“Oh, he never shuts up.”
“I believe he's giving me a warning.” She flashed him a dark look, but the crinkles at the corners of her mouth betrayed her. “He's telling me to get away from you. I'm in terrible danger with you.”
He stroked his jaw. “He's a seer and a prophet. Heed every word, lest fate take you by surprise.”
She batted her odd, yellow eyes, and laughed. “Fate should be careful I don't take him by surprise.”
As she spoke, he caught her scent again, her perfume of jasmine and honey, strong upon him. He felt as if she'd infiltrated his haunts, his home, his person. Her smell was sweet, her words playful, but he felt his chest tighten for a moment, a fleeting instant of tension, as if his body heard something in her voice, a sinister undertone that had escaped conscious notice.
Perhaps she felt his unease, or perhaps his unformed fears were true, and she saw he'd begun to see through her lies. Her face clouded, and she turned her back on him, perhaps studying his photos, and perhaps not.
Jesus, he thought. I'm getting paranoid.
“Who's this man?” she asked, tapping a portrait with her nail. “In this one, with the lake and the mountain in the distance. You two look happy. Fishing buddy?”
He snickered. “Not even close.”
“So I have to guess now? Then... Brokeback buddies?”
She stunned him into silence, and then he burst into gut shaking peals of laughter. “You swing for the mark, girl.”
“Damn,” she said, smirking. “The only book you've got in this place is that old copy of Leaves of Grass that was on the bedside table.”
“Was?”
“Someone knocked it down. Only book here, unless you've hidden the rest to trick me. Do you want me to take another guess? I can hit pretty hard if you make me.”
He shook his head, and walked over beside her, his limbs easy and loose, all that anxiety dissolved and washed away by laughter. “I give,” he said. “That's Sam.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding with an exaggerated scowl. “So that's Sam!”
“My brother. Bigger. Prettier. Won every award for photography they make.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I thought you'd won them all.”
“He's won more.”
Her brows contracted, and she pursed her lips. “How come...?”
“You know my name, and not his? Sam's an artist.”
Her eyes flicked towards Squizzle, who perched on a coat tree in the corner, munching a handful of roasted almonds. “And you're a monkey wrangler?”
“Part time monkey wrangler,” he said, deadpan. “I'm on unpaid probation until I get me certified.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “Sam's an artist. He doesn't touch commercial projects.”
“And you?”
“I'm as commercial as they come, apparently,” he said, looking into the distance, reminded of a girl with blue green eyes and pink ribbons in her braided black hair. “I do anything I want. If someone wants to pay me for it... I'm saint, to live on wood chips and mould.”
“And your non-commercial brother,” she said, watching him sidelong, “he needs the odd spot of help... For his mouldy wood chips.”
That tension returned, a tight knot in the centre of his chest. He felt jarred, knocked off-balance by her insight into his life.
“You'd make a good detective,” he said.
“Spy, you mean. Not girlfriend, not wife.” She gestured at a lower row of pictures, portraits of women, most of them young and pretty. “They told me that.”
“Just now?”
“The second I walked in here.” She gestured at the row of portraits, at those bright smiles, the pair of demure, downcast eyes, that smouldering half-lidded glances, at the woman whose lips were pressed together as her eyes shimmered with budding tears, and at the one who wept into her hands, the tears flowing through her fingers.
“Auburn and ashen, brunettes with braids... You have an extensive collection.”
Somewhere along the way, Soro had lost track of the conversation. He felt adrift, without land or sails in sight. “I guess.”
“And now you have me.”
He took a deep breath, felt his chest swell, felt the pressure in his lungs. He held it, and then let out. “I have your picture,” he said.
“And a clean conscience. Please. Don't grow guilt spots over Misty. She's not a little girl; she knew what she was doing. You invited me to play, like you invited these other girls. Frankly, I think the sex was just an excuse for the photo.”
He almost choked. “You don't talk like most girls.”
She chuckled. “Most girls are insipid, shallow beasts. You have my face, but you'll never take a picture of the real Misty.” She walked to the door. She paused on the threshold, and bent down to a table laden with photographic paraphernalia. She picked up an empty picture frame. “But that doesn't mean you can't play with your...luck, again.” She took out her lipstick, and wrote her number in thick red script. “Bye bye, Eye Guy,” she said, and slipped through the door.
Soro leaned against the wall and gazed at the door, his head spinning. He had a feeling he'd just played a game without knowing the rules; played, and lost.
Or had he?
***
The sense of unease that he'd begun to feel when he'd met Misty did not disappear. It grew over the passing days, and though the marks on his body from his New Verity exploit faded from the surface, he felt an inner discomfort, as if they were not healing, but burrowing deeper, chewing through his flesh to settle on the bones.
When we went outside, he felt eyes on his back. When he stayed home, he felt trapped, cut off from the world.
His feelings communicated themselves to Squizzle, who began at first to sit on his shoulders and groom his scalp, but when that failed to soothe him, Squiz tried shock tactics; he marched up and down in front of Soro, shooting nervous glances at the sofa and the fridge, and when he heard a loud noise from outside, he leapt up in the air, hair jutting out like a porcupine, and then he scrabbled for cover in the hidey hole under the wooden cabinet where Soro kept his keepsakes locked away.
Soro resisted it, but the tiny monkey was a born comedian, and the act broke him down into peals of laughter.
“You're right, Squiz,” he said, sitting on the couch, tickling the critter's fur. “I've been acting like Hamlet on a bad day. Let's get some air.”
He thought he'd thrown off the gloom for good, but when he got back, it was waiting for him, in a more insidious form than before.
Sam and Soro were close enough that they didn't need to talk every day. Between the two of them, they had such a common understanding that they could be apart for a week, a month, even a year, and then one day they'd sit down together over a pot of coffee, and show each other their latest pictures.
That was their bond, the uncommon facility with a camera they both had. Not a blood bond, a gene bond, not a gift from giving parents, though that pair had given them other things. It was just something they had, something that set them apart from other people, and pulled them closer together.
But you can't sit down, drink coffee, and share pictures when you're a thousand miles apart. Well, they had the internet, but if it wasn't the same for a human, it was impossible for a monkey. Squiz loved Sam too, but he had no more patience with the web than he had for the cats that tried to stalk him from time to time.
Without effect. Squiz was more than a match for a street cat.
When they were apart, he and Sam kept in touch with picture postcards. Not the store bought variety, with a pretty if unmemorable photo of some local delight, but something more personal: they made their own cards, with pictures that they took wherever they were, glued to squares of high grade cream coloured card made in only one store, Vertigues, in their neighbourhood. Wherever one went, he made it a point to stop at Vertigues on the way to the bus terminal, train station or airport, and pick up a lasting supply. They both
had portable digital printers, small size worth the big money it cost to maintain this private connection.
When he saw the card, poking out of his mail slot, on his way home, he felt as if a warm breeze blew over him on a cold winter's eve. He plucked the card from the slot, felt a jarring, eerie tingle in his fingers, and then it passed, and he hurried upstairs to read the card.
Squiz jumped and chirruped when he saw him, and ignored the proffered raisin, in favour of sniffing over the card. The little monkey rolled his eyes and puffed out his lips, snatched the raisin and bounced away.
“Weird,” said Soro. “Maybe Sam forgot to shower.” He glanced at the card, and wondered if he ought to wash his hands.
He dropped down on the sofa with a mug of steaming black coffee, enjoying the aroma. Squiz made a face, and strolled into the kitchen to look for more raisins. Soro grinned and sipped his drink. “You're young, Squiz. One day you'll appreciate the finer things.”
He looked at the picture. He saw the sun rise over a mist-wreathed mountain range, sweeping away to the horizon. In the foreground stood a wizened Andean woman, with a floppy red hat and a polished wooden pipe that looked as though it had once belonged to Sherlock Holmes. He frowned. Something was off about that picture, but he couldn't say what it was. He turned the card over, and read the message.
He almost spilled his coffee.
“Dear Soro,” he read aloud, “having a great time in the Andes. Won't be back stateside for a while. Try to behave yourself until I get back. Best wishes, Sam.”
He dropped the card on the cushions, and stared into the glimmering pool of his coffee, his brows furrowed, almost meeting in the middle. From time to time he shook his head, or drummed his fingers on the end of his nose. Squiz came up and sat beside him, brushed his arm and gave a low murmur. Soro continued to frown at his coffee.
At last he came out his reverie, and noticed the weight of the mug in his hands. He lifted it to his lips, and grimaced. The coffee had gone cold.
He set the mug down on the coffee table, and went to his bedroom. He'd been right about Misty; she'd have made a good spy. There, on the little table by the unmade bed, sat his only book, a first edition of Leaves of Grass. He picked up the volume, and leafed through it. The book appear fatter than most, for although it had only the first handful of Walt Whitman's poems, it was bulked out by the cards.
Every few pages his fingers encountered, not paper, but the harder edge of a postcard. He opened the book, and looked at a card. “A child went forth,” he read out the beginning, “to the old world, to France, and what he saw he took into himself, like baguettes and Notre Dame.” He flipped over the card, and there he saw the great gothic cathedral, a beautiful monster carved out of shadow and rock.
He carried the book back into the living room, and sat cross-legged on the sofa, ready to take as long he needed to undermine his concerns. He couldn't yet call them suspicions.
He turned from card to book, and back. He rifled through the pages, searching for some slender thread. Even the most tenuous connection would let him relax, but nowhere he looked, in the arrangement of words, in their mere selection, nowhere on that card could he find a trace of Whitman's substance or style.
“It's not here, Squiz,” he said.
The monkey hopped up on his knee, and cocked his head, looking up at Soro with warm, but puzzled eyes.
“Sam never misses the game. We've got two things in common, only two, pics and Leaves.” He shook his head. “Even the cardstock feels wrong; the grain is too fine. Vertigues uses cotton fibre. I could feel the difference when I picked it up.”
He felt a sudden impulse to leap up, so he stood, but where could he go? What was he supposed to do? He stumped back and forth in the living room until his feet hurt. Then he made another cup of coffee, but his restless mind wouldn't let him enjoy the taste. He set it aside, for Squizzle to sniff at, and wrinkle his cute little nose, and when Soro remembered to drink it, once again it had gone cold.
“It's no use,” he said. “I've turned it this way and that, and back to this again. Sam didn't write that card.”
Squizzle looked at him, and his big, orange brown eyes shone with such intelligence that Soro half-believed the monkey understood every word.
“It could be a joke. It could be a new game. Maybe I'm supposed to figure it out. Sam, what are you japing on? I don't know, Squiz. I bet if you did understand, you'd give me good advice.”
The monkey blinked twice, nibbled his toenails, and then he reached out, and put one small hand on Soro's thigh.
Soro raised one eyebrow. “Either you're coming on to me, or that's a splendid idea.”
He wrote his own card, and he did it right. “What do you see, Sam's Soro? A mystery, I'll tell...” After he'd posted it, he felt a little better. Then he tried calling Sam's last known location, a Peruvian hotel. That didn't work, so he tried several other ways, calling or emailing Sam's eco-minded pals, and some agencies he'd worked with. He also contacted the American embassy in Peru, in case they had news.
At the end of it, he hadn't got in touch with his brother, or heard more than fragmentary stories about some mysterious project in the Andes, but he'd reached out as wide as his arms would go.
I should feel satisfied, he thought. Or worried. Instead I feel exhausted. He flopped down on the sofa. Squiz curled up in the crook of his arm, warm and fuzzy, and together they slid into oblivion.
***
He woke in darkness, unsure what had awoken him, but with a strong urge in his gut, an urge to run. On his heart rested fingers that tightened in a murderous grip.
My God, he thought. My God, what has happened? What's happening to me?
Panic welled up inside, as the hand on his heart gripped tighter. Confused half-images flashed through his half-awake mind, faces mish-mashed together, some parts he recognised, others were strange or grotesque. One had the eyes of his brother under the billowing red hair of the first model he'd slept with, and in her mouth, tucked behind those full, pouting lips, stood rows of twisted grey teeth, stunted and deformed into a monstrous parody of human teeth. Drool flowed over them, with the foul stink of bile, and the coppery hint of blood.
The creature lunged at him, but he opened his eyes, dispelling the dream monster. The pressure in his chest did not vanish. Those crushing fingers developed claws, claws that dug into the palpitating meat of his heart.
I'm having a heart attack, he thought. Dear God, I'm having a heart attack. I'm going to die and I'm only twenty four!
He felt weak, no, that wasn't it. He was afraid to move, afraid to test his body, lest it betray him, lest his attempt caused his embattled heart to collapse.
I can't just lie here, he thought. If I do...
He shifted his right hand, under the twisted, sweaty sheets, reaching for the edge of the bed. The pain in his heart did not diminish. The fingers squeezed, the claws stabbed, and his fear remained strong.
Without any preamble, he felt something grasp his finger, something small and leathery and warm.
"Squiz," he murmured.
The monkey replied with a cooing sound.
"I'm not alone," he said. "I'm not alone after all."
The pain felt less, and he thought he would be able to move. He eased himself up into a sitting position, with his knees up at chest. With every shift, every breath, he feared his heart would give in, that the invisible claws would clench and rend it. When he focused on that image, his heart kicked, and the pain grew.
His brow and back were streaked with cooling sweat, and his eyes too were moist. He felt a lump in his throat, and without meaning to, he sobbed.
No, he thought. I'm not crying and I'm not dying.
He stroked Squizzle, and whispered the monkey's favourite words to him in a sing song voice. "Nuts, raisins. Nuts, raisins. Dried figs and prunes, pumpkin seeds too." The monkey shivered, and not from the cold. He looked up at Soro, and gave him that odd, enigmatic smile. Soro knew of few animals, besides man
, that could smile. Off-hand he could only think of dolphins, but a dolphin couldn't sit in your lap or perch on your shoulder.
He concentrated on the little monkey, stroking him, whispering to him, remembering the places they had been together. Little by little, the pain faded, and with it went the fear.
Later, as he drank his coffee, and looked out the window at the deep shadows cast across streets and houses by the rising sun, he asked himself what had happened.
Heart disease?
Nonsense. Twenty four, and fit. Besides, he more or less lived on the same diet as Squiz: nuts, seeds, and fruit.
Damage from some violent encounter, unsuspected, and now making itself felt?
He shook his head. There had been more than enough falls and knocks, but not around the heart.
Poison?
He laughed.
Shared pain via empathic or psychic link?
Again he shook his head. "You watch too much science fiction on TV," he said.
Psychosomatic illness caused by stress or anxiety.
He opened his mouth as if to speak, but his left hand twitched, a minor involuntary convulsion. His brows came down over his eyes, and his lips pressed together, thin and pale.
He glared out of the window, the vista forgotten. He spoke to hear his thoughts. "Not money. Not a girl. Not trouble with some ogre of a boss. Not health, now my head's all healed. Not nuclear Armageddon," he chuckled. "Not the planet; it's still pretty. Then..."
He knew the answer already. He'd known it before he'd asked the question. It had been the last thing on his mind before he slept, and the first thing in his heart when he'd woken.
"That damn card... Sam, find a phone, return my calls! This isn't like you, man. If I did something to piss you off, I'm sorry, but..."
No.
There had been no fight. Perhaps their one usual point of contact was a card, but if one of them fired out a dozen messages, the other would find a phone.
"Unless you can't."
***
He got to the post office before it opened. The morning air blew chill kisses at his lips and cheeks, and carried the city's perfume of stale cheese burgers, the hot chemical reek of the launderette, the yeasty goodness of bread rising in the bakery oven.
His feet felt cold in his brown leather loafers; he'd forgotten to wear socks. His jeans, scratched and ripped without regard for current fashion, let in more of the cold than he could have wished, and his dark grey polo neck, though the long sleeves covered his arms, was still little help. Only when he walked out of the thick shadows, and into the golden blaze of the sun, did he feel warm.