individual. I stood on one end of a bridge, he stood on the other. I knew this one. He was one of the best and was going to be hard, if not impossible, to slip. Hello, I called across the bridge to him. He didn’t appear to hear me. I waved. He didn’t appear to see me. I began walking. He followed. It was quite an interesting relationship.
Off we went. Up the streets and down them and through doors and up escalators, I mean elevators, very small ones, but also I do mean escalators, or escalator, it is a rather funny word, as they all are, said over and over again.
It is possible, in this city, to cover distance underground. I did so. Through doors and down stairs. Corridors like snakes. Bright posters and glistening tile walls. People coming toward you in trickles and bursts.
Off in the distance, down one of the corridors, I heard music.
Voice and instrument.
Each after the other.
Gal I knew.
Hello, I said.
Part of the time she was one of us.
Right now, as far as I could tell, she was not.
She let go of her instrument, let it hang from a thick strap around her neck, and held out her hand.
You? she said, glancing down the long hall at him.
Yes, I said.
She nodded and started singing again so I dropped a coin into her hat and pushed off.
As I rounded the next corner and moved up toward the exit I heard another coin dropping, the other’s coin dropping, and the voice, which by the way was impossibly low and lovely, stopped.
Then I stopped.
Then it started again, with the instrument this time, and I started again, only, having started, found myself walking back the way I had come, so that, having re-rounded the corner, I was now walking behind him. He was not far ahead of me, and not moving fast, a nice easy pace, and his legs were shorter than mine and he looked a little, perhaps, round in the middle, and limped slightly, that was important, so that probably, conditions permitting, I would have him soon, I thought, only at that moment I passed her again and she nodded again and the music stopped.
She shrugged.
I dropped another coin.
He, in passing her again, after me again, did not.
So that was that and, back outside, we walked around like before until I was tired and sat down in an establishment where they served nice big drinks, one of which I sent over to him.
A few weeks before someone had sent one over to me.
I raised my glass.
He appeared not to notice. He appeared not to be drinking, either, but did, of course, and was.
I was trying to develop a plan.
I am no good at all, I believe I have already mentioned, at planning.
Nevertheless, I thought that I could somehow employ the paradigm of the dove-coming-out-of-the-hat trick, as described above. Yeah, I thought. I thought, somehow you understand, that I could reverse it, the idea of reversal having rather effectively just injected itself into my mind. It seemed to me that I could make the dove (myself) disappear into the hat (some receptacle) if I could only figure out some equivalent for the swishing of the hands. Dove, I said to myself. I swished my hands around a little, practicing. He was, without appearing to be, watching me. That was the problem. Even if I was a dove, the trick could never work if he was watching me. I mean if he was watching me while he was supposed to be watching my hands, or the putative equivalent thereof, swish around. I had been the proof of that—at the event, when I was sitting on the floor, before I had become a dove.
I’m a dove, I said.
The waiter shot me a look.
I kind of eased off on being a dove and got up.
He got up too.
It was a little like wearing a well-tailored, loose-fitting jacket.
Albeit one made of eyes.
For a second I thought about running. But then I remembered hearing about someone who had tried running on him. So I walked. Wearing the jacket. Quickly, but I walked.
In the end, I couldn’t think of anything except for a scheme which would have required as half the swishing part a few
Off we went. Up the streets and down them and through doors and up escalators, I mean elevators, very small ones, but also I do mean escalators, or escalator, it is a rather funny word, as they all are, said over and over again.
It is possible, in this city, to cover distance underground. I did so. Through doors and down stairs. Corridors like snakes. Bright posters and glistening tile walls. People coming toward you in trickles and bursts.
Off in the distance, down one of the corridors, I heard music.
Voice and instrument.
Each after the other.
Gal I knew.
Hello, I said.
Part of the time she was one of us.
Right now, as far as I could tell, she was not.
She let go of her instrument, let it hang from a thick strap around her neck, and held out her hand.
You? she said, glancing down the long hall at him.
Yes, I said.
She nodded and started singing again so I dropped a coin into her hat and pushed off.
As I rounded the next corner and moved up toward the exit I heard another coin dropping, the other’s coin dropping, and the voice, which by the way was impossibly low and lovely, stopped.
Then I stopped.
Then it started again, with the instrument this time, and I started again, only, having started, found myself walking back the way I had come, so that, having re-rounded the corner, I was now walking behind him. He was not far ahead of me, and not moving fast, a nice easy pace, and his legs were shorter than mine and he looked a little, perhaps, round in the middle, and limped slightly, that was important, so that probably, conditions permitting, I would have him soon, I thought, only at that moment I passed her again and she nodded again and the music stopped.
She shrugged.
I dropped another coin.
He, in passing her again, after me again, did not.
So that was that and, back outside, we walked around like before until I was tired and sat down in an establishment where they served nice big drinks, one of which I sent over to him.
A few weeks before someone had sent one over to me.
I raised my glass.
He appeared not to notice. He appeared not to be drinking, either, but did, of course, and was.
I was trying to develop a plan.
I am no good at all, I believe I have already mentioned, at planning.
Nevertheless, I thought that I could somehow employ the paradigm of the dove-coming-out-of-the-hat trick, as described above. Yeah, I thought. I thought, somehow you understand, that I could reverse it, the idea of reversal having rather effectively just injected itself into my mind. It seemed to me that I could make the dove (myself) disappear into the hat (some receptacle) if I could only figure out some equivalent for the swishing of the hands. Dove, I said to myself. I swished my hands around a little, practicing. He was, without appearing to be, watching me. That was the problem. Even if I was a dove, the trick could never work if he was watching me. I mean if he was watching me while he was supposed to be watching my hands, or the putative equivalent thereof, swish around. I had been the proof of that—at the event, when I was sitting on the floor, before I had become a dove.
I’m a dove, I said.
The waiter shot me a look.
I kind of eased off on being a dove and got up.
He got up too.
It was a little like wearing a well-tailored, loose-fitting jacket.
Albeit one made of eyes.
For a second I thought about running. But then I remembered hearing about someone who had tried running on him. So I walked. Wearing the jacket. Quickly, but I walked.
In the end, I couldn’t think of anything except for a scheme which would have required as half the swishing part a few
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