A City Dreaming (34 page)

Though as it turned out, he didn't even need to wait that long, because after a long jog through the celebrity memoir section, they found themselves back in the same room they had initially walked into. At least it seemed the same room to M, four doorways, an unpleasant woman stamping cards behind a circular desk.

“Reunited at last!” M said to the Librarian.

“
Shhhhhhhhh!
” she hissed.

“Doesn't she remember me? Or is that her twin?”

“No, it's her,” Tannery explained. “Somehow this antechamber is mirrored across the Library, regardless of where you are in the stacks.”

“Then why doesn't she recognize me?”

“She recognizes you. She just doesn't like you.”

“Impossible!” M said, hurt and flabbergasted and coming down off the cocaine none too gently.

They crossed the threshold into the children's section of the Library—the children's wing, the children's labyrinth, the children's closet infinity. The walls were festooned with bright pictures and cheery slogans encouraging the viewer to
GET LOST IN LITERATURE
! and warning that
FICTION'S MY ADDICTION
! M paused for a moment in front of a large table covered with a dozen different embossed hardbacks below a sign saying
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF HARPER LEE
.

“That's far enough,” came a voice hidden by a cardboard display of characters that A.A. Milne never got around to inventing—Cynthia the rottweiler and Hunter the androgynous girl-child.

The sound of a gun being cocked was followed by the sight of that self-same gun. It was a custom model, not that M knew anything about guns really, but it was hard not to notice the filigreed silver, or that the end of the barrel was shaped like a pentagram. The man carrying it was just about average height if you included the varicolored Mohawk, which, comblike, stretched above an ochre head. He wore a red leather jacket with an eight ball on the back and a number of fetishes dangling from the zippers—harpy feathers and mandrake mandalas and fully stocked dream catchers. On one hip he had an empty holster for his gun, and on the other a curved skinning knife. He was dressed just oddly enough to warrant a double take at your average Brooklyn dive bar.

“Don't think about trying any gimmicks,” Falcor Khat said. “The gun is ensorcelled.”

“Ensorcelled,” M repeated, enunciating each syllable. “I don't think I've ever heard that spoken aloud before. What's the deal? You here picking up the latest E.L. James?”

“Cute. No, I'm really only here looking for one book, the same one you're here for, I imagine.”

“You're only interested in one book? That's absurd, Falcor. That's just indefensible. There are lots and lots of books worth reading. Proust is very good. Bolaño, Borges. Rebecca West is great, not sure why more people don't read her. Maybe we could hook you up with something simple—
The Phantom Tollbooth
might be a good start. You know, minds are like parachutes—they only function when open!” M had picked this last one up from a poster hanging above Tannery's shoulder, but he stood by it all the same.

Khat sighed. One might have got the sense that Khat did find M as amusing as M found M. “Are those going to be your last words?”

“Apparently not?”

“Good-bye, M,” Khat said, about to simplify the situation with his index finger.

“You won't find the book without me,” M informed him, quicker on the draw.

“Bullshit. The only reason you'd be here is because Tannery hired you as protection—why he thought you capable of that, I have no idea—ergo, Tannery has the location.”

“Tannery is my silent partner. We went in halves on a spell of location,” M pulled his phone out of his pocket, opened a map app, and waved it around in front of Khat. “See? It's been ensorcelled. Ensorcelled,” M said again.

Khat scowled. “Good-bye, Tannery,” he said, swiveling the aim of his cannon.

Tannery, white-faced, choking over an explanation, squeaked loudly. The Librarian, visible from the doorway but thus far showing no interest in their growing feud, looked up and cleared her throat unpleasantly.

“This is a library!” M said to Tannery in a stage whisper. “Keep your voice down!” Then, back at Khat, “But still, you can't shoot him; the spell doesn't work unless he's above the ground. You're going to have to give up on killing anybody for a little while. Think of it as a new challenge.”

“I guess I can wait a bit,” he said, gesturing at M, who headed deeper into the library, following, or so it seemed, the map on his phone.

The practice of magic is as diverse as any other art or craft, filled with
endless specialties and subspecialties. Khat was one of those who had gone in for violence—war mages, battlefield sorcerers, sword saints, hex-wielding gunslingers, kung-fu masters, and priestesses of the goddess of death. It seemed a rather pointless way to spend the time they were given, at least to M's mind, hours at dojos and ranges when you could be drinking sidecars in bustling Brooklyn bars—though, admittedly, there were moments, like this one for instance, when M supposed it wouldn't be altogether useless if he had any serious idea of how to throw a punch.

“I'm surprised you'd be chasing after the grimoire, Falcor,” M said, walking briskly from Children's Books to Books Intended for Adults but More Appropriate for Children. This was rather less well-cared-for than the zone they had come from, old copies of
The Fountainhead
and
On the Road
gathering dust in corners. “You know
grimoire
is another word for book, right? Really you'd need to be literate to get any use out of it.”

“You're not nearly as funny as you think you are.”

“But I think I'm really, really funny, and so even at half rate, I'd still be hysterical.”

They found themselves back in the front room. “What are you going to do with your share of infinity?” M asked, then snapped his fingers excitedly. “Imagine the size of the gun you could carry! And all the weapons you'd have around to play with! Gun-blades, razored nunchuks, poison-needled cock rings . . .”

“I've never met anyone so contemptuous of the instruments by which he'd be murdered.”

“Just the man who carries them.”

“Sure, what issues have ever been resolved through physical force? I can draw faster than Doc Holiday, outwrestle a panda bear, and I learned
iaijutsu
from the ghost of Miyamoto Mushashi. What do you have, M? What do you have?”

“A healthy sense of the absurd,” M said. “I assumed from your haircut that was a quality we shared.”

“Keep talking,” Khat said, raising his voice beyond the conversational. “It'll make killing you that much more fun.”

“
Shhhhhhh!
” the Librarian commanded. The coke-bottle glasses she
wore might have been the reason her eyes seemed bigger than her head was, though it failed to explain their strange darkness.

M checked his phone and took them left, into Popular Histories of World War II, 1967–1978, exiting about a half mile later into Monster Erotica. M wanted to take a detour into Aquatic Amarous Adventures, but Khat had that gun and was not slow to remind anyone of that fact.

“You talk absolutely endless reams of shit,” Khat said, “for a man who could be broken in two by a JV lineman.”

“Oh, I wouldn't think of competing with all that hardware. You look like one of Tannery's action figures.”

“They're collectibles,” Tannery interrupted.

“No doubt future generations will accord them a niche in the Louvre,” M prophesied, before turning back to Khat. “We all have our specialties.”

“And what's your specialty, M? Talking bullshit?”

“Don't knock talking. We aren't out here tonight looking for Excalibur or Terminus Est or storied Snaga. Words are the thing. What's the point of killing a man when you can run him round to your point of view or poison his memory for future generations?”

“I find most people don't look beyond the knife sticking out of their chest.”

“You aren't really planning to murder us, are you? What would be the point? I'm cooperating. You get the book and whatever comes with it; we get to shuffle back to our day-to-day.”

“I still owe you for that thing in Taipei.”

“Who can even remember that thing in Taipei?”

“You tricked me into eating dumplings laced with arsenic.”

“Right,” M said, nodding. “That was the thing that happened in Taipei. And Tannery?”

“Tannery I just don't like.”

“Sorry, Tannery. You don't think that there's any chance that upon merging with the godhead or whatever, you'll feel beyond such petty concerns as revenge or random murder?”

“Quite possibly, now that you mention it. Which is why I'll probably just go ahead and kill you before taking a look at the book.”

“That makes sense,” M admitted. They were back in the lobby. “I've been wondering: Does your hair do that naturally or does it require some sort of product?”

“Don't . . .” Khat said, smiling around the anger, shaking his head back and forth. “Don't annoy me, M. This could go worse for you than it has so far.”

“You already told me you were going to kill me.”

“But when I said that I was still planning on killing you quickly.”

M gave an exaggerated shudder and turned south. They spent a while lost in the halls of fan fiction, thousands upon thousands of volumes exploring the burning questions of what exactly would happen if Spock met Skywalker, or if Neo from
The Matrix
found himself mysteriously transported aboard the
Serenity.
Turning left before they had even scratched the surface, they found themselves back in the lobby.

“If you've been feeding me a line,” Khat began, “I'm going to kill Tannery and make you watch.”

“That's less threat than you suppose,” M said.

“It's not the only one I got,” Khat said nastily. “How about I poke a little hole in your stomach and tie one end of your intestine to a bookshelf. You know, you've got miles and miles of that stuff inside you. It would make it easier to find my way back out.”

“Sounds complicated. Do you dabble in rocketry or is this pretty much your only line?”

“You don't think much of me, do you, M?”

“I don't think about you much, but I guess if I did I wouldn't think much of you.”

“I got this cannon, though,” Khat said, smacking the butt.

“You've got me there. Who ever heard of an idiot with a gun?”

Khat smiled and reached forward, then M was doubled up trying to make sure that what was in his stomach remained there, rather than on the floor or his pants. The Librarian looked up from her cards.

“You better watch your mouth with me, you little fucking faggot,” Khat grunted loudly, “or I'll see you gagging on the end of my pistol.” This time, the Librarian shot them all a look of rancor.

“And I'm the one struggling with his sexuality,” M coughed.

“Fuck you!” Khat yelled, drawing his weapon from its holster.

“That's it,” said the Librarian, slamming shut a book.

All of the lights went out. Something vast and black and nearly silent came out of the darkness, so quiet in fact that you could only tell it was there by the beating of its stygian wings and the suddenly overpowering scent of wet paper. And of course by Khat's prolonged and horrific screaming.

Sure enough, when the lights came back on, M was still there, and Tannery, and the Librarian was back at her perch—assuming she had ever left—continuing with her endless busywork as if nothing at all had happened. Khat, however, was nowhere to be found. Nor his gun, nor his knife, nor his groovy leather jacket, nor any of the objects of power he had been carrying. Looking about carefully, however, M did notice a few streaks of blood on a pile of unshelved Hardy Boys paperbacks.

“Well, then,” M said. “Shall we get started?”

Tannery was so shaken by having spent the better part of an hour thinking he was certain to be murdered, as well as by the rather savage nature of his reprieve, that he needed twenty minutes before he could remember the directions he had memorized. Then it took them another few hours trying to retrace their way back to that portion of the Library they had originally come in at. They thought briefly of asking the Librarian for help but decided against it.

Eventually they found themselves back where they had started, and from there Tannery was able to reconstruct their intended route, though walking it lasted until the wee hours, and they turned left into Fetishes: Mysophilia–Narratophilia when they should have gone right into Supernatural Romances: Twee Vampire–Nonconsensual Werewolf, and it took them a while to get on track, especially because M insisted on sticking around for a few moments and expanding his base of knowledge. But by the time dawn was rolling round—according to M's cell phone, the supreme fortress of knowledge is, of course, windowless—they came to a small alcove simply labeled “???”.

Tannery scrambled around for a while, pulled a book off the shelves with an unmarked leather cover, and put it down on a nearby table.

“This is it?” M asked.

“It is,” Tannery said.

M looked at Tannery. Tannery looked at M. M found himself wondering, perhaps rather belatedly, if he really thought that Tannery was the sort of person who ought to be given unlimited power—if there was anyone who could be trusted with it, really—and, if not, whether it might not be better to do something so that Tannery did not acquire it. But before M could turn thought into action, Tannery threw open the book, revealing its knowledge to an unresisting world.

The first page was a woodcut of a man being spanked by a zaftig woman. The following pages were essentially similar.