On the way back home, I stopped at the liquor store and purchased the most expensive bottle of scotch I could find ($136.50, tax included, for twenty six ounces of single malt with one of those Scot names that sound like someone throwing up). Possibly the purchase was caused by Todd"s exhortation to live a little. And of course the whiskies I"d drunk with Todd had made me feel better, so having more was the natural thing to do.The large rustling paper bag with its sloshing contents somehow made me furtive. When I got back to the meat merchant"s house I opened the front door as if I were a burglar, and crept up the stairs every inch the Invisible Man.
There was a light on in Kross"s flat: a soft golden mist lined the bottom of his door. I stood in front of mine, key ready. I didn"t want to drink alone; there"s no such thing as drinking alone, anyway. When one drinks alone one ends up talking on the phone to long-forgotten people, maybe even writing letters to girlfriends ditched with relief half a lifetime earlier. I looked at the light, hesitating; then I slipped the key back into my pocket and crept up to Kross"s door.
I made almost no sound; one disgruntled floorboard gave out a muted fart. I stopped maybe a foot away from the door, still clutching the big bottle of whisky in its paper bag. I listened; someone was talking in one of the rooms downstairs; there was a m.u.f.fled voice – I made out the word "rosebud" – and a soft giggle. It reminded me why I hadn"t wanted to socialize with any of the other tenants - until now.
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I strained to hear anything from behind the door in front of my face, but Kross"s flat was as still and quiet as the proverbial tomb. I raised my free fist to knock, and hesitated. Somewhere in the house, an old, tired beam groaned softly.
"Come in."
I stared at the black door with a sagged lip.
"Come in. Don"t make me get you."
I went in.
Kross was seated in the seedy armchair that was part of the flat"s rented furnishings, in front of a scarred coffee table that featured a large tin ashtray and a cigarette unrolling a ribbon of light blue smoke. He had an open magazine propped up on his lap; one of his hands was hidden behind it, as if he had been masturbating secretly. He wore black jeans and a thick grey hand-knit sweater with a cable motif. His socks didn"t match: one was black, the other dark grey.
"Your socks don"t match," I said. "Isn"t it odd how washing machines seem to feed on socks?"
"You a launderette owner?"
"No, I"m an unemployed art director," I said. "I thought that being fellow inmates and all we could share a nightcap. Unless you have art that needs directing right this minute." I made the paper bag rustle promisingly.
He watched me without smiling for a couple of seconds, but that didn"t shake me. I"d become used to the fact that people didn"t smile at me as often as they used to when I was gainfully employed, and lived in a world-cla.s.s area.
"Sure. I"ll get some ice," he said finally. He got up and I noticed a slight awkwardness in the way he handled the thick magazine - I had the impression he didn"t want me to see what it was about. He took it with him into the kitchen; maybe it was a p.o.r.n mag after all, and he had been giving his gonads the occasional friendly rub. I went up to the coffee table and deposited the bottle, twisting the bag into a paper truncheon and smacking my leg with it as I turned around, searching for a wastepaper basket and giving the room the once-over at the same time.
That was when I noticed Kross had made an addition to the rented furniture: a big table that effectively took up one end of the room. It definitely hadn"t been there when I was shown the flat. It was a makeshift affair, consisting of a piece of white particleboard laid across a pair of wooden trestles, and it featured an interesting item: a small statue, perched atop the matte black case of a laptop computer as if on a pedestal. I moved a step closer to examine it -
It was about a foot high, sculpted from dark, almost black wood that I thought might be ebony: a tall, spindly statue or rather statuette of a man with what I initially took for a goat"s head. But its eyes - narrow, slanted nicks in the dark wood - were both at the front; and the round, sucker-like mouth at the end of the long, curved jaw displayed human teeth. The wrists of the long thin arms were joined to the hips; two huge flat hands thrust out on both sides of the smooth pubis, fingers fused into blades. There were no genitals. I picked the statuette up; it was slightly sticky to the touch, and lighter than I expected.
"Put that down."
I did. Then I made a show of depositing the rolled-up paper bag into the wastepaper basket by the table before turning round. Kross was standing in the kitchen doorway with a mug in each hand. One mug was red, the other green. They reminded me of traffic lights. I decided that if he gave me the red one, it would be a sign I should stop drinking.
"Sorry. It"s an arresting piece," I said, and did Kross"s eyes narrow slightly?
"Sit down." It was more or less a command, and I obeyed. I sank into the flat"s other armchair; it groaned and wheezed; my knees pretty much touched my chin when I reached out to take the mug Kross offered me. It was the red one. I shook it experimentally, and the ice inside chuckled. The h.e.l.l with it; I was going to drink more, and enjoy it.
"Sorry about the gla.s.ses." He didn"t sound sorry. He picked up the bottle I"d brought and whistled softly. "My, my," he said. "Purveyors to the royal family, no less. Judging by the way they"ve been carrying on, we should be careful with that stuff."
He removed the cap with what clearly was a practiced twist of the fist and poured himself a nearly full mug before handing the bottle to me.
"Oh, I don"t mind the gla.s.sware at all," I said, pouring. "I just wish I hadn"t been so uptight about wearing my new pink housecoat. It"s so comfortable, and tres chic." I set the bottle down sharply. Kross picked up his smoldering cigarette and looked at it for a moment. Then he said:
"So. What does someone with such a fine taste in scotch do in this f.u.c.king dump?"
"It"s my fine taste that put me here," I said, and took a swig. It was very good scotch. In fact, it was probably the best scotch I"d ever drunk.
"I saw a FedEx employee asking about an Oscar Hansen earlier today," remarked Kross.
"Yes, that"s me."
"Mark Kross, with a K." He made an odd little bow from the waist.
"I know. I saw an envelope from a Swiss financial inst.i.tution asking about Mark Kross the other day."
"Very nice." Kross smiled and nodded appreciatively, and there certainly was a new kind of appreciation in his eyes. "Well," he gestured with his mugless hand, "As you can guess from these surroundings, my promising envelope didn"t contain good news."
"Neither did mine," I said, and took another good swig.
"You said you are an unemployed art director?"
"That"s who I am," I said gravely. "Special emphasis on the word unemployed."
Kross snorted softly.
"Should I bring a box of tissues?" he asked, and I liked him instantly. You"re familiar with the routine that follows confessing to a misfortune, aren"t you? Your interlocutor"s eyes darken with either sympathy or dread (it"s often hard to tell); they touch your sleeve gently, as if you were made of something very brittle, and begin a.s.suring you everything will be all right in the end. It"s not true; endings are bad by definition. Anyway, I found Kross"s reaction refreshing.
I suppose that was partly why I told him everything, starting with the day I invented a daughter named Bonnie, and going on to describe all the stuff you know already. But really - I don"t know what came over me. I mean, you"ve probably twigged by now that I"m not the most talkative of guys (it"s been quite an effort to tell you all this, as a matter of fact. I"m not quite sure you appreciate the agony I went through). It might be, it must be that I gave in to the basic human impulse to tell someone. It"s a powerful impulse. It even influences people that are hardly human, like serial murderers and child rapists. And then there was the scotch. The Prince of Wales must have been drinking the very same stuff when he"d expressed his desire to swap places with a hard-working tampon.
Kross listened well; I had the impression that he"d done a lot of listening in his lifetime, and it probably made me more candid than I intended. I was on air for quite a while; although my memories of the later part of that evening aren"t crystal-clear, I recall glancing at the whisky bottle when I"d finished and noticing that it was half empty. More than half empty, in fact.
I can also recall that when I"d finished, we were both silent for a while. Then I said:
"And you - what do you do?"
"Do?"
"For money. How do you make your living, for f.u.c.k"s sake."
"Oh, that. I"m a security consultant."
"A security consultant? What"s that? You walk around in a uniform, looking for broken windows and torn fencing? No, waitamoment," I think I said, probably waving a correcting forefinger. "That"s a security guard."
"Well, you might say I"m an advisor to the people in charge of the security guards."
"Change the flashlights for more powerful models? Purchase longer nightsticks?" Sarcastic, I know, but I"d just finished telling him about myself.
Kross nodded amiably.
"Something like that," he said, and activated the whisky bottle.
"Business flat at the moment? I expect that"s a good sign. We should all be happy and grateful things are safe and secure," I said darkly. "You"ve been doing your job too well, Mark."
"Don"t call me Mark." I looked at him and he shrugged.
"I never liked that name," he said. "It sounds like something dangling from a nostril."
"Yes," I said. "Isn"t it sad how we all get named without prior consent. I keep hearing those f.u.c.king stupid jokes about the Academy Awards."
Kross didn"t laugh or smile, and I liked him that much better.
"So what do I call you then?" I asked.
He shrugged again.
"Kross is fine," he said.
"Ah, I see. You"re a Christian type of guy."
We drank in silence for a while. Then I said:
"I saw my younger brother today in order to borrow some money."
"You"ve told me already."
"He told me I"m a coward. That I"m afraid of taking risks."
"You"ve told me that, too."
"My younger brother is still very young," I said. "He thinks life is just a big adventure. Oh, I admit that if someone showed up right now and invited me to look for Blackbeard"s treasure or something like that I"d jump at the chance. But that"s not life."
Kross straightened out in his collapsing armchair and lit a cigarette. He watched me through the smoke for a while, and said:
"Well, what is it then?"
I didn"t even attempt to answer that. I stared into my mug, noting the shape of the half-melted ice cubes. Kross clicked his cigarette lighter a couple of times.
"Let me tell you a story," he said.
And that"s when he told me about Avery"s treasure, within just a few hours of meeting me for the first time.