The Four Last Things

Chapter 25

"Have you got a gun?" I asked into the phone.

"Does Archie got zits?" he said. "What caliber you want? Twenty-two? Thirty-eight? Automatic? Revolver? Belly-gun? Smith amp; Wesson? Uzi?"

"You've got an Uzi?"

"Nah. I lied about the Uzi."

"Can you get your uniform?"

"I don't need no uniform."

"Why not?"

"White reflects light, don't you know that? Black absorbs it. Black skin is the cloak of invisibility, least as far as white people are concerned."

"I'd still rather you wore the uniform."

He let out an exasperated breath. "Man don't trust the power of metaphor," he said.

"What about the truck? Can you get it?"

"Why not? Who else gone want it?"

"Can you get them tonight?"

There was a pause. "Thass a problem," he said. "The yard's closed for the night."

"What time do they open?"

"'Bout five-thirty in the ayem."

"Fine. We won't begin until noon or so. You can pick them up at ten." I sat there thinking.

"You gone tell me what we doin'?" he said into the silence.

"I'll explain it when you get here. How long will it take?"

"Well, that depend on where you are, don't it?"

I told him where I was.

'They got room service there?"

"Hell," I said. "They've barely got rooms."

"Order us up a pizza. You'll see me before you see it. One thing."

"What?"

"No anchovy on that pizza, or I'm gone."

He beat the pizza by about two minutes, lugging a six-pack of Mickey's Big Mouth, and sauntered around the room looking both amused and pleased with himself. "My, my," he said, "You do live in style, don't you? One fine domicile after another. Ain't you afraid of gettin' soft, pampering youself like this?" In the cramped confines of the Russell Arms he looked even taller than he had at my house. He had to duck his head to pass under the lighting fixture that hung from the center of the ceiling.

"I got a couple of questions," he said, popping the top from a Mickey's and handing it to me. "This gone to be dangerous?"

"No more dangerous than Grenada."

"Good. I slep' through that. Next question. We the good guys or the bad guys?"

I put my hand over my heart. "Dexter," I said, "You wound me. Look at this face."

He grinned. "Thass the pizza," he said. I hadn't heard anything. A moment later, someone knocked.

"Jus' in case," he said, stepping behind the door.

It was the pizza. The delivery boy, a bent and befuddled octogenarian, was terrified when I closed the door behind him to reveal Dexter looming two feet above his head.

"This hinge is terrible," Dexter said to himself, examining it. He looked down at the delivery boy. "Oh, hello," he said in a British accent. "I'm the doorman. This door needs help. You wouldn't have any WD-40, would you?"

The delivery boy shook his head helplessly and wobbled backward out of the room. He forgot to give me my change. Dexter opened the box and folded himself somehow so that he could sit on the edge of one of the beds. His knees jutted out at acute angles, reaching almost to his chin. He took a bite of pizza.

"Okay," he said. "Let's hear what you proposin'."

I gave him five or six minutes of background. When I got to Sally he stopped chewing, and when I told him about Merryman and the little girls he put the pizza down. "Riptahls," he said. "Snakes and 'phibians." I told him the rest of it. He shook his head, not looking like anyone I really wanted to know.

"This all got somethin' to do with those pieces of paper on the wall?"

"Well, yes," I said with more than a little reluctance. I took down the overhead view and told him what I thought we might do. He listened in absolute silence, except for one brief cackle of laughter. When I'd finished he sat quietly for longer than I would have thought possible, following the floorplan with his eyes. Then he grunted and looked up at me.

"From a purely determinist viewpoint," he said, "we might not get killed. I ain't sure I always agreed with ol' Jerry about determinism, though."

"Have you got a better idea?" I said. It hadn't sounded exactly watertight to me either.

"Maybe one or two little improvements," he said.

It took him two minutes to fix things to the point where I could almost believe the plan would work.

An hour later he was stretched out on top of the other bed, sound asleep. His head was touching the headboard and his bare feet dangled over the end. He hadn't bothered with the blankets. Other than the boots, he hadn't undressed. Neither had I. I turned off the light and lay for what seemed like hours, looking up at the ceiling and listening to Dexter breathe. When I eased myself off the bed to go to the bathroom, a hand grasped my wrist. I looked down at Dexter. I hadn't even heard him move.

"All right," he said, gazing up at me. When I came back a minute later he was asleep again. A few minutes later, so was I.

The phone rang from very far off, at the end of a long, narrow, dark corridor. I had to navigate the corridor to get to it, but it kept receding in front of me like the shimmer of a mirage. When I finally caught it and picked it up, the handset turned into a snake. I woke up.

The phone was ringing, and Dexter was lying on his side with his eyes wide open. "Hard man to wake up," he said.

"Nobody knows this number," I said. "Nobody but Eleanor." I picked it up and said hello.

It wasn't Eleanor.

"Simeon," a familiar voice said. "How nice to know you're in the neighborhood."

"Who is this?"

"Please. You disappoint me. Simeon, it's Dick." IV — Hell