I gritted my teeth. “It was an amicable parting of the ways.”
“I hear otherwise,” Sirin said, but dismissed my nascent protest with a wave of the hand. “Not that it matters much.”
I’m confused now. I can’t remember if we had this discussion in his office or somewhere else, if I’m thinking of another conversation. As I try to imagine his office during our meeting, I see books that belong to other eras, other encounters. I’m fairly sure that The Exchange & Other Stories by Nicholas Sporlender had not yet been published, for example, and that that book of essays about Martin Lake wasn’t published until several years later, either. Why, now that I really look, I can see a cane in the corner of Sirin’s office, although he didn’t use one. And over there—glimmering darkly, like some expanse of black lamp-lit water—a starfish Duncan never showed him. No, actually, it’s a pair of the same glasses I brought with me to Lake’s party. I can see that now.
Does that mean Sirin knew what Duncan knew? About the glasses? {You worry me, sister. The one thing you had going for you was a kind of grim, lurching linear progression. You seem to be losing that now.}
It’s darker in here than before, but I can see better, if that makes any sense. The spores are thick. I shall ask the bartender to bring me a fan, or to open the window. I can’t afford to leave again now. It’s getting too late to rewrite. All I want to do is move forward. All I want is to look ahead. Typos will proliferate. Sentences will wind up nowhere. I don’t care.
But we were in Sirin’s office, attempting to throw off the weight of accumulated memory.
Sirin told a joke of some kind, but I didn’t understand the punch line. We sat there uncomfortably for a moment before I said, “I came here to see if—”
“You came here to find work for Duncan, and possibly for yourself. Your gallery is failing. Duncan was indiscreet with a student. Tell me why I should help you?”
No respite from that uncanny knack he had for knowing things. I said the only thing I could say: “We’ve always done good work for you. Rarely missed a deadline. Our private lives have never affected Hoegbotton.”
Sirin laughed at that—or perhaps I am again remembering some other meeting—and as his body shook with that not unsympathetic laughter, a strange black dust rose from his suit.
He sat forward, elbows on the desk, fingers templed. His features took on a sudden intensity. He said: “I am going to recommend you both for positions. Temporary or permanent, who can tell? Something horrible is about to happen that will provide an opportunity for you both to find work. The Ambergris Daily Broadsheet will soon become the only reliable source for information. They will need reporters. Between the two of you, you should be able to supply that need and do a good job.” {Just do a good job? Nothing was ever so simple with Sirin, which is why I kept well away from him.}
This information stunned me. “How do you know?” I started to say, but then shrugged. I had given up trying to understand how or why Sirin knew so much, or why it continued to surprise me. Someday, I was sure, Sirin would write a book that explained it all.
“It doesn’t matter why, does it? I’m offering you employment.” {Witty, yes. Clever, yes, with a core of hidden sadness, but also deadly in his way.}
He leaned forward, offered me a card from the end of his long fingers. I liked looking into his eyes, used to experience a tiny tremor from the effect of that gaze.
“Visit the editor at the Broadsheet,” he said, “in about six weeks. When it all begins.”
“Six weeks is a long time to wait,” I said. Ahead, in those six weeks, lay a period of the doldrums—Duncan stalking Mary from afar, unable to get close, while I piloted the doddering skeleton of my ever-less-seaworthy ship of a gallery. At times, sitting at my desk with no customers on the horizon, I could actually feel the room begin to list from side to side, the gallery anchored to nothing more permanent than perpetual debt.
Sirin sat back in his chair. “Not as long as you might think.” His gaze softened. “I cannot guarantee you anything, Janice. No one ever receives what might be called an ironclad guarantee. Now, I have another appointment, so you’ll have to excuse me. If you’re lucky, perhaps you can turn your work for the Broadsheet into a book for me. We’ll see about that later, depending on whether or not Ambergris is still standing at the end of this.”
And that was the end of my meeting with Sirin. As I left, he had returned to his butterflies, clucking his disapproval of the fungus that had swallowed up his sapphire cappan.
Two things stayed with me from that encounter. First, the name on the card: “James Lacond.” Lacond—thick, stinking of cigars, rumpled, pinkish, rambling—would soon play a large role in Duncan’s life. But as I stared down at the name and tried to understand that our lives would be changing in six weeks, he seemed nothing more than a bit player. This was when it first occurred to me that perhaps Sirin had not received his information about Duncan in quite as intuitive a way as I had thought. As I left, I could have sworn that I saw a manuscript with a title page reading “The Role of Chance in the History of the Southern Cities” pinned between two volumes of The Lore of the Ancient Saphant. Even now, the thought of that title, Sabon’s first book, causes an involuntary shudder.
{Like those hallucinations you were having a few paragraphs ago, this is clearly impossible. Mary did not publish her first book for four years. For two of those years, I saw her drafts. Such marvelously light, sensual drafts. I would only reluctantly apply my red pen to them, for to edit her, often in the afterglow of making love, was almost to draw upon her skin, to criticize her very form—which I could not do, for she was perfect in every way.}
Within the hour, Sirin, that elegant man, would disappear from Ambergris for three years. Where he went, what he was doing, no one would ever know.
A fight broke out in the bar a couple of minutes ago. As I typed, I listened to the raised voices for a few minutes before the screech of chairs and a heavy sound, like a table being overturned, marked its escalation to something more serious. For a moment, I wanted to go out there. I felt insular, removed. I wanted to talk to someone. Anyone. Instead of just “talking” to whoever is reading this account.
I have wondered, more than once, who will be reading this after I am gone. I am faced with the distinct possibility that the owner of the Spore will read it—or at least glance at it. {Wrong—I got here first.} If this is so, thank you for your hospitality. I wonder what you’ll make of these spore-stained pages. {I wonder what he’ll make of my notes. Except I’m not sure I’ll leave the pages here when I’m done. I might move them somewhere safer.}