The Killing Circle

special”), not to mention the income that’s been freed up since his second wife “got some other schmuck to pay for all the crap to which she’d become accustomed”. This place is the New Tim Earheart, he tells me. He likes all the leather, the halogen pot lights, the sweep of upward mobility evidenced in the twenty-dollar martinis. And then there’s the pick-up opportunities.

“Just being here signals you as successful,” Tim tells me, seductively rolling a bill and dropping it in the coat check girl’s jar.

“Successful at what?”

“That’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t matter. The details can be worked out later.”

As the first round is consumed, Tim tells me a couple tales of women from these premises with whom he has worked it out later. It’s vintage Earheart, and it makes me miss him. Companionship. Where had that disappeared to? Nestled in the same basket with a living wife, a job—all of it pushed down the stream and round the bend.

As if to bring this illusion of two friends having a worry-free cocktail to an end, Tim clears his throat at the arrival of the second set of martinis, pulls a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and slides it over the bar toward me.

“What’s this?”

“Read it.”

“You wrote this?”

“Just read it.”

It’s a sin, the church says, to do the things that I do

But how can I stop until I’ve done them to you?

Later, in hell, is where my bones will be burned

‘Til then, let it be known: the Sandman’s returned.

“Where did you get this?”

“It was sent to the paper. To me, as a matter of fact.”

“You think it’s him?”

“What do you think?”

“The style certainly fits.”

“Not to mention the name.”

Tim watches me. To see how this grim revelation is sinking in. Or to take an accounting of how many years I’ve aged since he last saw me. I know I don’t look good. But having my clean-shaven, gym-going friend study me like a coroner studies a corpse—it can’t help but make a fellow a little nervous.

“Are you going to run it?” I ask.

“I’d like to.”

“But they won’t let you.”

“It’s my decision this time.”

“So?”

“So? There’s no story.”

“’The Sandman Returns.’ Sounds like a headline to me.”

“He’s not claiming any particular homicides. Not much point in terrorizing the public if there’s nothing to terrorize them with aside from a shabby limerick.”

“It’s not a limerick.”

“You’re the expert.”

There are victims, of course. Conrad and Evelyn. Ivan an apparent suicide under what the crime hacks call “suspicious circumstances”. Not to mention Petra—and now Angela too—gone missing. But the only thing that connects all of them is the Kensington Circle, and if Tim Earheart hasn’t discovered this yet, I’m not about to tell him.

“You know, there is a context in which I’d run the poem,” Tim says, musing aloud. “It would require a reaction, naturally.”

“A reaction?”

“From you. A comment on how an internationally bestselling novelist feels to have inspired copycat psychopaths with a work of fiction. That I could I go with.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Just thought it might be fun.”

“Me taking credit for spawning a new generation of serial killers? Yes, that’s definitely amusing. That would be a giggle.”

I figure that’s about it. Tim had come for a story, not gotten it, and all that’s left is for the National Star to pick up the tab. We bring things to a close with some banter about the latest newsroom outrages and gossip. It’s just killing time. But it makes me nostalgic for the days of journalistic sniping and complaint, when it would have been me telling Tim about the photo chief’s crossdressing weekends.

As it turns out, however, we’re not quite done with the business that Tim called me here for.

“Off the record,” he says as he raises his finger for the bill, “what do you make of the whole Sandman thing? Someone using the name of a bad guy in your novel, I mean.”

“I don’t feel responsible for anything, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then what are you getting at?”

“What do you know?”

“Just what I read in the papers.”

“Has he contacted you?”

“Nope.”

“I bet you’ve got a theory.”

“You know what, Tim?” I start, slipping off the bar stool and surprised to find myself unsteady on my feet. “Here’s the thing: I wrote a book. And I regret it. I truly do.”

Tim puts his hand out to steady me but I take a step back. What I should do now is leave. But seeing how Tim Earheart, my one-time journalistic equal, looks at me with pity in his eyes, makes me stick around for a few more words.

“I’m just trying to survive. Understand? So if you receive any more third-rate verse from psychos, don’t come to me.”

“Jesus, Patrick. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? No, that’s my department. Sorry is my thing.”

My hands are sliding into the arms of my jacket. The coat check girl, God bless her, appears out of nowhere to dress me against the evening’s chill. Giving me a commiserating look, smoothing my collar against the back of my neck. A moment that proves there is still comfort in this world, though you may not know where it will come from. I could kiss her for it. Maybe Tim Earheart already has.

I take a cab home but get the driver to drop me off a couple blocks early so I can walk the rest of the way on my own. Continue tipsily homeward feeling my way around a thought: Maybe the shouters and shooters and moon howlers on the streets down here are versions of where all of us are headed. City in Fear. Yes. We’ve been right to be more and more afraid—we’ve just been afraid of the wrong thing. It won’t be a cataclysmic nasty from Out There that will bring us down, not ozone depletion or impacting comet or dirty bomb, but the advance of madness. Why? There isn’t enough room for sanity any more. Eventually, the asylum doors will be forced open. And it will be us who walk out.

Or maybe it will only be me. Because I am once again of the opinion I am being pursued. Somewhere between the sex shop and the other sex shop I pick up the heavy, thick-soled step of someone behind me.

Past the Prague Deli (“Czech Us Out!”) and the used record shops he keeps up without changing the rhythm