Three cheers for the Service!
And three cheers for Mr. Ratesic, a leading light among them, who even now—“now” in the sense of “at the time he emerges in the telling of the tale, at the time you, dear reader, are given the pleasure of joining his company”—even now Mr. Ratesic is confronted with a set of flat facts which, though each taken individually is true, piled together like a cairn, arranged with fiendish purpose to cover over a yawning darkness…
7.
“Cigarette?”
“No thank you, sir.”
“Come on.”
I am digging through my pockets one at a time, scowling and huffing. You might think that after all these years of stalking the world in this damn coat I’d have decided where the cigarettes go, but no such luck. At last I find the pack, yank out two smokes together, and poke one at Paige.
“No thank you.”
I feel myself bristle, I don’t know why. I light my cigarette, inhale deeply, and then exhale slowly. We’re still on Ellendale, standing beside the car, across the street from the courtyard building, looking up at Crane’s window, the same window we were looking out of a half hour ago. What if we could see ourselves? Look out on us from the window, while looking up at ourselves from out here?
“All right, look. Ms. Paige.”
“Yes?”
She looks up. Something is different in my voice. Or I hope it is. I’m trying to put it there. I’m trying to give her a softer surface. For the time being, anyway.
“Ms. Paige. First of all, you don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ okay? I’m just like you. All of this, the junior-senior Speculator stuff, it’s just what they do.” I take a second drag. I feel smoldering, cratered, like a volcano. Like a fire creature breathing smoke. “But rank within the Service is not important, okay? Not to people who matter. So you can call me Mr. Ratesic, or”—I’ve come this far, right?—“Laszlo.”
“Okay.”
“Or Laz. I don’t fucking care.”
“Okay.”
I glare at her.
“Okay, Mr. Ratesic.”
I laugh, just a little, a quiet rasp. “I’ll take it.” I indulge another drag, studying Crane’s windows, wondering if he ever stood there and took a long moment like this, contemplating the street. I’m guessing not. I hold smoke in my mouth, enjoy the way it feels on the back of my throat.
“What I’m saying is, you might find that it helps. The smoking, I mean. When your throat hurts.”
“It doesn’t.” I look at her. She shrugs. “I don’t actually get that.”
I scratch my neck, take another drag. “You don’t get what?”
“The throat. The eyes. Uh, coughing. And so on.”
“You don’t get any of it?”
“No.”
“No symptoms of any kind?”
“No.”
“When you’re seeing lies, when you’re feeling them? You don’t feel any physical—any reactionary effects at all?”
“I don’t, Mr. Ratesic.” She gives me a small apologetic smile. “I really don’t.”
“No shit?” I murmur, the words coming out soft with the smoke, like the memory of old words.
“No, sir.” She winces. “Sorry. No, Laszlo.”
I’m catching a chill off that information, as crazy as that sounds. It’s ninety degrees out here, I’m in my long black coat, and still the chill shudders up my spine like a ghost on feet. The chill of Charlie’s presence, out here leaning against the car with us, Charlie making himself known. She really is just like him.
She’s looking at me, curious. “I know that you do—that a lot of people, a lot of Specs, do get sort of a… how would you describe it?”
I shrug. “It’s like an allergy. A sensitivity. Not every time, and not always bad. Not usually bad at all. But most of the time, after exposure, you feel it a little bit, that’s all. Your body feels the work.” I finish the cigarette and consider starting a second one. “And especially after speculating.”
“Right. Yeah. I don’t get that.”
I smoke in silence, contemplating my new partner. I don’t get that, she says, like it’s not a big deal. But that’s how it works. The gift and the burden. You do the work, you feel it, that’s all. We all get it—all of us, apparently, except for Aysa. She is at another level. She is in another place.
The lack of symptomatology is one thing, but for some reason this revelation about my young charge registers in me as a kind of grief. I don’t know much about her yet, and I don’t like her because I don’t like anybody, but I can see that she is good. She’s kind and attentive and just fucking dying to do well in the world, to do good and do well. She’s too good to be carrying all of this: the gifts of discernment, of speculation—the “gift”—the burden of it, the responsibility to her fellow citizens, all of it.
“Ms. Paige, are you—”
“Yes?”
“Involved with anyone?”
Her eyes widen as she realizes what I’m asking. “You mean—like—”
“Yeah.” I gesture vaguely with one thick hand, searching the air for appropriate terminology. “Like a—sweetheart.”
Ms. Paige looks genuinely confused. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Because—I don’t know.”
Because I want to protect her, all of a sudden. I want to point her away from all of this work, from the dullness and the danger, from me in my dark clothes and dark spirit, point her away from the danger and the dullness of the whole preposterous enterprise and out toward the rest of our good and golden world, toward the Venice
