The Best of Gene Wolfe

Outside I spoke to him in private while Eira was upstairs searching our room for the hairbrush that I had been careful to leave behind.

“If you are here to reclaim her,” I told him, “I am your debtor. Thank you for waiting until morning.”

He grinned like the trap he was. “Have a nice night?”

“Very.”

“Swell. You folks think we don’t want you to have any fun. That’s not the way it is at all.” He strove to stifle his native malignancy as he said this, with the result that it showed so clearly I found it difficult not to cringe. “I do you a favor, maybe you’ll do me one sometime. Right?”

“Perhaps,” I hedged.

He laughed. I have heard many actors try to reproduce the hollowness and cruelty of that laugh, but not one has come close. “Isn’t that what keeps you coming back here? Wanting favors? You know we don’t give anything away.”

“I hope to learn, and to make myself a better man.”

“Touching. You and Dr. Frankenstein.”

I forced myself to smile. “I owed you thanks, as I said, and I do thank you. Now I’ll impose upon your good nature, if I may. Two weeks. You spoke of favors, of the possibility of accommodation. I would be greatly in your debt. I am already, as I acknowledge.”

Grinning, he shook his head.

“One week, then. Today is Thursday. Let us have—let me have her until next Thursday.”

“Afraid not, pal.”

“Three days, then. I recognize that she belongs to you, but you’ll have her for eternity, and she can’t be an important prisoner.”

“Inmate. Inmate sounds better.” The demon laid his hand upon my shoulder, and I was horribly conscious of its weight and bone-crushing strength. “You think I let you jump her last night because I’m such a nice guy? You really believe that?”

“I was hoping that was the case, yes.”

“Bright. Real bright. Just because I got here a little after she did, you think I was trailing her like that flea- bitten dog and I followed her here.” He sniffed, and it was precisely the sniff of a hound on the scent. The hand that held my shoulder drew me to him until I stood with the almost insuperable weight of his entire arm on my shoulders. “Listen here. I don’t have to track anybody. Wherever they are, I am. See?”

“I understand.”

“If I’d been after her, I’d of had her away from you as soon as I saw her. Only she’s not why I came here, she’s not why I’m leaving, and if I was to grab her all it would do is get me in the soup with the big boys downstairs. I don’t want you either.”

“I’m gratified to hear it.”

“Swell. If I was to give you a promise, my solemn word of dishonor, you wouldn’t think that was worth shit- paper, would you.”

“To the contrary.” Although I was lying in his teeth, I persevered. “I know an angel’s word is sacred, to him at least.”

“Okay then. I don’t want her. You wanted a couple of weeks, and I said no deal because I’m letting you have her forever, and vice versa. You don’t know what forever means, whatever you think. But I do.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, and I meant it from the bottom of my soul. “Thank you very, very much.”

The demon grinned and took his arm from my shoulders. “I wouldn’t mess around with you or her or a single thing the two of you are going to do together, see? Word of dishonor. The boys downstairs would skin me, because you’re her assignment. So be happy.” He slapped me on the back so hard that he nearly knocked me down.

Still grinning, he walked around the corner of someone’s camper van. I followed as quickly as I could, but he had disappeared.

 L

ittle remains to tell. I drove Eira to St. Louis, as I had promised, and she left me with a quick kiss in the parking area of the Gateway Arch; we had stopped at a McDonald’s for lunch on the way, and I had scribbled my address and telephone number on a paper napkin there and watched her tuck it into a pocket of the denim shirt she wore. Since then I have had a week in which to consider my adventure, as I said on the first page of this account.

In the beginning (especially Friday night), I hoped for a telephone call or a midnight summons from my doorbell. Neither came.

On Monday I went to the library, where I perused the back issues of newspapers; and this evening, thanks to a nephew at an advertising agency, I researched the matter further, viewing twenty-five-and thirty-year-old tapes of news broadcasts. The woman’s name was not Eira, a name that means “snow,” and the name of the husband she had slain with his own shotgun was not Tom, Dick, Harry, or even Mortimer, but I was sure I had found her. (Fairly sure, at least.) She took her own life in jail, awaiting trial.

She has been in Hell. That, I feel, is the single solid fact, the one thing on which I can rely. But did she escape? Or was she vomited forth?

All this has been brought to a head by the card I received today in the mail. It was posted on Monday from St. Louis, and has taken a disgraceful four days to make a journey that the most cautious driver can complete in a few hours. On its front, a tall, beautiful, and astonishingly busty woman is crowding a fearful little man. The caption reads: I want to impress one thing on you.

Inside the card: My body.

Beneath that is the scrawled name Eira, and a telephone number. Should I call her?