Wilde Stories 2018 Read online

  He dropped the papers curling into ash as the fire spread.

  “A lesson, a dear lesson in realising what a lost book is,” he said.

  The Librarian’s immense arm pressed me back, anticipating me wrestling free, though I didn’t know what I would do even if I could escape his grasp—perhaps throw myself on the fire in hopes of extinguishing it, rescuing the scorched remnants of the manuscript from the ashes? But it would be futile: it does not take long for poetry to burn. Verses are highly flammable—it’s because they were dear fuel in someone’s imagination.

  “Consider that a written warning—obviously it cannot be filed away, but…well, I am a practical man. With the elder Hardy’s esprit in ashes perhaps you will no longer want to open a book again.” The Librarian straightened his bow-tie. “You may take the rest of the day off. If I find you at the Index in the morning, I will know your decision to stay with us. At a reduction in salary.”

  Perhaps my gaze was too wet with tears to set his retreating backside ablaze.

  I trudged to my room. The Librarian’s search had torn apart bed and desk. I sat down on the floor and wrapped my arms around my knees.

  Something climbed up my back and to my ear. “Empressement.”

  I stroked the rat with two fingers. It chirped and then nipped gently at my earlobe. “Frantling.” It leapt to the ground and ran towards the door, stopped and looked over its shoulder at me and squeaked. “Usative.”

  I followed it through the maze of the Library. The lighting where we tread was dimmer. I had not been everywhere. Some subjects were unknown to me. Down one path I saw a familiar figure reclining on the penultimate shelf devoid of books. The rat scampered away as Genet peered up at me.

  “Sometimes I do not go back,” he said, looking chagrinned. He handed me the book his head had been resting on. A Scheme for a New Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling by Benjamin Franklin. “How he loved whores. Once they brought him to the Speakeasy and all he wanted to do was steal a boy’s glasses and find the door leading to ancient Lesbos.”

  Genet stretched, a gesture that was part exercise and part pretence to embrace me suddenly. “I doubt more than a handful of authors end up in Wasted Graphemes so it is safe here.” He touched my face, my cheeks. “Ahh, but you recently had a terrible encounter with the wicked regent, I see.”

  I told him of my father, of his poetry. It had been years since I spoke of being away at school when they found his body, of life at the homes of distant relatives who could not look at me without seeing a debt to family they wanted little part of. My last name was all I had of my father’s until I learned of the Library.

  “You must feel his loss keenly.”

  I shrugged. “My father is a long-closed chapter.”

  “Ah, I see. The book, then—you mourn the loss of the book.”

  “Something like that.”

  “We shall toast to both the man and his book at the Speakeasy tonight,” Genet said, laying a hand on my shoulder.

  I rested my cheek against Genet’s fingers. “Actually—I had another thought. If you don’t mind.”

  And finally:

  1943 smelt of fire and paper. Feet stamped in unison, close by; voices intoned, “Heil Hitler!”; the books of Germany burnt in the courtyard, a gout of gluttonous smoke bearing their words into a sky already thick with many volumes. I backed away from the bonfire as fast as I could, pushing through the crowds that railed against the soldiers, shouldering my way through and away. Away from the crowd, away from the noise. Ducking into an alleyway, I paused to breathe, heaving against the damp wall.

  One hand was in Genet’s as I pulled him along behind me; the other clutched tight to the worn leather handle of Hemingway’s suitcase. Several street corners away, I pulled Genet into an alley­way. “You said you had a room near here—the room above the tavern, where the bed-springs sing?”

  He pressed against me, mouth close to my ear. “How forward of you—I like it.”

  He led me a few streets further, arriving at a narrow doorway in the shadow of rotting tenements, the tavern windows the only warm thing in sight. He fumbled with a key, whilst I wrapped my arms tight around myself and shivered. Away from the book-burning, the city was freezing. Eventually, Genet persuaded the door to open, and he led me up rickety stairs to a room reminiscent of my chambers at the Library: sparse, furnished with a bed and a writing table. The greying sheets were balled on a threadbare mattress, and the table was strewn with papers. The floorboards creaked and wobbled beneath our feet.

  There was a murine flicker by the doorway, and a scaly tail darted between my feet. A whispered word floated back in its wake. “Anopisthograph!”

  I sat on the bed, still shivering. Genet watched the rat depart and closed the door. The sound of the key in the lock released me; the tension of weeks in the Library, fumbling around under the Librarian’s watchful eye, drained away. I sank back.

  Genet lay down beside me, his skin warm against mine. He smelt of absinthe and book dust; I had the urge to bury my face in his chest, but my bone-weary limbs wouldn’t co-operate.

  “Will you read to me?” I said.

  He arched an eyebrow, and nuzzled against my shoulder. “My handsome witling—foreplay, is it?”

  “This isn’t foreplay.”

  “I have nothing to—”

  “The suitcase.”

  The bed-springs sang as he arose; I heard the grate of the lock opening, and the rustle of papers, then Genet returned to me with the contents of the suitcase in his hands: the first manuscript of Our Lady of the Flowers, where I had returned it when I had finished.

  Genet smiled faintly. “My slack-handed first draft—but if you insist…” He cleared his throat, and raised the first page to his eyes. “‘Wiedmann appeared before you in the five o’clock edition,’” he began.

  “No,” I said. “Turn it over.”

  He did as I asked, squinting at the fresh scrawl that coated the reverse of his pages.

  “Sorry about my handwriting,” I said. There had not been light in my Library chambers, or much space with which to work. My letters had been shrunk to the smallest I could manage to cram in everything I needed to write on the pale underside of Genet’s own pages.

  Genet sat up on the bed, crossed his legs, looked from the page, to me, and to the page again. He cleared his throat theatrically. “‘The Sum of All Our Tales, by Barnabus Hardy’,” he began.

  MAKING THE MAGIC LIGHTNING STRIKE ME

  JOHN CHU

  The client lies slumped across my shoulders. I have an arm around his thigh, another around his upper arm. His immaculately tailored silk pajamas are soft against my hand. They must feel amazing on his body. Right now, the client may as well be a loaded barbell, except his body gives and his weight shifts more as I walk toward the bed. The company seems to assign me only the heaviest clients. Not only do the ultra-rich not appreciate being bruised, though, once they’re conscious again, they have the means to make sure you don’t appreciate it either. There’s a conversation drifting past on the side of the door, but the room is dark and silent. Slowly, I lower him then tuck him into the bed.

  I do one final sweep of the hotel room to make sure everything is in order. His wallet, phone, and fountain pen are in the nightstand drawer. Check. His clothes have been unpacked and stowed in the dresser drawers or hanging in the closet. Check. His briefcase and business documents are sitting on the desk. Check. The hotel room is surprisingly small, but functional and tasteful. The wall art is abstract and modern. The furniture is all clean lines and rounded corners. The most garish thing in the room is the basket of champagne and caviar on the desk next to the briefcase. Whoever this client is, he came to work.

  My job is to make sure that once he falls asleep in his bed in New York, he wakes up the next morning in this bed in Zurich. No airport security. No border security. No trace of travel at all. At no point does anyone produce a passport or have anything inspected. Whether bypassing all those
layers of security is a necessity—say, he no longer has a passport and no other way to leave the country—or just a convenience is none of my business. Someone else in the company gets to make sure he wakes up in his own bed in New York after he falls asleep here in Zurich however many days from now. There are no short cuts here, just private jets and a lot of impeccably trained teammates doing the impossible. The company doesn’t really have a name. Internally, we’ve always called ourselves BedEx. I’m sure someone found that funny once and it stuck.

  I peel the patches off his temple then tuck them into my pants pocket. They’ve been keeping him in REM sleep and adjusting his circadian rhythms. He’ll wake up in the morning—a few hours from now—already adjusted to UTC+1. I tap my earpiece and indicate the client has been installed. While I wait for the all-clear, I collapse the luggage bags—can’t expect the ultra-rich to pack for themselves—for ease of carry. The room’s key card slides under the door into the room. The process is more efficient if my teammates rectify the hotel’s records while I’m installing the client and I’ve been trained to break into places way tougher to crack than hotel rooms. The process is also more efficient if we hack into the hotel’s computers. So much faster than waiting for a hotel employee. Besides, our clients don’t always stay under their own names and, this way, not only do they not need a passport, they don’t need any ID at all. I place the key in the nightstand drawer next to the wallet, phone, and fountain pen. The all-clear arrives a matter of moments later and I dissolve into the night.

  No one notices me sneaking out of the hotel and into a van in the parking lot. My two teammates nod at me as I enter then slide the door shut. Like me, they’re dressed in work blacks. There’s no substitute for actual physical access to computer systems when possible and we pride ourselves on making the impossible possible.

  Our van speeds away. Of the three of us, one of us is going back to base for some sleep before her Zurich-Dublin job tonight. One of us has a few days off and he’s taking it in Zurich. I have re-arranged my work schedule so that I can be in Boston tonight to catch Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges with Thom. Our first stop is the airport.

  We do not wear our gear off-site off-duty. That violates our NDA. I need to be in normal clothes before they drop me off at the airport. Stripping out of my work blacks and changing into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt in the van is always a special experience. There’s not a whole lot of room. It’s a lot of twisting and writhing to wrestle the work blacks off me. All things considered, I’d rather not be naked in front my co-workers so it’s sweater off, shirt off, T-shirt on, pants off, jeans on as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, the instant I pull off shirt or a pair of pants, someone always wolf whistles or cat calls.

  Tonight, I get plenty of both from both of them. Since I’m going to Boston through Brussels then Toronto, there’s even the predictable unfunny rhyme about “hauling Charlie’s muscles to Brussels.” That said, I never get anything like say, “sending Charlie back to Chinatown” even though my name is Charlie—Tsai, not Chan, my parents were strict, not intentionally evil—and, in this case, Toronto actually has a Chinatown. A vaguely racist joke is always right there but no one ever goes for it.

  If one of my teammates on a job is a big, muscular guy—and the male teammates tend to be—he’ll quip about my arms. Tonight’s no exception. The guy staying in Zurich goes on about how he’d like to build a set like mine and asks me about what I do in the gym. Since the guys who do this are invariably the sleeve-busting sort—more so than I am as far as I can tell—it took me months before I realized they were complimenting me, not mocking me. Their questions are genuine not sarcastic. Now, I just squirm and mutter something about curling with a full range of motion.

  My body apparently deserves this sort of reaction now. I’m still not used to it. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I literally grew into this job. But the magic lightning that will change me into who I want to be hasn’t struck me yet. I’m still waiting. Maybe after, some guy can compliment me on my body and I won’t want to dissolve into the earth.

  The only nice thing about the airport first thing in the morning is the lines are short. I always request the pat-down. Ironically, considering what I do for a living, what the company has done to my body means I will never make it through a body scan. The company does helpfully supply a note from a doctor should airport security somehow detect the pumps and other nanomachinery implanted in my body. Having some airport security guy get all handsy with me is annoying, but they do ask before they touch anything and none of them have ever prevented me from getting on a plane.

  After that, my tiny backpack and I wait then sit in a plane whose seat is a little too narrow and has no leg room. I used to be the right size for airplane seats. It’s only when I have to sit in one again that I remember that I’m not anymore. Still, I never put the seat back. It doesn’t help me as much as it annoys whoever is behind me. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Some fourteen hours or so later, I’m at Logan and still waiting. This time for the Silver Line, then the Red Line.

  It’d all be easier if I could fall asleep in Zurich and wake up in my bed in Boston. No lines, no waiting, and no convincing US Customs that I’m a US citizen even as the Customs official has my US passport in hand. Magically, I’d cross international boundaries without Customs even noticing. Someone ought to come up with a service that does that. The rich, of course, play by different rules than you and me.

  Thom is waiting for me just outside the theater. I see him as I sprint down Mass Ave., past the fish place, ducking and weaving around the sidewalk crowd. The flight arrived in Boston with just enough time for me to get home, pound down thirty-two ounces of protein shake, change into a belted pair of chinos and the dress shirt that fits, then get back onto the T to Central Square. The sophisticated technology inside me is playing all sorts of interesting games to keep me awake and alert. It’ll be fine as long as I get some rest after the play.

  He waves when he spots me. We met in grad school. In the university weight room, actually. I was the guy trapped between a loaded bar and the bench. He was the guy who set the bar on the rack then, rather than laughing, quoted Kander and Ebb at me. We may have bonded over the distinction between a cast album and a soundtrack. He showed me how to lift properly. We saw shows together. Sometimes, his boyfriend of the moment joined us. We kept in touch through texts after graduation. He moved here about a year ago for a residency at Mass General. Since I’m not in town a lot, we still text each other all the time.

  Thom is this walking shard of sunshine, all warm and golden even on this winter night. He’s rocking the grizzled face, cargo pants, and broken-in leather work boots. Even the bulky winter coat looks good on him. It’s hard not to despair a little when I look at him. It’s hard to remember the rest of the world exists when he smiles. All of that company training must be good for something because even as I see nothing but him, I don’t crash into anyone. It’s only when I reach him that I realize he’s waiting by himself.

  He hugs me. It’s still weird be able to look at him eye-to-eye. He’s never pointed out that I do that now. Maybe a few years apart are enough for him to forget that I used to be shorter than him.

  “Where’s Andy?” I ask. Thom doesn’t have a type, as far as I can tell, except male. Short, tall, hulking, gaunt, light, dark, I’ve seen him date them all.

  “Oh, we broke up. Turns out he smokes.” He shrugs. Thom is still built like an All-American wrestler and he’s impossibly charming when he wants to be. A steady supply of boyfriends has never been a problem for him. “Come on. The play’s about to start.”

  The theater is a flight of stairs up from the entrance. The usher at the door scans our tickets.

  “Do you want to go somewhere after the play?” I sit down and pull my arms in as Thom takes the seat next to mine. “I can run interference against the throng of guys you aren’t interested in.”

  “Charlie,” Thom looks at me oddly for a moment. “You know that yo
u scare people, right? You look dangerous. You’d also run interference against the guys I am interested in. But put you in a tight T-shirt and in the right bar—”

  “You don’t think I’m dangerous, do you?” If anything, I think of myself as more cuddly than dangerous.

  “I remember when you still had a neck.”

  The lights go down and the play starts. Alan Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges doesn’t get produced much. It’s a cycle of eight plays, each of which have two endings, or one play with four junctures where a character’s choice causes the play to go in one of two directions. Doing all eight plays in repertory would take up an entire theater season. In this production, five seconds into the play, Celia always decides to smoke the cigarette. Whether Lionel goes on a date with Sylvie depends on which performance you catch. The production makes the next choice itself then polls the audience to decide which of the two possible endings they perform. Not even the actors know which ending they’re heading towards until the end of the penultimate scene when dialogue from the ending they’re about to perform plays over the sound system. It’s not what Ayckbourn intended but this production has only a two-week run. Rehearsing and performing all the possibilities is impractical. As the audience applauds, I wonder about the choices we could have made and the choices we never had a chance to make.

  We don’t hit any bars after the play. Thom hugs me and we go our separate ways. It’s weird how easily my arms reach around him now. Still not used to it.

  On my days off, I eat, rest, work out, text Thom, and not much else. The three workouts and nine meals a day it takes to maintain my current shape doesn’t leave much time for anything else. And I want to be fitter than I am now. Stronger. Tougher. More muscular. When I’m not in Boston, I inevitably spend the whole day on base. Eating, resting, working out, and texting fills the days until the company needs me again.