The Names

After he left we stayed behind, drinking and talking, and when we hit the street we had a little trouble finding the way to our hotel."Let me get this straight," I said. "There was someone Texier.”"He's not important.”"Slow down. We should have left when Vosdanik left. Always leave with the guide. These alleys are full of religious fanatics.”"The archaeologist. Forget him.”"All right. We're with the cult. Where were they?”"Somewhere in Syria," Frank said."What is a Druze?”"What were the other words for the language?" he said. "Shit, did I ask about hammers?”"I thought he spoke Hebrew.”"Who?”"Jesus.”"He's not important. Forget him, forget what he spoke. I'm trying to concentrate on essentials. Did I ask about the victim's health?”"He was dead, Frank.”"Before they killed him. Did they choose an imbecile, a cancer victim?”"His health was not good. This is one of the qualities we associate with death. In all seriousness, where are we? We should have gone out the gate and found a cab.”"I thought the walk would clear our heads.”He started laughing."I don't think I'm drunk," I said. "It's the effect of the smoke, that's all, and then coming outside. That was a smoky place.”He thought this was very funny. He stopped walking in order to laugh, doubling up."What did he say?”"Who?" I said."I don't know what he said. Vosdanik. Maybe it was the smoke. It was a smoky place.”He was talking and laughing at the same time. He had to lean against a wall to laugh."Did you pay him?”"Damn right I paid him. We haggled. The little bastard.”"How much did you pay him?”"Never mind. Just tell me what he said.”He crossed his arms on his midsection, bent against the wall laughing. It was a staccato laugh, building on itself, broadening in the end to a breathless gasp, the laughter that marks a pause in the progress of the world, the laughter we hear once in twenty years. I went into an alley to vomit.

Through the night I kept waking up. Scenes from the restaurant, patches of Vosdanik's monologues. His face came back to me as a composed image, movie-lit, bronzed and shaded. The prominent nose, the indentations on either side of the forehead, the crooked fingers lifting a cigarette from the pack of Montanas, the little smile at the end. He seemed a wise and sympathetic figure in this dawn projection, super-lifelike. The third or fourth time I woke up I thought of the dead man's initials cut into the weapon. Old westerns. If one of those bullets has your name on it, Cody, there's not a goldarned thing you can do about it. Spitting in the dust. Montana daybreak. Is this what I wanted to isolate from everything else he'd said, is this what I was driving up out of sleep to tell myself to remember? Initials. It was the only thing he'd said that seemed to mean something. I knew something. There was something at the edge of all this. If I could stay awake and concentrate, if I could think clearly, if I could be sure whether I was awake or asleep, if I could either snap awake completely or fall into deep and peaceful sleep, then I might begin to understand.