All Tomorrow's Parties

48. IN THE MOMENT

RYDELL watched this man move ahead, in front of him, and felt something complicated, something he couldn't get a handle on, but something that came through anyway, through the ache in his side, the pain that grated there if he stepped wrong. He'd always dreamed of a special kind of grace, Rydell: of just moving, moving right, without thinking of it. Alert, relaxed, there. And somehow he knew that that was what he was seeing now, what he was following: this guy who was maybe fifty, and who moved, though without seeming to think about it, in a way that kept him in every bit of available shadow. Upright in his long wool coat, hands in pockets, he just moved, and Rydell followed, in his pain and the clumsiness that induced, but also in the pain somehow of his adolescent heart, the boy in him having wanted all these years to be something like this man, whoever and whatever he was.

A killer, Rydell reminded himself, thinking of the weight lifter they'd left behind; Rydell knew that killing was not the explosive handshake exchange of movies, but a terrible dark marriage unto and perhaps (though he hoped not) even beyond the grave, as still his own dreams were sometimes visited by the shade of Kenneth Turvey, the only man he'd ever had to kill. Though he'd never doubted the need of killing Turvey, because Turvey had been demonstrating his seriousness with random shots through the door of a closet in which he'd locked his girlfriend's children. Killing anyone was a terrible and permanent thing to enter into, Rydell believed, and he also knew that violent criminals, in real life, were about as romantic as a lapful of guts. Yet here he was, doing the best he could to keep up with this gray-haired man, who'd just killed someone in a manner Rydell would've been unable to specify, but silently and without raising a sweat; who'd just killed someone the way another man might change his shirt or open a bottle of beer. And something in Rydell yearned so to be that, that, feeling it now, he blushed.

The man stopped, in shadow, looking back. 'How are you?

'Fine, Rydell said, which was almost always what he said if anyone asked him that.

'You are not fine. You are injured. You may be bleeding internally.

Rydell halted in front of him, hand pressed to his burning side. 'What did you do to that guy?

You couldn't have said that the man smiled, but the creases in his cheeks seemed to deepen slightly. 'I completed the movement he began when he struck you.

'You stabbed him with something, Rydell said.

'Yes. That was the most elegant conclusion, under the circumstances. His unusual center of gravity made it possible to sever the spinal cord without contacting the vertebrae themselves. This in a tone that someone might use to describe the discovery of a new but convenient bus route.

'Show me.

The man's head moved, just a fraction. Some birdlike acuity. Light winked, reflected, in the round, gold-framed glasses. He reached into the open front of his long coat and produced, with a very peculiar and offhand grace, a blade curved, upswept, chisel-tipped. What they called a tanto, Rydell knew: the short version of one of those Japanese swords. The same light that had caught in the round lenses now snagged for an instant in a hair-fine line of rainbow along the curved edge and the angled tip, and then the man reversed the movement that had produced the knife. It vanished within the coat as though a segment of tape had been run backward.

Rydell remembered being taught how you had to use something anything if someone was coming after you with a knife and you were unarmed. If nothing else you were supposed to take off your jacket and roll it around your hands and wrists to protect them. Now he imagined using the projector, in its bag, as a sort of shield, to ward off the knife he'd just seen, and the hopelessness of the idea actually struck him as funny.

'Why did you smile? the man asked.

Rydell stopped smiling, 'I don't think I could explain, he said 'Who are you?

'I can't tell you that, the man said.

'I'm Berry Rydell, Rydell said. 'You saved my ass back there.

'But not your torso, I think.

'He might've killed me.

'No, the man said, 'he wouldn't have killed you. He would have rendered you helpless, taken you to a private location, and tortured you to extract information. Then he would have killed you.

'Well, Rydell said, uneasy with the matter-of-factness here, 'thanks.

'You are welcome, said the man, with great gravity and not the least hint of irony.

'Well, Rydell said, 'why did you do that, take him out?

'Because it was necessary, to complete the movement.

'I don't get it, said Rydell.

'It was necessary, the man said. 'There are a number of these men seeking you tonight. I'm uncertain of how many. They are mercenaries.

'Did you kill someone else, back there, last night? Where those patches of dried blood and Kil'Z are?

'Yes, the man said.

'And I'm safer with you than I am with these guys you say are mercs?

'I think so, yes, the man said, frowning, as though he took the question very seriously.

'You kill anybody else in the past forty-eight hours?

'No, said the man, 'I did not.

'Well, Rydell said, 'I guess I'm with you. I'm sure not going to try to fight you.

'That is wise, the man said.

'And I don't think I could run fast enough, or very far, with this rib.

'That is true.

'So what do we do? Rydell shrugged, instantly regretting it, his face contorting in a grimace of pain.

'We will leave the bridge, the man said, 'and seek medical aid for your injury. I myself have a thorough working knowledge of anatomy, should it prove necessary.

'Unh, thanks, Rydell managed. 'If I could just buy some four-inch tape and some analgesic plasters at that Lucky Dragon, I could probably make do. He looked around, wondering when he'd next see or be seen by the one with the scarf. He had a feeling the scarf was the one he'd really have to watch out for; he couldn't say why. 'What if those mercs scope us leaving?

'Don't anticipate outcome, the man said. 'Await the unfolding of events. Remain in the moment.

In the moment, Rydell decided he knew for a fact his ass was lost. Just plain lost.