The Blind Assassin

The houndstooth suit

He turns the key. It's a bolt lock, a small mercy. He's in luck this time, he has the loan of a whole flat. A bachelorette, only one large room with a narrow kitchen counter, but its own bathroom, with a claw-footed tub and pink towels in it. Ritzy doings. It belongs to the girlfriend of a friend of a friend, out of town for a funeral. Four whole days of safety, or the illusion of it.

The drapes match the bedspread; they're a heavy nubbled silk, cherry-coloured, over wispy undercurtains. Keeping a little back from the window, he looks out. The view-what he can see through the yellowing leaves-is of Allan Gardens. A couple of drunks or hobos are passed out under the trees, one with his face under a newspaper. He himself has slept like that. Newspapers dampened by your breath smell like poverty, like defeat, like mildewed upholstery with dog hairs on it. There's a scattering of cardboard signs and crumpled papers on the grass, from last night-a rally, the comrades hammering away at their dogma and the ears of their listeners, making hay while the sun don't shine. Two disconsolate men picking up after them now, with steel-tipped sticks and burlap bags. At least it's work for the poor buggers.

She'll walk diagonally across the park. She'll stop, look too obviously around her to see if there's anyone watching. By the time she's done that, there will be.

On the epicene white-and-gold desk there's a radio the size and shape of half a loaf of bread. He turns it on: a Mexican trio, the voices like liquid rope, hard, soft, intertwining. That's where he should go, Mexico. Drink tequila. Go to the dogs, or go more to the dogs. Go to the wolves. Become a desperado. He sets his portable typewriter on the desk, unlocks it, takes off the lid, rolls paper in. He's running out of carbons. He has time for a few pages before she arrives, if she arrives. She sometimes gets hung up, or intercepted. Or so she claims.

He'd like to lift her into the ritzy bathtub, cover her with suds. Wallow around in there with her, pigs in pink bubbles. Maybe he will.

What he's been working on is an idea, or the idea of an idea. It's about a race of extraterrestrials who send a spaceship to explore Earth. They're composed of crystals in a high state of organisation, and they attempt to establish communications with those Earth beings they've assumed are like themselves: eyeglasses, windowpanes, Venetian paperweights, wine goblets, diamond rings. In this they fail. They send back a report to their homeland: This planet contains many interesting relics of a once-flourishing but now-defunct civilization, which must have been of a superior order. We cannot tell what catastrophe has caused all intelligent life to become extinct. The planet currently harbours only a variety of viscous green filigree and a large number of eccentrically shaped globules of semi-liquid mud, which are tumbled hither and thither by the erratic, currents of the light, transparent fluid that covers the planet's surface. The shrill squeaks and resonant groans produced by these must be ascribed to fractional vibration, and should not be mistaken for speech.

It isn't a story though. It can't be a story unless the aliens invade and lay waste, and some dame bursts out of her jumpsuit. But an invasion would violate the premise. If the crystal beings think the planet has no life, why would they bother to land on it? For archaeological reasons, perhaps. To take samples. All of a sudden thousands of windows are sucked from the skyscrapers of New York by an extraterrestrial vacuum. Thousands of bank presidents are sucked out as well, and fall screaming to their deaths. That would be fine.

No. Still not a story. He needs to write something that will sell. It's back to the never-fail dead women, slavering for blood. This time he'll give them purple hair, set them in motion beneath the poisonous orchid beams of the twelve moons of Arn. The best thing is to picture the cover illustration the boys will likely come up with, and then go on from there.

He's tired of them, these women. He's tired of their fangs, their litheness, their firm but ripe half-a-grapefruit breasts, their gluttony. He's tired of their red talons, their viperish eyes. He's tired of bashing in their heads. He's tired of the heroes, whose names are Will or Burt or Ned, names of one syllable; he's tired of their ray guns, their metallic skin-tight clothing. Ten cents a thrill. Still, it's a living, if he can keep up the speed, and beggars can hardly be choosers.

He's running out of cash again. He hopes she'll bring a cheque, from one of the P. O. boxes not in his name. He'll endorse it, she'll cash it for him; with her name, at her bank, she'll have no problems. He hopes she'll bring some postage stamps. He hopes she'll bring more cigarettes. He's only got three left.

He paces. The floor creaks. Hardwood, but stained where the radiator's leaked. This block of flats was put up before the war, for single business people of good character. Things were more hopeful then. Steam heat, never-ending hot water, tiled corridors-the latest of everything. Now it's seen better days. A few years ago when he was young, he'd known a girl who'd had a place here. A nurse, as he recalls: French letters in the night-table drawer. She'd had a two-ring burner, she'd cooked breakfast for him sometimes-bacon and eggs, buttery pancakes with maple syrup, he'd sucked it off her fingers. There was a stuffed and mounted deer's head, left over from the previous tenants; she'd dried her stockings by hanging them on the antlers.

They'd spend Saturday afternoons, Tuesday evenings, whenever she had off, drinking-scotch, gin, vodka, whatever there was. She liked to be quite drunk first. She didn't want to go to the movies, or out dancing; she didn't seem to want romance or any pretence of it, which was just as well. All she'd required of him was stamina. She liked to haul a blanket onto the bathroom floor; she liked the hardness of the tiles under her back. It was hell on his knees and elbows, not that he'd noticed at the time, his attention being elsewhere. She'd moan as if in a spotlight, tossing her head, rolling her eyes. Once he'd had her standing up, in her walk-in closet. A knee-trembler, smelling of mothballs, in among the Sunday crepes, the lambswool twin sets. She'd wept with pleasure. After dumping him she'd married a lawyer. A canny match, a white wedding; he'd read about it in the paper, amused, without rancour. Good for her, he'd thought. The sluts win sometimes.

Salad days. Days without names, witless afternoons, quick and profane and quickly over, and no longing in advance or after, and no words required, and nothing to pay. Before he got mixed up in things that got mixed up.

He checks his watch and then the window again, and here she comes, loping diagonally across the park, in a wide-brimmed hat today and a tightly belted houndstooth suit, handbag clutched under her arm, pleated skirt swinging, in her curious undulating stride, as if she's never got used to walking on her hind legs. It may be the high heels though. He's often wondered how they balance. Now she's stopped as if on cue; she gazes around in that dazed way she has, as if she's just been wakened from a puzzling dream, and the two guys picking up the papers look her over. Lost something, miss? But she comes on, crosses the street, he can see her in fragments through the leaves, she must be searching for the street number. Now she's coming up the front steps. The buzzer goes. He pushes the button, crushes out his cigarette, turns off the desk light, unlocks the door.

Hello. I'm all out of breath. I didn't wait for the elevator. She pushes the door shut, stands with her back against it.

Nobody followed you. I was watching. You've got cigarettes?

And your cheque, and a fifth of scotch, best quality. I pinched it from our well-stocked bar. Did I tell you we have a well-stocked bar?

She's attempting to be casual, frivolous even. She's not good at it. She's stalling, waiting to see what he wants. She'd never make the first move, she doesn't like to give herself away.

Good girl. He moves towards her, takes hold of her.

Am I a good girl? Sometimes I feel like a gun moll-doing your errands.

You can't be a gun moll, I don't have a gun. You watch too many movies.

Not nearly enough, she says, to the side of his neck. He could use a haircut. Soft thistle. She undoes his four top buttons, runs her hand in under his shirt. His flesh is so condensed, so dense. Fine-grained, charred. She's seen ashtrays carved out of wood like that.

Red brocade

That was lovely, she says. The bath was lovely. I never pictured you with pink towels. Compared to the usual, it's pretty opulent.

Temptation lurks everywhere, he says. The fleshpots beckon. I'd say she's an amateur tart, wouldn't you?

He'd wrapped her in one of the pink towels, carried her to the bed wet and slippery. Now they're under the nubbly cherry-coloured silk bedspread, the sateen sheets, drinking the scotch she's brought with her. It's a fine blend, smoky and warm, it goes down smooth as toffee. She stretches luxuriously, wondering only briefly who will wash the sheets.

She never manages to overcome her sense of transgression in these various rooms-the feeling that she's violating the private boundaries of whoever ordinarily lives in them. She'd like to go through the closets, the bureau drawers-not to take, only to look; to see how other people live. Real people; people more real than she is. She'd like to do the same with him, except that he has no closets, no bureau drawers, or none that are his. Nothing to find, nothing to betray him. Only a scuffed blue suitcase, which he keeps locked. It's usually under the bed.

His pockets are uninformative; she's been through them a few times. (It wasn't spying, she just wanted to know where things were and what they were, and where they stood.) Handkerchief, blue, with white border; spare change; two cigarette butts, wrapped in waxed paper-he must have been saving them up. A jackknife, old. Once, two buttons, from a shirt, she'd guessed. She hadn't offered to sew them back on because then he'd know she'd been snooping. She'd like him to think she's trustworthy.

A driver's licence, the name not his. A birth certificate, ditto. Different names. She'd love to go over him with a fine-toothed comb. Rummage around in him. Turn him upside down. Empty him out.

He sings gently, in an oily voice, like a radio crooner: A smoke-filled room, a devil's moon, and you-I stole a kiss, you promised me you would be true-I slid my hand beneath your dress. You bit my ear, we made a mess, Now it is dawn-and you are gone-And I am blue.

She laughs. Where'd you get that?

It's my tart song. It goes with the surroundings.

She's not a real tart. Not even an amateur. I don't expect she takes money. Most likely she gets rewarded in some other way.

A lot of chocolates. Would you settle for that?

It would have to be truckloads, she says. I'm moderately expensive. The bedspread's real silk, I like the colour-garish, but it's quite pretty. Good for the complexion, like pink candle-shades. Have you cooked up any more?

Any more what?

Any more of my story.

Yourstory?

Yes. Isn't it for me?

Oh yes, he says. Of course. I think of nothing else. It keeps me awake nights.

Liar. Does it bore you?

Nothing that pleases you could possibly bore me.

God, how gallant. We should have the pink towels more often. Pretty soon you'll be kissing my glass slipper. But go on, anyway.

Where was I?

The bell had rung. The throat was slit. The door was opening.

Oh. Right, then.

He says: The girl of whom we have been speaking has heard the door open. She backs against the wall, pulling the red brocade of the Bed of One Night tightly around herself. It has a brackish odour, like a salt marsh at low tide: the dried fear of those who have gone before her. Someone has come in; there's the sound of a heavy object being dragged along the floor. The door closes again; the room is dark as oil. Why is there no lamp, no candle?

She stretches her hands out in front of her to protect herself, and finds her left hand taken and held by another hand: held gently and without coercion. It's as if she's being asked a question.

She can't speak. She can't say, I can't speak.

The blind assassin lets his woman's veil fall to the floor. Holding the girl's hand, he sits down on the bed beside her. He still intends to kill her, but that can come later. He's heard about these impounded girls, kept hidden away from everyone until the last day of their lives; he's curious about her. In any case she's a gift of sorts, and all for him. To refuse such a gift would be to spit in the face of the gods. He knows he should move swiftly, finish the job, vanish, but there's lots of time for that still. He can smell the scent they've rubbed on her; it smells of funeral biers, those of young women who've died unwed. Wasted sweetness.

He won't be ruining anything, or nothing that's been bought and paid for: the fraudulent Lord of the Underworld must have been and gone already. Had he kept his rusty chainmail on? Most likely. Clanked into her like a ponderous iron key, turned himself in her flesh, wrenched her open. He remembers the feeling all too well. Whatever else, he will not do that.

He lifts her hand to his mouth and touches his lips to it, not a kiss as such but a token of respect and homage. Gracious and most golden one, he says-the beggar's standard address to a prospective benefactor-rumour of your extreme beauty has brought me here, though simply by being here my life is forfeit. I can't see you with my eyes, because I'm blind. Will you permit me to see you with my hands? It would be a last kindness, and perhaps for yourself as well.

He hasn't been a slave and a whore for nothing: he's learned how to flatter, how to lie plausibly, how to ingratiate himself. He puts his fingers on her chin, and waits until she hesitates, then nods. He can hear what she's thinking: Tomorrow I'll be dead. He wonders if she guesses why he's really here.

Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don't have time, by those who truly understand the wordhelpless. They dispense with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they're forced at spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however-if I may use such an overworked word-miraculous. What we mean by that is, Against all odds.

And so it is, this night.

The blind assassin begins very slowly to touch her, with one hand only, the right-the dexterous hand, the knife hand. He passes it over her face, down her throat; then he adds the left hand, the sinister hand, using both together, tenderly, as if picking a lock of the utmost fragility, a lock made of silk. It's like being caressed by water. She trembles, but not as before with fear. After a time she lets the red brocade fall away from around her, and takes his hand and guides it.

Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.

This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love.

You surprise me, she says.

Do I? he says. Why? Though I like to surprise you. He lights a cigarette, offers her one; she shakes her head for no. He's smoking too much. It's nerves, despite his steady hands.

Because you said they fell in love, she says. You've sneered at that notion often enough-not realistic, bourgeois superstition, rotten at the core. Sickly sentiment, a high-flown Victorian excuse for honest carnality. Going soft on yourself?

Don't blame me, blame history, he says, smiling. Such things happen. Falling in love has been recorded, or at least those words have. Anyway, I said he was lying.

You can't wiggle out of it that way. The lying was only at first. Then you changed it.

Point granted. But there could be a more callous way of looking at it.

Looking at what?

This falling in love business.

Since when is it a business? she says angrily.

He smiles. That notion bother you? Too commercial? Your own conscience would flinch, is that what you're saying? But there's always a tradeoff, isn't there?

No, she says. There isn't. Not always.

You might say he grabbed what he could get. Why wouldn't he? He had no scruples, his life was dog eat dog and it always had been. Or you could say they were both young so they didn't know any better. The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds. And I haven't said he didn't kill her afterwards. As I've pointed out, he was nothing if not self-interested.

So you've got cold feet, she says. You're backing down, you're chicken. You won't go all the way. You're to love as a cock-teaser is to fucking.

He laughs, a startled laugh. Is it the coarseness of the words, is he taken aback, has she finally managed that? Restrain your language, young lady.

Why should I? You don't.

I'm a bad example. Let's just say they could indulge themselves-their emotions, if you want to call it that. They could roll around in their emotions-live for the moment, spout poetry out of both ends, burn the candle, drain the cup, howl at the moon. Time was running out on them. They had nothing to lose.

He did. Or he certainly thought he did!

All right then. She had nothing to lose. He blows out a cloud of smoke.

Not like me, she says, I guess you mean.

Not like you, darling, he says. Like me. I'm the one with nothing to lose.

She says, But you've got me. I'm not nothing.

Society Schoolgirl Found Safe

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Police called off their search yesterday for fifteen-year-old society schoolgirl Laura Chase, missing for over a week, when Miss Chase was found safely lodged with family friends Mr. and Mrs. E. Newton-Dobbs at their summer residence in Muskoka. Well-known industrialist Richard E. Griffen, married to Miss Chase's sister, spoke to reporters by telephone on behalf of the family. "My wife and I are very relieved," he said. "It was a simple confusion, caused by a letter which was delayed in the post. Miss Chase made holiday arrangements of which she believed us to have been aware, as did her host and hostess. They do not read the newspapers while on vacation or this mix-up would never have occurred. When they returned to the city and became aware of the situation, they rang us immediately."

Questioned about rumours that Miss Chase had run away from home and had been located in curious circumstances at the Sunnyside Beach Amusement Park, Mr. Griffen said he did not know who was responsible for these malicious fabrications but he would make it his business to find out. "It was an ordinary misunderstanding, such as might happen to anybody," he stated. "My wife and I are grateful that she is safe, and sincerely thank the police, the newspapers, and the concerned public for their help." Miss Chase is said to have been unsettled by the publicity, and is refusing interviews.

Although no lasting harm was done, these are by no means the first serious difficulties to have been caused by faulty postal delivery. The public deserves a service it can rely on unquestioningly. Government officials should take note.

Street walk

She walks along the street, hoping she looks like a woman entitled to be walking along the street. Or along this street. She doesn't, though. She's dressed wrong, her hat is wrong, her coat is wrong. She ought to have a scarf tied over her head and under her chin, a baggy coat worn along the sleeves. She ought to look drab and frugal.

The houses here are cheek by jowl. Servants' cottages once, row On row, but there are fewer servants now, and the rich have made other provisions. Sooty brick, two up, two down, privy out back. Some have the remains of vegetable gardens on their tiny front lawns-a blackened tomato vine, a wooden stake with string dangling from it. The gardens couldn't have gone well-it would have been too shady, the earth too cindery. But even here the autumn trees have been lavish, the remaining leaves yellow and orange and vermilion, and a deeper red like fresh liver.

From inside the houses comes howling, barking, a rattle or slam. Female voices raised in thwarted rage, the defiant yells of children. On the cramped porches men sit on wooden chairs, hands dangling from knees, out of work but not yet out of house and home. Their eyes on her, their scowls, taking bitter stock of her with her fur trim at wrists and neck, her lizard handbag. It could be they are lodgers, crammed into cellars and odd corners to help cover the rent.

Women hurry along, heads down, shoulders hunched, carrying brown paper bundles. Married, they must be. The wordbraised comes to mind. They'll have been scrounging bones from the butcher, they'll be toting home the cheap cuts, to be served with flabby cabbage. Her shoulders are too far back, her chin too far up, she doesn't wear that beaten-down look: when they raise their heads enough to focus on her, the glances are filthy. They must think she's a hooker, but in shoes like that what's she doing down here? Way below her league.

Here's the bar, on the corner where he said it would be. The beer parlour. Men are gathered in a clump outside it. None of them says anything to her as she goes past, they just stare as if from thickets, but she can hear the muttering, hatred and lust mixed in the throat, following her like the wash from a ship. Perhaps they've mistaken her for a church worker or some other sniffy do-gooder. Poking scrubbed fingers into their lives, asking questions, offering table scraps of patronising help. But she's dressed too well for that.

She took a taxi, paid it off three blocks away, where there was more traffic. It's best not to become an anecdote: who'd take a cab, around here? Though she's an anecdote anyway. What she needs is a different coat, picked up at a rummage sale, crumpled into a suitcase. She could go into a hotel restaurant, leave her own coat at the check, slip into the powder room, change. Frump up her hair, smudge her lipstick. Emerge as a different woman.

No. It would never work. There's the suitcase, just to begin with; there's getting out of the house with it. Where are you off to in such a hurry?

And so she's stuck doing a cloak-and-dagger number without a cloak. Relying on her face alone, its guile. She's had enough practice by now, in smoothness, coolness, blankness. A lifting of both eyebrows, the candid, transparent stare of a double agent. A face of pure water. It's not the lying that counts, it's evading the necessity for it. Rendering all questions foolish in advance.

There is however some danger. For him too: more than there was, he's told her. He thinks he was spotted once, on the street: recognised. Some goon from the Red Squad, maybe. He'd walked through a crowded beer joint, out the back door.

She doesn't know whether to believe in it or not, this sort of danger: men in dark bulgy suits with their collars turned up, cars on the prowl. Come with us. We're taking you in. Bare rooms and harsh lights. It seems too theatrical, or else like things that occur only in fog, in black and white. Only in other countries, in other languages. Or if here, not to her.

If caught, she'd renounce him, before the cock crowed even once. She knows that, plainly, calmly. Anyway she'd be let off, her involvement viewed as frivolous dabbling or else a rebellious prank, and whatever turmoil might result would be covered up. She'd have to pay for it privately, of course, but with what? She's already bankrupt: you can't get blood from a stone. She'd close herself off, put up the shutters. Out to lunch, permanently.

Lately she's had the sense of someone watching her, though whenever she reconnoitres there's nobody there. She's being more careful; she's being as careful as she can. Is she afraid? Yes. Most of the time. But her fear doesn't matter. Or rather, it does matter. It enhances the pleasure she feels with him; also the sense that she's getting away with it.

The real danger comes from herself. What she'll allow, how far she's willing to go. But allowing and willing have nothing to do with it. Where she'll be pushed, then; where she'll be led. She hasn't examined her motives. There may not be any motives as such; desire is not a motive. It doesn't seem to her that she has any choice. Such extreme pleasure is also a humiliation. It's like being hauled along by a shameful rope, a leash around the neck. She resents it, her lack of freedom, and so she stretches out the time between, rationing him. She stands him up, fibs about why she couldn't make it-claims she didn't see the chalked markings on the park wall, didn't get the message-the new address of the non-existent dress shop, the postcard signed by an old friend she's never had, the telephone call for the wrong number.

But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out; enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immolation is what she wants, however briefly. To exist without boundaries.

Still, she finds herself wondering about things that never occurred to her at first. How does he do his laundry? One time there were socks drying on the radiator-he'd seen her looking, whipped them out of sight. He tidies things away before her visits, or at least he takes a swipe at it. Where does he eat? He's told her he doesn't like to be seen too often in one place. He must move around, from one eatery, one beanery, to another. In his mouth these words have a sleazy glamour. Some days he's more nervous, he keeps his head down, he doesn't go out; there are apple cores, in this or that room; there are bread crumbs on the floor.

Where does he get the apples, the bread? He's oddly reticent about such details-what goes on in his life when she's not there. Perhaps he feels it might diminish him in her eyes, to know too much. Too many sordid particulars. Perhaps he's right. (All those paintings of women, in art galleries, surprised at private moments. Nymph Sleeping. Susanna and the Elders. Woman Bathing, one foot in a tin tub-Renoir, or was it Degas? Both, both women plump. Diana and her maidens, a moment before they catch the hunter's prying eyes. Never any paintings called Man Washing Socks in Sink.)

Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself, through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out: where life grunts and snuffles, romance only sighs. Does she want more than that-more of him? Does she want the whole picture?

The danger would come from looking too closely and seeing too much-from having him dwindle, and herself along with him. Then waking up empty, all of it used up-over and done. She would have nothing. She would bebereft.

An old-fashioned word.

He hasn't come to meet her, this time. He said it was better not. She's been left to make her way alone. Tucked into the palm of her glove there's a square of folded paper, with cryptic directions, but she doesn't need to look at it. She can feel the slight glow of it against her skin, like a radium dial in the dark.

She imagines him imagining her-imagining her walking along the street, closer now, impending. Is he impatient, on edge, can he hardly wait? Is he like her? He likes to imply indifference-that he doesn't care whether she'll arrive or not-but it's just an act, one of several. For instance, he's no longer smoking ready-mades, he can't afford them. He rolls his own, with one of those obscene-looking pink rubber devices that turns out three at a time; he cuts them with a razor blade, then stows them in a Craven A package. One of his small deceptions, or vanities; his need for them makes her breath catch.

Sometimes she brings him cigarettes, handfuls of them-largesse, opulence. She nicks them out of the silver cigarette box on the glass coffee table, crams them into her purse. But she doesn't do this every time. It's best to keep him in suspense, it's best to keep him hungry.

He lies on his back, replete, smoking. If she wants avowals, she has to get them beforehand-make sure of them first, like a whore and her money. Meagre though they may be. I've missed you, he might say. Or: I can't get enough of you. His eyes shut, grinding his teeth to hold himself back; she can hear it against her neck.

Afterwards, she has to fish.

Say something.

Like what?

Like anything you like.

Tell me what you want to hear.

If I do that and then you say it, I won't believe you.

Read between the lines then.

But there aren't any lines. You don't give me any.

Then he might sing: Oh, you put your dingus in, and you pull your dingus out, And the smoke goes up the chimney just the same- How's that for a line? he'll say. You really are a bastard. I've never claimed otherwise. No wonder they resort to stories.

She turns left at the shoe repair, then a block along, then two houses. Then the small apartment building: The Excelsior. It must be named after the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A banner with a strange device, a knight sacrificing all earthly concerns to scale the heights. The heights of what? Of armchair bourgeois pietism. How ridiculous, here and now.

The Excelsior is red brick with three storeys, four windows each floor, with wrought-iron balconies-more like ledges than balconies, no room for a chair. A cut above the neighbourhood once, now a place where people cling to the edges. On one balcony someone's improvised a clothesline; a greying dishcloth hangs on it like the flag of some defeated regiment.

She walks past the building, then crosses at the next corner. There she stops and glances down as if there's something caught on her shoe. Down, then back. There's nobody walking behind her, no slow car. A stout woman labouring up front steps, a string bag in either hand like ballast; two patched boys chasing a grubby dog along the sidewalk. No men here except three old porch vultures hunched over a shared newspaper.

She turns then and retraces her steps, and when she comes to the Excelsior she ducks into the alleyway beside it and hurries along, forcing herself not to run. The asphalt is uneven, her heels too high. This is the wrong place to turn an ankle. She feels more exposed now, caught in the glare, although there are no windows. Her heart's going hard, her legs are flimsy, silken. Panic has its hook into her, why?

He won't be there, says a soft voice in her head; a soft anguished voice, a plaintive cooing voice like a mourning dove's. He's gone away. He's been taken away. You'll never see him again. Never. She almost cries.

Silly, frightening herself like that. But there's a real part to it all the same. He could vanish more easily than she could: she's of a fixed address, he'd always know where to find her.

She pauses, lifts her wrist, breathes in the reassuring smell of perfumed fur. There's a metal door towards the back, a service door. She knocks lightly.

The janitor

The door opens, he's there. She has no time to feel gratitude before he pulls her inside. They're on a landing; back stairs. No light except what comes through a window, somewhere above. He kisses her, hands to either side of her face. Sandpaper of his chin. He's shivering, but not with arousal, or not only.

She draws away. You look like a bandit. She's never seen a bandit; she's thinking of the ones in operas. The smugglers, in Carmen. Heavy on the burnt cork.

Sorry, he says. I had to decamp in a hurry. Could be a false alarm, but I had to leave some things behind.

Such as a razor?

Among the rest. Come on-it's down here.

The stairs are narrow: unpainted wood, a two-by-four as bannister. At the bottom, a cement floor. The smell of coal dust, a piercing underground smell, like the damp stones of a cave.

It's in here. The janitor's room.

But you aren't the janitor, she says, laughing a little. Are you?

I am now. Or that's what the landlord thinks. He's dropped by a couple of times, early in the morning, to make sure I've stoked the furnace, but not too much. He wouldn't want hot tenants, they're too expensive; lukewarm's good enough. It's not much of a bed.

It's a bed, she says. Lock the door.

It doesn't lock, he says.

There's a small window, bars across it; the remains of a curtain. Rust-coloured light comes through it. They've propped a chair against the doorknob, a chair with most rungs missing, half matchwood already. Not much of a barrier. They're under the one mildewed blanket, with his coat and hers piled on top. The sheet doesn't bear thinking about. She can feel his ribs, trace the spaces between.

What are you eating?

Don't pester me.

You're too thin. I could bring something, some food.

You're not very dependable though, are you? I could starve to death waiting for you to turn up. Don't worry, I'll be out of here soon enough.

Where? You mean this room, or the city, or…

I don't know. Don't nag.

I'm interested, that's all. I'm concerned, I want…

Cut it out.

Well then, she says, I guess it's back to Zycron. Unless you want me to leave.

No. Stay a little. I'm sorry, but I've been under a strain. Where were we? I've forgotten.

He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.

Right. Yes. The usual choices.

He's deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever, when-with the sensitive hearing conferred on him by his blindness-he detects a metallic noise of grinding and rasping. Chain link against chain link, shackles in motion. It's drawing nearer along the corridor. He already knows that the Lord of the Underworld hasn't yet made his purchased visitation: he could tell that by the state the girl had been in. A pristine state, as you might say.

What to do now? He could slip behind the door or under the bed, leave her to her fate, then reappear and finish the job he'll be paid for. But matters being as they are, he's reluctant to do that. Or he could wait until things are well underway and the courtier is deaf to the outside world, and slide out the door; but then, the honour of the assassins as a group-as a guild, if you like-would be tarnished.

He takes the girl by the arm, and by placing her hand across her own mouth, he indicates the need for silence. Then he leads her away from the bed and stashes her behind the door. He checks to make sure the door is unlocked, as has been arranged. The man won't be expecting a sentry: in his deal with the High Priestess, he specified no witnesses. The temple sentry was to have made herself scarce when she heard him coming.

The blind assassin hauls the dead sentry out from under the bed and arranges her on the coverlet, with her scarf concealing the slash in her throat. She's not cold yet, and has stopped dripping. Too bad if the fellow has a bright candle; otherwise, in the night all cats are grey. Temple maidens are trained to manifest inertia. It might take the man-hampered as he is by his ponderous god costume, which traditionally includes a helmet and visor-some time to discover he's fucking the wrong woman, and a dead one at that.

The blind assassin pulls the brocade bedcurtains almost shut. Then he joins the girl, squeezing the two of them as flat as possible against the wall.

The heavy door groans open. The girl watches a glow advancing across the floor. The Lord of the Underworld can't see very well, evidently; he bumps into something, curses. He's fumbling now with the hangings of the bed. Where are you, my pretty one? he's saying. It won't surprise him when she doesn't answer, seeing that she is so conveniently mute.

The blind assassin begins to ease himself out from behind the door, and the girl with him. How do I get this damn thing off? the Lord of the Underworld is muttering to himself. The two of them creep around the door, then out into the hall, hand in hand, like children avoiding the grownups.

Behind them there's a shout, of rage or horror. One hand on the wall, the blind assassin begins to run. He pulls the torches from their sconces as he goes, hurls them behind him, hoping they will go out.

He knows the Temple inside out, by touch and smell; it's his business to know such things. He knows the city in the same way, he can run it like a rat in a maze-he knows its doorways, its tunnels, its bolt-holes and cul-de-sacs, its lintels, its ditches and gutters-even its passwords, most of the time. He knows which walls he can scale, where all the toeholds are. Now he pushes on a marble panel-it has a bas-relief of the Broken God on it, patron of fugitives-and they're in darkness. He knows this by the way the girl stumbles, and it occurs to him for the first time that by taking her with him he'll be slowed down. He'll be hampered by her ability to see.

On the other side of the wall, feet hammer past. He whispers, Take hold of my robe, adding, unnecessarily, Don't say a word. They're in the network of hidden tunnels that allows the High Priestess and her cohorts to learn so many valuable secrets from those who come to the Temple to meet or confess to the Goddess or pray, but they have to get out of it as quickly as possible. It is, after all, the first place the High Priestess will think to look. Nor can he take them out via the loosened stone in the outer wall by which he originally entered. The false Lord of the Underworld may know about that, having arranged for the killing and specified the time and place, and must by now have guessed the blind assassin's treachery.

Muffled by thick rock, a bronze gong sounds. He can hear it through his feet.

He leads the girl from wall to wall, and then down an abrupt, cramped staircase. She's whimpering with fear: cutting out her tongue hasn't stopped her capacity for tears. Pity, he thinks. He feels for the disused culvert he knows is there, lifts her up to it, offering his hands for a stirrup, then swings himself up beside her. Now they must worm their way along. The smell is not pleasant, but it's an old smell. Clotted human effluvium, gone to dust.

Now there's fresh air. He sniffs it, testing for the smoke of torches.

Are there stars? he asks her. She nods. No clouds then. Unfortunate. A couple of the five moons must be shining-he knows that from the time of month-and three more will shortly follow. The two of them will be clearly visible for the rest of the night, and in daylight they'll be incandescent.

The Temple won't want the story of their escape to become general knowledge-it would lead to loss of face, and riots might ensue. Some other girl will be tagged for the sacrifice: what with the veils, who's to know? But many will be hunting for them, on the hush but relentlessly.

He can put them into a hiding hole, but sooner or later they'd have to come out for food and water. Alone, he might get by, but not the two of them.

He could always ditch her. Or stab her, dump her in a well.

No, he can't.

There's always the assassins' den. That's where they all go when off-duty, to exchange gossip and share loot and boast about their exploits. It's hidden audaciously right under the judgment room of the main palace, a deep cave lined with carpets-carpets the assassins were forced to make as children, and have stolen since. They know them by touch, and often sit on them, smoking the dream-inducingfring weed and running their fingers over the patterns, over the luxurious colours, remembering what these colours looked like when they could see.

But only the blind assassins are allowed into this cave. They form a closed society, into which strangers are brought only as plunder. Also, he's betrayed his calling by saving alive someone he's been paid to murder. They're professionals, the assassins; they pride themselves on completing their contracts, they don't stand for violations of their own code of conduct. They'd kill him without mercy, and her too after a while.

One of his fellows may well be hired to track them. Set a thief to catch a thief. Then, sooner or later, they'll be doomed. Her fragrance alone will give them away-they've perfumed her up to the gills.

He'll have to take her out of Sakiel-Norn-out of the city, out of familiar territory. It's a danger, but not as great a one as remaining. Perhaps he can get them down to the harbour, then aboard a ship. But how to sneak past the gates? All eight of them are locked and guarded, as is the nightly custom. Alone, he could scale the walls-his fingers and toes can grip like a gecko's-but with her it would be a catastrophe.

There's another way. Listening at every step, he leads her downhill, towards the side of the city nearest the sea. The waters of all the springs and fountains of Sakiel-Norn are collected into one canal, and this canal takes the water out beneath the city wall, through an arched tunnel. The water is higher than a man's head and the current is swift, so no one ever tries to get into the city that way. But out?

Running water will deaden the scent.

He himself can swim. It's one of the skills the assassins take care to learn. He assumes, correctly, that the girl can't. He tells her to remove all of her clothes and make them into a bundle. Then he sheds the Temple robe and ties his own clothes into the bundle with hers. He knots the cloth around his shoulders, then around her wrists, tells her that if the knots come undone she must not let go of him, no matter what. When they come to the archway, she must hold her breath.

Thenyerk birds are stirring; he can hear their first croaking; soon it will be light. Three streets away, someone is coming, steadily, deliberately, as if searching. He half leads, half pushes the girl into the cold water. She gasps, but does as she is told. They float along; he feels for the main current, listens for the rush and gurgle where the water enters the archway. Too early and they'll run out of breath, too late and he'll strike his head against the stone. Then he plunges.

Water is nebulous, it has no shape, you can pass your hand right through it; yet it can kill you. The force of such a thing is its momentum, its trajectory. What it collides with, and how fast. The same might be said about-but never mind that.

There's a long agonising passage. He thinks his lungs will burst, his arms give out. He feels her dragging behind him, wonders if she's drowned. At least the current is with them. He scrapes against the tunnel wall; something tears. Cloth, or flesh?

On the other side of the archway they surface; she's coughing, he's laughing softly. He holds her head above the water, lying on his back; in this fashion they float down the canal for some distance. When he judges it's far enough and safe enough, he lands them, hauling her up the sloping stone embankment. He feels for the shadow of a tree. He's exhausted, but also elated, filled with a strange aching happiness. He has saved her. He has extended mercy, for the first time in his life. Who knows what may come of such a departure from his chosen path?

Is anyone around? he says. She pauses to look, shakes her head for no. Any animals? No, again. He hangs their clothes on the branches of the tree; then, in the fading light of the saffron and heliotrope and magenta moons, he gathers her up like silk, sinks into her. She's cool as a melon, and faintly salty, like a fresh fish.

They're lying in each other's arms, fast asleep, when three spies who've been sent ahead by the People of Desolation to scout out the approaches to the city stumble across them. Brusquely they are awakened, then questioned by the one spy who speaks their language, though far from perfectly. This boy is blind, he tells the others, and the girl is mute. The three spies marvel at them. How could they have come here? Not out of the city, surely; all the gates are locked. It is as if they have appeared out of the sky.

The answer is obvious: they must be divine messengers. They are courteously allowed to dress in their now-dry clothing, mounted together on a spy's horse, and led off to be presented to the Servant of Rejoicing. The spies are enormously pleased with themselves, and the blind assassin knows better than to say very much. He's heard vague tales about these people and their curious beliefs concerning divine messengers. Such messengers are said to deliver their messages in obscure forms, and so he tries to remember all of the riddles and paradoxes and conundrums he has ever known: The way down is the way up. What goes on four legs at dawn, two at noon and three in the evening? Out of the eater comes forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. What's black and white and red all over?

That's not Zycronian, they didn't have newspapers.

Point taken. Scratch that. How about, More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil; the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?

That's a new one.

Take a guess.

I give up.

Nothing.

She takes a minute to work it out. Nothing. Yes, she says. That should do it.

As they ride, the blind assassin keeps one arm around the girl. How to protect her? He has an idea, impromptu and born of desperation, but nevertheless it may work. He will affirm that both of them are indeed divine messengers, but of different kinds. He is the one who receives the messages from the Invincible One, but only she can interpret them. This she does with her hands, by making signs with her fingers. The method of reading of these signs has been revealed only to him. He will add, just in case they get any nasty ideas, that no man must be allowed to touch the mute girl in an improper way, or in any way at all. Except himself, of course. Otherwise she will lose the power.

It's foolproof, for as long as they'll buy it. He hopes she's quick on the uptake, and can improvise. He wonders if she knows any signs.

That's all for today, he says. I need to open the window.

But it's so cold.

Not for me it isn't. This place is like a closet. I'm suffocating.

She feels his forehead. I think you're coming down with something. I could go to the drugstore- No. I never get sick.

What is it? What's wrong? You're worried.

I'm not worried as such. I never worry But I don't trust what's happening. I don't trust my friends. My so-called friends.

Why? What are they up to?

Bugger all, he says That's the problem.

Toronto High Noon Gossip

BY YORK

The Royal York Hotel overflowed with exotically garbed revellers in mid-January at the season's third charity costume ball, given in aid of the Downtown Foundlings' Cr ¨che. The theme this year-with a nod to last year's spectacular "Tamurlane in Samarkand" Beaux Arts Ball-was "Xanadu," and under the skilled direction of Mr. Wallace Wynant, the three lavish ballrooms were transformed into a "stately pleasure dome" of compelling brilliance, where Kubla Khan and his glittering entourage held court. Foreign potentates from Eastern realms and their retinues-harems, servants, dancing girls and slaves, as well as damsels with dulcimers, merchants, courtesans, fakirs, soldiers of all nations, and beggars galore -whirled gaily around a spectacular "Alph, the Sacred River" fountain, dyed a Bacchanalian purple by an overhead spotlight, beneath shimmering crystal festoons in the central "Cave of Ice."

Dancing went briskly forward as well in the two adjacent garden-bowers, each loaded with blossom, while a jazz orchestra in each ballroom kept up the "symphony and song" We did not hear any "ancestral voices prophesying war," as all was sweet accord, thanks to the firmly-guiding hand of Mrs Winifred Griffen Prior, the Ball's convenor, ravishing in scarlet and gold as a Princess from Rajistan. Also on the reception committee were Mrs Richard Chase Griffen, an Abyssinian maid in green and silver, Mrs. Oliver Mac Donnell, in Chinese red, and Mrs Hugh N. Hillert, imposing as a Sultaness in magenta.

Alien on Ice

He's in another place now, a room he's rented out near the Junction. It's above a hardware store. In its window is a sparse display of wrenches and hinges. It isn't doing too well; nothing around here is doing too well. Grit blows through the air, crumpled paper along the ground; the sidewalks are treacherous with ice, from packed snow nobody's shovelled.

In the middle distance trains mourn and shunt, their whistles trailing into the distance. Never hello, always goodbye. He could hop one, but it's a chance: they're patrolled, though you never know when. Anyway he's nailed in place right now-let's face it-because of her; although, like the trains, she's never on time and always departing.

The room is two flights up, back stairs with rubber treads, the rubber worn patchy, but at least it's a separate entrance. Unless you count the young couple with a baby on the other side of the wall. They use the same stairs, but he rarely sees them, they get up too early. He can hear them at midnight though, when he's trying to work; they go at it as if there's no tomorrow, their bed squeaking like rats. It drives him crazy. You'd think with one yelling brat they'd have called it quits, but no, on they gallop. At least they're quick about it.

Sometimes he sets his ear against the wall to listen. Any porthole in a storm, he thinks. In the night all cows are cows.

He's crossed paths with the woman a couple of times, padded and kerchiefed like a Russian granny, labouring with parcels and baby buggy. They stash that thing on the downstairs landing, where it waits like some alien death trap, its black mouth gaping. He helped her with it once and she smiled at him, a stealthy smile, her little teeth bluish around the edges, like skim milk. Does my typewriter bother you at night? he'd ventured-hinting that he's awake then, that he overhears. No, not at all Blank stare, dumb as a heifer. Dark circles under her eyes, downward lines etched from nose to mouth corners. He doubts the evening doings are her idea. Too fast, for one thing-the guy's in and out like a bank robber. She hasdrudge written all over her; she probably stares at the ceiling, thinks about mopping the floor.

His room has been created by dividing a larger room in two, which accounts for the flimsiness of the wall. The space is narrow and cold: there's a breeze around the window frame, the radiator clanks and drips but gives no heat. A toilet stashed in one chilly corner, old piss and iron staining the bowl a toxic orange, and a shower stall made of zinc, with a rubber curtain grimy with age. The shower is a black hose running up one wall, with a round head of perforated metal. The dribble of water that comes out of it is cold as a witch's tit. A Murphy bed, inexpertly installed so that he has to bust a gut prying it down; a plywood counter stuck together with furniture nails, painted yellow some time ago. A one-ring burner. Dinginess blankets everything like soot.

Compared to where he might be, it's a palace.

He's ditched his pals. Skipped out on them, left no address. It shouldn't have taken this long to arrange a passport, or the two passports he requires. He felt they were keeping him in the larder as insurance: if someone more valuable to them got caught, they could trade him in. Maybe they were thinking of turning him in anyway. He'd make a cute fall guy: he's expendable, he's never really fit their notions. A fellow-traveller who didn't travel far or fast enough. They disliked his erudition, such as it was; they disliked his skepticism, which they mistook for levity. Just because Smith is wrong doesn't mean Jones is right, he'd said once. They'd probably noted it down for future reference. They have their little lists.

Maybe they wanted their own martyr, their own one-man Sacco and Vanzetti. After he's been hanged by the neck until Red, villainous face in all the papers, they'll reveal some proof of his innocence-chalk up a few points of moral outrage. Look what the system does! Outright murder! No justice! They think like that, the comrades. Like a chess game. He'd be the pawn sacrifice.

He goes to the window, looks out. Icicles like brownish tusks depend outside the glass, taking their colour from the roofing. He thinks of her name, an electric aura circling it-a sexual buzz like blue neon. Where is she? She won't take a taxi, not right to the spot, she's too bright for that. He stares at the streetcar stop, willing her to materialise. Stepping down with a flash of leg, a high-heeled boot, best plush. Cunt on stilts, Why does he think like that, when if any other man said that about her he'd hit the bastard?

She'll be wearing a fur coat. He'll despise her for it, he'll ask her to keep it on. Fur all the way through.

Last time he saw her there was a bruise on her thigh. He wished he'd made it himself. What's this? I bumped into a door. He always knows when she's lying. Or he thinks he knows. Thinking he knows can be a trap. An ex-professor once told him he had a diamond-hard intellect and he'd been flattered at the time. Now he considers the nature of diamonds. Although sharp and glittering and useful for cutting glass, they shine with reflected light only. They're no use at all in the dark.

Why does she keep arriving? Is he some private game she's playing, is that it? He won't let her pay for anything, he won't be bought. She wants a love story out of him because girls do, or girls of her type who still expect something from life. But there must be another angle. The wish for revenge, or for punishment. Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so the guy doesn't even know he's been hurt until much later. Then he finds out. Then his dick falls off. Despite those eyes, the pure line of her throat, he catches a glimpse in her at times of something complex and smirched.

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.

He has a bridge table, flea-market vintage, and one folding chair. He sits down at the typewriter, blows on his fingers, rolls in paper.

In a glacier located in the Swiss Alps (or the Rocky Mountains, better, or on Greenland, even better), some explorers have found-embedded in a flow of clear ice-a space vehicle. It's shaped like a small dirigible, but pointed at the ends like an okra pod. An eerie glow comes from it, shining up through the ice. What colour is this glow? Green is best, with a yellow tinge to it, like absinthe.

The explorers melt the ice, using what? A blowtorch they happen to have with them? A large fire made from nearby trees? If trees, better to move it back to the Rocky Mountains. No trees in Greenland. Perhaps a huge crystal could be employed, which would magnify the rays of the sun. The Boy Scouts-of which he had briefly been one-were taught to use this method to start fires. Out of sight of the Scoutmaster, a jovial, mournful pink-faced man fond of sing-songs and hatchets, they'd held their magnifying glasses trained on their bare arms to see who could stand it longest. They'd set fire to pine needles that way, and scraps of toilet paper.

No, the giant crystal would be too impossible.

The ice is gradually melted. X, who will be a dour Scot, warns them not to meddle with it as no good will come, but Y, who is an English scientist, says they must add to the store of human knowledge, whereas Z, an American, says they stand to make millions. B, who is a girl with blonde hair and a puffy, bludgeoned-looking mouth, says it is all very thrilling. She is a Russian and is thought to believe in Free Love. X, Y, and Z have not put this to the test, though all would like to-Y subconsciously, X guiltily, and Z crudely.

He always calls his characters by letters at first, then fills the names in afterwards. Sometimes he consults the telephone book, sometimes the inscriptions on tombstones. The woman is always B, which stands for Beyond Belief, Bird Brain, or Big Boobs, depending on his mood. Or Beautiful Blonde, of course.

B sleeps in a separate tent and is in the habit of forgetting her mittens, and wandering around at night contrary to orders. She comments on the beauty of the moon, and on the harmonic qualities of wolf howls; she's on first-name terms with the sled dogs, talks to them in Russian baby talk, and claims (despite her official scientific materialism) that they have souls. This will be a nuisance if they run out of food and have to eat one, X has concluded in his pessimistic Scottish way.

The glowing pod-like structure is freed from the ice, but the explorers have only a few minutes to examine the material from which it is made-a thin metal alloy unknown to man-before it vaporises, leaving a smell of almonds, or patchouli, or burnt sugar, or sulphur, or cyanide.

Revealed to view is a form, humanoid in shape, obviously male, dressed in a skin-tight suit the greenish-blue of peacock feathers, with a sheen like beetles' wings. No. Too much like fairies. Dressed in a skintight suit the greenish-blue of a gas flame, with a sheen like gasoline spilled on water. He is still embedded in ice, which must have formed inside the pod. He has light-green skin, slightly pointed ears, thin chiselled lips, and large eyes, which are open. They are mostly pupil, as in owls. His hair is a darker green, and lies in thick coils over his skull, which comes to a noticeable point on top.

Unbelievable. A being from Outer Space. Who knows how long he has lain there? Decades? Centuries? Millennia?

Surely he is dead.

What are they to do? They hoist up the block of ice that encases him, and engage in a conference. (X says they should leave now, and call the authorities; Y wants to dissect him on the spot, but is reminded that he might vaporise, like the spaceship; Z is all for getting him out to civilization on a sled, then packing him in dry ice and selling him to the highest bidder; B points out that their sled dogs are taking an unhealthy interest and have begun to whine, but she is disregarded due to her excessive, Russian, female way of putting things.) Finally-by now it's dark, and the Northern Lights are behaving in a peculiar fashion-it is decided to put him into B's tent. B will have to sleep in the other tent, along with the three men, which will provide some opportunities for voyeurism by candlelight, as B certainly knows how to fill an alpine climbing outfit and a sleeping bag as well. During the night they will take four-hour watches, turn and turn about. In the morning they will cast lots in order to reach a final decision.

All goes well through the watches of X, Y and Z. Then it is the turn of B. She says she has an uncanny feeling, a hunch that all will not go well, but she is in the habit of saying this and is ignored. Newly wakened by Z, who has watched with libidinous urges while she has stretched and clambered out of her sleeping bag and then wiggled into her padded outdoor suit, she takes her place in the tent with the frozen being. The flickering of the candle puts her into a drowsy state; she finds herself wondering what the green man would be like in a romantic situation-he has attractive eyebrows, although he is so thin. She nods off to sleep.

The creature encased in ice begins to glow, softly at first, then more strongly. Water runs silently onto the floor of the tent. Now the ice is gone. He sits up, then stands. Without a sound he approaches the sleeping girl. The dark-green hair on his head stirs, coil by coil, then lengthens, tentacle-it now appears -by tentacle. One tentacle twines itself around the girl's throat, another around her ample charms, a third tightens itself across her mouth. She awakens as if from a nightmare, but it is no nightmare: the space being's face is close to hers, his cold tentacles hold her in an implacable grip; he is gazing at her with unprecedented longing and desire, with sheer naked need. No mortal man has ever looked at her with such intensity. She struggles briefly, then surrenders to his embrace.

Not that she has much of a choice.

The green mouth opens, revealing fangs. They approach her neck. He loves her so much he'll assimilate her-make her part of himself, forever. He and she will become one. She understands this wordlessly, because among other things this gent has the gift of telepathic communication. Yes, she sighs.

He rolls himself another cigarette. Will he let B be eaten and drunk in this fashion? Or will the sled dogs heed her plight, break loose from their tethers, tear in through the canvas, rip this guy to pieces, tentacle by tentacle? Will one of the others-he favours Y, the cool English scientist-come to her rescue? Will a fight ensue? That might be good. Fool! I could have taught you everything! the alien will beam at Y telepathically, just before he dies. His blood will be a non-human colour. Orange would be good.

Or perhaps the green fellow will exchange intravenous fluids with B, and she will become like him-a perfected, greenish version of herself. Then there will be two of them, and they will crush the others to jelly, decapitate the dogs, and set out to conquer the world. The rich, tyrannical cities must be destroyed, the virtuous poor set free. We are the Flail of the Lord, the pair of them will announce. They will now be in possession of the Death Ray, put together from the spaceman's knowledge and some wrenches and hinges looted from a nearby hardware store, so who will argue?

Or else the alien is not drinking B's blood at all-he's injecting himself into her! His own body will shrivel up like a grape, his dry, wrinkled skin will turn to mist, and in the morning not a trace of him will be left. The three men will come upon B, rubbing her eyes sleepily. I don't know what happened, she will say, and since she never does, they will believe this. Maybe we've all been hallucinating, they will say. It's the North, the Northern Lights-they addle men's brains. They thick men's bloodwith cold. They will not catch the ultra-intelligent alien green gleam in B's eyes, which were green to begin with anyway. The dogs will know, however. They will smell the change. They will growl with their ears back, they will howl plaintively, they will no longer be her friends. What's got into those dogs?

It could go so many ways.

The struggle, the fight, the rescue. The death of the alien. Clothes will be torn off in the process. They always are.

Why does he crank out this junk? Because he needs to-otherwise he'd be stony flat broke, and to seek other employment at this juncture would bring him further out in the open than would be at all prudent. Also because he can. He has a facility for it. Not everyone does: many have tried, many failed. He had bigger ambitions once, more serious ones. To write a man's life the way it really is. To go in at the ground level, the level of starvation pay and bread and dripping and slag-faced penny-ante whores and boots in the face and puke in the gutter. To expose the workings of the system, the machinery, the way it keeps you alive just so long as you've got some kick left in you, how it uses you up, turns you into a cog or a souse, crushes your face into the muck one way or another.

The average working man wouldn't read that kind of thing, though-the working man the comrades think is so inherently noble. What those guys want is his stuff. Cheap to buy, value for a dime, fast-paced action, with lots of tits and ass. Not that you can print the wordstits and ass: the pulps are surprisingly prudish. Breasts and bottom are as far as they'll go. Gore and bullets, guts and screams and writhing, but no full frontal nudity. Nolanguage. Or maybe it's not prudishness, maybe they just don't want to be closed down.

He lights a cigarette, he prowls, he looks out the window. Cinders darken the snow. A streetcar grinds past. He turns away, he prowls, nests of words in his head.

He checks his watch: she's late again. She's not coming.