The Stochastic Man

25

I phoned Carvajal. “I have to talk to you,” I said.

We met along the Hudson Promenade near Tenth Street. The weather was ominous, dark and moist and warm, the sky a threatening greenish yellow, with black-edged thunderheads piled high over New Jersey and a sense of impending apocalypse pervading everything. Shafts of fierce off-color sunlight, more gray-blue than gold, burned through a filtering layer of murky clouds clustered like a crumpled blanket in mid-sky. Preposterous weather, operatic weather, a noisy overstated backdrop for our conversation.

Carvajal’s eyes had an unnatural gleam. He looked taller, younger, jazzing along the promenade on the balls of his feet. Why did he seem to gain strength between each of our meetings?

“Well?” he demanded.

“I want to be able to see. ”

“ See,then. I’m not stopping you, am I?”

“Be serious,” I begged.

“I always am. How can I help you?”

“Teach me to do it.”

“Did I ever tell you it could be taught?”

“You said everyone has the gift but very few know how to use it. All right. Show me how to use it.”

“Using it can perhaps be learned,” Carvajal said, “but it can’t be taught.”

“Please.”

“Why so eager?”

“Quinn needs me,” I told him abjectly. “I want to help him. To become President.”

“So?”

“I want to help him. I need to see. ”

“But you can project trends so well, Lew!”

“Not enough. Not enough.”

Thunder boomed over Hoboken. A cold damp wind out of the west stirred the clotted clouds. Nature’s scene-setting was becoming grotesquely, comically excessive.

Carvajal said, “Suppose I told you to give me complete control over your life. Suppose I asked you to let me make every decision for you, to shape all your actions to my orders, to put your existence entirely into my hands, and I said that if you did that, there’d be a chance that you’d learn how to see. A chance. What would your reply be?”

“I’d say that it’s a deal.”

“ Seeingmay not be as wonderful as you think it is, you know. Right now you look upon it as the magic key to everything. What if it turns out to be nothing but a burden and an obstacle? What if it’s a curse?”

“I don’t think it will be.”

“How can you know?”

“A power like that can be a tremendous positive force. I can’t see it as anything but beneficial for me. I can see its potential negative side, sure, but still — a curse? No.”

“What if it is?”

I shrugged. “I’ll take that risk. Has it been a curse for you?”

Carvajal paused and looked up at me, eyes searching mine. This was the appropriate moment for lightning to crackle across the heavens, for drum rolls of terrible thunder to sound up and down the Hudson, for tempestuous rain to slash across the promenade. None of that happened. Abruptly, the clouds directly overhead parted and sweet soft yellow sunlight enveloped the dark storm-frowns. So much for nature as a setter of scene.

“Yes,” Carvajal said quietly. “A curse. If anything, yes, a curse, a curse.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What does that matter to me?”

“Even if it’s been a curse for you, I don’t think it would for me.”

“Very courageous, Lew. Or very foolish.”

“Both. Nevertheless, I want to be able to see. ”

“Are you willing to become my disciple?”

Strange, jarring word. “What would that involve?”

“I’ve already told you. You give yourself to me on a no-questions-asked, no-results-guaranteed basis.”

“How will that help me to see? ”

“No questions asked,” he said. “Just give yourself to me, Lew.”

“Done.”

The lightning came. The skies opened and a crazy drenching downpour battered us with implausible fury.