should be able to pick and choose. The world’s your oyster. I can see that. Open in front of you. Have what you like. Free, gratis and without charge. You tell me what you see in there, and the next minute it’s in your hands …’
Look away, something in Cal said; nothing comes free. Prices must be paid.
But his gaze was so infatuated with the mysteries in the folds of the jacket that he couldn’t have averted his eyes now if his life depended upon it.
‘… tell me …’ the Salesman said, ‘… what you see …’
Ah, there was a question –
‘… and it’s yours.’
He saw forgotten treasures, things he’d once upon a time set his heart upon, thinking that if he owned them he’d never want for anything again. Worthless trinkets, most of them; but items that awoke old longings. A pair of X-ray spectacles he’d seen advertised at the back of a comic book (see thru walls! impress your friends!) but had never been able to buy. There they were now, their plastic lens gleaming, and seeing them he remembered the October nights he’d lain awake wondering how they worked.
And what was that beside them? Another childhood fetish. A photograph of a woman dressed only in stiletto heels and a sequinned G-string, presenting her over-sized breasts to the viewer. The boy two doors down from Cal had owned that picture, stolen it from his uncle’s wallet, he’d claimed, and Cal had wanted it so badly he thought he’d die of longing. Now it hung, a dog-eared memento, in the glittering flux of Shadwell’s jacket, there for the asking.
But no sooner had it made itself apparent than it too faded, and new prizes appeared in its place to tempt him.
‘What is it you see, my friend?’
The keys to a car he’d longed to own. A prize pigeon, the winner of innumerable races, that he’d been so envious of he’d have happily abducted –
‘… just tell me what you see. Ask, and it’s yours …’
There was so much. Items that had seemed – for an hour, a day – the pivot upon which his world turned, all hung now in the miraculous store-room of the Salesman’s coat.
But they were fugitive, all of them. They appeared only to evaporate again. There was something else there, which prevented these trivialities from holding his attention for more than moments. What it was, he couldn’t yet see.
He was dimly aware that Shadwell was addressing him again, and that the tone of the Salesman’s voice had altered. There was some puzzlement in it now, tinged with exasperation.
‘Speak up, my friend … why don’t you tell me what you want?’
‘I can’t … quite … see it.’
‘Then try harder. Concentrate.’
Cal tried. The images came and went, all insignificant stuff. The mother-lode still evaded him.
‘You’re not trying,’ the Salesman chided. ‘If a man wants something badly he has to zero in on it. Has to make sure it’s clear in his head.’
Cal saw the wisdom of this, and re-doubled his efforts. It had become a challenge to see past the tinsel to the real treasure that lay beyond. A curious sensation attended this focusing; a restlessness in his chest and throat, as though some part of him were preparing to be gone; out of him and along the line of his gaze. Gone into the jacket.
At the back of his head, where his skull grew the tail of his spine, the warning voices muttered on. But he was too committed to resist. Whatever the lining contained, it teased him, not quite showing itself. He stared and stared, defying its decorum until the sweat ran from his temples.
Shadwell’s coaxing monologue had gained fresh confidence. It’s sugar coating had cracked and fallen away. The nut beneath was bitter and dark.
‘Go on …’ he said. ‘Don’t be so damn weak. There’s something here you want, isn’t there? Very badly. Go on. Tell me. Spit it out. No use waiting. You wait, and your chance slips away.’
Finally, the image was coming clear –
‘Tell me and it’s yours.’
Cal felt a wind on his face, and suddenly he was flying again, and wonderland was spread out before him. Its deeps and its heights, its rivers, its towers – all were displayed there in the lining of the Salesman’s jacket.
He gasped at the sight. Shadwell was lightning swift in his response.
‘What is it?’
Cal stared on, speechless.
‘What do you see?’
A confusion of feelings assailed Cal. He felt elated, seeing the land, yet fearful of what he would be asked to give (was already giving, perhaps, without quite knowing it) in return for this peep-show. Shadwell had harm in him, for all his smiles and promises.
‘Tell me …’ the Salesman demanded.
Cal tried to keep an answer from coming to his lips. He didn’t want to give his secret away.
‘… what do you see?’
The voice was so hard to resist. He wanted to keep his silence, but the reply rose in him unbidden.
‘I …’ (Don’t say it. the poet warned), ‘I see …’ (Fight it. There’s harm here.) ‘I … see …’
‘He sees the Fugue.’
The voice that finished the sentence was that of a woman.
‘Are you sure?’ said Shadwell.
‘Never more certain. Look at his eyes.’
Cal felt foolish and vulnerable, so mesmerized by the sights still unfolding in the lining he was unable to cast his eyes in the direction of those who now appraised him.
‘He knows,’ the woman said. Her voice held not a trace of warmth. Even, perhaps, of humanity.
‘You were right then,’ said Shadwell. ‘It’s been here.’
‘Of course.’
‘Good enough,’ said Shadwell, and summarily closed the jacket.
The effect on Cal was cataclysmic. With the world – the Fugue, she’d called it – so abruptly snatched away he felt weak as a babe. It was all he could do to stand upright. Queasily, his eyes slid in the direction of the woman.
She was beautiful: that was his first thought. She was dressed in reds and purples so dark they were almost black, the fabric wrapped tightly around her upper body so as to seem both chaste, her ripeness bound and sealed, and, in the act of sealing, eroticized. The same paradox informed her features. Her hair-line had been shaved back fully two inches, and her eye-brows totally removed, which left her face eerily innocent of expression. Yet
