Good evening, king of swords.”
“And good evening, noble blade. Did you do a reading before I came? To tell you how it all worked out?” the Gray Man asked as he walked with Maura down toward the Champagne Mutiny. He had showered before he came, though he had not shaved his trademark grizzle from his jaw, and he looked nice, although Maura didn’t point this out.
“Did you kill someone before you left to pick me up?” Maura had traded her tattered blue jeans for a slightly less tattered pair of blue jeans and an off-the-shoulder cotton shirt that showed how well her collarbone and neck got along. She looked nice, although the Gray Man didn’t point it out.
But they were both aware that the other had noticed.
“Of course not. I don’t think I kill nearly as many people as you think I do,” he said, opening the passenger door for her. “Do you know, this is the first time I’ve seen you wearing shoes. Oh, so — what’s going on there?”
Maura glanced over her shoulder to where he pointed. A small, weary Ford had just pulled up behind the Gray Man’s rental car. “Oh, that’s Calla. She’s following us to the restaurant to make sure you’re really taking me there and not burying me in the woods.”
The Gray Man said, “How ridiculous. I never bury anybody.”
Calla gave a mean-spirited wave in his general direction. Her fingers were claws on the steering wheel.
“She likes you,” Maura said. “You should be glad. She’s a good friend to have.”
The tired Ford followed them to the restaurant and waited on the curb until the Gray Man and Maura were seated at a table beneath a honeysuckle and Christmas-light-covered trellis. Fans fixed in the corners kept the humid night at bay.
Maura said, “I’m going to order for you.”
She waited to see if he would challenge her, but he just said, “I’m allergic to strawberries.”
“Six percent of the population is,” she noted.
He said, “I see where your daughter came from.”
She beamed at him. She had one of those lovely, open, perfect smiles, genuinely happy and very beautiful. The Gray Man thought, This is the worst decision I’ve ever made.
She ordered for them. Neither drank any wine. The appetizers were delicious, not because of the kitchen, but because all food eaten in anticipation of a kiss is delicious.
The Gray Man asked, “What is it like, being a seer?”
“That’s a funny way to put it.”
“I only mean, how much do you see, and how clearly? Did you know I would ask that question? Do you know what I’m thinking?”
Maura’s smile curled cleverly. “It’s like a dream or a memory, but forward. Most of it is fuzzy, but sometimes we’ll see one particular element very sharply. And it’s not always the future. Oftentimes, when people come for a reading, we’re really telling them things they already know. So no, I didn’t know you would ask that question. And yes, I know what you’re thinking, but that’s because I’m a good guesser, not a good psychic.”
It was funny, the Gray Man thought, how humorous she always appeared, how that smile was always just a moment away from her lips. You really didn’t see the sadness or the longing unless you already knew it was there. But that was the trick, wasn’t it? Everyone had their disappointment and their baggage; only, some people carried it in their inside pockets and not on their backs. And here was the other trick: Maura was not faking her happiness. She was both very happy and very sad.
Later, their entrees arrived. Maura had ordered the salmon for the Gray Man.
“Because,” she said, “there’s something fishy about you.”
The Gray Man was amused.
“What’s it like, being a hit man?”
“That’s a funny way to put it.” But really, the Gray Man found that he didn’t want to talk about his work. Not because he was ashamed of it — he was the best that he knew of — but because he was not defined by it. It wasn’t what he did in his spare time. “It pays the bills. But I prefer my poetry.”
Maura had ordered herself one of those small birds that was served looking like it had walked onto the plate under its own steam. She seemed to be doubting that decision now. “Your Old English poetry. Okay, I’ll bite. Tell me why you like it.”
He did. He did it as well as he could without telling her about where he had gone to school or what he had done before publishing his book. He mentioned he had a brother, but quickly backtracked and moved around that part of the story. He told her as much as he could about himself without telling her his name. His phone was buzzing against his leg, but he let it ring.
“So you are only a hit man to pay the rent,” Maura said. “Do you not care about hurting people?”
The Gray Man considered. He didn’t want to be untruthful. “I do,” he said. “I just — turn that part of my brain off.”
Maura pulled one of the legs off her tiny bird. “I don’t suppose I have to tell you how psychologically unhealthy that is.”
“There are more destructive impulses in the world,” he replied. “I feel fairly balanced. What about you and your ambition?”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “What makes you say that?”
“The game you were playing that first night. When you were guessing the cards. Practicing. Experimenting.”
“I just want to understand it,” Maura said. “It’s changed my entire life. It’s a waste if I don’t know as much as I can. I don’t know if I’d call it ambition, though. Oh, I don’t know. It has done its damage…. So, you mentioned a brother.”
She somehow managed to link the word brother to damage. He felt as if she had already divined the nuances of their relationship.
“My brother,” he said, and then he paused and regrouped. Very precisely, he replied, “My brother is very intelligent. He can create a map of a place if he’s driven through it once. He can do great sums in his head. I always looked up to him when I was a child. He invented complicated games and spent all day at them. Sometimes he would include me, if I promised to follow the rules. Sometimes he’d take a game like chess or Risk and apply those rules to the entire neighborhood. Sometimes we built forts and hid in them. Sometimes he found things in other people’s houses and hurt me with them. Sometimes he trapped animals and did things to them. Sometimes we dressed in costumes and put on plays.”
Maura pushed her plate away. “So he was a sociopath.”
“Probably, yes.”
She sighed. It was a very sad sigh. “And now you’re a hit man. What does he do? Is he in prison?”
The Gray Man said, “He invests other people’s money in SEP accounts. He will never be in prison. He’s too intelligent.”
“And you?”
“I don’t think I would do well in prison,” he said. “I would rather not go.”
Maura was quiet for a very long time. Then she folded her napkin and put it aside and leaned to him. “Does it bother you that he’s made you this way? You know that’s why you can do this, don’t you?”
Any part of the Gray Man that had been bothered by this had died a long time before, burned with matches and gashed with scissors and picked at with straight pins, and when he looked at her, he didn’t disguise that deadness in him.
“Oh,” she said. Reaching across the table, she laid her palm on his cheek. It was cool and soft and entirely different, somehow, from what the Gray Man had expected. More real. Much more real. “I’m sorry no one saved you.”
Was he unsaved? Would he have ever ended up any other way?
Maura called for the check. The Gray Man paid for it. He’d left two bites of salmon on his plate, and Maura used her fork to steal them.
“So we’ll both have fish breath,” she said.
And then, in the dark next to the Champagne Travesty, he kissed her. Neither of them had kissed someone else in a while, but it didn’t much matter. Kissing’s a lot like laughing. If the joke’s funny, it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you last heard one.
Finally, she murmured, her hand in his shirt, fingers tracing ribs, “This is a terrible idea.”
“There aren’t terrible ideas,” the Gray Man said. “Just ideas done terribly.”
“That’s also a psychologically unhealthy concept.”
Later, after he’d dropped her off and returned back to the Pleasant Valley Bed and Breakfast, he discovered that Shorty and Patty Wetzel had been trying desperately to call him all through dinner to let him know that his rooms at the bed and breakfast had been ransacked.
“Didn’t you hear us calling?” Patty asked urgently.
The Gray Man recalled the buzz of his phone and patted his pockets. His phone was missing, however. Maura Sargent had stolen it while they were making out.
In its place was the ten of swords: the Gray Man slain on the ground and Maura the sword driven through his heart.