The Art of Arrow Cutting Page 6

  “Then you have neko, kitsune, and tenuki—cats, foxes, and badgers. That, as you may have heard, is also the scale the Japanese use for women. They’re all shape-changers—the monsters, I mean, not the women. Well, not all of them. They’re also pretty neat illusionists. Cats are lords and ladies, upper-crust and powerful; foxes are minor nobles, like samurai; badgers are peasants, with a pretty crude sense of humor. They’re all whimsical at best, malicious and chaotic at worst. You want to hear any more?”

  Mage shrugged—a subdued shrug, involving only his shoulders and his face. “Do you believe this stuff?”

  “I didn’t yesterday. How much of it I believe now, I don’t know. But believing in one bakemono’s like eating one peanut. Like, say you believe in vampires. Or demons. Vampires can be turned by a cross, burned by holy water or the host. Demons can be exorcised. So either you throw out that part of the mythos—and a lot of horror writers do that, make vampirism a disease or a mutation—or you have to believe in God, or it doesn’t work. Like, you can’t have that kind of evil without some supernatural good to match it. Like yin and yang.”

  “What if it’s only the vampires or the demons who believe in God and that’s why they can be exorcised? Like faith-healing in reverse or—what’s the word? A psychosomatic disease? That doesn’t mean the god is real.”

  “Then how does the rukoro-kubi fly? Where does the magic come from?”

  “Damned if I know,” replied Mage wryly. “I take it you don’t believe in that kind of god either?”

  Takumo shook his head. “My grandparents—who mostly brought me up—were Buddhists, and my mother thought God was doing life for murder. I’m only a kind of half-assed Buddhist, like I don’t eat meat or anything or kill or lie any more than I have to, and I pray to the Goddess every time I do a stunt, but I was never a Christian. What about you? You look like you were a good Catholic boy.”

  “Yeah, I guess I was, back before my voice broke. Then I got interested in girls, and they got interested in me.” He grinned briefly. “And I didn’t like the way the church treated women; I mean, Jesus obviously liked women, but all the Old Testament and Saint Paul bullshit about the husband being to the wife what God was to the church … my father shouldn’t be left in charge of a toll booth, much less a family, and he used religion as an excuse for nearly everything he did, and the last thing I wanted was to be like him. Anyway, Mom started bitching when I didn’t want to go to church any longer, and she wouldn’t tell any of us about sex; sex was nasty and you didn’t take precautions because that meant you’d thought about it beforehand—if it happened, it had to happen by accident. That’s what innocence meant to Mom—hell of an attitude for a woman with four daughters, huh? But you can’t not find out about sex in school, even if most of what you find out is wrong … and then after Gina got knocked up, we found out by accident that Mom was on the pill. Okay, so she had good reasons—five children, six if you include my father—but the bullshit, you know, the hypocrisy? And you find flaws like that in a religion, it disillusions you completely, you chuck the whole thing.”

  Takumo shrugged. “New Yorkers might, but not Californians. Like, we invented chop suey, remember? We’ll marry anything to anything else. Gay churches, beach chess, billion-dollar counterculture” —he took another gigantic bite from his lentilburger and swallowed— “and the Ronald Reagan Library. I guess that makes it easier for me to dig this. Anyway, you want to come to the library, see the books yourself?”

  Mage nodded, cramming the last of his hot dog into his mouth. Takumo stood and asked, “You want to know why I think you gave up on God?” Mage raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think you believe in anything you can’t see.”

  Mage, unable to speak, merely shook his head. “Think about it,” said Takumo, and walked out.

  Takumo placed another three books on the end of the table and murmured, “Back in a minute.” Mage nodded without looking up from the volume open before him, which described the Seven Fortunate Gods. He was—as Takumo had expected—particularly intrigued by Benten, Goddess of Love and the Arts and Patron of Women, who rewarded those she favored with physical beauty.

  Takumo ambled casually toward the men’s restroom, glanced quickly over his shoulder at Mage, then dashed between the bookshelves and hurried toward the exit. No bags were allowed into the stacks, and Mage had been forced to leave his camera case in the foyer downstairs. Takumo was fairly sure that the case wasn’t locked—Mage often needed to be quick on the draw when a fleeting image presented itself—and though he swore to himself that he trusted the photographer, he didn’t believe that Mage had told him everything. Maybe, he told himself, Mage didn’t know everything. Maybe the blonde had slipped something into the camera case that Mage hadn’t found, and then told the rukoro-kubi—maybe under torture, maybe not.

  The case opened easily, revealing a Nikon camera with an 80-300 zoom lens attached, a flashgun the size of a mallet, two unopened boxes of 200 ASA film, and seven filters—all in their respective slots in the foam-rubber padding. Takumo pressed the lining of the case, looking for anything hard, but he knew that was too obvious. He was opening the battery compartment of the flashgun when a hand fell heavily on his shoulder. He froze. The hand, he noted with some relief, was apparently attached to an arm—or at least to a familiar-looking sleeve.

  Takumo knew seven working defenses from that position, three of them particularly effective against a larger opponent, but he decided against using them.

  “I think there are photocopiers upstairs,” said Mage sweetly.

  “How was the book?”

  “I didn’t finish it. Who’s the Japanese God of Thieves?”

  “Hotei, I guess,” said Takumo slowly. “He’s the God of Gamblers and Patron of the Yakuza—professional criminals. Or there’s Ebisu, who’s the God of Merchants, which is equal time, neh?”

  Mage released his shoulder and opened the flashgun, dropping three large rechargeable batteries into his hand, then letting Takumo peer down the empty tube. “Curiosity satisfied?”

  “No.”

  “What else do you want to see?”

  “If I knew that, man—”

  “You wouldn’t have to look. Right. You think there’s something here that the rukoro-kubi wanted. I thought the same thing, so I searched this case before we left the hostel this morning, while you were in the shower. Okay?”

  “Find anything?”

  “Just what you see here, and my passport, unless he was after my Saint Christopher medal or …”

  “Or what?”

  Mage blinked, slipped the batteries back into the flashgun and closed the compartment, then reached into his pocket and withdrew the key, waving it before Takumo like a hypnotist’s focus, studying it. It still looked perfectly ordinary.

  “Or this. Amanda’s key.”

  Takumo, taking care to move slowly, placed his hand, palm up, beneath the midpoint of the key’s swing. “Can I see it?”

  Mage hesitated.

  “Hey, man, I risked my ass for you last night! A good New Yorker would’ve let the freakin’ thing kill you! Okay, so maybe I’m one of your mysterious they, maybe you’ve been set up, sure, sure. What’s the worst that can happen? I take the key, give you the vibrating palm and split? If I could do that, man, I could do it flipside just as easy, dig? I turn into a rukoro-kubi and my hand flies out the door? Which, in case you hadn’t noticed, weighs half a ton? If I do that, man, you can keep my body for transplants; don’t forget to cauterize the neck. I mean, hey, I heard your laser pistol here charging up then, you can burn my shadow onto the wall if I—”

  “Okay.” He dropped the key into Takumo’s hand. “Sorry.”

  “It’s cool.” Takumo bowed his head to stare at the key. “Looks ordinary enough. You say it opened her door?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn. I was hoping it might fit some luggage locker in Grand Central Station,” he said in a better-than-average imitation of Peter Lorre’s Joel Cairo. He
turned the key over with his thumb and stroked the thong. “This feels like hair.”

  “Human hair?” asked Mage.

  “I think so, yeah. It isn’t yours?”

  “No.”

  Takumo nodded. “Thanks for the trust.”

  “No. Keep it. Or post it back to Totem Rock if you like. It hasn’t exactly brought me any luck. I’ll meet you later … what time’s the bus?”

  “Twenty past nine, but—”

  “Damn. When’s the next one?”

  “Tomorrow morning, ten thirty-five. Why?”

  “Amanda’s friend, Jenny. She’s working until half past nine. Can you afford a hotel for the night, or shall I meet you in L.A.?”

  “I can find a place to sleep,” replied Takumo, closing his hand around the key. “Meet you at the bus tomorrow at ten. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Takumo looked down at his clenched fist. “You’re sure about this?”

  “I’m sure,” replied Mage, glancing at his watch. A quarter to seven. “You want to eat?”

  8

  Days Are Numbers

  Jenny Holdridge was somewhere between cute and cuddly—that is, between ten and twenty pounds overweight. Her body language was casual but slightly clumsy, her clothes baggy and badge-encrusted, her shoulder-length brown hair reminiscent of a freshly unmade bed. Her eyes were obscured by large school-marmish spectacles, and her mouth was too small for her face, but her dimples were easy to read. Mage liked her at first sight and realized that the feeling was mutual; he doubted that Jenny had an enemy in the world.

  And here I come to change that, he thought bitterly. He’d introduced himself as a friend of Amanda’s, and she’d believed him. He’d offered to take her to dinner but she’d suggested they grab some take-out and eat it at her place instead—most of the good places had closed by nine anyway.

  “You should try Washington,” he’d told her. “Everything outside of Chinatown is strictly breakfast and lunch. I do remember one Mexican place with a sign in the window saying that it was open for dinner, but they’d been closed down and someone had thrown a brick through the sign.”

  She’d laughed. Her teeth were white and perfect. “What were you doing in Washington?”

  “Seeing the Smithsonian.”

  “Spaceships or dinosaurs?”

  “Spaceships mainly. I’m not a technology freak—I understand how a camera works and that’s about my limit— but I always wanted to get into space, go to the moon …”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’m a born tourist, always have to be somewhere else, see somewhere new.”

  “Where’d you bump into Amanda?”

  “Totem Rock.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s a little town, about half a day east of here.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  “I don’t know. I met her outside the Greyhound station when she was on her way back here. Coming back to the hospital. She was renting a grotty little apartment—”

  “You mean smaller than this?”

  “And grottier. It looked like she lived there alone—” he began, then reconsidered. “Actually, it looked like no one lived there at all. Certainly not for very long. Does she know anyone there?”

  “I never heard of the place … but she didn’t mention any friends outside the university. I guess I just assumed she didn’t have any.”

  They sat on the living-room floor to eat; the kitchen table was covered with computer printouts and books. Mage looked around the room, deciding that the unicorns—glass unicorns, ceramic unicorns, soft toys, posters, a calendar, a mobile—were Jenny’s, while the Salvador Dalis, fractal images and chess prizes were Amanda’s. He was trying to guess the owner of the framed print on the wall—a very attractive witch working at a cauldron, all darks and brooding reds—when Jenny remarked, “You said Amanda came back here?”

  “What?”

  “To the hospital.”

  “Yes. Didn’t she call you or anything?”

  “No,” replied Jenny. She sounded disappointed and puzzled.

  “Has anyone else come here looking for her?”

  “No.”

  Mage waited, eyebrows raised slightly.

  “Oh, it’s funny, and it’s probably nothing, but I felt, I don’t know, as though someone were watching the place. And there’ve been phone calls, you know the sort, only a silence on the other end. And …”

  “Yes?”

  “The other day—Tuesday—I think someone took my photo. Someone in a brown car. It wasn’t you …?”

  “No. I only arrived yesterday.”

  “Did Amanda say when she was coming back?”

  “She was at the hospital Tuesday and checked out Wednesday.”

  Jenny took another slice of pizza and stared at it as though it were a Rorschach. “That’s not like her. She must really be down.”

  “Was she down a lot?”

  “Not as much as you’d think, not as much as I’d be if I had what she had.” Mage silently but sincerely damned her fear of words. “And it was weird, but she seemed to cheer up just before she left, as though she’d found a cure or something. She was reading a lot of medical texts, interspersed with math — population dynamics mostly, and Von Neumann’s Theory of Games. And playing chess, blindfolded, with anyone who’d sit still long enough. I didn’t.”

  Mage nodded; Jenny didn’t look like the sitting-down type. “I noticed all the prizes.”

  “Oh, they’re old. She lost interest in competing—said it took too much time—though she was a minor celebrity when she was fifteen, sixteen. That trophy, the queen” —she pointed with the wedge of pizza— “was from the ’93 U.S. Open in Vegas. I guess that’s when she became interested in blackjack instead.”

  “Blackjack?”

  “Uh-huh.” She shrugged slightly; her glasses slid down her nose and she pushed them back up with the pizza crust. “She started spending her time at the blackjack tables between chess matches. She said she was interested in the math of it, the probabilities, more than the money. She didn’t win an outrageous fortune or anything, but she won consistently enough that the pit bosses started to wonder about her. She said that the last time she was there, the manager of one of the casinos actually took her to dinner and asked about her method. I don’t know what she told him, but I think she kept seeing him, though she didn’t talk about it much.”

  “Did she have a method?”

  “For blackjack? I don’t know, but I think she was looking for one. She liked to know how everything worked— and what the probability was that it wouldn’t work. Alex once complained that she played chess like a computer, but I think that was because she kept beating him.”

  “Who was Alex? Her boyfriend?”

  “No. She didn’t have any boyfriends, apart from maybe Tony, the guy in Vegas. All the boys we knew treated her like she was contagious.” She shrugged again. “But I can sort of understand. Who wants a relationship with someone who’s going to die in …” Words and Jenny failed each other again. Mage waited silently. “Alex was our math tutor, Alex Corwin. I think he loved Amanda, in his way; she was the student every professor dreams of. A prodigy. She had a feel for numbers, and patterns, that I can’t really understand; to her, they were some sort of magic. You could give her a number—a phone number, say—and she’d tell you whether it was prime or not, or if it was a cube … that sort of thing. A computer can do that, of course, but it does it by trial and error. You can’t ask a computer what’s interesting or unique about a number.”

  “Were you a prodigy?”

  She laughed. “Me? No, I’ve always had to do everything the hard way, but that’s more useful; you can’t program a feel into a computer, or teach it in schools. It was a toss-up between this and history, but you can’t get a job with an arts degree. Pretty corrupt, right?”

  “If corrupt means compromising,” said Mage slowly, “doing something you don’
t like doing just for money, then I guess most of us are corrupt sometimes.”

  “How about you?”

  “Yeah, me too. I like traveling, taking photos, but sometimes I make more money by staying in one place, or taking photos that I don’t like … though I don’t need a lot of money and I move on when I have enough.”

  “You never wanted to settle down?”

  “Not yet. Someday maybe; I don’t know.”

  “When you find the right girl?”

  Mage studied her and realized that she was referring to Amanda, not to herself. “Maybe … but I don’t think so. The right girl would like traveling.”

  “What if you weren’t going in the same direction?”

  “I don’t know; if it were the right girl, I guess I’d turn around, go where she went—but I’ve never found the one right girl, anymore than I’ve ever found the one right place. It’s not that I never love—I don’t sleep with anyone I don’t love. But I love easy. So sue me.” He smiled. “Or better still, tell me more about Amanda.”

  Jenny hesitated: Mage could see the question that hovered on her lips, and he was trying to think of the answer when she asked, “Like what?” instead.

  “What exactly was wrong with her? She wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Leukemia,” she replied — quietly, as though the cancer came when it was called.

  Mage nodded gently. “And where did she go?”

  “Down south.”

  “The States?”

  Jenny nodded.

  “Another hospital?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t give me a forwarding address or anything.”

  “Does she know anyone down there?”

  “I don’t think so, apart from Tony … not very well, anyway. I don’t remember her getting letters or long-distance phone calls, and she didn’t use E-mail much.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “End of semester.”

  So she went south, maybe to Vegas, then to Totem Rock, then back to Calgary. Mage shook his head. Perhaps there was a pattern there that Amanda could’ve seen, but it seemed perfectly random to him… .