Tara's Teahouse 6

On Wednesday I received a call from Kimball to tell me that he was in town for the week. I gathered up my stuff, told him I’d be down in a half hour, and hurried to Gretel’s to meet him for coffee.

I found him in the back of the coffee shop, a newspaper pulled up over his face.

“Ah.” He said, looking up from his paper. “How’s my favorite clergyman?”

“Holy.” I quipped, sitting down in the plush leather seat across from him. He lowered the newspaper, revealing a round face with a thin brown mustache and curly hair.

“Glad I didn’t go into that field.” He said, extending his hand across the table. “Are you buying?”

“Did I say I was?”

“No, but… charity for the poor and all of that.”

I stood up and asked what he was drinking.

“You make more than me, you know.” I said.

“Yes, but you get to be holy.” Kimball replied. “I’m just a good for nothing muckraker. Large Americano and a bagel, please.”

I placed the order and sat down again.

“So how have you been?” I asked. “It’s been nearly a year now.”

“It’ll likely be longer than that before I’m in town again.” He said with a hint of excitement in his voice. “I’m working on a big assignment.”

“Really?”

He thumped the paper down on the table and pointed triumphantly to a story on the third page. I read the title and by line: “Celebrated Russian Author Remains Missing After Three Weeks. Special Feature by Kimball Brown.”

“So you’re covering a murder?” I said.

“Who said anything about murder?” Kimball replied. “All we know is that he’s missing. All cards are on the table at this point.”

“Who’s the missing man?”

Kimball’s eyes widened.

“You haven’t heard?” He answered. “Illya Katinov, the Russian novelist.”

“Isn’t he the one who wrote about Chinese politics?” I said. “Star and Sickle, or something like that?”

“God, you always go for the worst rubbish, don’t you?” Kimball laughed. “Katinov only contributed a few chapters to that rag, and most of his work was edited to the point of being unrecognizable. Ever hear of Dance of the Dragonfly?”

“I think I saw it on display at a bookstore last year.”

“It’s a masterpiece.” He said. “But Katinov’s greatest novel might be the one he never completed….”

“What’s that?”

Kimball pressed his finger to his thick lips.

“I’m not at liberty to say.” He replied, adopting a faux haughty air. “But I’ve got the inside scoop on it.”

“You’re ahead of the other papers, then?”

“Far ahead!” He declared. “And what’s more, I think it’s the key to understanding the circumstances of Katinov’s disappearance. That is to say – and this is strictly between you and me – I think Katinov had lost his taste for fiction after Dragonfly. I think he was writing real life.”

“So how did he disappear, anyway?”

“If I knew that, I’d be working for the CIA.” Kimball laughed. “He had a meeting scheduled with his publishing agent, but when the agent came by Katinov’s apartment, Katinov wasn’t there. Not really all that unusual; literary agents get stiffed all the time. But Katinov didn’t come back the next day, or the next. Finally, the police took the liberty of breaking in his door and searching the apartment. Nothing was out of order, and the only unusual sign they found was a shattered window on the east side of the flat. The notes for Katinov’s next novel – which I can’t talk about, you understand – were found on his kitchen table.”

“So foulplay is suspected?”

Kimball shrugged.

“When’s it ever not?”

---

I stand on the roof of the Hotel Freeland, wrapped tight in my black coat against the frigid wind. Behind me, a white light flashes on the steel frame of the hotel sign, warning the city of a coming storm. I crouch near the edge, watching the bustling crowds take cover.

A whiff of moisture. In this weather, it can’t be rain. Snow is coming.

The grey streets broil with figures hurrying home in the twilight gloom. Even up here, I can hear their heavy boots desecrating the puddles with filthy rubber soles.

“So what are doing these days?” Kimball asked.

I smiled, told him all about my work at St. Matthew’s.

“Ah.” He said, his round putty face molding itself in an amorphous grin. “Living the dream, eh?”

He did it on purpose.

The bastard.

“It’s not so bad.” I said, stirring the coffee with my finger. “The pay is good, and I’m making a difference in people’s lives.”

“Yeah. I’ll bet.” He said, nodding towards the folded newspaper on his lap.

He didn’t need to elaborate. I knew what that nod meant.

But he decided to interpret it anyway.

“You know, back in high school, you always did make a difference in people’s lives. Hell, you saved Jessica from committing suicide, remember?”
“Yeah. She liked my work. I guess it inspired her.”

Keep pushing, Kimball. Keep twisting that knife.

“I think it had an impact on a lot of people.” He said, glancing down at his paper again. “Writing shapes the way people think. It shapes history.”

“So does religion.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He folded the newspaper again, tapped it thoughtfully on his knee. “Maybe the two aren’t very different.”

“Yeah. Maybe not.”

Kimball leaned in his chair, balancing his cup in his hand. The cup teetered between us, threatening to spill on either side.

“We all thought you’d be published by your eighteenth birthday.” He muttered. Carefully, he lifted the cup and set it down on the table. Leaning forward, he studied my face.

“What the hell did you do to yourself?” He asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve aged twenty years in five. You’re even paler than the last time I saw you. What happened to you?”

I shrugged.

“I became holy.” I said, and got up to leave.

I hide my face between the folds of my collar, my eyes smarting in the chill wind. Across the boulevard, another beacon lights up. I can hear it humming in the air. The storm is approaching.

I hear a truck honking below, see the flash of headlights swerve out of the way. Through an open window in the old apartment building across the way, I can see the shifting blue lights of a television set.


I close my eyes, hear the first drops of sleet splish on the concrete beside me, and jump. I fall through a waterfall of lights and colors, the blues, whites, and reds painting my chameleon skin as I plummet to the street below. I fall in Technicolor, a human lightshow transposed against the reflective surface of the falling snow. I gather speed, hurtle towards the ground, the city lights igniting my body as it crackles through the electric atmosphere. As I approach the crowded street, I’m a blazing meteorite, and the snow melts. The city is bathed in steam.

I get up, smile, and walk away – the sweat freezing into icicles on my brow.