Agyar Read Free Page A

can close my eyes and see her, looking at me with an expression that, at the time, I took for tenderness, but that I later came to believe was only a vague cousin—the fondness one might feel for a cat who lived with a close friend.
    Odd, that. How long has it been since I have had a close friend? Will I ever again? Perhaps. Jim and I seem to be hitting it off rather well, I suppose because neither of us has anything the other wants. Which, now that I think of it, was never true of Laura and I, even when we were close—or what passed for close between us.
    It was close on my part, I think. I cared for her. I’d have to say that I loved her, with the sort of burning passion that I then knew how to feel, and now know how to inspire. It would probably be trite to say, “What goes around comes around,” but that’s what it feels like.
    I remember how I felt, though, when she would escort me through Vienna or Paris. I can still recall the pressure of her hand on my arm. To this day, I don’t know how much affection she felt for me and how much she just found it amusing to have me so infatuated with her. I certainly can’t ask her. And I’m not even sure I want to find out.
    And yet I know that she is capable of intense feelings, or, at any rate, she was once. I remember sitting in a cafe in, well, somewhere where they had cafes. It was closed, and the streets were deserted, but we were sitting there nevertheless, and she started telling me about a man named Broadwin or something like that. Her eyes
became soft, almost misty, and she said, “He had such big hands, Jack. When he held me he was all the world. I’d look up into his face and see nothing but his eyes looking down at me.”
    “Where is he now?” I asked casually, because I felt the stirrings of something like jealousy.
    “He’s dead,” she told me. “Years later, he became involved with some bit of fluff in Scotland, and lost his head. Figuratively, at first.” Then her voice changed and she came back to the present. “Take that as a lesson, Agyar János.”
    “I will,” I told her. And I did, too. A couple of lessons, in fact. One of them is that, at one time in her life, she felt something. I wonder if it could ever happen again? Probably not.
    But where was I? Right. I was sitting in the chair, just at the point when Jim the ghost came noiselessly down the stairs and stood translucently in front of me, nearly six feet tall, well dressed, black, with a round face, thick neck, broad shoulders, and very short white hair. He was dressed, as ever, in his funereal best; white shirt and string tie. “You look disgruntled,” he said.
    “This is a boring city.”
    “Maybe. You seemed to like the party last week.”
    “It wasn’t bad. For a college party. I was surprised at the number of disciplines in attendance.”
    “That’s a trademark of Artie. What did you think of him, by the way?”
    “Artie? Professor Carpenter?”
    “Yes.”
    “Never really had the chance to talk to him. His mistress let me in. Why?”
    “His grandfather was one of my instructors.”
    “Is that how you know him?”
    “No, he used to live here.”
    “Oh. That’s right. Why did he leave?”
    “He began to think the place was haunted.”
    “Oh,” I said. And, “He has an ugly mistress.”
    Jim laughed and looked at the pendant I wear on my chest, which is a large chunk of black petrified wood, polished and set in silver. He was only looking at it because he never looked anyone in the eyes, I suspect even when he was alive. Since I’m an eye-contact person, that always makes conversations with him a little uncomfortable. It was also a little disturbing to see the black vertical line of the fireplace poker through his clothing, as if it were a decoration on his trousers. I should imagine that I’ll become used to this sort of thing, if I remain here for any length of time.
    Which subject, in fact, Jim brought up sometime while we were talking. “Do you know how