The War Against the Assholes (25 page)

35

N
othing ever turns out the way you imagine it will. You think there's going to be someone telling you the great and painful secrets of this world. And that's exactly what happens. But it doesn't help. It only harms. You. Those around you. The world itself. You stand in the light of revelation. All occurrence seems as pointless and endless as it did before. That's the trouble with revelations. What they reveal isn't hidden. It's so obvious we refuse to see it.

I assumed Charthouse had kids. Possibly my age. His voice had that well-marinated quality you find among family men. At least my own father's voice. From coaxing and yelling. So maybe I expected his son to greet us. No son. No wife. At least not present. I saw them in pictures. His wife was nice looking. She had thick-framed glasses and a bright smile. His daughter looked exactly like him and his son looked exactly like his mother. The photos covered the foyer wall and spread out over the wall above the steel- and glass-clad appliances of the open kitchen and the two living room walls that were not made of windows. Through the glass I saw the city. The ornate points of the buildings piercing low cloud. The public trees gleaming, wet and dark. Traffic lights, headlights, cop lights all pulsing, all flowing. I guess you could call it harmony. Runoff dripped from Alabama's umbrella. Runoff wormed its way down my back. “It's going to be hard,” said Alabama. I saw, then, that her eyes, their whites, were red, the lids bruised. Even before I saw the bed, a hospital bed with its upper section canted toward the windows, I heard him. Heard his clotted, ragged breathing. Wet newspaper being torn.

Simple chaos. Division and disintegration. End of the world. That's another meaning of the Fool. He represents all that stands outside the governable. He plays no role in the deck. Yet he is an integral part of the deck. He has no value, yet he persists and persists. When he appears, you may consider it a sign of suspension. Improvisation. Pure art. Charthouse lay in the white bed. His hands and arms lay inert on the white blanket. Wasted. Arms of a starving man. In one hand a handkerchief, white also with red dots. He wore a loose blue tee shirt with the words
ALTGELD'S HARDWARE
printed on it. It was loose because his torso and thorax were as wasted as his arms. His collar­bones thrust against his skin. His cheeks concave, his cheekbones jutting. He gestured at us as we approached the bed. And bent, contracted, as a spasm of coughing seized him. Before he could get the handkerchief to his mouth, I saw the blood spray from his lips. His skin was gray. Literally gray, as gray as the rain. The whites of his eyes blue. “I see you're staring,” he rasped. Another blood-slick cough. He started again. “I see you're staring at my eyes. It's called cyanosis.” Coughed again. This time he got the cloth up in time to block the blood spray.

Vincent had propped him up: Hob's words. I understood now. “Charthouse,” Alabama said, “we're here.” “Can you help me,” he said. Alabama didn't answer. The rain beat the windows. “So, Big Mike,” he said. His lips glowed with pink spittle. Crimson, vivid, open sores decorated his cheeks, his neck, his arms. “I'm not contagious,” he said. Alabama was rattling through a series of orange pill jars on the table next to him. “In the big bottle,” he said. Alabama shook two into his palm. “Where are your glasses,” I said. I knew how this went. Just a more severe version of our trips to see Mrs. Madigan. “Above the sink,” said Charthouse. I trotted to the hard-glinting kitchen. As the faucet hissed, Charthouse hissed too. “The ideal of service. I see your education was not wasted on you.” His hand trembled as he raised the glass to his cracked lips. Also beset with sores. Water slopped over. “Sans eyes sans teeth,” he said. I steadied the glass. Helped it to his mouth. He still smelled like ozone. Also like rotting meat. His breath and his sweat. He was covered in sweat. It had darkened his whole shirt to navy, except for a small patch on his right shoulder. Still sky blue. A victorious and futile flag. “He did a number on us,” said Charthouse. “We did a number on ourselves,” said Alabama. “That's the run of the play,” said Charthouse. Another spasm racked him. His arm smashed into a steel stand holding an IV bag. The tube fed into the flailing arm. I caught the stand before it fell. Before even Alabama got to it. The ideal of service. A fresh cut open now on his forearm where it had struck the metal. Not a serious blow. Alabama slapped a gauze pad on it and Charthouse let out a noise I could not decipher at first. Empty. Rattling. A laugh. He was laughing. “Gilding the lily at this point,” he said. “That's right,” said Alabama. She finished twisting a beige bandage. “There's no what's it called,” she said, “none of those metal clips.” Charthouse laughed his empty laugh again.

He didn't lecture. He didn't even talk much. We sat with him. His wife and children stared at us. The rain worsened. Thunder grinding. Lightning forking and touching the building spires. I wanted to ask:
Are you doing this?
I kept my mouth shut. I got him another glass of water when he dropped the first one. He slept for five minutes. I couldn't look at Alabama. She didn't look at me. Sitting side by side. Watching his ruined chest rise and fall. When he woke up, he said: “You're still here? You are gluttons for punishment.” He sounded exactly like my father. That's what I thought at the time. Later on I was less sure. It might have been despair. Or the simple unreality of the room, the rain, the woman I'd lost my virginity to, the dying man, the bed, the pill bottles, the photographs, the voided light. “I need,” he said. Couldn't finish. Alabama was nodding. From a drawer in the medicine table, she took out a pair of blue latex gloves. Put them on. Then removed an ampoule of clear liquid and a syringe wrapped in green-and-white paper and plastic. “You know how to do this,” said Charthouse. “You explained,” said Alabama. She drew up a syringe full of the clear liquid. Charthouse said: “I wish there was better news. They're going to come after you. You know that.” “Hob got what he wanted,” I said, “why would he come after us.” “I said they,” said Charthouse. “They,” I said. “You think Potash was the man on top,” said Charthouse, “he has masters. Had them. Chain of command.”

Alabama was flicking the syringe with her finger. They did that in hospital shows. “And you know there isn't anything else,” he said, “anything else at all.” He gestured, faintly, briefly, with his handkerchief. Took in his body. His medical apparatus. All of it. “There isn't anything else,” he repeated, and then his breathing changed. Faster, higher. His feet kicked under the white sheet. Not enough to move it much. “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck,” he said, “Alabama, oh, fuck, oh, fuck.” She stuck the needle into this Y-junction thing in the IV tube, just under the bag, and hit the plunger. Her face stony. “I don't like to use profanities,” said Charthouse. I could barely hear it. His head fell forward. His breathing slowed. I couldn't look away. I heard nothing other than his breathing as it faded. I saw nothing other than his sore-riddled arms. Life had contracted itself to this single, infinite instant. When the artery in his emaciated neck stopped jumping, the rest of my senses came back. I heard Alabama say: “Please help.” And then the tinny sound of an operator speaking through an open line. “We need to leave,” she said to me. “Ma'am? What is your emergency? Ma'am? What is your emergency?” the operator buzzed as the phone swung on its pristine cord.
He still has a landline
: That's what ran through my head. Again and again.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE FOOL
could also be read as the triumph of the innocent. No one is more innocent than the Fool. By definition. Since guilt is perfectly coextensive with knowledge. A sea and its shore. Which meant: I was not guilty of Potash's death. Which meant: neither was Alabama. Which meant: nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. It never turns out how you expect. Worlds and lives end in a single instant. That's the worst. There's no respite. No mercy. No time. One moment you stand on this side of the line, in the sunlight. The next you stand on that side of the line, in perpetual night. We said good-bye on the street in front of Charthouse's building. When I say we said good-bye, what I mean is this. We stood in the rain. Alabama under her umbrella. I was under an eave. Not deep enough to keep me dry. Alabama pulled off the gloves. Tossed them in a corner trashcan. She was shaking. Her whole body now, not just her hand. She started to cry. Not loudly. I doubt if anyone walking past would have noticed. I did. I put a palm on her shoulder. She let it rest there for one breath. Two. Her skin hot. I felt it through the jacket, through her indigo sweater. Then she said, “Don't touch me. No offense, but don't.” I stepped away. I'm no idiot. “So what happens now,” I said. “I don't know. And why would you even ask me.” The tears clotted her voice. Two strands of mucus hung from her nose. “We're in danger,” I said. “I'm not running,” she said. The strands lengthened and broke. “Don't look at me. Don't look at me right now,” she said. “Not much point to fleeing,” I said, “even if you planned on it.” “This is such fucking bullshit,” she said. “I know,” I said. She stopped crying. Wiped her nose with her sleeve. She would not look at me. “What are we going to do,” I said.

She spun. Jabbed her forefinger into my chest. “Are you retarded? There's no we.” “It's just,” I said. Tried to say. She shouted me down. The finger-blow caused an instant ache. She had hit a cluster of nerves. Without trying. “There's no we anymore. Not now. Not anymore. Were you not paying any attention up there? Were you just sitting there like a piece-of-shit jock dickhead, you dumb fuck?” She was screaming. I saw her uvula. Rain beads in her eyelashes. “I didn't mean,” I said. “You didn't mean? That's great. That solves everything,” she said. Silence. Rain noise. The hawking wind off the river. “We,” she said. Her voice dense with scorn. I had no response. No counterargument. She was right.
We
as a concept no longer applied. The Fool, remember, only exists in the singular. That's his privilege and his damnation. Alabama started walking. Without another word. Her boots scraped the sidewalk. Precise and rhythmic. I saw her. In her quiet room. In that blue light. Poised above me. Half-smiling. I almost called out to her. I swear I almost did. Before she turned onto Hubert, the vision vanished. She was gone too. I couldn't hear the sound of her boots.

It didn't hurt. It didn't feel like anything. Whatever else you can say about the Fool, he's free. I started to run. The ambulance came as I hit Laight. Threw gray crowns of water from a rut in the cobbles. Siren lights stained the pavement. Building walls. My hands and my sleeves. The colorless air. When the last echoes died, I realized I was whistling. I knew the tune. I knew the words.

A NOTE TO THE READER

The Calendar of Sleights
is fictional, but the concepts and techniques outlined in it—as the initiated have no doubt already discerned—are not. The
Calendar
is directly inspired by (and takes its name from a phrase within) S. W. Erdnase's instructional treatise on legerdemain
The Expert at the Card Table
. The true identity of the pseudonymous Erdnase remains a point of controversy among historians of magic, and I will not presume to offer any theories about it. But I must thank here the Conjuring Arts Research Center in Manhattan for generously allowing a neophyte like me to delve into the mystery via their archives.

A
LSO BY
S
AM
M
UNSON

The November Criminals

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• This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. • Text copyright © 2015 by Sam Munson • All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Saga Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 • First SAGA PRESS hardcover edition June 2015 • SAGA PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. • For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or
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. • The text for this book is set in Dante MT. • Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data • Munson, Sam. • The war against the assholes / Sam Munson. — First edition. • pages ; cm • Summary: “Contemporary fantasy meets true crime when schools of ancient sorcery go up against the art of the long con in this stunningly entertaining debut fantasy novel. Mike Wood is satisfied just being a guy with broad shoulders at a decidedly unprestigious Catholic school in Manhattan. But on the dirty streets of New York City he's an everyman with a moral code who is unafraid of violence. And when Mike is unwittingly recruited into a secret cell of magicians by a fellow student, Mike's role as a steadfast soldier begins. These magicians don't use ritualized rote to work their magic, they use willpower in their clandestine war with the establishment: The Assholes”—Provided by publisher. • ISBN 978-1-4814-2774-6 (hardcover) • ISBN 978-1-4814-2776-0 (eBook) • 1. Magicians—Fiction. I. Title. • PS3613.U6936W37 2015 • 813'.6—dc23 • 2015012624