Koko

In the morning he told Maggie that he had to do something to help the other guys – he wanted to see if he could find out more about Koko’s victims, find out more that way.

‘Now you’re talking,’ Maggie told him.

4

Why questions and answers?

Because they go in a straight line. Because they are a way out. Because they help me to think.

What is there to think about?

The usual wreckage. The running girl.

Do you imagine that she was real?

Exactly. I imagine she was real.

What else is there to think about?

The usual subject, my subject. Koko. More than ever now.

Why more than ever now?

Because he has come back. Because I think I saw him. I know I saw him.

You imagined you saw him?

It is the same thing.

What did he look like?

He looked like a dancing shadow. He looked like death.

Did he appear to you in a dream?

He appeared, if that is the word, on the street. Death appeared on the street, as the girl appeared on the street. Tremendous clamor accompanied the appearance of the girl, ordinary street noise, that earthly clamor, surrounded the shadow. He was covered, though not visibly, with the blood of others. The girl, who was visible only to me, was covered with her own. The Pan-feeling poured from both of them.

What feeling is that?

The feeling that we have only the shakiest hold on the central stories of our lives. Hal Esterhaz in The Divided Man. The girl comes to speak to me with her terror, with her extremity, she runs toward me out of chaos and night, she has chosen me. Because I chose Hal Esterhaz, and because I chose Nat Beasley. Not yet, she says, not yet. The story is not yet over.

Why did Hal Esterhaz kill himself?

Because he could no longer bear what he was only just beginning to know.

Is that where imagination takes you?

If it’s good enough.

Were you terrified when you saw the girl?

I blessed her.

13 Koko (#ulink_8909e21b-ad54-5a67-9f19-64080093e20c)

As soon as the plane took off, Koko too would be a man in motion.

This is one thing Koko knew: all travel is travel in eternity. Thirty thousand feet above the earth, clocks run backward, darkness and light change places freely.

When it got dark, Koko thought, you could lean close to the little window, and if you were ready, if your soul was half in eternity already, you could see God’s tusked grey face leaning toward you in the blackness.

Koko smiled, and the pretty stewardess in first class smiled back at him. She leaned forward, bearing a tray. ‘Sir, would you prefer orange juice or champagne this morning?’

Koko shook his head.

The earth sucked at the feet of the plane, reached up through the body of the plane and tried to pull Koko down into itself, suck suck, the poor earth loved what was eternal and the eternal loved and pitied the earth.

‘Is there a movie on this flight?’

‘Never Say Never Again,’ the stewardess said over her shoulder. ‘The new James Bond movie.’

‘Excellent,’ Koko said, with real inward hilarity. ‘I never say never, myself.’

She laughed dutifully and went on her way.

Other passengers filed down the aisles, carrying suitbags, shopping bags, wicker baskets, books. Two Chinese businessmen took the seats before Koko, who heard them snap open their briefcases as soon as they sat down.

A middle-aged blonde stewardess in a blue coat leaned down and smiled a false machine smile at him.

‘What shall we call you today, hmm?’ She raised a clipboard with a seating chart into his field of vision. Koko slowly lowered his newspaper. ‘You are…?’ She looked at him, waiting for a reply.

What shall we call you today, hmm? Dachau, let’s call you Lady Dachau. ‘Why don’t you call me Bobby?’

‘Well then, call you Bobby is what I’ll do,’ the woman said, and scrawled Bobby in the space marked 4B on the chart.

In his pockets, Roberto Ortiz had carried his passports and a pocketful of cards and ID, as well as six hundred dollars American and three hundred Singapore. Big time! In a pocket of his blazer Koko had found a room key from the Shangri-La, where else would an ambitious young American be staying?

In Miss Balandran’s bag Koko had found a hot comb, a diaphragm, a tube of spermicidal jelly, a little plastic holder containing a tube of Darkie toothpaste and a toothbrush, a fresh pair of underpants and a new pair of tights, a bottle of lip gloss and a lip brush, a vial of mascara, a blush brush, a rat-tailed comb, three inches of a cut-down white plastic straw, a little leather kit ranked with amyl nitrate poppers, a tattered Barbara Cartland paperback, a compact, half a dozen loose Valium, lots of crumpled-up Kleenex, several sets of keys, and a big roll of bills that turned out to be four hundred and fifty-three Singapore dollars.

Koko put the money in his pocket and dropped the rest onto the bathroom floor.

After he had washed his hands and face he took a cab to the Shangri-La.

Roberto Ortiz lived on West End Avenue in New York City.

On West End Avenue, could you feel how the lords of the earth, how God himself, hungered for mortality? Angels flew down West End Avenue, their raincoats billowing in the wind.

When Koko walked out of the Shangri-La he was wearing two pairs of trousers, two shirts, a cotton sweater, and a tweed jacket. In the carry-on bag in his left hand were two rolled-up suits, three more shirts, and a pair of excellent black shoes.