Fury

“I’ll be back soon,” he said lamely, but she had recovered her composure now, and shrugged. “No big deal.” They went through the outside door of the building together and he walked rapidly away from her, toward Columbus Avenue, not looking around, knowing that she’d be with Eddie on the neighboring stoop, angrily sticking a thirsty tongue down his bemused, delighted throat. There were posters everywhere for The Cell, the new Je

11

“In the future, sure theen’, they don’t listen no more to this type talk radio. Or, jou know wha’ I theen’? Porhap’ the radio weel listen to ass. We’ll be like the entortainmon’ and the machines weel be the audien’, an’ own the station, and we all like work for them. —”Yo, listen up. Du

Sitting on the steps of the great museum, caught in a sudden burst of slanting, golden afternoon sunlight, sca

Yet another story was being half told behind his back; another stranger’s fairy tale of the city poured into his defenseless ear. “Yeah, it went great, honey. No, no problems, I’m en route to the trustees’ meeting, that’s why I’m calling you on my cell. Conscious all the time, but doped-up, sure. So, semiconscious. Yeah, the knife comes right at your eyeball, but the chemical assistance makes you think it’s a feather. No, no bruising, and let me tell you it’s amazing what my visual world now contains. Amazing grace, yeah, good one. Was blind but now I see. Really. Look at all this stuff out here. I’ve been missing so much. Well, think about it. He really is the laser king. I asked around a lot as you know and the same name kept coming up. A little dryness is all, but that goes away in a few weeks, he says. Okay, love ya. I’ll be home late. What can you do. Don’t wait up.” And of course he turned around, of course he saw that the young woman was not alone, a man was nuzzling at her even as she flipped her cell phone shut. She, gladly allowing herself to be nuzzled, met Solanka’s eye; and, seeing herself caught in her lie, beamed guiltily, and shrugged. What can you do, as she had said on the phone. The heart has its reasons, and we are all the servants of love.

Twenty minutes to ten in London. Asmaan would be asleep. Five and a half hours later in India. Turn the watch upside down in London and you got the time in the town of Malik Solanka’s birth, the Forbidden City by the Arabian Sea. That, too, was coming back. The thought filled him with dread: of what, driven by his long-sealed-away fury, he might become. Even after all these years it defined him, had not lost any of its power over him. And if he finished the sentences of that untold tale?… That question must be for another day. He shook his head. Neela was late. Solanka put down his newspaper, pulled a piece of wood and a Swiss Army knife out of an overcoat pocket, and began, with complete absorption, to whittle.

“Who is he?” Neela Mahendra’s shadow fell across him. The sun was behind her, and in silhouette she looked even taller than he remembered. “He’s an artist,” Solanka replied. “The most dangerous man in the world.” She dusted off a spot on the museum steps and sat down beside him. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “I know a lot of dangerous men, and none of them ever created a credible work of art. Also, trust me, not a single one of them was made of wood.” They sat there in silence for a while, he whittling, she simply still, offering the world the gift of her being in it. Afterward Malik Solanka, remembering their first moments alone together, would dwell particularly on the silence and stillness, on how easy that had been. “I fell in love with you when you weren’t saying a word,” he told her. “How was I to know you were the most talkative woman on earth? I know a lot of talkative women and, trust me, compared to you, every single one of them was made of wood.”