I-I-IV

“Listen to me.” I press Blind Allie against the door of the men's loo, my hands around her upper arms. “This is a deadly serious business, old girl. I need you to follow my instructions to the fucking letter. Understand?”

She catches me by the left wrist and does sort of a twist-thing. Now I’m pointed the other way with a brick wall pushing my shades into my face, and my left arm is more or less Blind Allie’s property. “That’s enough touchy-touchy for right now, Spex,” she chides. “And enough drama-queening out of you. What’s it gonna take for you to get Miss No-Pants out of my bar?”

“Ouch. Bottle of whiskey,” I reply. “Best you’ve got in the house. You’ll get it all back, cross my heart.”

She thinks about this for a moment. “Best-best, or the best you ever buy?”

“Best-best,” I reply. “Tippity-top, spare no expense.”

She relaxes her grip. “There’s an open bottle of Dalmore Reserve up front. I don’t know what you’ve got planned,” she says, “but I’m gonna count the drops. I’ll know if one’s missing.”

“And two clean glasses, what?”

“Sure, Spex. Do your thing.”

So, tally ho then. She takes off. I, with stately gait and measured stride, cross the stuffy little back bar of the Mortal Coil towards the half-naked woman who has scared some of the scariest people on the planet away from their drinks. I stop at a respectful distance. I clear my throat. “So, what’s a girl like you doing in a nice place like this?”

Her eyes don’t move from their streaky reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She exhales another cloud of inexplicable smoke. I clear a pair of unfinished lunches off a table, walk up behind her, and grab a double-handful of hair that has been dyed the color of filth. “Alright, now. Upsie-daisy.”

With one good heave I pull her backwards off the barstool and lug her across the room. She slumps onto the sticky varnished tabletop like a roll of sodden carpet. She lies there, staring up at the ceiling, naked but for a bustier and stockings. And the restraint bracelets, of course -- top of the line Kevlar things, fried threads of strong-as-steel fabric hanging loose where they’ve been torn.

Blind Allie returns with the refreshments. “Where you at, baby? Gimme a shout.”

“Over here, Allie. Ta.” I take the bottle and glasses from her. “Might want to grab a fire extinguisher as well.”

She snorts and departs. I pull out a chair and plop the half-bare stranger into a sitting position. I take a seat across the table from her. Her eyes do not exactly focus as I pop open the bottle -– not the '62, but excellent stuff nonetheless -- but there’s a certain … presence. An awareness.

I pour myself a generous dram, then set an empty glass in front of my silent companion. When Allie returns, dragging a big red compressed-foam extinguisher, I am watching the stranger's glass slowly fill with a rich caramel-colored liquid.

Allie drops the extinguisher at my feet. “So what’s up? Gimme the color commentary. Has she said anything? What’s she doing?”

I look at the stranger, at her ugly dye-job, at the tattered restraints. I look at the brimming glass in front of her. “She hasn’t said a word. And what she's doing is just what anybody who’s alone in a new city would do, what? She’s trying to fit in.”

I reach across, pick up the stranger’s glass, and knock back its contents. Instantly my throat is on fire, and my nose is filled with smoke. The Dalmore burns all the way down. “Thanks be for single malts, married women, and any combination of the two,” I say. “And for generous new friends.” I set the empty glass back on the table. Once again, it slowly fills. “Here’s a riddle for you, Allie old girl. Why did Helen Keller fuck the one-armed rabbi?”

She thinks on that for a moment. In the meantime, I pull a small sheet of plywood and a Zippo lighter out of my green canvas messenger bag. Allie shrugs. “I give up. Why did she?”

“Because he drives a Ferrari.” Once more I shoot the stranger’s whiskey. “Now that we’ve broken the ice, I think it’s time to break the silence. Time for a conversation. We’ve just got to put this charming lady in her element, and I’ve got the awfulest suspicion I know what that is.”

Imagine you’re blind, deaf and dumb. The only way you can communicate with the world is by writing things down. But nobody else can read your language, and anyhow, you haven't got anything to write with. Now imagine trying to pass yourself off as a native in an environment that operates on a completely different set of social standards and physical laws from what you’re used to. A bit frustrating, what? There are a thousand possible explanations for this strange woman, but I have a hunch. Of all the elements that might be hers, one in particular makes me rather nervous.

There is a language. Not a well-known language, at least in these parts. I certainly don’t speak it. But I know enough to find out if she does.

I lean across the table. I bend my head down to her ear. I flick the Zippo and hold the flame close to my lips. “*******,” I say.

The stranger flexes. Every muscle fiber in her body clenches at once, arching her back and pulling her face into a beastly grimace. I've no doubt my accent is atrocious, but I don’t need her to tell me the way to the beach. I just need an answer. “Allie? Have that fire extinguisher ready, there’s a dear.” I hold the sheet of plywood out at arm’s length and raise it to the stranger’s mouth.

Ahh. So that’s how you pronounce it.

I drop the flaming board onto the floor and, relieving Allie of her burden, shoosh foam all over it. Allie jumps back as it splashes her feet.

“Spex? Spex, you asshole, what are you doing to my bar?”

I pick up the sodden plywood and shake off the suds. The symbol that's seared into it is one I’ve seen before. It’s not a Cambrian glyph, or one of the middle-epoch runes that Hentchler loves so dearly. This symbol has only turned up quite recently in human history. Aleister Crowley had it tattooed on his left buttock. Madame Blavatsky had it stamped in silver and strung on a chain that she wore to her grave. Scholars will tell you that it means ‘change’ or ‘transformation’ or ‘a journey to an unknown land’. Scholars are arseholes.

“Allie?” I say. “Ring up Bansi Butcher.”

She’s wiping her feet off with a napkin. She’d been glowering at the air a few feet to my right, but now she orients on my voice and gives me the full force. “Nuh-uh. Not in here, not in my place.”

“Have a heart, old girl,” I wheedle. “You want me to do it in the street? Like a bally dog?”

“Yes.”

“Cold-hearted brute.” I sigh. “Well, right-ho then. But ring Bansi.”

Hentchler and Dickey stare as I stagger through the front bar with the half-naked stranger slung over my shoulder. I pay them no heed. Allie holds the front door for me.

I manage an awkward bow as I pass the old fruit vendor. “Hail to thee, Reggie. Nothing to be alarmed about, the lady’s just ill.”

I look up and down the street. There’s nobody about that I can see. I plop the unresisting stranger down on the asphalt between two parked cars; she sits there, with the eyes that aren’t really hers staring through me. I pull out the VoltMeister v350 and push the metal prongs into the pudgy, blotchy flesh under her chin.

“Bon voyage, what?" I murmur. "Don’t bother to write, and try not to come back. I’ve no idea what pious sod called you here, but you really must screen your prayers more carefully. Cheerio, then.”

Bzzzzzzzt

What falls to the ground looks nothing like the woman with the fake tan and bad dye-job. A thing like a five-foot stalk of asparagus, translucent green-blue and covered with short wiry tendrils, flops onto the pavement. Inside it, a cloud of thick, purplish-black ink throbs slowly and without purpose. The tourist has returned home. What’s left is just the receptacle, an empty paper cup tossed out into the street.

I stand up to find Dickey hovering behind me. He’s staring down at the corpse. “What … the fuck … is that?” he asks at last. “Where did it come from?”

I lay a hand on his shoulder. “Those, Dickey old boy, are the wrong questions entirely. For one thousand dollars, I will tell you what the right question is.”

He scratches that perfect Aryan chin of his. He pulls out his wallet and hands over an embossed traveler's cheque, which I slide into the pocket of my orange hunting trousers.

“The correct question, Dickey old bean, is not what or how, but why. Specifically, why now. Now fuck off.” And with that I boost myself over the corpse and cross the street to the ambulance that has just pulled up. “Hullo, Bansi,” I say through the driver’s window. I jerk my thumb back over my shoulder. “There’s your patient. I’ll take my twenty percent up front, if you don’t mind.”