Swap Death

 At precisely eight o’clock on the morning of April fifth the telephone rang.  I was not expecting a call. No one had my number at the apartment I was staying at.  I let the phone ring.  Once… twice; it continued insistently.  I tried my best to ignore it.  I answered on the fifth ring.  

The voice on the other end of the line was muffled yet uncannily familiar.

“Hello?” it said.

“Hello, who is this?” I said in reply.

“Meet me at 12 o’clock in the room above the bar at the top of Jackson Street, on the end closer to the park.  I have something for you.”

The line went dead.  I decided at that moment to go to Jackson Street.  I had a shower, got dressed and ate breakfast.  Jackson Street was a twenty-minute walk away, so I took my time.

At a quarter past eleven I walked out my door. By half past eleven I was outside the bar looking for the entrance to the rooms above.  I found a door down the side that opened when I tried it.  It opened onto the bottom of a stairwell.  I made my way up the stairs, round one landing and on to another flight.  At the top of the stairs was a lone green door.  I knocked.  

“Come in. I’ve been expecting you,” said the same voice as earlier.

I opened the door and walked into the room.  Behind a desk sat me, or at least the man who sat behind the desk looked like me. 

“Mmmmm ...  yes, hello.  You called me earlier?”  I said hesitantly.

“Yes.  Thanks for coming.  I was beginning to wonder if you would come.  But I see that you’re early in fact.  A good sign.”

I took a seat in the seat across the desk from him.

On each end of the desk were two sealed wooden boxes.  There was a window directly behind him and I could see the trees in the park beyond.  There was a tree right next to the window and the shadows of leaves dappled the windows.  The room was simply but tastefully furnished.  The walls were white.  A cool well lit place.

I smiled at myself.  Or rather we each smiled at the other.  I sat back in my chair.

He sat forward in his and opened the box on his left.  

Inside was a single sheet of typewritten paper. He passed it across to me, and indicated I read it.

‘She caught fire.’  

In a sense that is all that you have to say, but you’ll pause and continue. To speak of the rage, the madness, that followed would be meaningless.  Instead you say:

‘They left.’

There is neither solace, nor resemblance to the thing itself, in words.  

'It was dry.  Hot and dry.  The air was still and the lake made it no cooler.'

Superman continued mechanically in Spanish.  You, a three-year-old foreigner, only half understand.  Not that any of us ever does.  

You watch television.  Up, up and away.   You are alone – alone, apart from the smell of soap.  When the memory of the rest is forsaken, that -- and that alone -- shall redolently linger.  Already the screaming woman is a dream -- like the naked woman the middle of the road in the Vietnam news coverage.  Unreal repetition.  Superman ends.  You switch off the television.  Look at the curved reflection of the room.  

Candlelight plays on the surface of the wine glass.  I can think of nothing else to say. City lights dance on the river as we leave.

After the fire, she spent eleven days in hospital, repeating one phrase: 

'Tell the police I was burning rubbish in the yard.'  

Then she died.

Smoke curled from an unsmoked cigarette in your hand. Expressionless. Unhearing.

I dread the sound of your footsteps, the rasp of your breath, the news you will one day bring.

“You will go home in a few minutes and write these words you have forgotten,” he said.   He took the sheet of paper and set it alight over an ashtray in the middle of the desk. He set the dying embers down in the ashtray and opened the second box.  In it was a gun and a gold coin.

"You have a choice to make now.  You can get up and walk away and know that I will shoot you in your back," he said. "Or you can pick up the gun and shoot me and take the gold.  There is only one condition.  In precisely ten years time you shall return to this room and sit in the chair I am sitting in, opposite another who is already a younger version of yourself."

 As he said this, a pained expression came over his face. 

"What's to stop me from shooting you now and not returning in ten years’ time?" I asked.

“Nothing apart from the fact that it has already happened” he replied.  I picked up the gun, blasted him away and took the coin. I made my way out of the room and tread carefully down the stairs.  No one saw me leave.  Though I scanned the newspaper obsessively in the weeks and months that followed, there was never any report of the murder. I play with the gold coin incessantly.  I count days.  I try to forget.