In the library, and it could be nothing else, for all its towering shelves of books, "The Boss" sat as Toby had seen him through the window, in his high-backed chair of oxblood leather.
Everything in the room was fine. The desk was black and heavily carved. There was a special bookcase to the man's left with figures carved on both sides of the doors. The figures intrigued Toby.
It looked German, all this, as if it were furnishings from the German Renaissance in Europe.
The carpet had been woven for the room, an immense sea of dark flowers, banded in gold along the walls and their high polished baseboards. Toby had never seen a rug made for a room, cut away around the half columns that flanked the double doors, or cut away around the protruding edges of the window seats.
"Sit down and talk to me, Son," said the man.
Toby took the leather chair opposite. But he said nothing. Nothing would come out of his mouth. The music still rang in his ears.
"I'm going to tell you exactly what I want you to do," said the man, and then he described it.
Elaborate, yes, but hardly impossible, and elegantly challenging.
"Guns? Guns are crude," said the man. "This is simpler, only you have but one chance." He sighed. "You sink the needle into the back of the neck, or into the hand, and you keep moving. You know how to do that, to keep walking, with your eyes focused ahead as if you never even brushed up against the guy. These people will be eating, drinking, off their guard. They think the men outside are watching for the gunmen whom they have to fear. You hesitate? Well, your chance is gone, and if they catch you with that needle--."
"They won't," Toby said. "I don't look dangerous."
"That's true!" said the man. He opened his hands as he spoke in surprise. "You're a handsome boy. I can't place your voice. I think Boston, no. I think, New York, no. Where did you come from?"
This didn't surprise Toby. Most people of Irish and German descent who lived in New Orleans had accents that no one could place. And Toby had cultivated the uptown accents of the rich and that must have been even more confusing.
"You look English, German, Swiss, American," said the man. "You're tall. And you're young and you've got the coldest eyes I've ever seen."
"You mean I look like you," said Toby.
The man was startled again, but then he smiled. "I suppose so. But I'm sixty-seven and you're not even twenty-one."
Toby nodded.
"Why don't you stop clutching that gun and talk to me?"
"I can do everything you've asked," said Toby. "I'm eager to do it."
"You understand, one chance."
Toby nodded.
"You do it right and he won't notice. He won't die for at least twenty minutes. By that time, you'll be out of the restaurant, normal pace, just keep on walking and we'll pick you up."
Toby was powerfully excited again. But he didn't let on. The music in his head wouldn't stop. He heard the first major drive of strings and kettledrums.
I knew how excited he was as I watched him. I could see it in his breathing and in the warmth in his eyes, which perhaps the man did not notice. Toby looked like Toby for a moment, innocent, with plans.
"What is it you want for all this, besides money?" asked the man.
Now Toby was the one who was startled. And there was a dramatic change in his face. The man noticed it, the blood in Toby's cheeks, and the flash in his eyes.
"More work," said Toby. "Lots of it. And the finest lute you can buy."
The man studied him.
"How did you come to all this?" the man asked him. He made a little gesture with his open hands again. He shrugged. "How did you manage to do the things you did?"
I knew the answer. I knew all the answers. I knew the exhilaration Toby was feeling; I knew how much he distrusted this man, and how he liked the challenge of carrying out what the man wanted and then trying to stay alive. After all, why shouldn't this man kill him after he did this work for him? Why not indeed?
An errant thought took hold of Toby. It wasn't for the first time that he found himself wishing that he were dead. So what did it matter if this man killed him? This man wouldn't be cruel. It would be fast and over, and then the life of Toby O'Dare would be no more, he figured. He tried to imagine, as countless humans have, what it means to be annihilated. The despair took hold of him as if it were the deepest chord he would strike on his lute, and its reverberation went on unendingly.
The coarse excitement of the job at hand was its only counterweight, and the chord throbbing so steadily in his ears gave him what passes for courage.
This man seemed reachable. But in truth, Toby didn't trust anybody. Nevertheless, it was worth a try. The man was educated, confident, polished. The man was, in his own way, very alluring. His calm was alluring. Alonso had never been calm. Toby pretended to be calm. But he didn't really know the meaning of it.
"If you never betray me," Toby said, "I'll do anything for you, absolutely anything. Things other people can't do." He thought of that girl sobbing, pleading, he thought of her stretching out her arms, her palms up to push him away. "I mean I will do absolutely anything. But there's bound to come a time when you won't want me around."
"Not so," said the man. "You'll outlive me. It's imperative that you trust me. Do you know what `imperative' means?" Toby nodded. "Absolutely," he said. "And for the moment, I don't think I have too many choices, so yes, I trust you."
The man was thoughtful.
"You could go into New York, do the job, and keep on going," said the man.
"And how would I be paid?" Toby asked.
"You could take half up front, and just disappear."
"Is that what you want me to do?"
"No," said the man. He pondered.
"I could love you," the man said under his breath. "I mean it. Oh, not, you know, that I want you to be my bitch, I'm not saying that. Nothing like that. Though at my age, I don't much care whether it's a boy or a girl, you know. Not when they're young and fragrant and tender and beautiful. But I don't mean that. I mean, I could love you. Because there's something beautiful about you, about the way you look and talk and about the way you move through a room."
Exactly!That is what I was thinking. And I was understanding now, what they say angels cannot understand, about their two hearts, both of them.
I was thinking about Toby's father and how he used to call him "Pretty Face" and taunt him. I was thinking of fear and the utter failure to love. I was thinking of the way that beauty on earth survives though thorns and wretchedness try perpetually to choke it. But my thoughts were in the background here. The foreground is what matters.