McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [64]
Farther down there are no more snowy patches so it’s harder. At one point the skid gets going down a scree slope. I get a bump on my head trying to stop it. That fits with my plans.
After we leave Grandma at the clinic, I tell Loo, “Tie me up and lead me to the prison. There’s a big reward for my capture. Turn me in and request it. Make them set up the money in a bank account for Grandma, to dole out little by little. It’s a lot of money.” (I still don’t dare tell her how much even though I’m sure she’d not be able to understand it anyway.)
But even as I speak I realize they won’t do it for a child. Perhaps I should turn myself in for my own reward. Have an account in my own and Grandma’s name. Will they let me do that? What if Grandma dies or never recovers her senses? Loo’s name then. They won’t, but they might. It would change their life. I may as well try.
I show Loo how to tie me up.
“The bruise on my head . . . tell them you did that.”
She starts to cry. “I won’t.”
“You’ll see. You’ll be a hero. Everything will be better this way.”
“It won’t be.”
“I’ll be fine. I have my chants and I can think about you.”
She tries to give me her doll.
“They’ll not let me keep anything. You keep the pipe, too. I can only take unreal things like remembering.”
But we’re too late. There’s been no reward since winter. I can’t believe it. I’m no longer of any importance. At first I feel a great relief. My stomach lurches. I almost throw up. It’s over. This is better than any reward no matter how large. Loo and I can walk away.
But they grab me anyway. I struggle though I know it’s useless. In half a minute I’m shackled again. I yell at Loo to go to the clinic, but when I look back, they’ve got her, too. I can’t think why. I suppose she’s guilty of helping me. I never should have let them help. I wonder what they’ll do to Grandma. They know I have loved ones now. I wonder if Loo has the sense to chant.
We put up new posters: THE GENERAL IS IN OUR CUSTODY. Finding him and capturing him was difficult but we prevailed. Congratulations to all our Search and Capture teams. They will be rewarded. Prepare your flags and trumpets; tomorrow there will be another day of celebrating.
Closing Time
By NEIL GAIMAN
It was in the nature of boys to get into trouble.
But sometimes you had to knock.
There are still clubs in London. Old ones, and mock-old, with elderly sofas and crackling fireplaces, newspapers, and traditions of speech or of silence, and new clubs, the Groucho and its many knockoffs, where actors and journalists go to be seen, to drink, to enjoy their glowering solitude, or even to talk. I have friends in both kinds of club, but am not myself a member of any club in London, not anymore.
Years ago, half a lifetime, when I was a young journalist, I joined a club. It existed solely to take advantage of the licensing laws of the day, which forced all pubs to stop serving drinks at eleven PM, closing time. This club, the Diogenes, was a one-room affair located above a record shop in a narrow alley just off the Tottenham Court Road. It was owned by a cheerful, chubby, alcohol-fueled woman called Nora, who would tell anyone who asked and even if they didn’t that she’d called the club the Diogenes, darling, because she was still looking for an honest man. Up a narrow flight of steps, and, at Nora’s whim, the door to the club would be open, or not. It kept irregular hours.
It was a place to go once the pubs closed, that was all it ever was, and despite Nora’s doomed attempts to serve food or even to send out a cheery monthly newsletter to all her club’s members reminding them that the club now served food, that was all it would ever be. I was saddened several years ago when I heard that Nora had died; and I was struck, to my surprise, with a real sense of desolation last month when, on a visit to England, walking down that alley, I tried to figure out where the Diogenes Club had been, and looked first in the wrong