Ghost Lights by Lydia Millet (classic fiction txt) 📕

his face, and a suffocation. He closed his eyes and lights pricked at the darkness.

“Excuse me,” he said.

The hallway was slightly less stifling but not enough, and he kept going past the security guard and the reception desk, out the front door. The sky had clouded over and a cool breeze was up, and he relaxed instantly.

The guard would probably not let him back in by himself, but he was indifferent. The lawyer was his watchdog. The lawyer was being a lawyer. There was nothing Hal could do to help, past the fact of having brought him in, Brady and him. He was unsure of their competence, but what could he do? Nothing. These were guys who spent their spare time discussing women with extra nipples.

He sat down on a deep window ledge, feet planted far apart on the sidewalk, and raised his face to the sky. He took a deep breath and then looked level again, gazed in front of him. A car or two passed. Across the street there was a store that seemed to sell things made of ugly plastic. The objects festooned the windows brightly but their nature was unclear . . . he had always thought of himself as competent, but then he came down here and had to do everything through proxies—all he did was delegate tasks to those who were more qualified. His own qualifications, it turned out, were limited to Service business. He had no qualifications outside those narrow parameters.

And yet back home, day in, day out, he walked around like a competent man.

That was what his country did for people like him. It specialized them. They knew how to live, day in, day out, in one highly specific undertaking. They thrived in their tunnels, however narrow. Manual laborers knew more. Manual laborers, many of them, could perform myriad tasks if called upon to do so, but white collars like himself knew only one thing.

He was a surplus human, a product of a swollen civilization. He was a widget among men.

When civilization fell and government went with it, his people would die off, replaced by bricklayers, plumbers and mechanics—replaced by farmers, weavers, and electricians who could forage through the ruins for generators and fuse boxes and wire. There would be no more use for his kind.

Could he adapt, given time? Possibly. Although with some difficulty. His former mantle of confidence would fall away; losing authority, he would become a kind of beggar. He and the bohemians. Clearly they were even more useless than he was. This was why, no doubt, he partly identified with them. The presence of other broadly useless humans offered a certain comfort . . . more comfort even than Gretel, in fact, who had been so kind to him, because the young and beautiful were in their own privileged category. They would always be needed, or wanted, at least. The young and beautiful were an end in themselves. Even in the postscript to civilization, the young and beautiful would seldom be forced to beg. Plus they were good breeding stock.

In any case civilization was not quite falling at the moment. It was on its way down, collapsing in slow motion, but it had some good years left in it yet. Chances were he would continue to be what he was, live out his life as a widget, and never be called upon to learn to, say, butcher a calf.

There was Brady, coming out the front door. He nodded briskly at Hal, shook a cigarette out of a packet and lit it.

Brady, too, was a human widget.

“My prediction,” said Brady, after a first inhale, “is they keep him in overnight. Maybe one more night for good measure. I don’t think we’re looking at a serious situation.”

“Jesus,” said Hal. “That’s great to hear.”

He didn’t quite trust Brady. Brady was not smart enough, he suspected. But still it offered some relief.

“Can I talk to him by myself? Or do the cops always have to be there?”

“Give ’em another five minutes,” said Brady. “You should be able to get some face time then.”

•

Bail was not an option, apparently. T. had not been arrested, he told Hal, sitting in the interview room again with the door wide open. He was being detained, but no charges had been brought. He was staying on a voluntary basis, until they were satisfied he was not a flight risk.

“As a courtesy,” he explained.

“You’re staying in prison as a courtesy? Why be courteous? I don’t get it. They have no right to keep you.”

“It’s all right, Hal,” said T. calmly. “Really. They’re doing a search for the body, just in case. Mostly the riverbanks, is all they can manage. Manpower issue I guess. But if they don’t find anything in the next twenty-four hours, the lawyer said, I’ll be free to leave. And if they do find it, they’ll conduct an autopsy. Verify my story.”

“That’s bullshit,” said Hal.

“It’s OK. Really. It’s not a problem for me.”

“Do you even know the, you know, the conditions? Have you gone to where they’re going to keep you?”

“Not yet. It’s just down the street.”

“And the lawyer advised you to go along with this? I mean we have money. You know. There’s plenty of it. We should be able to post a bond. You could stay at my hotel while they do their search. Their autopsy.”

“I don’t think they’ll find the body,” said T. “I think the animals got to it.”

He seemed matter-of-fact about the prospect.

“Listen. T. Why not stay in my hotel? You want to—I don’t know—have to use the toilet in front of perfect strangers? Eat gruel?”

“My own cell, they said. It’s not a high-security thing. There are private showers. And it’s just for one night.”

“I don’t know,” said Hal, shaking his head. He felt fretful. T. was not practical; in his new form he had become irresponsible, flaky. Could he be trusted even with self-preservation? “Maybe we should call a lawyer in the U.S. Someone famous. Get a referral, at