So Here’s The Thing
by Martin Mundt

© 2007 by Martin Mundt
All Rights Reserved

Episode 3: Imagine

So here’s the thing—I love women who lie.

She sits next to me at the bar. She’s young and beautiful. Goes without saying, right? Story’s not worth telling otherwise. She orders a drink. I don’t remember what kind. A detail that isn’t telling, but it got her to the bar, and that’s all that matters.

So I turn to her and speak.

Pretend, I say, that we’re the only two people left in the whole world.

Not the best line ever, I’ll admit, and I’m not sure where I’m going with it, but I’m thinking on my feet.

She gazes at me, but whether with contempt or excitement, I can’t tell. Have I already met her somewhere? I can’t remember.

Imagine, she says—and she says this like she had it waiting in her purse for just this occasion and now she’s pulling it out—imagine that we’re not really the only two people left in the world, but simply that no one else matters.

Okay, she’s good. She rummages up the beginnings of a faint smile. Not contempt, but not quite excitement either. But enough to keep going.

Pretend I’m just a regular guy, an average, everyday Joe humping it for a living, day in and day out; except, and this is where it gets good; except in reality I’m something special, I play by my own rules, Johnny Outlaw, but I can’t tell you why, because the knowledge would put you in danger, and I would never put you in danger, not for any reason. I’m that kind of guy.

She lights a cigarette. She’s got to. She’s playing for time. The conversation took a turn she didn’t expect, but she plays her cards well, like she would’ve lit up no matter what I’d said. She blows a smoke ring, like the pale ghosts of lips ascending from her red lips. I don’t expect that, and she takes advantage.

Imagine, she says, that I muddled through school, middle of my class, and now I’m strictly 9-to-5, hair neither black nor blonde, and even if everything I’ve just said is a lie, you’ll never prove it, because I’ve covered my sordid past far too well, and besides, I’m smarter than you are. Face it. You’re out of your league. You only know what I tell you, and anything I say could be a lie.

Another smoke ring. Another smile. I’m intrigued. How could I not be? Maybe she is smarter than me. Maybe I’m doomed. Or maybe not.

I lean close to her. Maybe I just want to whisper something. Or maybe I want to get in her space and mess with her head. But if that’s my game, it’s not working with her.

Pretend, I say, that I’ve escaped from a top-secret, quasi-governmental, black-ops training facility, and even as we speak, assassins from a dozen clandestine agencies are converging upon me, each eager to kill me for the devastating information which, though inside my head, I can’t remember.

Smoke ring. Smile. But the smoke quivers, the smile trembles. I’ve hooked her.

Pretend I’m a genius, I say, pressing my advantage. I’m off the scale. Einstein gets me coffee. I was trained from birth to impersonate anyone, from steelworkers to presidents, in pursuit of largely obscure goals transmitted to me by a mysterious cabal of powerful men who rule the world from behind the scenes. I have vowed to track them down and kill them, even as I seem to do their bidding.

Pretend, I say…

She cuts me off with a wave of her cigarette, a line of smoke my words will not cross.

Imagine, she says, that I have slipped cyanide into your drink.

I glance at my half-empty glass. I try to remember the molecular weight of cyanide. Did it sink to the bottom? Or have I already drunk it? I look back to her smile. I lean closer, but this time to hear what she has to say.

Imagine, she says, that I am one of twin sisters, one a sociopath, the other not, but both of us assassins, and you can never know which of us you are with, and one of us loves you, but the other can perfectly mimic that love without feeling it, and your only hope of survival beyond tomorrow is that the one who loves you will kill her sister before she herself is killed.

I loosen my tie, a sharp, savage gesture. I have trouble breathing. Is this the result of her animal heat? Or is it the poison beginning to work in my system?

Imagine, she says, the choice that lies before me—either kill my lover or kill my sister. It arrests you, doesn’t it? This bald statement of fact? And even though I am an assassin, with innocent blood on my hands, I put this choice so starkly, so disarmingly, that it brings you up short, and allows you to empathize with me.

She touches the cigarette to her lips, draws smoke in, exhales it. Her lips glow a glossy blood-red in the dim lights.

Pretend, I say, that I know you better than you imagine. You have not poisoned me. You are too elegant for such a clumsy attempt on my life.

She laughs. The sound is all aged whiskey and new sex. I am right. I have no choice, otherwise I am a dead man.

Imagine, she says, that I am merely toying with you, because it amuses me.

Pretend that I allow you to toy with me, because I find the game to be stimulating.

She flicks some ash to the floor, which could as well be my heart, my love, or my soul, for all the concern she shows.

Pretend, I say, that I know my father is among the men who wish me dead, though I have never to my knowledge met him, but I trust my genius will enable me to piece together his true identity and confront him once and for all with the question of why he has done to me what he has done to me. Pretend this revelation presents me in a suddenly sympathetic light.

She lowers her eyes. I anticipate a turning point. She raises her eyes to mine.

Imagine, she says, that I am your long-lost sister.

I do not gasp, but it is only because of my life-long habit of emotional detachment.

Pretend, I say, that this realization shatters our lives, for we are brother and sister engaged in forbidden love.

Imagine, she says, that though we are shattered, still we do not stop, for our passion and guilt merge into glorious, reckless, transcendent sin.

Pretend that others find our love repellant, yet fascinating.

Imagine we revel in their fascination, no less than their repulsion.

Pretend that this knowledge, cunningly hidden so that we might discover it only after tremendous exertions and improbable good fortune, is actually false, and was revealed to us only that we might be manipulated with it.

Imagine our rage. Imagine our joy.

Pretend that we only pretend to be manipulated.

Imagine that we each privately suspect that the lie is itself a lie, and that we are brother and sister after all, but we question it no further, because the uncertainty excites us beyond reason.

I suddenly suspect that I am lost in a maze of two-way mirrors, that none of this makes any sense, and yet I feel compelled to go on. I am hooked. Helpless. A clubbed seal. I must know how it all ends. And who wouldn’t want to know? This story of a mysterious relationship between two intelligent, physically beautiful, but emotionally damaged people, this story has become like a drug. Who wouldn’t follow it through any and every implausibility?

Pretend, I say, that I am a clone. The assassins who hunt me are all identical copies of myself. Perhaps none of my memories are real, but were created to give me a past I have not actually lived. Or perhaps the assassins do not exist, and are only a metaphor for my own desire to kill myself.

Imagine, she says, that I am, in reality, you; that I have traveled backwards in time from your own future after your sexual re-assignment surgery, which you used to confound your pursuers, and I am here to warn you—to warn myself—that your, my, our father, holding a pistol, approaches you from behind at this VERY MOMENT!

I flinch, but do not turn around.

Pretend, I say, that I know no one is there, because I can see the emptiness behind me reflected in your eyes.

Imagine, she says, that I know you know.

Pretend, I say, that I know you know I know.

We reach a point of uncertainty. We verge on the unknown. We stare into darkness. What will we do? It is as if the universe gathers around us like a commercial. I sip my drink, but do not taste it. I drink only so that I need not be the next to speak.

She crosses her legs, mysteries folding upon mysteries beneath the hem of her skirt. She grazes my leg with her foot, as if by accident. The tops of her stockings are visible. She does this, no doubt, so I will not expect her to speak.

Pretend, I say, that I was the one in the satyr’s mask at the ball in Monte Carlo, the one who swept you off your feet, the one you could never forget, the one whose name you would never know, the one whose touch first brought your heart to life, the heart you had thought cold and dead.

Imagine I would forget you if only I could, because you represent a moment of purity and perfection which I know can never be repeated, but of course I have never forgotten. What I have forgotten are all the other dull, interminable moments that have passed since, until now, when I look into your eyes again and know that purity and perfection are perhaps once more within my grasp. Imagine my heart begins to race. Imagine too that I don’t regret drawing my knife on you in Monte Carlo.

Pretend that when I seized you in my arms and forced the knife to slip from your fingers until it fell useless into the fountain, and you closed your eyes and sighed because overpowering strength excites you, pretend that I felt the same as you did.

Imagine that when we kissed in the soft moonlight rippling off the water of the fountain, and I bit your lip until I drew blood, it was because, to me, the knife was not a weapon, but foreplay. Imagine I was, and am, thrilled by the taste of your blood.

Pretend that I retrieved your knife, kept it for years in the hope I would one day meet you again, and so find the perfect moment to return it to your hand, to do with what you will.

Imagine I am amazed.

Pretend I stand before your blade, naked and helpless, and my confidence more than amazes you; it arouses you.

Imagine that I cast the knife aside, because I need no arousal beyond you alone.

Pretend that I will lift you in my arms and carry you to a bed strewn with rose-petals and thrill you as you have never been thrilled before.

It is the moment of truth. The suspense is palpable. What will she say? What will she do? Is this not the choice everyone desires? The decision everyone dreads?

Her drink arrives. She stands, leans towards me until I feel the heat of her lips against my ear. She whispers.

Imagine that you already have thrilled me, but our years of magnificent passion have been erased by your amnesia, and this—all this that has passed between us here—all this is just how the story really begins.

She walks away.

Pretend I didn’t get her name.

Okay, so that’s my pitch, Mr. Spielberg. I’m thinking Brad Pitt and Charlize Theron, or maybe Nicole Kidman, but I’ll let you work out the casting details on your own. So? Whattya think? Oh, and would you like fries with that?

Martin Mundt exists elsewhere in the virtual world at:
www.martinmundt.com
www.crawlingabattoir.com
&
www.myspace.com/martinmundt