Hideaway

he said, “Tab? Uh, no. Cash, thank you, ma'am.”
    When he took out his wallet, it didn't feel like a wallet at all but like one of Bambi's ears might feel. When he slid his thumb back and forth across the smooth leather, he felt not what was there but what might soon be available for his caress: delicately shaped ridges of cartilage forming the auricula and pinna, the graceful curves of the channels that focused sound waves inward toward the tympanic membrane.…
    He realized the waitress had spoken to him again, stating the price of his drink, and then he realized that it was the second time she had done so. He had been fingering his wallet for long, delicious seconds, daydreaming of death and disfigurement.
    He fished out a crisp bill without looking at it, and handed it to her.
    “This is a hundred,” she said. “Don't you have anything smaller?”
    “No, ma'am, sorry,” he said, impatient now to be rid of her, “that's it.”
    “I'll have to go back to the bar to get this much change.”
    “Okay, yeah, whatever. Thank you, ma'am.”
    As she started away from his table, he returned his attention to the four young women—only to discover that they were leaving. They were nearing the door, pulling on their coats as they went.
    He started to rise, intending to follow them, but he froze when he heard himself say, “Lindsey.”
    He didn't call out the name. No one in the bar heard him say it. He was the only one who reacted, and his reaction was one of total surprise.
    For a moment he hesitated with one hand on the table, one on the arm of his chair, halfway to his feet. While he was paralyzed in that posture of indecisiveness, the four young women left the lounge. Bambi became of less interest to him than the mysterious name—“Lindsey”—so he sat down.
    He did not know anyone named Lindsey.
    He had never known anyone named Lindsey.
    It made no sense that he would suddenly speak the name aloud.
    He looked out the window at the harbor. Hundreds of millions of dollars of ego-gratification rose and fell and wallowed side to side on the rolling water. The sunless sky was another sea above, as cold and merciless as the one below. The air was full of rain like millions of gray and silver threads, as if nature was trying to sew the ocean to the heavens and thereby obliterate the narrow space between, where life was possible. Having been one of the living, one of the dead, and now one of the living dead, he had seen himself as the ultimate sophisticate, as experienced as any man born of woman could ever hope to be. He had assumed that the world held nothing new for him, had nothing to teach him. Now this. First the seizure in the car: Something's out there! And now Lindsey. The two experiences were different, because he heard no voice in his head the second time, and when he spoke it was with his own familiar voice and not that of a stranger. But both events were so peculiar that he knew they were linked. As he gazed at the moored boats, the harbor, and the dark world beyond, it began to seem more mysterious to him than it had in ages.
    He picked up his rum and Coke. He took a long swallow of it.
    As he was putting the drink down, he said, “Lindsey.”
    The glass rattled against the table, and he almost knocked it over, because the name surprised him again. He hadn't spoken it aloud to ponder the meaning of it. Rather, it had burst from him as before, a bit more breathlessly this time and somewhat louder.
    Interesting.
    The lounge seemed to be a magical place for him.
    He decided to settle down for a while and wait to see what might happen next.
    When the waitress arrived with his change, he said, “I'd like another drink, ma'am.” He handed her a twenty. “This'll take care of it, and please keep the change.”
    Happy with the tip, she hurried back to the bar.
    Vassago turned to the window again, but this time he looked at his own reflection in the glass instead of at the harbor beyond. The dim lights of the lounge threw insufficient glare on the pane to provide him with a detailed image. In that murky mirror, his sunglasses did not register well. His face appeared to have two gaping eye sockets like those of a fleshless skull. The illusion pleased him.
    In a husky whisper not loud enough to draw the attention of anyone else in the lounge, but with more urgency than before, he said, “Lindsey, no!”
    He had not anticipated that outburst any more than the previous two, but it did not rattle him. He