The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
“No. I’d like to go to sleep, and I’d like you to leave.”
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes,” he said peremptorily. “And I would like to let you
sleep, but first I owe you a remonstrance.” Again he motioned for me to sit.
My legs were getting that simultaneously stiff and rubbery feeling that comes
from exhaustion. I stayed standing. “A remonstrance for not listening to the
sound advice of your friend.” He spoke softly and crisply, as though he were
breaking velvet saltines.
“All you had to do was listen. Listen to a pretty girl. How difficult can that
be?” He held a questioning hand out, palm up, and shook his head with false
pity. “You might have led a long and happy life.”
“What do you ...?” I stammered, rubbing my eyes and feeling my bowels
deliquesce as soon as he put my life in the past conditional. He stood up,
and I took a tremulous and involuntary step backward. As I did, I stepped on
my baseball, which somehow, no matter where I put it, always seemed to find
its way to the most inconvenient place in my apartment. I fell backward like a
cartoon character, landing butt first and feet up, knocking the wind out of
myself. Tonu walked, chuckling pompously, over to the doorway between my
kitchen and living room, where I was lying stunned on the floor.
“Nothing broken, I hope?”
I flapped my hands at the wrists and moved my feet up and down. Nothing
broken aside from my pride. I shook my head and started to rise when
Tonu shoved the tip of his cane into my shoulder.
“Slowly, if you don’t mind,” he said, twisting the cane head. An ominouslooking
little trigger popped out in the right place, and I noticed that the end
of the cane was hollow: a barrel.
“What the hell is that?”
“Neat thing, this,” he said, lifting it off me for a moment to admire it. “I
got it when I was serving in the Ottoman Honor Guard.”
“The what?”
“Just stand up slowly, would you, and walk over to that chair across from
mine, as I’ve already told you to do. We’ll have one last brief chat, like civilized
people.”
“Are you going to kill me?” I wish I could tell you I asked the question
bravely.
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