‘The Mask Vanishes’

Todd Lift

The Mask Vanishes

“It’s nice to meet an adventurous reader.”

Arthur’s compliment brought a warm smile from his host. He could hardly take his eyes off the books filling the shelves in the largest room of Janice’s flat. Rarely in his thirty-two years had he felt such awe, and it was not only for the books. There were readers, bibliophiles, then people like this young woman who collected any and all works that she might have a use for in the future.

Just after arriving in the South American capital, Arthur had responded to an ad in a paper seeking a tenant to sublet this place for three months while Janice vacationed abroad. He had a room at a hotel a few blocks away. As he gazed around, Arthur knew he could go through all his life responding to classifieds and never have another experience like this one. 

As Janice talked about the lease and the landlord and the neighborhood and all the other matters he needed to weigh before subletting, Arthur struggled for balance on the ruby carpet scored with silver, gazing at the books, some with cracked spines, others well preserved over the centuries. 

He wondered who were the authors Janice admired, which of them fed her wanderlust. There must be a few here they both liked. Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Kafka, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dinesen, Calvino, Weldon Kees. Though Arthur was not close enough to read the spines, their number made him think that somewhere there must be a handful that would give them a common currency if they sat down to talk in a café. 

Janice showed little sense of the awe that had all but overcome the visitor. 

“So, Arthur, do you have pets?

It took a moment to snap out of his reverie. 

“Ah, no. No, Janice. As you know, I just moved down here, and I wouldn’t think of bringing one into so refined a space. Please tell Manuel he doesn’t need to worry.” 

She laughed lightly.

“Well, now, you could have rowdy dogs and cats and I don’t think he’d care. The issue would be the safety of my rare and exotic figurines. He wants this stuff in storage. Anyway, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing down in these parts. I mean, beyond what you said in your email.” 

Now it was Arthur’s turn to laugh awkwardly. He had come to this city to cover the election and had explained all this in his email. 

“I told you when I reached out, I’m in town to cover Paredes and his vision for the country. But, hey, I know, every other guy you meet tells you he’s a writer. And I don’t fault you for wondering what’s behind the claim.”

Janice nodded. He went on, feeling hope rise modestly.

“But may I remind you that this country may be right about to elect a libertarian candidate who will send things in a totally new direction and foster digital innovation and get millions of people out of their rut. The world will be watching the election results come in, and I want to be here, on the ground, talking to voters, getting their insights and thoughts and ideas down, and reporting on events that have so much significance for the rest of the world.”

Janice nodded. The sunshine streaming through one of the tall windows between a pair of high bookshelves accentuated the lushness of her golden hair with a tinge of copper, the paleness of her supple cheeks. The light on the bare skin of her arms threw into relief every crevice, pore, and goosebump. What most captivated him was her intelligence. He thought of the writer Paul Fussell’s description of soldiers who die before you get to know them as unread books on a shelf. At this moment he felt Janice had shown him the room to plant a notion in his mind that she was a book he would never read beyond a page or two, or a country he could only just begin to explore. Arthur felt enchanted with her and with a nation he came to feel was not Argentina or Chile or Peru, but a province of his oddest dreams.  

 “This could make my career. But look, however this turns out, it’s better than editing an investment bank’s marketing copy. And I would like to stay on the premises of a cultivated, smart person if I can at all arrange it. I’ve been in this country for five days and it’s all like a dream, yet nothing else has inspired the wonder I feel just standing here in this library, talking to you.” 

He swallowed hard, knowing he had said too much, not sure whether his honesty was commendable or his innocence contemptible. 

Janice smiled again, making him realize how silly was his anxiety.

“Well, Arthur. I’m truly sorry we won’t have any time before I set out into the world to test the truth of that statement. This trip came together at the last minute, and I’m still looking for somewhere to put my more valuable things in storage before I head off. Anyway, I sense that we do have things in common, or the wording of my ad wouldn’t have spoken to you the way it did. Let me show you around a bit more.”

She led him from the room with the wall-to-wall bookshelves and ruby carpet and down the hall to a chamber with a display of wealth and artifacts that enlarged Arthur’s sense of the term conspicuous consumption. If Thorstein Veblen were here, he might have passed out at the sight of the ancient Persian rug with its images of sorcerers and elixirs and battles at the end of the universe, the ornate chandeliers, the ivory Nok statues from West Africa and the ones purporting to channel Giacometti at his weirdest, the rows of votive candles, the red banners and dragons from an age of China you might die to inhabit for a day, the dull red and ochre Japanese Nō theater mask, the bamboo curtains, the framed poster from a Dresden opera production of Boris Godunov, the canvases painted or inspired by Cézanne, Renoir, Monet, Degas. 

The young woman seriously meant to hold out the offer of this room to a stranger. He thought that even if he suppressed any doubt as to the authenticity of the items filling the space, he could not help wondering about her grip on reality. Maybe this country really was a place untouched by the traumas of the cities where Arthur had grown up, perhaps people did trust one another and hold out hope for a friendlier social environment.

Then again maybe she was crazy. But in the most liberating sense of the term, in a way that made him want to get on his knees and propose to her right now. This sublet thing is all well and good, Janice, and I’ll be a great tenant and take out the trash twice a week, but I haven’t stopped thinking of you since the moment I walked in here and I really need to continue our conversation. 

She led him through a corridor with more bookshelves and an alcove from which a dark marble bust of the nation’s first president looked out at passersby. As they reached the lobby, Arthur thought of showings in Boston years before where the host was unimpressed with him. 

But as they faced each other in the lobby, Janice spoke in a kind voice.

“You have excellent references, Arthur. I am looking to make a decision soon. Thanks very much for stopping by this afternoon.”

Just before he turned to head for the door, Arthur noticed another presence in the lobby. A young man with Che Guevara hair and John Lennon glasses stood waiting. Pegging him as one of the most radical types of intellectual, maybe a young professor or a teaching assistant, Arthur guessed he was from one of the outer suburbs of this huge city and wanted to be closer to his university. He had little doubt that this stranger could do a better job of relating to Janice, of charming her. 

Arthur was not so vain as to think he was the only applicant she could have invited to take a tour of the flat. Or to assume that he could not be one of a number of people booked for back-to-back showings. Still, for reasons he could not put into words, the sight of that handsome stranger, looking at him with equanimity as he got ready to leave, provoked him in a strange way, made him sense a transgression.

Arthur stepped off the lift in the lobby and marched out into the bright day. For all the sunshine it was cooler than the seasonal norm. Crowds filled the streets and as he made his way toward the quarter where his hotel stood, he saw banners and posters, some for the rightist candidate, some for the socialist, some for the libertarian whose campaign had generated so much buzz. 

He reached his hotel, went up to his room on the third floor, showered, dressed again, and went out to have dinner at a sidewalk bistro. After four glasses of wine, he grew content to watch strangers pass and listen to the live music from a café up the street, as his thoughts returned to the blonde in the apartment full of books and fine things. 

The next morning was bright but cooler still. Arthur went out to get a coffee and brought it back to his room. He sat at the small desk with his laptop out and light streaming through the windows with parted beige curtains. 

As he browsed the online news, headlines repeated and bled into one another. Oscar Paredes, the libertarian, believed in cryptocurrency, flipped his middle finger at those who called it a scam and a fool’s dream, and thought the nation closer to the beginning than the end of its dalliance with new asset classes. 

But Paredes had his critics, including members of the military who said he was not equal to the challenges of resurgent terrorism and rogue states. The Maoist insurgency in the hills would graduate from firing at buses on remote roads to blowing up skyscrapers unless the country elected the strongman-in-waiting, Yukio Hata, who had served in Japan’s armed forces, had studied military history all his life, knew how to uphold order.

As he ran a search for Janice’s name once again and pulled up a page full of interesting results, the sense returned that she and Arthur were alike in so many ways. She had left her job at a Manhattan literary agency specializing in self-help books and ghostwritten celebrity bios and had come down here to live a life that answered her self-schemata. Arthur had walked out on his job at a global investment bank, had foresworn dignifying himself as a journalist when writing all day about promotions, lateral hires, and office openings, had come down here to report on an election that captivated the world.

For the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon, he browsed news sites and set down observations about the scene in a leather-bound journal. Soon his thoughts would have crystallized enough to make pitches to editors. The contest between Paredes and Hata was getting fierce.

As the afternoon wore on, Arthur decided he had spent more than enough time in this room, doing what you must never do in a foreign locale. He could as easily have read online pieces about this nation’s struggles and its election in a room back in Boston. But Arthur knew that, whether or not he could bring himself to admit it, he had craved a space where he could answer his phone in privacy when he saw Janice’s name and number flash on the screen. It killed him that she had not come back yet with her decision. Maybe she never would.

He went down to the lobby and sauntered out of the hotel and up the street, then turned left on the corner and headed toward the district with a lot of cafés and wine bars and galleries and theaters. The streets were getting more crowded as people began to leave work. He ignored a few beggars who made pleas to him and one who cursed him out in Spanish. A truck rumbled by in the other direction, speakers on its roof blaring that Hata was the choice for anyone who wanted to rout the insurgency in the hills forever and ensure a peaceful future for the nation. Hata was more popular in the working-class districts.

He passed a music school, a bakery, an occult bookshop, and a gallery with a minimalist décor before pausing outside the entrance to a beer garden with knots of people standing around inside. This was not at all what he wanted. He pressed ahead, covering five more blocks, before he spied the façade of a quiet café with a dark interior.

The inside was bigger than someone on the street might think. As a server led him to a table, he fingered his phone, weighing whether to keep it on just in case Janice called or texted. Then he turned it off. His table stood in an alcove in the middle of the place and to your right as you walked in. Further down near the back entrance were more tables and a small stage where bands played in the evening. 

A waiter appeared and he ordered a glass of one of the enticing reds grown in the regions that rebels kept threatening to overrun. As he sat there sipping the wine, gazing through the façade of the café at the dimming light, he thought of Janice, the intelligence in her eyes, the wry quality of her tone that hinted at knowledge she had no need to deploy in the moment. 

Arthur sipped the sweet wine and closed his eyes so nothing could disrupt his reverie. He ignored the clacking of shoes in either direction as people came into the left the café. Soon the place would be full, they would all be eager for the flamenco band. Arthur just wanted to drink more wine while savoring his thoughts of Janice.

More people came and left as the light outside faded. The server brought another glass of the dark rich red substance. Now he heard a couple of voices on the far side of the alcove, near the back of the dimming café. 

“You can’t be serious, Gabriel.”

“Oh yes, I am. I did it, bro. Moved like lightning the moment she turned her back.”

“You’re joking, man.”

It sounded like a pair of young men enjoying a ribald story. Then Arthur listened further.

“Hard to believe how naïve this lady was,” said the first voice.

“Oh, she screened me, all right. Poor lady thinks I’m a theater director.”

The other laughed long and hard.

“A theater director! Good one.” 

“Naïve as they come, brother. Dumb Yank. Thinks we’ll all greet her with love in our hearts, like the Dirty War never happened. She comes down here and puts out an ad for a sublet and I show up like I’m seriously looking to sublet from her, when I really want to help myself to what she’s got. And I took that mask and it’s going to pay my rent for a long time.”

The two young men laughed hard. Arthur could not believe what he was hearing, the frank, jocular tones as this Gabriel described his modus operandi for filching expensive things. 

“That’s a nice mask, get you a few thousand.”

“Unless Hata wants us to host a Nō performance.”

More laughter. So that was it. The prospective tenant had stolen the Nō mask that Arthur had glimpsed and forgotten just before his own tour ended. 

 Arthur thought it was not yet six and he was drunk. He imagined that he had dozed off and woken in the midst of a fantasy that would expose him as the dumbest American of all for believing any of it. 

Suspicions drifted through his mind, ones that would never forgive him for not resolving them. He rose and moved in a roundabout way toward the restroom on the other side of the space, giving the table where the two young men sat, directly behind the alcove, a wide berth and keeping his face at such an angle that they could not see it if they tried. He doubted they noticed him at all. After a minute in the restroom, he reemerged and got a profile view of the first speaker at the table on the far side of the alcove. There sat the young man with the spectacles and the Che Guevara hair, talking to a guy with a construction worker’s build.

As he returned to his seat, he felt certain neither had noticed him. It was quite dim inside the space now and he had taken deliberate moves, one of a dozen people moving about. All he had to do was sit here and stay calm, though now the wine in his blood made him feel like a self-indulgent idiot at a college party, giddy and hot and prone to say moronic things. 

He sat there waiting nervously until the two young men passed on their way to the front entrance. Then he took bills out of his wallet, dropped them on the table, followed the two outside, keeping his distance. It was dark out now, but he made himself stay far behind them amid other pedestrians. Even so, he had little trouble following their progress as they moved up the street to the corner and crossed the street to the next block, toward what was, if you believed the tourist guides, an iffy part of town. He noted the satchel bouncing at Gabriel’s side, weighed calling the police on him. But he guessed police lacked probable cause to stop or search Gabriel, or whatever legal principle applied in this country. More importantly, Arthur thought that he must be the one who got back what Janice had lost. 

He followed them until they reached the next corner and turned to hug each other. Once again Arthur heard the stocky youth address the thief as Gabriel. They split up, the friend heading north as Gabriel continued east. Arthur looked straight ahead so that, on the off chance that Gabriel turned abruptly back, he would not see Arthur looking at him. Still he kept Gabriel in sight until the latter turned north at the next corner. Arthur hurried to the end of the block, peered around the edge of a department store at the perpendicular street, saw Gabriel cross the street and vanish into a two-story hotel.

Arthur held off, timing his entry to the lobby of this new hotel to limit the chances of encountering Gabriel in the hall or on the stairs. When he walked in, he saw the place was a bit seedy, with framed images of waterfalls and mountains and one potted plant in the lobby, but the young clerk was friendly enough. She affirmed that a room with a single bed was available on the second floor. If it seemed odd to her that Arthur had only a briefcase with him, she gave no sign.

On entering room 204, Arthur took out his laptop and wrote five hundred words about the race for the presidency and the growing desperation, as he saw it, of the rightist faction. “Interest rates are low and the local currency is in the gutter. Here are precisely the conditions that breed authoritarianism, but the people of this city have a choice. As they plan their trip to the polls next week, they look ahead to a couple of possible futures, one prosperous and democratic, the other averse to innovation and running on deep fears and fierce hatreds.” 

Having barely reviewed what he wrote, he sent it off to the editor of a news site he had freelanced for in the past. You did not have to be here, on the ground, to write what he had just written, Arthur knew. His coverage would be much stronger when he had interviewed people on the streets. It needed a bit of time. 

He asked himself whom he was kidding. It was impossible to think about any of this right now. He got up and tiptoed out into the hall. Then he made his way out of the hotel, stole back to the one where had stayed since arriving in the country, and collected his things but did not check out. After stopping to have dinner at a sidewalk café with wistful and sad music flowing from the speakers, he headed back to the seedy hotel. 

The second floor was quiet and empty. With painstaking care, he moved down the hall and stole a glance at the crack under every door. Only one of them, 212, had a light on inside. He went into his room, arranged his things, turned the light off, stood waiting at the peephole. Arthur knew he could wait all night if it came to that.  

Just after midnight, Gabriel passed by in the hall, as nonchalant as ever. Arthur heard a door open and close. With infinite care he slid out into the hall, edged down a few inches in the direction Gabriel had gone, noted the light filling the crack under the door of 217. He quickly went back into 204 and shut the door without a sound. 

In the morning, he did without caffeine, needing to see Gabriel pass by outside on his way to the stairs. Gabriel left at 8:47. Arthur hoped that Gabriel was not just going on a coffee run, that he would be gone for at least an hour. Happily, not everyone was as habituated to morning coffee as he was. Gabriel still had not returned when Arthur heard the cleaning lady’s cart roll up the hall. In deference to the sign on Arthur’s door, she skipped 204. Breathing heavily, sweating a little, he opened the door a crack to follow her progress down the hall. If Gabriel came back now, it would sink everything. 

Wearing only a towel, Arthur went into the bathroom and spread shaving cream on his face, then quickly shaved his neck and his right cheek. Gazing into the mirror, he thought he could pass for a man in mid-shave. He turned the hot water faucet as far as it would go, then slid back to the door and looked out again. The maid was not in the right place yet. He waited for a while and gazed out again. The maid had opened 217 and gone inside. In Arthur’s bathroom, steam rose from the basin and the hiss was loud. 

With an effort, he snapped off the left faucet handle. Then he dropped it next to the basin and ran out of his room and down the hall, calling for the maid as loud as he could. She came out of 217 with a startled look. He told her that the handle had come off in his hand and he could not shut off the scalding water. As she hurried up the hall, he darted into 217 and to his surprise located Gabriel’s satchel right away. It lay on a small table before a closed curtain with a floral design. He flipped it open, reached in, freed the Nō mask. 

In other circumstances he would have stood admiring the smooth ochre likeness of a face, the subtleties of its look and the elegance of its design. Now he slid it between the towel and his buttocks and went back out into the hall, thinking the hardest part would be to get back into the room and hide the mask without her seeing anything. But the maid had already left to get help for the gushing water. 

Luckily, fixing the sink was the work of a few minutes for the maintenance guy the maid had fetched. The guy and the maid even spared Arthur the questions and eye rolls he thought he was in for. With the sink fixed, they left and the maid resumed her rounds. 

Arthur could not give up this room. The other hotel was the address he had put on his sublease application. For now, Janice could not know where he was. Sitting at the little table by the window, with the blinds open just a crack, not widely enough for anyone to see him from the street, he studied the thing he had rescued for Janice. Holding it in his hands now, he could not imagine Gabriel raising the alarm, saying Hey, someone stole the mask that I stole. 

When night fell, he stole out of the hotel again and ten blocks away found an empty bench. He pulled out his cell phone and entered a number.

“Hello?”

“Janice. Arthur here. Remember me?”

The pause before she answered was faintly ominous. Could she have forgotten him already?

“I . . . I do remember you, Arthur. I’m sorry, I’m just a little distracted right now—” 

“—because Gabriel took your beautiful Nō mask.”

“What? Gabriel! How do you know this?” 

“I heard him talk about it, Janice. But don’t worry. I have the mask. You’ll have it back very soon—”

“You have the mask? Where are you? Return it to me now!” 

“I just said, you’ll have it back soon. I had to call you. You might have thought I stole the mask. Or that I’m trying to sell you something you own, like the con men in that O. Henry story. I needed to call and explain—” 

“Nothing you’ve said so far in this call makes the slightest sense. How did Gabriel get his filthy hands on my Nō mask? How in the hell did you get it back? Is this even Arthur I’m speaking to?” 

“I’m going to call you a bit later when you’re calmer, okay?”

“No—no, please, Arthur. I’m sorry. Please take your time and explain.” 

He described the incident in the café and following Gabriel up the street. Beyond that he told her nothing. If she imagined that he had confronted the thief, and bested him physically, he saw no need to correct her. 

“Now, I’ve got the mask and you will have it back quite soon. I just feel that—I don’t know, exactly—in order to appreciate the full significance of this victory, I need to understand you a bit better. I’d love to know how you came to acquire this mask, and all your books and paintings and figurines and carpets and necklaces. Does that make any sense at all?”

“Oh, you why to know why I’m intellectually curious. I don’t think I can answer that, any more than I can tell you why some people have higher sex drives than others.”

Nice choice of a metaphor, Arthur thought but did not say. 

“I’m not going to lie and say that I didn’t notice this about you. And think, wow, what an extraordinary person I’ve met.”

“And here we are in this strange city, two American fish out of water, so why I wasn’t acting warmer to you. You really like having incurred a moral debt from me. Come on, Arthur, I’m not stupid.” 

Arthur sighed.

“Well, I guess I expected a bit of gratitude after—” 

“Is Gabriel okay?” 

Now he relished the heights that he occupied after getting the mask back.

“He’s okay, Janice. I didn’t mess him up too badly.” 

He thought she would detect the irony in that last bit, but it was not clear she did.

“Arthur, I leave Wednesday. When can I get the mask back, please?” 

“Tomorrow.” 

“Call me tomorrow.” 

The next morning Arthur rose early and went out to canvass one of the working-class neighborhoods for views on the election. He took copious notes in a journal. At ten a.m. exactly he found a bench in a small park and dialed Janice’s number again. Arthur had begun to think that Janice was still figuring out how to talk to him, that he needed to present his most relatable self.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Janice.”

“You know, Arthur, I’m beginning to wonder whether you have my mask or this is some cruel ruse.” 

“Do you want me to describe it?” 

“You saw it the other day.”

“I saw it without seeing it, Janice. Your books were on my mind. And the fact you’re obviously smart and cultivated and complex and interesting. Look, I can come over this afternoon and return the mask.”

Again the pause before she answered discomfited him.

“No, don’t do that. I’m . . . I’m taking legal advice about how to handle this.”

“What? I get one of your most prized possessions back for you and you don’t even want it back—” 

“Of course I want it back, Arthur. That mask has tremendous sentimental and spiritual importance for me. Way more than you know. But I have to be a little careful about how we proceed here. I don’t want Gabriel going and telling people that I sent a mercenary out after him—”

“Gabriel is fine, Janice. I didn’t hurt him. He has no idea who took the mask from him. I was careful about that, let me tell you. I want to return the mask. I’ll bring it to your lawyer. Just give me the information—” 

“Are you stupid, Arthur? Or, a better question: do you think I’m stupid? You could be working with Gabriel. This could all be an elaborate scheme to blackmail or embarrass me.”

Arthur felt as if he had swallowed a rat.

“How on earth could I—we—profit from taking your mask and giving it back to you?”

“You might give me back a fake and sell the real one. Or wait till the fake is in my place and then go online and say I patronize a black market for forgeries. Or come out and suggest that I owe you something pretty substantial for getting the mask back. Or the one you give back might be stolen from somewhere and then I’ll really be fucked. There are so many scams and schemes in this great big rotten world, and if I’ve heard of one I’ve heard of a billion. So please be patient here.”

They broke off the chat in mutual exasperation. Arthur went back to the seedy hotel and sat in his room reading notes from his journal, typing on his laptop. He sent off three articles featuring extensive comments from people on the street with strong opinions about the election, most siding with the libertarian candidate, a few with the strongman. 

“Esmeralda Flores, a sixty-nine-year-old grandmother, said Paredes will legalize and promote the adoption of new asset classes offering her family a way out of poverty in this faltering economy.” 

“The innovator Paredes brings a youthful charm and Kennedy-esque luster to the country’s hidebound political scene, said Diego Martinez, a forty-year-old mechanic.” 

“Cryptocurrency and spot ETFs are stepping stones to real engagement with the global economy as financial institutions pull back from China and look for new markets for their cutting-edge products, said Sandra Escobar, a university student.” 

After sending off the last article, he closed the laptop and covered his face with his hands. He was here as that venerable thing, a foreign correspondent. Most newspapers and magazines did not have boots on the ground. This could make his career. But never could he have imagined the frustrations that his act of heroism had brought on. The gulf between him and Janice was as wide as ever. 

In the evening, he found another bench and dialed her number. He feared she would hang up on hearing his voice, but her tone was civil.

“Janice, I really have tried to do the right thing here. You can have this mask appraised. It’s not a fake and I’m not going to blackmail you. And, you know, I don’t fault you for imagining an elaborate scheme. The country is going through turbulence and it affects the way people think.”

“Thank you, Arthur. I regret some of what I said earlier. And you’re quite right, maybe the election is affecting my mood. The choice really is stark and riots are not impossible after election night. People want order. They don’t know what Yukio Hata really represents. I know.”

This was not the first thing Arthur expected to hear.

“I don’t understand. What do you know?”

“I’ve met the candidate, Arthur. I was at a gallery opening drinking wine and he came right up and started talking to me. He said he could relate to my ‘fish-out-of-water’ status because he’s from Japan and he’s experienced some pretty ugly racism here.” 

“I don’t doubt it.”

“And I tried to convince him that I have a serious interest in Japan and its culture, I collect things, but he was just like, yeah, sure, whatever.” 

“But it’s true.”

“Obviously, but he thought I was patronizing him. Yet he persisted, he got my number from someone and called me a number of times until I found a polite way to ask him to stop. I didn’t like how he acted, his assumption that I would welcome him into my life, but I think I really offended him.” 

“You are perceptive. About the mask. I really am acting in good faith here and would love just to return it, no questions asked.”  

“I know, Arthur. You’re a kind and curious man. I need to speak to my lawyer again, but we’ll arrange it. Please understand it may need to happen after the election, things are just so crazy.”

He guessed that was not so bad. The election was the next day. Still, it rankled a bit. He felt she was stringing him along and setting up an anticlimax, where the lawyer would accept the mask from him, hand him a bit of money for his troubles, and say goodbye. 

The sour mood did not hurt his productivity. Yukio Hata was ruthless, there were rumors about his unsavory connections, including mobsters, he was the last person this nation needed as its leader, and Arthur wanted him to go down in flames. He wrote four more stories and pressed send each time with satisfaction. The world would know what to think of the strongman-in-waiting who had moved in on Janice and belittled her knowledge of Japan. This Hata was a thug, a pompous buffoon with no real grasp of economics, Arthur’s articles made clear. 

Toward midnight he drifted off quickly in spite of horns honking and people chanting slogans in favor of one or the other candidate. In the dream that came now he wandered on a vast field with miles of swaying grass and snow-capped mountains in the far distance, a scene like those where he imagined battles in the Falklands war to have played out. The winds whipped his hair and grew so strong he thought he might fall over, but he pressed on, scanning the desolation for smoke or dancing cloth or any other sign of another person. 

After wandering for what felt like many miles, he paused at the sight of a narrow ditch scoring the expanse of grass. It ran perpendicular to his route and could almost have passed for a crude path. He thought any sensible person would follow it, because if you pursued it far enough you would end up somewhere, but as he looked in both directions a sense rose, a queasy feeling that anticipated the corrupt choice he was on the verge of making, and he looked in the direction opposite the distant peaks, at the fringes of field on both sides of the ditch, and something told him if he dared go that way all existence would recoil. As he pressed on the same way and the monotony of swaying grass did not yield, he began to count his paces. Somewhere after ten thousand he lost track, worn out, desperate. Arthur could not know whether his judgment was right or wrong, whether it was self-interest or a vestigial morality that had driven him on this way. He was aware only of a face, the size of a small moon, filling the vastness in front of him, daring him to continue. Or rather it was the outlines of a face, without features he could describe and all the more terrifying for that.

He woke with a start. The horns were louder as light streamed through the gap in the blinds. It was a day like no other in the nation’s history, everyone was on the way to the polls. Before he headed out, he thought of calling Janice, but that would happen after the election was over, that was how they had left it, and she already had concerns about him. Arthur was so eager to get out onto the street that he almost forgot the protocols for avoiding Gabriel. He did not even know that Gabriel still stayed here. 

Arthur roamed all over, visiting the voting stations, talking to strangers in cafés and on the street, getting heaps of comments, pulling out his laptop at odd moments to file live updates. He managed to turn out four full-length articles which appeared on various websites. Finally, at the end of one of the most productive days of his career, he headed back to the hotel to watch the returns come in and knock out a couple more stories. By ten o’clock Paredes was the clear winner, with sixty-eight percent of votes cast. 

In the morning his work was far from done, what with the victory parade starting just after lunch, but there was one person in the world he wished to speak to right now. After three rings Janice answered.

“Janice! Isn’t this the best news you’ve ever had in your life?”

“Oh, Arthur. Is there anything you won’t do for my attention?”

“Ah, right, that’s it. Like my elaborate plan to steal your mask and give it back to you. Speaking of which—” 

To his utter dismay, Janice said she could not stay on the phone and read out the address of her lawyer’s office. She hung up. Arthur felt so mad he feared he might run out into the street and attack someone. Here was what his decency had got him.

The parade started at the base of the Avenue of Martyrs and would end a mile away at the biggest park in a city full of them. Arthur found a spot on a block not too far from the starting point. People cheered and pushed against the police barriers and doffed their hats as the vehicles began to glide past at a leisurely pace. The first was a converted van with huge speakers mounted on top, blaring the election results. Then came an open car with several campaign officials in it, though not Parades himself. Then a pickup with a screen mounted in its bed on which scenes from campaign headquarters the night before played. Some of the people in the second car also appeared on that screen, opening champagne bottles, hugging, giving impromptu speeches. Next there came another truck with a really long bed on which a mariachi band played with vigor. The vehicle that followed was a buggy-driven open carriage where two people sat, one them a man in a conquistador outfit sipping champagne, the other a woman in a gorgeous white dress and a Nō mask.

Arthur rubbed his eyes and stared hard at the woman in the carriage. His first thought was that all the strain and anxiety of recent days had made him hallucinate. The carriage advanced up the street and he almost lost sight. Then he began to make associations and thought, Janice is mocking me. Showing me that I went to so much trouble for nothing at all and my life means nothing. That I was a fool for thinking my possession of the mask gave me some kind of leverage, more foolish still for thinking I could be of interest to her. I do not exist.

It had to be her. It must be. 

He climbed over the barrier and ran toward the carriage. People shouted and screamed though some of the cries were jocular, as if they took him for a good-natured fan. He panted and ran faster and nearly fell. In his peripheral vision more strangers yelled and pointed and he half expected a bullet.

Then he was at the side of the carriage. The masked face did not turn. Arthur reached in and ripped it off with all his force, revealing the visage of a startled young local woman. Arthur dropped it, turned, and ran as fast as he could toward the base of the avenue. 

Screams followed him and he heard footsteps pounding, but to his amazement no one caught up with him. He turned and ran north and got onto a parallel street that would take him almost to the seedy hotel. People must have thought he was crazy but so many were exuberant in the city today, nothing was normal. At first it seemed incredible that no crowds pursued him, but then maybe in the eyes of these people he was just another drunk idiot. You couldn’t stop them all, so why try. He thought of the woman in the carriage. People in this country feared Yukio Hata and sending her out in that mask was a small olive branch to the loser who still commanded vast influence in the police and military.

Especially the police.

Panting, sweating, on the verge of falling down, he slowed his pace as he reached the hotel. No one appeared to notice him as he passed through the lobby and went up to the second floor. He went into 204, closed the blinds all the way, then picked up his laptop and slammed it on the desk as hard as he could. 

As he sat with his face in his hands, weeping and cursing himself, his cell phone rang. He reached for it warily.

“Hello?” 

“Arthur? It’s Janice, how are you? I wanted to let you know that I’ve made a decision.”

Now he heard voices outside, and boots on pavement, and realized he had been wrong. People had followed his progress from the Avenue of Martyrs. 

“Okay, then. Tell me.”

“I’m going to sublet the place to someone else, but as a consolation prize, I think I’ll let you keep the Nō mask.”

“Hah. That’s rich, Janice. Do you know—” 

“Honestly, Arthur. I avoided saying this, but you’ve missed too many clues. You assumed that Yukio Hata was wrong about my knowledge of Japan because I owned the mask. You never guessed that he might have given it to me after the gallery opening, as a small step toward curing my cultural ignorance.”

Boots thundered on the steps. Within seconds they would be at the door.

“How very kind of him.”

Janice laughed. That light, breezy sound. 

“No, Arthur, dear. Kind is not the word. Hata thinks of himself as a deity. When that man gives me a mask, he means it as a profound, spiritual gesture binding us together forever. Hata has evil connections, let me tell you. The only way I could ever extricate myself without ending up on a death list was to make him think someone stole the mask. Which should not be hard to believe when the police find you with it. So you’d be on a certain list even if you had not helped Hata lose. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be you just now.”

Arthur felt as if his lungs were on fire and he could barely see. Hard knocks came at the door.

“Gabriel. He had the fucking mask. He took it from your place.”

“My exquisite lover Gabriel and I have followed your every move since we met, Arthur, dear. He was going to plant the mask on you, but you made his so life much easier. And mine.” 

Janice hung up. The police burst in just as Arthur was trying to flush the mask down the toilet.
 

Michael Washburn is a Brooklyn-based writer and journalist and the author of five short story collections. His short story "Confessions of a Spook" won Causeway Lit's 2018 fiction contest.