Dangerous Ideas (excerpt)

Chapman, the spy, the killer, pretended to listen to a lecture on something or other. He had hoped on getting to grips with this lecture, the words, their meanings, its gist, but trying to do so left him struggling to stay awake. Of all the assignments he could have been given, none would have been more disappointing than this.

   The man delivering the lecture was the focus of Chapman’s assignment. A man by the name of Bryan Dyer. A philosophy professor who he assumed must have achieved his reputed eminence through his writings and not his public speaking performances. For Dyer spoke through a constant patter of half coughs and throat clearings, each syllable arhythmically tripping out of his mouth to stumble against awaiting ears rather than into them. His sentences seemed unending, and were loaded with jargonized abstractions Chapman had learnt about way back in his college days but never understood. Whatever the subject of the talk was would be tedious enough, he assumed, but this professor’s delivery took it to a whole new level of mind-numbing stupor.

   Chapman sat at the back of the room in the middle of the last row of loosely arranged chairs. His gaze tried to stay fixed upon the person of Dyer but it soon began to drift around the prof’s personal space, and regaining focus on his physically delineated presence required no small effort. Time would jump, and the spy found himself staring into the swirling bald spot on the top of the head of the man sitting in front of him. Looking to the left of this head he noticed the man seated next to the first man had the exact same swirling bald spot, and both wore crew-cuts of equally greying dark hair, and both were slumped down into their chairs, leaving their bald spots visibly arrayed for the man sitting behind them to compare. He looked at one, then the other, and then back again, and so on, trying to find any difference between the swirls of their bald spots, however minute. None could be found. Not a hair out of tandem. Anyway, as entertaining as this was, relative to other concerns, he remembered he had a job to do and so forced his eyes up to look beyond them to look at the man behind the podium.

   The room was plain. There was nothing on the walls save some sprinklings of grime. The lights overhead buzzed in a cheap monotone and painted everything in the room a urinary tinge. The stale air left your mouth dry and sour, and it almost chafed as you breathed. There were no empty seats. The audience numbered fifty, and everyone but the spy seemed able to pay attention. They kept still, they didn’t fidget, and none whispered amongst themselves, or if they did it wasn’t noticeable either to Chapman, who was too involved in his own fight against sleep, or to Dyer, who was too busy looking at his notes in order to read aloud from them to ever make eye contact with anyone. There were only two exits, one behind the speaker, and one double door to the left of the audience.

   He still couldn’t listen to the words. However hard he thought he tried wasn’t working. It was as if it wasn’t a question of will at all. Trying to follow his words was like trying to look directly at a tiny string-like stand in his own eye that floats across his field of vision. Chapman now tried to look at a string-like strand in his eye, seeing if he could get it to rest in the centre of his vision. It came close, but began to sink as soon as he made his eyes as still as possible, and when the eyes moved slightly, it jumped out to his peripheral.

   All of a sudden, Dyer finished speaking, and for the first time looked up to acknowledge his audience. Applause broke out, somewhere between polite and rapturous, and gave Chapman a start. He looked around to see everyone clapping and joined in, his own clapping adding nothing to the general noise. Dyer didn’t so much smile as raise his lips at the corners and walked out of the room, cueing people to stop clapping and start getting up and getting out of here. Feeling a surge of relief the spy threaded through the leaving throng. As he negotiated around clusters of people he heard snippets of their summations to each other.

   “I wish he expanded more on his previous work. It would have grounded the whole thing more, yes?”

   He had to stop at the double door as too many people were packing through at once.

   “I’m not really sure what to make of it.”

   He wished they would try to make something of it somewhere else and get out of his way, pronto.

   “After that you gotta be hungry, eh?”

   He pushed past an obstinately slow older couple without bothering to apologize, even by gesture, and stepped out into lobby as if he had stepped into the fresh outside air of a cool summer night. He made his way towards the bar. He had time. This assignment had turned into another nothing, so no real follow-up was needed. Any potentially dangerous ideas this Dyer had were so wrapped up in obfuscation and terrible rhetoric that it couldn’t possibly be anything but harmless. He winced at the thought of trying to report on the lecture itself, of telling his superiors Dyer’s ideas whilst trying to seem like he knew what Dyer was talking about. He doubted if Dyer knew what Dyer was talking about. Maybe he could get away with reporting that. Dyer is an obscurantist and nothing more. His superiors hadn’t given him any information on him, so he probably didn’t matter. Just someone they felt he had to check out, for whatever reason. Even so, Chapman knew he’d have to read up on Dyer’s philosophical publications, if only to fill in some gaps and not look like he’d done nothing. Hence, he needed a drink. Hence, the bar.

   The lights here were silent and illumined everything in soft cushy tones. It was all sleek brown furnishings and soft red fabrics. Achingly slow jazz muzak played from an indiscernible source as couples sat across from each other, talking and whispering and laughing. He looked over to the bar. One stool was available. Next to this open spot sat a girl, facing the bar but with her body turned to the side so that the upper knee of her crossed legs pointed at the available seat. It’s the kind of thing you could see as an invitation. He panned his eyes over her as he moved towards the chair. Her stark black hair stopped straight at the shoulders and her off-white dress fitted nicely around her body, seeming to suit her at this twist of position, as it would any position. Her knees withdrew a little inward as he squeezed past and seated himself down. Her eyes were closed. Seeing her face in profile meant that only one closed eye was visible, but the dark creaseless eyelid indicated that both were closed. She must have felt him come closer, he fancies, to draw in her legs like that when he made no sound to announce himself. Despite her awkward turn of body she seemed so serene. He then looked around for the barman.

   She opened her eyes and turned to him, smiling as he looked back at her.