Terraplane (26 page)

"His deliveries come in this way," she said, cutting the engine as
Cedric approached. I noted that sometime during the day Doc had
put a new sideview on his driver's door. "You got 'em?" she asked,
sticking her head out the window.

"Oh, Wanda, I'm so sorry," he said. "Do you know the ones who
did it-"

"I told you they were taken care of," she said. "I know you're
sorry, Cedric. There's just not enough time to think about it yet.
Where you got 'em and how much you want for 'em?"

"Here's one," he said, drawing from behind his back a gleaming
tag, New York World's Fair 1939 plain upon its face.

"Where's the other?" she asked. We stepped from the car, all but
Oktobriana. Cedric eyed Jake but gave him little heed. "What's the
price? We ain't got all night, Cedric-"

"The other one's in my office over there," he said, handing her
the one carried, pointing with single finger towards the side rear,
barely visible in the dark beyond the lampglow.

"So how much?"

"Nothing," he said. "I just need Valentino here to come with me
to help get it. That's all."

Wanda looked at me; looked at Cedric. The fee was obvious; that
we needed both plates was of unavoidable import. She moved as if
to mash him.

"You little son of a-"

"Wanda," I said; she settled. "Jake, replace the first plate.
Where's the other, Cedric?"

"You're not going to-"

"There's no choice, Wanda," I said. "Is there?"

"Oughta club him and just take it-"

"There's been enough of that for one night," I said. "Come on,
Cedric. You say it's over here? Every moment counts-"

"I know," he said. "It's over here. I'm scared of the dark." He
almost ran to his office; I followed, hearing no more comment
from Wanda, expecting none from Jake. We entered a closet-sized
room just off the garage where, possibly, deliveries might be
checked against orders. In the gloom I saw but shadows even after
eyes adjusted, but felt all: unhitching, he drew my trousers down
to kneelevel as he dropped down upon his own, as if positioning to
pray. Standing inspection-still, eyes shut so as not to break privacy,
I discerned but few true differences: the grip behind was harder, the
lips more gladly enveloped, his nails were longer and sharper than
Katherine's. Yet, the distinction evidenced in deeper form; in heart
I felt nothing, and so nothing showed plain. Cedric seemed not to
mind; continued until he finished, or grew bored, or realized his
efforts brought naught.

"Thank you, Cedric," I said, taking the other plate once I'd
rezipped.

"Good luck," he said, "soldier boy." Stepping away quickly, as
did I, we left without further word. Reentering the garage proper I
handed the second plate to Jake, who took it without remark, as I
knew he would. The garage door creaked as it rose again, permitting us escape with but mannerly protest; we slid into darkness.

WANDA RACED US THROUGI I THE STREETS, BLIND TO ALL BUT THE
road ahead, obeying all signals, marking all moves, running without word. We left Harlem, rolling into the park at 110th, creeping
over its crumbling roadway, past fields of unmown grass, straggling
brush and unpruned forest. Scattered across a moonlit slope,
meadowed rather than treed, I saw what at first evidenced as a host
of boulders, dropped as if glacier-left; realized upon second look
that the rocks were but sleepers, taking rest as they could on their
city on a hill.

"Where do we aim?" Jake asked, holding on to Oktobriana still,
his shake not yet settled. Full-frame shivers rattled her own body at
five-minute intervals; even in darkness, from front-seat vantage, I
saw her trembles, and wondered whether the effect came from
evening's events, or from her disease. Wanda drove as if struck deaf
and dumb; her hands' cords knotted as she gripped them more
tightly upon the wheel. At the moment it seemed she acted only
sequentially, not concurrently; she drove, and did no other.

"None trail," said Jake, neckcraning to gain rear-window vista.
"None obvious, I should say. How undercover works here remains
unknown."

"Shoulders, Jake," said Oktobriana. "So sore and tender. Rub
them, please. "

"Wanda-" I began to say; was hushed by her shout.

"You couldn't just walk in the front door like normal people,"
she said, all emotion suddenly loosed. "You done that, we might
have been able to get out of it some other way. We hadn't told 'em a
damn thing. They were just asking those damn stupid questions till
they caught you all and then they knew something was up. Don't
even know why you couldn't have just waited till they left."

"We were ignorant of intent or design," I said, attempting
defense. "Or action as it went in our absence."

"Ignorant's right," she said. "Done it like anybody else, nobody
would've got hurt. Act like civilized human beings-"

"Doc would be with us now had we knocked?" I asked.

Wanda, sinking, clutched for any patch of reason; found none.
"Her running around this morning like she was just asking for it-"

"She wasn't this evening!" I shouted, estimating Jake's usual
objections to oral vehemence might pass in this instance; for a
moment I thought he hadn't even heard. "Nor this morning, for
that matter-"

"Such statements are unfair," said Jake, very quietly. "Action
such as encountered demands one reaction. They acted. I reacted.
That's all."

"Did you have to go after 'em like you did?" she asked, her eyes
remaining on the curving road ahead; midtown's tower lights
showed through trees' canopy. "Hogs stand a better chance in the
slaughterhouse."

"Hogs deserve better," Jake said. "It was my sole implement at
hand. I'd have preferred a more minimal touch but hadn't
choice-"

"What kinda world is it you live in?" she asked, her face drawn as
if to rein in tears. "Talk about people bein' sawed up like you was
making a grocery list. Acting like someone's always out to get you,
so you got to get them first. I mean I can understand a mood like
that but you all take it so damn far. Norman was the same damn
way. No wonder you all got along so good. He was always looking
over his shoulder, seeing who was closing in. Crazy man-"

"Not so crazy," Jake said. "Someone closed in."

"He'd be here now if you all hadn't come here!" she snapped. "We'd be driving on out for the weekend. Or we'd be home. But we
wouldn't be where we are. " After a long moment, she settled,
rubbing her eyes.

"We'd not expected such a detour," I said. Nostalgia's wave
suddenly washed over me, nostalgia for a home that seemed evermore distant, never again seen true; seen only in this off-register
reproduction.

"Russki krai," Oktobriana said, unexpectedly slipping into
mother tongue. "Otchi dom." Russian soil, native home; nostalgia. "Smert. All smert. "

"Let's make the best of it," she said, "since we don't have much
choice."

"None," I corrected. We emerged from the park at Columbus
Circle, seeing no ungainly tower, no wall dividing midtown from
the Upper West; where, on the south curve, stood our day's concrete Lollipop House, showed here what appeared as a several-story
Victorian mansion. A sign atop its mansard advertised chewing
gum of unknown make. Central Park South's thirty-story wall
defended midtown from the jungle here as in our time; here only
half the wall seemed whole. Several buildings showed only as
framework against the night sky, left unfinished, I supposed, when
the money ran out. Rounding the circle into Broadway, past bright
wide windows holding the latest model Hupmobiles, Pontiacs and
Studebakers, we drifted by a Terraplane dealership, seeing our
transport in newborn form. Many slept sidewalked, below the
shining displays.

"Doc was wonderful kind man," said Oktobriana. "Much goodness in him. Great knowledge of humanity. Knowledge given.
Heaven above. In heaven above. If soul survives. Likely so. Floating forever between worlds. Heaven is in fence. Also hell."

"What fence?" Wanda asked, uncomprehending. Remembering
the metaphor, I could leap along with her logic, and so followed.
That if such were literal it seemed so good a place for him to be as
any. Recalling Doe's words, I realized that she had entered a stage
where her thoughts passed more quickly than she could give them
accurate word in logical sequence. As Oktobriana became less
conversationalist than yurodiva-an untranslatable, roughly meaning a seeming fool who speaks of saintly matters, always
true-her endless commentary became first annoying, then
oppressive, and then at last, as with all, we grew used to it. She
spoke of all seen as we passed into Times Square, in our time the
home of all the misbegotten and wild; here it showed as what I'd
heard it had been in my parents' childhood, a rainbow-lit stage
upon which uncounted millions performed. Displays twicesized
over any of ours shilled in neon ribbon for Four Roses, Seagram's,
Chevrolet. One to our rear insisted in tall yellow letters that a bag
of Planter's peanuts a day would give us more pep; how pep was
applied, I couldn't say. On far left a mouthpuckered head several
meters high puffed smoke rings, hawking Camels. A trapezoidal
building, vaguely Italianate in look, stood at the Y formed by
Broadway and Seventh's intersection; around its facade, just above
ground floor, a letterscroll ran, flashing news and weather through
the blink of a thousand small bulbs. At Forty-fourth and Broadway
men singlefiled blockround like Russian shoppers; here they waited
to receive, one to each, a breadloaf passed out from a parked
Salvation Army truck.

"Sunday papers are out now," said Wanda, edging into the far
right lane, careful not to bump any of a multitude of taxis, cars and
streetcars. Seeing a sign, I wondered what an Automat was; there
was no driveway leading in. "I'll stop and pick 'em up. You all can
see what's going on in the world."

"News of our action'll show when?" I asked. "By dawn?"

"If it'd just been the cops and Norman no paper but the Age
would've covered it," she said. "Since you all got two G-men as
well it'll be front page on ever' paper in the country by tomorrow
night and Monday. Not till then, though."

After curbsiding the car near Forty-second, by one of the larger
newsstands seen, she got out.

"I'm burning hot," Oktobriana said; her metabolism was
increasing everfaster, and even as she sat outwardly still her interior
consumed itself with terrifying speed. "Climate seems so tropical
here all the time. Unlike Russia where we have no jungles. Here we
have forest of light." She murmured some uncatchable phrase as
she stared at the lightscroll, just to our left. CLOUDY, RAIN TOMOR ROW, I read. UNEMPLOYMENT RATE NEXT YEAR TO lll'I' FIFI'Y
PERCENT; SAYS LONG.

"Pardon?"

"Number of times bulbs will light in hour," she said, explaining
her lost remark. Several times she attempted to toss back her hangs
from her face; failed, finally handswept them away. "So tired and
aching. Like stretched on rack. Like running without cease for
weeks. Four thousand five hundred eighty-nine kilometers. Seeming tendonitis in joints. Artoscopic treatment. Mentally I feel
twice the normal person," she said. "What is wrong with me?"

This was no place to tell; growing anxious, I looked for Wanda.
She still stood at the stand, waiting on line. Oktobriana's thoughts
passed and faded at everincreasing rate.

"With appropriate machinery all lights could run with single
machine's touch," she said; Jake kept an arm around her to keep her
from bouncing off the seat. "Tesla could do such. Must have vast
plan. Great business support must help him here. Temperament
more suited to commerce. No fear of round surface. `New YorkNew York,' " she started singing, badly. " `Want to wake up in city
full of creeps.' " Her laugh came as a hyperventilating bray. "Parody version American defector astrophysicist taught me one time.
Before leaving country he moved to Vermont. Hated city. Moved
where Solzhenitsyn lived behind chicken wire. Like fence. Not
like Zblstoy. Not like fence of gulag. Not-"

Through any carwindow Wanda heaved in her buy, lapping me
full with multisectioned Sunday rags: the Times, the News, the
Herald-Tribune and Mail, the Mirror. Info of any unrelated nature
wasn't my desire just then; I'd long reached overload. Before
flooring them between my feet I noted the News's head: WI►ERE IS
S'IALIN? In regards to what or whom? I wondered; his attitude
would be surely similar towards all. The pact with Hitler wouldn't
be penned until August, unless it had been already signed, or
unless it wasn't going to he signed. To see the future's possibilities
without being able to guess which would eventually come to
actuality was much more troubling than having no idea what the
next day might hold; it was like watching a car speed towards crash,
knowing one of four within would be killed, but not which one.

"We're going to go out in the country," said Wanda. "Get things
sorted out."