The Invention of Everything Else (24 page)

"How," he wants to know again, "will they know the way home?" Of course.

Louisa shakes her head. She'd meant to ask Mr. Tesla but forgot. She looks down at the basket of birds in his lap. She can't bear to say that she still doesn't know, so instead she tells him what she does know. "They borrow books they will not buy. They have no ethics or religions. I wish that some kind Burbankian guy. Would cross my books with homing pigeons."

"What's that?" Arthur asks.

"It was on a bookplate. My mother's copy of
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
"

Arthur nods at Louisa. "I like it," he says. "What's Burbankian?"

"Luther Burbank. He was a horticulturist who experimented by mixing different plants together. He made the nectarine, I think."

"Aha," Arthur says and leans back, though keeping his eyes trained on Louisa. "The nectarine," he says slowly, and something about that word makes Louisa flush with blood. They ride on in silence. The train bumping beneath them. Their heads tending in toward each other.
Nectarine. Nectarine. Nectarine
and Arthur whispers, "Tell me about the man at the hotel."

"Mr. Tesla?" she asks.

"Yes," he says, whispering as if this were all a big secret.

"You've been listening to Azor too much." Arthur has been going out to Rockaway at night, spending his evenings there. "He's not from the future, if that's what you were wondering. You shouldn't believe a fraction of what Azor says."

"How do you know Mr. Tesla is not from the future?"

"He's Serbian."

"The two are not mutually exclusive."

"No, but Arthur, really." Louisa shakes her head.

"Well, why would he tell you?"

"He's told me many things."

"What?"

"All manner of things, about his life, people he once knew, his inventions."

"Hmm," he says.

"That's more than you tell me about your life, Arthur. Maybe you're from the future."

"I wish" Arthur is quiet a moment before asking, "What do you want to know about my life?"

Louisa bites her lip. What does she want to know? She looks down at his fingers—he could easily hold two of her hands in his—and his fingers strike her as a mystery, a whole universe. He is holding on to her birds so gently. Even better than knowing is not knowing, is
wanting
to know everything and having to find out very, very slowly, like pulling a fishing line to the surface before you know what's on the hook. A tire. A treasure chest.

He's waiting for her to ask, his mouth open a crack. Finally Louisa thinks of something she wants to know. She'd like to know what's inside his dark mouth. She blindly fumbles, lopsided in every regard. She leans into him through the thickness of so many unknowns. Caraway. His glasses smash into her face. Her mouth on his. Louisa kisses Arthur for the very first time.

"Tickets, please." Their kiss is interrupted by a conductor anxious to collect their fare. Arthur, without looking away from Louisa, reaches into his breast pocket, producing the tickets. Louisa leans back into the seat, tasting the kiss.

The conductor wears a watch fob that reads
THE LONG ISLAND RAILROAD
—
THE ROUTE OF THE DASHING COMMUTER!
It bops Louisa in the head. She looks up, sees the conductor's hairy nostrils. The train is nearly empty. The sun is rising ahead of them. While the conductor is punching their receipt, he stops for a moment to ask Arthur, "What's in the basket, son?"

"Homers."

"Homers?" the conductor says. "When I was young I kept homers too. I was a member of the North Shore Excelsior Wings and the Fantastic Flying Stripes. We could never decide on a name."

The conductor lifts one leg up onto an armrest and leans forward for a talk. Arthur sighs very loudly, regretfully. The conductor seems not to notice.

"I remember one particular day—we were going for the record until, in the very last stretch of the race, we hadn't thought things out too well or listened to a weather report—in fact, I see our folly now." The conductor drones on and on, detailing the coloration of each bird in the race, its particular strengths and weaknesses, which ones had suffered from infectious catarrh, which ones had gotten worms. Arthur yawns loudly a number of times. He begins to stare out the window, ignoring the man altogether. The conductor is undeterred. "A lightning storm caught up with our birds," he continues. "It blew them all hell west and crazy," he says and pats the top of the basket. "The birds' signals got crossed. They were blown way off course. We lost some for good, some got broken and battered. One group turned up at the coop of a surprised birder all the way in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. I have no doubt that, oh—
shoreham station. stop is shoreham,
" the conductor yells.

"Whoop!" Louisa jumps to her feet. "Arthur, this is our stop," she says, standing and shooing the chatty conductor out of their way.

"But you bought tickets through to Wading River," the conductor says.

"I've changed my mind. This is our stop."

"Excuse me," Arthur says, and he and Louisa make a dash for the door and jump down to the platform, alone again, Arthur, Louisa, and the birds.

It is a beautiful depot, full of wicker furniture, quiet. The village of Shoreham seems to still be asleep. It is not really a town but rather a collection of small, twisty roads, a few farms, and lots of trees, pines and hardwoods. Arthur hoists the birds up onto his shoulder so he can take Louisa's hand as they stroll away from the station, uncertain where they are going but happy to be walking in the sea air. The day is cold and very clear. The smell of the pine trees is nearly the exact opposite of the smell of Manhattan.

It is a beautiful walk through what seems like fairyland. Tall trees, tight, twisted roads, dark moss, and wildflowers. Besides one farm truck that rolls past them, they have the entire village to themselves. Arthur says very little.

Shoreham's sky is tremendous, ripples of white clouds against the pale blue. The birds are anxious to be set free. They stir under the cloth. Perhaps they can smell the ocean. "All right. Soon enough," she tells them, and she and Arthur walk a bit farther. "I want to find just the right place." They walk on until there, suddenly in front of them, is a small, deserted building. Louisa peers in through the chainlink fence that surrounds it, through the twists of ivy. The building's bricks have been rounded by erosion, but it is easy to detect a former grandness. There's a small cupola, a peak where someone once took the trouble to make something beautiful. The dome is constructed of lacy wrought iron and supports a weathervane. It seems the loneliest place in the world for something so lovely.
NO TRESPASSING
by order of the Shoreham Sheriff's Dept. The sign is faded, and beside it there is a large pile of rotting boards as if something once great had been torn down, time on top of time. The birds flutter. "This is the place," Louisa says decisively.

She takes the basket from Arthur and sets it down on the road. Removing the chamois, she unlocks the cage and checks her watch, noting the hour and minute. "All right, dears. All right." She opens the door and watches as the pigeons fly straight up into the sky, taking off to the west. Louisa and Arthur stand before the abandoned building, craning their necks up as the birds fly off. Their wings beat awkwardly at first, as if they're swimming for some surface, until they get their bearings. As four dark spots in the bright air, the homers set off for Fifty-third Street, flying directly over the small ruined brick building.

Louisa follows the birds with her eyes, watching for as long as she can. Their wings are pounding, and with her head tipped back she loses herself. Something is happening to her. The wind off the ocean beats on her chest and she feels her back sprouting wings.

"Do you ever have the feeling that you can fly?" she asks Arthur. "I mean, without a stolen plane."

He too has been staring up at the disappearing birds. Slowly he lowers his chin so that he is looking at her. He is smiling a very crooked, knowing smile. "Yes," he says.

"Are you getting it right now?" she asks.

And again he smiles slowly. He doesn't answer.

The road down to the water is straight, a runway. Arthur takes Louisa's hand, and after hiding the wicker cage in the low shrubs, the two begin to run down toward the shore. They begin to sprint with every ounce they have. Louisa is laughing. Arthur is urging her to run faster and faster. They make straight for the shore. Their winter coats fly out behind them like tail feathers. The road becomes sandier as they near the water. The wind urges them on. She can see the beautiful sea ahead and cannot wait to soar above it, or perhaps even, as her skills improve, dip down close to the water, skimming just above the waves. She huffs on, as hard as she can. The road ends up ahead. Louisa sees a low wire fence, a rail to guard against misled vehicles plummeting of the dunes and into the sea below. They build up even more speed, their legs paddling. Releasing almost all they have in one courageous leap, they clear the fence, landing in the sea grass for two tremendous bounds before something unbelievable happens. The ground drops and Arthur and Louisa flap their wings.

Stopping here for one moment: Arthur and Louisa are flying, suspended in the ether, nothing but air surrounding them. And perhaps time does move in circles rather than lines. For one fraction of a second they are progress soaring above the world, brief and beautiful, a fraction of a second before progress crashes back down to Earth.

The cliff above the shore is in no way negligible, leaving Arthur and Louisa with approximately twenty feet of air beneath their pedaling, flailing arms and legs.

Arthur lands first, smashing his side into the damp sand. Louisa lands next on her back where the solid state of the beach ungenerously meets the flux of her lungs and pounds every last bit of air from her body. She gasps. Nothing happens. The two lie still, looking up at the sky from where they just fell. With the wind knocked out of her, Louisa doesn't yet detect the pain in her left leg. She gasps a second time and the air rushes in.

"Arthur?" she finally says, coughing some, not moving.

"Louisa?"

"Are you OK?"

"I can't tell yet," he says. "Are you?"

"I think I'll be all right," she says and the two of them lie quietly, gathering their breath.

"Ow. That hurt," she says.

"Ow," he echoes. "Oh," he says. On their backs in the sand, they rub the spots where they landed the hardest. "Ow," he repeats. "That really hurt."

"We're going to be bruised" Louisa says. She starts to move her hands and feet slowly, making sure everything is still attached and functioning.

"I guess it didn't work" he finally says.

"I guess not."

Arthur turns toward her. Her leg hurts and her lungs still feel shaky. She watches the sky. He watches her.

"That was a good try, though," he says. "Next time, maybe." He reaches out his arm to brush some sand off Louisa's face and hair. He fingers the edge of her ear and leans in to kiss her with an exhale that is warm and rushed. His head replaces the sky in her view and Louisa bends into the kiss, moving through Arthur, soaring in his breath, his brain. A bird again.

You know about transmigration of souls; do you know about transposition of epochs—and bodies?

—Mark Twain

Dear Dr. Nikola Tesla:

Enclosed please find a rough draft—the early stirrings of a thesis I am hoping you, in your great wisdom, will validate. Dear Doctor, help us to break free of the technological and psychological barriers we've built in our minds.

Yours in the struggle,
Margaret Storm

A curious name. Her even more curious enclosure begins:

Nikola Tesla is not an Earth man. The space people have stated that a male child was born on board a space ship which was on a flight from Venus to the Earth in July, 1856. The little boy was called Nikola.

Venus, Sam, the second planet from the sun. To be exact, 108,200,000 kilometers from the sun. The atmosphere on Venus is mostly carbon dioxide. Its clouds are composed of sulfuric acid, so the surface temperature hovers near 470 degrees centigrade. All the water that might have once flowed in rivers, pooled into seas, or percolated underground has been boiled away by the sun.

Most surface features on Venus are named for women.

But I am a man.

I am not from Venus, Sam. As I told you, I am from a small town on the Serbian-Croatian border.

It happened the evening I received this letter. Here, I can still make out the postmark: 1903. I believe I was living at the Waldorf. The ink has faded a bit, but, yes, 1903.

There's a knock at the laboratory door. At first I try to ignore it, but the knocker seems to be someone familiar with my tactics of evasion. The knocking continues. From a window I peer down to the street. It's George Westinghouse. "Niko," he shouts up. "We need to talk."

"Fine," I tell him. "I'll be right down."

I let him in and the first thing George does is clear his throat. I duck my head. Hoping it is nothing contagious, I crack open a window just in case, so that the germs will escape out into the night air.

George walks slowly through the laboratory, just as he did the first night I met him in 1888. At that time he'd already procured the rights to a number of current distribution systems. None of them really worked. George was anxious to strike a deal with me. I sold him the rights to my AC system for $60,000, with the promise that I would receive, as a royalty, $2.50 per horsepower of electricity he anticipated selling. That was in 1892, eleven years ago. I have yet to receive any royalties.

George walks through the lab as he did that first night, studying the projects I'm working on, pausing in front of a small resonator and a sketch for a craft with vertical liftoff. He stands in front of each device until he understands its inner workings. He is quiet, pacing, continuously fingering his silk cravat as though it were perhaps choking him.