The Kingdom of Ohio (15 page)

“Who sent you?” The inventor scowls at her.

“Do you really not recognize me?” Her voice cracks. “How is this possible, how—” She shakes her head, initial giddiness suddenly replaced by despair.

A madwoman, Tesla thinks with an inward shudder. He imagines the contagion of her sickness swarming invisibly through the air toward him. Fumbling behind his back, he pretends to search through his pockets for a handkerchief. While his hands are out of sight he reaches inside his left sleeve and nudges a lever connected to the device concealed near his wrist. A small nozzle swings out to rest beside his thumb. He shakes his head. “Should I? Because I do not.”

“Then tell me about this,” she says, raising a piece of paper. It is a sketch of the machine from his dreams, he sees with disbelief.

“Where did you get that?” Shocked, he takes a step toward her. The stench of her proximity makes his head swim. “Tell me, where? It was not in this room.”

“Nikola, please.” She stares, silently pleading, opening her arms to him. Gritting his teeth, he reaches out as if to meet her embrace. Then, when she is only a step away, he flicks his thumb over the lever.

Her eyes go wide as the device attached to his wrist ejects a mist of chloroform in her face. She coughs, chokes, and tries to stumble away, but it's already too late. Her body goes limp, collapsing into the inventor's arms, and then—as he steps hastily away—to the floor.

Tesla stands there for a moment, regarding her motionless shape. At the sight of her face, he experiences an odd tug of almost recollection: as if he has seen her somewhere before—although where, he cannot place. But this is impossible; his memory has always been perfect. Shrugging the sensation away, he goes into the washroom to throw out his soiled gloves and repeatedly wash his hands.

 

 

 

 

WHEN HE IS satisfied that the last traces of her touch have been cleansed away, Tesla straightens his collar and steps back into the sitting room. As he slides a cigarette out of the slim silver case in his pocket, lights it, and exhales twin streams of smoke through his nostrils, he is annoyed to discover that his hands are shaking. He crosses to the desk and lifts the telephone receiver, but before Tesla can ask the operator to be connected with the police there is a knock at the door. For an instant the inventor hesitates, trying to calculate how long the effects of the chloroform will last. Long enough, he decides. He replaces the receiver in its cradle and pulls the bedroom door closed, concealing the girl's motionless figure, then straightens his jacket and crosses to admit his visitor.

The man that Tesla lets into his chambers is nondescript, of average height with brown hair, wearing a rumpled brown suit. A miserable specimen, Tesla thinks, but this is one reason he was picked for his present role. Smith is his name, or at least the name that he has chosen to use.

“Good morning,” Tesla says. “Would you care for a drink?”

“Gin and tonic, if you don't mind.” Smith sinks, uninvited, onto the couch.

Frowning at this obvious weakness, the inventor goes to the liquor cabinet and efficiently constructs the cocktail.

“So,” he says, handing the other man his drink and stubbing out his cigarette. “We have some business to discuss.”

Smith nods. “The work continues. They're digging six days a week now—the first level is almost complete.”

Through the tall windows behind the couch the sun is shining in Tesla's face, making Smith appear as a glowing silhouette, clothed in light. Something about this image disturbs him.
Omen. Harbinger—
these words come to the inventor's mind unbidden—the figure of a man consumed by brilliance—but it's just nerves, he reminds himself, the aftereffects of the woman's unexpected appearance. He crosses to the window and tugs the curtains closed, then sits across from his visitor. “And have they found anything?”

“Some old plumbing, that's all. But there's this—” Smith removes a small notebook from his coat pocket and tears out a page, sliding it across the table to the inventor. Tesla glances at the scrap, instantly committing it to memory, and then tucks it into his pocket.

“This is the complete plan?”

Smith nods and gulps his drink. “That's it—no doubt about it.”

“It's as I expected, then.” Tesla steeples his fingers and crosses his legs, trying to interject a conversational tone into the encounter. He hates all this deceit and spying—not for moral reasons but for aesthetic ones: because he should be above requiring such tools, because it entails working with individuals whose language and manners are ugly. “It's typical of Edison, don't you think? The approach of brute force.”

The other man shrugs. The round lenses of his glasses glint with stray reflections, turning his face into an eyeless expanse of pasty skin. “Whatever you say.”

“Tell me, what is his mood like these days? Does he seem anxious to you? Confident? Satisfied?”

“Couldn't tell you. Don't see him much, personally—there's a dozen managing assistants above me. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm your man.” He gestures with his notebook. “This was only finalized yesterday.” Smith drains his glass and sets the empty tumbler on the table, eyeing it regretfully.

“I understand.” Tesla sighs and massages his temples for a moment, then freezes as he hears a faint movement behind the closed door. He sits very still, listening—but there is only silence. With an effort, he forces his attention back to the man in front of him. “There is no need to stoke my enthusiasm, Mr. Smith. Your work has been entirely adequate.”

“Well, good. But there's a small problem.”

“And what is that?”

“Well . . .” Smith pauses and eyes the inventor's elegant figure before continuing. “This is getting dangerous for me. Risky. Security's been tightened around the lab.”

“And therefore you want more money,” Tesla concludes. “Has it ever occurred to you, Mr. Smith, that the work I am performing—that we are performing—is a service to all mankind? Some persons, in your place, would consider material renumera tion to be beside the point.”

Smith laughs a short, unpleasant laugh. “Speak for yourself, Professor.”

For a moment, Tesla considers speaking his mind—or better yet, simply throwing out this gluttonous oaf—but an instant later remembers himself. At this point, time is too much of the essence for a replacement to be found. Withdrawing an envelope from his pocket, he hands it to the other man with his fingertips.

“Next time, there will be something extra for you—provided that the information you have given me today is accurate.”

“It is.” Smith pockets the envelope, visibly restraining himself from examining its contents. “By the way,” he asks, trying and failing to sound indifferent, “exactly what are you looking for down there?”

“That,” Tesla says coldly, “is not your concern. All you need do is inform me if anything unusual is found in the tunnels, or shows up at the lab.” The inventor rises to his feet. The other man does the same.

“Give my regards to the boys at Menlo Park.” Tesla does not offer his hand.

Forcing a smile, Smith nods and the inventor ushers him out. When he is gone, Tesla picks up the telephone and informs the concierge that the police are needed in his rooms. Then he settles back in his chair again, closes his eyes, and thinks about the past and the future.

THE BRIDGE

YESTERDAY WAS MY BIRTHDAY—NOT THAT THE EVENT HOLDS MUCH significance anymore. For the last decade, each turning of the calendar has meant the same thing: a steady progression from
old
to
older
.
²⁸
In the afternoon, carrying my stack of frozen dinners home from the supermarket, I passed a vacant lot where a new apartment building is being built. A group of shirtless construction workers were resting in the shade outside, laughing and talking. I smiled and nodded at them; they fell silent, staring stonily back at me. For a moment I felt hurt by their reaction. Then I caught my reflection in a shop window and remembered why. From where they sat, in a private world of youthful camaraderie, I was an unwelcome intruder from the wrong end of life: a reminder of still-distant mortality.

As I shuffled away, I realized that I could hardly blame them. Some mornings nowadays, after the forgetting of dreams, the gray-haired ghost in the mirror is an unpleasant shock even to me.

Of course, the most significant ways I've changed over the years since our time together go far deeper than the simple brutalities of old age. Rather, they are the result of hours spent studying history, of the shelves of books read and community college courses endured, alterations measured not in wrinkles or infirmity but in the drift of despair and hope, conviction and disbelief.

Still, despite all this, I can't shake my unfashionable, old man's notion that the self is something more constant than postmodern thinkers claim. That, despite all the ways in which we change over time, and the passage of memory into forgetting, somewhere, in each of us, some essential thing remains the same.

For me, more than anything else it's a certain sense of bewilderment that has always been the common thread of my days. This feeling of surprise at the strangeness of the world, of not quite fitting in. That sensation was most acute, I think, when I arrived in Los Angeles three decades ago. During those first months even the most ordinary things (passing cars, the sheen of a plastic fork, my own shocked face in a mirror) would leave me stunned with wonder and despair.

Now my bags are packed and I'm making preparations to leave this city. And that old feeling of disorientation is back, stronger than ever.

In part, this is a result of the unexpected news that I'm a millionaire. During the last ten years, apparently, the little retail space where the antiques store is located has gained enough value that I thought the real estate agent had lost her mind when she told me what I could expect to get. The problem (already a point of tension between us) is that I'm not interested in being rich. At this point in life, wealth seems more like a burden than a blessing.

Even more than this news, however, it's the past that has me off balance these days. Walking alone through the city streets, I'll start thinking about you and all the ways it could have been different—and then suddenly find myself, as if just woken up, baffled and blinking on some honking street corner, or standing in a fluorescent supermarket corridor, or sitting alone at the dark little bar near my apartment, at a loss for what I'm doing in this ill-fitting world of unknown faces and chaotic shapes, where all that makes sense are my memories of a vanished time, and you.

 

 

 

 

THROUGH THE AMBER LENS at the bottom of Peter's glass, the saloon contracts around him into a jumble of figures and voices—a scene that hardly changes when he lowers the whiskey and leans back, gazing drunkenly around.

This is the Harp Pub, an Irish saloon near the river, where men from the subway crews sometimes meet. There are six of them gathered now around the battered wooden table: Peter, Paolo, Michael, and three others from the subway crew—Saul, Jan, and a blond man whose name Peter never heard, or has forgotten. Around them the space is crowded with the noise and heat of other drinkers, the air thick with grease and paraffin smoke.

“Here's to Tobias,” Michael says, lifting his glass for the twentieth time of the evening. He wobbles to his feet, nearly upending the table, and raises his voice. “A more shit-for-brains, scum-toothed, clockslob sneak of an arsehole brother who'd puke”—he pauses for breath—“who'd puke in his own beer and drink it with a grin, did a man never have!”

“Tobias!” Peter and the others echo, raising their own glasses. Michael drains his whiskey and collapses back into his chair, angrily wiping a hint of wetness from his eyes.

“Damn,” he mutters, “damnit.”

Peter looks away, at a loss for what to say. Since their arrival here, Michael's toasts have become progressively more incomprehensible and vulgar, and Peter—along with his companions around the table, he guesses—is still struggling to understand what it means.

Gazing up at the low ceiling overhead, Peter recalls the look on Michael's face when he'd knocked on the subway workshop door, two hours ago now. The absolute emptiness of Michael's expression when he'd delivered the news that his brother, Tobias, was dead. An accident in his cell, the police had said.

Now, with the room reeling around him, Peter remembers this—and it's not his place to judge, he reminds himself, if this is what Michael needs. If these obscenities can somehow substitute for, or speak, his grief.

Michael raises his glass again and starts to slur: “To that twat sucking, dog-fucking, piss-drinking, pus-bleeding, sewer-reeking b-bog Irish disgrace of a . . .”

They drink, and drink again, each of them and the pub itself growing steadily more unsteady with the noise of other conversations, comings and goings, interruptions and digressions, liquor spilled or misplaced or both, the fumes of cheap cigarettes, a third bottle of whiskey opened and emptied—

A waitress passes their table and Michael lunges at her, shouting for another round while behind him Paolo tries desperately to signal “No” with throat-slashing gestures. The new bottle of whiskey arrives. Michael lurches to his feet, this time actually upsetting the table, which overturns in a crash of shattering glassware, so that the other occupants of the pub—or at least those at nearby tables—turn to stare. Michael lifts the whiskey bottle over his head. “Come!” he cries. “Come, this way—” And ignoring the onlookers, and the protests of Saul and Paolo, he makes for the door of the pub, leaving Peter and his companions to trail behind, mumbling apologies to the waitresses as they go.