The Toynbee Convector (25 page)

“Ladies, dear, dear, ladies,” whispered Albert Beam.

They continued to stare at each other’s masks with a sort of fevered benevolence. For it had suddenly struck them that while they had been busy making each other happy they had made no one else unhappy!

It was something to sense that by some miracle they’d given each other only minor wounds and those long since healed, for here they were, forty years on, still friends in remembrance of three loves.

“Friends,” thought Albert Beam aloud. “That’s what we are.
Friends
!”

Because, many years ago, as each beauty departed his life on good terms, another had arrived on better. It was the exquisite precision with which he had clocked them through his existence that made them aware of their specialness as women unafraid and so never jealous.

They beamed at one another.

What a thoughtful and ingenious man, to have made them absolutely and completely happy before he sailed on to founder in old age.

“Come, Albert, my dear,” said Cora.

“The matinee crowd’s here,” said Emily.

“Where’s Hamlet?”

“Ready?” said Albert Beam. “Get set?”

He hesitated in the final moment, since it was to be his last annunciation or manifestation or whatever before he vanished into the halls of history. With trembling fingers that tried to remember the difference between zippers and buttons, he took hold of the bathrobe curtains on the theater, as ‘twere.

At which instant a most peculiar loud hum bumbled beneath his pressed lips.

The ladies popped their eyes and smartened up, leaning forward.

For it was that grand moment when the Warner Brothers logo vanished from the screen and the names and titles flashed forth in a fountain of brass and strings by Steiner or Korngold.

Was it a symphonic surge from
Dark Victory
or
The Adventures of Robin Hood
that trembled the old man’s lips?

Was it the score from
Elizabeth and Essex, Now, Voyager
, or
Petrified Forest
?

Petrified forest!? Albert Beam’s lips cracked with the joke of it. How fitting for him, for Junior!

The music rose high, higher, highest, and exploded from his mouth.

“Ta-
tah
!” sang Albert Beam.

He flung wide the curtain.

The ladies cried out in sweet alarms.

For there, starring in the last act of Revelations, was Albert Beam the Second. Or perhaps, justifiably proud, Junior!

Unseen in years, he was an orchard of beauty and sweet Eden’s Garden, all to himself.

Was he both Apple and Snake?

He
was
.

Scenes from
Krakatoa, the Explosion That Rocked the World
teemed through the ladies’ sugar-plum minds. Lines like “Only God Can Make a Tree” leaped forth from old poems. Cora seemed to recall the score from
Last Days of Pompeii
, Elizabeth the music from
Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
. Emily, suddenly shocked back into 1927, babbled the inane words to “Lucky Lindy... Spirit of St. Louis, high, stay aloft... we’re
with
you...!”

The musical trio quieted into a sort of twilight-in-midmorning-holy-hour, a time for veneration and loving regard. It almost seemed that a wondrous illumination sprang forth from the Source, the Shrine at which they gathered as motionless worshippers, praying that the moment would be prolonged by their silent alleluias.

And it was prolonged.

Albert Beam and Junior stood as one before the throng, a large smile on the old man’s face, a smaller one on Junior’s.

Time-travel shadowed the ladies’ faces.

Each remembered Monte Carlo or Paris or Borne or splash-dancing the Plaza Hotel fount that night centuries ago with Scott and Zelda. Suns and moons rose and set in their eyes and there was no jealousy, only lives long lost but brought back and encircled in this moment.

“Well,” everyone whispered, at last.

One by one, each of the three pal-friends stepped forward to kiss Albert Beam tightly on the cheek and smile up at him and then down at the Royal Son, that most Precious Member who deserved to be patted, but was not, in this moment, touched.

The three Grecian maids, the retired Furies, the ancient vest porch goddesses, stepped back a way to line up for a final view-halloo.

And the weeping began.

First Emily, then Cora, then Elizabeth, as all summoned back some midnight collision of young fools who somehow survived the crash.

Albert Beam stood amidst the rising salt sea, until the tears also ran free from his eyes.

And whether they were tears of somber remembrance for a past that was now a golden pavane, or celebratory walls for a present most salubrious and en chanting, none could say. They wept and stood about, not knowing what to do with their hands.

Until at last, like small children peering in mirrors to catch the strangeness and mystery of weeping, they ducked under to look at each other’s sobs.

They saw each other’s eyeglasses spattered with wet salt stars from the tips of their eyelashes.

“Oh,
hah
!”

And the whole damned popcorn machine exploded into wild laughter. “Oh,
heee
!”

They turned in circles with the bends. They stomped their feet to get the barks and hoots of hilarity out They became weak as children at four o’clock tea, that silly hour when anything said is the funniest crack in all the world and the bones collapse and you wander in dazed circles to fell and writhe in ecstasies of mirth on the floor.

Which is what now happened. The ladies let gravity yank them down to flag their hair on the parquetry, their last tears flung like bright comets from their eyes as they rolled and gasped, stranded on a morning beach.

“Gods! Oh! Ah!” The old man could not stand it. Their earthquake shook and broke him. He saw, in this final moment, that his pal, his dear and precious Junior, had at last in all the shouts and snorts and happy cries melted away like a snow memory and was now a ghost.

And Albert Beam grabbed his knees, sneezed out a great laugh of recognition at the general shape, size, and ridiculousness of birthday-suit humans on an indecipherable earth, and fell.

He squirmed amidst the ladies, chuckling, flailing for air. They dared not look at each other for fear of merciless heart attacks from the seal barks and elephant trumpetings that echoed from their lips.

Waiting for their mirth to let go, they at last sat up to rearrange their hair, their smiles, their breathing, and their glances.

“Dear me, oh, dear, dear,” moaned the old man, with a last gasp of relief. “Wasn’t that the best ever, the finest, the loveliest time we have ever had anytime, anywhere, in all the great years?”

All nodded “yes.”

“But,” said practical Emily, straightening her face, “drama’s done. Tea’s cold. Time to go.”

And they gathered to lift the old tentbones of the ancient warrior, and he stood amongst his dear ones in a glorious warm silence as they clothed him in his robe and guided him to the front door.

“Why,” wondered the old man. “Why? Why did Junior return on this day?”

“Silly!” cried Emily. “It’s your birthday!”

“Well, happy me! Yes, yes.” He mused. “Well, do you imagine, maybe, next year, and the next, will I be gifted the same?”

“Well,” said Cora.

“We—”

“Not in this lifetime,” said Emily, tenderly.

“Goodbye, dear Albert, fine Junior,” said each.

“Thanks for all of my life,” said the old man.

He waved and they were gone, down the drive and off into the fine fair morning.

He waited for a long while and then addressed himself to his old pal, his good friend, his now sleeping forever companion.

“Come on, Fido, here, boy, time for our pre-lunch nap. And, who knows, with luck we may dream wild dreams until tea!”

And, my God
, he thought he heard the small voice cry,
then won’t we be famished
!?

“
We will
!”

And the old man, half-asleep on his feet, and Junior already dreaming, fell flat forward into a bed with three warm and laughing ghosts…

And so slept.

The Tombstone

Well, first of all there was the long trip, and the dust poking up inside her thin nostrils, and Walter, her Oklahoma husband, swaying his lean carcass in their model-T Ford, so sure of himself it made her want to spit; then they got into this big brick town that was strange as old sin, and hunted up a landlord. The landlord took them to a small room and unlocked the door.

There in the middle of the simple room sat the tombstone.

Leota’s eyes got a wise look, and immediately she pretended to gasp, and thoughts skipped through her mind in devilish quickness. Her superstitions were something Walter had never been able to touch or take away from her. She gasped, drew back, and Walter stared at her with his droopy eyelids hanging over his shiny gray eyes.

“No, no,” cried Leota, definitely. “I’m not moving in any room with any dead man!”

“Leota!” said her husband.

“What do you mean?” wondered the landlord. “Madam, you don’t—”

Leota smiled inwardly. Of course she didn’t really believe, but this was her only weapon against her Oklahoma man, so—”I mean that I won’t sleep in no room with no corpse. Get him out of here!”

Walter gazed at the sagging bed wearily, and this gave Leota pleasure, to be able to frustrate him. Yes, indeed, superstitions were handy things. She heard the landlord saying, “This tombstone is the very finest gray marble. It belongs to Mr. Whetmore.”

“The name carved on the stone is
WHITE
,” observed Leota coldly.

“Certainly. That’s the man’s name for whom the stone was carved.”

“And is he dead?” asked Leota, waiting.

The landlord nodded.

“There, you
see
!” cried Leota. Walter groaned a groan that meant he was not stirring another inch looking for a room. “It smells like a cemetery in here,” said Leota, watching Walter’s eyes get hot and flinty. The landlord explained:

“Mr. Whetmore, the former tenant of this room, was an apprentice marble-cutter, this was his first job, he used to tap on it with a chisel every night from seven until ten.”

“Well—” Leota glanced swiftly around to find Mr. Whetmore. “Where is he? Did he die, too?” She enjoyed this game.

“No, he discouraged himself and quit cutting this stone to work in an envelope factory.”

“Why?”

“He made a mistake.” The landlord tapped the marble lettering, “
WHITE
is the name here. Spelled wrong. Should be
WHYTE
, with a Y instead of an I. Poor Mr. Whetmore. Inferiority complex. Gave up at the least little mistake and scuttled off.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Walter, shuffling into the room and unpacking the rusty brown suitcases, his back to Leota. The landlord liked to tell the rest of the story:

“Yes, Mr. Whetmore gave up easily. To show you how touchy he was, he’d percolate coffee mornings, and if he spilled a teaspoonful it was a catastrophe—he’d throw it all away and not drink coffee for days! Think of that! He got very sad when he made errors. If he put his left shoe on first, instead of his right, he’d quit trying and walk bare footed for ten or twelve hours, on cold mornings, even. Or if someone spelled his name wrong on his letters, he’d replace them in the mailbox marked
NO SUCH PERSON LIVING HERE
. Oh, he was a great one, was Mr. Whetmore!”

“That don’t paddle us no further up-crick,” pursued Leota grimly. “Walter, what’re you commencing?”

“Hanging your silk dress in this closet; the red one.”

“Stop hanging, we’re not staying.”

The landlord blew out his breath, not understanding how a woman could grow so dumb. “I’ll explain once more. Mr. Whetmore did his homework here; he hired a truck that carried this tombstone here one day while I was out shopping for a turkey at the grocery, and when I waited back—tap-tap-tap—I heard it all the way downstairs— Mr. Whetmore had started chipping the marble. And he was so proud I didn’t dare complain. But he was so awful proud he made a spelling mistake and now he ran off without a word, his rent is paid all the way till Tuesday, but he didn’t want a refund, and now I’ve got some truckers with a hoist who’ll come up first thing in the morning. You won’t mind sleeping here one night with it, now will you? Of course not.”

The husband nodded. “You understand, Leota? Ain’t no dead man under that rug.” He sounded so superior, she wanted to kick him.

She didn’t believe him, and she stiffened. She poked a finger at the landlord. “You want your money. And you, Walter, you want a bed to drop your bones on. Both of you are lying from the word go!”

The Oklahoma man paid the landlord his money tiredly, with Leota tonguing him. The landlord ignored her as if she were invisible, said good night and she cried “Liar!” after him as he shut the door and left them alone. Her husband undressed and got in bed and said, “Don’t stand there staring at the tombstone, turn out the light. We been traveling four days and I’m bushed.”

Her tight crisscrossed arms began to quiver over her thin breasts. “None of the three of us,” she said, nodding at the stone, “will get any sleep.”

Twenty minutes later, disturbed by the various sounds and movements, the Oklahoma man unveiled his vulture’s face from the bedsheets, blinking stupidly. “Leota, you still up? I said, a long time ago, for you to switch off the light and come to sleep! What are you doing there?”

It was quite evident what she was about. Crawling on rough hands and knees, she placed a jar of fresh-cut red, white, and pink geraniums beside the headstone, and another tin can of new-cut roses at the foot of the imagined grave. A pair of shears lay on the floor, dewy with having snipped flowers in the night outside a moment before.

Now she briskly whisked the colorful linoleum and the worn rug with a midget whisk broom, praying so her husband couldn’t hear the words, but just the murmur. When she rose up, she stepped across the grave carefully so as not to defile the buried one, and in crossing the room she skirted far around the spot, saying, “There, that’s done,” as she darkened the room and laid herself out on the whining springs that sang in turn with her husband who now asked, “What in the Lord’s name!” and she replied, looking at the dark around her, “No man’s going to rest easy with strangers sleeping right atop him. I made amends with him, flowered his bed so he won’t stand around rubbing his bones together late tonight.”