Jack Womack, page 17
“What music was programmed for backdrop during the ceremony?” I asked, rambleminded, thinking of the music at my own: Satie, Purcell, Elgar, Prokofiev, Moussorgski—
“‘Can’t Buy Me Love,’” she said. “Everyone’s favorite. But most dreams become ash as time burns away. By day he left I had accepted his departure in spirit long before. Not since last summer had we made violent love.”
Jake’s face flushed thrombosis red. With unforeseen lunge Oktobriana leapt pantherlike atop him, mad for flesh’s rub. Her foot grazed the table near, sending a pressed-glass cup laden with matches tumbling, spilling them across its top. “Great stone man here distracts me now,” she laughed, winding round him; he didn’t pull away. Inadvertently, she eyed the matchpile. “Six thousand eight hundred eighty-nine,” she said. We looked. There weren’t a hundred there.
“Your mind’s going,” said Jake.
“Count them,” she whispered. We did, laying them out in fives until the last.
“Eighty-three,” he said.
“Square of eighty-three is six thousand eight hundred eighty-nine,” she said, thought clouding her face. “How odd to know square.”
“It’s reasoned you should, I’d think—”
“I have never memorized tables. Would be pointless waste of brain so long as calculator is near. This is so strange. The number appeared to flash in my head.”
Rising, retrieving an unopened box from the kitchen, breaking its seal, I slid it open, rained its contents before her.
“Nine thousand two hundred sixteen,” she said, at once. “Ninety-six matches.” Bringing her hands upward she rubbed her eyes, looked again. “How peculiar. There is factor operating here that I do not understand. Perhaps because I am so tired. Sleep came but at moments last night,” she said, lying down, placing her head in Jake’s lap. “Suffering from unexpected jet lag or equivalent, possibly. Jake, rub neck please. Such lingering stiffness.”
With good hand he drew his slender fingers across her nape, probing and stroking, continuing slow massage for several silent minutes. Periodically her legs jerked as if in hypnogogic phase, before sleep’s sweet coma envelops. Our own blips must flash on his screen, I thought. A safe extraction seemed impossible; her implant would be mote small and no unguided digging might haul it forth. At any instant the local team, guided by his word, might show, coming at his urging to mop us away. Through the windows I looked to see those black bugs flitting up; nothing. Not until tonight, I thought, considering. Takeout was strictly a nightgame, in my experience, and so seemed likely here.
“Jake,” I said, lowvoiced. As I watched her eyes speed backforth beneath her shut lids, her small fists knotted as if for battle, I realized why Doc’s tongue had so stilled. “Come kitchenways with me. Something essential needs passing.” Easing himself up, allowing her descent without overt disturbance, he extricated and followed as I led into the sunbright kitchen, sweat pooling at my beltline. He eyed me without blink; folded his arms before him as if certain of answer, no matter the question.
“You’ve developed an intriguing relationship,” I said to him, curious to gather what feelings he had, if any, before I related. “It eased capture—”
“Capture sans escape,” he said. “To little purpose, under circumstance. Keep minded there exists but a one-mind intrigue.”
“She’s quite attracted, Jake—”
“In untenabled way,” he said, his suit yellowed by sun pouring through the drapes’ filter, “for unlogicaled reason. Passing fancy, a bunch of forget-me-nots waiting to wither.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps deeper than admitted. Where’s your stand, then? She’s physically bountied. Intelligent beyond grasp. Articulate, multi-able. Mad as a cat for you. You say no?”
He nodded. “Untenabled.”
“You’ve let the answer hang, Jake. Where’s your stand?”
His mouthcorners drew as if by pickle’s touch. As he stood, shifting from foot to foot, he idly frisked himself for his missing toys.
“Well?”
“She tears my dreams apart,” he said at last. “It’s not me she sees, Luther. It’s whatsisname on the backbound. The Big Boy. A deliveryman could have served as such an object—”
“It’s you.”
“Untenabled!” he repeated, his voice deepening as it rose; not since Thursday night had I seen such rising within his face.
“Why?” I asked, nearly so loud. “What’s foreseen?”
“Hurt,” he said, shifting again to barely heard mutterance. “The wrong kind.”
He spoke true; I had to tell how true. Leaving his words where he dropped them he moved as if to exit. I motioned him to return.
“She’s dying, Jake,” I said. As I told of all I’d read, all that Doc added, he evidenced no shift in feature, gave no hint that what was heard disturbed. As mentioned, Jake was not devoid of comprehension; he quickly gathered all ramifications. Upon concluding I paused, baffled by what might be passing through his mind. “Response? Reaction?”
With thumb and finger he stroked his chin, pressed upper teeth into his lower lip, looked wallways as he spoke. “As foreseen,” he said.
The front door’s slam shot us ready and full; only as we looked, and saw Doc walking through, did we loose our tenses.
“Least somebody here’s awake,” he said, quietly, so as not to wake. “Looked like it was siesta time around here.”
“We were dialoguing,” said Jake, walking past into the front. “Excuse.”
“You tell her?” Doc whispered, nearing. Fly’s whine settled in my ear; I swatted it away, grateful not to have snared it.
“Told Jake,” I said.
“I hear you,” Doc said, sighing.
“I was offguarded,” I said. “Once recovered I’ll have no trouble. Mayhap we can figure something—”
From beneath his arm he slipped me what I’d seen as a sci-fi mag the night past; what evidenced at prolonged view as Popular Mechanics. “Bill wrote the cover article. You can get an idea what I mean.”
THE WORLD OF 1960, the banner printed thereupon read, overlaying a garish rendition of unlikely cityscape limned in primaries, drawn with blockline sketch. The painting’s centerpiece showed a cluster of concrete roads rolling between trimmed trees; no traffic evidenced upon the roads but one or two buglike vehicles. Around the skyscrapers’ tops, flylike, buzzed copters and blimps.
“Look through there. See how accurate his predictions are.”
I thumbed the pages, keen to know what the future would bring my father, or the man who might possibly be my father in this world. In 1960 he would ride atom-powered one-man helicopters to the office, where he worked twenty hours a week; his home’s furniture could be washed with blasts from a water hose; the weather within the dome covering his city could be adjusted as desired. Daily applications of pesticides would preserve his food forever; to clean his suit he would only have to walk in the rain. Only the highest art was transmitted through television’s unyielding stare. As ever, a combination of laughter and tears proved the only response.
“Did a pretty good job, don’t you think?” Doc asked.
“Not at all.”
“He must have gotten some things right—”
“Nothing.”
“Well,” said Doc. “Still, the changes must be unimaginable.”
“Your world is more similar to ours than guessed,” I said. “We’re more accomplished at what we do. That’s all.”
“I’d think they’d have at least outlawed war by your time,” he said. “Way they’re always talking about it, though you couldn’t hardly think so these days. Were you in a peacekeeping army?”
“Hardly,” I said, “and I knew fourteen separate police actions.”
“Doesn’t ever’one live in better houses and apartments?” he asked. “Like those towers on the cover there—”
“Such as these pictured?” I asked. “You know what comes from such projects?” He shook his head; I motioned towards Jake, sitting next to sleeping Oktobriana, in the front room.
“But look at you,” he said. “No one grows old—”
“Most don’t live long enough.” Doc showed a pensive look, went to the refrigerator—icebox—and took out a bottle of milk, popping off its paper top.
“I don’t know, Luther,” he said, pouring a glassful. “You’re probably just used to it all. See miracles ever’ day, don’t even realize it.”
Miracles, yes, all God’s wonders. The poison ocean rising higher each year, the thin air ashine with the sun’s cancerous rays, the earth sodden with the blood of the billions killed upon it. The sound of orphans at play in the littered, rotting streets, born alone to die alone. The love that lasts and lasts and then fades as you look on. There were too many miracles in my modern age. “In Wanda’s paper was mention of previous Martian reports,” I said. “Was a joke inferred?”
“Oh,” Doc laughed. “Last Halloween Orson Welles did this radio play about Martians invading the earth. Made it sound like a news broadcast. Scared the shit out of a lot of fools over in Jersey. That’s probably what they was talking about.”
“Undoubted.”
“I guess in your time you talk to Martians regularly,” said Doc, delusion again clouding his brain. “What’re they like?” he asked, eyes shining with the hope of the hopeless.
“Mars is a lifelorn planet,” I said. “Beautiful in physical form as photos evidence but free of sentient nature.”
“Sentient?” he repeated, sounding the phrase. “Nobody lives there?” I shook my head. He looked to have discovered that his Christmas presents were lifted along with the tree and all its jewels. I hadn’t wished to grinch him so. “There life anywhere else?”
“Only here,” I said—and there, certainly, in our world, among our doppelgangers. “Therefore earthlife seems all the more—” Horrible? Doomed? Superfluous?
“Precious,” Doc reflected. “That’s so.”
That, too. Oktobriana’s slipped away as we watched.
8
“INTERACTION’S FEASIBLED HERE?” I ASKED, DISCERNING through blue smoke none but pale faces gathered stage-near. Our people, dark but for Jake, loaded the rear, housed themselves barside, at intervals drifted through the smog to reappear up front, delivering drinks, rising from the white dough like raisins in batter.
“Feasibled,” Doc repeated. “Bastards always take the best seats. But money talks, man. Try getting into one of their joints sometime, see how far you get.”
Abyssinia contained as main room a coffin-shaped space with decapitatory ceiling; the illumination therein but grudgingly allowed sight. No coordinated decor systems showed: unframed posters covered walls, booth seats showed several years’ slashes; not even the barstools matched. Two African masks of evident years and simple beauty hung above the bar, and I wondered from whose grandparents they had been inherited.
“Still alive,” Jake said, hushvoiced.
“So the tracker reads—”
“Not Skurry,” he corrected. “Him.” His eyes fastened upon one of the newer posters, one announcing a concert past: FROM SPIRITUALS TO SWING/CARNEGIE HALL DEC 23 1938. In the midst of that night’s performers, this night’s: ROBERT JOHNSON. “You went?” he asked Doc, who smiled.
“Wouldn’t have minded,” he said. “But Carnegie Hall’s whites only. They tried to get it fixed for that one thing and they couldn’t even do that.”
Jake, not noticing Doc’s tone, stared stageways, blanked as if already lost within music.
“There’s so many here,” I said, looking over Caucasians’ finehaired heads, slicked and dyed and balding. “I’d think they’d barely hear rumor of such through the static.”
“Depends on who’s playing,” said Doc. “They always pour in to pay their blues-dues when these boys come up from the Delta. Ever’day I was growing up I heard the blues. Played pretty, played rough. Almost hear the blues in the air down there.” He laughed. “Depressin’ shit, Luther. Give me Basie any day of the week.”
Jake’s lack of attention to all but the empty stage concerned, though for the mo there could be no removing his stare from where it fixed. His anticipation seemed more powerful even than that of a child awaiting Christmas, when the child has already inferred that the gift most desired is certain to be delivered.
“These people ride up here in their taxis, in their big fine cars, slum around up here all night long, drinking. Ever watch white people drink? I don’t mean no offense, Jake—” Jake, unlistening, bore none. “They sip. They keep sipping till the whole bottle’s gone. Then they upchuck all over the goddamn floor. Better that than when they start singing along, though.”
“They’re lyric-familiar?”
“Some of ’em. Man, you never heard anything so pitiful.”
“What brings them in?”
“I can’t tell how these people’s minds work,” he said, edging barways. “Ask Jake. Hey, Jess, down this way,” he shouted to the bartender. Jess stepped down, drying a mug with three quick twists of rag, his hands twicesized over mine; his face was networked with scars whose web resembled a railroad yard. Between chipped teeth he flattened a green cigar’s unlit stub.
“A sidecar, Doc?” he asked, unracking a glass. “What your guests want?”
“Give ’em beer. Any preference?” We preferred none; estimated it best to follow leads. “Trommer’s White Label’ll do.” With metal tool Jess uncapped two long-necked brown bottles, poured one into a glass, then asked Jake: “Want yours in a teacup?” One of the inward-bent caps lay bartopped. Jake, looking up, retrieved it, poised it upon his thumbs, lay two fingers atop. With quick motion he thumbed the cap inside out, splitting its cork liner; flicked it barways.
“A glass,” he said. Jess poured.
“Bill come around yet?” Doc asked.
Jess shook his head, passing Jake’s filled glass gently towards him. “Motherfucker’s usually first one here come Saturday night. Haven’t seen hide or hair of him. His momma drug his ass to temple, maybe.”
“Maybe.” Maybe not. The wooden wall clock’s skeletal hands showed eight-forty; Doc expected an eight o’clock curtain, but then so had the club’s audience. They could wait; our minutes passed into minutes lost. Thirst burned my throat; beer it might have been, but I drank, at once hearthappy I had. If the best bread was liquid it would have borne such a taste, sweet with yeast, its head dense enough to slice, not at all resembling our day’s bitter water.
“You’ve heard of Robert Johnson before, Jake?” Doc asked, gesturing towards the awaiting stage. “He’s no Cab Calloway. Don’t see how he’s so well known in your day.”
“He’s not,” said Jake. “Only the most aware see the glory. Long years past I first filled ear with his song. During a weekend at the Old Man’s old house. Those hearing as intended to hear know—” Jake paused, waved his hands before him as if seeking unseen prey. “It makes it easier, somehow. No explanation holds.” Removing his pocket-player, he set it, planning to tape.
Doc laughed. “Way you all talk sometimes breaks me up. Hell, Jake, you must know ever’thing he did by heart.”
“Knew it already,” said Jake, seeming exhausted by his speech’s worded emotions. “Didn’t realize.”
A dapper man stepped onstage, held up his hands as if to slow a charge.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “there’s a slight delay but don’t worry. Mister Johnson’ll be out to play for you shortly. Please be patient with us.”
“Who’s he?” I asked.
“That’s Vernon,” said Doc. “Wanda’s second cousin. He runs the club. We all own the building. Went in together ten years ago, just before the Crash. Laid down cash money. Even if it gets ten times worse’n it is, and they’re always saying it might, nobody’s gonna toss my ass into the street. Now if one of my tenants doesn’t come across after a while, they’ll get the deep six, but—”
“You never threw any of those deadbeats out in your life,” laughed Jess. “Makes Wanda do it.”
Doc ignored, continued. “I handle the apartments. Vernon runs the club. Break about even at worst and most of the time we do better than that. If the building’s full and there’s a good run of performers down here, well then we’re eating high on the hog—”
“We hope you’re enjoying Harlem as much as we enjoy having you,” Vernon insisted, straight-faced. Jess turned his head away, held a laugh.
“Enjoy havin’ ’em stuck on the end of my blade—”
“Grin and bear it, Jess,” said Doc. “Come on.”
“Mister Johnson will be out any moment now,” said Vernon.
“He’d better be,” one especially ivory member of the audience shouted back. “These damned shows never start on time.” His mate, a young woman, wore her coiffed blondness curled beneath her veiled hat; with white-gloved hand she swung a half-meterlength cigarette holder as if to brand. When she voiced, her words rebounded off the silence that always settles at inopportune moment, so that embarrassment resulting may be total.
“We coulda stayed at the Rainbow Room,” she whined, her tone rich with nose. “Oh, no. Moneybags here has to haul us up to Harlem for some damned coon show—”
As Vernon stepped away her voice faded with audience’s rising murmur; additional commentary went gratefully unheard, at least by us.
“Oughta smoke the bitch,” said Jess, lowvoiced.
“Beats the devil,” said Doc. “They haul themselves up here and once they get settled they don’t do nothing but beef. It’s too crowded. Too hot. Food’s no good. Gimme a clean glass—”
“What they expect?” Jess said. “You’re right, though. They haul up a lotta green.”
“They do.”
“They can cry all they want long as they stick around long enough to spend it.”
“What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Anyway, see, Wanda and me, we lived in shitholes first ten years we lived up here,” Doc continued. “Down in San Juan Hill. West Sixty-second. When I got out of the army they’d just put Prohibition into law. Best damn thing ever happened to us. See, Wanda knew Vernon of course, he’d come up a few years earlier, and Cedric’d been in my regiment—”
