Tallulah was lying across her satin sofa with Now Spot sitting on the floor with his head stretched up, resting on a mauve pillow near her elbow. She greeted me with a question. “How did Spot do, darling?”
“He was fine, Tallulah. I watched him incorporate.”
“Really, darling, I think you mean you watched him become corporeal. It was his first outing since he arrived.” Then Spot loped over to the sofa and sat with his head resting on a cinnamon colored pillow near Tallulah’s knee. Now Spot got up and tried to nudge Then Spot away. Tallulah watched the juggling for space and said, “It has been a problem, darling. My Now Spot has suffered terribly from jealousy.” She looked at him and said, “Haven’t you, darling?” Now Spot began to whimper. “Neither one of them would give up the name Spot, and it has been exhausting. I tried calling them Number One and Number Two, but they would not respond at all to those names. I can’t say that I blame them. Who wants to be called by a bathroom function? My first Spot had completed his half life and had gone onto his true afterlife before my second Spot arrived at Rahab. I had hoped that the same thing would happen before my third Spot arrived, but it didn’t.” She shifted herself around so that she was lying in the opposite direction of the sofa. “I only know that calling all my Dalmatians Spot may have made my life on earth easier, but it has been hell these past couple of weeks. Well, maybe not hell—that is an entirely different place—but I can tell you it has not been easy. Talk about sibling rivalry! No, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t talk about sibling rivalry.”
“I can’t talk about sibling rivalry. I have no sibling.”
“Be thankful that you haven’t, darling. You are probably a much better conversationalist for not having any brothers or sisters. Very dull topic, sibling rivalry. They all say the same thing: ‘Mother loved you best.’ Very whiney.” She looked around.
I thought she was looking for Malcolm, so I told her where he had gone.
“Imagine someone paying to see the Rockettes. It is rather like paying to watch someone stir soup.”
I tried not to smile. “Are you going to send me Topside?” I asked.
She pulled the sheets of the computer print-out from behind one of her satin pillows. They were all crumpled and stained. I asked her what had happened. “Darling,” she explained, “Then Spot became infantile about some of his habits. Tallulah has felt like a zoo keeper.” She put a cigarette into a holder and held her match ready to light it, stopped, blew the match out and said, Tallulah has always loved her Spots, but she is not an animal lover/* She struck another match while she held the cigarette holder between her lips. “I’m happy to see you again.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m happy to be back.”
“Shall we resume where we left off?”
“I would like to.”
“I don’t think that Nicolai Ion would be at work today, so I shall send you to his house in Glen Cove. Remember stage left and through the Orgone.”
“And Papillon! when I want to return.”
I started out of Rahab Station, and Then Spot started to follow me. Tallulah called him back, and I heard her lecturing him as I entered the Orgone for my first solo trip Topside.
I WAS IN an upstairs room in a large house. There was a sofa at one end of the room and a desk at the other. Bookshelves from floor to ceiling lined two of the walls. The side of the room that held the desk had a window over the desk and two filing cabinets on one side and three on the other. A man was sitting at the desk working on some papers. On top of the corner file cabinet to the right, propped between the wall and a beer stein full of Ticonderoga #2 pencils, sat a ventriloquist’s dummy wearing a white satin dress, long gloves and a tiara. Anna Karenina. I would have known her anywhere.
Using the lowest handle of the file cabinet drawer as a step to give myself a boost, I climbed on top of the file cabinet and put Anna Karenina on my lap. The man at the desk was so busy writing things and doing arithmetic with the help of a small calculator that he didn’t even notice that Anna had changed positions. I coughed. He looked up for only a second before resuming his figuring. I coughed again. This time he looked up and around, shook his head and returned to the work on his desk.
I sneezed twice before saying in a deep Russian accent like the one Tallulah had used when she had told Malcolm and me about Nicolai’s routine, “You have too much of dust in my place, Nicky. Why you not dust me off?”
Without looking up, Nicolai replied, “I’m sorry, Anna, but there’s so much work to do. I want to finish these estimates before Lucinda and the kids get home.”
ME (as ANNA): Listen, Nicky, you have made neglect of me, Anna Karenina, for long time now.
NICOLAI: [still without looking up] I know, Anna, I know, but I have to make a living.
ANNA: Why you not make me a living, too, Nicolai? We had very much talent, together, you and me.
NICOLAI: [looking up at last] Yes, Anna, we did. But the problem was that we just didn’t make it.
ANNA: What you mean, we not make it? What ees it?
NICOLAI: It is the big time, Anna. We just didn’t make it.
ANNA: HOW can you say you not make it? You are a rich man, Nicolai Ion Simonescu. [I moved Anna’s hand as if she were checking her tiara] Did you steal the crown jewels, Nicky?
NICOLAI: Hardly, Anna. Hardly that. It’s more a question of selling the crown jewels.
ANNA: Listen, Nicolai, you not talk to me in a long time. A vairy long time. Longer than since you not dust me. You not really make talk with me since Tallulah go belly up. You make talk with me now, Nicky.
NICOLAI: [He tossed his pencil across his desk and put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his swivel chair. He smiled, mumbled Tallulah, put his feet up on the desk and tilted back.] Strange you should mention Tallulah, Anna. I’ve been thinking about her on and off all day. She always believed in our talent.
ANNA: Then why you not stick with Anna Karenina?
NICOLAI: I tried, Anna, I tried. Remember the winters when I had to set you on the shelf to entertain children at birthday parties just so I could make enough money to get us through the year? [He stared out the window, said half to himself.] I was so upset when I realized that these little kids, these pre-schoolers, didn’t think my Anna was very funny. [He looked again at Anna and smiled.] That’s when I made animal and monster puppets to entertain them just so I could earn enough money for us to continue with our act. We were so fine, Anna. So fine.
ANNA: Why you give up, Nicky?
NICOLAI: It takes more than talent, Anna. I didn’t give up until after Tallulah died.
ANNA: Why you give up then, Nicky?
NICOLAI: Circumstances. Certain things came my way. I have always thought that Tallulah would understand. We had the talent, Anna, but we didn’t get the breaks. Tallulah would understand that if the breaks don’t happen one way, you have to make them happen another.
ANNA: So tell me, Nicky, what you do now?
NICOLAI: I am a businessman.
ANNA: What kind of business you make?
NICOLAI: I design and manufacture animal and monster puppets. Kids love my puppets. One of the birthday parties I didn’t take you to was for the son of a television producer. He saw how much his kid loved my monster puppets, and he asked me to design and make some puppets for a children’s television show. The children’s show became popular. I bought a factory. My puppets are stars, Anna. Not you. Not me. Now I even sell licenses and franchises to people who want to use my puppet characters on coffee mugs or T-shirts. I am the puppet king of show business.
ANNA: I have hear about puppet kings, Nicky. What I have not hear about is Burger King. What kind of king is that?
NICOLAI: That is not a real king, Anna. Burger King is a fast food chain.
ANNA: I have hear of fasting. Mr. Mahatma Gandhi have very much of this fast. I have even hear of famine although in Russia it nevair happen. Or you fast, or you eat. Food c
annot be fast, so how can it be, a fast food chain?
NICOLAI: No, no, Anna, this fast, does not mean “not eating.” This “fast” refers to quick. Burger King is a quick food chain. People who are in a hurry come in and order a hamburger and some potatoes. Sometimes they eat them standing up, sometimes they carry them out of the restaurant to eat in their offices.
ANNA: In Anna’s casde, everyone, even Anna’s peasants, eat sitting down. Only animals eat standing up.
NICOLAI: [He took his feet off his desk and sat forward and put his hands over his face. He started to laugh.] I keep forgetting where you came from, Anna.
ANNA: Do you miss me, Nicky?
NICOLAI: Miss you? Of course, I miss you, Anna. What I don’t always remember is how much.
ANNA: Vairy much is how much you miss Anna Karenina. You get me new gown and new crown, and we go back on the street, Nicky baby.
NICOLAI: It’s a date, Anna. Now, let me get these estimates done, and I promise you we will go busking just like old times. [He leaned over his papers again.]
ANNA: You make date with me, Nicky. I want to know when. Anna Karenina have need to know the date to make fit the palace schedule.
NICOLAI: [Checked a calendar on his desk.] December twenty-second, Midwinter’s Night, looks good.
ANNA: What you mean, looks good? How can you tell from piece of paper what day will be like. It will be cold. Anna Karenina will need a cape. You must make Anna Karenina a cape with a fur lining. No fun fur, Nicky baby. Russian sable.
NICOLAI: Your wish is my command, Anna Karenina.
ANNA: One more thing, Nick. Since you have become rich man, have you seen the girl Emmagene?
NICOLAI: Emmagene. Sweet Emmagene. [Gazed out the window.] Emmagene Krebs. [Looked back at Anna.] I have not seen her in a long time. Right after Tallulah died, I asked her to marry me, but she refused. When I asked her why, she said that she had to be free when her big break came. I told her that I would not stand in her way, but she said that she had to seek her fortune before she had finished singing the eighteen thousand songs she had to sing. She disappeared from the streets and from my life. The spring after Tallulah died I heard that she was appearing at a coffee house in Greenwich Village. The next Saturday night I went there, but her show had closed just the week before. I asked around, but no one seemed to remember a lovely young woman with a pure and sweet voice. I looked for her for a long time, but then I stopped.
ANNA: Maybe Emmagene hide out under a Rolling Stone or maybe she become one of those singing Spiders, Nicky.
NICOLAI: They’re Beades, not Spiders, Anna. She’s not a Beatle or a Rolling Stone or any star that I have ever heard of. After all these years, I wonder if she has any of her eighteen thousand songs left to sing.
ANNA: We go busking in the Greenwich Village, Nicky baby.
NICOLAI: Midwinter’s Night. Eight o’clock. It’s a date.
* * *
I heard a door open downstairs, and I jumped down from the file cabinet. I called, “Papillon!” and heard Nicolai say, “I keep forgetting that you speak French,” before I felt myself in the Orgone.
I TOLD Tallulah everything that I had done on my first solo mission Topside. I reconstructed the conversation that Anna Karenina had had with Nicolai Ion Simonescu, and she laughed at all my good lines and applauded when I was done. I took a bow, sweeping my arm along the floor as she had done. “He’s rich,” I said. “I don’t know how he got the money to start his business, but he must have gotten it somewhere. His house is a castle that would make Anna Karenina feel comfortable. She’s still wearing her crown. Come to think of it, he could have hidden The Regina Stone right there in Anna’s crown. No one would think to look in a dummy’s crown. I certainly didn’t.”
“But, darling, if he sold The Regina Stone, he would no longer have it, and it couldn’t be in Anna’s crown.”
“But you could use a diamond that big to get a loan from the bank. You said it was worth as much as a house.”
“But, darling, why would the bank loan money to someone who doesn’t need it?”
“I think that it is bank policy to loan money only to people who have something that is worth as much or more than the loan they ask for.”
“Tallulah draws the line at trying to understand business. It involves arithmetic, you know.”
I told her then that anyone who was as good an actress as she was, didn’t need to understand business. I told her that I had cried at her movie. She asked which one, and I told her.
She said, “Yes, darling, I was fabulous. My leading man in that movie wanted to marry me.”
“Did you marry him?”
Tallulah gave me a long, cold stare. “Of course not. He was not in love with me; he was in love with the part I played. I told him that I, Tallulah, was much more than the sum of my parts, and that was far more than he could handle.”
I asked her if she ever did get married.
“Of course, darling. I was married—let me think—four times. Unless you insist on counting that tiny little marriage I had just after high school. Then you would have to say five. And if you insist on counting my two marriages to the same man as two, then you would have to say I was led to the altar six times, darling. Wretched phrase: led to the altar. Sounds so sacrificial, doesn’t it?”
“Did you love your husbands?” I asked.
“Very much.”
I asked her if there was one husband that she loved more than the others.
“I loved them all equally. It was the time that varied. I loved one for fourteen years and one for fourteen days—that little marriage I referred to earlier.”
“Were you married to the man who gave you The Regina Stone?”
“No, darling, I wasn’t. He wanted to marry me, of course. He told me that there was great chemistry between us. I told him that if he wanted great chemistry, he should woo Madame Curie. I could do nothing to improve that man’s vocabulary. Instead of telling me that I was alluring and glamorous, mysterious and enchanting, he insisted upon referring to me as his jolly good girl. I told him I was none of those four things. I was not his, not jolly, not good, and I certainly was no girl. Words do count. People live and die by them. Ask Patrick Henry.”
“Patrick Henry Mermelstein?” I asked.
“We’ll take him up next time.” Now Spot began to whimper. Tallulah addressed him. “Yes, Spot,” she said, “Tallulah will send you for them next time.” She said to me. “I don’t know when I’ll be ready for you again, but keep checking the Tel. And bring Malcolm.”
I didn’t tell her that Malcolm and I had stopped speaking to each other; I knew that she knew. And I also knew that her remark that I should bring Malcolm was not as casual as she made it sound, and the fact that I knew had nothing at all to do with her performance. She was, after all, still a wonderful actress. My knowing had something to do with the magic that was between Tallulah and me, something to do with my kind of knowing that happened without thinking, the kind of knowing that Malcolm did not understand or trust.
Tallulah says, “Always use good grammar. It’s like wearing designer clothing. People may not like your style, but they will pay attention to the cut of your cloth.”
twelve
I DECIDED there was only one way to approach Malcolm, and that was directly, without rehearsal. To do it as if I were an already famous person who found arguments not worth remembering. To do it without thinking, which is the way that Malcolm said I did everything anyway. So the next day, right after Mother left for work, I walked over to his trailer and knocked on the door as if I had as much right to do so as an Avon lady or insurance salesman.
Mr. Soo answered. I had not thought of that possibility, and I knew that if I let that stall me, all was lost. So I made myself as bold as I was when I was invisible, and I said that I had come to see Malcolm and would Mr. Soo please ask him to come to the door.
I paid no attention to the fact that Malcolm was in his pajamas. I said, “Tallulah wants us
at the Tel. I’ll wait for you by the weathergram tree.”
“Jericho Tel is not so large that you have to tell me exactly where you’ll be. I could find you if you just said Jericho Tel. You don’t have to say by the weathergram tree.”
“You don’t have to be didactic.”
“You are being didactic when you say the weathergram tree at Jericho Tel. You are also being didactic when you use the word didactic.”
“I’m glad you said that, Malcolm. For a minute I thought that I had missed you.” I turned to leave.
Malcolm called to me. “Wait up. I have to make a phone call, and then I’ll be right there.”
I told him that he better get dressed, too, and he looked down at his pajamas and was not at all embarrassed by being in them. I sat down on the step to his trailer and waited, feeling glad that Malcolm would return to the Tel. He was certainly aggravating, but he did not make me mad the way the clones did. He made me mad, but in a different way. I was as different from Malcolm as I was from the clones, but his differences were interesting even though they were aggravating. We simply had a different way of looking at the world—both inside and out.
As soon as he came out, I asked him whom he had had to call. He said Lynette Hrivnak, and I think I snorted before I asked him why he had to call her. He said that she had asked everyone who had gone to Radio City Music Hall over to her house to listen to records. I told Malcolm that he would probably be back from the Tel in time to go, and he said that he would just as soon skip it, that he would rather go to the Tel.
“I suppose you loved the Rockettes,” I said.
“I liked them for the first ten minutes or so. They did everything very precisely. Then I got bored. I thought it was a lot like coloring and staying inside the lines. Neat but not very imaginative.”
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