“So to make my life bearable, for the next few weeks, till we can talk Mr. Upjohn into giving you a raise–”
“Upjohn!” Danny fairly screamed. “You’ve got to stay away from the boss, Connie. Don’t screw around. He won’t give me a raise, and I’d rather you stayed away from him–”
“Until then,” she went on relentlessly, “we will decorate our apartment in the style I’ve wanted for years.”
“Turkish Period?”
“Turkish Period.”
Danny flipped his hands in the air. What was the use? He had known Connie was strong-willed when he’d married her.
It had seemed an attractive quality at the time; now he wasn’t so sure. But he was strong-willed too: he was sure he could outlast her. Probably.
“Okay,” he said finally, “I suppose Turkish Period it’ll be. What the hell is Turkish Period?”
She took his arm lovingly, and turned him around to look in the store window. “Well, honey, it’s not actually Turkish. It’s more Mesopotamian. You know, teak and silk and…”
“Sounds hideous.”
“So you’re starting up again!” She dropped his arm, her eyes flashing, her mouth a tight little line. “I’m really ashamed of you, depriving me of the few little pleasures I need to make my life a blub, sniff, hoo-hoo…”
The edge was hers.
“Connie…Connie…” She knocked away his comforting hand, saying, “You beast.” That was too much for him. The words were so obviously put-on, he was suddenly infuriated:
“Now, goddammit!”
Her tears came faster. Danny stood there, furious, helpless, outmaneuvered, hoping desperately that no cop would come along and say, “This guy botherin’ ya, lady?”
“Connie, okay, okay, we’ll have Turkish Period. Come on, come on. It doesn’t matter what it costs, I can scrape up the money somehow.”
It was not one of the glass-brick and onyx emporia where sensible furniture might be found (if one searched hard enough and paid high enough and retained one’s senses long enough as they were trying to palm off modernistic nightmares in which no comfortable position might be found); no, it was not even one of those. This was an antique shop.
They looked at beds that had canopies and ornate metalwork on the bedposts. They looked at rugs that were littered with pillows, so visitors could sit on the floors. They looked at tables built six inches off the deck, for low banquets. They inspected incense burners and hookahs and coffers and giant vases until Danny’s head swam with visions of the courts of long-dead caliphs.
Yet, despite her determination, Connie chose very few items; and those she did select were moderately-priced and quite handsome…for what they were. And as the hours passed, and as they moved around town from one dismal junk emporium to another, Danny’s respect for his wife’s taste grew. She was selecting an apartment full of furniture that wasn’t bad at all.
They were finished by six o’clock, and had bills of sale that totaled just under two hundred dollars. Exactly thirty dollars less than Danny had decided could be spent to furnish the new household…and still survive on his salary. He had taken the money from his spavined savings account, and had known he must eventually start buying on credit, or they would not be able to get enough furniture to start living properly.
He was tired, but content. She’d shopped wisely. They were in a shabby section of town. How had they gotten here? They walked past an empty lot sandwiched in between two tenements–wet-wash slapping on lines between them. The lot was weed-overgrown and garbage-strewn.
“May I call your attention to the depressing surroundings and my exhaustion?” Danny said. “Let’s get a cab and go back to the apartment. I want to collapse.”
They turned around to look for a cab, and the empty lot was gone.
In its place, sandwiched between the two tenements, was a little shop. It was a one-storey affair, with a dingy facade, and its front window completely grayed-over with dust. A hand-painted line of elaborate script on the glass-panel of the door, also opaque with grime, proclaimed:
MOHANADUS MUKHAR, CURIOS.
A little man in a flowing robe, wearing a fez, plunged out the front door, skidded to a stop, whirled and slapped a huge sign on the window. He swiped at it four times with a big paste-brush, sticking it to the glass, and whirled back inside, slamming the door.
“No,” Danny said.
Connie’s mouth was making peculiar sounds.
“There’s no insanity in my family,” Danny said firmly. “We come from very good stock.”
“We’ve made a visual error,” Connie said.
“Simply didn’t notice it,” Danny said. His usually baritone voice was much nearer soprano.
“If there’s crazy, we’ve both got it,” Connie said.
“Must be, if you see the same thing I see.”
Connie was silent a moment, then said, “Large seagoing vessel, three stacks, maybe the Titanic. Flamingo on the bridge, flying the flag of Lichtenstein?”
“Don’t play with me, woman,” Danny whimpered. “I think I’m losing it.”
She nodded soberly. “Right. Empty lot?”
He nodded back, “Empty lot. Clothesline, weeds, garbage.”
“Right.”
He pointed at the little store. “Little store?”
“Right.”
“Man in a fez, name of Mukhar?”
She rolled her eyes. “Right.”
“So why are we walking toward it?”
“Isn’t this what always happens in stories where weird shops suddenly appear out of nowhere? Something inexorable draws the innocent bystanders into its grip?”
They stood in front of the grungy little shop. They read the sign. It said:
BIG SALE! HURRY! NOW! QUICK!
“The word unnatural comes to mind,” Danny said.
“Nervously,” Connie said, “she turned the knob and opened the door.”
A tiny bell went tinkle-tinkle, and they stepped across the threshold into the gloaming of Mohanadus Mukhar’s shop.
“Probably not the smartest move we’ve ever made,” Danny said softly. The door closed behind them without any assistance.
It was cool and musty in the shop, and strange fragrances chased one another past their noses.
They looked around carefully. The shop was loaded with junk. From floor to ceiling, wall to wall, on tables and in heaps, the place was filled with oddities and bric-a-brac. Piles of things tumbled over one another on the floor; heaps of things leaned against the walls. There was barely room to walk down the aisle between the stacks and mounds of things. Things in all shapes, things in all sizes and colors. Things. They tried to separate the individual items from the jumble of the place, but all they could perceive was stuff…things! Stuff and flotsam and bits and junk.
“Curios, effendi,” a voice said, by way of explanation.
Connie leaped in the air, and came down on Danny’s foot.
Mukhar was standing beside such a pile of tumbled miscellany that for a moment they could not separate him from the stuff, junk, things he sold.
“We saw your sign,” Connie said.
But Danny was more blunt, more direct. “There was an empty lot here; then a minute later, this shop. How come?”
The little man stepped out from the mounds of dust-collectors and his little nut-brown, wrinkled face burst into a million-creased smile. “A fortuitous accident, my children. A slight worn spot in the fabric of the cosmos, and I have been set down here for…how long I do not know. But it never hurts to try and stimulate business while I’m here.”
“Uh, yeah,” Danny said. He looked at Connie. Her expression was as blank as his own.
“Oh!” Connie cried, and went dashing off into one of the side-corridors lined with curios. “This is perfect! Just what we need for the end table. Oh, Danny, it’s a dream! It’s absolutely the ne plus ultra!”
Danny walked over to her, but in the dimness of the aisle between the curios he could
barely make out what it was she was holding. He drew her into the light near the door. It had to be:
Aladdin’s lamp.
Well, perhaps not that particular person’s lamp, but one of the ancient, vile-smelling oil burning jobs: long thin spout, round-bottom body, wide, flaring handle.
It was algae-green with tarnish, brown with rust, and completely covered by the soot and debris of centuries. There was no contesting its antiquity; nothing so time-corrupted could fail to be authentic. “What the hell do you want with that old thing, Connie?”
“But Danny, it’s so per-fect. If we just shine it up a bit. As soon as we put a little work into this lamp, it’ll be a beauty.” Danny knew he was defeated…and she’d probably be right, too. It probably would be very handsome when shined and brassed-up.
“How much?” he asked Mukhar. He didn’t want to seem anxious; old camel traders were merciless at bargaining when they knew the item in question was hotly desired.
“Fifty drachmae, eh?” the old man said. His tone was one of malicious humor. “At current exchange rates, taking into account the fall of the Ottoman Empire, thirty dollars.”
Danny’s lips thinned. “Put it down, Connie; let’s get out of here.”
He started toward the door, dragging his wife behind him. But she still clutched the lamp; and Mukhar’s voice halted them. “All right, noble sir. You are a cunning shopper, I can see that. You know a bargain when you spy it. But I am unfamiliar in this time-frame with your dollars and your strange fast-food native customs, having been set down here only once before; and since I am more at ease with the drachma than the dollar, with the shekel than the cent, I will cut my own throat, slash both my wrists, and offer you this magnificent antiquity for…uh…twenty dollars?” His voice was querulous, his tone one of wonder and hope.
“Jesse James at least had a horse!” Danny snarled, once again moving toward the door.
“Fifteen!” Mukhar yowled. “And may all your children need corrective lenses from too much tv-time!”
“Five; and may a hundred thousand syphilitic camels puke into your couscous,” Danny screamed back over his shoulder.
“Not bad,” said Mukhar.
“Thanks,” said Danny, stifling a smile. Now he waited.
“Bloodsucker! Heartless trafficker in cheapness! Pimple on the fundament of decency! Graffito on the subway car of life! Thirteen; my last offer; and may the gods of ITT and the Bank of America turn a blind eye to your venality!” But his eyes held the golden gleam of the born haggler, at last, blessedly, in his element.
“Seven, not a penny more, you Arabic anathema! And may a weighty object drop from a great height, flattening you to the niggardly thickness of your soul.” Connie stared at him with open awe and admiration.
“Eleven! Eleven dollars, a pittance, an outright theft we’re talking about. Call the security guards, get a consumer advocate, gimme a break here!”
“My shadow will vanish from before the evil gleam of your rapacious gaze before I pay a penny more than six bucks, and let the word go out to every wadi and oasis across the limitless desert, that Mohanadus Mukhar steals maggots from diseased meat, flies from horse dung, and the hard-earned drachmae of honest laborers. Six, fuckface, and that’s it!”
“My death is about to become a reality,” the Arab bellowed, tearing at the strands of white hair showing under the fez. “Rob me, go ahead, rob me: drink my life’s blood! Ten! A twenty dollar loss I’ll take.”
“Okay, okay.” Danny turned around and produced his wallet. He pulled out one of the three ten dollar bills still inside and, turning to Connie, said, “You sure you want this ugly, dirty piece of crap?” She nodded, and he held the bill naked in the vicinity of the little merchant. For the first time Danny realized Mukhar was wearing pointed slippers that curled up; there was hair growing from his ears.
“Ten bucks.”
The little man moved with the agility of a ferret, and whisked the tenner from Danny’s outstretched hand before he could draw it back. “Sold!” Mukhar chuckled.
He spun around once, and when he faced them again, the ten dollars was out of sight. “And a steal, though Allah be the wiser; a hot deal, a veritable steal, blessed sir!”
Danny abruptly realized he had been taken. The lamp had probably been picked up in a junkyard and was worthless. He started to ask if it was a genuine antique, but the piles of junk had begun to waver and shimmer and coruscate with light. “Hey!” Danny said, alarmed, “What’s this now?”
The little man’s wrinkled face drew up in panic. “Out! Get out, quick! The time-frame is sucking back together! Out! Get out now if you don’t want to roam the eternities with me and this shop…and I can’t afford any help! Out!”
He shoved them forward, and Connie slipped and fell, flailing into a pile of glassware. None of it broke. Her hand went out to protect herself and went right through the glass. Danny dragged her to her feet, panic sweeping over him…as the shop continued to waver and grow more indistinct around them.
“Out! Out! Out!” Mukhar kept yelling.
Then they were at the door, and he was kicking them–literally planting his curl-slippered foot in Danny’s backside and shoving–from the store. They landed in a heap on the sidewalk. The lamp bounced from Connie’s hand and went into the gutter with a clang. The little man stood there grinning in the doorway, and as the shop faded and disappeared, they heard him mumble happily, “A clear nine-seventy-five profit. What a lemon! You got an Edsel, kid, a real lame piece of goods. But I gotta give it to you; the syphilitic camel bit was inspired.”
Then the shop was gone, and they got to their feet in front of an empty, weed-overgrown lot.
A lame piece of goods?
“Are you asleep?”
“Yes.”
“How come you’re answering me?”
“I was raised polite.”
“Danny, talk to me…come on!”
“The answer is no. I’m not going to talk about it.”
“We have to!”
“Not only don’t we have to, I don’t want to, ain’t going to, and shut up so I can go to sleep.”
“We’ve been lying here almost an hour. Neither of us can sleep. We have to discuss it, Danny.”
The light went on over his side of the bed. The single pool of illumination spread from the hand-me-down daybed they had gotten from Danny’s brother in New Jersey, faintly limning the few packing crates full of dishes and linens, the three Cuisinarts they’d gotten as wedding gifts, the straight-back chairs from Connie’s Aunt Medora, the entire bare and depressing reality of their first home together.
It would be better when the furniture they’d bought today was delivered. Later, it would be better. Now, it was the sort of urban landscape that drove divorcees and aging bachelors to jump down the airshaft at Christmastime.
“I’m going to talk about it, Squires.”
“So talk. I have my thumbs in my ears.”
“I think we should rub it.”
“I can’t hear you. It never happened. I deny the evidence of my senses. It never happened. I have these thumbs in my ears so I cannot hear a syllable of this craziness.”
“For god’s sake, Squires, I was there with you today. I saw it happen, the same as you. I saw that weird little old man and I saw his funky shop come and go like a big burp. Now, neither of us can deny it!”
“If I could hear you, I’d agree; and then I’d deny the evidence of my senses and tell you…” He took his thumbs from his ears, looking distressed. “…tell you with all my heart that I love you, that I have loved you since the moment I saw you in the typing pool at Upjohn, that if I live to be a hundred thousand years old I’ll never love any one or any thing as much as I love you this very moment; and then I would tell you to fuck off and forget it, and let me go to sleep so that tomorrow I can con myself into believing it never happened the way I know it happened.
“Okay?”
She threw back the covers and got out of bed.
She was naked. They had not been married that long.
“Where are you going?”
“You know where I’m going.”
He sat up in the daybed. His voice had no lightness in it. “Connie!”
She stopped and stared at him, there in the light.
He spoke softly. “Don’t. I’m scared. Please don’t.”
She said nothing. She looked at him for a time. Then, naked, she sat down cross-legged on the floor at the foot of the daybed. She looked around at what little they had, and she answered him gently. “I have to, Danny. I just have to…if there’s a chance; I have to.”
They sat that way, reaching across the abyss with silent imperatives, until–finally–Danny nodded, exhaled heavily, and got out of the daybed. He walked to one of the cartons, pulled out a dustrag, shook it clean over the box, and handed it to her. He walked over to the window ledge where the tarnished and rusted oil lamp sat, and he brought it to her.
“Shine the damned thing, Squires. Who knows, maybe we actually got ourselves a 24 carat genie. Shine on, oh mistress of my Mesopotamian mansion.”
She held the lamp in one hand, the rag in the other. For a few minutes she did not bring them together. “I’m scared, too,” she said, held her breath, and briskly rubbed the belly of the lamp.
Under her flying fingers the rust and tarnish began to come away in spots. “We’ll need brass polish to do this right,” she said; but suddenly the ruin covering the lamp melted away, and she was rubbing the bright skin of the lamp itself.
“Oh, Danny, look how nice it is, underneath all the crud!” And at that precise instant the lamp jumped from her hand, emitted a sharp, gray puff of smoke, and a monstrous voice bellowed in the apartment:
AH-HA! It screamed, louder than a subway train. AH-HA!
FREE AT LAST! FREE–AS FREE AS I’LL EVER BE–AFTER TEN THOUSAND YEARS! FREE TO SPEAK AND ACT, MY WILL TO BE KNOWN!
Danny went over backward. The sound was as mind-throttling as being at ground zero. The window glass blew out. Every light bulb in the apartment shattered. From the carton containing their meager chinaware came the distinct sound of hailstones as every plate and cup dissolved into shards. Dogs and cats blocks away began to howl. Connie screamed–though it could not be heard over the foghorn thunder of the voice–and was knocked head over ankles into a corner, still clutching the dustrag. Plaster showered in the little apartment. The window shades rolled up.
Troublemakers: Stories by Harlan Ellison Page 17