“Okay,” said Victor.
“I’m on my way from a meeting in San Francisco. Traveling incognito, you might say. You don’t know how people can be if the word gets out. So I’d appreciate it if, you know, you don’t let on who you’re talking to. Understand?”
“I understand.” It must be hard, he thought, being a celebrity.
“I knew you would.”
Victor cupped his hand around the mouthpiece. The old man from the end of the counter fumbled money from his coin purse and staggered out. Victor tried to say the right things. He wasn’t ready. However, he remembered how to get to his own house. He gave directions from Highway I, speaking as clearly and calmly as he could.
“Who was that?” asked Jolene when he had hung up.
“Nobody,” said Victor.
“What?”
“A friend, I mean. He . . .”
“He what?”
“I’ve got to . . . meet him. I forgot.”
Her expression, held together until now by nervous anticipation, wilted before his eyes. The tension left her; her posture sagged. Suddenly, she looked older, overweight, lumpen. He did not know what to say.
He grabbed his gloves and made ready to leave.
She smoothed her apron, head down, hiding a tic, and then made a great effort to face him. The smile was right but the lines were deeper than ever before.
“Call me?” she said. “If you want to. It’s up to you. I don’t care.”
“Jolene . . .”
“No, really! I couldn’t take the cold tonight, anyway. I—I hope you have a nice meeting. I can tell it’s important.”
“Business,” he said. “You know.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
She forced a laugh. “What on earth for? Don’t you worry.”
He nodded, embarrassed.
“Take care of yourself,” she said.
You deserve better, he thought, than me, Jolene.
“You, too,” he said. “I didn’t plan it this way. Please believe—”
“I believe you. Now get going or you’ll be late.”
He felt relieved. He felt awful. He felt woefully unprepared. But at least he felt something.
All the way home the hidden river ran at his side, muffled by the reeds but no longer distant. This time he noticed that there were secret voices in the waters, talking to themselves and to each other, to the night with the tongues of wild children on their way back to the sea.
Now he considered the possibility that they might be talking to him.
Victor unlocked the old house and fired up the heater. He had little chance to clean. By the time he heard the car, he was covered with a cold sweat, and his stomach, which he had neglected to feed, constricted in a hopeless panic.
He parted the bathroom curtains.
The car below was long and sleek. A limousine? No, but it was a late-model sedan, a full-size Detroit tank with foglights.
A man climbed out, lugging a briefcase, and made for the front of the house.
Victor ran downstairs and flung open the door.
He saw a child approaching in the moonlight. It was the same person he had seen leave the shadow of the car. From the upstairs window the figure had appeared deceptively foreshortened.
The boy came into the circle of the porchlight, sticking his chin out and grinning rows of pearly teeth.
“Vic?”
Victor was confused.
Then he saw.
It was not a child, after all.
“I’m Rex Christian,” said the dwarf, extending a stubby hand. “Glad to meet you!”
The hand felt cold and compressed as a rubber ball in Victor’s grip. He released it with an involuntary shudder. He cleared his throat.
“Come on in. I—I’ve been expecting you.”
The visitor wobbled to an overstuffed chair and bounced up onto the cushion. His round-toed shoes jutted out in front of him.
“So! This is where one of my biggest fans lives!”
“I guess so,” said Victor. “This is it.”
“Great! It’s perfect!”
On the stained wall a grandfather clock sliced at the thick air.
“Can I get you something?” Victor’s own voice sounded hollow in his ears. “Like something to drink?”
“I’d settle for a beer. Just one, though. I want to keep a clear head.”
Beer, thought Victor. Let me see . . . He couldn’t think. He looked away. The small face and the monkey mouth were too much for him. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
“You owe me, remember?”
“What?”
“The beer. In your letter you said—”
“Oh. Oh, yeah. Just a minute.”
Victor went to the kitchen. By the time he returned, he had replayed his visitor’s words in his mind until he recognized the rhythm. Everything the dwarf—midget, whatever he was—had said so far fit the style. There was no doubt about it. For better or worse, the person in the other room was in fact Rex Christian. The enormity of the occasion finally hit him. Setting the bottles on the coffee table between them, he almost knocked one over.
My time has come, he thought. My problems are about to be over. My prayers have been answered.
“This must be pretty far out of the way for you,” Victor said.
“Not at all! Thanks for the invitation.”
“Yeah,” said Victor. “I mean, no. I mean . . .”
And in that instant he saw himself, this house, his life as it really was for the first time. He was overwhelmed with self-consciousness and shame.
“Did . . . did you have any trouble finding the place?”
“Nope. Followed your directions. Perfect!”
Victor studied the virgules in the carpet, trying to find his next words there.
Rex Christian leaned forward in his chair. The effort nearly doubled him over.
“Look, I know what it’s like for you.”
“You do?”
“Believe me, I do. That’s my business, isn’t it? I’ve seen it all before.”
Rex sat back and took a long pull from the tall bottle. His Adam’s apple rolled like a ball bearing in his throat.
“You must know a lot about people,” said Victor.
“Never enough. That’s why I take a trip like this at least once a year.” He chortled. “I rent a car, visit folks like you all over the country. It’s a way of paying them back. Plus it helps me with my research.”
“I see.” There was an awkward pause. “You—you said you were in San Francisco. On business. Was that part of this year’s trip?”
“Right. Nothing beats the old one-on-one, does it?”
So he didn’t come all this way just to see me, thought Victor. There were others. “From your writing, well, I thought you’d be a very private person.”
“I am! Somebody wants a book, they have to climb the mountain. But when it comes to my fans, it’s a different story. They’re raw material. I go to the source, know what I mean?”
“I used to be a people-person,” said Victor, loosening up a bit. He drained his bottle. He thought of going for two more. But the writer had hardly touched his. “Now, well, I don’t go out much. I guess you could say I’ve turned into more of a project-type person.”
“Glad to hear it!”
“You are?”
“It just so happens I’ve got a project you might be interested in. A new book. It’s called A Long Time Till Morning.”
“I like the title,” said Victor. “Excuse me.”
He rose unsteadily and made a beeline for the stairs. The beer had gone through his system in record time. When he came out of the bathroom, he gazed down in wonderment from the top of the landing. Rex Christian was still sitting there, stiff and proper as a ventriloquist’s dummy. I can’t believe this is happening, he thought. Now everything’s changed. There he is, sitting in my living room!
His heart pounded with exhilaration.
Let
me never forget this. Every minute, every second, every detail. I don’t want to miss a thing. This is important; this matters. The most important night of my life.
He bounded down the stairs and snagged two more beers and an opener from the kitchen, then reseated himself on the sofa.
Rex Christian greeted him with a sparkling grin.
“Tell me about your new book,” said Victor breathlessly. “I want to hear everything. I guess I’ll be the first, won’t I?”
“One of the first.” The author folded his tiny hands. “It’s about an epidemic that’s sweeping the country—I don’t have the details yet. I’m still roughing it out. All I gave my editor was a two-page outline.”
“And he bought it?”
Rex Christian grinned.
“What kind of epidemic?”
“That’s where you can help, Vic.”
“If it’s research you want, well, just tell me what you need. I used to do a lot of that in school. I was in premed and—”
“I want to make this as easy as possible for you.”
“I know. I mean, I’m sure you do. But it’s no sweat. I’ll collect the data, Xerox articles, send you copies of everything that’s ever been written on the subject, as soon as you tell me . . .”
Rex Christian frowned, his face wrinkling like a deflating balloon. “I’m afraid that would involve too many legalities. Copyrights, fees, that sort of thing. Sources that might be traced.”
“We could get permission, couldn’t we? You wouldn’t have to pay me. It would be an honor to—”
“I know.” Rex Christian’s miniature fingers flexed impatiently. “But that’s the long way around, my friend.”
“However you want to do it. Say the word and I’ll get started, first thing in the morning. Monday morning. Tomorrow’s Sunday and—”
“Monday’s too late. It starts now. In fact, it’s already started. You didn’t know that, did you?” Rex’s face flushed eagerly, his cheeks red as a newborn infant’s. “I want to know your feelings on the subject. All of them.” He pumped his legs and crept forward on the cushion. “Open yourself up. It won’t hurt. I promise.”
Victor’s eyes stung and his throat ached. It starts here, he thought, awestruck. The last thirty-three years were the introduction to my life. Now it really starts.
“You wouldn’t want to know my feelings,” he said. “They—I’ve been pretty mixed up. For a long time.”
“I don’t care about what you felt before. I want to know what you feel tonight. It’s only you, Vic. You’re perfect. I can’t get that in any library. Do you know how valuable you are to me?”
“But why? Your characters, they’re so much more real, more alive . . .”
Rex waved his words aside. “An illusion. Art isn’t life, you know. If it were, the world would go up in flames. It’s artifice. By definition.” He slid closer, his toes finally dropping below the coffee table. “Though naturally I try to make it echo real life as closely as I can. That’s what turns my readers on. That’s part of my mission. Don’t you understand?”
Victor’s eyes filled with tears.
Other people, the people he saw and heard on the screen, on TV, in books and magazines, voices on the telephone, all had lives which were so much more vital than his own wretched existence. The closest he had ever come to peak experiences, the moments he found himself returning to again and again in his memory, added up to nothing more significant than chance meetings on the road, like the time he hitchhiked to San Francisco in the summer of ’67, a party in college where no one knew his name, the face of a girl in the window of a passing bus that he had never been able to forget.
And now?
He lowered his head to his knees and wept.
And in a blinding flash, as if the scales had been lifted from his eyes, he knew that nothing would ever be the same for him again. The time to hesitate was over. The time had come at last to make it real.
He thought: I am entitled to a place on the planet, after all.
He lifted his eyes to the light.
The dwarf’s face was inches away. The diminutive features, the taut lips, the narrow brow, the close, lidded eyes, wise and all-forgiving. The sweet scent of an unknown aftershave lotion wafted from his skin.
“The past doesn’t matter,” said the dwarf. He placed the short fingers of one hand on Victor’s head. “To hell with it all.”
“Yes,” said Victor. For so long he had thought just the opposite. But now he saw a way out. “Oh, yes.”
“Tell me what you feel from this moment on,” said the dwarf. “I need to know.”
“I don’t know how,” said Victor.
“Try.”
Victor stared into the dark, polished eyes, shiny as a doll’s eyes.
“I want to. I—I don’t know if I can.”
“Of course you can. We’re alone now. You didn’t tell anyone I was coming, did you, Vic?”
Victor shook his head.
“How thoughtful,” said the dwarf. “How perfect. Like this house. A great setting. I could tell by your letter you were exactly what I need. Your kind always are. Those who live in out-of-the-way places, the quiet ones with no ties. That’s the way it has to be. Otherwise I couldn’t use you.”
“Why do you care what I feel?” asked Victor.
“I told you—research. It gives my work that extra edge. Won’t you tell me what’s happening inside you right now, Vic?”
“I want to. I do.”
“Then you can. You can if you really want it. Aren’t we all free to do whatever we want?”
“I almost believed that, once,” said Victor.
“Anything,” said the dwarf firmly. “You can have anything, including what you want most. Especially that. And what is it you want, Vic?”
“I—I want to write, I guess.”
The dwarf s face crinkled with amusement.
“But I don’t know what to write about,” said Victor.
“Then why do you want to do it?”
“Because I have no one to talk to. No one who could understand.”
“And what would you talk to them about, if you could?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’m afraid.”
“Tell me, Vic. I’ll understand. I’ll put it down exactly the way you say it. You want me to relieve your fear? Well, in another minute I’m going to do that little thing. You will have nothing more to fear, ever again.”
This is it, Victor thought, your chance. Don’t blow it. It’s happening just the way you had it planned. Don’t lose your nerve. Ask the question—now. Do it.
“But where does it come from?” asked Victor. “The things you write about. How do you know what to say? Where do you get it? I try, but the things I know aren’t—”
“You want to know,” said the dwarf, his face splitting in an uproarious grin, “where I get my ideas? Is that your question?”
“Well, as a matter of fact—”
“From you, Vic! I get my material from people like you! I get them from this cesspool you call life itself. And you know what? I’ll never run out of material, not as long as I go directly to the source, because I’ll never, ever finish paying you all back!”
Victor saw the large pores of the dwarf’s face, the crooked bend to the nose, the sharpness of the teeth in the feral mouth, the steely glint deep within the black eyes. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck and he pulled away. Tried to pull away. But the dwarf’s hand stayed on his head.
“Take my new novel, for instance. It’s about an epidemic that’s going to sweep the nation, leaving a bloody trail from one end of this country to the other, to wash away all of your sins. At first the police may call it murder. But the experts will recognize it as suicide, a form of hara-kiri, to be precise, which is what it is. I know, because I’ve made a careful study of the methods. Perfect!”
The underdeveloped features, the cretinous grin filled Victor with sudden
loathing, and a terrible fear he could not name touched his scalp. He sat back, pulling farther away from the little man.
But the dwarf followed him back, stepping onto the table, one hand still pressing Victor in a grotesque benediction. The lamp glared behind his oversized head, his eyes sparkling maniacally. He rose up and up, unbending his legs, knocking over the bottles, standing taller until he blocked out everything else.
Victor braced against the table and kicked away, but the dwarf leaped onto his shoulders and rode him down. Victor reached out, found the bottle opener and swung it wildly.
“No,” he screamed, “my God, no! You’re wrong! It’s a lie! You’re . . .!”
He felt the point of the church key hook into something thick and cold and began to rip.
But too late. A malformed hand dug into his hair and forced his head back, exposing his throat and chest.
“How does this feel, Vic? I have to know! Tell my readers!” The other claw darted into the briefcase and dragged forth a blade as long as a bayonet, its edge crusted and sticky but still razor-sharp. “How about this?” cried the dwarf. “And this?”
As Victor raised his hands to cover his throat, he felt the first thrust directly below the rib cage, an almost painless impact, as though he had been struck by a fist in the chest, followed by the long, sawing cut through his vital organs and then the warm pumping of his life’s blood down the short sword between them. His fingers tingled and went numb as his hands were wrapped into position around the handle. The ceiling grew bright and the world spun, hurling him free.
“Tell me!” demanded the dwarf.
A great whispering chorus was released within Victor at last, rushing out and rising like a tide to flood the earth, crimson as the rays of a hellishly blazing sun.
But his mouth was choked with his own blood and he could not speak, not a word of it. The vestiges of a final smile moved his glistening lips.
“Tell me!” shrieked the dwarf, digging deeper, while the room turned red. “I must find the perfect method! Tell me!”
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