Then he stepped behind Claire, making with his left hand a sweeping gesture as if to offer, ladies and gentlemen, an appreciative view.
Then raised the scissors again with his right hand and gave two distinct snips above her head. The blades sliced through the air, and Claire’s dress fell to her feet. Then her underclothing, rings, watch, and necklace fell away with the second snip. I saw it and did not doubt the magic, because I already knew the truth of her. Her breasts hardly noticeable except for their delicate whiteness. Her body straight and sad. A pillow of thick, dark hair where her legs met. She was as frail and lovely as a luna moth. And as cold and quiet as a corpse.
Hadashi stiffened the fingers of one hand and by degrees levitated her, suspending Claire, the girl who wanted to go home, above the metal coffin. Then lowered her with barely a ripple. The rest was either frightening or not, because of its familiarity. He used the same sword that he had used before. And he moved in a sort of ballet. Slicing the fruit and floating it next to her body. Scattering chrysanthemum petals over her breasts. Adding plums, peaches, water chestnut, and mushrooms. Coating her with honey and caressing the unresisting form of her. Then kissing the apple and planting it deeply between her legs. Until at last he gave a final, soothing pass of the hand as if to urge her into a deeper sleep. And the metal lid descended, and was clamped shut. The assistants carried her the way they would have carried a casket, opened the iron lips of the oven, and let the flames lick forth. It was Hadashi himself who shoved her into the inferno.
And then we waited.
There were more tricks of course, more spectacles. Perhaps an hour of them, I’m not sure. My eyes found their occupation among the orange and blue flames. Until finally. They drew her forth again and set the sarcophagus upon the banquet table once more. Someone poured water over the lid, creating an immense cloud of steam that drifted over us, the audience. A man with quilted gloves unclamped the lid, and Hadashi himself lifted the cover, his face obscured by more escaping steam. Then he dipped a ladle into the mixture, tasted it ruefully, smiled. And we smiled with him. We were amused. It was all so absurd.
He had transformed her into an old woman, a sleeping spinster with boiling liquid gurgling all about her. The skin had cracked and peeled in places, turned shiny and dark in others. Her belly had grown soft and swollen, while vague strips of flesh hung loosely at her hips and thighs. It was marvelous, said a woman at a near table, as real as a roasted turkey: no one is more exacting than the Japanese magician. There was ripe applause as people stood on tiptoe to get their look—skin pulling away from wrist and ankles, the hair on her head and the now tiny patch between her legs looking as though it had been spun from sugar, charred, and some of it burned away. It was all too much, they agreed. Not a detail left undone. Even the face had its perfect sheen, the surface drawn back by the fire’s delicate fingers and melded to the skull. The lips as though they had been sewn shut. The eyes like varnished slits. And nervous laughter all around.
It took a moment for Hadashi to silence the crowd, but, as Robert had said, we had given ourselves over to the perfect showman, and he was insistent upon his final effect.
He reached out his hand and clutched the air, pulling invisible strings toward him; and the body began to stir. The woman in the coffin raised one knee slightly and moaned, some of the liquid sloshing, sizzling against the sides. The head turned to face us, and one of the eyes cracked open. She seemed to be examining her own arm like a mummy just awakening from its long sleep, but I do not think she was surprised by the crumbling flesh. I think she was looking at me, searching for something I could not give or say. And it was the Japanese magician who kissed her hand and laid it gently over her breast and brushed her lips with his own.
When the lights came on again, the stage was clear.
8
What I have discovered is that the floor of my hospital room is as bright and chitinous as a beetle’s shell. When I look down, I see my face floating several inches beneath a surface of stone, distorted, like moonlight stretched across water. Maybe that’s the way she sees me now. Or maybe that’s the way she sees my story, because she’s looking down herself, and the blanket has slipped from her lap and made itself into a mountainous island upon a faraway sea. And the face that she has found, I suspect, is not mine, but her mother’s face. I think she’s beginning to understand.
“Why would you make up something like that?” she said. “Why would you tell me a story like that?”
“Because I never fell out of love with her. Ever.”
“You divorced her. And then she died.”
“Of breast cancer, two years, three months, and six days after. I know. That’s why I’m telling you what really happened.”
“It’s not going to happen to you.”
“No, I’m not afraid of that. What I’m trying to tell you is that, shortly before your mother died …”
“Look, you don’t have to do this.”
“… I began taking my students to lunch.”
“Pop …”
“I would put them into my stories—it would never amount to much—and they would be sweet and delicious for a while. Then they would drift away. Marry their young men. It certainly wasn’t real to me, and I doubt that it was for them. But each time they drifted away, there was this little pinprick that reminded me of something.”
“Is that what happened with Claire?”
“I suppose.”
“And it reminded you of what?”
“That I was famous for a while. After that first book. Then the novel came along, and I developed a taste for the real thing. It’s what fame will do; I’m just surprised at how little it took. To ruin things, I mean.”
“You don’t need to do this, Jack.”
“You’ve got a family, a real family. You can do better.”
“You don’t have to do any of this.”
“I know. I’m just trying to tell you where I’ve been for the past ten years. Besides, how was I supposed to know it was a love story?”
“Go back to sleep. I’ll be there when you wake up.”
“The trick, you see, is to face all this without falling into sentimentality. That’s the trick. I just … I loved her so much.”
9
“You mind if I ask you something, Jack?”
I can hear Robert’s voice, and when I open my eyes, I can see his lugubrious face. He reminds me of Bogart just after the plane leaves. Every time I come to the club I expect to see him in a gray fedora and double-breasted suit, except that would be too informal. Robert is a tuxedo man. The starched shirt, the satin stripe and satin lapels seem to hold him together, to frame his overriding decency in a way that words cannot. And for the first time, in any version of the story, I wonder what I look like to him. Maybe like a drunk just lifting his head from the bar.
“What …?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Where is everybody?”
“Gone.”
“The kid I was with?”
“You took her home, Jack. You don’t remember that?”
“No. How about Hadashi?”
“Gone. They’re all gone. I mean, hell, Jack, it’s your story. You’re telling me you don’t know what happens?”
“Is that what you were going to ask?”
“No. No, as a matter of fact, I was going to ask why you picked the thirties. I mean, you weren’t even alive then, right?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I thought it was safe—innocent or something. The time before the war and all that. Maybe stories I heard from my parents. I don’t know.”
“Because, you know, what it looks like from this side … kind of like it’s all starting to unravel on you.”
“Just tell me one thing, Robert. Do you remember a cocktail waitress named Ann Marie?”
“That’s who you’re looking for, somebody named Ann Marie?”
“Yeah.”
Robert walks behind the bar and selects a half
-empty bottle from among the rows. Balances two glasses in the palm of his hand. “Nope. I don’t remember anybody by that name. And I remember ’em all; it’s my job.”
“That’s too bad.”
One of the waiters has upended the last of the chairs, and now the tables all look as if they’re wearing crowns. Someone is sweeping near the piano. And someone else is wringing out a mop, then making long liquid strokes, turning the floor into a reflecting pool. There’s a hint of daylight around the window frames, maybe enough to suggest that the night is finally over. Robert pours two drinks and slides one in my direction.
“Tell me something else, Jack. Back there when you said you were going to make some changes …” He raised his glass in my direction, then took a sip with his eyes closed. Popped his lips apart and planted his elbows on the bar. “What was that all about?”
I raised my own glass, and we took another long drink together. Finally he understood.
“I’ll be taking over the club myself for a while.”
“Ah.”
“I appreciate everything you’ve done, Robert. I really do.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“It’s getting a little late, I realize that. And I’m sorry, I really am.”
“It’s okay, Jack. You don’t have to be sorry.”
“It’s just something I have to do.”
“Yeah.” He finished his drink and came out from behind the bar. We shook hands in front of the stage where Hadashi had worked his magic.
I was afraid at first that Robert would not see the door, but I need not have worried. Like all great politicians, my good friend had known from the first how to take his exit. He straightened his jacket and, from a distance of eight or ten feet, gave a modest wave as he turned toward the corridor. Walking a bit stiffly perhaps. But, unless I am very much mistaken, Robert Hassard gave me a quick wink as he faced the long hall; then, smoothing back his hair just as Bogart would have done, he fronted the door and reached for its handle. There was a cold light that fanned out across the floor and a vague movement on the other side of the threshold. Then he was gone.
The sweeper went back to his sweeping. I rocked the ice in my glass and thought that, if he had only asked, I would have gladly walked with him into the light.
Abduction
Here’s a flash. If I phone them, it’s a story. If they phone me, it’s therapy. No exceptions. And that’s the tabloid truth. So usually I say this—I ask ’em, I say, you got pictures? You got some way I can verify this crap? And then of course about half of them hang up. The other half are inventive. It’s why I throw away my life in Best Western parking lots, isn’t it? Waiting for Elvis or some woman with a two-headed baby. Because you never know.
So, anyhow, this kid’s cracking the door just enough to show one of those flannel granny gowns. Pink damn flowers from neck to ankle, one hand on the knob and one on the chain like some old lady who’s suddenly got second thoughts about turning in the Satan worshiper across the street. And I’m outside in what passes for a hallway thinking, okay, okay, at least you believe, while I flash her some ID and start crooning. “Hi. I’m Barry Nussbaum. From the Global-Star?”
And nothing. I mean nothing.
She’s got herself wedged behind the door, trying to decide whether to slam or trust some old guy with a ponytail and loose tie. Like maybe I’ve come to take her back to the mother ship. Who the hell knows what she’s seeing? So I back off, smile, try to see what it is that I’m seeing; and it’s not a story. She looks about fifteen. Big honey blonde hair that hasn’t seen a brush in two days, blue eyes that are way past bloodshot, and not quite enough makeup to ruin a perfect complexion. Probably a runaway. And I’m thinking, Jesus, she looks like a cheerleader that somebody beat the shit out of. Except that’s not news and I’m already into my routine. “Janelle? Are you the Janelle Roberts who called? Because, honey, if you’ve got a story, I can’t get it out here in the corridor. Now, do you want to talk to the cops or do you want to talk to me?” Pure bluff, but it gets the door open, doesn’t it?
“I can’t stop crying,” she says.
Okay. I’m inside now, and it’s real. The stale air. Food cartons on the floor, trash talk on the tube. And I feel this tightness in my chest, this familiar, sad fatigue that’s going to drag me into some trailer park and kill me someday. I can tell she’s freaked out. Got the furniture arranged around her bed like a barricade, Pooh Bear against the headboard, rose petals all over the nightstand like the flower girl went crazy at your cousin’s wedding. Draperies closed. And I can feel the flu coming on, everything going numb including my emotions, and I have to concentrate just to taste the cigarette smoke—exhale, watch it drift. And here we are. She’s looking at me; I’m looking at her pink toenails. Like we’re the most normal couple in the world.
“You mentioned a boyfriend over the phone?”
I’m just treading water. I saw there was nothing for the front page in the first ten seconds, and I’ve already reduced her to a six-inch piece in the back—if I can find the angle. We avoid each other’s faces and stare instead into this pile of crumpled sheets in the corner. It’s the way they all do. Like they’re trying to tell you something by telepathy.
Finally she says, “He’s gone. I think he took the car.” Easing her feet under this green blanket that looks like pond scum, then drawing her knees up the way they do when they’re little girls.
So I just come right out with it, my one foray into cleverness. “Look, is he the one who hit you?”
But she shakes her head, puzzled. So I fish out the tape recorder and figure I’ll give her ten more minutes because, underneath, she’s beautiful, and I feel like she’s somebody I knew and lost a long time ago. So I ask her if she’s called anyone else.
“No,” she says. “I just need the money.”
And I think, God, you could be an actress. You could be Lolita. You could be my own kid, somebody I loved if the world weren’t such a garbage heap, but instead I hear myself saying, “Okay. Here’s the deal. You get a thousand dollars straight up if I can verify what you say. Five thousand if I get photographs. But you’ve got to convince me. We don’t pay for scams, and we don’t do counseling. So, Janelle. Have we got an abduction story or not?”
“Last night,” she nodded.
“Good. Good. Now—amaze me.”
“There was this rumbling noise, like a train. And then this bright light. You know, like … a train.”
“Okay, forget the recorder. Just talk to me.”
“I couldn’t move. It was like I was floating, up, but I couldn’t move, and then I was just there.”
“Where? In a room? A spacecraft?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, don’t worry about that. We can do a sketch later. Now, after you were lifted up, is that when you saw the alien?”
“Yes, I mean, no. I didn’t have any clothes on, and I couldn’t move. I don’t remember exactly. It was so cold, and they made me lay back.”
“That’s when they examined you?”
“Yes.”
Now I want to pick her up and shake her, shake the damn flowers off her gown and say, You think I haven’t heard this before? You think I’m paying for this? Sweetie, I’ve written this same story a hundred and forty-six different ways. I know who tells it, and I know who reads it. And I can get your whole life into three paragraphs.
But I hear her whispering to me, “Mr. Nussbaum, I’m afraid I’m going insane.”
“Let’s open the drapes; it’s still light outside.”
“No!”
“Okay, but tell me what really happened.”
Tears now. She’s winding the bedspread around her legs and shivering. Backing away now.
“Janelle, listen to me. I can smell a phony before it gets cooking. It’s part of my job. Now if you need some kind of help—”
“There was an alien.”
“Look, I’ve got to go. Is there somebody you want me to call?”
“Okay. There was an alien. What did he look like?”
“He was so small.”
“Okay, small. What else?”
“A large head, very large. And those eyes just like the pictures. Round but, you know, pointed at the end. These deep dark eyes. And tiny little hands, Mr. Nussbaum. I’m not imagining this.”
“What else?”
“Just this little gash, this purple gash for a mouth. And no hair. No hair on its body. Please. Please, help me.”
I flick off the recorder. “Look, whoever you are, I’m really sorry. I know you’re confused and that somebody’s hurt you—okay? I’ll call Social Services when I get back to the office. Here’s a twenty; it’s all I’ve got.”
“It was gray!” Defiance? I can’t tell, and it doesn’t make any difference—what does anybody named Janelle Roberts have to defy? “Sort of pinkish gray. A little bit … bluish gray, I think. I couldn’t … watch.”
“Just one?”
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe you were dreaming.” It’s the kindest thing I can think to say.
“You weren’t there.”
“I know. Good-bye.”
“You weren’t there when it cried.”
“What?”
“When it made this crying sound. When it came out.”
“When it came out of …?”
“After it came out of me.”
It takes a moment for me to realize.
The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men Page 7