“The Superego contains what we learn from our teachers, our advisors. The Superego is what harmonizes the Id and Ego. It provides an awareness that the universe is larger than ourselves, that we must function with an awareness of this greater scheme or become deluded that we are somehow central to all.”
Grandma Gloria looked overwhelmed at this flood of words. Marj felt herself grinning.
“It’s okay, Grandma. Really, it’s okay. You want me to choose to accept what you call the Second Sight, but the way you present the choice it’s as if I need to wrap myself up like a gypsy fortuneteller, get a deck of cards, and deny everything else I know. What this card is telling me is that I can have both. I can have it all. Black horse. White horse. Me at the reins.”
She laughed. After an moment, Grandma Gloria laughed with her.
“Then I can rest?” the old woman asked, hesitant still.
“That’s your choice,” Marj said. “You’ve kept telling me that neither death nor destiny can be denied. You’ve been fighting death, trying to force me into a destiny you chose for me. Listen to your own words. You never were speaking to me. You were speaking to yourself.”
And with that, Marj rose, bent, and kissed the old woman on one age-wrinkled cheek. There was a door visible now between two of the brightly burning candles, and Marj walked through it.
Marj was sitting at her kitchen table. She might have been tempted to believe that, after her rough night, she had drifted off to sleep again and spilled her coffee.
But words written with the coffee said: “Good-bye and God Bless.”
And in her hand Marj grasped a tarot card emblazoned with the Charioteer.
Heart and head. Intellect and soul. Like Marj, we believe we must choose one over the other. The truth is so much more complex, so much more difficult. We all live between these two extremes. We all live in our own personal Twilight Zone.
STANLEY’S
STATISTICS
Jean Rabe
Meet, if you will, Stanley Rossini, a pleasant enough octogenarian who made his fortune writing best-selling police procedurals and whose thoughts are filled with the criminals and detectives who traipse through the big, bad city in his mind. Stanley worries about becoming a victim, like some of his fictional characters did, becoming one more statistic on a police blotter. One more number crunched. And so he lives in a small town, keeps all of his doors locked, and one day tries to feed his loneliness by inviting inside the wrong soul.
Josh didn’t mind the smell of geezers. Good thing, since he spent a few hours every day—save Sundays and holidays—delivering food to their tidy little run-down homes.
The women usually smelled of bargain-brand perfumes they’d lathered on to war with the disinfectants sloshed all over their kitchens.
The men smelled musty, of old clothes slick-shiny-thin at the knees and elbows and a bit too baggy—shirts and pants that had an assortment of stinks and stains on the front from being dribbled on, and that Goodwill would flip a rejecting finger at if given the opportunity—but the geezers just couldn’t part with because they lacked the disposable income and desire to go out shopping for something better. Sometimes the men also smelled of cheap cigars because on their pensions they couldn’t afford the good kind, and of Vicks VapoRub or Bengay or some other pungent ointment Josh had learned to tolerate quite well.
He found Stanley Rossini to be a pleasant exception to the rest of his clients, and so he often took his proverbial sweet time when delivering Stanley’s Meals on Wheels.
Stanley always smelled of a hint of expensive aftershave, a touch of fine whiskey, and wore over the top of his pressed linen shirts designer-brand sweaters so new there hadn’t been time for even the smallest nub to appear. His pants had a pressed crease down the front—never a wrinkle, the cuffs brushing the tops of his polished black leather loafers . . . Italian, Josh wagered, because they looked like ones George Clooney wore in a romantic vineyard-set comedy he saw at the budget cineplex.
Stanley’s house wasn’t little or run-down, but it was tidy, and everywhere in his kitchen, dining room, and den—Josh had not yet seen the rest of the place—were antiques of various sizes that didn’t have a mote of dust on them. Stanley had a housekeeper come by on Mondays and Thursdays to keep the place spotless; Josh had met her once in passing. Also on display were an assortment of trophies and poster-sized framed book covers featuring guys with guns and wide-eyed women in fishnet stockings. Josh had learned during his second delivery that Stanley had been quite the writer in his younger years and was not shy about displaying his accomplishments.
As usual, Josh rang the bell and waited ten toe-taps. And equally as usual, Stanley opened the door, motioned Josh into the living room, and then with a flick of his age-spotted hand, gestured him toward the kitchen beyond. Stanley was careful to double-latch the door behind him, put on the chain, and re-key the security system.
“Just set my lunch up on the table, Joshua, if you don’t mind. The good china today, the Royal Copenhagen. I’ll get to it in a few minutes. Oh, and a pitcher of ice water. Have to deal with my company first. A reporter from the local paper’s come to interview me about my new book.”
Josh had registered the woman seated on the leather couch, notebook in hand, tiny tape recorder whirring away on the coffee table next to a Japanese teapot and cups. This was the first time Josh had seen Stanley entertain anyone. He sat the food sack on the mahogany table and went to the cabinet for a plate, being especially quiet so he could hear the conversation in the other room.
“I’m almost finished with the final draft,” Stanley told the woman. “Another week, two at the most, then it’ll be back to the publisher and ready to go to print.”
The old man had a soft voice, and so Josh slipped closer to the doorway so he wouldn’t miss anything. He was pissed about the woman’s presence, as he’d intended to pocket another Hummel figurine from the knickknack shelf on the wall behind the couch—no way that would happen with both of them sitting there. Josh was an expert on Hummel. The previous pieces he swiped from Stanley—one from that shelf and another from the desk in the den—“Umbrella Girl” and “Umbrella Boy” respectively—he’d sold for $1,200 each on eBay. Stanley also had an assortment of Royal Doulton figurines in a curio cabinet that Josh intended to pick from. And that would be just the tip of the pilfering iceberg.
Also in the curio cabinet were museum-quality Capodimonte gnomes, a set of seven of them, all playing musical instruments, in near-mint condition and made sometime between 1760 and 1800. Josh had researched the pieces and placed their value at $14,000 for the lot. Beneath them on the bottom shelf was a Meissen nineteenth-century figural grouping of Diana the Huntress in a chariot drawn by a pair of white elks, the color intense. It was worth at least as much as the gnomes. Stanley had made an off-handed comment two Meals on Wheels deliveries past that his deceased wife—God bless her beautiful soul—had inherited all sorts of figurines from a great-great uncle. Stanley kept them around to honor her memory.
Josh intended to honor her memory by selling Diana and her elks to the highest bidder sometime next week . . . along with the two terribly rare Russian Imperial porcelain fairy-tale figurines that had to have been crafted by Sabanin. The latter would go for a solid ten thousand, and the arctic white fox by Cybis on the curio’s top shelf would go for more than that, as it was number forty of one hundred (Josh had taken a peek at it when Stanley was in the bathroom) and signed, no chips or cracks, and at ten inches across too big to slip in his pocket.
Three weeks ago on eBay Josh had sold an old Vincent Jerome Dubois cockatoo for a mere $3,000. He’d nabbed that from a geezer’s house on Washington Street, another unsuspecting Meals on Wheels client. And a week before that, from a geezer in a rental unit, he’d managed to lift a figurine of St. George mounted on a white horse and slaying a dragon. The detail was exquisite, from the Italian studio of Pattarino, who was known for giving his pieces to dignitaries visiting the Vatican. Josh su
spected he’d underpriced it at $4,000.
“Four thousand, that’s how many copies of my first book sold. This one, they’re going to start the print run at four hundred thousand, I understand. Never thought I’d finish the book. Never thought I’d tell my editor I was done with the first draft. Been working on it two long years. They used to take me only a few months to write, a book. But ‘back in the day’ a book only had to be about fifty thousand words, give or take. The publishers want double that now. More complex characters, too. More violence.”
“Wow, a hundred thousand words.”
“That’s why it’s taken so long. That and the arthritis in my fingers slowing me down some. Thought I was done writing, I say, retired so to speak. But I’d gotten the bug again, damn the arthritis. See the knobs? It’s rheumatoid—RA. Have some more tea. It’s Earl Grey, imported.”
“How many words do you write a day?”
Stanley shrugged, the gesture setting a wrinkle in his sweater. “Don’t track it that way. Been writing on one of those newfangled laptops because my editor said he wouldn’t deal with typewritten manuscripts anymore.”
“Your fans will snap this new book up, I’m sure,” the reporter gushed as she noisily sipped from the cup. “There hasn’t been a new Stanley Rossini in a bookstore in . . . what . . .”
“Nine years,” he finished. “Like I said, I’d thought I was done writing.”
“And the name of this new book?”
“Statistics,” he answered. “Comes out in hardcover next May. Hope I live long enough to see it.”
That would be eight months away, and Josh felt certain Stanley would more than make it—if nothing untoward happened to him. Though Stanley had to be eighty-five if he was a day, he was in great shape. Stanley didn’t need Meals on Wheels. He didn’t need a housekeeper. He was spry and could well take care of himself; in fact, he drove himself to doctor appointments and town meetings in his old BMW. Josh suspected Stanley ordered the Meals on Wheels—and had to pay full price since he wasn’t financially limited—because he was lonely and liked the contact with the delivery man. All of the geezers Josh delivered to were lonely. And none of them, Stanley included, seemed to miss the figurines Josh helped himself to.
Geezers had so many dust-catchers sitting around anyway that they probably couldn’t remember precisely what they had. Bits of jewelry, Meerschaum pipes, ivory letter openers, 14K thimbles, and all manner of things strewn here and there that the geezers probably didn’t know were valuable. Josh was careful never to take too many pieces from any one place . . . unless a geezer was sick and on his or her way out. Then Josh got a little greedier. Only on a few occasions had Josh helped a geezer to the hereafter so he could take some bigger pieces.
Well, a few more than a few occasions.
But he’d never been caught.
Never would, he figured.
Working for Meals on Wheels paid very well.
“Statistics?” the reporter pressed. “Did I get that right? The name of your book is Statistics?”
“I always favored one-word titles. Lets them set the print on the cover bigger.”
“And it’s about—”
“—a number cruncher in the police department who finds trends in crime statistics and uses them to break a burglary ring and later track a serial killer.”
Josh poked his head out farther and watched the woman scribble furiously in her notebook.
“So, Mr. Rossini—”
“Stanley. I like to be called Stanley.”
“So, Stanley, I heard this book doesn’t feature your usual hero, Sergeant Alfonso . . .”
“Detective,” he corrected. “Alfonso got a promotion and his gold shield in the seventeenth book. No, Statistics is not about Detective Alfonso, but he puts in a cameo just for old-time’s sake. The number cruncher is a new character—based him on my father, actually.”
“Interesting,” she said.
“My father used to work for the FBI’s UCR division—helped form it, in fact. And I got a lot of the statistics I use in my book from the UCR—well, double-checked them, actually. There’s magic in statistics, but only a few people know that. The numbers have a life of their own, you see. Statistics have been following me my whole life, just like they followed my father—and eventually got him the day after his sixtieth birthday, hit-and-run in downtown Manhattan. Every nine days someone in New York City is killed by a hit-and-run driver. And of those drivers, twenty percent leave the scene. I know statistics, I know that this is a cruel world, and I protect myself as much as I can. That’s why I have so many locks on my doors and the most expensive security system I could buy—keeps me from being one of the statistics. I drive an older car, dark blue, statistically safer on the road. I have to be so very careful. The statistics want me badly.”
The woman politely bobbed her head, but stopped writing. Josh could tell that she’d figured Stanley had ventured into that twilight zone of addle-brained geezerhood. Alzheimer City.
“The statistics can be quite malicious, you know,” he continued. “So I decided to finally, after all these years, write a book about them. Should have done it earlier, just didn’t occur to me. My editor thinks it’s going to be a sure-fire best-seller and will open on the New York Times list in the top ten.”
“Uhm . . . UCR.” She bobbed her head quicker. She had a long neck and a long nose, and so the gesture reminded Josh of a pigeon. When Stanley didn’t get back on track, she tapped her pen on the notebook. “What’s the UCR?” Even her voice sounded all twittery and birdlike.
“The Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Like I said, my father helped establish it back in . . . oh, 1929 I think it was. I was just a little tyke. By the way, Stanley was the forty-third most popular baby boy name in 1925, the year that I was born. A pretty harmless statistic, that one.”
“UCR . . .” she pressed.
“Right. There was this organization called the IACP—the International Association of Chiefs of Police. My father was heavily involved in it for years before joining the FBI, and the Association had pushed for an archive of crime statistics. The FBI . . .” He paused, probably waiting for her to ask what those initials stood for, Josh guessed. “The FBI collected all the statistics from police and sheriff departments across the country, gathered them all into the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, the UCR. Back then it was all on paper. Now it’s computerized.”
“Statistics,” she stated.
“They have lots and lots of statistics, the UCR.” Stanley puffed out his chest, the first time Josh had seen him do that. “I usually can rattle off statistics for this and that without much thought . . . the statistics follow me around, you know, whittle their way into my brain and beg me to become one of them . . . one more statistic. But I called the UCR before I started my novel just to verify everything, all the statistics I wrote about and had my number-cruncher character analyze. I hadn’t needed to bother though, as I instinctively had all of them correct.”
“The statistics?”
“Yes. The UCR’s statistics—and the statistics that pop into my head—come from almost seventeen thousand police agencies, and they’re bundled under all sorts of categories—general crime, hate crimes, law officers killed and assaulted, thefts, drunken driving, what-have-you. More tea?”
Josh bit his lip when the reporter reached for the teacup and nearly knocked it over. The tea service, he’d researched after yesterday’s delivery, was circa 1890, and all totaled had eighteen pieces, each stamped on the bottom and signed with Japanese letters. The pot had a blue picture painted on it of a delicate-looking house that was perched over a stream and wooden bridge. When Josh stared at it, he imagined he was in Japan. The cups displayed a thick gold border lining, which given the immaculate condition of everything put it easily at $5,000. If the reporter broke the cup, the value of the set likely would be halved.
Stanley would have to die soon, Josh realized in that moment. Very soon. There were too many large pieces in
this house that had to be filched and sold before anything happened to them. The set of “good” dishes, for example. Josh tiptoed back to the kitchen table and touched the edge of the plate he’d put out.
Stanley had said his wife received the set from a relative during their twenty-fifth anniversary party. Stanley had no clue what they were worth—at least $87,000 according to a collector Josh had contacted. The china set was exceedingly rare, Flora Danica in near-perfect condition. The plates had hand-painted flowers and bore maker’s marks on the undersides.
Yes, Stanley would have to be helped to the hereafter very soon, before a single piece of Royal Copenhagen got a chip in it. Before the Japanese tea set was ruined.
Josh had only been in three rooms . . . he tried to imagine the valuables on display in the rest of the house. He would have to bring several duffel bags on the day that Stanley would die. A couple of cardboard boxes. Maybe borrow a friend’s van so he could also make off with the early French Art Deco Macassar chair that sat in the entry. Josh put it circa 1915, faux ivory border, caned seat, veneer only slightly weathered and easily worth more than a grand. The signed Norman Rockwell print that hung above it was probably worth something, too.
He returned to the cupboard and took down a pitcher, filled it with water and ice, and set it on the table. It was an Anthony Shaw Burslem Peruvian horse hunt pattern, hard to find in this condition and color—lavender, made in 1850, Josh had learned, likely something else Stanley’s wife had inherited. Josh had stolen and sold a few other Shaw pieces through the years and was familiar with the artisan, who was born in Cheddleton, Staffordshire, in 1827, married in 1833, and established himself as a potter in 1851.
Josh couldn’t help but smile. Stanley thought he knew all about statistics. Josh knew about statistics, too. He knew that the top-selling antiques on the Internet this week were an American cherry secretary desk that went for $16,000, an Armenian Kazak rug from the nineteenth century that went for $11,000, an art nouveau inlaid dining set that sold for $8,600—that one had been his, stashed for two years so it wouldn’t be traced back by nosy relatives of a geezer who died after lunch—and a bronze Putti clock garniture from the early 1800s that went for a whopping $11,000.
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 18