Curioddity

by Paul Jenkins

  “Regular coffee, please,” said Wil. “Better make it Oversized.” He gulped, realizing that in his manic confusion he had actually succumbed to Mug O’ Joe’s institutionalized language mangling.

  “Absolutely, sir!” replied the teenager in a breezy manner that demonstrated he was only too pleased to receive Wil’s order correctly for a change. The server turned to address Wil’s elderly companion. “And what can I get for you today?”

  The little old man abruptly bent at the waist and covered one eye so that he could better study the chalk-drawn menu upside down. “Something exotic, I think,” he replied. “What do you have on special?”

  Unperturbed by this odd behavior, the teenager turned to survey the ridiculous collection of coffee containers on the shelf behind the counter. Wil looked up at the labels on the jars; he had never realized just how many different types of coffee existed in this coffee shop. Had those jars really been up there all the times he’d placed an order inside Mug O’ Joe’s?

  “A lot of people like the Sumatran Dragon’s Breath,” enthused the teenager. “Have you ever tried Bengal Tiger Hiccups? I could do that as a frappe.”

  “That sounds most excellent,” replied the little old man, matching the teen’s enthusiasm. “And could you hold the heavy cream, please?”

  “Certainly, sir. Go ahead and take a seat and I’ll bring those out to you,” replied the teenager with a broad smile

  Of all the things that had happened to Wil on this particular morning, the teenager’s sudden transformation from surly to polite was the thing that threw him the most. Unless this was a different teenager. Wil was hardly in the frame of mind to analyze the situation. He needed coffee.

  Still in a mild state of shock, Wil found himself moments later at a table by the window, seated across from the little man. He’d never actually sat inside the coffee shop before. Looking around, he saw the ridiculous array of exotic coffees was larger and more comprehensive than he’d previously noted; the containers were stacked precariously in all corners of the shop. Wil looked at the labels, many of which were in languages he couldn’t read. One of the containers was labeled with what appeared to be Egyptian hieroglyphics. Just as Wil noticed a particular label on one of the containers that seemed etched with what appeared to be Aramaic writing into what appeared to be blue neon glass, the teenager arrived.

  Wil gratefully accepted his Regular Oversized, hoping beyond hope that the effects of the outlandish amount of caffeine might jolt him back to his senses. The teenager smiled at Wil, then passed the little man his Bengal Tiger Hiccups frappe, which bubbled below the surface, suggesting it might be full of frozen carbon dioxide. It possessed a venomous odor that teetered precariously between malted chocolate and malted battery acid. Unsurprisingly, the little man wrinkled his nose at the drink the moment it arrived. Before Wil had a chance to thank his server, the teenager turned tail and breezed back to the counter where he proceeded to attend to other customers and occasionally smile in Wil’s general direction.

  “Dinsdale.”

  Wil jolted out of his reverie with a start. The peculiar old man was now staring at him, politely smiling.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Dinsdale, Mr.”

  Wil could tell his potential new client was patiently waiting for him to overcome his attack of confusion. This must have been a conversation they were having previously, which Wil had probably lost track of. He furrowed his brow, hoping this would give him the appearance of being fully engaged in the moment.

  “Or Mr. Dinsdale, if you prefer,” continued Mr. Dinsdale. “Aren’t you going to fill out your form?”

  Wil produced his now-crumpled insurance form. “Dinsdale … right. First name?”

  “Mr. Dinsdale. Now, about that matter of urgency: I need to know first and foremost that you can keep a secret. What I am about to divulge to you is known to only seven people in the United States and one more in the former Soviet Republic of Kurdmenistan. Can I count on you, Wil?” Mr. Dinsdale looked at Wil, expectantly. Despite the overwhelming sense that this eccentric elderly gentleman was playing everything from shortstop to quarterback in a league of weirdness all his own—and despite the slight suspicion that Kurdmenistan was not an actual country—Wil nodded. “Good man!” said Mr. Dinsdale. And with that he produced from his coat pocket what appeared to be a set of musical notations and placed them on the table. “Now then … we’ll have to take things slowly for security reasons. I don’t want to throw it at you all at once. Let’s try a little test first. Do you have any idea what this is?” he asked.

  Not wishing to appear completely thrown off his game, Wil decided to go with the obvious: “I’m going to go with the obvious,” he responded, doing his utmost to appear confident. “Musical notes?”

  “But not just any old musical notes,” said Mr. Dinsdale, pleased that Wil was warming to the task. “Look again. See anything out of the ordinary?”

  The musical parchment appeared to be old and weathered. Whoever had written the notations had crammed in an awful lot of notes; and though Wil possessed no musical training whatsoever, he could see that this was an unusual piece. At the top of the page was written a faint signature that had faded over the years. Wil gulped and tried not to let his obvious double take throw him off balance and pitch him onto the floor.

  “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,” affirmed Mr. Dinsdale with a grin. “But what makes this particular piece of music special is what it represents.”

  “What does it represent?” Wil asked, intrigued.

  “Mr. Mozart was no ordinary musical genius, as anyone can tell you,” replied Mr. Dinsdale. “Many people know that he was a Freemason and that he composed his first concerto at the age of five. There was a movie and a rock song about it. But very few people know that Mozart was also a scientist and mathematician, and that he dabbled in musical alchemy. In his later years, he was being driven mad by his own genius—so much so that he traveled to consult a famous doctor in Vienna before he lost the plot entirely.” Mr. Dinsdale picked up the yellowed sheets and looked about the coffee shop in conspiratorial fashion. “The Viennese doctor advised Mozart that he was indeed going crazy as a result of having too many competing thoughts in his head at the same time,” continued the little man in a hushed voice. “He advised Wolfgang that he needed to go home and compose himself. And that’s exactly what the great man did. What you are looking at is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in musical form!”

  Dinsdale handed the musical notations across the table so that Wil could take a look for himself. Wil blushed and closed his eyes. “Okay, I get it,” he said with a chuckle. While he hadn’t spotted any of the TV cameras on the way in, Wil knew that when he opened his eyes the little man would be sitting next to a game show host, and that all of the customers in the coffee shop would be revealed as audience participants. He consoled himself with the thought that if he were very lucky, the morning phone message from his dad might also possibly be someone pulling his leg. He just hoped beyond hope that he hadn’t picked his nose, or something, while on camera.

  Wil opened his eyes to find Mr. Dinsdale smiling at him, patiently. No one else in the coffee shop seemed to be in on the game. Wil began to imagine he was trapped in the center lane of a three-lane highway, driving a tiny European compact with two enormous eighteen-wheelers keeping pace on either side: it’s one thing to go out crushed between something heavy, he thought, but it’s another thing altogether if you feel utterly ridiculous when it happens. He glared at the little man across the table. “Is this some kind of joke?” he asked, barely trying to hide his annoyance.

  “No, it’s a concerto, I think,” replied Dinsdale, stuffing the parchment back into his pocket. “I needed to show you an authentic exhibit in case you doubted my sincerity. For as you have no doubt guessed, I am indeed the curator of the Curioddity Museum!”

  Mr. Dinsdale sat back in his chair and waited for Wil to slap his forehead with his palm and say, “Of course!” But the old man was goin
g to be in for a long wait. At this very moment, Wil was deciding whether or not to lean forward and slap Dinsdale on the forehead, thus pushing him off his chair. The little man’s face began to fall as he realized Wil may or may not have understood the significance of his previous statement. “The Curioddity Museum,” he repeated, aghast that Wil seemed to be struggling to understand. “Don’t tell me you’ve worked in the city for all this time and haven’t found your way to the Museum of Curioddity?”

  “That would have been difficult,” said Wil, sharply, “since I’ve never even heard of it. Who put you up to this?”

  Mr. Dinsdale (Wil was beginning to suspect this was not even his real name) was now beginning to look most perturbed indeed. He pulled the musical notations from his pocket once again. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I fancy you may have misunderstood my intentions. If you’d like to examine the documents once again you can attest to their authenticity—”

  Wil took the documents, as if to examine them. And promptly dropped them on the ground. The papers seemed to make a faint tinkling sound that resembled the famous overture of the Marriage of Figaro, which he ignored. He wasn’t too fond of tricks, and this particularly elaborate one only served to tick him off even further. The little man looked at the fallen notations, aghast, and hurriedly reached down to scoop them up.

  “Look, Mr. Dinsdale—or whatever your name is—this has been a particularly rough morning for me,” said Wil. “I’m not sure why you’ve decided that today would be a good day to test your new comedy routine on a perfect stranger but I have bills to pay and debt collectors to make excuses to. If you have an actual point, I’d be most grateful if you’d get to it. And if you are in fact trying out new material for your routine, I’d appreciate a royalty check for my trouble.”

  Wil glared at Dinsdale, feeling slightly foolish for having been suckered into whatever scam the old man had going. It seemed mildly idiotic to think this strange-looking person stood a remote chance of being an actual client. Mr. Dinsdale, for his part, stared at the papers, taking just a little extra time to sort them while he apparently considered what he might do next. He furrowed his brow and scratched his chin in a contemplative manner. Then, he furrowed his chin and scratched his brow, which Wil was grudgingly forced to admit seemed a neat trick. Finally, Mr. Dinsdale nodded his head, having arrived at the business end of some kind of conclusion or other.

  “You know, I think I understand your skepticism, Mr. Morgan,” said Mr. Dinsdale. “How silly of me. Of course, you’d have to actually hear the music first before you could accept it as the genuine article.”

  “What? Wait—”

  “Yes, I realize my mistake now. You’re not the sort to just take something this magnificent at face value. You’re going to need proof of its authenticity. That’s what makes you a renowned detective. I should have expected no less, considering your reputation.”

  Wil flushed, feeling slightly embarrassed to have been so gruff with an eccentric old man who—on the face of it—had been nothing but pleasant company. He was unaware that at any time during his career as a private investigator he had garnered any kind of renown or reputation beyond that of someone who habitually paid his bills late, or not at all.

  “Look … Mr. Dinsdale, you seem like a nice enough guy: weirder than a bobcat on a skateboard but harmless enough. If this is just something you do to fill up your mornings, that’s fine. But unless you’re willing to give me an actual job or tell me what you really want, I’m going to have to get back to work.”

  Mr. Dinsdale suddenly sprang to his feet in an animated fashion, startling a couple of the patrons nearby who were sharing something that looked suspiciously like a gravel milkshake. “That’s the Wil Morgan I expected!” the little man shouted, enthusiastically. “Then it’s settled. Let’s get to work at once! Come on!”

  And with that, Mr. Dinsdale abruptly turned and headed for the front door of the coffee shop, leaving his bubbling Tiger concoction to pump out a heavy gas that cascaded off the edge of the table like a waterfall. “Wait!” cried Wil. But it was no use: the old man was already at the door and heading out into the street at an alarming rate for one so old. Wil scooped up his Regular Oversized and gave chase.

  As Wil rushed to the exit, he passed the teenaged server, who for some inexplicable reason was now simply standing by the door holding a large carton of heavy cream. They made eye contact for a brief moment.

  “Be careful out there,” said the teenager.

  As he rushed outside, Wil admitted to himself he had absolutely no idea of the significance of that statement.

  * * *

  BY THE time Wil got out to the street, he could see that Mr. Dinsdale was already some thirty or forty yards ahead, obscured partly by the freezing fog. It seemed to Wil that unless the little man was an Olympic sprinter of some repute, this had to be either an optical illusion or he was having another of his missing time experiences. He broke into a run, calling out to his quarry ahead just as Mr. Dinsdale turned a corner. By the time Wil reached the corner, some five or six seconds later, Mr. Dinsdale was now a hundred yards ahead on the same street. And yet the little man seemed to be puttering along at a speed that seemed in keeping with a person of his advanced years—in other words, at a pace equivalent to a crippled turtle.

  Wil looked at his watch: two minutes to eleven. If he stopped now he could get back to the office in time to avoid two or three phone calls and perhaps share a conversation with Mr. Whatley about politics and/or cleaning products. He’d spend the afternoon fretting about the imminent arrival of his father and then have the living daylights scared out of him at exactly six minutes after three. Finally, he’d go home after a fruitless day of nothing in particular and run the gauntlet of his rusty old landlady and her moth-eaten cats. He decided to keep up his pursuit.

  Running as fast as he could, Wil got within ten yards of Mr. Dinsdale just as the old man turned left onto the main artery of the one-way system. “Stop!” he cried. “Mr. Dinsdale!”

  Wil barreled around the corner, half-expecting Dinsdale to now be a full half mile ahead. Much to his surprise, he ran full bore into the little man, and he barely managed to grab at Dinsdale’s mustard-yellow coat lapels before the two of them went clattering to the ground. Wil heard a honking sound: most of the people traversing the complicated one-way system in their cars seemed to now be staring in their direction as they passed. Mr. Dinsdale furrowed his chin again. Wil felt nothing if not mildly ridiculous.

  “What on Earth are you doing?” asked Dinsdale. “Is something wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I’m sorry,” replied Wil as he tried to catch his breath. “I tried … catch up … back there … too fast!”

  Mr. Dinsdale extricated himself from the embrace, stood up, and dusted himself off. “I can see it was too fast.” He sniffed. “You’d better slow down before you do yourself a mischief.”

  “Slow down? Slow down? You come plowing into my office like a crazy person, you show me Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Unfinished Whatever while I’m pumped full of caffeine, and then you speed off like a clown car without any brakes … and I’m supposed to slow down?”

  “Couldn’t have put it better myself. Come on, it’s this way.” Mr. Dinsdale narrowed his eyes to peer at something on the road ahead before striking out in its general direction. This kind of erratic behavior really seemed to be Dinsdale’s thing, thought Wil, as he jumped to his feet and gave chase, determined not to lose the old man in the now-thickening fog.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The Curioddity Museum, of course. It’s just up ahead.”

  “Up ahead? Waitaminnit … where exactly is this museum?”

  “Oh, we’re situated on Upside-Down Street right across from the abandoned cinema,” said Mr. Dinsdale, cheerily.

  Wil knew for a fact that no museum could possibly exist for at least two miles in the direction Dinsdale was now headed. This was the way he walked home from his of
fice every single day—following the flow of the one-way traffic, naturally—and he would most definitely have seen something as obvious as a museum on his travels, not to mention an abandoned movie theater. Up ahead lay a particular stretch that led cars and pedestrians alike along a featureless causeway lined by enormous banking buildings. This in turn led to a second old railway bridge that rivaled the first for its ability to rattle one’s fillings. Wil was just beginning to come to terms with the absurdity of the concept that was “Upside-Down Street” when up ahead, Mr. Dinsdale ducked to his left and onto a street that Wil had never, ever noticed was there.

  He stopped in his tracks to consider what might be Actually Occurring, as opposed to Apparently Occurring. By this point, he had begrudgingly accepted this was no ordinary miserable Monday. A manic Monday, perhaps, or maybe a momentous Monday. Wil felt it was a testament to Mr. Dinsdale’s, well … curioddity … that he had barely even thought about the hideous and awkward likelihood that his dad was going to visit sometime in the next few days. And in thinking this, he suddenly realized that indeed, his father was coming, and he had to catch himself against the wall of one of the banking buildings to stop himself from succumbing to his vertigo and toppling over.

  Wil squinted at the little side street, which to all intents and purposes had suddenly and magically appeared overnight between the two largest banks in the entire city. He’d heard that such terrifying diseases as flesh-eating parasites and temporal lobe epilepsy might cause sudden hallucinations followed by irreversible insanity. But try as he might, he couldn’t concentrate in such a manner that the little street would simply go away. The street sign read, simply, MONS. Wil’s sixth-grade-level French classes had taught him this was the French word for “mountain,” but the idea of a street named after anything higher than fifty feet in what was quite possibly the world’s flattest city seemed absurd. A lot of things seemed absurd. Wil edged closer to the corner of the little street, wondering why he felt so nervous about peering around it.