by Paul Jenkins
Wil hazarded a glance in Lucy’s direction and was most concerned to find her navigating the roads by looking underneath the top of her steering wheel. “So,” he began nonchalantly, grasping his life tightly by the reproductive organs, “have you ever driven this way before?”
Lucy gripped the wheel and sneered at the white lines in the road. “I drive this way to work every day. Shut up, I’m trying to concentrate!”
The Pinto careened around a small hybrid that was inconveniently stopped at a red light and shot off onto the divided highway that led to the museum.
Wil didn’t have the heart to tell the object of his affection and future mother of his children that he had not intended “this way” to mean, “in this direction.” Rather, he had meant to inquire if she habitually drove in this manner. But given the fact that his heart had stopped beating a few blocks back, he felt obliged to keep such opinions to himself until he felt either solid ground under his feet or the warm caress of a hospital gurney.
Up ahead, the invisible side entrance to Upside-Down Street loomed, invisibly.
“We’re taking a right about five hundred yards up there!” yelled Wil.
“Would you please shut up!” yelled Lucy in return. “I know where I’m going!”
“It’s just ahead!”
“Gah! I can’t stand backseat drivers!”
“But I’m in the passenger seat—”
“Even worse!”
“It’s kind of a sharp right!”
“You’re worse than your Lemon phone! Hold on!”
With a sudden squeal of tires that sounded like a multitude of yodeling pigs, Lucy banked the wheel of the Pinto dead right, so that the rear of the car fishtailed around in a manner familiar only to professional Japanese drift drivers and people who had accidentally driven onto an oil slick. As the Pinto careened onto Upside-Down Street, the back of the vehicle flattened the confusing street sign so completely and utterly that it sprang upward, flipped off its base, and planted itself neatly upside down in a nearby gutter. Which, in effect, left the sign the way it should have been oriented to begin with. Had it been an animate object, it wouldn’t have had the nerve to protest.
Lucy gunned the car’s argumentative engine toward the museum, slammed on the brakes, and skidded to a halt so abruptly that Wil’s esophagus had to remind itself not to project through the front windshield. The vehicle sputtered to silence.
“Okay-dokey,” said Lucy in a breezy manner, “we’re here!”
* * *
WIL SAT in complete silence for a brief moment, unable to decide if he had just experienced the thrill ride of his life, or if he had invented a new cure for constipation. Amazingly, most of his body parts seemed to have survived the journey. The ones he couldn’t feel were probably in shock.
“Are you okay, Wil?” asked Lucy with a look of genuine concern on her face.
“I’m not sure,” Wil replied. “I think I might have blacked out back there. Do you always drive like that?”
“Like what?” she replied, innocently.
“Like an angry little Korean lady behind the wheel of a tank.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Wil could tell from Lucy’s genuine expression of puzzlement that she was telling the truth. This was going to be a much longer conversation, one that would need to be conducted over a very large pot of coffee and a few impossibly huge peach Danish. In the meantime, he and Lucy needed to get inside the museum. A certain Mr. Dinsdale had some explaining to do.
“Come on,” said Wil, peeling himself from the passenger seat, where he had been slightly glued in by large pools of cold sweat seeping through his clothing. He pushed against the crumpled passenger door, stepped out into a light rain, and headed toward the front of the museum.
“You still haven’t told me what the problem is,” Lucy remonstrated as she exited the driver’s side of the Pinto. “Why did you bring me here? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I just had dinner with one!”
“What—?”
Grabbing Lucy’s hand, Wil started toward the museum’s revolving door. “No time to explain,” he muttered. “Just bear with me, okay? I have a feeling this is all going to make sense to you in some weird way. It’s about the museum—”
“What’s happened?” Lucy shouted, as bewilderment finally caught up to the rest of her. “Did somebody die?”
“No. I think somebody just came back to life. Namely, me.”
“How is that possible?”
“It’s not. It’s just implausibly deniable. It’s about un-looking at things properly so that they finally make sense—like the daily specials in your local coffee shop.”
And with that, Wil rushed in through the right-hand side of the revolving door, Lucy followed him quickly in through the left side, and they found themselves inextricably stuck with no place to go.
* * *
WIL BASHED his head on the inside of a pane of glass and stood there stunned for a moment. He’d successfully navigated the door on two previous occasions by un-looking at it. But this time, he had simply not looked where he was going, and there was clearly a subtle distinction between the two. Being stuck in close quarters with the incomparable Miss Price—watching her try to untangle her shoelaces from the base of the door while simultaneously pushing in the wrong direction to free herself—gave Wil the sense he had indeed found his intellectual soul mate. Under normal circumstances, he probably would have chosen to stay where he was for a little longer and work with Lucy on their mutual problem.
But this was no ordinary circumstance: what awaited inside the Curioddity Museum’s foyer caused Wil to simply stand and stare, his mouth agape. And moments later—without knowing how he did it—he found himself standing in front of the cash register with a small amount of drool emerging from his mouth.
* * *
INSIDE THE foyer, Mr. Dinsdale and three uniformed workers were wrestling with huge, crackling ropes as they tried to hold down the box of Levity to prevent it from shooting through the ceiling.
“Hold her steady!” yelled Dinsdale as the Levity box suddenly tugged on one of the ropes and sent two of the burly men flying. “Bob! You and Robbie secure the ballast and tie down to one of those statues! Bobby and I will grab this end!”
A strange form of Tesla-style electricity played around the holding ropes, and across the ceiling of the foyer. At the register, Mary Gold filed her nails and smacked her bubble gum, as if to make it clear she had no interest in the madcap proceedings whatsoever. Out of the corner of Wil’s eye, the wooden crates twitched excitedly. The Curioddity Museum had undergone a most fundamental change indeed. Suddenly, it could be seen exactly as intended.
As the three uniformed workers attempted to comply with Dinsdale’s instructions, the Levity box suddenly broke free. It tugged sharply on the remaining ropes, one of which had been wrapped tightly and securely around an old-style radiator. The radiator immediately became dislodged, sending a massive plume of steam into the air. One of the unfortunate workers was now being dragged across the floor, sending the man clattering into his two coworkers, both of whom had barely begun to recover.
“Wil!” yelled Dinsdale. “It’s good to see you! Grab the end of that rope and help Bob, will you?”
Will eyed the rope nervously for a moment. The large amounts of electricity playing along its length tended to suggest a kind of “don’t touch” motif at play.
“What are you waiting for? We need your help, please! It’s getting away!”
“Is it safe?” asked Wil, grabbing for the departing rope against the protests of his fight-or-flight instincts.
“Of course not! Now hurry!”
“I think I just called you from the future but I got the answering machine instead!”
“What?”
“Nothing!”
Wil felt a strange, cool sensation flooding his forearms as he grabbed hold of the electrostatically charged rope and b
egan to tug against it. Up above, the Levity box bucked and squealed before settling into place. And with the aid of the three burly workers—all named Robert—and the old man himself, the box now moved slowly back down toward the floor of the foyer.
While Wil huffed and tugged, he noticed with some interest that the wooden crates in the foyer were moving in such a way as to apparently grab his attention. He locked eyes with Mary Gold at the cash register. She stared back, smacking her gum a few times and regarding him with an expression of feigned disinterest, before glancing toward the revolving door.
To his dismay, Wil discovered that Lucy was sitting on the floor of the door’s left side, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed from the bottom of her heart. He had no way of helping her unless he let go of the rope and sent the box crashing upward through the ceiling.
Wil glowered at Mary Gold. Don’t just stand there, he said, translating his thoughts into the most rudimentary of body language. Go and help her.
With a look of utter disdain that Wil took to be Mary Gold’s most conciliatory tone, the beehived receptionist floated toward the revolving door as Wil, Mr. Dinsdale, and the three Roberts hauled the now-docile box of Levity down toward the floor of the foyer.
“Well done everyone!” yelled Mr. Dinsdale enthusiastically. “Let’s get the box riveted onto the new display shelf and back into the temporal exhibit!”
“Mr. Dinsdale!” yelled Wil in response. “I need to talk to you about something … someone…”
“That’s it!” called Dinsdale toward his workers. “Lower her gently.”
“Mr. Dinsdale—”
“Robbie! Wrap the rope around the base of that door!”
Mr. Dinsd—”
“Bobby! Take Bob and go fetch me some pliers!”
“Mr. Dinsdale!”
* * *
A SILENCE fell upon the foyer of the museum. Out of the corner of Wil’s eye, the wooden crates settled quickly into place, as if having been admonished by a schoolteacher.
“Mr. Dinsdale,” said Wil as calmly as he could in spite of his breathlessness, “can you please tell me what in the heck is going on? Why was that old box trying to punch a hole through the ceiling?”
Mr. Dinsdale’s rheumy eyes glistened, and he smiled the smile of a grandfather who’d just witnessed a grandson’s first touchdown. “Your eyes are simply un-looking in the right direction now, Wil,” he said. “It’s good to have you back.”
Mary Gold appeared at that moment, leading Lucy toward the two men. Lucy’s shoulders continued to shake, much to Wil’s dismay. Perhaps she’d really hurt herself. He stepped forward to make sure she was okay. To his surprise, Wil found her shaking not to be a result of sobbing but because Lucy was giggling, quietly and uncontrollably. Mary Gold rolled her eyes and moved away.
“Oh, Wil,” Lucy said, recovering. “That … was … epic!”
“It was?”
“Yeah. I mean you went the wrong way! An’ I went around the other way, and we got stuck! Major fail!”
“I’m pretty sure I went the right way.” Wil thought for a moment. Maybe Lucy was right, and he had entered the door from the wrong direction. She certainly had the effect of sending him in directions he had a hard time predicting.
Lucy proffered her hand in the direction of Mr. Dinsdale and smiled sweetly. “Hi,” she said in her oh-so-confident manner. “You must be Mr. Dinsdale. I’m Lucy. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Hello Lucy,” said Dinsdale. He squinted, and then his eyes darted quickly toward Mary Gold, a look of genuine intrigue spreading across his face. “Have we met before?”
“I’m pretty sure I’d remember that,” replied Lucy, evenly. “This place is groovy. Do you have airlocks?”
“On every floor.”
“Even better—”
“Okay, hold it right there!”
All eyes turned to Wil who, at this moment in time, had stepped so far outside his normal frame of reference that he found himself looking at his brain from the outside in, much like patrons of a gallery might study a painting in an actual wooden frame. “I need,” he said, gritting his teeth, “to let go of this rope. Please.”
And with that, Wil let go of the rope.
And promptly fainted.
* * *
MR. DINSDALE’S office had the look of an Escher painting: its walls were decorated in such a manner that if one looked into the distance, the pattern of the wallpaper had a tendency to move sideways at rapid speeds. One end of the room seemed narrower than the other. It was exactly as Wil expected it would be, and that only served to unsettle him even more; he was becoming used to the madness, he realized.
“How are you feeling?” asked Mr. Dinsdale from across the small table where they now sat. His face carried a look of genuine concern, as did Lucy’s.
“I feel more like I do now than when I first got here,” said Wil, defeated. On the tabletop in front of him, the Perpetual Penny wandered lazily across the flat surface, having no intention of ceasing its spinning activities anytime during the next millennium. “I can’t believe all of this is real. I don’t want to believe it.”
“Yes, you do, Wil. I knew it from the moment I first met you. You’re looking at things with your heart again instead of your eyes. Life is about to get a lot more interesting.”
Wil grasped the cup of tea that had been placed in front of him and let his attention wander to small, spherical objects that were floating aimlessly throughout the room. “I feel like my centrifuge just stopped spinning,” he said, wistfully. And off this simple-yet-complicated remark, Lucy placed a tender hand against his cheek and brushed his hair back slightly. Her caress felt like the most perfect touch in all the world.
“And is the world better, or worse than before?” asked the old man.
“Roughly the same, Mr. Dinsdale.” Wil considered his plight. “I can’t tell which direction I’m facing, or if I just learned something, or if I already knew it and just remembered it. I can’t tell if I’m coming or going, and I have no idea how I got here. All I know is that everything’s random, and this place is the epicenter of it all.”
“When you visit the Museum of Curioddity, the world begins to waken. And when you leave it, you always take a piece of it with you. You’re simply seeing the world the way it’s supposed to be seen. It takes some getting used to.”
“Is that penny spinning forever?”
“Yes, it would appear so.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re ready to believe it can. With a two percent margin for human error, of course. But this being Thursday, that usually goes down by a couple of percent.”
Wil looked at Lucy, hoping with all his heart that she would remain real, no matter how unreal this entire experience seemed to be. Despite her concern for his well-being, Lucy seemed to be taking it all in her stride. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. “I think you had some kind of electric shock.”
“It’s perfectly fine, Lucy,” exclaimed Dinsdale. “Those ropes have a few hundred thousand volts running through them but it’s counteracted by the effects of the Levity. Or at least that’s the theory.”
“That’s the theory?” repeated Wil, incredulous.
“Yes, and it works, apparently.” Mr. Dinsdale jumped to his feet in the arbitrary, energetic manner he seemed to have claimed for his very own. “Now that you’re back in the fold, we have to get straight to work. I’m glad you left a message on my answering machine last week telling us you’d be coming. There’s no time to lose.”
“No time to lose what?”
“That’s the spirit!” said Mr. Dinsdale, happily. “Come on!” He turned on his heel and headed toward the main floor with the expectation that Wil and Lucy would follow him.
Lucy glanced to Wil, greatly amused. “He’s better than advertised,” she said, her eyes widening. “Come on. I want to see what happens next.”
Grabbing Wil by the hand, she led him out of the office and into the mot
ionless centrifuge of randomness otherwise known as the Museum of Curioddity while the Perpetual Penny continued to spin, perpetually.
* * *
OUT ON the museum’s upper floor, the building seemed to have undergone a seismic shift either in a perceptual sense, or just literally. Wil hadn’t remembered the hallways being so wide, nor the ethereal will-o’-the-wisps that seemed to float in and out of rooms chased by more of the small, spherical objects. The museum was alive in every corner, and in every meaningful way.
Lucy gasped in delight at each exhibit they passed. Inside the display of perpetual motion machines they found one of the Roberts tinkering with da Vinci’s Perpetual Emotion machine. The burly worker had a set of handwritten instructions laid to one side, and was twisting something on a back panel with a small eyeglass screwdriver, while a second Robert kept his arm stuck in the machine’s front orifice and alternated between a state of euphoria and a state of utter despair. Wil pulled Lucy slightly toward him, making sure to give the wretched contraption a very wide berth. Perpetual things were now becoming normal, but that didn’t mean they were all safe.
While no one was looking, Mr. Dinsdale had teleported to the end of the hall, which led to the temporal exhibits and the featureless room beyond. Next to him, tiny flashes of lightning seemed to illuminate the glass bottle “lightning catcher” from within. “Wil! Lucy! Come this way, please!” called the strange old man.
Lucy tightened her grip on Wil’s arm, intrigued by the possibilities unfolding before her very eyes. Clearly, she did not need to be untrained in order to see the museum properly—it already fit into her worldview. “Is Mr. Dinsdale always this arbitrary?” she said, chuckling, as they approached the waiting old man.