The Lost Time Accidents

by John Wray

  “Very nice,” I said. “A premium kitchen.”

  “He doesn’t look old enough for an apartment this posh. Is there family money?” You blinked at me sweetly. “You’re not a fabulously wealthy recluse, are you, Walter?”

  “A recluse? Not at all. Why would you ask me that?”

  “I was watching you earlier, out in the living room. You were alphabetizing all the DVDs.”

  “I don’t think of recluses as going to parties,” I said stiffly. “I tend to think of them as staying at home, in a bunker or a tower of some kind. And as for those DVDs—”

  You gave my hand a squeeze. “Don’t get your shorts twisty, Walter. I’m sure the DVDs were frightfully out of order.” You watched me for a while. “I’ve always had a soft spot for the blue-eyed, moony type. Also, for the record, I’m sloshed.”

  I considered pointing out that my eyes were a sort of muddy greenish gray, but prudence prevailed. Your expression grew pensive.

  “Do you mind if I ask how you pay the rent?”

  “I’m working on—I suppose you could call it a book.” I stared out at the forest of pant legs and skirts. “A book of history.”

  “History, did you say?”

  I nodded.

  “Anybody’s history in particular?”

  Talking about my book always made me want to commit seppuku, and this was no exception. I hadn’t so much as glanced at it since I’d dropped out of college.

  “Mine,” I answered, fighting the urge to bark or gnash my teeth. “My family’s, I mean.”

  To my infinite relief you didn’t laugh. “Your family? What’s special about them?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. Which was the second lie I told you.

  “I know what’s special about mine, Walter. Would you like to know?”

  “Very much.”

  “We’ve always had noteworthy tombstones. My great-great-uncle Elginbrodde—of the Massachusetts Elginbroddes—wrote his epitaph himself, and it’s a doozy. Want to hear it?”

  “Of course.”

  “All right, then.” You screwed your eyes up fiercely. “It was etched in a kind of cursive, I remember. Let me think—

  “‘Here lie I, Melvin Elginbrodde:—

  Have Mercy on my Soul, Lord God,

  As I would do, if I were God

  And Ye were Melvin Elginbrodde.’”

  Neither of us spoke for a moment. If I hadn’t already known that I was at your mercy, Mrs. Haven, I’d have realized it then.

  “That’s quite an epitaph,” I said at last.

  “I’d like to read your book one day, Mr. Tompkins.”

  No one had ever told me that before—and no one has since. “You would?” I said. “Why?”

  “Something tells me I’d like it.” You turned my hand over, as if reading my palm. “If we become friends, maybe I could have a walk-on part.”

  “It’s not that kind of history,” I managed to answer, painfully aware of how pompous I sounded. “It starts almost a hundred years ago. I’m trying to make a sort of pilgrimage, you might say, back along the causal—”

  “There must be money in your family.” You let go of my hand. “An apartment this hideous doesn’t come cheap.”

  “Van came by his riches honorably, I’ll have you know. By the sweat of his loins.” I attempted a grin. “He has a mail-order pheromone business.”

  Your eyes widened. “He has a what?”

  I cleared my throat carefully. “He sells pheromones—”

  “Has he got any here?”

  “Here?” Something in your voice made me uneasy. “In this apartment, you mean?”

  Your face was close enough to mine that I could feel your hopsy breath against my neck. “In this apartment,” you said, “is exactly what I mean.”

  I felt suddenly exposed under your attention, undersized and at risk, like a chinchilla caught in a searchlight. I found myself wondering whether it hadn’t been a mistake to tell you about Van’s business. I was still trying to make up my mind as I followed you out of the kitchen and up the spiral staircase to the second floor.

  “They’re probably in here,” you said, opening the door of what my cousin liked to call his “cockpit.” “This is where I’d keep the monkey drops.”

  “Monkey drops?”

  “The pheromones, Walter.”

  You were already rifling through the drawer of Van’s night table. A vaguely pornographic poster above the headboard advertised something called Equus Special Blend: two women with airbrushed, lava-colored bodies caressing a man-sized vial of iridescent goo. I studied it for a while, trying to figure out why Van could possibly have had it framed, then recognized it as a poster for his company. The vial was sweating angrily and so were both the women. A banner of digital-looking text across their genitals proclaimed:

  YOUR. TIME. IS. NOW.

  “Your time is now,” you said quietly. You were standing at my shoulder, gazing up at the poster with a look that I couldn’t interpret. “Isn’t it always?”

  “If that were true, Mrs. Haven, my cousin would be out of a job.” You sighed, and I realized—too late—that your expression was one of melancholy. “I only mean that, in this case, ‘your time’ is a reference to getting a girl—I mean, to finding somebody to—”

  “It’s always now,” you said. “It’s never then.” You seemed to be speaking only to yourself. A second wave of jealousy broke over me, even more overpowering than the first. My sense of predestination was gone without a trace.

  “I’d rather not talk about time, if you don’t mind.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you really want to know, Mrs. Haven—” I hesitated, at a loss as to where to begin. “You might say that time is my family curse.”

  “Time is everyone’s curse.”

  “That’s a popular misconception, actually. Without progressive time—that is to say, without what physicists refer to as the ‘thermodynamic arrow,’ life as we experience it—”

  “Put a cork in it, Walter,” you said, pressing the thumb of your right hand against my lips. Your left hand held two vials of brownish liquid. I was gripped by a new sensation then, one that I’ve always hated: the feeling of life imitating advertising. The mimicry wasn’t perfect—you weren’t sweating or lava-colored, and you had your clothes on—but it was close enough. I took one of the vials from you, squinted at it a moment, then pulled out the rubber stopper with my teeth. A smell of grease and toffee filled the room.

  You gave a tipsy-sounding laugh. “What’s your next move, Walter? What are you—”

  “My time is now,” I said softly. I knocked the little vial back like a shot.

  For the space of a few seconds I felt nothing: my sense of propriety stirred in certain of the remoter furrows of my brain, but that was all. Almost at once, however—with astonishing speed, at any rate—a warmth began to muster at the bottom of my spine. My eyes had closed at some point without my noticing, and I quickly lost all awareness of the room, of the party, even of the fact of you beside me. Purple and crimson and cinnamon-colored shapes began to creep across my sight, and behind or below them were other shapes, less abstract, more carnal, squirming and writhing together in patterns and rhythms that brought a prickling flush to my skin. I felt exalted, singled out by obscure and erotic forces, ready for anything as long as it was filthy. I have no clear sense of how long this condition lasted, Mrs. Haven, or how obvious my voluptuousness was to you. With every passing second I became more deliciously aware of each fold and recess of my body, more physically greedy, more depraved. I took in a deep and languid breath, held it as long as I could, then decided I was ready to have my way with the cosmos, beginning with you.

  When I opened my eyes, you were staring at me as though I’d just swallowed a tooth.

  “You’re not supposed to drink it, Walter. It’s a musk.”

  By the time I’d fully grasped what you were saying the voluptuousness had drained away completely, rushing out of my bo
dy as if it couldn’t wait to escape, leaving me baffled and self-conscious and alone. For the blink of an eye, I was able to savor a feeling of mortification as acute as my arousal had just been; then, without the slightest transition, I was lying facedown on the corkwood floor.

  “Walter? Come in, Walter. Are you alive?”

  Your voice was all breath and no sound, the voice of a panicked conspirator, and I wondered, considering my position, how I was able to hear you at all. Then you spoke to me again, and your lips brushed my earlobe, and I realized you were with me on the floor.

  “I hear somebody coming, Walter. I think maybe it’s time to get up.”

  “Why are you lying down, Mrs. Haven? Did you take a shot, too?”

  You cursed under your breath and rolled me over. I opened my eyes with reluctance. You were floating above me like a kind of cherub, but also like a creature in a lithograph I’d once seen, a gargoyle hunched over a woman in the throes of a terrible fever.

  “I love you, Mrs. Haven.”

  You pursed your lips at that, looking more prim than I’d have thought possible, and patted me very gently on the cheek. “That’s nice of you, Walter. How soon are you going to be sick?”

  “That isn’t important. I want to—”

  At that moment my cousin reeled into the room, leading a sniggering young man by the collar of what appeared—from what I could make out—to be a uniform of the merchant marine. The two of them grappled for a while at the foot of the bed, taking no notice of us whatsoever, butting foreheads like amorous elk. I’d never seen my cousin behave in this way, though I can’t honestly say I was surprised. Something about Van has always brought late-night nature programming to mind.

  “Hello, cousin,” I groaned.

  Van gave a slight jerk, as though he’d been stuck with a pin; the boy closed his eyes and flopped onto the bed. You sat up and arranged your hair and dress.

  “Jesus, Waldy. What are you doing down there?” Van squinted at us for a moment. “That can’t be Richard Haven’s fucking wife.”

  “This man is ill,” you said politely.

  “What have you got to say for yourself, Waldy? You’re sick? Is that true?”

  “It will be soon,” I managed to reply.

  As I write this, Mrs. Haven, it occurs to me that our romance was bookended—set in parentheses, as it were—by visits to the toilet to be sick. You waited just outside the bathroom door, chatting cordially with my cousin; I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror (scruffy brown hair in need of a cut, startled-looking gray eyes, general air of defeat) and resigned myself to the inevitable. Our illicit encounter, such as it was, was over. Our desert island had been colonized.

  Van was gone when I finally emerged, but you were just where I’d left you, leafing through an Equus Special Blend brochure. I stood beside you sheepishly, steadying myself against the wall, waiting for you to acknowledge me. When you did I knew at once that it was over.

  “I have to go,” you said flatly. “The Husband is waiting. I told him that I’d left something upstairs.”

  “That something being me.”

  “You don’t understand the chance we’re taking, Walter.” You looked suddenly tired. “He has a possessive streak—a nasty one. If he starts to suspect—”

  “I’m not afraid of him. Let him come up.”

  Your reply was a yawn, which was what I deserved. It’s typical of my cursed nature that I discounted the fact that you were risking your marriage—and most likely far more—by waiting while I threw up in the bathroom. All I cared about was that you’d soon be gone.

  “Mrs. Haven, I feel it incumbent on me—”

  “You talk funny,” you said. “Like an actor playing the part of a college professor. I’m not sure I like it.”

  “I come from an odd family. Let’s blame it on them.”

  “What sort of a family?”

  “Millionaire recluses.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised, the way you talk.” You considered me a moment. “I like it.”

  “You’ve already made up your mind?”

  “That’s right, Walter. Sometimes it goes fast.”

  I put my hands on your shoulders. “Mrs. Haven—”

  “It seems a bit weird, your calling me that now.”

  “Why?”

  “No one’s ever called me that before they kissed me.”

  For some reason this stopped me cold. “You haven’t told me your name,” I said. “Your given name, that is.”

  “I guess this means we’re in a stalemate, Walter.”

  We stared at each other, both of our expressions guarded, as though it had just occurred to us that we were strangers. “My name isn’t Walter,” I said finally. “It’s Waldemar.”

  You narrowed your eyes. “What sort of a name is Waldemar, if you don’t mind my asking? Are you a wizard?”

  “It’s a family name. It came from my grandfather’s brother.”

  “That family of yours again. They keep popping up.”

  “Mrs. Haven, I’d like very much to—”

  “Your breath smells like toffee,” you said, wrinkling your nose. “Don’t operate any heavy machinery tonight, Walter. Okay? Take a cab.”

  I took a step toward you—more of a lunge, really—but my cause was clearly hopeless. You were at the head of the staircase already, frowning at me slightly, as though I were becoming hard to see. All the seconds and minutes that had hung suspended since I’d met you hit the floor with a crash, scattering like ball bearings across the parquet. I watched your cropped head spiral out of view as smoothly and irrevocably as the water in the toilet had just done.

  A thought came to me then, or the ghost of a thought, but I flushed it irritably from my mind. It had to do—of all possible thoughts, in that place, at that instant—with time, and with our progress inside it. I found myself spinning clockwise—the opposite spin to your descent of the staircase, to the swirling of the toilet, to the direction in which I wanted time to move—but it had no effect at all on your departure. At the end of the hall, like a frigate coming over the horizon, my cousin drifted grimly into view.

  “What are you trying to do, Tolliver? Can you answer me that?”

  “I’m putting up resistance,” I mumbled. “I’m testing a theory. By turning in the contrary direction to the prevailing—”

  “Shut up, asshole. What the hell were you doing with R. P. Haven’s wife?”

  I came to rest and stared into Van’s eyes. He looked chillingly sober.

  “I wasn’t doing anything, really. I found her under the counter. She was—”

  “Do you have any idea how important Haven is for me? For my company?”

  I’ve always had trouble distinguishing rhetorical questions from literal ones, Mrs. Haven, and this was no exception. “I have a hunch,” I said carefully, “from the look on your face, that he’s one of your principal backers.”

  Van said nothing for a long, reflective moment.

  “Get out of my house, Tolliver.”

  IV

  KASPAR AND SONJA’S LOVE flowered lushly, Mrs. Haven, as secret liaisons will—but Waldemar had secrets of his own.

  The cause of his mysterious sleeping habits and absences from school was, in fact, a middle-aged widow with a rose-colored villa, just as the departmental wags had whispered; but their mutual passion took a form that would have surprised even the most imaginative of gossips. The widow Bemmelmans—Lucrezia, to her intimates—was a fearsome opponent of vice in all its irruptions, from child prostitution to cardsharping to the intemperate consumption of coffee. In his role as her favorite, Kaspar’s brother had taken to spending his evenings at the widow’s side, assisting her in composing a staggering number of articles, letters, and feuilletons, of which the following text (concerning the “waltz king” of Vienna, Johann Strauss) is as good an example as any:

  A dangerous power has been put into the hands of this dark man. African and hot-blooded, rabid with life, he exorcises the dev
il from our bodies; his own limbs no longer belong to him when the thunderstorm of the waltz is let loose. His fiddle-bow dances in his arms, and the tempo animates his feet; bacchantically the young couples waltz—lust in its purest form let loose. No God inhibits them.

  Whether lust of any kind—other than a kind of righteous bloodlust—was let loose in their late-night drafting sessions, it was clear enough to Kaspar that the widow Bemmelmans (or the “Brown Widow,” as she would come to be known) had a hold over Waldemar that ran deeper than any shared schoolmarmishness. The precise nature of this hold continued to elude my grandfather, try as he might to divine it; but he was certain that the two of them had some skeleton in the cupboard, and that it was the reason for his brother’s furtiveness. He made a point of telling Waldemar about his affair with Sonja Silbermann in rapturous detail, in the hope of bridging the widening gulf between them, but his brother barely seemed to hear. Kaspar forced himself to take an interest in the widow’s pet crusades, and even went so far as to attend one of her gatherings; this, however, proved an even worse miscalculation. He made the fatal blunder, Mrs. Haven, of bringing his new bonne amie along.

  Their romance was barely a month old when Kaspar and Sonja paid their call on the widow Bemmelmans, but already my grandfather’s fitted shirts and fawn-colored suits had been exchanged for a brown linen jacket that looked perpetually slept in, and blue canvas trousers—as shapeless as the dresses back in Znojmo—that he’d bought from a bricklayer’s apprentice. His nervousness at meeting his brother’s benefactress was somewhat offset by Sonja’s surprising decision to wear a delightful saffron sundress, but his misgivings returned at the sight of the widow’s footman, a badger-faced giant with a waxed blond mustache, who wore the uniform of a Hungarian hussar.

  The widow received them in a ballroom on the villa’s second floor. Waldemar was there, as were half a dozen other young men, arranged about the room in self-consciously romantic poses, like actors in some grim tableau vivant. The widow was the only person seated, on a leopard-skin couch that appeared to take up a third of the room. A pair of sabers lay crossed on the waxed floor before her; it was unclear, at least to Kaspar, whether their function was decorative or sporting. He found himself picturing the widow Bemmelmans, surrounded by her eager coterie, officiating at round-robin tournaments, perhaps even at duels.