The Girl in the Face of the Clock

by Charles Mathes

  The receptionist smiled and shook her head, the way you might at the sight of a little boy with his best Sunday clothes covered in chocolate.

  “Good morning, Mr. Mannerback,” she chided, as he sped by her.

  “Gummy bears, very important,” said Peregrine Mannerback, the chairman of OmbiCorp International, oblivious to her greeting. “Gummy gummy gummy gummy bears.”

  Jane knew she must look ridiculous with her mouth open, but she was still too shocked to have gotten it properly closed by the time he returned a few seconds later. This is what happened when you tried to anticipate! Jane had been so certain that the tall man with the military bearing was Perry Mannerback that now she had no idea what to do. Her brain had stopped functioning entirely.

  “Mr. Mannerback, wait,” said the receptionist, bolting from her station and chasing after him to the elevator. She whispered into his ear and pointed to Jane. He listened intently, nodded, and marched over.

  “Perry Mannerback,” he announced, extending his hand. “How do you do? Very pleased to meet you.”

  “Jane Sailor,” said Jane, shaking hands. His hand was cool, his grip was firm.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ll talk on the way.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Jane, following him into the elevator.”

  “Sailor,” said Perry Mannerback, pushing the lobby button. “I know someone with that name.”

  The elevator doors closed.

  “You bought a painting by my father, Aaron Sailor,” Jane said.

  “Oh, yes. That was ages ago. Ages. Do you like gummy bears?”

  He pulled out a large bag from one of the bulging pockets of his raincoat and struggled to pull it open.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Of course you like gummy bears, don’t be shy,” said Perry Mannerback. “Everybody likes gummy bears. Gummy bears are very important to a person’s overall happiness. That’s why my secretary always makes sure I have some in my office. We’re going to have a good time.”

  What kind of good time could you have in an elevator? Jane was eyeing the alarm button when mercifully the car stopped at the forty-third floor and a pair of witnesses got in.

  “I like the orange ones,” said Perry Mannerback, unconcerned. “The orange ones are my favorites. Which ones do you like?”

  “I like the orange ones too,” said Jane cautiously.

  “No, those are mine,” said Perry Mannerback. “Here. You can have a green one.”

  He placed one in her hand. The elevator stopped again on its long descent. Jane’s ears popped as they had on the way up. More people got in. Perry Mannerback dug into his bag and distributed gummy bears to everyone. Some people took them with amusement, others looked annoyed, perhaps because he had reserved all the orange ones for himself.

  When the elevator finally reached the ground floor, Perry Mannerback grabbed Jane’s hand and practically dragged her through the crowded lobby and outside to a long black limousine parked in front of the building next to a “Don’t Even THINK of Parking Here” sign.

  “Let’s go, Leonid,” said Mannerback, closing the door. “Let’s go, let’s go.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Mennerbeck,” answered the chauffeur, a compact, Slavic-looking man in his thirties, who wore a well-pressed suit, a black chauffeur’s hat, and a resigned expression.

  “Okay!” said Perry Mannerback, bouncing up and down on the soft leather backseat with excitement. “Okay!”

  “Where are we going?” asked Jane, feeling strangely calm. Her center was low. Her breathing had returned to its proper rhythm. She was ready for anything (she hoped).

  “We’re going to have a good time,” said Perry Mannerback again with a satisfied expression, studying her for the first time. “Who did you say you were?”

  “Jane Sailor. You bought a painting from my father, Aaron Sailor.”

  “Oh, yes. Very nice chap. How is he?”

  “He’s been in a coma for the past eight years since somebody pushed him down a flight of stairs.”

  Jane had decided on going intentionally for shock value. It worked. Perry Mannerback reeled back as if struck with a fist. He placed his hand on his heart, then brought it up to his forehead. Then he leaned across the long leather seat and clasped it over Jane’s with surprising gentleness.

  “You poor thing, you poor, poor thing,” he declared with what appeared to be sincerity. Then he sat back. His eyes filled with tears. “Terrible to hear this. Yes, I remember him. Your father. A nice man. Very nice man.”

  Mannerback wiped his eyes, then pulled out a silk handkerchief and blew his nose with a honk.

  “Thank you,” said Jane, taken aback.

  They stared at one another for a few moments. Up close, she could see the white-on-white pattern of his shirt and the faint age spots on his neck and hands. Part of what gave his big eyes their earnest expression was that his eyelashes were unnaturally long and silky. He leaned forward again and spoke.

  “So why are we meeting?”

  Jane didn’t have a clue what to say. Instead, she just opened the little black purse she had brought along, took out the “Get Out of Jail Free” card, and handed it to Mannerback.

  “Of course,” he said, turning it over and noting his signature. “I remember giving that to your father. The painter. Nice chap. I didn’t know. Really, I didn’t. So what would you like for your favor?”

  “My favor?”

  “Yes. I give those cards when I owe someone a favor. A big favor. Very big favor. Anything you want, just name it.”

  Jane paused for a moment and studied him, wondering whether the monogrammed gold buttons on his blazer were in fact actual gold. He looked back with the eager smile of an eight-year-old.

  “I’d like to know who pushed my father down those stairs,” she said softly.

  Perry Mannerback’s eyebrows scrunched together and his lips screwed into a frown.

  “Terrible thing. Terrible thing. But I don’t know how I can help you with that one. I really don’t. I can only do what I can do, you know? Would you like a job?”

  “A job?”

  “Sure,” declared Mannerback. “I’ve got plenty of those. That’s what people usually ask for. A job. Or money, sometimes they just ask for money. Perhaps one day someone will actually ask me to get him out of jail. Are you an accountant?”

  “No. Why? Do I look like an accountant?”

  “A little.”

  “Please don’t tell me that.”

  “We’re always looking for accountants. Count all our money, we’ve got plenty. I know, you’re a lawyer!”

  “God forbid!” said Jane.

  “Not an accountant. Not a lawyer. No matter. We employ all kinds of people. Programmers. Analysts. Executive types. Secretaries. So what are you?”

  “I’m a fight director.”

  “A what?”

  “A fight director. I choreograph fights. For the theatre.”

  “I don’t think we need any of those. No, indeed. Fight director. What a curious profession. How on earth did you get into that?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Jane.

  “Good. I like long stories.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested.”

  “But I am,” protested Perry Mannerback, clenching his little fists. “I am, I am, I really am. I want to hear. Please, tell me. Please.”

  “I have this funny talent,” Jane said with a shrug. “I don’t know how to really describe it. It’s like I can see the relationships between moving objects from different angles in my mind. Since I was a kid I’ve been able to do these weird things, like toss a milk bottle in the air and as it’s falling back down, end over end, I can throw a clothespin right into it. You know how people make shadow animals with their fingers?”

  “I love that!”

  “When I was in college, I did something like that but with my whole body. My roommate would set up a sheet and project a light behind me, then I would jump around like a l
unatic but to the people sitting on the other side of the sheet it would look like mating elephants, dancing fish, Mickey Mouse—all kinds of strange things. I never planned anything, never rehearsed—I could just see in my mind what my movements would look like from out front.”

  “That’s fantastic!”

  Jane shrugged.

  “It was just this funny talent I had, this party-trick kind of thing. It never occurred to me that it was good for anything but some laughs. Then a girl in the drama department saw one of my little performances and asked me to help her with the fights in this play she was directing. She said I’d be able to do it easily. I thought she was crazy, but she was right. From the first rehearsal, I could see exactly what two people on stage could safely do so that it would look like they were beating one another’s brains out from the audience. And of course I’ve been fencing competitively since I was eight, so the sword fights weren’t a problem. A producer came to the opening night and in one of those million-to-one shots brought it to New York. You might have heard of it—Tillabuck.”

  “About the man with the mustache!” said Perry Mannerback. “I saw that on Broadway. It was great!”

  “It ran a few years,” said Jane, nodding. “It was probably the luckiest break anyone ever had—for all of us. Half the company are now on television or in the movies. The director did the new Wendy Wasserstein. I made some money and some connections in the New York theatre. I ended up with a boyfriend who was one of the handful of guys in the world who actually make their living as fight directors. I learned so much from him that pretty soon I was getting jobs on my own, which was one of the reasons we broke up.”

  “And you actually make your living like this? Choreographing fights?”

  Jane nodded.

  “I’m one of the few women working in the field,” she said, “so I’m a very politically correct hire for nonprofits and regional theatres. It doesn’t hurt that I know what I’m doing, either. When I get through with a production, the actors really look like they’re killing one another. And if I need to, I can skewer a full-grown egomaniac with épée, foil, saber, or dirk.”

  “Marvelous!” said Perry Mannerback, clapping his hands together. “I know. You could be my bodyguard.”

  “Right,” Jane said with a laugh.

  “No, I’m serious. You look like a bodyguard. Professional. Fit. And redheads are supposed to be very fiery. You could scare people away just with your looks.”

  “That’s very comforting to hear,” murmured Jane. “The fact is that I’ve never been in an actual fight in my life. Only pretend.”

  “But you would know what to do, I’ll bet, if I got kidnapped by pirates or something.”

  “That doesn’t seem likely.”

  “It could happen,” said Perry Mannerback indignantly. “Just look at all those terrorists out there. And serial killers. And out-of-control journalists. Besides, I need an assistant.”

  “Mr. Mannerback, I didn’t …”

  “You can be my bodyguard assistant. This will be grand.”

  “Mr. Mannerback …”

  “Come on,” he pleaded. “I haven’t had an assistant for a long time. They always quit. I’ll pay you. I have plenty of money.”

  Then he named a weekly figure so much higher than most people in the arts could make that Jane wanted to cry.

  “And benefits,” said Perry Mannerback, adding injury to insult. “Health insurance with dental. Profit sharing. OmbiCorp employees get all kinds of neat stuff, and we don’t care because the stockholders pay.”

  Jane tried to catch her breath. Health insurance, too. Practically nobody she knew in New York had health insurance. To get health insurance, you had to sign a long-term contract with a LORT theatre and move to some place like St. Louis or Minneapolis.

  “What did my father do that you owed him such a big favor?” she asked.

  “Gosh, it’s a nice day,” replied Mannerback, turning away and staring out the window as the limo inched up Broadway.

  “What did my father do that you owed him such a big favor?” repeated Jane.

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice suddenly louder than necessary. “I can’t remember.”

  Jane almost laughed aloud, the man was so obviously lying. They sat in silence for a moment. Then Mannerback turned back and looked at her like a bad puppy.

  “So what do you say? Will you do it? Will you let me give you a job? I always pay my debts.”

  Jane’s instinct was to open the door of the limousine and dive into traffic, but this was one of those times you had to use your head, not your emotions, to decide.

  She didn’t have a job for the summer, and the money Perry Mannerback was offering beat unemployment by a long shot. It wouldn’t be forever, Jane told herself. By next fall she’d be back in Omaha or Austin teaching punch-ups to actors again. Besides, how else could she find out why Perry Mannerback owed her father such a big favor? Or if he had pushed him down the stairs.

  “Okay,” Jane said. “Why not?”

  “Hurrah!” her new employer declared, pumping her hand and slapping her back. “This is great. Wonderful. Welcome aboard.”

  Just then the limousine glided to a stop at the side entrance to the Lincoln Center complex on Sixty-second street, across from the Fordham University Law School. The chauffeur cut the engine, then got out of the car and opened the backseat door.

  “Where are we going?” asked Jane, following Mannerback, who had jumped out and was bounding up a walk toward a large tent that had been set up in an area where they usually had outdoor concerts.

  “We’re going to have fun!” shouted Mannerback over his shoulder.

  As Jane chased after him and rounded the corner, a huge banner stretched between two posts came into view: THE BIG APPLE CIRCUS.

  Her first duty as Perry Mannerback’s bodyguard-assistant was to get them both popcorn.

  Five

  “You’ll be surprised,” said Perry Mannerback in his earnest, excited way as they got into the small, mahogany-paneled elevator. The elderly, white-gloved attendant closed the door and pressed the button marked “PH.” “It’s not what you expect, I bet. I bet it’s not what you expect at all.”

  Nearly a week had now passed since Jane had come to work for Perry Mannerback. This was the first time she would have the opportunity of seeing his penthouse apartment, but if it turned out that he lived with a family of elves in the exclusive Fifth Avenue building that he had brought her to, she wouldn’t be surprised. Perry Mannerback was the most remarkable man Jane had ever met.

  There were other men who were like children (practically every guy Jane knew was childish to one degree or another), but Perry Mannerback truly was a little boy: a fifty-six-year-old with all the good and bad aspects of a third-grader. He was innocent, yet he was naughty. He was rough, yet he was gentle. He was boisterous and shy, selfish and thoughtful, silly-looking but somehow cute. He could be hateful and stupid one moment, sensible and incredibly sweet the next.

  If Perry Mannerback had been born into a poor or even a middle-class family, Jane didn’t know what would have become of him. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to hold a job. He had no useful skills, was totally irresponsible, and had the attention span of a tropical fish. However, in the same way that God seemed to look out for mothers, drunks, and little dogs, the Almighty had provided Perry Mannerback from birth with everything he needed for a happy and productive life—namely, money.

  Perry Mannerback, as Jane had learned over the past few days, was the great-great-grandson of Otto Mannerback, an industrious German immigrant who had arrived in New York City in 1869 at the age of eleven without a cent in his pocket. Otto had eventually found work in a factory that made buttons from discarded oyster shells. Within ten years he had founded his own company in a lightless tenement on Grand Street—Otto Mannerback Buttons.

  By the time Perry was born, several generations of shrewd and hardworking Mannerbacks had built Otto Mannerback Buttons
into the largest buttonmaking concern in the world. Perry’s great-grandfather had diversified into other unglamorous yet profitable businesses that had assured Ombicorp’s profitability in bad button years as well as good. Perry’s grandfather had taken the company public and continued its expansion. His father had built it into an international conglomerate.

  Perry Mannerback had thus entered the world wrapped in a safety net of trust funds and privilege, his childlike qualities valued rather than condemned, his interests viewed as eccentric instead of crazy. Because of his wealth he was accorded opportunities that most men could only dream of.

  To her astonishment, Jane had learned that this man who made “vroom-vroom” noises when he played with toy cars had graduated from Harvard University (albeit not at the top of his class), had made his way through three marriages to beautiful and well-bred women (presently all happily divorced), and was now an actual grandfather. He was a respected member of New York society, a trustee of the Metropolitan Opera and the Museum of Modern Art, and served on the boards of directors of several major banks, corporations, and charities. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, under his leadership OmbiCorp International had flourished beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

  Perry Mannerback’s shrewd tactics and unorthodox style had become a business legend. Competitors and journalists alike were always trying to figure him out, but to no avail. When OmbiCorp had bought out a small plastic toy producer whose Arizona factory complex turned out to be sitting on top of the largest palladium deposit ever discovered in the Western Hemisphere, all Perry Mannerback would say was, “Yellow stegosauruses. They make yellow stegosauruses. Who wouldn’t buy a company like that?”

  When Forbes asked how OmbiCorp had thought to snap up a biotech company involved in recombinant DNA before the field got hot, the enigmatic chairman replied, “I thought it had something to do with combs. Everybody needs a comb.”