by Terry Carr
He looked the woman over with a cold, suspicious eye. He examined her dress carefully, as if there might be something concealed under it other than her horrible legs. He seemed to be almost afraid of her canes. So much so that he was hardly able to turn his eyes away from them to the large guard hovering to her right. “Gibraltar?”
Gibraltar replied with something suspiciously like a humorous intonation: “She’s okay, Dave. And, Dave, she meets the requirement.”
“That’s right, Mr. Grandcourt,” said the other guard. “The people with her showed us her birth certificate. She was born”—and he chuckled—“on the third of July 1997.”
Dave was not amused. His suspicious eye took in the small knot of grinning people standing in the hallway and a sign, standing just inside the door, with large black letters forbidding entry to all who failed to meet a very rigorous requirement, before he turned it back to the woman. “What do you want, ma’am?”
“Sir”—a thin sibilance, like a single strand of cobweb, issued from the lipless mouth. “Sir, I want nothing. I am a memento mori, the skeleton at the feast. I am here to remind you that you too are mortal.”
Dave hooded his eyes. “Thank you. And now that you have delivered your message, Madame Mayfly, you may totter back to those who sent you. I would be very much obliged to you if you would do me the great favor of not dying in the next few minutes. Wait until you’re well away from the building before you fall over.”
“Just a minute, Dave,” said a woman, stepping out of the half-circle of people that was forming about them. “Let’s not be cruel. And besides…”
He rounded on her, almost fiercely. She was a tall woman, with auburn hair and pleasant, if not exactly pretty, features. “And what, may I ask, is the date of your birth?”
She appeared to be about thirty; but her reply was: “25 February 1972.”
He winced, mockingly touched his forehead, as if he were touching a forelock, though he had none.
“And besides,” she went on, “it makes a very picturesque contrast, don’t you see?”
“I rather think I do,” said Dave dryly. “It’s the contrast I object to.”
“I’ll pose with her,” said 25 February. And to the younger woman: “Would you mind posing, dear?”
“Not at all, my dearie-dear. I’m quite accustomed to posing, you know.” Her smile was touched with a pathetic pride. “I was Miss Flushing of 2016.”
“If you don’t mind,” said Dave to 25 February, “I think I see the possibility of an even more striking contrast.” He turned to Gibraltar.
“There’s a girl in the kitchen named April-May. You’ll know her when you see her. Fetch her here. And bring those two photographers here.”
“Yes, Dave.” The guard raised his hand, as if to touch his forelock, caught himself, and ran his hand through his close-cropped hair instead. He disappeared through the swinging doors of the kitchen some thirty yards farther on at the back of the room. They all waited (the decayed woman shaking with palsy, like an antique car with the motor idling) until he came back into sight, shepherding before him, as if she were a suspect being brought in for questioning, a slim blond girl. As she was brought closer, those in the half-circle about Dave saw that he indeed had an eye for contrast where the “old” lady was concerned. For April-May was extremely pretty, with blond ringlets, blue eyes, and the flawless complexion of a child. Her face was thin but sweet; though at the moment, as she hurried forward, wiping her hands on her apron, it was rather worried.
And she had a tremulous voice. “Yes, sir?”
“Don’t be afraid, my dear,” said Dave. And it was obvious that she had nothing to fear from him, for his frozen face had thawed by quite a few degrees. “There’s nothing wrong. We simply want you to pose with this lady here.”
The girl and the decayed woman looked at each other. Dave noticed that there was no shock, no antipathy, no disgust in the face of either. The fresh and budding girl looked at the one hundred-and-two-year-old woman with an expression no different from that with which she regarded everyone else in the room; and the malicious glitter in the eye of the decayed woman was somewhat softened.
But 25 February had been nettled by something. “April-May, you look like you’re not more than sixteen. Are you sure you’re old enough to have a work permit?”
The girl stammered, “I’m older than I look…”
And all the Evergreens standing about laughed, though not unkindly.
“Isn’t everyone?” asked a man standing at Dave’s elbow. He appeared to be within a year or two of thirty—and a stranger might have said that he would be fat at fifty.
“No, Sleek,” said Dave, “not everyone.” And to 25 February: “You needn’t concern yourself with that. You may outrank me in age, but I’m still in charge of these matters. I’ve already satisfied myself about her permit. I assure you that no one gets in here without being thoroughly screened. And April-May’s a great acquisition for the Banquet. She makes the most delicious little desserts.” And he looked upon her rather as if she were a dessert herself.
“Men!” said 25 February scornfully and turned away. “Why,” she said delightedly, “why, here’s her twin! See that boy there—he’s not much older than she is.”
Dave looked around, saw a slim, red-jacketed fellow with light brown, almost blond hair, bearing a tray to a table.
“One of my Mayfly waiters. In fact, he’s waiting on my table, so he’s my waiter in the other sense too. Strange. I hadn’t noticed…”
“Well,” murmured 25 February, “perhaps you never notice waiters—only dessert girls.” And to the junior security man: “Bring that boy here, will you?” The guard glanced at Dave, who absently nodded permission, his lofty brow still furrowed in puzzlement.
The boyish-looking waiter was torn from his duties, came forward.
“What a fledgling he is!” exclaimed 25 February. “Fragments of the eggshell are still clinging to him!”
The subject of her remarks glanced down and about at his red tunic, as if he had taken her remarks literally, which caused his arrival at the halfcircle to be greeted with laughter. He looked about at the laughers with an inquiring smile and wide-open eyes.
“What is your name?” asked 25 February.
“Ogg,” said the waiter. “Jimmy Ogg. O-g-g.”
“A euphonious name,” said Sleek.
“Well, Jimmy, we’d like to take some pictures. Would you mind posing with these two ladies here?”
“Yes,” said Sleek. “Be a good egg, Ogg.”
Jimmy shrugged and obligingly moved forward; and as the people parted from in front of him, he saw the two “ladies” for the first time. He stopped, as the dancers had done when they had first seen the doddering woman; and then he went on bravely and took up a position at her side. But it was April-May whom he looked at over her bent and nodding head. He was almost as fresh-looking as April-May, though undoubtedly a year or two older. He continued to stare, and she lowered her eyes, smiling shyly. A blush spread over her face… and was answered by a blush in his.
Again there was laughter from the group standing about.
“Now, that,” said someone, “is something you don’t often see these days.”
“The old, old story,” intoned Sleek.
“Like takes to like,” said 25 February, with a glance at Dave, the meaning of which was: “She’s for him, not for the likes of you, sir.”
And it was Dave’s turn to be nettled.
The photographers were already present and the cameras made their unnecessary but satisfying little sounds. They took pictures of the three; and then, for sharper contrast, of the two “ladies” with so much disparity between their ages.
“Don’t worry,” said Dave into Sleek’s ear. “I have no intention of allowing those photographs to be published.”
“Enough!” whispered the decayed woman. “It’s past my bedtime.” She began working herself about to face the doorway, with quick jerky little mov
ements like those of a spider. “Remember: be not proud. Your days too are numbered. Good night.”
“Good night,” agreed Dave, with more feeling than was required by courtesy. He watched her picking her way with her two canes toward the door, then revolved his disgusted eye toward the senior guard.
“I wouldn’t do that again if I were you, Gibraltar. What if she had died here? Think what a focusing point for hatred that would be! Think what the media would make of it. And think what that mob down there would make of it, if they heard of it. And, believe me, they would—within half an hour.”
Gibraltar was abashed. “Gosh, Dave, I didn’t think of that.”
For down on the wet street was a restless crowd, smoldering with a bitterness that threatened to flame into violence at any moment; but it was kept at bay (across Broadway and across Fifty-second Street) by raincoated policemen clip-clopping down the glistening asphalt on anachronistic horses. Some of those who turned their faces up to the rain and shouted and sang were so old that they could no longer hope that the genetic reprogramming would take hold. Others had chosen to have children and now resented the condition the government had attached to its permission to add to the world’s population. Many, perhaps most, knew that their credit ratings would never be good enough to purchase the “Tune-Up,” as it was called, even if those mysterious quotas (about which there were so many doubts) remained unchanged. But, regardless of which class they fell into, they all chanted slogans or carried placards that implied that their grief and rage were not of a mere personal nature but rested on the very highest of grounds. Some of those grounds were political, but most were religious: for it had come to be widely believed that anyone who had chosen to have more than the biblical threescore-and-ten in this world had forfeited all hope of Eternal Life in the next.
But why should that happier crowd in “The Ballroom in the Sky” care? It was safe enough. No Mayfly was admitted to the hotel without some sort of legitimate business there. And no one less than one hundred years old was admitted to the Ballroom itself, except under one condition: that he or she come in as part of the servants’ staff, as Jimmy had. No, the Evergreens needn’t concern themselves. The police, the hotel guards, and their own numbers gave them safety. All their energies could be expended in one glorious blaze of welcome to the coming century. All had seen the present one come in; and all hoped, not too unreasonably, to welcome in the century after the one that began tonight at midnight.
The half-circle dispersed. The dancers picked up the tempo again and the eaters gave their undivided attention to their plates. Sleek moved back to his table. But Jimmy Ogg and April-May stood where they were, neither speaking, neither moving.
“All right, Ogg,” said Dave, preparing to follow Sleek’s example. “It’s over. You can go back to work.”
“In a minute,” said Jimmy.
Dave stopped and turned, his face grim. He stabbed a finger at the red jacket. “You will do it now! Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” said Jimmy, not looking away from April-May. “You’re President Emeritus of the Waiters’ Union, President of the Caterers’ Guild, National Secretary of the Evergreen Society…”
“That’s enough!” snapped Dave, who heard impertinence in this recitation of his titles. “You obviously know enough to realize that if I say you don’t work again as a waiter in this town, you’ll never work again. The only reason I don’t send you out that door right now is because we’re so shorthanded tonight. Otherwise,” went on Dave, his anger growing as he spoke, “otherwise, I would. So back to work, and back to work now!” The girl whispered, “You’d better do it.”
“You won’t run away?”
She laughed, as if at the absurdity of the notion… and Jimmy brushed by Dave on his way back to his station. Dave looked after him, then turned to the girl and made an ironical, exasperated gesture with both hands.
“He’s a waiter, for God’s sake!”
April-May inclined her head to one side, then flashed out brightly with “But, Mr. Grandcourt, didn’t you begin life as a waiter?”
He had, of course. But somehow it didn’t matter and it had never mattered. He hadn’t really, so to speak, been a waiter: no more than a secret agent who assumes the guise of a waiter is really a waiter. And he had never for a moment lost his contempt for his fellow waiters.
But this would be a little difficult to explain to April-May… and before he had quite found the words to do so, she was on her way back to the kitchen.
He watched her disappear through the swinging doors, then turned his face again to where Jimmy was hovering about his table in the middle distance; watched him intently, his brow wrinkled. It cleared. “Ogilby!” he muttered. And he walked rapidly to the back of the Ballroom, though not to the kitchen.
A short while later Jimmy was tapped on the shoulder by a passing waiter. “You’re wanted in the office.”
The office was a small room with the usual furnishings: a desk, some chairs, an ornamental letter tray, and a PIN terminal. A single overhead lamp sent a cone of light down upon the desk; the rest of the room was in shadow. Dave Grandcourt stood before the desk, his face turned toward Jimmy standing in the doorway; and behind the desk stood a tall man wearing a black, not a green, tuxedo. He was a man who at one time would have been called “distinguished,” but now the silver hair at his temples carried a less flattering implication.
“Come in,” said Dave. And when Jimmy had done so Dave said, “May I see your union card?”
Jimmy, with a wry, resigned smile, removed the plastic card from a breast pocket and handed it to him. Dave studied it while Jimmy glanced idly about at the dark corners of the room. There were stacks of folding chairs in one corner and what appeared to be pieces of theatrical backdrop scenery propped against the far wall. “Let’s see,” murmured Dave, without looking up, “you must be about sixty years old?”
Jimmy was at first blank, then looked at the silver-templed man behind the desk, who said in a slow and puzzled voice, “Why… yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”
Dave’s laugh was of the snorting I-can’t-believe-I-heard-that kind. “I didn’t mean you, Griesé. I meant our young friend here, who has a union card issued forty years ago.” He examined Jimmy as if he were some previously unclassified specimen of insect. “One thing is obvious—you’re not an Evergreen. So only one solution is possible: You stole this card off your father’s desk.”
Jimmy was a little startled by this deduction, but he replied with conviction and a touch of warmth, “I did not steal it!”
“Didn’t you? It doesn’t matter. Even if he handed it to you voluntarily, there’s still a crime involved. The only difference is: he’s an accessory. By the way, I seem to remember your father’s name as Ogilby and I notice that that’s the name on the card. And yet you say your name is Ogg?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Ogg suits me better.”
Griesé nodded, easily accepting this. Choosing their own names after they had left home had become a widespread fashion among the young.
But Dave’s face was still glazed over with suspicion. “Why did you do it?”
Jimmy grinned. “I wanted to attend the Banquet. I thought it would be a lot of fun. And this”—he touched his red jacket with a forefinger—“is the only way I could. Am I fired?”
Dave didn’t reply immediately. Tapping the card against the knuckles of his left hand, he now studied Griesé in much the same way he had studied Jimmy.
“Mr. Griesé knows nothing about this,” said Jimmy. “When the men you’d picked as waiters came through the lobby of the hotel on the way up here to report to him, I simply joined them and handed him my PIN card and that union card. Naturally, he assumed that you had hired me.”
“Naturally,” said Dave.
Jimmy repeated: “Am I fired?”
Dave’s smile was very slow in forming… and so slight as to seem hardly worth the wait. “No… no, I don’t think so. We’re very short on waiters tonight. An
d, besides, I don’t want anything to mar this historic occasion, not while it’s in progress. So you’re perfectly welcome to hang around for… what did you call it?… the fun. You may go back to your station. But I think I’ll retain this superannuated card; as head of the Waiters’ Union, I have the right to do that. Well? Is there something else?”
For Jimmy had hesitated. He turned his inquiring blue eyes on Dave. “You say you knew my father?”
Dave’s green eye, turned sideways, was sardonic. “Our paths crossed briefly some years back. I found him… a little lacking in respect, let us say, and I was going to have him kicked out of the Union; but he saved me the trouble by disappearing before the showdown—on the very evening of the Hearing, as I recall. He must have remembered that he had pressing business elsewhere. It may be”—and he allowed his smile to reappear—“that your resemblance to him is more than physical. You may go.”
Jimmy left. The door had hardly clicked shut behind him when a man came out from behind the theatrical scenery propped against the wall. He wore the red jacket of a waiter, but he had a face so remarkably hard-looking that it wouldn’t have greatly recommended him as a waiter to a prospective employer—his uncompromising mouth alone would have cost him many a job. Dave stepped to this man and whispered into his gristled ear three, perhaps four words. They may have been words of dismissal, for the man touched his forelock very briskly and left the room.
Griesé’s eyes followed him out the door, then came sliding back to his employer, as if fascinated. The two men stared at each other for some moments in silence.
And then Dave, softly: “Mr. Griesé, may I suggest that you don’t worry about his skin? There’s only one thing you need fret yourself about, and that is that you hired as a waiter a Mayfly not previously screened by me. That is an act of inexcusable negligence at best; and, for all I know, it may be something worse.”
Griesé backed away from the desk a little, shaking his head. “You don’t believe that, Mr. Grandcourt. And I know as well as you do that you’re not turning that boy over to your secret police because you think he’s some sort of anti-Evergreen spy or assassin. You don’t think that for a moment. You’re either acting out of sheer malignity or you have some other motive I don’t know about.”