He did not, of course, want to be unfaithful to his Alicia, at this moment growing big in the belly and waiting patiently for victory and his safe return. He could avoid betraying her by calling this Belgian girl, at the instant of taking her, by Alicia’s name. Perhaps he did not desire her at all. It was not at all simple.
He did not inspect the house properly. Rather than spend the bulk of his time in the crawl space and cellar—the most likely spots for concealed weapons—he grew top-heavy, loitering on the upper floors, particularly interested in the girl’s bedroom, which she shared with a younger sister. Here he searched meticulously—in drawers, under and behind furniture, even among the bed sheets. He stopped short of cutting into the mattress with his bayonet.
During the investigation, the only noteworthy item Adolphe discovered hung on the wall by the door. A photograph showed two figures dressed in antique costumes or, rather, suggestions of long ago as dreamed up by a modern costume designer. The figures, actors, portrayed a small boy and an older woman. The boy extended his open palm, proudly showing off half a dozen small seeds. The woman held hands over her face, going through the stereotypical gesture of weeping. Below the image, a caption in Dutch read: De moeder van Jan is niet tevreden met de boonen: “Jack’s Mother Is Not Pleased with the Beans.”
Evidently the photo came from a series illustrating the old fairy tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Out of context, with no surrounding story, the image moved Adolphe. He felt drawn to it; it promised a slow grace. His eyes were changed, although he could not say what, if anything, he saw in the photo. The stilted, ill-printed, technically deficient image of two exaggerated thespians in sorry costumes miming a scene from a maudlin tale whose moral—useful things don’t always appear useful—had nothing to do with the war, his part in the war, or this Belgian girl who hated him for no good reason reminded him of something, and Adolphe decided he must possess it.
—Is this yours or your little sister’s?
The girl looked away. She did not answer.
—How much will you ask for this? As a remembrance of you.
—I will not sell that to you. You will have to steal that.
A sadness came over Adolphe. He had never lost a close relation and had kept relatively free from bad news. But he recognized this feeling without being able to place it. The sun rested, deep-set against an aqua sky. Belgium was warm, sunbaked in September. The usual barrage from the front came in over the still-neutral Belgian air. He’d spent too much time on this house already; others waited. He had reached a point beyond which there was no passing.
Adolphe thrust his hands into his pockets, sounding their deep places. His hands went down, farther down, until they touched bottom, and loose change. He drew up the coins and counted out a third of what they had given the photographer only three months before: half, because the photo was half the size of the other, and two thirds of that, because this image had only two figures to the other’s three. Leaving the change, he took the photo off the wall and went downstairs and out of the house. At his back, he heard the unmistakable rustling of absolute silence.
That evening in billet, he drew out the picture and freed it of its unwieldy frame. He tried to discipline himself to look hard at the picture, with all the attention a foot soldier could muster. He looked for some detail, some clue or link that might point at why he felt the stupid image meant something. He had seen the actress-mother before, and felt he ought to know her name.
Slowly, out of his aesthetic stupor, he became aware of a commotion outside, firing and voices. The soldier in the bunk next to him shot up and whispered:
—Assassins!
Two other fellows nearby said he was going out of his head. They said it was still the sounds from the front, only weather and a shift in winds made them seem louder than usual.
Adolphe looked at his photo. The little boy stretched out his arm proudly; the mother hung her head in shame. Two ways of looking at the same beans. He heard the firing again. Perhaps the shots were closer; he had not yet decided. He was deep in the first of May, hearing not shots but dance music. He mouthed out loud—the only way of being sure if he had actually said them once—the words:
—Brass band, Peter.
Chapter Twelve
The Love Interest
First, there is always a long-sustained condition of great mental expenditure or one established by long force of habit, upon which at last some influence intervenes making it superfluous, so that a volume of energy becomes available for manifold possible applications and ways of discharge.
—Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia
Mays had never before noticed how much the Charles River Drive resembled the S curve at Le Mans. The machine responsible for revealing the likeness was Bullock’s minute sports car, into which the two now crammed. Lenny had told Mays the model—something Italian ending in “i” or “o,” sounding like those genus and species names that had stumped Peter altogether in the ninth grade.
Mays sat in what could only be the co-cockpit, the curb looming in the distance over his right shoulder. He chanted to himself such phrases as “The wheels hugged the pavement,” and “The sleek little machine nursed the rail.” He had only a vague sense of what these meant. They came to him spontaneously out of the vast warehouse of cultural quintessence he’d absorbed over a quarter century. Airfoil, rpm, turbocharge: the awful pressure of the Zeitgeist.
He experimented with willing the veering cars and trucks out of their way, as Bullock broke for daylight in a far lane. The red-haired woman had eluded him for months, but it now seemed, as with any self-respecting matinee, that he had only to survive the obligatory chase scene to pin her down at last. Not that he placed too much hope on survival: out here in the traffic, Bullock’s bon mot about the number two killer after cancer being boredom took on a whole new dimension.
Until his interview with Bullock over a hot quote machine, Mays had been content to chase after the eternally elusive woman with the usual ineptitude of the modern male. Having come this far, he might grudgingly concede to risk his life for the cause, but not in an Italian car. He would signal for a stop; perhaps if Lenny started braking now, Mays could hop out somewhere in upstate New York.
The wind and excess g-forces plastered Bullock’s cheeks back and pulled his lips into a grin. He had not spoken a word since identifying Mays’s woman as Sarah Bernhardt back at the brokerage. He had concentrated on the immediate objective—speed. Mays glanced at him, and, helpless against the narrative voice that always took over in times of crisis, dredged up the description “eyes glued to the road.”
Putting the machine on cruise control, Lenny turned toward Mays and saluted. The gesture was unmistakable: the low-slung cockpit, the wind-pressed face—Errol Flynn in Dawn Patrol. A slow dissolve into the next scene and the wing commander would go stoically to the duty roster, find the names Len Bullock and Peter Mays, draw a heavy line through them, and mouth the words “Adieu, mes amis.” Len screamed something above the traffic:
—Perfectly safe!
At first, Mays thought Bullock had said, “Murder is great,” but dismissed the possibility as unlikely if not out of character. The nominal driver took hands off the wheel to pantomime physical laws, zooming them about, tilting and waving, proving that the faster a body went into a turn, the more it would resist tipping over. Making eye contact with the other fellow, Mays nodded eagerly. He was certain Bullock was certifiable. He could not remember enough college physics, however, to disprove the contention, long ago having forgotten everything except a maniacal professor who regularly screamed at the class that centrifugal force did not exist but only seemed to. And once again, as he had done so many years before, Mays wondered what could be the difference between a real force and one that only seemed real.
Not surprisingly, a glance at the speedometer showed that Bullock had murdered and disposed of the gauge. What use could such an instrument have for him? To a fellow like Bullock, there were th
ose that measured speed and those who lived it. Mays sat back in his cockpit, put his little fingernail between his canine and first bicuspid, and threw his lot solidly behind the camp of the measurers. Barring a notion of where they were headed, he had somehow to determine how fast they were traveling there. He remembered enough physics to know that velocity was distance divided by time. Finding feet per second, he could multiply up to miles per hour, exactly reversing the process he always used to calculate his pay in seconds. In this way, Mays could determine how fast he was traveling when he died.
The clock on the dash read 5:25. That seemed impossible; it couldn’t be later than a quarter to. A furtive glance at Lenny’s wrist showed 5:31—worse and worse. Mays thought back to the digital on Bullock’s desk at the brokerage: that one ran fast as well. A conspiracy of clocks; the sick feeling struck Peter that the man sitting next to him, one hand on the steering wheel, deliberately set all his clocks as much as forty-five minutes forward.
Such a habit could only come from Bullock’s believing that to be on time was already too late. Lenny had the disease of the dieter who, losing weight, still buys clothes one size too small, or the husband who tramps about in the garden beneath his wife’s window until he at last he discovers the tracks of infidelity, those he himself has just made. Though Mays could still have gotten legitimate seconds from either the dash or Lenny’s wrist, he abandoned the measuring project: whatever the cardinal number, it was sure to be off the red zone of his personal speedometer.
When they finally develocitized somewhere downtown, Mays extricated himself from the cabin and looked for the carrier and helicopter the navy always sent out for just such situations.
—Leonard, if you really wanted me to buy that Transport issue you’re so hot on, you might have used some subtler form of persuasion. You know, broken my fingers or something.
—What? You mean the car ride? Come on, Nicky; I’ve never even gotten a ticket that wasn’t at least partly the other fellow’s fault. Besides, you think I’m going to crack up a machine I still owe twelve K on?
—I’ll buy the whole Transport company and have them bring me over on a troopship before I ride with you again.
Bullock gave a superior snicker and suggested they “duck in somewhere and have a mug.” Whatever he meant by that, Mays would do it, providing it wasn’t too septic. The chase scene had dealt a severe blow to his white count.
Mays had an aberrant fondness for greasy spoons, and for a single happy moment thought they were headed for one called The Feed Bag. Because he lived alone, he ate out continually. The only way he could afford to spend six dollars on a sandwich was by knowing that a fancier place charged seven. Also, the worse the place, the more the clientele left one alone. Only the rich had time to involve others in their psychopathies.
But Bullock ushered them past the lowly Feed Bag into the seat of opulence, a place called The Trading Floor. Velvet and brass sat in judgment, instantly turning Mays against the spot. Entering along an oaken balustrade of sorts, he went right to work on demolition plans. Brink could do the electronic explosives. Delaney could create a diversion. And Moseley could shelter him from the law behind a complicity of potted plants.
The staff of The Trading Floor greeted Bullock as a regular. Men in cutaway collars and women in starched linen gave Mays proprietary bobs of the head, tacit acknowledgment of the importance of any business transacted in this place. Underneath their circumspection, Mays felt sure, lay the lurid boxing fan or concertogoer. They waited for the big boys to break, the shareholders to snap, jump to their feet, and execute business takeovers with sharp table implements. Meanwhile, the staff assumed the decorous indifference of the serving class.
A young man in glorified bellhop suit led them to a table.
—This is your spot, I believe, Mr. Bullock?
Mays noted the bill that changed hands. If Brink and Bullock Inc. ever got into serious trouble with their debt, they could always come to The Trading Floor and ask this boy for a loan against future tips. Did Len bring Caro here, or did he reserve the place for important clients? If so, what were the two of them doing here now?
Mays felt decidedly out of place. The joint reeked of departed decades—the glory days of Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, and American Imperialism. Not a cornice dated a day past the Treaty of Versailles. Someone had gone to great effort and expense to outfit brass moldings and darkwood daises with motifs that might have been picked up at any vegetable-and-fruit stand for eighty cents a pound. Each recessed ceiling panel contained a cloud scene in oils and mother-of-pearl inlay. The only similar sky scene Mays had ever before witnessed was in a dive where a falling fan had torn clean through the ceiling.
—Listen, Leonard. I didn’t bring any cash. Let’s go across the way to that Feed Bag place. I can trade my watch for two Reubenses.
Bullock shushed him just as the headwaiter came up, leading a demure woman in Edwardian Downstairs getup.
—A pleasant afternoon, gentlemen. This will be your waitress, Miss Stark.
Mays commenced to mumble a “how do you do.” An icy look from Bullock cut him off.
—Two private lines to the exchange at either end of the bar, a news wire in the corner, and a tape . . .
Bullock waved the headwaiter off with practiced nonchalance. The fellow backed away, continuing to offer assistance until too far off to hear. The anachronistic Miss Stark settled her linen bindings and stays, and attended to the place settings. Mays took another look around the room, which had altered considerably since the headwaiter had pointed out the amenities. While the hardwood and burnished metals still gave off the unmistakable aura of lost times, here and there from out of the turn-of-the-century trappings poked the strange fruit of the present: cathode screens, dot-matrix printers, and above the mirrored and marbled bar, a twelve-foot green phosphor ticker reading out the latest spasm of common-stock transaction. The clients of The Trading Floor needed their data in a steady, real-time stream, no doubt because all fixed money was as deeply in hock as Bullock.
After having to adapt to the rich, darkened, opulent feel of brass and oak, Mays caught himself regarding the data machines as the anachronisms. Host had become guest, and to his eyes, dilated in the gaslight, there seemed no way one could have grown smoothly out of the other. And yet the mechanical altars of information seemed somehow of the same stuff, the same aura as the marble and mother-of-pearl. Mays had read somewhere—either the Britannica or Culture Comix; he could never remember sources—that after the White Man had brought radios to Polynesia, the form of the knobbed box began showing up in totems.
Bullock said he’d pick up the tab and that Nicky was not to read the menu from right to left. Mays was busy watching the ineluctable Miss Stark—twenty-five if she was a century—set the table. She doled out the silver in quirky genuflections. Her employers had evidently instructed her at great length in the protocol of place setting, protocol now as universally extinct, except in preserving cults, as the Model T. But they lived on, an unconvincing fossil record, in the jerky formality of this woman.
Despite her ritualistic behavior and her Trading Floor livery, Miss Stark seemed, in the face, a woman of unmistakably contemporary bone structure playing dressup. If he laughed appreciatively, perhaps he could get her to roll her eyes in secret agreement. But he hadn’t the nerve to try such a stunt in such a place. When Miss Stark completed the service and left, Bullock said:
—She’s going to get a big, fat tip.
—How do you figure?
—I start with a maximum of twenty-five bucks and subtract a dollar for every word they say. When I go to a restaurant, I want to be waited on. If I want chat, I go home to Caroline.
The two men looked over their menus, reproductions of 1910 handbills, in silence. At what seemed the perfect moment, Miss Stark reappeared. Mays held his breath and hoped she didn’t blow a day’s income by getting garrulous all of a sudden.
—Gentlemen?
Bullock looked over at hi
m, eyes alight, delighted at finally finding a member of the serving class who could, if keeping to an equally succinct good-bye, gouge him for twenty dollars. They ordered. Miss Stark, without condescending to write anything down, evaporated in silence.
The two were at last face to face with no interruptions. Mays sat next to the last fellow he would have asked for help, who was about to reveal all. Peter’s search for the phantom redhead, which had gone from dull picaresque to detective thriller, was now to reach its denouement here in this electronically outfitted, ivory-enameled monument to laissez-faire and the Maine. And Mays had suddenly lost all interest.
For one, his mind had habituated to the too-frequent setbacks and diversions—the false leads, the claustrophobic chamber concerts, the titillation of red hair at the far end of a city block—until now he felt more comfortable in the sheer plod of pursuit than in the possibility of arising victorious, bloody, but unbowed. For another, the desire for the redhead, if it had ever been desire per se, had long ago become just a motive for getting up in the morning and searching—for some thing, any thing—if only to overcome the sloth he suspected was at the center of his personality. He might even have dropped the whole escapade some time back had not friends and chance conspired to keep him on the track.
Finally, he’d been so long getting used to and at last enjoying the idea that this search was hopeless, that the phantom woman was immeasurably beyond the caliber of any female he might meet in the flesh, that it stood to reason any woman Bullock told him about could not, by definition, be her. He still coveted the chase and wanted to resume it. But he had no need for any lead Bullock might give him over a T-bone, with one eye on the twelve-foot ticker tape above the bar.
Mays had no hobbies, religion, or social convictions. His job held no interest. His friends, be they ever so humble, and love affairs, be they ever so transient, grew predictable after a while. Things, he had always felt, stayed interesting only until they revealed their underlying behavior. But the chase had been arbitrary; it had no underlying pattern, and so might have remained nominally interesting forever, providing he never closed with the quarry. But he had made the mistake of fixing his obsession on a woman who, however ethereal, had in fact at one time, even from eight stories up, a real, bodily existence. Now he had to pay for that mistake, to sit still and listen while the compulsive Bullock told him who (there’s the rub) that person was.
Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance Page 16