by Eric Beetner
“Haight-Ashbury.”
“Yeah, that’s it. She meets this guy. Nice guy, she says. Turns out he’s into the same shit she is and he’s even from back here. He’s out there for the same reason she is: to find himself. I guess there are lots of lost people out there, right? Anyway, she likes him a lot and he likes her well enough so when they get back here to the city, they start to go out. After a couple dates she falls for him. Hard. According to her, he falls hard, too. One night they have this date to go dancing downtown only he doesn’t show. She gets worried, ’cause she says that’s not like him. She keeps calling, but he doesn’t answer. She leaves messages. He doesn’t call back. What can she do? She figures he skipped out on her. She’s heartbroken, of course, but what can she do? A week or so later she gets a call from some woman. Says she’s his sister. Kate something or other. Tells Rachel her brother died.”
“Died?”
“Yeah.”
“Murdered?”
“Nah. She says natural causes. Heart attack or something sudden like that. She tells Rachel he went just…” Goldblatt snapped his fingers, “like that. Poor kid. She can’t even go to the funeral because it’s already over. They cremated the body, so she doesn’t even have a grave she can visit.”
“Sad story, but would you please get to the point where you tell me why you need to hire me.”
“Keep your shirt on. I’m getting there. So, he croaks and she’s heartbroken, I mean really torn up. Bad. She’s an emotional chick anyway but I’ve never seen her that bad. She loses weight ’cause she’s not eating. She can’t get out of bed and when she does she barely makes it to the couch. She sleeps most of the day. You know the drill. She’s so depressed she goes to a shrink. He gives her a prescription for one of those anti-depressants. Doesn’t work. She don’t know what to do with herself so she winds up wandering the streets. Day, night, it don’t matter. She’s out there looking for something but she doesn’t know what it is.”
“There’s an end to this story, right?”
“Yeah. I’m getting there. Anyway, she figures the only way to snap out of this is to maybe reconnect with him in some way, so she calls his sister. She talks to her and it seems to help a little ’cause Rachel starts to feel connected to the dead guy. They call back and forth a couple, few times. You know, like they become telephone pals. One day, when she tells his sister she’s still feeling really down about the whole thing, the sister mentions this fortune teller named Madame Sofia. She tells Rachel how she went to her when their father died and how she really helped by giving her closure. Don’t you fucking hate that word? Like it’s some kind of real estate deal. Anyway, Rachel, who believes in this kind of crap, decides she’s gonna try it too.”
“You mean going to this fortune teller?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Like I told you, Rachel’s not only a little spacey but by this point she’s pretty desperate. I mean, when better living through chemistry doesn’t work, what else is there? She’s willing to try anything to get rid of the pain, right? Even something like this. So, she goes to this fortune teller and this chick tells Rachel she can make contact with the guy.”
“The dead guy?”
“Yeah. Right. The dead guy. Now you gotta understand this about Rachel. She believes we don’t really die when we leave this mortal coil. She believes in an afterlife. Like, we don’t really die we just move on to ‘another room.’”
“Another room?”
“Yeah. Like another dimension, maybe. You don’t really die, according to Rachel, you just move to another place. It can be a better place or it can be a worse place. But it’s a different place. So, this fortune teller supposedly finds the ‘room’ this guy has moved on to and she supposedly makes contact with him.”
“Makes contact?”
“Yeah.”
“And Rachel believes this?”
He nods. “She believes, all right. Now Rachel may be woo-woo, but she’s not stupid. She had to be convinced, but she was. Evidently, according to Rachel, this Madame Sofia knows stuff about the dude and about her and him that she couldn’t possibly know.”
“Like what?”
“You’ll have to ask Rachel. But evidently it was enough to convince her that the chick really has made contact. At the end of that first session she tells Rachel she can only continue if Rachel can come up with some dough.”
“Big surprise.”
“Yeah.”
“How much?”
“Like twenty-five grand.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I wish I was.”
“For what?”
Goldblatt, the man of a thousand faces, made one of them. “You’re gonna love this one. It’s for a fucking ‘time machine.’”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. But Goldblatt, dead serious and not too happy about the situation, wasn’t laughing with me.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Like a heart attack. You and I know it was for that trip around the world and a Rolex watch and maybe a diamond pendant but Rachel, by this time she’s under some kind of spell. She’s bought everything this gypsy woman told her, hook, line, and sinker.”
“Didn’t she question the money thing?”
“Nope. She rationalizes. Tells herself, ‘everyone has to make a living.’ Me, I look at it as a killing, not a living.”
“And Rachel was able to come up with the dough?”
“She was. And a lot more. Because you know the drill. Once you’re on the line, they’re not about to let you off the hook.”
“Where was she getting the money?”
“Inheritance from her father. He was some kind of big-shot lawyer. He died before I met her. That’s probably why she married me. You know, what with me being a lawyer and all. Maybe she connected me with her dead father.”
The idea that Goldblatt could remind anyone of their father struck me as odd at best, but women are a strange lot. As Freud said, “women, what do they want?” In this case, at least for a few months, I guess it was Goldblatt.
“What was this so-called time machine supposed to do?”
“It wasn’t an actual time machine. You know, one of those H.G. Wells thingies that’s supposed to send you back in time. It was some kind of otherworldly apparatus that was supposed to make a clear connection between them while he’s in this other ‘room.’ I’m sure you know what comes next.”
“The time machine isn’t quite enough, right?”
“Bingo. She asks Rachel for another twenty-five grand.”
“For?”
“Now that she’s made contact, she needs to build what she calls a ‘golden bridge’ across the dimensions, so Rachel can ‘visit’ the ‘room’ where this guy is parked, probably for eternity.”
“Give me a break.”
“Yeah, real Twilight Zone stuff. But Rachel bought it. She believed she could actually communicate with the dead guy.”
“So, she came up with the dough?”
“Yeah. But now when she sees nothing’s happening, she starts getting a little suspicious.”
“About time.”
“You’re telling me. So, she tells me the whole story and wants to know if I think maybe something’s fishy. I practically have a fucking heart attack…I mean, that’s a shitload of dough.”
“And here I would’ve bet it was food that was gonna get you.”
“Very funny. Anyway, she starts crying, because in her heart she knew all this was just a load of bullshit. But the poor kid was lonely and she wasn’t thinking straight. She feels worse now that she was taken for such a sucker so she makes me promise to get her money back.”
“Which is where I come in.”
“Right. I could probably do it myself but if I found this quack I’d probably kill her.”
“What do you mean, ‘find her’?”
“You don’t think after taking Rachel for all that dough she’s gonna stic
k around, do you? Rachel goes back to the storefront to confront her to try to get her money back and abracadabra,” he snapped his fingers, “she’s gone.”
“Storefront?”
“Yeah. She worked out of one over on First Avenue, near the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, or whatever they’re calling it now. Only it’s not there anymore.”
“What do you mean it’s not there anymore?”
“It’s a Subway sandwich shop now. So, partner, you gotta help me out by helping Rachel out.”
My gut response was to say no. I didn’t want to get involved in Goldblatt’s life any more than I had to. Besides, this sounded like a no-win situation. The chances of finding this woman were pretty slim, the chances of getting the dough back even slimmer. But I knew I couldn’t say no to Goldblatt. It wasn’t just that we were partners, even though the idea of that turned my stomach, it was that he’d helped me out in the past and although I would never admit it to him, I did owe him something. And it might give me a unique opportunity to find out more about Goldblatt, My Man of Mystery.
But if I took this on, I had to set firm ground rules because if I didn’t, he’d be hovering over me like a helicopter mom, second-guessing my every move. Getting all up in my face.
“When can I meet with Rachel?”
“I’ll give her a call and set it up.”
“Just give me her number and I’ll take care of it.”
“And you’ll let me know so I can be there, right?”
“You’ll just get in the way.”
“She’ll be much more comfortable with me in the room. Otherwise, she’ll clam up and you won’t get anything from her.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m pretty good at getting people to give me what I need.”
“She don’t know you, Swann. She’s skittish.”
“Look, Goldblatt, this is nonnegotiable. Either I meet Rachel alone or you can find someone else to help her.”
“You’re threatening me?”
“It’s not a threat. It’s how I conduct business. You want me to do my best, don’t you?”
“And your best means I don’t tag along?”
“Exactly.”
He was thinking it over. I knew this because he grabbed for the last roll in the basket, split it in half, buttered it generously, and took a couple bites. This is what he does when he thinks. Eat.
“Okay. I get it. I don’t like it but I get it. But let me talk to her first so she doesn’t get spooked.”
“Fine by me,” I said, trying to remain calm as I imagined the fun that might be in store for me in meeting the former Mrs. Goldblatt.
Click here to learn more about Swann’s Down by Charles Salzberg.
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i.
Nole Darlen hadn’t even thought about pulling the trigger.
The sound, the flashback, the acrid odor—all were so sudden and strong that there was no room for individual sense-impression. Instead, he felt one overwhelming impact, neither hearing, touch, smell but a compound of all senses, so that he tasted the thunderous sound—a coppery pulse of flavor on the roof of his mouth—and heard the rising smell of burnt powder, too loud, like a clashing of brass. And only later, in memory, he saw the bullet’s impact punching the body into a stretched upward leap and crumpling it to the floor. He felt the breaking of the chair as a febrile crinkling, barely audible in the echoing throb of the gun blast. He saw the body land with a fuffing, like a rug being shaken out.
He really hadn’t known he was going to fire just then, and certainly hadn’t anticipated the crash of effect, and so he stood, overwhelmed, for a moment. The pistol, which had kicked up and back from the firing, was suspended in his raised hand, just at his ear, as though he were listening carefully to the chamber. He was still smiling wryly at that last bit of conversation, the ludicrous challenge: You wouldn’t dare.
Then he made a small sound, incomprehensible, even to himself. A groaned syllable of some sort. And threw the gun to the floor as realization swept over him, pushing him furious and frightened through the crudely framed doorway. And out into the deep night.
His first few frenzied steps faulted in the gluey spring mud, sending his body forward and throwing him to shockingly cold wet earth. The fall increased his terror and he wrenched himself upright, running again—this time with an exaggerated, high-stepping hop, thrusting and pulling his feet into and out of the grasping muck.
He ran about ten yards this way, then stopped, stock-still. He made that same single-syllable sound and turned, wrenching his feet about and lurching back into the shed. He dropped to his hands and knees and scrabbled around on the hardpacked floor for the Colt revolver. Tucking the cold heavy piece into the waist of his pants, he arose and left the shed again, this time walking bent forward, with a grim determination, like a soldier moving through hostile fire, following some drilled command: one foot then the other, dogged and deliberate, through the mud and out onto the grassy clearing around the house, which brooded heavily over him. Then he began to run, out of the clear, across the graveled lane, past his tethered horse, and into the deepness of the invisible woods. He stopped, still, again, as the pitched darkness flooded over him.
“The sonofabitch. The sonofabitch. Sonofabitch,” Nole breathed, as though he were chanting some bizarre mantra. He drew the heavy Colt and held it at his side. Then he ran again, down the steep trail, until his foot kicked against a root and he was flung down once more, this time onto the hard, dropping path. He felt the cold earth, then a burning abrasion on forearms and knees, and he slumped, letting his entire weight fall flat on the ground, lying outstretched and still, the pistol clutched in his hand, now flung out straight over his head, but actually pointing downward, on the cold, stony slope. He rasped out the same small sound this third time, struggling to regain his wind.
Nothing could have prepared him for this, any of this, in spite of plans and avowals. It was as though the blast of the pistol were something that had happened to him, not something he had willed, done, caused to occur. This time yesterday he hadn’t even known the pistol existed, much less that it would determine his actions so decisively today. And so he had yet to consider how any of this could fit into a sequence of events, actions, and consequences. He had forgotten entirely about his father, whom he had just shot, the body piled onto the floor of that flimsy shed on the splinters of a caned chair that had broken with the sound of crumpling paper. Now, the man did not exist at all, as though the entire day, the shed, the gun itself had been blotted out by that flash, and so Nole’s hand no longer held pistol or weapon, but only a cold, unnameable weight, pressing the back of his fist against the pebbly ground.
Once, when Nole was a child, his father had made him a bullroarer, out of a piece of horn and a thong. And he had wound it and pulled it, wound it and pulled it, all day long, fascinated by the strange elasticity that came not from rawhide or horn, but from their interaction with his own hands as he pulled outward and felt the toy draw back the other way, against him. And then he would draw it out again and let it pull him back, like a surge and release, flow and counterflow, as though all the rigid, hard things in the world had become elastic and were tugging and swaying, accompanied by a deep sonorous hum. And what he recalled most vividly was lying in his bed, that night, and he could feel the movement still, in his hands, sore and blistered from the rub of the thong, but still seeming to draw and strain and give back in to the thrumming of the bullroarer, moving through the middle night of sleep, dream, roll and turn.
And the next day Nole had been out in the barn, where his father had sent him to fetch gloves and fence wire. And he had pulled the bullroarer from his overalls and begun the hummed play. And forgotten the errand and his father and the world
itself. Until the man had crashed through the door, shouting his name, and had snatched up the thong from his hands, unthreaded the piece of horn, and thrown it all out the bright square of the doorway. “Now you get to work,” he’d said. And then cursed—“goddam thing”—not cursing the boy, but the bullroarer, the toy he had made himself, for his boy’s amusement.
Nole thought of that moment, as he lay stretched out on the trail. Goddam thing, his father had said, and flung away his own gift, made with the man’s own hands, from the things around the farm, the bone and the rawhide, and given to his son, who found it all so wondrous and magical, the stretch and rebound, blur and thrum. And stood now, empty-handed and surprised, in the cold floating dust of the barn.
Some time later, thirty minutes or an hour, Nole uncurled himself from the chill ground and stood, rubbing his elbows and knees where the hot sting of his fall needled the skin. Down the hill, beyond the screen of woods, the stream rumpled and slapped. He tensed, hearing a sound like a whistle, then relaxed, hearing the echo of creeksound off the hillsides. He stretched his arms over his head, realizing he was stiff and sore, as though he’d been climbing a mountain or pitching hay all day long. “’Stead of killin’ Daddy,” he said, aloud. He felt a wash of regret followed by a blotting of bitterness and anger. He turned, tucking pistol into waistband, and walked slowly up the trail, back to the lane, past the still horse, to where he could see the looming bulk of the house across the way. Behind it and off to the left leaned the pale blur he knew was the shed. He looked again at the huge house and its turret, a picture cut from a magazine and pasted against the black scrapbook paper of the sky. “His goddam house,” he said, aloud again. “His wife. His reward.” He sniffed. “I reckon I finally showed him.” He turned toward the shed. “Hell,” he said, dismissively. “Get on up.”
So he retraced his steps, across the soft grass of the lawn surrounding the big house, bigger than anything in this county, outside of town anyway, and everybody wondered what four people could find to do to fill up a house that large, when most folks raised families of ten or twelve or even more in their little places, put together out of chink and daub and fresh boards from the sawmill, still smelling of the hot blade and slapped up in some impossible extra time between setting out and suckering and threshing, canning, cutting, grading. And hog killing. It’s cold enough to kill hogs. Cold enough…He went on by the house without looking up at it, straight and deliberate, back through the muck around the shed and into the door.