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«You will. Three years from now.»
«Are you sure?»
«I won't look quite the same. But it'll be me. And you'll know me forever.»
«Oh, I'm glad for that. Your face is familiar. I somehow know you well.»
She began to walk slowly, looking over at him as he stood near the porch of the house.
«Thanks,» she said. «You've saved my life.»
«And my own along with it.»
The shadows of a tree fell across her face, touched her cheeks, moved in her eyes.
«Oh, Lord! Girls lie in bed nights listing the names for their future children. Silly. Joe. John. Christopher. Samuel. Stephen. And right now, Will.» She touched the gentle rise of her stomach, then lifted her hand out halfway to point to him in the night. «Is your name Will?»
«Yes.»
Tears absolutely burst from her eyes. He wept with her.
«Oh, that's fine, fine,» she said at last. «I can go now. I won't be out here on the lawn anymore. Thank God, thank you. Good night.»
She went away into the shadows across the lawn and along the sidewalk down the street. At the far corner he saw her turn and wave and walk away.
«Good night,» he said quietly.
I am not born yet, he thought, or she has been dead many years, which is it? which?
The moon sailed into clouds.
The motion touched him to step, walk, go up the porch stairs, wait, look out at the lawn, go inside, shut the door.
A wind shook the trees.
The moon came out again and looked upon a lawn where two sets of footprints, one going one way, one going another in the dew, slowly, slowly, as the night continued, vanished.
By the time the moon had gone down the sky there was only an empty lawn and no sign, and much dew.
The great town clock struck six in the morning. Fire showed in the east. A cock crowed.
The Very Gentle Murders
Quicker Than The Eye
Dorian In Excelsus
«Are you sure?»
«I won't look quite the same. But it'll be me. And you'll know me forever.»
«Oh, I'm glad for that. Your face is familiar. I somehow know you well.»
She began to walk slowly, looking over at him as he stood near the porch of the house.
«Thanks,» she said. «You've saved my life.»
«And my own along with it.»
The shadows of a tree fell across her face, touched her cheeks, moved in her eyes.
«Oh, Lord! Girls lie in bed nights listing the names for their future children. Silly. Joe. John. Christopher. Samuel. Stephen. And right now, Will.» She touched the gentle rise of her stomach, then lifted her hand out halfway to point to him in the night. «Is your name Will?»
«Yes.»
Tears absolutely burst from her eyes. He wept with her.
«Oh, that's fine, fine,» she said at last. «I can go now. I won't be out here on the lawn anymore. Thank God, thank you. Good night.»
She went away into the shadows across the lawn and along the sidewalk down the street. At the far corner he saw her turn and wave and walk away.
«Good night,» he said quietly.
I am not born yet, he thought, or she has been dead many years, which is it? which?
The moon sailed into clouds.
The motion touched him to step, walk, go up the porch stairs, wait, look out at the lawn, go inside, shut the door.
A wind shook the trees.
The moon came out again and looked upon a lawn where two sets of footprints, one going one way, one going another in the dew, slowly, slowly, as the night continued, vanished.
By the time the moon had gone down the sky there was only an empty lawn and no sign, and much dew.
The great town clock struck six in the morning. Fire showed in the east. A cock crowed.
The Very Gentle Murders
1994 year
Joshua Enderby awoke in the middle of the night because e felt someone's fingers at his throat.
In the rich darkness above him he sensed but could not see his wife's frail, skelatinous weight seated on his chest while she dabbled and clenched tremblingly again and again at his neck.
He opened his eyes wide. He realized what she was trying to do. It was so ridiculous he almost cried out with laughter!
His rickety, jaundiced, eighty-five-year-old wife was trying to strangle him!
She panted forth a rum-and-bitters smell as she perched there, toppling like a drunken moth, tinkering away as if he were a toy. She sighed irritably and her skinny fingers began to swear as she gasped, «Why don't you, oh, why don 't you?»
Why don't I what? he wondered idly, lying there. He swallowed and this faint action of his Adam's apple dislodged her feeble clutch. Why don't I die; is that it? he cried silently. He lay another few moments, wondering if she'd gain strength enough to do him in. She didn't.
Should he snap on the light to confront her? Wouldn't she look a silly ass, a skinny chicken aloft sidesaddle on her hated husband's amazed body, and him laughing?
Joshua Enderby groaned and yawned. «Missy?»
Her hands froze on his collarbone.
«Will you-« He turned, pretending half sleep. «Will you-please' '-he yawned-' 'move to your side — of the bed? Eh? Good girl.»
Missy moved off in the dark. He heard ice tinkle. She was having another shot of rum.
At noon the next day, enjoying the weather and waiting for luncheon guests to arrive, old Joshua and Missy traded drinks in the garden pavilion. He handed her Dubonnet; she gave him sherry.
There was a moment of silence as both eyed the stuff and hesitated to sip. He handled his glass in such a way that his large white diamond ring sparked and glittered on his palsied hand. Its light made him flinch and at last he gathered his phlegm.
«Missy,» he said. «You haven't long to live, you know.» Missy was hidden behind jonquils in a crystal bowl and now peered out at her mummified husband. Both perceived that the other's hands shook. She wore a cobalt dress, heavily iced with luncheon jewels, little glittery planets under each ear, a scarlet design for a mouth. The ancient whore of Babylon, he thought dryly.
«How odd, my dear, how very odd,» Missy said with a polite scrape of her voice. «Why, only last night-«
«You were thinking of me?»
«We must talk.»
«Yes, we must.» He leaned like a wax mannequin in his chair. «No rush. But if I do you in, or if you do me in (it matters not which), let's protect each other, yes? Oh, don't look at me in amaze, my dear. I was perfectly aware of your little gallup last night on my ribs, fumbling with my esophagus, feeling the tumblers click, or whatever.»
«Dear me.» Blood rose in Missy's powdery cheeks. «Were you awake all during? I'm mortified. I think I shall have to go lie down.»
«Nonsense.» Joshua stopped her. «If I die, you should be shielded so no one'll accuse you. Same with me, if you die. Why go to all the trouble of trying to-eliminate-each other if it just means a gallows-drop or a french fry.»
«Logical enough,» she agreed.
«I suggest a-a series of mash notes to each other. Umm, lavish displays of sentiment before friends, gifts, et cetera. I'll run up bills for flowers, diamond bracelets. You purchase fine leather wallets and gold-ferruled canes for me.»
«You have a head for things, I must say,» she admitted.
«It will help allay suspicion if we appear madly, anciently in love.»
«You know,» she said tiredly, «it doesn't matter, Joshua, which of us dies first, except that I'm very old and would like to do one thing right in my life. I've always been such a dilettante. I've never liked you. Loved you, yes, but that's ten million years back. You never were a friend. If it weren't for the children-«
«Motives are bilge,» he said. «We are two querulous old pots with nothing to do but kick off, and make a circus of that. But how much better the dying game if we write a few rules, act it neatly, with no one the wiser. How long has this assassination plot of yours been active?»
She beamed. «Remember the opera last week? You slipped from the curb? That car almost nailed you?»
«Good Lord.» He laughed. «I thought someone shoved both of us!» He leaned forward, chuckling. «Okay. When you fell in the bath last month? I greased the tub!»
Unthinkingly, she gasped, drank part of her Dubonnet, then froze.
Reading her mind, he stared at his own drink.
«This isn't poisoned, by any chance?» He sniffed his glass. «Don't be silly,» she replied, touching her Dubonnet with a lizard's doubtful tongue. «They'd find the residue in what's left of your stomach. Just be sure you double-check your shower tonight. I have kited the temperature, which might bring on a seizure.»
«You didn't!» he scoffed.
«I've thought about it,» she confessed.
The front-door chimes rang, but not with their usual joy, sounding more funereal. Nonsense! Joshua thought. Bosh! thought Missy, then brightened:
«We have forgotten our luncheon guest! That's the Gowrys! He's a bore, but be nice! Fix your collar.»
«It's damned tight. Too much starch. One more plot to strangle me?»
«I wish I had thought of that. Double time, now!»
And they marched, arm in arm, with idiot laughter, off to meet the half-forgotten Gowrys.
Cocktails were served. The old relics sat side by side, hands laced like school chums, laughing with weak heartiness at Gowry's dire jokes. They leaned forward to show him their porcelain smiles, saying, «Oh, that's a good one!» loudly, and, softly, sotto voce; to each other: «Thought of anything new?» «Electric razor in your bath?» «Not bad, not bad!»
«And then Pat said to Mike!» cried Mr. Gowry.
From the corner of his mouth Joshua whispered to Missy, «You know, I dislike you with something approaching the colossal proportions of first love. You have taught me mayhem. How?»
«When the teacher is ready, the pupil will arrive,» whispered Missy.
Laughter rose in tumbling, whirling waves. The room was giddy, airy, light. «So Pat says to Mike, do it yourself!» boomed Gowry.
«Oh, ho!» everyone exploded.
«Now, dear.» Missy waved at her ancient husband. «Tell one of your jokes. Oh, but first,» she remembered cleverly, «trot down-cellar, darling, and fetch the brandy.»
Gowry sprang forward with wild courtesy. «I know where it is!»
«Oh, Mr. Gowry, don't!»
Missy gestured frantically.
Mr. Gowry ran from the room.
«Oh, dear, dear me,» cried Missy.
A moment later, Gowry uttered a loud shriek from the basement, followed by a thunderous crash.
Missy hippety-hopped out, only to reappear moments later, her hand clutched to her throat. «Heavens to Betsy,» she wailed. «Come look. I do believe Mr. Gowry has pitched himself straight down the cellar stairs!»
The next morning Joshua Enderby shuffled into the house lugging a large green velvet board some five feet by three, on which pistols were clasped in display.
«Here I am!» he shouted.
Missy appeared with a rum Collins in one bracelet-jangly hand, her cane thumping in the other. «What's that?» she demanded.
«First, how's old Gowry?»
«Broken leg. Wished it had been his vocal cords.»
«Shame about that top cellar step gone loose, eh?» The old man hooked the green velvet board to the wall. «Good thing Gowry lurched for the brandy, not I.»
«Shame.» The wife drank thirstily. «Explain.»
«I'm in the antique-gun-collecting business.» He waved at the weapons in their neat leather nests.
«I don't see-«
«With a collection of guns to clean-bang!» He beamed. «Man shoots wife while oiling matchlock garter pistol. Didn't know it was loaded, says weeping spouse.»
«Touche',» she said.
An hour later, while oiling a revolver, he almost blew his brains out.
His wife came thumping in and froze. «Hell. You're still alive.»
«Loaded, by God!» He lifted the weapon in a trembling hand. «None were loaded! Unless-«
«Unless-?»
He seized three more weapons. «All loaded! You!»
«Me,» she said. «While you ate lunch. I suppose I'll have to give you tea now. Come along.»
He stared at the bullet hole in the wall. «Tea, hell,» he said. «Where's the gin?!»
It was her turn for a shopping spree. «There are ants in the house.» She rattled her full shopping bag and set out ant-paste pots in all the rooms, sprinkled ant powders on windowsills, in his golf bag, and over his gun collection. From other sacks she drew rat poisons, mouse-killers, and bug-exterminators. «A bad summer for roaches.» She distributed these liberally among the foods.
«That's a double-edged sword,» he observed. «You'll fall on it!»
«Bilge. The victim mustn't choose his demise.»
«Yes, but no violence. I wish a serene face for the coroner.»
«Vanity. Dear Josh, your face will twist like a corkscrew with one heaping teaspoon of Black Leaf Forty in your midnight cocoa!»
«I,» he shot back, «know a recipe that will break you out in a thousand lumps before expiring»
She quieted. «Why, Josh, I wouldn't dream of using Black Leaf Forty.»
He bowed. «I wouldn't dream of using the thousand-lump recipe.»
«Shake,» she said.
Their assassins game continued. He bought huge rattraps to hide in the halls. «You run barefoot so: small wounds, large infections!»
She in turn stuck the sofas full of antimacassar pins. Wherever he laid a hand it drew blood. «Ow! Damn!» He sucked his fingers. «Are these Amazon Indian blowgun darts?»
«No. Just plain old rusty lockjaw needles.»
«Oh,» he said.
Though he was aging fast, Joshua Enderby dearly loved to drive. You could see him motoring with feeble wildness up and down the hills of Beverly, mouth gaped, eyes blinking palely.
One afternoon he phoned from Malibu. «Missy? My God, I almost dove from a cliff. My right front wheel flew off on a straightaway!»
«I planned it for a curve!»
«Sorry.»
«Got the idea from Action News. Loosen car's wheel lugs:
tomato surprise.»
«Never mind about careless old me,» he said. «What's new with you?»
«Rug slipped on the hall stairs. Maid fell on her prat.»
«Poor Lila.»
«I send her everywhere ahead now. She bucketed down like a laundry bag. Lucky she's all fat.»
«We'll kill that one between us if we're not careful.»
«Do you think? Oh, I do like Lila so.»
«Lay Lila off for a spell. Hire someone new. If we catch them in our crossfire, won't be so sad. Hate to think of Lila smashed under a chandelier or-«
«Chandelier!» Missy shrieked. «You been fiddling with my grandma's Fountainbleu Palace crystal hangings? Listen here, mister. You're not to touch that chandelier!»
«Promise,» he muttered.
«Good grief! Those lovely crystals! If they fell and missed me, I'd hop on one leg to cane you to death, then wake you up and cane you again!»
Slam went the phone.
Joshua Enderby stepped in from the balcony at supper that night. He'd been smoking. He looked at the table. «Where's your strawberry crumpet?»
«I wasn't hungry. I gave it to the new maid.»
«Idiot!»
She glared. «Don't tell me you poisoned that crumpet, you old S.O.B.?»
There was a crash from the kitchen.
Joshua went to look and returned. «She's not new any-more,» he said.
They stashed the new maid in an attic trunk. No one telephoned to ask for her.
«Disappointing,» observed Missy on the seventh day. «I felt certain there'd be a tall, cold man with a notebook and another with a camera and flashbulbs flashing. Poor girl was lonelier than we guessed.»
Cocktail parties streamed wildly through the house. It was Missy's idea. «So we can pick each other off in a forest of obstacles; moving targets!»
Mr. Gowry, gamely returning to the house, limping after his tumble of some weeks before, joked, laughed, and didn't quite blow his ear off with one of the dueling pistols. Everyone roared but the party broke up early. Gowry vowed never to return.
Then there was a Miss Kummer, who, staying overnight, borrowed Joshua's electric razor and was almost but not quite electrocuted. She left the house rubbing her right underarm. Joshua promptly grew a beard.
Soon after, a Mr. Schlagel vanished. So did a Mr. Smith. The last seen of these unfortunates was at a Saturday night soiree at the Enderbys' mansion.
«Hide-and-seek?» Friends slapped Joshua's back jovially.
«How do you do it? Kill 'em with toadstools, plant 'em like mushrooms?»
«Grand joke, yes!» chortled Joshua. «No, no, ha, not toadstools, but one got locked in our stand-up fridge. Overnight Eskimo Pie. The other tripped on a croquet hoop. Defenestrated through a greenhouse window.»
«Eskimo Pie, defenestrated!» hooted the party people. «Dear Joshua, you are a card!»
«I speak only the truth,» Joshua protested.
«What won't you think of next?»
«One wonders what did happen to old Schlagel and that rascal Smith.»
* * *
«What did happen to Schlagel and Smith?» Missy inquired some days later.
«Let me explain. The Eskimo Pie was my dessert. But the croquet hoop? No! Did you spot it in the wrong place, hoping I'd pop by and lunge through the greenhouse panes?»
Missy turned to stone; he had touched a nerve.
«Well, now, it's time for a wee talk,» he said. «Cancel the parties. One more victim and sirens will announce the arrival of the law.»
«Yes,» Missy agreed. «Our target practice seems to wind up in ricochet. About that croquet hoop. You always take midnight greenhouse walks. Why was that damn fool Schlagel stumbling about out there at two a.m.? Dumb ox. Is he still under the compost?»
«Until I stash him with he-who-is-frozen.»
«Dear, dear. No more parties.»
«Just you, me and-ah-the chandelier?»
«Ah, no. I've hid the stepladder so you can't climb!»
«Damn,» said Joshua.
That night by the fireplace, he poured a few glasses of their best port. While he was out of the room, answering the telephone, she dropped a little white powder in her own glass.
«Hate this,» she murmured. «Terribly unoriginal. But there won't be an inquest. He looked long dead before he died, they'll say as they shut the lid.» And she added a touch more lethal stuff to her port just as he wandered in to sit and pluck up his glass. He .eyed it and fixed his wife a grin. «Ah, no, no, you don't!»
«Don't what?» she said, all innocence.
The fire crackled warmly, gently on the hearth. The mantel clock ticked.
«You don't mind, do you, my dear, if we exchange drinks?»
«Surely you don't think I poisoned your drink while you were out?»
«Trite. Banal. But possible.»
«Well, then, fussbudget, trade.»
He looked surprised but traded glasses.
«Here's not looking at you!» both said, and laughed.
They drank with mysterious smiles.
And then they sat with immense satisfaction in their easy chairs, the firelight glimmering on their ghost-pale faces, letting the port warm their almost spidery veins. He stuck his legs out and held one hand to the fire. «Ah.» He sighed.
«Nothing, nothing quite like port!»
She leaned her small gray head back, dozing, gumming her red-sticky mouth, and glancing at him with half-secretive, lazy eyes. «Poor Lila,» she murmured.
«Yes,» he murmured. «Lila. Poor.»
The fire popped and she at last added, «Poor Mr. Schlagel.»
«Yes.» He drowsed. «Poor Schlagel. Don't forget Smith.»
«And you, old man,» she said finally, slowly, slyly. «How do you feel?'
«Sleepy.»
«Very sleepy?»
«Un-huh.» He studied her with bright eyes. «And, my dear, what about you?»
«Sleepy,» she said behind closed eyes. Then they popped wide. «Why all these questions?»
«Indeed,» he said, stirring alert. «Why?»
«Oh, well, because . . .» She examined her little black shoe moving in a low rhythm a long way off below her knee. «I think, or perhaps imagine, I have just destroyed your digestive and nervous systems.»
For the moment he was drowsily content and examined the warm fire and listened to the clock tick. «What you mean is that you have just poisoned me?» He dreamed the words. «You what!?» He jumped as all the air gusted from his body. The port glass shattered on the floor.
She leaned forward like a fortune-teller eagerly predicting futures.
«I cleverly poisoned my own drink and knew that you'd ask to trade off, so you felt safe. And we did!» Her laugh tinkled.
He fell back in his chair, clutching at his face to stop the wild swiveling of his eyes. Then suddenly he remembered something and let out an incredible explosion of laughter.
«Why,» cried Missy, «why are you laughing?»
«Because,» he gasped, tears streaming down his cheeks, his mouth grinning horribly, «I poisoned my drink! and hoped for an excuse to change with you!»
«Oh, dear,» she cried, no longer smiling. «How stupid of us. Why didn't I guess?»
«Because both of us are much too clever by far!» And he lay back, chortling.
«Oh, the mortification, the embarrassment, I feel stark naked and hate myself!»
«No, no,» he husked. «Think instead how much you still hate me.»
«With all my withered heart and soul. You?»
«No deathbed forgiveness here, old lily-white iron-maiden wife 0 mine. Cheerio,» he added faintly, far away.
«If you think I'll say 'Cheerio' back, you're crazed,» she whispered, her head rolling to one side, her eyes clamped,
her mouth gone loose around the words. «But what the hell. Cheer-«
At which her breath ceased and the fire burned to ashes as the clock ticked and ticked in the quiet room.
Friends found them strewn in their library chairs the next day, both looking more than usually pleased with their situation.
«A suicide pact,» said all. «So great their love they could not bear to let the other vanish alone into eternity.»
«I hope,» said Mr. Gowry, on his crutches, «my wife will someday join me in similar drinks.»
Joshua Enderby awoke in the middle of the night because e felt someone's fingers at his throat.
In the rich darkness above him he sensed but could not see his wife's frail, skelatinous weight seated on his chest while she dabbled and clenched tremblingly again and again at his neck.
He opened his eyes wide. He realized what she was trying to do. It was so ridiculous he almost cried out with laughter!
His rickety, jaundiced, eighty-five-year-old wife was trying to strangle him!
She panted forth a rum-and-bitters smell as she perched there, toppling like a drunken moth, tinkering away as if he were a toy. She sighed irritably and her skinny fingers began to swear as she gasped, «Why don't you, oh, why don 't you?»
Why don't I what? he wondered idly, lying there. He swallowed and this faint action of his Adam's apple dislodged her feeble clutch. Why don't I die; is that it? he cried silently. He lay another few moments, wondering if she'd gain strength enough to do him in. She didn't.
Should he snap on the light to confront her? Wouldn't she look a silly ass, a skinny chicken aloft sidesaddle on her hated husband's amazed body, and him laughing?
Joshua Enderby groaned and yawned. «Missy?»
Her hands froze on his collarbone.
«Will you-« He turned, pretending half sleep. «Will you-please' '-he yawned-' 'move to your side — of the bed? Eh? Good girl.»
Missy moved off in the dark. He heard ice tinkle. She was having another shot of rum.
At noon the next day, enjoying the weather and waiting for luncheon guests to arrive, old Joshua and Missy traded drinks in the garden pavilion. He handed her Dubonnet; she gave him sherry.
There was a moment of silence as both eyed the stuff and hesitated to sip. He handled his glass in such a way that his large white diamond ring sparked and glittered on his palsied hand. Its light made him flinch and at last he gathered his phlegm.
«Missy,» he said. «You haven't long to live, you know.» Missy was hidden behind jonquils in a crystal bowl and now peered out at her mummified husband. Both perceived that the other's hands shook. She wore a cobalt dress, heavily iced with luncheon jewels, little glittery planets under each ear, a scarlet design for a mouth. The ancient whore of Babylon, he thought dryly.
«How odd, my dear, how very odd,» Missy said with a polite scrape of her voice. «Why, only last night-«
«You were thinking of me?»
«We must talk.»
«Yes, we must.» He leaned like a wax mannequin in his chair. «No rush. But if I do you in, or if you do me in (it matters not which), let's protect each other, yes? Oh, don't look at me in amaze, my dear. I was perfectly aware of your little gallup last night on my ribs, fumbling with my esophagus, feeling the tumblers click, or whatever.»
«Dear me.» Blood rose in Missy's powdery cheeks. «Were you awake all during? I'm mortified. I think I shall have to go lie down.»
«Nonsense.» Joshua stopped her. «If I die, you should be shielded so no one'll accuse you. Same with me, if you die. Why go to all the trouble of trying to-eliminate-each other if it just means a gallows-drop or a french fry.»
«Logical enough,» she agreed.
«I suggest a-a series of mash notes to each other. Umm, lavish displays of sentiment before friends, gifts, et cetera. I'll run up bills for flowers, diamond bracelets. You purchase fine leather wallets and gold-ferruled canes for me.»
«You have a head for things, I must say,» she admitted.
«It will help allay suspicion if we appear madly, anciently in love.»
«You know,» she said tiredly, «it doesn't matter, Joshua, which of us dies first, except that I'm very old and would like to do one thing right in my life. I've always been such a dilettante. I've never liked you. Loved you, yes, but that's ten million years back. You never were a friend. If it weren't for the children-«
«Motives are bilge,» he said. «We are two querulous old pots with nothing to do but kick off, and make a circus of that. But how much better the dying game if we write a few rules, act it neatly, with no one the wiser. How long has this assassination plot of yours been active?»
She beamed. «Remember the opera last week? You slipped from the curb? That car almost nailed you?»
«Good Lord.» He laughed. «I thought someone shoved both of us!» He leaned forward, chuckling. «Okay. When you fell in the bath last month? I greased the tub!»
Unthinkingly, she gasped, drank part of her Dubonnet, then froze.
Reading her mind, he stared at his own drink.
«This isn't poisoned, by any chance?» He sniffed his glass. «Don't be silly,» she replied, touching her Dubonnet with a lizard's doubtful tongue. «They'd find the residue in what's left of your stomach. Just be sure you double-check your shower tonight. I have kited the temperature, which might bring on a seizure.»
«You didn't!» he scoffed.
«I've thought about it,» she confessed.
The front-door chimes rang, but not with their usual joy, sounding more funereal. Nonsense! Joshua thought. Bosh! thought Missy, then brightened:
«We have forgotten our luncheon guest! That's the Gowrys! He's a bore, but be nice! Fix your collar.»
«It's damned tight. Too much starch. One more plot to strangle me?»
«I wish I had thought of that. Double time, now!»
And they marched, arm in arm, with idiot laughter, off to meet the half-forgotten Gowrys.
Cocktails were served. The old relics sat side by side, hands laced like school chums, laughing with weak heartiness at Gowry's dire jokes. They leaned forward to show him their porcelain smiles, saying, «Oh, that's a good one!» loudly, and, softly, sotto voce; to each other: «Thought of anything new?» «Electric razor in your bath?» «Not bad, not bad!»
«And then Pat said to Mike!» cried Mr. Gowry.
From the corner of his mouth Joshua whispered to Missy, «You know, I dislike you with something approaching the colossal proportions of first love. You have taught me mayhem. How?»
«When the teacher is ready, the pupil will arrive,» whispered Missy.
Laughter rose in tumbling, whirling waves. The room was giddy, airy, light. «So Pat says to Mike, do it yourself!» boomed Gowry.
«Oh, ho!» everyone exploded.
«Now, dear.» Missy waved at her ancient husband. «Tell one of your jokes. Oh, but first,» she remembered cleverly, «trot down-cellar, darling, and fetch the brandy.»
Gowry sprang forward with wild courtesy. «I know where it is!»
«Oh, Mr. Gowry, don't!»
Missy gestured frantically.
Mr. Gowry ran from the room.
«Oh, dear, dear me,» cried Missy.
A moment later, Gowry uttered a loud shriek from the basement, followed by a thunderous crash.
Missy hippety-hopped out, only to reappear moments later, her hand clutched to her throat. «Heavens to Betsy,» she wailed. «Come look. I do believe Mr. Gowry has pitched himself straight down the cellar stairs!»
The next morning Joshua Enderby shuffled into the house lugging a large green velvet board some five feet by three, on which pistols were clasped in display.
«Here I am!» he shouted.
Missy appeared with a rum Collins in one bracelet-jangly hand, her cane thumping in the other. «What's that?» she demanded.
«First, how's old Gowry?»
«Broken leg. Wished it had been his vocal cords.»
«Shame about that top cellar step gone loose, eh?» The old man hooked the green velvet board to the wall. «Good thing Gowry lurched for the brandy, not I.»
«Shame.» The wife drank thirstily. «Explain.»
«I'm in the antique-gun-collecting business.» He waved at the weapons in their neat leather nests.
«I don't see-«
«With a collection of guns to clean-bang!» He beamed. «Man shoots wife while oiling matchlock garter pistol. Didn't know it was loaded, says weeping spouse.»
«Touche',» she said.
An hour later, while oiling a revolver, he almost blew his brains out.
His wife came thumping in and froze. «Hell. You're still alive.»
«Loaded, by God!» He lifted the weapon in a trembling hand. «None were loaded! Unless-«
«Unless-?»
He seized three more weapons. «All loaded! You!»
«Me,» she said. «While you ate lunch. I suppose I'll have to give you tea now. Come along.»
He stared at the bullet hole in the wall. «Tea, hell,» he said. «Where's the gin?!»
It was her turn for a shopping spree. «There are ants in the house.» She rattled her full shopping bag and set out ant-paste pots in all the rooms, sprinkled ant powders on windowsills, in his golf bag, and over his gun collection. From other sacks she drew rat poisons, mouse-killers, and bug-exterminators. «A bad summer for roaches.» She distributed these liberally among the foods.
«That's a double-edged sword,» he observed. «You'll fall on it!»
«Bilge. The victim mustn't choose his demise.»
«Yes, but no violence. I wish a serene face for the coroner.»
«Vanity. Dear Josh, your face will twist like a corkscrew with one heaping teaspoon of Black Leaf Forty in your midnight cocoa!»
«I,» he shot back, «know a recipe that will break you out in a thousand lumps before expiring»
She quieted. «Why, Josh, I wouldn't dream of using Black Leaf Forty.»
He bowed. «I wouldn't dream of using the thousand-lump recipe.»
«Shake,» she said.
Their assassins game continued. He bought huge rattraps to hide in the halls. «You run barefoot so: small wounds, large infections!»
She in turn stuck the sofas full of antimacassar pins. Wherever he laid a hand it drew blood. «Ow! Damn!» He sucked his fingers. «Are these Amazon Indian blowgun darts?»
«No. Just plain old rusty lockjaw needles.»
«Oh,» he said.
Though he was aging fast, Joshua Enderby dearly loved to drive. You could see him motoring with feeble wildness up and down the hills of Beverly, mouth gaped, eyes blinking palely.
One afternoon he phoned from Malibu. «Missy? My God, I almost dove from a cliff. My right front wheel flew off on a straightaway!»
«I planned it for a curve!»
«Sorry.»
«Got the idea from Action News. Loosen car's wheel lugs:
tomato surprise.»
«Never mind about careless old me,» he said. «What's new with you?»
«Rug slipped on the hall stairs. Maid fell on her prat.»
«Poor Lila.»
«I send her everywhere ahead now. She bucketed down like a laundry bag. Lucky she's all fat.»
«We'll kill that one between us if we're not careful.»
«Do you think? Oh, I do like Lila so.»
«Lay Lila off for a spell. Hire someone new. If we catch them in our crossfire, won't be so sad. Hate to think of Lila smashed under a chandelier or-«
«Chandelier!» Missy shrieked. «You been fiddling with my grandma's Fountainbleu Palace crystal hangings? Listen here, mister. You're not to touch that chandelier!»
«Promise,» he muttered.
«Good grief! Those lovely crystals! If they fell and missed me, I'd hop on one leg to cane you to death, then wake you up and cane you again!»
Slam went the phone.
Joshua Enderby stepped in from the balcony at supper that night. He'd been smoking. He looked at the table. «Where's your strawberry crumpet?»
«I wasn't hungry. I gave it to the new maid.»
«Idiot!»
She glared. «Don't tell me you poisoned that crumpet, you old S.O.B.?»
There was a crash from the kitchen.
Joshua went to look and returned. «She's not new any-more,» he said.
They stashed the new maid in an attic trunk. No one telephoned to ask for her.
«Disappointing,» observed Missy on the seventh day. «I felt certain there'd be a tall, cold man with a notebook and another with a camera and flashbulbs flashing. Poor girl was lonelier than we guessed.»
Cocktail parties streamed wildly through the house. It was Missy's idea. «So we can pick each other off in a forest of obstacles; moving targets!»
Mr. Gowry, gamely returning to the house, limping after his tumble of some weeks before, joked, laughed, and didn't quite blow his ear off with one of the dueling pistols. Everyone roared but the party broke up early. Gowry vowed never to return.
Then there was a Miss Kummer, who, staying overnight, borrowed Joshua's electric razor and was almost but not quite electrocuted. She left the house rubbing her right underarm. Joshua promptly grew a beard.
Soon after, a Mr. Schlagel vanished. So did a Mr. Smith. The last seen of these unfortunates was at a Saturday night soiree at the Enderbys' mansion.
«Hide-and-seek?» Friends slapped Joshua's back jovially.
«How do you do it? Kill 'em with toadstools, plant 'em like mushrooms?»
«Grand joke, yes!» chortled Joshua. «No, no, ha, not toadstools, but one got locked in our stand-up fridge. Overnight Eskimo Pie. The other tripped on a croquet hoop. Defenestrated through a greenhouse window.»
«Eskimo Pie, defenestrated!» hooted the party people. «Dear Joshua, you are a card!»
«I speak only the truth,» Joshua protested.
«What won't you think of next?»
«One wonders what did happen to old Schlagel and that rascal Smith.»
* * *
«What did happen to Schlagel and Smith?» Missy inquired some days later.
«Let me explain. The Eskimo Pie was my dessert. But the croquet hoop? No! Did you spot it in the wrong place, hoping I'd pop by and lunge through the greenhouse panes?»
Missy turned to stone; he had touched a nerve.
«Well, now, it's time for a wee talk,» he said. «Cancel the parties. One more victim and sirens will announce the arrival of the law.»
«Yes,» Missy agreed. «Our target practice seems to wind up in ricochet. About that croquet hoop. You always take midnight greenhouse walks. Why was that damn fool Schlagel stumbling about out there at two a.m.? Dumb ox. Is he still under the compost?»
«Until I stash him with he-who-is-frozen.»
«Dear, dear. No more parties.»
«Just you, me and-ah-the chandelier?»
«Ah, no. I've hid the stepladder so you can't climb!»
«Damn,» said Joshua.
That night by the fireplace, he poured a few glasses of their best port. While he was out of the room, answering the telephone, she dropped a little white powder in her own glass.
«Hate this,» she murmured. «Terribly unoriginal. But there won't be an inquest. He looked long dead before he died, they'll say as they shut the lid.» And she added a touch more lethal stuff to her port just as he wandered in to sit and pluck up his glass. He .eyed it and fixed his wife a grin. «Ah, no, no, you don't!»
«Don't what?» she said, all innocence.
The fire crackled warmly, gently on the hearth. The mantel clock ticked.
«You don't mind, do you, my dear, if we exchange drinks?»
«Surely you don't think I poisoned your drink while you were out?»
«Trite. Banal. But possible.»
«Well, then, fussbudget, trade.»
He looked surprised but traded glasses.
«Here's not looking at you!» both said, and laughed.
They drank with mysterious smiles.
And then they sat with immense satisfaction in their easy chairs, the firelight glimmering on their ghost-pale faces, letting the port warm their almost spidery veins. He stuck his legs out and held one hand to the fire. «Ah.» He sighed.
«Nothing, nothing quite like port!»
She leaned her small gray head back, dozing, gumming her red-sticky mouth, and glancing at him with half-secretive, lazy eyes. «Poor Lila,» she murmured.
«Yes,» he murmured. «Lila. Poor.»
The fire popped and she at last added, «Poor Mr. Schlagel.»
«Yes.» He drowsed. «Poor Schlagel. Don't forget Smith.»
«And you, old man,» she said finally, slowly, slyly. «How do you feel?'
«Sleepy.»
«Very sleepy?»
«Un-huh.» He studied her with bright eyes. «And, my dear, what about you?»
«Sleepy,» she said behind closed eyes. Then they popped wide. «Why all these questions?»
«Indeed,» he said, stirring alert. «Why?»
«Oh, well, because . . .» She examined her little black shoe moving in a low rhythm a long way off below her knee. «I think, or perhaps imagine, I have just destroyed your digestive and nervous systems.»
For the moment he was drowsily content and examined the warm fire and listened to the clock tick. «What you mean is that you have just poisoned me?» He dreamed the words. «You what!?» He jumped as all the air gusted from his body. The port glass shattered on the floor.
She leaned forward like a fortune-teller eagerly predicting futures.
«I cleverly poisoned my own drink and knew that you'd ask to trade off, so you felt safe. And we did!» Her laugh tinkled.
He fell back in his chair, clutching at his face to stop the wild swiveling of his eyes. Then suddenly he remembered something and let out an incredible explosion of laughter.
«Why,» cried Missy, «why are you laughing?»
«Because,» he gasped, tears streaming down his cheeks, his mouth grinning horribly, «I poisoned my drink! and hoped for an excuse to change with you!»
«Oh, dear,» she cried, no longer smiling. «How stupid of us. Why didn't I guess?»
«Because both of us are much too clever by far!» And he lay back, chortling.
«Oh, the mortification, the embarrassment, I feel stark naked and hate myself!»
«No, no,» he husked. «Think instead how much you still hate me.»
«With all my withered heart and soul. You?»
«No deathbed forgiveness here, old lily-white iron-maiden wife 0 mine. Cheerio,» he added faintly, far away.
«If you think I'll say 'Cheerio' back, you're crazed,» she whispered, her head rolling to one side, her eyes clamped,
her mouth gone loose around the words. «But what the hell. Cheer-«
At which her breath ceased and the fire burned to ashes as the clock ticked and ticked in the quiet room.
Friends found them strewn in their library chairs the next day, both looking more than usually pleased with their situation.
«A suicide pact,» said all. «So great their love they could not bear to let the other vanish alone into eternity.»
«I hope,» said Mr. Gowry, on his crutches, «my wife will someday join me in similar drinks.»
Quicker Than The Eye
1996 year
It was at a magic show I saw the man who looked enough like me to be my twin.
My wife and I were seated at a Saturday night performance, it was summer and warm, the audience melting in weather and conviviality. All around I saw married and engaged couples delighted and then alarmed by the comic opera of their lives which was being shown in immense symbol onstage.
A woman was sawed in half. How the husbands in the audience smiled.
A woman in a cabinet vanished. A bearded magician wept for her in despair. Then, at the tip-top of the balcony, she appeared, waving a white-powdered hand, infinitely beautiful, unattainable, far away.
How the wives grinned their cat grins!
«Look at them!» I said to my wife.
A woman floated in midair. .. a goddess born in all men's minds by their own true love. Let not her dainty feet touch earth. Keep her on that invisible pedestal. Watch it! God, don't tell me how it's done, anyone! Ah, look at her float, and dream.
And what was that man who spun plates, globes, stars, torches, his elbows twirling hoops, his nose balancing a blue feather, sweating everything at once! What, I asked myself, but the commuter husband, lover, worker, the quick luncher, juggling hour, Benzedrine, Nembutal, bank balances, and budgets?
Obviously, none of us had come to escape the world outside, but rather to have it tossed back at us in more easily digested forms, brighter, cleaner, quicker, neater; a spectacle both heartening and melancholy.
Who in life has not seen a woman disappear?
There, on the black, plush stage, women, mysteries of talc and rose petal, vanished. Cream alabaster statues, sculptures of summer lily and fresh rain melted to dreams, and the dreams became empty mirrors even as the magician reached hungrily to seize them.
From cabinets and nests of boxes, from flung sea-nets, shattering like porcelain as the conjurer fired his gun, the women vanished.
Symbolic, I thought. Why do magicians point pistols at lovely assistants, unless through some secret pact with the male subconscious?
«What?» asked my wife.
«Eh?»
«You were muttering,» said my wife.
«Sorry.» I searched the program. «Oh! Next comes Miss Quick! The only female pickpocket in the world!»
«That can't be true,» said my wife quietly.
I looked to see if she was joking. In the dark, her dim mouth seemed to be smiling, but the quality of that smile was lost to me.
The orchestra hummed like a serene flight of bees.
The curtains parted.
There, with no great fanfare, no swirl of cape, no bow, only the most condescending tilt of her head, and the faintest elevation of her left eyebrow, stood Miss Quick.
I thought it was a dog act, when she snapped her fingers.
«Volunteers. All men!»
«Sit down.» My wife pulled at me.
I had risen.
There was a stir. Like so many hounds, a silently baying pack rose and walked (or did they run?) to the snapping of Miss Quick's colorless fingernails.
It was obvious instantly that Miss Quick was the same woman who had been vanishing all evening.
Budget show, I thought; everyone doubles in brass. I don't like her.
«What?» asked my wife.
«Am I talking out loud again?»
But really, Miss Quick provoked me. For she looked as if she had gone backstage, shrugged on a rumpled tweed walking suit, one size too large, gravy-spotted and grass-stained, and then purposely rumpled her hair, painted her lipstick askew, and was on the point of exiting the stage door when someone cried, «You're on!»
So here she was now, in her practical shoes, her nose shiny, her hands in motion but her face immobile, getting it over with .
Feet firmly and resolutely planted, she waited, her hands deep in her lumpy tweed pockets, her mouth cool, as the dumb volunteers dogged it to the stage.
This mixed pack she set right with a few taps, lining them up in a military row.
The audience waited.
«That's all! Act's over! Back to your seats!»
Snap! went her plain fingers.
The men, dismayed, sheepishly peering at each other, ambled off. She let them stumble half down the stairs into darkness, then yawned:
«Haven't you forgotten something?»
Eagerly, they turned.
«Here.»
With a smile like the very driest wine, she lazily unwedged a wallet from one of her pockets. She removed another wallet from within her coat. Followed by a third, a fourth, a fifth! Ten wallets in all!
She held them forth, like biscuits, to good beasts. The men blinked. No, those were not their wallets! They had been onstage for only an instant. She had mingled with them only in passing. It was all a joke. Surely she was offering them brand-new wallets, compliments of the show!
But now the men began feeling themselves, like sculptures finding unseen flaws in old, hastily flung together armatures. Their mouths gaped, their hands grew more frantic, slapping their chest-pockets, digging their pockets.
All the while Miss Quick ignored them to calmly sort their wallets like the morning mail.
It was at this precise moment I noticed the man on the far right end of the line, half on the stage. I lifted my opera glasses. I looked once. I looked twice.
«Well,» I said lightly. «There seems to be a man there who somewhat resembles me.»
«Oh?» said my wife.
I handed her the glasses, casually. «Far right.»
«It's not like you,» said my wife. «It's you!»
«Well, almost,» I said modestly.
The fellow was nice-looking. It was hardly cricket to look thus upon yourself and pronounce favorable verdicts. Simultaneously, I had grown quite cold. I took back the opera glasses and nodded, fascinated. «Crew cut. Horn-rimmed glasses. Pink complexion. Blue eyes-«
«Your absolute twin!» cried my wife.
And this was true. And it was strange, sitting there, watching myself onstage.
«No, no, no,» I kept whispering.
But yet, what my mind refused, my eye accepted. Aren't there two billion people in this world? Yes! All different snowflakes, no two the same! But now here, delivered into my gaze, endangering my ego and my complacency, here was a casting from the same absolutes, the identical mold.
Should I believe, disbelieve, feel proud, or run scared? For here I stood witness to the forgetfulness of God.
«I don't think,» said God, «I've made one like this before.»
But, I thought, entranced, delighted, alarmed: God errs.
Flashes from old psychology books lit my mind.
Heredity. Environment.
«Smith! Jones! Helstrom!»
Onstage, in bland drill-sergeant tones, Miss Quick called roll and handed back the stolen goods.
You borrow your body from all your forebears, I thought. Heredity.
But isn't the body also an environment?
«Winters!»
Environment, they say, surrounds you. Well, doesn't the body surround, with its lakes, its architectures of bone, its overabundances, or wastelands of soul? Does not what is seen in passing window-mirrors, a face either serene snowfalls or a pitted abyss, the hands like swans or sparrows, the feet anvils or hummingbirds, the body a lumpy wheat-sack or a summer fern, do these not, seen, paint the mind, set the image, shape the brain and psyche like clay? They do!
«Bidwell! Rogers!»
Well, then, trapped in the same environmental flesh, how fared this stranger onstage?
In the old fashion, I wanted to leap to my feet and call, «What o'clock is it?»
And he, like the town crier passing late with my face, might half mournfully reply, «Nine o'clock, and all's well
But was all well with him?
Question: did those horn-rims cover a myopia not only of light but of spirit?
Question: was the slight obesity pressed to his skeleton symbolic of a similar gathering of tissue in his head?
In sum, did his soul go north while mine went south, the same flesh cloaking us but our minds reacting, one winter, one summer?
«My God,» I said, half aloud. «Suppose we're absolutely identical!»
«Shh!» said a woman behind me.
I swallowed hard.
Suppose, I thought, he is a chain-smoker, light sleeper, overeater, manic-depressive, glib talker, deep/shallow thinker, flesh fancier…
No one with that body, that face, could be otherwise. Even our names must be similar.
Our names!
»…1…bl . . . er…» .
Miss Quick spoke his!
Someone coughed. I missed it.
Perhaps she'd repeat it. But no, he, my twin, moved forward. Damn! He stumbled! The audience laughed.
I focused my binoculars swiftly.
My twin stood quietly, center stage now, his wallet returned to his fumbling hands.
«Stand straight,» I whispered. «Don't slouch.»
«Shh!» said my wife.
I squared my own shoulders, secretly.
I never knew I looked that fine, I thought, cramming the glasses to my eyes. Surely my nostrils aren't that thinly made, the true aristocrat. Is my skin that fresh and handsome, my chin that firm?
I blushed, in silence.
After all, if my wife said that was me, accept it! The lamplight of pure intelligence shone softly from every pore of his face.
«The glasses.» My wife nudged me.
Reluctantly I gave them up.
She trained the glasses rigidly, not on the man, but now on Miss Quick, who was busy cajoling, flirting, and repicking the pockets of the nearest men. On occasion my wife broke into a series of little satisfied snorts and giggles.
Miss Quick was, indeed, the goddess Shiva.
If I saw two hands, I saw nine. Her hands, an aviary, flew, rustled, tapped, soared, petted, whirled, tickled as Miss Quick, her face blank, swarmed coldly over her victims; touched without touching.
«What's in this pocket? And this? And here?»
She shook their vests, pinched their lapels, jingled their trousers: money rang. She punched them lightly with a vindictive forefinger, ringing totals on cash registers. She unplucked coat buttons with mannish yet fragile motions, gave wallets back, sneaked them away. She thrust them, took them, stole them again, while peeling money to count it behind the men's backs, then snatched their watches while
holding their hands.
She trapped a live doctor now!
«Have you a thermometer!?» she asked.
«Yes.» He searched. His face panicked. He searched again. The audience cued him with a roar. He glanced over to find:
Miss Quick standing with the thermometer in her mouth, like an unlit smoke. She whipped it out, eyed it.
«Temperature!» she cried. «One hundred ten!»
She closed her eyes and gave an insincere shake of her hips.
The audience roared. And now she assaulted her victims, bullied them, tugged at their shirts, rumpled their hair, asked:
«Where's your tie?»
They clapped their hands to their empty collars.
She plucked their ties from nowhere, tossed them back.
She was a magnet that invisibly drew good-luck charms, saints' medals, Roman coins, theater stubs, handkerchiefs, stickpins, while the audience ran riot, convulsed as these rabbit men stood peeled of all prides and protections.
Hold your hip pocket, she vacuumed your vest. Clutch your vest, she jackpotted your trousers. Blithely bored, firm but evanescent, she convinced you you missed nothing, until she extracted it, with faint loathing, from her own tweeds moments later.
«What's this?!» She held up a letter. «'Dear Helen: Last night with you-'»
A furious blush as the victim tussled with Miss Quick, snatched the letter, stowed it away. But a moment later, the letter was restolen and reread aloud: «'Dear Helen: Last night-'»
So the battle raged. One woman. Ten men.
She kissed one, stole his belt.
Stole another's suspenders.
The women in the audience-whinnied.
Their men, shocked, joined in.
What a magnificent bully, Miss Quick! How she spanked her dear, idiot-grinning, carry-on-somehow men turned boys as she spun them like cigar-store Indians, knocked them with her brontosaur hip, leaned on them like barber-poles, calling each one cute or lovely or handsome.
This night, I thought, is lunatic! All about me, wives, hilarious with contempt, hysterical at being so shabbily revealed in their national pastimes, gagged for air. Their husbands sat stunned, as if a war were over that had not been declared, fought and lost before they could move. Each, nearby, had the terrible look of a man who fears his throat is cut, and that a sneeze would fill the aisle with heads .
Quickly! I thought. Do something!
«You, you onstage, my twin, dodge! Escape!»
And she was coming at him!
«Be firm!» I told my twin. «Strategy! Duck, weave. Zigzag. Don't look where she says. Look where she doesn't say! Go it! now!»
If I shouted this, or merely ground it to powder in my teeth, I don't recall, for all the men froze as Miss Quick seized my twin by the hand.
«Careful!» I whispered.
Too late. His watch was gone. He didn't know it. Your watch is gone! I thought. He doesn't know what time it is! I thought.
Miss Quick stroked his lapel. Back off! I warned myself.
Too late. His forty-dollar pen was gone. He didn't know it. She tweaked his nose. He smiled. Idiot! There went his wallet. Not your nose, fool, your coat!
«Padded?» She pinched his shoulder. He looked at his right arm. No! I cried silently, for now she had the letters out of his left coat pocket. She planted a red kiss on his brow and backed off with everything else he had on him, coins, identification, a package of chocolates which she ate, greedily. Use the sense God gave a cow! I shouted behind my face. Blind! See what she's doing!
She whirled him round, measured him, and said, «This yours?» and returned his tie.
My wife was hysterical. She still held the glasses fixed on every nuance and vibration of loss and deprivation on the poor idiot's face. Her mouth was spoiled with triumph.
My God! I cried in the uproar. Get off the stage! I yelled within, wishing I could really yell it. At least get out while you have some pride!
The laughter had erupted a volcano in the theater, high and rumbling and dark. The dim grotto seemed lit with unhealthy fever, an incandescence. My twin wanted to break off, like one of Pavlov's dogs, too many bells on too many days: no reward, no food. His eyes were glazed with his insane predicament.
Fall! Jump in the pit! Crawl away! I thought.
The orchestra sawed at destiny with violins and Valkyrian trumpets in full flood.
With one last snatch, one last contemptuous wag of her body, Miss Quick grasped my twin's clean white shirt, and yanked it off.
She threw the shirt in the air. As it fell, so did his pants As his pants fell, unbelted, so did the theater. An avalanche of shock soared to bang the rafters and roll over us in echoes a thundering hilarity.
The curtain fell.
We sat, covered with unseen rubble. Drained of blood, buried in one upheaval after another, degraded and autopsied and, minus eulogy, tossed into a mass grave, we men took a minute to stare at that dropped curtain, behind which hid the pickpocket and her victims, behind which a man quickly hoisted his trousers up his spindly legs.
A burst of applause, a prolonged tide on a dark shore. Miss Quick did not appear to bow. She did not need to. She was standing behind the curtain. I could feel her there, no smile, no expression. Standing, coldly estimating the caliber of the applause, comparing it to the metered remembrances of other nights.
I jumped up in an absolute rage. I had, after all, failed myself. When I should have ducked, I bobbed; when I should have backed off, I ran in. What an ass!
«What a fine show!» said my wife as we milled through the departing audience.
«Fine!» I cried.
«Didn't you like it?»
«All except the pickpocket. Obvious act, overdone, no subtlety,» I said, lighting a cigarette.
«She was a whiz!»
«This way.» I steered my wife toward the stage door.
«Of course,» said my wife blandly, «that man, the one who looks like you, he was a plant. They call them shills, don't they? Paid by the management to pretend to be part of the audience?»
«No man would take money for a spectacle like that,» I said. «No, he was just some boob who didn't know how to be careful.»
«What are we doing back here?»
Blinking around, we found we were backstage.
Perhaps I wished to stride up to my twin, shouting, «Half-baked ox! Insulter of all men! Play a flute: you dance. Tickle your chin: you jump like a puppet! Jerk!»
The truth was, of course, I must see my twin close-up, confront the traitor and see where his true flesh differed from mine. After all, wouldn't I have done better in his place?!
The backstage was lit in blooms and isolated flushes, now bright, now dark, where the other magicians stood chatting. And there, there was Miss Quick!
And there, smiling, was my twin!
«You did fine, Charlie,» said Miss Quick.
My twin's name was Charlie. Stupid name.
Charlie patted Miss Quick's cheek. «You did fine, ma'am!»
God, it was true! A shill, a confederate. Paid what? Five, ten dollars for letting his shirt be torn oft, letting his pants drop with his pride? What a turncoat, traitor!
I stood, glaring.
He glanced up.
Perhaps he saw me.
Perhaps some bit of my rage and impacted sorrow reached him.
He held my gaze for only a moment, his mouth wide, as if he had just seen an old school chum. But, not remembering my name, could not call out, so let the moment pass.
He saw my rage. His face paled. His smile died. He glanced quickly away. He did not look up again, but stood pretending to listen to Miss Quick, who was laughing and talking with the other magicians.
I stared at him and stared again. Sweat oiled his face. My hate melted. My temper cooled. I saw his profile clearly, his chin, eyes, nose, hairline; I memorized it all. Then I heard someone say:
«It was a fine show!»
My wife, moving forward, shook the hand of the pickpocketing beast.
On the street, I said, «Well, I'm satisfied.»
«About what?» asked my wife.
«He doesn't look like me at all. Chin's too sharp. Nose is smaller. Lower lip isn't full enough. Too much eyebrow. Onstage, far oft, had me going. But close up, no, no. It was the crew cut and horn-rims fooled us. Anyone could have horn-rims and a crew cut.»
«Yes,» my wife agreed, «anyone.»
As she climbed into our car, I could not help but admire her long, lovely legs.
Driving off, I thought I glimpsed that familiar face in the passing crowd. The face, however, was watching me. I wasn't sure. Resemblances, I now knew, are superficial.
The face vanished in the crowd.
«I'll never forget,» said my wife, «when his pants-fell!» I drove very fast, then drove very slow, all the way home.
It was at a magic show I saw the man who looked enough like me to be my twin.
My wife and I were seated at a Saturday night performance, it was summer and warm, the audience melting in weather and conviviality. All around I saw married and engaged couples delighted and then alarmed by the comic opera of their lives which was being shown in immense symbol onstage.
A woman was sawed in half. How the husbands in the audience smiled.
A woman in a cabinet vanished. A bearded magician wept for her in despair. Then, at the tip-top of the balcony, she appeared, waving a white-powdered hand, infinitely beautiful, unattainable, far away.
How the wives grinned their cat grins!
«Look at them!» I said to my wife.
A woman floated in midair. .. a goddess born in all men's minds by their own true love. Let not her dainty feet touch earth. Keep her on that invisible pedestal. Watch it! God, don't tell me how it's done, anyone! Ah, look at her float, and dream.
And what was that man who spun plates, globes, stars, torches, his elbows twirling hoops, his nose balancing a blue feather, sweating everything at once! What, I asked myself, but the commuter husband, lover, worker, the quick luncher, juggling hour, Benzedrine, Nembutal, bank balances, and budgets?
Obviously, none of us had come to escape the world outside, but rather to have it tossed back at us in more easily digested forms, brighter, cleaner, quicker, neater; a spectacle both heartening and melancholy.
Who in life has not seen a woman disappear?
There, on the black, plush stage, women, mysteries of talc and rose petal, vanished. Cream alabaster statues, sculptures of summer lily and fresh rain melted to dreams, and the dreams became empty mirrors even as the magician reached hungrily to seize them.
From cabinets and nests of boxes, from flung sea-nets, shattering like porcelain as the conjurer fired his gun, the women vanished.
Symbolic, I thought. Why do magicians point pistols at lovely assistants, unless through some secret pact with the male subconscious?
«What?» asked my wife.
«Eh?»
«You were muttering,» said my wife.
«Sorry.» I searched the program. «Oh! Next comes Miss Quick! The only female pickpocket in the world!»
«That can't be true,» said my wife quietly.
I looked to see if she was joking. In the dark, her dim mouth seemed to be smiling, but the quality of that smile was lost to me.
The orchestra hummed like a serene flight of bees.
The curtains parted.
There, with no great fanfare, no swirl of cape, no bow, only the most condescending tilt of her head, and the faintest elevation of her left eyebrow, stood Miss Quick.
I thought it was a dog act, when she snapped her fingers.
«Volunteers. All men!»
«Sit down.» My wife pulled at me.
I had risen.
There was a stir. Like so many hounds, a silently baying pack rose and walked (or did they run?) to the snapping of Miss Quick's colorless fingernails.
It was obvious instantly that Miss Quick was the same woman who had been vanishing all evening.
Budget show, I thought; everyone doubles in brass. I don't like her.
«What?» asked my wife.
«Am I talking out loud again?»
But really, Miss Quick provoked me. For she looked as if she had gone backstage, shrugged on a rumpled tweed walking suit, one size too large, gravy-spotted and grass-stained, and then purposely rumpled her hair, painted her lipstick askew, and was on the point of exiting the stage door when someone cried, «You're on!»
So here she was now, in her practical shoes, her nose shiny, her hands in motion but her face immobile, getting it over with .
Feet firmly and resolutely planted, she waited, her hands deep in her lumpy tweed pockets, her mouth cool, as the dumb volunteers dogged it to the stage.
This mixed pack she set right with a few taps, lining them up in a military row.
The audience waited.
«That's all! Act's over! Back to your seats!»
Snap! went her plain fingers.
The men, dismayed, sheepishly peering at each other, ambled off. She let them stumble half down the stairs into darkness, then yawned:
«Haven't you forgotten something?»
Eagerly, they turned.
«Here.»
With a smile like the very driest wine, she lazily unwedged a wallet from one of her pockets. She removed another wallet from within her coat. Followed by a third, a fourth, a fifth! Ten wallets in all!
She held them forth, like biscuits, to good beasts. The men blinked. No, those were not their wallets! They had been onstage for only an instant. She had mingled with them only in passing. It was all a joke. Surely she was offering them brand-new wallets, compliments of the show!
But now the men began feeling themselves, like sculptures finding unseen flaws in old, hastily flung together armatures. Their mouths gaped, their hands grew more frantic, slapping their chest-pockets, digging their pockets.
All the while Miss Quick ignored them to calmly sort their wallets like the morning mail.
It was at this precise moment I noticed the man on the far right end of the line, half on the stage. I lifted my opera glasses. I looked once. I looked twice.
«Well,» I said lightly. «There seems to be a man there who somewhat resembles me.»
«Oh?» said my wife.
I handed her the glasses, casually. «Far right.»
«It's not like you,» said my wife. «It's you!»
«Well, almost,» I said modestly.
The fellow was nice-looking. It was hardly cricket to look thus upon yourself and pronounce favorable verdicts. Simultaneously, I had grown quite cold. I took back the opera glasses and nodded, fascinated. «Crew cut. Horn-rimmed glasses. Pink complexion. Blue eyes-«
«Your absolute twin!» cried my wife.
And this was true. And it was strange, sitting there, watching myself onstage.
«No, no, no,» I kept whispering.
But yet, what my mind refused, my eye accepted. Aren't there two billion people in this world? Yes! All different snowflakes, no two the same! But now here, delivered into my gaze, endangering my ego and my complacency, here was a casting from the same absolutes, the identical mold.
Should I believe, disbelieve, feel proud, or run scared? For here I stood witness to the forgetfulness of God.
«I don't think,» said God, «I've made one like this before.»
But, I thought, entranced, delighted, alarmed: God errs.
Flashes from old psychology books lit my mind.
Heredity. Environment.
«Smith! Jones! Helstrom!»
Onstage, in bland drill-sergeant tones, Miss Quick called roll and handed back the stolen goods.
You borrow your body from all your forebears, I thought. Heredity.
But isn't the body also an environment?
«Winters!»
Environment, they say, surrounds you. Well, doesn't the body surround, with its lakes, its architectures of bone, its overabundances, or wastelands of soul? Does not what is seen in passing window-mirrors, a face either serene snowfalls or a pitted abyss, the hands like swans or sparrows, the feet anvils or hummingbirds, the body a lumpy wheat-sack or a summer fern, do these not, seen, paint the mind, set the image, shape the brain and psyche like clay? They do!
«Bidwell! Rogers!»
Well, then, trapped in the same environmental flesh, how fared this stranger onstage?
In the old fashion, I wanted to leap to my feet and call, «What o'clock is it?»
And he, like the town crier passing late with my face, might half mournfully reply, «Nine o'clock, and all's well
But was all well with him?
Question: did those horn-rims cover a myopia not only of light but of spirit?
Question: was the slight obesity pressed to his skeleton symbolic of a similar gathering of tissue in his head?
In sum, did his soul go north while mine went south, the same flesh cloaking us but our minds reacting, one winter, one summer?
«My God,» I said, half aloud. «Suppose we're absolutely identical!»
«Shh!» said a woman behind me.
I swallowed hard.
Suppose, I thought, he is a chain-smoker, light sleeper, overeater, manic-depressive, glib talker, deep/shallow thinker, flesh fancier…
No one with that body, that face, could be otherwise. Even our names must be similar.
Our names!
»…1…bl . . . er…» .
Miss Quick spoke his!
Someone coughed. I missed it.
Perhaps she'd repeat it. But no, he, my twin, moved forward. Damn! He stumbled! The audience laughed.
I focused my binoculars swiftly.
My twin stood quietly, center stage now, his wallet returned to his fumbling hands.
«Stand straight,» I whispered. «Don't slouch.»
«Shh!» said my wife.
I squared my own shoulders, secretly.
I never knew I looked that fine, I thought, cramming the glasses to my eyes. Surely my nostrils aren't that thinly made, the true aristocrat. Is my skin that fresh and handsome, my chin that firm?
I blushed, in silence.
After all, if my wife said that was me, accept it! The lamplight of pure intelligence shone softly from every pore of his face.
«The glasses.» My wife nudged me.
Reluctantly I gave them up.
She trained the glasses rigidly, not on the man, but now on Miss Quick, who was busy cajoling, flirting, and repicking the pockets of the nearest men. On occasion my wife broke into a series of little satisfied snorts and giggles.
Miss Quick was, indeed, the goddess Shiva.
If I saw two hands, I saw nine. Her hands, an aviary, flew, rustled, tapped, soared, petted, whirled, tickled as Miss Quick, her face blank, swarmed coldly over her victims; touched without touching.
«What's in this pocket? And this? And here?»
She shook their vests, pinched their lapels, jingled their trousers: money rang. She punched them lightly with a vindictive forefinger, ringing totals on cash registers. She unplucked coat buttons with mannish yet fragile motions, gave wallets back, sneaked them away. She thrust them, took them, stole them again, while peeling money to count it behind the men's backs, then snatched their watches while
holding their hands.
She trapped a live doctor now!
«Have you a thermometer!?» she asked.
«Yes.» He searched. His face panicked. He searched again. The audience cued him with a roar. He glanced over to find:
Miss Quick standing with the thermometer in her mouth, like an unlit smoke. She whipped it out, eyed it.
«Temperature!» she cried. «One hundred ten!»
She closed her eyes and gave an insincere shake of her hips.
The audience roared. And now she assaulted her victims, bullied them, tugged at their shirts, rumpled their hair, asked:
«Where's your tie?»
They clapped their hands to their empty collars.
She plucked their ties from nowhere, tossed them back.
She was a magnet that invisibly drew good-luck charms, saints' medals, Roman coins, theater stubs, handkerchiefs, stickpins, while the audience ran riot, convulsed as these rabbit men stood peeled of all prides and protections.
Hold your hip pocket, she vacuumed your vest. Clutch your vest, she jackpotted your trousers. Blithely bored, firm but evanescent, she convinced you you missed nothing, until she extracted it, with faint loathing, from her own tweeds moments later.
«What's this?!» She held up a letter. «'Dear Helen: Last night with you-'»
A furious blush as the victim tussled with Miss Quick, snatched the letter, stowed it away. But a moment later, the letter was restolen and reread aloud: «'Dear Helen: Last night-'»
So the battle raged. One woman. Ten men.
She kissed one, stole his belt.
Stole another's suspenders.
The women in the audience-whinnied.
Their men, shocked, joined in.
What a magnificent bully, Miss Quick! How she spanked her dear, idiot-grinning, carry-on-somehow men turned boys as she spun them like cigar-store Indians, knocked them with her brontosaur hip, leaned on them like barber-poles, calling each one cute or lovely or handsome.
This night, I thought, is lunatic! All about me, wives, hilarious with contempt, hysterical at being so shabbily revealed in their national pastimes, gagged for air. Their husbands sat stunned, as if a war were over that had not been declared, fought and lost before they could move. Each, nearby, had the terrible look of a man who fears his throat is cut, and that a sneeze would fill the aisle with heads .
Quickly! I thought. Do something!
«You, you onstage, my twin, dodge! Escape!»
And she was coming at him!
«Be firm!» I told my twin. «Strategy! Duck, weave. Zigzag. Don't look where she says. Look where she doesn't say! Go it! now!»
If I shouted this, or merely ground it to powder in my teeth, I don't recall, for all the men froze as Miss Quick seized my twin by the hand.
«Careful!» I whispered.
Too late. His watch was gone. He didn't know it. Your watch is gone! I thought. He doesn't know what time it is! I thought.
Miss Quick stroked his lapel. Back off! I warned myself.
Too late. His forty-dollar pen was gone. He didn't know it. She tweaked his nose. He smiled. Idiot! There went his wallet. Not your nose, fool, your coat!
«Padded?» She pinched his shoulder. He looked at his right arm. No! I cried silently, for now she had the letters out of his left coat pocket. She planted a red kiss on his brow and backed off with everything else he had on him, coins, identification, a package of chocolates which she ate, greedily. Use the sense God gave a cow! I shouted behind my face. Blind! See what she's doing!
She whirled him round, measured him, and said, «This yours?» and returned his tie.
My wife was hysterical. She still held the glasses fixed on every nuance and vibration of loss and deprivation on the poor idiot's face. Her mouth was spoiled with triumph.
My God! I cried in the uproar. Get off the stage! I yelled within, wishing I could really yell it. At least get out while you have some pride!
The laughter had erupted a volcano in the theater, high and rumbling and dark. The dim grotto seemed lit with unhealthy fever, an incandescence. My twin wanted to break off, like one of Pavlov's dogs, too many bells on too many days: no reward, no food. His eyes were glazed with his insane predicament.
Fall! Jump in the pit! Crawl away! I thought.
The orchestra sawed at destiny with violins and Valkyrian trumpets in full flood.
With one last snatch, one last contemptuous wag of her body, Miss Quick grasped my twin's clean white shirt, and yanked it off.
She threw the shirt in the air. As it fell, so did his pants As his pants fell, unbelted, so did the theater. An avalanche of shock soared to bang the rafters and roll over us in echoes a thundering hilarity.
The curtain fell.
We sat, covered with unseen rubble. Drained of blood, buried in one upheaval after another, degraded and autopsied and, minus eulogy, tossed into a mass grave, we men took a minute to stare at that dropped curtain, behind which hid the pickpocket and her victims, behind which a man quickly hoisted his trousers up his spindly legs.
A burst of applause, a prolonged tide on a dark shore. Miss Quick did not appear to bow. She did not need to. She was standing behind the curtain. I could feel her there, no smile, no expression. Standing, coldly estimating the caliber of the applause, comparing it to the metered remembrances of other nights.
I jumped up in an absolute rage. I had, after all, failed myself. When I should have ducked, I bobbed; when I should have backed off, I ran in. What an ass!
«What a fine show!» said my wife as we milled through the departing audience.
«Fine!» I cried.
«Didn't you like it?»
«All except the pickpocket. Obvious act, overdone, no subtlety,» I said, lighting a cigarette.
«She was a whiz!»
«This way.» I steered my wife toward the stage door.
«Of course,» said my wife blandly, «that man, the one who looks like you, he was a plant. They call them shills, don't they? Paid by the management to pretend to be part of the audience?»
«No man would take money for a spectacle like that,» I said. «No, he was just some boob who didn't know how to be careful.»
«What are we doing back here?»
Blinking around, we found we were backstage.
Perhaps I wished to stride up to my twin, shouting, «Half-baked ox! Insulter of all men! Play a flute: you dance. Tickle your chin: you jump like a puppet! Jerk!»
The truth was, of course, I must see my twin close-up, confront the traitor and see where his true flesh differed from mine. After all, wouldn't I have done better in his place?!
The backstage was lit in blooms and isolated flushes, now bright, now dark, where the other magicians stood chatting. And there, there was Miss Quick!
And there, smiling, was my twin!
«You did fine, Charlie,» said Miss Quick.
My twin's name was Charlie. Stupid name.
Charlie patted Miss Quick's cheek. «You did fine, ma'am!»
God, it was true! A shill, a confederate. Paid what? Five, ten dollars for letting his shirt be torn oft, letting his pants drop with his pride? What a turncoat, traitor!
I stood, glaring.
He glanced up.
Perhaps he saw me.
Perhaps some bit of my rage and impacted sorrow reached him.
He held my gaze for only a moment, his mouth wide, as if he had just seen an old school chum. But, not remembering my name, could not call out, so let the moment pass.
He saw my rage. His face paled. His smile died. He glanced quickly away. He did not look up again, but stood pretending to listen to Miss Quick, who was laughing and talking with the other magicians.
I stared at him and stared again. Sweat oiled his face. My hate melted. My temper cooled. I saw his profile clearly, his chin, eyes, nose, hairline; I memorized it all. Then I heard someone say:
«It was a fine show!»
My wife, moving forward, shook the hand of the pickpocketing beast.
On the street, I said, «Well, I'm satisfied.»
«About what?» asked my wife.
«He doesn't look like me at all. Chin's too sharp. Nose is smaller. Lower lip isn't full enough. Too much eyebrow. Onstage, far oft, had me going. But close up, no, no. It was the crew cut and horn-rims fooled us. Anyone could have horn-rims and a crew cut.»
«Yes,» my wife agreed, «anyone.»
As she climbed into our car, I could not help but admire her long, lovely legs.
Driving off, I thought I glimpsed that familiar face in the passing crowd. The face, however, was watching me. I wasn't sure. Resemblances, I now knew, are superficial.
The face vanished in the crowd.
«I'll never forget,» said my wife, «when his pants-fell!» I drove very fast, then drove very slow, all the way home.
Dorian In Excelsus
1996 year
Good evening. Welcome. I see you have my invitation in your hands. Decided to be brave, did you? Fine. Here we are Grab onto this.»
The tall, handsome stranger with the heavenly eyes and the impossibly blond hair handed me a wineglass.
«Clean your palate,» he said.
I took the glass and read the label on the bottle he held in his left hand. Bordeaux, it read. St. Emilion.
«Go on,» said my host. «It's not poison. May I sit? And might you drink?»
«I might,» I sipped, shut my eyes, and smiled. «You're a connoisseur. This is the best I've had in years. But why this wine and why the invitation? What am I doing here at Gray's Anatomy Bar and Grill?»
My host sat and filled his own glass. «I am doing a favor to myself. This is a great night, perhaps for both of us. Greater than Christmas or Halloween.» His lizard tongue darted into his wine to vanish back into his contentment. «We celebrate my being honored, at last becoming-«
He exhaled it all out:
«Becoming,» he said, «a friend to Dorian! Dorian's friend. Me!»
«Ah.» I laughed. «That explains the name of this place, then? Does Dorian own Gray's Anatomy?»
«More! Inspires and rules over it. And deservedly so.»
«You make it sound as if being a friend to Dorian is the most important thing in the world.»
«No! In life! In all of life.» He rocked back and forth, drunk not from the wine but from some inner joy. «Guess.»
«At what?»
«How old I am!»
«You look to be twenty-nine at the most.»
«Twenty-nine. What a lovely sound. Not thirty, forty, or fifty, but-«
I said, «I hope you're not going to ask what sign I was born under. I usually leave when people ask that. I was born on the cusp, August, 1920.» I pretended to half rise. He pressed a gentle hand to my lapel.
«No, no, dear boy-you don't understand. Look here. And here.» He touched under his eyes and then around his neck. «Look for wrinkles.»
«But you have none,» I said.
«How observant. None. And that is why I have become this very night a fresh, new, stunningly handsome friend to Dorian.»
«I still don't see the connection.»
«Look at the backs of my hands.» He showed his wrists. «No liver spots. I am not turning to rust. I repeat the question, how old am I?»
I swirled the wine in my glass and studied his reflection in the swirl.
«Sixty?» I guessed. «Seventy?»
«Good God!» He fell back in his chair, astonished. «How did you know?»
«Word association. You've been rattling on about Dorian. I know my Oscar Wilde, I know my Dorian Gray, which means you, sir, have a portrait of yourself stashed in an attic aging while you yourself, drinking old wine, stay young.»
«No, no.» The handsome stranger leaned forward. «Not stayed young. Became young. I was old, very old, and it took a year, but the clock went back and after a year of playing at it, I achieved what I set out for.»
«Twenty-nine was your target?»
«How clever you are!»
«And once you became twenty-nine you were fully elected as-«
«A Friend to Dorian! Bulls-eye! But there is no portrait, no attic, no staying young. It's becoming young again's the ticket.»
«I'm still puzzled!»
«Child of my heart, you might possibly be another Friend. Come along. Before the greatest revelation, let me show you the far end of the room and some doors.»
Good evening. Welcome. I see you have my invitation in your hands. Decided to be brave, did you? Fine. Here we are Grab onto this.»
The tall, handsome stranger with the heavenly eyes and the impossibly blond hair handed me a wineglass.
«Clean your palate,» he said.
I took the glass and read the label on the bottle he held in his left hand. Bordeaux, it read. St. Emilion.
«Go on,» said my host. «It's not poison. May I sit? And might you drink?»
«I might,» I sipped, shut my eyes, and smiled. «You're a connoisseur. This is the best I've had in years. But why this wine and why the invitation? What am I doing here at Gray's Anatomy Bar and Grill?»
My host sat and filled his own glass. «I am doing a favor to myself. This is a great night, perhaps for both of us. Greater than Christmas or Halloween.» His lizard tongue darted into his wine to vanish back into his contentment. «We celebrate my being honored, at last becoming-«
He exhaled it all out:
«Becoming,» he said, «a friend to Dorian! Dorian's friend. Me!»
«Ah.» I laughed. «That explains the name of this place, then? Does Dorian own Gray's Anatomy?»
«More! Inspires and rules over it. And deservedly so.»
«You make it sound as if being a friend to Dorian is the most important thing in the world.»
«No! In life! In all of life.» He rocked back and forth, drunk not from the wine but from some inner joy. «Guess.»
«At what?»
«How old I am!»
«You look to be twenty-nine at the most.»
«Twenty-nine. What a lovely sound. Not thirty, forty, or fifty, but-«
I said, «I hope you're not going to ask what sign I was born under. I usually leave when people ask that. I was born on the cusp, August, 1920.» I pretended to half rise. He pressed a gentle hand to my lapel.
«No, no, dear boy-you don't understand. Look here. And here.» He touched under his eyes and then around his neck. «Look for wrinkles.»
«But you have none,» I said.
«How observant. None. And that is why I have become this very night a fresh, new, stunningly handsome friend to Dorian.»
«I still don't see the connection.»
«Look at the backs of my hands.» He showed his wrists. «No liver spots. I am not turning to rust. I repeat the question, how old am I?»
I swirled the wine in my glass and studied his reflection in the swirl.
«Sixty?» I guessed. «Seventy?»
«Good God!» He fell back in his chair, astonished. «How did you know?»
«Word association. You've been rattling on about Dorian. I know my Oscar Wilde, I know my Dorian Gray, which means you, sir, have a portrait of yourself stashed in an attic aging while you yourself, drinking old wine, stay young.»
«No, no.» The handsome stranger leaned forward. «Not stayed young. Became young. I was old, very old, and it took a year, but the clock went back and after a year of playing at it, I achieved what I set out for.»
«Twenty-nine was your target?»
«How clever you are!»
«And once you became twenty-nine you were fully elected as-«
«A Friend to Dorian! Bulls-eye! But there is no portrait, no attic, no staying young. It's becoming young again's the ticket.»
«I'm still puzzled!»
«Child of my heart, you might possibly be another Friend. Come along. Before the greatest revelation, let me show you the far end of the room and some doors.»