Afterlife Crisis

by Randal Graham

  I gaped. There was a fishy sort of rumminess in this young beazel’s manner, and her tone raised the gravest suspicions. It was the way she’d said Peericks was sleeping “in a certain sort of way.” Unless I was very much mistaken, I had divined the meaning of those vague words right off the bat.

  “You beaned him!” I exclaimed.

  “I had to!” she cried. “You told me yourself that you did the same thing when—”

  I raised an interrupting digit, for I couldn’t allow this doctor-clobbering pipsqueak to cite me as a binding precedent. “While I admit that I did, on one occasion, KO the good doctor in a bid to extricate — do I mean extricate?”

  “Yes, extricate. Or remove.”

  “Right. Then I’ll admit I did KO this doctor in a bid to remove or extricate self and others from the hospice, but I did so only as a last resort and at the unmistakable prompting of the Author. I mean to say, everyone knows you can’t go beaning hospice officials on a whim without the merest provocation. But when the Author places a book called Cranial Trauma at your elbow, just as the doctor moves his occiput into prime beaning position, you’ve no other choice but to bow to the Author’s will and get to biffing. But the crucial thing is to choose your wallops wisely. Take my example. I’ll admit freely that in our recent tête-à-tête with Matron Bikerack, it occurred to me more than once that a well-placed slosh on the occiput might have been an effective ploy. Yet I suppressed the urge to biff. Not every head which the Author places in your path is ripe for beaning. Other solutions should be exhausted before you give in to the impulse and start raining blows on those around you or the thing becomes habit-forming and you gain a reputation.”

  “Other solutions my eye,” she said, peevishly. “Peericks wasn’t about to let me go. He didn’t buy my story about the engagement, and he was going to stick me into a higher-security wing of the hospice. He said I was a flight risk. A flight risk!”

  Well, I mean, she was a flight risk, of course, and that risk had come to fruition. She’d proven the doctor’s point by flying the coop this very night. But I didn’t raise this point with Vera. If she chafed at being labelled a flight risk, despite ample justification, I was happy to let the matter rest. Besides, she had raised another issue which called for exploration, viz, the doctor’s refusal to accept her claims about our engagement. I called for additional information.

  “He didn’t accept the marriage license?” I said.

  “There isn’t any marriage license.”

  “Did you lose it?”

  “I never had it!” she said. “All I got from the clerk at City Hall was Nappy’s address.”

  “It seems to me it would have been prudent to get the license while you were there.”

  She turned her head in my direction, taking her eyes from the road ahead just long enough to aim an exasperated look at yours truly — the sort of look that says “how can a thick-headed brick like you be allowed to mix freely with the public?” And while anyone seeing this look would have no trouble divining the meaning it conveyed, I couldn’t see why it was indicated in the circs. I’d merely pointed out the obvious error of her ways. I was on the point of drawing myself up to my full height — at least as much as this was possible while occupying the passenger seat of a compact car — and giving Vera one of my own austere looks while demanding an explanation, when she sighed an exasperated sigh which seemed to come from the soles of her shoes.

  “What’s done is done,” she said, dully. And then seeking a change of subject, or possibly just a distraction from our present plight, she fiddled with the appropriate knob on the car’s dashboard and activated the radio, which began emitting offensive noises indicating country music.

  Reasoning that there was enough sadness in the world without this twangy din polluting the air, I changed stations, finally settling on one that featured the daily news. This seemed like a sound choice: if police had started setting dragnets far and wide for a pair of fugitives on the lam from Detroit Mercy, it was best that we get word of it here and now. But rather than dishing up a story about an escaped mental patient and her debonair fiancé, the news was featuring a story on the disturbing trend of disappearing Napoleons. Practically all Napoleons, said the radio, had disappeared without the merest trace, and public authorities remained baffled, having no clue as to where the Napoleons had gone or what might have caused their disappearance. Complicating matters was the fact that Abe the First, Mayor of Detroit, was still awol from his office, and the bureaucrats he’d left in his wake hadn’t a notion of how to proceed, but merely scratched their collective head for want of any clear solution.

  “We’ve just got to find Norm Stradamus,” said Vera. “Remember Nappy’s note. It was addressed to Norm and said, ‘They’re taking me.’ She must have believed Norm would know who took her. And whoever that is must be the person who’s making all the Napoleons disappear.”

  I agreed with the young pipsqueak’s diagnosis. It seemed unlikely that there was a widespread public fad of scooping up random Napoleons left and right, and far more likely that a single person, organization, or gang with a Napoleonic fixation had been responsible for the scooping.

  “But where could Norm Stradamus be?” I asked. “And how do we find him? We can’t just wander about Detroit going door to door and asking folks if they’ve spotted Norm or caught wind of anyone spouting cryptic quatrains, what? Does your television say nothing?”

  “Sorry, no. Not a peep out of it today. It’s been pretty quiet since all of that stuff about ‘two chairs’ and the vision that led me to pinch Nappy’s files.” And on the cue “Nappy’s files,” the beazel’s face spread into a wide-eyed, eureka sort of expression and she slammed on the brakes, skidding Jack’s car to a halt and sending Fenny hurtling forward into the windscreen. He stuck there briefly, looking like a displeased furry pancake, and then slid back down to the dash, where he shook his head for a space and gave Vera a piercing glare of indignation.

  “Nappy’s files!” Vera repeated. “Why don’t we take them to Isaac? He’s the one who wanted to have them in the first place. And if he’s so interested in Napoleons, he may have some clue about why they’ve all been disappearing.”

  I hated to pop this young prune’s balloon and dash her hopes to the ground, but I knew this idea was a dead end. Isaac, I explained, had been just as baffled as me when it came to the motive-force behind the sudden Napoleonic shortage. He needed Napoleons in his research but hadn’t a notion of who else might want them or why they’d all been disappearing into thin air.

  “But Isaac still might be able to give us a hand,” said Vera. “If we just give him Nappy’s files—”

  “But to what end?” I said. “The whole point of giving Nappy’s files to Isaac was to push along his research, thus obliging him to return the favour by confirming Oan’s story, convincing Peericks that Oan’s grey cells are firing correctly and she’s fit to return to duty.”

  “Right,” said Vera, in a quizzical sort of way indicating that she hadn’t seen the problem.

  I could see the time had come to put her abreast. “What you’re failing to see, young shrimp, is that the ultimate goal of that strategy, the foundation upon which our whole foreign policy has been built, has well and truly gone phut. The only reason we had for helping Oan get out of storage was to assist Dr. Peericks, and the reason for helping Peericks was to put this peerless twerp into my debt, convincing him to fork over whatever information he had about Zeus. But consider our situation now! Assume that Isaac shows up, assists Oan, and Oan is returned to her gig as Sharing Room Director. So far so good. But mark the sequel: I return to reap the rewards, asking Peericks to give me Zeus’s coordinates. Peericks then looks at me and says something along the lines of, ‘Ah yes, you’re the fugitive who helped Vera waylay the matron, steal her pass, and escape from the hospice rather than waiting a day or two for banns to be read and marriage licenses to issue.
Please come right this way and I’ll get you a comfy padded cell.’ I understand you wanted out, and I understand beaning the doctor and charging through the hospice gates felt like the surest path to freedom, but in your hot-blooded haste and naïveté you’ve missed a key part of the equation: my name at the hospice is now mud, and all hope of fishing info out of Peericks is now lost. Why, even if Zeus is still a resident of the hospice, I’ll never get word of it from Peericks.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” said Vera.

  “There’s your error,” I said, tolerantly. “Always think of everything.”

  “You could have stopped me,” she said. “You didn’t have to use the matron’s pass card. When she fell you could have—”

  “My dear ass,” I said, “we were in the heat of the chase! You can’t expect a fellow confronted with tumbling matrons, heroic hamsters, stolen pass cards, and lightly charred fiancées making a break for the open spaces to stand calmly, weigh the situation in a dispassionate manner, and formulate solutions. The adrenaline kicks in and overwhelms what psychological types refer to as the executive function. It wasn’t until we were in the car that the heated blood had cooled enough to allow for detached reflection.”

  “Should we go back?” said Vera. “Clear things up with Peericks?”

  I lowered the boom on this suggestion with the greatest of promptitude. One didn’t need television to see where that incautious strategy would lead us. We’d both be locked in the hospice before you could say “what ho.” And while it was possible Zeus himself was in the hospice, and my own incarceration would result in merry reunions, it seemed a dash sight more likely that I’d be stuck cooling my heels in Detroit Mercy while Zeus got on with his life elsewhere. And as if that weren’t enough to cloud the brow, I’d be stuck in a loony bin with a pair of fiancées. I issued a clear nolle prosequi. Vera’s recent rash actions, I explained, had taken the hospice off the list of practical destinations.

  “Well, at least I’ve solved one of your problems,” she said, putting the car back into motion.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Your problem with Oan. Word of my escape will spread around the hospice like wildfire. I don’t think Oan will be keen to marry the man who broke me out.”

  I shook the loaf. If this Vera had one flaw, apart from a growing habit of biffing every bean that was lowered in her presence, it’s that she failed to account for the sheer magnitude of loopiness within the hospice walls.

  “I’m not so sure,” I said, slumping a pair of despondent shoulders. “First, Oan is understandably besotted with yours truly. She sees me as a religious icon — the Hand of the Intercessor — and is unlikely to be swayed in her views by something as minor as our recent flight for freedom. And second,” I continued, making the score plain to the meanest intelligence, “Oan knows about your television. She heard you tell me your prophetic powers had plotted a course to Norm Stradamus. She’ll think our dust-up with the matron, and our escape from Detroit Mercy, were all part of some preordained scheme designed to clear our path to Norm Stradamus’s hideout so that you could keep your promise.”

  “What promise?”

  “Your promise to seek Norm’s blessing! You gave your word to the old disaster. And no one puts more stock in the word of prophets than this Oan. When a bird who can see the future gives her solemn promise that she’ll spare no effort in seeking a blessing from another sayer of sooth, Oan is sure to consider the matter settled. She’ll be convinced that everything we have done, however weird or unseemly, has been set in motion by the ruddy Laws of Attraction, or Destiny, or the Great Omega, or whatever force a goofy stargazer like Oan blames for everything that happens.”

  “That’s a difficulty,” she said.

  “And we still don’t know where to go next,” she added, filling the dead air.

  I pulled a suggestion from the metaphorical hat.

  “The Hôtel de la Lune?” I said.

  “Why there?”

  And there she had me. I suppose the idea had coalesced because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, and in the absence of any plot-furthering destination, one might as well plant one’s flag in the lap of luxury. I was about to explain all of this to Vera, and to describe for her the wonders of the Detroit Riviera, when I was rudely interrupted by a police cruiser barrelling into the side of our compact car, stopping us in our tracks and crushing everyone within.

  * * *

  When I awoke, some unspecified time later, I was wearing a silk dressing gown and lying in a four-poster bed, found in a room that was so luxurious that it made the suites in the Hôtel de la Lune look like a one-star airport hovel on the wrong side of the tracks.

  Chapter 17

  I shook the melon with a good deal of vigour, hoping to clear out the cobwebs and determine whether the sight that met my eyes was a mere hallucination or illusion.

  The vision held.

  I was in a vast room that was, as previously specified, about the most palatial spot to have ever housed the Feynman frame. The four-poster bed in which I’d awoken, for example, was bedecked in fine silk sheets, flowing draperies, a rather sumptuous duvet, and an entire platoon of well-stuffed pillows. The walls were liberally besprinkled with a museum’s worth of art — principally landscapes and portraits framed in gold — and the wall that faced my current posish was home to one of the most imposing hearths to ever cook a log. Other prominent features of my surroundings included couches, tables, chairs, bookshelves, busts, knickknacks, and tapestries, all drawn from the swanky slice of the spectrum and practically screaming the word “posh.”

  I could see at a glance it was the sort of place where Rhinnick Feynman belonged. Fenny, too, seemed right at home, for the little chap was snoring on a cushion nestled snugly on the passenger side of the bed.

  The port side of the room featured a floor-to-ceiling window at least thirty paces wide. Through this window I could see I was several storeys up and looking out on a swath of primordial forest abutting a shimmering blue lake. There were mountains on the horizon. It added up to the sort of scene I’d hitherto spotted only in those high-definition background photos that decorate the computing machines of people who spend most of their days trapped in cubicles. “Picturesque” about sums it up.

  The room also featured several large wooden doors. One of these was slightly ajar, and I perceived that it led into the sort of marble-laden loo you’d imagine you might find in a spot like this. But it was the door nearest the window that collared the lion’s share of my attention, for it now opened, permitting entry to some form of domestic fauna backing into the room pulling a wheeled, metallic cart.

  This domestic denizen pivoted on his axis.

  And while I won’t say that his advent qualified as one of those thunderbolts that shoot from the heavens and shiver your timbers, I was caught by surprise, and I uttered a mildly astonished, “Why, Abe love a duck!” when I realized who he was.

  “William!” I said.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Grrnmph,” said Fenny, burrowing into the sheets, apparently not wishing to hobnob with the help.

  “What in Abe’s name are you doing here?” I asked, which was a bit odd, now that I think of it, since I hadn’t a notion where “here” was. William saw through this snafu and supplied the data.

  “We’re in the home of my new employer, sir. The regent.”

  “Your new employer?”

  “Yes, sir. The regent.”

  “And who is that?”

  “A wealthy ancient, sir, and a princk. She was recently a guest at the hotel. While there, she kindly expressed appreciation for the manner in which I attended to my duties, and offered to add me to the strength of her staff here. I agreed, and took office as the regent’s personal attendant just last week.”

  “Last week?” I said, scoffing. “You’ve miscalculated, my dear old luggag
e handler. It’s only a few days ago that you and I were bandying words at the Riviera.”

  He shook the loaf. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mr. Feynman. You’ve been convalescing here, in one of the regent’s guest quarters, for eleven days and nights. You’ve been asleep since your ordeal.”

  “My ordeal?” I said, befogged. And then it hit me like a police cruiser, or like a large ceramic pig containing coins. Memory returned to its throne, as the expression is, calling for an immediate change of subject.

  “The police car!” I cried, a cry I amended a moment later by appending: “Where is Vera?”

  “She, too, is recovering, sir,” said William. “In another wing of the house. Her recovery has, if I may say so, been somewhat more rapid than your own. She has responded well to nature’s soft nurse and has been conscious for some time.”

  “Nature’s what?”

  “Soft nurse, sir. The allusion refers to sleep, sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care, sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds, and chief nourisher in life’s feast. Vera slept for seven days and then awoke, fully recovered. Her wounds healed quickly.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said. “She’s had practice. The poor blister recently bounced back after an explosion which blew her limb from limb. No doubt her various bits and pieces are getting used to sorting themselves out and knitting themselves together.”

  “It is conceivable, sir.”

  “She’s all right, then? Suffering no whatdoyoucallits from our imbroglio?”

  “She’s doing very well, sir. Indeed, when last we spoke she seemed to be in jocund mood.”

  “Good, good,” I said. “And how about this regent chap? What’s his story?”

  “Not a chap, sir. The regent is female.”

  “Right. I think you mentioned. What’s her name? And what’s she the regent of?”

  “I am not privy to those details,” said William.