Afterlife Crisis

by Randal Graham

  I tried to assist matters by whacking up an indoor game, one that involved coaxing Fenny to push bits of paper past a goalpost I’d constructed from bars of soap. This occupied a quarter of an hour before Fenny rejected the task as pointless and scurried off to amuse himself elsewhere. I then read a quaint, printed copy of the Detroit Daily Monitor and followed this up with a solid hour spent in a bubble bath — one that was greatly enhanced by the presence of an impressively buoyant duck. A rubber one, as I recall.

  William blew in a couple of times, first bringing lunch and then bringing tea. On both of these visits, he filled the air with that flowery prose of his, and then blew out, locking the door behind him. During the second of these encounters I briefly toyed with the notion that, when the time came for me to head for the hills, I could simply press the bell to summon William, biff him about the upper slopes once he’d poked his nose in the room, and then ho for the open spaces, perhaps trousering his keys for future use. But it has often been said of Rhinnick Feynman that, whatever the possible advantages to self, he takes pains to preserve the innocent and keeps them out of the crossfire. The plan of striking William with some blunt instrument did, I’ll admit, afford one quick route to freedom, but it would also leave the aforementioned William with a lump on his pumpkin. And it might also, given the Regent’s temper and refusal to see sense, cost William his current stream of employment income. Thus I resolved to stick with what we might call “Plan A.”

  At long last the time came.

  It was about 8 p.m., at the time of quiet evenfall, when William oiled in with a nightcap — the potable sort, not the kind you put on your head. I seized the day, as it were, and, through a spot of what must have seemed to William to be nothing more than idle conversation, I coaxed out of this well-spoken butler the crucial information that the Regent and her troops had left the building.

  I wasted no further time. Once William had buttled off elsewhere, I shoved myself into a well-tailored suit which I found hanging in the closet — presumably something the Regent had set aside with a view to upholstering yours truly — and prepared to make my escape. And as much as I’d like to portray my bit of escaping as one of those daring spots of adventure you read about in action novels — the sort where the hero dangles from helicopters or dives into volcanoes — the truth is that I escaped the room by using one of my less widely publicized talents, viz, my skill at picking locks. Fenny helped. And between the two of us we tripped the lock in the space of about five minutes, legging it for the open spaces with a song — albeit a fairly quiet song — upon our lips.

  I was cognizant of the fact that, by violating the Regent’s edict and going awol from my room, I was probably putting a toe across the line of some cultural norm concerning the proper conduct of guests in houses. To be weighed against this was not only the fact that my absence was necessary if I was to have any hope of pushing along the plans I had for Zeus, Vera, and self, but also the fact that if I remained in statu quo, as the expression is, I was as likely as not to die of boredom — at least, insofar as death is possible in Detroit. So I dismissed any qualms that might have furrowed an etiquette expert’s brow, and buzzed off, Fenny in hand. Or rather in pocket.

  I realize, at this juncture, that having described the first step in my ingenious plan, viz, waiting around for the coast to clear before buzzing off to freedom, I’ve neglected to tell my public what the ingenious plan was. At this stage in my affairs, it became clear that matters on the Isaac Newton front were being covered by the Regent and her cronies, and I could continue to regard that issue as having been handled or rendered moot. Whatever Abe might have felt at the outset of this journey, Isaac was now a spent force, and nothing to be feared by anyone at all, let alone by the all-powerful mayor of Detroit. To be sure, Norm and the Regent had fallen into Abe’s error and mistaken Isaac’s quantum tootling for something fit for the bold-faced headlines, but they would soon learn, from their foray into R’lyeh, that Isaac’s scientific musings amounted to less than a hill of beans. Perhaps the evidence they gathered en route to this discovery would be useful in showing Abe, in his turn, that Isaac could be safely ignored. I was on to other things: reminding Zeus of who he was, checking up on Nappy, checking in on Vera, and — the matter currently at the top of the Feynman agenda — extricating myself from a pair of accidental betrothals.

  It was on this last point, viz, my attempt to escape the scaffold, that my current plans focused, for it occurred to me, when Norm was nattering on about prophecies and church doctrines, that there might be something in these doctrines, perhaps relating to the church’s rites of marriage, that I could use to throw a spanner into the works with respect to my impending nuptials with Oan. Perhaps we’d find some rule or commandment that prevented the hitching up of mere parishioners with Hands of Intercessors, if you follow, or possibly some scriptural statement that it was an abomination to marry a man you’d met in a hospice — you know how these religious doctrines are: highly specific and arbitrary. Don’t mix natural and handmade fibres, don’t smoke reefers in the church, don’t play tennis against left-handers, don’t wear white after Abe Day passes, that sort of thing. So I’d resolved to do some digging through the doctrine, as it were.

  Norm had mentioned, if you’ll recall, that the Regent was fairly new in her affiliation with the Church of O. This had given me yet another ingenious idea. I intuited that her personal quarters would be a good place to find church literature, the newly converted being, in my experience, particularly zealous when it comes to delving into doctrine. So I’d rather cleverly planned to make my way to the Regent’s quarters, dig through her personal effects, find whatever I could about the rules of the Church of O, and hope against hope that something in those rules could be used to cure Oan of her love for Rhinnick or otherwise convince her to cheese the notion of making herself my better half.

  Of course, you can’t go doing a thing like that without help from your local psychic — or at least you can, but why would you bother? — so I resolved to grab Vera along the way and take her with me. I could ask if she foresaw any roadblocks, implore her to detect any oncoming guards, or possibly, once her brain was jump-started by me explaining my plan to her, she might use her television to see how the whole thing turns out and then be in a posish to give me the lowdown on whatever information we would have learned in the Regent’s quarters, saving us the trouble and expense of actually going through with it. Although, come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure that soothsaying works in the manner described. In any event, if I was breaking into the Regent’s quarters and seeking information, it was plausible that a certain amount of datapad hacking or password guessing would be required, and Vera was singularly gifted when it came to anything in the nature of fiddling with machines. So as I said, I resolved to hitch up chez Vera en route to the Regent’s lair.

  Having recently delved my current environs and the surrounding halls with the aid of Norm Stradamus, it was for me the work of a moment to wend my way to Vera’s room, ducking into doorways or behind trash bins whenever anyone came bumbling in my direction and threatened to cross the Feynman path. And while you might be thinking that all of this dodging and ducking would take its toll on my psyche and wound the spirit, not to mention what it would do to the trouser creases, you’d be mistaken: for inasmuch as all of this furtive skulking wrinkled the garments, it did convey me safely to Vera’s door, where I managed to fetch up without provoking so much as a peep out of anyone who might have raised a hue and cry should Feynman’s absence from his room have been noted.

  I was about to knock gently on the doorway — loud enough to be detected within, yet not so loudly as to summon the local rozzers and land myself in the jug — when the door opened before my knuckles reached it. And I reflected, as it did so, how dashed convenient it was to be pals with a psychic pipsqueak who had advance notice of one’s comings and goings.

  I slipped into the room, where Vera and self
exchanged a few cordialities before getting down to brass tacks.

  “Have they gone?” she asked, agog.

  “Like the wind,” I said. “They blew out an hour or so ago, intent on foiling Isaac’s plans.”

  “Good,” she said. “So what do we do?”

  For me — as it would have been for any man of sensitivity and fine feelings — this was a moment of the gravest difficulty. For while this Vera had become, partially due to necessity and partially due to pure merit, a close friend and confidante to whom I could generally spill the beans and entrust the files marked “top secret,” the act of filling her in on my hope to escape the grip of Oan’s matrimonial plans still was likely to fall within the statutory definition of bandying a woman’s name, and we Feynmen shrink from bandying women’s names. Moreover, as one who also considered herself affianced to Rhinnick Feynman, Vera was hopelessly afflicted by what is known as a conflict of interest, and therefore not among those to whom I should, according to the book of rules, confide my plans. But to be weighed against this was Vera’s general good-eggishness and skill at fishing a pal out of the soup. And the soup, at this juncture, was what I was deeply immersed in, and it was a time for all good men — or in this case, women — to come to the aid of the party and chip in wherever they may. So I decided, on balance, to fill this Vera in on my current plans with respect to the Oan/Feynman betrothal.

  I laid out my ultimate goal, explaining my hope to extricate self from this engagement without causing any embarrassment or shame to either the party of the first part, viz, me, or the party of the second, viz, Oan.

  She seemed to weigh this.

  “Why not tell her you’re off the market?” she said.

  “Off . . . off the market?” I said, tremulously, for I feared where this bit of conversation may lead. I mean to say, I knew that this Vera also saw herself as one who was affianced to yours truly, and while she hadn’t made a fuss on hearing the news that I was also betrothed to Oan, I was reluctant to lean on one betrothal as my reason for ending another. The party to the second betrothal is bound to expect a certain amount of follow-through if you go about using these pending nuptials as an excuse to return other putative fiancées to store.

  “Married to someone else, I mean,” she said.

  “Oh, ah.”

  “Just tell her you got drunk one day last month and accidentally ended up hitched to someone else, and that you’ve been too embarrassed to tell her about it ’til now. That’ll let you out.”

  “No good,” I said, although I did applaud the St. Bernard spirit displayed by this young prune, who was doing her best to give aid and comfort and map out the path to safety. “Wouldn’t work with a bird like Oan. She’d have me before a Justice of the Peace before you could say what ho, and would be yelling for annulments on every side. No. I need another method of oiling out.”

  “You could always tell her you have a disease.”

  “A disease?”

  “Oh, you know, something hideous and communicable. Nothing puts a person off a prospective marriage partner like the prospect of catching something that leads to open sores and oozing pu—”

  “Desist, young boll weevil!” I cried, pointing a chastening pen directly at her upturned nose, “for not only is your suggestion, if it qualifies as a suggestion, unfit for ventilating in mixed company, but it’s also dashed impractical. I mean, simply rub two brain cells together and see the flaws in your specious plan. Point 1: I haven’t any communicable diseases at present, and I’ve no wish to contract one for the purposive of evading matrimonial doom. Point B: well, to be frank I’ve forgotten what point B was, but rest assured that it was stellar and supports my view that your unspeakable idea is fatheaded and ill conceived.”

  She laughed a silvery laugh at this juncture, for reasons that escaped me altogether. Females are, in my experience, singularly gifted in this respect, viz, emitting silvery laughs in the absence of any cause.

  “Fine,” she said, apparently gripped by the force of my arguments, “what’s this big plan of yours then? Lay it out and I’ll poke some holes.”

  I laid it out.

  She mused a bit.

  “Hmmm,” she said, and then she did a bit more musing. At length she contorted her map into something resembling amused surprise and said, “You’re not the chump I took you for!”

  “When did you take me for a chump?” I asked.

  “I dunno, sometime last Tuesday. I forget what gave me the idea. But I think this plan might work! Let’s get a move on.”

  So we did. And within two shakes we were standing at the threshold of the Regent’s personal study, where we picked the lock instanter, and got down to our derring-do.

  Chapter 27

  “That’s odd,” I said.

  “What’s odd?” said Vera.

  Well, she rather had me there, as I wasn’t sure precisely what it was that struck me as odd. Something was definitely amiss, but for the life of me, I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

  I applied the neuroglia, as I believe they’re called.

  “Hmm,” I said, and meant it.

  I wonder if you’ve ever had the experience of having your attention grabbed by something conspicuous by its abs. I’m not referring to something obvious, like when you set your sandwich down on a hospice table for a moment, busy yourself with some distraction, and turn back to find that it’s been spirited away or perhaps wolfed down by a roving Napoleon. No, I mean that rummy feeling of wrongness you sometimes get when things don’t quite match up with what you expected. It was that way with me now.

  “Rummy,” I said.

  “What are you on about?” said Vera, crossing arms and tapping a foot or two.

  I was, at long last, able to fill the pipsqueak in.

  “Pathetic fallacy,” I said.

  “Pathetic whatacy?” said Vera.

  “I thought that might be a bit above your head,” I said, in that erudite way of mine. “It’s a literary thingummy you get when the atmosphere of a place reflects a person’s mood or essence. A storm raging in the background while your protagonist throws a fit. The sun smiling through the clouds whenever Feynman takes the stage. A heavy fug when a schoolmaster enters stage left. The person reflected in the place, I mean to say. At least I think that’s what it means. Though why it should be called pathetic, or what’s fallacious about it, is beyond me.”

  She betrayed a certain impatience. I set to the task of connecting dots.

  “It’s just this space,” I said, waving around the Regent’s study. “An utter lack of pathetic fallacy. Here we have the private lair of a testy bird prone to flying off the handle, one whose habits include shooting thunderbolts from her eyes, breathing fire, chewing broken bottles, and howling at passing moons, yet what do we find when we enter her private sanctum? A house of horrors? An armoury filled with torture devices, assorted weapons, and the wall-mounted heads of snarling fauna? No. We find a cozy little book-nook bedecked with lace, crystal whatnots, a couple of decorative vases, a fussily carved mahogany reading desk, and all the fixings. A gracefully appointed, fairly luxurious room equipped for contemplation and study, and one you’d expect to be haunted by a well-to-do librarian. Not a sullen and temperamental ancient who organizes nightly assaults on City Hall or unprovoked attacks on mathematicians.”

  Vera looked at me as though something was dribbling out the side of my mouth, but reason must have told her my remarks were on the nose, as the expression is. For here was a room that was tidy, artistically designed, impressively furnished, and adorned with a couple of restful fireplaces and numerous shelves of books. Not the sanctum of a scowling conqueror or hater-of-her-species. It was also touch higher-tech than I might have imagined given the rest of the décor in the Regent’s home, this room featuring a number of shiny black screens and other doodads possibly drawn from the I-Ware line. The aforementioned
reading desk seemed to serve as tech-central, being strewn with datapads and a few additional techish thingummies which I couldn’t readily name. There were also draperies, onyx statues, a few soapstone thingummies, and earthen-tone paintings depicting various desert scenes.

  One of the lower-tech items on the desk seemed to draw the Feynman eye. It was a large, empty vase constructed of some thickish species of porcelain, positioned on the desk amid the technological doodads. It stood about two feet high — above the desktop, I mean — and was festooned in that peculiar pictographic writing you sometimes get; the kind featuring squiggles and dots associated with the occasional doodle of a dog or cat or a chap who looks all right from the neck down but is topped by the head of a crocodile or other surprising fauna. All gibberish of course, but eye-catching. I mentioned it to Vera.

  Vera reminded me that we weren’t here on a sightseeing tour, and that porcelain vases, however liberally emblazoned with pictographic gibberish, weren’t featured on this evening’s agenda paper. We accordingly wasted no further time staring about the joint and breathing in the surroundings, but instead applied ourselves to the task at hand, self haring toward a bookshelf in search of any literature spelling out the doctrines of the Church of O, and Vera — as is her wont — buzzing straight for the machinery scattered atop the desk, grabbing up a datapad or two, and pressing keys. I had just started reading assorted spines — of books, I mean — when Vera yipped from the nor’east.

  “I’ve found a file about the Regent!” she exclaimed.

  “She keeps files about herself? A bit narcissistic, what?”

  “You carry your own character sketch with you,” she said, emitting another silvery laugh. And I remember thinking that, for one who had been mindwiped in the not-too-distant past, she had an impressive knack for using her televisual powers to dredge up inconvenient slices of my past whenever they might refute a point I was making, catch me in a bit of hypocrisy, or prove a charge of pot-calling-kettles-black. This is a trait I’ve frequently noticed in members of the female sex, whether mindwiped or not, viz, their knack for keeping track of inconvenient bits of history and airing them out precisely at a time when you’d prefer they remain unventilated. I’ve often wondered whether this talent finds its seat on the second X chromosome.