The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

by Connie Willis

  It was bigger than I had imagined. Rows and rows of empty red chairs curved between the huge pillars and up to the red curtains where the screen must be. The walls were covered with intricate drawings. I stood there, holding my jujubes and Raisinets and popcorn, staring at the chandelier overhead. It was an elaborate gold sunburst surrounded by silver dragons. I had never imagined it was anything like this.

  The lights went down, and the red curtains opened, revealing an inner curtain like a veil across the screen. I went down the dark aisle and sat in one of the seats. “Hi,” I said, and handed the Raisinets to David.

  “Where have you been?” he said. “The movie’s about to start.”

  “I know,” I said. I leaned across him and handed Darlene her popcorn and Dr. Gedanken his jujubes. “I was working on the paradigm for quantum theory.”

  “And?” Dr. Gedanken said, opening jujubes.

  “And you’re both wrong,” I said. “It isn’t Grauman’s Chinese. It isn’t movies either, Dr. Gedanken.”

  “Sid,” Dr. Gedanken said. “If we’re all going to be on the same research team, I think we should use first names.”

  “If it isn’t Grauman’s Chinese or the movies, what is it?” Darlene asked, eating popcorn.

  “It’s Hollywood.”

  “Hollywood,” Dr. Gedanken said thoughtfully.

  “Hollywood,” I said. “Stars in the sidewalk and buildings that look like stacks of records and hats, and radicchio and audience surveys and bra museums. And the movies. And Grauman’s Chinese.”

  “And the Rialto,” David said.

  “Especially the Rialto.”

  “And the ICQP,” Dr. Gedanken said.

  I thought about Dr. Lvov’s black and gray slides and the disappearing chaos seminar and Dr. Whedbee writing “meaning” or possibly “information” on the overhead projector. “And the ICQP,” I said.

  “Did Dr. Takumi really hit Dr. Iverson over the head with a gavel?” Darlene asked.

  “Shh,” David said. “I think the movie’s starting.” He took hold of my hand. Darlene settled back with her popcorn, and Dr. Gedanken put his feet up on the chair in front of him. The inner curtain opened, and the screen lit up.

  Epiphany

  “But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day.”

  —Matthew 24:20

  A little after three, it began to snow. It had looked like it was going to all the way through Pennsylvania, and had even spit a few flakes just before Youngstown, Ohio, but now it was snowing in earnest, thick flakes that were already covering the stiff dead grass on the median and getting thicker as he drove west.

  And this is what you get for setting out in the middle of January, he thought, without checking the Weather Channel first. He hadn’t checked anything. He had taken off his robe, packed a bag, gotten into his car, and taken off. Like a man fleeing a crime.

  The congregation will think I’ve absconded with the money in the collection plate, he thought. Or worse. Hadn’t there been a minister in the paper last month who’d run off to the Bahamas with the building fund and a blonde? They’ll say, “I thought he acted strange in church this morning.”

  But they wouldn’t know yet that he was gone. The Sunday night Mariners’ Meeting had been cancelled, the elders’ meeting wasn’t till next week, and the interchurch ecumenical meeting wasn’t till Thursday.

  He was supposed to play chess with B.T. on Wednesday, but he could call him and move it. He would have to call when B.T. was at work and leave him a message on his voice mail. He couldn’t risk talking to him—they had been friends too many years. B.T. would instantly know something was up. And he would be the last person to understand.

  I’ll call his voice mail and move our chess game to Thursday night after the ecumenical meeting, Mel thought. That will give me till Thursday.

  He was kidding himself. The church secretary, Mrs. Bilderbeck, would miss him Monday morning when he didn’t show up in the church office.

  I’ll call her and tell her I’ve got the flu, he thought. No, she would insist on bringing him over chicken soup and zinc lozenges. I’ll tell her I’ve been called out of town for a few days on personal business.

  She will immediately think the worst, he thought. She’ll think I have cancer, or that I’m looking at another church. And anything they conclude, he thought, even embezzlement, would be easier for them to accept than the truth.

  The snow was starting to stick on the highway, and the windshield was beginning to fog up. Mel turned on the defroster. A truck passed him, throwing up snow. It was full of gold-and-white Ferris wheel baskets. He had been seeing trucks like it all afternoon, carrying black Octopus cars and concession stands and lengths of roller-coaster track. He wondered what a carnival was doing in Ohio in the middle of January. And in this weather.

  Maybe they were lost. Or maybe they suddenly had a vision telling them to head west, he thought grimly. Maybe they suddenly had a nervous breakdown in the middle of church. In the middle of their sermon.

  He had scared the choir half to death. They had been sitting there, midway through the sermon, and thinking they had plenty of time before they had to find the recessional hymn, when he’d stopped cold, his hand still raised, in the middle of a sentence.

  There had been silence for a full minute before the organist thought to play the intro, and then a frantic scramble for their bulletins and their hymnals, a frantic flipping of pages. They had straggled unevenly to their feet all the way through the first verse, singing and looking at him like he was crazy.

  And were they right? Had he really had a vision or was it some kind of midlife crisis? Or psychotic episode?

  He was a Presbyterian, not a Pentecostal. He did not have visions. The only time he had experienced anything remotely like this was when he was nineteen, and that hadn’t been a vision. It had been a call to the ministry, and it had only sent him to seminary, not haring off to who knows where.

  And this wasn’t a vision either. He hadn’t seen a burning bush or an angel. He hadn’t seen anything. He had simply had an overwhelming conviction that what he was saying was true.

  He wished he still had it, that he wasn’t beginning to doubt it now that he was three hundred miles from home and in the middle of a snowstorm, that he wasn’t beginning to think it had been some kind of self-induced hysteria, born out of his own wishful thinking and the fact that it was January.

  He hated January. The church always looked cheerless and abandoned, with all the Christmas decorations taken down, the sanctuary dim and chilly in the gray winter light, Epiphany over and nothing to look forward to but Lent and taxes. And Good Friday. Attendance and the collection down, half the congregation out with the flu and the other half away on a winter cruise, those who were there looking abandoned, too, and like they wished they had somewhere to go.

  That was why he had decided against his sermon on Christian duty and pulled an old one out of the files, a sermon on Jesus’ promise that He would return. To get that abandoned look off their faces.

  “This is the hardest time,” he had said, “when Christmas is over, and the bills have all come due, and it seems like winter is never going to end and summer is never going to come. But Christ tells us that we ‘know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning,’ and when he comes, we must be ready for him. He may come tomorrow or next year or a thousand years from now. He may already be here, right now. At this moment…”

  And as he said it, he had had an overwhelming feeling that it was true, that He had already come, and he must go find Him.

  But now he wondered if it was just the desire to be somewhere else, too, somewhere besides the cold, poinsettia-less sanctuary.

  If so, you came the wrong way, he thought. It was freezing, and the windshield was starting to fog up. Mel kicked the defrost all the way up to high and swiped at the windshield with his gloved hand.

  The snow was
coming down much harder, and the wind was picking up. Mel switched on the radio to hear a weather report.

  “…and in the last days, the Book of Revelation tells us,” a voice said, “‘there will be hail and fire mingled with blood.’”

  He hoped that wasn’t the weather report. He hit the scan button on the radio and listened as it cycled through the stations. “…for the latest on the scandal involving the President and…” the voice of Randy Travis, singing “Forever and Ever, Amen”…”hog futures at”…”and the disciples said, ‘Lord, show us a sign. …’”

  A sign, that was what he needed, Mel thought, peering at the road. A sign that he was not crazy.

  A semi roared past in a blinding blast of snow and exhaust. He leaned forward, trying to see the lines on the pavement, and another truck went by, full of orange-and-yellow bumper cars. Bumper cars. How appropriate. They were all going to be riding bumper cars if this snow kept up, Mel thought, watching the truck pull into the lane ahead of him. It fishtailed wildly as it did, and Mel put his foot on the brake, felt it skid, and lifted his foot off.

  Well, he had asked for a sign, he thought, carefully slowing down, and this one couldn’t be clearer if it was written in fiery letters: Go home! This was a crazy idea! You’re going to be killed, and then what will the congregation think? Go home!

  Which was easier said than done. He could scarcely see the road, let alone any exit signs, and the windshield was starting to ice up. He swiped at the window again.

  He didn’t dare pull over and stop—those semis would never see him—but he was going to have to. The defroster wasn’t having any effect on the ice on the windshield, and neither were the windshield wipers.

  He rolled down the window and leaned out, trying to grab the wiper and slap it against the windshield to shake the ice off. Snow stabbed his face, stinging it.

  “All right, all right,” he shouted into the wind. “I get the message!”

  He rolled the window back up, shivering, and swiped at the inside of the windshield again. The only kind of sign he wanted now was an exit sign, but he couldn’t see the side of the road.

  If I’m on the road, he thought, trying to spot the shoulder, a telltale outline, but the whole world had disappeared into a featureless whiteness. And what would keep him from driving right off the road and into a ditch?

  He leaned forward tensely, trying to spot something, anything, and thought he saw, far ahead, a light.

  A yellow light, too high up for a taillight—a reflector on a motorcycle, maybe. That was impossible, there was no way a motorcycle could be out in this. One of those lights on the top corners of a semi.

  If that was what it was, he couldn’t see the other one, but the light was moving steadily in front of him, and he followed it, trying to keep pace.

  The windshield wipers were icing up again. He rolled down the window, and in the process lost sight of the light. Or the road, he thought frightenedly. No, there was the light, still high up, but closer, and it wasn’t a light, it was a whole cluster of them, round yellow bulbs in the shape of an arrow.

  The arrow on top of a police car, he thought, telling you to change lanes. There must be some kind of accident up ahead. He strained forward, trying to make out flashing blue ambulance lights.

  But the yellow arrow moved steadily ahead, and as he got closer, he saw that the arrow was pointed down at an angle. And that it was slowing. Mel slowed, too, focusing his whole attention on the road and on pumping his brakes to keep the car from skidding.

  When he looked up again, the arrow had slowed nearly to a stop, and he could see it clearly. It was part of a lighted sign on the back of a truck. “Shooting Star” it said in a flowing script, and next to the arrow in neon pink, “Tickets.”

  The truck came to a complete stop, its turn light blinking, and then started up again, and in its headlights he caught a glimpse of snow-spattered red. A stop sign.

  And this was an exit. He had followed the truck off the highway onto an exit without even knowing it.

  And now he was hopefully following it into a town, he thought, clicking on his right-turn signal and turning after the truck, but in the moment he had hesitated, he had lost it. And the blowing snow was worse here than on the highway.

  There was the yellow arrow again. No, what he saw was a Burger King crown. He pulled in, scraping the snow-covered curb, and saw that he was wrong again. It was a motel sign. “King’s Rest,” with a crown of sulfur-yellow bulbs.

  He parked the car and got out, slipping in the snow, and started for the office, which had, thank goodness, a “Vacancy” sign in the same neon pink as the “Tickets” sign.

  A little blue Honda pulled up beside him and a short, plump woman got out of it, winding a bright purple muffler around her head. “Thank goodness you knew where you were going,” she said, pulling on a pair of turquoise mittens. “I couldn’t see a thing except your taillights.” She reached back into the Honda for a vivid green canvas bag. “Anybody who’d be on the roads in weather like this would have to be crazy, wouldn’t they?”

  And if the blizzard hadn’t been sign enough, here was proof positive. “Yes,” he said, although she had already gone inside the motel office, “they would.”

  He would check in, wait a few hours till the storm let up, and then start back. With luck he would be back home before Mrs. Bilderbeck got to the office tomorrow morning.

  He went inside the office, where a balding man was handing the plump woman a room key and talking to someone on the phone.

  “Another one,” he said when Mel opened the door. “Yeah.”

  He hung up the phone and pushed a registration form and a pen at Mel.

  “Which way’d you come from?” he asked.

  “East,” Mel said.

  The man shook his balding head. “You got here in the nick of time,” he said to both of them. “They just closed all the roads east of here.”

  “And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat upon them.”

  —Revelation 9:17

  In the morning, Mel called Mrs. Bilderbeck. “I won’t be in today. I’ve been called out of town.”

  “Out of town?” Mrs. Bilderbeck said, interested.

  “Yes. On personal business. I’ll be gone most of the week.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said, and Mel suddenly hoped that there was an emergency at the church, that Gus Uhank had had another stroke or Lottie Millar’s mother had died, so that he would have to go back.

  “I told Juan you’d be in,” Mrs. Bilderbeck said. “He’s putting the sanctuary Christmas decorations away, and he wanted to know if you want to save the star for next year. And the pilot light went out again. The church was freezing when I got here this morning.”

  “Was Juan able to get it relit?”

  “Yes, but I think someone should look at it. What if it goes out on a Saturday night?”

  “Call Jake Adams at A-1 Heating,” he said. Jake was a deacon.

  “A-1 Heating,” she said slowly, as if she were writing it down. “What about the star? Are we going to use it again next year?”

  Is there going to be a next year? Mel thought. “Whatever you think,” he said.

  “And what about the ecumenical meeting?” she asked. “Will you be back in time for that?”

  “Yes,” he said, afraid if he said “no,” she would ask more questions.

  “Is there a number where I can reach you?”

  “No. I’ll check in tomorrow.” He hung up quickly, and then sat there on the bed, trying to decide whether to call B.T or not. He hadn’t done anything major in the fifteen years they’d been friends without telling him, but Mel knew what he’d say. They’d met on the ecumenical committee, when the Unitarian chairman had decided that, to be truly ecumenical, they needed a resident atheist and Darwinian biologist. And, Mel suspected, an African-American.

  It was the only good thing that had ever come out of the ecumenical committee. He and B.T had started by complaining ab
out the idiocies of the ecumenical committee, which seemed bent on proving that denominations couldn’t get along, progressed to playing chess and then to discussing religion and politics and disagreeing on both, and ended by becoming close friends.

  I have to call him, Met thought, it’s a betrayal of our friendship not to.

  And tell him what? That he’d had a holy vision? That the Book of Revelation was coming literally true? It sounded crazy to Mel, let alone to B.T, who was a scientist, who didn’t believe in the First Coming, let alone the Second. But if it was true, how could he not call him?

  He dialed B.T.’s area code and then put down the receiver and went to check out.

  The roads east were still closed. “You shouldn’t have any trouble heading west, though,” the balding man said, handing Mel his credit-card receipt. “The snow’s supposed to let up by noon.”

  Mel hoped so. The interstate was snow-packed and unbelievably slick, and when Mel positioned himself behind a sand truck, a rock struck his windshield and made a ding.

  At least there was hardly any traffic. There were only a few semis, and a navy-blue pickup with a bumper sticker that said “In case of the Rapture, this car will be unoccupied.” There was no sign of the blue Honda or of the carnival. They had seen the light and were still at the King’s Rest, sitting in the restaurant, drinking coffee. Or headed south for the winter.

  He passed a snow-obscured sign that read “For Weather Info, Tune to AM 1410.”

  He did. “…and in the last days Christ Himself will appear,” an evangelist, possibly the one from yesterday, or a different one—they all had the same accent, the same intonation—said. “The Book of Revelation tells us He will appear riding a white horse and leading a mighty army of the righteous against the Antichrist in that last great battle of Armageddon. And the unbelievers—the fornicators and the baby-murderers—will be flung into the bottomless pit.”