by Terry Bisson
“Wait till I get my hands on that cold-hearted, conniving little black-hearted _______!”
I had heard enough. I rapped Whipper Will on the side of the head, firmly. A short, sharp shock. He sagged to his knees and I reached around him and took the .38 out of his hand. I was just about to rap him again on the other side of the head, when he slumped all the way down to the linoleum.
“Good going,” said Buzzer. “What’s that?”
“An Anti-Entropic Field Reversal Device,” I said.
“Looks like a flashlight in a tube sock.”
“That, too,” I said as we dragged Whipper Will, as gently as possible, down the hall toward his room.
* * *
It was almost ten o’clock the next morning when I woke up in Whipper Will’s office, on the couch I called my bed. I got up and went to the window. There was the wrecker, parked under the sign at Hoppy’s Good Gulf, right where I had left it.
I pulled on my pants and went downstairs, across the corner lot. The beaded seat cushion was missing several rows of beads along the top, and at least half of the bottom. Wooden beads were scattered in the red dirt. I stepped carefully, even respectfully, around them.
“Whipper Will’s Yank,” said Hoppy, who was replacing the front brake pads on yet another Taurus.
“Right,” I said.
“How’s old Whipper Will?”
“About the same, I hope,” I said. I decided there was no point telling Hoppy about borrowing the truck the night before. “You know how it is with old folks.”
“ ’Nuff said,” he said.
When I got back to the office, there were two messages on the machine. The first one was from Buzzer. “Don’t worry about Gaithers, Yank,” he said. “I told her a story about a burglar, and she won’t call the cops because it turns out that the .38 in her desk is illegal. So no problem about that hole in the wall and fingerprints and stuff. I don’t see any reason to bother Candy about this incident, do you?”
I didn’t. The second message was from Candy. “I’m back. Hope everything went well. See you at the Bonny Bag at twelve.”
I opened a Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke and spread out my Corcoran’s on the windowsill. When I awoke it was almost twelve.
* * *
“I had a great trip,” Candy said. “Thanks for looking after things. I stopped by Squirrel Ridge on the way into town this morning, and—”
“And?” And?
“Daddy looks fine. He was sleeping peacefully in his wheelchair in front of the TV. His hair is almost white again. I think Buzzer washed all that Grecian Formula out of it.”
“Good,” I said. “It seemed inappropriate to me.”
“I feel like things are settled enough,” Candy said. She touched the back of my hand. “Maybe we should go up to Squirrel Ridge tonight,” she said. “The mountain, not the nursing home. If you know what I mean.”
“What’ll you two lovebirds have?” Bonnie asked, chalk poised. “How’s your Daddy? Ever tell you about the time he took a . . .”
“You did,” I told her. “And we’ll have the usual.”
* * *
If I were making this story up, it would end right here. But in real life, there is always more, and sometimes it can’t be left out. That evening on our way out to Squirrel Ridge, the mountain, Candy and I stopped by the nursing home. Whipper Will was sitting quietly in his wheelchair, stroking a napkin, watching Pam Tillis on TNN with Buzzer. The old man’s hair was white as snow and I was glad to see there wasn’t a tooth in his head. Buzzer gave me a wink and I gave him the same wink back.
That diamond looked damn good.
That night up at the Overlook I got down on my knees and—well, you know (or you can guess) the rest, with all the privileges that entails. That might have been the end of the story except that when I got back to the office the fax was whirring and stuttering and snorting and steaming, and the phone was ringing, too.
I was almost afraid to pick up the phone. What if it was Buzzer again?
But it wasn’t. “Congratulations!” Wu said.
I blushed (but I’m an easy blusher). “You heard already?”
“Heard? I can see it! Didn’t you get my fax?”
“I’m just now picking it up off the floor.”
It was in purple mimeo ink on still-warm paper:
“Must be the Butterfly Effect,” Wu said.
Even though butterflies are romantic (in their way), I was beginning to get the idea that Wu wasn’t talking about my proposal, and its acceptance, and all the privileges that entails.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Chaos and complexity!” Wu said. “A butterfly flaps its wings in the rain forest and causes a snowstorm over Chicago. Linear harmonic feedback. Look at the figures, Irv! Numbers are the soul of science! You have set up a superstring harmonic wave reversal that has the entire Universe fluttering like a flag in the wind. What did you hit that beaded seat cushion with, anyway?”
“A two by four,” I said. I didn’t see any reason to tell him about Whipper Will.
“Well, you rapped it just right. The red shift is back. The Universe is expanding again. Who knows for how long?”
“I hope until my wedding,” I said.
“Wedding?!? You don’t mean . . .”
“I do,” I said. “I proposed last night. And Candy accepted. With all the privileges that entails. Will you fly back from Hawaii to be my best man?”
“Sure,” Wu said. “Only, it won’t be from Hawaii. I’m starting college in San Diego next week.”
“San Diego?”
“My work here as a meteorologist is done. Jane and the boys are already in San Diego, where I have a fellowship to study meteorological entomology.”
“What’s that?”
“Bugs and weather.”
“What do bugs have to do with the weather?”
“I just explained it, Irving,” Wu said. “I’ll send you the figures and you can see for yourself.” And he did. But that’s a whole other story.
Get Me to the Church on Time
THE BEST WAY TO APPROACH BROOKLYN is from the air. The Brooklyn Bridge is nice, but let’s admit it, to drive (or bicycle, or worse, walk) into homely old Brooklyn directly from the shining towers of downtown Manhattan is to court deflation, dejection, even depression. The subway is no better. You ride from one hole to another: There’s no in-between, no approach, no drama of arrival. The Kosciusko Bridge over Newtown Creek is okay, because even drab Williamsburg looks lively after the endless, orderly graveyards of Queens. But just as you are beginning to appreciate the tarpaper tenement rooftops of Brooklyn, there she is again, off to the right: the skyline of Manhattan, breaking into the conversation like a tall girl with great hair in a low-cut dress who doesn’t have to say a word. It shouldn’t be that way, it’s not fair, but that’s the way it is. No, the great thing about a plane is that you can only see out of one side. I like to sit on the right. The flights from the south come in across the dark wastes of the Pine Barrens, across the shabby, sad little burgs of the Jersey shore, across the mournful, mysterious bay, until the lights of Coney Island loom up out of the night, streaked with empty boulevards. Manhattan is invisible, unseen off to the left, like a chapter in another book or a girl at another party. The turbines throttle back and soon you are angling down across the streetlight-spangled stoops and back yards of my legend-heavy hometown. Brooklyn!
“There it is,” I said to Candy.
“Whatever.” Candy hates to fly, and she hadn’t enjoyed any of the sights, all the way from Huntsville. I tried looking over her. I could see the soggy fens of Jamaica Bay, then colorful, quarrelsome Canarsie, then Prospect Park and Grand Army Plaza; and there was the Williamsburg Tower with its always-accurate clock. Amazingly, we were right on time.
I wished now I hadn’t given Candy the window seat, but it was our Honeymoon, after all. I figured she would learn to love to fly. “It’s beautiful!” I said.
I was anticipating the usual long holding pattern, which takes you out over Long Island Sound, but before I knew it, we were making one of those heart-stopping wing-dipping jet-plane U-turns over the Bronx, then dropping down over Rikers Island, servos whining and hydraulics groaning as the battered flaps and beat-up landing gear clunked into place for the ten thousandth (at least) time. Those PreOwned Air 707s were seasoned travelers, to say the least. The seat belts said Eastern, the pillows said Pan Am, the barf bags said Braniff, and the peanuts said People Express. It all inspired a sort of confidence. I figured if they were going to get unlucky and go down, they would have done so already.
Through the window, the dirty water gave way to dirty concrete, and then the wheels hit the runway with that happy yelp so familiar to anyone who has ever watched a movie, even though it’s a sound you never actually hear in real life.
And this was real life. New York!
“You can open your eyes,” I said, and Candy did, for the first time since the pilot had pushed the throttles forward in Huntsville. I’d even had to feed her over the Appalachians, since she was afraid that if she opened her eyes to see what was on her tray, she might accidentally look out the window. Luckily, dinner was just peanuts and pretzels (a two-course meal).
We were cruising into the terminal like a big, fat bus with wings, when Candy finally looked out the window. She even ventured a smile. The plane was limping a little (flat tire?), but this final part of the flight she actually seemed to enjoy. “At least you didn’t hold your breath,” I said.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Ding! We were already at the gate, and right on time. I started to grope under the seat in front of me for my shoes. Usually there’s plenty of time before everyone starts filing out of the plane, but to my surprise it was already our turn; Candy was pulling at my arm, and impatient-looking passengers, jammed in the aisle behind, were frowning at me.
I carried my shoes out and put them on in the terminal. They’re loafers. I’m still a lawyer, even though I don’t exactly practice.
“New York, New York,” I crooned to Candy as we traversed the tunnel to the baggage pickup. It was her first trip to my home town; our first trip together anywhere. She had insisted on wearing her Huntsville Parks Department uniform, so that if there was a crash they wouldn’t have any trouble IDing her body (whoever “they” were), but she would have stood out in the crowd anyway, with her trim good looks.
Not that New Yorkers aren’t trim. Or good looking. The black clad, serious-looking people racing by on both sides were a pleasant relief after the Kmart pastels and unremitting sunny smiles of the South. I was glad to be home, even if only for a visit. New Yorkers, so alien and menacing to many, looked welcoming and familiar to me.
In fact, one of them looked very familiar . . .
“Studs!”
It was Arthur “Studs” Blitz from the old neighborhood. Studs and I had been best friends until high school, when we had gone our separate ways. I had gone to Lincoln High in Coney Island, and he had gone to Carousel, the trade school for airline baggage handlers. It looked like he had done well. His green and black baggage handlers uniform was festooned with medals that clinked and clanked as he bent over an access panel under the baggage carousel, changing a battery in a cellular phone. It seemed a funny place for a phone.
“Studs, it’s me, Irving. Irv!”
“Irv the Perv!” Studs straightened up, dropping the new battery, which rolled away. I stopped it with my foot while we shook hands, rather awkwardly.
“From the old neighborhood,” I explained to Candy as I bent down for the battery and handed it to Studs. It was a 5.211-volt AXR. It seemed a funny battery for a phone. “Studs is one of the original Ditmas Playboys.”
“ ‘Playboys’?” Candy was, still is, easily shocked. “ ‘Perv’?”
“There were only two of us,” I explained. “We built a tree house.”
“A tree house in Brooklyn? But I thought . . .”
“Everybody thinks that!” I said. “Because of that book.”
“What book?”
“Movie, then. But in fact, lots of trees grow in Brooklyn. They grow behind the apartments and houses, where people don’t see them from the street. Right, Studs?”
Studs nodded, snapping the battery into the phone. “Irv the Perv,” he said again.
“Candy is my fiancée. We just flew in from Alabama,” I said. “We’re on our Honeymoon.”
“Fiancée? Honeymoon? Alabama?”
Studs seemed distracted. While he got a dial tone and punched in a number, I told him how Candy and I had met (leaving out my trip to the Moon, as told in “The Hole in the Hole”). While he put the phone under the carousel and replaced the access panel, I told him how I had moved to Alabama (leaving out the red-shift and the nursing home, as told in “The Edge of the Universe”). I was just about to explain why we were having the Honeymoon before the wedding, when the baggage carousel started up.
“Gotta go,” said Studs. He gave me the secret Ditmas Playboy wave and disappeared through an AUTHORIZED ONLY door.
“Nice uniform,” said Candy, straightening her own. “And did you see that big gold medallion around his neck? Wasn’t that a Nobel Prize?”
“A Nobel Prize for baggage? Not very likely.”
Our bags were already coming around the first turn. That seemed like a good sign. “How come there’s a cell phone hidden underneath the carousel?” Candy asked, as we picked them up and headed for the door.
“Some special baggage handlers’ trick, I guess,” I said.
How little, then, I knew!
* * *
Flying into New York is like dropping from the twentieth century back into the nineteenth. Everything is crowded, colorful, old—and slow. For example, it usually takes longer to get from LaGuardia to Brooklyn, than from Huntsville to LaGuardia.
Usually! On this, our Honeymoon trip, however, Candy and I made it in record time, getting to curbside for the #38 bus just as it was pulling in, and then catching the F train at Roosevelt Avenue just as the doors were closing. No waiting on the curb or the platform; it was hardly like being home! Of course, I wasn’t complaining.
After a short walk from the subway, we found Aunt Minnie sitting on the steps of the little Ditmas Avenue row house she and Uncle Mort had bought for $7,500 fifty years ago, right after World War II, smoking a cigarette. She’s the only person I know who still smokes Kents.
“You still go outside to smoke?” I asked.
“You know your Uncle Mort,” she said. When I was growing up, Aunt Minnie and Uncle Mort had been like second parents, living only a block and a half away. Since my parents had died, they had been my closest relatives. “Plus, it’s written into the reverse mortgage—NO SMOKING! They have such rules!”
Born in the Old Country, unlike her little sister, my mother, Aunt Minnie still had the Lifthatvanian way of ending a statement with a sort of verbal shrug. She gave me one of her smokey kisses, and then asked, “So, what brings you back to New York?”
I was shocked. “You didn’t get my letters? We’re getting married.”
Aunt Minnie looked at Candy with new interest. “To an airline pilot?”
“This is Candy!” I said. “She’s with the Huntsville Parks Department. You didn’t get my messages?”
I helped Candy drag the suitcases inside, and while we had crackers and pickled lifthat at the oak table Uncle Mort had built years ago, in his basement workshop, I explained the past six months as best I could. “So you see, we’re here on our Honeymoon, Aunt Minnie,” I said, and Candy blushed.
“First the Honeymoon and then the marriage?!?” Aunt Minnie rolled her eyes toward the mantel over the gas fireplace, where Uncle Mort’s ashes were kept. He, at least, seemed unsurprised. The ornate decorative eye on the urn all but winked.
“It’s the only way we could manage it,” I said. “The cate
rer couldn’t promise the ice sculpture until Thursday, but Candy had to take her days earlier or lose them. Plus, my best man is in South America, or Central America, I forget which, and won’t get back until Wednesday.”
“Imagine that, Mort,” Aunt Minnie said, looking toward the mantel again. “Little Irving is getting married. And he didn’t even invite us!”
“Aunt Minnie! You’re coming to the wedding. Here’s your airline ticket.” I slid it across the table toward her and she looked at it with alarm.
“That’s a pretty cheap fare.”
“PreOwned Air,” I said. She looked blank, so I sang the jingle, “Our planes are old, but you pocket the gold.”
“You’ve seen the ads,” Candy offered.
“We never watch TV, honey,” Aunt Minnie said, patting her hand. “You want us to go to Mississippi? Tonight?”
“Alabama,” I said. “And it’s not until Wednesday. We have to stay over a Tuesday night to get the midweek nonstop supersaver roundtrip pricebuster Honeymoon plus-one fare. The wedding is on Thursday, at noon. That gives us tomorrow to see the sights in New York, which means we should get to bed. Aunt Minnie, didn’t you read my letters?”
She pointed toward a stack of unopened mail on the mantel, next to the urn that held Uncle Mort’s ashes. “Not really,” she said. “Since your Uncle Mort passed on, I have sort of given it up. He made letter openers, you remember?”
Of course I remembered. At my Bar Mitzvah Uncle Mort gave me a letter opener (which irritated my parents, since it was identical to the one they had gotten as a wedding present). He gave me another one for high school graduation. Ditto City College. Uncle Mort encouraged me to go to law school, and gave me a letter opener for graduation. I still have them all, good as new. In fact, they have never been used. It’s not like you need a special tool to get an envelope open.
“Aunt Minnie,” I said, “I wrote, and when you didn’t write back, I called, several times. But you never picked up.”
