by Terry Bisson
“Downtown,” I said. “It’s almost lunchtime.”
“Perfect!” he said. “How about Carlo’s?”
When Wu and I had worked at Legal Aid, on Centre Street, we had often eaten at Carlo’s Calamari in Little Italy. But only when we had time to take a loooong lunch.
“No way!” I said. “It takes forever to get waited on at Carlo’s.”
“Exactly!” said Wu.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. “You plan to buy this phone?” It was Nutty Ned himself. I recognized his nose from the TV ads.
“No way,” I said.
“Than hang it the fuck up, please.”
* * *
“We got a menu as soon as we sat down,” I said. I was speaking on the model Camaro phone at Carlo’s, while Candy poked through her cold seafood salad, setting aside everything that had legs or arms or eyes, which was most of the dish.
“Impossible!” said Wu.
“We ordered and my primavera pesto pasta came right away. Maybe they have it already cooked and they just microwave it.” I said this low so the waiter wouldn’t hear. He had brought me the phone on a tray shaped like Sicily. It was beige, flecked with red. Dried blood? Carlo’s is a mob joint. Allegedly.
“What’s right away?”
“I don’t know, Wu. I didn’t time it.”
“I need numbers, Irv! What about breadsticks. Do they still have those skinny hard breadsticks? How many did you eat between the time you ordered and the time the food came?”
“Three.”
“Three apiece?”
“Three between us. Does knowing that really help?”
“Sure. I can use it either as one and one-half, or as three over two. Numbers don’t lie, Irv. Parallel or serial, I’m beginning to think my T-axis problem is centered in New York. Everything there seems to be speeded up slightly. Compressed.”
“Compressed,” I said. When Wu is talking he expects you to respond. I always try and pick a fairly innocuous world and just repeat it.
“You’ve got it, Irv. It’s like those interviews on TV that are a little jumpy, because they edit out all the connective time—the uhs, the ahs, the waits, the pauses. Something’s happened to the connective time in New York. That’s why the phone rings ten times for me here—actually an average of 8.411—and only once for you.”
“How can the phone ring more times for you than for me?”
“Ever heard of Relativity, Irving?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“No buts about it!” Wu said. “Theoretically, a ninety-degree twist could cause a leakage of Connective Time. But what is causing the twist? That’s the . . .”
His voice was starting to fade. Truthfully, I was glad. I was ready to concentrate on my primavera pesto pasta.
“Pepper?” asked the waiter.
“Absolutely,” I said. I don’t really care for pepper, but I admire the way they operate those big wrist-powered wooden machines.
* * *
Candy loves to shop (who doesn’t?) so we headed across Grand Street to Soho, looking for jeans on lower Broadway. Since there was no waiting for the dressing rooms (maybe Wu was on to something!), Candy decided to try on one pair of each brand in each style and each color. We were about a third of the way through the stack, when the salesgirl began to beep; rather, her beeper did.
“Your name Irv?” she asked, studying the readout. “You can use the sales phone.” It was under the counter, by the shopping bags.
“How’s the coffee?” Wu asked.
“Coffee?”
“Aren’t you at Dean and DeLucca?”
“We’re at ZigZag Jeans.”
“On Broadway at Grand? Now my fuzzilogical GPS transponder is showing slack!” Wu protested. “If I’m three blocks off already, then that means . . .”
I stopped listening. Candy had just stepped out of the dressing room to check her Levis in the store’s “rear view” mirror. “What do you think?” she asked.
“Incredible,” I said.
“My reaction exactly,” said Wu. “But what else could it be? The bus, the breadsticks, the F train—all the numbers seem to indicate a slow leak of Connective Time somewhere in the New York metropolitan area. Let me ask you this, was your plane on time?”
“Why, yes,” I said. “At the gate, as a matter of fact. The little bell went ding and everybody stood up at 7:32. I remember noticing it on my watch. It was our exact arrival time.”
“Seven thirty-two,” repeated Wu. “That helps. I’m going to check the airports. I can patch into their security terminals and interlace from there to the arrival and departure monitors. I’ll need a little help, though. Dmitri, are you there? He’s sulking.”
“Whatever,” I said, giving the ZigZag girls back their phone. Candy was trying on the Wranglers, and me, I was falling in love all over again. I rarely see her out of her uniform, and it is a magnificent sight.
* * *
In the end, so to speak, it was hard to decide. The Levis, the Lees, the Wranglers, the Guess Whos, the Calvins, and the Glorias all cosseted and caressed the same incredible curves. Candy decided to buy one pair of each and put them all on my credit card, since hers was maxed out. By the time the ZigZag girls had the jeans folded and wrapped and packed up in shopping bags, it was 3:30—almost time to head back to Brooklyn if we wanted to beat the rush hour. But Wu had given me an idea.
Even guys like me, who can’t afford the Israeli cantaloupes or free-range Pyrenees sheep cheese at Dean and DeLucca, can spring for a cup of coffee, which you pick up at a marble counter between the vegetable and bread sections, and drink standing at tall, skinny chrome tables overlooking the rigorously fashionable intersection of Broadway and Prince.
D&D’s is my idea of class, and it seemed to appeal to Candy as well, who was back in uniform and eliciting (as usual) many an admiring glance both on the street and in the aisles. I wasn’t halfway through my Americano before the butcher appeared from the back of the store with a long, skinny roll of what I thought at first was miniature butcher paper (unborn lamb chops?), but was in fact thermal paper from the old-fashioned adding machine in the meat department. The key to Dean and DeLucca’s snooty charm is that everything (except, of course, the customers) is slightly old-fashioned. Hence, thermal paper.
“You Irv?”
I nodded.
He handed me the little scroll. I unrolled it enough to see that it was covered with tiny figures, then let it roll back up again.
“From Wu?” Candy asked.
“Probably,” I said. “But let’s finish our coffee.”
At that very moment, a man walking down Broadway took a cellular phone out of his Armani suit, unfolded it, put it to his ear and stopped. He looked up and down the street, then in the window at me.
I nodded, somewhat reluctantly. It would have been rude, even presumptuous, to expect him to bring the phone inside the store to me, so I excused myself and went out to the street.
“Did you get my fax?” asked Wu.
“Sort of,” I said. I made a spinning motion with one finger to Candy, who understood right away. She unrolled the little scroll of thermal paper and held it up to the window glass:
“Well?”
“Well!” I replied. That usually satisfied Wu, but I could tell he wanted more this time. Sometimes with Wu it helps to ask a question, if you can think of an intelligent one. “What’s the ON TIME ON TIME ON TIME stuff?” I asked.
“Those are airport figures, Irv! LaGuardia, to be specific. All the planes are on time! That tell you something?”
“The leak is at LaGuardia?” I ventured.
“Exactly! Numbers don’t lie, Irv, and as those calculations clearly show, the connective temporal displacement at LaGuardia is exactly equal to the Time axis twist I’m getting worldwide, adjusted for the Earth’s rotation, divided by 5.211. Which is the part I can’t figure.”
“I’ve seen that number somewhere before,” I said. I dimly remembered something rolling a
round. “A shoe size? A phone number?”
“Try to remember,” said Wu. “That number might lead us to the leak. We know it’s somewhere at LaGuardia; now all we have to do is pinpoint it. And plug it.”
“Why plug it?” I said. “This no-delay business just makes life better. Who wants to wait around an airport?”
“Think about it, Irving!” Wu said. There was an edge to his voice, like when he thinks I am being stupid on purpose. In fact I am never stupid on purpose. That would be stupid. “You know how a low-pressure area sucks air from other areas? It’s the same with Time. The system is trying to stabilize itself. Which is why I can’t get the proper EMS figures for Hurricane Relief, or Ido Ido, for that matter. Which is why I asked you to delay your wedding in the first place.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. I was so excited about my upcoming Honeymoon that I had totally forgotten the wedding. “So let’s plug it. What do you want me to do?”
“Go to LaGuardia and wait for my call,” he said.
“LaGuardia?!? Aunt Minnie is expecting us for supper.”
“I thought she was Lifthatvanian. They can’t cook!”
“They can so!” I said. “Besides, we’re sending out for pizza. And besides—” I dropped my voice, “—tonight’s the night Candy and I officially have our Honeymoon.”
Honeymoon is one of those words you can’t say without miming a kiss. Candy must have been reading my lips through the Dean & DeLucca’s window, because she blushed; beautifully, I might add.
But Wu must not have heard me, because he was saying, “As soon as you get to LaGuardia . . .” as his voice faded away. We were losing our connection.
Meanwhile, the guy whose phone it was, was looking at his watch. It was a Movado. I recognized it from the New Yorker ads. I kept my subscription even after moving to Huntsville. I gave him his phone back and we headed for the subway station.
* * *
How could Wu expect me to hang out at LaGuardia waiting for his call on the night of my Honeymoon? Perhaps if the Queens-bound train had come first, I might have taken it, but I don’t think so. And it didn’t. Taking Candy by the hand, I put us on the Brooklyn bound F. It wasn’t quite rush hour, which meant we got a seat as soon as we reached Delancey Street. Did I mention that the train came right away?
Even though (or perhaps because) I am a born and bred New Yorker, I get a little nervous when the train stops in the tunnel under the East River. This one started and stopped, started and stopped.
Then stopped.
The lights went out.
They came back on.
“There is a grumbashievous willin brashabrashengobrak our signal,” said the loudspeaker. “Please wooshagranny the delay.”
“What did she say?” asked Candy. “Is something wrong?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
Turns out we were in the conductor’s car. The lights flickered but stayed on, and she stepped out of her tiny compartment, holding a phone. “Ashabroshabikus Irving?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Frezzhogristis quick,” she said, handing me the phone.
“Hello?” I ventured. I knew who it was, of course.
“Irv, I need you in baggage claim,” said Wu.
“In what?”
“I’m closing in on the Connective Time leak. I think it’s a phone somewhere on the Baggage Claim and Ground Transportation level. I need you to go down there and see which payphone is off the hook, so we can . . . What’s that noise?”
“That’s the train starting up again,” I said.
“Train? I thought you were at the airport.”
“I tried to tell you, Wu,” I said. “We promised Aunt Minnie we would come home for dinner. Plus, tonight’s my Honeymoon. Plus, you’re not looking for a payphone.”
“How do you know?”
“The 5.211. Now I remember what it was. It was a battery for a cell phone. It was rolling and I stopped it with my foot.”
“Of course!” said Wu. “What a fool I am! And you, Irv, are a genius! Don’t make a move until I . . .”
But we were losing our signal.
“Make if sharanka bresh?” asked the conductor, a little testily. She took her phone and stepped back into her tiny compartment and closed the door.
* * *
Every bad pizza is bad in its own way, but good pizza is all alike. Bruno’s on the corner of Ditmas and MacDonald, under the el, is my favorite, and Aunt Minnie’s too. A fresh pie was being popped into the oven as Candy and I walked in the door, and Bruno, Jr., assured us it was ours.
We were headed for home, box in hand, when a battered Buick gypsy cab pulled up at the curb. I waved it off, shaking my head, figuring the driver thought we’d flagged him down. But that wasn’t it.
The driver powered down his window and I heard Wu’s voice over the static on the two-way radio: “Irv, you can head for Brooklyn after all. I found it. Irv, you there?”
The driver was saying something in Egyptian and trying to hand me a little mic. I gave Candy the pizza to hold, and took it.
“Press the little button,” said Wu.
I pressed the little button. “Found what?”
“The leak. The 5.211 was the clue,” said Wu. “I should have recognized it immediately as a special two-year cadmium silicone battery for a low-frequency, high-intensity, short-circuit, long-distance cellular phone. Once you tipped me off, I located the phone hidden underneath the old Eastern/Braniff/Pan Am/Piedmont/People baggage carousel.”
“I know,” I said, pressing the little button. “I saw it there. So now I guess you want me to go to LaGuardia and hang it up?”
“Not so fast, Irv! The phone is just the conduit, the timeline through which the Connective Time is being drained. What we need to find is the number the phone is calling—the source of the leak, the actual hole in Time, the twist. It could be some bizarre natural singularity, like a chronological whirlpool or tornado; or even worse, some incredibly advanced, diabolical machine, designed to twist a hole in space-time and pinch off a piece of our Universe. The open phone connection will lead us to it, whatever it is, and guess what?”
“What?”
“The number it’s calling is in Brooklyn, and guess what?”
“What?”
“It’s the phone number of Dr. Radio Dgjerm!”
He pronounced it rah-dio. I said, “Help me out.”
“The world-famous Lifthatvanian resort developer, Irving!” said Wu, impatiently. “Winner of the Nobel Prize for Real Estate in 1982! Remember?”
“Oh, him. Sort of,” I lied.
“Which was later revoked when he was indicted for trying to create an illegal universe, but that’s another story. And guess what?”
“What?”
“He lives somewhere on Ditmas, near your aunt, as a matter of fact. We’re still trying to pinpoint the exact address.”
“What a coincidence,” I said. “We’re on Ditmas right now. We just picked up a pizza.”
“With what?”
“Mushrooms and peppers on one side, for Aunt Minnie. Olives and sausage on the other, for Candy. I pick at both, since I like mushrooms and sausage.”
“What a coincidence,” said Wu. “I like it with olives and peppers.” He sighed. “I would kill for a hot pizza. Ever spend six weeks in a tree house?”
“Ever spend six months in a space station?” asked a strangely accented voice.
“Butt out, Dmitri,” Wu said (rather rudely, I thought).
“Aren’t you supposed to be looking for that address?”
“I spent three nights in a tree house once,” I said. “Me and Studs. Of course, we had a TV.”
“A TV in a tree house?”
“Just black and white. It was an old six-inch Dumont from my Uncle Mort’s basement.”
“A six-inch Dumont!” said Wu. “Of course! What a fool I am! Irv, did it have . . .”
But we were losing our signal. Literally. The driver of the gypsy c
ab was leaning out of his window, shouting in Egyptian and reaching for the phone.
“Probably has a fare to pick up,” I explained to Candy as he snatched the little mic. out of my hand and drove off, burning rubber. “Let’s get this pizza to Aunt Minnie before it gets cold. Otherwise she’ll cook. And she can’t.”
* * *
Different cultures deal with death, dying, and the dead in different ways. I was accustomed to Aunt Minnie’s Lifthatvanian eccentricities, but I was concerned about how Candy would take it when she set Uncle Mort’s ashes at the head of the table for dinner.
Candy was cool, though. As soon as supper was finished, she helped Aunt Minnie with the dishes (not much of a job), and joined her on the front porch for her Kent. And, I supposed, girl talk. I took the opportunity to go upstairs and strap the legs of the twin beds together with the $1.99 Honeymoon Bungee I had bought in Little Korea. The big evening was almost upon us! There on the dresser was the sleek little package from Sweet Nothings: Candy’s Honeymoon negligée. I was tempted to look inside, but of course I didn’t.
I wanted to be surprised. I wanted everything to be perfect.
From the upstairs window I could see the big maple tree in Studs’s back yard. It was getting dark, and blue light spilled out through every crack in the tree house, of which there were many.
I heard the doorbell chime. That seemed strange, since I knew Candy and Aunt Minnie were on the front porch. Then I realized it was the phone. I ran downstairs to pick it up.
“Diagonal, right?”
“What?”
“The screen, Irving! On the Dumont you had in the tree house. You said it was a six-inch. Was that measured diagonally?”
“Of course,” I said. “It’s always measured diagonally. Wu, what’s this about?”
“Blonde cabinet?”
“Nice blonde veneer,” I said. “The color of a Dreamsicle™. It was a real old set. It was the first one Aunt Minnie and Uncle Mort had bought back in the fifties. It even had little doors you could close when you weren’t watching it. I always thought the little doors were to keep the cowboys from getting out.”
