That night the PDL headquarters is also glowing – with its protective laser matrix. Seemingly invincible, it looms fortress-like above the street. Traffic abates as the wee hours approach and the sounds of the city lower into silence. No one is about and we're down for the night when, with a heavy chugging, the Longobardo Drayage van hoves into view.
The huge truck whines to stop next to the building and a ramp drops down to the curb. Presently the band members come marching out. They're moving a bit stiffly and are wearing turtlenecks against the night chill.
They quickly form a pyramid and start to bound up the side of the building with the silvery ease of acrobats everywhere. How they stymie the lasers is one more proof of their androbotic powers.
Climbing, they spell out the name P-H-I-B-E-S with their bodies in silhouette against the nighttime mists. Once on the roof they commandeer the service elevator and ride down to the floor where Lady Phibes and Sophie are being held. Sad Sax dispatches every guard they encounter with a variant of Dr. Phibes’ famous sleeper hold.
He breaks into a run as soon as he spots Sophie, sweeps her into his arms and covers her with kisses – an eerily ‘real’ outburst of love from these not-quite-human lovers. But there's no time to dally. The crew gathers Lady Phibes’ sarcophagus onto a gurney and hustles her up the service elevator to the roof.
An instant later the Velicopter swoops down out of the sky to stop on a dime a scant three feet above the glistening quartz oblong. (It's a dark and moonless night so where does this light come from if not from Lady Phibes’ own emanations!)
Phibes, in full combat gear, expertly maneuvers the Velicopter into position and holds it there, its rotors whooshing the night air, while his beloved is lifted into the aircraft. All in! He revs the engine and lifts off, together again at last with his wife.
There's a gala welcoming party at the townhouse the next evening. Sophie sings her heart out while the band plays on. Then, she and Sad Sax pull out all the stops with a fiery tango.
Phibes is in the Shrine Room murmuring devotedly to his beloved when he notices a slight scratch on her wrist. Immediately sensing the cause – that the Institute was on the verge of carrying out its ghastly designs on his wife, Phibes scalds the air through his neck vent:
“Whoever did this to you, I will find them. No recourse. No respite. Retribution. Retribution. All is retribution!”
Early the next morning he and Vulnavia embark in the Hispano. The top is down and both are dressed for touring the open road, he in a cap and canvas jacket and she in a fitted suede jumpsuit. The tight boot space behind them contains but one piece of luggage, a staunch leather satchel, used rather than new.
Missy Bramwell has in the meantime fallen right in with the Franconia Notch gentry: afternoon teas, shopping for antiques, candlelight supper at the local inn. She especially likes taking long walks in the nearby woods, reveling in the fall colors and tramping through the leaf piles with abandon. Hers is the picture of a handsome woman without a care in the world, lustily sampling the crisp air and foliage.
It's a sunny afternoon, warm for mid-October. Many other strollers are about today and she exchanges greetings with several, including that comely couple who nod in return. The couple passes and we recognize the canvas jacket and the suede jumpsuit, seemingly absorbed in their rustic appreciation.
Missy ambles on, kicking through pile after pile of wind-driven leaves that stretch across the footpath. One pile larger than the others is especially inviting. Kicking and pummeling, she jumps up and down upon it like some happy acrobat, each time landing a bit heavier and burying herself a bit deeper into its leafy thicknesses, gurgling with the delight of it all.
As the afternoon sun wanes and the strollers leave the woods, Missy Bramwell is still enjoying the leaf pile. Or is she? Seen more closely, there's a look of concern on her features. And instead of jumping up and down on the pile, she seems to be straining to get out of it. Straining but not escaping the greens and golds and reds.
Missy Bramwell's exertions continue all night long, growing weaker and weaker beneath the harvest moon until she is reduced to twitches and shudders.
Hikers discover her late the following afternoon, twisted atop the leaf pile and half submerged in its greens and golds and reds. And quite still.
SOPHIE’S SECRET
Phibes and Vulnavia return to Gramercy Square on one of those perfect autumn afternoons Gotham is famous for. The summer heat is gone, the air is clear and the city is on a brief time-out; the possibilities of cooler weather seem endless.
After parking the Hispano next to the Longobardo Drayage Truck in the townhouse garage, Phibes and Vulnavia go upstairs, he to the Shrine Room to share this golden moment with his beloved and Vulnavia to her apartment.
After a brief reverence, Phibes takes his leave of Victoria. The ballroom has been readied for their homecoming. And as he and Vulnavia, resplendent in a Versace creation, glide the room, the Wizards encompass what tea dancing is all about.
Sophie croons a number or two during this intermezzo, subdued to fit the mood, but there's a razor gleam in her eyes. Something else is going on inside this extraordinarily beautiful creature's mind. Beautiful Sophie is, but can she keep a secret?
Yes she can! Because in a few short weeks, the incredible story of this incredible songstress will break: her beginnings, finding her voice, her quest for stardom…and then the music, finally and at last the music…when she hooks up with the band.
“Sophie and The Band That Plays Forever”, as told to Willow Weeps, journalist.
You heard it here first…
***
EPILOGUE
Willow was really miffed. She thought – no, make that ‘she knew’ – that she would win the ‘Hold the Press’ award. It was the school's highest honor for journalism students but all she came away with was an honorable mention and that goofy looking Spuyten Duyvil Fuzzy.
Willow was proud of her work on the SALIGIA murders and had been invited to tour the New York Times in June. Newsweek was also considering so it's no wonder that the Executive Editor of the INTELLIGENCER dressed to impress today. It was graduation day after all. Willow blew a year's allowance on a double-breasted blue gabardine from Juicy Couture and, for the first time in her life, heels. Not those ugly-looking chunks but real and very pretty shapes that she took home in a fancy candy-striped box signed by ‘Rico’.
Her parents were all ‘ooohs and aaahs’ in the auditorium but if they noticed Willow's letdown, they didn’t show it. Her dad even treated her and her clique to punch and angel food cake at the reception afterwards.
She let everyone sign her Fuzzy. Gamelin's ‘Boo U’ was really hurtful but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a retort. Willow kept her stiff upper lip for a week until her brother finally broke it while they were sweeping the back yard.
So who’d you think you were, sis, Maria Bartiromo (by permission)?
She's a financial reporter.
Yeah. You got all spiffed up like her.
So?
So she's a reporter, and you ain’t.
I’m a reporter, too.
No you ain’t.
Am!
Not!
I am too, Gamelin, and you're just jealous.
Hah! Reporters check their facts. ‘Corroborate’, you know what that is?
We learned that in class.
So why didn’t you do it instead of showing up in all that highfalutin get-up and then going for a fall?
Did not.
Did too.
Not. Stop it Gamelin. Stoddard, tell him to stop.
You tell him, sis. He's your bro.
That's right. We're all family and you guys are supposed to stick up for me.
We do, sis. But you still gotta check your facts if you wanna be a journalist.
Reporter.
Ok. A buck’ll get you a nickel if you do.
Great, because tomorrow is Fact-Checking Day, so have your money rea
dy.
We're going to keep an eye on you just to make sure.
Then you better be ready to travel.
Where to?
Gramercy Square.
Acting on a tip that she had squirreled out of Inspector (Acting) Pretorius, Willow and her two brothers took the A Train down to 23rd Street early the next morning, walking the few blocks to Gramercy Square with one stop at Nedick's along the way for some OJ and oatmeal squares.
What they found was a complete shambles. #14 had been stripped of its identity: walls bared down to the lathing, carpeting torn from the floors, light fixtures removed save for a single bulb on each floor – all of the debris carried away undercover at night.
Where it was taken became a topic of festering speculation because such extensive demolition must be approved by the local council before Building Inspection can issue a permit. In #14's case, this approval was neither sought nor offered.
The jackhammers probably worked for weeks but went completely unnoticed by the neighbors. It would later be discovered that isinglass over the windows and some sort of cork barriers for the walls had been installed early on to ensure the privacy.
Willow and her brothers poked around the building in mute disbelief. This house, in the midst of this most gracious of neighborhoods, was wounded – and not a little bit lost!
Three days earlier a big truck could be seen lumbering away in the dusk. It was the end of a sultry day and the flitting mare's tails overhead sent down fitful sprinkles with little effect on the muggy sticky air.
The big truck, graceful for its size, kept moving toward the river, passing through a zone of low buildings that just an hour ago banged around with a brisk collection of small enterprises crammed together in this long-since depreciated commercial real-estate.
The men and women who made a livelihood here should not be lamented. They earned their keep and kept families together with a little bit left over for a once-in-a-while trip to Coney.
The big truck kept pushing westward toward the laid-low glow above the Jersey shore across the river. The Hudson was very wide at this point and getting wider still as it leaked out of the continent and into the ocean beyond. Night swimmers will understand.
Truck drivers are all the same when it comes to bad roads. You're pulling 23,000 pounds and if the load shifts when you hit a pothole, it ends up in your lap. Get killed or steer your way out of it and kill someone else.
All the roadways near the river were tarred over an old concrete base that was already fifteen years past its useful life. Separations, many of them more than six inches deep, extended from every intersection in a DNA-like matrix. These axel-breakers battered the surface traffic without remorse.
The driver didn’t seem to notice the rough ride; neither did his companion as they moved steadily toward the river, the muggy air giving way now to a cooler saltier flow coming off the Hudson. Just as the truck eased into the Holland Tunnel, a yellow sunbeam caught the gold lettering on its side – Longobardo Drayage Company.
***
It's only a story. The things that happened here might’ve happened. Could’ve happened. Maybe happened.
But how? How could Anton Phibes, our real fictional man, survive the eighty-some years between London, 1940 and New York City in 2020?
Lovers will know the answer without asking. All the rest may find satisfaction in this short but by no means inclusive list:
Anton Phibes survived because his real–to-artificial parts ratio is 1.5 to 1 after the Klingenstein Reconstruction…because Dr. Oksana Baranov revived his fighting spirit…because the Quaternary Aquifer that flows beneath the Great Pyramid at Giza restored his soul…because he HAD to survive so he could bring back his Victoria.
For those mortified readers who still need to question the ephemera, maybe you don’t need to know!
Dr. Phibes in The Beginning Page 15
