“For as the important, abstemious man you are now,” said Mr Clubb, “what do you eat in the mornings?”
“Toast and coffee,” I said. “That’s about it.”
“But in childhood?”
“Eggs,” I said. “Scrambled or fried, mainly. And bacon. Home fries, too.” Every fatty, cholesterol-crammed ounce of which, I forbore to add, had been delivered by barnie-hands directly from barnie-farms. I looked at the rigid bacon, the glistening potatoes, the mess in the egg cup. My stomach lurched.
“We prefer,” Mr Clubb said, “that you follow your true preferences instead of muddying mind and stomach by gobbling this crap in search of an inner peace that never existed in the first place, if you can be honest with yourself.” He leaned over the desk and picked up the plate. His partner snatched a second piece of bacon and wrapped it within a second slice of toast. Mr Clubb began working on the eggs, and Mr Cuff grabbed a handful of home fried potatoes. Mr Clubb dropped the empty egg cup, finished his coffee, refilled the cup, and handed it to Mr Cuff, who had just finished licking the residue of fried potato from his free hand.
I removed the third slice of toast from the rack. Forking home fries into his mouth, Mr Clubb winked at me. I bit into the toast and considered the two little pots of jam, greengage, I think, and rosehip. Mr Clubb waggled a finger. I contented myself with the last of the toast. After a while I drank from the glass of water. All in all I felt reasonably satisfied and, but for the deprivation of my customary cup of coffee, content with my decision. I glanced in some irritation at Mr Cuff. He drained his cup, then tilted into it the third and final measure from the pot and offered it to me. “Thank you,” I said. Mr Cuff picked up the pot of greengage jam and sucked out its contents, loudly. Mr Clubb did the same with the rosehip. They sent their tongues into the corners of the jam pots and cleaned out whatever adhered to the sides. Mr Cuff burped. Overlappingly, Mr Clubb burped.
“Now, that is what I call by the name of breakfast, Mr Clubb,” said Mr Cuff. “Are we in agreement?”
“Deeply,” said Mr Clubb. “That is what I call by the name of breakfast now, what I have called by the name of breakfast in the past, and what I shall continue to call by that sweet name on every morning in the future.” He turned to me and took his time, sucking first one tooth, then another. “Our morning meal, sir, consists of that simple fare with which we begin the day, except when in all good faith we wind up sitting in a waiting room with our stomachs growling because our future client has chosen to skulk in late for work.” He inhaled. “Which was for the same exact reason that brought him to our attention in the first place and for which we went without in order to offer him our assistance. Which is, begging your pardon, sir, the other reason for which you ordered a breakfast you would ordinarily rather starve than eat, and all I ask before we get down to the business at hand is that you might begin to entertain the possibility that simple men like ourselves might possibly understand a thing or two.”
“I see that you are faithful fellows,” I began.
“Faithful as dogs,” broke in Mr Clubb.
“And that you understand my position,” I continued.
“Down to its smallest particulars,” he interrupted again. “We are on a long journey.”
“And so it follows,” I pressed on, “that you must also understand that no further initiatives may be taken without my express consent.”
These last words seemed to raise a disturbing echo – of what I could not say, but an echo nonetheless, and my ultimatum failed to achieve the desired effect. Mr Clubb smiled and said, “We intend to follow your inmost desires with the faithfulness, as I have said, of trusted dogs, for one of our sacred duties is that of bringing these to fulfilment, as evidenced, begging your pardon, sir, in the matter of the breakfast our actions spared you from gobbling up and sickening yourself with. Before you protest, sir, please let me put to you the question of how you think you would be feeling right now if you had eaten that greasy stuff all by yourself?”
The straightforward truth announced itself and demanded utterance. “Poisoned,” I said. After a second’s pause, I added, “Disgusted.”
“Yes, for you are a better man than you know. Imagine the situation. Allow yourself to picture what would have transpired had Mr Cuff and myself not acted on your behalf. As your heart throbbed and your veins groaned, you would have taken in that while you were stuffing yourself the two of us stood hungry before you. You would have remembered that good woman informing you that we had patiently awaited your arrival since eight this morning, and at that point, sir, you would have experienced a self-disgust which would forever have tainted our relationship. From that point forth, sir, you would have been incapable of receiving the full benefits of our services.”
I stared at the twinkling barnie. “Are you saying that if I had eaten my breakfast you would have refused to work for me?”
“You did eat your breakfast. The rest was ours.”
This statement was so literally true that I burst into laughter. “Then I must thank you for saving me from myself. Now that you may accept employment, please inform me of the rates for your services.”
“We have no rates,” said Mr Clubb.
“We prefer to leave compensation to the client,” said Mr Cuff.
This was crafty even by barnie-standards, but I knew a counter-move. “What is the greatest sum you have ever been awarded for a single job?”
“Six hundred thousand dollars,” said Mr Clubb.
“And the smallest?”
“Nothing, zero, nada, zilch,” said the same gentleman.
“And your feelings as to the disparity?”
“None,” said Mr Clubb. “What we are given is the correct amount. When the time comes, you shall know the sum to the penny.”
To myself I said, So I shall, and it shall be nothing; to them, “We must devise a method by which I may pass along suggestions as I monitor your ongoing progress. Our future consultations should take place in anonymous public places on the order of street corners, public parks, diners, and the like. I must never be seen in your office.”
“You must not, you could not,” said Mr Clubb. “We would prefer to instal ourselves here within the privacy and seclusion of your own beautiful office.”
“Here?” He had once again succeeded in dumbfounding me.
“Our installation within the client’s work space proves so advantageous as to overcome all initial objections,” said Mr Cuff. “And in this case, sir, we would occupy but the single corner behind me where the table stands against the window. We would come and go by means of your private elevator, exercise our natural functions in your private bathroom, and have our simple meals sent in from your kitchen. You would suffer no interference or awkwardness in the course of your business. So we prefer to do our job here, where we can do it best.”
“You prefer,” I said, giving equal weight to every word, “to move in with me.”
“Prefer it to declining the offer of our help, thereby forcing you, sir, to seek the aid of less reliable individuals.”
Several factors, first among them being the combination of delay, difficulty, and risk involved in finding replacements for the pair before me, led me to give further thought to this absurdity. Charlie-Charlie, a fellow of wide acquaintance among society’s shadow side, had sent me his best. Any others would be inferior. It was true that Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff could enter and leave my office unseen, granting us a greater degree of security than possible in diners and public parks. There remained an insuperable problem.
“All you say may be true, but my partners and clients alike enter this office daily. How do I explain the presence of two strangers?”
“That is easily done, Mr Cuff, is it not?” said Mr Clubb.
“Indeed it is,” said his partner. “Our experience has given us two infallible and complementary methods. The first of these is the installation of a screen to shield us from the view of those who visit this office.”
I
said, “You intend to hide behind a screen.”
“During those periods when it is necessary for us to be on-site.”
“Are you and Mr Clubb capable of perfect silence? Do you never shuffle your feet, do you never cough?”
“You could justify our presence within these sacrosanct confines by the single manner most calculated to draw over Mr Clubb and myself a blanket of respectable, anonymous impersonality.”
“You wish to be introduced as my lawyers?” I asked.
“I invite you to consider a word,” said Mr Cuff. “Hold it steadily in your mind. Remark the inviolability that distinguishes those it identifies, measure its effect upon those who hear it. The word of which I speak, sir, is this: Consultant.”
I opened my mouth to object and found I could not.
Every profession occasionally must draw upon the resources of impartial experts – consultants. Every institution of every kind has known the visitations of persons answerable only to the top and given access to all departments – consultants. Consultants are supposed to be invisible. Again I opened my mouth, this time to say, “Gentlemen, we are in business.” I picked up my telephone and asked Mrs Rampage to order immediate delivery from Bloomingdale’s of an ornamental screen and then to remove the breakfast tray.
Eyes agleam with approval, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff stepped forward to clasp my hand.
“We are in business,” said Mr Clubb.
“Which is by way of saying,” said Mr Cuff, “jointly dedicated to a sacred purpose.”
Mrs Rampage entered, circled to the side of my desk, and gave my visitors a glance of deep-dyed wariness. Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff looked heavenward. “About the screen,” she said. “Bloomingdale’s wants to know if you would prefer one six feet high in a black and red Chinese pattern or one ten feet high, Art Deco, in ochres, teals and taupes.”
My barnies nodded together at the heavens. “The latter, please, Mrs Rampage,” I said. “Have it delivered this afternoon, regardless of cost, and place it beside the table for the use of these gentlemen, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff, highly regarded consultants to the financial industry. That table shall be their command post.”
“Consultants,” she said. “Oh.”
The barnies dipped their heads. Much relaxed, Mrs Rampage asked if I expected great changes in the future.
“We shall see,” I said. “I wish you to extend every co-operation to these gentlemen. I need not remind you, I know, that change is the first law of life.”
She disappeared, no doubt on a beeline for her telephone.
Mr Clubb stretched his arms above his head. “The preliminaries are out of the way, and we can move to the job at hand. You, sir, have been most exceedingly, most grievously wronged. Do I over-state?”
“You do not,” I said.
“Would I overstate to assert that you have been injured, that you have suffered a devastating wound?”
“No, you would not,” I responded, with some heat.
Mr Clubb settled a broad haunch upon the surface of my desk. His face had taken on a grave, sweet serenity. “You seek redress. Redress, sir, is a correction, but it is nothing more. You imagine that it restores a lost balance, but it does nothing of the kind. A crack has appeared on the earth’s surface, causing widespread loss of life. From all sides are heard the cries of the wounded and dying. It is as though the earth itself has suffered an injury akin to yours, is it not?”
He had expressed a feeling I had not known to be mine until that moment, and my voice trembled as I said, “It is exactly.”
“Exactly,” he said. “For that reason I said correction rather than restoration. Restoration is never possible. Change is the first law of life.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, trying to get down to brass tacks.
Mr Clubb hitched his buttock more comprehensively onto the desk. “What will happen will indeed happen, but we prefer our clients to acknowledge from the first that, apart from human desires being a messy business, outcomes are full of surprises. If you choose to repay one disaster with an equal and opposite disaster, we would reply, in our country fashion, There’s a calf that won’t suck milk.”
I said, “I know I can’t pay my wife back in kind, how could I?”
“Once we begin,” he said, “we cannot undo our actions.”
“Why should I want them undone?” I asked.
Mr Clubb drew up his legs and sat cross-legged before me. Mr Cuff placed a meaty hand on my shoulder. “I suppose there is no dispute,” said Mr Clubb, “that the injury you seek to redress is the adulterous behaviour of your spouse.”
Mr Cuff’s hand tightened on my shoulder.
“You wish that my partner and myself punish your spouse.”
“I didn’t hire you to read her bedtime stories,” I said.
Mr Cuff twice smacked my shoulder, painfully, in what I took to be approval.
“Are we assuming that her punishment is to be of a physical nature?” asked Mr Clubb. His partner gave my shoulder another all-too-hearty squeeze.
“What other kind is there?” I asked, pulling away from Mr Cuff’s hand.
The hand closed on me again, and Mr Clubb said, “Punishment of a mental or psychological nature. We could, for example, torment her with mysterious telephone calls and anonymous letters. We could use any of a hundred devices to make it impossible for her to sleep. Threatening incidents could be staged so often as to put her in a permanent state of terror.”
“I want physical punishment,” I said.
“That is our constant preference,” he said. “Results are swifter and more conclusive when physical punishment is used. But again, we have a wide spectrum from which to choose. Are we looking for mild physical pain, real suffering, or something in between, on the order of, say, broken arms or legs?”
I thought of the change in Marguerite’s eyes when I named the —Hotel. “Real suffering.”
Another bone-crunching blow to my shoulder from Mr Cuff and a wide, gappy smile from Mr Clubb greeted this remark. “You, sir, are our favourite type of client,” said Mr Clubb. “A fellow who knows what he wants and is unafraid to put it into words. This suffering, now, did you wish it in brief or extended form?”
“Extended,” I said. “I must say that I appreciate your thoughtfulness in consulting with me like this. I was not quite sure what I wanted of you when first I requested your services, but you have helped me become perfectly clear about it.”
“That is our function,” he said. “Now, sir. The extended form of real suffering permits two different conclusions, gradual cessation or termination. Which is your preference?”
I opened my mouth and closed it. I opened it again and stared at the ceiling. Did I want these men to murder my wife? No. Yes. No. Yes, but only after making sure that the unfaithful trollop understood exactly why she had to die. No, surely an extended term of excruciating torture would restore the world to proper balance. Yet I wanted the witch dead. But then I would be ordering these barnies to kill her. “At the moment I cannot make that decision,” I said. Irresistibly, my eyes found the bottom drawer containing the files of obscene photographs. “I’ll let you know my decision after we have begun.”
Mr Cuff dropped his hand, and Mr Clubb nodded with exaggerated, perhaps ironic slowness. “And what of your rival, the seducer, sir? Do we have any wishes in regard to that gentleman, sir?”
The way these fellows could sharpen one’s thinking was truly remarkable. “I most certainly do,” I said. “What she gets, he gets. Fair is fair.”
“Indeed, sir,” said Mr Clubb, “and, if you will permit me, sir, only fair is fair. And fairness demands that before we go any deeper into the particulars of the case we must examine the evidence as presented to yourself, and when I speak of fairness, sir, I refer to fairness particularly to yourself, for only the evidence seen by your own eyes can permit us to view this matter through them.”
Again, I looked helplessly down at the bottom drawer. “That will not be necessary. You will
find my wife at our country estate, Green . . .”
My voice trailed off as Mr Cuff’s hand ground into my shoulder while he bent down and opened the drawer.
“Begging to differ,” said Mr Clubb, “but we are now and again in a better position than the client to determine what is necessary. Remember, sir, that while shame unshared is toxic to the soul, shame shared is the beginning of health. Besides, it only hurts for a little while.”
Mr Cuff drew the files from the drawer.
“My partner will concur that your inmost wish is that we examine the evidence,” said Mr Clubb. “Else you would not have signaled its location. We would prefer to have your explicit command to do so, but in the absence of explicit, implicit serves just about as well.”
I gave an impatient, ambiguous wave of the hand, a gesture they cheerfully misunderstood.
“Then all is . . . how do you put it, sir? ‘All is . . .’ ”
“All is in order, all is in train,” I muttered.
“Just so. We have ever found it beneficial to establish a common language with our clients, in order to conduct ourselves within terms enhanced by their constant usage in the dialogue between us.” He took the files from Mr Cuff’s hands. “We shall examine the contents of these folders at the table across the room. After the examination has been completed, my partner and I shall deliberate. And then, sir, we shall return for further instructions.”
They strolled across the office and took adjoining chairs on the near side of the table, presenting me with two identical wide, black-clothed backs. Their hats went to either side, the files between them. Attempting unsuccessfully to look away, I lifted my receiver and asked my secretary who, if anyone, had called in the interim and what appointments had been made for the morning.
Mr Clubb opened a folder and learned forward to inspect the topmost photograph.
My secretary informed me that Marguerite had telephoned from the road with an inquiry concerning my health. Mr Clubb’s back and shoulders trembled with what I assumed was the shock of disgust. One of the scions was due at 2.00 p.m., and at four a cryptic gentleman would arrive. By their works shall ye know them, and Mrs Rampage proved herself a diligent soul by asking if I wished her to place a call to Green Chimneys at three o’clock. Mr Clubb thrust a photograph in front of Mr Cuff. “I think not,” I said. “Anything else?” She told me that Gilligan had expressed a desire to see me privately – meaning, without the Skipper – sometime during the morning. A murmur came from the table. “Gilligan can wait,” I said, and the murmur, expressive, I had thought, of dismay and sympathy, rose in volume and revealed itself as amusement.
The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror Page 33
