by M. E. Kerr
“I’m going to drop you off,” Keats said. “I’ll give you a few hours and then we’ll head for Gosman’s.”
“I thought you were dying to see a ventriloquists’ convention?”
“I am, but I’m also dying to take a bath and change. They’ll still be there later tonight, and tomorrow…. And you should see Little Jack alone, I think.”
“You’re the boss.”
“No, that’s Daddy, who should be home right about now.” She took a look at her watch.
I knew then what she was going to do. Beg Daddy to let me stay there.
I said, “I’m not that anxious to be under the same roof with him, either.”
“Hush, Fell. Our guest room has a private bath with a sauna, a view of the ocean, and a waterbed.”
“I wouldn’t mind being under the same roof with him,” I said.
“He’ll like you, too. Just don’t tell him you’re suicidal.”
“What if he asks?”
She laughed.
She said, “Should I stop at Seaville Video and see if I can find a great film to watch later tonight?”
“See if you can find one called I Love Las Vegas.”
“You’re kidding, I hope.”
“No, I’m not. Lenny Last was hunting for it right before he died. I just wonder why, what’s in it.”
“You always do this, Fell.”
“I always do what?”
“You get too involved … in everything.” “Aren’t you curious?”
“I’m mildly curious about a lot of things. I’m not consumed with curiosity over every little thing.”
“I’m not either.”
“Yes, you are. You’re like Gras, our new dachshund. If he knows there’s anything even remotely resembling food in the room, even an old wadded-up candy wrapper someone’s got in his pocket, he roots around and roots around until he finds it.”
“Better than your old poodle, Foster. He was a real stuck-up dog.”
“He was really Daddy’s dog. That’s why he didn’t take to you.”
“Try and get the movie,” I said. “Elvis has a cameo role in it.”
“I’m not an Elvis fan, either. I think Bruce Springsteen has it all over Elvis.”
“Sure, he copied him.”
Just when I was beginning to think we’d spent too much time together, and were getting on each other’s nerves, Keats said, “Look! There it is!”
It was up on the dunes, a great gold-and-white castle complete with drawbridge, towers, and domed roof.
“I love what they’ve done to it,” said Keats. “It’s the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen in all my life.”
“Sure you don’t want to come in with me?”
We were crossing the drawbridge.
“No, I’ve got to get home.”
“Don’t feel bad if Daddy says no. I can find an old turret in this place to curl up in.”
Kingdom By The Sea was right on the dunes, the sea just a short walk away. As we drove up to the entrance, I could feel the wind become cooler and smell the salt air.
Keats stopped the car under an enormous banner flapping in the breeze.
WELCOME TO THE
10TH CONVENTION
OF AMERICAN VENTRILOQUISTS!
WELCOME TO KINGDOM BY THE SEA!
CAPTAIN MICHAEL MARR, PROPRIETOR
A kid dressed up in sailor’s whites came down the steps and asked if we had any luggage.
“A bellboy! I don’t believe it,” I said.
“A bellperson,” said Keats. She handed the sailor the key to the trunk and told him which bag to take.
The sailor hustled inside with it. “Check out the room situation here,” Keats said. “There’s a million-in-one chance Daddy’d not be in the mood for company of any kind, nothing to do with you.”
“Sweetheart,” I said, doing my old Humphrey Bogart imitation, “don’t sweat it.”
THE MOUTH
Ah, The Charles Dance. Of all the events at Gardner School, this was the biggie.
In honor of the Sevens founder, Damon Charles, all males attended the annual Charles Dance as someone named Charles.
Nels was putting together a pilot’s outfit to go as Charles Lindbergh, famed aviator and father of a kidnapped child.
“If I was ever going to kidnap,” said Nels to Lenny, “I’d do exactly what the Lindbergh kidnapper did — take someone who couldn’t talk.”
“The Lindbergh kidnapper killed the baby anyway,” Lenny said, “so it didn’t matter if it could talk or not.”
“If I was to suggest kidnapping to you, Tra La, what would you say?”
“I’d say don’t call me Tra La.”
“Seriously! What would you say?”
“I’d say get some aviator goggles, a silk scarf, or something! You don’t look like a flyer, Nels!”
Lenny didn’t see any point in talking about kidnapping.
But he remembered the conversation.
One day he would think back to it, and he would remember it very clearly: Yeah, there was mention of kidnapping … way back that first year.
Nels changed his mind about the Charles he wanted to be, and went to the dance as Charles Ryder, a character out of a novel called Brideshead Revisited.
Of course Lenny was going as Charlie McCarthy, of the famous ventriloquist team Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.
There was another member of Sevens dressed up like the dummy, too.
Nels told Lenny, “Before I’d appear anywhere dressed the same as Carl Delacourt, I’d step into the men’s and strip down until I was bare-assed.”
Carl Delacourt’s head came to a point. His ears stuck out like the handles on a jug. He had mean little feral eyes.
He was a scholarship student like Lenny. The dense and sullen son of an evangelical minister. Diamond, he had named his tree. Diamond? the Sevens asked. He said it was for his idol, for Neil Diamond.
It was well known that Delacourt got furious if anyone brought up the old rumor that Diamond’s famous song “Longfellow Serenade” was written to his penis.
Almost anybody would rather put his name on the blind-date list than bring his sister to a dance as his date.
Not Carl Delacourt.
Right after his name on the Sevens list of Members & Ladies was Delacourt, Laura (Sister).
“She’s probably a major wallflower,” Nels said while they eyed the list. “Carl says they’re both going to be shrinks.”
He and Lenny were going stag. You could. It was more fun. It was cheaper, which appealed to Lenny: no corsage to buy. You could play the field, too.
Just as soon as the pair noted that Carl was dressed up as a dummy, and right after their little repartee about it, Laura Delacourt came into view.
“She’s not so bad after all,” said Nels.
Lenny didn’t say anything.
“They couldn’t be blood relatives,” Nels said.
Lenny didn’t say anything.
Delacourt and his sister began to dance.
“She moves like an angel and she looks like one,” said Angel-Face himself. “I wouldn’t mind being shrunk by her.”
Silence from Lenny.
“Beauty and the Beast,” said Nels.
Lenny didn’t say anything.
“Or isn’t she your type?” said Nels.
Silence.
“She’d be mine if I liked blonds.” said Nels, who would just about come to her shoulder. She was tall and long-legged.
Then Nels finally turned to Lenny, looked up at him, and said, “Where are you, Tra La?”
For the first time, he saw Lenny’s face.
He saw the look in Lenny’s eyes as they followed Laura Delacourt in a fox-trot with her ugly brother.
He saw the end of something and he saw the beginning of something.
He felt what he saw like a sock to his insides, but he never showed it.
The old shrug. What would he do without that old shrug to his shoulders?
> “Why don’t you cut in, Tra La?”
He nudged Lenny with one hand in a halfhearted way.
Still, Lenny couldn’t talk. Couldn’t move.
Nels didn’t push it. Nels wasn’t in any hurry to speed this thing along.
A thing like this could change history.
Already had, many times over.
It didn’t matter if it was your little destiny it interfered with or the fate of an entire nation.
It left its mark … if it ever left.
Lenny finally said something.
“So that’s Laura Delacourt.”
chapter 7
The sailor gave the suitcase to a heavyset fellow at the registration counter. Attached to his dark-blue blazer was a plastic name tag: Toledo.
I asked him how I could get in touch with Jack Horner, in The Raven, and he pushed some phone buttons and talked to me while the number rang. “Is Horner a vent?” “A what?” “A ventriloquist?”
“He’s here for the convention, yes. You call them vents?”
“They call themselves that,” he said. “There’s no answer in The Raven.”
“Thanks for trying, Mr. Toledo. Would you check the bag, please?”
“Just plain Toledo…. Your friend could be at the Gospel Vents’ workshop on the mezzanine, or at Beginners’ Tricks down the hall. They’re almost over now.”
I chose Beginners’ Tricks. I went around a corner to French doors opening on a courtyard packed with folding chairs and people sitting in them…. People weren’t the only occupants, either. There were dummies sitting in some seats. The first thing that struck me was how alike most of the dummies looked, as though they’d all come out of the same mold. Some had different colored wigs, and they were dressed in everything from tuxedos to sailor suits, but they all had those big dark eyes with the wide red mouth and a certain wild-and-crazy-guy expression.
Latecomers were standing in the back.
A skinny, bald guy in a bow tie was pointing to a blackboard where there were four giant letters in white chalk: p, b, m, and f. He called them “the bane of our existence, and the reason for most flapping.”
I asked a white-haired man standing next to me what flapping meant.
“Moving your lips,” he whispered.
Next the speaker held his hand to his face. It was made up to resemble a tiny head. From the mouth of lipsticked fingers came a shrill little voice saying, “P. ?. M. F…. Please be my friend.”
Everyone clapped.
I tried saying the same words softly to myself, without moving my lips.
Out came lease e eye wend.
“How does he do that?” I said.
The man beside me said, “You missed the best part. This is almost over.”
While everyone was trying to say the same sentence, I looked at the others. There were a few kids around six or seven and a few my age. There were about a dozen females. The majority were men, all ages. Some had their dummies on their laps.
Jack Horner did.
• • •
Little Jack wasn’t holding Plumsie as the others held theirs. Plumsie was stretched out on his back, on Jack’s bare knees, his eyes staring up at the sky.
Little Jack didn’t see me. (I remembered the day he’d called me Felly.)
He had on a black T-shirt and denim shorts, in contrast to Plumsie, who was in a tux with a white shirt, red tie, and red cummerbund. (“Bye-bye, Felly.”… And Dib’s last words to me had been “Cork it, Fell!”)
Little Jack was chewing gum, straining to see the speaker past the people in front of him. The sun had bleached his hair the shade of beach sand. He wore it straight, and very long in the back. His tan made his eyes all the more blue.
The speaker’s lipsticked fingers opened and the same voice that had begged please be my friend announced the session was over. Part II would begin the next morning at nine.
The man next to me was watching me stare at Little Jack. He didn’t look like an Easterner. He had on white pleated pants with a silver buckle on a black belt, a white short-sleeved shirt with silver pocket buttons, and a bolo tie with a turquoise stone.
“So that’s how Plumsie ends up,” he said. “My, how the mighty have fallen.”
I turned to face him. “Did you know Lenny Last?”
“Most of us old-timers did. That’s why there was that moment of silence for him at the banquet last night.”
“I just got here,” I said. “I’m not a vent.”
“Your questions told me that.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Guy Lamb,” he said. “What are you doing at a vents’ convention? Selling something, or buying something?”
“An acquaintance of mine is selling something.”
He looked in the direction I was looking. “How’d he get his hands on old Plum?”
“He inherited him from Lenny Last.”
“Who is he to Len? Len had only his mother, and she was getting along in years.”
I explained that Little Jack had pulled Lenny Last out of the wreck and that Last’s dying words were “Please take good care of my dummy.”
“That’s a lot of bull merde, son.”
“That’s the story, Mr. Lamb.”
“You can call me Guy…. That’s quite a story. Whoever dreamed up that one didn’t know Lenny Last.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Len would have never said ‘dummy.’ That word wasn’t in his vocabulary. Particularly when it came to Plum. And he’d never give Plumsie to a stranger…. We’re all attached to our figures, but Lenny was overtaken by Plum. Some figures do that. They bewitch their owners.”
“Maybe Little Jack misheard him.” I had my eye on Little Jack. Now he was standing with Plumsie caught between his legs, its face squashed against his calves.
He was lighting up a cigarette, talking to a fellow who was Asian, tall and twentyish, with a string mustache.
Guy Lamb’s mouth was tipped. “Did your friend mishear Len or did he put words in his mouth?”
“Why would he want a dummy?”
Guy Lamb put his hand on my arm. “Please. Don’t say dummy. Say figure. Say Plumsie. Anything but dummy.”
“A figure,” I said. “Why would he want it enough to lie about it?”
“Why does anyone want something enough to lie? Money, my boy, dinero.”
“I don’t think Little Jack was thinking about money. He’d just survived an accident and he was drunk, too.”
“I’d heard Lenny was, that it was Lenny’s fault,” said Guy Lamb.
“Was he always a drinker?”
“A big one near the end. Some say it was the gambling debts he was carrying. Others say it was something in his past. Plumsie began remarking about it, too, as he took over the act, about the drinking and the asthma. That was around the same time he decided he didn’t like the name Plumsie.”
“What did he want to be called?”
“He never said. What he said was he didn’t want a name with seven letters in it, so Lenny started calling him Plum. I think he just liked to irritate Lenny.”
I must have made a face without realizing it.
Guy Lamb said, “Sounds farfetched, hmmm? But you should have seen them near the end. Lenny’d wheeze but Plum wouldn’t. Lenny’d drink until he slurred before a performance, but Plum never slurred. Then there was this high little voice that would come out of Plum. He’d scold Lenny in it. He’d called Lenny ‘Big Guy.’ If Lenny fluffed a line, Plum would trill, ‘Nice try, Big Guy.’ Sometimes with an Italian accent. ‘Nice-ah try, Big Guy.’ Sometimes it’d be a French accent or German.
“The audience picked up on it, and they’d call out ‘Nice-ah try, Big Guy!’ Or ‘Nice twy, Beeg Guy,’ — always in falsetto, like Plum. Some folks thought it wasn’t funny, if you know what I mean.” He pointed to his ear with one finger, turning it in circles. “Some folks thought Lenny was headed around the bend.”
“What was his personal life like?”
“He did
n’t have one. Lenny was like me, a loner. Now, what went on before I knew him, or inside him — that I can’t tell you. Plumsie probably told us more than Len wanted us to know. Some figures will do that, will bring out your devils. My Earl never did, thank the good Lord.” He looked over at Little Jack, who was holding Plumsie between his knees while he wrote something down. “Yes,” he said, “Lenny was like me. He wanted Plum to end up in The Vent Haven Museum … not like that.”
“Do you know who Little Jack’s talking to?” I asked him.
“Your friend is talking to Fen. He’s only been on the scene a few years now, but he’s climbing the ladder fast. He played The White House last Christmas.”
“Is he Japanese?”
“Vietnamese. Now he might be interested in buying Plumsie. He’s not too happy with the figure he’s got. That’s her in the chair behind him. Most vents have figures their same sex, and I expect Fen would be better off with a male himself.”
I could see only the back of something about three feet long, all in black with a white wig.
“That’s Star,” said Guy. “She’s got more clothes than a movie star.”
“Why do these figures all look alike?” I said.
“They don’t. You just don’t look carefully. Some look like a lot of others because they’re cheapos. Plywood and plastic, stuffed with cotton.”
“How much is a cheap one?”
“About five hundred dollars.”
“And an expensive one?”
“My Earl upstairs is worth fifteen thousand. Crestadoro made him.”
“And Plumsie, what would he go for?”
“Hard to tell. There aren’t many like Plumsie anymore. He was made by the McElroys years ago. He probably had a few owners before Len bought him.”
“Give a guess,” I said.
“Twenty, twenty-five thousand, maybe more. But there’re not that many collectors interested in figures that expensive, and a professional performer would hesitate to work with him. Plum was too much Lenny’s, and he was too strong for Lenny. So he has this undertone. That’s what we call it.”
“Sort of like a jinx or a curse, hmmm?”
“We call it an undertone,” he said emphatically. “Now that Fen fellow wouldn’t know enough to be wary of Plum, wouldn’t know his history.”
