The Books of Fell

by M. E. Kerr

“For now it stays with me,” said Nels. “I’m keeping it with me until we surprise her with it! I figure a good time is after dinner, when the dancing’s started. That’s the time to pop the question.”

  Lenny did remember he asked Nels, “Do you want to do it for me?”

  But Nels only laughed.

  Nels didn’t notice the anger in Lenny’s tone.

  chapter 11

  As soon as she saw Fen, Keats decided she’d be the one to show him where he was performing that night.

  I thought she’d let out a squeal or a holler when he introduced Plum to her, but she behaved as though nothing could faze her.

  When she finally got around to seeing how I was coming in the kitchen, she could hardly talk.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked her.

  She leaned against the counter, holding her head with one hand, breathing in deeply, then letting it out.

  “Are you all right, Keats?”

  “I will be.”

  “Where’s Fen?”

  “I made him put the dummy in the car. Plum’s so mean, Fell. Was he mean to you?”

  “Plum is a stick of wood. Fen told me to take the suitcase full of clothes and shove it.”

  “That’s not Fen at all. Fen would never say that. That’s Plum.”

  “Never mind.”

  “Fen says Plum won’t need his old things at all.” “Did you tell him about the journal?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Is he out in the garden? Can you see him?”

  I could. Gras at his heels, Gras’s tail wagging acceptance as they strolled down a stone walk near the rosebeds.

  “He’s there…. Did you ask him why he wanted to buy Plum so badly?”

  “I didn’t ask him anything about the dummy. I hardly said anything…. Fell, my heart is coming through my blouse.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of him.”

  “Him?” I looked again. He was very tall and very skinny. Silky, straight black hair like Gras’s, and the mustache … “What’s so great about him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean he’s probably a nice guy, but — ” “Never mind, Fell. Something’s already started.”

  “Well, before something is almost over, try to find out how he heard about Plum, and why he wanted to own him.”

  “I think he’s Japanese. He looks rich, doesn’t he? And he’s driving a new Porsche.”

  “He’s Vietnamese,” I said.

  “That’s right. Mummy said he was Vietnamese. Oh Gawd, Fell, I don’t know anything about Vietnam, even where it is exactly.” She grabbed her head then. “And my hair!”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I’ve got to fix it! I’ve got to put on some lipstick…. Fell? I have another surprise besides the journal. It’s upstairs in the VCR in the guest room.”

  “I Love Las Vegas?”

  “Right.”

  “Thanks, Keats.” But she was gone.

  • • •

  Later, I watched them walk along together. Keats had changed to white shorts and a purple T-shirt. I could remember when she’d teased me about having purple eyes, and how one whiff of Obsession (which the downstairs reeked of suddenly) could make me go weak.

  They stood down by the fountain in the rose garden for a while. He was all in white, except for a light-blue shirt and a dark blue-and-white-polka-dot tie.

  Everything he had on fit him so well, he had to have a Mr. Lopez in his life.

  I started fixing the peaches, glancing out at them from time to time.

  Their eyes never left each other’s face, and every time I looked, they were grinning together or laughing aloud.

  I began to feel tired … not just of what I was doing, but of what I wasn’t doing, feeling, having in my life.

  I cleaned up after myself, took the journal with me, and headed up the back stairs to the guest room.

  I remembered the times I used to sneak down those stairs, nights I wasn’t supposed to see Keats, on orders from her old man.

  I flopped down on the bed and it gurgled. I turned on the VCR, and I Love Las Vegas began with that old early-sixties music sound when Tina Turner was still with Ike, and my mom was in high school learning all the dance steps from the Mashed Potato to the Watusi.

  She could still remember most of them.

  All you’d have to say is Mom? Do the Funky Chicken.

  Mom? Do the Hully Gully.

  • • •

  The windows in the guest room were very tall and wide, so you could lie on the bed and look out at the ocean. Its color was early-evening green; the sky was still pale blue.

  I kept thinking about Jazzy, for some reason … about maybe taking her someplace for fun … so she could get away, say she’d been someplace that summer when she got back to school.

  I didn’t feel like fast-forwarding to Celeste. I just let the movie play, and I picked up the journal.

  Elvis was singing “She Thinks I Still Care.”

  The handwriting was tiny and not easy to read, but I finally found the place where Keats had stopped.

  If you’re ever curious to see Annette and Celeste in action, catch the movie I Love Las Vegas.

  THE MOUTH

  If you’re ever curious to see Annette and Celeste in action, catch the movie I Love Las Vegas.

  Elvis is in it, so it’s still around, mostly on late-night TV.

  It’s all there:

  Dr. Fraudulent telling Annette that psychoanalysis is just the care of the id by the odd.

  Annette asking Celeste if she’d like to join her secret sorority and Celeste saying she hoped it wouldn’t interfere with her membership in the Book-of-the-Month Club.

  Celeste announcing that Annette was on a seafood diet. She sees food and eats it.

  And of course, her trademark:

  CELESTE: For sunburn or windburn, I turn to my Swinburne.

  ANNETTE: Oh, no, Celeste.

  CELESTE: Mr. Swinburne, you know me so.

  ANNETTE: Honey, we don’t want to hear those gloomy poems again. We want to be cheerful. There are young lovers in the audience.

  CELESTE: Hello, young lovers! … “I wish we were dead together today/Lost sight of — ”

  On and on. (You’d think Nels’d never had an original thought!)

  Ending with … the old song Annette used to sing to Nels when he was little.

  “Seeing Nelly Home.”

  And Celeste would interrupt and say …

  “Who wants him home? He is a horse’s derriere!”

  The audience aboard the Seastar loved it.

  Some of them who’d seen the act before had Snickers bars with them for Celeste.

  Laura had to laugh despite herself. She whispered to Nels, “Does it make you furious when Celeste says that?”

  “I could kill her,” Nels smiled back.

  • • •

  It was one twenty-six, close to her finale. Lenny was ready.

  He was trying not to think about Nels or Laura while he waited for Celeste to be placed in the chair.

  He was trying not to think about marriage, too.

  When it had been a kind of faraway dream, it had seemed idyllic, but now that Nels was forcing it to happen way ahead of time, Lenny had cold feet.

  He imagined all the tsuris he’d get from his mother because Laura wasn’t Jewish.

  And he’d have to face Reverend Delacourt’s threats of vengeance, if not in this life then in the next.

  Nels loved to orchestrate other people’s lives, didn’t he? Not other people’s, either … just theirs: Laura’s and Lenny’s. He’d probably arrange to be along on their honeymoon.

  And if Nels had his way, and Lenny did propose right away, what would Laura remember about the night?

  Six diamonds and a ruby.

  Still … $50,000 was such an unbelievable amount to come Lenny’s way when he was only eighteen.

  If he’d never met Nels, he’d p
robably be in some chorus line, or waiting tables as he’d been doing for months, hoping for a break … even a walk-on in an off-Broadway play.

  Laura would probably have drifted away from him.

  • • •

  Suddenly Lenny heard the Seastar audience singing:

  I was see-ing Nel-ly ho-oh-ome … I was see-ing Nel-ly —

  The next thing Lenny knew, the dummy was in the chair.

  • • •

  Everything went without a hitch.

  Lenny hung up the garment bag with Celeste inside and shut the closet door. He sat on the bed and lit a Kent.

  He wouldn’t have minded taking the dummy out to look at her closely, but he’d promised Nels he would not do one thing that was not in their game plan.

  Maybe later, before she was deep-sixed, he could admire the handiwork that had gone into creating her.

  He sat there smoking, just beginning to feel the thrill of what was going to be possible now.

  He put out the cigarette, walked across to the mirror, and watched his reflection give him a smile and a wink.

  He’d pulled it off. No small thanks to Nels, and to the anger he’d felt toward Nels when he was back in the service room waiting to grab Celeste. That had helped defuse the fear.

  His face glowed. He could have everything now. Let Nels give her the stupid Seven of Diamonds!

  He gave his hair a swipe with the comb, then had second thoughts: mussed it, stopped smiling, made his eyes seem sad. After all, when he caught up with Laura and Nels, he was supposed to be still a little seasick.

  Lenny squared his shoulders and set off for the next step: the ransom note he’d leave under Annette’s stateroom door.

  She lived one deck above, near the Captain’s quarters.

  Lenny went up there and in one quick motion bent down and gave the envelope a push.

  When he stood up straight and started toward the stairs, he saw the Captain.

  The Captain wasn’t supposed to be there. Nels said the Captain never missed one of Annette’s performances.

  The Captain was coming out of his door with another Seastar officer.

  From the looks on their faces, there was something wrong.

  Part of the contingency plan was for Lenny to ask a silly question if he was seen someplace where he seemed out of place.

  Make a point of it. If you were guilty of anything, you wouldn’t.

  So Lenny said, “Oh, Captain, is the Jacuzzi nearby?”

  The Captain looked at him.

  There was something very, very wrong.

  “What?” Lenny asked, because he had never seen a man just let tears roll down his cheeks.

  “President Kennedy’s been shot in Dallas,” he said.

  The other officer said, “He’s dead.”

  chapter 12

  I was stretched out on the waterbed, holding the phone on my stomach, waiting for I Love Las Vegas to rewind.

  “Of all the missing people, Nels Plummer’s the one I remember best,” Mom was saying, “because he disappeared the day the President was killed.” “What do you remember about him?” “That he was from the food-chain Plummers. They’re very rich, Johnny. I remember wondering why his sister had a job on a boat, when they had all that money.”

  “Do you remember that he went to Gardner and that he was a Sevens?”

  “Really? That wouldn’t have meant anything to me back then. So he was in your fancy club? Well, that figures.”

  Mom would never believe you didn’t have to have money or pull or something special to be a Sevens. Since I couldn’t tell her how you became one, I’d never convince her that wasn’t it.

  Now there was a new threat to the Sevens’ secret. Keats had stumbled upon it in the journal. Even though she swore on her eyesight and her ability to feel emotion that she would never, never speak of it again, to me or to anyone else, I’m not so sure I would have sworn on those two essentials that she could be trusted.

  The moon was rising over the ocean. The sun had set on any dinner plans I might have worked out with Keats.

  Fen’s blue Porsche was still in the driveway. No sign of them in the garden, but Gras was on the grass destroying a rawhide chew stick, which meant someone wanted him out of the way.

  Mom was still talking about Nels Plummer. “I remember one theory was that he fell overboard upchucking. There was talk of all the drinking on that ship once the news was announced.”

  I still hadn’t finished the journal, although I’d been trying hard to read it at the same time I watched I Love Las Vegas.

  Thoughts of Jazzy’d kept intruding. I was thinking of what a lousy summer she was probably having.

  “It’s funny that you called right now,” said Mom. “I’ve always thought we had ESP. Has Jazzy been on your mind?”

  “I was thinking tonight that I ought to take her someplace like Jones Beach or Fire Island, before summer’s over.”

  “She couldn’t wait. She’s taken off by herself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I said. She’s been missing two hours. Then you call up and ask me about a missing person…. Maybe she’s at Aunt Clara’s, up on the roof over there. They’ve got it planted. Clara maybe thinks I know Jazzy’s with her.”

  “Sure. Where else would she be?”

  “Bernard’s walking over there now to see, and if she’s not there, then we call the police.”

  “Bernard?”

  “Mr. Lopez,” said Mom.

  “She’ll be there,” I said, “don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think,” Mom said. “It’s wasted effort when it comes to your kids. I just react.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I do, too.”

  “You, you don’t know,” said Mom. “You take off when anything gets you. You don’t react. You take off.”

  “Do you want me to come home?”

  “You’re out there now. She’s just at Aunt Clara’s.”

  “She’s there,” I agreed.

  “She’ll be all right,” Mom said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Okay. I won’t,” I said.

  “I’m glad you called, Johnny.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I’ll check with you later.”

  I looked at my watch. It was twenty past eight. Where was a five-year-old at twenty past eight in the evening if she wasn’t at her aunt’s?

  I supposed Mr. Lopez would take care of it.

  He was practically family, wasn’t he?

  Dear Lord, I hoped he wasn’t…. There was something about Mr. Lopez I was never going to like — maybe the fact that most times I’d talked to him he had pins in his mouth.

  There’d be this little hole in his lips words would come out of, and there’d be three or four pins.

  That’s how I remembered him.

  The house was quiet except for the sound of music. It wasn’t the Von Trapp family trudging down the Alps with Julie Andrews leading them in “Do-Re-Mi” — more like an old Madonna album, more like “Like a Prayer.”

  I supposed Keats was playing things for Fen. They were probably sitting on that great, soft, white couch in the living room with the French doors opening onto the garden.

  No doubt in a little while Bernard would arrive back at our place with Jazzy in tow, and they’d put her to bed, then sit around in front of the TV the way they did, drinking homemade wine and eating Fritos.

  To each his own, hmmm?

  At such times I often found myself on the verge of trying to imagine what Delia was doing, who she was doing it with, and where. Rome? Hong Kong? Paris?

  Then very quickly, before the stinging behind my eyes turned into salt water, I refocused my thinking.

  I turned to something far away from me and my experience.

  I turned on the little Tensor lamp and picked up the black leather book.

  Of course, the only one on the Seastar not upset about Kennedy was Nels.

  THE MOUTH

  Of course, the only o
ne on the Seastar not upset about Kennedy was Nels.

  He refused the Captain’s invitation for all passengers to assemble in Main Dining for prayers. Many were settled in there, watching the large TV flash the latest news bulletins from Dallas and Washington. Laura was among them.

  Captain Stirman had announced that the Seastar was heading back to port. The ship would arrive in New York harbor at midnight. Two days ahead of schedule.

  “This screws up everything, Tra La!” Nels complained in their cabin. “I’ve got to think! Go stay with Laura.”

  “Do you think your sister’s read the ransom note already?”

  “Has to have! I can’t stop it now. When she was taking her solo bow? Someone opened the door and shouted, ‘Kennedy’s been shot!’ People started crying, screaming — Annette didn’t get out of the room for about twenty minutes. That’s when I should have moved: found you, put Celeste back, and gotten the note from Annette’s stateroom. Why didn’t I think faster? This is such lousy luck, Tra La!”

  “We can’t pull this off now, Nels.”

  Nels was pacing, hitting his fist with his palm.

  He said to Lenny, “I need to make new arrangements, that’s all. We’ll smuggle Celeste out somehow.”

  “I don’t feel up to this, Nels.”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “The President’s dead, Nels!”

  “Don’t pull any crap on me, Tra La!”

  “Don’t you know what’s going on aboard this ship? Everyone’s in a daze.”

  “That could work for us.”

  “Let’s just give her back the dummy, Nels, and forget it. It’s all different now.”

  “No way. We’ve set things in motion. Lark is prepared and we are. We just have to rearrange the schedule, push it up. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Won’t the banks close down?”

  “Not yet, and I bet my sister’s already been on the phone and arranged to get the money.”

  “We can’t count on anything running normally, even your sister, Nels. Laura can’t even talk.”

  Nels opened his jacket and patted the bulge in the inside pocket. “She’ll have plenty to say when she sees this tonight.”

  “No, Nels. Everything’s changed now.”

  “They’ll still have dinner and dancing.”