“Maybe God is volume, Harry.”
The first thing I saw on opening my eyes was a hot dog that’d been immaculately conceived in Nicholas’s hand.
“What do you mean? Like sound, or size?”
Chomp chomp. He shrugged. “Part of what you were thinking was right, but only part.
“Hey! Here comes another train! Come on, jump!”
Suddenly the boy leapt off the station roof, down twenty feet to the top of a subway car pulling into the station.
I ran to the edge, but wasn’t about to take that plunge, Venasque or not.
“Jump down!”
“No way!”
There was a “beep” and then the car doors slid shut with a hard clunk. Nicholas crouched down, still holding his hot dog. Stuffing the rest of it in his mouth, he brushed his hands off and waved to me.
“Don’t be surprised!”
The train started out of the station.
I cupped hands around my mouth. “Surprised by what?”
“That all the words are God!”
He was gone. I was on a roof in Vienna thinking about God, how to get down, and what I was going to tell the boy’s parents.
That last question was answered ten minutes after I’d climbed down, found a telephone booth, and called the Easterlings to tell them their child had last been seen playing hood ornament on top of a moving subway car.
“Hello?”
“Nicholas?”
“Hi, Harry.”
“You’re home already?”
“I can’t talk now, Harry. My favorite cartoon show is on.” He hung up. I heard my coin drop down into the belly of the telephone.
NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS, EARTHQUAKES, LOVE triangles, dead shamans, showering dogs, and magical children (among other things) can take their toll on one. Despite them, I walked back to the hotel that afternoon feeling vibrant but composed. Life is best when it’s surprising and you’re looking forward to what’s next. I was convinced expectation is the best we can ever hope for. I knew we were going toward something momentous in Saru. Already enough mystery and purpose had revealed itself on the way there to indicate it was a hell of a lot more than building yet another rich man’s tower.
“Christ, Harry, where’ve you been? We’re having dinner tonight with Prince Hassan, the Sultan’s son.” Fanny was lying naked on the big bed watching a tennis match on television. She didn’t look like she was in an extreme hurry.
“I thought we were supposed to meet him in Zell am See.”
“We were, but he’s flying over to have dinner with us. I guess there’s a Saruvian restaurant in Vienna?”
In the midst of taking off my hat, I stopped when I heard that. “It’s not called the ‘Bazz’af,’ is it?”
“Yes, I think so. Why are you yelling?”
“Oh, no reason.” Hat on, I walked straight to the bathroom and ate six antacid pills.
The first time I ever met the Sultan of Saru was at the Restaurant Bazz‘af in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, a rich Saruvian entrepreneur decided the world needed to taste the food of his homeland, so the sadist opened a bunch of Restaurant Bazz’afs around the world. They are very expensively appointed and purportedly use only the best ingredients, but my meal that night was a bad dream of fiery sauces, ominous vegetable dishes all of the same military consistency and color (khaki), and meat that was not nice. I won’t go into it further. I’d gone to the restaurant with Bronze Sydney, who has the appetite of ten, but even she looked stricken by the time we got up off our cushions and waddled to the door. The only things she said in the car afterward were: (1) Never eat dinner sitting on a cushion, and (2) That meal was worse than our divorce.
After eating the stomach pills, I looked in the bathroom mirror, tipped my hat to myself, and asked how I was doing. My father taught me the practice when I was in high school. Look yourself in the eye and see how others saw you today. Don’t check for pimples or nose hair—that’s first-thing-in-the-morning or last-thing-at-night stuff.
“Some guy from the Saruvian Embassy called while you were out, sweating bullets, and said Big Top isn’t eating his steak.” Fanny had snuck up on me while I was mirror gazing. We looked at each other in that neutral zone. She leaned against the door frame, a small woman with friendly teacup breasts and rather wide hips. I always liked holding her body and watching it, particularly when we made love. Fanny closed her eyes and smiled angelically through most of the act, but her body, as if connected to some other woman, thrashed, twisted, and probably would have zipped around the room like an untied balloon, given the chance. I often had to hold on for dear life. She said she wasn’t aware of what she did when she fucked, but wouldn’t take responsibility for her flips and jigs.
“You look very edible in your birthday suit.”
She smiled and checked herself in the mirror. “Thank you. Speaking of edible, doesn’t Big Top eat steak?”
“No. Venasque fed him club sandwiches all the time so he likes mixed things. I usually give him chicken salad or deviled ham from the deli. Did the Saru guy leave a number? I’ll call back and tell him.
“Listen, Fan, I’ve got to warn you that if this Bazz’af restaurant is anything like the one in Los Angeles, you’d better prepare yourself. It’s the pits.”
The phone rang in the other room. She turned to get it. “Probably the Saruvian Embassy saying Big Top won’t eat the caviar either.”
I followed her. “Caviar? You told them he liked that?”
“Sure. I told them to try it. You feed him salty potato chips. Hello?”
I waited for her to hand me the phone. Instead she listened a long time, slowly sitting down on the bed, the phone tight to her ear.
“It’s crazy! An arrow? Dad, is this the truth? All right. Wait a minute. I said wait a second!” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “My mother got hit by an arrow at a fashion show! She’s in the hospital. Stable condition. They think she’ll be okay. Unbelievable.”
“An arrow? How’d that happen?” I started to smile. It was impossible not to.
“Not funny, Harry.”
“Then why’re you smiling too?”
She shook her head and went back to the phone.
Twenty minutes later she was dressed and in the middle of packing her bag again. “She went to a fashion show where the models came out in Robin Hood outfits. They were carrying bows and arrows and pretended to shoot at the audience. Cute, huh? Guess who was in the first row? My ma. Guess who got hit when one of the idiots accidentally shot an arrow? My ma. Now I know what Warhol meant by ‘fashion victims.’”
“So you do what, fly from Zurich?”
“The Sultan’s plane is supposed to be here in an hour. Thank God his son was flying in for dinner. I’ll go right back out on it and I should be able to catch the Swissair night flight out of there.
“You know what pisses me off most? My mother never goes to fashion shows. Never. It’s her goddamned friend Mary Rice who always coerces her into doing that dumb foofy women’s shit. But Mary Rice didn’t get hit by an arrow. Oh no! She got a good story to tell the girls at coffee klatsch. And they’ll all be listening sympathetically but laughing like hell inside. Damn her!”
I remembered the man who’d died in the car wash. This fate was even more ignominious.
“Let’s get Mary Rice with killer bees.”
Fanny frowned at me, a pink bra in her hand.
“Look, when I get back to L.A., we’ll go down to Texas and smuggle some killer bees up from there, bring ’em over to Mary’s house and make sure they sting her. Then your mother’ll be one up.”
“You’re nuts, Harry. Hand me those shoes.
“I hate this! I love my mother but I want to go to Saru. I’ve always wanted to go to Saru! Did you know some people think that’s where Christ went when he disappeared for those years in the middle of his life? Some say Saru and others India. Damn it!”
While packing, Fanny told me facts and stories about Saru. I often forgot ho
w thorough a person she was, both personally and professionally. Invited on this trip, she’d gone out and read every bit she could find on the country.
“Do I have everything?” She stood still and surveyed the room. “The most important thing to know, Harry, is how wonderfully this Sultan has done since he took power. Remember how he joked one day about his enemies there? Well, the enemy happens to be his brother, a guy named Cthulu. The Sultan downplayed it, but this Cthulu is one scary number. When their father the old Sultan died twenty years ago, there was a power struggle in the family. A third brother, Khaled, was supposed to take over, but Cthulu killed him. Rumor also has it he then ate part of Khaled’s body afterward to gain his strength.”
Fanny made a rueful face and shook a finger at me. “If you’d done your homework, you’d know all this.”
“I’m going there to design a building, honey, not study cannibalism. But you’re right. I’m sure glad you’re telling me. How did the Sultan defeat his charming brother?”
“That’s where the plot thickens. The official history says our man was much more popular and thus able to get together more people and firepower. But the unofficial word is that he had a prophetic dream—a dog came in a dream and told him everything that was about to happen, so he was ready for Cthulu when the time came.”
“Ah, another reason why he wants to build his dog museum. Who told you about that?”
“His son.” She picked up her suitcase and rolled it to the door.
“How come the Prince would tell you but the Sultan wouldn’t?”
Certain moments pass in silence which are suddenly split by a lightning bolt of realization. Snapppp—its fatal white electricity shoots down and across you, into the earth.
Knowing a big mean revelation was at hand, I sat on a chair and said quietly, “Tell me about you and Prince Hassan, Fanny.” Click click click—things started coming clear. “Tell me why they invited you on this trip and why the Prince ‘just decided’ to come over for dinner with us tonight.”
Hands on hips, she faced me square on. “Don’t threaten me with your questions, Harry! I got enough to think about. Tell you? Okay. Because he’s my other lover. You want to hear that? You want to know it? Now you do! Because I met him in L.A. and we got along beautifully. And because I’m getting tired of being treated shitty by you. Did you think it was going to go on like this forever? Calling me into the game only when you think it’s time for me? Forget it! I’m no specialty team player, Harry: I don’t just return kickoffs. I want to play the whole time, Coach. You want your Claire and eat Fanny too. Well, fuck you, you can’t. Or rather you can, but so can I.
“I have to go.”
Would you care to know how many curtains there were in that Viennese hotel room? How many water glasses in the bathroom? Wooden hangers, as opposed to metal, in the closet? I counted them all. After Fanny left I sat on the bed, staring at the floor, trying out the word “cuckold” in my mind. But that term applied essentially to married men: I wasn’t. Plus I had a lover too. ZZZZ—static and contradictions were building in my head at an alarming rate—enough to make me swear at myself and stand up.
“There’s nothing to make your desire for them soar more than to hear they’re fucking someone else,” I said aloud.
At the window I pulled a curtain aside and tried to catch a glimpse of the hotel entrance. Was there a limousine with diplomatic plates waiting down there, or an erection-red Ferrari driven by her royal lover?
I’d never met Prince Hassan. The Sultan spoke of his oldest son in glowing, albeit vague terms. I knew he’d gone to school in America and remembered a magazine article on the world’s most eligible bachelors with him in a photo next to some blond French poodle with wowie cleavage at Cannes or Forte Dei Marmi.
From the window I stalked purposely into the bathroom but with nothing to do once there, I began counting again—two water glasses, four fat towels, and a partridge in a pear tree.
“Screw this!” Acting the hurt brat, I’d refused to go downstairs with Fanny when she left (“Do you honestly think I’m going to carry your bag down to him?”), but now if I hurried—
I saw him almost as soon as I stepped out of the elevator into the lobby. Sitting near the reception desk smoking a cigarette, he looked more like a fifteen-year-old skateboarder from Laguna Beach than Crown Prince of Saru. In his late twenties, wearing faded jeans, a black Purdue Boilermakers sweatshirt, and high-top basketball sneakers that were a cartoon of color, flashy arrows, lines, and zigzags. The outfit both reassured and annoyed me. This was royalty? And the man Fanny chose to share breath with? Hmm.
No Fanny in sight. Flamethrower that I am, I decided to go head-on and walked over. “Prince Hassan?”
He looked up from his cigarette and made a small amused smile. “Yes?”
“I’m Harry Radcliffe. Where’s Fanny?”
“She left for the airport in my car.”
“You didn’t go with her?” I said with a sneer and heavy eye contact. I know what you’ve been doing to my girl, motherfucker.
“No. My father wanted me to take you to dinner, and what the Sultan says, goes.”
Wimp! Weenie! Daddy’s boy! No balls, huh? You let your father boss you around like that? All galloped across my mind as splendid things to say, but they were the jabs of a man with a kicked ass. A loser’s nyah nyah when we both knew he had Fanny and the advantage. For the moment.
“She told me about the two of you.”
An ash fell on his knee. He flicked it off with a quick finger. “Radcliffe, would you like to hear what Fanny said when I asked her to leave you? ‘Harry’s a selfish bastard, but he never stops coming at you. He’s like a fly that keeps buzzing around my face.’
“Imagine being me: The woman I want prefers you, a fly, to me, a prince. To make it worse, my father insists you build his museum.” Stabbing the cigarette out in a nearby ashtray, he watched the embers burn down and out. “After Fanny and I first slept together, I spent two days seriously considering having you murdered, but then a frightening thought came to me: What if you are an afrit?”
“What’s that?” I sat down across from him and took a cigarette out of his pack. “May I?”
“Please, be my guest. May you die of lung cancer.
“An afrit is a very dangerous jinn. Do you know what that is? Al-Qaswini says that ‘the jinn are aerial animals, with transparent bodies, which can assume various forms. At first they may show themselves as clouds or as huge undefined pillars; when their form becomes condensed, they become visible, perhaps in the bulk of a man, a jackal, a wolf, a lion, a scorpion or a snake.
“‘Jinn often attain the lower heavens, where they overhear the conversations of angels about future events. This enables them to help wizards and soothsayers.’ But Radcliffe, most important, ‘certain scholars attribute to them the building of the Pyramids or, under the order of Solomon, the great Temple of Jerusalem’! What do you think of that? Everywhere I turn now, you are there to annoy me and make me crazy.” He stuck a finger up in the air—EUREKA! “But you may be doing it all on purpose! You’re listening while I explain what a jinn is, but inside you’re laughing and thinking up your next torture.
“My father can’t afford to build this museum. He is being attacked on all sides by his enemies and should use the money for weapons and training a stronger army. I’ve tried to talk him out of it for years but he is stubborn and believes he is doing God’s work. All right, build the madness, but get a Saruvian to do it, or at least an Arab. No, he wants a California architect who is only recently out of the insane asylum.”
I sat back in the seat, smiling. The cigarette, although I hadn’t smoked in five years, tasted delicious. The Prince might’ve put horns on my head, but the tone of his voice and vehemence of his gestures said Harry Radcliffe was a big pain in his ass, and I hadn’t even begun to bite.
“I suggest we begin by hating each other and hope it goes downhill from there. I don’t want to like you, Radcliff
e. I don’t even want to know you. If you are an afrit you have great power, but know I’ll fight as hard as I can. If you’re not one, I still might have you killed.
“Is that fair? Do you understand?”
“I do.”
He stood up. “No, I don’t want to shake hands with you. There’s only one other thing I want to say.”
I got up slowly and took a final drag on the cigarette. “What’s that, Prince?”
He spoke over his shoulder. “Fanny says I’m a much better fuck than you.” A couple nearby whipped their heads around and looked at him with shocked, open mouths.
It almost shut me up, but not quite. “That’s because fucking is for mortals, Your Highness. Remember, I might be a pommes frites.”
He stopped, turned. “Afrit! Are you stupid, or only testing me? How can I tell?”
At the Restaurant Bazz’af, Hassan told me to have a dish which, when translated into English, was Soft Bells and Hard Flowers. It was delicious. He ordered fish sticks and a Coke. When I asked why he was having that, he said it was none of my business.
We ate in silence. Savoring each bite, I tried to figure out what was in my meal. Some kind of nut, some kind of smoked meat.
“Do you believe in magic, Radcliffe?”
I looked at him and chewed.
“I don’t care if you do! I’m only trying to make conversation.”
“Yes, I believe.”
“Fanny does not, although I know she was there when your dog saved my father from the earthquake. I visited that dog today at our embassy. He is very ugly.”
“‘That dog’ is also very magical, Prince. I’d be careful what I said in front of him.”
“You see? This is another reason why I think you’re an afrit. You have bewitched both my father and Fanny, and this ugly magical dog is further proof of who you are. I’ll say this, though, you’ll have competition in Saru! There is so much magic there, you snap your fingers and ten magicians appear.”
I put the last bite of food in my mouth, dabbed my lips with the napkin, and smiled. “Maybe I know that already.”
Outside the Dog Museum Page 11
