Let's All Kill Constance

by Ray Douglas Bradbury

  "One last thing." I took a dozen steps and stopped.

  "Don't tell me." Henry inhaled. "You're fresh out of floor."

  I looked down at a round manhole. The darkness sank deep with no end.

  "Sounds empty." Henry inhaled. "A freshwater storm drain!"

  "Beneath the back of the theater, yes."

  "Damn!"

  For suddenly a flood of water gushed below, a clean tide smelling of green hills and cool air.

  "It rained a few hours ago. Takes an hour for the runoff to get here. Most of the year the storm drain's dry. Now it'll run a foot deep, all the way to the ocean."

  I bent to feel the inside of the hole. Rungs.

  Henry guessed. "You're not climbing down?"

  "It's dark and cold and a long way to the sea, and if you're careless, drowning."

  Henry sniffed.

  "You figure she came up this way to check those names?"

  "Or came in through the theater and climbed down."

  "Hey! More water!"

  A gust of wind, very cold, sighed up out of the hole.

  "Jesus Christ!" I yelled.

  "What?"

  I stared. "I saw something!"

  "If you didn't, I did!" The flashlight beam arced crazily around the mirrored room as Henry grabbed my elbow and lurched away from the hole.

  "We going the right way?"

  "Christ," I said. "I hope so!"

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  OUR taxi dropped us at the curb behind Rattigan's big white Arabian fortress.

  "Lordy," said Henry, and added, "That meter ran overtime. From now on, I'm driving."

  Crumley was not out front by the shoreline but farther up by the pool with half a dozen full martini glasses, two already empty. He gazed at these fondly and explained.

  "I'm ready now for your numbskull routines. I am fortified. Hello, Henry. Henry, aren't you sorry you left New Orleans for this can-o'-worms factory?"

  "One of those drinks smells like vodka, right? That will make me not sorry."

  I handed a glass to Henry and took one for myself in haste while Crumley scowled at my silence.

  "Okay, spill it," he said.

  I told him about Grauman's and the basement dressing-room mirrors. "Plus," I said, "I been making lists."

  "Hold it. You've sobered me up," said Crumley. "Let me kill another." He lifted a glass in mock salute. "Okay, read your lists."

  "The grocery boy on Mount Lowe. The neighbors of Queen Califia in Bunker Hill. Father Rattigan's secretary. The film projectionist on high in Grauman's Chinese."

  Henry cut in. "That gent in Grauman's…?"

  I described Rustler, stashed among stacks of old film with the pictures on the walls of all the sad women with all the lost names.

  Henry mused. "Hey now. Did you make a list of those ladies in the pictures up on high?"

  I read off my pad: "Mabel. Helen. Marilee. Annabel. Hazel. Betty Lou. Clara. Pollyanna…"

  Crumley sat up straight.

  "You got a list of those names on the cellar mirrors?"

  I shook my head. "It was dark down there."

  "Easy as pie." Henry tapped his head. "Hazel. Annabel. Grace. Pollyanna. Helen. Marilee. Betty Lou. Detect the similarities?"

  As the names rolled from Henry's mouth, I ticked them off my penciled list. A perfect match.

  At which point there was a lightning strike. The lights failed. We could hear the surf roar in to salt Rattigan's beach as pale moonlight silvered the shore. Thunder clamored. It gave me time to think and say, "Rattigan's got a complete run of Academy annuals with all the pictures, ages, roles.

  Her competition is in every one. It ties in with all those upstairs pictures, downstairs mirrors, right?"

  Thunder echoed, the lights blinked back on.

  We went inside and got out the Academy books.

  "Look for the mirror names," Henry advised.

  "I know, I know," Crumley growled.

  In half an hour we had thirty years of Academy annuals paper-clipped.

  "Ethel, Carlotta, Suzanne, Clara, Helen," I read.

  "Constance can't hate them all."

  "Chances are," said Henry. "What else she got in her bookshelves?"

  An hour later we found some actors' reference albums, crammed with pictures, going way back. One with a legend up front giving the name J. Wallington Bradford. I read, "A.k.a. Tallullah Two, a.k.a. Swanson, Gloria in Excelsius, a.k.a. Funny Face."

  A quiet bell sounded in the back of my head.

  I opened another album and read: "Alberto Quickly. Fast flimflammery. Plays all parts Great Expectations. Acts A Christinas Carol, Christmas Carol's Scrooge, Marley, Three Christmases, Fezziwig. Saint Joan, unburned. Alberto Quickly. Quick Change. Born: 1895. At liberty." The quiet bell sounded again.

  "Hold on," I said. I felt myself murmuring. "Pictures, mirrors, and now here's a guy, Bradford, who is all women. And then here's another guy, Quickly, who is all men, every man." The bell faded. "Did Constance know them?"

  Like a sleepwalker I moved to pick up Constance's Book of the Dead.

  There it was.

  Bradford on one page, near the beginning of the book.

  Quickly toward the end.

  "But no red circles around the names. So? Are they alive or dead?"

  "Why not go see," said Henry.

  Lightning struck. The lights failed again.

  In the dark, Henry said, "Don't tell me, let me guess."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  crumley dropped us by the old apartment house and ran.

  "Now," said Henry, "what are we doing here?"

  Inside, I glanced up the three-story stairwell. "Searching for Marlene Dietrich alive and well."

  Before I even knocked on the door, I caught the perfume through the paneling. I sneezed and knocked.

  "Dear God," a voice said. "I haven't a thing to wear."

  The door opened and a billowing butterfly kimono stood there with a Victorian relic inside, squirming to make it fit. It stopped squirming and tape-measured my shoes, my knee bones, my shoulders, and finally eye to eye.

  "J. Wallington Bradford?" I cleared my throat. "Mr. Bradford?"

  "Who's asking?" the creature in the doorway wondered. "Jesus. Come in. Come in. And who's this other thing?"

  "I'm the boy's Seeing Eye." Henry probed the air. "That a chair? Think I'll sit. Sure smells strong in here. Nothing personal."

  The kimono let loose a blizzard of confetti in its lungs and waved us in with a grand sweep of its sleeve. "I hope it isn't business that brings you here. Sit, while Mama pours gin. Big or small?"

  Before I could speak he had filled a big glass with clear Bombay blue crystal liquor. I sipped.

  "That's a good boy," said Bradford. "You staying five minutes or the night? My God, he's blushing. Is this about Rattigan?"

  "Rattigan!" I cried. "How'd you know?"

  "She was here and gone. Every few years Rattigan vanishes. It's how she divorces a new husband, an old lover, God, or her astrologer. ?Quien sabe?"

  I nodded, stunned.

  "She came years ago, asking how I did it. All those people, she said. Constance, I said, how many cat lives have you had? A thousand? Don't ask which flue I slid up, which bed I ran under!"

  "But— "

  "No buts. Mother Earth knows all. Constance invented Freud, tossed in Jung and Darwin. Did you know she bedded all six studio heads? It was a bet she took at the Brown Derby from Harry Cohn. Til harvest Jack Warner and his brothers till their ears fly off,' she said.

  "All in the same year? Cohn yelled.

  "'Year, hell,' said Constance. 'In one week, with Sunday off!'

  " 'I bet a hundred you can't!' said Cohn.

  " 'Make it a thousand and you're on,' said Constance.

  "Harry Cohn glared. 'What will you put up as collateral?'

  " 'Me,' said Rattigan.

  " 'Shake!' cried Cohn.

  "She shook all over. 'Hold these!' She flung her
pants in Cohn's lap and fled."

  Breathless, J. W. Bradford raved on: "Did you know that once I was Judy Garland. Then Joan Crawford, then Bette Davis. I was Bankhead in Lifeboat. A real nightwalker, late sleeper, bed buster. You need help finding Rattigan? I can list her discards. Some fell in my lap. You want to say something?"

  "Is there a real you in there, somewhere?" I said.

  "God, I hope not. How terrible to find me in bed with just me! Rattigan. You tried her beach house? Artie Shaw stayed there after Caruso. She got him when she was thirteen. Drove him up the La Scala wall. When she topped off Lawrence Tibbett, he sang soprano. They had a squad car of paramedics by her joint, 1936, when she mouth-to-mouth breathed Thalberg into Forest Lawn. You okay?"

  "I just got hit by a ten-ton safe."

  "Take more gin. Tallulah says so."

  "You'll help us find Constance?"

  "No one else can. I loaned her my whole wardrobe a million years back. Gave her my makeup-box rejects, taught her perfumes, how to surprise her eyebrows, lift her ears, shorten her upper lip, widen her smile, flatten or bulge her bosom, walk taller than tall, or fall short. I was a mirror she posed in front of, watching me stare, blink, pretend remorse, alert, despair, delight, sing in a gilded cage, power-dive into pajamas, breaststroke out. She trotted in a high school pony, swarmed out a nest of ballerinas. By the time she left, she was someone else. That was ten thousand vaudevilles ago. And all so she could compete with other actresses for other roles in films, or maybe steal their men.

  "Okay, doll," J. W. Bradford said as he scribbled on a pad. "Here's more names of those who loved Constance. Nine producers, ten directors, forty-five at-liberty actors, and a partridge in a pear tree."

  "Did she never hold still?"

  "Ever see those seals in Rattigan's surf? Slick as oil, quicker than quicksilver, hit the bed like lightning. Number one in the L.A. Marathon long before there was one. Could have been board chairman at three studios, but wound up as Vampira, Madame Defarge, and Dolley Madison. There!"

  "Thanks." I scanned a list that would have filled the Bastille twice over.

  "Now if you'll forgive, Mata Hari must change.1"

  Zip! He flourished his kimono.

  Zip! I grabbed Henry's arm and we flew down the stairs and out onto the street.

  "Hey!" someone cried. "Wait!"

  I turned and looked up. Jean Harlow-Dietrich-Colbert leaned over the top rail, smiling wildly, waiting for Von Stroheim to shoot her close-up.

  "There's someone else like me, even crazier. Quickly!"

  "Alberto Quickly!" I called. "He's alive?"

  "He does one nightclub a week, then hospital rehabs. When they sew him up he repeats his farewell tour. Damn fool, in his nineties, said he found Constance (a lie!) on Route 66 when he was, my God, forty, fifty. Driving across country, he picked up this tomboy with suspicious breasts. Made her a star while his act faded. Runs a theatre intime in his parlor. Charges folks on Friday nights to see Caesar stabbed, Antony on his sword, Cleopatra bitten." A piece of paper sailed down. "There! And something else!"

  "What?"

  "Connie, Helen, Annette, Roberta. Constance didn't show up for more lessons in changing lives! Last week. She was supposed to come back and didn't."

  "I don't understand," I yelled.

  "I had taught her things, dark, light, loud, soft, wild, quiet, some sort of new role she was looking for. She was coming back to me to learn some more. She wanted to be a new person. Maybe like her old self. But I didn't know how to help. Role-playing, Jesus, how do you get actors unhooked? W. C. Fields learned to be W. C. Fields in vaudeville. He never escaped those handcuffs. So here was Constance saying 'Help me to find a new self.' I said, 'Constance, I don't know how to help you. Get a priest to put a new skin around you.' "

  A great bell rang in my head. Priest.

  "Well, that's it," said Jean Harlow. "Did I confuse but amuse? Ciao." Bradford vanished.

  "Quickly," I gasped. "Let's call Crumley."

  "What's the rush?" said Henry.

  "No, no, Alberto Quickly, the rabbit in and out of the hat, Hamlet's father's ghost."

  "Oh, him," said Henry.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  we dropped Henry off at some nice soft-spoken relatives on Central Avenue and then Crumley delivered me to the home of Alberto Quickly, ninety-nine years old, Rattigan's first "teacher."

  "The first," he said. "The Bertillion expert, who fingerprinted Constance toenail to elbow to knees."

  In vaudeville he had been known as Mr. Metaphor, who acted all of Old Curiosity Shop or every last one of Fagin's brood in Oliver Twist as audiences cried "Mercy." He was more morbid than Marley, paler than Poe.

  Quickly, the critics cried, orchestrated requiems to flood the Thames with mournful tides when, as Tosca, he flung himself into forever.

  All this Metaphor-Quickly said glibly, happily, as I sat in his small theater-stage parlor. I waved away the box of Kleenex he offered before he treated me to his Lucia, mad again.

  "Stop," I cried at last. "What about Constance?"

  "Hardly knew her," he said, "but I did know Katy Kelle-her, 1926, my first Pygmalion child!"

  "Pygmalion?" I murmured, pieces falling into place.

  "Do you recall Molly Callahan, 1927?"

  "Faintly."

  "How about Polly Riordan, 1926?"

  "Almost."

  "Katy was Alice in Wonderland, Molly was Molly in Mad Molly O'Day. Polly was Polly of the Circus, same year. Katy, Molly, Polly-all Constance. A whirlwind blew in nameless, blew out famous. I taught her to shout, 'I'm Polly!' Producers cried, 'You are, you are!' The film was shot in six days. Then I revamped her to jump down Leo the Lion's throat. 'I'm Pretty Katy Kelly.' 'You are!' the lion pride yelled. Her second film done in four days! Kelly vanished, then Molly climbed the RKO radio tower. So it was Molly, Polly, Dolly, Sally, Gerty, Connie… and Constance rabbiting studio lawns!"

  "No one ever guessed Constance played more than one part over the years?"

  "Only I, Alberto Quickly, helped her to grab onto fame, fortune, and fondling! The golden greased pig! No one ever knew that some of the marquee names on Hollywood Boulevard were names Constance made up or borrowed. Could be she shuffled her tootsies in Grauman's forecourt with four different shoe sizes!"

  "And where is Molly, Polly, Sally, Gerty, Connie, now?"

  "Even she doesn't know. Here are six different addresses in twelve different summers. Maybe she drowned in deep grass. Years are a great hiding place. God hides you. Duck! What's my name?!"

  He did a flip-flop cartwheel across the room. I heard his old bones scream.

  "Ta— ta!" He grinned in pain.

  "Mr. Metaphor!"

  "You got it!" He dropped cold.

  I leaned over him, terrified. He popped one eye wide.

  "That was a close one. Prop me up. I scared Rattigan so, she ran." He babbled on. "It was only fitting. After all, I'm Fagin, Marley, Scrooge, Hamlet, Quickly. Someone like me had to be curious and try to figure out what year she lived in, or if she ever existed at all. The older I got, the more jealous I became of the gain and loss of Constance. I waited too long over the years, just as Hamlet waited too long to slay the foul fiend who killed his father's ghost! Ophelia and Caesar begged for slaughter. The memory of Constance summoned bull stampedes. So when I turned ninety all my voices raved for revenge. Like a damn fool I sent her the Book of the Dead. So it must be that Constance ran from my madness.

  "Call an ambulance," Mr. Metaphor added. "I've got two broken tibias and a herniated groin. Did you write all that down?"

  "Later."

  "Don't wait! Write it. An hour from now I'll be in Valhalla harassing the statues. Where's my bed?"

  I put him to bed.

  "Slow down," I said. "That Book of the Dead, you say you sent that to Constance?"

  "There was a half-ass semi-garage sale of actors' junk at the Film Ladies' League last month. I got some Fairbanks photos and a Crosb
y song sheet, and there, by God, was Rattigan's thrown-away phonebook stuffed with all her cat-litter-box lovers. My God, I was the snake in the garden. Grabbed onto damnation for a dime, eyed the lists, drank the poison. Why not give Rattigan bad dreams? Tracked her down, dropped the Dead Book, ran. Did it scare the stuffings out of her?"

  "Oh, my God, it did." I stared into Mr. Quickly's grinning face. "Then you didn't have anything to do with that poor old soul lost on Mount Lowe?"

  "Constance's first sucker? That stupid old guy is dead?"

  "Newspapers killed him."

  "Critics do that."

  "No. Tons of old Tribunes fell on him."

  "One way or the other, they kill."

  "And you didn't harass Queen Califia?"

  "That old Noah's Ark, two of every kind of lie in her. High/low, hot/cold. Camel dung and horse puckies. She told Constance where to go and she went. She dead, too?"

  "Fell downstairs."

  "I didn't trip her."

  "Then there was the priest…"

  "Her brother? Same mistake. Califia told her where to go. But he, my God, told her to go to hell. So Constance went. What killed him? God, everyone's dead!"

  "She yelled at him. Or I think it was she." "You know what she yelled?"

  "No."

  "I do."

  "You?"

  "Middle of the night, last night, I heard voices, thought I was dreaming. That voice, it had to be her. Maybe what she yelled at that poor damn priest, she yelled at me. Wanna hear?"

  "I'm waiting."

  "Oh, yeah. She yelled, 'How do I get back, where's the next place, how do I get back?'"

  "Get back to where?"

  There was a quick spin of thought behind Quickly's eyelids. He snorted.

  "Her brother told her where to go and she went. And at last she said, 'I'm lost, show me the way.' Constance wants to be found. That it?"

  "Yes. No. God, I don't know."

  "Neither does she. Maybe that's why she yelled. But my house is built of bricks. It never fell."

  "Others did."

  "Her old husband, Califia, her brother?"

  "It's a long story."

  "And you have miles to go before you sleep?"