Quicker Than the Eye (3 page)

"Nineteen ninety-four?"

'Six-thirty a.m. February fifth, 1994."

'Then that's the title of our book. Or why not

Zaharoff 
add Richter for the earthquake Richter scale at Cal-Tech. 
Zaharoff/Richter Mark V? 
Okay?"

"Okay."

The doors slammed. The motor roared.

" 
Do
 
we go home?" "Go fast. Jesus. Fast." They went.

 Fast.

Remember? Why, how could they forget? Although they knew him for only a little while, years later his name would arise and they would smile or even laugh and reach out to hold hands, remembering.

Sascha. What a tender, witty comrade, what a sly, hidden individual, what a child of talent; teller of tales, bon vivant, late-night companion, ever-present illumination on foggy noons.

Sascha!

He, whom they had never seen, to whom they spoke often at three a.m. in their small bedroom, away from friends who might roll their eyeballs under their lids, doubting their sanity, hearing his name.

Well, then, who and what was Sascha, and where did they meet or perhaps only dream him, and who were 
they?

Quickly: they were Maggie and Douglas Spaulding and they lived by the loud sea and the

warm sand and the rickety bridges over the almost dead canals of Venice, California. Though lacking money in the bank or Goodwill furniture in their tiny two-room apartment, they were incredibly happy. He was a writer, and she worked to support him while he finished the great American novel.

Their routine was: she would arrive home each night from downtown Los Angeles and he would have hamburgers waiting or they would walk down the beach to eat hot dogs, spend ten or twenty cents in the Penny Arcade, go home, make love, go to sleep, and repeat the whole wondrous routine the next night: hot dogs, Penny Arcade, love, sleep, work, etc. It was all glorious in that year of being very young and in love; therefore it would go on forever

Until 
he 
appeared.

The nameless one. For then he had no name. He had threatened to arrive a few months after their marriage to destroy their economy and scare off the novel, but then he had melted away, leaving only his echo of a threat.

But now the true collision loomed.

One night over a ham omelet with a bottle of cheap red and the conversation loping quietly, leaning on the card table and promising each other grander and more ebullient futures, Maggie suddenly said, "I feel faint."

"What?" said Douglas Spaulding.

"I've felt funny all day. And I was sick, a little bit, this morning."

"Oh, my God." He rose and came around the card table and took her head in his hands and pressed her brow against his side, and looked down at the beautiful part in her hair, suddenly smiling.

"Well, now," he said, "don't tell me that Sascha is back?"

"Sascha! Who's 
that?"

"When he arrives, he'll 
tell 
us."

"Where did that name 
come 
from?"

"Don't know. It's been in my mind all year."

"Sascha?" She pressed his hands to her cheeks, laughing. "Sascha!"

"Call the doctor tomorrow," he said.

"The doctor says Sascha has moved in for light housekeeping," she said over the phone the next day.

"Great!" He stopped. "I 
guess." 
He considered their bank deposits. "No. 
First 
thoughts count. Great! When do we meet the Martian invader?"

"October. He's infinitesimal now, tiny, I can barely hear his voice. But now that he has a name, I hear it. He promises to grow, if we take care."

"The Fabulous Invalid! Shall I stock up on carrots, spinach, broccoli for 
what 
date?"

"Halloween."

"Impossible!"

"True!"

"People will claim we planned him and my vampire book to arrive that week, things that go bump and cry in the night."

"Oh, Sascha will surely do 
that! Happy?"

"Frightened, yes, but happy, Lord, yes. Come home, Mrs. Rabbit, and bring 
him 
along!"

It must be explained that Maggie and Douglas Spaulding were best described as crazed roman-tics. Long before the interior christening of Sascha, they, loving Laurel and Hardy, had called each other Stan and Ollie. The machines, the dustbusters and can openers around the apartment, had names, as did various parts of their anatomy, revealed to no one.

So Sascha, as an entity, a presence growing toward friendship, was not unusual. And when he actually began to speak up, they were not surprised. The gentle demands of their marriage, with love as currency instead of cash, made it inevitable.

Someday, they said, if they owned a car, it too would be named.

They spoke on that and a dozen score of things late at night. When hyperventilating about life, they propped themselves up on their pillows as if the future might happen right 
now. 
They waited, anticipating, in seance, for the silent small offspring to speak his first words before dawn.

"I love our lives," said Maggie, lying there, "all the games. I hope it never stops. You're not like other men, who drink beer and talk poker. Dear God, I wonder, how many other marriages play like us?"

"No one, nowhere. Remember?"

"What?"

He lay back to trace his memory on the ceiling. "The day we were married-"

"Yes!"

"Our friends driving and dropping us off here and we walked down to the drugstore by the pier and bought a tube of toothpaste and two toothbrushes, big bucks, for our honeymoon . . . ? One red toothbrush, one green, to decorate our empty bathroom. And on the way back along the beach, holding hands, suddenly, behind us, two little girls and a boy followed us and sang:

"Happy marriage day to you, Happy marriage day to you.

Happy marriage day, happy marriage day, Happy marriage day to you...

She sang it now, quietly. He chimed in, remembering how they had blushed with pleasure at the children's voices, but walked on, feeling ridiculous but happy and wonderful.

"How did they guess? Did we 
look 
married?"

"It wasn't our clothes! Our faces, don't you think? Smiles that made our jaws ache. We were exploding. They got the concussion."

"Those dear children. I can still hear their voices."

"And so here we are, seventeen months later." He put his arm around her and gazed at their future on the dark ceiling.

"'And here 
I 
am," a voice murmured.

"Who?" Douglas said.

"Me," the voice whispered. "Sascha."

Douglas looked down at his wife's mouth, which had barely trembled.

"So, at last, you've decided to speak?" said Douglas.

"Yes," came the whisper.

"We wondered," said Douglas, "when we would hear from you." He squeezed his wife gently.

"It's time," the voice murmured. "So here I am."

"Welcome, Sascha," both said.

"Why didn't you talk sooner?" asked Douglas Spaulding.

"I wasn't sure that you 
liked 
me," the voice whispered.

"Why would you think 
that?"

"First I was, then I wasn't. Once I was only a name. Remember, last year, I was ready to come and stay. Scared you."

"We were broke," said Douglas quietly. "And nervous."

"What's so scary about life?" said Sascha. Maggie's lips twitched. "It's that 
other 
thing. 
Not 
being, ever. Not being wanted."

"On the contrary." Douglas Spaulding moved down on his pillow so he could watch his wife's profile, her eyes shut, but her mouth breathing softly. "We love you. But last year it was bad timing. Understand?"

"No," whispered Sascha. "I only understand

you didn't want me. And now you 
do. 
I should leave."

"But you just 
got 
here!"

"Here I go, anyway."

Don't, Sascha! Stay!"

"Good-bye." The small voice faded. "Oh, good-bye."

And then silence. Maggie opened her eyes with "Sascha's gone," she said.

"He 
can't 
be!" The room was still.

"Can't 
be," he said. "It's only a game."

"More than a game. Oh, God, I feel cold. Hold me."

He moved to hug her.

"It's okay."

"No. I had the funniest feeling just now, as if he were real."

"He 
is. 
He's 
not 
gone."

"Unless we do something. Help me."

"Help?" He held her even tighter, then shut his eyes, and at last called:

"Sascha?"

Silence.

"I know you're there. You can't hide."

His hand moved to where Sascha might be.

"Listen. Say something. Don't scare us, Sascha. We
 
don't want to be scared or scare you. We need each other. We three against the world. Sascha?"

Silence
.

"Well?" whispered Douglas.

      
Maggie breathed in and out.

They waited.

"Yes?"

There was a soft flutter, the merest exhalation on the night air.

"Yes."

"You're back!" both cried.

Another silence.

"Welcome?" asked Sascha.

"Welcome!" both said.

And that night passed and the next day and the night and day after that, until there were many days, but especially midnights when he dared to declare himself, pipe opinions, grow stronger and firmer and longer in half-heard declarations, as they lay in anticipatory awareness, now she moving her lips, now he taking over, both open as warm, live ventriloquists' mouthpieces. The small voice shifted from one tongue to the other, with soft bouts of laughter at how ridiculous but loving it all seemed, never knowing what Sascha might say next, but letting him speak on until dawn and a smiling sleep.

"What's this about Halloween?" he asked, somewhere in the sixth month.

"Halloween?" both wondered.

"Isn't that a death holiday?" Sascha murmured.

"Well, yes . .

"I'm not sure I want to be born on a night

  like that."

"Well, what night 
would 
you like to be born on?"

Silence as Sascha floated a while.

"Guy Fawkes," he finally whispered.

"Guy Fawkes??!!"

"That's mainly fireworks, gunpowder plots, Houses of Parliament, yes? 
Please to remember the fifth of November?"

"Do you think you could wait until then?"

"I could try. I don't think I want to start out
 
with skulls and bones. Gunpowder's more like it. I could write about that."

"Will you be a writer, then?"

"Get me a typewriter and a ream of paper."

"And keep us awake with the 
typing?"

"Pen, pencil, and pad, then?"

"Done!"

So it was agreed and the nights passed into weeks and the weeks leaned from summer into the first days of autumn and his voice grew stronger,

as did the sound of his heart and the small commotions of his limbs. Sometimes as Maggie slept, his voice would stir her awake and she would reach up to touch her mouth, where the surprise of his dreaming came forth.

"There, there, Sascha. Rest now. Sleep."

"Sleep," he whispered drowsily, "sleep." And faded away.

"Pork chops, please, for supper."

"No pickles with ice cream?" both said, almost at once.

"Pork chops," he said, and more days passed and more dawns arose and he said: "Hamburgers!"

"For 
breakfast?"

"With onions," he said.

October stood still for one day and then...

Halloween departed.

"Thanks," said Sascha, "for helping me past that. What's up ahead in five nights?"

"Guy Fawkes!"

"Ah, yes!" he cried.

And at one minute after midnight five days later, Maggie got up, wandered to the bathroom, and wandered back, stunned.

"Dear," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Douglas Spaulding turned over, half awake. "Yes?"

"What day is it?" whispered Sascha.

"Guy Fawkes, at last. So?"

"I don't feel well," said Sascha. "Or, no, I feel fine. Full of pep. Ready to go. It's time to say good-bye. Or is it hello? What 
do 
I mean?"

"Spit it out."

"Are there neighbors who said, no matter when, they'd take us to the hospital?"

''Yes.''

"Call the neighbors," said Sascha.

They called the neighbors.

At the hospital, Douglas kissed his and listened.

"It's been nice," said Sascha.

"Only the best."

"We won't talk again. Good-bye,"

said Sascha.

"Good-bye," both said.

At dawn there was a small clear cry somewhere. Not long after, Douglas entered his wife's hospital room. She looked at him and said

 "Sascha's gone."

"I know," he said quietly.

"But he left word and someone else is here.

Look."

He approached the bed as she pulled back a coverlet.

"Well, I'll be damned."

He looked down at a small pink face and eyes that for a brief moment flickered bright blue and

then shut.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"Your daughter. Meet Alexandra."

"Hello, Alexandra," he said.

"And do you know what the nickname for Alexandra is?" she said.

"What?''

"Sascha," she said.

He touched the small cheek very gently.

"Hello, Sascha," he said.

ANOTHER FINE MESS 

The
 
sounds began in the middle of summer in the middle of the night.

Bella Winters sat up in bed about three a.m. and listened and then lay back down. Ten minutes later she heard the sounds again, out in the night, down the hill.

Bella Winters lived in a first-floor apartment on top of Vendome Heights, near Effie Street in Los Angeles, and had lived there now for only a few days, so it was all new to her, this old house on an old street with an old staircase, made of concrete, climbing steeply straight up from the low-lands below, one hundred and twenty steps, count them. And right now ...

"Someone's on the steps," said Bella to herself.

"What?" said her husband, Sam, in his sleep.

"There are some men out on the steps," said Bella. "Talking, yelling, not fighting, but almost. I heard them last night, too, and the night before, but . .

"What?" Sam muttered.

"Shh, go to sleep. I'll look."

She got out of bed in the dark and went to the window,
 
and yes, two men were indeed talking out there, grunting, groaning, now loud, now soft. And there was another noise, a kind of bumping, sliding, thumping, like a huge object being carted up the hill.

"No one could be moving in at this hour of the night, could they?" asked Bella of the darkness, the window, and herself.

"No," murmured Sam.

"It sounds like . .

"Like what?" asked Sam, fully awake now.

"Like two men moving-"

"Moving what, for God's sake?"

"Moving a piano. Up those steps.''

"At three in the 
morning!?"

"A piano and two men. Just listen."

The husband sat up, blinking, alert.

Far off, in the middle of the hill, there was a kind harping strum, the noise a piano makes when suddenly thumped and its harp strings hum.

"There, did you 
hear?"

"Jesus, you're right. But why would anyone steal-"

"They're not stealing, they're delivering."

"A 
piano?"

"I didn't make the rules, Sam. Go out and ask. No, don’t; I will."

And she wrapped herself in her robe and was out the door and on the sidewalk.

"Bella," Sam whispered fiercely behind the porch screen. "Crazy."

"So what can happen at night to a woman fifty-five, fat, and ugly?" she wondered.

Sam did not answer.

She moved quietly to the rim of the hill. Somewhere down there she could hear the two men wrestling with a huge object. The piano on occasion gave a strumming hum and fell silent. occasionally one of the men yelled or gave orders.

"The voices," said Bella. "I know them from somewhere," she whispered and moved in utter dark on stairs that were only a long pale ribbon going down, as a voice echoed:

"Here's 
another 
fine mess you've got us in." Bella froze. Where have I heard that voice, she wondered, a million 
times!

"Hello," she called.

She moved, counting the steps, and stopped.

And there was no one there.

Suddenly she was very cold. There was nowhere for the strangers to have gone to. The hill was steep and a long way down and a long way up, and they had been burdened with an upright piano, 
hadn't 
they?

How come I know 
upright? 
she thought. I only 
heard. 
But-yes, 
upright! 
Not only that, but inside a box!

She turned slowly and as she went back up the steps, one by one, slowly, slowly, the voices began to sound again, below, as if, disturbed, they had waited for her to go away.

"What 
are 
you doing?" demanded one voice.

"I was just-" said the other.

"Give 
me that!" cried the first voice.

That 
other 
voice, thought Bella, I know that, 
too. 
And I know what's going to be said next!

"Now," said the echo far down the hill in the night, "just don't stand there, 
help 
me!"

"Yes!" 
Bella closed her eyes and swallowed hard and half fell to sit on the steps, getting her breath back as black-and-White pictures flashed in her head. Suddenly it was 1929 and she Was very small, in a theater with dark and light pictures looming above the first row where she sat, transfixed, and then laughing, and then transfixed and laughing again.

She opened her eyes. The two voices were still down there, a faint wrestle and echo in the night, despairing and thumping each other with their hard derby hats.

Zelda, thought Bella Winters. I'll call Zelda. She knows everything. She'll tell me what this is. Zelda, yes!

Inside, she dialed Z and E and L and D and A before she saw what she had done and started over. The phone rang a long while until Zelda's voice, angry with sleep, spoke half way across L.A.

"Zelda, this is Bella!"

"Sam just 
died?"

"No, no, I'm sorry-

" You're 
sorry?"

"Zelda, I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but . . ."

 "Go ahead, be crazy."

"Zelda, in the old days when they made films around L.A., they used lots of places, right? Like Venice, Ocean Park . . . "

"Chaplin did, Langdon did, Harold Lloyd, sure."

"Laurel and Hardy?"

"What?"

"Laurel and Hardy, did 
they 
use lots of locations?"

"Palms, they used Palms lots, Culver City Main Street,' Effie Street."

"Effie 
Street!"

"Don't yell, Bella."

"Did you say 
Effie 
Street?"

"Sure, and God, it's three in the morning!"

"Right at the 
top 
of Effie Street!?"

"Hey, yeah, the stairs. Everyone knows them. That's

where the music box chased Hardy downhill and ran over Him.”

“Sure, Zelda, 
sure! 
Oh, God, Zelda, if you could 
see, 
hear,

what I hear! "

Zelda was suddenly wide awake on the line. "What's

going 
on? You serious?"

"oh, God, yes. On the steps just now, and last night and the night before maybe, I heard, I hear--two men hauling

a--a piano up the hill."

"Someone's pulling your leg!"

"No, no, they're there. I go out and there's nothing. But the steps are haunted, Zelda! One voice says: 'Here's another fine mess you've got us in.' You got to 
hear 
that man's voice!"

"You're drunk and doing this because you know I'm a nut for them."

"No, no. Come, Zelda. Listen. Tell!"

Maybe half an hour later, Bella heard the old tin lizzie rattle up the alley behind the apartments. It was a car Zelda, in her joy at visiting silent-movie theaters, had bought to lug herself around in while she wrote about the past, always the past, and steaming into Cecil B. DeMille's old place or circling Harold Lloyd's nation-state, or cranking and banging around the Universal backlot, paying her respects to the Phantom's opera stage, or sitting on Ma and Pa Kettle's porch chewing a sandwich lunch. That was Zelda, who once wrote in a silent country in a silent time for 
Silver Screen.

Zelda lumbered across the front porch, a huge body with legs as big as the Bernini columns in front of St. Peter's in Rome, and a face like a harvest moon.

On that round face now was suspicion, cynicism, skepticisms, in equal pie-parts. But when she saw Bella's pale stare she cried:

"Belle! "

"You see 
I'm 
not 
lying!" said Bella.

"I see!"

"Keep your voice down, Zelda. Oh, it's scary and strange, terrible and nice. So come on."

And the two women edged along the walk to the rim of the old hill near the old steps in old Hollywood, and suddenly as they moved they felt time take a half turn around them and it was another year, because nothing had changed all the buildings were the way they were in 1928 and the hills beyond like they were in 1926 and the steps, just the, way they were when the cement was poured in 1921.

"Listen, Zelda. 
There!"

And Zelda listened and at first there was only a creaking of wheels down in the dark, like crickets, and then a moan of wood and a hum of piano strings, and then one voice lamenting about this job, and the other voice claiming he had nothing to do with it, and then the thumps as two derby hats fell, and an exasperated voice announced:

"Here's 
another 
fine mess you've got us in."

Zelda, stunned, almost toppled off the hill. She held tight to Bella's arm as tears brimmed in her eyes.

"It's a trick. Someone's got a tape recorder or-"

"No, I checked. Nothing but the steps, Zelda, the steps!"

Tears rolled down Zelda's plump cheeks.

"Oh, God, that 
is 
his voice! I'm the expert, I'm the mad, fanatic, Bella. That's Ollie. And that other voice, Stan! And you're 
not 
nuts after all!"

The voices below rose and fell and one cried: "Why don't you do something to 
help 
me?"

Zelda moaned. "Oh, God, it's so 
beautiful."

"What does it mean?" asked Bella. "Why are they here? Are they really ghosts, and why would ghosts climb this hill every night, pushing that music box, night after night, tell me, Zelda, why?"

Zelda peered down the hill and shut her eyes for a moment to think. "Why do 
any 
ghosts go anywhere? Retribution? Revenge? No, not 
those 
two. Love maybe's the reason, lost loves or something 
Yes?"

Bella let her heart pound once or twice and then said, "Maybe nobody 
told 
them."

"Told them 
what?"

"Or maybe they were told a lot but still didn't believe, because maybe in their old years things got bad, I mean they were sick, and sometimes when you're sick you forget."

"Forget 
what!?"

"How much we loved them."

"They 
knew!"

"Did 
they? Sure, we told each other, but maybe not enough of us ever wrote or waved when they passed and just yelled 
'Love!' you 
think?"

"Hell, Bella, they're on TV every 
night!"

"Yeah, but that don't count. Has anyone, since they left us, come here to these steps and 
said? 
Maybe those voices down there, ghosts or whatever, have been here every night for years, pushing that music box, and nobody thought, or tried, to just whisper or yell all the love we had all the years. Why not?"

'Why not?" Zelda stared down into the long darkness where perhaps shadows moved and maybe a piano lurched clumsily among the shadows. "You're right."

If I'm right," said Bella, "and you say so, there's only one thing to do-"

"You mean you and 
me?"

"Who else? Quiet. Come on."

They moved down a step. In the same instant lights came

on around them, in a window here, another there. A screen door opened somewhere and angry words shot out into the night:

"Hey, what's going 
on?"

"Pipe down!"

"You know what 
time 
it is?"  "My God," Bella whispered, "everyone 
else 
hears now!"

"No, no." Zelda looked around wildly. "They'll spoil everything!"

"I'm calling the cops!" A window slammed.

"God," said Bella, "if the cops come-"

"What?"

"It'll be all wrong. If anyone's going to tell them to take it easy, pipe down, it's gotta be us. We 
care, don't 
we?"

"God, yes, but-"

"No buts. Grab on. Here we go."

The two voices murmured below and the piano tuned itself with hiccups of sound as they edged down another step and another, their mouths dry, hearts hammering, and the night so dark they could see only the faint streetlight at the stair bottom, the single street illumination so far away it was sad being there all by itself, waiting for shadows to move.

More windows slammed up, more screen doors opened. At any moment there would be an avalanche of protest, incredible outcries, perhaps shots fired, and all this gone forever.

Thinking this, the women trembled and held tight, as if

to pummel each other to speak against the rage.

"Say something, Zelda, quick."

" What?"

"Anything! They'll get hurt if we don't-"

" They?"

"You know what I mean. Save them."

“Okay. Jesus!" Zelda froze, clamped her eyes shut to find the words, then opened her eyes and said, "Hello."

"Louder. "

`'Hello," Zelda called softly, then loudly.

Shapes rustled in the dark below. One of the voices rose while the other fell and the piano strummed its hidden harp strings.

"Don't be afraid," Zelda called

"That's good. Go on."

"Don't be afraid," Zelda called, braver now. "Don't listen to those others yelling. We won't hurt you. It's just us. I'm Zelda, you wouldn't remember, and this here is Bella, and we've known you forever, or since we were kids, and we love you. It's late, but we thought you should know. We've loved you ever since you were in the desert or on that boat with ghosts or trying to sell Christmas trees door-to-door or in that traffic where you tore the headlights off cars, and we still love you, right, Bella?"

The night below was darkness, waiting.

Zelda punched Bella's arm.

"Yes!" Bella cried, "what she 
said. 
We love you."

"We can't think of anything else to say."

"But it's enough, yes?" Bella leaned forward anxiously. "It's 
enough?"

A night wind stirred the leaves and grass around the stairs and the shadows below that had stopped moving with the music box suspended between them as they looked up and up at the two women, who suddenly began to cry. First tears fell from Bella's cheeks, and when Zelda sensed them, she let fall her own.

So now,'' said Zelda, amazed that she could form words but managed to speak anyway, "we want you to know, you don t have to come back anymore. You don't have to climb

the hill every night, waiting. For what we said just now is it, isn't it? I mean you wanted to hear it here on this hill, with those steps, and that piano, yes, that's the whole thing, it had to be that, didn't it? So now here we are and there you are and it's said. So rest, dear friends."