Smog - Baggage of Enternal Night (10 page)

“Never seen a piece of luggage quite like this,”
he said.

The suitcase was the size of two couch cushions
stacked on top of each other and fastened by a thick bronze padlock overlaying
the latches. “Don’t suppose a key came with it?”

We owned a hammer and a set of chisels for
breaking apart locked baggage. More often than not, however, we didn’t need to
use them. Joey maintained a collection of lock picks and the knowledge of how
to use them. He selected a hook pick and twisted it around inside the lock for
a few moments with his good hand. It clicked apart. Joey tossed the padlock
aside and opened the case.

Inside was a gramophone, the old type of record
player that was popular during turn-of-the-century years, with the horn speaker
like a funnel that the sound came out from. I’d only seen units like that in
the city museum and antique stores.

“Maybe we can invite some dolls over and have a
party with this,” he said.

I thought of my girlfriend, Gail, who dressed nice
and smelled good all the time and kept her home spotless. She hated coming over
to visit me here. ‘Filthy,’ was the word she most frequently used to describe
my living conditions.

“Gail’s not too keen on carousing where stacks of
boxes might topple onto her,” I said.

“I didn’t say
which
dolls to invite.”

“Always causing trouble, ain’t ya?”

Joey grinned. His lips pursed together and his
cheeks rose, reminding me of a little boy who might suggest we sneak a sweet
from the confectioner.

“Anyway, it probably doesn’t work, it’s so old,” I
said.

“And maybe it does,” he replied. I couldn’t tell
if he was ribbing me or really
was
hoping to throw an impromptu bash. I
hated people visiting whom I didn’t already know. Gail was admittedly right in
the description of my living conditions, and it embarrassed me.

Joey pulled the record player out and lifted the
horn into place. The base of the player was rich-grained wood, sized about one
foot in all dimensions. The turntable and horn were brass. A handle, like the
crank of an old car, punched out from one side.

“I remember my grandmother used to have one of
these in her sitting room,” I said. “A real lively bird she was, playing music
every afternoon, recorded by the pianist from her church.”

“My grandma just whipped me with a stick of elm if
the chickens weren’t fed by sunrise.”

“Is that why you’re so damaged?”

Joey slapped me on the shoulder, and his chuckle
made the room feel twice as large. “Here’s cheers to grandmas, though I’d
rather be cheering to some younger dames.” He popped the cap off another
Stroh’s and downed half the bottle.

He continued. “I’ll get this working and you’ll either
have a shindig with me, or I’ll make you listen to piano gospel all night.”

“Let’s see what else you’ve got in there first.”

Inside the old case were two more boxes, each with
a flip lid, and I opened them.

Joey fingered through one. “Looks like there’s
quite a library of records in these boxes to mix it up. I suppose it’s hoping
too much for some Perry Como or The Shirelles.”

Between the two boxes, I estimated there were
about forty or fifty albums, each a flat black disc of wax. None of them were
identified by labels, and each disc appeared identical; thick and handmade,
with deep grooves set wider than the stereophonic vinyl albums of today.

“What do you make of this?” I asked and pointed at
one of the boxes. A series of lines in strange writing like Eastern European
characters were sketched in ink, followed by numbers, as if a series of ledger
entries.

Joey set the gramophone on a chair and began
winding the mechanical crank. Old record players worked like music boxes; the
sound was produced through manual effort, without electrical amplification. “I
don’t know,” he said, “but let’s hear what they’ve got to say.”

I pulled out a record, and Joey set it on the
turntable. He released the crank. At first there was silence. I took another
swig of Stroh’s.

It started off with a scratching sound, like a hen
trying to dig around in a yard made of sheet metal. Then some old-timey horn
blew the most melancholy notes I ever heard, and that was followed by something
that could have been a clarinet that played even more doleful than the horn. I
heard a tinkling which might have been a piano and something else I couldn’t
even guess at, that sounded like someone with molasses in their throat breathing
fast into a paper sack. If that was what music sounded like in the early
nineteen hundreds, I understood why the country soon fell into a Depression.

“Makes me want to stab ice picks through my ears,”
Joey said.

The instruments played for half a minute in choral
rhythm, following a series of timed beats and then crashed together in a burst
of clatter, before slowing back down again. I once visited New Orleans in my
younger days and heard the slow jazz marches of a funeral procession. If I had
to make a comparison, this record sounded closest to that, only the instruments
here were off-key and played together like children experimenting with
contraptions found in the city dump.

And then a voice spoke.

Or, rather, chanted. Joey and I looked at each
other. I immediately felt nauseous, the way castor oil curdles in your guts, and
I saw Joey felt the same. The voice was a man’s and he spoke in slow solemn
words, the intonations seeming to reverberate throughout my room in low bass
rumbles. The words were unfamiliar, but emotions dripping with wet fog somehow
filled each syllable, and my head swooned.

Vkhodite. Vkhodite. Vkhodite.

Ne zaderzhivat’sya v kholodnyy
i temnyy, ho prisoyedinit’sya ko mne v svet navsegda.

Vkhodite. Vkhodite. Vkhodite.

The sensation changed and the nausea reversed
until euphoria touched me. The words repeated over and over and each became a
finger rubbing inside my temples, massaging my brain. The world seemed to shift
slightly beneath me; shadows grew longer from behind the stacked baggage, and
my thoughts slowed. I felt relaxed, like slipping under the water of a warm
bath.

I lost track of time as the chanting words
repeated themselves. I descended further into the bath, floating free in a
stillness that must be like what an embryo experiences as it develops in the
womb.

Though I felt good, almost weightless, I sensed
something was out of line.

“Turn it off,” I finally said to Joey. He looked
at me from far away, and his eyes were heavy-lidded, as I felt mine must have
appeared to him. His expression though was wan as if he couldn’t fathom who
spoke, much less act on my directions.

I had to focus on the movements in my arm, but I
willed myself forward. The record must have been playing for at least ten
minutes, yet the needle still played in the first groove of the disc, as if it
had only begun. I lifted the needle, and the sudden silence was like the slap
of a cold hand.

Joey’s eyes focused, and he leaned back to lie on
the floor. “Mama, I feel like I just came off a three-day bender.”

“I feel like someone slugged me in the temple.”

He rolled over and grinned. “Sure beats Grandma’s
church music.”

I couldn’t agree with that; I thought I’d rather
listen to a hundred hours of piano hymnals than just a second more of that
strange man’s chant. His voice—those words—echoed in my mind.

Vkhodite. Vkhodite. Vkhodite...

The words were unfamiliar, yet they
spoke
to me. I couldn’t understand them, but I believed it sounded like a modern
language, if only some backwards Baltic dialect. The speaker’s articulation was
flat, void of intonation, and the rhythm was like breathing. In fact, I felt
that it somehow crept
inside
my breaths while I listened, the same way
it climbed into my thoughts.

“Hey, Charlie, wake up.” Joey snapped his fingers
at me. “I said, ‘What do you think the record was saying?’”

I looked at him, realizing part of me still
drifted away. “I don’t know, but it sure wasn’t whispers of sweet love.”

“Maybe this is some sort of hypnosis used on
prisoners during the first World War. That’d make sense, right? I mean, if you
wanted to drive someone crazy, just flick this on all night long.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “It bugged me out right away.”

Joey nodded and we were quiet, each looking at the
gramophone. If he were like me, Joey had to wonder at what exactly he brought
home that night.

He lifted his crippled hand, looking at each
finger one-by-one. “You know what else, Charlie?”

“I couldn’t guess.”

“I imagined I was flying,” he said. “Does that
make sense? While that played, I felt like my body didn’t weigh anything and I
lifted from the earth. I mean, I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t control it.
I just drifted up into the stars.”

“Funny,” I said. “I kind of felt the same, like I
was floating free in a warm bath.”

“What do you think these records are worth?”

“A trip to the city dump.”

“Get outta here! I’ve never encountered anything
like this before. That’s got to account for something. You think Ray will take
a look at it?”

“Maybe. Or maybe we should just scrap the thing.
We seem to agree there’s something off about it.”

Joey either ignored my comment or wasn’t listening.
“Ray knows antiques. Of course, this being a foreign language might throw him.
I sure wish I knew what it said.”

“Aw, hell, I know a guy who’s into languages.” I
said. I thought Joey was probably right about it having some sort of value. Of
course, when it came down to it, the stranger an item, the more value it
commands. “Real sharp fella. He’s a Hungarian that runs a book store I used to
live by, about as cultured a mind as you’re going to find in these parts. I’ll
bring him the player in the morning and ask what he makes of it.”

“Just bring him a couple of the albums. I’m going
to listen to some of the others on my own, see what else is on here.”

“What’s he going to do with records and no player
to put it on?”

“It’s 1963. Everyone’s got a record player.”

I shrugged, and Joey packed up the gramophone and
his other winning baggage. We said our goodnights, and he walked out the door
of my apartment. As soon as he left, the room felt a little colder, a little
smaller.

1963 was half over and I felt old and slow, as if
the year sped past, shooting clouds of dust at me as it blew by. I remembered
that I once had a plan for life, a direction, but now I just lived for the day.
Making bets and going to the auctions was always a hoot, but part of me felt that
I settled for something I wasn’t meant for. Truth was, I always wanted to live
in the city, but I also thought I would get a fancy job in business or law,
drive a big car, and travel to Europe. I made it to the city, but I found
regular work didn’t suit me. Getting chained to a desk for ten hours a day made
me think of stories about men that drowned in quicksand: once they start
sinking, it’s harder and harder to get out and after a certain threshold is
passed—just above the naval on a full-grown man—escape is impossible. They can
only scream and flounder and know death is cruel and inevitable. To me, that’s
what every day at an office job was like.

I got out in time, but I also lost my dream. I
might have given up and moved back to the warmer climes of my native Kentucky,
if I hadn’t met Danielle. We got engaged quick, ten years ago, and then I
caught her in bed with a jockey...a jockey I had bet against earlier that day
at the track and who went against the odds, winning in the final lap. Within
five hours, I lost my money and I lost
her
. I stood a foot taller than
that horse-riding bastard, and when I caught them doing the wild mamba in bed I
called him out and laid all my force into a crack against his jaw. He barely
flinched, and then he landed an uppercut that knocked me clean out. When I
woke, they both were gone. To this day, all I can figure is that he was
experienced with having wronged men hit him and had trained to take punches.

Either that, or I hit like a pansy.

After Danielle, I met Gail, whom I’ve come to love
like no other. If not for Danielle, I would have proposed marriage to Gail long
ago. As it was, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Too much pain and betrayal
associated with the custom. Gail kept me rooted in reality; she worked the regular
business job I couldn’t hold, she had the big car and the future. I wished
someday to make an honest woman out of her, though I knew deep down she
deserved better than me. I regularly expected her to cut me loose.

How many Stroh’s did I drink? I thought of Joey
and Danielle and Gail and all the people from my life speaking to me from a
record. And there, tiny amongst the towers of luggage and reminiscences, I
faded into night’s dreams.

Chapter
2

The next day I drove to Vic’s Books in
one of the city’s historic quarters lining the Detroit River’s north bank. Vic
was west of the Ambassador Bridge that connects to Canada, and every time I
drove past, I thought of how many forlorn people took a quarter mile walk
either way, hoping to start life over in a new country, only to find out that
it’s the same troubles everywhere.

I arrived at the shop and
parked in front. Vic’s Books was a small glass-faced square in the shopping
district, one of many like an assemblage of bright children’s blocks laid in
line.

Carrying three of Joey’s
records wrapped in a pillowcase, I pushed through the front door. A small bell
announced my entrance. Inside were cases of paperbacks and clothbound volumes
crammed into every space. The musty smell of aged paper filled the room like a
presence—a good presence—and I was reminded of lazy afternoons lounging in my grandfather’s
study reading childhood adventures in exotic lands.

There were no other customers
in the store, and I made my way through towering aisles of ancient tomes and
Harlequin tales until I reached the back, where Vic sat reading the
Detroit
Times
and smoking a frayed cigar.

“Charlie,” he said without
looking up. “Been too long since you stopped by. Never too busy to read, son.”

“I read.”

“The pony stats don’t count.”
He looked at me over the edge of gold-rimmed focals, the kind with a piece of
twine that circles your head and attaches to the arms like a necklace.

“All right, I’ll buy something
if that’s what you want,” I said.

“Of course that’s what I want.
I run a business don’t I?”

“I said I’ll buy something.” I
shrugged.

He shrugged back.

“And it’s nice to see you,
too,” I added.

“Hey, I’m just giving you a
hard time.”

“Same old Vic. You age, you
don’t change.”

He smiled at that, and a gleam
shone from the edge of one silver tooth. “I want to be mythified.”

“I have a favor to ask,” I
said.

Vic folded the paper and
scratched at his gray whiskers. “As long as it don’t involve money or
lipstick.”

“Not sure what it involves, but
probably only a few minutes of reaching back to your homeland.” I laid the
records on the counter next to him.

“You want me to listen to
music?”

“A pal procured these in an old
traveler’s suitcase. The records are of someone chanting—real eerie stuff. And
they don’t play right either, like the grooves in the wax are stretched or
extended somehow. The records seem to run longer than they should, as if they
won’t end.” I looked at Vic to make sure he didn’t think I was cracked. He just
nodded, so I continued. “Anyway, I think it’s an Eastern European language,
Baltic origins or something. Lot of ‘V’ and ‘Z’ sounds. We want to know what
they’re saying in the chants and maybe if there’s some value in these. Who
better to turn to than my old Hungarian pal in the antiquities market, eh?” I
smiled, though maybe a bit too much.

“Sounds curious,” he replied.
“But I don’t have a record player.”

I laughed inwardly, wishing
Joey was there.

“I’ll pass it around to someone
else I know,” Vic added. “These discs look handmade, so you never know what’s
recorded on them. Probably nothing more than a family choir recital. Come back
in a week—next Friday morning—and I’ll let you know what I find out.”

“Thanks, Vic.”

“Don’t think about it.” He
puffed on his cigar and looked around. “Now buy something, would ya? The store
don’t run on my favors.”

Not feeling any great
inspiration, I picked up a couple science fiction paperbacks showing covers of
green-skinned aliens and spacecraft that looked like flying dinner plates.

When I got home, I tossed the
books into a box with a hundred other paperbacks I would probably never read.
Besides clothes and makeup, used books were the most common item I found inside
baggage. It seemed nearly everyone carried a book about mystery or adventure or
advice when they traveled.

I farted around for the next
few days, talked with Gail on the phone each evening, and made plans to
accompany her and her boss to dinner on Tuesday at Frantillo’s. I always
enjoyed chatting with Gail; the day didn’t seem properly lived if I didn’t cap
it off with her spirited conversation.

Anyway, that date at
Frantillo’s wasn’t until midweek, so I should have had plenty of time to
prepare. Of course, Tuesday afternoon arrived sooner than expected, and I found
myself scrambling at the eleventh hour to make her schedule.

Don’t be late,
Gail had
said.
You’re always running behind, so leave early if you have to. Be here
at five thirty. It’s my boss, Geoff Van Duyn, and his wife. Don’t make me look
bad.

Her words rang in my head when
I ran into Joey in the lobby of Les Deux Oies. I had just bought a bouquet of
calla lilies for Gail from the corner vendor and was rushing back to my room to
change into dinner clothes.

Joey came out of the elevator
when I was about to go up. He looked peculiar somehow, messy in a way that was
antithesis to his customary care in grooming: polished shoes, oiled hair,
shirts pressed so tight that finding a wrinkle was like searching for fins on a
pigeon. Now he was pale, and I guessed he hadn’t shaved since last I saw him.

“Joey,” I said. “You okay? You
look terrible.”

“Sorry, Charlie. I didn’t know
I had to impress anyone today.”

“Fair enough. Suppose I did put
my foot in my mouth.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He
paused, holding the elevator open for me. “Going up, or am I holding the doors ’cause
I got nothing else to do?”

Sometimes when Joey spoke, I
couldn’t tell if he was wisecracking or in a pissy mood. I got the feeling
today was the latter case.

“I’ve got a few minutes. Why
don’t I walk with you?”

“Suit yourself.” He let the
doors close and we passed through the lobby.

“Find anything new on those
records?” I asked.

He seemed to flinch slightly
and walked a step faster.

“I’ve been listening to them
every day,” he finally said. “But I still don’t know what any of it means.
They’re all the same, by the way. Every record is the same, ’cept I’ve noticed
one thing.”

“What’s that?”

We reached the glass doors that
led outside to the street, and just before pushing through, he stopped. Joey
glanced around as if making sure nobody could overhear him, and his voice
lowered.

“After that first voice chants
for awhile, a second voice joins in, repeating the words of the first voice.
But the second voice is different on each album. Some are a man’s and some are a
woman’s; some sound old and some young. They’re a different person joining in,
but, otherwise, the records are the same. That god-awful music and the creepy
chant.
Vkhodite. Vkhodite. Vkhodite.
I never heard of such a thing.”

“Do you...” I started to say,
then stuttered, not sure how to phrase the question. “When it’s playing, do you
still feel the same, like what happened in my apartment?”

He nodded, and his voice
lowered even more.

“It’s strange, Charlie. Even
when I’m not listening to a record, the music keeps playing in my head. It’s
like it won’t turn off. But I don’t want it to turn off, either. It makes me
feel good, like it’s
supposed
to be playing, like it’s sharing a great
secret.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t play it
for awhile. As you said before, it could be some sort of hypnosis. Who knows
what’s it’s doing—could be rewriting your brain. Turn it off until we figure
out what it is.”

“But that’s just it,” he said.
“I think the records are telling me something. They
want
me to know. I’m
not saying the music is swingin’ good times—it’s a pretty wretched sound—but it
changes as you listen. It causes you to visualize things. I see a clearing in a
forest that’s covered in snow. I see a faraway castle with turrets that look
like Christmas tree ornaments. The records are preparing me...a new life, away
from pain and fear.”

Joey’s eyes seemed to glaze
over.

“That sounds pretty cracked to
me,” I said.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so
blunt in my response. He startled, and a dark shadow passed over his face. I
wondered later if I would have nodded understanding and inquired further, Joey
might have opened up a bit more. He might have told me
whom
he saw in
his visions, what he expected, and what was told to him.

Instead, he clammed up. “Yeah,
you’re right. It’s crazy talk. I’ve got to go anyway. You’re not going to
follow me around all day are you?”

“I’ve got my own plans.”

“Good seeing you, Charlie.”

“We still on for Roman’s auction
this Thursday?” I asked, as Joey pushed through the doors to exit.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he replied
and was gone in a blink.

My side venture with Joey took
no more than fifteen minutes. But by the time I went up to my room, dressed for
dinner, searched for my car keys (somehow fallen behind the wood locker of a
ventriloquist dummy), returned back downstairs, and drove across the city to
meet Gail, I was mortified to see that time had skipped forward in a hurry. My
watch read five forty-five.

The parking lot at Frantillo’s
was filled, so I went around the corner to find a space for my car. I
fast-walked back to the restaurant feeling every second ticking away in my
head. Frantillo’s was a small joint, low-roofed and snazzy with big windows
covered by thick crimson blinds. The afternoon sun still hung high, and it
played funny tricks in the reflections of the glass. I imagined Gail looking
out at me from behind the curtains in disappointment.

Inside, the maître d’ barely
looked up before asking if I had a reservation. I’m sure he thought I was
riffraff. He smelled of cheap aftershave and French cheese.

“I’m expected,” I said. I
walked past, and he shook his head as if I were lying.

The bar area was packed with
young businessmen decked out in wide-lapel suits and shoes so shiny it was like
walking past a row of mirrors. Everyone in there could have been part of a
collection of animatrons; they looked the same, laughed the same, talked about
the same topics.
Business meetings, business clients, business
opportunities.
It was a world I despised. Maybe I loathed it because I had
once tried to fit in, only to flounder helplessly instead. Failure rears
resentment.

I don’t know why I let it
bother me; I was as happy with life as I deserved and should only wish the same
for everyone else. I passed into the dining room, which was arranged in a maze
of high-backed booths allowing privacy to each party from surrounding patrons.
The lighting was dim, and Italian ballads drifted over muted conversations. I
zigzagged through until I found Gail. She sat by herself at a table with three
half-drunk glasses of red wine.

“Hi.” I waved. “Sorry I’m late,
dear. Only by fifteen minutes this time.”

“Try twenty.” She got up to
meet me, wearing a tight shirtwaist dress with big black buttons that looked
ready to pop off. Though she was a few years older than me, Gail could doll
herself up to look half her age. She was a full-sized woman with curves like a
pair of necking swans.

“Twenty’s not so bad.” I leaned
in for a smooch.

She pulled away. “Twenty today,
thirty yesterday, an hour tomorrow. When are you going to win a working clock
at one of your auctions?”

“Brought you something,” I said
and handed her the calla lilies I’d been carrying since the apartments. “Won’t
you feel bad for scolding when I explain how I scoured the florists of Detroit,
handpicking only the finest of lilies for your pleasure?”

“I might if it were the truth,”
she said.

Gail accepted the flowers, and
my charm won over her scowl. She smiled, and we kissed.

“Did I miss much?” I asked.

“Geoff’s mingling at the bar.
He saw some buddies from a club—either polo or yachting or men of inherited
fortune—and went over to show off his wife. She’s nineteen years younger than
him, you know. Took their second honeymoon last month.”

I rolled my eyes. “I sure fit
in.”

“You can try to make me look
good. He’s heading up store expansion in the New England markets and I’m in the
running for a promotion. A woman with a man does better climbing the corporate
ladder than a woman without. You know how much trouble we can get into if left
to our own devices.” She pinched the inside of my thigh and winked.

I startled, and a tiny squeal
slipped out. “You jezebel!” I pinched her back.

She never pressured me, but I
knew a married woman did better yet than any unmarried one, regardless if she
was in a relationship. Gail wore a small diamond ring on her wedding finger
that I gave her some years back. It wasn’t an engagement ring or even a promise
ring, just something I won inside a satchel at a baggage auction and gifted her
to make up after an argument. But it served a purpose also, as long as nobody
asked too many in-depth questions.