The Lost Time Accidents (34 page)

AMBITIOUS AS SHE WAS
in her blank, brutal way, Enzian had never pictured herself out in the world—out among the ignorant, the time-bound, the conventionally human—and least of all in the role of messiah. This wasn’t due to any doubt as to her own charisma (she’d been blessed with an almost fanatical belief in her suitability for pretty much everything) but because she herself had decided, nearly two decades earlier, that her brother would be the one to play that part. Not
decided
, she reminded herself. Nothing had been decided, not then or ever. Only foreseen.

Orson kept his distance from her now, whether out of anger or embarrassment she couldn’t have said; and her disappointment was still so severe, so painful to her, that it was safer for them both if he kept clear. The contract between them had been straightforward and fair—generous, really—and he had broken it. If Enzian had had her way—if Kaspar hadn’t opposed her with the last of his vitality—she’d have turned her brother out into the street.

Kaspar was fading perceptibly, growing smaller and more diffuse each time she looked, like the traveler waving from a moving train in the classic physics problem. There was a geometry to her father’s enfeeblement, a mathematical precision that suited them both, and which allowed her to observe its progression without losing her head to sentiment or panic. The heavy hair of which he’d always been so vain, and which had kept its chestnut color well into his sixties, now showed the shape of his skull when the light was behind it, and his square plowman’s shoulders had started to slump. He’d never been a handsome man—even Enzian knew that—but he’d somehow seemed more manly for his plainness. Now the sexlessness of old age had engulfed him. His hearing was failing, he’d taken to falling asleep at the dinner table, and she could hear his labored breathing through the bedroom wall at night. The end of Kaspar’s term was fast approaching.

What Gentian’s thoughts were with regard to this fact, or to her sister’s decision to take up the Tolliver mantle, or to any of the other upheavals at Pine Ridge Road that year, was far more difficult for Enzian to discern. Which is not to say there weren’t certain clues.

“By the way,” Gentian said, as she was clearing the table one evening. “Your friend came to the window last night. I let him in. We had ourselves a little heart-to-heart.”

Enzian, who’d just come down from tucking Kaspar into bed, cocked her head at her sister. “What’s that, Genny? Which friend? I have no—”

“Ottokar.”

“I don’t understand. Little Ottokar, the
Ungeziefer
? From back when we were girls?”

Gentian nodded without looking up. “We
thought
about waking you, of course, but you’d been up so late studying for that ballistics midterm. He’ll be back soon, though. He said so.”

Gentian’s manner was as matter-of-fact as ever: her voice betrayed no urgency, no acknowledgment that what she was saying was in any way unusual. She might have been talking about one of Orson’s classmates, or about Calvin Huber, the man who read the gas meter each month—though in that case she’d have been a bit more flustered. She had a schoolgirl’s crush on Calvin Huber.

“It’s 1957, Genny,” Enzian said at last. “We’re twenty-eight years old.”

“Do you want to hear what Ottokar had to tell me?”

Enzian could count on one hand the number of times she’d been at a loss for words with her sister. “You?” she said finally. “What Ottokar had to tell
you
?”

Gentian gave an absent little nod.

“What was it?”

“He’s proud of you, Enzie.” Gentian smoothed down her apron. “Just like the rest of us are.”

Enzian felt herself redden. “Well! That’s kind of you to say, Genny. I’d been hoping—”

“Yes, Enzie. Of course. But you’re making a terrible mistake.”

Everything hushed as she said this—all the manifold small workings of the house. Enzian could feel the hush against her ears, cool and flat, as if the room had been depressurized. Then slowly—one by one, it seemed—the noises returned. She heard her father cough and turn in bed.

“What mistake am I making?”

“Oh! He never said
that
,” Genny singsonged, gliding off into the kitchen.

*   *   *

Enzian had plenty of worries in her debut year as a physicist, from her father’s poor health to her brother’s defection to her sister’s unchecked eccentricity; but material concerns were not among them. Through some dark, occult bargain she never quite grasped—and which thrilled and alarmed her in equal measure—Warranted Tolliver Timepieces, Inc., grew in inverse proportion to Kaspar’s decline. Whatever it was he’d been doing from sunrise to sunset in his drop-ceilinged office downtown, he’d been doing it preposterously well. It would stand as the crowning irony of my grandfather’s irony-bedeviled duration that the most unilateral of his withdrawals from the world was the most richly rewarded venture of his life.

Buffalo Bill, to be fair, deserved some of the credit. Given careful supervision, he’d proven to be a gifted business manager and a virtuosic salesman—not that too much virtuosity was called for. For the first time in U.S. history, teenagers had money to spend on whatever flashy baubles caught their fancy, and wristwatches were a safe but potent sign of independence. Business had expanded quietly over the past decade—so quietly, in fact, that Kaspar’s children hadn’t paid it much attention. On a certain Saturday morning of that pivotal autumn, however—on one of the rare occasions when all of his offspring were in sight at the same time—he assembled them in the front hall. He let out a slow breath, as though resigning himself to something beyond his control, then sat down on the fourth step of the stairs.

“
Kinder
, I have news. We’re millionaires.”

None of the children said a word. Orson leaned against the door with his coat halfway buttoned, and Gentian and Enzian stood watching their father intently, apparently gauging the likelihood of his tumbling downstairs. It was enough to make him wonder whether anyone had heard him.

“Last time I checked,” said Orson guardedly, “I had less than fifteen dollars in the bank.”

“Check again, son.”

“But Papa, what’s the meaning of this?” Gentian got out eventually.

“Don’t look so
angefressen
, Genny. You’d think I’d just told you we were millions in debt.”

“Why are you telling us this, Papa?” said Enzian. “Why now?”

“When ought I to have told you, Enzie? Before we had the money?”

This was not the tableau Kaspar had envisioned. He looked on, feeling inexplicably sheepish, as Orson’s eyes met Enzie’s for the first time in months. Under any other set of circumstances he’d have been overjoyed; as it was, he was simply confused, a sensation he’d long since come to feel at home in. Enzian took a half step toward the staircase, apparently to get a closer look at him. She didn’t seem impressed by what she saw.

“You’ve deposited money into each of our savings accounts? Am I understanding you correctly?”

“I’ve set up three trusts,” Kaspar answered, glad to have something concrete to discuss. “The money has been invested for you. Partly in the company, partly in government bonds.”

“How much is in my trust?”

Kaspar hesitated, but only for an instant. “Half a million dollars.”

“What about mine?” said Orson.

“I put the same amount in each.”

He watched the fact of it sink in. His children’s perplexity—more than that: their efforts to hide it from him, and from one another—brought him a certain private satisfaction. Orson was particularly interesting: he stared furiously at a wrinkle in the entryway runner, as if trying to straighten it using the power of his mind.
I’ve known this boy for his entire life
, Kaspar said to himself. But he couldn’t seem to make himself believe it.

“When can we use the money?” said Orson.

“When you come of age, of course,” Enzian answered. But Orson kept his eyes fixed on his father.

Kaspar shrugged. “I have nothing to say about that. The trusts are in your names, children, not mine. You can draw from them whenever you choose.”

Orson nodded for a time. He might have been nodding at what he’d just heard, but it was obvious to his father that he wasn’t. He was nodding to give himself courage.

“I have an announcement.”

Kaspar had no gift of clairvoyance, but on that day—for what reason, he couldn’t have said—he finally beheld his son and understood him. Orson was about to say something that he’d been rehearsing for weeks, perhaps even longer.

“I’m going to New York City.”

No one spoke for a moment.

“Orson,” Gentian got out finally, ignoring her sister’s look, “I know that you and Enzie have been on the outs—”

“Ewa has a cousin who lives on Lexington and Forty-Second, the same block as the Chrysler Building,” he went on, ignoring her. “I’m going to write for
Preposterous! Stories
and
Omniverse
and
Tales of Stupefaction
, and all those other pulps that you and Enzie hate.” He paused for effect. “
Preposterous!
just accepted a story of mine.”

“But you can do all that here,” Gentian whimpered. “You’re still in your teens. I don’t see why—”

“They’ve finally accepted ‘The Yesternauts,’ have they?” Enzian said coolly. “Then you must have made the changes that they asked for.”

Orson stared past them all and said nothing.

“Changes?” Gentian said, if only to say something. “What changes?”

“Tits,” said Enzian.

Kaspar began to pay closer attention.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Orson answered. “There’s nothing wrong with tits. Except in this house.”

Kaspar cleared his throat to speak, then stopped himself.

“They didn’t like the title, either,” Enzian continued, in the same bloodless voice as before. “What’s it called now?”

Orson shut his eyes. “Enzie, it’s my first published story.”

“And we’re
happy
for you!” said Gentian. “What’s it called?”

“‘In the Naked Form of the Human Jelly.’”

“In the Naked
which
?” said Kaspar.

“It’s a quote. From Saul Bellow.”

“Saul Bellow,” said Enzian, “never wrote for the pulps.”

Orson brought a finger to his temple, as if considering her point. Then he buttoned up his coat and left the house.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Enzie,” Gentian said. She looked careworn and tired. Kaspar found that he barely recognized either of his daughters: they seemed to have changed their clothes and shape before his eyes.
Through the Looking-Glass
came to mind—Orson’s favorite book, as a child—and he wondered if some final dream were now commencing. Enzian stood as straight-backed and ferocious as the red queen herself, and plump, frowsy Gentian was the white queen personified, down to the slightest detail. How had he not noticed this before?

“I didn’t do
anything
,” Enzian muttered, opening and closing her fists. “He did it. All of it. And now it’s done.”

Genny appeared to be weeping, something her father had only the faintest memory of her having done before. She’d almost never raised her voice, either—at least not in anger—but she was raising it now. “
Tell
her,” she was shouting—shouting at him, of all people. “Tell her to let Orson write for the pulps!”

“He’s writing for them already,” said Enzian. “Titties and all.”

Kaspar dug a handkerchief out of his pocket, thought hard for a moment, then blew his nose resoundingly into his sleeve. “What’s a pulp?” he inquired.

Monday, 09:05 EST

Can I confess something to you, Mrs. Haven? I’m not sure anymore who “Mrs. Haven” is.

The closer I get to the crux of our story, the less clearly I’m able to see. Even during our most intimate moments, your name—the name you took from your husband and asked me, perversely, to use—seemed to function as a kind of screen, a cover for your true, pre-Haven self. I wonder if I ever saw behind it.

Which raises the question, come to think of it, of who it is I’m really writing for.

F
OR TWO WEEKS
after leaving Menügayan’s brownstone I heard no news at all, and I began to suspect—at times, even to hope—that I’d misunderstood the nature of our bargain. But I was foolish to doubt her. She was hard at work all the while, woodshedding and calculating, fussing and scheming, consulting the Synchronology Codex and game theory textbooks and Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War
, as tireless as the light cone of chronology itself.

In a more simpatico age—Hoover-era America, for example—there’s no telling how far Menügayan’s star might have risen. As it was, she was a has-been cult administrator, excommunicated at forty, making her living selling fanboy paraphernalia in shabby back-lot booths at “geek conventions.” I never did manage to discover why the UCS cut her loose, but it was painfully clear that the animosity she felt toward them (and toward Haven, in particular) had once been unconditional devotion. I wasn’t able to figure out what sort of deal she’d cut, either, though she never denied that her brownstone was the property of the Church. At the end of the day, Mrs. Haven—as Menügayan herself would have put it—none of these considerations mattered. She was going to bring you back to me. All further questions smacked of self-indulgence.

Menügayan hadn’t deigned to share the details of her scheme, but I had no doubt that she had one, and that the obliteration of your marriage was only a preliminary gambit, one small relay in the circuit she was building. She’d been a high-ranking financial officer in the UCS, apparently, and knew enough about the First Listener’s machinations to cause him significant grief. She was living in gilded exile on West Tenth Street, in a kind of tacit house arrest, like a disgraced Hero of the Revolution maintained in watchful comfort in some quaint suburban dacha. She spied on you, Mrs. Haven, because she had a spy’s nature—and because you passed her front door every day. She had her comics and her latex masks and you, and nothing else.