The Lost Time Accidents (42 page)

“Mr. Abel Isaiah Palladian—Mrs. Hildegard Haven.”

“Charmed,” said Palladian, flashing his teeth.

You’d kept quiet in the cab, barely meeting my eye, but you played along willingly now. “Please don’t get up, Mr. Palladian,” you said, sitting down next to him. “Walter’s told me quite a bit about you.”

Palladian arched his kudzu-like eyebrows at me. “He’s told you what, princess? That my kneecaps don’t work?”

“Nothing like that. About your many gifts.”

“My
gifts
?” The eyebrows went up even higher. “Sweetheart, if I was a hundred years younger—”

“Go ahead,” I said. “Ask him.”

“Aha!” said Palladian. “Sure.”

You glanced at me uncertainly. “Wombat?”

Palladian bobbed his head in a dreamy sort of way and cleared his throat. “The coarse-haired wombat of Australia resembles a small bear and can live twenty years in captivity.”

You laughed for the first time that day. “All right, Mr. Palladian.” You thought hard for a moment. “A football.”

This time the answer came instantly. “Although it is traditionally called a ‘pigksin,’ the ball that the pros use is made of cowhide, a more durable variety of leather. Practice balls have a life span of two to three days; professional game balls in the National Football League have a much shorter term. Because the quote-unquote ‘home team’ is required to provide two dozen new balls for each game, and because between eight and twelve of these balls actually get used—and are then disposed of—a football could be said to last six minutes, on average.” He held up a finger. “Six minutes, that is, of regulation play.”

I expected you to laugh again, or to acknowledge my smile, but you did no such thing. “A black hole,” you said softly.

“She asks the good questions, this one.” Palladian leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes.

“A quote-unquote ‘black hole’ is the burned-out remains of a star that has collapsed under its own weight. A black hole with the mass of our sun, more or less, would exist for twenty billion years times ten to the fifty-fourth power, which is roughly the present age of our universe. At the center of a black hole, of course, the enormous gravitation would produce a quote-unquote ‘singularity.’ A place where none of the standard laws of the universe apply—time included.” His eyes fluttered open. “Drop in there, princess, and you’ll stay gone forever.”

Palladian’s answer seemed to soothe you. You took a deep breath, satisfied, and beamed down at him for a while. Then you looked up at me. Your smile was about as similar to the one you’d given me at the James A. Farley Post Office as a coarse-haired wombat is to a black hole.

“Mr. Palladian,” you said, “you’re a bona fide wonder.”

Never one for false modesty, Palladian concurred.

“Well!” I said. “I’m glad you two—”

“Marry this woman, Mr. Tolliver. Give this woman children.”

“I’m married already,” you informed him serenely.

Palladian nodded. “No children, however.”

“That’s true.”

No one spoke for a moment. The two of you seemed to consider the subject closed.

“I’ve asked Mrs. Haven to travel with me to Europe,” I said, more shrilly than I’d intended. “To Vienna. I have family there.”

“Ah!” Palladian’s eyes gleamed. “An elopement.”

“A trip to Vienna,” I said quickly. “No more than that.”

“I don’t think a person can
elope
,” you put in, “if that person is married.”

You were watching Palladian closely. He was pursing his lips like a schoolteacher. I’d given up trying to guess what was going on.

“Mr. Tolliver,” he said, “would you mind stepping out of the lounge?”

I stared at him blankly. “Stepping out of the lounge?”

“That’s correct.”

A man I’d never seen before was sitting at the Xanthia’s front desk. He was chewing on an unlit Dutch Masters cigarillo and wearing a kind of serape, as if to blend in with the poster of Bolivia on the wall behind him. He bore a distinct resemblance to the man your husband’s enforcers had called Little Brother, which didn’t do much for my mental comfort. I sat down in a plastic armchair and watched the minute hand of the clock, which was shaped like a kitten, refuse to advance a single millimeter.

Eventually Palladian called me back in. It was clear right away that our visit was over. The two of you were sitting side-by-side at the lounge’s card table, both seats turned toward the door, like the receiving line at a memorial service. The look on your face was all business.

“I’m coming with you, Walter,” you announced.

Ecstatic as I was, Mrs. Haven, it never crossed my mind to ask you why.

Monday, 09:05 EST

I woke up in this chair with my fists on the floor and my shirt damp with drool, too groggy to move, and enjoyed a brief interlude of thick-brained thoughtlessness before I remembered what I’d found in my aunts’ bed. I lurched to my feet, expecting to see the Timekeeper behind me; I had no idea when our encounter had ended, or how I’d found my way back, or why on earth I’d let him get away. But I’ve been a coward since birth, Mrs. Haven: spooked by my own shadow, retiring and skittish, forever a half step too late. You understood this from the start—I know that now. I must have been so easy to deceive.

I took up my time-honored position at the card table and thanked C*F*P for it, glancing over my shoulder now and again, just to make sure. My dim little nook with its warped dome of trash had never looked so comfortable and safe. I sat quietly for what seemed like a significant amount of
Wt
, waiting for my fingers to stop shaking. Then I collected my wits and went to work on the chapters you’ve just finished reading, exactly as if I were still alone.

Already it seemed impossible that I’d seen what I’d seen—that I’d
spoken
with Waldemar, to say nothing of knocking him down; but my sense memories of that cramped, twilit room and of what had taken place there were as vivid as any since my exile here began. The explanations for what I was experiencing had been reduced, as far as I could reckon, to two. Either (1) I was just as divorced from consensus reality as my great-uncle had always been reputed to be, or (2) consensus reality (along with chronology) was a hoax; in other words, Waldemar had been right all along. But why take shelter in the past tense as I write this? There’s no safety in that. Either both of us are insane, Mrs. Haven, or neither of us are. And in either case I’m bound to him forever.

He was gone when I made my way back to the bedroom—somehow I’d known he’d be gone—but he’d left behind a note for me to find. I couldn’t help noticing that even our handwriting has features in common: both of us are left-handed, our letters curve rightward, and we share what Orson liked to call the “Tolliver twitch.”

Nefflein!

First you will pardon my English. I’ve had Leisure, in my Ramblings, to have practice with my Spelling, but it remains the Language of my Schooling-days. You didn’t know we had English, your opa and I? Our father decided. Those were
Schools
in those times, let me tell you! Remarkable schools. Then Kaspar for some reason switched to Czech.

It strikes me as desirable that you regard me as Human—“als ein Mensch”—so that you may regard Yourself likewise. A
Human
, Nefflein, with all the customary human Frailties. Perhaps this is a Thing that I can teach you.

It’s an Accident that brought us here, both of us, to these x/y/z/T coordinates—you won’t believe this, I think. But this simply proves how Much you have to learn. There are only Accidents, after all, or Happenstances: only *C*, in other words—no *F* or *P*. But it’s just as true to say that no such thing as Happenstance exists, since it can never exist by itself. The Word only has a meaning when
opposed
to Something else. Don’t you agree? Not unlike that playing Card of yours—the “Sküs.”

I’ve been leafing through your History, of course. How could I resist? The tone, I think, is a Success—not too frumpy, not too certain of itself—but I have a few minor corrections. I’ve written up a List, Nefflein, and trust you will have no objections. I find it helps to make the Time go by.

ERRATA

pg 29—The Apartment house on Mondscheingasse may currently be painted a “brilliant yellow,” but in 1905, if Memory serves, its color was a ghastly jaundiced Mauve.

pg 29—I was not in the Habit of cleaning between the slats in the floor of our Apartment with “a fork expressly altered for that purpose.” I made use of a sharpened graphite Pencil.

pg 32—I should like to state, for the Historical Record, that I was never a Patron of the Café Jandek. Bilch, the Source of my Brother’s information, was well known as a Gossip and a Thief.

pg 68—I’ve left this Erratum for last, both in deference to Chronological Order (ho! ho!) and to give it the Pride of Place that it deserves. In the second Paragraph, you write (very fetchingly):

“She (Sonja Silbermann) rose from the bench and walked straight to her front door without looking back. It was slightly ajar, just as she’d left it, and she slipped inside and pushed it shut behind her. Waldemar made no move to follow.”

I quite enjoyed your treatment of this Scene—the detail of the Chestnut Trees and the oilcloth-draped Bugatti in particular!—and have only two Objections worth recording. Silbermann’s sedan was a Citroën, not a Bugatti. And Sonja did, in fact, accompany me home on the Evening in question. I could never have left the Chronosphere without her.

XX

MY FATHER DISCUSSED
his second homecoming with me exactly once, after a relentless campaign of emotional blackmail on my part, and even then—more than thirty years post-factum—he gave me no more than a few stale crumbs. He got his jollies playing the grand old man of letters in his later years, and there were certain episodes of his personal history that he trundled out for anyone who’d listen, gumming them over like the stem of his god-awful pipe; but his return to Buffalo was not among them.

The reason for his reticence, Mrs. Haven, most likely isn’t what you think. He felt no regret at putting Manhattan behind him, and even less at breaking his self-important teenage oath to turn his back on his hometown forever; he was the first to acknowledge, in later years, that the move had brought him luck and happiness. The source of his silence was simpler than that. For the first time since he’d struck out on his own—the first time in what he thought of as the years of his maturity—he’d made a decision without understanding why.

Enzie and Genny had manipulated him—he knew that, of course. But he went along willingly, even eagerly, as though his sisters’ scheme had been his own idea. His desire for self-determination seemed to have abandoned him since his illness: where he’d once been defiant, he now felt conciliatory, at times even meek. In logistical terms the switch happened cleanly, with decorous precision, like castling in a friendly game of chess. Warranted Tolliver Timepieces, Inc., still required the occasional presence of a warranted Tolliver, if only for the sake of appearances; and 308 Pine Ridge Road was vacant and at his disposal. He could finish his book there, in the cubby that had incubated his earliest stories, and the uneasiness he’d no doubt feel at finding himself back where he’d started—just as Ewa Ruszczyk had predicted in the Odd Fellows Hall—would make him work faster and better. He’d be lonely, of course, but no more so than he’d been in Spanish Harlem. His solitude would help to keep him focused. He was regressing, he knew, but regression has one great advantage: the advantage of precedent. Whatever else it might bring, he reasoned, life in Buffalo wouldn’t hold much in the way of surprises.

On this last point, however, Orson’s sisters had a few trumps left to throw.

*   *   *

Two weeks later, my father climbed the steps of 308 Pine Ridge Road in an advanced state of dishevelment, dragging his battered yellow steamer trunk behind him. His shirt was misbuttoned and his face was unshaven and his hair stood out straight in the back, where his headrest on the train had ionized it. He’d returned home for one reason only, after all—to get his book finished—and his seediness was both a reminder and a caution: a message to neighbors and friends (if he had any left) to leave him in peace. Like untold writers before him—science fiction writers, especially—he’d begun to fancy himself a lone mystic, a hermit of sorts, and Pine Ridge Road was now his hermitage. It was just as possible to be a mystic in the suburbs, after all, as on some mountain in the wilderness. Retreat was the main thing: withdrawal from the struggle. What mattered was that you were left alone.

Orson unlocked the door in a rush, buzzing with anticipation, and pushed it gently open with his foot. Dust revolved in the air—the lazy, protozoan dust of wooden houses—and the afternoon sun turned the foyer the color of beer. It had been more than a decade, to the best of his reckoning, since he’d had that house completely to himself. He estimated the hour at four o’clock—half past at the most—and went to check the mantel clock, but found it stopped at 08:27 EST. An omen of some kind, no question about it, but for the moment its meaning escaped him.

He set his trunk down at the foot of the stairs and stood, beguiled and delighted, listening to the house shift and settle around him. If a single object had been added or removed since he’d left for New York, the change was too minute for him to see. Nine years had come and gone without a trace. There was something deliciously morbid in that: something unnatural, even perverse. I could never have predicted this, he thought. Not this changelessness.

“Nine years,” Orson said to the stillness. “Nine years and no time at all.”

He took off his peacoat and hung it on the mahogany head of the banister, whose burnished roundness made him think—as it had when he was small—of an old man’s bald crown. He slipped out of his loafers, then out of his socks. His feet stank agreeably. He crossed the frayed Persian carpet, feeling its coarseness against his instep, and laid his palm against the kitchen door. He felt the urge to strip completely—a thing he’d never once done in those rooms—and saw no earthly reason to resist it.
Starting tomorrow I’ll write naked
, he said to himself.
That ought to keep the brush salesmen away
.