The Road to Wellville (4 page)

But the doctor didn’t have to wait for his secretary’s response: there it was, slouching indolently against the wall not ten feet away, there it
was, staring him in the face. All at once his mood shattered like a windowpane. He could feel the rage take hold of him. “How dare you!” he choked, storming up to the ragged figure propped against the wall. “Haven’t I told you—”

But the figure moved and spoke and cut him off. The words seemed to come from deep inside him even as the sparkling audience flowed through the doors of the Grand Parlor and made their way in a knot toward them; the words spat themselves out like a curse, twisted by the unshaven lips, forced from the stinking rags and the feverish eyes: “Hello, Father. Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

   
Chapter 2   

I
gnoring the dainty little three-pronged fork, Charlie Ossining lifted the oyster to his mouth, tipped the shell forward and with a quick practiced pursing of the lips, allowed it to become one with himself. Before him, atop a bed of crushed ice, lay eleven others,’ glistening with the juice of life. He lingered over the second, garnishing it with a dash of cocktail sauce and a squeeze of lemon before sending it off to bed with its brother, the moment settling round him in a warm gastric glow as he took a leisurely sip of his Pommery & Greno ’96, and contemplated the snug green neck of the bottle peeking out from its icy cradle. This was living, all right, he thought, patting his lips with a swath of snowy linen and letting his gaze fall idly over the glittering depths of the car.

Outside, the scenery beat by the windows, as cold and cheerless as an oyster’s gullet—did oysters have gullets? he wondered briefly before downing another—but here, in the softly lit grip of the diner, it was all mahogany and crystal. Amazing, really. You’d hardly think they were rocketing along at nearly forty miles an hour—the car barely trembled, the champagne clinging to the rim of the glass even as the potted palm swayed serenely over the table. He could feel the vibration of the rails, of course, but it was nothing, a distant throb, as if threads of silk were pulling him gently through the bleak countryside
.

He was halfway through the plate of oysters—six shells denuded, six to go—when the Negro waiter pranced up the aisle, a pair of menus clutched to his chest, a cadaverous-looking couple following in his wake. Casting a quick look round him, Charlie saw to his dismay that his was the only table for four occupied by a single diner, and saw further that they were headed straight for him. So much for solitary pleasures.

“’Scuse me, sir,” the Negro said, dipping his head in extenuation, and then he drew out the chair opposite Charlie for the lady (thirtyish, too pale, too thin, nice eyes, a three-tiered hat built up like the Tower of Pisa with artificial fruit, lace, ribbon, assorted gewgaws and a pale little dead bird with glass eyes perched atop a wire twig) and the chair beside her for the man (too much nose, unruly hair, dressed up like a prince on his way to the opera). Charlie took an immediate dislike to them, but then he softened a bit, always willing to make concessions for the rich.

“Good evening,” Charlie offered. He was wearing a blue serge suit himself—a bit linty, maybe, but his pink-and-white-striped shirt had been worn only three or four times, and his cuffs and collar were new from the shop that morning.

The woman smiled—nice teeth, too. And lips. “Evening,” the man murmured, handing the wine list back to the waiter as if it were a bit of offal and turning the menu face down without even glancing at it. He fixed Charlie with an ever-so-slightly cross-eyed gaze, held it perhaps a beat too long, and then broke into a grin. Suddenly, a fleshless hand, chased by a bony wrist, shot out across the table, and Charlie, startled, took it in his own. “Will Lightbody,” the man said, his voice booming out now in an excess of enthusiasm.

Charlie spoke his own name, disengaged his hand, and turned to the woman.

“Mr. Ossining,” Will pronounced, and there was an odd hollowness to his voice, as if he were speaking from the bottom of a well, “I’d like you to meet my wife, Eleanor.”

The towering hat trembled beneath its excrescences, a pair of sharp mocking eyes took hold of Charlie’s like pincers, and Eleanor Lightbody was murmuring a standard greeting. A moment of silence followed
, Eleanor glancing down at her menu, Will grinning inappropriately, nakedly, a thirty-year-old schoolboy with a new plaything. Charlie began to wonder if he wasn’t a bit unbalanced.

“Oysters,” Will said suddenly. Eleanor lifted her eyes from the menu.

Charlie glanced at the half-dozen shellfish remaining on his plate and then looked up into Will’s horse-toothed grin. “Yes. Bluepoints. And they’re delicious, really sweet … would you care to try one?”

The grin vanished. Will’s lower lip seemed to tremble. He glanced out the window. It was Eleanor who broke the silence this time. “It’s his stomach,” she said.

His stomach. Charlie hesitated, wondering at the appropriate response. Sympathy? Surprise? A spirited defense of the digestive properties of oysters? He gazed wistfully on the plate of shellfish—the air had to be cleared before he communed with another, that much was apparent. “Dyspepsia?” he wondered aloud.

“I haven’t slept in three weeks,” Will announced. He was fidgeting with the corners of the menu, and his leg had begun to thump nervously beneath the table. Without benefit of the grin, his face had grown longer and narrower, his eyes had retreated into his skull, and there were two pronounced caverns beneath his cheekbones. He looked ready for the grave.

“Really? You don’t say?” Charlie glanced from husband to wife and back again. She had stunning eyes, she did, but the mocking gleam was gone from them now, vanished like her husband’s grin. “Three weeks?”

Will shook his head sadly. “Afraid so. I lie there in bed staring at the ceiling and my stomach is like a steam engine, like a boiler, and pretty soon I start seeing all these visions in the dark….” He leaned forward. “Pies, oranges, beefsteaks—and every one of them with legs and arms, dancing round the room and mocking me. Do you know what I mean?”

The waiter reappeared at that moment, hovering over the table with his order pad and sparing Charlie the awkwardness of a reply. “May I take your order, sir? Madame?”

Night was settling in beyond the windows, a descent of the dead gray sky over the dead gray landscape, shadows deepening, trees falling away into oblivion, the river running black. Charlie was suddenly aware of
his reflection staring back at him—he saw a hungry man in a linty blue suit hunkered over a plate of oysters. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, he hastily slid an oyster down his throat, emptied his glass and filled it again, the cold neck of the bottle as satisfying to the hand as anything he’d ever held.

“The potage,” Eleanor was saying, “it
is
leek, isn’t it?”

“Yes, madame.”

“No beef or chicken stock—” Her voice took on an admonitory tone the waiter was quick to recognize.

“Oh, no, ma’am—veggeble stock only.”

“Yes. All right. And none of the entrées is acceptable—would you bring me some vegetables, please? I don’t suppose you have crudités?”

The waiter looked uncomfortable. He shifted from one foot to the other. His white jacket was so bright it seemed to glow. “We have all the very finest here, ma’am, I can assure you of that….” He faltered. “I will inquire of the chef.” And then, after gazing searchingly at the floor a moment, he added, “We do have a fine cucumber salad tonight.”

Eleanor heaved a sigh. “All right, then—the cucumber salad. And a glass of water.” As she leaned forward to hand the waiter the menu, she seemed to think of something else. “Oh,” she said, “and a bowl of bran. To sprinkle over the salad.”

“Bran?” The waiter looked confused. “I’ll be sure to inquire of the chef, ma’am.”

She made a little puffing noise with her lips. “Oh, never mind,” she said. “Just the soup and the salad.”

Looking relieved, the waiter accepted the menu and bent forward, attentively gazing into Will Lightbody’s upturned face. “And for the gentleman?”

As Charlie took up another oyster, he couldn’t help noticing the look of panic settling into his fellow diner’s ever-so-faintly crossed eyes. Will waved his hand carelessly, as if he hadn’t come to eat at all, as if this weren’t the dining car of the Twentieth Century Limited, the world’s premier train, boasting the finest cuisine and finest service known to man. “Oh, nothing for me. A bit of toast, maybe.”

“Toast, sir?”

“Toast.”

There was a silence as the waiter contemplated this request. This was an era of vigorous and accomplished eating, of twelve-course meals, of soups, sauces and gravies, of three meats and a fish course, not to mention a cascade of wines—sherries, clarets, ports, Zinfandel and Niersteiner—and a succession of oleaginous desserts. The kitchen was groaning with rib roasts, broiled geese and slabs of venison, the cooks were furiously shucking oysters and poaching sturgeon, waiters staggered up and down the aisle beneath the burden of their laden trays, and here was Will Lightbody ordering toast. The silence held and Charlie was aware in that moment of the distant ticking of the rails. At the next table a woman swathed in furs gave a silvery little laugh in response to something her companion—an old man with gargantuan mustaches—was saying in a muted rumble.

“And, uh, how would the gentleman like that?”

Charlie’s new acquaintance seemed distracted. “Like what?”

“The gentleman’s toast, sir.”

“Oh, yes. Toasted, please.” Will glanced uneasily at his wife. “And with a bowl of broth,” he added in a single breath, as if afraid the tongue would be snatched from his mouth before he could get the words out.

“No broth,” Eleanor countered just as quickly, and there was no arguing with the tone of that voice: the waiter penciled out “broth” as expeditiously as he’d penciled it in. “Full of creatine,” she added, giving Charlie a look he couldn’t quite fathom.

“Will that be all?” the waiter asked, clasping his hands before him as if in prayer and giving an obsequious little nod of his head.

Will glanced up sharply. “Yes, yes. That’s all.”

The waiter retreated, the woman at the next table laughed again, and the night deepened a further degree, so that the diners could no longer see the countryside rushing past them. Charlie ducked his head to receive another oyster.

“Scavengers of the sea,” Will said suddenly.

Eleanor smiled, a faint compressing of the lips. Her eyes were keen again.

“Beg pardon?” Charlie returned, lifting the wine glass to his lips even as the soft pulp of the oyster met his teeth and found its way down his throat to join its companions
.

“Oysters,” Will said, turning to his wife. “Right, darling? Isn’t that what your Dr. Kellogg calls them?”

There was a joke here somewhere—Charlie could see it in her eyes—and he seemed to be the brunt of it. She tilted her head slightly, so that the glassy dumbstruck eyes of the bird atop her hat flashed luridly in the light. “Yes, Will darling,” she said, all the while staring at Charlie, “but he’s only speaking the truth. Oysters
are
unclean, after all. They live in muck and filth and they feed on it. And oyster juice, he insists, is nothing more or less than urine.”