Melting Clock (20 page)

He handed the phone to me and cleaned his hands.

“She’s getting your Mr. Wherthman,” he said. “I must dry my hands.”

“Mrs. Plaut can’t speak Spanish,” I said as he threw into the corner the offending handkerchief that had touched an unchilled phone.

“Her Spanish is flawless,” said Dali. “A bit of the Andalusian but perfect.”

And he was gone.

“Toby?” came Gunther’s voice over the phone.

“I’m here, Gunther.”

“Police were here. Sergeant Seidman.”

“Did they see the painting?”

“No, it is in my room, under the bed. They would not say why they were looking for you.”

“Fleeing the scene of the crime, absconding with evidence, possibly suspicion of murder.”

“That is less serious than last time,” he said. “They wish you to come see them immediately. I believe that a police automobile with a red-haired man inside is waiting across the street.”

“Thanks, Gunther,” I said. “Here’s my number. Don’t write it anywhere.”

“Be cautious, Toby,” he counseled.

“I will,” I said. “Did you know Mrs. Plaut speaks Andalusian Spanish?”

“Yes,” he said. “And a very acceptable French.”

“Why didn’t I know that?”

“Toby, you are my closest friend, the closest friend I have ever had and yet you have an inclination to close yourself off from that which will alter your perception of others. Mrs. Plaut is an enigma, not a joke.”

“I hate art and philosophy, Gunther. And I don’t care all that much for literature.”

“I know that you believe that, Toby. Please, I did not intend to agitate you.”

“I’m sorry, Gunther. I don’t really hate art and literature.

“I know that. Did you get enough sleep last night?”

At that instant, Gala, a twig in a purple dress reaching to the floor, washed into the room.

“No,” I said.

“Off the phone,” Gala ordered.

I turned my back on her. I had been about to end the conversation, but now I was more than a little inclined to engage Gunther in discussion of Da Vinci, Debussy, or Frankie Sinkwich.

“Recommend some reading for me, Gunther,” I said.

“I have a party to arrange for Dali and only twelve hours to complete it,” Gala said. “The phone is required.”

“I will gladly make a list and let you borrow my books,” said Gunther, “but I would prefer that you not remove them from Mrs. Plaut’s premises.”

“I’ll talk to you, Gunther,” I said.

“Be more concerned for your safety,” he answered, and I hung up.

Gala took the phone from me and motioned for me to get out of the way and out of the kitchen. I left.

The rest of the day, Jeremy—after I woke him at nine—and I took turns watching the street. A couple of truckloads of caterers arrived around three and took over most of the house. The caterers were all women.

“This,” declared Dali, who had changed into a white tuxedo with black tie and had come down to tilt his head back and watch the preparation, “must be a night of triumph. The press of the world will be here and I shall find new ways to offend.”

“Sounds like fun for all,” I said.

“I must retire to my rooms now.” Dali refused to acknowledge my sarcasm. “It is fatiguing to watch people work and to create offenses.”

At five, with food everywhere and tables on the beach around the throne, the first guests arrived. No one came to the house. Dali had painted a sign that Gala had personally put up in the sand. The sign read:

TO THE BEACH FOR SIGHTS DENIED MOST MORTALS

These first guests, a man and a woman, were wearing clown costumes.

From the window, Dali observed to me, “No imagination. I shall be dressed from the neck down as a rabbit—a trickster who hops, deceives, and refuses to be contained. And from the neck up, I shall be Sherlock Holmes, who claims to operate from reason and the logic but is really an artist.”

“Have fun,” I said.

“And you shall be dressed as …?” Dali inquired.

“I shall be dressed as Toby Peters, Detective.”

“There is only room for one detective at this party, and it shall be Salvador Dali. There is a costume for you in your room and one for the poet. Gala picked them. She can see through to the soul.”

I was about to say no again, but Dali wouldn’t let me get started.

“No one goes to the shore without wearing a mask of the gods.”

Depending on what torture Gala had laid out on the bed, it wasn’t such a bad idea to be in some kind of disguise. There wasn’t much chance of the L.A. cops showing up, but there was a chance the killer would come. That chance became a near certainty about ten minutes after the thought hit me.

The phone rang in the kitchen. Nobody paid attention. I picked it up. Over the clattering of the caterers and Gala’s shouting, a falsetto voice said, “Peters: Tonight, when the sun goes down, the painting will be revealed and Salvador Dali will face his punishment.”

Whoever it was hung up. I looked around to see if Dali was there or Gala was paying attention. They weren’t.

I went looking for Jeremy to tell him about the call and found him in the bedroom. He was wearing a toga with a gold rope around his waist.

“I am to be Plato.”

“You don’t have to do it, Jeremy.”

“I don’t mind. When I wrestled, I learned to accept costume and performance.”

I looked at the other costume on the bed. It was brown with leather shorts and with a little feathered hat, boots and a bow, and a quiver full of arrows.

“What’s that?”

“William Tell,” said Jeremy. “You have been honored. William Tell is Dali’s favorite character.”

“Why?”

Jeremy shrugged. Somehow, his shrug looked more meaningful in a toga.

“Tell is the archetypal father whose child’s life is in his hands. The child is dependent on the skill and courage of the father. Life and death, skill and faith. The child’s fate is in the hands of the father.”

“My knees’ll show,” I said, picking up the shorts.

“When you wear a bathing suit, they show,” Jeremy said gently.

“I don’t wear a bathing suit. I don’t go to the beach.”

“Tonight you will,” he reminded me, and I told him about the phone call.

E
ven before the sun was fully down there were four fires on the beach, blazes in giant copper pots. Dali supervised each one personally. Jeremy and I watched from the top of the hill where we could see down the beach for about a hundred yards in both directions. Dali was a frantic ball of white fur, cracking orders to hired hands who tended the fires. He ran from pot to pot like a vaudeville juggler trying to keep plates spinning on wobbly sticks.

In the center of the fiery pots, its heavy legs sinking into the sand, was the throne. Every once in a while Dali paused in his steeplechase to be sure the throne hadn’t gotten up on its legs and dashed into the ocean. Two long tables filled with seafood—lobsters, clams, shrimp, scallops—sat right on the shoreline where the tide was sure to get them in a few hours.

“I think he plans to let the sea take the food later,” Jeremy said.

“Looks that way,” I agreed, trying to reach a particularly itchy spot under my William Tell shorts. I couldn’t get at it, so I tried to do it with an arrow. I was reasonably successful.

The second set of guests arrived: a snail and an orange. Gala, dressed like a Cossack complete with tunic, fur cap, and beard, stood at the top of the sandy trail and pointed them toward the beach. At Gala’s request, Jeremy had carried the big clock outside and it stood next to her.

After Gala and the clock greeted each guest, they had to go past Jeremy and me, and we stopped them.

“I’m an orange,” the orange said.

“I can see that,” I said.

“Don’t shoot me,” he went on.

The snail roared with laughter.

“Get it?” said the snail. “William Tell shoots apples, not oranges.”

“Sorry,” I said to the orange. “We’ve got to frisk you for contraband.”

The snail thought this was funny, too, but the orange started to protest.

“Dali’s orders,” I said with a shrug and a look intended to make them think that it was just another eccentricity of the master.

I think the orange finally shrugged. I don’t know. The snail, even though she was a lady, was easier to search than the orange. We stood back and watched the couple waddle down the hill. I said, “Jeremy, this isn’t going to work.”

Looking particularly wise in his toga, he replied, “We will do what must be done.”

What had to be done next was to confront a woman in a gown and a head full of snakes instead of hair. The snakes looked too damned real.

“The Gorgon,” said Jeremy.

The man with her, if you ignored his big belly, looked like a Greek soldier complete with a big shiny shield. I tried to get under his armor. He was ticklish.

“Perseus,” Jeremy explained as the couple staggered down the hill. “He could only look at the Gorgon in his shield lest he turn to stone.”

They started to come too quickly for us to keep up with them. A herd of masked lemmings going over the cliff toward the water, lemmings disguised as ballerinas in fishing boots, buffaloes with the heads of owls, giant polka-dot chicken legs, red satin robots, and a hooded monk or executioner with ax. There were men dressed like women and women dressed like men. Half-man half-two-headed-horses, a bottle of mustard with an elephant’s trunk, and something that could have been a big wrinkled chili bean. It could have been something else, too, but I preferred to think it was a chili bean.

The noise level had risen considerably, though the waves were still slapping loud and close.

An angel and a Catholic priest wearing lipstick and sporting a long tail were the last to join the party. The angel, with white gown and feather wings, stopped next to us, played a few notes on her harp, and announced, “There should be no fires on the beach. The Japanese. It will draw the Japanese.”

“I think he plans to lure them to the beach and then pelt them with live lobsters,” I said.

“Droll,” commented the priest, heading down the hill to give her blessings.

“You hear that, Jeremy, it’s droll.”

“An essence of Surrealism is its offense,” Jeremy said.

“Anything?” asked Gala the Cossack, coming to our side and looking down at the madness on the beach. “Anything suspicious, strange?”

I looked down at the sight below, a beach full of escapees from a casting call for
Dante’s Inferno
or
Freaks.

“Looks normal to me,” I said.

“Dali seems pleased,” she said, stroking her beard. “Please bring down the clock.”

She headed down the sandy path toward her husband, who was standing on the seat of the throne, his paws folded, a mad knowing smile on his face.

“I’m going down, Jeremy,” I said, picking up the clock. “Keep an eye on things from up here.”

“It’s a bacchanal,” he said. “An astounding vision. If I had paper and a pen I’d write a poem.”

“Togas don’t have pockets,” I reminded him.

“I like that,” he said. “That will be the title of the poem, ‘Togas Don’t Have Pockets’—a surreal title for a surreal poem.”

The bow hooked over my shoulder dug into my back and the clock sank its claws into my stomach as I scurried down the hill and moved next to Dali on his throne in time to hear a woman dressed like a man say, “I hope you don’t die like the other painters, just when I get interested in your work.”

“In that case,” said Dali, “I hope we are both fortunate enough for me to outlive you.”

The woman backed away with a happy smile, and Dali leaned down to me and told me to place the clock before him on a marble pedestal. His voice was panicky as he put a paw on my shoulder: “They are coming too close and the sea is beginning to whisper something to me.”

“How about we call it a night and send the circus home early?” I suggested.

“Early? Early is dawn. The night is just coming. Fire dances in the waves. A feast of cannibals. Look. The lobsters look alive in their hands. Holes will appear in their flesh.”

“Sounds like fun to me,” I said.

“This,” contradicted Dali, “is not fun. This is art. Critics lurk beneath the masks, ready to steal my soul. Buyers hide their hideous drool behind hoods. They want to gather in my paintings, devour them in private feasts behind closed doors.
Vampiros.
Is that a real priest?”

“I hope not,” I said.

A voice rose from somewhere behind us. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

“You could never be my analyst, Roland. You are not truly literate.”

The snail appeared with a polka-dot chicken leg, stage whispering, “His paintings reveal so much of the Id that one can but anticipate with longing his return to consciousness.”

“Quiet,” shouted Gala, who suddenly appeared on the throne next to her furry husband. Her arms were raised high and her slight voice fought the ocean and the murmuring of the guests. Behind her, Dali adjusted his deerstalker, folded his arms, and turned his chin up in a pose uncomfortably like one of Mussolini’s. “At midnight, Dali will wind the clock and time will begin. But first, he will recite a poem of love and honor.”