On the Wing (31 page)

By sundown, everyone had gone. Curtis's parents had gone to bed.

Curtis and I sat on the porch in silence for a while.

“Does that sort of thing happen often around here?” I asked.

“Never,” he said. “In fact, before that, the most remarkable thing I ever saw around here was you.”

*   *   *

SOMETHING WOKE ME in the night. I wasn't sure what it was. I lay awake for a while, listening, but I heard nothing. The night was full of the sound of nothing happening. I switched on the light beside my bed, got my books, and returned to Panmuphle and the Bonhommes. The daughter had just told Panmuphle—that is, me—that it was Dr. Faustroll's habit to substitute paper for water in his daily sponge bath:

“It has been a long time since he made that change,” said Mr. Bonhomme gravely. “He uses a wallpaper of the season, of the fashion, or suiting his whim.”

“Wallpaper,” I muttered, suspecting now that I was the victim of a jest.

The fetching child spoke up. “To avoid shocking or offending the populace,” she said, “he dresses himself, over this wallpaper, in a shirt of quartz cloth; a large pair of trousers, drawn tight at the ankles, made of matte black velours; minuscule gray half-boots, with dust that he maintains, not without great effort or expense, I assure you, in equal layers or coatings, for months—”

She hesitated.

“Yes, mademoiselle?” I said, coaxing her.

“There is something about ant lions,” she said, knitting her darling brows.

“Ant lions?”

“Yes, sir. He employs ant lions in the maintenance of his boots—that is, in the maintenance of the layers of dust on his boots.” She cast her eyes downward like a schoolgirl who has not learned her lesson. “But I am not quite sure how or to what end they are employed,” she confessed.

“The ant lions are of no interest to me,” I assured her. “Continue with his costume, if you will.”

“Yes, sir,” she said with the hint of a curtsy. “Thank you, sir. He wears a vest of yellow gold, the exact color of his complexion, a vest—or perhaps I should say a cardigan—with two rubies closing two pockets, very high—”

“Quite the dandy,” I observed.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “And he completes the effect with a blue fox pelisse.”

“Whatever that is,” I muttered, noting it nonetheless.

“On his right index finger he stacks emerald and topaz rings,” she said, making the gesture as she spoke, “as far as the nail, the only one of his ten that he does not bite at all, and he stops or concludes or ends the stack of rings with a perfect molybdenum pin, screwed into the bone of the little phalanx, the smallest bone at the end of the finger, through the nail.”

“That is very bizarre,” I muttered as I noted it on my pad, “and possibly criminal.”

“By way of necktie,” she went on, almost gaily now, “he passes around his neck the ribbon of the order of the Grande-Gidouille.”

“I do not know—” I began.

“It is an order he invented!” she exclaimed, with delightful girlish giggles.

“And he has patented it,” her father added with bourgeois gravity, “so that it will not be misused.”

“Very well,” I said, assuming that I had heard all. “Thank you for your assistance,” I said, intending to take my leave.

“There is something more, monsieur,” said Mr. Bonhomme.

“Yes?”

“Before he leaves the house, he—”

“Yes?”

“He hangs himself, monsieur.”

“Hangs himself?”

“By that ribbon, the ribbon of the order of Grande-Gidouille.”

“Extraordinary.”

“He hangs himself by that ribbon from a gallows he has arranged for that purpose,” said the girl, with a mixture of awe and scoffery, “and he waits or hesitates there, hanging, for some time.”

“He must look ghastly,” I ventured.

“Somewhere between the looks that suffocators call ‘hung white' and ‘hung blue,'” she said thoughtfully.

“Almost certainly illegal,” I announced.

*   *   *

WHEN I CAME DOWNSTAIRS for breakfast, everything was quiet. There was a place set for me at the table, but it seemed as if everyone else must already have eaten and begun the day's occupation. I didn't see any food. I peeked around the corner into the kitchen, but no one was there, and I didn't see any food in there, either.

I went into the front hall. All was still. I went out to the porch.

The man and woman were sitting in rocking chairs, staring out at the intersection where the bus had stopped the day before.

“Good morning,” I said. “Where is—”

“Gone,” said the woman.

“Left this morning,” said the man.

“Right after breakfast,” said the woman.

“Took the bus,” said the man.

“W-what—where—why—” I sputtered.

“Said if he stayed here for the rest of his life he would never see anything like that again.”

“Said he had to go.”

“Oh,” I said.

A long time passed. No one said anything. Nothing happened.

Then I said, “I guess I'd better be going too,” and I left.

Chapter 26

Everything Olivia

WE SWUNG OFF THE INTERSTATE, following the sign directing travelers to the town of Olivia. The sign was unusual. It pointed in separate directions for tour buses, for deliveries, and for passenger cars. At the end of the off-ramp for passenger cars, we approached a toll gate.

“Two?” asked the toll collector.

“There are two of us,” said Albertine, “but isn't it a little odd to charge tolls by the person?”

“It isn't a toll,” the collector said with the weariness of one who has had to deliver the same explanation many times. “It's admission.”

“Admission?”

“That's right. It isn't a toll, and I am not a toll collector. It's admission, and I am a sales associate in the Admissions Department.” She pointed to the plastic tag pinned above her left breast. It said
Amanda,
and below that it said
Sales Associate.

“I've never been asked to pay admission to a town before.”

“Olivia isn't just a town,” Amanda explained. “It's a museum.”

“Ah!” I said. “One of those historical re-creations? That's very interesting. You see, my home town—”

“More of a personal museum,” she said. “The Town of Olivia is the Museum of Olivia.”

“A personal museum?” I said. “That's an interesting idea.”

“Olivia who?” asked Albertine.

“Just Olivia,” said Amanda. “Having her own museum and all, she has attained the rarefied status of single-name international celebrity. That's the way the brochure puts it.”

“I've never heard of her,” I said.

“Still,” said Amanda, “she has her own museum, and I'd be willing to wager that you don't.”

“Well, no,” I said, “I don't, but there is a caricature of me on the wall of a restaurant—”

“Do people live here? In the town of Olivia? In the Museum of Olivia?” asked Al.

“Sure do,” said Amanda. “I live here. I've lived here all my life.”

“The caricature shows me as I was in my teens,” I explained, “when I flew an aerocycle from—”

“You see,” said Amanda, “before Olivia came along, this town had been shrinking for as long as I can remember. I watched my friends grow up and move away, even saw members of my family move away. It was getting to be a very lonely place. We were on the verge of just disappearing, but then one day Olivia drove into town. She was just passing through, like you, but she was enchanted by the prospect that she, a woman named Olivia, might live in a town named Olivia. That's the way she puts it in her introduction to the brochure. She says she was ‘enchanted by the prospect.'”

“What a surprising and fortunate coincidence that she should happen upon a town named Olivia,” said Albertine.

“Well, of course at that time the town was named Gadsleyville,” said Amanda, “but nearly the whole damned place was for sale, so Olivia saw the opportunity and she seized it. She began buying up bits and pieces of us, and pretty soon she petitioned the town council to have the name changed to Olivia, so there she was and here we are.”

“Her destiny has been fulfilled,” Albertine offered.

“I doubt that Babbington would go so far as to rename the town for me,” I speculated, “although I wouldn't be surprised if the idea had its supporters—”

“I wouldn't say it's been fulfilled just yet,” said Amanda. “The mansion is still under construction, and the museum is likely to be under construction forever. So it remains a work in progress.”

She leaned toward us and lowered her voice.

“Confidentially, just between us, Olivia turned out to be a bit of an eccentric.”

“No,” said Albertine with convincing surprise.

“'Fraid so. She didn't tell anybody until she just about owned the whole town that what she wanted to do was not to establish the Museum of Olivia
in
the town of Olivia, but that she wanted to establish the town
as
the Museum of Olivia.”

“People would have resisted that?” I asked.

“Wouldn't you?”

“I probably would,” I said, “but I'm just wondering whether the people back in my home town—”

“So, anyway,” said Amanda, “that's what she set about doing.”

“Do you mean that she has been turning the entire town into a museum?” I asked.

“Sure do. I thought I was pretty plain on that point.”

“You were, you were,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure, because it raises an intriguing question about the future of my home town—”

“You don't say,” Amanda said. “Is that going to be two day passes then?”

“It sounds fascinating, Al,” I said. “What do you say?”

“I'm not sure that
fascinating
is the first word that comes to mind,” she said.

“Among the many exhibits that your pass will admit you to is the Gallery of Coins Found on the Sidewalk,” said Amanda. “You see, when Olivia was just a girl she found a nickel on the sidewalk. Kids are pretty good at that, finding coins on the sidewalk. Kids are little, so they're right down there, right close to the sidewalk, making it easier for them to find coins than it is for you and me. Not that I don't find my share.”

“I've always had that knack,” I said, “the knack for finding coins on the sidewalk. I'll often surprise Albertine by presenting her with a penny that I've spotted. I could probably have a Gallery of Coins—”

Amanda turned a pair of icy eyes on me and went right on. “Anyway,” she said, “Olivia picked up that nickel, and that night she put the nickel under her pillow, and while she was lying there in bed fingering the nickel, she asked herself how many nickels she might find in her lifetime. She didn't put it quite that way, of course, because she was just a young girl, but that was the question that formed in her mind. By morning she had a plan: she would save all the coins she found in the street for the rest of her life. Formulating a lifelong plan like that demonstrated remarkable foresight for one so young. That's what it says in the brochure: ‘remarkable foresight for one so young.' Will that be two day passes, then?”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “This is giving me some interesting ideas, and I'd—”

“What else have you got besides coins found on the sidewalk?” asked Albertine.

“Well, there is the Gallery of Discards. Before you dismiss that as trash, I want to emphasize that
discards
covers a lot of territory. Most of us would think of trash when we hear the word
discards,
and you will find trash in the Gallery of Discards, but you will find much more than that. See, Olivia, once she decided that someday there would be a Museum of Olivia, instead of throwing anything away, she threw it into the collection. It's all there, her personal mountain of discards, categorized, arranged, and displayed. As you might expect, this is the largest gallery in town. Preservation is a complex issue in a collection so large and diverse, and the conservators are breaking new ground in the area of long-term stabilization. That's what it says in the brochure, ‘breaking new ground in the area of long-term stabilization.' I told you that the word
discards
covers a lot of territory, and I wasn't kidding. You'll see for yourself. Let me just give you a for-instance: in the Gallery of Discards you will see wax effigies of all the boyfriends Olivia has dumped over the years. That's what it says in the brochure: ‘dumped.' We take all the major credit cards. Is it going to be two day passes?”

“If only Proust had had the foresight to hang on to all of his discards,” I said, bedazzled by the possibilities, “or to have wax effigies constructed—”

“I'm not sold yet,” said Albertine. “What else have you got?”

“There's the Gallery of Bad Thoughts. What can I say? It's scary. That's what I'll say. You can try that one if you like. I've never made it past the first room. That was scary enough for me. I've heard tell that it gets a lot worse the farther in you go. You have to ask yourself how a woman like Olivia could come up with such nasty ideas. Like it or not, she was a child of the culture and she is a woman of the world. That's what the brochure says: ‘a child of the culture and a woman of the world.' So she blames everybody else for her nasty ideas, that's the way I read it. That's what I hear her saying. Well, I never had any ideas like that. You wouldn't find a Gallery of Bad Thoughts in the Museum of Amanda. If there were a Museum of Amanda. Listen, I'm not supposed to do this, but since you're first-time visitors, I'll give you two-for-one. What do you say?”