Playback (3 page)

“You’s a big ’en, you is,” said the blonde. “You’d put most the men down here on the streets of Bandits Roost to shame, they ever catch a glimpse of what you got there.”

Andrew didn’t know if they were telling the truth or were just trying to please him for more pay, but he didn’t care. He’d had his moment of release, and now his moment of peace.

Peace.

His breathing eased. His heart slowed.

Then, “So what is in that leather case you brought?” It was the blonde.

Andrew opened his eyes, wiped his mouth, and then staggered to his feet. “It’s something to shoot you with,” he said.

“Oh! Holy Mother of God!” shrieked the brunette.

“No, you misunderstand,” said Andrew. “It’s a camera. It makes moving pictures.” He opened the large black leather case and went about attaching the heavy camera to the tripod.

The brunette, now sitting straight with the blonde beside her, said. “Moving pictures? Really? Can you do that?”

Andrew nodded. He adjusted the tripod legs, peered through the lens to find a disappointing lack of light. Everything through the camera appeared darkened and slightly distorted. He wished for some bright April sunlight rather than grayed January gloom.

“I seen Sarah Bernhardt in a couple of them little movin’ pictures down in Luna Park,” said the brunette. “She’s beautiful. She make good money doing that, you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Andrew. “Would you turn up the lamp?” The brunette scrambled to her feet and trotted to the wall to adjust the lamp’s valve. With a
whoosh
of gas the flame flared then held steady, sending a bit more of the anemic light across the room.

“So you gonna film us?” asked the blonde. She stood now and struck a pose beside the brunette.

“Yes.”

They giggled and hopped back onto the bed. He imagined the bedbugs regrouping and planning their attack.

“You gonna pay us for filmin’ us?” asked the blonde.

“Yes,” said Andrew. “I’ll pay you fairly.” He had fifty dollars in his pocket, and was sure the girls hadn’t seen that much money at once in their lifetimes. They would be able to feed themselves and any babies they might have back in their own flats.

Andrew took three minutes of film. The hookers embracing. The hookers kissing one another. The hookers standing by the window, staring out at the world as if they were unaware of their nakedness or their lots in life. The hookers curled up on the bed as if asleep. He thought,
Someday, there might truly be a market for such films. Films of naked women. Rich or poor. Beautiful or plain. Films of sex. Films of introspection. It could be a lucrative business for someone who had the time and inclination
.

He stopped the camera and rubbed a crick from his neck. The hookers, back on the bed again, looked at him. Their eyes had an odd cast to them. He wondered if the lighting had shifted as he filmed.

“I’m done,” he said. He slipped into his clothes and coat as they watched him without moving, without speaking. He fished into his pocket to retrieve the money. He suspected they would fall all over themselves once they saw what he had to offer by way of pay.

He looked up at them again. Still, their eyes were oddly wide, and tinted with a peculiar sheen. It was unnerving. He suddenly didn’t want to be close to them.

“Here.” He held out the money. “This is yours. I’m going to put it on the windowsill.” He put the money down.

They stared, saying nothing.

“Did you hear me?”

In unison, they said, “Yes.”

“I want you to just stay here until I’ve left.”

Together again, in almost an identical, flattened voice: “Yes.”

He quickly packed the camera in its case, buckling it and adjusting the leather straps. When he glanced back up, they were still staring at him. “Are … are you all right?”

Together: “Yes.”

Andrew lifted the camera case and walked to the door.

Then the blonde, her head turning slowly like that of a marionette’s: “What do you want us to do now?”

The brunette: “What should we do? Tell us.”

Andrew put the case down. Something was wrong with them, but what? They’d had no drink, had taken no drugs.

The two got up from the bed and stood, hands outstretched, waiting. Andrew stared back at them. And then …

No …!

 … the darkness was coming. His blood vessels began to hum as if they were filled with tiny bees. He began to shake.

“Tell us what to do.”

No, not now!

The humming grew louder, harder, hotter, rushing up into his brain and settling behind his eyes with a deafening roar. He grit his teeth and drove one fist against the side of his head.

Then all went dark.

A perfect, silent darkness.

***

Cold air brushed her face and naked body, but it was all right. Cold didn’t matter. There was money on the windowsill, but she didn’t want it. Money didn’t matter. As the brunette hooker shuffled toward the young man, her bare heel came down on a protruding nail in the floor. It punctured the flesh, but it was all right. Pain didn’t matter.

All that mattered was obeying him.

“Tell us what to do,” she said. The blonde woman beside her echoed, “Tell us, please tell us.”

He raised his hand and they stopped. He walked around the two of them and looked them up and down. His eyes were narrowed and reddened, his brow deeply furrowed, and his mouth contorted and twitching. He looked different from the way he had earlier. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was doing what he commanded her to do.

Then he said to her, “Slap that worthless, stinking whore!”

She turned to the blond woman, opened her hand and drove it as hard as she could against the woman’s face. There was a resounding crack that sent the blonde spinning to the floor, where she lay for a moment, panting, a huge red welt rising beside her nose.

The man looked at the blonde and ordered her back onto her feet. Then he cocked his head and said, “Tear out some of that bountiful brown hair.”

The blonde reached for the brunette with both hands. The brunette waited for it to happen. He had ordered it and so it was right. The blonde grabbed a hank over the brunette’s right ear and pulled down with a quick and powerful motion. With a loud ripping sound, a large portion of hair came out along with a slab of blood-covered scalp. Again there was pain. Great pain.

But, as before, pain did not matter.

She stood, blood rolling down her neck, waiting for the next order. The blonde waited beside her.

The man crossed his arms and frowned as if in deep thought. He blinked his red eyes and rubbed his chin. Then a small smile flickered across his face and he nodded at the brunette. “Kill her.”

She went to the window, drove her elbow through the glass, and selected an appropriately jagged shard. As the blonde stood still and obediently, the brunette brought the shard back, tilted her head to determine the best angle, then drove the glass down and into the blonde’s shoulder. The woman squawked and dropped to the floor, but did not resist. She just blinked.

The brunette knelt. She jammed the glass deep into the blonde’s chest. Dark red flowed out and around the glass and down onto the floor in a bright puddle. The hooker’s mouth drooled a pinkish foam. Her arms spasmed and her legs kicked, and then went still. A whistling breath eased out through her teeth and faded away.

The brunette looked up at the man. She lifted the hand with the glass; an offering. “Tell me what to do,” she said.

The man waved one hand. “That’s all. Now get away from me, you foul creature.”

She obeyed and went to sit on the bed.

The man dipped his finger into the blonde’s blood and scrawled on one warped, water-stained wall: THOMAS EDISON.

***

Friday, January 9, 1903, Glenmont Estate, West Orange, New Jersey

The clock in the parlor chimed twelve times—slow, steady
pings
that caused Edison to look up from his chair and wait until it went silent again. He savored the
stillness of midnight, the blank slate of the witching hour when his wife, Mina, and three youngest children were fast asleep and he had no distractions other than the flurried thoughts in his own head. Most nights, he would be in his laboratory with his assistants until the wee hours of morning, working on any number of projects, but tonight he remained home. Tonight, ghosts of the past seemed determined to wreak his ability to work or sleep.

The clock ceased its chiming and Edison turned his attention back to the letters and telegrams he’d scattered about on his desk. There were congratulatory missives from senators and congressmen, presidents and industry barons, marveling over his various inventions and accomplishments. There were clippings from newspapers across the nation in which reporters gave eyewitness accounts to the installation of his electric light systems in their cities. Some were little notes from schoolchildren, fascinated with science and wanting to come work for him. “I will do it for free!” quoted one cheerful note, written by someone no older than ten. “I want to be like you. I want to invent things!”

Edison ran his hands along the letters and articles, feeling the affirmation in the paper and ink. There was not a critical message in the bunch; he made a point of burning anything sent him that was insulting or challenging. He did not need that. He did not want that.

Outside the parlor window, in the black distance of night, he could hear a lone mockingbird begin to sing. Odd, that one would be singing in the dead of winter. One melody after another after another. Much like himself—one idea after another after another after another.
I wonder if the mockingbird ever gets letters criticizing him, telling him he is dishonest and he should just shut up and go away?

Edison folded the articles and letters, slid them back into the top left drawer of the desk, locking it afterward. Then he unlocked the right drawer and took out a small oak box that was also locked. He found the tiny key, and looking over his shoulder to make
sure none of his family or household staff had come into the parlor unannounced, he opened the box and pulled out the lone telegram.

It was a short note, as were all telegrams. Dated September 17, 1890, and sent from Paris.

Caught 2:12 at Dijon. With much effort offending package opened and discarded permanently from train. Q and K lost. —CS Anderson
.

Although the telegram was intentionally coded, Edison had understood immediately what happened. Louis Le Prince, the scoundrel who claimed to have invented the movie camera before him, had been in France, taking the train from Dijon to Paris, when Edison’s three men had caught up with him. Le Prince had caught on to their plans and put up a fight but was tossed from the train to his death.

Thirteen years ago. But Edison would still feel occasional twinges at the base of his neck as if the job really
wasn’t
finished, as if there was some lingering issue, something left undone. Yes, Louis Le Prince was most certainly dead. So, too, was Le Prince’s son, Adolphe, who’d been shot to death two years later on Fire Island. The Le Princes were gone and most likely forgotten.

“Good,” he whispered, his breath stirring the tiny hairs on the back of his hand. “Good, good. All is well. All will be well.”

He put the telegram away and left the parlor, quietly taking the stairs up to the large bedroom he shared with Mina. She was curled up on her side in her white gown, her dark hair in stark contrast against the white pillow. Her mouth was curved in a gentle, natural smile. She was a dear, a sweet wife, smart and energetic, a full seventeen years his junior. Glenmont, their home, was in her name, not his, an uncommon situation for husband and wife. Edison had insisted on this, as he feared someday those who plotted against him might bring him down to financial ruin and he would have to declare bankruptcy. This way, Glenmont could not be lost to the family.

Slipping out of his daywear and into his nightshirt, he crawled into bed beside Mina, propped himself up against the headboard and closed his eyes. With luck, he’d be able to grab four hours of sleep before the need to work took over and drove him back out of the bed again. He thought about the letters of congratulations, the articles announcing his successes. He thought about his famous friends—Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, John Burroughs—and how much they enjoyed his company on trips and vacations.

At least, he hoped they enjoyed the trips together. At least, he hoped they really were his friends.

Sleep pulled the corners of his eyes, and reluctantly he gave in. The sound of the blood pulsing at his temples became the sound of waves against a beach. Peaceful. Serene.

Herring gulls floated across an ice blue sky. Terns tiptoed up and down the sand, seeking tiny creatures as food. A lone white dog sniffed the waves that rolled up and back on the shore.

Then the dog turned and laughed at him. He tried to ask the dog why it was laughing but found himself unable to speak.

Suddenly, the dog turned from white to charred, smoking black. Other animals joined it on the beach—cats, dogs, geese, ducks—all smoldering, twisted, their animal faces burned off and leaving hideous, vacant death-head grins.

And they were all laughing and cheering.

It was then that Edison looked down to see he was chained to the ground. Two lengths of steel links coiled around his chest and down the length of his body, the ends of both disappearing into the sand. On his feet were wooden sandals lined with copper. From each sandal protruded a copper electrode.

Let me go! Free me now!
He tried to scream but nothing came out except a desperate hissing of air. His heart started to pound. Tears sprang to his eyes.

The charred animals continued to cheer and laugh. One dog, standing cleverly on two feet, set up a movie camera on a tripod and checked the legs to make sure they were steady. He fumbled with the spool of film, snapping it into place. Then he closed the camera and turned the crank to start filming.

Don’t do this! Stop!

An elephant was beside Edison now, a huge and towering beast, sniffing him with a burned and flaking trunk. It reached down to draw wires from a nearby generator and attach them to the electrodes on the wooden sandals. Edison struggled to free himself from the chains but the elephant only shook its scorched head.