Ray of the Star (11 page)

S
olange and Harry emerged from the latter’s apart ment contentedly aware that their exchange of confidences, no matter how satisfyingly thorough, could reasonably be thought of as no more than an additional incipit in what—barring any unforeseen accelerant—would require a whole cascading series in order to move them toward that something they had not, during their discussion of the matter, been quite willing to articulate, though we might reasonably infer that the potential of an intense acquaintance bolstered by duration was under discussion, meaning that high spirits were the order of the evening as they set off for the boulevard to recuperate and stow away Solange’s silver costume and Harry’s Yellow Submarine before heading together, as they had agreed, to the café to have a light meal and a bottle or two of sparkling water ahead of the revelations to come, though when they passed the second floor door marked “Rubinski” their steps slowed and they exchanged glances, but a collective shrug seemed to take care of the matter for both of them and instead of further discussing ghosts as they walked they turned to the related but generally less noxious subject of dreams, for Solange had had a corker the previous night, a nacreous haze that had ended with a question, “What word do we use to indicate that tame lions are living among us?” while Harry had found himself in a landscape dotted with amalgamators on a walking tour led by a kind of magician whose face, the dream had proposed to him, was “shining like a wet sword,” and while neither Solange nor Harry was interested in digging around for submerged meaning in these dreams, they both found the inclusion of moments of language amidst the standard swarm of images strangely appealing, and no doubt would have found their way into an interesting conversation thereon as they gathered their things on the boulevard if Alfonso, still in full regalia, including his sword and hind legs, hadn’t been waiting, arms crossed over his armored chest, next to the submarine,

“Our gondoleer,” Harry said,

“He doesn’t look happy,” Solange said,

“You’re right, he’s not, he’s been standing here waiting for three quarters of an hour next to this abandoned, borrowed Yellow Submarine waiting to see if the person who borrowed it from him would turn up again,” Alfonso said sternly, while inwardly in fact he was quite pleased that Harry’s negligence in re the submarine had so conveniently handed him a straightforward justification for rescinding Harry’s occupational privileges, and he was preparing to broach this subject, and to extract an imminent date and time for Harry to fulfill his end of the bargain and tell him his story, which would no doubt intersect intriguingly with the connoisseurs planned attentions, when a curious thought, one that had not entered into his calculations about the source of his misgiving earlier, entered his mind—no doubt by some side door or other, the handle of which was Solange’s happily smudged silver face or Harry’s sweat-streaked wrists or the half-shredded sparkling water bottle splayed across the roots of the oak tree that rose and spread just behind them—and made him uncross his arms and recross them then look off to the side to study the thought again then once more before confirming that, yes, while of course as he well knew he had been the one who had told a certain handsome young man interested in taking up the living statue profession and who had come and stood in front of him, for the purpose of observation, for several days, that he might, since he was interested in golden things, just as well go and observe the technique of the angel near the top of the boulevard, and then of course a few days later the young man had become the golden angel’s young man and then, some weeks later, had died horribly and smashed her heart to smithereens, all this he knew, but it hadn’t occurred to him until just that very moment that it was the connoisseurs who had planted the suggestion in his mind, during one of their circuits, as they passed behind him, “Send that guy off to see Solange, that’s who he ought to see next, that would be good, don’t you think?” or had it been them? was he remembering something that had actually occurred or dropping depth charges from the present into the past? he didn’t think so, and because he didn’t, because there was doubt in his mind and maybe just a little more than doubt, especially given the expressions that had played over the connoisseurs’ faces when they had discussed Harry earlier, instead of telling Harry it was time for him and the submarine to part ways, he leaned over, opened the hatch, and said,

“Climb in,”

“We’re going somewhere,” Harry said,

“I’ll take you,” Alfonso said,

“You’re sure?” Solange said,

Alfonso patted the side of the submarine and said it would be good exercise,

“Are you going to take that stuff off or walk with it?” Harry said, pointing at Alfonso’s hind legs,

“They’re on rollers, they work even better than the submarine, every now and again I like to move around a little when I’m performing, it wouldn’t do to walk off without my legs,” Alfonso said, and before Harry could say something else, Solange took his arm and pulled him into the submarine and shut the hatch behind them, and after she had instructed Alfonso to grab her gear then told him where they were going, they were off, and as they moved off, Harry and Solange looked at each other and Solange said,

“I think he’s going to tell us something,”

“I think so too,” Harry said,

“The thing is I can’t,” Alfonso said, “Or at the very least I shouldn’t, it’s difficult, even tedious, extremely tedious, it’s just that a moment ago I had a thought and that thought, well, made me think,”

“I thought a thought but the thought I thought was not the thought that I thought I thought,” said Harry,

“If only,” said Alfonso,

“This is about the connoisseurs, something to do with them, isn’t it?” said Solange,

“It might and it might not be,” said Alfonso,

“We saw you at the market with them earlier,”

“We had breakfast,”

“After the long night,”

“It was a long night, wasn’t it, too long, maybe I’m just overtired,”

“Maybe we all are, I’m not finding this submarine as comfortable today as I used to, plus I saw a ghost,” said Harry,

“Actually, I don’t feel particularly tired,” said Solange, “And when I saw you four this morning I got the feeling you were cooking something up, though I wouldn’t have thought it had anything to do with us,”

“Well, ha, ha,” said Alfonso,

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t, look, just whatever it is you’re going to do, don’t do it,”

“You mean don’t have dinner?”

“He means don’t go with Ireneo, that is what you mean isn’t it?”

“Who’s Ireneo?”

“Some guy,”

“Some guy that was looking for you?”

“Why?”

“I forgot to mention it but he asked me about you,”

“What did you tell him?”

“I sent him goose chasing,”

“He got tired of chasing gooses and came to see me, but anyway, why shouldn’t we go with Ireneo?”

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t go with anyone, I just said whatever it is you’re going to do, don’t do it,”

“The café is just over there,” said Harry,

“Fine,” said Alfonso, “I’ve warned you, which is a lot more than I should have done, though as a last thing I’ll just say that I really don’t have any idea if following my warning will help,”

“Fabulous,” said Harry, “Thanks a billion,”

“Yes, that’s not all that helpful, Alfonso,” said Solange,

“Apologies, but that’s all I can offer, I’m not sure if I knew more I would tell you, in fact I think I wouldn’t, there may already be consequences, though I hope not, and now I’ll have to go, and if you don’t mind, Harry, I’ll take the submarine along with me, you won’t be needing it anymore will you?”

“No,” said Harry,

“Good,” said Alfonso, then he opened the hatch and Solange and Harry stepped out and went straight into the café and sat down at a table and ordered dinner and when dinner arrived, Harry said,

“Do you still want to go?”

“Yes, how about you?”

“Yes,”

“You have to admit that was a little odd,”

“Yes,” Harry said, and shuddered, which made Solange shiver, about which they both laughed, then Ireneo arrived, bowed to Solange and apologized, in some detail, for the earlier misunderstanding that had kept her from her audience with Doña Eulalia, told Harry that he was feeling just fine and that he had taken care of the issue that had made it seem, when they had spoken, like there was a problem, to whit he had thrown his shoes off a cliff and purchased the relatively quiet espadrilles he was wearing and wouldn’t be doing any further running for the foreseeable future, then guided them off along what proved to be a fairly unproblematic set of twists and turns that ended in front of Doña Eulalia’s building, and although Harry couldn’t for the life of him understand why he hadn’t been able to find said building when he had gone looking, he had the feeling that if he mentioned this to Ireneo, Ireneo would come up with something as bizarre and unexplained/unexplainable as he had about his shoes, and Harry, feeling more than a little fatigued, thought he would leave any additional ellipses to Doña Eulalia and her lamps, though Solange, perhaps because she felt much less implicated than Harry in what was to come next, felt no need whatsoever to keep quiet, and, because she had had her interest piqued, as they approached the large green door, said, “I’m walking in between someone who saw a ghost this morning and someone else who felt he needed to throw his shoes off a cliff this afternoon—I know something about the ghost but nothing about the shoes, care to enlighten me?”

“N
o,” Ireneo said, and if he spoke to solange a little sharply, all the better as far as he was concerned, for it had cost him enough just to bring it all up for the purpose of clarifying his earlier behavior—Harry must have thought he looked “completely crackers,” as his mother had liked to put it when he threw tantrums as a child—and even just the thought of the whole business was enough to make his throat go dry and the back of his neck tingle like someone had struck him sharply on one of the upper vertebrae with the sort of rubber mallets doctors used to test reflexes, or at least that was the way he had felt when, after leaving the little store wearing his new espadrilles, the feeling had presented itself and obliged him to turn around, climb the hill he had just made it back down, cross the emerald lawn once again and go and look out over the wall, first at the horror of gray clouds spreading across the far horizon, then at the disaster of blue below, then decide he’d better throw himself off it, whereupon he had placed both hands on the low wall and started to lift one of his feet and said to himself, “Good, it has all been tedious and baffling anyway,” lifted his other foot onto the wall, looked at his unkempt toes and thought, “Good god those need trimming,” and tensed to spring, only at that moment something stirred in his peripheral vision, something moving slowly toward him, something that was whistling an air so exasperating that it reminded him of stale coffee beans being put through a hand grinder, then of someone kicking in a glass display case, then of the taste of gasoline-soaked cardboard, then of where he was, teetering on the edge of a wall with a 500-foot drop, and then the something—three old men walking shoulder to shoulder along the gravel path—stopped whistling and one of these three old men said,

“It’s just a pair of shoes,”

and another of them said,

“You don’t need those things, don’t be an idiot,”

then the whistling had recommenced and the three old men passed behind him, and the other half of his peripheral vision was engaged and just as it clicked on he thought he heard, somewhere amid the whistling, one of them say,

“Go and pick up Harry and take him where he’s supposed to go,”

and then he had fallen over backwards off the wall and had lain on the path they had traversed and at first it seemed to him that the path was like a piece of ice and that it would be damaging to continue to lie there on it looking up at the clouds and the occasional bird slicing through the air, that his skin would stick to it and be torn off when he tried to stand, that he would find himself partially flayed, and as he thought this the whistling started up in his head as if he had put on earphones and hit play and this time it sounded to him like teeth breaking as they were directed by their owner to bite down on chunks of aggregate mineral, and in the meantime the feeling in the back of his neck returned and he wanted nothing more than to stand up and fling himself off the cliff, but he knew that if he did so he would tear off his skin and that as he fell through space he would fall in a great shower of blood, and he knew this long after he had realized that the ground was not cold in the slightest and that the whistling had stopped and that he was not going to throw himself off the cliff, and knowing it he stood and brushed the dust off of his back and smiled in what he was quite sure was not at all a reassuring manner at a woman who was standing on the green lawn petting an obese German shepherd and staring nervously at him, and then he had stopped knowing it in quite such a debilitating manner and had started off again down the hill and had not paused, except to buy a bottle of water and a large packet of paprika-spiced fried minnows from a vendor near the harbor, which he shoved by the handful into his mouth until the packet was empty and he had calmed down enough to find a public restroom and wash his face and run damp fingers through his hair, before proceeding to his rendezvous, where he had hoped to preempt any questions to do with the shoes, a strategy that had worked quite well with Harry, but not, alas, with Solange, who nevertheless, far from taking visible offense at his curt answer, reached out, put her hand on his forearm and held it there until it occurred to him not only that he had been shaking, but also that he had now stopped,

“It has been a very long day,” he said, giving a little bow and turning away to cover the fact that he had gone quite crimson, and as he left them in the courtyard to go and let Doña Eulalia know, as she had asked him to, that they had arrived, his blush deepened and the tingling in the back of his neck returned, as did the shaking, and it was only with the greatest effort that he made it inside and up the short flight of stairs to Doña Eulalia’s room, where he leaned his head against the cool, reassuring wood of the door and said,

“I’ve brought them.”