Ray of the Star (15 page)

B
efore we move forward, as we must—for there is a juniper bush waiting just ahead for us too—it is worth mentioning that after Harry left the Rubinski’s and stepped out onto his filthy, sunlit street, no longer, at least not in the short term, interested in sitting in his apartment and waiting for another, even less commodious knock on the door, or tap on his shoulder, the cold drippings of his darlings, he thought first of going to see Doña Eulalia again, of attempting to ring a little more out of her, but while he had no trouble at all this time in finding her building, the thick, exterior door was locked tight and his pounding on it managed only to attract the attention of a group of women in black housedresses and flowered aprons who had set chairs against the side of the next building and were sunning their heavy, mottled legs, and flicking at the air with black fans, and while of course if it were helpful we could enter the building and look in, as it were, on Doña Eulalia, it would only be to find her in the grips of a sleep so deep all supposition was simultaneously made possible and irretrievable in it, and while we might be justified in speculating that her exertions from the previous night had forced her into this slumber, we would do better to look closely at the unusual glaze coating the well-sampled chocolate ducklings brought the previous night by the manifestly persuasive connoisseurs, and hope that one of her relatives takes it upon her/himself to look in on her, oh well, we have already seen how her “Ah,” was of some use, or seemed to be, to Ireneo, and it would have probably been asking too much to have expected her to come up with much more, though something like an “Ah” for Harry would have been quite welcome, just a little help—would that we who lurk in darkness could offer it to him, take him aside,

“Hello Harry,”

“Run, Harry,”

but it’s possible the help he needs is already there, has already been offered and we have thus far missed it, at any rate, “They are coming,” Harry thought and shuddered—with such force as it occurred that it tore a hole open in the blue door before him and he immediately ran through it and climbed the short flight of steps and stood behind Doña Eulalia’s bed and put his face next to her lips and, although she was far away, she spoke, though it was only to repeat herself,

“They are coming,”

“I know, thanks a lot, thanks for nothing,” Harry said—

as he left Doña Eulalia’s and decided, as we have seen, to make his way to the boulevard, and by chance his route took him past Almundo’s Store for Living Statues, open for business despite the upended phone booth partially blocking its door and two gilt-edge panes from its front window that had been blown in and lay shattered in the midst of miniature cobalt skyscrapers surrounding an emerald Godzilla statue display, and before Harry quite knew what he was doing he had stepped in through the door and peeped around an immense pile of goblin masks and goblin finger puppets and saw, standing in the only clear space in the store—where he himself had been fitted for his own costume—the man with the fish-motif lapel pin who had spoken to him about golf on the plane, the man who had described the new ball that would allow him to prosecute such vigorous assaults, the man who had not been at all interested in Harry’s comments about Restless Leg Syndrome and experimental invisibility, and who likely would have been even less interested in Harry’s thoughts on the Black Dahlia, had he been able to articulate them, a subject, the Black Dahlia, which had slipped his mind since the apparition beside the Yellow Submarine of the young woman with hair mostly the color of crushed pomegranates, and did not seem at all auspicious in its resurfacing now, nor did the apparition of this, as Harry put it to himself, idiot, who, as he watched, suddenly let fall the golden golf club he had been holding frozen above his head, as if he were going to smash an invisible ball, and indeed when he more or less froze again, with the golden club now resting over his left shoulder, he had the satisfied air of someone who had sent an invisible ball roaring through an invisible landscape, and although the ball and its owner soon flew straight out of Harry’s overcrowded head, for a moment it seemed to him that he could see it, this ball, that he was following it as it flew, faster and faster, past invisible parks and buildings and out over an invisible sea, where, rather than slowing, it picked up speed, so that he could no longer keep up with it, and was left to watch, if watch is the word, with considerable regret, as it went where he could not follow and where, before very long, it could no longer be perceived, which might have been the way that Solange and Ireneo would have put it had they been asked when, after stepping through the door of the building, the one that Harry would step through minutes after them, and making their way into the courtyard, where they couldn’t help but stop to take in that space, simultaneously so awkward and elegant, with all its globes, which did not so much vanish a moment later when, recalling the urgency of their errand, they began to stride toward the stairwell—with Ireneo, who had found his courage, even if he would lose it again in a moment, leading the way—as reconfigure itself into the street they had just stepped off, though it took them a moment to determine this, as their orientation and position had shifted and they were now, rather than moving toward the stairwell, beside the jackhammer tearing up the street, and none the happier for the journey, in fact both of them nauseated by it, although Solange immediately turned back and, when she saw Harry now ahead of them entering the building, even began to run, and while Ireneo ran, as best he could in his espadrilles, alongside her, it was only to say that he was not interested in repeating the experience, that he did not think at that moment that he could, that his experience with the shoes had weakened him and he was sure that, if they returned to the courtyard, what had happened would happen again, that he thought that perhaps it was time he had a holiday, that perhaps he would leave the city and travel back up the coast to see his mother, whom he had not left in the best of health, even if she had not, in fact, been as sick as she had claimed to be, that he had had his running shoes on when he had stayed with her and had, as a result, perhaps not given her the benefit of the doubt when he should have, and a mother deserved that benefit,

“Undoubtedly,” Solange said,

“Perhaps you would like to accompany me,” Ireneo said,

“I’m going back there right now,” Solange said,

“Well then, good-bye,” Ireneo said, and he stopped and Solange continued, and, as she caught sight—though she couldn’t quite believe it at first—of Raimon waving his cigar at her from down the block, she thought, “I will run so fast they won’t see me coming,” though unfortunately, in the event, they did.

T
he stairs Harry climbed after leaving the globe-lit courtyard were made of fine marble and the banister with which he supported his sore knee was polished ebony and the walls were encrusted with gold leaf and mother of pearl and the door he decided corresponded with the connoisseurs, not least because it stood ajar, was a richly burnished slab of solid oak in the center of which had been sunk a peephole of cyclopean proportion, and if something like the smell of old fish hadn’t seemed to emanate from it, Harry likely would have been more than mildly surprised to step out of all that careful elegance into a small, badly lit and even more badly ventilated room, on the filthy floor of which lay scattered more than one delicate fish carcass, along with miscellaneous small bones, scraps of paper, soda bottles, portions of moldy fruit, and a half-eaten box of brandy-filled chocolates, which one of the connoisseurs, who were still standing by the room’s only window, picked up and held out to Harry, who looked at it for quite some time before shaking his head,

“Well then, fuck you, friend,” the connoisseur said and lifted out one of the chocolates and handed it to the one of the other connoisseurs who popped it into his mouth and said as he chewed,

“What my colleague means is, welcome Knight of the Woeful Countenance, welcome to our fucking abode,”

“Thank you, I was following Solange and Ireneo,” Harry said,

“Who aren’t here,” said one of the connoisseurs,

“Then perhaps they’re in another apartment,”

“They’re not in another apartment,”

“There are no other apartments, it’s all offices,
this
isn’t even an apartment,”

“This is our office,”

“Our orifice,”

“Nice, huh?”

“Connoisseur central,”

“Where we do our business, direct traffic, etc.,”

“Sorry about the mess,”

“It is messy,” Harry said,

“Yeah, well, it’s been a long week,”

“A long century,”

“I should go find Solange and Ireneo, I’m sorry to have troubled you,”

“They aren’t here, not in this building, you won’t find them,”

“Believe us,”

“Although if you want to step over to the window here in about five seconds, you’ll see one of them,”

“Yeah?” Harry said,

“Come on over, stand between us,”

Harry went to the window and, with connoisseurs on either side of him, watched a rather red-faced Solange burst through the street door, hurl herself halfway across the courtyard, then vanish,

“What are you thinking she’s good for?”

“Once more, twice?”

“Twice, at least, this guy’s got real charm,”

“And she knows he’s here,”

“She does indeed,”

“You sure you don’t want a chocolate?”

“I should be going,” Harry said,

“What’s the rush?”

“Yeah, what’s the hurry?”

“Alfonso’s here too, in the other room,”

“Care to see him?”

“I bet he’d like to see you, he’s not feeling too well,”

“Got something at the market, didn’t sit right,”

“Alfonso’s here?”

“That traitorous son of a bitch,”

Harry looked first at one connoisseur, then at the others, and then at his pale reflection in the window,

“What’s he doing here?”

“Alfonso? we were talking,”

“Deliberating on the subject of loyalty, or the evils of being a blabbermouth,”

“Now he’s resting,”

“I think I understand,” Harry said,

“Understand what?”

“This, you three, I mean not exactly, but sort of, this is bad, right?”

“What’s
exactly?
Who cares?”

“Not I, said the fat, fucking fly,”

“He’s getting it,”

“You think so?”

“It’s finally coming back to him,”

Harry looked at their reflections, took a deep breath then another then took a step backwards, and saw that the three of them formed a kind of tripod upon which, Harry thought, a terrible, almost invisible camera could sit and snap photographs of his misery,

“You didn’t change the tires, right, wasn’t that the story?”

“You had to take a little trip and you were a little busy and you didn’t get the tires changed and, well, you know, wintertime, fuck,”

“I think I’d like to sit down, I think that would be very nice,” Harry said,

“Well pull yourself up some fucking floor, make yourself at home, after all it was us you really wanted to see, wasn’t it, and now here you fucking are,”

Here I fucking am,
Harry thought then went and leaned against a vaguely slimy wall and crossed his arms over his chest, but instead of sinking he held his position and it was as if he had entered into one of those more or less desirable moments when the powers of hindsight offer themselves in advance and nothing is surprising, nothing is ever surprising again, not at all,

“Drippings,” he said,

“Fuck yes,” one of the connoisseurs said,

“Waiting for you,”

“Say the word and we’ll get their drippings back on them, in fact, bammo, it’s already done,”

“The word?” Harry said,

“The
words
is what he means, and technically you already said them, back there,”

“At the motel,” Harry said,

“Cold night if I remember it correctly,”

“Which of course he does,”

“I remember everything, so do they,”

“You said ‘Take me instead,’ Do you remember saying that, Woeful Knight?”

“Yes,” Harry said,

“Well, say it again and now we’ll take you instead,”

“I meant to change the tires,” Harry said, and as he said it he thought he heard an invisible shutter click above them,

“Who gives a fuck, that was twenty years ago,”

“I even had an appointment to get it done,” Harry said,

“Of course you did, now say it again, and we’ll get them for you and you can have a nice little visit and then we’ll take you,”

“Why?” Harry said,

“You think walking up and down the boulevard is enough to float our boat, we want you, you’re a classic case, you appeal to us, we said so in that postcard we sent you,”

“That postcard?”

“The one with the picture of the city on it,”

“That came years ago,”

“You took your time getting here,”

“We’d practically forgotten the whole thing, the whole sorry business,”

“I thought you said you remember everything,” said Harry.

“Figure of speech,”

“Whatever,”

“Who cares?”

“The point is we had to walk by you in your Woeful Knight gear two or three times to get it, and then we thought, good, finally, let’s do it now,”

“Why now?”

“What’s wrong with now?”

“Is there something pleasant happening in your life that you wouldn’t like to leave? Something agreeable? Something nifty? Something neato?”

Harry didn’t answer and the connoisseurs, all of whom had been looking at Harry with satisfied grins on their faces, suddenly turned and looked back out the window,

“Here she comes again,”

“She’s slowing down,”

“Looks like she’s going to have a fucking heart attack,”

“Too much jam,”

“Not enough candy,”

“She should have accepted that gift,”

“Like the old lady did,”

“That old lady liked her chocolates,”

“Nice old lady,”

“Maybe that young guy of hers would have been spanking enough, for not accepting our largesse,”

“There’s never enough spanking,”

“Amen to that,”

Harry, standing on his tiptoes, could just see the street door opening,

“Well, now that’s interesting,” said one of the connoisseurs,

“Yes, it fucking is,”

Harry took a step forward and saw that both Raimon and Ireneo were now with the indubitably persuasive Solange as she charged across the courtyard, and not for the first time since his interview with Señor Rubinski he remembered the old story of the monkey’s paw and the story of the poor Black Dahlia and the word “DRIPPINGS” appeared in all caps in his mind, then he thought about Raimon and his hands and Doña Eulalia and her lemon crème cookies and the old women in black dresses and the bell that was still in his pocket and something came to him,

“He changed his mind, and now Raimon’s running with them,”

“How the fuck do you like that?”

“I’m not sure I do,”

“Listen,” Harry said, taking the bell out of his pocket, bending over, setting it on the floor beside him and giving it a whack, “I think I would like to see Alfonso, after all,”

The connoisseurs looked back at him,

“In a minute, back to business, say the words first,” one of them said,

“Yeah, excuse us, you have our full attention, especially since you brought that fucking bell, now say the words first, that’s how it works, we have to follow procedure,”

“They are coming,” said Harry, and hit the bell again,

“Yes, they fucking are, but only if you say the words first, say the fucking words, and stop with the bell,”

“Those are the words,” said Harry, hitting the bell once more,

“Listen, Knight of the Woeful Fucking Countenance, the fucking words are ‘take me instead’ and now for jerking us around with that bell you better add a fucking ‘please,’”

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see smoke beginning to seep from their mouths and bits of blood drip from their lips and an icy lake opened up behind them and a car skidded off the road and slid sideways into it, and it occurred to him that perhaps what he was seeing now was one of the pictures the almost invisible camera had taken and that, in fact, he wasn’t seeing anything, or not what he thought he was seeing, right this moment, at all,

“I’m going to go in and ask Alfonso if he’ll let me borrow the submarine again and then I’m going to go and apologize to Solange for lying to her and I’m going to tell her about my kids, and then I’m going to buy those two guys a drink,” Harry said, hitting the bell a final time, then walking toward the door,

“That’s beautiful, fuck face,”

“Yeah, that’s just gorgeous, now if you want to see those kids again, turn around, and say the words.”