The Cat's Pajamas (15 page)

She sat and the world rocked and this time she was really ill. The world dipped.

“Say something,” he pleaded.

“You love my sister,” she said.

“The way you say that.”

“I love you,” she said.

“What?”

“I love you,” she said.

“Now wait a minute,” he said.

“Didn't you hear me?” she asked.

“I don't understand.”

“I don't either,” she said, sitting straight. Now the trembling stopped and the coldness was coming out her eyes.

“You're crying,” he said.

“It's so silly,” she said. “You think about me the same way
she
thinks about you.”

“Oh, no,” he protested.

“Oh, yes,” she said, not touching the tears with her hands.

“That can't be,” he almost yelled.

“It is.”

“But
I
love her,” he said.

“But
I
love you,” she replied.

“Don't you think there's a little spark of love in her for me?” he wanted to know, reaching out in the air of the porch.

“Don't you think you could have a little spark of love in yourself for me?” she said.

“There must be something I can do.”

“There's nothing any of us can do. Everybody loves the wrong one, everybody hates the wrong one.” She began to laugh.

“Don't laugh.”

“I'm not laughing.” She threw her head back.

“Stop that!”

“I will.” She yelled out her laughter, and her eyes were wet and he was shaking her.

“Stop that!” he yelled into her face, standing up now. “Go in and tell your sister to come out, tell her I want to see her!”

“Tell her yourself, go tell her yourself.”

The laughing went on.

He put his hat on and stood there, bewildered, looking at her swinging hysterically in the swing, like a hunk of cold iron, and looking at the house. “Cut it out!” he cried.

He was starting to shake Lydia again when a voice said, “Stop that!”

He turned and there was Helen, behind the front porch screen, in cool shadow, only a paleness, a dim chalk outline. “Get away from her, leave her alone. Take your hands off her, Mister Larsen.”

“But, Helen!” he protested, running to the screen. The door was hooked and she put her hand out, as if tapping the screen to loose from it the last flies of the old summer.

“Get off the porch, please,” said Helen.

“Helen, let me in!”

John, come back!
thought Lydia.

“I'll give you until I count to ten to get your hat and run.”

He stood between the two cold ladies on the dark porch. Summer and autumn both were gone now. An invisible snow fell upon his shoulders and a wind came up from the interior of the house.

“How did this all happen?” He turned in a circle to the world, slowly. Somehow, to Helen, he seemed like a man on a shore and a boat, carrying her, the house that is, drawing out into the autumnal sea and nobody waving good-bye, but everyone separating forever. She could not quite decide whether he was handsome or ridiculous. The great horn of the sea was blowing and the ship moved away faster, leaving him stranded on the lawn, picking up his hat, looking into it, as if to see his entire life ahead of him, and the size of it was very small and the price tag was low indeed. His hands shook. He was drunk with shock. He reeled. His eyes wobbled in his pale face.

“Good night, Mister Larsen,” said Helen, hid in the dark.

Lydia was swinging in the swing, silent, breathless now. Not laughing or crying, just letting the dark world ride in stars one way, and the white moon another, just a body in a whirling arc, her hands at her sides, the tears drying on her face in the wind that she stirred by sailing.

“Good-bye.” Mr. Larsen stumbled and fell, half across the lawn. He sat there a moment, as if he were drowning, putting his hands up in the air. Then he got up and ran away down the street.

After he was gone, Helen opened the door and came slowly out to sit in the swing.

They rocked for about ten minutes that way, silently. Then Helen said, “I don't suppose there's any way you can stop loving him?”

They swung in the night.

“No.”

A minute later Lydia said, “I don't suppose there's any way for
you
to find a way to love him, is there?”

Helen shook her head.

The next idea to come to them was shared. One started and the other finished it.

“I don't suppose there's any way—”

“—he could stop loving you, Helen.”

“—and love you instead, Lydia?”

They gave the swing a push in the grape-arbor night, and after the fourth swing back and forth, they said, “No.”

“I can see us,” said Helen. “Good God. Twenty, thirty years from now. You and me out walking for an evening downtown. Us walking along Main Street, talking, alone. And coming to the cigar store. And there he is. There's John Larsen, all by himself, under the cigar store light, unwrapping a cigar. And we sort of slow down and he stops lighting the cigar when he sees us. And I look at him the way I look at him now. And you look at him the way you look at him now. And he looks at you the only way he can look at you. And at me the fool's way he looked at me tonight. And then we sort of stand there and you and I nod. And he puts up his hand and tips his hat. And he's bald. And we're both gray. And we walk on. Arm in arm. And do our shopping and spend the evening around town. And when we come back, two hours later, on our way home, he's still standing there, alone, looking off into nothing.”

They let the cat die.

They sat there, not moving, thinking of the next thirty years.

B
URNHAM
W
OOD
, I never knew his real name, led me into his splendid garage, which he had converted into a workplace/library.

On the shelves stood the complete works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, bound in rich leather, with gold epaulettes.

My hands itched as I studied this incredible collection, part of a literary experiment he was planning.

Burnham Wood turned from his amazing library, winked, and pointed at the far end of his vast garage.

“There!” he said. “My ironic machine with a peculiar name. What?”

With no particular emotion I said, “It looks like one of those trucks that revolve on their axis every ten seconds, churning cement slag on its way to pouring new roads.”

“Touché!” said Burnham Wood. “It's my Mafioso Cement Mixer. Look around. There's a relationship between it and this library.”

I glanced at the books but found no relationship. Burnham Wood patted the side of his machine, which stood, rumbling, like a great gray elephant. The Mafioso Machine shivered and stopped.

“The idea struck,” said Burnham Wood, “one desert night when a cement mixer passed me at high speed. I wondered if it was on its way to make concrete boots for lost Italian gangsters. I laughed, but the idea haunted me and woke me in the middle of the night months later. I had to fuse my library with this great monster, find a way, I thought, to travel this cement elephant back in time.”

I skirted the great gray beast as it tumbled and whispered, rotating and ready to travel.

“The Mafioso Cement-Mixing Machine?” I said. “Explain.”

Burnham Wood touched the F. Scott Fitzgerald books on their shelf and placed one in my hands.

I opened the book. “
The Last Tycoon,
by F. Scott Fitzgerald. His last. He didn't live to finish it.”

“Here then.” Burnham Wood stroked his great machine. “Shall I tell you what's inside? All the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years of time, going back fifty years. We're going to run those hours and days to help Scotty get some extra time to finish this novel. It was going to be his best but wound up a half-broken record played late nights while we drank far too much.”

“And,” I said, “just how are you going to do this?”

Burnham Wood produced a list. “Read. Those are the destinations my machine will visit to do the job.”

I stared at the list and began to read.

“B. P. Schulberg, Paramount, right?”

“Right.”

“Irving Thalberg, MGM? Darryl Zanuck, Fox?”

“Correct.”

“Will you visit all these people?”

“Yes.”

“You have directors at various studios, producers, floozies he once knew, bartenders all over creation. What will you do with them?”

“Find ways to move them, bribe them, or, when necessary, beat them up.”

“What about Irving Thalberg? He died in 1936, right?”

“And if he'd lived a bit longer he might have been a good influence on Scotty.”

“What are you going to do about a dead man?”

“When Thalberg died there was no sulfanilamide in the world. I'd like to sneak into his hospital room the week before his death and give him the medicines that might cure him and let him go back to MGM for another year. He might have hired Scotty for something better than the things they gave him.”

“That's quite a list,” I said. “You sound like you're going to move these people like chess pieces.”

Burnham Wood showed me a flush of hundred-dollar bills. “I'm going to spread these around. Some of these moguls might be tempted to move. Stand close. Listen.”

I stood close to the great rumbling machine. From its interior I heard far cries and gunshots.

“It sounds like a revolution,” I said.

“Bastille,” said Burnham Wood.

“Why would that be inside?”

“
Marie Antoinette,
MGM—Fitzgerald worked on it.”

“My God, yes. Why would he write a thing like that?”

“He loved film, but he loved money even more. Listen again.”

This time the gunfire was louder, and when the bombardment ceased I said, “
Three Comrades,
Germany, MGM, 1936.”

Burnham Wood nodded.

There was a ripple of many women laughing. When it quieted I said, “
The Women,
Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, MGM, 1939.”

Burnham Wood nodded again.

There were more cries of laughter, bursts of music. I recited the names I remembered from old film books.

“
Possessed,
Joan Crawford.
Madame Curie,
Greer Garson, screenplay by Huxley and F. Scott Fitzgerald. My God,” I said. “Why did he bother with all that and why are all those sounds inside your machine?”

“I'm tearing them up, I'm destroying the scripts. It's all packed inside with the mix.
A Diamond as Big as the Ritz
,
This Side of Paradise
,
Tender Is the Night.
All of them are in there. When you mix all that junk with the really good stuff you've got a chance of laying out a new road somewhere in the past to make a new future.”

I reread the list. “Those are the names of producers and directors and fellow writers over a period of years; some at MGM, a few at Paramount, and more in New York City as late as the summer of 1939. What's the sum?”

I glanced up at Burnham Wood and saw that he was trembling with anticipation, glancing at the machine.

“I'm going to run back with my metaphorical cement mixer and pour shoes for all those idiot people and transport them to some sea of eternity and drop them in. I'll clear the way for Scotty, give him a gift of Time so that, please God, finally
The Last Tycoon
will be finished, done, and published.”

“No one can do that!”

“I will, or die trying. I'm going to pick them up, one by one, on special days in all those years. I'm going to kidnap them out of their environments and deliver them to other towns in other years, where they'll have to make their way, blindly, having forgotten where they came from and the stupid burden they laid on Scotty.”

I brooded, eyes shut. “Good Lord, this reminds me of a George Arliss film I saw when I was a kid.
The Man Who Played God.
”

Burnham Wood laughed quietly. “George Arliss, yes. I do feel somewhat like the Creator. I dare to be the Savior of our dear, drunken, foolish, childish Fitzgerald.”

He stroked the machine again, and it trembled and whispered. I could almost hear the siren of the years rushing and tumbling inside.

“It's time,” said Burnham Wood. “I'm going to climb in, turn the rheostats, and do a disappearing act. An hour from now, go to the nearest bookstore or check the books on my shelf and see if there's any change. I don't know if I'll ever return, I may get locked in some year a long while back. I may get as lost as the people I plan to kidnap.”