Time Travelers Strictly Cash (17 page)

“Now, I’m not a superstitious man, but this is a pretty weird gig, even for me. So as I’m driving to the store I’m wondering if I’ve made a terrible mistake, and I kind Of-there was a witness presentI look upward-like and I say out loud, ‘Oh Lord, give me a sign. Will my paycheck get cosigned, or is that going off on a tangent?’ “Sustained groans. “All right, I’m embellishing. What I really said was, ‘Should I go through with this? Lord, give me a sign.’ At that moment I stop for a stop sign, and overhead a bird electrocutes itself on the high-tension lines and drops dead on the front hood of my car-“

Whoops of laughter.

“I swear to God, feet sticking up, I have a witness.”

Doc Webstór popped a vest button, and Josie was smiling dreamily.

“So I sit there at the stop sign awhile…shivering…tilt my head back and real soft I say, ‘You didn’t have to shout . .”

Roars. “Marvelous,” Gentleman John cried. “You went home straightaway, of course?”

“Hell no, like a chump I showed up at the Junior Miss Department. To tell you the truth, I was curious. Nothing I played or sang or said attracted the attention of a single customer, and when they gave the Girl Scouts the go-ahead anyway, one of them stepped into my guitar-case and broke a hinge, and I set fire to a $5O dress with my cigar, and I didn’t get paid. Worst single disaster of my career.”

John was shaking his head. “Don’t believe a word of it, old boy.”

“Of course not. Neither did I; that’s why I was stupid enough tO go through with it after a warning like that: I didn’t believe. In retrospect it’s obvious, but I just thought the damn bird was a sparrow or magpie or some such-…” I trailed off carefully.

“What was it then?” John bit. “Raven, I suppose?”

“I’m surprised at you, John,” I said triumphantly. “Obviously it was an Omen Pigeon.”

People grade a pun by their reaction to it. The very best, of course, as Bernard Shaw said, is when one’s audience holds its collective nose and flees screaming from one’s vicinity. Immediate laughter or groan is a lesser approbation. And in between these two is the pause, followed only after five or ten stunned seconds by cheers and jeers. It was this intermediate rating that I was accorded, and I savored the pause and Josie’s broad grin, and lifted my Irish whiskey to my lips to savor that too.

And sprayed a fine mist of Irish into the air.

Because before the pause could turn to applause, in that second or two of silence, we all heard-with a dreadful clarity-the unmistakable sŕund of hoofbeats on the roof..

Pretty near everyone had just drawn in a breath to cheer or groan; there was a vast huff as they all let it back out again.

Cigar smoke swirled in tormented search for safe harbor, and the only sound now was the hoofbeats on the roof.

Mike Callahan is unflappable. He plucked his malodorous cigar ftnm his mouth with immense aplomb, looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “You’re early, Fatso,” and went back to polishing the bar-top.

He received a scattered ovation, which died quickly..

I was as stunned as anyone else, but I think my strongest reaction was irritation at having my thunder stolen. There sure and hell were a lot of hooves up there. “Eddie,” I called out bitterly, someone has obviously gone to a lot of trouble to set up a gag. The least we can do is bite. Check it out, will you?”

Fast Eddie Costigan got up from his upright piano, eyes on the ceiling. “Sure t’ing,” he said uncertainly.

There are two openings onto the roof. One is the access hatch near the fireplace, with a ladder up to it built into. the wall. On warm nights Mike lets customers take their drinks up there and stargaze, which accounts for the second opening: a big dumbwaiter at the end of the bar. It carries dollar bills down and drinks and peanuts back up. Mike built it himself, and he made it big enough for parties. Both openings would have been in use that night, of course, if it hadn’t been raining. Eddie went up the ladder with a hesitancy that belied his nickname, and poked the hatch door open most gingerly. A practical joke this elaborate might have teeth in it-and Eddie, being from Brooklyn, has a horror of livestock. Prepared for anything, he hooked his head up over the coaming for a quick look.

He froze then, half out of the room, for a long moment, rain dripping in around him. Then he just slid down the ladder, landing hard on his butt. His monkey face was snow white.

“Well?” Callahan asked.

“Sleigh,” Eddie said. “Eight tiny reindeer. Heavyset guy with a white beard.”

“Told ya,” Callahan said.

Eddie nodded, dripping rainwater. “Ho ho ho.”

The dumbwaiter came to life.

Callahan turned to face it and put his big hands on his hips. The room was absolutely still, absolutely quiet save for the sound of the little dumbwaiter motor being overworked. It stopped. The door opened.

Inside, a man was balanced on his head, juggling lit cherry bombs.

“Zut alors,” he said. “God damn.”

Callahan stepped back a pace.

The stranger fell forward, twisting as he fell so that ha landed on his feet in front of the big barkeep, still juggling. As Mike opened his mouth, the hypnotic circle of burning fireworks opened out into a long arc whose terminus was the fireplace. All four cherry bombs exploded therein with a stupendous concussion. Broken glass sprayed outward, miraculously arranging itself on the floor to spell out the word “Al.”

The stranger vaulted the bar at once and cartwheeled into the middle of the room, people scattering frantically out of his way. He landed lightly on his feet and beamed.

“Phee is the name,” he cried merrily, “Al Phee, and the first one who asks me what it’s all about gets a boot in the plums. Phee’s my name and commission’s my game-gather round like cattle and you shall be herd. I bring you the bazaar of the bizarre; the genuine Universal Pantechnicon, at a cost of just pennies! Sacre blea! Baise mes fesses! Everything must go! Me stony, you savvy? Plenty bankruptcy along me.”

We all stared at him.

“Come on,” he shouted, “Look alive, get with it. This is opportuni dad muy milagroso-act now while this offer lasts. Step right up-who’ll be the first? Oh,faddle-” Suddenly he fell upon the room like a whirlwind, like a big mad mosquito or a horny hummingbird. He darted through the crowd, hugging people, kissing people, shaking hands, shaking feet, tugging on beards; introducing himself to the fire extinguisher and shaking its hose, grinning like Hell’s PR man and talking a mile a minute. He took a scissor from his breast pocket, clipped the end off Long-Drink McGonnigle’s tie and presnted it to him with a bow. He produced a white mouse from a side pocket and gave it gravely to Josie, and

when she only smiled he burst into delighted laughter himself, lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the mouse. He stuck his face an inch away from mine, tousled my beard and patted my ass and danced away.

Eddie had been misleading: he didn’t look much like Santa. He was not that heavyset, for one thing. The beard was more salt than pepper, but the neat short hair was weighted the other way-and the beard itself was not, a Santa-type but something in between a spade and a van dyke. I would say that he comported himself in a manner even more dapper and elegant than Gentleman John-certainly more flamboyant.

He wore a four hundred dollar blazer over a polka-dot pajama top. He wore no trousers, and fat beaming Buddhas were printed on his shorts. He wore phosphorescent lederhosen and jester’s shoes with curled up toes and bells. A propellor beanie was rakishly canted over one eyebrow. The rain had not wet him. Behind wire tinted glasses, merry eyes sparkled.

About that time Long-Drink caught up with him, roaring something about his tie. Phee spun to meet him, smiled with the enormous delight of one encountering an old and dear friend, picked three glasses of whiskey from a nearby table and began to juggle them. Not a drop did he spill. Long-Drink stopped dead in his tracks and his long jaw hung down.

Phee began to clap his bands rhythmically while he juggled, then slapped his thighs.

Without taking his eyes from the glasses, the Drink felt for, his tie, yanked it from his neek and tramped it into the sawdust.

Phee backed away, still juggling and clapping, until he was back in the center of the room where he had started. Suddenly the glasses were all upside down in their stately circle, their contents in motion, Each cataract ended up in Phee’s mouth, and his beard was dry when he finished.

His cyclone passage among us had shattered our group stasis-the room was filled with the rooba-rooba of many people talking, all at once. When the last of the three empty

glasses hit the hearth, and the fragments had spelled “PHEE” next to the “AL,” the murmur became a standing ovation.

“Mister,” Long-Drink said, “that was the best goddam juggling I ever saw in my life.”

Phee smiled indulgently, shook his head. “You haven’t lived until you’ve seen it done with chainsaws. Eeek! Heavy, baby.”

Eddie spoke for all of us. “What de fuck is goin’ on?”

“Mutual introductions, of course. I am Al Phee, and you are, in order,” he ticked us off, “Marshall Axtz, Boyle Deggs, Tom Foolery, Rachel Prejudice, Dee Jenrette, Miss Fortune,” (pointing at Josie) “Flemming Ayniss, Manny Peeples, and Euell P. Yorpanz. Now that we know who we are, we may’ consider what we are: c’est simple, non? Shitfire, and dog my cats. I am a yoofo.”

“A which?”

“Not a foe of you, but a U.F.O. And you are all Hugos. Unidentified goggling objects. What’s wrong with you imbeciles ce soir, don’t you see? Ding an sich: I am from outer

space.”

“With reindeer?” Callahan asked.

“We used to make ‘em look like dishware, but believe it or not, that wasn’t silly enough-people who saw us kept reporting it. Nobody reports a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.”

I think Phee expected this latest announcement to be the most stunning so far. If so, he was disappointed. Long-Drink nodded and said, “Sure, that explains it,” and there was a general air of demystiflcation everywhere. I wished that Mickey Finn were around that night. (Finn is an extraterestrial himself, and I wondered what he would think of this guy. But of course it was summer, and Finn was way up north on the Gaspé Peninsula, tending his farm.)

“So what can we do for you?” Callahan asked imperturbably.

“What’s a pantechnicon?” I added.

If he was disappointed at our collective sang-froid, Phee hid it well. “Merde d’une puce,” heexcialmed, eyes flashing, “don’t you know your own language?” He had one of the loudest voices I’d ever heard.

“Furniture warehouse,” Gentleman John put in.

“Correct,” Phee achnitted, “But not the meaning I meaning.”

“Oh, you must mean the 19th Century bazaars in London,” John said, light dawning.

“-where arts and crafts were sold, yes,” Phee said, applauding silently. “B plus. Pan plus technikos-comme je dit, a bazaar of the bizarre.”

Callahan’s eyes widened. “Do you mean to tell me-?” he began, teeth clenched on his cigar.

Phee smiled like a flashbulb going off. “Exactement, my large. I am an Intergalactic Traveling Salesman.”

People began to giggle, then laugh outright, then guffaw. Folks folded at the middle, slapped their thighs, pounded on tables with their fists, met each other’s eyes and laughed anew. Even Callahan roared with gargantuan mirth, clapping his big knuckly hands together. Phee might have been excused for thinking we doubted his story-but I could see through my own tears Of mirth that, after a moment’s annoyance, he understood. Somehow he understood our laughter was not derision but delight.

It’s like I said earlier-when you’ve been hanging out at Callahan’s bar for a while, you begin to-see a zany kind of symmetry to the way things happen there. “Hannibal’s Holy Hairpiece, it’s perfect!”-Long-Drink crowed. “A traveling salesman has flown into Callahan’s on Tall Tales Night. Sell my clothes, I’m gone to heaven!”

Flier bowed. “No fear? Marvelous; I impress. Hot damn. It is a business doing pleasure with you. I was told by blackguards that you did not civilize yet. Lies, by jimmy!”

“It just cOme on recent”, Doc Webster said, and broke up again.

Phee waited politely until we were all finished. Then he produced a burning cigarette from out of thin air, flipped it into his face and began chewing on the filter. “To business we then progress, jawohl? Groovey, Innkeeper, gib mir getrank-a flagon of firewater. Darn the torpedoes. Gosh.”

Callahan poured whiskey and passed it across the bar. “How come no sample cases, brother? What’s your line?”

“Oh, but I have a sample case, sweetheart. Mals oui. “He reached into the inside pocket of his blazer and removed a hole. It had no edges, no boundaries, and it was no color at all. It was just…a hole, about the size of the lid on a half gallon of ice cream. He held it by the edge it didn’t have, extended it to arm’s length, and when he dropped his hand it stayed there, a circle of nothing.

There were whistles and much awed murmuring.

“Nonsense,” Phee said airily, “Is nothing sacred? Voila le sample case.”

“Say,” Long-Drink began, “how many of those would you think it’d take to fill the Alb-ouch!” He glared at Doc Webster and began rubbing his shin.

“No, compadres,” Phee said, “It is not a hole-o-graph. It is a hyperpocket, a dimensional bridge to a… ahem pocket universe. Regardez!”

He reached an elegantly manicured hand into the hole, and the hand failed to reappear on the other side. “Pardon,” he muttered, rummaging. “Ah!” His hand emerged. It was holding, by the throat, an extremely long-necked dragon, whose scaled head had barely fit through the hole. Reptilian eyes regarded us coldly, the fangedjaws opened, and a gout of flame set Phee’s hair on fire.

“Damn,” he said irritably, “wrong drawer. One of these days I’m going to get this office organized.” He thrust the dragon’s head back into the hole with an air of embarassment. He ignored the fire on his head, and it seemed impolite to mention it, so it burned undisturbed as he rummaged, until his scalp was covered with black smoldering curls. The beanie was unaffected. “Bońiga de Ia meslizo enano, aha! Now see.”