The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality (3 page)

He reached into his coat again and handed me an envelope. I opened it, and on some expensive stationery was a note from Albert.

Dear Jack,

I would like you to be a part of something that is happening. Please do not be stubborn and balky. Be guided by our long friendship and not by any subsequent separation, and please come right away because time is a factor. I will explain it all when you arrive.

Your dear friend,

Albert

"Do you know what this is about?"

Rudy gave me a long look and shook his head.

"Is it important?"

He gave me a shrug.

"I think you know what this is about."

"If I did know, I couldn't tell you."

"Well, leave me Albert's number, and tell him what I said." I went over to the stairs, and gestured with my head toward the open road. We walked together to the Rolls, and he opened the door but didn't get in. Instead he got a pair of gloves from the pocket of the door and started to draw them on. I remember they seemed kind of thick for driving, but I wasn't paying much attention. I was thinking instead about how much I was going to enjoy my afternoon nap.

"Mr. Darcey, can I tell you something?"

"Sure, Rudy, lay it on me."
Anything so long as the next thing is goodbye.

"You're not doing so well. You lost your theater. You lost all your money and then some. You're living in a dump in the boondocks, and you don't have the slightest idea what to do next. Am I right?"

I just looked at him.

"Okay, well, somebody is trying to do you a big favor, and I am also trying to do you a favor by telling you that you are being very stubborn and foolish. Now why don't you do
yourself
a favor, and go lock up the house, and get in this car. You don't even need a toothbrush."

"Thanks for telling me that, Rudy," I said, stifling a yawn. "I'm sure it's very good advice, and I promise I'll get in touch with Albert in a week or two. Now please just get the hell out of here and give me a break."

I was very relieved when Rudy suddenly relaxed and grinned at me; all the energy had gone out of him. He shrugged and said, "Well, that's that. You can't say I didn't try." He winked at me, and I smiled back, glad that it was finally settled.

Then he did a curious thing. He bent down as though he wanted to pick something up from the ground; and at the same time he made a beckoning gesture with his finger as though he wanted to show me something. So I started to bend over also—like a chump—and the last thing I saw was his fist in that heavy leather glove coming up at me all the way from the ground.

When I came to, I had no idea where I was. There was a pillow under my head, and I was tucked up in a soft blanket. There was a soothing, vibrating sensation but no noise. Very faintly I could hear a clock ticking. Otherwise it was silent.

My jaw ached. There was something I wanted to remember that seemed vaguely important, but I was quite comfortable and a little groggy. I just wanted to sleep a little longer.

Suddenly I sat up. I was in the back of the Rolls-Royce. That little bastard had coldcocked me, and now he was hauling me off to Albert's! There he was behind the wheel, cool as a breeze. I would wring his head off like a chicken!

But the thick glass partition did not respond to my tugging at it; and when I rapped sharply on it with my knuckles, Rudy didn't even bother to turn around. It was just a quarter inch of glass and I was sure he could hear me rapping. If he thought he was going to get away with this, he didn't know Jack Darcey! I looked around for something solid to bash the glass with, but there was nothing. I didn't even have a good shoe to work with. I was still in my old beat-up sneakers.

I sat back against the seat. It felt ridiculous to keep tapping at the window. What time was it? I found the clock by its gentle ticking, a lovely and expensive timepiece set into the armrest. It was early afternoon, and the best I could figure was that I'd been out for about an hour. That little rooster had put me out for an hour with one punch? I thought about those gloves he had slipped on. Now I could see them clearly in my mind’s eye, padded across the knuckles with a little pillow of lead sand. Sap gloves they were called. What a sap I was not to have noticed! And the way he set me up, smiling and winking. What a chump I was! It should have given me a good laugh at myself, but I didn't feel like laughing.

Where were we? We were humming down some turnpike that could have been anywhere. From the position of the sun I guessed we were headed east. This was kidnapping, wasn't it? I was being kidnapped, a federal offense! It didn't
feel
very much like a federal offense, with me sitting in the back of a Rolls-Royce with a pillow and a comfortable blanket. But it was, goddammit!

This time I pounded on the partition with the side of my fist and shouted, "Rudy, you better listen to me, buddy, if you know what's good for you!"

"No need to shout, Mr. Darcey, I can hear you just fine." The voice came from a little speaker above the partition.

"Turn this car around, Rudy. Take me back home."

"Aw, Mr. Darcey, why don't you make yourself a cocktail and have a nice snooze. We'll be there in a couple of hours. You'll have a good time, I guarantee it. You like to ride horses, don't you? Mr. Keane said to tell you he has a really fine horse for you that is the spittin' image of Phoenix."

Phoenix was the horse the Keane family used to keep especially for me to ride, as though it was my own horse. Of course I'd like to ride a fine horse; how could I say otherwise? And that wasn't the point.

"Listen," I said. "Horse or no horse, you have no right to do this. This is kidnapping, understand? A very serious offense. You take me back home, or I will see you sitting in a cell!"

"Be a sport, Mr. Darcey. How would you like it if Marya Randall had put
you
in a cell?"

Marya Randall? I couldn't believe my ears! What did he know about Marya? She was an old lover I hadn't seen in ever so many years. He had to be referring to that time back in college when I kidnapped her and took her off to the mountains to have sex with her. It had all been very playful and as much her idea as it was mine; a novel and exciting way for us to begin our relationship. But what was I supposed to say now?

I was starting to feel very confused. Leaning back in the seat, I closed my eyes. Was I being stupid? A spoilsport? Maybe so, but I still wanted to have some say over what I was going to do or not do.

Then it occurred to me. We would have to stop somewhere. There had to be a traffic light or something between there and the old homestead. I could just open the door and jump out and then I could make my way back home. It wasn't a very heroic plan, but it gave me some feeling of being back in control. Isn't that what we all want, the feeling that we have at least a little control over what happens to us in our lives?

So I relaxed a bit, and started to enjoy the lush summer landscape dotted with farms and little towns, waiting for some kind of delay that would give me the chance I needed. But when I began to look for the door handle, just to be ready when the time came, I couldn't find one. There was no handle, no lever, no button, nothing that would open the door or even the window. Maybe it was very cleverly disguised to blend in with the decor, or maybe it was all controlled from the front. Now I was fuming again, and my mind was filling up with dark thoughts about what I would do to that little bantam when I got my hands on him.

On the outskirts of some little burg, we picked up a cop who jumped on his motorcycle and took off after us. I put my nose against the partition and tried to see the speedometer. Eighty-five miles an hour! It certainly didn't seem so fast in that smooth-rolling Rolls. Anyway, it would get Rudy pulled over, and perfect timing too, because that little town was sure to have at least a bus station. Once again I relaxed. I decided I really didn't care about the whole kidnapping business and trying to get Rudy in trouble. Best just to think of it as a joke and forget about it.

The cop turned on his flashers, but Rudy didn't even slow down. Instead I saw him punch some numbers into a mobile phone. What he said into the receiver I couldn't hear, but a minute or two later the cop pulled around in front of us with his lights still flashing and gave us an escort all the way to the Massachusetts line. There he pulled over, touched his helmet in an informal salute, and went about his business.

In the meantime, something had snapped and all the fight had gone out of me. I was on my way to Albert's for a little study break, and what had I really been fighting against anyway? My own embarrassment, mainly. I didn't want to go face someone who knew my whole history, feeling like a failure and a drifter who had forgotten where he was drifting, someone who had had every opportunity in the world, and wound up wasting them all. In my old jeans and sneakers, with no luggage and no toothbrush, I was going on a visit to see a man who had somehow earned such gracious solicitude from the New York State Troopers.

"Rudy," I said, "where are the cocktail fixings in this dream machine?"

A small but well-stocked bar, quite a marvel of engineering and cabinetry, unfolded itself and slid into place. When this graceful transformation had completed itself, I had to laugh with admiration.

You don't even need a toothbrush.
"Thank you, Rudy," I said. "Where are my clothes?"

A drawer slid open, and there, beautifully folded without so much as a wrinkle, was a complete outfit, casual but in impeccable taste. Everything fit me perfectly, even the shoes. I put my old clothes and ratty sneakers into the drawer, and it quietly swallowed them and disappeared.

Better prepared in my fashionable clothes for a journey in a Rolls, but also feeling disoriented and somewhat unreal, I poured myself a brandy and gently rocked the liquor in the bottom of the glass, sipping from time to time as I gazed out the window. The idea that I'd made a mess of a perfectly good life kept recurring, and that made me feel sad and blue. On the other hand, sitting in that Rolls with a brandy in my hand, I also had the comforting sensation that life was really just an amusing dream. It made for a kind of balance, and I wasn't suffering as we hummed along through the Massachusetts countryside.

It didn't seem long at all before I began to recognize Albert's neighborhood, the big estates with the rustic names like Oakbridge, Briarthorn, and Overknoll. This was fox hunting country, and Albert and I had ridden to hounds in some of these very same estates. It was quite a wild and nutty sport, all that was left of the noble hunts of ages past. Everyone had booze in their coffee in the morning to get them in the mood, that is reckless as hell, and then you rode until your ass fell off. Someone was always breaking his arm, or almost breaking his neck, and that was one more thing to crack jokes about. When we all finally straggled back out of the woods and fields, exhausted and giddy, there would be a huge dinner, and everyone would get really plastered and finally stagger off to bed. It was very expensive and rowdy fun.

Albert's mother and father did not participate in fox hunting, though they were both accomplished riders, and Mrs. Keane had a jumper she was very proud of. Actually they disapproved slightly of fox hunting. I heard her refer to it once in private as being
déclassé;
but they didn't mind if Albert and I went occasionally. They understood that since we were locked up in school most of the time, we had to blow off some steam.

When we got back to school, back to the classes and books and endless papers and tests, life at the old homestead seemed like a half-remembered dream. I would go back to pestering people about liberty, justice, and human rights whenever I began to worry that I was starting to blend in too well with my upper-class surroundings. I persuaded myself that my trips to Albert's home were in no way inconsistent with my ideals. There was a time for classes and studying and bandying ideas about, which was most of the time; occasionally there was an opportunity to have fun. When I was having fun, I told myself, I was entitled to make the most of it.

Anyway, the enemies, according to my teenage ideals, were people obsessed with making money, and who made it by exploiting people, that is by lying, cheating, double-dealing, and card-sharping the innocent and helpless. Albert's parents couldn't have cared less about making money; they were not in any way sly or venal. On the contrary, Albert's father was always running off to some meeting about some hospital or library he was founding, and his mother was often busy with charities. And if they occasionally forgot to say thank you to elevator operators and doormen, they were very friendly to their own servants and let them take home all the leftovers.

From our first meeting, the Keanes were very nice to me. When Albert told them that my family was in show business, I saw Mrs. Keane raise one hair on one eyebrow about a tenth of a millimeter. But except for that one moment, I always felt completely accepted and welcomed as though I was a member of the family. In addition to the horse they kept especially for me to ride, I also had my own room with my own closet and bath. I had a particular chair in the dining room where I always sat to eat. And when it was time to head back to school, Mrs. Keane always reminded me that they wanted me to think of the old homestead as my own home.

Mr. and Mrs. Keane were glad to see that Albert had a friend. He was their only living child, and he had been more than a little sheltered. I understood that. They were also a little short on kids. Albert's older brother had died young, and Mrs. Keane, for some medical reason, could not have any more children. I understood that too.

What I did not really understand was that they genuinely liked me just for myself. Like the majority of young people, I hadn't yet learned to like myself very much. And my own family had sent me away. So it puzzled me and made me uncomfortable sometimes to be treated so well by these people.

What I also did not understand at all was what an inestimable blessing it was to have the patronage of such a powerful family. A lot of parents who sent their children to prep schools went down on their knees every night praying that Junior would find a friend with a family as rich as the Keanes. Such parents told their children right up front that they were being sent to school to make friends in influential circles and never to forget it.