The Book of Counted Sorrows (4 page)

                   Upon his death, Heff's considerable fortune - enhanced by wise investments in Human Stupidity Bonds, the value of which soar with the rise of stupi ditv in the species, but fall with any indication of increasing human wisdom - was inherited by his only child, Hisser Heffalope, ward of the state. At the age of eighteen, having survived into more enlightened times, Hisser was released into society. It became a wildly successful criminal defense attorney, specializing in clients who were wealthy serial killers; Hisser won not-guilty-by-reason-of-entertaining-legal-defense verdicts for the most savage, unremorseful, bloody-minded, and ill-dressed murderers of its time, winning kudos, plaudits, accolades, and prize Cadi1lacs from the wards committee of the hoity-toity American Bar Association. Hisser also pioneered the profitable practice of suing the grieving families of a killer's Victims for damages, sucking them drier than an empty coconut husk. A secondary career as a cat rancher was far less successful, because Hisser routinely ate the profits.

                   Fortunately for the fate of mankind, The Book of Counted Sorrows did not fall into Hisser's several hands upon Addison Heffalope's choir-traumatizing death, but was reacquired by Ed Thomas, the Orange County rare-book dealer. By this time, Thomas was no longer operating out of a converted burlesque theater. He had moved his business into a former whorehouse that for decades had specialized in providing midget prostitutes for sailors of equally diminutive stature.

                   (A parenthetical aside: The term "midget prostitute," much in use in the 1930s, is not one we would use these days. Now we would say "height-challenged hooker." or perhaps "pocket Venus, if we were of a poetic bent, or possibly even "very small, not to say unusually small, not to say remarkably small, lady of the night.")

                   This whorehouse, by now a shop called Book Orgy, in a commercial district overlooking Newport Harbor, was a wonderfully atmospheric structure of many rooms, all filled with treasures upon treasures of magnificent books, and conducive to leisurely browsing, especially because the omnipresent odor, though as odd as that in the burlesque house, was frequently more appealing. Thomas, always present and assisted by his charming wife Pitty, was more of a host and friend to his customers than he was a retailer. By all accounts, he was an affable man and happy in his work, though he might have been dour if he had known that three years hence, in 1942, he would be run down by that 30,000-pound Acme steamroller and squashed flatter than a page of onionskin paper. Customers spent hours in this charming former bordello for midget prostitutes and height-challenged sailors, roaming room to room, and not one ever complained that the five-foot-high ceilings required them to browse on their hands and knees. If from time to time a small but highly aroused and extremely agitated sailor burst into the shop, looking for action and exhibiting little or no appreciation for literature... Well, this was no more awkward for Ed and Pitty than when they had been obliged to deal with the elderly strippers who had shown up at the former burlesque house, down on their luck and offering to take off their clothes for two dollars.

                   In 1941, Ed Thomas sold The Book of Counted Sorrows to Clete Reet, a breathtakingly stylish and hugely successful big-band leader who was as famous in his time as Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, but who is now, sadly, as forgotten as Cream-'o-Chaff, once the most popular breakfast cereal in America. On stage and off, Reet dressed the same, in top hat and tuxedo and white silk scarf, as if he had stepped off the cover of Vanity Fair. An Art Deco icon, he went everywhere with two elegant borzoi hounds on leashes, smoking a slim cigarette in a six-inch carved-ivory holder, with a monocle over his left eye - and with an incredibly witty wisecrack always on his lips, as was expected from every icon in that glittering era. In our own time, of course, icons are expected only to be surly, grunt out half-articulate sentences, scratch their crotches, and whine about their inadequacies and addictions on boring talk shows hosted by butt-kissing celebritymongers.

                   During the first year that he owned Counted Sorrows, overwhelmed by the demands of being an icon, with little time to read, Clete Reet sampled only a few of the verses in the book. In 1942, however, he became obsessed with the volume. He read it more than a hundred times, cover to cover, backwards, forwards, upside down, with monocle and without, abed and afoot, tipsy and sober, to his dogs with a keen eye for their reactions, at a distance of twenty feet with the assistance of high-quality binoculars - and finally at a distance of only sixteen feet but still with binoculars, this time bending forward from the waist, looking backward between his legs.

                   Two months after Ed Thomas met his end in a delicate dance of death with 30,000 pounds of rolling doom, on the fateful night of December 10, 1942, while having dinner at the Brown Derby, Clete Reet - dining with the suave William Powell and the delightful Myrna Loy, with dancer extraordinaire Fred Astaire and the incomparable Ginger Rogers - suddenly sat bolt upright in his chair and swallowed his tongue, whereafter he swallowed his teeth, his lips, his chin, his nose, the remainder of his face and skull, his neck complete with wing collar and black tuxedo tie, his shoulders, both arms, then his torso, his hips, his legs, and his feet, shoes and all, until nothing remained of him but a toothless red pulsing orifice. This toothless red pulsing orifice hungrily sucked in three poppy-seed dinner rolls, a champagne flute filled with Dom Perignon, Ginger Rogers' exquisite pearl necklace, one of William Powell's cufflinks, and a hapless busboy before at last imploding on itself and vanishing with a rude noise that would have embarrassed the stylish and impeccably well-mannered Mr. Reet if he had still been alive to hear it.

                   Clete Reet's last will and testament bequeathed his estate to his sister, one "Miss Scuttlesby," of Ennui Plains, Kansas. This third female Scuttlesby with no first name might seem significant, but I am assured by our Mrs. Scuttlesby (whose assurances have the fearsome conviction and the blistering heat of a long burst of hard radiation from a malfunctioning nuclear-power plant) that Reet's sister was no relation of hers. I also do not believe that Reet's sister was related to Langford Crispin's clothespin-on-the-nose housekeeper, the other Mrs. Scuttlesby, because the nine private detectives that I sent to the once bustling town of Ennui Plains, in search of leads, discovered nothing along those lines before they all perished, one by one, in a series of tornadoes. No, the appearance in this story of the three Scuttlesby women without Christian names is just one of those amazing coincidences that litter our lives, but which I, as a novelist, could never use in a work of fiction, lest I be criticized for perpetrating a plot full of improbabilities.

                   By the way, I say "once bustling," as regards Ennui Plains, because the town no longer exists. Shortly after Clete Reet's will was probated and after the full sum of the inheritance was settled upon his beloved sister, something catastrophic happened to this picturesque prairie hamlet. I say "something catastrophic," because I have insufficient information to be more specific. On the morning that Miss Scuttlesby was to leave on vacation, Ennui Plains ceased to exist. No smallest splinter or stone of the community was ever found, no roof shingle or bent rusty nail, not one shattered teacup or one dented soup pot, not one severed finger or mangled foot belonging to a resident, not one pile of steaming guts or even one freestanding kidney. Ennui Plains had simply vanished. Some scientists speculate that the town spun away into a time vortex, while others suspect that it came into contact with an anti-matter Ennui Plains and was swiveled into an alternate universe; theologians, however, believe that God used Ennui Plains as a cosmic Kleenex, filling it with a great wad of divine snot and tossing it away into deep space. Any of these explanations might be correct, although the truth is most likely stranger still.

                   In any event, I have not been able to trace Miss Scuttlesby, the big-band heiress, from that fateful moment. Perhaps she disappeared along with Ennui Plains. If she left on vacation just prior to the catastrophe, I've no way to discover her whereabouts, for any of her neighbors or friends who may have had knowledge of her travel plans have themselves vanished into a void.

                   Where was I?

                   Who am I?

                   From whence come I?

                   Wither do I go?

                   Wherefore art my thumbs?

                   Is there balm in Gilead?

                   Where is Gilead?

                   What is balm?

                   How much does it cost?

                   Has it been approved for sale by the FDA?

                   Is it available in a cheaper generic form?

                   Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

                   Who shot Liberty Valance?

                   Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?

                   Who's who?

                   What's what?

                   How's that?

                   Why did the chicken cross the road?

                   Or did the egg cross it first?

                   Where did the egg go when it got to the other side?

                   Do you want fries with that?

                   Do you think this mole looks funny?

                   I mean, not funny-ha-ha, but funny as in funny-creepy?

                   Why do fools fall in love?

                   Why ask why?

                   Why not ask why?

                   Who are you to tell me what to ask and not ask?

                   Where do you get off ?

                   For that matter, where do you get on?

                   Does that feel good?

                   What about this?

                   Hmmmmm?

                   And this?

                   Do you want to find a motel?

                   In a real dark night of the soul, is it always three o'clock in the morning?

                   Or sometimes is it more like 2:45?

                   What time is it?

                   What is time, anyway?

                   Is time a dimension or a force, or entirely an illusion?

                   Does my Wristwatch serve any important purpose other than to reinforce a delusion that time matters?

                   What time are we leaving?

                   Wither do I go?

                   From whence come I?

                   Who am I?

                   Where was I?

                    Oh, yes, Clete Reet swallowed himself in the Brown Derby, the heiress sister disappeared with Ennui Plains, and The Book of Counted Sorrows was not reacquired by Ed Thomas because he had by then been crushed under a steamroller driven by a coyote. But by diverse means far too diverse to divine, the magical and dangerous volume passed through the hands of a series of bibliophiles, always bringing with it the curse of too much knowledge, and leaving a trail of frightful destruction from 1942 until the present day.

                   I need a massage.

7

Bruno Kronk, Masseur Extraordinaire and Monkey Mechanic.

Bruno Kronk's mother was the best friend of my second cousin twice removed. Please understand: The cousin was twice removed, not Bruno's mother, and as far as that goes, the cousin was brought back twice, as well, after being removed, although by a majority vote of the family, she was removed yet a third time and never brought back again.

                   Bruno's mother, Brunetta, was an attractive but hulking woman, who drew whistles from lumberjacks, though they were as likely to be whistles of respect as whistles of romantic intention. She could bench-press a 400-pound Sumo wrestler, whether he wanted to be bench-pressed or not, and as a consequence, she was not welcome in Japan. As far as lumberjacks went, she could bench-press them, as well, two at a time, even while eating a breakfast of buckwheat cakes in garlic syrup, and she could fell a mighty redwood with her breath.

                     Brunetta left home at the age of seventeen with twelve dollars and a suitcase full of shoes, determined to see the world, every remote nook and crevice of it, but she returned at eighteen, barefoot and six months pregnant. Trailing behind her was Babe the Blue Ox, bigger than a house and bluer than one of the sleazy sex-and-science magazines for which Addison Heffalope, the doomed poet, wrote erotic doggerel. Brunetta's mother, Brunhilde, was certain that the father of the unborn child must be the owner of Babe: Paul Bunyan, the legendary giant lumberjack and American folk hero, who was also an infamous womanizer. (Do you want to see my Douglas fir, baby? How about a little log-rolling contest, sweetie? Believe me, this is a side of Bunyan that you don't want to explore.) Brunetta's father, Brunplotz, whose friends affectionately called him Plotzie, would have traced Bunyan down and either killed him or done something unimaginablv more brutal; however, Brunetta managed to persuade him that she had not been impregnated by the giant lumberjack but by Big Foot. Because Big Foot is mysterious in the extreme, as elusive as a ghost, and most likely mythical, Plotzie reluctantly conceded that a quest for revenge would be futile. Thus he resigned himself to living with the shame of his precious daughter's dishonor. Tree months thereafter, the family was left without vengeance but with little Bruno and a lifetime supply of blue sausages.

                   Thirty-two years later, Bruno came to work on the Koontz estate as our Masseur Extraordinaire and Monkey Mechanic. His massages are so aggressive that they are not merely relaxing but nearly fatal. If you have ever received a rigorous traditional Japanese massage, which is arguably the most forceful massage in the world, then you might be able to understand the power of Bruno's treatments if you can imagine a Japanese massage performed by a tribe of methamphetamine-crazed gorillas wielding baseball bats and lug wrenches while driven into a frenzy by samba music played at full volume on 40,000-amp speakers. Bliss. As deeply relaxing as a massage by Bruno can be, the restful effect is further enhanced on those occasions when a short-term coma and hospitalization follow.

                   You have no doubt noticed that I've left you alone here in my handsomely padded and tufted study for a mere twenty-one minutes and nine seconds, which is not nearly long enough for a complete massage, and being observant, you will have further noted that I have returned not in a coma, nor even disoriented, but only in a wheelchair and with a dreamy expression on my face. This is because my massage was interrupted by Mrs. Scuttlesby, who rushed to the massage theater to alert Bruno that a repair emergency had arisen regarding the robotic monkeys.

                   Although I myself possess no other talent or skill besides a certain humble gift for writing fiction, we are fortunate that this world harbors some exceptional human beings who can do two - or even more than two - things with equal ability. Albert Einstein was not only the greatest physicist who ever lived, but also the highest-scoring professional basketball player of his time. General Douglas MacArthur, brilliant commander of our Pacific forces in World War II, also had a profitable and acclaimed career as a stand-up comic in the Catskills and later in Las Vegas, under the name Shecky MacArthur, and in addition, he wrote best-selling romance novels under a name that I am sworn never to reveal, under penalty of instant spleen removal by descendants of the general. Likewise, our highly esteemed Bruno Kronk not only gives the most strenuous and most exquisitely debilitating massages on the North American continent, but he also is to robotic-monkey repair what Jackie Chan is to martial-arts movies.

                   Few estates in this country feature robotic-monkey displays, and I am burstingly proud to say that none - not even those vast sumptuous domains owned by Donald Trump, the Sultan of Brunei, Bill Gates, and Mick Jagger - none can boast as elaborate a collection of robotic monkeys as that which capers, tumbles, scampers, frolics, chatters, dances, and occasionally simulates copulation on our south lawn, albeit I will admit that Mick's collection, while smaller than ours, does contain more monkeys engaged in grossly obscene acts. Though if I were him, I wouldn't brag about this dubious distinction. Ours is largely a G-rated bunch of charming mechanical primates. On a warm spring afternoon, we enormously enjoy spreading a blanket on the south lawn and watching the monkeys pretend to pick lice out of one another's thick nylon fur, while we eat cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwiches and wash them down with fifths of bourbon.

                   Will you please adjust my lap blanket? After even an incomplete massage from Bruno, I'm not at once able to control my arms, and in attempting to adjust my lap robe, I might spasmodically knock over that priceless Tiffany lamp or gouge off my nose.

                   Thank you. That's just right.

                   What?

                   Where?

                   Oh, be not afraid. No, really, there's no danger. That was nothing more than a robotic monkey flinging itself at the window.

                   See, there's another one.

                   Yes, I know they can be daunting, with their gnashing steel teeth, gnashing and gnashing, but they are merely malfunctioning machines, not possessed of malevolent intent.

                   Well, you see, the windows will not shatter because -

                   Now that was a furious little Curious George! What an impact!

                   - because they are fabricated from inch-thick bulletproof glass.

                   Really, please sit down.

                   No, really.

                   Good lord! Impressive noise, wasn't it?

                   No, no, that wasn't a bigger monkey. They're all approximately the same size. That was just a pair of them, throwing themselves at the window while pretending to copulate.

                   I would offer you a little Scotch to quiet your nerves, but when you had finished it, you would be required to floss and convey the used length to the visitor's window at the carriage master's cottage. Until Bruno has ascertained the precise cause of the malfunction of the robotic monkeys and has effected repairs, it would be unwise for any of us to venture outside.

                   Where was I?