Zod Wallop (4 page)

Allan opened his eyes to stare directly into another pair of eyes, and the effect was unpleasant, like waking to find you are on the edge of a cliff, although here, instead of falling into space, one might topple into another person’s consciousness and be lost.

Allan did not panic, however, for he instantly recognized an unmistakable odor of wet hair and rotted fruit that belonged to Arbus. If you fell into Arbus’s consciousness, you could climb out easily enough. Lord Arbus was Raymond’s monkey.

“Arbus,” Allan said. “What are you doing here?” Allan reached over to the nightstand and turned the lamp on. He saw that the door to his room was open. “Is Raymond here?” he asked.

The monkey grinned and offered Allan a crumpled ball of paper. Allan smoothed the piece of paper on his knee. It was a single sheet of ruled paper, the sort of off-white, porous stuff upon which schoolkids laboriously practice block letters.

A more studied hand had employed this piece of paper to write: “Lord Allan—Upon reading this piece of paper, find Lady Rene Gold and hasten to the courtyard where means of escape await you. Bring the book with you. And may Blodkin smile upon this enterprise. R.”

Allan dressed quickly, started to leave the room, remembered the book and retrieved it. He stuffed it down the back of his pants and left the room.

In the hall, Arbus uttered a small, high-pitched trill, no doubt inspired by nervousness, and Allan put a finger to his lips and said, “Shhhhhhhhhhsh.”

When Allan tapped softly on Rene’s door, she opened it immediately, causing Allan to jump back and eliciting a small squeak from Arbus.

“Arbus. Allan,” Rene said. She was still dressed in the overalls and yellow tank top, and she held a blue backpack in her left hand. “I’m ready.” She slipped out into the hall and pulling her door closed behind her.

Allan would have liked to ask her how she had known to be ready and for what, but he decided to save the questions for later. They crept down the hall and into the courtyard.

Harwood Psychiatric was not a high-security institution. It was an expensive, private asylum, and most of those within its walls had no intention of fleeing. This was their refuge, in fact, from the larger, hostile world. But in recent years, a growing adolescent population had required Harwood to acknowledge some security measures. Young men and women had been placed in Harwood by exasperated parents, and these kids were inclined to bolt if the opportunity presented itself. So Harwood had acquired additional security guards, electronically locked doors, and the gray walls surrounding the courtyard had been raised. Those trees abutting the walls had been removed.

A full moon hovered overhead, so bright that the grass looked as though it had been spray-painted silver. Arbus darted across the grass, past the gurgling fountain, and Allan and Rene followed.

“All right!” Rene said. “All right, Raymond!”

Allan and Rene watched Arbus scramble up a swinging ladder made of rope and wooden slats. The monkey reached the top and turned, squatting on the wall. It spread its arms and grinned, as though expecting applause.

“You first,” Allan said, but he needn’t have bothered. Rene had slipped the backpack on and was briskly negotiating the ladder, an athletic girl whose retreating buttocks, despite being shrouded in shapeless overalls, filled Allan’s heart with the full meaning and exhilaration of the word escape.

A voice behind Allan shouted, “Stop!”

Allan saw Baker running across the grass. Allan turned, grabbed the first rung of the dancing ladder, and hauled himself up.

Negotiating the ladder was a shaky business. Rungs were not necessarily where feet could find them, but Allan floundered his way to the top and prepared to haul himself up when a hand suddenly hooked his foot.

Allan looked down to see the orderly, whose bandaged face was sweaty with determination. Allan kicked out, but in so doing lost his balance and leaned back into the terrible hollow of empty space, the moon falling toward him, his ears filling with his own shout of terror.

Allan hit the ground on his back, a whump of suddenness as though a circuit had been banged shut on the engines of gravity. He couldn’t move.

He saw Baker towering over him. The orderly was grinning, arms folded across his chest. His bandaged nose lent an outlaw aspect to his demeanor. He was saying something, but Allan couldn’t make it out.

And then, a trick of the shadows, Allan saw a yellow toothy smile floating in the dark foliage of the tree behind Baker, saw the smile drift forward, as though propelled by a gentle breeze, and saw the simian features of Arbus take shape behind the large, piano-key grin.

Baker must have sensed the approach of those teeth. Perhaps his nose signaled some telepathic warning to his brain. Whatever. It was too late. He began to turn just as Arbus craned forward, hooted mightily, and struck.

Baker screamed, and Allan, in the one brief instant before he rolled over, righted himself, and scrambled up the ladder and over the wall, saw Baker execute a rapid pirouette that spun the monkey from him and removed, in accordance with the laws of physics, a substantial portion of the his ear.

Raymond was waiting for Allan on the other side and hugged him. “Lord Allan,” Raymond said. “I trust you are unharmed.” Arbus, also unharmed, leapt from the top of the wall to join them.

“We had best be on our way,” Raymond said.

Allan followed Raymond to the car, where Emily and Rene awaited them.

It was only after they were out on the interstate, the night air dispelling confusion, that Allan realized, with a start of dismay, that he had lost the book. It must have been jolted out of his pants when he fell.

“I’ve lost
Zod Wallop
!” Allan blurted, and Raymond, who had been concentrating on his driving (with the assistance of Arbus who perched on his shoulder) involuntarily swerved, eliciting a horn blast from a car in the neighboring lane.

No one said anything for some time, and then Raymond, his voice devoid of its usual enthusiasm, said, “Bad luck, Allan. I think we’d better drive straight through.”

The car accelerated, bound southward into the night. It flew by diesel trucks outlined in points of light, and Emily Engel, Raymond’s new bride, slipped down in her seat and tilted sideways. “Heeeeeg,” she said, announcing her displeasure, and Rene leaned over from the backseat and tugged Emily back into a sitting position.

“Hey Emily,” Rene said.

“Faaaaaaaa,” Emily said.

“I D
ON'T
K
NOW,
” Helen said. “I am basically a city person.”

Harry offered her his hand. “Come on. Nothing to it.”

Harry helped his agent into the boat. “Sit there,” he said. “Okay, we are off.”

Helen Kurtis, a woman known in Manhattan for the ferocity of her demeanor, a woman who might have inspired the oft-quoted analogy that an agent is to a publisher as a knife is to a throat—Helen Kurtis was remarkably subdued as she perched on the rowboat’s plank seat. Her imposing bulk, generally swathed in primary colors and garnished with gold belts, earrings, and bracelets, was housed in khaki slacks, a green, short-sleeve blouse obscured by an orange life jacket, and a large straw hat. Round sunglasses completed her costume.

“Everybody should go fishing at least once,” Harry said. “It would be wrong to let the opportunity pass. You’ve come all this way to visit me. What kind of a host would I be if I didn’t make an attempt to fill this gap in your education?”

“You have a mean streak that I was unaware of, Harry Gainesborough,” Helen said. She looked around her as Harry rowed out to the middle of the pond.

“If I were really cruel, I’d let you hook your own earthworms. I’m taking into account your delicate feminine sensibilities.” It was almost noon, and the sun had boiled the color from the sky. Dragonflies zigzagged over the brown palm of water.

Harry stopped rowing and tossed the anchor overboard. He dug a worm out of the coffee can and expertly threaded it on the hook. He stood up and cast into the water. The bobber landed with a soft splash, and he handed the rod to Helen. “You keep your eye on the bobber,” he said. “It goes under, you yank.”

“All right.” Helen Kurtis held the fishing rod as though it were a broom, and Harry suspected that she was indifferent to his instructions, did not, indeed, wish to snare any fish.

Proof of this was immediately furnished. She leaned forward and began talking about the proposed Hollywood deal for
Zod Wallop
.

“The option is very generous, and that’s money you can just walk away with. Most options come to nothing, you know. You’d still have the money. Also, they are willing to give you a percentage of gross—we are not talking monkey points here. That’s rare. They just don’t give that to a writer.”

Harry let her talk. He knew there was no sense in trying to interrupt her. She was forgetting she was on a boat now; she was in her element, the country of the deal.

Harry smiled. He was glad she had come. He had forgotten how much he missed her. She’d arrived late the night before, laden with groceries, and smoked the better part of a pack of cigarettes while bustling around his kitchen preparing an omelette. “I’m the host here,” he had protested, and she had responded, “Well, you can’t cook, and I’m hungry so I guess you’ll have to confine your hosting to good conversation.” She had watched him drink a beer with a narrowing of eye and a stiffening of her square jaw, but she had said nothing.

Harry had managed to clean up before she came. He had taken the photos of Amy down but then, defiantly and at the last minute, he had put them back up—minus the bathing suit picture (his courage had failed there). Helen hadn’t said anything about the pictures, although she had seen them, of course. She didn’t miss much.

In the morning, Harry had driven her into town and they had eaten breakfast at Kenny’s Kitchen. Helen had enjoyed the experience immensely, but Harry had found her enjoyment annoying, containing, as it did, a lot of civilized eyebrow raising and commentary. “I’ve heard of grits,” she had said, playing with her food. “I shouldn’t be surprised if they are a great aid to digestion.”

Back at the cabin, the phone had cried, and Harry had answered it, recognized the voice of Raymond Story on the other end, and hung up immediately.

“Who was that?” Helen had asked.

“That was Raymond Story,” Harry said. “He is a young man who suffers from schizophrenia, but before you offer any sympathy, let me add that he is an extremely irritating and offensive human being, mentally ill or not. Dr. Moore told me that it is not uncommon for schizophrenics to create elaborate scenarios, and unfortunately Story’s scenario includes me. In a way, dear Helen, you are responsible. I met Story while at Harwood. He sees, in the drowning of my daughter and in his own near drowning when he was a child, some sort of bond. It’s unpleasantly weird, and has to do with
Zod Wallop
which he seems incapable of regarding as fiction. Anyway, let’s not talk about it.”

Helen frowned. “Is he dangerous?”

“Oh, he’s completely harmless. He’s just a nuisance.” Harry frowned. “A very resourceful nuisance. I have no idea how he managed to get my phone number.”

To escape another telephone call, Harry had decided to take Helen fishing. Ostensibly, that is what they were now doing, although when Helen’s bobber suddenly submerged in the middle of her lengthy discussion of film contracts, she reacted by throwing the fishing rod overboard.

The next half hour was spent in rowing after the bobber, which occasionally surfaced. Harry finally snatched the bobber out of the water along with a three-inch bluegill. The fish was released, and, by reeling the line hand over hand, the fishing rod, filmed with black muck, was retrieved.

“So this is fishing,” Helen said.

Harry glared at her. “No, this is not fishing. And no,
Zod Wallop
is not for sale to Hollywood. I’ll tell you something, Helen. I regret publishing
Zod Wallop
. That book’s a zombie. Or at least it’s a lie. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“It’s a beautiful book,” Helen said.

“And that’s the lie.” Harry said. “I had no business turning it into a beautiful book.”

Helen took her sunglasses off and studied Harry.

“Harry,” she said, “I know that Amy’s death shattered your life. I know that. I’ve never had children, so I won’t try to imagine the extent of your loss. I was married to the same man for forty-two years, and when Abe died, I didn’t know how I was going to go on. You remember how it was. I’d call you up, and I couldn’t remember why I’d called.”

Harry nodded. Abe Kurtis had been a bright-eyed, stocky little man who had worshiped his wife and when he died of a heart attack, suddenly and with no prior history, Helen had been devastated.

Helen said, “I kept on going to the office. I had this feeling that my clients, their lives, their well-being, shouldn’t have to suffer in this tragedy. I was going to protect them. So work, I guess, is what got me through that time. It helped me avoid self-pity.”

“Well—” Harry began.

Helen reached out and touched his knee, silencing him. “You’ve written seven children’s books, every one of them better than the last.
Zod Wallop
is some sort of gift the muse gave you, Harry. It’s a kind of wonderful, extraordinary act of grace. It may be a painful book, personally. But it is a great book, and you should accept that—with pride and humility. Maybe I should emphasize the humility. Ask yourself: Why me? Why was I given this gift?”