‘Why don’t we put on our woolly slippers?’ he wondered.
‘I’ll get them.’
She fetched the slippers.
They put them on, exhaling at the cool feel of the material.
‘Ahhhhhh!’
‘Why are you still wearing your coat and vest?’
‘You know, new clothes are like a suit of armor.’ He worked out of the coat and, a minute later, the vest.
The chairs creaked.
‘Why, it’s four o’clock,’ she said, later.
‘Time flies. Too late to go out now, isn’t it?’
‘Much too late. We’ll just rest awhile. We can call a taxi to take us to supper.’
‘Elma.’ He licked his lips.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, I forgot.’ He glanced away at the wall.
‘Why don’t I just get out of my clothes into my bathrobe?’ he suggested, five minutes later. ‘I can dress in a rush when we stroll off for a big filet supper on the town.’
‘Now you’re being sensible,’ she agreed. ‘John?’
‘Something you want to tell me?’
She gazed at the new shoes lying on the floor. She remembered the friendly tweak on her instep, the slow caress on her toes.
‘No,’ she said.
They listened for each other’s hearts beating in the room. Clothed in their bathrobes, they sat sighing.
‘I’m just the least bit tired. Not too much, understand,’ she said. ‘Just a little bit.’
‘Naturally. It’s been quite a day, quite a day.’
‘You can’t just rush out, can you?’
‘Got to take it easy. We’re not young anymore.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m slightly exhausted, too,’ he admitted casually.
‘Maybe.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Maybe we should have a bite here tonight. We can always dine out tomorrow evening.’
‘A really smart suggestion,’ he said. ‘I’m not ravenous, anyway.’
‘Strange, neither am I.’
‘But, we’ll go to a picture later tonight?’
‘Of course!’
They sat munching cheese and some stale crackers like mice in the dark.
Seven o’clock.
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I’m beginning to feel just a trifle queasy?’
‘Oh?’
‘Back aches.’
‘Why don’t I just rub it for you?’
‘Thanks. Elma, you’ve got fine hands. You understand how to massage; not hard, not soft–but just right.’
‘My feet are burning,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to make that film tonight.’
‘Some other night,’ he said.
‘I wonder if something was wrong with that cheese? Heartburn.’
‘Did you notice, too?’
They looked at the bottles on the table.
Seven-thirty. Seven forty-five.
‘Almost eight o’clock.’
‘John!’ ‘Elma!’
They had both spoken at once.
They laughed, startled.
‘What is it?’
‘You go ahead.’
‘No, you first!’
They fell silent, listening and watching the clock, their hearts beating fast and faster. Their faces were pale.
‘I think I’ll take a little peppermint oil for my stomach,’ said Mr Alexander.
‘Hand me the spoon when you’re done,’ she said.
They sat smacking their lips in the dark, with only the one small moth-bulb lit.
Tickety-tickety-tick-tick-tick.
They heard the footsteps on their sidewalk. Up the front-porch stairs. The bell ringing.
They both stiffened.
The bell rang again.
They sat in the dark.
Six more times the bell rang.
‘Let’s not answer,’ they both said. Startled again, they looked at each other, gasping.
They stared across the room into each other’s eyes.
‘It can’t be anyone important.’
‘No one important. They’d want to talk. And we’re tired, aren’t we?’
‘Pretty,’ she said.
The bell rang.
There was a tinkle as Mr Alexander took another spoonful of peppermint syrup. His wife drank some water and swallowed a white pill.
The bell rang a final, hard time.
‘I’ll just peek,’ he said, ‘out the front window.’
He left his wife and went to look. And there, on the front porch, his back turned, going down the steps, was Samuel Spaulding. Mr Alexander couldn’t remember his face.
Mrs Alexander was in the other front room, looking out a window, secretly. She saw a Thimble Club woman walking along the street now, turning in at the sidewalk, coming up just as the man who had rung the bell was coming down. They met. Their voices murmured out there in the calm spring night.
The two strangers glanced up at the dark house together, discussing it.
Suddenly the two strangers laughed.
They gazed at the dim house once more. Then the man and the woman walked down the sidewalk and away together, along the street, under the moonlit trees, laughing and shaking their heads and talking until they were out of sight.
Back in the living room, Mr Alexander found his wife had put out a small washtub of warm water in which, mutually, they might soak their feet. She had also brought in an extra bottle of arnica. He heard her washing her hands. When she returned from the bath, her hands and face smelled of soap instead of spring verbena.
They sat soaking their feet.
‘I think we better turn in those tickets we bought for that play Saturday night,’ he said, ‘and the tickets for that benefit next week. You never can tell.’
‘All right,’ she said.
The spring afternoon seemed like a million years ago.
‘I wonder who that was at the door,’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, reaching for the peppermint oil. He swallowed some. ‘Game of blackjack, missus?’
She settled back in her chair with the faintest wriggle of her body.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ she said.
Last Laughs
His name was Andrew Rudolph Gerald Vesalius and he was a genius of the world, dialectician, statistician, creator of Italian operas, lyricist, poet of German lieder, Vedanta Temple lecturer, intellectual Santa Barbara brainstormer, and a grand pal.
This last seems unbelievable, for when we first met I was running on empty, a drab writer of pulp science fiction, earning two cents a word.
But Gerald, if I dare use his familiar name, discovered me and warned people that I had the future’s eye and should be watched.
He coached me and let me travel as lapdog when he addressed relatives of Einstein, Jung, and Freud.
For years I transcribed his lectures, sat for tea with Aldous Huxley, and trod speechless through art-gallery shows with Christopher Isherwood.
Now, suddenly, Vesalius was gone.
Well, almost. There were rumors that he was scribbling a book on those flying saucers that had hovered over the Palomar hot-dog stand and vanished.
I found that he no longer lectured at the Vedanta Temple, but survived in Paris or Rome; a promised novel was long overdue.
I telephoned his Malibu home ten dozen times.
Finally his secretary, William Hopkins Blair, admitted that Gerald was stricken with some mysterious disease.
I asked permission to visit my saintly friend. Blair disconnected.
I called again and Blair cried, in staccato phrases, that Vesalius had canceled our friendship.
Stunned, I tried to imagine how to apologize for sins which I knew I had not committed.
Then one evening at midnight the phone rang. A voice gasped one word: ‘Help!’
‘What?’ I said.
The cry was repeated: ‘Help!’
‘Vesalius?’ I cried.
A long
silence.
‘That sounds like you. Gerald?’
Silence, voices muttering, and then buzzzz.
I clenched the phone and felt a rush of tears come to my eyes; that was Vesalius’s voice. After weeks of silent absence, he had cried out to me, implying some danger beyond my understanding.
The next evening, on impulse, I wandered around the Italian-named streets of upper Malibu and finally stopped at Vesalius’s house.
I rang the bell.
No answer.
I rang again.
The house was silent.
I had spent twenty minutes ringing the bell and knocking when suddenly the door opened. That curious person, Gerald’s keeper Blair, stood there staring at me.
‘Yes?’
‘After half an hour,’ I said, ‘all you have to say is yes?’
‘Are you that pulp-writer friend of Gerald’s?’ he said.
‘You know it,’ I said. ‘And I’m not just a pulp writer. I’ve come to see Gerald.’
Blair answered quickly. ‘He’s not here, he’s in Rapallo.’
‘I know he’s here,’ I lied. ‘He called last night.’
‘Impossible! He’s in Italy!’
‘No,’ I lied again. ‘He asked me to find a new doctor.’
Blair turned very pale.
‘He’s here,’ I said. ‘I know his voice.’
I stared down the hall, beyond Blair.
Suddenly he stood aside.
‘Make it quick,’ he said.
I ran along the hall to the bedroom and entered.
There, stretched out like a thin white marble carving on a sarcophagus lid, lay my old friend Vesalius.
‘Gerald!’ I cried.
The pale figure, looking ancient and stricken, remained silent, but the eyeballs revolved frantically in the thin face.
Blair, behind me, said, ‘You see, he does poorly. Speak your piece and leave.’
I moved forward.
‘What’s wrong, Gerald?’ I said. ‘How can I help?’
There was a staccato pulse around Gerald’s thin lips, but no answer, only a gray moth-flick of the eyeballs, glancing from me to Blair, and back again to me, frantically.
I panicked and thought to seize Gerald and flee, but there was no way.
I leaned over my friend and whispered in his ear. ‘I’ll be back,’ I said. ‘I promise, Gerald. I’ll be back.’
I turned and hurried out of the room. At the front door Blair, staring beyond me, said: ‘No, no more visitors. Vesalius prefers it.’
And the door shut.
I stood a long while wanting to ring and knock, knock and ring, but finally turned away.
I waited in the street for an hour; I could not bear to leave.
At one in the morning, all the house’s lights went dark.
I crept around the side of the house toward the back and found the French doors leading into Gerald’s room open to the fresh night air.
Gerald Vesalius was as I had left him, eyes shut.
I cried softly, ‘Gerald,’ and his eyes flew wide open.
He was winter pale as before and stiff rigid, but his eyes jerked frantically.
I crept into the room and bent over the bed and whispered, ‘Gerald, what’s wrong?’
He could find no strength to answer, but at last he gasped and I thought I heard him say, ‘Soli,’ and then, ‘tary,’ and then ‘confine,’ and, gasp, ‘ment!’
I put the syllables together, shocked.
‘But why, Gerald?’ I cried, as quietly as possible. ‘Why?’
He could only jerk his chin toward the foot of his bed.
I pulled back the covers and stared.
His feet had been tied with adhesive tape to the end of the bed.
‘So,’ he gasped, ‘couldn’t,’ he said, ‘telephone!’
There was a phone to his right, just out of reach.
I unwound the adhesive and then bent back to question him.
‘Can you hear me?’
His head jerked. He cried softly. ‘Yes. Blair,’ gasped, ‘wants to,’ he said, ‘marry,’ he gasped again, ‘the…ancient…priest.’ Then, in an ardent burst of words: ‘Philosopher of all philosophers!’
‘How’s that again?’
‘Marry,’ the old man exploded, ‘me!’
‘Wait!’ I was stunned. ‘Marry?’
A frantic nod then, suddenly, a wild shriek of laughter.
‘Me,’ whispered Gerald Vesalius. ‘Him.’
‘Jesus! Blair and you? Wedding?’
‘That’s it.’ Gerald’s voice was clearer, stronger. ‘That’s it.’
‘Impossible!’
‘It is, it is!’
I felt a terrible urge toward laughter, but stopped.
‘You mean—’ I cried.
‘Softly,’ said Gerald, his voice fluid now. ‘He’ll hear, he’ll throw,’ he gasped, ‘you out!’
‘Gerald, that’s not legal,’ I cried softly.
‘Legal,’ he whispered, swallowed hard. ‘Make legal, headlines, news!’
‘My God!’
‘Yes, God!’
‘But why?’
‘Doesn’t,’ said Gerald, ‘care. Fame! Figures the more he wants to marry me, more fame and the more I will give him.’
‘But again, why, Gerald?’
‘He wants to own me, completely. Just,’ said Gerald, ‘in,’ he said, ‘his,’ he gasped, ‘nature.’
‘Lord!’ I said. ‘I know marriages where a man owns the woman, or the woman completely owns the man.’
‘Yes,’ said Gerald. ‘He wants that! He loves, but this is madness.’
Gerald stiffened, eyes shut, and then in a frail voice which rose and faded: ‘Wants to own my mind.’
‘He can’t!’
‘Will try, will try. Wants to be world’s greatest philosopher.’
‘Lunatic!’
‘Yes! Wants to write, travel, lecture, wants to be me. If owns me, thinks he can take my place.’
A noise. We both sucked breath.
‘Madness,’ I whispered. ‘Christ!’
‘Christ,’ Gerald snorted, ‘has nothing…to do with it.’ Vesalius blew a surprise of mirth.
‘But still!’
‘Shhh,’ Gerald Vesalius cautioned.
‘Was he like this when he first started to work for you?’
‘I suppose. Not this bad.’
‘It was okay then?’
‘o’—a pause—‘kay.’
‘But—’
‘As years passed he was more gree–gree–greedy.’
‘For your cash?’
‘No.’ A derisive smile. ‘My mind.’
‘He’d steal that?’
Gerald sucked in, blew out. ‘Imagine!’
‘You’re one of a kind!’
‘Tell–tell–tell him that.’
‘Son of a bitch!’
‘No, jealous, envious, covetous, admiring, part monster, now monster full-time.’ Gerald cried this in a few clear instants.
‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Why are we talking?’
‘What else?’ whispered Vesalius. ‘Help.’ He smiled.
‘How will I get you out of here?’
Vesalius laughed. ‘Let me count the ways.’
‘No time for jokes, damn it!’
Gerald Vesalius swallowed. ‘Have strange…sense’–he paused–‘humor. List!’
We both froze. A door creaked. Footsteps.
‘Should I call the cops?’
‘No.’ A pause. Gerald’s face writhed. ‘Action, drama, wins!’
‘Action?’
‘Do as I say or all’s lost.’
I bent close, he whispered frantically.
Whisper, whisper, whisper.
‘Got that? Try?’
‘Try!’ I said. ‘Oh, damn, damn, damn!’
Footsteps in the hall. I thought I heard someone yell.
I grabbed the phone. I dialed.
I ran out the French doors, around the
house, to the front walk.
A siren screamed, then a second and a third.
Three trucks of paramedic firemen booted up the walk with nothing else to do so late at night. Nine different paramedic firemen ran, eager not to be bored.
‘Blair,’ I yelled. ‘That’s me! Damn, I’ve locked myself out! Around the side! Man dying. Follow me.’
I ran. The black-suited paramedics blundered after.
We flung wide the French doors. I pointed at Vesalius.
‘Out!’ I cried. ‘Brotman Hospital. Fast!’
They laid Gerald on a gurney and plunged out the French doors.
Behind us I heard Blair yelling hysterically.
Gerald Vesalius heard and waved gaily, calling out ‘Tata, toodle-o, farewell, solong, good-bye!’ as we rushed toward the waiting ambulance.
Gerald whooped with laughter.
‘Young man?’
‘Gerald?’
‘Do you love me?’
‘Yes, Gerald.’
‘But don’t want to own me?’
‘No, Gerald.’
‘Not my mind?’
‘No.’
‘Not my body?’
‘No, Gerald.’
‘Till death do us part?’
‘Till death do us part.’
‘Good.’
Run, run, hustle, hustle, across the lawn, down the walk, toward the waiting ambulance.
‘Young man.’
‘Yes?’
‘Vedanta Temple?’
‘Yes.’
‘Last year?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lecture on Great All Accepting Laughter?’
‘I was there.’
‘Well, now’s the time!’
‘Oh, yes, yes.’
‘To hoot and holler?’
‘Hoot and holler.’
‘Zest and gusto, eh?’
‘Gusto, zest, oh my God!’
Here a bomb burst in Gerald’s chest and erupted from his throat. I’d never heard such jovial explosions in my life, and snort-laughed as I ran alongside Gerald as his gurney was hustled and hurried.
We howled, we shrieked, we yelled, we gasped, we insucked-outblew firecracker bomb-blasts of hilarity like boys on a forgotten summer day, collapsed on the sidewalk, writhing with comic seizures of wild upchuck heart attacks, throats choked, eyes clenched with brays of ha-hee and hee-ha and God, stop, I can’t breathe, Gerald, hee-ha, ha-hee, and God, ha and hee, and once more ha-hee and whistle-rustle whisper haw.
‘Young man?’
‘What?’
‘King Tut’s mummy.’
‘Yes?’
‘Found in tomb.’ ‘Yes.’