Universe 15 Read online

  “But I was out there waiting for them, and I told them, ‘You can’t do it, that’s Code number 91.3002, sub-section E,’ and they lied and said they had special permission, so I said to the big muckymuck in charge, ‘Let’s see your waiver permit,’ and he said the Code didn’t apply in this case because it was supposed to be only for grading, and since they were demolishing and not grading, they could start whenever they felt like it. So I told him I’d call the police, then, because it came under the heading of Disturbing the Peace, and he said… well, I know you hate that kind of language, old girl, so I won’t tell you what he said, but you can imagine.

  “So I called the police, and gave them my name, and of course they didn’t get there till almost quarter after seven (which is what makes me think they bought off a councilman), and by then those ’dozers had leveled most of it. Doesn’t take long, you know that.

  “And I don’t suppose it’s as great a loss as, maybe, say, the Great Library of Alexandria, but it was the last of the authentic Deco design drive-ins, and the carhops still served you on roller skates, and it was a landmark, and just about the only place left in the city where you could still get a decent grilled cheese sandwich pressed very flat on the grill by one of those weights they used to use, made with real cheese and not that rancid plastic they cut into squares and call it ‘cheese food.’

  “Gone, old dear, gone and mourned. And I understand they plan to put up another one of those mini-malls on the site, just ten blocks away from one that’s already there, and you know what’s going to happen: this new one will drain off the traffic from the older one, and then that one will fail the way they all do when the next one gets built, you’d think they’d see some history in it; but no, they never learn. And you should have seen the crowd by seven-thirty. All ages, even some of those kids painted like aborigines, with torn leather clothing. Even they came to protest. Terrible language, but at least they were concerned. And nothing could stop it. They just whammed it, and down it went.

  “I do so miss you today, Minna. No more good grilled cheese.” Said the very old man to the ground. And now he was crying softly, and now the wind rose, and the mist rain stippled his overcoat.

  Nearby, yet at a distance, Billy Kinetta stared down at another grave. He could see the old man over there off to his left, but he took no further notice. The wind whipped the vent of his trenchcoat. His collar was up but rain trickled down his neck. This was a younger man, not yet thirty-five. Unlike the old man, Billy Kinetta neither cried nor spoke to memories of someone who had once listened. He might have been a geomancer, so silently did he stand, eyes toward the ground.

  One of these men was black; the other was white.

  Beyond the high, spiked-iron fence surrounding the cemetery two boys crouched, staring through the bars, through the rain; at the men absorbed by grave matters, by matters of graves. These were not really boys. They were legally young men. One was nineteen, the other two months beyond twenty. Both were legally old enough to vote, to drink alcoholic beverages, to drive a car. Neither would reach the age of Billy Kinetta.

  One of them said, “Let’s take the old man.”

  The other responded, “You think the guy in the trenchcoat’ll get in the way?”

  The first one smiled; and a mean little laugh. “I sure as shit hope so.” He wore, on his right hand, a leather carnaby glove with the fingers cut off, small round metal studs in a pattern along the line of his knuckles. He made a fist, flexed, did it again.

  They went under the spiked fence at a point where erosion had created a shallow gully. “Sonofabitch!” one of them said, as he slid through on his stomach. It was muddy. The front of his sateen roadie jacket was filthy. “Sonofabitch!” He was speaking in general of the fence, the sliding under, the muddy ground, the universe in total. And the old man, who would now really get the crap kicked out of him for making this fine sateen roadie jacket filthy.

  They sneaked up on him from the left, as far from the young guy in the trenchcoat as they could. The first one kicked out the shooting stick with a short, sharp, downward movement he had learned in his Tae-Kwon Do class. It was called the yup-chagi. The old man went over backward.

  Then they were on him, the one with the filthy sonofabitch sateen roadie jacket punching at the old man’s neck and the side of his face as he dragged him around by the collar of the overcoat. The other one began ransacking the coat pockets, ripping the fabric to get his hand inside.

  The old man commenced to scream. “Protect me! You’ve got to protect me… it’s necessary to protect me!”

  The one pillaging pockets froze momentarily. What the hell kind of thing is that for this old fucker to be saying? Who the hell does he think’ll protect him? Is he asking us to protect him? I’ll protect you, scumbag! I’ll kick in your fuckin’ lung! “Shut ’im up!” he whispered urgently to his friend. “Stick a fist in his mouth!” Then his hand, wedged in an inside jacket pocket, closed over something. He tried to get his hand loose, but the jacket and coat and the old man’s body had wound around his wrist. “C’mon loose, motherfuckah!” he said to the very old man, who was still screaming for protection. The other young man was making huffing sounds, as dark as mud, as he slapped at the rain-soaked hair of his victim. “I can’t… he’s all twisted ’round… getcher hand outta there so’s I can…” Screaming, the old man had doubled under, locking their hands on his person.

  And then the pillager’s fist came loose, and he was clutching—for an instant—a gorgeous pocket watch.

  What used to be called a turnip watch.

  The dial face was cloisonné, exquisite beyond the telling.

  The case was of silver, so bright it seemed blue.

  The hands, cast as arrows of time, were gold. They formed a shallow V at precisely eleven o’clock. This was happening at 3:45 in the afternoon, with rain and wind.

  The timepiece made no sound, no sound at all.

  Then: there was space all around the watch, and in that space in the palm of the hand, there was heat. Intense heat for just a moment, just long enough for the hand to open.

  The watch glided out of the boy’s palm and levitated.

  “Help me! You must protect me!”

  Billy Kinetta heard the shrieking, but did not see the pocket watch floating in the air above the astonished young man. It was silver, and it was end-on toward him, and the rain was silver and slanting; and he did not see the watch hanging free in the air, even when the furious young man disentangled himself and leaped for it. Billy did not see the watch rise just so much, out of reach of the mugger.

  Billy Kinetta saw two boys, two young men of ratpack age, beating someone much older; and he went for them. Pow, like that!

  Thrashing his legs, the old man twisted around—over, under—as the boy holding him by the collar tried to land a punch to put him away. Who would have thought the old man to have had so much battle in him?

  A flapping shape, screaming something unintelligible, hit the center of the group at full speed. The carnaby-gloved hand reaching for the watch grasped at empty air one moment, and the next was buried under its owner as the boy was struck a crackback block that threw him face-first into the soggy ground. He tried to rise, but something stomped him at the base of his spine; something kicked him twice in the kidneys; something rolled over him like a flash flood.

  Twisting, twisting, the very old man put his thumb in the right eye of the boy clutching his collar.

  The great trenchcoated maelstrom that was Billy Kinetta whirled into the boy as he let loose of the old man on the ground and, howling, slapped a palm against his stinging eye. Billy locked his fingers and delivered a roundhouse wallop that sent the boy reeling backward to fall over Minna’s tilted headstone.

  Billy’s back was to the old man. He did not see the miraculous pocket watch smoothly descend through rain that did not touch it, to hover in front of the old man. He did not see the old man reach up, did not see the timepiece snuggle into an arthritic hand, d
id not see the old man return the turnip to an inside jacket pocket.

  Wind, rain and Billy Kinetta pummeled two young men of a legal age that made them accountable for their actions. There was no thought of the knife stuck down in one boot, no chance to reach it, no moment when the wild thing let them rise. So they crawled. They scrabbled across the muddy ground, the slippery grass, over graves and out of his reach. They ran; falling, rising, falling again; away, without looking back.

  Billy Kinetta, breathing heavily, knees trembling, turned to help the old man to his feet; and found him standing, brushing dirt from his overcoat, snorting in anger and mumbling to himself.

  “Are you all right?”

  For a moment the old man’s recitation of annoyance continued, then he snapped his chin down sharply as if marking end to the situation, and looked at his cavalry to the rescue. “That was very good, young fella. Considerable style you’ve got there.”

  Billy Kinetta stared at him wide-eyed. “Are you sure you’re okay?” He reached over and flicked several blades of wet grass from the shoulder of the old man’s overcoat.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine but I’m wet and I’m cranky. Let’s go somewhere and have a nice cup of Earl Grey.”

  There had been a look on Billy Kinetta’s face as he stood with lowered eyes, staring at the grave he had come to visit. The emergency had removed that look. Now it returned.

  “No, thanks. If you’re okay, I’ve got to do some things.”

  The old man felt himself all over, meticulously, as he replied, “I’m only superficially bruised. Now if I were an old woman, instead of a spunky old man, same age though, I’d have lost considerable of the calcium in my bones, and those two would have done me some mischief. Did you know that women lose a considerable part of their calcium when they reach my age? I read a report.” Then he paused, and said shyly, “Come on, why don’t you and I sit and chew the fat over a nice cup of tea?”

  Billy shook his head with bemusement, smiling despite himself. “You’re something else, Dad. I don’t even know you.”

  “I like that.”

  “What: that I don’t know you?”

  “No, that you called me ‘Dad’ and not ‘Pop.’ I hate ‘Pop.’ Always makes me think the wise-apple wants to snap off my cap with a bottle opener. Now Dad has a ring of respect to it. I like that right down to the ground. Yes, I believe we should find someplace warm and quiet to sit and get to know each other. After all, you saved my life. And you know what that means in the Orient.”

  Billy was smiling continuously now. “In the first place, I doubt very much I saved your life. Your wallet, maybe. And in the second place, I don’t even know your name; what would we have to talk about?”

  “Gaspar,” he said, extending his hand. “That’s a first name. Gaspar. Know what it means?”

  Billy shook his head.

  “See, already we have something to talk about.”

  So Billy, still smiling, began walking Gaspar out of the cemetery. “Where do you live? I’ll take you home.”

  They were on the street, approaching Billy Kinetta’s 1979 Cutlass. “Where I live is too far for now. I’m beginning to feel a bit peaky. I’d like to lie down for a minute. We can just go on over to your place, if that doesn’t bother you. For a few minutes. A cup of tea. Is that all right?” He was standing beside the Cutlass, looking at Billy with an old man’s expectant smile, waiting for him to unlock the door and hold it for him till he’d placed his still-calcium-rich but nonetheless old bones in the passenger seat. Billy stared at him, trying to figure out what was at risk if he unlocked that door. Then he snorted a tiny laugh, unlocked the door, held it for Gaspar as he seated himself, slammed it and went around to unlock the other side and get in. Gaspar reached across and thumbed up the door lock knob. And they drove off together in the rain.

  Through all of this the timepiece made no sound, no sound at all.

  Like Gaspar, Billy Kinetta was alone in the world.

  His three-room apartment was the vacuum in which he existed. It was furnished, but if one stepped out into the hallway and, for all the money in all the unnumbered accounts in all the banks in Switzerland, one were asked to describe those furnishings, one would come away no richer than before. The apartment was charisma poor. It was a place to come when all other possibilities had been expended. Nothing green, nothing alive, existed in those boxes. No eyes looked back from the walls. Neither warmth nor chill marked those spaces. It was a place to wait.

  Gaspar leaned his closed shooting stick, now a walking stick with handles, against the bookcase. He studied the titles of the paperbacks stacked haphazardly on the shelves.

  From the kitchenette came the sound of water running into a metal pan. Then tin on cast iron. Then the hiss of gas and the flaring of a match as it was struck; and the pop of the gas being lit.

  “Many years ago,” Gaspar said, taking out a copy of Moravia’s The Adolescents and thumbing it as he spoke, “I had a library of books, oh, thousands of books—never could bear to toss one out, not even the bad ones—and when folks would come to the house to visit they’d look around at all the nooks and crannies stuffed with books; and if they were the sort of folks who don’t snuggle with books, they’d always ask the same dumb question.” He waited a moment for a response and when none was forthcoming (the sound of china cups on sink tile), he said, “Guess what the question was.”

  From the kitchen, without much interest: “No idea.”

  “They’d always ask it with the kind of voice people use in the presence of large sculptures in museums. They’d ask me, ‘Have you read all these books?’ ” He waited again, but Billy Kinetta was not playing the game. “Well, young fella, after a while the same dumb question gets asked a million times, you get sorta snappish about it. And it came to annoy me more than a little bit. I’ll I finally figured out the right answer.

  “And you know what that answer was? Go ahead, take a guess.”

  Billy appeared in the kitchenette doorway. “I suppose you told them you’d read a lot of them but not all of them.”

  Gaspar waved the guess away with a flapping hand. “Now what good would that have done? They wouldn’t know they’d asked a dumb question, but I didn’t want to insult them, either. So when they’d ask if I’d read all those books, I’d say, ‘Hell no. Who wants a library full of books you’ve already read?’ ”

  Billy laughed despite himself. He scratched at his hair with idle pleasure, and shook his head at the old man’s verve. “Gaspar, you are a wild old man. You retired?”

  The old man walked carefully to the most comfortable chair in the room, an overstuffed Thirties-style lounge that had been reupholstered many times before Billy Kinetta had purchased it at the American Cancer Society Thrift Shop. He sank into it with a sigh. “No sir, I am not by any means retired. Still very active.”

  “Doing what, if I’m not prying?”

  “Doing ombudsman.”

  “You mean, like a consumer advocate? Like Ralph Nader?”

  “Exactly. I watch out for things. I listen, I pay some attention; and if I do it right, sometimes I can even make a little difference. Yes, like Mr. Nader. A very fine man.”

  “And you were at the cemetery to see a relative?”

  Gaspar’s face settled into an expression of loss. “My dear old girl. My wife, Minna. She’s been gone, well, it was twenty years in January.” He sat silently staring inward for a while, then: “She was everything to me. The nice part was that I knew how important we were to each other; we discussed, well, just everything. I miss that the most, telling her what’s going on.

  “I go to see her every other day.

  “I used to go every day. But. It. Hurt. Too much.”

  They had tea. Gaspar sipped and said it was very nice, but had Billy ever tried Earl Grey? Billy said he didn’t know what that was, and Gaspar said he would bring him a tin, that it was splendid. And they chatted. Finally, Gaspar asked, “And who were you visiting?”

&nb
sp; Billy pressed his lips together. “Just a friend.” And would say no more. Then he sighed and said, “Well, listen, I have to go to work.”

  “Oh? What do you do?”

  The answer came slowly. As if Billy Kinetta wanted to be able to say that he was in computers, or owned his own business, or held a position of import. “I’m night manager at a 7-Eleven.”

  “I’ll bet you meet some fascinating people coming in late for milk or one of those slushies,” Gaspar said gently. He seemed to understand.

  Billy smiled. He took the kindness as it was intended. “Yeah, the cream of high society. That is, when they’re not threatening to shoot me through the head if I don’t open the safe.”

  “Let me ask you a favor,” Gaspar said. “I’d like a little sanctuary, if you think it’s all right. Just a little rest. I could lie down on the sofa for a bit. Would that be all right? You trust me to stay here while you’re gone, young fella?”

  Billy hesitated only a moment. The very old man seemed okay, not a crazy, certainly not a thief. And what was there to steal? Some tea that wasn’t even Earl Grey?

  “Sure. That’ll be okay. But I won’t be coming back till two a.m. So just close the door behind you when you go; it’ll lock automatically.”

  They shook hands, Billy shrugged into his still-wet trenchcoat, and he went to the door. He paused to look back at Gaspar sitting in the lengthening shadows as evening came on. “It was nice getting to know you, Gaspar.”

  “You can make that a mutual pleasure, Billy. You’re a nice young fella.”

  And Billy went to work, alone as always.

  When he came home at two, prepared to open a can of Hormel chili, he found the table set for dinner, with the scent of an elegant beef stew enriching the apartment. There were new potatoes and stir-fried carrots and zucchini that had been lightly battered to delicate crispness. And cupcakes. White cake with chocolate frosting. From a bakery.