From a corner, the baby gurgled, investigating his fingers with the inside of his mouth. He was sitting up by himself, straight as you please, as if he had aged in the fifteen-minute intermission.
“But,” I protested, “I was only gone long enough to cover the hole …” I looked up to verify, expecting to see the vivid colors of Klimt framed by a skillet-shaped hole, but there was no painting and no opening, only the smooth white plaster and the small ceiling fan humming politely in the background. In the sink, no crayfish shells. No ruined tiles on the floor. The room had healed itself, and the only difference from usual, aside from the small mob crowding close, was the weapons stacked in the corner—the cast-iron pan, the broom, the rusty harpoon, and the bear-faced war club. I scratched the top of my head.
“You did a right good job,” Beckett said. “If there ever was a hole, you can’t tell by looking at it.”
Nothing to be said. His compliment had a disingenuous air.
“But there is another hole, a real hole. You have left us on the precipice high above the canyon with the girls in their cancan frocks gathered about the pianoforte.” Perhaps he could hear the wheels spin in my cranium, for he added: “Begin again if you must. Come home on a June afternoon to find an orgy of chrome and rubber on the front lawn. Seven ladies’ bicycles, and just who are these lascivious two-wheelers? And what’s that melody but the house itself singing Pagliacci—”
“Strauss,” I corrected. “A woman singing the laughing song from Die Fledermaus in a makeshift music chamber set up in my brother’s room. Odd, though, but it was my brother, not me, who cared for the classics.”
“Right, so,” he said and winked. There was that third eye tattooed on the lid, and the others had the same design except for Marie, whose second sight was in her hands. Each palm bore a cartoon eye, though the words on her skin had vanished.
“They were dressed in fishnet stockings and petticoats, like they just stepped out of the Old West.”
“Dusty and busty,” the old man said. From the bathtub, two short whoops of endorsement. I thought I heard a horse nicker on the staircase.
“Only more refined,” I said. “A cross between elegance and decadence.”
Marie cleared her throat. “The virgin and the whore.”
I ignored her editorial. “When the mezzo finished her song and the last note of the piano sounded, the rest of the women clapped politely, and one or two began to wave silk hand fans, for though only June, summertime had come to town, and the room was close and moist. I should have thought to turn on the air conditioner, but my principle is to wait till the official first day of summer.”
“Ah, the solstice,” Beckett said. “The longest day of the year. Though this night rivals it, or perhaps only seems eternal. When we are waiting, every moment is pregnant. Are you sure you have no cigarettes?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Never start. They’re the devil to give up. And a thousand pardons for my interruption. We left the showgirls perspiring in the parlor.”
“That’s when they first took notice of me. The piano player stood and tapped the vocalist on her shoulder, and she motioned for the rest to stand. The music lingered in the chamber. A collective jolt of recognition ran through the group. As I may have said, they were perfect strangers to me, though young and beautiful, of all shapes and sizes pleasing to the eye. A more attractive group of women would be hard to imagine. Yet for all their novelty, they behaved in ways traditional and comforting. I had heard that pianist before and recalled her elegant phrasing. The singer, too, brought back the buried memory of the same song in another place and time, but more than the aural echoes, for the music caused deep emotions to come gasping to the surface. A lot like a love that had once been deliberately forgotten. While I did not know them, they knew me and had been waiting for my arrival, and now that I had come, they rushed forward with open arms, each racing the others to be first to embrace and kiss me.”
“Kiss you, is it?” Beckett asked. “I find that difficult to accept under the circumstances.”
My pride was hurt, but I showed nothing.
Beckett stepped forward and whispered confidentially, “You know I have always been on your side, right? A word of advice: do not turn around, but reach back with the bottom of your foot and shut the door behind you.”