The Metrognome And Other Stories Part 7

The paper on the final tin was slightly torn. She handled it carefully and inspected the tear. Something was stamped into the metal of the tin, almost concealed by the wrapping. Gently she peeled a little aside.

Yes, an oval stamp had been used on the tin. They probably all carried it. It was hard to make out; the stamp was shallow.

Peter van Eyck, the Smoke Nook . . . and an address right on Santa Monica Boulevard.

She found a little sc.r.a.p of paper, wrote down the name and address. Then she smoothed the torn paper (or was it leather?) down as best she could, replaced the tin on its shelf, and shut the panel. It snapped closed with another click of the old fashioned latch.

Hollywood Boulevard is just like a movie set. All front and no insides or back. Marching south from the Hollywood hills, you encounter Sunset Boulevard next, then Santa Monica. For much of its length life Santa Monica Boulevard is like the back of a movie set. A street where all the storefronts, you're certain, have their faces to the alleys and their backsides to the boulevard.

Almost, she was convinced she'd misread the address. But on the third cruise past she spotted it. It was just a door in an old two story building.

She pulled around the corner, managed to slither in between a new panel truck and an old Cadillac.

The door was open, the stairs inside reasonably clean. At the top of the landing she looked left, went right. She knocked on number five once and walked in. The overpowering, pungent odor of tobacco hit her immediately. Bells on the door jangled for a second time as she closed it.

Someone in the back of the room said, "Just a minute!" Twice that later, the proprietor appeared.

Short, fat, a fringe of hair running all around his head from chin, to cheeks, into sideburns, over the ear and around the back, like a cut on the dotted line demarcation.

At least in his sixties, but most of the wrinkles were still fat wrinkles, not age wrinkles. His voice was smooth, faintly accented. He smiled.

"Well! If I had more clients like you, young lady, I might not consider retiring."

"Thanks. Anyhow," she said, "you can't retire, at least not until tonight. I'm here to buy a birthday present for a very special friend."

The owner put on a pleased expression. "What does he like, you tell me. Imported cigars? Pipe tobacco? Snuff?" He winked knowingly, an obscene elf. "Perhaps something a little more unusual? Mexican, say, or Taiwanese?"

"And the opium den in the attic." She smiled back. "No, I'm afraid not. My friend buys his tobacco from you regularly "

"He has good taste."

" a special blend you make for him."

"My dear, I make special blends for many people, and not only here in Los Angeles. It's a fine art, and young people today . . . " He sighed. "Some of my best customers, then names would startle you. Who is your friend?"

"Dr. Walter Scott."

Smile, good bye. Grin, vanished. Humor, to another universe.

"I see." All of a sudden he was wary of her. "Does the doctor know that you are doing this?"

"No. I want to surprise him."

"I daresay." He looked at his feet. "I am afraid, dear lady, I cannot help you."

None of this made any sense. "Why not? Can't you just . . . blend it or whatever else it is you do? I don't need it till next week."

"You must understand, dear lady, that this is a very special blend. I can prepare most of it. But one ingredient always stays the same, and this Dr. Scott always supplies himself. It's like saffron in paella, you know. Without the tiny pinch of saffron, you have nothing, soup. Without the doctor's little additive . . ." He shrugged.

"Haven't you tried to find out what it is for yourself?" she pressed.

"Of course. But the doctor; he only smiles. I don't blame him for protecting the secret of his blend. Such a marvelous sweetness it gives the smoke, I tell you!" The tobacconist shook his head, fringe bobbing. "No, I cannot help you. Excuse me." He headed for the back of the room.

"Well, I like that!" She walked out the door, paused halfway down the stairs. Odd. Oh, well. She'd buy him that antique hurricane lamp he'd admired in Ports o' Call.

It was raining as she drove out to the house. Wednesdays he worked late, and she was sure he could use some company. She shivered deliciously. So could she.

The Pacific Coast Highway was a major artery. Thanks to the rain and fog, the number of four wheeled corpuscles was greatly reduced tonight. Typical southern California rain: clean, cold, tamer than back east.

She let herself in quietly.

Walt was sticking another log into the fireplace. He was sucking on the usual pipe, a gargoylish meerschaum this time. After the wet run from the driveway the fire was a sensuous, delightful inferno, howling like a chained orange cat.

She took off the heavy, wet coat, strolled over to stand near the warmth. The heat was wonderful. She kissed him, but this time the fire's enthusiasm wasn't matched.

"Something wrong, Walt?" She grinned. "Mrs. Norris giving you trouble about her glands again?"

"No, no, not that," he replied quietly. "Here, I made you a ginger snap."

The drink was cool and perfect as always.

"Well, tell me, then, what is it?" She went and curled up on the couch. The fire was a little too hot.

He leaned against the stone mantel, staring down into the flames. The only light in the room came from the fireplace. His face a.s.sumed biblical shadows. He sighed.

"Emma, you know what I think of women who stick their noses in where they shouldn't."

"Walt?"

d.a.m.n, he must have noticed the new tear in the tobacco tin wrapping!

"I don't know what you mean, darling." The handsome profile turned to full face.

"You've been in my tobacco, haven't you?"

Ginger snap, tickling as it went down.

"Oh, all right. I confess, darling. Yes, I was in your precious horde."

There was more than a hint of mild curiosity in his voice. It seemed to come from another person entirely. She pressed back into the couch and shivered. It was the sudden change in temperature from outside, of course.

"Gee, Walt, I didn't think you'd be so . . . so upset."

"Why?" he repeated. His eyes weren't glowing. Just reflection from the fire, was all.

She smiled hopefully. "I was going to surprise you for your birthday. I wanted to get you some of your special blend and really surprise you. Don't think I'm going to tell you what I got you, now, either!"

He didn't smile. "I see. I take it you didn't obtain my blend?"

"No, I didn't. I went to your tobacco place . . ."

"You went to my tobacco place?" he echoed.

"Yes, on Santa Monica. The address was under the paper or whatever that wrapping is." She blinked, shook herself. Was she that tired? She took another sip of the drink. It didn't help. In fact, she seemed to grow drowsier.

"That nice Mr. . . . I can't remember his name . . . he . . . excuse me, Walt. Don't know why I'm so . . . sleepy."

"Continue. You went to the shop."

"Yes. The owner said he couldn't make any of your blend for me because (fog) you always brought one of the (so tired) ingredients yourself and he didn't know what it was. So I had to get you something else."

"Why?" he said again. Before she could answer, "Why must you all know everything? Each the Pandora." He took up a poker, stirred the fire. It blazed high, sparks bouncing drunkenly off the iron rod.

She finished the drink, put the gla.s.s down on the table. It seemed to waver. She leaned back against the couch.

"I'm sorry, Walt. Didn't think you'd get so . . . upset."

"It's all right, Emma."

"Funny . . . about those . . . tins. Eight of them. Two were . . . named Anna Mine and Sue deBlakely."

"So." He fingered the poker.

"Well," she giggled, "weren't those the . . . names of your two ex wives?"

"I'm very sentimental, Emma."

She giggled again, frowned. Falling asleep would spoil the whole evening. Why couldn't she keep her d.a.m.n eyes open?

"In fact . . . all your blends had female . . . names."

"Yes." He walked over to her, stared down. His eyes seemed to burn . . . reflection from the fire again . . . and his face swam, blurred. "You're falling asleep, Emma. " He moved her empty gla.s.s carefully to one end of the table. It was good crystal.

"Can't . . . understand it. So . . . tired . . ."

"Maybe you should take a little rest, Emma. A good rest."

"Rest . . . maybe . . . " His arms cradled her.

"Lie here, Emma. Next to the fire. It'll warm you." He put her down on the carpet across from the fronting brick. The flames pranced h.e.l.lishly, anxious, searing the red hot brick interior.

"Warm . . . hot, Walt," she mumbled sleepily. Her voice was thick, uncertain. "Lower it?"

"No, Emma." He took the poker, jabbed and pushed the logs back against the rear of the alcove. Funny, she'd never noticed how big it was for such a modest house.

Her eyes closed. There was silence for several minutes. As he knelt and reached for her, they fluttered open again just a tiny bit.

"Walt . . ." Her voice was barely audible, and he had to lean close to hear.

". . .Yes?"

"What . . . special ingredient?"

There was a sigh before he could reply, and her eyes closed again. Long moments. He tossed two more logs on the fire, adjusted them on the iron. Then he knelt, grabbed her under the arms. Her breathing was shallow, faint.

He put his mouth close to her ear, whispered.

"Ashes, my love. Ashes."

MOTHER THUNDER.

Jessica Amanda Salmonson and I have corresponded for years, infrequently but always with respect and interest. In addition to writing her own stories, Jessica is a busy editor. When I learned that she was putting together an anthology of stories utilizing mythological themes, I was immediately interested.

Mythology always fascinated me in school, but all we were ever exposed to by the Anglocentric American secondary curriculum was the mythlore of Greece and Rome. If the teacher was especially well read and prepared, we might also receive a dollop of Norse G.o.ds, those individuals so famed today for .their appearances in Marvel comics. No residuals go to Valhalla or Asgard. Only when l left college did I begin to find out about mankind's wealth of invention, of the tales and fantasies of the rest of my brethren.

One thing I discovered was that mythologies exist to be expanded upon. The dreamtime could be my time, too. Tales twice told in Tanzania were as pointed and relevant as those spilled on the streets of Topeka. When it comes to storytelling, the family of man is wholly egalitarian. I think my embroidery of reality would be as welcome in a yurt in the Gobi as in New York.

What first drew me to the Inca, however, was not their mythology but their tragedy. If only, I told myself as I read the sad story of their destruction by the conquistadores, they had possessed writing. If only they'd known the wheel. If only they'd had matching cavalry or gunpowder. If only they'd had . . .

No one paid any attention to Crazy Yahuar until the Silver Men came.

"They have crossed the river," the exhausted chasqui told the Priest. "Even now they are working their way up the mountain."

"They must not come here," the old Priest muttered. "This is the most sacred place of the Tahuantinsuyu, the Four Corners of the World. They must not come here." He pulled his feathered cloak tighter around his shoulders. The wind was cold on the mountaintop.

"The Silver Men go where they wish." The teacher/n.o.ble who stood on the Priest's right hand had seen much these past twenty years. He had become a realist.

"Why dream on, old man? We have three choices: we can submit, we can run away into the jungle with Manco Inca; or we can die here. Myself, I chose my own grave, and it is here. This is where my grandfather began, and this is where his line will end."

"If we pray to the Sun," the old Priest began. The teacher interrupted him angrily: "It is too late for prayers, Priest. We have forgotten what they were for, have forgotten too much for prayers to be of help now. Prayers did not help Atahuallpa. The Silver Men strangled him, ransom or no ransom, prayers or no prayers. Give me' one of their armored long legged llamas to ride upon and one of their fire weapons to fight with, and keep your prayers:" He turned his attention to the panting chasqui.

"How many, post runner?"

The chasqui held out a quipu, and the teacher studied the number and location of the intricate knots tied in the rope. "Too many. You have done your job, runner. I will not hold you here. What would you do?"

"Return to my family." The chasqui was still breathing hard from the long run up the mountainside.

"Go then, if you can avoid the Silver Men, and live long."