The Metrognome And Other Stories Part 9

"You'll find another antique store someday, Marj," he a.s.sured her. "You can smell 'em."

The door clicked, moved inward slightly. Eyes peered out and up at them. They were green as a young kitten's, the youngest feature of an old face. They formed an informal boundary between the narrow, tower face and jaw and the bulging oversized skull. The latter was fringed with white hair, the whole fleshy basilica seemingly too large' to balance on the sunken cheekbones and thin jaw below.

"Oh, you're open."

The man's voice was rea.s.suringly firm, the accent southern: somewhere between Dallas and Nibelheim. "Mebbe, young lady. Who're you?"

"I'm Marjorie," she replied with her usual charming directness. "This is my husband, Dylan. He's a writer. Are you Mr. Saltzmann, the owner?"

"Not much use denyin' it," he mumbled. He looked resigned. "You want to look around? I haven't got much time."

"Not if you're closed. We don't want to cause you any trouble." Marjorie never wanted to make trouble, Dylan reflected wryly. She was the type to apologize to the tax collector for not being able to give the government more money.

"No, no trouble." The top heavy face seemed to soften slightly. "You folks from out of town?"

"Yes. How can you tell?"

"You look happy. Whereabouts?"

Dylan was growing annoyed at the inquisition, but Marjorie threw him a sharp look, and he hung on to his retreating sense of courtesy. "Up the coast. Little town called Cambric. It's near San Simeon. You know, where the Hearst castle is?"

"Sure I know. They got a few nice pieces."

A few nice . . . either the old man was putting them on, or else the first of Dylan's suppositions was correct and the inventory within would not be cheap.

The door rode back on its hinges. "Come on in, then."

The shop was as organized as a Pacific tide pool. Furniture, clothing, and brie a brae were scattered about the high ceilinged old room with an awkward yet eye-pleasing efficiency. One had the impression that whenever anew a.s.sortment was added to the melange it would spread itself like a wave across the existing stock, disturbing nothing, adding another layer of ancient creativity to the store's sedimentary deposits.

Light came in off the street through an old, high window. In the darker recesses of the nowhere-bright chamber, isolated small bulbs shone with feeble fluorescence, like fat fireflies in an Ohio forest.

Masterworks and gutterworks crowded together, competing for scant display s.p.a.ce. An old city garbage can held dresses that must have been over a hundred years old. In a scratched gla.s.s case junk jewelry lay heaped in piles of gleaming paste. There was also an old style tiara sparkling with suspiciously genuine looking emeralds and diamonds. One faceted green pool was as big as Dylan's watch face.

Curious, he called the proprietor over. Saltzmann peered down over his belly to where Dylan's finger was pointing.

"The necklace? That's seven dollars."

"No, no. The tiara, next to it."

"Oh, that one. That's three hundred thousand."

Dylan missed a breath, stared at the slim, delicate filigree of gold and gems. "You're kidding, of course."

"Too much? Oh, well, if you really want it, I suppose I can let it go for two hundred and fifty. Belonged to Josephine . . . Bonaparte's gal."

Dylan tried not to smirk. "We'll keep it in mind."

There was a call for help from the far side of the shop. Marjorie was buried back among the old clothes there, running centuries through her fingers, trying on one era after another. Saltzmann waddled over to a.s.sist.

That left a bored Dylan to wend his own way deeper into the depths of the store. The long room seemed to run clear through the building. A ship's figurehead smiled down at him, and he admired it, tried to imagine it breasting the waves of the seven seas. He pa.s.sed barrels stinking of long drunk whiskey, kegs of railroad spikes, old cast iron toys. There were baked and cracked horse collars and rusty farm tools dangling overhead that whispered of droughts and bad crops.

A corner led him to a back room, slightly better lit than the main store. Several pieces of furniture lay taken apart on floor and benches. He was just realizing that he'd stumbled onto the old man's workshop when he saw the chair.

It squatted off in a dim corner of its own, unadorned with antique c.o.ke bottles or limp fur capes or power tools. To a writer of travel and adventure stories it was as irresistible as a guided tour of eighteenth century Arabia.

Still, he paused long enough to peek back into the shop proper. Marjorie was holding a long black Victorian gown in front of her, d.i.c.kering with the owner. The gown seemed to fit the nips and tucks of her Junoesque figure well. Somewhere an equally lovely form, the original wearer of that dress, was now dust. Quickly he drew back into the workroom and walked over to stare greedily at the chair.

It was straight backed, with four legs, two straight arms, and a curved seat all hewn from some heavy, dark wood. Probably oak or walnut, he mused. In addition to the fairly standard clawed legs and swirling decorations there were more flagrant examples of the wood carver's art.

Each arm ended in the head of a peculiarly anthropomorphic fish. At each upper corner of the straight back a deeply sculpted lion's skull, fangs agape, glared back at him. But it was the back of the seat that drew most of his enraptured attention.

Roughly half the smooth slab was filled with tiny carved faces. None was larger than his thumbprint, yet the amount of detail in them was astonishing. Peering closely at one, a middle aged woman, Dylan could make out perfect carved teeth, eyebrows, hair. The expression was twisted and distorted, as were all the others.

Above this miniature gallery was a much larger face, so big that his spread palm could barely obscure it. It was extraordinarily animated and lifelike. The long nose appeared broken. Both cheeks swelled out into whorls of wind, gusting to either side of the chair to break against the smooth manes of the lions. Dylan studied the almost flexible carving, unable to decide whether the master wood carver had shown a face laughing or screaming.

"This room's off limits, son."

Startled, Dylan nearly stumbled as he spun around. "Sorry. I . . . didn't see a sign or anything."

Glancing at the floor, Saltzmann located and picked up a dirty, battered rectangle of cardboard on which EMPLOYEES ONLY had been crudely painted. He muttered something to himself, set about rehanging it just outside the entrance.

While he was busy with that, Dylan beckoned his wife in.

"Sugar, come take a look at this."

Marjorie walked over, glanced at the chair, and grimaced. "That's your taste, all right. Gruesome."

"Oh, come on, Marjorie. Look at that workmanship; look at those faces, the detail."

"That's your way of saying you want it?" she asked evenly.

He was abruptly embarra.s.sed. "Uh, did you find anything?"

She smiled tolerantly. "A couple of dresses."

"That's great. Buy whatever you want, hon."

"You always say that . . . after you find something you want."

"Wellllll . . ." He knew she was teasing him now.

"Never mind. I'm glad you found something, too. Just don't expect me to sit in it." Turning, she confronted the watching Saltzmann. "How much is it?"

"The chair? Well, you know, it really taint far sale." Dylan's hopes fell apart. "I've had it goin' on forty five years." He looked at his watch. "But since I'm goin' to die 'round seven twenty tonight, I s'pose you might as well have it as any other. That is, if its history don't bother you none. I'm bound to tell it to you."

"History intrigues me, never bothers me." Dylan turned a proprietary look on the chair, barely reflecting on the old man's macabre sense of humor.

"How old you think that chair is, folks?"

Dylan knew next to nothing about antiques. He let Marjorie guess. "A hundred years? No, two hundred."

Saltzmann was grinning, showing gold teeth alternating with dark gaps. His mouth displayed more masonry work than a Saxon fortress. "Little less than four hundred."

Uh oh, trouble, Dylan thought. A chair that old, in this kind of condition, would be expensive.

"It belonged to John Dee. Dr. John Dee?" Both Dylan and Marjorie waited expectantly. The owner looked disappointed. "He was court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth the First herself, after she got him off the hook for practicing black magic. He invented the crystal ball; leastwise, he told fortune tellers what it was good for." He paused for emphasis, added, "Made the only English translation of the Al Azif."

"Never heard of it," Dylan confessed honestly.

Saltzmann grunted, mumbled something about the ignorance of today's youth, and pointed at the back of the chair. "That's his face, Dr. Dee's, on the top there."

"That's interesting." Dylan had his wallet out. "How much?" He tried to sound casual.

"Oh, it don't matter now. Fifty dollars?"

Dylan made up for the earlier missed breath. "Okay. Sure."

Marjorie held the door for him while he wrestled the chair out into the hallway. "Hurry it up, son," the owner urged him. "I've got a lot to do before I'm taken."

As they finally finished securing the chair in the backseat of the car, Marjorie mentioned the oldster's earlier comment about dying at seven twenty.

"He fancies himself a wit," Dylan told her, making sure the chair wouldn't slip on the long drive home. "Besides, didn't you hear him say as we were leaving that he was getting ready to be taken somewhere? Somebody's picking him up. Now, he can't very well go and die at the same time, can he?"

"I guess not." Marjorie slipped into the front seat, admiring her old new dresses.

They beat the fog in, for which Dylan was grateful. It curled in around him like a damp pair of pajamas as he climbed out of the car, stretched, and closed the garage door behind them. Then he was carefully extricating the chair from the sedan's backseat as Marjorie unlocked the service porch door.

"Can't wait to see what it looks like in the study."

Some minutes later Marjorie had fed the cats, hung her dresses, and joined him there. Forty feet below the wide window, surf slapped sharply on the seawall supporting the house. His desk backed that window. Books lined the other three walls, interspersed with hanging house plants, paintings, sculpture, an old rifle, a Polynesian cane, crossed battle ax and saber, and other paraphernalia collected on their many travels. Somewhere offsh.o.r.e a ship's horn brayed at the fog like a hippo with sinusitis.

The chair rested behind the desk. "Got to polish it tomorrow." Loud barking exploded nearby. The study sided on another beach house. "d.a.m.n those dogs! A poodle I could maybe stand. But no, we move up here to be a hundred miles from noise and neighbors, and a month later he moves in with a pair of Great Danes not quite as big as ponies." The stentorian yapping sounded again.

"You'd better learn to live with it, hon. It's not against the law for a neighbor to own dogs." She indicated the chair. "And incidentally, you're going to polish that, not me. I'm not touching it. Gives me the quivers."

Making a face, teeth protruding over his lower lip, he advanced on her with cawed hands outstretched. "Ah, beware zee terror of zee Transylvanian chair, my lufly!"

"Stop that. Cut it out, Dylan!" She backed away, swatting nervously at his hands. "You know how easily I scare."

He dropped his hands, looked disgusted, "Oh, for heaven's sake, Marjorie. It's only a dead hunk of wood."

"Fine." She retreated toward the bedroom to unpack. "But you polish it."

Shaking his head, he turned to admire his acquisition. Now he had time to examine the tiny faces cut into the wood below the large one, time to admire the rich grain of the wood as well as the craftsmanship.

"They don't build furniture like this anymore," he murmured to himself, sitting down in it. He gripped the fish heads, sat straight. "Fifty bucks!" The straight wooden back was a bit stiff, but that was to be expected. In sixteenth century England they built for endurance as much as comfort. The tiny faces pressed into the small of his back, the larger portrait's gaping mouth between his shoulder blades.

"Hope you don't bite, Doc." It was very dark and quiet outside, the ocean a hidden, heaving ma.s.s idling and breathing beneath the fog.

Halfway to the kitchen, Marjorie stopped at a sudden sound, turned, and headed for the study. When she peered in, Dylan was hunched over the typewriter. The chair almost hid him, though the familiar hysterical chatter of the machine was enough to tell her what he was doing.

"Working now? I thought you were exhausted from the drive."

He stopped, looked back at her. "I just had a thought I had to get down. You know me, Marj. If I don't do it now, I'll forget it." A staccato cackle interrupted him.

"Those dogs! I've got to try and reason with Andrus again."

"Andrus is a lawyer, hon. You know you can't reason with him." She turned and headed back toward the kitchen.

The coffee was purring to itself, a dark liquid feline sound. She hefted the old fashioned percolator, poured two cups. Dylan walked in, closing the door on disappointed morning mist. The paper was clutched in his right hand. "Foggy out still this morning, hon. What's the matter?"

His expression was solemn, thoughtful. "I wish I hadn't been so hard on Mark Andrus last night. I just ran into his housekeeper, Mrs. Samuels." Marjorie nodded, waiting. "Andrus died last night."

"Oh, Dylan, no." He nodded. "How'd it happen?"

He tossed the paper on the kitchen table, didn't bother to open it. She put his coffee in front of him, and he sipped delicately. Steam crawled upward out of the cup, slim shadow matches to the curls in his hair.

"Heart attack, the doctor said. That's what Mrs. Samuels told me she was told. It doesn't seem fair. He wasn't much older than I am. "

"Isn't that kind of unusual, for him to have a heart attack? Not being forty yet and all." She stirred sugar into her own cup.

Shrugging, he opened the paper, laid it flat on the table. "Depends, I guess. If the men in his family had a history of heart trouble, then I suppose it's perfectly natural. Big fire up the coast near Eureka." He tapped the page. "If we don't get some honest rain soon here . . ."

He stopped, looked up at nothing. Marjorie knew that faraway gaze. Until he decided to return, she might as well talk to the coffee.

"You know," he finally told her, as though he hadn't been silent for several minutes, "it may seem a little sick, but this has given me a great idea for a story."

From behind the stove, she grimaced at him as she started the eggs. They made a sound like a desert sandstorm when they landed in the hot skillet. "You're right, that is sick."

"But it's a terrific idea." He pushed back from the table, stood. " 'Scuse me, hon, be right back." Marjorie sighed, watched him almost run toward the study. She'd have to call him to breakfast half a dozen times now, and his eggs would still get cold. Not that he would mind. In the fever grip of a new idea, he couldn't taste anything, anyway.

That breakfast was the beginning. From then on it seemed creation was only a matter of typing fast enough to keep up with the flood of inspiration. Everything Dylan wrote in the succeeding months sold, and the two books he managed to complete sold big. Not quite bestsellerdom, but considering the lack of advertising the publishers put behind them, the books did very well, indeed. That was enough to wake up the editors. If and when Dylan finished the third book, there'd be some spirited bidding waiting for it.

All of which, while gratifying, took a heavy toll on Dylan. It got so he rose explosively and raced for the typewriter. A hysterical day of writing left him barely enough strength to munch in slow motion through supper and stagger exhaustedly into bed.

Dylan used to be creative elsewhere besides behind the typewriter. Which is one way of saying his incredible surge of creativity was also taking a heavy toll on Marjorie.

"Hey."

"Hmmm?" Dylan didn't look up from the typewriter. She'd never cared much for the sound the electric made. Lately she'd felt as though each tap, each character printed, was a tiny bullet aimed squarely at her heart.

"I said, the housekeeper would like a word with the master." She stood leaning against the frame of the study door. Her insides had wound tighter and tighter the past week until her stomach felt as tiny and hard as a golf ball. Grayness obscured the view outside the study window, the inescapable coast fog of the north California coast.