Black House

"Gosh ‘n’ fishes, Bobby, do you know how to knock?"

"Sorry, Chief." Bobby looks at the smoke ribboning up from the wastebasket with neither surprise nor interest. "Danny Tcheda’s on the phone. I think you better take it."

"What’s it about?" But he knows. Why else would it be the phone?

Bobby only repeats, not without sympathy, "I think you better take it."

The car sent by Rebecca Vilas delivers Henry to Maxton Elder Care at three-thirty, ninety minutes before the Strawberry Fest! dance is scheduled to begin. The idea is for the old folks to work up an appetite on the floor, then troop down to the caff — suitably decorated for the occasion — for a glamorously late (seven-thirty is quite late for Maxton’s) dinner. With wine, for those who drink it.

A resentful Pete Wexler has been drafted by Rebecca Vilas to bring in the deejay’s shit (Pete thinks of Henry as "the blind record-hopper"). Said shit consists of two speakers (very large), one turntable (light, but awkward as a motherfucker to carry), one preamp (very heavy), assorted wires (all tangled up, but that’s the blind record-hopper’s problem), and four boxes of actual records, which went out of style about a hundred years ago. Pete guesses that the blind record-hopper never heard a CD in his whole life.

The last item is a suit bag on a hanger. Pete has peeked in and ascertained that the suit is white.

"Hang it in there, please," Henry says, pointing with unerring accuracy toward the supply closet that has been designated his dressing room.

"Okay," Pete says. "What exactly is it, if you don’t mind me asking?"

Henry smiles. He knows perfectly well that Pete has already had a peep. He heard the plastic bag rattling and the zipper chinking in a duet that only occurs when someone pulls the bag away from the hanger at the neck. "Inside that bag, my friend, Symphonic Stan, the Big-Band Man, is just waiting for me to put him on and bring him to life."

"Oh, uh-huh," Pete says, not knowing if he has been answered or not. All he’s really sure of is that those records were almost as heavy as the preamp. Someone should really give the blind record-hopper some information about CDs, the next great leap forward.

"You asked me one; may I ask you one?"

"Be my guest," Pete says.

"There appears to have been a police presence at Maxton Elder Care this afternoon," the blind record-hopper says. "They’re gone now, but they were here when I arrived. What’s that about? There hasn’t been a robbery or an assault among the geriatrics, I hope?"

Pete stops in his tracks beneath a large cardboard strawberry, holding the suit bag and looking at the blind record-hopper with an amazement Henry can almost touch. "How’d you know the cops were here?"

Henry puts a finger to the side of his nose and tips his head to one side. He replies in a hoarse, conspiratorial whisper. "Smelled something blue."

Pete looks puzzled, debates whether or not to inquire further, and decides not to. Resuming his march toward the supply closet–dressing room, he says: "They’re playing it cagey, but I think they’re looking for another lost kid."

The look of amused curiosity fades from Henry’s face. "Good Christ," he says.

"They came and went in a hurry. No kids here, Mr . . . uh, Leyden?"

"Leyden," Henry confirms.

"A kid in this place would stand out like a rose in a patch of poison ivy, if you know what I mean."

Henry doesn’t consider old folks in any way analogous to poison ivy, but he does indeed get Mr. Wexler’s drift. "What made them think — ?"

"Someone found sumpin’ on the sidewalk," Pete says. He points out the window, then realizes the blind guy can’t see him pointing. Duh, as Ebbie would say. He lowers his hand. "If a kid got snatched, someone probably came along in a car and snatched him. No kidnapers in here, I can tell you that much." Pete laughs at the very idea of a Maxton moldy oldie snatching any kid big enough to ride a bike. The kid would probably break the guy over his knee like a dry stick.

"No," Henry says soberly, "that hardly seems likely, does it?"

"But I guess the cops got to dot all the t’s and cross all the i’s." He pauses. "That’s just a little joke of mine."

Henry smiles politely, thinking that with some people, Alzheimer’s disease might be an actual improvement. "When you hang my suit up, Mr. Wexler, would you be so good as to give it a gentle shake? Just to banish any incipient wrinkles?"

"Okay. Want me to take it out of the bag forya?"

"Thanks, that won’t be necessary."

Pete goes into the supply closet, hangs up the suit bag, and gives it a little shake. Incipient, just what the hell does that mean? There’s a rudiment of a library here at Maxton’s; maybe he’ll look it up in the dictionary. It pays to increase your word power, as it says in the Reader’s Digest, although Pete doubts it will pay him much in this job.

When he goes back out to the common room, the blind record-hopper — Mr. Leyden, Symphonic Stan, whoever the hell he is — has begun unraveling wires and plugging them in with a speed and accuracy Pete finds a trifle unnerving.

Poor old Fred Marshall is having a terrible dream. Knowing it’s a dream should make it less horrible but somehow doesn’t. He’s in a rowboat with Judy, out on a lake. Judy is sitting in the bow. They are fishing. He is, at least; Judy is just holding her pole. Her face is an expressionless blank. Her skin is waxy. Her eyes have a stunned, hammered look. He labors with increasing desperation to make contact with her, trying one conversational gambit after another. None work. To make what is, under the circumstances, a fairly apt metaphor, she spits every lure. He sees that her empty eyes appear fixed on the creel sitting between them in the bottom of the boat. Blood is oozing through the wickerwork in fat red dribbles.