Alan Foster - The Metrognome and Other Stories

"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 offshore 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. "Damn 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 mass 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.