Ray Bradbury: Another Fine Mess

The sounds began in the middle of summer in the middle of the night.

Bella Winters sat up in bed about three a.m. and listened and then lay back down. Ten minutes later she heard the sounds again, out in the night, down the hill.

Bella Winters lived in a first-floor apartment on top of Vendome Heights, near Effie Street in Los Angeles, and had lived there now for only a few days, so it was all new to her, this old house on an old street with an old staircase, made of concrete, climbing steeply straight up from the low-lands below, one hundred and twenty steps, count them. And right now…

"Someone's on the steps," said Bella to herself.

"What?" said her husband, Sam, in his sleep.

"There are some men out on the steps," said Bella. "Talking, yelling, not fighting, but almost. I heard them last night, too, and the night before, but . .

"What?" Sam muttered.

"Shh, go to sleep. I'll look."

She got out of bed in the dark and went to the window, and yes, two men were indeed talking out there, grunting, groaning, now loud, now soft. And there was another noise, a kind of bumping, sliding, thumping, like a huge object being carted up the hill.

"No one could be moving in at this hour of the night, could they?" asked Bella of the darkness, the window, and herself.

"No," murmured Sam.

"It sounds like . .

"Like what?" asked Sam, fully awake now.

"Like two men moving-"

"Moving what, for God's sake?"

"Moving a piano. Up those steps.''

"At three in the morning!?"

"A piano and two men. Just listen."

The husband sat up, blinking, alert.

Far off, in the middle of the hill, there was a kind harping strum, the noise a piano makes when suddenly thumped and its harp strings hum.

"There, did you hear?"

"Jesus, you're right. But why would anyone steal-"

"They're not stealing, they're delivering."

"A piano?"

"I didn't make the rules, Sam. Go out and ask. No, don't; I will."

And she wrapped herself in her robe and was out the door and on the sidewalk.

"Bella," Sam whispered fiercely behind the porch screen. "Crazy."

"So what can happen at night to a woman fifty-five, fat, and ugly?" she wondered.

Sam did not answer.

She moved quietly to the rim of the hill. Somewhere down there she could hear the two men wrestling with a huge object. The piano on occasion gave a strumming hum and fell silent. occasionally one of the men yelled or gave orders.

"The voices," said Bella. "I know them from somewhere," she whispered and moved in utter dark on stairs that were only a long pale ribbon going down, as a voice echoed:

"Here's another fine mess you've got us in." Bella froze. Where have I heard that voice, she wondered, a million times!

"Hello," she called.

She moved, counting the steps, and stopped.

And there was no one there.

Suddenly she was very cold. There was nowhere for the strangers to have gone to. The hill was steep and a long way down and a long way up, and they had been burdened with an upright piano, hadn't they?

How come I know upright she thought. I only heard. But-yes, upright! Not only that, but inside a box!

She turned slowly and as she went back up the steps, one by one, slowly, slowly, the voices began to sound again, below, as if, disturbed, they had waited for her to go away.

"What are you doing?" demanded one voice.

"I was just-" said the other.

"Give me that!" cried the first voice.

That other voice, thought Bella, I know that, too . And I know what's going to be said next!

"Now," said the echo far down the hill in the night, "just don't stand there, help me!"

"Yes!" Bella closed her eyes and swallowed hard and half fell to sit on the steps, getting her breath back as black-and-White pictures flashed in her head. Suddenly it was 1929 and she Was very small, in a theater with dark and light pictures looming above the first row where she sat, transfixed, and then laughing, and then transfixed and laughing again.

She opened her eyes. The two voices were still down there, a faint wrestle and echo in the night, despairing and thumping each other with their hard derby hats.

Zelda, thought Bella Winters. I'll call Zelda. She knows everything. She'll tell me what this is. Zelda, yes!

Inside, she dialed Z and E and L and D and A before she saw what she had done and started over. The phone rang a long while until Zelda's voice, angry with sleep, spoke half way across L.A.

"Zelda, this is Bella!"

"Sam just died?"

"No, no, I'm sorry-

"You're sorry?"

"Zelda, I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but . . ."

"Go ahead, be crazy."

"Zelda, in the old days when they made films around L.A. , they used lots of places, right? Like Venice , Ocean Park . . . "

"Chaplin did, Langdon did, Harold Lloyd, sure."

"Laurel and Hardy?"

"What?"

"Laurel and Hardy, did they use lots of locations?"

"Palms, they used Palms lots, Culver City Main Street ,' Effie Street ."

" Effie Street !"

"Don't yell, Bella."

"Did you say Effie Street ?"

"Sure, and God, it's three in the morning!"

"Right at the top of Effie Street !?"

"Hey, yeah, the stairs. Everyone knows them. That's where the music box chased Hardy downhill and ran over Him."

"Sure, Zelda, sure! Oh, God, Zelda, if you could see, hear, what I hear! "

Zelda was suddenly wide awake on the line. "What's going on? You serious?"

"oh, God, yes. On the steps just now, and last night and the night before maybe, I heard, I hear-two men hauling a-a piano up the hill."

"Someone's pulling your leg!"

"No, no, they're there. I go out and there's nothing. But the steps are haunted, Zelda! One voice says: 'Here's another fine mess you've got us in.' You got to hear that man's voice!"

"You're drunk and doing this because you know I'm a nut for them."

"No, no. Come, Zelda. Listen. Tell!"

Maybe half an hour later, Bella heard the old tin lizzie rattle up the alley behind the apartments. It was a car Zelda, in her joy at visiting silent-movie theaters, had bought to lug herself around in while she wrote about the past, always the past, and steaming into Cecil B. DeMille's old place or circling Harold Lloyd's nation-state, or cranking and banging around the Universal backlot, paying her respects to the Phantom's opera stage, or sitting on Ma and Pa Kettle's porch chewing a sandwich lunch. That was Zelda, who once wrote in a silent country in a silent time for Silver Screen.

Zelda lumbered across the front porch, a huge body with legs as big as the Bernini columns in front of St. Peter's in Rome , and a face like a harvest moon.

On that round face now was suspicion, cynicism, skepticisms, in equal pie-parts. But when she saw Bella's pale stare she cried:

"Belle! "

"You see I'm not lying!" said Bella.

"I see!"

"Keep your voice down, Zelda. Oh, it's scary and strange, terrible and nice. So come on."

And the two women edged along the walk to the rim of the old hill near the old steps in old Hollywood, and suddenly as they moved they felt time take a half turn around them and it was another year, because nothing had changed all the buildings were the way they were in 1928 and the hills beyond like they were in 1926 and the steps, just the, way they were when the cement was poured in 1921.

"Listen, Zelda. There!"

And Zelda listened and at first there was only a creaking of wheels down in the dark, like crickets, and then a moan of wood and a hum of piano strings, and then one voice lamenting about this job, and the other voice claiming he had nothing to do with it, and then the thumps as two derby hats fell, and an exasperated voice announced: