Steven Millhauser - The Barnum Museum - Stories

Panel 44.Alfred in his blue cutaway is seated at a dark desk on which are an oil lamp, a bottle bearing the word INK, several quill pens, a globe on a stand, and a white bust with the word DANTE on its pedestal. Before him on the desk lies a long piece of paper curled over at the top. In his right hand he holds a quill. On the paper are the words: LET US GO THEN, YOU AND ME…The “ME” is crossed out and above it appears the word “I.” On the wall behind the desk hangs a large oval mirror in a mahogany frame. Alfred’s head, bent forward over his paper, is reflected in the mirror. Yellow lines of light radiate from the oil lamp. Brown and blue shadows lie on Alfred’s hand.

One summer evening at about midnight a man wearing eyeglasses and a light-blue shirt made his way through the crowded lobby of a movie theater and stepped outside with a look of dismay. The marquee was hung with a crackling curtain of rain. Groups of animated women stood in the brightness of the marquee shelter, while now and then a husband or boyfriend hunched his shoulders and marched into the downpour to bring the car around. Two plump girls in tight white shorts and denim jackets stood bent together at the edge of the rain, reaching out their fingers, whispering, giggling into the backs of their hands, as if the storm were a wild and erotic joke — and all at once they pulled their jackets over their heads and ran off into the rain like two upright turtles. A sudden flash of lightning revealed black thunderclouds in a lavender sky.

Mr. Porter jingled the car keys in his pocket and looked down with a frown at his new black shoes. It was just his luck. He was wearing tan cotton pants, and the sleeves of his light-blue shirt were turned back neatly twice. With an irritable glance at his watch he walked to one end of the marquee shelter, where the dry pale sidewalk became dark hissing wet. He reached out a palm, but to his surprise he felt no rain. He placed the tips of his shoes on the line of wetness, and bending forward at the waist, stretched out his arm farther and farther until he rose on his toes. A shot rang out. Mr. Porter began to thrash the air with both arms as if he were teetering on the edge of a cliff.

As the thunder died away Mr. Porter regained his balance. He adjusted his eyeglasses, looked contemptuously at a grinning couple, and walked to a dark corner beside the ticket booth, where he stood with his back to a wall of glass-covered Coming Attractions. One showed a redheaded woman in a transparent green nightgown standing before an open door with her hands pressed to her cheeks and her mouth wide open. Mr. Porter folded his arms across his stomach. He leaned one shoulder against the ticket booth, crossed his legs so that one shoe balanced on its toe, and resolved to wait out the rain.

Soon the crowd had vanished but the rain remained. On the polished tar a traffic light threw rippling green and red reflections that mingled with the blinking lemon swirls of the marquee lights. The precise blue letters of a neon sign over a hardware store appeared in the street as an azure blur. Rain hissed on the street, drummed on car tops, made a sound like flung pebbles against a passing umbrella. It blew along the street in waves of mist. “Nice weather,” said a voice. Mr. Porter started. Beside him stood a large woman who seemed to have sprung from one of the colorful Coming Attractions. Her rain-soaked orange hair was brown at the roots, her black eyebrows dripped down in wavy dark lines, the aquamarine of her eyelids flowed from the corners of her eyes. Rouge-colored drops rolled down her cheeks and dripped from her shining jaw. Mr. Porter nodded and glanced about. The marquee shelter was deserted except for a solitary figure in a tan trench coat who stood with his back to Mr. Porter and clasped in pink hands a tightly furled black umbrella with a silver point. “It’s getting late,” Mr. Porter said in a low voice barely above a whisper, and then he pushed against the ticket booth with his shoulder and straightened up and stepped briskly away, taking a deep breath and lowering his head as he approached the loud, dark cement.

As his foot swung over the line, Mr. Porter saw dark streaks soaking into his light pant leg. By the third step he felt as if he had stepped into a bathroom shower. Only a few pale streaks remained in his shirt, dyed dark blue by the rain. The backs of his hands glistened; his black watchband gleamed. His shoes shone with a perfect finish but he feared the black polish was being washed away by the rubbing rain. Water poured down the back of his neck and dripped from his nose and chin. His lenses rippled. A blurred taxi floated by, flinging at him a sheet of water.

When he reached his Chevy hatchback, Mr. Porter stepped from the curb into an ankle-deep steam of rushing water. He groped along the front of the car until he came to the door on the driver’s side. At the sight of the closed window he exhaled sharply with relief, but as he reached for his keys he was surprised to see that the lock button was raised. He opened the door quickly and slid onto the suddenly illluminated seat, which vanished as he shut the door. In the dark he took off his glasses and rubbed them against his soaked shirt. When he put them on he saw wavy blurs. Drops from his hair streamed down his cheeks onto his lips. Fumbling in his pocket with wet, slippery fingers, Mr. Porter drew out the zippered leather case from which his car keys dangled. He inserted the ignition key. It did not fit. Mr. Porter opened the door and in the amber light examined the blurred silver shape. It appeared to be the correct key. As he turned to insert it again, he noticed on the clean black seat beside him a roll of butter-rum Lifesavers, and suddenly he had the odd sensation that the world was unraveling, rushing out of control, as when, in his childhood, descending a dark stairway, he had reached out his foot for that last, phantom stair even as the floor, one step too soon, leaped up to meet him. Quickly Mr. Porter looked about. On the back seat he saw a lidless blue coffee can containing a screwdriver with a transparent yellow handle. Beside the can lay a little naked pink plastic doll the size of a thumb.

“Stupid cars,” Mr. Porter muttered, stepping out into the rain and slamming the door. A passing car swerved and honked. Under the bright blur of a solitary streetlight, four car-lengths away, stood another Chevy hatchback. Mr. Porter splashed toward it and bent down over the rear bumper. In the dripping chrome he saw his image, a colored ripple, and through his streaming lenses he read his license plate. Mr. Porter made his way to the door on the driver’s side. The window was half open, though the door was locked. When he opened the door a pool of rainwater on the driver’s seat reflected the amber light. On the glistening seat beside it lay a fat wet paperback with blue page-ends. Its shiny, sticky-looking cover stuck up, revealing watery blue stains on the uppermost page. On the back seat lay a slim black umbrella.

Mr. Porter drove slowly, leaning over the wheel and squinting through the rain-sheeted windshield at the rainbowed tar. From time to time he rubbed the misty glass with a quick motion of his left hand; his fingers left faint oily patterns on the glass. Through the dripping arches designed by the wipers he watched the stoplights and shopfronts flowing along the street in iridescent streams. Slowly, wavering silently, the bright signs and windows floated past, dripping into the street, streaming along the gutters, pouring into drains: a luminous green window filled with green-tinted bicycles, a blue-glowing cardboard girl holding up a bottle of beer, a red and green pizzeria. Under a streetlamp a brilliant red stop sign glistened at the end of its stick like an enormous lollipop. Mr. Porter turned onto another street. A stone divider appeared, the stores and bars and rainbows were replaced by large ghostly houses flanked by shadowy trees, beyond the double arch of the wipers the black windshield was dotted with transparent crystal drops. A blinking stoplight flung a handful of rubies across the windshield. In the distance Mr. Porter saw the tall misty pillars of the thruway, and soon he was rising slowly into the air along a sleek entrance ramp.