Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom

“Let it come up for air once in a while.”

“That’s right, Matthew. It’s going to burn out on you. It’s going to disappear like a wick.”

“Who was it this time?”

“Ten thirty-three?”

“Seven-oh-four?”

“The blonde? The one with the humongous mammaritos and the sweetheart great ass?”

“A fellow don’t kiss and tell.”

“You kissed them?”

“Man, you know what’ll happen to you if the manager finds out?”

“Yeah, you better off if her daddy finds out.”

“You’d believe all those workouts in the health club might slow him down a bit.”

“They do! You think any of them gals would still be alive otherwise?”

So they kidded him, joshed into heroic farmboy studship the familiar creature from the tearooms of central Florida.

“Some lover,” the bell captain said. “I saw you step into that elevator not fifteen minutes ago.”

“Maybe it stopped on the fifth floor,” he said. “Maybe that’s where a certain redheaded Cuban spitfire got on board. Maybe she threatened to dance all over me with her spike heels if I didn’t lock it from the inside. Maybe I serviced her right there in the box. Maybe that’s all the time we needed. How you doin’, Andy?”

“Pretty fair, Matthew. Yourself?”

“Be an ungrateful liar if I complained.”

“Be seeing you, Matt.”

“Be seeing you, Andrew.”

And spotted the dog, Pluto, surrounded by kids and holding the brace of Mickey Mouse balloons he always carried but so sparingly gave out.

(“Jesus, Lamar, you’d think you paid for them yourself,” he’d said.

(“No, but I have to fill them with helium. Do you know I have to blow up Goofy’s as well as my own?”

(“Really?”

(“He outranks me.”

(“No shit?”

(“Sure, and I’ll tell you something else. That son-of-a-bitch dog is one hard taskmaster.”

(“You know something? You had me going. You break me up, Lamar.”

(“Well, shit, I’m a pro.”)

Who owed him one. Probably more than one. For sometimes spelling Kenny whenever he drove over to Orlando or Winter Park or Daytona Beach or Kissimmee for an audition. (“Jesus, kid,” he’d said, after returning from one of these auditions and coming up dry, “you’ve given away every fucking balloon I had. I’ll be a year blowing the mothers up again. Show business!”)

So then and there Matthew Gale decided to call in his marker. He ambled over to the besieged pup and gave what always before had been Lamar Kenny’s overture, their secret silent signal. (Silent because as one of the characters he’d been forbidden all speech, not permitted even a growl. “Kid,” he’d say afterward, “they’ve muzzled old Pluto.”) He made the gesture with his hand. Kenny saw him but shook his head like a pitcher declining a sign. Matthew did the thing with his left hand again. The dog looked at him quizzically. (So comical, Gale thought. Damn, he’s good! Matthew had no idea why Lamar never landed those jobs. He was a wonderful actor.) So Matthew stepped up to him and did it again. Again the pooch shook it off and again Matthew repeated the signal. Pluto shrugged and released the balloons he held in his paw. They floated up out of the reach of the children, who jumped to grab at their strings. In the confusion Matthew Gale sidled up to his friend. “Meet me,” he said. “It’s important!”

Pluto looked up sadly after the balloons. He didn’t break character by so much as a whimper, but Gale could tell that anyone looking at him, every kid in the place, could read his mind, the expression written plain as day across his doggy jowls. Fuck damn, he was thinking, now I’ll have to blow up twenty more of these mouseshit balloons!

They were standing by his locker. Not until he’d removed the last of his Pluto suit and hung it neatly away did Lamar Kenny say anything at all. He pointed to the locker. “Is that the dressing room of a star or is that the dressing room of a star?”

“What do you think, Lamar?”

“I think it’s the dressing room of some assembly-line guy, a U.S. Steel worker, an A. F. of L.”

“About the gig.”

“Leave them to Heaven.”

“Come on, Lamar, what do you say?”

“I say it’s nuts. I say if you’re looking to get us fired you’ve struck pay dirt.”

Gale rubbed his finger across the locker’s dusty metal shelves. “I think it’s the dressing room of some assembly-line guy too.”

“That’s the way,” Kenny said. “Play up to the trouper in me.”

“I am. I want to. Didn’t I come to you with my proposal?”

“Some proposal.”

“Admit it, Lamar. It’s a great gig. Admit that much.”

“Don’t say ‘gig.’ You’ve got no right to say ‘gig.’”

“Sorry.”

“Do I say ‘rough trade’? Do I say ‘butch’?”

“I didn’t mean to offend, Lamar.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m so touchy. I’m in a profession; we live, we let live. You’re right,” he said, “it’s a hell of a part. Nah,” he said, “they’d turn us in. They’d call Security. We’d be lucky if all that happened was we lost our jobs.”

“They won’t turn us in. The guy, Colin, is in too deep. Forget about the bed part. The bed part’s the least of it. He has sensitive manuals in his possession.”

“You gave him sensitive manuals?”

“You think I know what I gave him? I don’t know what I gave him. I threw some stuff together. He played it down. He made out like it was nothing. Naturally I’m suspicious.”

“And the wife?”

“There’s something strange there.”

“Strange.”

“She’s got this at titude.”

“ You,” Mary Cottle commanded Colin Bible, “stay out of my room!” And reminded him of her good name and demanded to know how he’d found out.

It was astonishing, really. How the bottom of things lay at the bottom of things like the lowest rung on a ladder. But how, beneath that, there was a still lower level, that open area of the air, some apron of the underneath, mysterious, inexplicable. Colin sent her to Nedra Carp. Who put her on to Janet Order. Who implicated Mudd-Gaddis.

She went to him.

“Charles?” she said.

“Yes, lady?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“The Angel of Death?”

“No,” she said.

“Do I get another turn?”

She stared at him.

“Are you living?”

“Of course I’m living!”

“Are you bigger than a breadbasket?”

“Mudd-Gaddis!”

“How many is that?”

“Mudd-Gaddis!”

“Do you reside in eastern Europe west of the Odra?”

“I’m Mary Cottle!” she said.

“That was my next question.” He looked at her. “Yes, Miss Cottle?”

“Nothing,” she said.

Because everything has a reasonable explanation.

She didn’t really care about getting to the bottom of things. She didn’t care about the mystery. She wasn’t even protecting her good name. She was protecting that room.

“She’s proper pissed,” Mudd-Gaddis said.

“I’ve never even seen the room,” Lydia Conscience said.

“Neither have I,” said Rena Morgan.

Noah and Tony hadn’t. Nor had Janet Order. Benny, of course, couldn’t wait to get back there but knew there would be little point if anyone else came along.

They turned to Benny. He was the oldest. He had the Swiss Army knife that could get them in.

“It’d be breaking and entering,” Benny said.

“But not for the first time,” Rena Morgan said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” Rena said, “that by now you’re so practiced all the risk is removed. It isn’t as if it were anything stealthy.”