The Metrognome and Other Stories Read online

  It squatted off in a dim corner of its own, unadorned with antique Coke bottles or limp fur capes or power tools. To a writer of travel and adventure stories it was as irresistible as a guided tour of eighteenth century Arabia.

  Still, he paused long enough to peek back into the shop proper. Marjorie was holding a long black Victorian gown in front of her, dickering with the owner. The gown seemed to fit the nips and tucks of her Junoesque figure well. Somewhere an equally lovely form, the original wearer of that dress, was now dust. Quickly he drew back into the workroom and walked over to stare greedily at the chair.

  It was straight backed, with four legs, two straight arms, and a curved seat all hewn from some heavy, dark wood. Probably oak or walnut, he mused. In addition to the fairly standard clawed legs and swirling decorations there were more flagrant examples of the wood carver's art.

  Each arm ended in the head of a peculiarly anthropomorphic fish. At each upper corner of the straight back a deeply sculpted lion's skull, fangs agape, glared back at him. But it was the back of the seat that drew most of his enraptured attention.

  Roughly half the smooth slab was filled with tiny carved faces. None was larger than his thumbprint, yet the amount of detail in them was astonishing. Peering closely at one, a middle aged woman, Dylan could make out perfect carved teeth, eyebrows, hair. The expression was twisted and distorted, as were all the others.

  Above this miniature gallery was a much larger face, so big that his spread palm could barely obscure it. It was extraordinarily animated and lifelike. The long nose appeared broken. Both cheeks swelled out into whorls of wind, gusting to either side of the chair to break against the smooth manes of the lions. Dylan studied the almost flexible carving, unable to decide whether the master wood carver had shown a face laughing or screaming.

  "This room's off limits, son."

  Startled, Dylan nearly stumbled as he spun around. "Sorry. I . . . didn't see a sign or anything."

  Glancing at the floor, Saltzmann located and picked up a dirty, battered rectangle of cardboard on which EMPLOYEES ONLY had been crudely painted. He muttered something to himself, set about rehanging it just outside the entrance.

  While he was busy with that, Dylan beckoned his wife in.

  "Sugar, come take a look at this."

  Marjorie walked over, glanced at the chair, and grimaced. "That's your taste, all right. Gruesome."

  "Oh, come on, Marjorie. Look at that workmanship; look at those faces, the detail."

  "That's your way of saying you want it?" she asked evenly.

  He was abruptly embarrassed. "Uh, did you find anything?"

  She smiled tolerantly. "A couple of dresses."

  "That's great. Buy whatever you want, hon."

  "You always say that . . . after you find something you want."

  "Wellllll . . ." He knew she was teasing him now.

  "Never mind. I'm glad you found something, too. Just don't expect me to sit in it." Turning, she confronted the watching Saltzmann. "How much is it?"

  "The chair? Well, you know, it really taint far sale." Dylan's hopes fell apart. "I've had it goin' on forty five years." He looked at his watch. "But since I'm goin' to die 'round seven twenty tonight, I s'pose you might as well have it as any other. That is, if its history don't bother you none. I'm bound to tell it to you."

  "History intrigues me, never bothers me." Dylan turned a proprietary look on the chair, barely reflecting on the old man's macabre sense of humor.

  "How old you think that chair is, folks?"

  Dylan knew next to nothing about antiques. He let Marjorie guess. "A hundred years? No, two hundred."

  Saltzmann was grinning, showing gold teeth alternating with dark gaps. His mouth displayed more masonry work than a Saxon fortress. "Little less than four hundred."

  Uh oh, trouble, Dylan thought. A chair that old, in this kind of condition, would be expensive.

  "It belonged to John Dee. Dr. John Dee?" Both Dylan and Marjorie waited expectantly. The owner looked disappointed. "He was court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth the First herself, after she got him off the hook for practicing black magic. He invented the crystal ball; leastwise, he told fortune tellers what it was good for." He paused for emphasis, added, "Made the only English translation of the Al Azif."

  "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.

  "Damn it, sugar, I'm working."

  "You're working, and I'm dying." She tried to sound furious. It came out in a sob.

  "Don't be ri " Something went click in his head, and he turned, stared at her curiously. "Hon, is something the matter?"

  She didn't have to volunteer it now. He'd asked the question. "The matter? What could possibly be the matter?" She straightened, walked into the study.

  "C'mon now, hon what is it?"

  "Don't 'c'mon now, hon' me!" Her control vanished. "I haven't seen you, talked to you, done anything with you in months!"

  "I've been working." His voice was soft but not gentle. "Working my ass off, for us. You know how well we've done lately. Our bank account . . ."

  Usually his mock little boy manner of arguing was ingratiating. Now it was simply irritating. "To hell with our bank account. I'd like my husband back. You've been so obsessed with your work here lately, ever since we got back from LA, that . . ." She stopped, stared at him open mouthed.

  "Obsessed, yes. Ever since you bought that god awful chair. "

  "It's not god awful. It's beautiful. You said so yourself."

  "I never said it was beautiful, never! Well made, maybe, but I'd never've said it was beautiful. I'd remember."

  "You're being silly, Marj. If anything, I'd have to say this chair's been good for me, considering how much and how well I've been selling recently."

  "Maybe it's been good for you, but not for me. I I want you to get rid of it."

  "Get rid of it?" He looked at her as though she'd suggested some night swimming, now, in November. "This chair's one of my favorite things." He smiled patronizingly. "Don't tell me, Marj, that you're jealous of a chair. "

  "Will you get rid of it?" Her voice was low, edgy.

  He sat quietly for a moment, then spoke calmly and with a chill in his voice that made her tremble. "You're a little hysterical, Marjorie. I can't talk sensibly to you when you're hysterical. We'll talk some more about it later. I've got ten more pages to do yet tonight." He turned back to the typewriter.

  She stared at his back. Tatta ta tat tatta tatta . . . the letters fired at her, each one a little pinprick deep inside her guts. She opened her mouth, started to say something, then whirled and ran from the room.

  He did not look up.

  The doorbell rang, demanding. Sweating despite the coolness of the room, Dylan looked up from the machine on the third ring. Dazedly, he surveyed the evening's work. Nearly nine thousand words.

  As the bell rang and he rose to answer the door, he vaguely recalled something disquieting about the evening. Oh, yes, he and Marjorie had had an argument of some kind.

  That was probably she at the door. When she got mad or frustrated, she liked to take the car out and drive. Silly fool had probably forgotten her house keys and locked herself out. Try as he could, the cause of their argument escaped him. Well, he'd apologize for whatever it was, take the blame, promise never to do it again, and they'd kiss and make up.

  He was composing excuses as he opened the door. Marjorie wasn't there.

  Instead, he found himself staring blankly up at a tall stranger in a blue uniform. The man wore a white plastic helmet and sported insignia and buckles like a cubist's cactus. He favored Dylan with a solemn stare entirely out of keeping with his quasi military appearance.

  Dylan felt himself drowning in a sudden thick surge of conflicting thoughts and emotions. He heard a voice, distant and suspiciously like his own, saying, "Yes, Officer?"

  "Mr. McCarey? Dylan McCarey? This is 1649 Oakhurst Place?"

  "Marjorie . ." Dylan leaned out into the steely dampness, tried to see into the garage. The door was up, open. "Has she been in an accident?"

  "I'm sorry, Mr. McCarey. She died at the scene."

  "Died?" He shook his head. That didn't clear it. He smiled crookedly. "M
arjorie?"

  "Apparently, in the fog, she missed a turn. About halfway between here and Goleta."

  "Goleta? What was she doing way up near . . ." He stopped, remembered. They'd argued, and he'd turned away. Marjorie.

  "Marjorie." He started out the door. A firm hand caught him, an arm barred his way.

  "I'm very sorry, Mr. McCarey, very sorry. It was quick. Her car went over a three hundred foot cliff. I'm told she died instantly."

  Dylan stared past the man, into the smothered night. Nothing was visible through the fog save a faint squarish outline in the driveway topped by a leering red light winking. Blood, fog, night . . . Marjorie.

  "I'm Sergeant Brooks. I'm with the San Simeon station. If you'd like to come down there for a while . . ."

  "Later, maybe. Not now," he replied numbly. "Later. "

  "You sure you'll be okay?"

  "I'll be okay." He looked up. "Thank you, Sergeant. I have to make some phone calls, get in touch with people."

  "Of course. We'd like you to come into Obispo tomorrow . . . or as soon as you can. Official identification. I'm sorry."

  "Of course you would. I'11 come in the morning. After I make the phone calls. Good night, Officer."

  "Good night, Mr. McCarey. " Brooks studied him professionally, reached a decision. "I'11 be going now. If we can do anything, please call us."

  "Yes. Thank you."

  Dylan remained framed in the doorway, a weaving silhouette in the hallway light. He watched as the tall patrolman was swallowed by the fog. There was the sound of a car door slamming. Rumbling throatily, the blinking red light turned and receded into the distance. He stared until it had disappeared completely.

  Reflex guided him back to the study, back to his desk. A detached part of him was coolly aware of the mournful dialogue of wind and wave below the window. Marjorie, Marjorie. What had they fought about, to send her blindly running from the house, from him? That silly fight over nothing, over a chair. A damned piece of furniture.