Melting Clock

11

Even before the sun was fully down there were four fires on the beach, blazes in giant copper pots. Dali supervised each one personally. Jeremy and I watched from the top of the hill where we could see down the beach for about a hundred yards in both directions. Dali was a frantic ball of white fur, cracking orders to hired hands who tended the fires. He ran from pot to pot like a vaudeville juggler trying to keep plates spinning on wobbly sticks.

In the center of the fiery pots, its heavy legs sinking into the sand, was the throne. Every once in a while Dali paused in his steeplechase to be sure the throne hadn’t gotten up on its legs and dashed into the ocean. Two long tables filled with seafood-lobsters, clams, shrimp, scallops-sat right on the shoreline where the tide was sure to get them in a few hours.

“I think he plans to let the sea take the food later,” Jeremy said.

“Looks that way,” I agreed, trying to reach a particularly itchy spot under my William Tell shorts. I couldn’t get at it, so I tried to do it with an arrow. I was reasonably successful.

The second set of guests arrived: a snail and an orange. Gala, dressed like a Cossack complete with tunic, fur cap, and beard, stood at the top of the sandy trail and pointed them toward the beach. At Gala’s request, Jeremy had carried the big clock outside and it stood next to her.

After Gala and the clock greeted each guest, they had to go past Jeremy and me, and we stopped them.

“I’m an orange,” the orange said.

“I can see that,” I said.

“Don’t shoot me,” he went on.

The snail roared with laughter.

“Get it?” said the snail. “William Tell shoots apples, not oranges.”

“Sorry,” I said to the orange. “We’ve got to frisk you for contraband.”

The snail thought this was funny, too, but the orange started to protest.

“Dali’s orders,” I said with a shrug and a look intended to make them think that it was just another eccentricity of the master.

I think the orange finally shrugged. I don’t know. The snail, even though she was a lady, was easier to search than the orange. We stood back and watched the couple waddle down the hill. I said, “Jeremy, this isn’t going to work.”

Looking particularly wise in his toga, he replied, “We will do what must be done.”

What had to be done next was to confront a woman in a gown and a head full of snakes instead of hair. The snakes looked too damned real.

“The Gorgon,” said Jeremy.

The man with her, if you ignored his big belly, looked like a Greek soldier complete with a big shiny shield. I tried to get under his armor. He was ticklish.

“Perseus,” Jeremy explained as the couple staggered down the hill. “He could only look at the Gorgon in his shield lest he turn to stone.”

They started to come too quickly for us to keep up with them. A herd of masked lemmings going over the cliff toward the water, lemmings disguised as ballerinas in fishing boots, buffaloes with the heads of owls, giant polka-dot chicken legs, red satin robots, and a hooded monk or executioner with ax. There were men dressed like women and women dressed like men. Half-man half-two-headed-horses, a bottle of mustard with an elephant’s trunk, and something that could have been a big wrinkled chili bean. It could have been something else, too, but I preferred to think it was a chili bean.

The noise level had risen considerably, though the waves were still slapping loud and close.

An angel and a Catholic priest wearing lipstick and sporting a long tail were the last to join the party. The angel, with white gown and feather wings, stopped next to us, played a few notes on her harp, and announced, “There should be no fires on the beach. The Japanese. It will draw the Japanese.”

“I think he plans to lure them to the beach and then pelt them with live lobsters,” I said.

“Droll,” commented the priest, heading down the hill to give her blessings.

“You hear that, Jeremy, it’s droll.”

“An essence of Surrealism is its offense,” Jeremy said.

“Anything?” asked Gala the Cossack, coming to our side and looking down at the madness on the beach. “Anything suspicious, strange?”

I looked down at the sight below, a beach full of escapees from a casting call for Dante’s Inferno or Freaks.

“Looks normal to me,” I said.

“Dali seems pleased,” she said, stroking her beard. “Please bring down the clock.”

She headed down the sandy path toward her husband, who was standing on the seat of the throne, his paws folded, a mad knowing smile on his face.

“I’m going down, Jeremy,” I said, picking up the clock. “Keep an eye on things from up here.”

“It’s a bacchanal,” he said. “An astounding vision. If I had paper and a pen I’d write a poem.”

“Togas don’t have pockets,” I reminded him.

“I like that,” he said. “That will be the title of the poem, ‘Togas Don’t Have Pockets’-a surreal title for a surreal poem.”

The bow hooked over my shoulder dug into my back and the clock sank its claws into my stomach as I scurried down the hill and moved next to Dali on his throne in time to hear a woman dressed like a man say, “I hope you don’t die like the other painters, just when I get interested in your work.”

“In that case,” said Dali, “I hope we are both fortunate enough for me to outlive you.”

The woman backed away with a happy smile, and Dali leaned down to me and told me to place the clock before him on a marble pedestal. His voice was panicky as he put a paw on my shoulder: “They are coming too close and the sea is beginning to whisper something to me.”

“How about we call it a night and send the circus home early?” I suggested.

“Early? Early is dawn. The night is just coming. Fire dances in the waves. A feast of cannibals. Look. The lobsters look alive in their hands. Holes will appear in their flesh.”

“Sounds like fun to me,” I said.

“This,” contradicted Dali, “is not fun. This is art. Critics lurk beneath the masks, ready to steal my soul. Buyers hide their hideous drool behind hoods. They want to gather in my paintings, devour them in private feasts behind closed doors. Vampiros. Is that a real priest?”

“I hope not,” I said.

A voice rose from somewhere behind us. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

“You could never be my analyst, Roland. You are not truly literate.”

The snail appeared with a polka-dot chicken leg, stage whispering, “His paintings reveal so much of the Id that one can but anticipate with longing his return to consciousness.”

“Quiet,” shouted Gala, who suddenly appeared on the throne next to her furry husband. Her arms were raised high and her slight voice fought the ocean and the murmuring of the guests. Behind her, Dali adjusted his deerstalker, folded his arms, and turned his chin up in a pose uncomfortably like one of Mussolini’s. “At midnight, Dali will wind the clock and time will begin. But first, he will recite a poem of love and honor.”

The crowd went silent except for the orange, who had turned into a giant screwdriver-the vodka kind-and was babbling about hairy teeth.

“Off with his head,” Dali ordered the executioner, pointing at the offending fruit.

The executioner weaved through the crowd and headed for the orange, who saw him coming, screamed, and went running up the beach in the general direction of Monterey. With relative calm restored, Dali began to recite in a language that sounded a little like Spanish, but just a little.

The bottle of mustard whispered, “I think it’s Portuguese.”

“No,” said a small voice behind me. “It is Catalan.”

“Gunther,” I said, turning around to look down at the Coroner of the Munchkins.

“It was all I could find at short notice,” he said.

Gala glared down at us with a look to whither knaves, and Dali went on gesturing eloquently as he continued reciting and pointing at the sea.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered to Gunther.

“The phone here is disconnected and I had to tell you-” he began, but Dali stopped him.

“You have come from a dream to destroy my poetry,” Dali shouted.

“On the contrary,” said Gunther, who was not known to possess a sense of humor. “We have come from Los Angeles in time to save your life.”

“We?” I asked.

“I drove here with Alice Pallis and the baby Natasha,” Gunther explained.

The crowd on the beach applauded. They seemed to think the Munchkin and the archer were part of the performance.

“Minute impostor,” Dali cried. “You destroyed my poem. You try to frighten Dali.”

“You were reciting ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ in Catalan,” said Gunther.

Dali looked astounded. Tears welled in his eyes. His mustaches wilted.

“Off with his head,” cried Gala.

The executioner made his way back from the shore and advanced on Gunther. The crowd loved it. A zebra-striped onion on my right began to weep with laughter.

“It is the Three Bears,” Gunther repeated with dignity.

The executioner shouldered his ax, reached down, and picked Gunther up under one arm.

“Priceless,” cackled the snail.

I put my arm on the executioner’s shoulder. “Put him down.”

The executioner shook me off and started up the hill with Gunther struggling to get free. I went after them and tripped on my bow.

“Brilliant,” shouted a man behind me.

“Bravo,” called another.

I didn’t look back but I had the feeling Dali was either taking a bow and credit or curling into a ball and crying. I looked to the top of the hill for Jeremy, but he wasn’t there so I scrambled forward.

The executioner with his Munchkin bundle had disappeared around a corner of the house by the time I made it to the top and managed to stand. I moved none-too-quickly after them and knew when I turned the corner that I was going to lose the race.

My hope was that the executioner was one of Dali’s hirelings or pals. My fear was that he was Gregory Novak. There were cars in front of the house on the driveway and on the unpaved street, but no executioner with a Munchkin. I considered putting an arrow in my bow and stalking through the forest of cars, but I didn’t have much faith in my bow or my aim.

I wondered where Jeremy was, but I didn’t take time to look for him. Instead I went back to the house and opened the door. Something clattered. The lights were all on, which didn’t make me feel any better. I expected the big guy with the hood to come out from behind everything with ax raised high. But Gunther was in trouble, so I moved forward, considering possible weapons. The best I could do was a stone figure of a naked woman on a shelf. The woman figure looked like a garden rake with big round eyes.

I followed the clatter to the room Jeremy and I had slept in. From the hallway I couldn’t see anyone in the bedroom. I didn’t want to take any chances, at least any more than I could avoid. I was about to step into the room when something soft and fuzzy touched my hand.

I think I yelped. I turned and started to swing at a startled Sherlock Rabbit whose mustaches went wild.

“Assassino,” cried Dali.

I didn’t have time or the chance to reply because the blade of an ax came whistling past my ear and tore through the wall next to my face. I pushed Dali into the room ahead of me and took a swing over my shoulder with the big-eyed rake woman. I hit the hooded guy on the shoulder. I turned to face him and try again, but he had already pulled the ax out of the wall and was ready for another go at me.

I ran. Dali was ahead of me. I shoved him through a door and kicked it closed behind me.

“Run,” I said. “Get help.”

There was a latch on the door. I threw it just as the executioner turned the handle. Dali watched, mouth open. He didn’t run.

The ax head came crashing through the door, straight through and missed my nose, which is fortunately so flat that it’s almost no nose, by the width of a War stamp.

I pushed Dali into the next room. I slammed the door shut behind us. It didn’t have a lock. I picked up a chair and shoved it under the door handle.

This, as you may recall, is about where I started the story. So let’s leap forward about a minute.

There I sit behind the driver’s seat in my little green hat with a red feather, Dali next to me, a cowering bunny with a rapidly wilting mustache.

In front of me, through the windshield, I could see a hole in the little tin hood of my Crosley. Behind, in the mirror, I could see trees. Beside me, just outside the window, the executioner pulled the ax back. There was no room to move. There is no forward or backward in a Crosley and Dali filled what little there was on my right.

“Open the goddamn door and run, Sal.” I ordered.

I closed my eyes, expected the crash of glass, shards across my face, even the blade digging into my skull. I heard the door open and Dali gasp. Something was happening just outside the window. I opened my eyes and beheld on the hood of the Crosley, gurgling at me, a beautiful smiling baby. I turned to look at the executioner and saw him stagger back, a hand grabbing the wrist of his ax-arm, another hand pulling back the executioner’s hood.

I shoved Dali through the far door and scrambled after him. We turned to watch the battle. But it wasn’t much of a battle. The executioner was big and strong, but Alice Pallis was stronger. Jeremy appeared from the side of the house and ran forward to scoop his daughter from the hood of the Crosley just as Alice lifted the executioner and threw him over the top of the car. The ax sailed out of his hand and through a window at the back of the house.

“Thanks, Alice,” I said. Jeremy handed his wife the baby.

Dali looked down at the executioner.

“Odelle!”

Odelle, a cut the size of the Russian River on her forehead, looked up at Dali with hatred.

Jeremy lifted Odelle up and sat her on the hood of my Crosley. The hood sagged. From the beach we could hear what sounded like the chant of monks.

“Where’s Gunther?” I demanded, grabbing her shoulder.

“Gunther?” asked a dazed Odelle.

“The little guy.”

“In the house,” she mumbled. “I locked him in a closet.”

“Why did you want to kill Dali?” Dali asked, completely bewildered.

“Betrayer,” came Odelle’s reply.

“You are mad,” he said.

“I have the painting,” she said between tightly clenched teeth as blood rivered down her face. “You had my faith, my loyalty, and you were laughing at me.”

“Never,” said Dali, looking to me, Jeremy, Alice, and baby Natasha for support. Since we didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, we stood watching.

“Why’d you kill them?” I asked her.

“Them?” Odelle asked, looking at me.

“Street, Place, Taylor,” I said.

“The only one I killed was Taylor, in his kitchen. He wanted to sell the painting back. He was going to give it to Dali for money. I wanted to destroy Dali and then his reputation. I won’t cry.”

Alice shifted the baby and came up with a handkerchief.

“Wipe your face,” Alice said gently and Odelle wiped her face.

“Taylor killed Street and Place?” I tried.

“No,” she said. “They were dead before he got to them.”

“Then who the hell killed Street and Place?”

No one answered; then I remembered.

“Gunther.”

“Gunther killed them?” asked Alice.

“No,” I said. “Gunther said he knew who killed them.”

I pushed past Dali and ran into the house through broken doors, around overturned furniture. It wasn’t hard to find Gunther. He was kicking at the door of the closet of the room where Jeremy and I had slept. I opened the door and the Munchkin coroner came tumbling out. I helped him up and led him to the nearest bed.

“You all right, Gunther?”

“I am all right,” he said, looking around to see if anyone but me was present to view his loss of dignity.

“Alice caught the executioner who threw you in the closet,” I said.

“It was a woman.”

“Right,” I said. “She says she didn’t kill Street or Place. You said …”

“Grigory Yefimovich Novykh,” said Gunther.

“Grig … Gregory Novak?”

“No,” corrected Gunther, removing his hat and placing it on the bed. “Grigory Yefimovich Novykh, the son of Yefim Novykh born in Pokroyvskoye, Russia, where as a boy he was given the name by which he would be known throughout his life-the Debaucher, or, in Russian, Rasputin. Your Misters Place and Street were murdered by Rasputin.”