The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

37

“If it wasn’t for the forty-seven things I gotta do,” Ray Kirschmann was saying, “what I’d do is take you an’ Shorty here over to Luger’s for a steak the size of a Cadillac hubcap and enough gin to float it. But—”

“But those forty-seven things take precedent.”

“It’s probably an even fifty, and I wish they didn’t, but they do. Next week for sure, Bernie. The best steak dinner in New York and it’s on me.”

I don’t know what the first item on his list might have been, but it probably involved escorting an unfortunate fellow down to Central Booking. Whatever it was, he went off to do it and left me and Carolyn otherwise unaccompanied.

She said, “Bern, did I hear that right? Did Ray Kirschmann actually offer to spring for dinner?”

“At Peter Luger’s,” I said.

“This is some universe. Did Ray ever pick up the tab for anything?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“I guess you really knocked his socks off, Bern, and I can understand why. You took all those people and all the crazy things that have happened and you made sense out of everything.”

“Sense,” I said.

“Although I have to admit I found some of it a little hard to follow.”

“Some of it,” I said.

“Yeah, you know. The details, and the way one thing led to another.”

“Mostly,” I said, “it didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Lead to another. Most of the time, nothing led to anything.”

“But—”

I took a breath. “In this universe,” I said, “this brave new world of Bowl-Mor and SubwayCards, things don’t make sense. They don’t have to. There may be a certain logic that seems to operate, just as there is down the rabbit hole and on the other side of the looking glass, but there’s nothing hard and fast about it.”

“So when you laid it all out for them—”

“I was making it up as I went along. I’d laid the groundwork, that’s what kept me so busy the past few days, and then when I said it, well, that made it true.”

“It was true because you said it.”

“Sort of true.”

She thought it over, nodded slowly. “I think I get it,” she said, “except for the part I don’t. It’s hard to wrap my mind around some of it.”

“Probably impossible,” I said. “It’s hard for me, and I’m the one who made it up.”

“But you’ll explain it to me, Bern. At least you’ll spell out what you told everybody.”

“Sure,” I said, “but maybe not right now.”

“No, because right now I could possibly follow it. Even if there’s nothing to follow. I mean—”

“I know what you mean.”

“I’m glad one of us does. Bern, what do you want to do? And I hope it doesn’t involve bowling.”

“No more bowling.”

“Do you want to go out for dinner? I’m not sure I’m hungry, but I could probably force myself. Though I’m definitely not up for a steak the size of a Cadillac hubcap.”

“Neither am I.”

“Is there something special about Cadillac hubcaps? Aren’t all hubcaps the same size?”

“I think Ray just wanted to make it sound luxurious.”

“What it sounds like to me,” she said, “is way too much food. In fact any food at all sounds like too much food. Should we get a drink?”

“I suppose we could.”

“At the Bum Rap? Or someplace fancier, to make it more of a celebration? Except I can’t think of any place offhand, and the idea of the Bum Rap—”

“I know what you mean.”

“So what do you think, Bern? What do you want to do?”

I looked into her eyes, and she looked into mine, and the question answered itself.

The cab driver not only knew where Arbor Court was. He also knew the quickest and most direct way to get there. There was, I had to admit, a thing or two I would miss about this new universe.

We were in a hurry, but not a mad adolescent frenzy. So Archie and Ubi got fed, but they had to make do with dry food, because there was no time to waste opening cans.

Asterisk time.

“That was so...”

“Nice,” I supplied.

“Okay. That fits. It was definitely nice.” She laid a hand on my arm. “I was going to say sweet, and it was, but that wasn’t the word I wanted.”

“So many words.”

“Bittersweet,” she said.

“That’ll work.”

She propped herself up on an elbow. “I have the feeling,” she said, “that we just did something for the very last time.”

“I think you’re right.”

“When we wake up tomorrow morning, we’ll be pumpkins.”

“What’s odd,” I said, “is that I know what you mean. And yes, I think that’s what’s going to happen.”

“Metrocards. Security cameras.”

“Everything you’d find in the best of all possible worlds.”

“You won’t be able to go bowling.”

“Or burgling. And you won’t be able to go to Paula’s.”

“Or the Duchess, which I never did get inside of. And how many times did I go to Paula’s? Once?”

“Really? Just the one time?”

“As if all I wanted to do was make sure it was there. And it was, but at the same time it wasn’t. Do you know what I mean?”

“Um—”

“It’s like someone commissioned a stage designer to recreate Paula’s in her old spot on Greenwich Avenue,” she said, “and the guy did a perfect job and got everything right, so that it looked real and felt real and even smelled real.”

“But?”

“But the first thing you had to do was admire the guy’s work, and if you’re admiring it, well, that means you know it’s a stage set.”

“So it can’t be real,” I agreed. “This whole world’s like that.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

“Probably not for the people who belong here. But we’re just visitors, you and I.”

“Strangers and afraid, in a world we never made. That’s from a poem, isn’t it?”

“More or less. But we’re not exactly strangers.”

“And not exactly afraid,” she said. “And it’s not a world we never made, because, duh, we’re the ones who made it. Both of us, Bern.”

I took a moment, nodded. “Paula’s and the Duchess,” I said.

“And Alice in Wonderland. Tweedledum and Tweedledee?”

“Oh, right.”

“And Little Orphan Annie.”

“Huh?”

“In the comics, Bern. And then on Broadway, the musical, but for me it was always the Harold Gray comic strip. Whenever I got my hands on the morning paper, that was the first thing I looked at. Sometimes the only thing. Don’t tell me you don’t remember Little Orphan Annie.”

“Of course I do. Annie, who had empty circles for eyes.”

“And?”

“And she used to say ‘Leaping lizards,’ and—”

“And her dog was Sandy, and do you remember what he said?”

“Arf.”

“And?”

“And what? If he ever said anything but Arf, I must have missed it.”

“Once you’ve said Arf,” she said, “you’ve pretty much said it all. Besides Sandy, Bern. Who else was in the strip?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Daddy something. Daddy Warbucks?”

“Keep going, Bern.”

“Keep going? Keep going where?”

“When you saw Daddy Warbucks, who else were you likely to see?”

“Oh.”

“Well?”

“Punjab,” I said.

“And?”

“And the Asp.”

“There you go, Bern. Orrin Vandenbrinck started out with Dum and Dee for bodyguards, straight out of the Alice books, and when they got killed off who’d he replace them with? Punjab and the Asp, Daddy Warbucks’s bodyguards for all those years.”

I pictured the pair, the impossibly tall one in the turban, his silent and sinister companion.

“There’s a definite resemblance,” I allowed.

“A resemblance? You think that’s all it is?”

“Well, the tall one’s a Sikh,” I said, “and there are a lot of tall Sikhs, and tall or short they all wear turbans—”

“And beards, Bern.”

“And beards?”

“Check Wikipedia. That’s what I did, a day or two ago when you were racing around town doing whatever you were doing. That’s when it dawned on me that one of the ways I brought this world into being was by bringing Punjab and the Asp into it. Bern, hair is a big thing for a Sikh. If you want to be a Sikh in good standing, you never cut or shave any of your hair, not on your head or your face or your body.”

“If you say so.”

“But the dude in the turban who showed up at the Poodle Factory, and who was at Vandenbrinck’s side a few hours ago at the bookstore—”

“Was clean-shaven.”

“He could have stepped out of a Barbasol commercial. And if you happened to look at Punjab in a Little Orphan Annie comic strip—”

“You can do that online?”

“You can do anything online, Bern.”

Anything that didn’t involve Amazon or eBay. “And when Harold Gray drew Punjab—”

“No beard.”

“You’re positive?”

“Bern, I lived and breathed Little Orphan Annie. Trust me on this one.”

I thought about it. “Okay,” I said.

“Okay?”

“It would have to be your doing, that’s all. I used to read the comic strip when I was a kid, but it never made that huge an impression on me. But we already established that you deserve credit for co-creating this universe.”

“Credit or blame,” she said. “Either way, this is a joint venture.”

“Right.”

“It took both of our imaginations to get us into this—”

“Mess?”

She gave me a look. “Situation,” she said. “This joint venture. You made me take half the money, remember? From Abel?”

“Because we’re partners.”

“Sixteen thousand for you, sixteen thousand for me. And now there’s just one thing more I need to make this partnership as even as Steven.”

“What’s that?”

“An explanation,” she said. “You laid it all out for everybody at the bookshop, and most of them were quick enough to deny what you accused them of, but no one came up with the ultimate Alice objection.”

“The ultimate Alice objection?”

“‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’”

“Oh.”

“And I followed along, Bern, just like everybody else, and I don’t know if you dazzled me with brilliance or baffled me with bullshit—”

“The latter, I suspect.”

“—but either way the words got all wispy and floated away somewhere. Edgar Margate, for example.”

“The jade collector.”

“”Rich Uncle Pennybags,” she said. “That’s who he looked like, the Monopoly Man. All he was missing was the monocle.”

“And the bowler hat.”

“He put his jade collection on display at the gallery on Lispenard, and arranged to have it stolen?”

“Right.”

“But not by you.”

“No.”

“He wanted the insurance money, and he wanted to get it without giving up the jade figurines.”

“Cash flow problems,” I said. “Even a man who’s the spitting image of Mr. Monopoly can have them. But what do you say we put this on Hold?”

“How’s that, Bern?”

“I can explain,” I said. “I can explain how Edgar Margate arranged to have his own collection stolen, and how the Kloppmann Diamond wound up in Peter-Peter’s possession—”

“But it’s not the real diamond, is it?”

“—and who killed Jason Philbert and Mason Dilbert—”

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

“—and everything else that’s hard to understand. The reason it’s hard to understand is it doesn’t make any real sense, it’s all Wonderland whimsy and Looking Glass logic, but I can explain it.”

“I’m listening.”

“But not tonight,” I said. “Tonight I couldn’t even put the words and thoughts together, and you couldn’t take them in. But when we’re back in our own universe—”

“The real world.”

“Right.”

“Although this world seems real enough,” she said. “Except when it doesn’t. And you think we’ll be back where we started?”

“I think so.”

“Tomorrow?”

“When we wake up,” I said.

I was up and dressed at this point, and she sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me. “You’re going somewhere,” she said. “West End Avenue?”

“Right.”

“You want to sleep in your own bed,” she said, “in your own apartment.”

“I think that would be the best way to handle it. This started when I finished What Mad Universe and dropped off to sleep.” I patted my back pocket. “When I get home, I’ll make myself a cup of chamomile tea and get in bed with The Screaming Mimi.”

“Oh, you haven’t finished it yet?”

“I’ve been kind of busy. And I decided I didn’t want to finish, not just yet. So I’ve got a couple of pages to go.”

“So you’ll get in bed with the book.”

“And the money,” I said.

“The money?”

“The sixteen thousand from Abel. I don’t know how it works when it comes to transporting something from one world to another, but I’ve been carrying around that wad of Benjamins all afternoon and evening, and I figure the best chance I’ll have to hang on to them is if they’re right there in the bed with me.”

“Unless they turn into a Metrocard.”

“As I said, I don’t know how these things work, but I’ll find out when I wake up. And you ought to do the same. Your share’s in your stash, right?”

“Last I looked.”

“Get it out,” I said, “and sleep with it.”

“Jesus, I’ll feel like Scrooge McDuck. But okay, it’s a good idea. I think.”

“You’ll know in the morning.”

When I had one foot out the door, she asked if God was right.

“God’s always right,” I said. “It’s part of his job description.”

“In the book, Bern. The Screaming Mimi. Godfrey, the old drunk everybody calls God?”

“Oh.”

“Didn’t he maintain that if you want something badly enough you’ll get it? Well, are you close enough to the end to know if he’s right about that?”

“The deck’s stacked in God’s favor,” I said, “because if you don’t get it, then by definition you didn’t want it badly enough. But there’s a kicker.”

“Wouldn’t you know it?”

“If you want it badly enough,” I said, “you’ll get it. But it won’t make you happy.”

“Oh, wow. I’ll have to think about that. Bern? Get home safe.”

“I’ll walk to the corner,” I said, “and within twenty seconds a cab will pull up. I have to admit it, there are things about this universe I’m going to miss.”