Tick Tock

NINE

With paper towels and tap water, they had cleaned the blood off their foreheads.

The two Vietnamese women sat at the kitchen table. After applying a healing poultice that the hairdresser witch kept in the refrigerator, Mother Phan taped a gauze pad to Mrs. Dai’s bitten hand. ‘You sure not hurt?’

‘Fine, fine,’ said Quy Trang Dai. ‘Heal fast, no prob-lem.’

The rag doll lay on the table.

Tommy couldn’t take his eyes off it. ‘What’s in the damn thing?’

‘Now?’ Mrs. Dai said. ‘Mostly just sand. Some river mud. Snake blood. Some other things better you not know.’

‘I want to destroy it.’

‘Can’t hurt you now. Anyway, taking apart is my job,’ said Mrs. Dai. ‘Have to do according to rules or magic won’t be undone.’

‘Then take it apart right now.’

‘Have to wait till noon, sun high, night on other side of world, and then magic be undone.’

‘That’s only logical,’ Del said.

Getting up from the table, Mrs. Dai said, ‘Ready for tea now?’

‘I want to see it dismembered, everything inside cast to the wind,’ Tommy said.

‘Can’t watch,’ said Mrs. Dai as she took a tea kettle from one of the cabinets. ‘Magic must be done by sorceress alone, no other eyes to see.’

‘Who says?’

‘Dead ancestors of River Xan set rules, not me.’

‘Sit down, Tuong, stop worry, have tea,’ said Mother Phan. ‘You make Mrs. Dai think you not trust her.’

Taking Tommy by the arm, Del said, ‘Could I see you a minute?’

She led him out of the kitchen into the dining room, and Scootie followed them.

Speaking in a whisper, she said, ‘Don’t drink the tea.’

‘What?’

‘Maybe there’s more than one way to make a stray son return to the fold.’

‘What way?’

‘A potion, a combination of exotic herbs, a pinch of river mud - who knows?’ Del whispered.

Tommy looked back through the open door. In the kitchen, his mother was putting out cookies and slices of cake while Mrs. Dai brewed the tea.

‘Maybe,’ whispered Del, ‘Mrs. Dai was too enthusiastic about bringing you to your senses and back into the family. Maybe she started out with the drastic approach, the doll, when a nice cup of the right tea would have made more sense.’

In the kitchen, Mrs. Dai was putting cups and saucers on the table. The devil doll still lay there, watching the preparations with its cross-stitched eyes.

Tommy stepped into the kitchen and said, ‘Mom, I think we’d better go now.’

Looking up from the cake that she was slicing, Mother Phan said, ‘Have tea and nibble first, then go.’

‘No, I want to go now.’

‘Don’t be rude, Tuong. While we have tea and nibble, I call your father. By time we done, he stop by, take us home before he go work at bakery.’

‘Del and I are leaving now,’ he insisted.

‘No car,’ she reminded him. ‘This crazy woman’s car just trash in garage.’

‘The Peterbilt’s parked out there at the curb. The engine’s still idling.’

Mother Phan frowned. ‘Truck stolen.’

‘We’ll return it,’ Tommy said.

‘What about trash car in garage?’ Mrs. Dai asked.

‘Mummingford will send someone for it,’ said Del.

‘Who?’

‘Tomorrow.’

Tommy and Del and Scootie went into the living room, where the glass from the broken window crunched and clinked under their shoes.

Mrs. Dai and Mother Phan followed them.

As Tommy unlocked and opened the front door, his mother said, ‘When I see you again?’

‘Soon,’ he promised, following Del and Scootie onto the porch.

‘Come to dinner tonight. We have com tay cam, your favourite.’

‘That sounds good. Mmmmm, I can’t wait.’

Mrs. Dai and Mother Phan stepped onto the porch as well, and the hairdresser said, ‘Miss Payne, what day your birthday?’

‘Christmas Eve.’

‘Is true?’

Descending the porch steps, Del said, ‘October thirty-first.’

‘Which true?’ Mrs. Dai asked a little too eagerly. ‘July fourth,’ said Del. And to Tommy, sotto voce, she said, ‘They always need a birthday to cast the spell.’

Moving onto the front steps as Del reached the walk-way, Mrs. Dai said, ‘You have beautiful hair, Miss Payne. I enjoy doing such beautiful hair.’

‘So you can get a lock of it?’ Del wondered as she continued to walk toward the Peterbilt.

‘Mrs. Dai is wonderful genius hairdresser,’ said Mother Phan. ‘She give you best look ever have.’

‘I’ll call for an appointment,’ Del promised as she went around the truck to the driver’s door.

Tommy opened the passenger door to the truck cab so the dog could spring inside.

His mother and Mrs. Dai stood side by side on the steps of the front porch, his mother in black slacks and a white blouse, Mrs. Dai in her pink jogging suit. They waved.

Tommy waved back at them, climbed into the truck cab beside the dog, and pulled the door shut.

Del was already behind the wheel. She put the truck in gear.

When Tommy glanced at the house again, Mrs. Dai and his mother waved at him.

Again he returned the wave.

As Del drove away from the house, Tommy said miserably, ‘What am I going to do now? I love my mother, I really do, but I’m never going to be a baker or a doctor or any of the things she wants me to be, and I can’t spend the rest of my life afraid to drink tea or answer a doorbell.’

‘It’ll be all right, tofu boy.’

‘It’ll never be all right,’ he disagreed.

‘Don’t be negative. Negative thinking disturbs the fab-ric of the cosmos. A little bit of self-indulgent negativity might seem like an innocent pleasure, but it can cause a tornado in Kansas or a blizzard in Pennsylvania.’

Scootie licked Tommy’s face, and he didn’t resist. He knew he was genuinely desperate when he found himself taking comfort from the dog’s attentions.

‘I know exactly what we need to do,’ she said.

‘Oh, yeah? What?’

‘You’ve known since we kissed on the carousel.’

‘What a kiss.’

‘So for starters, we need to fly to Vegas and get married - if you care to propose to me.’

Scootie looked at him expectantly.

Tommy was surprised to hear her offer, but he was not surprised to hear himself say, ‘Deliverance Payne, daughter of Ned and Julia Rosalyn Winona Lilith, will you marry me?’

‘It’s going to take a lot more than a doll snake rat-quick little monster thing to stop me.’

‘You have a beautiful smile,’ he said.

‘You too.’

Actually, he wasn’t smiling. He was grinning like a fool.

Tommy had expected to catch a commercial flight from John Wayne Airport to Las Vegas, but Del’s mother owned a Learjet, which was ready for use with a fifteen-minute notice. Del was a qualified pilot.

‘Besides,’ she said, as they walked the last block to the airport from the abandoned Peterbilt, ‘I think the sooner we tie the knot, the better - in regards to whatever Mrs. Dai may have in mind. Married, we geometrically increase our psychic resources. We have more power to resist.’

A few minutes later, as they boarded the private jet, Del said, ‘Anyway, I want to see if we can beat my mom’s record. She married Daddy nineteen hours after she met him.’

Studying his watch, calculating, Tommy said, ‘You served me dinner about... twelve hours ago.’

‘We’ll make it. Are you tired, darling?’

‘Damn if I don’t feel totally rested. And I didn’t have a wink of sleep all night.’

‘You may never need it again,’ she said. ‘It’s such a waste of time, sleeping.’

Tommy sat in the co-pilot’s seat, while Scootie lounged in the passenger compartment.

They flew east into the morning sun, where the sky was no longer pink but as blue as Deliverance Payne’s eyes.

Their suite at the Mirage Hotel was one of several spacious and lavishly appointed accommodations. that were not rented to ordinary customers but were reserved to be provided free to high rollers who regularly gambled fortunes in the casino downstairs. Though neither Del nor Tommy intended to wager one dollar on the tables, the Payne name elicited a response no less generous and effusive than would have been accorded to an Arab prince bearing suitcases full of cash. Eighteen years after his death, Ned Payne remained a legendary poker player, and the hotel management’s affection for Del’s mother was evident in their numerous enquiries into the state of her health, her current activities, and the likelihood of her coming to visit sometime soon.

Even Scootie was greeted with huzzahs, petted and nuzzled and talked to in baby talk. In addition to the enormous vases full of fresh flowers that lent their fragrance to each of the seven rooms in the suite, there were strategically placed, silver-plated bowls full of dog biscuits.

A clothing store in the hotel shopping arcade sent up two salespersons and carts laden with garments. Within ninety minutes of their arrival, Tommy and Del had showered, shampooed, and selected their wedding outfits.

He wore black tassel loafers, black socks, charcoal-grey slacks, a blue blazer, a white shirt, and a blue-striped tie.

‘You look very preppy,’ Del said approvingly.

She wore white heels, a figure-flattering white silk dress with white lace at the neck and at the cuffs of the long sleeves, and two white orchids in her hair.

‘You look like a bride,’ he said.

‘No veil, though.’

‘Wouldn’t want to hide that face,’ he said.

‘You’re so sweet.’

Just as they were ready to leave the hotel for the chapel, the mayor of the City of Las Vegas arrived with an envelope containing their license. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man with silver hair, attired in an expensive blue suit, wearing a five-carat pinkie ring.

‘You dear girl,’ the mayor said, kissing Del on the forehead, ‘you are the most glamorous creature I’ve ever seen. How is Ingrid?’

‘She’s splendid,’ Del said.

‘She doesn’t come to town often enough. Will you tell her that I pine for her?’

‘She’ll be so pleased to know she’s remembered.’

‘She’s more than remembered. She’s unforgettable.’

Del said, ‘Well I’m spilling a secret here, but I’m sure you’ll have a chance to tell her yourself.’

The major embraced Tommy as if they were father and son. ‘This is a great day, a great day.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

To Del the mayor said, ‘Dear, you have arranged a limousine, I presume.’

‘Yes, it’s waiting.’

‘Then just delay here two minutes, so I can pop downstairs and be sure the police escort is ready too.’

‘You’re an absolute jewel,’ Del said, kissing his cheek.

The mayor departed, and Tommy said, ‘Who’s Ingrid?’

Examining herself in the marble-lined foyer’s ornate mirror, Del said, ‘That’s what some people call my mother.’

‘Of course. Will she be very upset that she wasn’t at the wedding?’

‘Oh, she’s here,’ Del said happily.

Still capable of surprise, Tommy said, ‘How?’

‘I called her as soon as we arrived, before I showered, and she flew up in her other jet.’

On the way down in the elevator, Tommy said, ‘How could you possibly manage to arrange all this so quickly?’

‘You took so long selecting your wardrobe,’ she said, ‘that I had time to make a few calls.’

An enormous black stretch limousine waited in front of the hotel, in the shade of the portico. Mummingford stood beside it. He had flown up from Newport Beach with Ingrid.

‘Miss Payne,’ he said, ‘may I offer my best wishes for much happiness.’

‘Thank you, Mummingford.’

‘Mr. Phan,’ said the butler, ‘I offer you my congratu-lations. You’re a fortunate young man.’

‘Thank you, Mummingford. I think I’m more than fortunate. I’m blessed. And bewildered.’

‘I myself,’ said Mummingford, ‘have functioned in a state of perpetual bewilderment ever since coming to work for Mrs. Payne. Isn’t it delightful?’

The Chapel of Everlasting Bliss, one of Las Vegas’s more well-appointed wedding mills, was bedecked with so many hundreds of red and white roses that Tommy feared an attack of hay fever. He stood by the altar railing, trying not to fidget, smiling stupidly because the place was full of people smiling at him.

Designed primarily to provide a suitable quasi-religious venue to impulsive out-of-state couples who arrived in Vegas either alone or with a few carloads of friends, the chapel seated only sixty people. Even given such short notice of the ceremony, friends of the Payne family filled the pews to capacity, and another thirty stood in the side aisles.

At Tommy’s right hand, Roland Ironwright, the magi-cian, said, ‘Relax. Getting married is a snap. I did it myself eighteen hours ago in this very room.’

Accompanied by a nine-piece band, Frank sang, ‘I’ve got the World on a String,’ as only Frank had ever been able to sing it, while Mrs. Payne gave Del a final once-over in the vestibule at the back of the chapel.

Then the band struck up ‘Here Comes the Bride.’

Scootie entered from the vestibule, carrying a nosegay in his mouth, which he brought to Tommy.

Behind Scootie was Mai, Tommy’s sister, radiant as he had never seen her. She carried a white basket full of rose petals, which she sprinkled on the carpet as she advanced.

Del appeared, and everyone seated in the chapel rose to beam at her as she approached the altar.

Somehow Frank managed to ad-jib additional lyrics to ‘Here Comes the Bride,’ adding lines like ‘she looks so groovy, like she stepped out of a movie,’ without diminishing the beauty and solemnity of the piece. Indeed, if anything, his version enormously enriched the old standard, and he sounded fifty years younger than he was, not like a crooner at the twilight of his life but like a young swinger in the days of the Dorsey Brothers and Duke Ellington.

When Tommy handed the nosegay to Del and took her arm to lead her to the altar, his heart swelled with love.

The minister was mercifully swift in the performance of his sacred duties, and precisely when it was needed,

Roland Ironwright cut open a fresh orange and produced the wedding band from the heart of the fruit.

After the minister pronounced them man and wife at 11:34 in the morning, less than eighteen hours after they had first met, Tommy and Deliverance indulged in another kiss of earthshaking power, only the second they had ever shared, and the onlookers applauded joyously.

From his place in front of the band, Frank called out to Del’s Mother, ‘Hey, Sheila, you wonderful broad, come up here and do this number with me!’

Del’s mother joined him, and they shared a micro-phone to belt out an up-tempo rendition of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin,’ which served as a recessional.

In the receiving line outside, Del reminded everyone about the reception at the grand ballroom of the Mirage at seven o’clock that evening. It promised to be the party of the year.

When the two of them were alone again with Scootie in the back of the limousine, returning to the hotel, Del said to Tommy, ‘Are you tired yet?’

‘I don’t understand it, but I feel as if I just woke up from the longest sleep on record. I’ve got so much energy it’s absurd.’

‘Lovely,’ she said, snuggling against him.

He put his arm around her, suddenly excited by the warmth of her and by the exquisite perfection with which her supple body moulded to his.

‘We’re not going back to the hotel,’ she told him.

‘What? Why not?’

‘I told Mummingford to take us to the airport. We’re flying back to Orange County right away.’

‘But I thought… I mean… aren’t we going to… Oh, Del, I want to be alone with you.’

‘I’m not going to ask you to consummate until you know all of my secrets,’ she said.

‘But I want to consummate,’ he said. ‘I want to con-summate this morning, as soon as possible, right here in the limo!’

‘Have you been eating too much tofu?’ she asked coquettishly.

‘If we go back to Orange County, we’ll miss our own party this evening.’

‘It’s less than an hour flight each way. We have maybe two hours of business when we get there. We’ll make it back with time to spare.’ She put a hand in his lap. ‘With time to consummate.’

In her house on Balboa Peninsula, Del led Tommy upstairs to the studio where she created her paintings.

Canvases were hung on all sides, and others stood in stacks against one wall, at least a hundred altogether. Most of them were exceedingly strange landscapes of places that could never exist on this world, scenes of such stunning beauty that the sight of them brought tears to Tommy’s eyes.

‘I painted these by remote viewing,’ she said, ‘but someday I hope to travel there.’

‘Where?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

Eight paintings were different from all the others. They were portraits of Tommy, rendered with a photographic realism equal to that with which the landscapes had been painted.

Blinking in astonishment, he said, ‘When did you do these?’

‘Over the past two years. That’s how long I’ve been having dreams about you. I knew you were the one, my destiny, and then last night you just walked into the restaurant and ordered two cheeseburgers.’

The living room in the Phan house in Huntington Beach was remarkably similar to the living room of the Dai House, although the furnishings were somewhat more expensive. A painting of Jesus, revealing His Sacred Heart, hung on one wall, and in a corner was a Buddhist shrine.

Mother Phan sat in her favourite armchair, slack-jawed and pale, having taken the news of the wedding as though she had been hit in the face with a skillet.

Scootie licked one of her hands consolingly, but she didn’t seem to be aware of the dog.

Del sat on the sofa with Tommy, holding his hand. ‘First, Mrs. Phan, I want you to understand that the Payne’s and the Phan’s could be the most wonderful combination of families imaginable, a tremendous union of talents and forces, and my mother and I are prepared to embrace all of you as our own. I want to be given a chance to love you and Mr. Phan and Tommy’s brothers, and I want all of you to learn to love me.’

‘You steal my son,’ said Mother Phan.

‘No,’ Del said, ‘I stole a Honda and later a Ferrari, and then we borrowed the Peterbilt that the demon stole, but I didn’t steal your son. He gave his heart to me of his own free will. Now before you say anything more that might be rash, that you might later come to regret having said, let me tell you about my mother and me.’

‘You bad news.’

Ignoring the insult, Del said, ‘Twenty-nine years ago, when my Mom and Dad were driving from Vegas to a poker tournament in Reno, taking a scenic route, they were abducted by aliens from a lonely stretch of highway near Mud Lake in Nevada.’

Gazing at Del, his head ringing like a gong with remembered lines of conversation that had seemed like sheer lunacy when she had spoken them, Tommy said, ‘South of Tonopah.’

‘That’s right, darling,’ said Del. To Tommy’s mother, she said, ‘They were taken up to the mothership and examined. They were allowed to remember all of this, you see, because the aliens who abducted them were good extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, most of the abductions are perpetrated by evil ET’s whose plans for this planet are nefarious in the extreme, which is why they block abductees’ memories of what happened.’

Mother Phan scowled at Tommy. ‘You rude to Mrs. Dai, won’t even stay for tea, run off and marry crazy woman.’ She discovered Scootie licking her hand, and she shooed him away. ‘You want lose tongue, you filthy dog?’

‘Anyway, in the mothership, hovering above Mud lake,’ Del continued, ‘the aliens took an egg from my mother, sperm from Daddy, added some genetic wizardry of their own, and implanted mother with an embryo - which was me. I am a starchild, Mrs. Phan, and my mission here is to ferret out damage done by certain other extraterrestrials - which often includes teaching people like Mrs. Dai to perform evil mojo - and set things right. Because of this, I lead an eventful life, and often a lonely one. But at last not lonely anymore, because I have Tommy.’

‘World full of lovely Vietnamese girls,’ Tommy’s mother told him, ‘and you run away with crackpot maniac blonde.’

‘When I reached puberty,’ Del said, ‘I began to acquire various extraordinary powers, and I suppose I might continue to acquire even more as the years go by.’

Tommy said, ‘So that’s what you meant when you said you’d have been able to save your father if he hadn’t gotten cancer before you reached puberty.’

Squeezing his hand, Del said, ‘It’s all right. Fate is fate.

Death is just a phase, just a transition between this and a higher existence.’

‘The David Letterman show.’

Grinning, Del said, ‘I love you, tofu man.’ Mother Phan sat as stone-faced as an Easter Island monument.

‘And Emmy, the little girl… the daughter of the guard at the gatehouse,’ Tommy said. ‘You have cured her.’

‘And gave you a massage on the carousel that means you’ll never need to sleep again.’

He raised one hand to the back of his neck, and as his heart began to race with exhilaration, he remembered the tingle of her fingers as they had probed his weary muscles.

She winked. ‘Who wants to sleep when we could use all that time to consummate?’

‘Don’t want you here,’ said Mother Phan. Turning to her mother-in-law again, Del said, ‘When the aliens returned Mom and Daddy to that highway south of Tonopah, they sent along one of their own as a guardian, in the form of a dog.’

Tommy would have thought that nothing on earth could have torn his attention away from Del at that moment, but he turned his head to Scootie so fast that he almost gave himself whiplash.

The dog grinned at him.

‘Scootie,’ Del explained, ‘has greater powers than I do-’

‘The flock of birds that distracted the demon,’ Tommy said.

‘-and with your indulgence, Mrs. Phan, I will ask him to give a little demonstration to confirm what I’ve told you.’

‘Insane crazy American maniac blond lunatic’ Mother Phan insisted.

The Labrador sprang onto the coffee table, ears pricked,

tail wagging, and gazed so intently at Mother Phan that she pressed back into her armchair in alarm.

Above the dog’s head, a sphere of soft orange light formed in the air. It hung there a moment, but when Scootie twitched one ear, the light spun away from him and whirled around the room. When it passed an open door, the door flew shut. When it passed a closed door, the door flew open. All the windows rose as if flung up by invisible hands, and balmy November air blew into the living room. A clock stopped ticking, unlighted lamps glowed, and the television switched on by itself.

The sphere of light returned to Scootie, hovered over his head for a moment, and then faded away.

Now Tommy knew how Del had started the yacht without keys and how she had hot-wired the Ferrari in two seconds flat.

The black Labrador got off the coffee table and padded to his mistress, putting his head on her lap.

To Tommy’s mother, Del said, ‘We’d like you and Mr. Phan and Tommy’s brothers and their wives, all his nieces and nephews, to come to our party tonight in Las Vegas and celebrate our marriage. We can’t fit you all in the LearJet, but Mother has leased a 747, which is standing by at the airport right now, and if you hurry, you can all be there with us tonight. It’s time for me to quit my job as a waitress and get on with my real work. Tommy and I are going to lead eventful lives, Mrs. Phan, and we’d like all of you to be a part of that.’

Tommy couldn’t read the wrenching series of emotions that passed across his mother’s face.

Having said her piece, Del stroked Scootie, scratched behind his ears, and murmured appreciatively to him:

‘Oh, him a good fella, him is, my cutie Scootie-wootums.’ After a while, Mother Phan got up from her chair. She went to the television and turned it off.

She went to the Buddhist shrine in the corner, struck a match, and lit three sticks of incense.

For perhaps two or three minutes, the survivor of Saigon and the South China Sea stood staring at the shrine, inhaling the thin and fragrant smoke.

Del patted Tommy’s hand.

At last his mother turned away from the shrine, came to the sofa, and stood over him, scowling. ‘Tuong, you won’t be doctor when want you be doctor, won’t be baker when want you be baker, write stories about silly whiskey-drunk detective, won’t keep old ways, don’t even remember how speak language from Land of Seagull and Fox, buy Corvette and like cheeseburgers better than com tay cam, forget your roots, want to be something never can be... all bad, all bad. But you make best marriage any boy ever make in history of world, so I guess that got to count for something.’

By four-thirty that afternoon, Tommy, Del, and Scootie were back in their suite at the Mirage.

Scootie settled in his bedroom to crunch dog bis-cuits and watch an old Bogart and Bacall movie on television.

Tommy and Del consummated.

Afterward, she didn’t bite his head off and devour him alive.

That evening at the reception, Mr. Sinatra called Mother Phan, ‘A great old broad,’ Mai danced with her father, Ton got tipsy for the first time in his life, Sheila Ingrid Julia Rosalyn Winona Lilith answered to three other names, and Del whispered to Tommy, as they did a fox-trot, ‘This is reality, tofu man, because reality is what we carry in our hearts, and my heart is full of beauty just for you.’