When the weather was okay, we'd go out walking with Mae in her carriage and the two of us on either side. Then another side of Eliot showed itself. I soon realized he _couldn't_ have lived anywhere but New York, because it was one of the few things he really loved. A walk with him meant an ongoing lecture about architecture, Frederick Law Olmstead's original plans for Central Park and where the best walnut brownies in the city could be found.
He took us to gallery openings and to a concert in Soho where thirty-two people listened to six people snip the air with scissors, all thirty-eight of us wearing totally serious expressions on our faces. It was a hoot; both Danny and I loved it. When the concert was over, Danny slipped into a dime store and bought three pairs of those silver, round-ended scissors like you had in kindergarten.
«Let's go home and do an encore!»
Wednesday afternoons Eliot and I got into the habit of having lunch together in our apartment. He'd eat a meatball wedge or a souvlaki gyro, while I polished off hunks of feta cheese and black Greek olives or spaghetti al burro. When we were done, we would settle down for a couple of hours of gab.
That's how I found out about his interest in the occult. He told me about a party he'd gone to where they had used a ouija board to summon the ghost of Amelia Earhart. I rolled my eyes at that and asked if she had flown into the room. That made him very mad. He believed wholeheartedly in «other powers» and was offended when I joked about the subject. It was one of the only times he ever got mad at me.
«You're such a little wise guy, Cullen. Let me see your hand.»
Rondua galloped across my mind and I felt uneasy about letting him have a look.
«Oh come on, Cullen. I'm not asking you to undress. Just let me look at your hand; I want to see what's up with you.»
I knew the left hand was what you're born with and the right is what you've done with it. I didn't know which would be more revealing to let him see.
«No, give me your right hand. Okay, let's see what we have here.»
He didn't take one look and jump in the air which, after my recent Rondua dreams, I was half-expecting. He squeezed the pads of my palm and fingers, then turned the hand over and back a few times.
«Well, my dear, I'm afraid you are very uninteresting, palm-wise. It says you'll be happily married, your children will turn out okay and you'll live longer than I will.»
«Seriously, Eliot, do you believe in occult things?»
His face said yes before he did. «Without any question, Cullen. I've seen too many things _not_ to believe it.»
«Then will you promise not to tell anyone if I tell you something? Especially not Danny?»
«Cross my heart, Mrs. James.»
I took a deep, deep breath and for the fourth time in one year, launched into the story of Rondua.
Eliot chewed his lip and looked at his fingernails while I spoke, but I knew he was paving attention.
«And Danny knows all about it?»
«All but the recent parts. Not about the racing driver and Alvin Williams being in there too. It worried him enough before; he thought something was going wrong with me.»
«But the shrinks said you were all right, right? Not that those dunces know what they're talking about! I once went to a psychiatrist who told me I'd get better if I painted my apartment green.»
«No, both of them said it was a little _abnormal_ for the dreams to go on in such perfect . . . order, but it was nothing to really worry about.»
We dropped the subject a while later when Mae woke from her nap and started complaining. But later that evening, he called and said he had talked with a friend of his who owned a bookstore. This friend was a big Doris Lessing fan and she had once told Eliot something about Lessing that rang a bell in his head when we talked.
«Cullen, you're insane, but you're not at _all_ original. According to my friend Elisabeth Zobel, Doris Lessing has what she calls 'serial dreams.' Here, listen to this: it's a quote from an interview Doris did in London: 'I had serial dreams. I don't mean to say necessarily the same story. But when I have a certain dream, I know it is the same area of my mind. . . . But it is not like a film which ends at a certain place or event. What happens is, I dream in the same area, like the same landscape or the same people, but above all the same feeling, the same atmosphere.'»
I closed my eyes and sighed a big deep sigh. It sounded so familiar.
«It sounds similar, Eliot, but not exactly the same.» I looked around the room to make sure Danny wasn't within earshot. «How come Alvin Williams and that racing driver were in there too?»
«Because they're part of your _life_, dumbie! Cullen, I'll bet you a million dollars Doris Lessing has her Alvin Williams too. All of us take things from our everyday life and stick them right in our dreams – and usually crookedly too. You and Doris make a lovely pair. Good night, Mrs. Norman Bates. Say hello to your husband for me.»
Early one morning we came up over a soft rise and below us, a mile or two away, was a wide paved road that stretched all the way to the horizon.
I was sitting on top of Martio's high hump, holding Pepsi in front of me. Mr. Tracy stood next to us, our Bones of the Moon walking sticks stuck in the black silk band of his enormous hat.
«Should I know about that road, Mr. Tracy?»
«No, I don't think so, Cullen. It was built after you left. Some of the machines on the plain just started up and began working on it. They kept at it until they had made a road that crosses all of Rondua. None of us know what it's for, but it does get you places twice as fast. If you want to go and visit Jackie Billows in the Conversation Bath some day, just get on that road and you'll be there a week earlier than you first planned.»
«Well, does anyone ever use it?»
«Not that I know of.» He stopped and looked at Martio and Felina, who both shook their heads.
Martio raised his head and turned to face us as best he could around his hump. «Once in a while they'll have a party on it, depending on which Stroke you're in. It's a very good surface to dance on.»
Although we were far from the road, I could see something moving toward us from the horizon very quickly.
«Look, there's something coming our way!»
«Yeah, look, Mom! What's that, Mr. Tracy?»
«That? That's just the speed of sound. Sometimes, if you're very lucky, you'll be able to see the speed of light go by too, but that's rare. Sizzling Thumb likes to keep as much light as he can in his Stroke. But the speed of sound is so common, and there's so much _of_ it. . . . Most of us just ignore it if we're near. If you wait a minute, you'll hear it and know what I mean.»
The sound from the road arrived a few seconds later. It was the noise I had known all of my life – cars, whistles, people talking, footsteps – everything smashed together in a big bunch. For a moment, the air around us was thick with it, but it passed.
Pepsi turned and looked at Mr. Tracy, his small face serious and adult. «Where are we going now, Mr. Tracy?»
«We have to find the second Bone, Pepsi. _You_ have to find it. And before that, we have to go and meet Sizzling Thumb. Do you remember him, Cullen?»
The boy and the three animals looked at me. I felt so stupid looking back and shaking my head. _Sizzling Thumb_?
Eliot knocked gently on the door of the suite. I had never seen him so nervous. He'd invited me to go with him to the Pierre Hotel to interview Weber Gregston, whose new film _Sorrow and Son_ had everyone talking. I'd seen it and liked it very much, but people really paid to see what this Gregston character was going to do next.
He was a strange man who had made only three films in ten years and paid little attention to what either Hollywood or the public wanted. A decade before, he had been an obscure young poet who had abruptly come into the public eye when he _1_. won a MacArthur Fellowship and then _2_. used most of the money to make a low-budget black and white film about a man who was convinced he was his own wife. It won a special award at the Berlin Film Festival and purportedly caused a riot in St. Louis, Missouri. One of the things I liked about the movie was its title – _The Night is Blond_.