So, of course, he never got around to telling her. What was the real point in upsetting her, worrying her now, when he had nothing more solid to go on?
The lecture happened two days later. They’d bought tickets for it a month back, and had no reason at all not to attend, despite the recent news. Their lives were going to become rather more limited after a few trimesters, let’s face it, and so they’d best make the most of it.
A BETTER REALITY, a conversation with Lyle Tamborough, the posters outside the theatre on Main had been promising all week. One of the alarms had malfunctioned, closing up the bank this evening, and so they got there slightly late.
The place was already full as they edged in, almost every last seat taken. The Yakamuras and Goodhews were there, as was everybody from the dinner party. Judith Mackenzie was in attendance as well.
Leonora Strang noticed them coming quietly in, and flashed them both a big white smile.
The Beazleys weren’t here, Frank took note. They obviously had so many other ‘things’ to do, this wasn’t one of them.
He mumbled a soft apology to each person he disturbed and, reaching his seat, quickly settled down.
“— setting up the basics for the things that we now know about our universe and other ones.”
He’d seen photographs of Tamborough before, but the man was far shorter and more frail-looking than he had imagined. He had to be in his mid-sixties, and stood at the podium with a noticeable stoop. His silver hair was thinning, but he had a dense moustache of the same colour. He wore tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, which Frank not seen in a good long while. His spindly fingers, nicotine-stained, fingered at the microphone stand. His voice was high and slightly grating.
He had drawn a succession of overlapping discs on the blackboard next to him, and was pointing at the top and bottom ones by now. Frank listened carefully, trying to catch up on what he’d missed.
“The alternate universes at the far ends of the scale will, obviously, be completely different from ours. So different, in fact, that four-dimensionality – the fourth dimension being time – might not exist in the least bit as we understand it. But closer to our own reality –“
He indicated the more central discs.
“— what we might very well find are universes like our own, but with slight variations. And who knows what those could be? A world where Yellow Cabs are red, perhaps? Or where politicians are honest?”
The audience laughed dutifully.
“My central point is that science and the human psyche dovetail very neatly in this proposition, as they often prove to do. Because I ask you, what has been the central dream of mankind down the millennia, encapsulated in nearly every major religion on this Earth? Why, the concept of Heaven. Paradise. A better place, a happier and trouble-free form of existence. Even to this day, even in this age of science, mankind yearns for that. Fundamentalist Christians in the heartland of this very country eagerly await the end of this tainted and imperfect world, the coming of the Rapture. Fundamentalists of other creeds actually kill themselves, and take others with them, to escape this life and thus enter a better one.”
Frank blinked slowly. What was this about? The man seemed to be describing what he, personally, had always regarded as dumb notions, lunatic behaviour. And then … lending validation to it?
“My point is, you don’t have to die. A better universe is out there, free of spite and violence and crime and war. The only thing we have to do is find it.”
“Could we actually go there?” someone in the audience asked.
“The truthful answer is, not yet. But I’m working on it.”
Which got him another, bigger laugh.
It went on in this manner for another forty minutes that, to Frank, seemed considerably longer. Most of this, so far as he was concerned, was pointless mumbo-jumbo. But the audience was listening attentively, almost raptly. And that included Joannie. He was surprised at first … he’d always thought her far more level-headed. But considering her new condition …?
The more he turned that one thing over, then the more that it made sense. How tempting all this had to sound to a woman newly pregnant. To bring up your first child in a world far calmer, safer, happier than the one that they were in? How massively appealing did that concept have to be?
A very pleasant fantasy, yes, he had to admit. But he’d expected something rather more substantial from the winner of a Nobel Prize.
The lecture finally petered to a close, to a massive round of applause. Judith Mackenzie actually climbed up and helped the old man off the stage – he didn’t even realise they knew each other.
When they emerged into the lobby, a tight cluster of women were chattering away excitedly. He knew them all by now. Leonora, Aimee, Alexis, Judy Elfman. Judith Mackenzie joined them having, presumably, relinquished her charge.
“I suppose I’d better tell them the good news,” Joannie announced brightly.
But he was in no mood for it himself. The lecture had left him edgy and a little tired. And besides, of the gathered women there were two he didn’t feel inclined to hang around with all that much.
“You go ahead. I need some fresh air,” he responded quickly. “See you outside.”
And it turned out she was okay with that.
Standing on Main, his hands in his pockets, everything looked slightly unreal around him, like a studio set. Slightly unreal. He remembered what Jack had said.
The gleaming, darkened windows and the ochre streetlights against the black sky. Tamborough’s statue looked like it had been transplanted here from the set of a science-fiction movie. Couples were going by him, talking. All of them casually, but not cheaply, dressed. Climbing into good models of car, Mercs, Beamers, luxury SUVs. Everything the same round here, and everyone quite similar. God, it grated at him now.
He remembered Aimee Stock talking about her old home-town in New York State, the way it had declined. ‘You know what worries me? The way things change these days.’ Everybody, these days, seemed so anxious about that.
He didn’t personally care for this equation where change equalled bad. Keeping things they way they were might make other people feel comfortable, but it just left him with a sense of being trapped.
A tall blond woman, getting into a sports-model Lexus, lit a cigarette. And, on a sudden impulse, he went across and bummed one off her quickly. Christ, he hadn’t done this in years.
The first lungful of smoke? It made his head reel faintly, but it set off all of the familiar nerve endings. And he wondered for a moment why he’d even given this up, before remembering. The little matter of strokes, emphysema, cancer and so on. It had been the right thing – the sensible thing – to do.
And how had his life got so fucking sensible these days?
The last time he’d used any harmful substance, before this one? It had been getting slightly tipsy at the Strangs when they had first arrived here. And that was the sum total of it? Getting very mildly pissed up, one time?
He remembered, back at college … well, those days were properly behind him now.
The second drag made him start to cough, and he threw the remainder of the cigarette down a storm drain. That’s your idea of kicks these days, Frankie boy, he told himself. There’s your wild side. One and a half draws on a Virginia Slim.
And then he wondered whether all this was a just panicky reaction to the massive new responsibilities that were about to descend on him. Am I just being chicken-shit? That notion slowed him down.
Joannie was taking her time, now wasn’t she? He went back to the theatre door. The women were all still there, in the same positions. But, instead of the delighted and congratulatory bustle he’d expected, they seemed lost in some rather more earnest conversation. Joannie seemed to be listening fixedly, looking slightly puzzled. But then nodding rapidly when she was asked things, whatever they might be.
And … he wasn’t really sure he liked the look of this. Two of these women, at least, were conspirators of some kind, although he wasn’t certain what their game involved. Was Joannie becoming drawn into whatever might be going on?
Or maybe, once again, he was just making a big fuss over nothing. Jack’s interpretation flooded back into his mind. Maybe Leonora just messed around and told her friends about it. Could it be as smuttily mundane as that?
He had to wait practically another five minutes, though, before Joannie remembered he was there. Made her excuses. Walked towards him. She was smiling gently, thoughtfully, as though something had just occurred to her which had not been obvious before.
The film they’d watched before they’d moved here came to mind. Okay, he thought. You gonna replace me with a robot now?
“Pretty involved conversation, by the look of it,” he remarked as they made their way towards the car.
“They were giving me some good advice.”
“But none of them even have kids yet.”
“They all know people who do,” Joannie pointed out a little crossly. “And besides, did you know Alexis and Leonora both used to be nurses?”
Or at least wore the uniform in one case, Frank supposed.
He’d been planning to go a little deeper into the whole subject. Find some way – preferably a subtle one – of conveying to her his growing unease. But as they got into the car and closed the doors, Joannie sniffed the air and asked, “Have you been smoking?”
“A few puffs.”
She looked astonished, and rather affronted.
“Jeez, you’ve chosen quite a time to take that up again.”
“I told you, I just took a couple of draws and then threw it away.”
“Why pick it up in the first place?”
Which was a good question. So they rode in silence for a while.
“Were you girls talking about anything else?”
“Why would we be?” she asked, glancing at him rather oddly. “Frank, have you got something on your mind?”
They were almost at the corner of their street, by this time. And he was trying to think how to phrase this. When a siren, rushing up behind them, made them both look back.
A patrol car was hurtling up towards them, all its beacons flashing. But he wasn’t even doing the speed limit, so he doubted it was after him.
He pulled over to the kerb, to let it pass them. The whole Lexus shuddered as the cop car thundered by. They watched as it went speeding out into the desert, leaving a thick trail of dust behind it. It was rare for the police to even use their sirens here.
Frank was ready to pull out again, when more flashing lights became apparent. Another cop car, an ambulance, and then a fire truck, went heading off in the same direction the first vehicle had disappeared.
They both exchanged worried glances.
“What do you suppose is going on?”
#
They came to a slow halt about three miles out into the desert. The whole scene in front of them was washed in flickering red and blue. All four of the emergency vehicles had stopped. Figures were moving around, mere silhouettes by this juncture. Frank could see that there had been some kind of accident.
“Wait here,” he told Joannie now, remembering her condition. “Let me go and see what’s up.”
The air smelled very dry and sharp as he got out. Overlain with several odours. Was that burning rubber that he got a hint of? Was that engine oil, or gasoline?
He went around the fire truck. And stopped. And just stood there, not even blinking.
It was hard to be properly certain in this oscillating light, but that seemed to be Joe Beazley’s Mazda lying overturned on the parched desert soil. Its whole frame was badly crumpled. By the look of it – the distance it was lying from the actual black-top – it had flipped over several times. Its windshield was shattered, just the sharp edges remaining, like a maw of jagged teeth.
Behind those, suspended upside down, his cheek against the dirt, part of Joe Beazley’s face could be made out. The eyes were wide open and glassy. There was blood in one of them. And there was something wrong, as well, with the shape of his head.
His wife was not with him. Margaret had come out, obviously, on the first flip, Was lying near a roadside ditch. Her Prada-clad torso was practically split in two, and her limbs were set at peculiar angles, all her dignified aloofness robbed from her by now.
As he watched, some paramedics walked towards her with a body bag. The fire crew started at the Mazda with a cutting tool, and sparks filled the night air.
Frank’s gaze wandered over numbly to the road, the elongated, curving pair of skid-marks on it. Then a cop he knew, Don Hendershall, came ambling across.
“Know them?”
“A little. They lived on my street.”
“New here, I understand?”
“Relatively. What happened?”
“They were going over the hundred mark, I’d say from the skid-pattern.” Another cop was photographing and measuring them by this stage of events. “My guess is a blow-out. Can’t be any other reason – this is a completely empty road.”
“That can happen?”
Don glanced at him with a tight, quirky, rather enquiring smile. “Sure it can happen. A car ain’t a toy. Happens all the time, in fact.”
Margaret was half-way in her bag by this time. Joe Beazley continued staring outwards, oblivious to the racket and activity now going on around him.
Frank remembered what he had overheard Leonora say. ‘They simply have to go’.
Well then, this was a lucky break, in her case.
Copyright © Tony Richards 2010.
