"Gee, Dad," his son pipes up, ironically admiring his handiwork, "does that mean I don't have to go to school today?"
"I'm sure you can find your usual way out of the attic window and down the drainpipe, Billy, just as though it were Saturday," replies his mother, and again there is a disturbing rattle in the air.
"Hey, come on," the father complains, "it's not funny," but he seems to be alone in this opinion. He has the terrible feeling that his marriage is collapsing, even though the bacon's as crisp as ever. Or, if not his marriage, something
"Hey, Dad, that's terrific!" exclaims his daughter, coming down for breakfast. "It looks like a giant tic-tac-toe board. What's it supposed to be, some kind of tribute to hurricanes or something?"
"That's right," says the mother, "it's called 'Three Sheets to the Wind.' Now, why don't you take it down, dear, and let the dog in. She's been scratching out there for an hour."
"Wow, speaking of sheets, I had the weirdest dream last night," says the daughter, ignoring the hollow static in the air. Her father shrinks into his chair, wondering whether the problem is that no one's listening — or that everyone is. "I was in this crazy city where everything kept changing into something else all the time. A house would turn into a horse just as you walked out of it or a golf course would take off and fly or a street would become a dinner table right under your feet. You might lean against a wall and find yourself out on the edge of a cliff, or climb into a car that turned out to be the lobby of a movie theater. Some guy would walk up to you and change into a pizza or a parking meter in front of your very eyes. Billy was in it, only he was sort of like a pinball machine and to shoot a ball you had to give a jerk on his peewee."
"That's stupid! Pinball machines are girls!"
"Maybe that explains the bed-wetting," sighs his mother.
"You were in it, too, Mom. You were in a chorus line in a kind of scary burlesque show, in which all the dancers were collapsing into blobs and freaks. One of your breasts seemed to slip down and slide out between your legs and you kept yelling something like 'Get a bucket! Get a bucket!' Dad wasn't in the dream, at least I didn't recognize him, but somebody who was pretending to be him kept hammering on the door and saying he was 'the loving dad' and please let him in. But I knew it was just a werewolf who was trying desperately to change back into a human and couldn't. See, everything kept changing except the things that were supposed to change."
"Speaking of your father, where is he? Wasn't he here just a minute ago?"
"I don't know. He wasn't looking very good. Sort of vague or something."
"Oh boy! Can I have his pancakes, Mom?"
"Well, I hope he paid the mortgage this month."
"Anyway, there were these midget league baseball players who turned out to be prehistoric monsters, and all of a sudden they attacked the city, only even as they went on eating up the people, the whole thing turned into a song-and-dance act in which the leading monster did a kind of ballet with the Virgin Mary who just a minute before had been a lawn chair. The two of them got into a fight and started zapping each other with ray guns and screaming about subversion on the boundaries, but just then the ship sank and everybody fell into the sea. You could see them all floating down past these enormous buttocks that turned out to belong to a dead man in a bathtub. Don't ask me who he was! Well, it occurred to me suddenly that if everything else was changing I must be changing, too. I looked in a mirror and saw I could flatten my nose or pull it out to a point, push my chin up to my forehead, stretch my cheeks out like wings. Still, I felt like there was something that wasn't changing, I couldn't put my finger on it exactly, but it was something down inside, something I could only call me. In fact there had to be this something, I thought, or nothing else made sense. But what was it? Who was down there? I was curious, so I asked the woman I was with to tell me what she thought of when she thought of me. I told her it couldn't be anything physical, my scars or my cock or the shit-streaks in my underwear, it had to be something you couldn't touch or see. And what she said was, 'Well, I think of you as a straight shooter, Sheriff, but one who can't stop lustin' after the goddamn ineffable.' "
"She said that, hunh?"
"Yup."
"Shitfire, Sheriff, what'd you do?"
"Well, I shot her." He hacks up a gob and aims it at the spittoon. "When a woman starts askin' me to change my ways — ptooey! — I change women." He tosses down his drink, leans away from the bar, cocks a wary eye on the swinging doors. "But now tell me somethin', podnuh — is that just my bowels movin' or is this saloon goin' somewhere?!"
"I'm afraid nothing stands still for long. So, just buckle up and enjoy the ride, ma'am."
"Ma'am?!"
"Yes, we'll be there soon."
"There — ?"
Charlie in the House of Rue
For a moment he stands there as though amazed, slap-shoes splayed, baggy trousers bunched up around his waist and tattered jacket fastidiously buttoned, there in the middle of the gleaming chandeliered hallway near the foot of a broad staircase, its polished balustrade winding above him like the frame of a formal portrait. Then he blinks, his eyelids flicking shut and open under his black derby like camera shutters. He flexes his bamboo cane, his elbows, his knees, glances around, his patch of scruffy black moustache twitching with anticipation. He bends from the waist, sniffs the large leafy plants that bank the staircase, lifts box lids, peeks behind paintings. He raps with his cane the nose of a wide-antlered deer's head mounted over a door near the stairwell, smiles toothily into the hall mirror, then tips his hat forward and dances an adroit flatfooted hopscotch on the floor, a brightly waxed checkerboard of black and white marble squares. The floor, the surfaces of the paintings, the mirrors, the polished balustrade and the crystal chandelier, all glitter with a bright sourceless light. Charlie swaggers jauntily through this light, challenging a hat tree to a fight, blowing his nose on a tapestry, doffing his derby to a suit of armor. He hooks his cane in his vest pocket, offers the armor a small cigar from a box on the hall table. No? Well. He offers himself one, accepts it, thanks the armor with an ingratiating smile. He pats his jacket, reaches deep into his trousers, pulls out the pockets: nothing but holes. He asks the suit of armor for a light. No response. He leans forward, knocks on the breastplate with his cane, jumps back in alarm, at the same time clapping his hands on the breastplate to still the reverberations. He presses his ear to the armor, sniffs its armpits, lifts the visor, peers in. He looks down. Up. Deeper down. He shrugs, drops the visor: it chops off the end of his cigar. He rolls his eyes at the truncated butt, scowls, then reopens the visor and tosses it in, leaping back as though to escape a trap. He helps himself to a fresh cigar, and on second thought to yet two more, one for each ear. He is about to pocket box and all when he discovers, on the stair landing high above him, a beautiful but strangely baleful young woman dressed in a long white gown. Abashedly, he offers her a cigar, while hiding the one in his hand behind his back. She gazes past him, unseeing. He returns the box to the table, pats it, smiles apologetically up at her, then returns the two cigars tucked behind his ears and seemingly the one behind his back as well, and, bowing and bobbing, tipping his derby, backs away into a doorway and out of the hall.