Darcey can find no order or category to the books. They’re published in different years, in different languages. There are plays and medical texts, histories and cookbooks, atlases and bibles. He begins to have hateful and destructive thoughts. Like torching this goddamn vault. Torching Doc Hawthorne’s whole house. Driving the rented Jaguar off the Havelock Cliffs. Maybe with Yuk Tang locked in the trunk.
He decides to pocket the magnifying glass that’s in the gold bowl. As he reaches for it, he notices, underneath the thick stack of bulging envelopes, the top of a package wrapped in brown paper. He pulls it out. It looks like a large brown brick. It’s addressed to Doc Hawthorne and it hasn’t been opened. Darcey rips off layers of brown wrapper. He pulls and tears at the paper, getting frustrated and tense, but finally uncovering a book. Another book. It’s old, not in great shape, and bound in cloth. The front is blank, but on the spine are the words Holy Writ and beneath them, Bombay.
Darcey’s not sure why he’s excited. He moves closer to the two candles and licks his lips. As he begins to open the volume, a cough explodes behind him and his heart and lungs collapse for a second. He falls to the side and awkwardly turns his body. The book stays in his hand, shaking.
In front of him, in the opening to the vault, shoulders hunched and on his knees, is Yuk Tang. Darcey has lost his voice. Yuk Tang lets his head fall to the side and in the dim light, Darcey gets a better look: Yuk Tang’s face is completely made up. He looks like a rodeo clown. He has on lipstick, rouge, mascara, false eyelashes. There are long, dangling diamond earrings hanging from his earlobes and around his shoulders is some kind of fur stole.
Yuk Tang leans into the vault. Darcey begins to rise and Yuk Tang swings his arm forward and catches Darcey solidly above the eye. Darcey falls backward. He has no idea what has hit him. Something heavy and metal. A wide and fast stream of blood is making its way from Darcey’s skull down his face. He tries to move and falls back against a shelf of books. He watches with one eye as Yuk Tang withdraws from the vault. The light from the living room closes out and he hears a metallic click as the piano comes flush against the wall.
Now two streams of blood make their way in a slow race down Darcey’s right cheek and past the corner of his mouth. His tongue comes out and licks at his own blood, hesitantly at first, and then furiously. The tongue twists and stabs, trying for the thick lines of red. There is an ache that takes over his skull, obliterates everything else for a time, and then eases off, leaves just a dizzying and constant echo of pain and confusion. Darcey thinks he hears his own voice and gets startled, sits up to listen, but gets dizzy and falls back to the floor.
He rests his head against books and time goes by. He dozes and wakes, dreams quickly and mumbles to himself. His eyes blink open and closed, one continually bathed in a fresh wash of blood. He has confusing, rapidly changing nightmares: Yuk Tang and Darcey, buried alive in a cave. Yuk Tang and Darcey buried alive in a rented, olive green Jaguar. Buried alive in the Menard Diner, an earthquake or avalanche throwing walls of mud and rock up on the roof and against the stained glass windows, sealing them in. And himself, alone and helpless, all energy run out a hole in his body, being carried into a raging ocean in the arms of George Lewis, carried like a sleeping child into deafening surf, and the ocean changes form, becomes a heaving sea of books, encyclopedias and dictionaries, ebbing and banking, swallowing broken Darcey under an endless wave.
His good eye opens then closes. It opens again. He forces vision. The vault seems to be getting darker, the flame from the candles seems to be shrinking, flickering. He looks up the wall of books opposite him, to the half-dollar window in the corner, and he thinks he sees blue and white lights revolving, lighting the circle of sky and then leaving it.
He would bet something will happen soon. In his lap is the Holy Writ from Bombay. He opens the cover and several pages slide under his fingers. He tilts his head and tries to focus his eye and makes a ridiculous effort to read. An almost perfect way of killing time.
Frederick Waterman
Best Man Wins
From Hemispheres: The Magazine of United Airlines
I walked onboard flight 587 from Paris to New York, showed my ticket to the flight attendant, then walked through first class, where I usually sat, and continued back to coach. At Row 22, I stopped and looked down at the man sitting in Seat A, the man who I knew would be there, the man who had been having an affair with my wife for the past four months.
I sat down in Seat B.
Jean-Louis Vachon did not look up from the pages of Le Monde, for he was not a man to be bothered with nods of hello to other travelers. I have known him for nine years, but I wasn’t sure how I’d react this time. Five days ago, a computer at home malfunctioned, restoring a hundred deleted files. My wife’s words to Vachon left no room for doubt.
What did I feel? Rage, bitterness, bewilderment, and sick despair each took their turns with me. I have not told her that I know, but each day I struggle to hide my anger, while every night my best and sweetest memories of love are turned into nightmares — with the Frenchman in my place.
I’m trying to think clearly now, trying to get back to who I am. I want to know whom to blame. Her? Him? Probably both. Revenge is tempting, but I’m going to solve this problem for good.
The wedding ring on my left hand still looks new. Our impulsive, romantic marriage took place three years ago, in a small stone chapel outside of Paris. At the post-wedding dinner, I remember my best man, Jean-Louis Vachon, saving how envious he was, for I was marrying “the most beautiful woman in the world.” I didn’t know how deep his envy ran.
I glanced at Vachon. If I waited too long to greet him, my presence would seem ominous, and he would guess that our seat assignments were not by chance.
I took a deep breath. “Jean-Louis! Is that you behind the newspaper?”
He turned to me. “Edward, my friend! They have given you this seat? How lucky for me!” His charming smile was now in place, but I had seen a flicker — not of guilt, for Vachon would have none of that — but animal alertness.
“It’s wonderful to see you, Jean-Louis. It’s been too long.”
What, I’d asked myself last night, should a cuckold sound like when he’s sitting next to his wife’s lover? I would try for one part happy, two parts ignorant, with a thin coating of fool.
“How are the Vachon vines?” I asked cheerfully. “Provence is getting good weather this summer, and I’ve heard two vintners say they are dreaming of another year like 2000.”
“We are all dreaming of another 2000, though it may not come in our lifetime.” Vachon’s English was perfect, but his words still rode a French cadence. “Men who grow grapes are always at nature’s mercy.”
I smiled at the man I hated. “Jean-Louis, at Les Mirettes my customers don’t even look at the wine list anymore. They only want to know if I have ‘Vachon.’ I might as well take the rest of the wine cellar and throw it into the East River.”
“Let me know the day, and I’ll help you. I’m always glad to get rid of my competition. But, Edward, as a wonderful chef, you will never have that problem. You have no competition.”
Vachon, I thought, you are playing a little game with your words — you are my competition, and you know it. But I let no recognition come into my face while the Frenchman enjoyed his private double-entendre.
The last, breathless passengers arrived on Flight 587. The usual announcements were made as we taxied across the tarmac, and the plane barely paused at the head of the runway before accelerating, lifting off, and angling upward.