Wanting to know the worst, Hall left the library, went down the corridor, and entered the clock room, where every single clock on all the walls and standing on all the shelves was absolutely still. Not a sign of movement. They’d run down at various hours, some with their doors and birds’ mouths open, the rest shut down in mid-hour, like a medieval town under siege.
Hall was horrified. It was like looking at a massacre. “Hubert!” he cried, Hubert being an upstairs servant one of whose jobs was to keep these clocks wound. “Hubert?”
No answer. Hurrying to the wall phone, gleaming plastic among the dead wood, he pounded out Hubert’s extension, which would activate the man’s beeper no matter where on the grounds he might be. Then he hung up and waited, staring at the phone, because now it was Hubert’s job to call him back.
Nothing. Where was the man? Where was Hubert? Why was there nothing in the world but all these dead cuckoo clocks?
“Alicia!” he screamed, needing her, needing her now. “Alicia!”
He hurried back to the corridor, where his voice would carry farther. “Alicia!” She had to be here! Where was she, off with one of those damned automobiles? “Alicia!”
There was no one else, no one else in the world, who understood him and could give him solace at a time like this. With the rest of the world, no matter how awful things got, one had to go on pretending to be a grownup. Only with Alicia could he relax into the baby he was.
“Alicia!”
No answer. No answer. They all failed you, sooner or later. No one to rely on.
He couldn’t stand to look at the clocks any more, and he’d lost the spirit to go on gazing at his books. Pouting, lower lip stuck out, he trailed away down the corridor until he saw the open door of the gym, and went in there instead.
Ah, the gym. If only Flip Morriscone were here. Flip was a good fellow, one of the very few good fellows Hall had ever met. A good fellow, and an honest fellow, and a hardworking fellow, and the best thing of all, he liked Monroe Hall! If he were here now, he’d be supportive about the cuckoos, he’d know what to do next.
At loose ends—well, he was always at loose ends these days—Hall went over to the treadmill, set it at a very leisurely pace indeed, far more languid than Flip would ever allow, and went for a little walk.
A little walk to nowhere, that’s what his life had come down to. He could walk, he could walk all he wanted, but he couldn’t actually go anywhere.
Treadmill to Oblivion, 1954, Fred Allen’s grim-titled memoir of his life writing and starring in a weekly radio show. Hall had a copy of it, of course, signed first edition with a dust jacket in almost perfect condition. He’d been told it was a very good book.
He didn’t need to read those books. He didn’t need to exercise on all these intimidating machines. He didn’t need to drive all these cars. He needed to have them, that’s all, have everything, have the complete set of everything ever made. Then he’d be happy.
It was almost two hours later that Alicia, back from her drive, found him there, still ambling in place on the treadmill, humming a mournful little tune. “Why, Monroe,” she said.
“Oh, Alicia,” he said tragically. He stopped walking and bumped painfully into the front of the machine. “Damn! Drat! Oh, why can’t I—” He hopped off the treadmill, which ambled on without him. “This is so awful!” he cried.
Switching off the machine, Alicia said, “You’re all upset, Monroe. What’s happened?”
“The clocks,” he told her. “They’ve all stopped.”
“Oh, dear,” she said.
“I called for Hubert, but no answer. Where is he? He doesn’t have days off, does he?”
“Oh, Monroe,” Alicia said, “I’m afraid Hubert has left us.”
“Left us? Why would he do a thing like that?”
“His family talked against us,” she said. “They found him a different job, so he won’t have to associate with us.”
“With you?” Hall cried. “Everybody likes to associate with you!”
“Well, yes, dear,” she said. “I didn’t want to make too much of it, but yes, it was mostly you he was talking about. His family talking about.”
“So he’s just gone off, and left the cuckoos to die. What a cruel heartless thing to do.”
“I tell you what, Monroe,” she said, “why don’t we go in and wind them up again? The two of us?”
“We can’t wind all those clocks! Alicia, we need servants!”
“Well, I’m afraid we’re having fewer… and fewer.”
“You go wind cuckoos if you want,” Hall told her. “I’m going to call Cooper.”
“I don’t think Cooper can do much for us, Monroe.”
“He’s an employment agent,” Hall pointed out. “He’s supposed to find employees for people who need employees, and God knows that’s us. I’m going to call him now.”
Hall’s office was farther down the corridor. Entering it, he made straight for the mid-nineteenth-century partners desk with its green felt inserts on both sides. (He used both sides himself, of course.) Rolodexes were placed here and there, but he didn’t need them. He well knew Cooper’s number. He dialed it, gave his name to the receptionist, waited a very long time, and then the cheeky girl came back and said, “Mr. Cooper isn’t in at the moment. Woodja like to leave your name and number?”
“Mr. Cooper certainly is in,” Hall told her, “and he already knows my name and number. He’s ducking me. He’s avoiding me. You can give him a message for me.”
“Sure thing. Shoot.”
“Monroe Hall needs staff. Did you get that? Did you write that down?”
“Monroe Hall needs staff,” she repeated, deadpan.
“Tell him,” Hall said, and slammed the phone down. Somewhere, a cuckoo rang.
18
WHEN THE DOORBELL RANG, Kelp was seated at the kitchen table, reading a recent safe manufacturer’s catalog, enjoying the full-color illustrations. He knew Anne Marie was somewhere else in the apartment, and figured the doorbell was for her anyway, because it was probably her friend Jim Green, come to talk about new identities. So he finished reading a “burglar-proof” paragraph, smiling faintly to himself, then closed the catalog and was getting to his feet when Anne Marie called, “Andy?”
“On my way.”
In the living room, Anne Marie smiled and said, “Andy Kelp, this is Jim Green.”
“Whadaya say?” Kelp said, and stuck out his hand.
“How do you do,” Jim Green said. He had a gentle voice, a mild manner, a small smile, a soft handshake.
Looking Green over, Kelp decided he wasn’t impressed. Anne Marie had been going on about how this was some kind of man of mystery or something, nobody knows his real name, he’s the spook’s spook, whatever. To Kelp, he just seemed like some average joe. Maybe even more average than most.
“Anne Marie tells me,” Green was saying, with a toothy smile in Anne Marie’s direction, “you and some pals are looking for new paper.”
“That’s it,” Kelp agreed. “You know, it doesn’t have to hold up forever, only a few months.”
Still smiling, Green shook both his head and a hand, saying, “No, excuse me, Andy, it doesn’t work that way.”
“It doesn’t?”
Anne Marie said, “Why don’t we sit? Jim, get you some coffee? A drink?”
“Nothing right now, Anne Marie,” Green told her, and Kelp again found himself wondering what impressed her so much about this guy. Anyway, they sat, and Green said, “An identity isn’t the same as like a counterfeit passport or something like that. An identity isn’t really even something you carry around with you. Mostly, it’s a new you we put into the files.”