Mr. Bright was in a foul mood all the same, having concluded that he’d been shaman-suckered out of a hundred and eighty dollars. He had just anted up five mints with a dip into the box from Iris Fancy Foods Restaurant Supply when he looked up to see Betty Step-in-Time sashaying into the Chowder Palace. His friends looked up to see what he was snarling at, and quickly looked away. A peculiar silence fell.
Betty was carrying a Pee Chee folder. He walked straight up to Mr. Bright, opened the folder with a flourish, and presented it to him. Mr. Bright stared down at it, dumfounded.
“We should maybe go,” said Leon, pushing away from the table. Charlie scuttled out the door ahead of him, and Elmore paused only to sweep the starlight mints into his windbreaker pocket before following them in haste.
Betty ignored them, leaning down like a helpful maitre d’ to remove a mass of photocopied paper from the folder and arrange it on the table before Mr. Bright.
The first image was evidently from a book on local history. It was a very old photograph, to judge from the three-masted ship on the horizon; waves breaking in the background, one or two bathers in old-fashioned costume, and a couple of little board and batten shacks in the foreground. White slanted letters across the lower right-hand corner read: Nunas Beach, corner of Alder and Stanford. Squinting at it, Mr. Bright realized that he was seeing the view from his own front window, a hundred years or more in the past.
Silently Betty drew his attention to the fact that the future site of Calamari Curls was a bare and blasted lot, though evening primrose grew thickly up to its edge.
“Well, so what?” he said. In reply, Betty whisked the picture away to reveal another, taken a generation later but from the same point of view. A building stood on the spot now—and there were the same arched windows, the same fanlight door, above which was a sign in letters solemn and slightly staggering: ALDER STREET NATATORIUM.
“A nata-what?” said Mr. Bright. Betty placed his hands together and mimed diving. Then he gripped his nose, squeezed his eyes shut and sank down, waving his other hand above his head.
“Oh. Okay, it was a swimming pool? What about it?”
Betty lifted the picture. Under it was a photocopied microfilm enlargement, from the San Emidio Mission Bell for May 2, 1922. Mr. Bright’s reading skills were not strong, but he was able to make out enough to tell that the article was about the Alder Street Natatorium in Nunas Beach, which had closed indefinitely due to a horrifying incident two days previous. Possible ergot poisoning—mass hallucinations—sea-creature—prank by the boys of San Emidio Polytechnic?—where is Mr. Tognazzini and his staff?
“Huh,” said Mr. Bright. “Could we, like, blackmail somebody with this stuff?”
Betty pursed his cupid’s bow and shook a reproving finger at Mr. Bright. He drew out the next paper, which was a photocopied page from the Weekly Dune Crier for April 25, 1950. There were three young men standing in front of the Hi-Ho Lounge, looking arch. The brief caption underneath implied that the Hi-Ho Lounge would bring a welcome touch of sophistication and gray-flannel elegance to Nunas Beach.
“So I guess they boarded the pool over,” said Mr. Bright. “Well?”
Quickly, Betty presented the next photocopy. It was an undated article from the San Emidio Telegraph noting briefly that the Hi-Ho Lounge was still closed pending the police investigation, that no marihuana cigarettes had been found despite first reports, and that anyone who had attended the poetry reading was asked to come forward with any information that might throw some light on what had happened, since Mr. LaRue was not expected to recover consciousness and Mr. Binghamton and Mr. Cayuga had not been located.
Mr. Bright shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
Betty rolled his eyes and batted his lashes in exasperation. He shuffled the last paper to the fore, and this was not a photocopy but some kind of astronomical chart showing moon phases. It had been marked all over with pink ink, scrawled notations and alchemical signs, as well as other symbols resembling things Mr. Bright had only seen after a three-day weekend with a case of Ten High.
“What the hell’s all this supposed to be?” demanded Mr. Bright. “Oh!.. I guess this is… some kind of shamanic thing?”
Betty leaped into the air and crossed his ankles as he came down, then mimed grabbing someone by the hand and shaking it in wildly enthusiastic congratulation. Mr. Bright pulled his hands in close.
“Okay,” he said in a husky whisper. He looked nervously around at his empty restaurant. “Maybe you shouldn’t ought to show me anything else.”
But Betty leaned forward and tapped one image on the paper. It was a smiling full moon symbol. He winked again, and backed toward the door. He gave Mr. Bright a thumbs-up, then made an OK symbol with thumb and forefinger, and then saluted.
“Okay, thanks,” said Mr. Bright. “I get the picture.”
He watched Betty walking primly away, trundling the pink bicycle. Looking down at the table, he gathered together the papers and stuffed them back in the Pee Chee folder. He wheeled himself off to his cubicle and hid the folder under his pillow, with the tire iron.
Then he rolled around to his desk, and consulted the calendar from Nunas Billy’s Hardware Circus. There was a full moon in three days’ time.
It was Saturday, and the full moon was just heaving itself up from the eastern horizon, like a pink pearl. Blue dusk lay on Nunas Beach. The tide was far out; salt mist flowed inland, white vapor at ankle level. Mr. Bright sat inside the darkened Chowder Palace, and watched, and hated, as people lined up on the sidewalk outside Calamari Curls.
Calamari Curls was having Talent Nite. The Early Bird specials were served, and senior diners went shuffling back to their singlewides, eager to leave before the Goddamned rock and roll started. Young families with toddlers dined and hurried back to their motels, unwilling to expose little ears to amplified sound.
Five pimply boys set up their sound equipment on the dais in the corner. They were the sons of tractor salesmen and propane magnates; let their names be forgotten. The front man tossed his hair back from his eyes, looked around at the tables crowded with chattering diners, and said in all adolescent sullenness:
“Hi. We’re the Maggots, and we’re here to shake you up a little.”
His bassman leaped out and played the opening of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” with painful slowness, the drummer boy joined in clunk-clunk-clunk, and the front man leaned forward to the mike and in a hoarse scream told the audience about his woes. The audience continued biting the tails off shrimp, sucking down frozen strawberry margaritas and picking at Kona Coffee California Cheesecake.
When the music ended, they applauded politely. The front man looked as though he’d like to kill them all. He wiped sweat from his brow, had a gulp of water.
Betty Step-in-Time wheeled his bicycle up to the door.
“We’re going to do another classic,” said the front man. “Okay?”
Ka-chunk! went the drums. The keyboardist and the lead guitarist started very nearly in sync: Da da da. Dada. DA DA DA. Dada.
“Oh Lou-ah Lou-ah-eh, ohhhh baby nagatcha go waygadda go!” shouted the front man.
Betty Step-in-Time dismounted. Just outside the restaurant’s threshold, he began to dance. It began in time with the music, a modest little kickstep. A few diners looked, pointed and laughed.
“Nah nah nah nah asaya Lou-ah Lou-ah eh, whooa babeh saya whay-gachago!”
Betty’s kickstep increased its arc, to something approaching can-can immodesty. He threw his arms up as he kicked, rolling his head, closing his eyes in abandon. A diner sitting near the door fished around in pockets for a dollar bill, but saw no hat in which to put it.