“Well, I am rather concerned.” She hesitated, as though reluctant to speak. She drew a deep breath and plunged on:.. I did pay you in advance for the repairs, because you said you needed the money for bills, and…”
He didn’t take offense. He understood perfectly. She had said something that otherwise she would have considered déplacé. but she was distraught and wanted to make the point as firmly as she could without being overly offensive.
“I’ll get to it today, Miss Hand; I promise.”
It would take time. It was a good instrument, a fine, old Gagliano. He knew he could finish the repairs in time if he kept at it without distraction.
Her tone softened. “Thank you, Mr. Tolliver. I’m sorry to have bothered you, but… you understand.”
“Of course. Don’t give it a thought. I’ll call as soon as it’s ready. I’ll give it special attention, I promise.”
“You’re very kind.”
They said their goodbyes and he stopped himself from suggesting dinner when the violin was ready. There was always time for that later, when appropriate. When the business with the bathroom was settled.
And that brought him back to the state of helpless fury and pain. That terrible man, Weisel!
Unknowing confluence of four billion resonating emotions, Fred Tolliver sat with head in hands; as the electrons danced.
Eight days later, in a filthy alley behind a boarded-up supermarket that had begun as a sumptuous gilt-and-brocade movie house in 1924, William Weisel sat in filth, trying to eat the butt of a stale loaf of pumpernickel he had stolen from a garbage can. He weighed ninety-seven pounds, had not shaved in seven days, his clothes were stained and torn rags, his shoes had been stolen while he slept, four days earlier, in the doorway outside the Midnight Mission, his eyes were rheumy and he had developed a terrible, wracking cough. The angry crimson weal on his left forearm where the bolt of lightning had just grazed him seemed to be infected. He gagged on the bread, realizing he had missed one of the maggots, and threw the granitelike butt across the alley.
He was incapable of crying. He had cried himself out. He knew, at last, that there was no way to save himself. On the third day, he had tried to get to Tolliver, to beg him to stop; to tell him he would repair the bathroom; to tell him he would build him a new house, a mansion, a palace, anything! Just stop this terror! Please!
But he had been stopped. He could not get to Tolliver. The first time he had set his mind to seeing the old man, he had been arrested by a California Highway Patrol officer who had him on his hot sheet for having left the Roll& in the middle of Ventura Boulevard. Weisel had managed to escape on foot, somehow, miraculously.
The second time he had been attacked by a pit bull while skulking through back yards. He had lost his left pant leg below the knee.
The third time he had actually gotten as far as the street on which Tolliver’s house sat, but a seven-car pileup had almost crushed him beneath tons of thundering metal, and he had fled, fearing an aircraft carrier might drop from the sky to bury him.
He knew now that he could not even make amends, that it was inertial, and that he was doomed.
He lay back, waiting for the finish. But it was not to be that easy. The song of the four billion is an unending symphony of incredible complexity. As he lay there, a derelict stumbled into the alley, saw him, and pulled the straight razor from his jacket pocket. He was almost upon him when William Weisel opened his eyes. He saw the rusty blade coming for his throat, had a moment of absolute mind-numbing horror wash over him, spasmed into shock, and did not hear the sound of the cop’s service revolver as the derelict—who had serviced over a dozen other such bums as Weisel in this same manner—was blown in half.
He woke in the drunk tank, looked around, saw the company to which he had been condemned, knew that if he lived it would be through years of horror, and began tearing off strips of rags from what remained of his clothing.
When the attendant came to turn the men out into the exercise area, he found William Weisel hanging from the bars of the door, eyes bulging, tongue protruding like a charred leaf from his mouth. What he could not reconcile was that no one in the cell had even shouted, nor raised a hand to stop Weisel. That, and the look of voiceless anguish on the dead man’s face, as though he had glimpsed, just at the instant of death, a view of an eternity of voiceless anguish.
The focus could direct the beam, but it could not heal itself. At the very moment that Weisel died, Fred Tolliver—still unaware of what he had done—sat in his home, realizing finally that the contractor had done him in. He could never repay the note, would perhaps have to get work again in some studio, and probably would be unable to do it with sufficient regularity to save the house. His twilight years would be spent in some dingy apartment. The modest final hope of his life had been denied him: he would not be able to just simply get by in peace. It was a terrible lonely thing to contemplate.
The phone rang.
He picked it up wearily. “Yes?”
There was a moment of silence, then the voice of Miss Evelyn Hand came across the line, icily. “Mr. Tolliver, this is Evelyn Hand. I waited all day yesterday. I was unable to participate in the recital. Please have my violin waiting for me, repaired or not.”
He was too stunned, too depressed, even to be polite. “Okay.”
“I want you to know you have caused me great pain, Mr. Tolliver. You are a very unreliable and evil man. I want you to know I’m going to take steps to rectify this matter. You have taken money from me under false pretenses, you have ruined a great opportunity I had, and you have caused me unnecessary anguish. You will have to pay for your irresponsibility; there must be justice. I will make certain you pay for what you’ve done!”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” he said, dimly, faintly.
He hung up the receiver and sat there.
The emotions sang, the electrons danced, the focus shifted, and the symphony of frustration went on.
Fred Tolliver’s cello lay unattended at his feet. He would never get through, just barely slide through. He felt the excruciating pain of pins and needles in his legs.
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
Shoppe Keeper
I was riding down Beverly Glen with Arthur Byron Cover. I said to Arthur, “You know, one of the things that always bothered me about those fantasies in which some dude comes across a magic shop that sells real magic, or three wishes, or genuine love potions, or whatever, is they never told you what kind of life was lived by the proprietor. I mean, where did he get his stock? In what sort of coin could you pay someone for things that valuable? When the dude leaves the shop it always vanishes; where does it go? What happened to the poor schmuck who ran the joint? Huh, answer me that?”
Arthur looked at me seriously and said, “You know, you’re a very weird person.”
That is how this story came to be written.
To satisfy my curiosity.
And you can stick it in your ear, Cover.
A pale, short, young man wearing filthy blue jeans and goat-roper boots worn away at the heels came shuffling down Jamshyd Avenue. As he passed the narrow arcade alleyway, the rusty creaking of a sign hung on chains caught his attention. He stared at the sign with eyes that were just the slightest bit crossed and glazed. The sign proclaimed Shoppe of Wonders and beneath those words in curlicued but. extremely readable Islamic calligraphy: Your Heart’s Desire.