“Listen, uh. Damnable,” said Doyle with quiet urgency, “if you’ll pretend you didn’t catch me, I’ll make you a rich man. I give you my word—” He rocked violently back in his seat then, for the gypsy had moved as fast as a striking mousetrap and rapped a knuckle hard against the bridge of Doyle’s nose.
“You gorgios all think the Romany, the gypsies, are stupid,” Richard remarked.
The wine and beer arrived at this point, and Doyle made the girl wait while he finished his beer in two long, laboring, throat-burning drafts, and then gasped out an order for another pint.
Richard was staring at him. “I guess it’s no harm if I bring you to him drunk.” He looked after the girl wistfully, “A bit of cool beer would sit well after all that running.” He sipped his wine without enthusiasm.
“It’s not bad. Have some.”
“No—beer was my Bessie’s favorite drink, and since she mullered I’ve not had a drop of it.” He drained the wine in one long gulp, shuddered, and then when the girl brought Doyle’s second beer he ordered another glass of wine.
Doyle gulped some more beer and pondered this. “My Rebecca,” he said carefully, “loved nearly every kind of liquor, and since she … mullered, I’ve drunk enough for the two of us. At least.”
Richard pondered this, frowning, for a few moments, then nodded. “It’s the same idea,” he pronounced.
“It’s to keep them from being forgotten.”
When the girl came to their table this time she demanded some money, got it, and then left a pitcher and a bottle on the table. The two men thoughtfully filled their glasses. “Here’s to dead ladies,” said Damnable Richard.
Doyle raised his glass. There was a moment of silent gulping, and then both glasses bumped back down on the table empty. They were ceremoniously refilled.
“How long ago… did Bessie die?” asked Doyle.
Richard drank half his glassful before answering. “Seventeen years ago,” he said quietly. “She was thrown from a horse near Crofton Wood. She was always kushto with horses but we were running at night from prastamengros and her horse put his foot in a hole. The fall… just… broke her head.”
Doyle refilled his own glass and then reached across to the wine bottle and refilled the gypsy’s. “Here’s to dead ladies,” Doyle said softly. Again they drained the glasses and refilled them.
Doyle found that he could still speak clearly if he spoke slowly and chose his words as carefully as a golfer selecting the right iron to use for a difficult stroke. “Rebecca also had her head broken,” he told the gypsy. “In spite of the helmet—the helmet broke too—she hit a freeway pillar head-first. I was riding, she was behind.” The gypsy nodded sympathetically. “We were on an old 450 Honda, and the streets were too wet to ride on if you were carrying a passenger. I even knew that then, but we were in a hurry and, hell, she had on a helmet, and I’d been riding bikes for years. I was changing lanes, ‘cause when you get onto the Santa Ana Freeway from Beach Boulevard you wind up in the fast lane, and I wanted to get to a slower one; and as I leaned it to the right and went across those lane divider bumps I felt the bike… shift sideways. Horrible sensation, like an earthquake, you know? A … deadly and unexpected motion. And the old 450’s were top-heavy anyway, with those overhead cams, and it—just—went—down.” He swallowed a massive gulp of beer. “Rebecca tumbled off to the right and I slid on straight ahead. Burned my leather jacket paper-thin on the pavement—if it had been dry it would have sanded me down to the bare ribs. The cars all managed to stop without running over me, and I got to my feet and hopped back—I’d broken my ankle, among other things—back to where she was. Her… head was—”
He was pulled out of his memories by the clink of the pitcher-lip on the rim of his glass. “No need to say it,” said Richard, lifting the pitcher away when the glass was full again. “I too saw what you saw.” He raised his own glass. “Here’s to Rebecca and Bessie.”
“May they rest in peace,” said Doyle.
When the glasses had clunked to the table again Damnable Richard stared hard at Doyle. “You’re not a sorcerer, are you?”
“God, I wish I was.”
“Somebody you were with must have been, though—I saw the two carriages disappear from that field like fleas from the back of your hand.”
Doyle nodded morosely. “Yes. Left without me.”
The gypsy got to his feet and threw a sovereign onto the table. “Take that,” he said. “I’ll tell them I took off chasing a chal that I thought was you, and knocked him down, but it was the wrong man and I had to buy him a drink to keep him from going to the prastamengros.” He turned to leave.
“You’re—” Doyle blurted. The gypsy paused and gave him an unreadable stare. “You’re letting me go? After only having a drink with me?” He knew he should just shut up, but he felt he couldn’t live with this mystery. “Did you think my offer to make you rich was a bluff?”
“It’s you gorgios that are stupid,” said Damnable Richard. He smiled, turned and walked out of the room.
The candle flickered out in a puddle of melted wax—the auction was over. The winner stood up to deal with the paperwork, looking a little more surprised than pleased that his last bid had been the last of all. Doyle glanced at the clock, and felt a tiny cold quiver in his chest—it was thirty-five minutes after ten. His glance darted around the room, but there was no giant blond man present, with or without the fierce beard Ashbless was evidently never without. Damn it, Doyle thought; the son of a bitch is late. Could I have missed him during the last few minutes? No, he’s not supposed to just duck in and out; he’s supposed to sit down and write the damned “Twelve Hours of the Night.” That’s what, a couple of hundred lines long?
His face was hot and his mouth tasted feverish. Reasoning that he must at all costs keep from passing out here, he ordered a pint of stout for two precious pennies. When it arrived the clock said twenty minutes of eleven, and though he tried to drink it slowly, as befitted a restorative, when the clock pinged the third quarter-hour his glass was empty, and he could feel the alcohol pressing outward against the walls of his skull—for he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours—and Ashbless still hadn’t arrived. Get hold of yourself, he thought. Coffee, no more beer. So he’s a little late; the accounts of his arrival were more than a century old when you read them—and those were based on Ashbless’ recollections, as recorded by Bailey in the 1830s. A bit of inaccuracy is hardly surprising. It might very well have been eleven-thirty actually. It has to have been eleven-thirty. He settled down to wait. Three carefully nursed cups of coffee later the clock bonged eleven-thirty and there had been no sign of William Ashbless. The stock and shipping business continued to be lively, and at one point a portly gentleman who’d sold a Bahamian plantation at a tremendous profit ordered up a glass of rum for everyone present, and Doyle gratefully poured the stuff down his feverish throat. And he began to get angry.
This really did, it seemed to him, show a carelessness on the poet’s part, a lack of regard for his readers. Arrogant—to claim he’d been here at ten-thirty when actually he hadn’t bothered to arrive until at least… let’s see—getting on for noon. What does he care if he’s kept people waiting? thought Doyle blurrily. He’s a famous poet, a friend of Coleridge and Byron. Doyle visualized him in his mind, and fever and exhaustion gave the picture an almost hallucinatory clarity—the broad shoulders, the craggy face lion-maned and Viking-bearded. Before, that face had seemed, like Hemingway’s, basically humorous and sociable in a hard-bitten way, but now it only looked cruel and unapproachable. He’s probably outside, Doyle thought, waiting for me to drop dead before he’ll condescend to come in and write his damn poem.