"Back down where?" I inquired.
"The Underworld."
Young Langley and I exchanged a look of trepidation. Although I fancied myself a kind-hearted soul and was willing to believe the same of Langley until proved otherwise, we did not feel that it would be wise to offer the Club as a refuge for anyone unfortunate enough to have run afoul of Organized Crime. The police were too regular a fixture on Club grounds as it was, and were as tired of seeing us as we were of seeing them.
Langley, bless him, took all this into consideration and acted like a gentleman: His checkbook was out and open with an alacrity that would have set Alumni Fund solicitors to helpless drooling.
"What's the problem, old man?" he asked. "A loan come due? Piper to be paid and all that? Perhaps if you were to give me some general notion of how best we might aid you and see you on your way… " (Of course he was never crass enough to mention the M-word, nor how much of the M-word our uninvited guest might need to assuage his pursuers.)
"Huh?" The man brushed hair out of his eyes and gaped at Langley. "Oh, you think I need money?" The M-word! There it was, naked and blushing in the marketplace! Beyond all other external factors, this was proof positive that we were not in the presence of one of Our Kind. (True, I had used the M-word myself repeatedly, and not so long ago, but there is a great difference between mentioning it when you are speaking in the abstract and naming the Ineffable Name when you are dealing with concrete sums. The former is finance, the latter, vulgarity.).
"Ah… don't you?" young Langley asked.
"Naaah. I got millions. Hey, look, I'm real sorry about all this, me showing up wherever the hell I am now, dressed like this, scaring the crap out of you, but I tell you what: You get me to a phone and I'll make it all better, fast. 'Kay?"
I pursed my lips and glanced at Langley, one eyebrow raised ever so slightly. I could tell that we neither one of us believed the apparition before to be in possession of a million anything, saving perhaps fleas, but ours was not to reason why. Ours was but to get the fellow off of Club property in good order, with a minimum of fuss and no public notice taken.
With this in mind, young Langley reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out his cellular telephone, and handed it to our guest with a gracious: "At your service, sir."
The bedraggled man stared at the instrument with a most disconcerting lack of comprehension. He took it from Langley's hand, turned it over a time or two, and by main chance happened to flip it open. A ludicrous grin stretched itself from ear to ear as he held it to his lips and loudly declaimed into the receiver: "Kirk to Enterprise!" Then he returned the telephone to its owner and added, "Cool toy, man. So, where's the phone?"
A terrible realization set its Louis Vuitton suitcases down on the doormat of my consciousness and lightly rang the bell for admission. I assumed a false air of insouciance and did my best to make it sound like a casual question when I inquired, "I beg your pardon, friend, but would you happen to know today's date? Year included, if you don't mind."
His answer told all.
"Not again," said Beddoes, the head of our Membership committee. He leaned his elbows on the bar, covered his face with his hands, and moaned softly over his brandy.
"Afraid so, old man," I said, though terrified so might have been more accurate.
"What is it about this place?" Beddoes exclaimed, demanding an answer of the stuffed porcupine above the bar, which one of our local Nimrods had contributed to the Club d-cor. (Granted he had found the poor dead creature at a Provincetown yard sale rather than between the crosshairs, but a hunt is a hunt.) "Why do we keep attracting this sort of thing?"
He was of course referring to the fact that the Club had, for some time now, become a magnet for beings whose like had not been seen heretofore outside of Greek mythology. In some cases they had assumed a semblance less apposite to Doria than to Darien. The most recent incident, of which I have already made passing mention, involved a Dr. Dion Sonoma whose true identity proved what every maenad worth her frenzy already knows: In vino there is often too damned much veritas for comfort. No matter their appearance, those refugees from Attic shores, the havoc they inevitably wrought was all of a piece.
I blamed Simpson. We all did. His case had been the first, him and his notion that bringing a Greek sphynx onto Club property did not violate the No Pets rule. Had we but known, and been less enraptured by the novelty of it all, we might have spared ourselves much. Riddles are no fun when the wrong answer ends in disembowling.
However, past errors and their ensuing regrets would do nothing to ameliorate current difficulties. No use crying over spilled entrails. All of us then present in the bar were experienced survivors and knew we must deal with the situation at hand before it managed to get out of same.
"What are you guys talking about?" our uninvited guest wanted to know. He was seated a little farther along the bar, in company with Langley. I had given our Youngest Member the task of standing watch and ward over the man as soon as I realized who he was and what it meant.
"You," I replied cheerfully.
"Yeah? What? The whole to-hell-and-back thing or just my music, man?"
"A bit from Column A and a smidge from Column B, as they say." I spoke with an airiness I did not quite feel. One of the first things our new friend had done upon discovering when he was, was to recount how he had come to be absent from the surface world for so long.
He had done it before. After all, his name was Orpheus.
I ought to clarify: Orpheus was not just his name, but his identity. He never had bothered to disguise or conceal it in any way. As he remarked, it made for all sorts of in-one's-face irony whenever he opened for Styx. Yes, he had enjoyed a renewed career in music, or what passes for music among some people, and had made a tidy sum at doing what he did best. No fool he, at least in matters of business. In time, he fell in love and married a beautiful girl who somehow managed to die in a freak concert accident. A freak fell on her while stage diving from the top of one of the speakers.
Some people simply refuse to learn from past mistakes: Believing more in recycling than rewedding, once more Orpheus took the road to Avernus and confronted grim Hades upon his iron throne. He used his gift of enchanted song to beguile the lord of the dead to release his lost love's spirit so that she might return to life.
There was no arguing with the power of Orpheus's music, though the idea of being forced to truckle repeatedly to a paltry demigod put a king-sized knot in Hades' loincloth. His divine displeasure was for naught. Orpheus had the upper hand, and it could span three octaves. And so, with epicly exasperated undertones of Here we go again, great Hades gave him back his new bride under the same condition as for his previously lost spouse, Eurydike: That Orpheus must ascend from the Underworld never once looking back to confirm that his beloved was in fact following him into the light of day.
As many a schoolboy knows (of the sort who have received a proper education) Orpheus did not trust Hades. Just as the exit from Avernus was within sight, he looked back. This violated the hellish compact. Eurydike's shade vanished, weeping, into the Underworld once more, and Orpheus was forbidden from returning for her. It is a little-known fact that the phrase, No do-overs originated with the lord of the dead.
I am sorry to report that Orpheus had not used his renewed career as an earthly musician to cultivate a better sense of trust. This time, too, he looked back before he had removed his new bride fully from Hades' realm. Some people might not learn from past mistakes, but some gods do. When Orpheus turned his head this time, instead of his bride's fleeing ghost he beheld Hades himself.