But first I had to find a place to sleep.
* * *
I knew only one person in the city aside from my aunts, and I called him from the first working pay phone I found. Van Markham was Buffalo Bill’s half sister’s grandson, and therefore some species of cousin to me, though I’d never really thought of him as family. But I was too hungry and wet, at that moment, to recollect exactly why this was.
“Equus Special Blend and Affiliated Products. Markham speaking.”
“Cousin Van! It’s Waldy Tolliver. I’m not sure if you remember, the month before last—”
“I remember you, Waldy. How did you get this number?”
“You gave it to me.”
The line went silent for a moment. “That sounds plausible.”
“What’s Equus Special Blend?”
“Let me answer your question with a question. What do you want?”
For once I felt grateful for Van’s bluntness. “I’m here in New York. I just dropped out of college.”
“Congratulations, cousin. Willkommen to actual life.”
“What I mean is, I don’t have a place to stay.” When he said nothing, I continued: “You’re the only person in town that I know.”
“Aside from the Sisters Frankenstein, you mean.” I could picture him pursing his lips in distaste. “They’ve got a big-enough cave up in Harlem, don’t they? Or have they filled it with junk mail and cat food by now? On second thought, don’t answer that.”
“Something’s happened to them, actually. That’s why I’m calling. They wouldn’t let me into their apartment.”
“People/Feelings,” said Van.
People/Feelings was a phrase Van had coined, sometime before dropping out of college himself, to stand for all the things in life that bored him. It freed him to focus on matters of genuine import, i.e., his personal business ventures and sex. His term for himself, when actively engaged in these latter pursuits — which was practically his every waking hour — was Randy the Robot. Randy didn’t go in much for sentiment.
“I need you to put me up for a week,” I told him. “Ten days at the most.”
“Starting when?”
“Starting now.”
The silence that followed was cosmic. A ghostly interference came across the line: a faint, mournful crackle that could have been caused by gamma radiation or dark-matter accretion or the frantic buzzing of my cousin’s brain. I wasn’t bothered by the delay, particularly. The algorithm Van used in situations of this nature was complex.
“I’ve got a studio in midtown,” he said eventually. “I’m looking to rent it on a fixed semiannual plan, with a subsidiary lease, but there’s a problem with the bylaws of the building re: sublets. I could let you have it on a binightly basis, I suppose, seeing as how you’re flesh of my flesh.”
“A binightly basis,” I repeated. “Sounds great.”
“Since you’re family,” Van said, after a slight hesitation, “I won’t require a security deposit.” He didn’t seem to expect a reply. “Sixty-eight West Forty-Fourth. Meet me there in an hour.”
I asked him what the binightly rent might be, in dollar terms. My only answer was the solar wind.
* * *
“Ask me how things are going,” said Van. We were sitting in a Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits across the street from the apartment I was going to be renting, at forty dollars a night, to be paid in binightly installments. He hadn’t explained why I’d be paying him on a forty-eight-hour cycle — in person, in cash, preferably in ATM-fresh twenties — and I was too thankful and exhausted to object.
“Go ahead, Waldy. Ask me. I can tell that you’re dying to know.”
I pulled myself together. “Okay. How are things—”
“Gangbangers.”
“Gangbusters, I think you mean.”
“Gangbangers,” my cousin repeated, with emphasis. “What do you think of that for a name?”
“That depends. What exactly are you selling?”
“Satisfaction,” Van said, smacking his lips.
“Unless the kind of satisfaction you’re talking about involves Glocks, secret handshakes, and drug deals gone wrong—”
“It does, in a way.” He narrowed his eyes. “And I’ll tell you another thing, cousin, though this is strictly classified. I’ve already found myself a backer.”
“That’s fantastic, Van. Congratulations. Now if you wouldn’t mind—”
“I’m telling you this for a reason, you jackass. Do you think I like to listen to myself talk?”
He seemed to view the question as hypothetical, so I let my attention drift — nodding amiably all the while — to take in the self-importantly stoned teens at the counter, the rain against the scratched and oily window, and a Möbius-strip-shaped dab of mayonnaise on the tabletop between us. I’d almost managed to forget where I was when my cousin dropped a name that ruined everything.
“What did you just say?”
He let out a titter. “Funny how things loop together, isn’t it? Who’d have thought the Iterants would want to horn in on the sensuality-enhancement industry?” He sighed happily. “But they’ve got to invest their cash the same as anybody else, I reckon.”
“How did they—” I took in a breath and counted slowly down from ten. “Who from the UCS contacted you?”
“What makes you think it wasn’t me doing the contacting?”
“They think you’re one of us, Van,” I said, fighting the urge to slap his smirking face. “That’s the reason they’re backing you — not that tarted-up horse piss you’re selling. There’s not a branch of this family they haven’t gotten their hooks into. First Enzie and Genny, then Orson, now you.” I clung white-knuckled to the edge of the table. “They haven’t hooked me, though — not yet. That’s why I need your help. I’ve got to—”
I cut my rant short when I noticed his expression. “You don’t believe me,” I muttered. “You’re not even listening.”
“I’m worried about you, Waldy.” He cleared his throat primly. “You can stay in my place for as long as you want — we’ll figure the payments out later. Get some rest. Watch some cable. Thirty-six is the vanilla porn channel, if memory serves. Thirty-seven is predominantly anal.”
I blinked at him, then at the keys he’d set down on the table. “You’re just like the others,” I said. “You think I’ve gone crazy.”
“Not at all,” Van assured me — but the look in his twitchy, bloodshot eyes said otherwise. “I’m leaving now, Waldy. Promise me you’ll get some fucking sleep.”
I watched him dart in his couture trench coat across the rain-slick pavement, relieved to have our rendezvous behind him, already intent on the next item of business. I envied him in that moment, Mrs. Haven, I have to admit. He nodded to his doorman, ducked briefly inside, then came back out with a package in his hands. His aviator glasses — mirrored, of course — matched his trench coat and expression perfectly. Only my cousin, I said to myself, would wear aviator glasses in a downpour. Then I looked at the package more closely.
It was a padded mailing envelope, crisp and marzipan-colored, identical to those I’d seen at the Villa Ouspensky. Van was cradling it as if it held a bomb.
* * *
Those next seven days passed like a dream, Mrs. Haven — or like a short, bumpy ride in the back of a van with packing tape covering its windows, driven by strangers wearing hazmat suits and Albert Einstein masks. I spent the week with the blinds drawn and the door double-locked and the telephone disconnected from the wall, living on stale ramen noodles and lukewarm tap water and cheese. I needed time with the package that Enzie had slipped me: time to ravel the threads and wires and light rays back into some kind of fabric, to reverse-engineer my family’s cataclysmic century. Things went on happening out in the world — horrendous things, mostly — and I was the last to find out. It was Heisenberg’s principle in all its dark glory: the observer affects the events he’s observing, no matter how many deadbolts he has on his door. I was changing, Mrs. Haven, and the chronosphere was changing with me.