“Even you could find it, Tommy,” the kid called after him. “Even you!”
As the shabby and foul-smelling taxi pulled up to 625 West Forty-second Street, Oliver realized they were only a block away from Playwrights Horizons, the theater where his personal favorite among Cassie’s plays, Runkleberg, had premiered on a double bill with his least favorite, God Without Tears. Lord, what a sexy genius she was. For her he would do anything. For Cassandra he would rob a bank, walk on burning coals, blow God to Kingdom Come.
Viewed from the sidewalk, the New York offices of Pembroke and Flume’s World War Two Reenactment Society looked like just another Manhattan storefront, indistinguishable from a dozen such establishments occupying the civilized side of Eighth Avenue, that asphalt DMZ beyond which the sex shops and peep shows had not yet advanced. The instant the three atheists entered, however, a curious displacement occurred. Stumbling into the dark foyer, attache case swinging at his side, Oliver felt as if he’d tumbled through time and landed in the private chambers of a nineteenth-century railroad magnate. A Persian rug absorbed his footfalls. A full-length, gilt-edged mirror rose before him, flanked by luminous cut-glass globes straight from the age of gaslight. A massive grandfather clock announced the hour, four P.M., tolling with such languor as to suggest its true purpose lay not in keeping time but in exhorting people to slow down and savor life.
They were met by a tall, swan-necked woman in a Mary Astor fedora and a sky blue business suit with padded shoulders, and while she was obviously too young to be Pembroke and Flume’s mother, she treated the atheists less like clients than like a gang of neighborhood boys who’d come over to play with her own children. “I’m Eleanor,” she said, leading them into a small paneled office, blessedly air-conditioned. Posters decorated the walls. PEMBROKE AND FLUME PRESENT BATTLE OF THE BULGE (the four Ts formed by the muzzles of tank cannons)… PEMBROKE AND FLUME PRESENT ATTACK ON TOBRUK (cut into the battlements of a fortified harbor)… PEMBROKE AND FLUME PRESENT FIGHT FOR IWO JIMA (written in blood on a sand dune). “I’ll bet you fellas would like something cold and wet.” Eleanor ambled over to an early-forties Frigidaire icebox and opened the door to reveal a slew of classic labels: Ruppert, Rheingold, Ballantine, Pabst Blue Ribbon. “New beer in old bottles,” she explained. “Budweiser, in fact, from the bodega around the corner.
“I’ll take a Rheingold,” said Oliver. “Pabst for me,” said Barclay.
“Ah, the pseudo-choices of late capitalism,” said Winston. “Make mine a Ballantine.”
“Sidney and Albert are in the back parlor, listening to their favorite program.” Eleanor removed the beers, popping the caps with a hand-painted Jimmy Durante opener. “Second door on the left.”
As Oliver entered the parlor in question — a dark, snug sanctum decorated with pinup photos of Esther Williams and Betty Grable — a high, attenuated male voice greeted him: “…where they discovered that Dr. Seybold had perfected his cosmo-tomic energizer. Listen now as Jack and Billy investigate that lonely stone house known as the Devil’s Castle.”
Two pale young men sat on opposite ends of a green velvet sofa, holding Rupperts and leaning toward a Chippendale coffee table on which rested an antique cathedral radio, its output evidently being supplied by the adjacent audiocassette player. Noticing their visitors, one man slipped a cigarette from a yellowing pack of Chesterfields while the other stood up, bowed politely, and shook Barclay’s hand.
On the radio, a teenaged boy said, “Great whales and little fishes, Jack! Can you imagine some foreign nation having all that electrical energy for nothing? We’ll be reduced to a pauper country!”
Barclay made the introductions. Because the moniker “Pembroke and Flume” seemed to suggest a cinematic comedy team whose trademarks included the physical disparity between its members — Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy — Oliver was taken aback by the impresarios’ similarity to each other. They could have been brothers, or even fraternal twins, a notion underscored by the matching red-and-black-striped zoot suits hanging from their elongated frames: Giacometti bodies, Oliver, the artist, decided. Both men had the same blue eyes, gold fillings, and blond pomaded hair, and it was only through concentrated effort that he distinguished Sidney Pembroke’s open, smiling countenance from the more austere, vaguely sinister visage of Albert Flume.
“I see Eleanor found you some brews,” said Pembroke, ejecting the cassette. “Good, good.”
“What were you listening to?” asked Winston.
“Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Really?” said Flume with a mixture of disbelief and disdain. “You’re not serious.”
Whereupon the partners threw their arms across each other’s shoulders and sang.
Wave the flag for Hudson High, boys, Show them how we stand! Ever shall our team be champions, Known throughout the land!
“There are better programs, of course,” said Flume, lighting his cigarette with a silver-plated Zippo. “The Green Hornet: ‘He hunts the biggest game of all — the public enemies who try to destroy our America!’ ”
“And Inner Sanctum, if you’ve got really strong nerves,” said Pembroke.
Flume faced Oliver squarely, taking a long drag on his Chesterfield. “I’m told your organization wishes to purchase our services.”
“I was quoted a figure approaching fifteen million.”
“Were you, now?” said Flume cryptically. Obviously the dominant partner.
“Could you tell us more about the target?” asked Pembroke eagerly. “We don’t have a clear picture yet.”
Oliver’s blood froze. Here it was, the moment when he must explain why obliterating a seven-million-ton corpse that didn’t belong to any of them was a necessary course of action. Opening his attach й case, he removed an 8X 10 color photo and balanced it atop the radio cabinet.
“As you know,” he began, “the Japanese have always been self-conscious about their height.”
“The Japs?” said Flume, looking perplexed. “Indeed.”
So far, so good. “According to the Freudian interpretation of World War Two, they sought to expand horizontally in compensation for their genetic inability to expand vertically. As scholars of that particular conflict, you’re undoubtedly familiar with this theory.”
“Oh, yes,” said Pembroke, even though Oliver had invented it the previous Tuesday.
“Well, gentlemen, the stark fact is that, at the beginning of this year, a team of Japanese scientists over in Scotland found a way to expand vertically. By exploiting the latest breakthroughs in genetic engineering, they’ve grown the Asian of the future — the gigantic humanoid creature whose prototype you see in this picture. You with me?”
“Sounds like a rejected Green Hornet script,” said Flume, coiling the gold chain of his zoot suit around his index finger.
“They call it Project Golem,” said Barclay.
“Most golems are Jewish,” said Winston.
“This one’s Japanese.
“The Japs are in Scotland?” said Pembroke.
“The Japs are everywhere,” admonished Flume.
“Thus far they’ve failed to endow their golem with life,” said Winston, “but if they ever do — well, you can imagine the danger such a megaspecies would pose for the environment, not to mention the free enterprise system.”
“Jack Armstrong would shit his knickers,” said Barclay.
“Luckily, the coming weeks afford us a perfect opportunity to stop Project Golem in its tracks,” said Oliver. “Ever since the hot weather hit, the scientists have been looking for a way to freeze the prototype before it putrefies. Then, last Wednesday, they resolved to hook it up to the supertanker Valparaíso and tow it above the Arctic Circle.”