Melancholy Elephants Read online

  “My mother’s out. I got no father.”

  “Oh, a clone, huh? Well, that’s a break anyway. I’d hate to try and talk my way out of this one with a grownup. No offense. Look, are we in Brooklyn? I gotta get to Manhattan right away.”

  “Yeah, we’re in Brooklyn. But I can’t push you to Manhattan—you weigh a ton.”

  Joe’s face fell as he considered this. “How the hell am I gonna get there, then?”

  “Beats me. Why don’t you walk?”

  Joe snorted. “With no legs?”

  “You got legs,” Spud said. “They just ain’t here.”

  Joe began to reply, then shut up and looked thoughtful. “Might work at that,” he decided at last. “I sure an’ hell don’t understand how this time-travel stuff works, and it feels like I still got legs. I’ll try it.” He squared his shoulders, looked down and then quickly backed up, and tried a step.

  His upper torso moved forward two feet.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said happily. “It works.”

  He took a few more steps, said, “OUCH, DAMMIT,” and grabbed at the empty air below him, leaning forward. “Bashed my cop-toppin’ knee,” he snarled.

  “On what?”

  Joe looked puzzled. “I guess on the wall back home in 2007,” he decided. “I can’t seem to go forward any farther.”

  Spud got behind him and pushed again, and Joe moved forward a few feet more. “Jesus, that feels weird,” Joe exclaimed. “My legs’re still against the wall, but I still feel attached to them.”

  “That’s as far as I go,” Spud panted. “You’re too heavy.”

  “How come? There’s only half as much of me.”

  “So what’s that—a hundred and fifty pounds?”

  “Huh. I guess you’re right. But I got to think of something. I gotta get to Manhattan.”

  “Why?” Spud asked.

  “To get to a garage,” Joe explained impatiently. “The guys that make these time-belts, they got repair stations set up all the way down the temporal line in case one gets wrecked up or you kill the batteries. The nearest dealership’s in Manhattan, and the repairs’re free till the warranty runs out. But how am I gonna get there?”

  “Why don’t you use the belt to go back home?” asked Spud, scratching his curly head.

  “Sure, and find out I left my lungs and one kidney back here? I could maybe leave my heart in San Francisco, but my kidney in Brooklyn? Nuts—this belt stays switched off till I get to the complaint department.” He frowned mightily. “But how?”

  “I got it,” Spud cried. “Close your eyes. Now try to remember the room you started in, and which way you were facing. Now, where’s the door?”

  “Uh…that way,” said Joe, pointing. He shuffled sideways, swore as he felt an invisible doorknob catch him in the groin, and stopped. “Now how the hell do I open the door with no hands?” he grumbled. “Oh, crap.” His torso dropped suddenly, ending up on its back on the floor, propped up on splayed elbows. The derby remained fixed on his head. His face contorted and sweat sprang out on his forehead. “Shoes…too slop-toppin’…slippery,” he gasped. “Can’t get…a decent grip.” He relaxed slightly, gritted his teeth, and said, “There. One shoe. Oh Christ, the second one’s always the hardest. Unnh. Got it. Now I gotcha, you son of a foreman.” After a bit more exertion he spread his fingers on the floor, slid himself backward, and appeared to push his torso from the floor with one hand. Spud watched with interest.

  “That was pretty neat,” the boy remarked. “From underneath you look like a cross-section of a person.”

  “Go on.”

  “You had lasagna for supper.”

  Joe paled a little. “Christ, I hope I don’t start leaking. Well, anyhow, thanks for everything, kid—I’ll be seein’ ya.”

  “Say, hold on,” Spud called as Joe’s upper body began to float from the living room. “How’re you gonna keep from bumping into things all the way to Manhattan? I mean, it’s ten miles, easy, from here to the bridge. You could get run over or something. Either half.”

  Joe froze, and thought that one over. He was silent for a long time.

  “Maybe I got an angle,” he said at last. He backed up slightly. “There. I feel the doorway with my heels. Now you move me a couple of feet, okay?” Spud complied.

  “Terrific! I can feel the doorway. When I walk, my legs back home move too. When I stand still and you move me, the legs stay put. So we can do it after all.”

  “‘We’ my foot,” Spud objected. “You haven’t been paying attention. I told you—I can’t push you to New York.”

  “Look, Spud,” Joe said, a sudden look of cunning on his pudding face, “how’d you like to be rich?”

  Spud looked skeptical. “Hey, Joe, I watch TV—I read sf—I’ve heard this one before. I don’t know anything about the stock market thirty years ago, I couldn’t even tell you who was president then, and you don’t look like a historian to me. What could you tell me to make me rich?”

  “I’m a sports nut,” Joe said triumphantly. “Tell me what year it is, I’ll tell you who’s gonna win the World Series, the Rose Bowl, the Stanley Cup. You could clean up.”

  Spud thought it over. He shot pool with one of the best bookies in the neighbourhood, a gentleman named “Odds” Evenwright. On the other hand, Mom would be home in a couple of hours.

  “I’ll give you all the help I can,” Joe promised. “Just give me a hand now and then.”

  “Okay,” Spud said reluctantly. “But we gotta hurry.”

  “Fine, Spud, fine. I knew I could count on you. All right, let’s give it a try.” The fat man2 closed his eyes, turned right and began to move forward gingerly. “Lemme see if I can remember.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Spud with a touch of contempt. Joe, he decided, was not very bright. “You’ve gotta get out of this room first. You’re gonna hit that wall in a minute.”

  Joe opened his eyes, blinked. “Yeah.”

  “Hold on. Where your legs are—is that this building, thirty-two years from now? I mean, if it is, how come the doors are in different places and stuff?”

  “Nah—I started in a ten-year-old building.”

  Spud sneered. “Cripes, you’re lucky you didn’t pop out in midair! Or inside somebody’s fireplace. That was dumb—you should have started on the ground out in the open someplace.”

  Joe reddened. “What makes you think there is anyplace out in the open in Brooklyn in 2007, smart-mouth? I checked the Hall of Records and found out there was a building here in 1976, and the floor heights matched. So I took a chance. Now stop needlin’ me and help me figure this out.”

  “I guess,” Spud said reluctantly, “I’ll have to push you out into the hall, and then you can take it from there, I hope.” He dug in his heels and pushed. “Hey, squat a little, will you? Your center of gravity’s too high.” Koziack complied, and was gradually boyhandled out into the hall. It was empty.

  “Okay,” Spud panted at last. “Try walking.” Joe moved forward tentatively, then grinned and began to move faster, swinging his heavy arms.

  “Say,” he said, “this is all right.”

  “Well, let’s get going before somebody comes along and sees you,” Spud urged.

  “Sure thing,” Koziack agreed, quickening his pace. “Wouldn’t want aaaaaaAAAAAARGH!!!” His eyes widened for a moment, his arms flailed, and suddenly he dropped to the floor and began to bounce violently up and down, spinning rapidly. Spud jumped away, wondering if Joe had gone mad or epileptic. At last the fat man2 came to rest on his back, cursing feebly, the derby still on his head but quite flattened.

  “You okay?” Spud asked tentatively.

  Joe lurched upright and began rubbing the back of his head vigorously. “Fell down the mug-pluggin’ stairs,” he said petulantly.

  “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to do that?” Joe barked.

  “Well, be more careful,” Spud said angrily. “You kee
p makin’ noise and somebody’s gonna come investigate.”

  “In Brooklyn? Come on! Jesus, my ass hurts.”

  “Lucky you didn’t break a leg,” Spud told him. “Let’s get going.”

  “Yeah.” Groaning, Joe began to move forward again. The pair reached the elevator without further incident, and Joe pushed the DOWN button. “Wish my own building had elevators,” he complained bitterly, still trying to rub the place that hurt. Migod, thought Spud, he literally can’t find it with both hands! He giggled, stopped when he saw Joe glare.

  The elevator slid back. A bearded young man with very long hair emerged, shouldered past the two, started down the hall and then did a triple-take in slow motion. Trembling, he took a plastic baggie of some green substance from his pocket, looked from it to Koziack and back again. “I guess it is worth two hundred an ounce,” he said to himself, and continued on his way.

  Oblivious, Spud was waving Joe to follow him into the elevator. The fat man2 attempted to comply, bounced off empty air in the doorway.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Come on, come on,” Spud said impatiently.

  “I can’t. My own hallway isn’t wide enough. You’ll have to push me in.”

  Spud raised his eyes heavenward. He set the “emergency stop” switch. Immediately alarm bells began to yammer, reverberating through the entire building. Swearing furiously, Spud scrambled past Joe into the hallway and pushed him into the elevator as fast as he could, scurrying in after him. He slapped the controls, the clamour ceased, and the car began to descend.

  At once Joe rose to the ceiling, banging his head and flattening the derby entirely. The car’s descent slowed. He roared with pain and did a sort of reverse-pushup, lowering his head a few inches. He glared down at Spud. “How…many…floors?” he grunted, teeth gritting with effort.

  Spud glanced at the indicator behind Joe. “Three more,” he announced.

  “Jesus.”

  The elevator descended at about three-quarter-normal speed, but eventually it reached the ground floor, and the doors opened on a miraculously empty lobby. Joe dropped his hands with a sigh of relief—and remained a few inches below the ceiling, too high to get out the door.

  “Oh, for the luvva—what do I do now?” he groaned. Spud shrugged helplessly. As they pondered, the doors slid closed and the car, in answer to some distant summons, began to rise rapidly. Joe dropped like an anvil, let out a howl as he struck the floor. “I’ll sue,” he gibbered, “I’ll sue the bastard! Oh my kidneys! Oh my gut!”

  “Oh my achin’ back,” Spud finished. “Now someone’ll see us—I mean, you. Supposed they aren’t stoned?” Joe was too involved in the novel sensation of internal bruising; it was up to Spud to think of something. He frowned—then smiled. Snatching the mashed derby from Joe’s head, he pushed the crown back out and placed the hat, upside-down, on the floor in front of Joe.

  The door slid back at the third floor: a rotund matron with a face like an overripe avocado stepped into the car and then stopped short, wide-eyed. She went white, and then suddenly red with embarrassment.

  “Oh, you poor man,” she said sympathetically, averting her eyes, and dropped a five-dollar bill in the derby. “I never supported that war myself.” She turned around and faced forward, pushing the button marked “L.”

  Barely in time, Spud leaped onto Joe’s shoulders and threw up his hands. They hit the ceiling together with a muffled thud, clamping their teeth to avoid exclaiming. The stout lady kept up a running monologue about a cousin of hers who had also left in Vietnam some parts of his anatomy which she was reluctant to name, muffling the sounds the two did make, and she left the elevator at the ground floor without looking back. “Good luck,” she called over a brawny shoulder, and was gone.

  Spud made a convulsive effort, heaved Joe a few feet down from the ceiling, and leaped from his shoulders toward the closing door. He landed on his belly, and the door closed on his hand, springing open again at once. It closed on his hand twice more before he had enough breath back to scream at Joe, who shook off his stupor and left the elevator, snatching up his derby and holding the door for Spud to emerge. The boy exited on his knees, cradling his hand and swearing.

  Joe helped him up. “Sorry,” he said apologetically. “I was afraid I’d step on ya.”

  “With WHAT?” Spud hollered.

  “I said I was sorry, Spud. I just got shook up. Thanks for helping me out there. Look, I’ll split this finnif with you…” A murderous glare from Spud cut him off. The boy held out his hand.

  “Fork it over,” he said darkly.

  “Whaddya mean? She give it to me, didn’t she?”

  “I’ll give it to you,” Spud barked. “You say you’re gonna make me rich, but all I’ve got so far is a stiff neck and a mashed hand. Come on, give—you haven’t got a pocket to put it in anyway.”

  “I guess you’re right, Spud,” Joe decided. “I owe ya for the help. If a grownup saw me and found out about the belt, it’d probably cause a paradox or something, and I’d end upon a one-way trip to the Pleistocene. The temporal cops’re pretty tough about that kind of stuff.” He handed over the money, and Spud, mollified now, stuffed it into his pants and considered his next move. The lobby was still empty, but that could change at any moment.

  “Look,” he said finally, ticking off his options on his fingers, “we can’t take the subway—we’d cause a riot. Likewise the bus, and besides, we haven’t got exact change. A Brooklyn cabbie can’t be startled, but five bucks won’t get us to the bridge. And we can’t walk. So there’s only one thing to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll have to clout a car.”

  Joe brightened. “I knew you’d think of something, kid. Hey, what do I do in the meantime?”

  Spud considered. Between them and the curtained lobby-door, some interior decorator’s horribly botched bonsai caught (or, more accurately, bushwacked) his eye; it rose repulsively from a kind of enormous marble wastebasket filled with vermiculite, a good three feet high.

  “Squat behind that,” he said, pointing. “If anybody comes in, make out like you’re tying your shoelace. If you hear the elevator behind you, go around the other side of it.”

  Joe nodded. “You know,” he said, replacing his derby on his balding pink head, “I just thought. While we was upstairs at your place I shoulda grabbed something to wear that went down to the floor. Dumb. Well, I sure ain’t goin’ back.”

  “It wouldn’t do you any good anyway,” Spud told him. “The only clothes we got like that are Mom’s—you couldn’t wear them.”

  Joe looked puzzled, and then light slowly dawned. “Oh, yeah, I remember from my history class. This is a tight-ass era. Men couldn’t wear dresses and women couldn’t wear pants.”

  “Women can wear pants,” Spud said, confused.

  “That’s right—I remember now. ‘The Twilight of Sexual Inequality,’ my teacher called it, the last days when women still oppressed men.”

  “I think you’ve got that backwards,” Spud corrected.

  “I don’t think so,” Joe said dubiously.

  “I hope you’re better at sports. Look, this is wasting time. Get down behind that cactus and keep your eyes open. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Okay, Spud. Look, uh…Spud?” Joe looked sheepish. “Listen, I really appreciate this. I really do know about sports history. I mean, I’ll see that you make out on this.”

  Spud smiled suddenly. “That’s okay, Joe. You’re too fat, and you’re not very bright, but for some reason I like you. I’ll see that you get fixed up.” Joe blushed and stammered, and Spud left the lobby.

  He pondered on what he had said, as with a small part of his attention, he set about stealing a car. It was funny, he thought as he pushed open an unlocked vent-window and snaked his slender arm inside to open the door—Joe was pretty dumb, all right, and he complained a lot, and he was heavier than a garbage can full of cement—but something about him appealed to
Spud. He’s got guts, the boy decided as he smashed the ignition and shorted the wires. If I found myself in a strange place with no legs, I bet I’d freak out. He gunned the engine to warm it up fast and tried to imagine what it must be like for Joe to walk around without being able to see where he was going—or rather, seeing where only part of him was going. The notion unsettled him; he decided that in Joe’s place he’d be too terrified to move an inch. And yet, he reflected as he eased the car—a battered ’59 Buick—from its parking space, that big goon is going to try and make it all the way to Manhattan. Yeah, he’s got guts.

  Or perhaps, it occurred to him as he double-parked in front of the door of his building, Joe simply didn’t have the imagination to be afraid. Well, in that case somebody’s got to help him, Spud decided, and headed for the opaquely-curtained front door, leaving the engine running. He had never read Of Mice and Men, but he had an intuitive conviction that it was the duty of the bright ones to keep the dumb ones from getting into scrapes. His mother had often said as much of her late husband.

  As he pushed open the door he saw Joe—or rather, what there was to see of Joe—bending over a prostrate young woman, tugging her dress off over her head.

  “What the hell are you doing, you moron!” he screamed, leaping in through the door and slamming it behind him. “You trying to get us busted?”

  Joe straightened, embarrassment on his round face. Since he retained his grip on the long dress, the girl’s head and arms rose into the air and then fell with a thud as the dress came free. Joe winced. “I’m sorry, Spud,” he pleaded. “I couldn’t help it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I couldn’t help it. I tried to get behind the thing like you said, but there was a wall in the way—of my legs, I mean. So while I was tryin’ ta think what to do this fem come in an’ seen me an’ just fainted. So I look at her for a while an’ I look at her dress an’ I think: Joe, would you rather people look at you funny, or would you rather be in the Pleistocene? So I take the dress.” He held it up; its hem brushed the floor.

  Spud looked down at the girl. She was in her late twenties, with long blond hair and a green headband. She wore only extremely small and extremely loud floral print panties and a pair of sandals. Her breasts were enormous, rising and falling as she breathed. She was out cold. Spud stared for a long time.