The Silver Metal Lover

“I’d give you the money.”

So I did try to write, a couple of stories, but nothing would come. The characters were always the same, people I know—Clovis, Demeta, Egyptia. And I could never get past the first page. Forty or so first pages. I didn’t try to write about Silver. I’d said all there was I could say, and it hadn’t been enough.

Involved in myself, I didn’t take any notice of the inevitable trend in the Clovis-Leo situation. Then one afternoon Clovis stalked in glittering with the rain which had replaced the snow. He flung his nineteenth-century coat at the closet, which caught it, and announced: “This morning I got a hideous rambling letter from Egyptia. Someone took her up to a tomb in the desert on the pretext she looked like some princess out of antiquity. And as they stood there on the moonlit sand, next to a handy sphinx, a slender ghost is supposed to have flitted by.”

“You don’t believe in ghosts?” said Leo.

“Do you?”

“I’m superstitious. Most actors are. Yes, I believe in them. My theatre over on Star is supposed to be haunted. If you’d come and be my Hamlet there, you might see the haunt—”

“You give me a good idea,” said Clovis. “We can hold a seance here.”

Leo laughed. “Here? You’re joking.”

“Am I?”

Clovis produced the seance table and the glass and the plastic cards with letters and numbers up to ten.

“Well, it’s supposed to be bad luck, isn’t it?”

“Lucky for some,” said Clovis.

He began to set out the cards.

“I think I’d rather go for a walk,” said Leo.

“Fine. Jane and I will have the seance without you.”

“Oh.”

“Won’t we, Jane?” Clovis didn’t look at me. Part of me wanted to say: “Do your own dirty work,” but it was less complicated to say, however listlessly, “All right.”

“Jane doesn’t like the idea either,” said Leo.

“Yes she does. She adores the idea. Don’t you, Jane?”

“Yes, Clovis.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

“Dear me,” said Clovis, “are you having a migraine attack in the ears, now?”

Clovis sat cross-legged on the rug. A little dull pain went through and through me. I thought of the seance with Austin directly after I had seen Silver for the very first time.

“Jane,” said Clovis, “do come here and show Leo there’s really nothing to be afraid of.”

I got up and went over, and sat down. I looked at the cut-glass goblet. Leo had moved to the window. Clovis said to me, extra quietly, “Don’t ask me why, but push a bit, will you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I did say don’t—”

“Oh, hell,” said Leo. “All right.” He came over and sat down with us, running his hand over Clovis’s hair as he did so, and I saw Clovis wince.

We all put one finger on the glass. Inside me, the pain swelled on a long slow chord. But I had no urge to do anything about it, for there was nothing to be done. My eyes unfocused. I seemed to retreat inside myself, somewhere distant. I ignored the tiny voice which cried: If only this were the first time again. If only I could go back.

“Jesus Christ,” said Clovis, far away, but in a tone of abject awe, “it’s moving.”

No, I really couldn’t stay with Clovis anymore. I really couldn’t take any more of this sort of thing, this game. His dishonesty, this fear of his of being loved, of loving—

The glass moved steadily and strongly.

“It’s spelling something,” said Leo.

You fool. It’s spelling Leo, get lost.

“J.,” said Leo, “A.—Jane it’s for you—”

“Special delivery,” said Clovis. His voice cracked. He was overdoing it.

“I.,” said Leo. “I.? And N.” There was a pause and then the glass moved again. “Same thing all over,” said Leo. “J.A.I.N. A spirit that can’t spell. Damn. It’s getting stronger. There’s something really here, Clovis.”

“I know,” Clovis said. He cleared his throat. “And it wants Jane. Jane? Wake up. You’ve got a caller. There it is again. Jain. Who spells your name that way?”

I blinked. The room came back, hurtfully bright with rainy light and sharp with other lives.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Who spells Jane J.A.I.N.?”

“No one.”

The glass moved.

“It’s going somewhere else,” said Leo, the faithful commentator, as though he were broadcasting for a performance where the visual had blacked out and everything must be described. “Y.O… U.”

“You,” said Clovis.

“I don’t exactly—” said Leo.

“I do,” said Clovis. “Jane says no one spells her name with an I., and it said: You do.”

“I don’t,” said Leo.

“Oh for God’s sake,” said Clovis. “She does.”

“This is turning into farce,” said Leo.

“J.A.I.N.” said Clovis. The glass flew. “T.H.E. S.O.U.N.D.O.F.R.A.I.N.F.A.L.L.I.N.G.S.I.L.K.E.N. G.R.A.I.N.P.A.L.E.C.H.A.I.N.—this is gibberish—the sound of rain falling? Silk? Grain? Wholewheat bloody bread —”

The glass stopped under our fingers.

I shut my eyes.

“Clovis,” I said, “when did you go through my things and read my manuscript?”

“With your writing, reading any manuscript of yours would be unlikely.”

I opened my eyes and made myself look at him. His face was terribly white, unlike Leo’s, which was flushed and excited.

“Clovis, why are you doing this? Is it spite? Or are you trying to help in some stupid tactless—”

The glass moved. I saw Clovis’s face drain even whiter; he stared back at it as if it had loudly spoken to him.

“It isn’t me,” he said.

“It’s you.”

“It says,” said Leo, “The idea is—the idea is for me— for me to—A.M.U.S.—”

“Amuse you,” said Clovis, anticipating.

The glass shot across the table.

“T.H.A.N.K.—Thanks,” said Leo, disbelievingly. “Clovis, have you rigged this table?”

“Not recently,” said Clovis. He took his hand away from the glass, and lay down full length on the rug. “We know who it is. Don’t we, Jane?”

“Jane, don’t leave me alone with this thing,” said Leo, as I moved my own hand away.

“You can take your hand off, too, Leo,” I said. “It can go on moving without any help.” I was angry. The first emotion I’d felt for centuries. “There’s a magnet in the glass and wires in the table. And you can set up a program.”

Clovis gave a croaking laugh.

“How would a program know when to say “Thank you” so sarcastically?” he said. “Jane, you think too much.”

The glass spun under Leo’s hand.