Time Bomb

been bought at the same time.

I cleared my throat. No one responded. I waited and gave myself over to fantasy. A young couple Sunday shopping in some suburban department store- Sears or a counterpart. The smell of popcorn, the ding of elevator bells. One child in tow- a boy. The parents anxious, budget-conscious, but intent on acquisition. Furniture, appliances, soft rolls of carpeting. Cookware, dishes, all the brand-new, optimistic words it took to fill a proper 50’s populuxe home: Pyrex, stainless, vinyl, Formica, rayon, nylon. Sheaves of receipts. Warranties. More promises. A shopping spree worthy of a game-show winner…

All these dreams reduced to an ensemble, static as a museum exhibit.

I said, “Hello?”

A white-painted brick mantel framed a fireplace that was too clean ever to have been used. No screen, andirons, or tools. The top of the mantel was as bare as the walls. White walls, blank as giant sheets of virgin notepaper.

The tabula rasa approach to domestic life…

Across the living room was a dining room two thirds its size. Crenelated molding. More green carpet, more notepaper walls. Pecan-finish china cabinet, matching buffet. A couple of souvenir plates on one of the cabinet shelves. Grand Coulee Dam. Disneyland. The rest of the shelves empty. An oval table surrounded by eight straight- backed, plastic-sheathed chairs and topped with a brown pad filled most of the floor space. A pass-through with sliding wooden doors was cut into the wall behind the head of the table, offering a view of a yellow kitchen.

I went over and peeked in. Thirty-year-old refrigerator and stove glazed with yellow porcelain. No magnets or reminders on the fridge. No cooking smells.

There was a doorway leading to the rear of the house. A note was tacked onto the threshold.

DR. D.: IN THE BACK. M.B.

Beyond the note, an unlit hallway lined with closed doors. White space deepening to gray. I stepped closer, made out the sound of music. A string quartet. Haydn.

I walked toward it, followed the right turn of the hallway, and came to a final door. The music was loud and clear enough to be live.

I turned the knob, stepped into a large, peak-ceilinged room, the planks and cross-beams painted white. Dark hardwood floor. Three walls of blond birch paneling; the fourth, a bank of sliding glass doors that looked out to a small backyard that was mostly cement driveway. A silver-gray Honda sat in front of a corrugated aluminum garage door.

The glass gave the room an indoor-outdoor look. What realtors used to call a lanai, back in the days when they were peddling tropical dreams. What had become, in this age of transience and marital fracture, the family room.

The Burden family room was big and cold and devoid of furniture. Devoid of nearly everything, except for six- figures’ worth of stereo equipment arranged in a bank against one of the birch walls. Black-matte cases, black-glass instrument panels. Dials and digital readouts bleeping green and yellow and scarlet and gas-flame blue. Oscilloscopic sine waves. Fluctuating columns of liquid laser. Pinpoints of bouncing light.

Amps and preamps, tuners, graphic equalizers, bass-boosters, treble-clarifiers, filters, a reel-to-reel tape player, a pair of cassette decks, a pair of turntables, a compact disc player, a laser-disc player. All of it connected via a tangle of cable to a Stonehenge arrangement of black, fabric-faced speaker columns. Eight obelisks, spread throughout the room, big enough to project a heavy metal band into the bleachers of a baseball stadium.

A string quartet flowed out at medium volume.

Three quarters of a quartet. Both violin parts and the viola.

Mahlon Burden sat on a backless stool in the center of the room cradling a cello. Playing by ear, eyes closed, swaying in tempo, thin lips pursed as if for a kiss. He had on a white shirt, dark trousers, black socks, white canvas tennis shoes. His shirt sleeves were bunched carelessly at the elbows. Gray stubble flecked his chin, and his hair looked unkempt.

Seemingly unaware of my presence, he played on, fingers assuming positions along the ebony board, bearing down, quivering with vibrato. Floating the bow across the strings in a horsehair caress. Controlling his volume so perfectly that the cello meshed seamlessly with the recorded sounds regurgitated by the speakers.

Man and machine. Man as machine.

To my ears he was good, symphony quality or close to it. But I was put off by the sterile staginess of the whole thing.

I was here to exhume, not to be serenaded. But I heard him out, kept waiting for him to make a mistake- some flaw in tempo or sour tone that would justify an intrusion.

He kept playing perfectly. I endured an entire movement. When the piece was finished he kept his eyes closed but flexed his bow arm and took a deep breath.

Before I could say anything, the next movement began, opening with an arpeggiated solo by the first violin. Burden smiled as if meeting an old friend, readied his bow.

I said, “Mr. Burden.”

He opened his eyes.

I said, “Very pretty.”

He gave me a blank look and his face twitched. The second violin joined in. Then the viola. He glanced back at the columnar speakers, as if making eye contact with their fabric faces could somehow forestall the inevitable- forestall what he’d initiated.

The moment for the cello’s entry arrived. The music flowed, exquisite but incomplete. Unsettling. Like a beautiful woman without a conscience.

Burden gave one last look of regret, then stood, put his cello in its case, then the bow. Out of a trouser pocket came a small black remote-control module.

A single button push.

Fade to black.

The silence emptied the room of more than music. I noticed for the first time that the birch paneling was really some kind of photoprinted plyboard. The scuffmarks on the hardwood stood out harsh as keloid scars. The sliding glass door hadn’t been cleaned in a while. Through the cloudy panes, the concrete and grass view was depressing.

Family room without a family.

He said, “I play every day without fail. Concentrate on the technically challenging pieces.”

“You play very well.”

Nod. “At one time I had ambitions of doing it for a living. But it’s not a very good living unless one is extremely lucky. I never counted on luck.”

Uttered with more pride than bitterness. He walked over to the stereo bank.

“I believe in doing things systematically, Dr. Delaware. That’s my main talent, actually. I’m not much in terms of innovation, but I do know how to put things together. To create systems. And to use them optimally.”

He fondled the equipment, then began delivering a lecture on each of the components. Waiting out delay tactics was one of my talents. I just stood there and listened.

“… so you might be asking yourself, why two cassette players? This one”- he pointed- “is conventional magnetic tape, but this one is DAT. Digital audio tracking. State of the art. The inventors hope to compete with CDs, though I’m not yet convinced. Still, the sound quality is impressive. I had a prototype a full year before it hit the market. It interfaces quite well with the rest of the system. Sometimes that’s a problem: Components will meet individual specifications but not blend well with other members of the system. Like an instrument that’s been tuned to itself with no regard for the rest of the orchestra. Acceptable only in a very limited context. The key is to approach life with a conductor’s perspective. The whole greater than its parts.”

He moved his hand as if wielding a baton.

I gave him a dose of therapist’s silence.

He stroked a black glass face and said, “I suppose you’ll want to know about our origins- Holly’s origins.”

“That would be a good start.”

“Come with me.”