“I've got some rough sketches. You want to see?'
Marvella shrugged. 'I guess so. They any good?'
'I think so.' She placed a large pad in front of Marvella, just to the right of the sewing machine, and slowly turned the pages until she had finished showing six of them.
'That's all so far?' Terri nodded. 'They're good,' Marvella said, gave a flicker of a smile, then looked back at the sewing machine and stepped on the treadle.
Terri had to bite back a grin. It was getting better, she thought, better every day. Marvella's praise so far had been limited to semi-appreciative grunts. But today she had actually said Terri's work was good. True, she wasn't the most communicative person Terri had ever known, but the respect she felt for Marvella was, she thought, beginning to be returned, if ever so slightly. At least it was something, and it could, she considered, be a lot worse.
Abe Kipp could have been the costume designer.
Terri chuckled at the thought, earned a look of mild disapproval from Marvella, and got back to her work.
By four-thirty the shadows had gathered on the fifth floor, and Harry Ruhl was hoping that his digital watch would beat the darkness to five o'clock. From time to time he glanced down at it and whispered, 'C'mon, c'mon, hurry it up…” but it did no good. He thought of moving it ahead by several minutes, but remembered that he did not have the instruction sheet with him.
He worked on, uncomfortably alert to every slight noise, every squeak of floorboards, settling of joists. He had disconnected each sink and toilet in the rooms of what had been the men's ward, had loaded them onto the elevator, and hauled them out behind the theatre to the dumpsters. It had taken him three trips, and now the only thing remaining was the equipment in the men's operating room. Harry had not yet gone in there.
He hated operating rooms, although he had never seen one. An operating room was where his daddy had died four years earlier. The doctor had come out and told him that when they cut his daddy open they had found that what they called the tissues were so desiccated that there was no way to reattach them on closing. Harry had not understood what all the words meant, but he had understood that his daddy had been alive when he went into the operating room, and was dead when he came out. Another thing he knew about operating rooms was that his uncle had died in the one on the fifth floor back in the late thirties. His uncle was only a teenager then, and his daddy had told him the story plenty of times. 'They killed him in there, Harry,' he had said. 'He wasn't all that sick, but they killed him in there anyway.'
The conclusion was a simple one for Harry Ruhl to draw – they killed people in operating rooms. And since people were killed in there, what happened was what usually happens in places where people are murdered. Ghosts come back.
That thought was more vividly in his mind than ever as he walked down the short hall toward the operating room. He had to take the sinks and the table out of there, or Abe would get mad at him. He didn't mind someone being mad at him – lots of people had over the years – but what really bothered him was Abe's teasing, and calling him a pussy boy. So he had to show Abe he wasn't afraid. He had to show him he was brave. He had to take that operating table down there, right in front of Abe.
The only problem was that he didn't feel brave. He really felt like a pussy boy right now, and it was dumb, he knew, but he really didn't want to open those big doors to the operating room. Worst thing was that there were no windows in those doors, so he couldn't peek through first to make sure there wasn't anything there. He'd have felt a lot better if he could have done that.
But he couldn't, doggone it. So there was no point in just standing here, was there? Nope. What he just had to do was open those big wooden doors and walk right in, and there wouldn't be a thing there to be scared of, and he could just yank out that operating table and take it down and then go the hell home and watch something funny on the television to help him stop thinking all these dumb, weird things.
Harry put his hand on the cold metal handle of the door and was about to pull it open when he heard something inside the room and froze. It was a dry, rasping sound, like something scraping on metal.
A mouse? he wondered, and prayed it was so. Maybe a mouse's claws scratching the floor. But wait, it wasn't the floor, was it? No, it had sounded hollow, like something on the operating table.
Oh Jeez, he thought, and then, oh Jesus, damning himself as he heard the words in his head. He shouldn't think that, shouldn't think swearing. But in another moment the self-condemnation was gone as the sound came again. Could it be a mouse?
Doggone it, if it was he would be ready for it, wasn't going to let a mouse scare him, wasn't going to go down and tell Abe that there was something up there and then Abe would come back and say, 'Look, it's just a mouse, you dummy, you pussy boy…”
Harry reached in his pocket and drew out a Swiss Army knife that his daddy had given him the Christmas before he had died. It wasn't a real official one – Abe had told him that – but it had all sorts of things on it, including two knife blades, the larger of which he now opened and held in front of him, inner wrist cocked up, like a child shines a flashlight, as though it were a talisman that could magically protect him from whatever waited within.
'Not gonna scare me, mouse,' he said, and thought how lonely his voice sounded up here in the waning shadows from the far windows that faced the west. 'No sir. I'm gonna open this door now, so you better scoot!' He shook the handle with his left hand and listened.
There was no sound now. Maybe it had run away.
'I'm comin' in… right… now!' He yanked the door open and looked in.
The doctor was waiting for him.
~* ~
(THE EMPEROR, tall, broad-shouldered, strong looking, stands behind the metal operating table. He wears a white gown spattered with red-brown stains, and rubber gloves glimmering with something dark and wet. His hands are empty, but his eyes are full of fire, and a saber lies on the table before him.)
THE EMPEROR
Hello, Harry. I've been waiting for you. Waiting for… the pussy boy. (HARRY tries to speak, but his throat chokes.) Give me your scalpel, Harry. I was going to use this… (He indicates the saber.)… but yours is much nicer. Give me the scalpel.
(HARRY walks toward THE EMPEROR with slow, ponderous steps, as if against his will. He reaches across the table and hands him the Swiss army knife. THE EMPEROR takes it in his right hand, picks up the saber with the left, and leans it against the wall. He holds up the knife and turns it in his hand, as if admiring the blade.)
THE EMPEROR
This will do nicely. (He reaches up and pulls down his mask, revealing his face.)
HARRY
Mr… Hamilton…
THE EMPEROR
(Smiling) No. Not Mr. Hamilton. Emperor. Emperor Karl Frederick Augustus, about to grant a boon to one of his most loyal subjects. Now. Won't you lie down? And then we shall begin.
Scene 15
God damn Harry anyway. Five-thirty already and the big dummy's still upstairs, and after how afraid he was and all.
Abe Kipp shook his head in disgust, as he paced toward the elevator. He always counted on Harry to let him know when it was quitting time, but for once the kid didn't come through. Abe had been backstage reading a twenty-year-old issue of Cavalier, when that smart-ass Curt Wynn came walking by and asked him what he was still doing there. When Abe looked at his watch and saw that he should have left a half hour before, he was torn between walking out the door and giving Harry a piece of his mind. He decided on the latter, as there were so few times that Harry really did anything worth yelling about. But this, dammit, was one of those times. Christ, stay late once and they'll be expecting freebies from then on. They got paid weekly, not by the fucking hour.
