amount of stuff there is in cities. That’s heavy, heavy.”
Saul put in, “Mrs. Willis says the skyscrapers get very heavy at night when they—excuse me—screw her.”
Dorotea Luque’s eyes grew large, then she exploded in giggles. “Oh, that’s naughty,” she reproved him merrily, wagging a finger.
Saul’s eyes got a faraway look like a mad poet’s, and he embroidered his remark with, “Can’t you imagine their tall gray skinny forms sneaking sideways down the streets, one flying buttress erected for a stony phallus?” and there was more sputtery laughter from Mrs. Luque. Gun got her more wine and himself another bottle of ale.
8
Cal said, “Franz, I’ve been thinking on and off all day, in the corner of my mind that wasn’t Brandenburging, about that ‘607 Rhodes’ that drew you to move here. Was it a definite place? And if so, where?”
“607 Rhodes—what’s that all about?” Saul asked.
Franz explained again about the rice-paper journal and the violet-ink person who might have been Clark Ashton Smith and his possible interviews with de Castries. Then he said, “The 607 can’t be a street address—like 811 Geary here, say. There’s no such street as Rhodes in ’Frisco. I’ve checked. The nearest to it is a Rhode Island Street, but that’s way over in the Potrero, and it’s clear from the entries that the 607 place is here downtown, within easy walking distance of Union Square. And once the journal-keeper describes looking out the window at Corona Heights and Mount Sutro—of course, there wasn’t any TV tower then—”
“Hell, in 1928 there weren’t even the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges,” Gun put in.
“—and at Twin Peaks,” Franz went on. “And then he says that Thibaut always referred to Twin Peaks as Cleopatra’s Breasts.”
“I wonder if skyscrapers ever have breasts,” Saul said. “I must ask Mrs. Willis about that.”
Dorotea bugged her eyes again, indicated her bosom, said, “Oh, no!” and once more burst into laughter.
Cal said, “Maybe Rhodes is the name of a building or hotel. You know, the Rhodes Building.”
“Not unless the name’s been changed since 1928,” Franz told her. “There’s nothing like that now that I’ve heard of. The name Rhodes strike a bell with any of you?”
It didn’t.
Gun speculated, “I wonder if
“You know,” Cal said, “I’d like to know that too.”
Dorotea shook her head. “Is just 811 Geary. Was once hotel maybe—you know, night clerk and maids. But I don’t know.”
“Buildings Anonymous,” Saul remarked without looking up from the reefer he was making.
“Now we do close transom,” said Dorotea, suiting actions to words. “Okay smoke pot. But do not—how you say?—advertise.”
Heads nodded wisely.
After a bit they all decided that they were hungry and should eat together at the German Cook’s around the corner because it was his night for sauerbraten. Dorotea was persuaded to join them. On the way she picked up her daughter Bonita and the taciturn Fernando, who now beamed.
Walking together behind the others, Cal asked Franz, “Taffy is something more serious than you’re making out, isn’t it?”
He had to agree, though he was becoming curiously uncertain of some of the things that had happened today—the usual not-unpleasant evening fog settling around his mind like a ghost of the old alcoholic one. High in the sky, the lopsided circle of the gibbous moon challenged the street lights.
He said, “When I thought I saw that thing in my window, I strained for all sorts of explanations, to avoid having to accept a… well, supernatural one. I even thought it might have been you in your old bathrobe.”
“Well, it could have been me, except it wasn’t,” she said calmly. “I’ve still got your key, you know. Gun gave it to me that day your big package was coming and Dorotea was out. I’ll give it to you after dinner.”
“No hurry,” he said.
“I wish we could figure out that 607 Rhodes,” she said, “and the name of our own building, if it ever had one.”
“I’ll try to think of a way,” he said. “Cal, did your father actually swear by Robert Ingersoll?”
“Oh, yes— ‘In the name of…’ and so on—and by William James, too, and Felix Adler, the man who founded Ethical Culture. His rather atheistic coreligionists thought it odd of him, but he liked the ring of sacerdotal language. He thought of science as a sacrament.”
Inside the friendly little restaurant, Gun and Saul were shoving two tables together with the smiling approval of blonde and red-cheeked Rose, the waitress. The way they ended up, Saul sat between Dorotea and Bonita with Gun on Bonita’s other side. Bonita had her mother’s black hair, but was already a half-head taller and otherwise looked quite Anglo—the narrow-bodied and -faced North European type; nor was there any trace of Spanish in her American schoolgirl voice. He recalled hearing that her divorced and now nameless father had been black Irish. Though pleasingly slim in sweater and slacks, she looked somewhat gawky—very far from the shadowy, hurrying shape that had briefly excited him this morning and awakened an unpleasant memory.
He sat beside Gun with Cal between himself and Fernando, who was next to his sister. Rose took their orders.
Gun switched to a dark beer. Saul ordered a bottle of red wine for himself and the Luques. The sauerbraten was delicious, the potato pancakes with applesauce out of this world. Bela, the gleaming-faced German Cook (Hungarian, actually) had outdone himself.
In a lull in the conversation, Gun said to Franz, “That was really a very strange thing that happened to you on Corona Heights. As near as you can get today to what you’d call the supernatural.”
Saul heard and said at once, “Hey, what’s a materialist scientist like you doing talking about the supernatural?”
“Come off it, Saul,” Gun answered with a chuckle. “I deal with matter, sure. But what is that? Invisible particles, waves, and force fields. Nothing solid at all. Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”
“You’re right,” Saul grinned, sucking his. “There’s no reality but the individual’s immediate sensations, his awareness. All else is inference. Even the individuals are inference.”
Cal said, “I think the only reality is number… and music, which comes to the same thing. They are both real and they both have power.”
“My computers agree with you, all the way down the line,” Gun told her. “Number is all they know. Music?— well, they could learn that.”
Franz said, “I’m glad to hear you all talk that way. You see, supernatural horror is my bread and butter, both that
Bonita protested, “No!”
“—and the more serious junk, but sometimes people tell me there’s no such thing as supernatural horror anymore—that science has solved, or can solve, all mysteries, that religion is just another name for social service, and that modern people are too sophisticated and knowledgeable to be scared of ghosts even for kicks.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Gun said. “Science has only increased the area of the unknown. And if there is a god, her name is Mystery.”
Saul said, “Refer those brave erudite skeptics to my Mr. Edwards or Mrs. Willis, or simply to their own inevitable buried fears. Or refer ’em to me, and I’ll tell ’em the story of the Invisible Nurse who terrorized the locked ward at St. Luke’s. And then there was…” He hesitated, glancing toward Cal. “No, that’s too long a story to tell now.”
Bonita looked disappointed. Her mother said eagerly, “But are e-strange things. In Lima. This city too.
Her brother beamed his understanding and lifted a hand to preface one of his rare remarks. “
