The Teleportation Accident

dumps my body in the ocean. But Stent can’t know. I love that man more than anything in the world. I love that man so much it makes me grind my teeth at night. If he found out I’d been fooling him for our entire marriage … That’s why I can’t stop. If I stop doing what Drabsfarben says, he’ll make sure Stent finds out about everything I already did. You know, I met Sinclair Lewis’s wife once. She was in the same hole as me. But in the end she went to the FBI. I guess I’m not that brave.’

‘What does Jascha want with Bailey?’

‘When the NKVD found out Bailey was working on teleportation, they told Drabsfarben they wanted Bailey to defect. That was supposed to be his top priority from then on. But Drabsfarben only really knew artists and writers and musicians and architects. Back then, he didn’t have a connection to CalTech. He didn’t even have a connection to a connection. Then we saw you going to dinner at Gorge’s house. Gorge bought himself a lot of juice at CalTech with that million dollars for the theatre. Drabsfarben thought you might be useful one day.’

Ever since he noticed Dolores Mutton, the barman across the room had been polishing the same side of the same glass in ever smaller and more rapid circles. ‘So that was why you called me afterwards and took back all your threats and offered me that job,’ said Loeser.

‘Yes. And in the long run, it worked out nicely. Drabsfarben’s plans almost always do. We put on a little pressure and you brought Bailey right to us. The NKVD were thrilled. But after about another year, Drabsfarben decided Bailey wasn’t going to defect voluntarily. So he tried blackmail.’

‘Adele told me that. What’s this secret about Bailey’s past?’

‘Maybe he’s a bootlegger from North Dakota? I don’t know. Drabsfarben hasn’t told me. But that’s not all Drabsfarben knows. He has something else on Bailey. Something much bigger. Something so big he says it’s too dangerous even to bring into play right now. In any case, blackmail hasn’t worked either. And Drabsfarben’s getting worried. The NKVD have taken the Comintern apart, and they see Drabsfarben as a Comintern man all the way through. That means he has to watch his back. He goes out in public now less and less. Did you hear what happened to Willi Munzenberg?’

‘Who is that?’

‘Didn’t you know him in Berlin? He came up in the Comintern at the same time as Drabsfarben. They worked together for years. They used to leave parcels for each other at some second-hand bookstore.’

‘Luni’s!’

‘I don’t know. But a couple of months ago Munzenberg was found hanging from a tree outside an internment camp near Lyons. Drabsfarben thinks the same thing could happen to him. He thinks the only way he can save himself now is to get Bailey to Moscow. I just hope he fails.’

‘So do I! Bailey’s supposed to be running my Teleportation Accident tonight.’ Loeser finished his beer. ‘Are you still going to pay me the thirty dollars every month?’ he said.

‘No. If the Cultural Solidarity Committee carries on, I want it to do some honest good for honest exiles.’

‘Oh. All right, well, one last question: have you really seen Jascha kill someone?’ For the first time Loeser wondered if Drabsfarben might have had something to do with the deaths at CalTech.

‘Maybe I was just saying that to scare you. Either way, though, if you breathe a word about any of this to anyone, you’ll have a hell of a lot more to worry about than those forged cheques.’

‘You needn’t worry, Mrs Mutton. I won’t tell anyone. Whom would I tell?’

The answer, of course, was Blimk. He told Blimk. After Dolores Mutton left him alone in the bar of the Chateau Marmont, Loeser paid the bill, walked down to the shop where he still spent most of his afternoons, and repeated every sensational detail.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more persuasive demonstration of why you shouldn’t get involved in politics,’ Loeser concluded.

‘I feel sorry for the lady,’ said Blimk, who had not made any comment on Loeser’s odour, perhaps because, by the standards of the shop’s regular customers, it was not memorably unpleasant.

‘I shouldn’t still be scared of her, but I am.’

‘So you want a number for my buddy in Washington?’

‘Your Lovecraft man at the Department of State? Why?’

‘Probably easier than calling the FBI out of the blue.’

‘Why would I want to call the FBI?’

‘Tell ’em what’s going on in the Palisades.’

‘I’m not telling anyone about this except you. If getting Bailey to Moscow is really Drabsfarben’s last chance to save himself, then there’s nothing more he can make me do for him now. I don’t have to worry about it any more. I can just sit back and watch what happens.’

‘But he’s a commie spy. Probably wants to bring the whole country down.’

‘I thought you weren’t political.’

‘I ain’t, but a fella’s got some responsibilities to the place he lives.’

‘Not me,’ said Loeser. ‘I am what is sometimes termed a rootless cosmopolitan. I had no responsibilities to Berlin and I certainly have no responsibilities to Los Angeles. Anyway, so what if Drabsfarben does bring the country down? What would anyone mourn? Jell-O salads with mayonnaise?’

‘You been here five years and you’re still pretending you hate this place? Five years and you’re still worried about what your buddies from back home would say if they heard you admit you kinda liked it?’

Blimk had never spoken so sharply to him before. ‘Look, I read an article in The Nation last year by some English writer,’ Loeser declared, ‘where he said, “If I had to choose between betraying my country” — well, not that this is my country — but anyway, “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend” — well, not that Drabsfarben is my friend — still, “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should …” — well, I can’t remember exactly how it ended, but the point was … until you’ve seen Dolores Mutton in a red dress you can’t comprehend the position I’m in.’

‘You think it won’t make any difference to you if the commies get this teleportation fella? You ain’t read about all these deals Hitler and Stalin keep making?’

‘I try not to pay attention to any of that.’

Blimk put down his cup of coffee. ‘Get out of my store.’

‘What?’

‘I might not love my country like I ought to, but I like it okay, and I think it’s been nicer to you than you deserve.’

‘Would you still like your country so much if it took your store away?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Have any more of those men from the Traffic Commission come by recently?’

‘So what if they have?’

Loeser was about to tell Blimk all about the elevated streetcar terminal, but he knew the information was too important to give up in haste. ‘I just mean your opinion might change one day.’

‘I said get out of my store. Out.’

Loeser decided he just did not have the inner faculties to resolve a quarrel with his best friend on the same day as the premiere of The Christmas Teleportation Accident; but he couldn’t go straight to the Gorge Auditorium, because he’d always taken a sort of Berkeleian idealist approach to first nights, believing that problems didn’t really start to multiply until the director was there to deal with them; and he didn’t want to go home because of the skunk bomb. So instead he sat in a drugstore on the edge of Elysian Park long enough to arrive at CalTech with only about an hour to spare, no more than was sufficient to give Bailey’s new theatrical effect the proper test run it had been awaiting for so long. Passing the Obediah Laboratories on his way to the Gorge Auditorium, however, Loeser was dismayed to see Bailey himself going inside. He pursued the physicist upstairs to room 11, too impatient to knock.

‘Professor Bailey? I’m sorry to interrupt, but we really both ought to be at the theatre by now.’

‘Just a minute, Mr Loeser.’ Bailey was already bent over the controls of the ultramarine accomplishment or whatever it was called. Loeser sighed and looked around the room. On a desk nearby was Bailey’s toy steam engine, and beneath it Loeser noticed a slim white book with a familiar yellow illustration of a row of shacks: The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft.

‘I had no idea you were a Lovecraft aficionado, Professor!’ said Loeser.

‘What?’ Bailey looked up from his machine, and then an expression of displeasure passed across his face as