“And where is Molly, Polly, Sally, Gerty, Connie, now?”
“Even she doesn’t know. Here are six different addresses in twelve different summers. Maybe she drowned in deep grass. Years are a great hiding place. God hides you. Duck! What’s my name?!”
He did a flip-flop cartwheel across the room. I heard his old bones scream.
“Ta-ta!” He grinned in pain.
“Mr. Metaphor!”
“You got it!” He dropped cold.
I leaned over him, terrified. He popped one eye wide.
“That was a close one. Prop me up. I scared Rattigan so, she ran.” He babbled on. “It was only fitting. After all, I’m Fagin, Marley, Scrooge, Hamlet, Quickly. Someone like me had to be curious and try to figure out what year she lived in, or if she ever existed at all. The older I got, the more jealous I became of the gain and loss of Constance. I waited too long over the years, just as Hamlet waited too long to slay the foul fiend who killed his father’s ghost! Ophelia and Caesar begged for slaughter. The memory of Constance summoned bull stampedes. So when I turned ninety all my voices raved for revenge. Like a damn fool I sent her the Book of the Dead. So it must be that Constance ran from my madness.
“Call an ambulance,” Mr. Metaphor added. “I’ve got two broken tibias and a herniated groin. Did you write all that down?”
“Later.”
“Don’t wait! Write it. An hour from now I’ll be in Valhalla harassing the statues. Where’s my bed?”
I put him to bed.
“Slow down,” I said. “That Book of the Dead, you say you sent that to Constance?”
“There was a half-ass semi–garage sale of actors’ junk at the Film Ladies’ League last month. I got some Fairbanks photos and a Crosby song sheet, and there, by God, was Rattigan’s thrown-away phonebook stuffed with all her cat-litter-box lovers. My God, I was the snake in the garden. Grabbed onto damnation for a dime, eyed the lists, drank the poison. Why not give Rattigan bad dreams? Tracked her down, dropped the Dead Book, ran. Did it scare the stuffings out of her?”
“Oh, my God, it did.” I stared into Mr. Quickly’s grinning face. “Then you didn’t have anything to do with that poor old soul lost on Mount Lowe?”
“Constance’s first sucker? That stupid old guy is dead?”
“Newspapers killed him.”
“Critics do that.”
“No. Tons of old Tribunes fell on him.”
“One way or the other, they kill.”
“And you didn’t harass Queen Califia?”
“That old Noah’s Ark, two of every kind of lie in her. High/low, hot/cold. Camel dung and horse puckies. She told Constance where to go and she went. She dead, too?”
“Fell downstairs.”
“I didn’t trip her.”
“Then there was the priest …”
“Her brother? Same mistake. Califia told her where to go. But he, my God, told her to go to hell. So Constance went. What killed him? God, everyone’s dead!”
“She yelled at him. Or I think it was she.”
“You know what she yelled?”
“No.”
“I do.”