Closing Time (50 page)

"Yes, please do that. Send me a thousand dozen."

"And whom shall I bill?"

"Someone will pay. We both understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch."

"Thank you for the lunch, Mr. Minderbinder. I go away with good news."

"I come with good news," called Angela buoyantly, and swept into the hospital room in an ecstasy of jubilation. "But Melissa thinks you might be angry."

"She's found a new fellow."

"No, not yet."

"She's gone back to the old one."

"There's no chance of that. She's late."

"For what?"

"With her period. She thinks she's pregnant."

Defiantly, Melissa said she wanted the child, and the time left to have a child was not unlimited for either one of them.

"But how can it be?" complained Yossarian, at this end to his Rhine Journey. "You said you had your tubes tied."

"You said you had a vasectomy."

"I was kidding when I said that."

"I didn't know. So I was kidding too."

"Ahem, ahem, excuse me," said Winkler, when he could endure no more. "We have business to finish. Yossarian, I owe everything to you. How much money will you want?"

"For what?"

"For setting up that meeting. I am in your debt. Name what you want."

"I don't want any of it."

"That sounds fair."

29

Mr. Tilyou

Securely ensconced in his afterlife in a world of his own, Mr. George C. Tilyou, dead now just about eighty years, took pleasure in contemplating his possessions and watching the time go by, because time didn't. Purely for adornment, he wore in his waistcoat a gold watch on a gold chain with a snaggletooth pendant of green bloodstone, but it remained unwound.

There were intervals between occurrences, naturally, but no point in measuring them. The rides on both roller-coasters, his Dragon's Gorge and Tornado, and on his Steeplechase Horses, all governed by the constants of gravity and friction, never varied noticeably from beginning to end, and neither did the water journey by boat through his Tunnel of Love. He could, of course, alter the duration on his El Dorado carousel and enlarge or decrease the circlings on the Whip, Caterpillar, Whirlpool, and Pretzel. There was no added cost. Here nothing went to waste. The iron wouldn't rust, paint didn't peel. There was no dust or refuse anywhere. His wing-collared shirt was always clean. His yellow house looked as fresh as the day fifty years before on which he had finally brought it down. Wood did not warp or rot, windows did not stick, glass did not break, plumbing would not even drip. His boats did not leak. It was not that time stood still. There was no time. Mr. Tilyou exulted in the permanence, the eternal stability. Here was a place where the people would not grow older. There would always be new ones, and their number would never grow less. It was a concessionaire's dream.

Once he had back his house, there was nothing on earth he wanted that he did not have. He kept abreast of conditions outside through the felicitous fellowship of General Leslie Groves, who came by periodically to chat and make enjoyable use of the amusements offered, arriving at his railroad siding in his private train. General Groves brought newspapers and weekly newsmagazines that simply vanished into thin air, like all other trash, after Mr. Tilyou had finished skimming only those rare stories peculiar enough to merit his perusal. Punctually too, every three months to the day, a Mr. Gaffney, a pleasant acquaintance of a different order who worked as a private investigator, dropped in from above to find out all he could about anything new. Mr. Tilyou did not tell him everything. Mr. Gaffney was remarkable for his civility and dress, and Mr. Tilyou looked forward ro his alighting there for good. Sometimes General Groves arrived with a guest he thought fitting for Mr. Tilyou to know beforehand. Mr. Tilyou had men and women in abundance and no express need for ministers, and he felt far from slighted upon hearing that the chaplain General Groves had spoken of had declined to be introduced to him. In the larger den in one of the two railroad coaches encompassing the elegant living quarters of General Groves, Mr. Tilyou could entertain himself in singular fashion by peering at the glass pane in any of the windows and, once acquainted with the controls, looking out at just about any place in the world. Usually, he wanted only New York City, and mostly those parts of Brooklyn he thought of as his stamping grounds and his burial ground: the carnival area of Coney Island, and Green-Wood Cemetery in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, in which, in 1914, he had been laid, temporarily, he could now complacently certify, to rest.

The site on which his house had stood remained a vacant space, a parking lot for visitors in high season who now had automobiles. Where his spangled wonderland had flourished famously now functioned objects of lesser reputation. Nowhere he looked was there any new thing under the sun he envied. His gilded age had passed. He saw decline and corrosion at the end of an era. If Paris was France, as he'd been wont to repeat, Coney Island in summer certainly was no longer the world, and he congratulated himself on having gotten out in time.

He could play with the color of things in the windows of General Groves's railroad car, could see the sun go black and the moon turn to blood. The modern skylines of large metropolises did not appeal to his sense of the appropriate and proportionate. He beheld soaring buildings and gigantic commercial enterprises that were not owned by anybody, and this impressed him with a negative dismay. People bought shares of stock which they might not ever see, and these shares had not one thing to do with ownership or control. He himself, as a matter of scale and responsible moral behavior, had always put effort and capital into only such projects as would in entirety be his, and to own only such things as he could see and watch and wish personally to make use of with a satisfaction and pleasure enjoyed by others.

He was better off now than poor Mr. Rockefeller and autocratic Mr. Morgan, who had put their wealth in bequests and their faith in a sympathetic Supreme Being overseeing a mannerly universe, and now lived to regret it.

Mr. Tilyou could have told them, he did indeed keep telling them.

Mr. Tilyou always kept at hand a shiny new dime to give to Mr. Rockefeller, who, though there were no days, came begging almost daily in his repentant struggle to collect back all those shiny new dimes he had handed away in a misguided effort to buy public affection, which he now understood he never had needed.

Mr. Morgan, gimlet-eyed and eternally furious, was firmly convinced that a mistake had been made of which he was the diabolical and undeserving victim. Like clockwork, although there were no working clocks, he demanded to be told if the mandates correcting his situation had come down from on high yet. He was not used to being treated that way, he crossly reminded with sullen astonishment and obstinate stupidity when told they had not. He had no doubt he belonged in heaven. He had gone to the Devil and to Satan too.

"Could God possibly make a mistake?" Mr. Tilyou was finally compelled to point out.

Although there were no weeks, almost a full one passed before Mr. Morgan could answer.

"If God can do anything, he can make a mistake."

Mr. Morgan seethed openly too over his unlit cigar, for Mr. Tilyou would no longer permit anyone to smoke. Mr. Morgan owned a deck of playing cards that he would not share, and although there were no hours, he spent a great many of them alone playing solitaire on one of the gondolas on the sparkling El Dorado carousel created originally for Emperor William II of Germany. One of the more flamboyant chariots on that wheel of fortune that never went anywhere was still embellished pompously with the imperial crest. With the emperor aboard, the carousel always played Wagner.

Mr. Tilyou had warmer sentiments for two airmen from the Second World War, one of them Kid Sampson by name, the other McWatt-sailors and soldiers on leave had always been prevalent in Coney Island and welcome at Steeplechase. Mr. Tilyou always was gladdened by any new arrival from the old Coney Island, like the big newcomer Lewis Rabinowitz, who learned his way around in record time and recognized the George C. Tilyou name.

Mr. Tilyou enjoyed the company of good-natured souls like these, and he joined them frequently on their speedy plunges on the Tornado and the Dragon's Gorge. For relaxation, and in persistent inspection, he cruised back often into his Tunnel of Love, flowing into darkness beneath the lurid billboard images of the Lindbergh kidnapper in the electric chair and Marilyn Monroe dead on her bed, into his wax museum on the Isle of the Dead, to find his future by floating into the past. He had no visceral aversions, none at all, about taking his place alongside Abraham Lincoln and the Angel of Death, where he was likely to find himself in front of a New York City mayor named Fiorello H. La Guardia and the earlier president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, mortals from the past who lay ahead in his future. They had come along after his time, as had the Lindbergh kidnapper and Marilyn Monroe. Mr. Tilyou could not yet bring himself to say that the man now in the White House was another little prick, but that was only because neither he nor the Devil used bad language.

Mr. Tilyou had room to grow. Below him was a lake of ice and a desert of burning sand, some meadows of mud, a river of boiling blood, and another of boiling pitch. There were dark woods he could have if he could think what to do with them, with trees with black leaves, and some leopards, a lion, a dog with three heads, and a she-wolf, but these were never to be caged, which ruled out a zoo. But his imagination was not as supple as formerly; he had fears he might be getting old. He had triumphed with symbols, was used to illusions. His Steeplechase ride was not really a steeplechase, his park was not a park. His gifts were in collaborative pretense. His product was pleasure. His Tornado was not a tornado, his Dragon's Gorge was not a gorge. No one thought they were, and he could not imagine what he would have done with a true tornado or a genuine gorge and a real dragon. He was not positive he could hit upon sources of hilarity in a desert with burning sand, a rain of fire, or a river of boiling blood.

The recapture of his house filled him still with pride in his patient tenacity. It had taken thirty years, but where there is no time, one always has plenty.

The house was of yellow wood, with three floors and gabled attic. No one seemed to comment when, shortly after his death, the lowest floor had disappeared and the house of three stories had become a house with two. Neighborhood pedestrians did sometimes remark that the letters on the front of the lowest step appeared to be sinking, as indeed they were. By the time of the war, the name was almost half gone. During the war, young men went into military service, families moved, and Mr. Tilyou spied again his chance to act. Soon after the war, no one found curious the empty space, soon a parking lot, that was where the house had been. When shortly afterward his Steeplechase amusement park disappeared too, and then the Tilyou movie theater closed, his name was gone from the island and out of mind.

Now, in possession of everything he wanted and safe at home, he was the envy of his Morgans and Rockefellers. His engaging magic mirrors never had any deforming effect upon him or his ticket takers.

Returning to his office after work near the end of a day, although there were no days and he had no work, he found Mr. Rockefeller. He gave him another dime and chased him off. It was hard to associate the poor figure even remotely with that complex of business buildings in Rockefeller Center and with that oval pearl of an ice-skating rink. He saw from an imperious note on his rolltop desk that Mr. Morgan would be back to have it out with him once more over Mr. Tilyou's new no-smoking policy. Rather than face him again so soon, Mr. Tilyou took back his dust-free bowler from the peg on his coatrack. He fluffed up the petals of the flower in his lapel, which was always fresh and always would be. With energetic gait, he hurried from the office to his home, humming quietly the delightful Siegfried Funeral Music that resonated from his carousel.

Bounding up his stoop of three steps, he stumbled very slightly on the top one, and this had not happened to him before. On the shelf above the pair of sinks at his kitchen window, he spied something strange. The Waterford crystal vase with the white lilies looked perfectly normal, but, mysteriously, the water inside seemed to lie on an angle. In a minute he found a carpenter's level and set it down on the sill of the window. He shivered with a chilling surprise. The house was out of plumb. He strode back outside with wonder, his brow furrowing. At the stoop with the vertical face bearing his name, he had no need for the carpenter's level to tell him the steps were awry, as was his walkway. The right side was dipping. The baseline of the letters spelling TILYOU was tilting downward and the oval bottoms of the letters at the end were already out of sight. He went rigid with alarm. Without his knowledge or intent, his house was beginning to sink again. He had no idea why.

BOOK TEN

30

SAMMY

For reasons she did not know, her father had not seemed to like her as a child or exhibit anything closer to acceptance when she was older and married. He was friendlier to her sister and brother, but not by much.

She was the oldest of three children. Her mother was more of a comfort but could effect no alleviating refinements in the household atmosphere dominated by the restrained and aloof male parent. They were Lutherans in Wisconsin, not far from the state capital in Madison, where, in winter, the days are short, the nights black and long, and the biting winds frigid. "It was just the way he always was," explained her mother, defending him. "We knew each other from church and school." They were the same age and both were virgins when they married. "Our families picked us out for each other. That's the way we did things then. I don't think he has ever been really happy."

He ran a small retail agricultural supply business he had inherited and enlarged, and he bantered more freely with his employees and suppliers, who were fond of him, than he was likely to do at home. He was commonly more at ease with others. It was nothing against her personally, her mother kept insisting, for as a child she had always been good. But at her father's death, from lung cancer too, they found out he had made no provision for her in his will, although he bequeathed to her three children portions that in total equaled that left her brother and her sister, and he awarded her discretionary power as trustee. She was not altogether surprised.