Fletch Reflected (15 page)

“What?”

“Have children. It took three husbands, so far, but each one of them was handsome, healthy, and bright enough.”

“You’re not yet thirty?”

“Twenty nine.”

“Wow. Seven children while you’re under thirty. Pardon me. I just haven’t met that before.”

She laughed.

“And you want more children?” he asked.

“Yes. Lots.”

“Good thing you’re rich.”

“Yes. Isn’t that nice? Has anyone ever told you what a pleasure it is to nurse a baby?”

“It looks nice.”

“Envious of little Robert here?”

“I guess so.”

“Were you nursed?”

“I have no idea.”

“Then I suspect you weren’t. I believe nursed babies are much better off.”

“Your husbands—? Never mind.”

She laughed. “Well, in order to have all these children, you see, really I’m better off living here at Vindemia, where there is plenty of help. The men I’ve married think they would be happy living here. But, in time, they discover they’re not a bit happy. Each has found Vindemia much too confining.”

“I can understand that.”

“And here they either work for my father, or they don’t work. There isn’t anything else to do. Slowly they get restless, and finally, you know, make the speech of apology, say they can’t take it anymore, they have to go live their own lives. We’re all good friends, I and my ex-husbands, that is. I understand.”

“You wanted these kids pretty badly, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes. Don’t you think having lots of nice children is a good use of wealth?”

Jack said, “I’ve seen worse uses.”

Politely, conversationally, Amy then asked Jack personal questions, where he had been born, brought up, schooled. He answered as well as he could.

She said, “You’re old enough to be married. You never were?”

“No.”

“I expect you have a fairly hopeless view of marriage.”

“Except to have children, maybe …”

“Don’t you want children?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure,” she said. “It’s the only reason to get married. Just to keep the paperwork straight.”

Jack said, “Shedding yourself of three husbands must have cost more than a little.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “I have a way of handling my father.”

“How’s that?” he asked.

“If he doesn’t do what I want I’ll tell the world he sexually abused me as a child.”

“Is it true?”

“Of course not. But he manipulates, tries to control everybody. One has to have a way of manipulating him, don’t you agree? His reputation, that he’s Mister Perfect himself, perfect husband, father of a perfect family, is his soft spot. It’s the only weapon I have, you see.”

“It’s not very nice.”

“It works.”

“Would you actually use it? Say such a thing?”

“Of course. And he knows it.”

The oldest boy, about nine years old, was standing between Jack’s knees. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Jack.”

“Jack, will you come play with us?”

Jack wasn’t sure he wanted to play with the children in the pool.

He was sure he wanted no more of the conversation with Amy MacDowell.

Suddenly the beautiful day, the beautiful flowers, the beautiful pool, the beautiful children seemed to have become splattered by something foul.

“Go ahead,” Amy said.

Jack stood up. “If I touch your naked children in the swimming pool will I be accused of sexual child abuse?” His voice sounded stronger to him than he had intended.

“Of course not.” Amy chuckled. “What would be the point?”

Jack enjoyed himself more than he thought.

Cupping his hands under water, one by one the children stepped into his hands so he could lift them out of the water and fling them backward. They landed on their backs, laughing, making lovely splashes.

The children then began a game of King of the Mountain with him, each trying to climb him, sit on his shoulders, throw the others off. His hair got pulled and his ears tugged.

The children wriggled around with the energy and humor of monkeys.

The games continued longer than he expected.

“Jack?” Amy called him from the side of the pool. “You’d better come out of the water, now. Your back is bleeding.”

Jack put his own hand on his back and saw it was so.

“Besides,” Amy said. “The sun will scar your cut.”

While Jack was putting on his socks and sneakers, Amy said to him, “Don’t tell anybody what I told you. I’d hate to have Alixis use it against my father, too. You know what I mean?”

“Y
ou make sweet sounds come out of that stringed box.”

Jack was sitting in the woods, his back against a tree, strumming his guitar. His bike was propped against another tree.

First a boxer dog had bounded into the little clearing in the woods; then a tall, lean older man wearing walking shorts and horned-rimmed glasses came along the path. The man had a long, very straight back.

“Don’t get up,” Doctor Radliegh said. “And don’t stop playing. I like it. May I sit down, Jack?”

Jack resettled his back against the tree. “They’re your woods, Doctor Radliegh.”

“God’s woods. God’s world. We’re just the caretakers.” Radliegh sat cross-legged on a tuft of grass. He chuckled. “If I were God, I’d fire us. Wouldn’t you?”

“If you were God, would you fire you?” Jack asked.

“I’ve tried to keep my patch neat.” Radliegh looked around at the planted forest. “Make the most of it. How does one play a guitar?”

“I’ve been doing it so long …” Jack did a short riff. “Just let your fingers play, I guess.”

After a lunch of sandwiches and milk in his cottage, Jack had strapped the guitar on his back and gone for a bike ride around Vindemia.

There were only a few cars outside the business offices on Saturday afternoon. Beauville’s BMW was one.

There were more than a dozen small airplanes, both jets and propeller driven, parked neatly on the airstrip. As Jack
watched, an ancient yellow two-seater wobbled down the sky and made a perfect landing. There seemed to be only one person, the pilot, a man, in it.

Again, there were only a few cars outside the country club. The tennis courts, pool area, and greens were devoid of people.

While heading toward the airstrip, a gray Infiniti sedan with tinted windows passed Jack. Another passed him from behind before he went on the road around the country club.

Jack presumed guests were arriving in the airplanes and then being ferried to the main house for the party that night.

Beyond the clubhouse, Jack found a timber road heading off to the right. Intersecting with it were walking-riding trails. He jounced his bike along one until he came to a clearing where he thought he’d be alone.

He had been playing his guitar for only about twenty minutes.

Another plane went overhead, low.

Doctor Chester Radliegh looked up through the trees from where he sat cross-legged on the ground. “Lots of guests arriving.” He smiled at Jack. “Good time to take a walk.”

“You know my name,” Jack said.

Radliegh nodded. “Jack Faoni.”

The dog climbed onto Radliegh’s crossed legs and lay down on them. His settled his chin on Radliegh’s knee.

Radliegh said, “This guy’s name is Arky. He thinks I belong to him.”

“Arky?”

“Archimedes.”

“Of course.”

“Wanted to name a son that, but Mrs. Radliegh would have none of it.”

“Name a son after a screw?” Jack smiled.

“Never mind.” Conversationally, Radliegh said, “A few
days ago my elder son, Chet, surprised me. He met me at the stables at dawn. He had saddled two horses. We had a great ride together.”

Jack waited for the point of this comment.

Radliegh said no more.

Jack asked, “Where was Peppy that morning?”

“I don’t know.”

Searching for a point, Jack asked, “How many days was this before your favorite horse died?”

“Oh, days,” Radliegh answered. “Three or four days.” He patted the dog’s head. “Things like that don’t happen as often as I expected they would.”

“Like what?” Jack asked.

“Oh, just one of the kids joining me for a ride.”

Thinking about Radliegh, Jack played a short, fast ditty on the guitar.

Jack was thinking he had never before met a mind like Radliegh’s. The man was a certified genius, but there was something childlike in what Radliegh had just said. Or was it subtle, profound?

Radliegh was surprised his children did not join him for rides.

Radliegh was surprised one son, one day, did join him for a ride.

Therefore … what?

When Jack had asked Nancy Dunbar why the need for all the security and spying at Vindemia, she had said: “Doctor Radliegh does not like surprises.”

Perhaps Radliegh’s mind was on a plane so different from the average person’s that everything about humans surprised him.

Intensely, Radliegh had watched Jack’s fingers play the ditty. “That’s fun,” he said.

“So how does one invent the perfect mirror?” Jack asked.

Radliegh shrugged. “Just like your fingers. Let your mind
play; pick at things: something develops.” Then he said, “Sometimes.”

Looking at his fingers on the frets, Jack asked, “What happens to a black hole when it disappears?”

Radliegh smiled. “You mean, what happens to the information within?”

“I don’t know what I mean.”

“It would be fun if it elongated into a line so narrow that its cut length would be a speck so small it might be invisible.”

“Why would that be fun?” Jack asked.

“Because it might help define the indefinite we’re prone to think of as the infinite.”

“Oh.” Jack did not understand, but he heard the readiness to answer, the words. Doctor Radliegh may be surprised by humans, perhaps had inadequate language to deal with them, but he was not surprised black holes appeared to disappear.

“Do you mind my asking what your mind is playing with, picking at now?” Jack asked.

“Of course not,” Radliegh said. “Space locomotion.”

“Space travel?”

“I guess so. I don’t believe people are questioning sufficiently the basic principles of physics.”

Jack said, “I’m not.”

“You were taught not.”

“Only thing we were taught to question,” Jack said, “was our marks, not our teachers.”

“That is,” Radliegh continued rapidly, “that the basic laws of physics are universal, cosmological. Considering the history of the cosmos, we humans have been perceiving physical laws as briefly as it takes you to blink your eye, comparatively.”

Jack blinked.

“I’m not sure sufficient weight is given to the fact that our
perceptions, so far considered absolute, are entirely dependent upon our intellectual appurtenances. These physical laws, seen from another planet, dependent upon other intellectual appurtenances, might be perceived entirely differently. Probably are.”

“Okay.”

“Yet the true, absolute, ultimate physical laws might conform to no perception of them yet achieved on any planet, be totally different.”

Jack said, “I guess I’ll stick to pickin’ my guitar.”

“It’s the same thing,” Radliegh said. “Your achieving a system of time and space permits you to play the guitar. We have to achieve a system of time and space presently inconceivable to us to achieve space travel.”

Radliegh lifted the boxer dog off his legs and stood it on its own legs on the ground. “Well, come on, Arky.” Radliegh stood. “Guess I’ve got to go be polite.” Standing up, Radliegh said, “You see, it’s okay to think about anything, however silly. That’s how questions develop.”

Feet spread, hands over his head, Doctor Radliegh stretched fully. “It’s a silly thought, of course, totally without basis, but wouldn’t it be nice if, for example, the elongated black holes had the information to be tramways, to get us through space quickly?”

From where Jack sat on the ground the stretching man seemed huge.

“One suggestion, or hope, always is,” Radliegh continued, as he crouched and petted Arky, “that everything has a purpose. Not to look for the purpose, not to see it, to see it and deny it, is fault, wouldn’t you say?”

“Sir?” Jack asked.

Smiling, Radliegh waited for Jack to speak.

“How come you sat and talked with me?” Jack asked. “Said such things to me? I mean, from your own mind?” Radliegh’s eyebrows shot up. “My way of saying thank
you,” he said, “for your concern. Someday you might have the kindness to remember I did so.”

Which left Jack totally, absolutely confused.

Jack wondered if he was seeing Chester Radliegh from the right planet.

I
n his blue bow tie, carrying his silver tray, at dusk Jack approached a group of formally dressed people on one of the terraces of the main house at Vindemia.

“Would you care for an hors d’oeuvre, sir?”

Turning around suddenly, a man grabbed the silver tray firmly with his left hand and held it steady. “Ah! Liver wrapped in bacon! One of my favorite things!”

Jack said, “D—!”

“You almost dropped the tray, lad!” Fletch said, letting it go. “Want to see us all dressed so pretty at a grand party at Vindemia on our hands and knees eating liver wrapped in bacon off the terrace floor? That would be a pretty sight!”

The two women to whom Fletch had been talking tittered.

Then Fletch thrust his face close to Jack’s and whispered, “Can you spell it?”

His eyes on them, Doctor Chester Radliegh guided his wife across the terrace to Fletch.

“What?”

“Hors d’oeuvre.”

“Sure.”

“Good! Your grandmother never could.”

“My grandmother? The mystery novelist?”

“Your grandmother, the defective novelist,” Fletch said.

“Mister Fletcher!” Radliegh held out his hand to Fletch. “I’m Chester Radliegh.”

“How nice of you to have me on such short notice!” Fletch took Radliegh’s hand.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time,” Radliegh said.

“I’m a great fan of your biography of Edgar Arthur Tharpe Junior.”

Glaring at Jack, Fletch sniffed. “Some like it.”

“My wife,” Radliegh introduced, “Amalie.”