Smith's Monthly #7 Read online

  “Is he really dead?” I asked Benny. I hadn’t been able to get much of a read on Benny up until that question. I seldom did on the more powerful gods, but suddenly I could feel Benny being very uncertain and confused.

  “Smelled dead,” Benny said.

  “How about you go check him out to be sure,” Stan said, releasing the time bubble.

  The wind snapped against my skin once again and the distant sounds of trucks on the freeway echoed over the sagebrush.

  Benny shook his head slowly back and forth. “Never touched a dead body before and you know, maybe you’re right, maybe we should be calling the police and all that.”

  “Go roll him over, see if he really is dead,” Stan said, his boss voice in full command.

  I had a hunch that Dan was far from dead.

  Benny took a deep breath and then in his brown golf shoes headed across the hard desert ground toward the body.

  If nothing else, this was going to be entertaining watching him sneak up on his dead golfing partner.

  THREE

  BENNY FINALLY reached the body and I could tell he had been holding his breath the entire time since he swayed slightly like he was about to pass out.

  He gently reached down to roll Dan over and the body vanished, leaving only the carcass of a very dead coyote that clearly had been picked over by birds and other desert animals and was the source of the ripe smell.

  Dan’s body had been only an illusion, made very real by the smell.

  Nice trick.

  A good illusion is always in the details and smell was the detail that made this one.

  Benny jumped back and instantly teleported to a spot back in front of us. His face was bright red, his green eyes intense and clearly angry.

  “Where the hell did Dan’s body go? Did you two do that? Did Laverne? Who would take Dan’s body? We need to go to the police. Body theft is a serious crime.”

  “As if murder isn’t,” I said, shaking my head.

  “There was no body,” Stan said.

  I was having trouble understanding that Stan needed to even explain that to Benny.

  “No body, no murder?” Benny asked, clearly puzzled.

  The little golfer who claimed to be the world’s best detective wasn’t really carrying a full bag of clubs when it came to deductive reasoning.

  “An illusion,” I said. “You said Goldenburg was the God of Magic, right?”

  Benny nodded, slowly starting to understand.

  I turned to Stan. “To project an illusion like that, wouldn’t Dan have to be involved?”

  “More than likely,” Stan said. “At least at some point. Don’t blame Dan, though, since he only got something if they lost.”

  “So, Benny,” I asked our little golfing detective, “what hole are they on and is Dan with them?”

  Benny seemed to stare off into the distance for a moment, then grow even redder in his face, something I didn’t think was possible.

  “They are on the sixth hole and Dan’s as healthy as he gets, which isn’t going very far since last year he had two bypass surgeries and has a blood sugar level that would kill a honey bee.”

  Benny kept staring off into the distance. “I bet we’re now two holes down because I was gone and Dan can’t play a lick of golf and more than likely has fallen down a few times staring at Tammy’s shorts, not that I blame him for that, if you get my drift.”

  Benny glanced up at me and then at Stan. “So you two are telling me that I didn’t accidently kill Dan, that’s really him playing golf with Goldenburg?”

  Stan and I both nodded.

  “And that Dan was helping Goldenburg trick me so that they could win the match and I would end up doing dishes for a month in his place?”

  Stan and I again both nodded.

  “Wow, you guys are as good as everyone says you are,” Benny said. “I never would have figured that out on my own.”

  I almost said that I had guessed that, but again did the cute thing and bit my lip.

  “What are you going to do when you rejoin them?” Stan asked.

  “Nothing,” Benny said. “Just going on as if nothing had happened and win the match and get Tammy and those great shorts of hers to help me get my office straightened out. I really should have hired someone fifty years ago, but you know how it goes when a fella gets busy.”

  Stan and I both stood there in the wind of the desert and said nothing. Lady Luck had been right. This hadn’t taken very long at all.

  “I owe you two,” Benny said, smiling, his green eyes lost in the rolls of red flesh on his cheeks. “You solved the murder and saved my life.”

  “There was no murder, Benny,” Stan said.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Benny said and tipped his golf hat and vanished.

  I turned to Stan. “How about I buy you lunch and you tell me who that guy really is.”

  “The world’s greatest detective,” Stan said, keeping a perfect poker face. “He told you.”

  “If he’s the world’s greatest detective, then I’m Sherlock Holmes.”

  “You can’t be,” Stan said.

  “And why not?”

  “Because Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character.”

  “And Benny isn’t fictional, at least in his own mind?”

  “No, he’s the world’s greatest detective as he said.”

  “It’s going to be one of those lunchtime conversations, isn’t it?” I asked.

  Stan just smiled and jumped us away from the dead coyote and hot sun and sagebrush and back to my office.

  I never did find out if Benny ended up winning the services of Tammy for a month. And the first time I used the phrase “…if you get my drift” around Patty, she made me swear to never use it again.

  It seemed she also had met Benny at some point in the past.

  Mike Resnick asked me one fine day to write an alternate history story for an anthology about Wallis Simpson. I asked, “Who’s he?”

  Mike laughed, said I had some research to do, and hung up.

  Since at that point in time I had been playing with how music and time travel sort of go hand-in-hand, I did my research and wrote this story for him. I was very proud of it and Mike liked it as well. (He seemed surprised I could learn so much about Wallis Simpson so quickly.)

  The anthology called By Any Other Fame edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg appeared and vanished, almost without a trace in 1994. I liked the story a great deal and was bummed, but that was the nature of traditional publishing in those days.

  So in a continuing effort to bring some of my favorite stories back to a wider audience at times in this magazine and then later in book form and in collections, here is the story again. Even after twenty years, it’s still one of my favorites.

  I hope you enjoy it as well.

  A BUBBLE FOR A MINUTE

  ONE

  THE LAST NOTES of the old song, Paper Moon, faded into the thick antiseptic smell of the small nursing home room and the needle on the record made an impatient clicking, demanding that someone stop it.

  In the wheelchair beside the bed, the old woman named Wallis Simpson nodded, almost in time to the clicking needle. She had a faint smile and distant haze in her eyes that gave her ninety-eight year old face a peaceful look. Seventeen-year-old Gary Sullivan studied that face for a moment, shaking his head at the incredible story she had just told him. A story of her youth and her marriages. A story identical to the stories she had told him every day for the last week. Identical, that is, right up until the story reached 1932. Right up until she stopped and asked him to put on the long-playing record of Paper Moon.

  Gary pulled back the sleeve on his sweatshirt and leaned forward in his chair over the old-fashioned phonograph. Carefully he picked up the arm and put it back on its holder. It was amazing something this old still worked and even more amazing that the old record hadn’t been worn into dust since she listened to it so much.

  He clicked off the machine and the small ta
pe recorder on the nightstand beside it, then faced Mrs. Simpson. “Would you mind if I came back again tomorrow?” It was the same thing he had asked for the past two weeks.

  She took a moment to come back from whatever time she had been inside her own head, then smiled at him. “Of course not.” Her voice was soft and almost hoarse after the workout she had given it telling him her story today. But her voice still had a tremendous power and aliveness that he had admired since the first day he had interviewed her.

  “Besides,” she said. A light smile slowly filled her face and smoothed out some of the wrinkles. “Who else would I have to talk to? Who else would believe in me?”

  “Great,” he said, with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, even though he had no idea what she meant by believing in her. It was just part of that song she loved so much.

  He stood and, for the first time in the last half hour, noticed just how hot and closed-in this modern little room was. It felt like a prison and suddenly all he wanted to do was run for the door, escape, see what had changed.

  What had changed seemed to be his constant question. Today, her story had ended with her marrying a business man by the name of Harvey. With him she had two children. Gary had no idea what that would do to the world outside. But he doubted it would be enough to help his dad. So far, in two weeks of trying, none of her stories had been enough. But somehow he knew that if she just kept telling stories, in one his dad would still be with him and his mother.

  Mrs. Simpson turned her wheelchair slightly to face where Gary stood. “You know,” she said. “This little experiment of yours has made me the envy of the wing. No one ever comes to talk to most of these folks, except on holidays and the like.”

  He took a deep breath of the hot air and forced himself to smile. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that his little experiment, as she called it, had started out as nothing more than a history paper for a senior high class. A simple assignment that had been done and turned in two weeks before. But he had kept coming back because at first he didn’t understand why she kept changing the last part of her stories.

  And then, after a few days, he needed her to keep changing the stories until she came to the right story. The exact right story that would bring his dad back home.

  “Well,” Gary said, “how about same time tomorrow afternoon? You know how important reputation is to high school students.”

  She laughed. “Thanks for believing in me,” she said again. She said that at least once every day and it was starting to give him the creeps. He just nodded and turned into the hall. The name beside her door now said Mrs. Harvey. It had been the twelfth time her name had changed, yet he still thought of her as Wallis Simpson, the name she had been the first time he asked her to tell a story.

  Gary forced himself to walk slowly and carefully to the front door, smiling at the nurses at the nurses’ station and taking slow, deep breaths of the thick antiseptic and death-filled air. The front door was only a few yards ahead.

  He wondered what world he would find beyond it this time.

  TWO

  THE ASSIGNMENT had been given by Coach Kinser, the heavy-set ex-jock who taught Gary’s third period. He was also Gary’s football coach, which made getting a good grade even more important. “Go to a nursing home,” Coach Kinser said, “ask permission to talk to a resident, and interview that resident about his or her past.”

  The entire class had groaned and the Coach had just smiled. “History is an oral tradition,” he had said. “You will enjoy it.”

  Gary, of course, had waited until a few days before it was due and then found Mrs. Simpson. “Wallis,” as she said she liked to be called. Her room was the standard modern nursing home room, just like the one Gary’s grandmother had died in. There was a bed with metal rails, a small desk, a small nightstand, and a television across from a rocking chair. Nothing else decorated her room and the place instantly made him feel like he was being smothered.

  His first thought was to make the interview fast and get it over with. But Wallis Simpson was a good storyteller and, as Mr. Kinser had said, Gary enjoyed listening to her.

  It took over an hour the first day and filled a tape.

  That first day she told him about her early years. She was from Baltimore and had been married twice. Her first marriage was to a naval officer by the name of Earl Spencer, whom she divorced in 1927. Her second marriage was to a Washington D.C. businessman named Ernest Simpson.

  From the way she talked it was clear that she loved Ernest and everything he gave to her. She talked about how much they traveled and how she met kings and presidents while at his side.

  On a business trip to England she and Ernest had become fast friends with the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward. She said she had many wonderful stories about trips with the Prince and parties at his castle.

  But when her story reached the summer of 1932 and the party she and Ernest attended at the White House, everything suddenly changed.

  The Prince of Wales had gotten them an invitation to the party to meet the new American President. It was at the mention of the party that she asked Gary to put the long- playing record of Paper Moon on her old phonograph.

  He did as she asked and while that record played, she told him about the party and meeting President Roosevelt and the First Lady and then about how Ernest was killed in London and how she returned to the states and never remarried. Her story ended with the record and Gary thanked her and went home, thinking he had more than enough information for his paper.

  But it turned out he didn’t.

  He actually wanted more about the White House party and the young President Roosevelt, figuring that would make the most interesting paper for the Coach, since the Coach had a thing for the Roosevelts.

  So the next afternoon Gary stopped by the nursing home again to see Mrs. Simpson. She seemed happy to see him and again she went over the same story of her life, right up until the party at the White House.

  And again, when she mentioned that White House summer party, she asked him to put on the record.

  This time she told him much more about the party and about how she and Ernest had taken a limousine from the hotel. Then she went on to tell him about how she had fallen for the limousine driver. Two years after the party she went back to Washington, leaving Ernest in London, and got a divorce. She married the limousine driver, a man by the name of Barkley. He died five years ago and she was now all alone.

  At first Gary had wanted to ask her about her change in her story, but then just shrugged it off to senility. And he was so startled by the change in story that he forgot to ask her more about President Roosevelt.

  She thanked him for believing in her and, as he left the room, he noticed the nametag on the door. It now read Mrs. Barkley, where the day before he was sure it had read Simpson.

  As a lark, and with the same excuse that he needed more information about President Roosevelt, he went back the next day. In that day’s story she met a businessman at the White House party and married him three years later. Not only had her name again changed on her door, but on the way home that afternoon his mom’s favorite grocery store, DANNY’S, was gone, replaced by a small shopping mall.

  He asked his mom about the store, but she just gave him a blank look and shook her head. And there was no store by that name listed anywhere in the phone book.

  The next day DANNY’S Grocery was back after Mrs. Simpson told him a story about how she and Ernest traveled to Africa, where he died in a hunting accident.

  By this point Gary had figured out what seemed to be impossible: that her stories were somehow changing the world.

  And he had also figured out that maybe, if he got to the right story, his dad would come back. His dad who had left him and his mother when he was five. A dad who his mother would never talk about and who he had dreamed about for as long as he could remember.

  So he kept going back every day, listening to Mrs. Simpson, or whatever her name was t
hat day, tell the same story right up to the hot summer of 1932, right up to the White House party.

  Then he would listen to her change the world around them.

  THREE

  ON GARY’S seventeenth visit to Mrs. Simpson he finally got his wish. His dad came back.

  Her story the day before had left her with two children and today, for some reason, there was a vase of fresh flowers on her nightstand. She looked happier and healthier than he had seen her and he commented about it.

  She thanked him and they started into the same routine. She told him about her early life, her uncle and her grandmother, both of her marriages, and all the traveling she did. Gary had this part memorized and it never varied. And as always, when she reached the summer party at the White House, she asked him to put on the record of Paper Moon.

  “Why Paper Moon?” he asked her as he placed the record in place.

  She smiled, her mind obviously a long way back in time, remembering. “It was the song the big band at the White House played three times. I danced and danced that night, feeling like a princess gone to the ball. I remember wanting the song and the night to last forever.”

  She smiled at him. “So I bought the record. And besides, didn’t you know that music has magic in it? With music, the world can be more than just make-believe.”

  Gary just nodded as the shivers ran up and down his back. With his hand shaking he carefully started the record.

  “He was so handsome,” she said, her eyes glazed as she looked off into the past, “standing there beside Eleanor, greeting his guests.” She paused and looked at me. “You know he couldn’t walk, don’t you?”

  “President Roosevelt?”

  She nodded. “They had his braces locked in place so he could stand and greet his guests. He told me later that hurt him, which was why he didn’t give many parties.”