Then there was nothing at all, he was gone, and the surface of the mirror was flawless and bright.
Ramone was sweating, ‘If I hadn’t seen that – if I hadn’t seen that, right there in front of me, with my own eyes!
Madre mia!
’
Martin stood up. His face in the mirror was gray, the color of newspaper. ‘Ramone … I don’t know what to say. I had no idea it was going to do that.’
‘But it
pulled
him! It pulled him in!’
Ramone touched the surface of the mirror quickly as if he were touching a hotplate to make sure that it was switched on.
‘Ramone –,’ warned Martin, ‘Christalmighty man, be careful. Supposing
you
got sucked in?’
Ramone’s fright was fragmenting into grief and anger. ‘Man – that’s my
cat
! That’s my fucking cat! Six years I’ve had that cat! I didn’t love and feed and take care of that cat just to have some stupid mirror take him away! Some stupid
mirror
!’
Martin came over and gently gripped Ramone by the shoulders. ‘Ramone – I’m sorry! If I’d have guessed what was going to happen –’
‘Martin, am I blaming you?’ Ramone fumed. ‘I’m not blaming you, okay? It wasn’t your fault! But I want my cat back! He went in the mirror, where is he?’
‘Ramone, I really don’t know. He’s gone, I don’t know how and I don’t know where.’
Ramone stood up, his eyes staring. ‘Well, there’s got to be one way to find out, and that’s to break this goddamned stupid mirror to pieces!’
‘No!’ shouted Martin. ‘Ramone – listen – there’s a boy in that mirror. For all we know, he’s managed to stay alive some way – you know, by hiding in the mirror, or something. Listen, I don’t understand any of it. But until I do – please, Ramone, don’t touch that mirror. You don’t know what the hell might happen – how many people might die.’
Ramone bit his lip for a moment and took three angry paces away from the mirror, and then three angry paces back again. ‘Thass bullshit! Thass bullshit, Martin, and you know it! What do you care, how many people might die! What the hell just happened to Lugosi? Thass my
cat
!’
Martin didn’t know what to say. Both of them were still shocked by Lugosi’s hair-raising disappearance – into where? into what? It didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t even as if a mirrorland cat had jumped out to replace him, the way that Boofuls’ blue and white ball had come bouncing out to replace Martin’s tennis ball.
Martin had thought that he had discovered the mirror’s logic; that an object could only pass through to the mirror-world if another object was sent back in return. But Lugosi had been sucked into the surface of the mirror and vanished utterly. And – judging from the way in which his hindquarters had struggled and his heart had been beating – it had been an agonizing and terrifying experience.
Ramone touched the surface of the mirror again; quickly, nervously, jerking his hand back.
‘It can suck in a ball, it can suck in a cat. Do you really think it can suck in a man?‘
‘Ramone,’ said Martin, ‘that’s an experiment I don’t even want to think about trying.’
‘We-e-ell, maybe; maybe not. But that’s my cat in there. I mean he’s
in
there some way. And all I want to do is get him out.’
‘Wait,’ Martin told him. ‘I have an idea. Maybe I can get Boofuls to tell us.’
‘Oh, man, Boofuls? You’re cracked. Boofuls is dead, Boofuls is hamburger.’
‘Yes, well, perhaps he is,’ Martin replied, trying not to sound too frosty about it. ‘But his soul or his spirit or something of what he was is still here – still inside this mirror.’
‘Oh, yeah? Where? I don’t see any Boofuls. All I see is me and you and some stupid ball that’s blue here and gray there, and that doesn’t prove anything, and most of all it doesn’t get Lugosi back.’
‘Will you be patient?’ Martin shouted at him.
‘I don’t want to be patient!’ Ramone retorted. ‘I didn’t even want to come here in the first place!’
‘Then go!’ yelled Martin.
Ramone tugged open the door. He hesitated for a moment, but then he lowered his head, and turned away and said, ‘Shit, man’, and left. Martin stood in the sitting room, still breathless, still trembling, and heard Ramone take the stairs three and four at a time.
Then he went to the bathroom and stood over the basin for a long time, listening to his stomach growling. He didn’t actually vomit, but he felt as though the inside of his mouth and throat were lined with grease.
Mr Capelli came up to his apartment at half past six that evening. Martin was typing away furiously at an episode of
As the World Turns
. Mr Capelli knocked on the sitting room door and then stepped in. He was wearing a dark three-piece suit, very formal, and some strong lavender-smelling cologne. He tugged at his cuffs, and cleared his throat, and nodded toward the mirror.
‘You don’t get rid of it?’ he asked.
Martin stopped typing and turned around in his revolving chair. ‘I’m sorry. Somebody’s coming to pick it up first thing tomorrow morning. That was the earliest I could manage.’
Mr Capelli approached the mirror and straightened his black spotted necktie. Then, with the flat of his hand, he smoothed the hair on the back of his head.
‘Going out tonight?’ asked Martin, watching him, hoping he wouldn’t step too close to the mirror.
Mr Capelli leaned forward and bared his teeth at his reflection. ‘Twenty-one thousand dollars’ worth of dental work,’ he declared. ‘Twenty-one thousand dollars! And what do you get? Teeth is all you get.’
Martin said, ‘Thanks for keeping Emilio away.’
Mr Capelli turned around. ‘Well, it wasn’t easy. He said he wanted to play with your nephew.’
‘Mr Capelli –’
‘Don’t say nothing,’ said Mr Capelli, raising one hand. ‘Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.’
‘Mr Capelli, I tried to explain to you yesterday – my nephew isn’t here at all. The boy that Emilio was playing with was Boofuls.’
‘Sure,’ said Mr Capelli.
‘Boofuls appeared in the mirror and Emilio saw him. He was as clear as you are. I saw him myself, with my own eyes.’
‘Sure,’ said Mr Capelli.
‘You don’t believe me,’ said Martin. ‘You don’t believe me for one moment.’
‘Sure I believe you,’ Mr Capelli told him, his mouth taut. ‘When I was a boy, my mother and father told me all kinds of stories about ghosts and monsters and things that stared at you out of mirrors. My father used to tell me one story, how he went past his parlor one night, and take a quick look at the mirror, and sitting at the dining table was six people dressed in black, with black veils over their heads, sitting silent, but only in the mirror.’
Martin looked back at Mr Capelli but didn’t know what to say.
‘I believe you,’ said Mr Capelli. ‘I believe you, but I don’t want to hear nothing about it. I don’t want to hear nothing about no other worlds, no mirror-people. Life is hard enough in this world, praise God.’
He turned vehemently back to the mirror. ‘Every mirror is evil. Mirrors are for nothing but vanity, for look at your own face, and not the face of other people. This mirror has special evil. Tomorrow morning, you get rid of it. Otherwise, I’m sorry, you have to go.’
Martin nodded. ‘All right, Mr Capelli. The guy’s coming around at eleven.’
Actually, Martin had made no arrangements yet for getting rid of the mirror. He was simply stalling for time. If Boofuls was really inside it; and if Ramone’s cat was inside it, too, he wanted to keep hold of it and make sure that it was safe. He had called Ramone to ask him if he would store the mirror at The Reel Thing for a while, but Ramone had still been out, and Kelly had told him that she didn’t have the ‘athaw’ty’ to say yes.
Mr Capelli laid his hand on Martin’s shoulder. ‘You get rid of that mirror, understand? But you make sure you don’t break it, not in this house, anyway. Breaking a mirror like that, who knows what you’re going to let out.’
‘Sure thing, Mr Capelli,’ said Martin. ‘And – you know – have a good time.’
Mr Capelli looked down at his suit. Then he stared at Martin as if he had said something utterly insane. ‘A good time? We’re going to have dinner with my wife’s sister.’
Four
AN OLD COLLEGE
pal from Wisconsin called him just before seven: Dick Rasmussen, who used to date Jane’s younger sister, Rita.
Dick had come to Los Angeles on business, selling luggage, and he insisted they meet for a drink and maybe dinner?
‘Dick, I’m real busy. I’m working on
As the World Turns
.’
‘You mean somebody actually sits down and
writes
that shit? I thought the actors made it up as they went along.’
Reluctantly, Martin agreed to meet Dick at eight o’clock at the Polo Lounge. ‘I have to tell you, though, Dick, the only people who go to the Polo Lounge these days are tourists.’
‘Martin, I’m under orders from the commandant. If I get back home and Nancy finds out I didn’t go to the Polo Lounge, believe me, she’s going to have my balls.’
‘You married
Nancy
?’
‘Not Nancy Untermeyer. Oh, no, no such luck. Nancy Brogan. You remember Nancy Brogan? Little blond girl, used to go around with that pig-faced fat girl, Phyllis whatever-her-name-was. Yeah, we got spliced! Two kids, now, boy and a girl. No – not Nancy Untermeyer, very regretfully. Do you remember the way Nancy Untermeyer used to play the cello in the school orchestra? Whee-oo. She used to look like she was screwing it.’
Reluctantly, Martin dressed in a clean blue shirt and put on his best and only white suit, and rubbed a scuff off his white Gucci sneakers with spit and a Kleenex. He made sure he locked the sitting room door before he left. He didn’t want Emilio wandering up here while he was out. On the way out he passed a pink ten-speed bicycle parked against the hall stand: it belonged to Emilio’s baby-sitter, Wanda.
His evening with Dick was just as bad as he had imagined it was going to be. Dick was energetic and loud and endlessly excited about Hollywood. He wore a small brown toupee to conceal his thinning crown and a red-and-green-plaid sports coat that might just as well have had ‘Hayseed’ embroidered on the back. Whenever anybody came into the Polo Lounge, he nudged Martin conspicuously and asked, ‘Is that somebody? That isn’t Katharine Ross, is it?’
Dick drank piña coladas with paper parasols in them and ate the orange slices with noisy relish. ‘This is the land of the orange, right? That isn’t Warren Beatty, is it? I mean, you must know all of these people personally, right?’
‘Well, I get to know one or two of them.’
Dick slapped him on the thigh. ‘George Peppard! I’ll bet you know George Peppard!’
An elegantly dressed woman at the next table turned around and gave them a cold, patronizing look. Martin flashed her his Quick Boyish Smile, but she didn’t smile back. He felt more like an outsider than ever. He finished up his white-wine spritzer and listened to Dick jabbering and wondered glumly if rubbishness was contagious.
Dick insisted they go for dinner at the Brown Derby.
The restaurant was almost empty, apart from a couple from Oregon who had come to Hollywood for a second honeymoon. ‘We’re not on our second honeymoon, as you might have guessed, ’Dick told the wine waiter, and slapped the table and laughed until he was red in the face.
It was midnight before Martin dropped Dick back at the Hyatt on Sunset. Dick wanted to have another drink, but Martin stayed in the car with the engine running. ‘Dick – I have to work. This may be magic land to you, but to me it’s the salt mines. So do me a favor, will you, have a safe journey home, and give Nancy a kiss for me, and good night.’
‘I loved you, you know,’ Dick told him, leaning over the side of the Mustang with his eyes boiled and his toupee crooked. He breathed wine and rum straight into Martin’s face. ‘I loved you like a fucking brother.’
‘Good night, Dick,’ Martin told him, and clasped his hand for the tenth time, and at last managed to drive away.
‘Fartin’ Martin!’ Dick shouted out as he teetered on the sidewalk outside the hotel. ‘That’s what they always called you! Heeyoo! Far-Tin Mar-Tin!’
‘Dick the Prick,’ Martin replied under his breath as the traffic signals at Sierra Bonita intersection turned green, and he turned left on squealing tires toward Franklin Avenue.
When he let himself back into the house, Wanda’s bicycle was still parked in the hallway, and he tripped over it in the darkness, catching his shin on the pedal. ‘Goddamn it!’ he hissed at it, and would have kicked it if the landing light hadn’t been suddenly switched on, and Wanda hadn’t appeared.
‘Martin?’ she called. ‘Is that you?’
Martin climbed the stairs. ‘It is I, fair Wanda, and the pedal of your bicycle has just added injury to the most insulting evening of my entire adult life.’
Wanda was a short blond girl of seventeen. She was still plump with puppy fat, but her face was pretty, like a little painted
matrioshka
doll, with rosy cheeks and China-blue eyes. She was wearing a pink jogging suit with a printed picture of Bruce Springsteen on the front, and pink sneakers. Oddly, she was carrying a saucer half filled with milk.
‘Where are you going with that?’ Martin asked her.