6
Dead Prefer Blondes
Ben couldn’t decide what shocked him more: the fact that the woman who opened the door wasn’t Marian; the fact that she flashed him the most famous smile in the history of womankind; the fact that she had dyed her hair a charcoal black, taking away her hallmark; or, perhaps, the sudden realization that she wasn’t who she pretended to be. She sighed petulantly and signaled him to wait. Then she took off down the long hall of her apartment, disappeared into a room, rattled and rummaged, finally returned with a Polaroid camera, bent down, pressed her face against his, called out “cheese!” and pushed the button. Embarrassed, Ben looked at the photo she shoved his way. The frozen and forced smile on his face lent him the expression of the ultimate idiot. However, he made up his mind not to call her bluff.
“Here,” she said, “you can show everyone you had your picture taken with me. What more could you want? Please, sir, please, just take it and leave. Arthur is supposed to be back any minute now.”
He furrowed his brow, thinking about the prosperous industry of look-alikes in the previous world and wondering whether “Arthur” was “the” Arthur Miller, or, strangely enough, a look-alike of the famous playweight, then handed back the picture. “I’ve got no use for it,” he said, shrugging.
“Marilyn” smiled faintly. “Do you know how much this picture is worth?”
Ben snatched the picture, glanced at it, and stared at her condescendingly. “I’m sorry, Ms. Monroe. I’m of the mind that you earned every compliment you ever got … but I swear, I am not a fan. I came here with one thing in mind, to find my wife.”
“Your wife? Why did you think you’d find her here?”
Concentrating on her face, he responded with a question. “Why do you live here? Shouldn’t you be living in 1962?”
Her face soured. “Don’t you think I’m tired of moving from place to place? I have no choice. They always find me. They always find their way to my new apartment and force me to move.” After a ponderous silence, she asked in astonishment, “You’re really not a fan?”
Ben shook his head. “This place belongs to my wife, Marian Mendelssohn. I actually still don’t understand why you took her apartment; it seems a lot like trespassing.”
“You think I need to trespass? I have a good friend who finds abandoned places with my initials for me. I move every year. And before you even ask, yes, a lot more people loiter around apartments with the initials N.J.B., thinking I’m undercover with my old name.”
“Did you ever consider changing your name?” Ben asked, immediately regretting the question.
A tremor of desperation slipped into her gleaming smile. “Even if my name was Florence Nightingale they’d find me. The move just buys me two or three months of quiet till they come again.”
“If your fans find you everywhere, why don’t you just go live with Arthur? The way I see it, all your problems would be solved if…”
“Marilyn” raised a finger to her lips. Her face dull with boredom, she answered in a sleepy voice, as though she were saying this for the thousandth time, “because of the AACM.”
She groaned at the sight of Ben’s blank face, and said, “We’ll make this short, okay? As I’m sure you know, in the Other World you can change your name in one direction and one direction only. You can cut it short but you can’t make it longer. I’m talking about the name you had when you left the previous world. Mostly it’s for people who had three names and more. Like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He, for instance, had no intention of changing his name in any way. And from what I hear, he led a fascinating death until the Association for the Appreciation of Classical Music caught up with him. The AACM is full of musicologists, amateur composers, musicians, and just ordinary aficionados. Fanatics all. If you’re a famous composer, they’ll do anything to convince you to keep writing music. They’ll never let you be. Their love for music borders on a pure hatred for musicians. They decided they wanted Mozart to finish the
Requiem
, as though he’d never gotten sick. He refused outright; said he was happy with Süssmayr’s work and that no one would convince him otherwise. But that didn’t make much of an impression on them. They wrote petitions, staged protests, hounded him wherever he went. But he stuck to his guns. The real victim here is actually Süssmayr, who couldn’t handle their insults and, despite his teacher’s praise and encouragement, punched in a seven over three. Mozart was crushed. He blamed the AACM for his student’s eternal sleep, but they just brushed it off, and as if that wasn’t enough, later that day they went on the air, on the evening news, and urged him to write a brand new requiem, because “now more than ever,” he had the best possible reason: He could compose a requiem for the composer who had finished his own requiem! Naturally, Mozart refused … He said nothing would sway him. Everyone thought it was over, but they wouldn’t let him be. They came after him everywhere, harassed him constantly. He moved five times and they found him each time. Mozart thought about going back to his original name, but like I said, you can’t add names, you can only subtract. Think about it, with a name like Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus, who would find him? Anyway, he decided to drop Wolfgang. You know, just keep the essence. Amadeus Mozart. I don’t know what he was thinking. They’ve been combing the world for him for two hundred years and now suddenly it’s over? The truth is, he almost pulled it off, would have actually, had it not been for Salieri, the tattler, who bumped into him at a Beethoven performance, the
Tenth
I think, and then followed him back to his apartment where he uncovered the ruse.
“Since then, the poor guy’s been on the move, darting from place to place. Anyway, my Arthur’s borne the brunt of it. You know how many times they’ve come to his place by mistake because of the initials? And these aren’t sane people, mind you. Even when they see they’ve made a mistake, they ask permission to search the place. These loonies think Arthur’s hiding Mozart in his apartment. He moved eight times before he took my advice and moved in with me. Sure, I’m harassed, too, but not with the same intens—” She yawned and covered her mouth. Ben promised to leave soon; he just wanted to know how she ended up in his wife’s apartment.
She stretched and sleepily repeated what she had said earlier. “I have a good friend. He finds abandoned places. No one’s lived here for at least six months.”
“Six months?” Ben asked. “But she only came here a year and three months ago. You’re saying Marian only lived here for nine months?”
“I have no idea. I’ve been living here for three months. That’s when I was able to set this up.”
“But this is an eternal address, no? This will be Marian’s address a thousand years down the road, too. That’s what they said during the orientation.”
“That’s what I meant when I said I was able to get this thing set up. My friend works in the thumb center. So, you know…”
“No, I don’t.”
“Look, you think I died yesterday? I know you’re just buying time,” she said.
“No, no, no,” Ben said, “I’ll be out of here in a second. Just so you know, though, I did die yesterday. I hardly know anything about this world. Like that thing with the thumbs. As far as I know, all you use it for is to take out tapes and…”
“Alright, rookie, alright,” she laughed, opening the door and pointing to an elliptical, thumb-shaped hole. “You see? We don’t have keys or locks. We have the thumb hole. You recognize your apartment by the signs—date of death, initials—and your apartment recognizes you by your thumbprint. In the whole history of this world there’s not been one recorded break-in. You come to your apartment, put your thumb by the door, push lightly, and in you go. Simple, easy, and spares you the sorrow of carrying keys.”
“But,” Ben said, enchanted by the simplicity of the idea, “this hole is supposed to recognize Marian’s thumb, not yours.”
She agreed and hurried to explain. “Every time you come and go a blue light goes on in the thumb center HQ. If six months go by without any movement, a red light goes on. It means that the resident either left or went seven over three. Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s the former. Once someone’s left, a resident can come and ask the center to move in. The higher-ups in the center have you sign a piece of paper that says that if the initial resident returns you have to pack up and leave within three days. As I said earlier, Arthur and I have been living here for three months and no one has asked to move back in.”
“And the fingerprint?” Ben asked.
“Switched!” Marilyn’s copy announced, raising her thumb. “This is my thumb print and my thumb hole. If your wife comes back, I’ll have to leave and take my thumb hole with me.”
“What about Marian?” Ben asked childishly. “Where is she?”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Sorry, I left my crystal ball in the previous world.”
Ben gave her a look.
“I don’t mean to sound cynical, it’s just that your wife could be anywhere.”
“What about at the HQ? Would they know there?”
“The center gives out info about original residents in their given apartments, that’s all.”
Ben nodded pensively and said, “Can I ask you a favor?”
“You want to leave your fingerprint in my telefinger so that if your wife turns up at my place I’ll let her know that you’re looking for her.”
Ben placed his finger on number 6 in her godget. “Push!” she said. He obeyed, raising an eyebrow as she held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Ben.” Reading the astonishment on his face, she smiled and touched her ear. “News and telefinger services are fed straight to the ear … as is the name of the person you are about to call, so there’s no mistake in identity.”
Before he had the chance to thank her, she offered some more helpful advice. “Take your godget and push number two four times. You’re sweating like a racehorse coming around the final stretch.”
Ben smiled bashfully. A chilly wind parted the curtain of sticky humidity, and for a brief moment he managed to escape the chaos churning in his mind.
“How can I thank you?” he asked.
She stepped back into the apartment, smiled, and shooed him away playfully. “Go. That’ll do the trick.”
* * *
On his way to the elevator, he remembered he had forgotten the picture of the two of them. He pivoted, made his way back to the front door, raised his hand, was poised to knock, and then heard “Marilyn” say “Leave it for Marian.”
7
The Defect
About a year and a half after the Y2K farce fizzled, Yonatan laughed, remembering the night all four digits changed. As the world toasted the historic date with a rousing symphony of sound and color, Yonatan finished reading Salman Rushdie’s book,
The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
A surge of adrenaline coursed through him as he read his favorite author’s final words. Unable to sleep, he sat down at the computer and sneezed seven times. Despite the flu, there was much to be thankful for, seeing as the sickness got him out of making the rounds through Tel Aviv with his friends, celebrating the most egocentric birthday party humankind had ever known. Going back into the kitchen, he made himself a cup of tea, splashed in a lug of whiskey, and went back to his seat, heart pounding expectantly, nostrils quivering with germs. He sneezed again, moaned, cursed the fucking virus, and brought the computer to life. It complied, earning him a quick 2,000 shekels. He had bet four friends 500 shekels each that the bug was a sham, spread by twisted minds who enjoyed toying with people as they teetered on the cusp of a new millennium.
Yonatan didn’t believe in the end of the world. He believed in the end of man. He scoffed at the idea that one day a hidden hand would wipe all humans away. He also had nothing but scorn for people that heeded the foolishness of seers, openly wishing that their worst fears materialize posthaste, if only because they were so wrapped up in their own demise they never started to live their lives. His close friends resented the outrageous simplicity with which he lived his life, taking him to task for his dizzying carelessness. Yonatan smoked three packs of Gitanes a day, drank three bottles of Guinness a day, was a regular at Pizza Hut and McDonald’s, slept with strangers without protection, flew once a year to sunbaked beaches and turned his body over to the sun’s rays, had no familiarity with the seat belt, tended to start the week with a few lines and end it with a few light blue pills that sent him straight to the dark side of the moon, put good money down on good-for-nothing soccer teams, and turned his computer on at the stroke of midnight.
Yonatan will get the money the next day and take his friends out to a feast, after which he’ll insist on driving home drunk to the south side of town. Roni will clap him on the back and say you can’t drive like this; Yonatan will ask why not; Daniel will laugh and say what will you do if you run into a cop; Yonatan will shrug and say it’ll be an honor to puke on a man of the law; his friends will say he’s impossible; Yonatan will respond that he’s improbable, and drive home, zigzagging moderately. After parking the car on a diagonal, he’ll stagger inside, hold on to the staircase railing, fight the lock and key, enter his apartment, shut the door, and collapse on the rug into a long, deep sleep.
Only the following night, after coming back from the bookstore, will he turn on the computer and see, to his delight, that a woman left him the following message: “Dear Grimus, I was moved by your words. If you feel like it, drop me a line. Vina.” Yonatan will recall the eve of the millennium. He turned on the computer and went to the Salman Rushdie fan site, wrote that he just finished reading
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
and described how touched he had been by the Indian master’s mythical story of rock and roll:
The ground beneath Vina Apsara’s feet is the only holy ground I know—the ground of love. The only ground worth fighting for. Ormus fought, Rai fought, Vina fought, each in their own way and each simultaneously won and lost. When the ground opened beneath Vina’s feet, she disappeared. Love swallowed her whole. And then she rose again, like a second sunrise, in a different place, on different ground. And disappeared again. And rose again. Vina reinvented herself, the masses reinvented her, her lover invented her and her friend as well. Vina is the quintessential heart that keeps on beating after every crisis, attack, or shock, the heart that refuses to bow before a quake. With her heart Vina Divina drove everyone mad, especially Ormus. The Goddess made the God crazy and their madness made the ground shudder, claiming lives. That’s true love. Demanding, selfish, cruel, larger than life, undaunted by death. Because like the song, it, too, survives the end of life.