Up From Jericho Tel Read online

  She invited the three of them—four, if you counted Anna Karenina—to a party at her apartment on Twelfth-Night, January 6, because she knew that all their holiday labors would be over by then. They were to dress as one of the Magi. Except Anna Karenina who was already dressed appropriately, since she always wore a tiara.

  The Twelfth-Night party became a tradition, and every year Fiona made stuffed goose and plum pudding and all the old-fashioned holiday foods. Widdup polished the silver until it was so bright it seemed noisy, and Tallulah ordered a centerpiece of pine cones and green velvet ribbons. She kept the lights low and burned votive candles in a row on the mantle over the fireplace and elsewhere throughout the apartment. She had always loved to entertain, and her Twelfth-Night party for the buskers became her favorite. Every year she took her most elegant dress out of storage; it was a deep ruby velvet with balloon sleeves and a long, full skirt. She had worn it on stage for her famous role of Regina, the same role that had impressed a fan so much that he had given her The Regina Stone necklace. She loved having an occasion to wear them together, for although she never took off The Regina Stone, she seldom had an opportunity to wear it with the ruby velvet gown.

  In all the years since she had owned the necklace, Tallulah had never been tempted to sell it, even though keeping it was a bother and an expense. It was so valuable that insurance on the stone cost more than her groceries—but not more than her cigarettes. But Tallulah had never sold it and never would. Because The Regina Stone was a symbol to her of her success as an actress. “Not a reminder, darling. I must make that clear. I have memories as reminders. The Regina Stone was a symbol. The difference is this: Only I can see the memories; everyone could see The Regina Stone. One could hardly not see it, darlings. It was enormous. Large enough for some people to have called it vulgar. No diamond is ever vulgar. Tallulah says it is always better to have a diamond that is large and perfect than one that is small and flawed. The Regina Stone was famous as my good luck piece. Some called it Tallulah’s Talisman.”

  After their feast, the group went into the living room and seated themselves comfortably. Widdup served coffee, and mulled cider that they stirred with a cinnamon stick. Tallulah assigned everyone a part, and they read Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. The whole evening had come to be one of celebration and reunion for the buskers and Tallulah.

  The evening of their last Twelfth-Night, they had finished dinner and had just been served coffee in the living room when Tallulah had her attack. She remembered feeling The Regina Stone as she clutched her throat just before passing out. There followed a brief period when everything was dark, a time when her spirit had not entirely left her body and she could not see. Then, when she was totally incorporeal, she looked back at the body she had lately occupied, and she saw that her throat was bare.

  Someone had robbed her corpse of The Regina Stone.

  “YOUR JOB, darlings,” Tallulah said, “is to find The Regina Stone. My spirit will have no rest until you do. If you’ll come to Jericho Tel straight from school, I shall send Spot Topside when I need you. Don’t bother with those grimy shovels anymore; they might dirty up my divan. Just tap three times. Actually, tapping once or twice will be enough, but Malcolm seems to find some comfort in three’s, so tap three times, and I’ll let you down. You’ll begin tomorrow. But Malcolm, darling, before you go Topside, you better give yourself a little spin in the Orgone. Jeanmarie and I will wait for you. Remember to say ‘Papillon!’ when you are ready to return.”

  Malcolm left, and there were a hundred things I wanted to ask Tallulah. I wanted to ask her if anyone else had tried to find The Regina Stone and what would happen to her if we found it. I wanted to ask her how many plays she had been in and how many movies she had made. I wanted to know who her favorite leading man was and how rich she had been. And most of all I wanted to tell her that I longed to be an actress. But I asked her none of those things, and I did not tell her my dream of becoming an actress. What I asked her was this: how did she get such a good line on her lipstick and how did she keep it from smearing. She told me to powder my lips first and blot twice.

  Tallulah says, “Never have a long conversation

  with anyone who says ‘between you and I.’ ”

  seven

  WHEN WE visited Jericho Tel after school the following afternoon, Tallulah said it was late in the day, and we had a lot to do. She sounded crisp and unfriendly, the way people who are not naturally efficient sound when they try being efficient. As anxious as I was to be invisible again, I was annoyed at her rushing us Topside. I started to say that it was hardly our fault that we had to go to school for the best part of the day, but I had no chance to say anything before we were sent stage left and through the Orgone.

  WE FOUND ourselves in a room large enough to be measured in acres. It was carpeted wall to wall and divided into cubicles not by walls but by desks and file cabinets. Hundreds of people—most of them women—were sitting at typewriters. At least I thought they were typewriters until Malcolm pointed out that each typewriter was connected to a machine that erupted with sheet after sheet of green-streaked paper folding back on itself in accordion-pleated folds. These were no ordinary typewriters: these were computer terminals.

  Since the days of my invisibility, both computers and I have undergone important changes, both inside and out, and for both of us the changes on the outside would be the least important but the most noticeable. These computers had no screens glowing with vinegar green light. These computers wrote on paper: They belched out words—rat-tat-tat, ra-ta-ta-tat, ra-ra-ra-tat-tat—one letter at a time while reams of paper rolled through them as if pulled by hands as invisible as mine and Malcolm’s. I asked Malcolm what these people were doing.

  Malcolm walked over to one of the women who was typing. He looked over her shoulder for a few minutes before returning to me. “This is an Internal Revenue Service Center.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said. “No one here would have The Regina Stone, and besides, Internal Revenue is federal, and federal is in Washington, D.C.”

  “How do you know that we’re not in Washington, D.C?” he asked.

  I couldn’t answer that question. Malcolm returned to reading over the woman’s shoulder. “We’re at a Long Island zip code.”

  “How do you know what is a Long Island zip code? Do you think in zip codes or something? Do you close your eyes and dream of the lovely river flowing alongside thirty-two-two-one-seven? And do you think that the capital of Connecticut is six-one-four-four-three?”

  “The capital of Connecticut is Hartford, and its zip code is zero-six-one something. The New England states all have zip codes that begin with zero.”

  “Ohio?”

  “Begins with four.”

  “What about Pennsylvania?”

  “One.”

  “Hollywood.”

  “Hollywood, Florida is three-three-zero; California is nine hundred something.”

  “Manhattan?”

  “One hundred. Listen, Jeanmarie, we are wasting time. I happen to have this talent for numbers. It is not as if I try to remember them. It is that I don’t forget them. I don’t seem to be able to. The point is that we’re still on Long Island, and this is a data processing center.”

  I was irritated. “Can you tell me why we were sent here? I thought we were going to go to Manhattan and watch the street performers. I don’t see any Regina Stones around here. I don’t even see any rhinestones. I don’t see anything around here that interests me in the least.”

  Malcolm said, “I do.”

  “What?”

  “This place is full of names. Names like Patrick Henry Mermelstein and Nicolai Ion Simonescu and Emmagene Krebs.”

  “So what.”

  “If they have the names, they also have the addresses. And if they have the addresses, we can track down all the people who were there when Talluiah died.”

  “Don’t forget Fiona and Widdup. The butler always did it.”
<
br />   “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “That is supposed to mean that if you read mystery novels, everyone forgets about the butler’s having been in the room, just the way you forgot about Widdup’s having been there. In the end, it turns out that the butler did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Did the murder. Of course, I’m not saying that Tallulah was murdered. I just think that you better look up the maid and the butler. They could have taken The Regina Stone as easily as anyone else. Maybe easier.”

  “I don’t know how we’re going to find Fiona. We don’t have her last name.”

  “Her last name is Widdup.”

  “That’s the butler’s name.”

  “If you’d ever read an English novel, you’d know that butlers are always called by their last names, and since Fiona and Widdup were husband and wife, she must be Fiona Widdup. His first name is probably Arthur or Charles, something from the British royal family.”

  “How do you spell Fiona?”

  I told him how and then I said, “I think that it is just too bad. I am very disappointed.”

  “You’ve known for a long time that I don’t have a talent for spelling.”

  “That’s not what I’m disappointed about. I hate to rely on a data processing center.”

  “If I can accept the magic, you can accept the technology. Or try to.”

  “I want only to have some magic in my life.”

  “I happen to think that going from Jericho Tel to . . .” he glanced over his shoulder to read what was coming off the tele tape “. . . Holtsville in the blink of an eye is magic. Right now, I happen to feel very much at home, and I am anxious to get to work. I am going to stand behind this woman and watch what she does. You be lookout and see which of these people is going to take a coffee break.” I asked him why, and he told me that as soon as he learned how to break into the system, he was going to sit at someone’s place and get data out of the databank.

  I was impressed. I didn’t know that a databank was like a regular bank, something you had to break into. He stood behind the woman closest to us and read her fingers as they raced over the keyboard, giving commands and making requests. I saw how he concentrated so fiercely that he didn’t even notice when I left to walk across the room and sit at a terminal where an operator had just left. At last he looked up and beckoned to me to follow him to a far corner of the room where we could talk a little louder without being heard.

  “There’s a code,” he said. “Before the computer will give me information, I have to enter a password. But even before that, I have to enter an identification number. I know hers,” he said, pointing to the woman he had just left. “It won’t work for me to try to sit at any empty seat. We’ll just have to make this woman get up and move away from her place, and you’ll have to keep her away while I get the computer to tell me what I need. Can you do it?”

  I said I was sure I could.

  The two of us stood behind our victim. With a slight nod of his chin, Malcolm let me know that I was to begin. I tickled the back of her neck first. She squinched her head, creasing it back toward her shoulders a couple of times before I started rubbing my finger back and forth under her nose. Back and forth, back and forth. Lightly, like a hair across her face. She kept wrinkling her nose and swatting the back of her neck. Malcolm started running his fingers through her hair, and I kept doing my thing, avoiding sticking my fingers up her nose. I began blowing in her ears as well. First the right ear and then the left as I continued to rub under her nose and tickle the back of her neck. Soon she was lifting both hands from the keyboard to bat them around in the air and slap the back of her neck and rub her nose. I’m sure it was a surprise to find a finger already under her nose when she tried to rub it. Malcolm and I persisted for two or three minutes before the woman finally shook her head and said, “I think I better take a break.” She diddled with the keys, the teletype shut down, and she left.

  Malcolm wasted no time sliding into her chair. He reversed her diddle, and in no time at all, the teletape sent the message: LOG ON. Then Malcolm typed in some combinations of numbers and letters, and the next message it sent was PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD. I was impressed that a machine said “please.” Malcolm typed something in. It must have been correct, for the next thing the computer wanted was a code. He did everything the computer asked before he made his first request. He commanded the computer to give him the 1040 forms of Nicolai Ion Simonescu, and the computer had started typing out the information when the young man at the next console noticed that there was a machine operating without an operator. He called out to someone who must have been the supervisor, “Ted, there’s a ghost in Murph’s machine; better come shut it down.”

  Ted came over to Murph’s machine and attempted to sit in her chair. However, everytime he lowered his buttocks, Malcolm pinched him hard. He popped up as if he had been stung—which in a way, he had been. He said to the man who had called him over. “Where in the hell is Murph? How can she walk away from a malfunction like this?”

  Murph was returning from the employees lounge when she saw Ted standing by her station with her machine pumping out information as if it had a mind of its own. She started running over toward it when I tackled her. Ted came over and extended a hand; she reached out for it, and he would have succeeded in pulling her up if I had not punched him in the stomach. He doubled over, clutching his stomach, and I sat down on the small of Murph’s back. She started pounding her hands and her feet on the floor like a baby throwing a tantrum. Ted recovered enough to say, “Murph, get up this minute and go to your machine and shut it down.”

  She couldn’t. I continued sitting on her, and when Ted made a move toward the computer terminal or toward helping Murph, I thwacked him behind the knees.

  Murph stopped kicking and began praying, “Blessed Mary, Mother of God, please take this madness from me.” That was one of her prayers. Another one, addressed to the same person, was to “. . . take this burden from me.” I felt sorry for Murph and would have asked Malcolm to hurry except that I knew that in his slow, methodical way, he was hurrying.

  Ted was screaming orders, asking Ruth to get Washington on the phone and tell them to get their ass down here and asking Hazel to go to the electrician and tell him to get his ass up here and asking Lester to call IBM and tell them to get their ass over here. I thought it was interesting that the computer said please, but Ted did not.

  In a deep, gruffy voice I said, “And call the exorcist to get his ass inside here.” I had never dared to say ass in public before, never having been assigned reading from the part of the Bible where it is written.

  Other operators began shutting down their stations to see if they could help, and I knew it was a question of time before Murph would be rescued. My weight could not withstand the force of several grown people pulling at her. Malcolm looked over his shoulder and saw what was happening, and called out, “Hold on tight, Jeanmarie. I’m almost finished.” By the time he said that, people were so confused by what was going on that they paid little attention to a voice coming from the phantom at the computer.

  Murph had stopped kicking and praying. She folded her arms in front of her and rested her chin on them and was lying there watching Ted get thwacked in the knees every time he approached her computer terminal. I think she was ready not to be rescued at all when two people lifted her under her arms, and two lifted her feet. They raised her up as if she were a stretcher, and unknown to them, they had managed to lift me, still seated on the small of her back, my feet dangling about two feet above the floor.

  One of them asked, “Can you stand on your own two feet now, Murph?” And she replied, “I have this terrible weight on the small of my back. I’ve never had back problems before.” Murph had not been lifted so high that I couldn’t jump down, and I did. I moved over toward Malcolm because I saw that three men were coming to rescue the computer.

  Malcolm seemed to have printed enough paper to make an encyclopedia, but
he kept on typing. I had my work cut out for me. I ran toward one of the men and tripped him and made him fall. I reached Malcolm’s chair just a second before the other two did. I reached in back of me and found a felt-tipped pen and began making jabbing motions with it, poking it right then left, then right again. The two men looked and marveled at this dancing pen. I felt like Wonder Woman. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” I said in the same deep, gruffy voice I had used before. The men backed away and away until they turned tail and ran.

  At that point, the entire office assembled in the far corner of the room. They linked arms and began moving toward us. I continued jabbing with the pen, and Malcolm continued pounding the keys of the computer. “We’re doomed, Malcolm,” I whispered. “Can you go any faster?”

  “I’m almost done.”

  “Do you think eerie noises will help?”

  “Try.”

  So I began to howl. I howled like a cat, and I bayed like a dog, and I mooed like a cow. The group continued moving coward us, slowly, slowly, arms linked, their eyes fixed like boiled eggs. Eerie noises helped convince them that we needed to be exorcised, and two of the women took tiny gold crosses from around their necks and pointed them toward the phantom computer.

  “Are you finished?” I demanded of Malcolm.