Ray of the Star
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In this excerpt from the middle of the novel, our hero, Harry Tichborne, attends a party of living statues, has a private conversation with one of them, dances, then goes for a ride in a full-size papier mâché model of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine with his budding love interest, Solange, aka the Silver Angel.
Drinks at the party they were attending were procured by pushing one of two buttons set close together near the baseboard beneath the front window, which prompted a slender hand to appear out of a small hole cut into the floor, a hand that would, when given a modest amount of money, reemerge with an ice-cold bottle of sparkling water, or a glass of grenadine, or a chocolate malt, while donations to the gallery hosting the event could be made by holding a bill under a piece of nearby plastic tubing that snaked its way up to the ceiling where it curved around and around before plunging into a clear receptacle, already well supplied with bills that would dance madly when a button near the opening on the other side of the room was pushed and a fresh bill was sucked into it, a seductive spectacle that deprived both Harry, holding a chocolate malt, and Solange, a glass of grenadine, of several bills each, and if a line had not begun to form behind them they might well have allowed the contraption to suck up the entire collective contents of their wallets, which would have been a shame because, as they discovered, feeding additional bills into a slot in the floor caused a room that housed a griffon’s skeleton to light up under the oak planking, and furthermore there were tempting deep-fried items on offer at back tables that Alfonso convinced them to sample, and so it was that Harry drank a chocolate malt and ate a deep-fried clove cookie while silver-faced Solange interspersed bites of deep-fried almond butter squares with sips of grenadine and waves at Julius Caesar, Atlas and Che Guevara, the latter who ran straight over, stuffed his unlit cigar in his mouth and gave Solange a bear hug, lifting her straight off the floor and twirling her around, before turning to Harry, bowing and suggesting that the two of them take the air, that it was a splendid night, there was a marvelous little garden attached to the store, etc.,
“Well,” Harry said,
“Go on, go on, Raimon is an old friend,” Solange said,
“And that’s really why I wanted to have a word,” said Raimon, once they had made their way through a backroom and into what was indeed a thoroughly charming tree-filled garden, lit with strings of lights that were reflected in a handsome, merrily plashing pond surrounded by high walls, one of which, according to Raimon, who lit his cigar and leaned against an ornamental quince, had been built by the Romans as part of the ancient city’s outer defenses, many relics of which Harry couldn’t have failed to notice were still standing amidst the modern edifices,
“Fascinating,” said Harry,
“Yes,” said Raimon, “Though of course every now and again some section of wall, uncared for by the municipal authorities, crumbles to the ground, leaving only its absence behind,”
“Its absence…”
“Its afterglow, in which some aspect of the former wall might be said to remain standing,’
“I like that,” Harry said,
“Are you familiar with negativity delirium?” Raimon said,
“No,” Harry said,
“It’s the evil inverse of phantom limb syndrome, whereby, rather than missing limbs and organs maintaining their presence, present limbs and organs vanish,”
“That’s awful,”
“It’s diabolical,”
“I’ve often thought of chopping off my legs, because of the condition I suffer from, but now I can see that they might not be so easy to get rid of,”
“Not so easy at all, take for example, the case of my missing hands,” said Raimon, wedging his brightly burning cigar in the corner of his mouth and holding his hands up in the air,
“What are those things?” said Harry,
“You can see them too?”
“Your hands, yes,”
“Not everyone can see them,”
“How extraordinary,”
“It’s the greatest mystery and speaks to the core of this whole business, which is to say that they’ve come back, but not quite the same and not quite in the right place,”
“Yikes,” said Harry,
“I’ve never heard of such a case and I’ve done a great amount of research,” said Raimon,
“Nor have I,” said Harry, for lack of anything terribly à propos to offer, while trying and failing to see in what way the hands were wrongly placed,
“If it were an instance of phantom limb syndrome, we might not be surprised to know that the limb in question had returned, in fact it is quite common for them to return to the wrong place, my own uncle lost his left ring finger to a rip saw and had it return some months later in between the middle and index finger of his right hand, it was most distressing for him and all of us, but this is an instance of negativity delirium in which what has vanished returns and is visible, at least to some,”
Harry wasn’t quite sure what to say to this either so contented himself to raise an eyebrow and nod in an enabling manner,
“Shall we go back inside?” Raimon said, looking at his hands and shrugging, as if there was nothing further that could or should be said,
“Yes,” said Harry,
“I’m glad we had a chance to chat,”
“I am too,”
“That’s really all I wanted, was to chat,”
“I’m glad we could,”
“She’s had a very rough time of it,”
“So I gather,”
“You could say that the universe has conspired against her,”
“I’m in a position to empathize,”
“I’m so very sorry,”
“Thank you,”
“It is all much more difficult than it ought to be, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed,” Harry said.