Mark Twain in Milan by Rob Hunter	Table of Contents part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6
part 5

With Sam Clemens/Mark Twain gone, Giancarlo, Lindy and I ran Parrucchiere Gianni by ourselves. Oh yes, Giancarlo #2 was there waiting for us, sitting in the six thousand dollar leather and chrome chair and looking very pleased with himself. #1 stared at #2 who shrugged and evaporated. But no Mark Twain. With the departure of the redundant Giancarlo the mass transfers, time-hopping, whatever, stopped.

On the back of Gianni’s farewell note was a tip on how to run the salon: establish an appropriate artistic setting. “If the client in the chair thinks something creative is going on, she feels special. This is the psychology of a good cut. The client thinks you are consulting with the hair muse.” The salon flourished but Mark Twain was stranded. We three moped between appointments.

“Lindy, remember your impromptu séance?” I asked.

“I’m sorry it was Sarah Bernhardt and not Lady Lovelace, Giancarlo.” She oozed empathy in his direction.

“I am used to disappunto, Lindy. It is not your fault,” said Giancarlo.

I thought it was time for Plan B. “Your Uncle Larry’s vent grates. You said something about his knowing another way in.”

“Oh, sure. There’s an access hatch just past Bloomingdale’s.”

“That’s the Lex,” said I, “not the 2nd Avenue. How come?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea,” said Lindy, “but I remember the empty tunnel. They must connect. I was only six.”

Any answer is a good answer and, after all, I had asked her. “Plan B it is. We’ll go train-diving with Uncle Larry.” And we three were off together, headed against the uptown flow of rush hour traffic.

When we arrived at Uncle Larry’s grate there was a squatter in possession: a sidewalk hawker had parked his blanket and sat cross-legged in a semicircle of assorted wares: junk jewelry and silk scarves, brown twisted cigarettes and glassine envelopes. He sized us up, then turned to hustle a passing knot of commuters, “Loose joints. Loose bags and joints,” He noticed Lindy and switched his pitch. “Bracelets, lingerie, earrings...”

A voice with a Missouri twang sliced through the clamor and babble of midtown. “A sensible list of accessories for a most beautiful woman.”

“Sam!” No flash, no aura, no sparks, just Sam Clemens. Albeit Sam Clemens was a formidable enough looking specimen, he had well... bulked up. He was taller, younger and considerably more muscular than the last time I’d seen him. Even in Manhattan, he attracted stares. He was six foot six in his gaiters and must have weighed in at 240. Onlookers cheered as he came sashaying, moustache first, up the street like he had just bounded out of a cavalry charge. He took a bow.

“Be right with you, kids.” Sam Clemens walked over to the sidewalk vendor and lifted him off the ground. One powerful arm held him upside down while the other went through his pockets for the advertised loose joints and bags. “Cubebs, you say? We’ll take eight. Four for now, four for later.”

“Easy, easy. The customer is always right. No hard feelings, OK?” The man struggled in Sam’s powerful grip.

“No hard feelings, Kemo Sabe,” said Sam as he put the man down. “And a word to the wise — you’re as obvious as a wart on a debutante; try another corner. And cut back on smoking up your inventory. If the constables catch you you’re yesterday’s news. Not everyone has my forbearance.” He tossed a twenty-dollar gold piece to the street peddler, “Keep the change.” The man dusted himself and moved off Uncle Larry’s grate. He cast us a baleful glance as he spread his blanket a few yards away.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Where were you? Where did you go?”

“As close as I can figure — nowhere: a featureless terrain, sun always at three in the afternoon, a gray haze. Nothing ever changed; I have not the slightest idea how long I was there.”

“Hmm...” Giancarlo looked wise. “Signor Twain — if you do not mind my saying — you are the same Mark Twain we last saw?”

Sam scratched his head. “Far as I can tell.”

Sam was lighting up a cubeb as we four dived down the iron ladder beneath the recently vacated access hatchway. At the bottom of the ladder was the same 59th Street stop we had sent Sam off from yesterday. All that work to save four fares.

By the time we got past the first landing with a Rastafarian and his folding table of incense and essential oils and a Bible Lady with her sandwich board, it was just before the early rush hour.

Lindy grabbed my elbow and spun me around to face her. “Andy? What if Sam hadn’t come home and you were stuck back there. I mean, I am here and you are there — forever?”

“Well, to be on the safe side, I could learn how to factor quadratic equations.”

“No. Just look at me.”

I looked at her. “Wow.”

“See,” said Lindy. She kissed me right there on the second landing of the 59th Street Station and I was a lost man. I held on tight and kissed her back. There were appreciative yells and a few wolf whistles as the uptown express pulled in.

“Andy. We’ve got Sam back. What are we waiting for?”

“Lady Ada.”

We hung around for hours — then gave up and trudged back to Parrucchiere Gianni.

* * *

Giancarlo revisited his theory of there being a human agency for these events. “You may be the switch that turns the phenomenon on and off. A gatekeeper. You or Ada. Or both of you. Or Lindy.” I was thinking this over, playing with a set of scissors and staring out the window.

“Drop the scissors,” Lindy screamed.

“Yeoow! Ouch!” The scissors were hot. I tried to shake them loose but they clung to my hand. I was being electrocuted in a shimmering of blue aurora starbursts and the smell of ozone.

“Shhh...” said Lindy. The closer she got to the scissors, the hotter they got. She slapped the scissors out of my hand. They went flying and stuck in a far wall where they caught a Tuscan shepherd right in the crotch. Said shepherd was a decorative trope on Don Paolo’s toile de jouy wallpaper and one of the few left adhering to the wall. We were back at the target range cum speakeasy Ada Lovelace had vandalized.

“Ready a sinistra, ready a destra.” Somebody was calling out from the other room, “Ready on the left, ready on the right.” The next command would be to commence firing. I thought of stray, or not so stray, bullets. “Lindy, down,” I said.

“Don’t push,” she said. We piled under a huge desk that filled the farthest corner of the room.

Grief-stricken, Don Paolo was sobbing over the shredded remains of his imported wallpaper — shepherds and shepherdesses about their discreet businesses in a renaissance bosky dell. As he dabbed at his eyes with a silk embroidered hanky, he spotted us. Don Paolo’s face turned an apoplectic orange. “Nunzio!” he screamed. The Moose lumbered into action and squeezed off a barrage of shots in our general direction.

Poppoppoppop. Click, click. The Moose was out of ammo. He had missed, probably the enthusiasm of the moment. Next time he wouldn’t miss. Reverberations and ricochets died away to be replaced by silence broken only by our labored breathing. Then a rattle as the Moose fumbled in his pockets for more bullets.

As the Moose inserted a fresh clip, at the far wall an aurora borealis shimmered. It was Mark Twain. He had flaming red hair, wore a bronze-plated kilt and was younger and more muscular than the Mark Twain from the subway. He waved. Hanging onto his arm was Ada Lovelace, her hair long and flowing, held in check with a single golden circlet, and dressed in body hugging spandex: a Druidic princess right off the cover of a Sci-Fi paperback. The carabinieri had arrived, a little late but we weren’t complaining. We now had the numbers but the Moose had the bullets. Lady Ada sized up the situation and began closing in. Very quietly she picked up an alabaster objet d’art, a lissome lass with her arms held over her head, adjusting a laurel crown, a nymph. Clunk! Lady Ada dropped the Moose.

“I have always wanted to do that,” said Ada Byron Lovelace. “It is a probability cluster. These show up as irregularities in the mathematical calculations...” She examined the Moose’s unconscious form. “Sweet in the code string. Endearing I thought, but what we have here is wretched excess.” She turned the Moose over with the tip of a toe and registered distaste. “Perhaps not so sweet.”

The Moose groaned and cautiously opened one eye. The eye registered indifference, then surprise. A hand shot out to grip Lady Ada’s ankle. “Awful cheek,” she said as she bonked him again with the nymph.

The Moose was down for the count and there was no discernable damage to the alabaster statuette. The thing must have been the genuine article; in antiquity they built doodads to last.

“So glad you could come,” said Lindy, standing and dusting off her knees. Wham, Bam, etc. again, the heavy ozone smell of sunrise over the gas works. And...

We were back at Parrucchiere Gianni but without Lady Ada. She was left in yet another alternate 1929 at the mercy of Don Paolo and the Moose — when the Moose came to. Blue auroras danced from the ceiling and the walls as Lindy let out a shriek. Reclining in the leather and chrome chair was Ada Lovelace and leaning over her with a bundle of hot towels, me. Lindy passed out; I considered it. Lady Ada looked up, noticed us, and likewise screamed. She was disappearing as I watched. There was a minor thunderclap as air rushed in to occupy the space formerly occupied by, well... us. Lady Ada’s departing scream and the pop of collapsing air brought Sam Clemens running in from his sanctum — a former utility closet, where he now spent most of the day hunched over a 2- inch LCD. He had become addicted to C-span and the History Channel.

“Sam, I have this woman...”

“Good for you, Andy. Something sweaty, I trust. I wish you both many happy assignations.”

“I beg your pardon; I don’t mean to intrude, but...” This was a fresh arrival. Mark Twain again. This one was clean-shaven. The two Mark Twains looked at one another, stepped back for a better look and circled one another in a neat figure eight not unlike a pair of cheetahs stalking in high grass.

“Sam...” I said.

“Yes.” they both answered simultaneously. “Uh, hello, Andy.” Then, each pointing to the other, “Who’s he?”

“You.”

There was a crunch of crumbling drywall and the clearing of a manly throat as a third Mark Twain arrived, our red-headed guy in the Roman army getup. He was stuck in the wall just as the Moose had been. Mark III was carrying a standard issue Roman short sword. “But there are so many of you...” Lindy said.

“Yes.” The three Mark Twains replied in unison. He — they — were very pleased with him — them — selves. “Can’t have too much of a good thing,” quipped my Mark Twain — the man in the red fez. Or I supposed it was him. Mark Twain, Mark Twain and Mark Twain had been keeping busy while we ducked bullets.

“I sense a pattern here,” I said.

“Well, good for you,” grumped Mark III. “So do I, and I’m it. Get me out of the goddamned wall.”

There was a girlish giggle. “History doesn’t repeat itself — at best it sometimes rhymes,” said Lady Ada. “Hello, Marcus, well-met.” This Ada wore the spiky Day-Glo hair of Ada Lovelace #3 but was dressed in skin-tight black spandex. “My stars and garters, we must have a kink in the fabric of local space-time.”

Mark III, who even though stuck in the wall was absorbed with admiring himself in the mirror, flexed a bicep and grinned from ear to ear.

“Marcus Tertius Secundus,” said Mark III as he gave us a clenched fist salute and hammered said fist against his chest. “Agent of Empire.” He raised an admiring eyebrow at Lady Ada.

I gave a yank on the sword. It was hot to the touch. Mark III was immediately surrounded by a bluish aura. The University of Turin’s time-traveling docent found this encouraging. “Ahh, Ada’s theory is correct. I had hoped so. He will not be with us for long.” The three of us pulled Mark III out of the wall. His aura subsided as he shook himself off.

“Would you mind telling me what this is all about? I thought... I thought bodies’ occupying the same space was impossible,” I stammered. I was developing a nervous tic.

“Simple,” Lady Ada said. “If a butterfly dies in Cleveland there will always be a superfluity of Clevelands where the butterfly did not die. And went on to procreate and flourish.”

“We’ll always have Cleveland,” I shrugged. “Whenever.”

“Pay attention, please. Cleveland is real estate — a place — and firmly positioned in its parallelisms. To quote your marvelous Stephen Hawking, the laws of physics do not allow time machines, thus keeping the world safe for historians.”

“You are not supposed to know about him,” I said.

“I am a woman ahead of her time; don’t worry about it,” said Ada Lovelace. “The more the merrier. In case of trouble, I thought to bring along a friend with military training.” She nodded at Marcus Tertius Secundus. “And I am not the Ada Byron Lovelace with whom you have been associating.” Here she consulted a large platinum watch. “She is due to arrive in ten minutes. Come Marcus, we have interrupted a dalliance.” She winked at Lindy.

“But we must be away, Marcus and I. I am totally assured that my beloved shepherd will have covered the variora satisfactorily. There is a future for him, but not with me.”

* * *

Proceed to part 6...

Copyright © 2011 by Rob Hunter