The Triforium Page 9

  The Tiktaalik could taste a change in water chemistry as the tide pushed in from the River Thames. Up ahead was the opening, near the bronze statue of Boudicca. Here, what was once the Tyburn emptied into the River Thames and the Tiktaalik followed its course. When it reached the Thames, it used its lobed fins to struggle out of the water onto the grassy bank by the Thames Path Trail.

  Tiktaaliks never could survive out of the water long. This one rested on the riverbank and gulped in air. The night sky was dark and moonless. Across the Thames on the South Bank, the long ornate Edwardian London County Hall was lit by colored lights. The spacious wings of the old steepled stone building appeared golden, while its curved columnated center went from purple to salmon in response to the ever-changing illumination. Next to the hall was the London Eye, radiantly red against the night sky. All of these colors reflected on the surface of the Thames, turning the river into a watery neon sign. This light show invited the public to cross the Westminster Bridge and join in on the fun on the other side.

  Tiktaalik’s pulse was slowing; its crocodilian eyes were drying in the chilly night air. It was failing. It was dying. But then, just before it expired, it faded away, transforming itself into another creature. A large lizard with feet, not fins, a Proterosuchus occupied the spot where the Tiktaalik had been.

  The Proterosuchus immediately put its tail and four feet into motion. Up a stairway it moved onto the Westminster Bridge. It waddled with confident terrestrial mobility, passing through holidaymakers, businessmen, married couples, and tourists of every shape, size, and nationality.

  But the Proterosuchus didn’t last long. It transitioned into a bipedal Theropoda with huge carnivorous jaws. Then — poof — it was gone and there was something that looked like an ancient mouse. Poof — that was gone and replaced by a wooly mammoth, then a saber-tooth tiger, followed by a tree shrew. Animals, existing and extinct, were coming and going in rapid succession, one after another. Suddenly the focus was on the metamorphosis of great apes. One followed another, knuckle-dragging their way across the Westminster Bridge. First there was a chimpanzee, then an orangutan, then a gorilla followed by Ardipithicus ramidus, Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and finally by Homo erectus. It was Homo erectus that neared the end of Westminster Bridge. Apparently, it would be the last in the chain. It held its form as it marched toward a thirteen-ton white stoneware statue of a British Lion: the South Bank Lion.

  A strange-looking fellow was sitting on the top of the South Bank Lion’s pedestal, just beneath the lion’s jaws. He was a slender man sporting two days’ worth of stubble. The long locks of his hair were matted. His clothes were of an odd old style and dirty. One of his leather shoes was buckled but the other was not. His hose sagged below his britches. His appearance could be explained by the singularity of his concentration. His sense of things going on around him often went numb when he had an idea. He had lots of ideas — astounding ideas. His ideas received his scrutiny, not the state of his appearance.

  He had just had one of these ideas. It came to him in a flash while he was deep in thought. The idea was considered earth-shattering, revolutionary, beyond the reach of the greatest minds, but it had been driven from his head by the distraction of the extravagant parade of animals that had come across the Westminster Bridge.

  Homo erectus sauntered up to the South Bank Lion and looked up. Its hairy face brightened with a toothy smile.

  This smile was not pleasing to the scholar who was perched atop the lion’s pedestal.

  “Darwin! You know I will not talk to apes!”

  Charles Darwin’s ghost acquiesced and allowed his form to move back into his usual gentleman-of-the-nineteenth-century shape.

  “Bah! Sir, this is not but mummery — a pageant of idolatrous images of antediluvian flesh — mere manifestations of the devil and contrary to the love of god! You shall repent Mr. Charles Darwin. You shall repent as it is said in the Book of Mathew, ‘Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire.’ Besides, you are very, very late! Well, sir, this watch is now yours. They are heading to the Ferris wheel.”

  Then the ghost of Sir Isaac grinned and added, “I bid you a goodnight.”

  With that, he dropped an apple that he had been holding in his hand. The apple exploded into pieces on the pavement at the feet of Charles Darwin’s ghost.

  Floating up off the pedestal, Sir Isaac Newton’s ghost landed gently upon the sidewalk. He then turned and started to walk back toward his cozy tomb in Westminster Abbey. As he did so, Newton’s ghost turned briefly to see if his remarks had made any kind of impression upon Charles Darwin’s ghost. What he saw was that Darwin’s ghost had once again transformed himself into a chimp and was waving goodbye to him.

  “You have a vegetable’s soul.” Newton’s ghost muttered before moving on.

  ***

  Maeva Wolusky and Wallace Butterfield had made it through security and were being herded through a turnstile into a glass pod. Twenty-five people could fit into each pod. Attendants held the doors open and motioned with their arms as people obediently picked up their pace to fill the Ferris wheel on schedule. The ghost of Charles Darwin just made it in before the doors were secured shut. Each pod was attached to the exterior skeletal of what looked to be a humongous bicycle wheel. The pods and spokes of the wheel were lit in bright red.

  People took their places around interior periphery of the pod. There was no view left unclaimed by a sightseer. Each window was filled with a line of heads, with more heads behind them, craning for a better look at the emerging vistas.

  As Ferris wheels went, it was a slow ride. One lap took thirty minutes. And that’s what you got for the price of admission, one lap. But that didn’t bother Wallace Butterfield. The architecture of London would soon be his, displayed below him.

  He was so excited, and it wasn’t just the repressed kid in him; he was excited because he had by his side the most beautiful girl he had ever come within arm’s length of.

  As the wheel began its slow turn upward, he glanced down at her. She was smiling at him attentively, as though she didn’t really mind being on a souped-up kiddy ride with a man who was wearing one of his father’s old suits. He had at least forsaken the white shirt with obligatory tie for a black T-shirt that made him look dangerous. But, as always, he didn’t feel dangerous around women, nor did he know where to begin. It was such a big task to get someone to like him, a task he was woefully unprepared for. What should he say and how should he say it? How could he make her feel comfortable around him? If she wanted to be around him.

  They had met, as planned at Westminster Bridge. Not much was said, but “Hello,” “How are you?” “We should be off.” It was nervously formal, almost mechanical. After that it was pay for the ride and get on board.

  However, now there was no activity beyond rising upward and staring out at the night vistas of London. It was time to really talk. He had to say something, and it had to be witty and charming, not dorky and lame.

  “So, do you come here often?” It was the best he could do.

  “No,” she said with an embarrassed grin, which he interpreted as meaning that she normally wouldn’t be caught dead in this place. But he’d hoped that he was wrong.

  “Gwell,” he said. Butterfield wanted to say “great” and then changed his mind in mid-word to “swell.” It came out as “gwell.” This made him even more anxious and he began to spew out a lot of other words after “gwell” hoping to distance himself from this mistake. So, what he said was, “Gwell. This is a great place to see the city’s architecture. A Ferris wheel ride can be educational.”

  Maeva laughed and, with a mischievous smile, said, “Go ahead educate me.”

 
“Well, obviously there’s Parliament and Big Ben in front of us and of course our project, the Abbey right behind them.”

  She glanced down at the gold lights around Parliament and the green ring of light around the old clock tower. “Where exactly is the Abbey?”

  “Oh,” he pointed, “there. When the Abbey has a steeple it will be a lot easier to pick out.”

  “My, you must be so excited, having your plans presented for such an important spot in our country’s history and culture!”

  She sounded enthusiastic, which gave him a tad more confidence. “Oh my, I hope. I mean, I hope they accept my plans,” he gushed, though he knew he didn’t have any and most likely wouldn’t have any soon.

  The crowd in the pod pressed Maeva a little closer to Wallace. He breathed in her alluring fragrance and began to forget how nervous he was.

  “Yes, there is a lot of big modern architecture that you can take in from up here.”

  “But it’s dark,” said Maeva.

  “Oh but that’s part of it — how a building presents itself to the public at night. In some respects, is more important than in the daytime. The silhouette of a structure or how it is illuminated often portrays more of the architect’s original concept. In the daylight his genius can be lost in the jumble of shapes that surround his creation. Besides, imperfections like cracks, staining, posters, and graffiti are masked by the dark.”

  “So, if I follow your reasoning. That’s why a date looks better in a dimly lit pub?”

  “No!” he said apologetically. “I think of the night as a sea and buildings like great ships afloat on it. You know how pretty the shabbiest looking street looks when everything gets covered in fresh snow. It’s like that. The night is cleansing like fresh snow. The snow and the night tie everything together making it one big design. Does that make sense?” He wasn’t sure if it would. It would to his father. It was what he used to say.

  Maeva nodded, and said, “Tell me about these ships of yours.”

  “Of course there are the venerated old ones like the Abbey and Parliament over there and you can see Saint Paul’s off to the far right. Christopher Wren’s masterpiece — of course he’s not buried at the Abbey.”

  “What?” she asked, not because she was confused over what he had just said, but because Wallace’s ghost was coming into focus and she could now see him sneering down at her.

  “Oh, nothing … just something the Reverend said. He doesn’t approve of most of the architecture about town. But I do. You see over there, past Saint Paul’s is One Canada Square and 30 Saint Mary Axe, known as the Gherkin. They are two hundred and thirty-five meters and one hundred and eighty meters tall and just across from them, on this side of the river is a new building. It is only two-thirds done: the Shard. When that building is finished, it will be three hundred and ten meters tall. It will be the tallest building in Europe. Our skyline is becoming a mountain range of glass and lights. You have to look at it all together, not individually. So that’s why it’s so nice to see it up here, especially at night.”

  “I see. What’s the building over there by the river with the large clock?”

  “Oh that’s a marvelous old Art Deco building: the Shell-Mex House. I frequently go for walks over there. It’s in front of Cleopatra’s Needle. That’s the oldest structure in London.”

  Maeva’s face became flat and lost expression. “The crowned Horus — Bull of victory — Loving Ra,” she said under her breath, as though in a trance.

  “Excuse me?” Wallace asked in bewilderment.

  Maeva gave an embarrassed laugh. “Oh, for some reason I’ve heard that’s what a bit of the hieroglyphics on the obelisk says. At least that’s what I think I’ve heard. Isn’t it strange what obscure bits and pieces of information people choose to remember?”

  Wallace was intrigued. “So then, you know something about Egyptology?”

  She quickly rebuffed this suggestion, “No, no hardly anything.” Maeva distracted him from this line of questioning by asking, “What’s that purplish lit building over there that looks like a bunch of concrete bunkers?” She gestured to their right, where several people were looking out.

  “The Royal National Theatre. And that bit right there is the Olivier Theater,” Wallace replied.

  As Maeva stared out in the direction she had just pointed to, a shadow was forming within the crowd. First a top hat was visible. Then, the form of a man began to emerge from within the group of sightseers. A pulsating blue Victorian man was condensing out of the vapor around him.

  Apparently the ghost of Charles Darwin had been momentarily distracted. Evidently, he had let his guard down when he saw the large bronze statue of Sir Laurence Olivier in front of the Olivier Theater. Olivier’s statue portrayed the actor in his role as Hamlet, wearing a cape holding up a sword. Darwin’s ghost chuckled to himself, for that costume was very much like the one Sir Larry’s ghost had worn when he’d paid a visit to the Dean of Westminster.

  No one else in the pod could have seen him unless he wanted him or her to. But Maeva’s ghost was all scrambled up in her brain, and she hadn’t consumed enough absinthe to prevent her from seeing him. Darwin’s ghost slid further into the crowd, attempting to get as many people between him and Maeva as possible.

  “Excuse me Wally,” Maeva said. “I think I see somebody I know. I’ll be right back.”

  Butterfield was so pleased that she had called him Wally and not Wallace that he didn’t mind so much that she was leaving his side for a few minutes.

  Maeva began to push her way through the other tourists in the pod. When she got to where she had seen Darwin’s ghost she found that he was no longer there. She looked about the pod, and then glanced out the window. Darwin’s ghost wasn’t there either, but something else was. A paratrooper, all blue and ghostly, was tumbling out of the sky. He waved to Maeva as he passed her pod, and then crashed into the Thames.

  She knew this paratrooper and also knew that her blood chemistry was getting way out of whack. Maeva Wolusky reached back under her suit jacket and pulled out a glass hip flask from where she had tucked it beneath her pink lace panties and black slacks. To the amazement of the group of people around her, she knelt down so that Wallace couldn’t see her, and began to chugalug the green contents down. The people beside her muttered and pulled away. Maeva dropped the now emptied bottle onto the floor and then reached for a second smaller bottle, which she kept in her jacket pocket. Uncorking it, she dosed her earlobes and her neck with the fragrance the little bottle contained. Then Maeva turned about and worked her way back through the crowd to where Wallace had been patiently standing.

  “Everything all right?” he queried, a bit puzzled by the crowd’s behavior.

  “Oh yes … just a case of mistaken identity. I thought I knew somebody over there, somebody from long ago — but, no. Just a close likeness, that’s all.”

  Maeva Wolusky pressed closer to Wallace Butterfield. The ride had come to an end. The pod was on ground level. Butterfield breathed in the deep heady fragrance of pheromones and wormwood that he had come to know as Maeva’s scent. She teetered, almost falling, and then grabbed his arm to steady herself.

  “Shall we be off?” she asked with some enthusiasm.

  The next part of their evening was Maeva’s idea. Now, she would show Wallace a bit of her world.

  Chapter Twelve

  High Times At The Brocken Specter

  It was an inconspicuous street that was kept in perpetual shade by a five-story parking garage that occupied one whole side of it. On the side that was not dedicated to the automobile, there were a few homes, but no shops. The overall appearance was of stark utility. The sort of place where you could almost hear the residents think, “Here we come to go to sleep. Here we leave to go to work.” There was also a dead area among the houses, an abandoned tube station. You might thin
k that it had once given life to the area, pumping people in and out, sending them all over London and bringing them back again. But the terminal had been an ill-conceived appendix to the Piccadilly line. It had had little use and was eventually abandoned.

  The night was still young when the lady cabby let Maeva and Wallace off in front of the forgotten terminus. Maeva insisted on paying the fare. This was her treat. It struck Wallace as a bit odd that she took her change from the cabbie and offered no tip. He thought that perhaps she was cheap by nature. But the cabby didn’t seem to care, which was even stranger. The street where she had instructed the driver to let them off was not well lit. They were in front of a red brick tube station with a large multi-paned half-moon window taking up the entire second floor. On the street level were two padlocked doors, above which were large exit and entrance signs. The dreary appearance of the place had Wallace wondering why on earth Maeva had taken him here. Where was the nightclub she had been speaking of in the cab?

  Apparently, she could read the confusion on his face. “Not these doors. Over here.”

  Maeva motioned Butterfield to a third, smaller door that had been stenciled with the words “Fire Escape.” She winked at him and asked, “Are you ready?”

  “For what?” he asked in bewilderment.

  Maeva didn’t reply but pounded on the metal door of the fire escape.

  The door opened partially. A woman stuck her head out.

  “Oh Maeva. Come on in.” She said.

  The fact that he was about to enter a fire escape leading down to an abandoned railway station was not as disturbing to Butterfield as the woman who had just let them in. She was huge, a female bouncer, no doubt, and certainly capable of handling any man he knew. Her overdeveloped steroid-induced musculature was well oiled and deeply bronzed by a tanning salon. She had muscles that he didn’t know existed — at least they didn’t exist on him. The few parts of her that didn’t have any muscle tissue were only barely covered by the skimpy fabric of a yellow thong bikini.