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than the customary four and thence proceeded to sweep through the Law School
with as much dispatch as that venerable institution might allow. He ignored
the jibes of such straw-headed idlers as pronounce overachiever with contempt
and made Partner in a prestigeous New York City firm of corporate attorneys in
record time.
This in itself was no great miracle. The phenomenal nature of young Langley's
accomplishments became apparent only when one was privy to the fact that he
was the offspring of one Thrash Gordon, late luminary of that genre of soi
disant music known as Heavy Metal rock and roll. Before Mr. Gordon departed
this life in the wake of a tragic tuning fork accident, he managed to break
seventeen guitars, fifty-seven hotel suites, eight drummers, and Dorothea
Langley's heart. Dorothea had retained her maiden name throughout the course
of that ill-considered marriage and, upon her husband's death, returned to the
estranged bosom of her family to raise her boy properly.
It worked. Albeit Benet Owen (so named by his father in a moment of
cold-cough-and-flu-medicament-induced religiosity, commemorating both St.
Benet Biscop, one of the lesser-known patron saints of musicians, and St. Owen
of Rouen, invoked against deafness) had passed the first eight formative years
of his life as a junior-rank roadie, once free of his father's world he
embraced his mother's roots with a convert's holy passion.
Yet swear as he might that he had turned his back irrevocably on the realm of
popular music and all it entailed, he could not deny he had retained much
knowledge of that shadowy otherworld.
Now, as he knelt beside the apparition in the rose garden, his first remark
proved that he had not removed himself so far from the late Thrash's sphere as
he might have preferred, viz:
"Whoa. That is one bitchin'
ax!"
"I beg your pardon?" I remarked.
Young Langley promptly re-collected himself and withdrew his hand from the
guitar with all alacrity
(though also with some obvious reluctance). "I mean to say, this is quite the
costly musical instrument:
Too costly to be in the hands of someone like that
. It's probably stolen. We must alert the authorities."
Alerting the authorities was not in accord with Club policy. Despite repeated
contretemps that had at the last ditch demanded the intervention of local law
enforcement personnel, the Board still preferred not to bring in outsiders to
settle matters until sufficient quantities of members-only blood had been shed
to
make such action unavoidable.
"How can you be sure?" I asked.
"Well, just look at him!" young Langley replied with a fine que voulez-vous?
gesture of his impeccably manicured hands. "He's in possession of one of the
priciest guitars on the market, yet he's unkempt, uncombed, and in rags!"
"He is not in rags," I corrected him. "He is wearing a chiton
, which is "
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Young Langley had no respect for a Classical education. "Have you searched him
for identification?" he inquired, interrupting me.
"Where?" I countered. "The chiton was never confected that had pockets, as you
would know if you'd bothered to hear me out." I confess, I was a bit
acidulous, but his cavalier disregard for my hard-won erudition irked me out
of all knowledge.
Young Langley made an impatient sound, then checked our uninvited guest for
vital signs. He was just prying open the victim's eyelids when these flew wide
of their own accord. Our visitor sat bolt upright and let out a shriek of
abject terror that scattered the petals from a good half-dozen of the nearest
rose bushes.
"Oh wow, man, I'm sorry," he said after he recovered his self-possession.
"It's just, like, I thought I was still back down there
, you know?"
"Back down where?" I inquired.
"The Underworld."
Young Langley and I exchanged a look of trepidation. Although I fancied myself
a kind-hearted soul and was willing to believe the same of Langley until
proved otherwise, we did not feel that it would be wise to offer the Club as a
refuge for anyone unfortunate enough to have run afoul of Organized Crime. The
police were too regular a fixture on Club grounds as it was, and were as tired
of seeing us as we were of seeing them.
Langley, bless him, took all this into consideration and acted like a
gentleman: His checkbook was out and open with an alacrity that would have set
Alumni Fund solicitors to helpless drooling.
"What's the problem, old man?" he asked. "A loan come due? Piper to be paid
and all that? Perhaps if you were to give me some general notion of how best
we might aid you and see you on your way . . ."
(Of course he was never crass enough to mention the M-word, nor how much of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]