Greg Smith: The Guts Of A Beggar-ch1

THE GUTS OF A BEGGAR

CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER ONE

A one-eyed man came to the house this afternoon. He scared the shit out of my wife. I was downstairs at the workbench, finishing another rush repair job for another crazy musician, when the intercom coughed politely.

"Honey, there's a man here wants to see you."

The barely restrained fear in Doreen's voice would have coexisted more naturally with something like, Honey, there's a madman with a gun up here who just ordered me to strip naked.

My hands froze. I almost dropped a steel level on the exposed face of the 1959 Gretsch Silver Jet guitar I was repairing. Vertebrae clicked as I straightened my back. I looked up at the ceiling as if, for a moment, I could see through the sagging sixty-year-old floor of our suburban Detroit tract house to where someone was standing in the doorway, apparently frightening Doreen.

I shoved the bar stool behind me. Without bothering to look, my hand reached out to the wall and slapped the TALK button of the little Radio Shack intercom unit. Once cream colored plastic, its center was now stained the deep brown of the bowl of a Meerchaum pipe, after thousands of such slaps by my hands when they were laced with lacquer, or varnish, or glue. The polystyrene button felt like the surface of an old oil painting.

I realized I wasn't speaking. I was afraid to speak, preferring to muse upon my surroundings like a timid old man. I cleared my throat loudly. "I'm coming right up," I said, conveying in my tone that I knew something was wrong and that I was prepared to deal with it.

My mind generated various scenarios, each one of them ending in a glorious venting of stress for me, as I hit the light switch, left the workroom, shut the cats out of it with a strong slam of the door to let Doreen know that I was on my way, and headed up the stairs.

Salesmen, solicitors, political polsters, cops, kids who want to cut the lawn, I don't care---I just don't want to hear it anymore. I tend to call it compassionate apathy because I can't bear to call it common garden-variety indifference to my fellow man. Whatever you call it, it's where I live---and it's a strange place to be. It's isolated, and dangerously self-important, and not recommended for the kids at home.

From prodigy to perfectionist to pariah in one easy lifetime. The European tradition of force-feeding classical music lessons to the tender young, often at the hands of a Balkan or Slavic fascist octogenarian like the knuckle-busting bastard who still haunts my dreams, produced many of us. We peaked early and we spiraled down through a neurotic attraction to discipline and its rigors to land comfortably in hand-scrubbing obscurity.

But don't ask. Suffice to say, it is the way I am. Fueled by an ego that remains eternally champion because it remains carefully unchallenged, I persist in chasing my castles in the clouds.

Thus it was a short simple step to convince myself that my fortressed ego was about to be besieged yet again, by someone who Doreen knew I wouldn't appreciate. That was all it took to shove my instinctive fears to the back of my mind. Yet I climbed the stairs quickly enough that I was grateful they had been repainted with sand in the mix after I slipped on the enameled wood last year and fell backward on my spine.

With that particular pain in my memory, I climbed to the landing, turned off the light below me, crossed the kitchen, where everyhing had fallen under the spell of Doreen's beef barley soup, and passed under the archway to the living room.

Doreen stood defensively at the front door, one hand clutching the edge of the door at the level of her shoulder, seemingly ready to slam it in someone's face.

I smiled, chagrined that I had gotten my feathers up to protect this woman. I've been known to opt too quickly to engage the Sir Galahad aspects of our marriage, when everybody knows that Doreen is ever more Morgana than Guenevere, ever more the renegade sorceress than the damsel in distress.

But then I noticed Doreen's overt posture of defiance, her spine too straight and her head too high, and my fears crept forward again.

I couldn't see very well through the stained glass window that recently replaced the front door's single window pane (one of Doreen's latest triumphs of aesthetics over practicality), but I could see how high the man's silhouette stood. He was big.

I put my hand over Doreen's hand on the door and we opened it as far as the hinges would permit. Brows duly lowered, I was prepared to deliver an appropriate variation of the old tried-and-true "I Don't Have Time for This" theme, when I caught my first sight of the one-eyed man.

Whatever I was planning to do or to say quickly slipped under the soles of my feet and lay there, motionlessly, like the most vulnerable prey in the forest waiting for the most dangerous predator to go away.

I could only stare, my mouth open and my eyes wide.

The one-eyed man drew my attention and held it as if by hypnosis.

He was tall, slim, and stood with poor posture, holding a dark woolen cloak around his body. His skin was almost albino white, and his features made me think of an unhurried renaissance charcoal study on bleached vellum, drawn by reflected candlelight in the cold stone chamber of a subterranean mausoleum.

I couldn't tell how old he was. He could have been forty or sixty. Too much conflicting data about his appearance confused me. There was something ancient about him that I couldn't quantify, but that I could see in his face. Yet he seemed young, too. Alert. Impatient. But concealing that impatience behind a cynical apathy for the moment that was meant to mask his strong inner impulse to be elsewhere, for secret (or sinister) purposes.

I began to try to read the lines of his face: the sharp angles, the stark planes, the strength of his chisel-cut jaw. I also tried to study the sublime power that shined in his one good eye---it was cold and blue, deep and calm, like a circular blue ocean carved into the surface of a frozen white world.

All of these details wove together to inform me that I would learn nothing from such a superficial study. I couldn't read anything in his face, I conceded, because the life that poised silently behind that face was a life far beyond anything I had ever known. He looked as if he lived in another century, if not on another planet.

I wondered what he was doing here.

Thin, snow-white, shoulder-length locks framed his face. I could see how, under certain conditions, that hair might serve to obscure the deep jagged scar that ran from his forehead to his jaw. His right eye, the smooth white of a hard-boiled egg, bisected that horrible scar, and its sightless glare made my palms itch.

Why doesn't he cover that eye with a patch, pirate-style? I thought. As over-dramatic as such things tend to be, it would certainly beat the shit out of parading around town making people's palms itch.

I pondered that question for a moment, and then he spoke.

"Mr. Overstreet? Mr. Carlin Overstreet?"

I nodded my head, my mouth hanging open.

"Mr. Overstreet, I apologize for intruding upon your home in this way, but it is my hope that you can help me."

I couldn't look away from his one good eye. I actually tried and I couldn't do it. I swallowed dry air. "Help you? Help you how?"

His lips curled into what might have been a smile, though on his face it was a grim, humorless expression.

"I understand you repair musical instruments."

I nodded my head, exhaled a breath much too strongly, and spared a glance to Doreen. My wife returned my glance, and I decided she was not so frightened of this strange visitor, after all. She looked more intrigued than afraid.

"I repair stringed instruments, yes."

He nodded his head slightly. A look of relief passed over his face to be replaced by one of serious intent, the way a cloud passes away to reveal the glare of the sun. I took a step backward, partly to let him in and partly to put some distance between us. Doreen stayed close to me, but her eyes remained on our visitor's face.

"It has come to my attention that you are quite competant in that regard." He bowed his head slightly. "I am in need of your services."

He spoke the words in an over-enunciated, almost robotic way, as if he had looked them up in a Berlitz guide, though there was no trace of an accent or a dialect that I could detect in his careful, clinical tones.

He moved into the living room. I noticed that he was holding a long black instrument case in one hand, resting its butt on one leather-booted foot.

I wondered what was in there.

Doreen and I shared another glance. She told me with her sharp green eyes that this was okay, weird but okay, and that it was worth finding out what this man wanted me to do, at the very least.

"All right," I said. "I'm a little backed up right now but, yeah, we can talk." My voice cracked, and my face must have been a picture. I took another step backward and shut the front door, inhaled a breath and dredged up what I hoped was a convincing smile. I gestured for him to follow me. "We can look at the job downstairs in the workshop, where the light is better."

The one-eyed man was visibly relieved. "Thank you for sharing this time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Overstreet."

Doreen smiled and waved one hand in a dismissive manner. "Call me Doreen," she said graciously. I relaxed a bit more when I heard the charmed calm in her voice. I told myself that she had shed her previous fears because I was here, but my bullshit meter immediately began to needle into the red zone on that one.

"Very well, Doreen. I am Albion." He put his right hand over his heart and left it there while he bowed a shallow bow.

"I'm sorry. Al who?" she asked in apologetic tones.

The one-eyed man smiled an actual smile; it was slight, sour, and perfunctory in the extreme---the mirthless grin of the mortician.

"That is my name," he said. "I am Albion, son of Melchior the Wayfarer. I am your humble servant, Doreen."

I don't know why I expected my wife to blush, or to giggle, or to fan her face with one hand and sigh like a Tennessee Williams character, but she did none of those things. She merely nodded the way a lady at a medieval ball might nod to a gentleman of the royal court. She was enjoying this. And, in spite of my uneasiness, I smiled.

Doreen caught my smile and returned it with one of her own. If she had been afraid of Albion moments ago, that was all over now.

Good enough for me.

I led the way downstairs.

A long appreciative sniff behind me as we crossed the kitchen made me think that maybe it would be a nice idea to offer him some soup. But various inner voices informed me of the inappropriate nature of such a gesture. There was an urgency about the moment that took precedence over such human niceties. This was serious business.

Besides, I had no idea what this strange man ate. Perhaps he ate food that was as exotic and as alien as was his demeanor. And that name. Weird fucking name.

"My formal name contains fourteen generations. I find it convenient to use the familiar form."

I turned and stared. A slight grin greeted me. I almost called it quits right then and there, but my curiosity told me to ignore my fight-or-flee impulses to see what was going to happen next. None of my intellectual alarms were sounding, and I could see nothing immediately dangerous here, so I did not hesitate to take a step deeper into this mystery.

I descended the stairs, glancing behind me once more to see Albion holding the black case before him as if it contained the Holy Grail. I was anxious to know what I would see when that battered black case was opened, and my heartbeat racheted up a few more notches toward fast.

I opened the workroom door on its well-sprayed hinges, checking behind me for any sign of the three cats who live here with Doreen and me. They were preferring to remain invisible, rather than to try once more to gain entrance to the Forbidden Room---a game of which they never tire.

Strange.

"If you'll just put the instrument up here, on this bench," I said as I flicked the light switch and shielded my eyes from the glare of the hundred watt bulb, "I'll let you know what I can do for you."

I grinned a stupid grin. I sounded to myself like a shyster lawyer or a shady accountant. I shook my head with a tsk. I was nervous as hell and I wasn't even sure why.

Albion placed the case carefully on the workbench. The latches of the case looked very old---they were black, anvil-beaten iron, for Chrissakes---made by hand with drilled fittings.

My heart began to pound in my ears.

I wondered if Albion were reading my thoughts again.

"I don't make an effort, kind sir, though your thoughts are very clear to one who can See them," he said in a frighteningly calm way. "They are quite strong." He nodded slightly. "You are well-disciplined and you focus your thoughts easily." He fixed me with the calm ocean of his eye. "Do you not?"

My feet carried me a step backward. I opened my mouth to speak, but then I clamped my jaw shut, held my breath, and stared. I sent him a thought with a white flag waving above it.

Albion breathed a soft laugh. His teeth were bad, but his breath smelled of cloves and cinnamon. "Knowledge of the unspoken mind can never be a weapon against a noble man like yourself, Mr. Overstreet."

I made a wordless sound of confusion, then, "Who are you?"

Albion canted his head to stare at me from beneath a drawn brow. He said nothing. Then he looked down and opened the case.

I had planned to continue breathing throughout all of this, but now that plan was brutally interrupted. My lungs locked and my eyes stared until they burned dry, but I couldn't blink.

Albion slowly reached out and touched the thing in the case as if to prove to both of us that it were real. I just stared, my vocal chords chugging like my old Chevy on a frozen February morning. I looked from the thing in the case to the one-eyed man's face and then back again, coughing sounds of shock.

Was this thing alive? I didn't want to ask.

The thing in the case looked to be a cross between a lobster and some kind of a giant mutant arachnid. Imagine the love child of William Burroughs and H.R. Giger. Now imagine something uglier than that. I didn't want to touch it, but I couldn't look away from it. It was fascinating in its supreme ugliness.

I followed the paths of the dull, gray, tendon-like strings that were anchored near the thing's head (?) and ran the length of what must have been its neck (?) to a kind of bony bridge somewhere near its ass (?). Other gray rubbery-looking strings fanned across its spidery legs in intersecting symmetrical arrays that spanned the four corners of the thing. The unnatural, angular positions of its arms made me think of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

I had never seen anything like this. I've seen ouds, banjos, bazoukis, balalaikas, sitars and sarods. I've seen lyres, mandolins, harp-guitars, Chapman Sticks, and Erlewine Lasers---but this thing had to be from another universe---I couldn't identify it with anything I knew.

Then I noticed the damage. Someone had cut it with a very sharp something---a linoleum knife, maybe---across the whole lower treble bout of the thing. It was a mess, gouged in equidistant, curved rows, as if claws had slashed across it. A hand-sized piece was missing completely. Here and there were places where the sympathetic strings had been cut.

Claws?

My blood rushed. I focused my eyes through a tight squint, then reached for my glasses, put them on, and looked at it again.

"Oh, my God."

The one-eyed man ignored me, stroking a hand over the damaged surface of the thing.

"Can you repair this?" Albion's tone spoke of a tight rein on a galloping urgency. This was very important to him, and he didn't have much time. How could I refuse, even though I had no idea where to begin, or what to do?

"I, um. Maybe I could---huh---I don't know."

He gulped a long breath of air and gripped the edge of my wooden workbench with his right hand. The fingernails were long. Curved. Scary. Like some Fu Manchu villain in an old silent film. I didn't like it. I didn't like any of this anymore. I began to try to think of a way out.

The smell of cloves and cinnamon was giving me a headache. I sniffed, wondering if I'd finally found something on Earth to which I was allergic. My sinuses were killing me.

"I don't know if I can fix this thing or not. First of all, what's it made of? Some kind of plastic? Epoxy? Was it carved to look like this?" I looked right at him. "Did it grow into this?"

Albion continued to stare at the thing. His face drew down into a tragic expression, like the face of a father who has forced himself to look into the eyes of his dying child. His hand trembled as he gently stroked its complicated surface.

There was another deep scar that crossed the back of his right hand from the ball of his thumb to the outer edge of his wrist. It was more recent than the scar on his face, still red and swollen around the edges. I winced as I wondered how he'd managed to escape damage to the tendons, certain death for any musician.

I looked up from his hand to stare at his face, wondering how the hell he had cut his hand like that. A knife fight? A power tool mishap? Somehow I knew it was something much more fantastic, something that would scare me half to death if I knew of it. I stared at his eye, afraid to ask.

Then I noticed that Albion had also borne two equally gruesome wounds on the sides of his head, one at each temple, visible only when his spider-silk hair moved away from the sides of his face. The scars were small but vivid, tightly knotted, as if they had healed naturally after something had brutally gouged his skull.

What the hell kind of torture had Albion endured?

Had horns been ripped from his head?

And hadn't he, for Christ's sake, ever heard of stitches?

"This instrument," he said in a distracted voice, "is very old."

His eye fixed its stare on me again, and I leaned away from its sudden intensity. He continued to stare until I looked down to avoid the laser-sharp scrutiny of that eye. I tried to think as little as possible, afraid that any reaction to his words, whether spoken or not, would constitute an interruption.

"This instrument was once a celebrated and accomplished creature, a senior member of an ancient culture. It lived as a priest of Lian Elah, the Music of the Spheres, in a place very far from this place, in a time very far from this time."

He reached up and allowed the hinged lid of the case to swing down. I assumed it was because he could no longer bear to see the instrument in its present state. His face revealed a desperate inner battle, the nature of which I couldn't begin to comprehend.

This guy was gauging me, testing me, feeding me crumbs of information as I was able to digest them---maybe to keep my head from expoding from knowing too much of the mystery before me.

"The Wayfarers have always used the lyrinsi as their instruments of travel. My father, Melchior, found the first. Since then, the lyrinsi have, in turn, helped us to find the others, wherever they had been hidden."

I nodded silently, staring down at my house slippers.

"I know you are wondering why I am telling you all this, Mr. Overstreet. To begin, I am bound by my faith not to bear false witness against you. Untruth may not pass my lips. Suffice to say you hold my life in your hands. This lyrinsa must sing again, or I will die here, on this planet." He stroked the pebbled black leather covering of the instrument's case. "And, worse than that, others will die elsewhere."

His face changed. "Do you understand what I'm saying to you, Mr. Overstreet?"

It was as if a haze drifted between me and the blue of his eye; it seemed to shimmer. Perhaps it was the beginning of a tear.

"Do you understand why you must help me?"

"Yes."

What frightened me the most, beside the fact that I actually believed all of this Gene Roddenbury bullshit, was that I was so surprisingly proud of my role in this mysterious drama. Proud and eager to serve the interests of this strange man.

I was suspicious of that pride, and afraid of it. I refused to allow that pride to move me too far, but it stood nearby, like a mugger cleaning his fingernails with the tip of a gleaming butterfly blade in the shadow of an alleyway, waiting patiently for me to pass close by.

The crowd of questions on my tongue had grown until I didn't dare open my mouth at all, or I would never stop babbling them. I glanced up to see Albion smiling his slight smile at the look on my face.

I slowly opened the case again. "Can I touch it?"

"Of course."

I ran the tip of my index finger over the surface of the thing. I expected it to be soft, because of its appearance, I suppose. But it was smooth and hard, like polished marble.

A ridiculous thought struck me; I don't know where it came from.

"Is it---you know---aware of me?"

Albion gave me a curious look, spared me another slight grin, and then nodded his head slowly in the affirmative, causing the tangled ends of his hair to brush the shoulders of his cloak.

"This physical artifact is much like a human skeleton, but also very different. The lyrinsi are fully aware in multiple dimensions, even after death. Though it is true that its consciousness no longer lives in this body---it is indeed dead in that sense---its consciousness does still command this body. In that sense, it is still very much alive."

I sighed, shaking my head in utter brain fatigue. I knew so little of what was going on here. I wanted to know more. But I felt suddenly like a kid sneaking into a fenced enclosure marked HIGH VOLTAGE to learn about electricity; I knew there was danger here, I just didn't know how much. And I knew I should be afraid to want to find out. But I wasn't. I wanted to know everything. And I wanted to know it now.

I wondered what I must look like to Albion. If he could see right into my garbage-strewn little mind as it stretched and yawned to encompass his universe, the view from over there must be numbingly boring. My shallow suburban American attitudes, so cynical and self-possessed, must seem to him as the Centurions must have seemed to Jesus.

"Okay, okay. You win. I'll try it. I might have some pissed off clients, but I guess that's nothing new to me. They'll get over it."

I offered up a weak grin. In my mind was a sudden image of myself dropping to my knees and begging to be left alone. I realized that he might see it and I banished it from my thoughts as quickly as I could, but I caught Albion's sudden glance and his saber-thin smile.

"Thank you," was all he said, but I could sense an immensity of feeling behind those two words. I wasted a fraction of a second patting myself on the back for deciding to go along with this. Then I slapped my ego into a corner and cleared the decks for some serious activity. This man needed my help involving something fantastic, something almost unbelievable. And I was ready.

I imagined Doreen's face when she saw this thing.

Uh-oh.

"I think I'll keep this between us for now."

"As you wish."

"I'm a hundred an hour. More if I have to do anything excessively dangerous or environmentally irresponsible---like if I have to use any of the cyanocrylate adhesives. Or certain aerosols. Stuff like that."

He didn't flinch. Just nodded.

"Plus materials costs. When I figure that one out."

"I understand."

"If you want me to start right away, I'll need a deposit of three hundred dollars."

Still not a ripple. I wondered if I could have charged him his firstborn son and he would have accepted it with the same measured acquiescence. He reached into his cloak with the scarred hand and brought it out again almost immediately. It held, of course, exactly three C notes, ATM fresh. He handed them to me without looking at them.

A wave of coldness washed over my shoulders. I wondered if it would be impolite to openly scratch my palms. Damn him! A determination to remain calm took precedence over my impulse to run away like a Monty Python character. I took the money, feeling like the archetypical philistine.

"Fine. Well, I'll need a phone number where I can reach you."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Overstreet. That won't be possible."

"Email?" I said with a half-wince.

"No."

"Fax?"

He just stared.

"Ah. What's your beeper number, then?"

He didn't laugh.

"Well, how am I supposed to---"

"I will return."

"When I'm finished?"

"Yes."

"You'll just show up?"

"That is correct."

I looked down, unable to face the steady stare of his eye.

"What if there's a problem?" I asked in a purposely casual tone.

When I looked back up at him, his expression had changed. I wasn't sure if he was angry or sad---or if his emotions were simply as removed from my own as was the bizarre instrument he played from my own beloved pre-war Martin D-28.

"Problem?"

I was sorry I brought it up. I apologized inwardly, somehow knowing he would hear. Yet he gave me no indication that he had heard.

"I don't know. You know. A problem." A great start. I cleared my throat, tried to clear my thoughts as easily. It didn't work.

"You need only know that I need your help, Mr. Overstreet. I am certain you will find the means to provide that help."

I was a mess. The tenor of my fear was approximating that of the island native who sees upon the far horizon the distant break of the tidal wave that is racing toward him to obliterate his tiny island home forever. I felt as though I were in terrible danger, although that danger was as yet far away. My face drew down around a scowl. I raised a hand to speak---okay, to lie---about the distant fear that had already broken the horizon of my thoughts and was rapidly racing toward me. I didn't know what kind of lie to tell; it didn't seem to matter, the way Albion was staring at me.

"What I mean, is, I don't know what kind of materials and processes I'm going to have to use here. I don't know what either one will entail, all told. This whole thing is so far outside my field of experience that I don't even know if I'll be able to---"

"I have a sense about these things."

I stopped dead. His eye held a kind of knowing beyond speech.

"You have a what?"

He looked at me. Steadily. In a way that made it impossible for me to look away---the way he looked at me upstairs, when I first saw him.

"A sense. I have faith in you, Mr. Overstreet."

"I don't---I didn't mean to---I mean, I---"

"Certainly you know of the bond between a musician and his instrument." His Midwestern American English was better now. And his eye was cold again, gauging me, looking right into me. "My bond with the lyrinsa is very strong."

My palms started to itch again. This time I scratched them. "Where the hell are you from?"

Albion almost smiled.

The quality of his stare changed again.

A blue world opened up to me.

A blue miracle of perspective tilted above me in dizzying distances.

A blue sky hung over me now. Horizon to jagged horizon. Blue and clear and absolutely limitless.

There are things here, in the boundless blue. Dragons. Monsters. Things I don't want to see. In the distance, there are mountains that stand in impossible shapes, beckoning to me from afar. And there are cities in the sky, their tall slender spires gleaming gold.

"I am from a time and place beyond this time and place. I am a Wayfarer. The Earth is but a stone in the stream of my journey, upon which I must often place my step."

The blue sky and everything in it dispersed with the last of his words.

I realized I had been holding my breath. I breathed.

Albion almost smiled.

I knew he knew what I had just seen. I huffed a breath. "I'm sorry I asked," I said, shaking my head warily and raising my open palms.

Albion laughed. I was glad to hear it. It was light and clear, without any critical weight to it at all. It made me feel better.

But that laugh didn't last long; it faded away, to be replaced by an awkward period of silence. He looked tired. So tired. He stepped away from the thing in the case and glanced toward the door.

"If our business is complete, I must go."

"Sure. Okay. I'll do what I can---I mean, I'll fix it somehow. I'll do it."

"I recognize truth."

Every time I almost caught up to this guy, he'd give me another concept to wrestle into the worn weave of my white middle class world-view, and another problem I could no more solve than Larry, Moe, and Curly could read the Rosetta Stone.

"Oh, I'm sure you can---even if that truth is wearing a disguise."

He just stared.

Humor is my pet reaction to stressful things. It calms me down. But here I was, standing next to a deadpan one-eyed albino who wouldn't crack a smile if I took a pratfall onto the floor. I didn't know how to deal with this guy at all.

"Give yourself some credit," he said, sounding ridiculously like Doreen's mother. "You do your best work under pressure." Then he smiled his non-existent smile and gestured for me to proceed him to the door.

An aura of ancient protocol infused all of Albion's actions. I was becoming accustomed to it, and it didn't bother me the way I thought it should. In fact, I liked it.

When I lived in Amsterdam for a while, in my reckless youth, I suddenly found myself speaking Dutch, without ever realizing how it happened. Gestures had become words, words had become phrases. It had never been a conscious task, it just caught up to me somehow. I never really thought about it with my reactive mind. I just let it happen to me. And I remember only that I liked it. Letting it happen to me like that. It was Freudian and Darwinian, all at the same time.

This Wayfarer, whatever that is (no, I didn't ask), was so consistent in his alien nature that I was beginning to understand it. Beginning to adapt to it. I smiled, feeling strangely at ease, willing to just let it happen.

"I'll give myself credit when I've earned it---when you can cuddle up to that guitar from Mars again and play whatever kind of Martian music you play on it." I laughed. It was sincere, but it was a rough, rude sound compared to his laugh, as Billy Gibbons is to Andre Segovia.

"I am pleased," he said.

I wanted to ask where he was going, and how he'd know when to come back, and why he trusted me with such a tricky job, and what the hell kind of music did he play on this thing, and a hundred other questions that I knew must go unasked. He was leaving.

I led the way up the steps to the kitchen. "Would you like a bowl of soup?" I asked, surprising myself.

"Thank you, no. I must go."

"Okay. Starve, then," I said with a nervous laugh.

Doreen sat in the living room, curled comfortably on the couch, watching an old Cary Grant movie on TV, a skein of knitting in her lap. Jasper, the big fat blue point Himalayan, lay at her tiny socked feet. She smiled and nodded as Albion passed, as if she'd known him for years.

I was stunned. Things were surreal enough for me without this seeming familiarity of hers to shake up my rattled nerves like a gunshot in a phone booth. I was in the Twilight Zone, at the least---ready to call somebody for a tranquilizer, at the worst---and Doreen was just smiling as if he were here for her weekly Thursday night meditation group, or petitioning door-to-door for a new town hall. I didn't get it.

Albion left us. I held the door to watch him get into a big black car and drive off. Even the car was like something out of a Hollywood movie: old rounded fenders, mounted headlights, louvered hood, and a roof that was so severely chopped in the manner of those Fifties hot rods that the darkly tinted windshield looked to be no more than twelve inches high. The engine didn't sound like a car's engine in the least. It sounded strange and powerful, whining like an electric turbine as he slowy eased the car north toward Eleven Mile Road.

The engine whined more loudly on a higher octave when he punched it; he was heading east down Eleven. Tires screamed on the pavement, and then suddenly the sound was gone, as if the car had quickly disappeared. I shook my head and shut the door.

I gave Doreen a look.

"What was that all about?" she asked.

"Weird guy, huh?"

"Honey, you got so many weird guys coming in and out of that basement, I can't keep track anymore."

"Oh, come on. You can't equate him with the rockers and the bluesers and the heavy metal heads and the goths who can't stop wrecking the tools of their trade, can you?"

I sat opposite her in the recliner. She looked so peaceful, as always. I wanted some of that peace; I was tied up in knots.

"No. I don't mean that. Except that it's part of the curve. The people in your life just keep getting weirder, that's all."

"Tell me you're not complaining."

"I'm not complaining."

"Tell me you're not mocking me."

"Honey." She put down the knitting needles and stared at me. She always looked beautiful. And now was no exception. "I'm not mocking you."

"You mean you weren't freaked out by that guy?"

She shrugged. "At first, maybe. That poor man. His face. I've never seen him before, have you?"

I shook my head, watching Cary Grant deliver lines to Ida Lupino.

"Never."

I looked at Doreen's eyes. No burning questions there. No gaping rents in her ontology. She was fine.

We watched the movie for a while.

I began to itch to go down and look at the thing in the case.

"It's gonna be a tough job. The bloomin' bloke was right nasty to 'is blighty ol' bash box, 'e was," I said in the pathetic Cockney dialect that usually made her laugh or at least roll her eyes.

Knit one. Pearl one. Knit one. Pearl two. It was one of Doreen's zen states. She could knit through a hurricane.

"You took it?" she asked, watching Cary Grant.

"Yeah. Three bills up front." Did I sound appropriately uninvolved? I didn't know. "He wants it done quick."

"Of course."

Jasper stood, stretched, yawned, and hopped down to the carpet. He was bored with the turn of the conversation, and walked into the kitchen for a change of scene.

"I guess I'll start on it."

"Now?"

"It's not that late. I got some good hours in me yet."

"You're not going to be using that horrible stuff again, are you?"

"No, honey. Nothing is going to smell up the house."

"It's not just that. I don't want you breathing that stuff. It's a matter of your health as much as it is a matter of that horrible smell coming up through the ducts. Why can't you understand that?"

All focus was off the mystery in the basement.

I got up, took the few steps necessary to reach Doreen, and leaned down. Doreen raised her face, baby-kiss lips poised. I kissed her, then again, more seriously.

Fortified. Connected to life. How can I explain to my single friends what's in a kiss from Doreen? And why would I want to break their hearts with knowledge of something they don't have?

"I'll be up late," I said.

"I know. You got a new rush job."

"Hey. My cancer cure is still incubating in the oven, and my summit meeting in Geneva isn't until late tomorrow."

"Very funny."

"I'll come up sooner if I burn out."

"Okay."

It was that simple. No problem. I didn't jump up and run. I contained my enthusiasm like a boy with bees in a glass jar---listening intently to the wild hum inside, but not crazy enough to open it---and went downstairs.

When I entered the workshop, Jasper, Gizmo, and Bonkers were all sitting on the workbench, staring at Albion's lyrinsa. Jasper, ignoring me as usual, reached forward with one paw and touched it. He drew the paw back quickly, as if it had stung him. But he didn't run away.

Gizmo, his shy little litter brother, shivered and made a long low sound that I could feel in the base of my spine. Bonkers, the midnight black indigenous dumpster cat from our apartment days, sitting uncharacteristically shoulder-to-shoulder with his pure-bred tormentors, stared into the open case with them.

None of them seemed to notice me at all---as if they were in kitty trances of some kind. I barked a laugh. No response. I walked slowly into the workroom and joined them in their studies for a while.

Six unblinking eyes stared at the thing in the case.

While I watched, Jasper reached out again with the same paw and this time he touched a string. The soft vibration sustained and swelled, and soon set other strings into motion. Gizmo made that sound again, low, gritty, in harmony with the soft tones coming from inside the case. Bonkers joined in, then Jasper. As if they were singing.

I stood still for a moment, trying to figure out what the hell these animals were doing. I couldn't begin to understand it. I didn't have time to try. I moved to clear the table of all feline guests.

"Come on," I said in urgent tones. "Let me work, guys."

When my hand neared Jasper, he stood up, hunched his back, hissed at me, and made a face that said, "You see these teeth, asshole?"

I backed away, confused. I couldn't get a grip on why Albion's instrument was affecting the animals this way. They were acting crazy. I wondered what kind of effect it would have on me when I started working on it. Would I end up howling at the moon?

"Settle down, boys. You're scaring Daddy."

Jasper ignored me again, now that I had moved away from him. All his attention was once more focused on the lyrinsa. I didn't know what to do, so I watched them watching it for a while. And then for another while. I wondered how long they could keep this up. After another tedious period, I decided I wasn't about to find out.

I reached to the shelf over the workbench and grabbed a can of compressed air that I use for blowing dust off things. I aimed it in the cats' general direction and let the can do my hissing for me.

That worked. Their response was reinforced by years of horrifying flea spray conditioning from the era before modern treatments. All three of them vacated their previously occupied spaces with astounding alacrity---so much so that I felt like a jerk for panicking them.

They high-tailed it out of the room and into the unfinished part of the basement. As soon as they were gone, I shut the door.

The next few hours were eventful ones. I discovered that a mixture of sculptor's plaster and paint primer served well to fill in a sample area. And it dried quickly. I mixed up a bigger batch of it and applied it quickly, working with a small putty knife to match the organic texture of the thing. It really wasn't that difficult.

More than once I had the feeling that I was being watched. I shook it off, but I couldn't ignore the persistent sensation that unseen eyes followed every move I made. I worked faster, speeding ahead of myself, allowing the possibility of human error to creep into the equation, but strangely afraid to slow down; every second counted now in a way that I couldn't explain.

Handmade string anchors replaced the ones that had been ripped away. I measured them and set them, and then told myself to wait until the plaster had attained full structural integrity before I mounted the strings.

I forced my hands to stop working. I took a step away from the workbench and absently looked down. I saw what I thought was blood in random drops along the floor. I bent down, put a finger to it, and brought it up. It was blood. And all I knew for certain was that it wasn't mine. I stood up, wiped my finger clean with some rubbing alcohol, and opened the door to look for the cats.

They were all right there, sitting outside the door, staring at me. I ran a cursory check and found no trace of blood anywhere about them. This calmed me and concerned me at the same time; true, my furry companions were uninjured, but that left only one possibility: Albion had been bleeding.

He hadn't looked good. Seemed weak. Maybe from loss of blood.

To think that he had come here, from God knows where, to get this instrument fixed, even though he was leaking precious bodily fluids at the time, gave me a chill.

That's when I grabbed this spiral notebook off the shelf, got a pen, and began to write all this down.

I'm not exactly sure why it seems so important to document these events as they happened to me, but it does. While the final coat of goo dries, I can't finish my work, and I don't seem too well equipped to do anything else right now. I'm nervous as hell and I can't settle down.

Sure, it's insane to try to reckon with all the bizarre things that Albion said, and it's more insane to act as though the lyrinsa were a normal wood and wire guitar, but I'm determined to do what the one-eyed man needs me to do. It's what I've chosen and, usually, when I make a choice, that's it. If you don't believe me, just ask Doreen's mother.

The central strings are in a unique arrangement I've never seen before, tuned in even fourths. By studying the other sympathetic strings, I've figured out how to replace the missing ones. I've been able to get them all on and tuned to pitch. Soon I'll be able to pick this thing up, put it through some paces, and find out what this butt-ugly thing sounds---

---vibration. There's a vibration in the air. It's too subtle to hear, but I can sense it. It's distant. Dim. But it's here. And I think it's growing.

I'm suspicious of the source on an instinctual level. It's from somewhere bad; I can feel it. Maybe it's from the place where Albion got all those horrible scars.

Oh, shit.

I want to scream out loud, but a lifetime of cultural conditioning won't allow that. I'm a grown man, after all, and this is nothing but a distant vibration, no louder, no more threatening, than the UPS truck driving down the street outside. There will be no screaming here.

The water in the plastic bottle on the workbench begins to bull's-eye concentrically toward the center. The metal tools begin to chatter against the scarred wooden worktable and against the white painted pegboard on the wall. My heart begins to chatter against my ribcage.

I can hardly keep writing.

The room is full of that strange vibration now.

I wonder if Doreen can hear this---shit, I wonder if the neighbors can hear this. It seems to be shaking the walls of the basement.

The instrument on the bench is vibrating, too---it's picking up the vibration in the air and generating its own grace notes. The sound from it is like breathing. Or singing---like when the cats were singing to it.

Oh, shit.

I want to run away, but I can't. I don't know why; I just can't. It's more important for me to relate these moments as they occur than to escape them. I should have known it would get this strange, but I didn't. Now I'm gonna pay.

My fingers are shaking. I can't read this too well. I'm so fucking scared, and I know things are going to get worse. The vibration is hurting my teeth. The paper posters and handbills and spec sheets and reminders on the walls are shivering like leaves in a storm. I can feel the vibration in the joints of my bones. Great---it's an arthritis ray from Planet X.

I don't want to complain, but it really hurts.

Can't look at page I'm writing on.

Looking at middle of room.

There's a hole in the air. Right here. Right in front of me.

Can you read this, whoever you are? A hole in the air.

Light. Spinning. Growing. Flower. Bigger.

I see eyes! There's things in the---

Excerpt from THE GUTS OF A BEGGAR by Greg Smith