Immediately, I realized I had made a big mistake. Inside, catching Stanley had seemed a noble purpose. Outside, it was an act of insanity.
Stanley was a few feet away, balanced on the ledge, above the mansion’s back grounds. He was moving, steadying himself by holding on to passing windows or grooves pitted into the building by time. All things considered, he was doing pretty well.
He turned back and saw me. He even had the wherewithal to laugh.
“You’re kidding me!” he yelled.
I couldn’t blame him. Hanging on to the maid’s room window, I was shaking like a palsied old man, my face frozen in a smile of fear. My only thoughts: Marlon Brando replaced Anthony Franciosa in The Fugitive Kind; forty years later, James Woods replaced Brando in Scary Movie 2.
Stanley taunted me. “Don’t look down!”
Of course, I did.
It was only two flights, but, a hundred years ago, they made buildings with less and higher floors. It seemed like that, anyway: many miles to the ground. On the huge back lawn, I saw the tiny guide continuing his tour, directing his group’s attention to some topiary.
“It was here that Mr. Steilerman used his walking stick …” I heard him faintly say.
There was no way I could catch up. Stanley was skittering like a cat burglar now, getting the hang, before I could move an inch.
Then I heard a pleasant sound.
On another day, it would have been unnerving. But, at that moment, the creaking and cracking of an old home’s ledge was a lovely woman’s song.
The place was falling apart, after all. That was why they’d taken him in as a tenant in the first place.
Stanley stopped. Slowly, he looked beneath him, at the area of support now starting to collapse. He was like the coyote in the Warner’s cartoons, a trivia area that wasn’t really my own.
“Aw, no,” Stanley said.
The tour group glanced up at the noise. They heard a man curse, shrilly. Then, the very next instant, Stanley and a small slab of concrete had cascaded down to join them.
I DIDN’T WAIT UNTIL HE HIT THE GROUND.
Gratefully, I clawed and angled my way back inside the window. Stanley might survive the fall but he’d be hobbled. That gave me time for some unfinished business.
I was lucky that I returned when I did.
The minute my feet hit the maid’s room floor, I saw Abner at the door. He was almost gone, clumsily gripping a plastic bag, the tape sticking stupidly out of it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I panted.
Abner turned back. Then he closed the door. The color red had trouble covering his entire face.
“Nowhere,” he said, innocently.
Abner was an adaptable guy, but he hadn’t made the greatest career moves. He had blown his on-air LCM gig by cheating on Taylor. He had been fired from writing Quelman for, well, having no talent. And he had alienated himself from the human race by hooking up with Stanley Lager.
But he could always go back to being king of the trivial. And what better way than with Clown?
“We had a deal.”
“I told you in my e-mail, Milano,” he said, awkwardly, “that that was null and void.”
“Well, why don’t you get one of your fancy Hollywood friends to renegotiate it then?”
Abner sighed. This option was lost to him now, as were all of his industry contacts. Our correspondence wasn’t worth the e-mails they’d been written with.
“I’ll take it under advisement,” he said.
That was the end of our attempt at civilized interaction. Both of us now tensed, prepared to return to the jungle.
“Give me that tape.”
“Make me.”
“I will.”
“Well, what are you waiting for?”
Then we stopped.
“Hey!” a small voice cried. “Hey!”
Abner and I both moved, quickly, to the window. There, on the back lawn, the tour guide and his guests had suffered the results of Stanley’s sudden landing. A few tourists were splayed on the grass, unhurt but stunned. Laughing, their teenage offspring were slapping each other’s palms. A piece of ledge rested near them. The guide was yelling to no one in particular.
“He got away!”
I sighed. Being the trivial rat he was, Stanley Lager had once more scurried to safety.
