Ragnarok!

By Robert Lory

Arthur, Merlin, Odin, Thor, Loki. They all failed to neutralize the mountainous beast of destruction known as Ragnarok. What makes them think that 1960s New York City adman and (very) reluctant hero Stanley A. Havelock can do better?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483527109

Book preview

Autry.

CHAPTER ONE

Come along, vards

and listen to my tale,

and I'll tell you of my troubles

on the Ragnarok Trail.

Come-a whoopee whoopee whoopee

come-a humm humm humm,

humm whoopee whoopee whoopee

humm whoopee humm.

At nine thirty that August Tuesday morning I should have known it. I didn't, but I should have. It was precisely ten forty-five New York time when I knew it. Knew it for sure, I mean.

But I get ahead of myself.

Back to nine thirty.

That was when the Oldies but Goodies station came alive on my clock-radio with the Del Vikings proclaiming the virtues of Whispering Bells. Not only were the Del Vikings themselves not whispering, but the radio volume was set to a decibel rating certain to wake up everyone within small hydrogen bomb range of my Seventy-Second Street Manhattan apartment.

Zero hour, according to the outrageously bright red numerals on the clock, was nine thirty. Clearly, my eyes were deceiving me. Clearly—

"Whispering bells, loud and clear—"

The self-contradicting Del Vikings were silenced suddenly as my fist bottom descended mightily on the appropriate button on the clock-radio top. But the red numbers remained obstinate. Squint as I did, every which way with my pained eyes, they stuck by their guns. Deep within my throbbing head, I accepted the irrefutable evidence. It was nine thirty. Precisely nine thirty. Irrefutably—

Nine thirty!

I rolled over in the bed and made a grab for the telephone just as it decided to ring and bring my frantic nerve endings to a new high. Stuffing a cigarette into my mouth, I paused to take stock of my situation. As I fumbled for a lighter or matches, I realized two very important facts.

The first was that the pack of cigarettes wasn't my brand.

The second was that I didn't have a brand anymore, having given up smoking two weeks ago.

Then who—

Ah, yes.

Myrtle Ann Loomisjohn, that was who. That was definitely who.

The telephone was still ringing, with little in the way of regard for the humiliation of the out and out sucker I knew myself to be. Oldest trick in the world!—I could just hear Old Barnshank saying it. As a matter of fact, if I picked up the phone, it was almost assured that I could hear Old Barnshank saying it—or something equally unpleasant.

The ringing wasn't going to stop, nor was the pounding in my head. Who in his right mind would get himself sloshed to his ear-lobes with martinis on a Monday night—especially a Monday night prior to this particular Tuesday morning?

Hello, I said into the phone. I tried to sound casual, as if I answered the phone every day.

Mr. Havelock, came back the rich voice of Jennifer, the inefficient ornament who at this very moment was probably applying her neutral-shade lipstick outside our chief's office door. Mr. Havelock, Mr. Barnshank wonders if he might have a word with you. One moment.

It was much less than the one moment when Barnshank's word almost blew me off the bed. "Havelock!"

Sir, I said. Barnshank normally responded well to deference. Normally.

"Where the hell are you, boy? No, don't answer that, I know exactly where you are—and exactly where you aren't, which is where you're supposed to be. Do you know where that might be, Havelock?"

Sir— I tried again.

"Here, Havelock, right here. Here where your office is. Here where you are currently gainfully employed. Here where I am. Here!"

Yes sir. There.

"I'm happy you remember. Do you also recall that you've got—we've got—a client presentation at—"

At eleven, I completed as briskly as I could. Barnshank liked briskness. Precisely at eleven, I added. Barnshank also liked precision. Sir, I decided to polish off some work here first. I think better at home.

You have the art work with you?

I plan to pick it up from the designer on my way in, I told him.

His voice turned ice cold. Suppose you plan to begin your way in right now. I want to see that art before we go to Briscoll. Hear me good, Havelock. That account is almost in the bag. If we lose it because of your—

I'll be in your office within the hour.

"Within the half-hour." The click on the line told me our telephone conversation had ended.

Which, considering the number of points I'd been able to score, was probably for the best.

In the john, I popped three aspirins into my mouth, turned on the sink faucet and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked strange, unlike my usual blond, blue-eyed dapper self. There were thick red lines oddly marring my face and chest. Odd not only in themselves, but odd in the way they seemed to move across my flesh as my flesh moved across the face of the mirror. It took a minute or so of fearful study for me to realize that the thick red lines were not part of me but were in fact on the mirror. I'd been left a message fashioned in lipstick:

DARLING, IT WAS FUN. YOU WERE GREAT.

SO GREAT, I THOUGHT YOU DESERVED TO SLEEP LATE.

LOVE, M.A.L.

I retrieved two of the soggy aspirins from the sink before they went down the drain. I chewed and swallowed them with a gulp. Myrtle Ann Loomisjohn! I'd fix her for this, I swore I would. One of these days—

My thoughts, stumbling through my booze-bruised brain, converged with my eyes on the shelf under the mirror. The glass was there in its usual place, but the toothbrush and toothpaste were gone. As was the razor blade in my Gillette. As was the packet of spares.

Very cunning, Ms. Loomisjohn.

A friendly drink between competitors, she'd called it yesterday afternoon when she phoned my office. She even offered to buy. What was the harm in it? That's what I figured. So we both were pitching the Briscoll Legwear account today, me in the morning, her in the late afternoon. So what? Years previous we were with the same agency and had been on friendly, though innocent, terms. She was a tasty looking morsel and maybe one friendly drink might lead to another which, in turn, might lead to another friendly but less than innocent—

It did. We wound up at my apartment at—what time? I couldn't remember. I did remember, however, that she turned our to be every bit as tasty as she looked. But as I now scrambled through my old army foot locker, I wondered. What kind of woman was it who'd use that kind of technique to kill off the competition?

A fierce competitor, I answered myself as I found what I was looking for under a cross-cut saw in the foot locker. There, lodged between a rolled-up extension cord and a box of ratchet-wrenches, was the paper cutter. And in the paper cutter was a razor blade. Used, but the only one handy.

Very used, I concluded, when minutes later I surveyed the damage the thing had done to my face. As I stepped into the shower, I decided I'd claim an acute case of heat rash. After all, it was August. August in New York can be death to sensitive faces, everybody knows that.

It was nine fifty-five when I slid open the closet door and discovered that Myrtle Ann had decided that friendly competition also called for hiding my shoes. All my footwear, except for a pair of bright Mexican open-toed sandals, was by now probably ashes in the apartment building incinerator. At least she spared my suits and shirts and socks and, I sighed to discover, neckties.

But what about the shoes?

I pushed the panic back into a remote corner of my mind. After all, the agile brain of Stanley A. Havelock, in the thirty-two years of its existence, had always—well, almost always—figured out some way to—

Of course.

I was pitching the Briscoll account, right? Clunky, ordinary shoes cover up hosiery, right? But bright, flashy, open-toed Mexican sandals—nay! Even though our presentation didn't include it now, I could add that—through our public relations staff—we planned to make the open-toed look the big thing next season. And what better way, gentlemen, to bring eager focus to our Briscoll Lankies for Loveable Legs?

Five minutes later, I was skipping along in my Mexicans down Third Avenue looking for a taxi. As one pulled over, I patted my back pocket to discover I'd left my wallet in the apartment. Come to think of it, I didn't see my wallet in the apartment. Good old Myrtle Ann. But even she didn't think to look into my jacket pocket for loose coins, and—behold—there in the company of three pennies and one dime were two tokens, each entitling me to an elegant ride on the New York subway system.

Unfortunately, I had to re-skip three blocks to the nearest subway entrance. I was somewhat winded and feeling like an advanced heat-prostration case by the time I stepped into the downtown train. My trusty Timex proclaimed the time to be ten twenty.

At ten thirty-five, I had the eight large pieces of artwork in hand and since the subway was near, it was but five minutes later when I again rushed through the turnstile to catch the train that just was pulling in. Unfortunately (once more, yes) I rushed so fast I didn't feel the tug on my jacket until the itty bitty nail had torn off a very large chunk of my side pocket. I continued on, figuring that since it was hot, it probably would be a shirt-sleeves meeting anyway. I might even enter the conference room in shirt-sleeves. Let's roll up our sleeves and get right down to it, gentlemen, I might say, adding of course that I was speaking figuratively and noting with an easy laugh that we all wore short-sleeve shirts, ha ha.

My stick-to-the-job watch said ten forty-two as the train moved out and the old woman who was the only other passenger in the car shot me a nasty look.

Young man, kindly return my umbrella, she said acidly.

Pardon? Then I noticed that, due no doubt to my single-minded haste, one of the heavy pieces of matboard I carried had an overlarge umbrella hanging from it.

As I meekly handed back the umbrella, her face took on the same self-righteousness look I expected I'd get from Barnshank when he told me I had precisely ten minutes to clean out my desk of all personal items.

It was ten forty-five. As I said at the beginning of all this, I knew. I knew it for sure:

It clearly was going to be one of those days.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something sparkle on the floor of the car. It seemed as if it had just sort of appeared out of nowhere, but I knew that had to be impossible, so it must have been there all along. I ambled over and looked down at it. A bright and shiny new penny.

I smiled, recalling the find-a-penny chant I sang years and years previous when I was disguised as a cute little boy. Find a penny, pick it up. And all day long you'll have good luck….

I still was smiling as I started to bend down. Then—

I stopped smiling.

Find a penny?

Wasn't it a pin? Somebody once told me that. A pin, not a penny. Or maybe it was that the pin was in the English version and the penny in the later, American version.

On the other hand, perhaps—

What was I doing? Pin or penny, did it make any difference? Surely this was not time to play literary critic to a nursery rhyme. Surely this was a time for action—even if there was a gamble involved. There was a fifty-fifty chance a penny brought good luck all day long if you found it, and here I was thinking of pins!

I quickly checked the surrounding floor of the car. There absolutely was not a single pin in evidence. Therefore—

Find a penny, pick it up, I hummed-sang-whispered, glancing furtively at the old umbrella grouch to see if she was watching. She wasn't; she was frowning at a deodorant poster. I bent down as if to inspect my shoelaces—cleverly ignoring the fact that Mexican sandals don't have shoelaces. My hand shot down and out at the bright little piece of copper.

And all day long, I mumbled, "you'll have—

"Good lord!"

There was a pause of a few seconds between the two parts of the chant's altered second line. It took me that long to realize that the things bouncing off my shivering head and shoulders were hailstones big as fists. Shielding my head with the artwork I clutched, I also realized that somebody had turned out the lights in the car.

But, of course, I wasn't in the car. I knew that when I saw the snow drifting just below my numbing knees and heard the wind whistling through the trees. I gathered there were trees, though I couldn't see any nearby.

Only a bleak, white plain.

Then somebody shouted, "Corporal of the guard!"

Both the man and the horse were outfitted in chain mail off which the hailstones bounced with noises sounding much like the opening number of a loud minstrel show. Raising his helmet visor to display a short beard, the rider peered at me through the downpour.

"You're not the corporal of the guard!" he shouted, using a short sword to point with.

That's true, I responded. But where—

What's that? I can't hear you!

"I said that's true!"

What's true?

I'm not the corporal of the guard!

Good! he shouted