The day before Thanksgiving, one of the girls at work attempted to ski “Sucker,” one of the most difficult of the third-slope ski runs. Thereafter she was put into a cast from armpit to toes, and I was called in to assume her hours at work.
She worked the midnight shift.
At first, I was all right. I felt the pull, and resisted it. I knew what normal behavior consisted of, and I practiced it all night long. I tried my best to sleep from four in the afternoon until nine, then get up, go out and have breakfast, and then get to work at midnight, where I would work until eight in the morning. The routine was simple, and I had no problem with it. My only problem was with the tug, the tug from the other side.
I kept the fluorescent lights brightly lit, kept the draperies drawn. I wanted no dark influence to touch my switchboards.
But of course it did. It was there the first time I walked in at night. The girl I relieved from duty was tainted. I rushed her out the door and double bolted it. The switchboard room was quiet, empty; the office was dark, the desks cleared, the typewriters and calculators covered. The darkness was already inside.
The darkness was already inside, and more of it seeped in through the calls that I had to answer. The personalities of those people—customers, clients whom I had talked to during the daytime—were obviously altered by the night, and at night, when they assumed I was not busy, they wanted to talk.
And as they talked, I knew the influence the night had on them, and soon I began to sway with the motion.
Within weeks, the darkness owned me again.
GLORIA GARDENER: “She was a good worker. I hated to have to put her on midnight when Becky broke her leg, but she was really the only candidate. All the other girls had families, or boyfriends, or something, and Angelina was all alone. She didn’t seem to mind too much, at least she didn’t say anything to me about it. I gave her a big raise for the inconvenience.
“She got along just fine with the other girls. A little shy at first, I think she’d been through some pretty rough times, didn’t like to talk much about her past. I mean she was just a little thing, young and all, but her face had no innocence left, if you know what I mean. I thought I was giving her a break, when I, you know, hired her, so young and all—and an orphan at that. She worked out real well. The other girls, well, they’re just precious, and they made her feel real welcome. I didn’t have any idea at all that Angelina would give me any problems here at night. But then, I guess, well, young girls have their temptations, don’t they?
“Anyway, Becky was out of work flat on her back for six months. It was six months full before she came back to work. By that time, of course, Angelina didn’t want to give up her shift, so Becky started back daytime. But Becky wanted her night work, so she’s the one who discovered what-all Angelina’d been doing at night, and then told me about it. The other girls had been covering for her, I guess, because apparently she’d been at it a while, and I’d never had a clue.”
16
During the night shift I worked steadily, with no breaks. I answered calls, tallied the day’s totals, refreshed and updated client information, spoke with lonesome clients and drunk clients, answered burglar alarms with calls to the police, dealt with emergencies of different kinds—all in a state of frenzied activity, worry, and self-restricted movement. I kept my emotions drawn as tight as the draperies and avoided too much talk with the customers.
I felt the dawn rather than saw it—the pull relaxed, I eased my grip on reality, and began to breathe again. I had passed through another night—had beaten it one more time.
I was exhausted every morning.
At six o’clock, another girl, usually Theresa, joined me at the switchboard. Together we would make the scheduled wakeup calls, start the coffee for Mrs. Gardener, tidy the boards, and make ready for the onslaught of incoming calls.
Theresa was a lively redhead who was forever fighting with her boyfriend and then staying up all night to make up. I enjoyed her rather remarkable reminiscences over her first cup of coffee. Her very presence enlivened me; I saw in her the complete embodiment of daytime: sunshine, health, happiness, love. Even her terribly puzzling relationship with her boyfriend brought light to the room.
At six-thirty Judy arrived, and by then the board was lighting up with calls. This was the home stretch, and with the daylight, my humor was much improved. At eight, Suzanne came in and relieved me. I punched my time onto a card, stored my headset, filed my daily report, and left, exhausted.
The morning I met Cap Nicks, I walked with weary legs from the building into the frosty December air. All night long I had waged my battle with the patient, patient darkness, working all the while, and then emerged into the sunshine filled with avid skiers marching down the snow-packed sidewalks, skis resting on shoulders, looking far too active, healthy, and lively for eight o’clock in the morning. I remember watching their parade, feeling exhaustion leaden in every cell, thinking that a cup of hot chocolate or even coffee would sit well with me.
Instead of turning left, to go down the street and home to my basement apartment, I turned right and went up toward Main Street, to a popular little breakfast spot.
I should have known better. The line of tourists waiting for breakfast wound out the door and down two shops. It is the visitor season, Angelina, I told myself. It was a hard concept, that of seasonal populace, and I was unaccustomed to it.
As I stood there, I realized that coffee or hot chocolate was not really the issue. What I wanted was companionship, I wanted to be with someone interesting. Anything to keep me from going home to an empty apartment.
The loneliness was suddenly overwhelming. I felt a need to share with someone the terrors of the night, the confusion about my past that strangled my thoughts. I needed someone to talk to, to be with. I needed to learn not just the definition of the word remorse, but to see how other people lived with it. And remorse wasn’t the only word I didn’t understand. Altruism was another. So were compromise, and sacrifice. All those social words.
Loneliness wrapped around me like a leper’s shroud. There was no one for me. No one but Boyd, and he was impossible. Someday, though, someday I would return to Boyd, someday when I could hold my head up and be clean.
I kept walking, past the warehouses, beyond the service entrance of the shopping mall. I heard my boot heels on the frozen ground and on the hard-packed snow, on the ice and even on the pavement, but it didn’t sound the same. It sounded low.
The air was crisp and cold and my nose began to run. I shoved my hands deep into my pockets, where one shredded an old Kleenex and the other toyed with a penny and a smooth pebble. The sun was bright as it reflected off the snow, and I stopped for a moment, letting sadness and loneliness mix with my exhaustion. I kicked through the soot-blackened plow bank at the side of the road and felt sorry for myself.
I felt like giving up. Life was just too hard. I had to fight the darkness and do it all alone, and it was too much, it was too hard, I felt used up.
I wanted to lie down in the snowbank and wait for someone to come and rescue me. I wanted someone to take me away from all this, to take care of me. I was tired of doing it by myself.
Instead, I just kept kicking at that snowbank, and when I’d expended a little excess energy, I decided that home was indeed the place to be. There, I could brew myself a nice hot cup of tea and get comfortable. And sleep. I was so tired.
Feeling the hot sun on my back and the cold on my face, I put my head down and began to walk toward home. Suddenly the sanctuary of my little apartment was ever so appealing. I could hide there. My pace quickened.
I had crossed the street, hearing new life in my footsteps, when I heard a husky, whiskey-honed voice boom a greeting.
“Good mornin’! Ain’t she a beauty?”
A man, a big man with flesh rolling over his trousers, stood in the corn
er doorway of a warehouse. He was barefoot and balding and wearing a stretch-necked T-shirt, and he was clapping his hands against the cold and dancing a little, his bare pink toes finding fault with the hard nuggets of salt atop the cold sidewalk.
“You keep looking at your feet while you walk, you’ll miss the whole day!” He stopped fidgeting for a moment, rubbed his hands together briskly, then rubbed his reddening arms. “You in a hurry?” He smiled again, big, clean white teeth. I shook my head no. “Well, hell, come on in then, get out of that cold.” He suddenly started to shiver convulsively, doing a strange little dance in his bare feet, his belly jiggling obscenely. “God damn, it’s cold out here.” He opened the door and I walked through, smiling at his odd appeal.
He followed me in and closed the door behind him. “Well, pretty thing, what can I offer you? Coffee? Tea? A friend? That’s what I need, anyway, a little personal company. A little female company. Name’s Nicks. Captain of this here club. Most call me Cap.”
“I’m Angelina Watson. Tea would be fine.”
“One cup coming up.” He turned away, then paused and waved an arm around the warehouse. “Welcome to the Seven Slopes Anti-Tourist Yacht Club.”
The room occupied the entire vast end of a warehouse. The roof with its skylights and metal rafters stretched far overhead. A metal partition divided the Yacht Club from the rest of the warehouse building, but the wall reached only twelve or fourteen feet high.
The Yacht Club, for all its space, was decently furnished and looked not only comfortable, but livable. Several sets of living-room groupings were scattered about the floor, complete with lamps, rugs, and homey atmosphere; a kitchen with three refrigerators and a serving bar separated the rest of the room from Cap’s personal living quarters, which I could see consisted of an unmade bed, a freestanding closet, and several cardboard boxes. A long bar ran the length of two walls, an eclectic assortment of bar stools waiting in front of it. All the exposed plumbing was nicely painted, and the result was the oddest interior I had ever seen, but not unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all.
Cap came back with an unbuttoned plaid shirt on over his bulging T-shirt, carrying a teacup on a saucer. He set it down on a coffee table where a mug of steaming coffee waited, and motioned me over.
“Here, here, come sit here. Heater’s right under this table. Makes this whole area nice and cozy. So. Now. What do you think of my club?”
“It’s most unusual,” I said.
“Hah. Hah. Ain’t it the truth. We call it a ‘loft.’ That gives it a little more class, don’t you think?”
“What exactly is this place?”
He sat heavily on the couch, both elbows winged out over the top. “Before there were tourists, we had a nice little town. A man could go into a neighborhood bar and have a quiet little drink, take his girlfriend along, you know, maybe get a sandwich or something.”
I sipped my tea. Cinnamon.
“And then Seven Slopes was discovered. Ta-da. Big news coverage, write-ups in all the ski magazines, condominiums went up and ski facilities, and now all the bars are full of cocaine and stupid people on vacation. So some of us got together and established the Yacht Club. It’s open all the time, except Mondays, that’s my day off, and now and then when I sleep.” He grunted toward the coffee table and took a sip of his coffee. “So you are my first customer today.”
“And you’re the captain.”
“That’s right. Captain. Before they called me Cap, they called me Boss. I retired from the railroad line down in Denver.”
“Does this club have memberships?”
“Yes, indeedy. No tourists here. We’re all anti-tourist, but not officially. Tourists are good for the economy, you know. They’re just not good for our social life. All our members are full-time, bona fide residents.” He looked at me, and again I noticed the kind features, the humor in the eyes. “Are you a resident?”
“Yes, I live on Wharton Street. I work at the answering service.”
“You work for Gloria? Gloria Gardener?”
I nodded.
“Ha. Good for you. Bet she keeps you hopping, doesn’t she? Gloria’s a good old broad. Her husband’s a charter member of the Yacht Club here. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t have any use for me at all. Hah. Gloria. Give her my love . . . no, better not.” He winked at me as he noisily gulped the last of his coffee.
Suddenly, all the energy ran out of my limbs like warm water. I needed to go home.
I stood and thanked Cap, parrying his insistence that I stay and have breakfast. I explained my working hours, and he invited me back that night as his guest, to have a little late dinner before work, to see the club in action, to meet his friends.
In my anxiety to get away, I agreed. Later, I was sorry, and thought about not going. On the other hand, it was a perfect excuse to see some of the local side of social life in Seven Slopes, and I, too, was lonely for companionship.
“I began to hate Angelina. After such a long time with no word of her, I figured she must be dead. I tried to tell myself that she was either dead or reformed, but I knew better. I knew deep down inside myself that if Angelina died, I’d know about it. She was all I could think about, and it was ruining my life. I prayed for word of her so I could stop her. And then I prayed for word of her so I could see her again. I had to talk to her, I had to ask her ‘Why?’ And finally I prayed for word of her so I could have an excuse to leave Westwater. It was suddenly too damned small-town for me. I hated it, and I hated everybody’s demands on me. Another winter and I thought I’d die of boredom. I was restless like I’d never known before. Really restless. I just wanted to get out, see some new things, meet some new people. I just wanted to get out.
But this is the address where my newspapers come, and it was from here that I’d started my network trying to find her, so I didn’t dare leave. I was trapped here because of Angelina. She’d tied me down here in Westwater, and I really hated her for it.”
17
I slept through the day and awoke about four in the afternoon. It was already dark outside. I turned on the radio to hear Christmas music, and I couldn’t help but reminisce. One year ago I had been with Lewis; the Christmas before that, I had been with my mother and Rolf. Would the holiday season ever again be as it used to be? Probably not. Christmas was for children.
I fixed some toast and a cup of tea and sat at my rickety table, worried about the coming evening at the Yacht Club. I would be socializing with older people, people of experience, people with wisdom. How would I appear to them?
I worried that the darkness would overcome me in the midst of a mature crowd, that my behavior would turn bizarre; I worried that this, my first actual social event, would turn bad, and I would have to leave Seven Slopes in fear and shame, like I had left so many places before.
I spread marmalade on my toast and regarded it. My appetite had fled. How on earth did people accomplish their social obligations? Didn’t the stress and tension of it all ruin the experience? Did anyone truly find pleasure in it?
Maybe others just accepted life. Maybe they just accepted their behavior as the manifestation of their personality, and nothing to be ashamed of. Well, it was certainly worth a try. I had made so many strides in Seven Slopes, keeping a tight rein on myself. I couldn’t let fear of my behavior cripple me.
I would go to the Yacht Club and let whatever would happen . . . happen. With this decision, the burden of life seemed to lift from my shoulders. I had no need to fight anymore, I could relax. I began to look forward to the approaching evening.
Then it happened.
I was barely awake, toying with my toast, still groggy from my long sleep. I was feeling a bit of Christmas melancholy, reminiscent, wrapped in a cocoon of my own thoughts, when suddenly it felt like the bottom of my mind dropped out and I fell through, down into a huge void. My stomach lurched, an
d then—I was face-to-face with Boyd. We saw each other only long enough to both register astonishment, and then like a yo-yo, I was snapped back, the trapdoor slammed shut, and I was sitting in front of my cold toast, sweat gushing from my pores and my head reeling.
I thought for a moment that I would faint.
I made my way back to my bed and lay down, filled with wonder at the vivid hallucination, wondering what possible significance it could have.
The next thing I knew, it was eight o’clock.
Four hours had passed. Four hours with no memory. I hadn’t slept; I knew I hadn’t slept. Panic gripped me. I knew where I’d been. I’d just spent four hours with Her—four hours with the owner of those lips, with the voice of the dark, the music of my dreams. Four hours with the force that had driven me insane in Westwater. Four hours with no memory of it. What had she done to me?
Oh, God, what now? I tried so hard to outrun it; I tried everything I knew to keep the dark away, but what match was I for this voice, this force, this female Mesmer that stole my conscious mind and bent it to her will?
I began to pace. My mind was filled with possibilities, ways to divert Her, things to do to keep Her influence from me. I couldn’t go to work. The darkness filled that answering service. I couldn’t stay home, for it was dark, and I’d slept the day away. I couldn’t go out, I couldn’t stay in, the world began to close in on me. I felt helpless in the face of Her power, helpless, hopeless, tiny, lost . . .
I know, I thought. The Yacht Club.
Yes! The Yacht Club. There was light there, and people, and conversation. That’s what I need, that’s exactly what I need. She wouldn’t dare . . .
She wouldn’t dare.
It was eight o’clock.
I showered and changed and made ready.
I was still deeply troubled, and quite anxious, as I walked along the streets toward the club. I could hear club activity from more than a block away, and could see muted lights coming through the high warehouse windows, but She was on my mind. She and Boyd and that strange, strange experience of seeing him, or recognizing his essence, being so close as to almost smell him, for that one instant. And then, instead of letting me ponder the situation, She captured my attention for four hours. She’d left me alone for months, now, months. And now, all of a sudden, four hours gone. I was truly afraid.
Black Ambrosia Page 11
