Spin Dry

by Greg Hollingshead

  “Stan? Jardine?”

  “The architect. He’s also the honorary head of PAGO International, though he’s always been too modest to acknowledge the honour. All his work is agoraphobia-aware. Context-sensitive. Framing Not Disclaiming. Space for People, People for Space. Monolithism Go Home. These are his watchwords. He’s very postmodern. He understands, Rachel. He’s like one of us. He’s done dozens of malls and public buildings all over the world. No architect has done more to combat the horrors of going out. It’s not that the old compound-style malls are necessarily so bad, but there’s never any doubt that you’re inside. They’re a little too much like home to be exactly therapeutic. The thing about steel and glazing, on the other hand, it’s there and it’s not there. Kind of an architectural white lie. Jardine allows us to pretend we’re outside, and that really builds our morale. In fact, one eminent critic has called his work a ‘decompression chamber to the literal outdoors.’

  “It was funny. Sirocco took me to see ‘the architect’ for Arcadia Centre, to convince me to sell. (I was playing up my gut reluctance, to put the squeeze on him for the best price. But also I was expecting the usual kind of mall and a little depressed by that.) Well, you can imagine my amazement to find myself shaking hands with the Stanley Jardine. Of course, I happened to mention a few things about my PAGO work in the Millpond, and he seemed very pleased, in his gruff, understated way. If it wasn’t for Stan Jardine I might have held on to my bus yard like a sentimental fool—”

  “Sentimental dead fool.”

  Wilkes laughed happily. “But after talking to Stan I was ready to hand it over gratis—Just kidding. But tell me. How’s Jane? Did she miss me?”

  “Cam, I think I’d like to meet this Stanley Jardine sometime—”

  “How about right now? Knowing, as I do, the particular psychic landscape of the Millpond, I’ve already offered my servicesas a consultant. Stan works on the principle that agoraphobics’ problems are everybody’s, writ large. Hell is other people. That line of thinking. Also, I sensed some friction with Sirocco, so I’m sure he’ll welcome input from a sympathetic quarter.” Wilkes consulted his watch. “Ten to five. He should still be in his office. He’s working flat out to finish the plans.”

  “I promised Sally I wouldn’t go to Mortprop today, Cam. Sirocco’s after me—”

  “To buy a condo?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well anyway, Stan’s not at Mortprop. He’s got his own office in Village Market Square. When he’s not in Paris. His own stretch limo and driver out back. I know you’ll be as impressed with him as I was—”

  Outside, to Rachel’s joy, they found Puff curled magically asleep on the warm hood of the ComputerGrafix guy’s car. Rachel lifted the dead-weight, whisker-twitching, paw-flexing creature and slipped it inside her jacket. “After we talk to Stan, we’ll see Jane, right?” Wilkes asked anxiously as they waited for their cab.

  “Right.”

  After a few minutes Cam said, “Rachel, are you all right? You look terrible.”

  “I know.”

  In Village Market Square a light shone from the Fred Hogg Dance Studio above Chez Pond, now closed for the day. Next to Chez Pond was Market Square Video, a blaze of light, and abovethat, the Tease ‘n Please Hairstyling Salon, also in full swing. The office of Stanley A. Jardine, Architect, was on the third floor, along the hall from S. Thurm, Dental Surgeon, and down one floor from Alex Silver, Ph.D., Psychologist. So while Rachel had been talking to Silver about Harry, Stanley Jardine was eight feet below. Isn’t life ironical?

  The door said Walk In. They did. Darkness. Wilkes switched on a light. Shadowless cathode illumination. The receptionist’s chair was empty. “Doesn’t have one,” Wilkes whispered, making elaborate tiptoe motions towards an inner door that stood ajar. Rachel’s mental state had temporarily improved while she focused on trying to drown Wilkes and subsequently on trying to grasp his story. But now that she was about to meet Stanley Jardine, shades of Strobe Brain were back. So was a tickle of extrasensory terror that splayed out from her sphincter to oochiekootchie down the backs of her legs and up, up, up into the pit of her stomach and from there still upwards into her heart, throat, mouth (dried it right out), brain (emptied it …).

  Holding tight to Puff, who was purring now, Rachel followed close behind Wilkes. Lightly—he was nervous—Wilkes knocked on the open door.

  “Come in.”

  The office was dark except for the pool of lamplight over the drafting board.

  “Stan?” Wilkes said, abashed.

  The figure turned, pushing the lamp aside with a slow hand. “Turn on the goddamn light—”

  His face was shadowed. Wilkes touched the light switch, Rachel—hugging Puff—touched the water gun in her pocket. For an instant then she thought he had turned back to his work as if he would talk to them that way, like the inimitable Mr. X in an old serial, but as the fluorescence came on, she saw that he was placing his palms on that drafting board, elbows lifting, to swing round in his seat, and then she was looking at him.

  Stanley Jardine lowered his body from the stool carefully, as if warily, and moved towards Wilkes and Rachel. He was wearing a giant cream white jacket with sparse stripes and baggy cream white pants. He had recognized Wilkes and now as he came closer he studied Rachel, who studied him right back, every stroboscopic flash. Under normal brain conditions Rachel would probably have been able to tell right away if this was the man from the jailhouse roof. As it was, the face from that photograph got recursively interleaved in fraction-of-a-second flashes with what she could only assume was the face of the man in front of her—with him and with all the other possible and impossible Harrys she had been stumbling into over the past few months … So it took a while. But it was him all right.

  Wilkes, meanwhile, was failing to come through with introductions. And then Stanley Jardine was extending a thousand hands. Rachel looked down. Hand, make that. She reached for it, missed. Her jacket had fallen open, and now he saw Puff. Quickly, as if it were a bare breast, Rachel covered the creature. “She’s asleep.”

  “A cat—”

  Rachel remembered about him and cats. “You hate cats, don’t you, Harry?” Harry? Did she say Harry?

  Stanley Jardine just looked at her.

  And then Wilkes was introducing them, stressing the Stanley, saying how interested Rachel was in hearing about Arcadia Centre. But first he himself had a question about the eight percent from the sale of his bus yard that was supposed to have gone to Leon Boseman of Bi-Me Village Realty—

  “I’ll take care of it,” Jardine said. “Sit down. I want you both out of here in ten minutes.”

  They sat in chrome chairs around the table where he ate his catered food. His heavy forearm bulldozed aside a week of cardboard and aluminum foil. From Rachel’s chair she could look out across the back lane into darkened backyards of colonial bungalows in brick and handsplit shingle as Stanley Jardine searched for something among the cardboard boxes, luggage, folders, and rolls of blueprints stacked along one wall. Photographs of his own, to show her? No. Bourbon. He set out three shot glasses and filled them. “Drink.”

  They drank.

  “What do you want,” Jardine said.

  “Jane had a cat, too,” Wilkes began, conversationally. “Puff VI. I’m afraid she’s missing.”

  “Will they build it the way you want it?” Rachel asked Stanley Jardine, her tongue lolling disastrously.

  “If we find her we’ll be needing chicken wire for the sofa legs,” Wilkes said.

  Jardine looked at Rachel. “You’re a reporter.”

  “Puff thinks she’s a rake,” Wilkes chuckled. “Not Rachel, Stan,” he added. “She’s just interested—Stan, could you tell us something about how you see Arcadia Centre in the postmodern world? As future tenants, Jane and I—”

  Jardine turned to Rachel.

  “You’re a future tenant too.”

  “No—”

  “No inside stories
. You can write on the place when it opens.”

  “I’m not a writer.”

  “So why are you here? Nobody but an investor or a journalist takes a healthy interest in a complex that doesn’t exist yet.”

  “I just tagged along with Cam. He’s the fanatic.”

  “Where’d you find her, Wilkes? What is she? Your sister? A hooker? She’s on the nod, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Say, Stan,” said Wilkes in a loud, bright voice, pretending he had not heard this. “I’ve been thinking. How about deer mice in Mill Court? You know—sneaking the grain? They’re such cute little devils!” Wilkes turned to Rachel, explanatory. “Mill Court’ll be one of the theme squares, so shoppers will know what sector they’re in.”

  Jardine looked at Wilkes.

  “That way, Stan,” Wilkes continued, “Puff and the other condo cats could mouse.”

  “No mice,” Jardine said.

  “Prairie dogs?”

  “What will Arcadia Centre be like, Harr-uh—?” Rachel jerking out of a doze.

  “Flying squirrels might be a big draw,” Wilkes suggested, “or—bats! Swooping around the gaslights in the Victorian Arcade!”

  Stanley Jardine stood up. “You people should level with me.”

  “Cam,” Rachel said. “Would you mind giving me a minute with—Mr. Jardine?”

  Surprised, Wilkes went to find them a cab.

  Stanley Jardine sat back down and poured a drink for Rachel and himself.

  Rachel continued to stroke Puff inside her jacket, probably wearing a bald spot on her little skull.

  “Drink,” said Stanley Jardine.

  They drank. Rachel’s eyes watered. She lifted out Puff and placed her on the floor beside her chair. “Lorna Gillese,” she said. This was her mother’s maiden name.

  Stanley Jardine’s face showed no change of expression, only of identity, maybe two hundred a second. The one that recurred most often looked as though somebody had taken their thumb and—A pause of two, maybe three decades, during which his eyes remained on his glass. “You’re on junk.”

  “No—!”

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” fingering her water gun. “See you.” She swallowed.

  They both had their forearms on the table and their glasses cupped in their fingers.

  “She need money?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “You need money.”

  “No.”

  “What do you want?”

  I want Harry, you monster, and if I can’t have Harry I want him cancelled, and I want the cancellation retroactive from this fucking second.

  “Listen to me,” said Stanley Jardine. “I’m an architect. I design buildings. I know two kinds of people. The ones who help me. The ones who try to stop me. Everybody else is the public.”

  “Makes me the public.”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  “And Lorna Gillese?”

  “Tried to stop me.”

  “By being Lorna Gillese.”

  Stanley Jardine stood up. “If you or her need money, talk to my lawyers.”

  Rachel also stood up. Un-dream deprived, she was the last person not to go peacefully. Dream deprived, she said, “You’re my father. This isn’t good enough.”

  “Get out of here.”

  He said it with weariness, the way at the end of a trying day you would say it to a foolish dog who is happy to see you and wants to play. Already he was moving back to his drafting board, Rachel following helplessly. What for?

  “Rachel?” The voice of Cam Wilkes, doggy to Rachel’s ear. “I got us a cab—” he was pulling her arm.

  “Let go, Cam—give me a minute—”

  “Rachel, I think Mr. Jardine wants to get back to work—”

  “I’ll be right down—”

  “Nick Sirocco’s on his way up—If you’d rather not—”

  Rachel snatched up the comatose Puff and took a last look towards Stanley Jardine at his drafting board.

  “Shop there,” he said, not turning. “Spend time. It’s a way of life. It’ll help you.”

  In the cab Rachel said, “Millpond General,” and Wilkes cried, “Rachel! Are you all right?”

  She told him about Jane. This information left Cam even more shaken and trembling than herself. When they arrived at the hospital she told the cabby to hold on, then helped Wilkes into the Emergency waiting area, where Sally said,

  “You’re an asshole, Cam Wilkes.”

  “I know. I’ll never leave her again.”

  “She’s awake,” Sally told Rachel. “I can take him in. You go home and sleep. Did you find him yet?”

  “Ask me when I’ve slept on it—Cam? Give Jane this?” In his arms she placed the unconscious Puff. “And this—?” The water gun.

  “Hey Rachel. Remember what I told you.” Sally aimed an imaginary buffalo gun at the ceiling. Squeezed the trigger. Absorbed the recoil.

  Rachel nodded. Mumbled, “Thanks but—use my bare brains—”

  “Your bare what?”

  “Umm—” losing it. Really need to thleep—sink—theep—slink—What brains?

  Outside, slumped in the back of the cab, she told the cabby, a sweet-faced balding woman, to drive around. And then Sally was knocking on the window.

  “Can I come too?”

  “Where?”

  “Small drink at the Reservoir?”

  Another gap, and they were pulling up at the lights of the Olde Mill. Rachel looked at her watch. Could not make out the time. The Reservoir Bar was upstairs, but as they passed The Buhrstone, Rachel happened to glance in, and there, at a small table moving along the old mill mural, his back to her, was Harry.

  Rachel recognized him right away. Something about a thickness through the head and shoulders, the nondescript hair, the posture. Something inevitable about the posture—

  “How about down here—” she said to Sally.

  “Wouldn’t we have to eat—?”

  “There’s somebody I—”

  Sally was gone. Just disappeared.

  Rachel should have been able to see his face by now, the floor had come around. But he must have switched chairs, it was the back of his head she was still getting. Anyway, she knew. If this was to be one of those moments of surprise disappointment—the person turns, and it is as if your old friend has had the most radical surgery—Rachel would be very … surprised.

  Next she was sitting down across the table from him, had ordered cattail crepes—cattail crepes? at The Buhrstone?—struggling to see him and not succeeding. There was too much smoke in here, or too much glare from the lamp over the table, which was too low, too bright. It was like a dream, the way her eyes would refuse to focus properly, or even to open, as if the lids had been Crazy Glue’d, like when her brain did not have the dreampower to come up with the information it needed to show her what the dreamscript was calling for next …

  Oblivious to Rachel or her problem, Harry was already talking, a singer with earphones on, Martian and strange, no human ear to correct the sound. So Rachel’s mad brain pitched right in to knead and shape the flow into some kind of recognizable pattern, redeem it—failed—meanwhile struggling to do everything she could against that glare, that smoke, that blind spot, to pry open her eyes, her stuck lids—failed.

  Had time passed? Suddenly she was startled as a dozer is startled by the sudden scrape of his chair—He was getting to his feet! Here Babs—Babs!?—was coming with their cappuccinos, and Harry was standing up and just walking away!

  “Hey, hey, wait a minute! Hey! Babs is—” Rachel stumbling after him down a staff hallway past the kitchen and out the back door, pop cases piled high, dark shadows against the white wall under incandescent lane lights, fresh paving, a sheet of newspaper floating by, a carton of half-and-half, end over end in slow motion, and Rachel is following him through a gate cut in Permawood into a backyard of perfect grass now luminous inmoonlight, scattered with boards and the
se have been kicked aside to leave slats of yellow.

  The boardwalk has finished. The fences are fresh-built and high, there are stars out tonight, diamonds the size of fists, a hubcap moon, he is walking down the dark grass to the water where hired swans swim whitely back and forth along the shore, occasionally beaking in under their feathers. Little waves lap like tongues at a margin of crushed stones. Now, there’s a big swan! But no, it is only a white splash that Harry has made, delayed.

  “Harry!” Rachel is squatting on the grass bank to stare across the black water, hearing the steady spill of the water wheel, waiting for him to surface. It is not such a big pond, the millpond. A storm sewer, basically. Still … night breezes and cat’s paws dance and play across it. There’s lots of time to look at the stars. Except that the Olde Mill lights, the pansy garden of floodlights, and the street lights that ring the pond have made a sort of low white ceiling that the fine dark promise of the water can’t penetrate. He will break the surface and shout to her in the breathless happy way that swimmers have. He will tell her it’s not so bad once you get in. How long does she have to wait? A white rabbit almost slams into her chest, veers. This pond. Had some livestock watering hole, hooves squelching grey muck, been the inspiration for this unconvincing body of water that was no millpond because there was no millstream and because that was not a mill? It did not matter to anybody. Harry does not surface, does not shout. She puts her hand in the water. Liquid ice. Sheputs her hand on his clothes. They are shadow. She stands up, looks again to the surface of the water.

  And that must be when it happens. The surface is jet glass. There is a kind of roiling, and a glimpse of something rising like a glimpse in a green black mirror with the angle wrong. Already its red eyes are on her. The surface explodes white. The creature bursts high into the air, straining to breathe, white-faced, those eyes on Rachel.

  It swims to the bank and climbs out, its fingers strong and cold on Rachel’s forearm.

  It is Rachel herself.

  “Come on. Want to show you something—”

  But Rachel is scared, resisting. Gone whiny. “It’s free-zing—”

  “Forget that. Move,” and pulls her immediately into the icy water.