by Chip Cheek
They found her in a spacious, brightly lit room at the end of a narrow hallway. “The electricity’s working,” she said, and Clara cried, “Have you gone mad? Turn the lights out!” But Alma ignored her.
It looked to be a den or game room. A billiards table stood in one corner, but it was piled with mounds of colorful fabric. Overhead a dangerous-looking wrought-iron light fixture hung from the exposed roof beams. The walls were crowded with masks—ceremonial masks, Henry thought: horrible frowning mouths, furious eyes, wild tufts of hair. Some of them appeared to be Japanese, others from some kind of island culture—New Guinea, maybe. At the back were three large stained-glass windows with Gothic arches, and before these a low platform that looked to be a stage, at the back of which, propped between two of the windows, stood a long, stained-wood plank with strings stretched along the length of it, some kind of musical instrument. Along the front of the room, facing the street, was a row of glass doors that led out to the second-story porch, presumably; the blinds on them were shut, and tied up between each of them were heavy blue drapes. The furniture in the center of the room was leather, the lamp shades colorful glass. On the rug before the stage, pillows were scattered everywhere, strewn with colorful beads and shiny objects Henry couldn’t make sense of at a glance.
“They’re explorers,” Max said. “Anthropologists.”
“Traveling minstrels, maybe,” Effie said.
“It’s a gold mine,” Alma said.
Three different hallways led away from the den, and they went exploring, going their separate ways. Henry followed Alma, and when he looked behind him, expecting Effie to be there, he saw that he was alone with her. She pointed her flashlight ahead. The layout seemed needlessly complicated. There were half floors, doorways unevenly spaced apart, circular windows nestled into alcoves, a staircase that spiraled sharply up to a trapdoor. They looked into a lushly furnished bedroom, all of it decorated in various shades of rich blue. Across from it was a room crowded with bellhops’ carts full of costumes—old-fashioned ballroom dresses, hoop skirts, harlequin suits, a bear costume. Alma stopped short and he bumped into her and caught a whiff of unwashed hair. “This is so wild,” he said, because they had not said anything since separating from the others, but she didn’t seem to hear him.
She aimed her flashlight into the next room over, stepped inside, and found the light switch. It was completely empty. The closet door stood open. Silently they looked at it, Henry frozen at the entrance, trying to make sense of it, until they heard Clara’s voice from somewhere else in the house: “Hey, come look.”
They went down a connecting passageway and came to a lighted door, and inside stood Clara, staring at shelves upon shelves of faceless heads supporting wigs of every conceivable variety. “Just look at this,” she said.
The shelves covered every wall, save for a space for a window at the back. In the center of the room sat a plush circular ottoman, and in a corner an oval mirror. There were men’s and women’s wigs, some natural-looking, others from history—Roman centurions, seventeenth-century courtesans—and others that seemed to be alien, in shimmering blue and green.
Max appeared at the door, Effie just behind him. “Wow,” she said.
“They’re theatre people,” Max said.
Effie came over to Henry’s side. “There’s a room full of fake clouds and trees and swords and all. You wouldn’t have known it to see them going down the sidewalk.”
“You can never know people,” Max said.
With a practiced movement Alma bundled her hair atop her head so it stayed there on its own, selected a glittery, ruby-red flapper’s wig with a severe cut at the jawline, and put it on in front of the mirror, tucking the loose strands away. She turned around, transformed, and because they were closest to her, she posed for Henry and Effie, hands on her hips, and Henry said, “Beautiful.”
“What do you think, Maximilian?”
“That you look like a cheap prostitute,” he said.
“Perfect,” she said.
Max selected a long barrister’s wig, but Alma said that was dull because it was meant to be a wig and there was no illusion to it, so he replaced it with a frizzed shock of gray hair and a long beard that made him look, Effie said, like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. For Henry, Effie chose a great curly mass of Gibson Girl hair, which amused everyone, and for herself she took a bright blond wig that was, Max pointed out, strikingly similar to Clara’s hair. “It isn’t close,” Clara said, and Max said, “Oh, but it is,” and with the same skill she’d shown for Marilyn Monroe, with a subtle shift in her posture and the set of her face, Effie transformed herself into Clara. The effect was disconcerting: there was the real Clara, and across from her a short, squat version—his wife. “Oh, Maxie, darling,” she said, batting her eyes at Max, and everyone laughed—Clara especially. She found a wig of dark curls that was similar to Effie’s hair, and when she put it on and looked at herself in the mirror, she sang, “Well, I declare! Ain’t I the cutest thing you ever saw?”
“You’re simply delicious, darling,” Effie said. “I want to tear you apart into tiny pieces and gobble you up.”
“Well, fiddle-dee-dee!”
Max had doubled over laughing, his Moses beard swinging out in front of him. “Wonderful, wonderful,” he said. “Please keep them on, I’m begging you.”
“No,” Henry said, and yanked Effie’s wig off. He laughed nervously. It might all have been in good fun, but the look on Effie’s face had been turning deadly. “It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies,” he said.
They replaced their wigs—except for Alma, who kept her glittery red flapper’s wig on—and made their way downstairs, where the rooms were more open and identifiable. There was an elegant dining room with a table that could have sat a dozen people, and presiding over it was a large oil painting of a jester playing a lute. The kitchen, when Max found the light, was bright and spacious, with a large island range and dozens of hanging pots and pans, and the walk-in pantry was stocked with nonperishables. Through another passageway they entered a beautifully furnished den that smelled strongly of pipe tobacco. Alma had turned all the lamps on. The walls were dark wood. A stone hearth dominated the room, and over it hung two crossed swords. There was a sprawling couch of brown leather in three sections, an entire wall of books, a grizzly bear standing up on its hind legs, shelves of curios and artifacts, and a bar.
“I need a drink,” Clara said.
Max had picked up a picture from an end table, a photograph that seemed to be from the turn of the century, of a young woman lying on a cushion wearing several strings of pearls. “This must be the lady of the house. You kind of looked like her, Hank, with your wig on.”
Clara poured bourbon into four expensive-looking highball glasses and passed them around to Max and Effie and Henry. Alma seemed deeply absorbed in the shelves of curios. Max put on a record, over Clara’s protestations, and soon a mischievous-sounding aria was playing, a woman’s voice singing in French, interrupted occasionally by a loud chorus and a crash of cymbals. According to Max, she was singing, Love is a rebellious bird, and nothing can tame it.
The bourbon, like nails going down at first, quickly refreshed Henry’s buzz, and soon it seemed to have cast a spell on all of them. Max and Clara waltzed together over the rug. Effie kicked her sandals off and ran, holding her arms out to her sides, in a track that went from the den back through the dining room and kitchen and into the den again on the opposite side. She had never, she announced, run indoors, not since she was a child. Henry chased her on the third lap and caught her in the dark dining room, pressed her against the table, breathing onto her neck, as she caught her breath and seemed to wait for what he was going to do—until Max called from the den: “Hank, where are you? I challenge you to a duel.” They found him in front of the hearth holding one of the swords, testing its weight. Henry pulled the other one down from its mount, and in slow motion—the swords were heavy—they clashed them together. “Oh God
, I can’t look at this,” Clara said, and crossed back over to the bar. And sure enough, after a few swings, Max popped Henry on the knuckle, and Henry dropped his sword. “Ah, shit, Hank, I’m sorry,” Max said, and Henry laughed and said it was all right. It was a small cut, but the blood appeared immediately. These swords were the real thing. “Well—dumbass,” Effie said, coming quickly to him and taking his hand, and to his surprise, she brought it to her mouth and gently sucked at the cut. Henry couldn’t have done that. Just the sight of blood made him light-headed. He sat on the rug beside his sword. Max said he’d look for bandages. Clara said she’d refill his glass. True to his word, Max returned a minute later with a bandage—he’d found a lavatory—and Effie affixed it to his knuckle, and kissed it.
They all settled on the floor by the sofa with their refilled drinks. The bourbon was going down easily now. Max had put on a Mozart clarinet concerto. There was an impressive classical collection here, he said. He wondered if they should build a fire, but Clara said she would absolutely forbid it, and besides, it was a warm night.
“They like pillows, don’t they?” Effie said. As in the game room upstairs, there were pillows scattered here and there all around the perimeter of the space, on the floor as well as the sofa, and Max said, “It’s for the orgies.” Effie laughed, but he pressed on: “It’s true. You don’t know thespians. It’s a free-for-all in that set, God bless them. Isn’t that right, Clare?”
“Oh yes.” She raised her glass. “That’s my tribe.”
“No, it’s not. The playwrights don’t have any fun. It’s the players. I bet a whole troupe of them have been here. They have parties and put on plays for themselves, and at the end of the night they lay out on all these pillows and fuck each other. I wonder how many bacchanals have taken place here.”
“All this time,” Clara said, running her hand up and down her shin. “Mr. and Mrs. Bishop.”
Effie asked what Max knew about thespians, and he said his mother had been one. “Actually, ‘thespian’ is a generous word. She had a bit role on Broadway once. She was a pretty face. Alma could tell you…” He craned his neck to look over the sofa for her, but she was no longer in the room.
“Do you remember the night we saw the Persian dancers in the Village?” Clara said to Max, and Max smiled and nodded and looked down into his drink. “Now, that was a bacchanal.”
“Oh yeah?” Effie said. She’d slouched to Henry’s side, and she straightened herself up now, languidly, to listen.
“Oh yeah,” Clara said. “This girl at the after-party—it was an intimate affair, a harem theme—and this girl gave us some kind of potion that made everything … What would you say, Maxie? Very focused. And interesting. She had Max and me undress, and she did a kind of ritualistic massage on us, using this aromatic oil, that was supposed to rid us of foul humors or something. And oh my God…”
“It was nonsense,” Max said. “She was winging an incantation as she went. Ten to one she was from Kansas.”
“You say that now,” Clara said, “but there is no such thing as a skeptical hard-on.”
Effie cried out and hid behind Henry’s shoulder, and Henry, as usual, felt a couple of steps behind. It was the bourbon. Now Clara smiled at him wickedly.
“I, for one, had the best orgasm of my life,” she said. “Up to that time, I mean. I wish I could remember that girl’s name. Do you remember, Maxie? She introduced me to my own body.”
“You’re embarrassing our friends, Clare,” Max said.
“Am I? I don’t see how. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
The concerto had long since finished, and Max got up to put on another record, and then a short time later, somehow, it was two in the morning. They pulled themselves to their feet, and Henry and Max took a great deal of time replacing the swords on their mounts. Max called out for Alma, but there was no answer. “We’re leaving,” he shouted, and Clara said, “She’s probably out wandering, Maxie. Don’t worry about it.”
They turned out the lights and went out the front door. The night air was thick and humid and Henry could feel the earth turning in space. Effie leaned against him and they made a zigzag path down the sidewalk. At their porch, after Max and Clara had said good night, he looked back to the Victorian house and saw a lighted window in the tower. It was Alma, he was sure. They hadn’t explored the tower. He wanted to go back, but it was all he could do to get himself and Effie up the porch steps.
Six
They woke to gusts of warm wind through the attic windows, and by early afternoon the light outside had turned lavender. Raindrops the size of quarters began to fall, and in minutes, with the sound of distant approaching thunder, the rain became a deluge.
They could run over to Clara’s in their bathing suits, Henry said, but Effie wanted to stay in. She felt like burrowing for a while. It looked dangerous out there. And she worried that Clara would begin to think they were freeloaders—all that food and gin, and they’d contributed nothing. “I’m about one hundred percent positive she doesn’t think of us like that,” Henry said, and Effie said he was probably right. But they’d barely touched the groceries they’d bought Sunday, and maybe it would be nice to have a day to themselves. This made Henry happy—that she wanted his company. He said it sounded like a fine idea.
She made ham-and-cheese sandwiches and they ate in the living room with the windows open. The white curtains billowed in like ghosts, and outside, the wind ravaged the trees, and for a long while not a minute went by without a flash of lightning, an echoing boom of thunder. Henry loved the rain. The more violent, the better. He loved the sound it made on their aluminum awnings back home. Effie admitted she had an exaggerated fear of bad weather, but she liked to keep the windows open because she’d heard you were supposed to, in case of tornadoes—something about air pressure. “Do you need me to comfort you?” Henry asked, and she said maybe, and soon they were making love on the sofa—a great release, since he’d been near to bursting that morning, thinking of Clara’s story. He gripped the backs of her knees. When he was spent, finally, she looked winded and pleased.
They played a game of checkers, eschewing their clothes. “Our own bacchanal,” Henry said, and Effie gasped and said, “Oh my God. Could you believe what Clara said? About the harem?”
“I bet she feels mortified today.”
“I bet she doesn’t.” She went back to studying the board. “I think she likes to shock people. She was always that way.”
“Do you think it was a story?”
“No,” Effie said. “An embellishment, maybe. But she is what she is.”
Henry wanted to say he’d liked it, how open and frank she was—how she and Max both were—but he knew that what he liked about it was dangerous. “Man,” he said, “if anyone back home said that kind of thing—or did it, God forbid—they’d be tarred and feathered.”
“She’s of a different world,” Effie said. “That is a fact.”
After she won, they went upstairs to share a bath, and as soon as they’d settled into the water, the lights went out.
They held still a moment. “Did we do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Rain struck the frosted window. They got out of the tub and dried off in the dark. Henry tried the hallway light, but it was no use. The electricity had gone out.
“Well, this is cute,” Effie said.
“Maybe it’s a circuit breaker or something. Do you know where it is?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea.”
The temperature outside the bathroom had dropped, and a draft was coming up the stairwell from the den. Up in the attic room they felt around for their clothes and dressed, and went downstairs to look for candles. But to no avail. There wasn’t enough light to see into the closets and drawers, and the windows themselves were barely visible in the darkness. They stepped out onto the porch and looked toward Clara’s. Not a light anywhere, save for a faint glow in the distance, from the town center, pro
bably. Even the streetlights down on Madison were out.
“I don’t know how I’m going to make supper,” Effie said.
“It’s probably a downed line somewhere,” Henry said. He knew nothing about how utilities worked. “They’re probably fixing it already.”
With nothing else to do, they went back inside and lay down on the sofa and pulled a quilt over them. Effie insisted they keep the windows open, and they listened to the wind and the rain.
* * *
A rapping at the door startled them from a doze, and the porch outside the windows was alight. The wind and rain had not abated. There was another rap, more insistent this time, and Effie said, “Who on earth?” and Henry got up to see who it was. In his confusion he thought it must be the police, come to arrest them for last night, and he was relieved to see that it was Max, holding a flashlight, drenched from head to foot.
“Would you believe this storm?” he said. “I had to wade upstream to get here.”
Henry welcomed him inside, and he stood dripping on the tiles in the foyer.
“Oh, Max, look at you,” Effie said, getting up from the sofa. “I’ll get you a towel.”
“There’s no need. I wasn’t sure I had the right house. Are you just sitting here in the dark?”
“We couldn’t find the candles,” Henry said.
“Why didn’t you come over? Don’t you love us anymore?”
Effie was standing at the foyer now, smiling broadly. “We didn’t want to—”
Max held up his hand. “I’ve been sent to collect you, and I’ve been told that no is not an acceptable answer. Clare’s gone stir-crazy and made a cassoulet—or what she’s calling a cassoulet. You should have seen her. She looked like she was holding a black Mass. I thought she would blow herself up trying to light the burners.”
