"I have the signed contract."
"You amaze me, man. How do you do it?"
"Charm, mon ami. Simple old-fashioned charm."
"Well you play the game better than anybody I know."
Laughter. "Tell me Henri, are you really fucking that thing?"
"When you close your eyes, they are all the same."
More laughter, the kind I remembered from college: "‘What's wrong with blazer-boy's head?' ‘Dude, it's square.'" Then came the gruff intonations of Angus, which made me even more grateful that I hadn't gone inside.
"You'll still need to partner with a local gardener in each location, someone who knows the conditions, sort of thing. Leo has already been researching that."
"I've found some wonderful people already," Leo said.
"But the show is still mine, yes?" said Henri.
"Chill out! Of course. You're the host. They're just guest stars."
"So where will we begin?"
"Someplace warm," Leo said. "Florida or California, for the winter."
"Perfect."
"Especially if your company pays the way, right? So tell me, is Klara really willing to be on the road that long?"
"She has already told me so."
"And the brother won't get in the way? I assume some of the money is in his name."
"Trust me. He will not be a problem."
"You sure? This isn't Africa, man. You can't just do whatever you want."
"You'd be surprised."
By the time the door swung open I could hardly move. I heard: "Let me get the light." In an instant I was flooded with a harsh glare; my white shoes glowed like beacons. What an idiot I was—not to have changed out of them. Leo and Angus descended inches above my head.
"Watch your step," said Henri.
His piston-like breathing continued as their footsteps died. I imagined him staring down at me, snickering at my curled, fetal form. I started counting primes, trying not to scream like in Dracula: "a scream so wild, so ear-piercing, so despairing that it seems to me now that it will ring in my ears till my dying day."
The Saab hummed to life. The cottage door closed. Still I didn't move. Suddenly I gasped and coughed. I realized I'd been holding my breath. I tried to muffle my mouth with my sleeve, but it was no use. Did Henri hear? The interior stairs creaked. I braced myself.
Nothing.
I opened my eyes. The lights were off. I raised myself up, saw shades of furniture in the darkness of the windows. The sword was lost amid the inky muddle. There was a far-off sound. A dog barked in the distance. Life imitating cliché. Not a peep came from the house.
I waited. And waited. No lights, no more creaks or dogs or anything else. Just the crickets, as ubiquitous and full of song as a Greek chorus. I knew I'd just dodged a bullet, as they say. Henri must have gone upstairs to sleep. Yet a part of me still distrusted the silence, even as I approached the front door. It had a round brass handle. I thought about fingerprints and turned it with my sleeve.
It wasn't locked.
My head started pounding. I admonished myself to act, go inside and do it. But I couldn't. Everything was suddenly too real, too imbued with consequence. What was I doing here anyway? I felt like an actor who'd forgotten his lines. I had to concentrate, making the whole universe small, nothing except the action that lay immediately ahead. I imagined it in words: In one swift motion I threw open the door and strode in. It worked. Before I knew it I was in the living room. My heart beat like a war drum. There was the sword—a black smiling gash on the wall. I laid the scissors on the sofa's arm and reached up, allowing my fingers to find the hooks, to study them, before lifting and releasing it. I backed away from the wall—the moment of truth—while keeping it cradled above my head. Only when I was certain that it was free did I lower it. It was heavier than I'd anticipated. Much heavier.
I curled my fingers around the handle and pulled. It slid out reluctantly. It was no longer a much-used weapon. But once free of its covering it seemed to dance through the air. I imagined the sense of power that must have girded the man who'd once wielded it in earnest. For a moment I was tempted to run off with it, declare victory and go home. But what would I do in the dead of winter if Klara were gone? I imagined lying in bed clutching the steel blade, the wind howling all around me. "A howl swept through the wintry night, / A forlorn cry, so full of fright." I thought of a long ago winter's night when Mother and Father had gone out on a social engagement. It had snowed so much that they couldn't return until the following morning. Great drifts blocked the roads and piled up nearly to my window. I stood gazing at it, keeping watch, not for them but for Klara, who'd sneaked off with her drama-friend Jane shortly after they'd left. Every groan of the roof and creak of a floorboard told me I wasn't alone. But who else was there? That's what I never knew. I peered behind doors, opened closets, scanned beneath beds. Still I was suffused with doubt. The attic? The basement?
No.
I couldn't go through that again. I'd come too far to back down now. I retraced my steps to the hallway below the stairs. I paused, wondering whether something less than total violence might suffice. Perhaps I might just steal the contract? Or merely frighten him away, the way he tried to frighten me?
In the end I had no choice.
"Looking for me?"
The next few moments flew by in a blur. These words—"Looking for me?"—sounded like something out of a Humphrey Bogart film. In the first shock of hearing them I remember wondering which film it was. And why were the words coming from behind me? Did Henri have a second staircase?
My head exploded. I heard the sound of shattered porcelain as if from far away. Pieces rained down, glittering in the diffuse and bluish light. I remember thinking it was almost beautiful in the moments before the spasms hit. Then I bent over, convulsing wildly. I began to panic. I knew the next blow would end me.
But there in my hand lay the answer.
I whirled around like a dervish. The sword must have taken him by surprise. I could hear him stumble and a crash of glass and furniture. Had I done it? Gotten rid of him for good? I staggered forward until I'd found the front door. I burst outside, running wildly over the spongy grass.
I was nearly at the tree line when the outside lights popped on. In a quick backward glance I saw Henri's shadowy figure limping down the stairs. Limping? "Utterson thought for a moment that Hyde was limping. But it was only his eyes playing tricks on him. Hyde had a strong, forceful walk."
He was coming straight for me.
I knew I couldn't possibly find, unlock, start, and drive off in the MG before he reached me. I scrambled past the trees and down the sloping lawn. If I couldn't lose him I might at least discourage him by running as far as I could. Of course he might not give up if I had his sword, so I stuck it into the ground—upright, so he'd see it—in an open patch of lawn.
Of all my mistakes that night, that might have been the worst.
After another hundred yards or so I glanced back and saw him in hazy silhouette against the house lights, yanking the thing out and continuing on. I ran harder. My legs were a discombobulated mess. My breath was a wheezy dying train. I tasted blood. My tongue was swollen where I'd bitten down on it. Flutters of panic began to overcome me, weakening my knees and nearly causing me to hyperventilate. Where could I go? Marta's house? I had a childhood recollection of a tiny, tidy cottage—yellow-painted wood with a crucifix on the door and plastic-covered furniture, Marta hovering over me with a tray of almond cookies. But I saw nothing like that, just more trees and the outlines of roofs with an occasional haloed light. So I kept running, taking the streets more or less at random, until I was lost, hoping that if I couldn't find myself, he couldn't find me either.
How wrong I was.
The footsteps only grew louder. He was gaining on me. I had to hide. I veered toward the vague outline of a sign. Its
familiarity drew me. Girardi & Sons. I crunched up Phil's driveway and nearly tripped over the flowerpots. Where was the office door? There. But it was locked. I hurled myself against it, over and over, with an abandon I didn't know I possessed. Something splintered. I pushed and it gave way. The footsteps were close. I saw him out of the corner of my eye. Stumbling up the driveway like a drunk. I plunged inside, toward where I remembered the secret door. How did it work? I clawed the lines in the paneling. Come on, come on. Finally I heard a pop. I pulled back and slipped inside and quickly shut the door behind me.
It was pitch black until I found the light. It nearly blinded me. After the first blinking moments of visual adjustment I hurried to the wall. The .45 caliber revolver. I fumbled with its chamber, trying to recall from my military textbooks how to open it. I pulled the pin and dropped it to the right. There were no bullets inside. My hands shook. The vintage bullets on the wall were much too large. I glanced around, my eye finally resting on the dresser where the bullet-riddled helmet lay. I tore open its drawers. In the bottom one, beneath a folded pair of military underwear, was a small patriotically colored box. I took this out and opened it. One bullet fell to the floor. Another remained inside.
I hastily chambered this bullet.
A strange sense of calm came over me then. I spun the cylinder to line up the bullet. I cocked the gun and leaned my head against the wall. Henri's feet padded across the office floor. I hardly flinched. Not even when I heard him scrabbling against the wood-paneled door. I was at the center of a great stillness now. There was nowhere to run, no more decisions to make. I raised the gun to my temple. What would it feel like? In the end I didn't want to know, didn't want to indulge the cliché. "It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying . . ."
"Milo?"
I opened my eyes. Henri was standing in the doorway, his hair disheveled and the sword lowered in front of him. A large cut ran across his upper leg that gave him the air of a stagy buccaneer.
"Don't hurt yourself."
"I won't," I said, lowering the gun.
He seemed relieved, running a hand through his hair and taking deep billowing breaths. "My God, I thought you were a thief."
"I took your sword."
He waved away our antagonism like it was yesterday's joke. "It doesn't matter now."
We remained silent for a few moments, the silence of the grave, as both of us glanced around this strange room we'd found ourselves in. "We have been at each other's throats, you and I," he went on. "Perhaps it is time to end this game, yes?"
"You have my diary."
He shrugged. "I could have turned it over the police, but I did not. I am giving you a chance, you see?"
"To do what?"
"To leave us. Klara and I. We only want a little freedom. We have great plans."
"I've heard."
Henri's smile wavered for just an instant. His eyes darted to the walls. "It was a trap, Keith saw it now: police with shields and pistols drawn, all strewn / Around the room, its walls now witness to his fate, so small, so drab, a little ruin." "Klara must have told you," he said, attempting to regain his charm.
"She tells me everything."
"Ah, we have no secrets then."
I wanted to laugh, but something held me back—the pressure in my head again. "Keith sprang at them, but seemed to freeze, defiance in tableau, / It was his final work, himself, before his deathly throe." I blinked. Henri edged closer to me. "Keith sprang at them . . ."" "Have you ever written fiction?" I asked. "When the characters and plot just take over?"
Another step forward, hands outstretched. I clutched my head. "Keith sprang at them . . ."
No! It was getting worse. Other novels crowded in, not just Father's but all the books that influenced him. Dracula: "There was something so panther-like in the movement—something so unhuman, that it seemed to sober us all from the shock of his coming."
"I am not a character," he said. "And this is not a plot."
"Now you want me to believe that?"
"It is the truth."
"The truth is you've been acting like Keith. Trying to make me believe."
"Everything is going to be alright now." He reached for me in the same way he reached for this cheap optimism. "Trust me, yes? Here, let me give you a hand."
Matthew Lewis's The Monk: "He overtook her; he twisted his hand in the ringlets of her streaming hair, and attempted to drag her back with him to the dungeon."
I raised the gun. He stopped.
"Milo?"
"Everything is not alright," I said. Because I realized what he was doing, trying to suck me under his spell by pretending sympathy, pretending he understood. "You had it all plotted out. How you'd get rid of me. Then bilk Klara dry. Maybe kill her when you didn't need her any longer." "Then throw her to the wolves, the birds, the trees, / And let cruel nature claim her fee."
"That was only in your mind, Milo."
I waved the gun. "What difference does that make?"
"I am truly sorry if I . . ." Suddenly there was a hint of fear in his voice, as if he realized he was no longer in control—that neither of us was. Then who? Father? I wondered that, too. Maybe he wasn't dead. Maybe he wasn't even done writing. Maybe he'd set this all up as his sequel—his last and most horrifying game.
But no. I shook my head. "You were acting a role," I said. "With the tattoo. The scar. It was a game to you. You knew Klara wouldn't see through you—she'd be too blinded by your charm. And me? You'd scare me, make me wonder if you really were Keith so I'd be too afraid to oppose you."
"This is your imagination talking."
"Do you know what my father taught me?" I went on. "His greatest lesson? That all life is what you imagine it to be."
"You are getting excited. Perhaps you would like to lie down? Have a rest?"
"You said Father inspired you. He inspired me too. Literally, as in breathed life into me. But you know what? I inspired him even more."
"I am leaving Vermont. You see? There is nothing to worry about."
"But you're taking Klara with you."
He shrugged.
"Florida? California?" I said. "I overheard it all."
"She is a business partner. She will only be gone a few days at a time."
Liar! On all sides, Phil's Father stared at me heroically. A real-life war hero. "You're a con man. You knew Klara would be an easy mark. Were you even in the Foreign Legion? It doesn't matter. I'll leave it ambiguous. Readers like that sort of thing."
"Readers?"
"What do you think I'm describing here? This is an outline. For a book. My book."
I could see it in his eyes—the sudden realization that he was just a character after all.
"Do you know what Father's literary agent will find when he goes through the attic?" I went on.
He paused. "Klara said you had burned everything."
"No, not everything. There was one thing I missed. In the floorboards. The long-awaited sequel."
He opened his mouth and closed it.
"It will be the greatest literary discovery since the lost manuscript of Shakespeare. I've already told you the plot."
"Do not do this, Milo."
"Should I change the names? That's what I'm still unsure about."
"Nobody will believe it."
I laughed. "I'm calling it The Garden of Blue Roses. Do you like it? The title, I mean? It comes from you, you know."
He shook his head. But I could see him inching closer. On all sides, Phil's Father stared at me heroically. A real-life war hero. Or was that, too, just a story?
"This is crazy, Milo."
"Well in that case . . ." I aimed for Henri's heart.
"Milo?"
"Tell me your name. Before you changed it to Henri."
"You know my name."
<
br /> "You stole someone else's identity. An older Henri Blanc."
"That was just a coincidence."
"There are no coincidences in novels."
"But this is not . . ."
"Say it! Say: ‘My name is Keith Sentelle.'"
"But that is not true."
"Keith sprang at them . . ."
I squeezed the trigger.
Blood spurted from his gaping chest
As Keith did finally come to rest,
All that natural, killing, cold philosophy
Stopped dead and leaking, gurgling red. Catastrophes
Averted, that's what everybody gathered had to contemplate
Now that this evil monster had met his fate.
Or had he? Could a bullet really stop him?
That was the question as they watched, so grim.
And then, from somewhere in Keith's throat
They heard strange noises--not a snicker or a gloat,
Just childish crying, fear of being all alone
When this sad story ceased and he was gone.
And somewhere far away, the Master stilled
His hand, his canvas half-undone. He willed
Himself to listen to the silent, eerie absence,
The ineluctable transcendence
Of rotting flesh, so slowly growing cold.
The Master, too, then closed his eyes. Keith's tale was told.
Or so he thought.
I covered my ears. I couldn't hear a thing. My eardrums felt like they'd burst, oozing liquid silence. I was underwater, floating in another realm: graceful, easy, buoyant. I lowered my hands. I was free. I was just standing there being me, as people say, in this room full of someone else's memorabilia.
Even my memories grew distant. "Keith sprang at them." I remembered it as something that had happened ages ago: how I'd seen Henri's action before he moved—seen the idea of it as it made its way from that brain down through his legs. I'd reacted. My hand had jerked back. Now all that was left was his blood dripping down the walls like moisture on a wintry window.
And a pair of boot-shod feet sticking through the doorway.
The Garden of Blue Roses Page 22
