The Delphi Room

by The Delphi Room (v5. 0) (epub)

  Whenever I picked up a pen, the girl that was floating up above my head would suddenly anchor. Well no, that’s not true. For the most part, that last statement would fall into Life’s Column of Bullshit Wishful Thinking. But in the best moments, she would anchor and be still, and in that stillness the mast of a story would unfurl, no illusions, no folding mirrors, no pain. Sometimes—no Shadowman. Or even better, he would stand there—in a good mood—and throw out the most fabulous ideas. I was writing a novella about a company of interstellar circus performers—always been a deep admirer of people who can juggle flaming torches. I wanted the Shadowman to be a character in the book, but he wouldn’t let me, of course. He accused me of trying to use him for publicity. I wasn’t just a waitress in a Thai café, or a onetime costume designer for a shoestring theatre troupe! I started writing stories when I was six—my smash debut was entitled “Mr. Aardvark Ties His Shoes.” I hope I’m accurate when I say I’ve progressed since then. I actually had a couple of stories published in high school, in small fringe journals that pay you with a copy of the magazine. I did a lot of writing at school in the bathroom stall farthest from the door, under a pebbled glass window, at lunchtime. There’s something deliciously subversive about doing creative work that no one knows about in a place where you would never be suspected. Also, there’s no revenge like painting a cruel picture of someone you hate with words.

  I’ve since had quite a few stories published in lit journals, mostly tiny publications run out of a garret, so to speak. I considered those small victories to be target practice. Wrote poems too, but I never showed them to anyone. Sometimes the Shadowman would dictate his poetic inspirations to me and I would be forced to write his verses for him. I hated doing that. He has a fondness for violent imagery. (Maybe you think I’m crazy because I see things that other people don’t see. But Davie always said it made me interesting. And lonely.) I’d been working on my novella for about a year, but it was a nerve-destroying, hair-pulling process. Many nights I spent studying my red walls, tapping at them with my index finger as though I expected a “Mouth of Truth,” just like the one in Roman Holiday, to appear and spew forth the key to genius, or lying on the couch counting the bumps on the ceiling, as if some final number might be the mathematical proof I needed to solve the question of why it was so hard to create. I guess part of why it was so hard was the Shadowman. He’d come up with great ideas, but sometimes he’d suddenly insist I cross out what I’d written. I always felt as though I was writing (and living) against a tide, and in the last months, that tide was washing out my will.

  Maybe I should’ve written a script instead—a movie for Davie to star in. Not that he deserved it. But what people get and what they deserve seem to be random factors in life. Are we meat puppets playing out a script? The whim of a sadistic playwright’s hand?

  I had a father, but he died in an accident before I was born. Actually, he was run over by a car, same as you. So I spent much of my life missing him even though I’d never met him, wondering where he was and what he was doing, until I trained myself not to think about it. Now I’m wondering about him again. I suppose I half expected him to knock on the door, say “Hi Velvet, nice to meet you” and provide some further instructions. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I guess he went to Heaven.

  I’ll shut up now.

  Sincerely, Velvet

  7

  I lay on my back doing Pilates exercises because I have always found if you do something physical you don’t have to think as much, not because I cared about having tight abs in Hell. I kept my eyes on the frozen 8:57 clock.

  When my stomach hurt as much as I could stand, I collapsed flat out, closing my eyes so I wouldn’t be tempted to count the bumps on the ceiling. How long had I been in here? No wrinkles yet—in fact, I seemed to look younger. Having spun off the treadmill of tick tock, I couldn’t even take a guess. Back on planet Earth, time seemed an incontestable reality: measured, estimated, swallowed up, drawn out. But in the pink room with the broken clock and the window that looked out on a meta-landscape of white, time was a flimsy nothing. From the moment the heavy door shut behind me, or no, wait, from the moment I went whizzing down the slide in the dark, the ticker-tape continuum bent, and life in a bedroom bubble began.

  And it was a good thing I didn’t feel hungry, since room service had not appeared at the door. Nor did I have to pee, a fact I also counted as a major blessing. When I thought about food, the coconut curries I ate every workday, or the three bars of bittersweet chocolate I went through once a month, it was with a sensation of fond nostalgia and sharp sadness, but it did not evoke any physical longing in me.

  It was people I longed for.

  INT. BRINKLEY’S HELL—MIRROR—

  VELVET’S CHILDHOOD HOME—BEDROOM—NIGHT

  Mae/Mother bursts through Velvet’s bedroom door, book in hand, wearing a glittering black cape. The remains of a black eye still mar her face.

  MAE/MOTHER

  Gather ’round, child! It’s story hour!

  VELVET

  (solemnly)

  Children.

  MAE/MOTHER

  Huh?

  VELVET

  Children. There are two of us.

  MAE/MOTHER

  Hmmm . . . that’s interesting. I only see one. So either I’m blind, there’s a kid under the bed, or you’re crazy. Which is it?

  VELVET

  I guess you’re blind. She’s sitting right beside me.

  MAE/MOTHER

  Velvet, we talked about this. I thought you got rid of your imaginary friend.

  VELVET

  She’s not imaginary. And I did, but she came back. She missed me.

  MAE/MOTHER

  You’re givin’ me the creeps. I wasn’t prepared to read for an audience of more than one.

  VELVET

  She would prefer you refer to her by name.

  MAE/MOTHER

  She has a name?

  VELVET

  Delilah.

  MAE/MOTHER

  Delilah? Jesus. You’re not gettin’ biblical on me, are you?

  VELVET

  That’s her name. She wants to know if you’re going to read the story about the pigs.

  MAE/MOTHER

  No, I’m going to read the story about the witches. That’s why I wore the cape. You know I can’t do my “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble” routine without a costume. Oh, wait a second. I left my martini in the bathroom.

  Mae/Mother exits, cape flying, and Velvet pulls the covers up to her chin.

  VELVET

  (to Delilah)

  I’m cold. Are you? You’ll like this one. Mom’s a great story-reader. Just make sure to be quiet. She doesn’t like to be interrupted while she’s performing.

  The cape-clad woman flies back in, sloshing some of her martini on the carpet.

  MAE/MOTHER

  Fuck. Oh well. These carpets need disinfecting anyway.

  She takes a big drink, wipes her mouth and places the glass on the dresser.

  MAE/MOTHER

  (clears throat)

  Now.

  VELVET

  Delilah is very much looking forward to the performance.

  MAE/MOTHER

  For fuck’s sake, Velvet, can’t you get some real friends? Isn’t there anyone in your class you like?

  VELVET

  (with great dignity)

  No.

  Mae/Mother flings herself to the floor.

  MAE/MOTHER

  You’ll be the death of me! You’re killing me, you’re killing me, I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dead!

  A long silence, during which Velvet peers over the bed at her mother’s prone form. Then the dead woman pops to her feet.

  MAE/MOTHER

  Fine, be a freak. But I don’t recommend going around telling the kids at school about your little friend. Spe
aking of freaks, how’s my eye? Can you notice it much?

  VELVET

  Yeah.

  The witchy drama queen pouts, touches the bruise.

  MAE/MOTHER

  You coulda lied. Think it’ll be better by Saturday? I got a date. Think I can cover it with make-up? I’ve done that before, but it usually still shows through a bit.

  VELVET

  Maybe you should cancel.

  MAE/MOTHER

  Uh-uh. This one’s different.

  VELVET

  You always look pretty to me.

  Mae/Mother drops the storybook to the floor and starts to cry. She climbs onto the bed and wraps Velvet in her arms and cape.

  MAE/MOTHER

  My little angel, my little angel. Mommy loves you so much! Don’t forget. Don’t ever forget.

  (wipes her tears and sniffles)

  Oh Vee, you get tits and life goes to rat shit.

  VELVET

  I don’t want tits.

  MAE/MOTHER

  They come in handy sometimes.

  VELVET

  Delilah doesn’t want tits either.

  MAE/MOTHER

  Does she want a story?

  VELVET

  (nodding)

  So do I.

  Mae/Mother leaps off the bed, retrieves the storybook from the floor and spreads her arms wide.

  MAE/MOTHER

  Very well. In honour of my daughter Velvet and her invisible friend Delilah, I will now present to you The Witching Hour, by Cedric Culpepper. Lights, please.

  Velvet turns on her bedside lamp. Mae/Mother turns off the overhead light.

  MAE/MOTHER

  There.

  (clears throat)

  Now, by the light of a huntress moon and a sixty-watt bulb, I will regale you with tales from the dark side.

  (in a low, slow, chilling voice)

  “Once upon a time, in the very dead of night . . .”

  8

  Dear Velvet,

  My mother was not crazy, I will have you know. I would expect that someone who was sensitive enough to the vagaries of life that she killed herself—and had an ongoing, emotionally charged dalliance with a Shadowman—would be rather less blunt in speaking about a person’s mother. Granted, she was troubled. Very sensitive, a painter. But I dislike the word “crazy.” An abominable word. Careful, Velvet, not to dole out labels and judgments here. Doing so will not help your case, if there is a case to be made. Those begging for mercy should be choosier about the words they use.

  She needed me. Always. And so I stayed with her. Because I am a nice person. She missed her little girl, as you saw. My sister. I guess I wasn’t a very good substitute. Which makes me sad. Her little girl went missing from a grocery store two years before I was born. Gone forever.

  Your mother could be described as troubled as well, from what I have seen. But I agree with your childhood assessment. She’s a great story-reader.

  Everything I know about feminine dress I learned from my mother. I hated wearing dresses when I was a little boy. But for some reason, I like it now. I don’t know why.

  I should not have told you about the dresses, or the peach angora. (But since you already saw me in your mirror as a little boy wearing a dress, it stands to reason that you may see me as a grown man, also wearing a dress.) You could not possibly understand. I am not sure why I did tell you so readily, why I was so very eager to be honest about my occasional style of dress, and not about other things. It seems that a fluorescently-lit bedroom cell in Hell brings out one’s confessional spirit only on an intermittent basis. I am not gay. (As Clara Bow could attest.) I am not a drag queen. I am a man with a taste for fine fabrics. As a result, I sometimes wore dresses. Not on the street, just in my bedroom. Clara understood. She loved clothes. As you well know, there is nothing like the feel of a flowing dress swishing against your skin. My comprehension of this puts me in the upper echelon of sensual creatures.

  Somehow, I was not at all surprised to learn that you are a writer. Please tell me more about the novella you were writing. Speaking of writing (or writing of writing, rather), the “screenwriter” responsible for our earthly debacles must have a vicious streak. Though aside from being run over by a car, I suppose I cannot really complain about my life. Relatively uneventful, as it was. But from this vantage point, I suppose it is an interesting prospect to see one’s time on Earth in filmic terms. A sad movie, a shot of bleak Gallic cinema! There is no joy in acting such a play. Though perhaps we are trapped in a clip of Gallic cinema right now! Better to fancy our lives had more of a Latin filmic flavor, or, in ancient terms, minor Greek tragedy (no offense to Homer). What am I saying? Who wants to watch one’s life onscreen? Living the scenes was enough—I do not desire a catalogue. Even cinephiles have their limit.

  I was a bibliophile, too. In my life on the spinning rock, I loved to read anything and everything. I had checked out most of the books in the library, until I stopped because the pages were filthy and stuck together, and apparently a lot of people who take books out of the library do not have great hand-eye coordination when it comes to drinking coffee while reading. I became a book buyer instead. Sometimes I just stared at the names in the phone book if I did not have more interesting reading material in the house. Dogs in North America Annual was my favourite magazine. (Of course, I did not really want to own a dog, given the inherent cleanliness issues, but I liked looking at them.) I confess to a weakness for the Bichon Frisé. Not because I have a desire to style their hair or anything like that. Their faces remind me of Christmas.

  While we are on the topic of writing (well, sort of—I am veering back in that direction) I will confess something else: I had started a book of my own. Are you familiar with Harlequin romance novels? I like a story with a happy ending. On a whim I picked one up in a drugstore one day and I was hooked. They let anybody take a stab at writing one, you know. There is a formula that is really quite mathematical in its precision. They send it to you and you invent the rest. I thought, how hard could this be? And they pay you for it.

  So I started writing like mad. In my most recent attempt, the heroine’s name was Eleanor, and the hero’s name was Declan. I was about a quarter of the way in when I was run over. It starts out with Eleanor, a young grieving widow American expatriate, running a bed-and-breakfast out of a medieval manor in the Cotswolds. Declan is a figure surrounded by mystery. He comes to stay with her, but he carries secrets that, unbeknownst to her, connect him to her past. I was still unsure what those secrets were, but that was the general idea of the book. It was dedicated to my favourite movie star, Clara Bow.

  INT. VELVET’S HELL—MIRROR—

  BRINKLEY’S BEDROOM—NIGHT

  Brinkley sits at his little wooden desk, pen in hand, notebook open before him, clad in a white satin bias-cut dress and a peach angora cardigan. The 1920s film star Clara Bow stares from a large black-and-white glossy photograph pasted to a mirror that hangs on the wall. Impish, knowing sexuality quartzes out of her kohl-heavy eyes. Brinkley sighs and grinds his knuckles into his eye sockets. He begins to cross out what he has written in his book, gathering momentum as he slashes his pen back and forth across the page. The paper rips and he throws his pen against the wall and tears at his notebook. His eyes are red and damp. He crumples several pages and disposes of them in a wastebasket beside his desk. Sniffling, he pulls Kleenex from a dispenser, a Cotswold-style cottage that emits Kleenex from its chimney, and turns to Clara Bow in the mirror.

  BRINKLEY

  Please tell me how to proceed, Clara. Perhaps a Harlequin romance is beyond me. My description of the Cotswold scenery is perfect, I think. But I seem to be lacking any, shall I say, erotica, which poses a problem when one is writing a romance novel.

  The photograph of Clara Bow comes to life.

  CLARA BOW

  (strong Brooklyn accent)

  I ain’t
no writer, honey. But this I know fer sure. Ain’t nobody gonna read a romance novel that only has descriptions uh trees in it.

  (shrugs)

  Nothin’ romantic ’bout greenery, darlin’.

  BRINKLEY

  You are right, completely right. But I seem unable to fix the problem. I am no Marlowe. Now he was a romantic.

  CLARA BOW

  I got no idea who this Marlowe character is, but you gotta put feelin’ into it. That’s what people want. Like me. I can cry on cue, ya know. Watch this.

  In an instant tears cascade from Clara’s eyes, silky streaks of slipperiness highlighting the apple contours of her cheeks. The baffled, pure pain of a wounded animal swirls in the dark fathoms of her gaze. In response, Brinkley’s eyes well and tears fall in profusion down his face.

  BRINKLEY

  Please don’t cry. I hate it when you cry. It makes me cry.

  (buries his face in his hands)

  Oh, I can’t look.

  His shoulders begin to shake.

  CLARA BOW

  Brinkley, hey Brinkley!

  He looks up.

  CLARA BOW

  Hey silly! What are ya gonna cry for? I’m just puttin’ on a show. Directors are amazed that I can do that. But I gotta park my chewing gum behind my ear. I don’t like ta cry when I got gum in my mouth.

  BRINKLEY

  But you look so sad.

  CLARA BOW

  Well yeah. I gotta lotta sad things I can think about. Makes me cry inna second. The fans love me, ya know.

  BRINKLEY

  Of course they do. You are the “It Girl” of the ’20s. But nobody loves you as much as me. I love you dearly, Clara. So please don’t cry anymore. The only time I ever cry is when I talk to you.

  CLARA BOW

  Then ya should talkta me more often. Cryin’s good for the soul. If ya can scream at the same time, even bettah. There’s nothin’ so refreshin’ as throwin’ yaself on the floor and screamin’ bloody murder. My ma used ta have fits.