by Jonathan Dee
Why? I said. You’ll be here for it, won’t you?
He smiled coyly. No, actually, he said. I’m leaving tomorrow too. I’m flying to Rome.
Rome?
He nodded. I’ll have to catch one of the subsequent performances.
I have to tell you, Mal, some of the clients we have flying in will be pissed when they get here and—
You can handle them, John, he said.
I couldn’t see why he was being so cryptic. Did I know about this? I said.
Actually, no one knows about it. I’m going back to Umbria, for the final renovations on the house. A week at the most.
He couldn’t keep the smile off his face. He stood up from his chair and leaned forward across the desk. In his tone of voice, in his every movement it was clear that he wanted to find some way to restore the old intimacy between us.
I want to spend my honeymoon there, he said to me. When I come back I’m going to ask Molly to marry me.
* * *
THERE WERE NO phones on planes back then. I tried once from the Newark airport and got my own voice on the machine. Of course, it was two in the afternoon, California time; you could have been anywhere. So then I spent another six hours, just as I had on the way out east less than a week before, in a kind of furious, helpless anticipatory limbo, knowing that you were below me somewhere, unable to communicate with you without actually finding you and holding you still. I still believed, I still believed, that I would find you back in our apartment, waiting for me. What is this power you have, to make me believe? I thought you’d have an explanation, a typically strange rationale for your odd behavior, and that I would have a right to demand that explanation. Not out of anger; never out of anger, where you were concerned. Maybe that was my mistake: you would have loved me more, or at any rate taken me more seriously, if instead of trying to talk you out of your own self-contempt I had shared in it, reinforced it, at least when provoked. But I wanted that explanation purely in the spirit of furthering my understanding of you.
There isn’t much else to tell. I took a cab straight from the San Francisco airport to our door, the last twenty bucks I had, by the way. The place was empty. I stood in the kitchen until a distinct visual memory of your leaving popped into my head through sheer force of desperation – a picture of you with a green canvas duffel bag with handles on it. I ran to the bedroom closet, but the bag wasn’t there. I looked under your bed, in the bathroom, in the hallway. Nothing was conclusive enough for me.
Then I sat and called your parents, back in Ulster.
Hello?
Mrs Howe? I’m sorry to bother you. It’s John.
Who?
I swallowed. John Wheelwright. Molly’s friend. I was just there.
Right. (There was a shuffling sound, as she sat up in bed I suppose, and she said quite clearly to her husband, No, it’s that friend of hers.) Sorry. It’s late here, you know. I was sleeping.
Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me, but it was past midnight there by then.
Where are you? she said.
Back in Berkeley.
Oh. (This with some distaste.) Can you put Molly on?
What?
Molly, Kay said. Is she there?
No, I said. I was calling to see if she’d come home yet.
Home here?
Yes.
No.
No word from her?
No, Kay said, a little impatiently. I don’t know where she is. We went and picked up the car today, it was where she said it was, but beyond that I have no idea. I guess she’s left again.
There was a long silence.
All right then? Kay said; and she hung up.
So that was that. You were nowhere, and I had no idea what had happened to change what existed between you and me. Whatever existed, actually, was unchanged; it still existed; here it was – our kitchen, our phone, our furniture, our bed. It only needed you to come back and take your place in it.
I say that was that, but of course it took me a long time to come to terms with the finality of it, to admit that to myself. And anyway, before I could even begin those endless skeptical inner repetitions of the fact that you really were gone, start wondering what that meant for me, how I could move forward from there – how I could move at all, in any direction! – there was one more thing to try.
I sat in a restaurant on Telegraph, drinking coffee in a plush threadbare armchair which I had turned around to face out the window, until a young man in a red shirt and khakis appeared across the street, holding a stack of pamphlets in one hand and carrying an old plastic milk crate under the other arm. He plopped the crate down in the middle of the sidewalk and stood next to it for a minute or more with his eyes closed, in what I gradually understood was a prayer. Then his eyes fluttered open and he hopped nimbly on to the crate and immediately went into a loud harangue of some sort (I couldn’t hear it – I was still in my chair across the street) with his eyes focused sharply on the empty space before him, a foot or so above the heads of the pedestrians. Those with the bad luck to be passing just as he started to speak could actually be seen to jump in surprise, and to turn around resentfully or curiously as they picked up their normal stride; within just a few seconds, though, the voice had blended into the street scene, and no one paid any attention to the preacher’s words at all.
I got up and walked across the street. It was Berkeley, so the cars just coasted to a stop and waited for me even though I was crossing in the middle of the block. The preacher had reddish-blond hair, already beginning to recede from his large, unlined forehead. His features were small and round, piggish you could almost say. He didn’t seem to see me, even when I came to a stop in front of him, right at his feet.
Are you Richard Howe? I said.
He didn’t so much as glance at me; he must have heard me, I thought, but then again maybe not – maybe he was in some kind of a trance state. Look around you, he shouted, addressing the crowd without really seeming to see it. Is this the life you wanted for yourself? The years on earth are over in the blink of an eye!
Are you Richard Howe? I said again. I have to talk to you. It’s important. It’s about your sister.
Where are you rushing to? To the office? To a store, to buy things?What are you rushing toward, really? Death, my friends, death! It will be here in the next instant! Beyond it lies eternity! Is there anything more worth preparing for than that? Does money matter, in the end? Do nice clothes matter? Jesus says …
And on like that for nearly an hour and a half. No one, I reasoned, could keep that volume and pace up indefinitely; so I sat on the pavement with my back up against the used-record store and waited. He never turned around. If I’d had a hat, I could have put it on the pavement by my feet and probably made a few bucks, which I needed.
Ultimately he stepped down from the crate, picked it up under his arm, and started up the block. I jumped to my feet and overtook him. It wasn’t hard; he was clearly exhausted.
Are you Richard? Please. It’s important.
He ignored me. But now, beside him, looking down on him in fact, for he was not a tall guy when off his crate, I could see that he very likely was not your brother. There was no resemblance there at all. So I let myself fall behind him and I followed him down Telegraph until he turned on to Vine Street; I watched him unlock a door and I memorized the address. Then, because I had been away from home for a few hours, I went back to see if you had returned, or called, or maybe written a letter.
Around six I returned to the house on Vine Street. I knocked and then stood well back from the door, in case anyone wanted a look at me. It took a while before the door opened, and two smallish, short-haired, clean-shaven young men stood in the doorway, wearing red shirts. They stood abreast, as if trying to keep me from seeing inside, or from charging in. Not that they were big enough to stop me anyway. It was all pretty strange.
My name is John Wheelwright, I said as levelly as I could manage. I’d like to speak to Richard, as soon as it�
�s convenient. It concerns his sister Molly.
Yes, said the one on the left. We know who you are. I think he meant it to sound spooky, but his high voice and solemn demeanor just made my own impatience with him harder to control.
Shoes off, said the one on the right.
Sorry?
Shoes off, please. Leave them outside the door, if you would.
I did so, and the two of them parted. Nervous in spite of myself, I padded down the hall in my socks, and turned the corner into the main room.
The walls, stripped of decoration, were painted a blinding white – blinding mostly because the room was filled with lamps, maybe ten of them, lighting every cranny of the place so thoroughly that nothing cast any shadow. On the floor, his back against the wall just inside the doorway, was yet another red-shirted young man sitting cross-legged on the floor holding a sketch pad; on it, he was finishing up what for one startling moment I took to be a pastel portrait of your father. But then I saw Richard, and the family resemblance was powerful indeed. He sat in a cracked black leather La-Z-Boy, fully reclined, his hands folded on his stomach. It was the only chair in the room. The other young men, four or five in all, sat on or lay across these huge square pillows scattered around the floor.
The whole thing just struck me as amazing and pretentious: trappings with no discernible purpose beyond gussying up the triviality of their mission, compared to the mission I was on.
I am Richard, he said. He might as well have told me he was Mr Kurtz. He reached down for the handle and returned his chair to its upright position.
Is Molly here?
Of course not.
Do you know where she is?
I have no idea, he said archly, disdainfully, as if I’d asked him what time it was and he’d responded by telling me he didn’t wear a watch. I haven’t seen her in a long time. Are you the person with whom she is living in sin?
I nodded. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to offend him. I just had no time to waste on being offended myself.
And now she’s gone, Richard said, and you don’t know where she is.
That’s right. Have you heard from her?
Richard shook his head. If you were willing to defile her, he said, and of course you weren’t the first, then you can’t really be surprised if another defiler comes and takes her from you, can you?
I reddened at this. The young men on the floor were following our exchange with great interest, smiling, as if nothing more than amusement were at stake.
You don’t even know me, I said.
Oh, I know you.
The others murmured their agreement.
I know Molly, too, Richard went on. She has been on a path toward destruction ever since she left her parents’ house. She is remorseless. And you have taken advantage of her for a while, and hastened her down that path, when you could have done something instead to turn her toward salvation. But what have you lost, really, from your own point of view? I would imagine that such a sinful relationship is more or less interchangeable with another one.
Dumbfounded, I said: She’s your sister.
He shrugged. And you’re my brother, he said. What about it?
I’m in love with her.
You are a hypocrite. Your actions, not your words, are what signify, and your actions tell me that what you felt for Molly was not love.
He shifted in his seat, and smiled.
But it’s not too late, you know, he said. You’ve made a mistake, but it’s not a mistake from which you can’t recover, if you start right now, by pledging your soul to Jesus. Are you willing to save yourself?
I want to save your sister, I said. That’s how I will save myself.
Molly is past saving. Who knows? She may have arrived in Hell already.
I took a step toward him, expecting that his little minions would jump up to try to protect him. But they didn’t; I kept going across the room, fists clenched, intending to drag him out of his La-Z-Boy and take advantage of his slander of you to make him answer for all the frustration I felt.
Richard flipped up the armrest of his reclining chair, reached into a little wooden compartment there intended by the manufacturers, I imagine, to hold a bag of chips or a TV Guide, and pulled out a gun. He laid it in his lap. The young artist had stopped his sketching; he was shaking his head at me, sorrowfully.
If you change your mind, Richard said, our door is always open to you.
THAT WAS IT. I waited another month, until I was out of money, and gave up the lease on the apartment. I called my parents, apologized abjectly, and begged for the funds to continue living out there until Christmas. I took a room in the North Side home of a man whose wife had just left him and taken their kids; evenings, while he drank in front of the TV, I stayed behind my bedroom door and wrote my thesis on Goya for the completion of my degree. I had them mail it to me in Los Angeles, where I moved in order to work in the art department at New West magazine. When that folded, I took a job in the LA office of J. Walter Thompson; after two years a headhunter found me and I went to Chiat/Day. When they opened their New York office, they offered big raises to anyone willing to relocate. I was willing to relocate. There was nothing holding me anywhere.
There’s more I could tell you. But I get the feeling I’m talking to myself.
* * *
TO SPOKANE VIA Las Vegas this time; I lost fifty bucks on the slots right there at the gate. But before that I called Farber, the lawyer, from a pay phone and told him I was on my way. Same old guy; he kept insisting I hadn’t woken him up when it was clear that I had.
He was able to see me for breakfast the next day. I told him that Palladio was anxious to settle the case against Culture Trust in an expedient and mutually beneficial way.
Settle? he said, trying to flag down the waitress with the coffee pot; he’s just the sort of guy to whom waitresses don’t pay attention. It’s a criminal proceeding, not a civil one.
Nevertheless. When can I talk to your clients?
Lots of luck, he said, with a raised eyebrow; but right from the table he called and this time they actually agreed to see me, that very afternoon. I don’t know why they said yes this time; probably for no better reason than that they had said no last time.
The judge had lifted the contempt charge against Gradison and both men were out on bail. I rented a car and drove along the river until I was well out in the boondocks. I had to keep checking my odometer because, according to the directions Farber had faxed to my hotel room, which I held in one hand as I drove, the dirt road on which Liebau had built his house wasn’t marked in any way. I found it easily enough in the end. The house was two miles up the road, deep in the woods. It was some beautiful country.
Liebau’s house was a huge A-frame, with a small yard area in front and on one side, from which all the stumps hadn’t yet been cleared. Underneath the porch steps I could see two generators, one working, one evidently being repaired. I knocked; Farber appeared at the screen door, and let me in.
The great room was dominated by a wall of masks, hung haphazardly, in a variety of sizes and aspects. They were tribal, made of painted wood; more than that I could not say about them. They stared across the room at a wall of sagging bookshelves. On the north side, a vast picture window looked straight into the face of the woods; on the south, a large woodstove with iron doors. Above us, against the south wall and behind the chimney, was a sleeping loft. In the middle of the room, the two men – Professors Gradison and Liebau – sat waiting for me at a low table, cross-legged on a couple of pillows laid on the floor. They wore old wool sweaters, work pants, boots, and their time in prison did not appear to have slimmed them down at all. They did not get up.
The masks are beautiful, I said, lowering myself on to a leopard print cushion across the table from them. African?
From New Guinea, Liebau said, in a reasonable enough tone of voice. I did my doctoral research there.
And Mr Liebau, you built this place yourself?
He gest
ured to his colleague. Jack and I, he said. With some help from friends who had different sorts of expertise. Hooking up the generator, digging the well, and whatnot.
You’re not survivalists, are you?
Not yet, Liebau said.
Gentlemen, thank you for seeing me. I may as well get right to it. You and your organization seem to have locked yourselves in a kind of death spiral with Palladio, the place where I work. It’s gone on for a long time now; and it’s reached the point where the toll it’s taking on everyone concerned, on the work that we all want to do, is enormous.
(I knew I was flattering them with terms like organization, but that’s just what I wanted to do. I wanted to give them some opportunity to claim victory.)
I’m here to resolve our differences in an amicable way. Your lawyer, I imagine, has already told you that we’ve gotten the gallery itself to agree to drop the charges against you, but now, what with all the publicity the trial’s gotten, the judge says no. So now it’s between us. Nothing is off the table.
The door to the kitchen swung open. A young, attractive Asian woman brought in tea, on a beautiful hand-painted tray, and silently departed. She wore slippers. I tried not to let my surprise show.
You’re not here to resolve anything, Liebau said. You’re here to make us disappear. Mal Osbourne is not troubled by our disagreeing with him. He’s troubled by the fact that our disagreement (he held up his index fingers, clawlike, on either side of his head) is getting national attention, because of the chord it strikes with the masses.
I’m sorry, I said, smiling. Did you just use the word masses?
Yes, god damn it! So you can come here and simper all you want about cooperation, but we know this is all about silencing us. And we will not be silenced.
You pathetic lackey, Gradison added, in an almost apologetic tone, as if completing Liebau’s sentence for him.
There was a chair in the room, by the picture window, and Farber sat in it, his back to the windblown pines outside. Legs crossed, he sipped his tea and studied the scattering of masks across from him.
