The House that Jack Built

by Malcolm James

  But I had no right to castigate her for lying.

  After I finished, she frowned and pursed her lips, which was rare for her. We had grown to be much more than lovers. She was my friend, my confidant and the one person I totally trusted with almost everything.

  “Malcolm, I have to ask you something.” She had been uncharacteristically serious while I told her the story. I regretted even mentioning it. I nodded and raised my eyebrows, as if to say ‘okay, what is it?’

  “After everything that’s happened…why are you still friends with him?” I looked up at her from across the table. We were in a small restaurant off Michigan Avenue. The atmosphere was close and quiet. The way I preferred it. But I didn’t feel comfortable discussing the topic there.

  “Can we talk about it later?” I took a sip of wine and glanced around the room to see if there was anyone I knew. Of course there wasn’t, because it had been years since I had lived in Detroit. But I wasn’t prepared to have that discussion in public. I already told her more than I felt comfortable discussing.

  She peered at me and a dull, expressionless look washed over her face. I think that she used that expression to mask irritation, anger, frustration and any other negative emotion that might show weakness. She had a wonderful way of looking at life, and found negative energy distasteful.

  “Why can’t we talk about it now?” She peered at me for a moment and then sighed. “I have to admit, I don’t understand your relationship with him, and I never did. You two are day and night, and he is definitely the night.”

  I chuckled at her comment. Although it was a simple statement and I’d always known it, I never heard anyone say it. She was right. He and I were night and day, and if I was a shimmering warm summer’s day, he was a blistering cold blizzard on a January night.

  Christ, he was night in Alaska. But Jack and I had a bond that defied explanation, and no matter how hard I tried to explain it to her – or anyone else, for that matter, no-one would ever understand.

  “Listen, it’s difficult to explain. You know what happened. We’ve been through a hell of a lot together.” She snorted. She knew almost everything. She’d been there.

  “Elizabeth, I know how messed-up this sounds, but he’s my friend. As fucked-up as everything is…everything that happened to you…everything that’s happened between the three of us…he’s still my friend.” I looked in her beautiful brown eyes, looking for some kind of understanding. She tilted her head and smiled at me. I breathed a sigh of relief. The worst was over, or so I hoped.

  “Alright. How can I be mad at those eyes?” She reached over and stroked my cheek and I closed my eyes and felt her skin touch mine. “I have to count myself very lucky that I met a man who could be so very loyal to a friend. Even if that friend is Jack.

  “So I shouldn’t complain. Remind me to show you just how lucky I feel.”

  She giggled and my midsection stirred. I thought about asking for the bill, but the restaurant had the most amazing Crème Brulée, and I enjoyed the fact that I was sitting and talking with her. Like old times.

  So we finished our meal. Later on, she did show me just how lucky she felt. But I was the one who felt lucky, and for a brief time, we both forgot about Jack, his house, the past and even the future. We just focused on the present.

  ***

  Spring turned into summer, and as the days grew longer and warmer, I didn’t hear from Jack except for the odd voicemail message. For the most part he seemed somewhat stable, but his messages were sometimes confusing when he spoke about the house, its construction and the progress he was making. He kept on insisting that I come and see it, so in July, I finally acquiesced and flew to Nova Scotia.

  I left Halifax in my rental car and took Highway 103 to the South Shore. It was an incredibly warm day. The mercury surpassed 90 Degrees. Summers in Nova Scotia rarely get blisteringly hot – the climate is moderated by the North Atlantic Drift. But when it does get hot, the humidity makes it unbearable. So I cranked the air conditioning and followed Jack’s directions.

  I arrived at the construction site around Three in the afternoon. I was greeted by a blast of steaming hot air as I got out of the air conditioned car. I was dizzy and discombobulated, but I forgot about that when I saw it. Although I didn’t notice it at the time, subsequent visits would reinforce the suspicious lack of birds singing and crickets chirping.

  I wasn’t cognizant of it though, for the structure which towered over me had my full attention. It was monstrous and conspicuous in its own right.

  The lot – it was more like a city block – was surrounded by Cats, backhoes, front loaders and forklifts. But they were dwarfed by the mammoth construction which reached for the heavens as if it was trying to fly, or praying to be torn down. I had seen the plans with my own eyes, but nothing could have prepared me for this.

  It was a most obscene expression of wealth and whim. The house was covered by trees on three sides, the fourth side being a steep cliff which overlooked the Atlantic Ocean. Jack told me the lot was eighty-seven acres and the road to the site was a half-mile of pretty landscape. But this gargantuan construction undermined all the natural beauty and insulted every sense. And I was only looking at a steel frame, marked by a skeletal exterior and partially-completed interior.

  My face was lathered with sweat and I wiped the droplets away, but not before some dripped over my eyebrows and into my eyes. The salty sting made me wince, even more so because of the glistening rays of sun which invaded my line of sight. Rays pierced through the structure that stood before me.

  It looked like a blackened evil shell of a giant gothic cathedral, if the cathedral were perversely conceived in the minds of Robespierre and the Marquis de Sade.

  Half-naked of exterior embellishments, pink granite from the Côtes d’Armor covered the lower section and the frame’s tendrils – long black metallic beams – twisted grotesquely above its perimeter. They reminded me of thick tree roots, yanked unceremoniously out of the earth which tried to hold them. There appeared to be little consistency in the way they snaked, and I recalled the strange blueprint that Jack had shown me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, for it couldn’t have been real.

  Inside the ‘house,’ workers were hanging drywall and nailing floor joists. As a matter of fact, the interior was close to completion. Floors were being finished with multiple coats of varnish and drywall waited for finishing compound. Table saws buzzed away as staircases were built. Fixtures were being screwed-in and moldings were being attached. It was an incredible production, and I tried to imagine what it must have cost him to hire this many workers. Even if I could imagine, I supposed that he didn’t care.

  I walked around the exterior and scanned for Jack while I avoided workers and equipment. There was so much activity that the noise was almost deafening. It was more reminiscent of a commercial construction site than a residential one.

  I kept looking but I couldn’t find Jack anywhere. It took several minutes before I reached the back of the house – the south face. Shockingly, there was practically no land separating the structure and the cliff that overlooked the ocean. There were maybe twenty feet of dead earth and the occasional weed or root creeping up out of the earth. I slowed my pace as I neared the cliff. The drop-off was a good hundred feet and terminated with crashing surf that pounded jutting boulders. I never had a problem with heights or vertigo, but I stepped backward quickly as dizziness encompassed me.

  I heard a laugh behind me and jumped. With the sound of the equipment and the roar of the ocean, I didn’t hear Jack sneak up on me.

  “God!” I yelled, irritated and freaked, “You don’t sneak up on people like that!” I wiped droplets of perspiration away from my brow and glared at him.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t tell me you have a fear of heights, too!” Jack winked and walked right past me toward the edge. He was so close that the tips of his shoes reached over the precipice. He bowed over slightly and peered straight down. After my sudden fri
ght, this freaked me out even more. For he swayed slightly, and if a good gust of wind took him or unsteady earth crumbled suddenly, he would have toppled over the side.

  “Jesus, Jack! Cut the bullshit!” Jack stood upright and took a couple of steps back.

  “I love the ocean,” he spun around and walked toward me, shook my hand vigorously and slapped me on the back. He was well-tanned and casually yet tastefully dressed – Calvin – and he looked lean and in good shape. There was a strange yet welcome sparkle in his eyes.

  “Yeah, me too, but not enough to take a hundred foot dive,” I responded sourly as we walked back to the front of the ‘house.’ Jack pointed out while we walked. He showed me the location for the Bacon Study, the Shakespeare Library and the Blake Solarium. I couldn’t imagine what this thing was going to look like when complete, yet Jack knew every square foot of the place. And I’m sure he knew exactly what the final result would look like.

  As we reached the front of the house – the north face – he stopped in mid-sentence to speak with the foreman. Jack stormed over to him and tried to yell above the noise. He gestured wildly as the foreman pointed at a spot on the house plans. He was obviously frustrated, and after a couple of minutes of back-and-forth that I couldn’t make out, Jack threw up his hands and walked toward me. Although Jack couldn’t see it, I smiled while the foreman gave him the finger. Jack shook with frustration.

  “Asshole. As if I wasn’t paying him enough money, now he’s bothering me with insignificant details.”

  “Insignificant? Like what?” We walked to our cars.

  “Structural stuff. Nothing major.” He snorted and took keys from his pocket. Pointing them at his Jag, he pressed a button and the alarm deactivated with two high-pitched whistles. I stared at him with confusion.

  “Structural? How’s that insignificant?” Jack sighed, rolled his eyes and peered at me as if to say ‘not you, too.’

  “He’s telling me that there should be a load-bearing wall right in the middle of the Blake Solarium. No fucking way, That would screw everything up. I told him, three times, to find a way to make it work. And now he’s telling me that it’s going to cost at least a hundred thousand dollars to fix the problem. Who gives a shit? Sheesh.”

  “Yes, how dare he bother you with such things! It’s only money.” I chuckled softly and shook my head.

  “Exactly. Where are you staying?” I told Jack that I had a hotel room in Halifax and he shook his head.

  “No you’re not. Tonight you dine with me at the house.” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Which house? That one?” I pointed back toward the mausoleum.

  “No! Jeez, it’s not ready for that yet. No, I mean the house down the road. When I purchased the property, I also acquired the house that was sitting on it. I’m living in it until this one’s done.” He jabbed his thumb back toward the construction.

  “C’mon, I have some things to show you.” I couldn’t wait. As I got in my car and turned it around, I looked back at the monstrosity and felt relieved that we were leaving. I didn’t know what it represented. But whatever it was, I didn’t like it at all. I never wanted to see it again.

  Unfortunately, I would see it again, but not until it was complete.

  Chapter 48

  Jack’s temporary ‘home’ was a tiny hovel by anyone’s standards. I was shocked.

  As long as I had known him, Jack resided in lavish homes, penthouses and hotel rooms. This…this thing was a dirty little domicile more suited for poor white trash than Mr. Moneybags.

  The décor was minimalist and obviously part of Jack’s purchase. It was an embarrassing mishmash of Grandma’s hand-me-downs and K-Mart effluvia. No two pieces of furniture matched, and the walls were covered with floral wallpaper that predated the Cuban Missile Crisis. The rooms were tiny and cluttered with narrow hallways and a steep staircase to the second floor – which I’m sure was designed for two of the Seven Dwarfs.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, the entire place smelled like a combination of dry rot, stale must and feet. When we entered the place I couldn’t help myself when I chortled. Jack dropped his keys by an old-style rotary-dial telephone and began to rummage for something in the living room – if it can be called that. When I laughed, he gave me a blank look. His only acknowledgement of my visible disdain was a shrug, after which he continued to search for something in a tall pile of papers.

  “Now, where did I put that…?” He muttered under his breath as he flipped through the pages. The pile, which was stacked precariously high, tumbled over and onto bald brown carpeting. He cursed aloud as he continued to leaf through the pages. But he left them there as if he didn’t care about the mess, or the papers for that matter.

  “Ah HAH!” he cried triumphantly as he produced a piece of paper that appeared to have writing on it. It was stapled to another piece of paper. Delicately, he held the document with both hands before handing it over to me.

  I peered at it. The first page was an official-looking document which was typed, signed and stamped with a crest that appeared to have some kind of official meaning. The wording on the stamp was Latin that circled above and below the crest – a griffin entwined in the grip of a giant serpent.

  I looked at the writing, but it was in Italian and I couldn’t make out what it said. At the top, large letters stated certificato d'origine. There was a hastily-scrawled signature at the bottom. It was entwined around a typed name and a title: Guiseppe diGarmo, Direttore della Biblioteca.

  I flipped to the second page. It appeared to be a bill of goods. Again in Italian, there was a single item listed on the page: l'autobiografia di Leonardo da Vinci, and under the column prezzo, €6,000,000. I peered at Jack and held the document up.

  “What is this?” My voice trembled slightly and I knew by the look on this face that he recognized my query to be more for verification than ignorance. The right side of Jack’s mouth curled up and his eyes, which appeared very black in the pale light of the room’s limited sunlight, glinted with a secret just dying to be shared.

  “You know what it is. It’s a bill for six million Euros.” I rolled my eyes in frustration and stuck out my tongue as I slapped the paper on the table. I wasn’t in the mood for games today. It was stiflingly hot in the house – it had no air conditioning – and the stench was beginning to make me ill. Jack hadn’t even had the decency to offer me a cold drink.

  “I got that. You have anything to drink?” I was tired of waiting for him to offer me something and he nodded and pointed to a cabinet which probably contained Grandma’s fine china at one time. I walked to the cabinet and opened it, feeling joy return when I eyed the fine selection contained within. Thank God he had maintained that part of his décor. I looked at a couple of bottles before I settled on a twenty-five year old Islay Malt. Pouring two glasses, I looked over at him.

  “Ice?” Jack nodded and walked to the kitchen, a journey of ten steps.

  “So you’re telling me you bought Leonardo’s autobiography? For,” I did some quick math, “seven-and-a-half million dollars? What are you, nuts?” While I yelled at him he rummaged around in the freezer. He returned with a bowl full of ice cubes. I eagerly grabbed two cubes and dropped them into my glass. They landed with a delightful clink and the cubes cracked right away, as they hit the warm Scotch: one of my favorite sounds. I swirled the glass a bit to let the cold circulate and then took a long, delicious sip.

  “I didn’t even know he wrote one,” I sat down.

  “No one does,” Jack downed his Scotch in one gulp and sat it on top of the stack of papers. He took the document and peered at it in an almost trancelike manner.

  “It’s almost as if it didn’t exist.”

  “What are you talking about?” The heat was quite unbearable. I think the smell that caused my nausea was more than musty old socks and dry rot. I got up and walked over to the lone window in the living room. After struggling with it for awhile, the paint that sealed the seams gave. It flew open with a loud
thud. Jack looked at me with an irritated look as I dejectedly felt hot air flow in from the outside.

  Returning to my seat, I picked up my glass and held it to my forehead and cheeks. God, I wanted a smoke. I groped around in my pockets to no avail. But as if he read my mind, he flipped a pack at me and returned to poring over the document. I nodded gratefully and pulled a cigarette out of the package. As I puffed, he held the first document up to me. The one with the stamp and signature on it.

  “This,” he waved his free hand in front of the document like he was giving a dissertation, “is a Certificate of Authenticity from La biblioteca di antichità – the Library of Antiquities, in Florence. It states that the item in question – which I purchased and which is now being hand-delivered here – is in fact the authentic and unequivocal sole copy of a book entitled La mia vita di persecuzione personale. Or in English, My Life of Personal Persecution.

  “It’s been verified as the only existing copy, written by the Master himself, Leonardo da Vinci.” I nodded and looked for something to flick my ashes in. Finally, I flicked them on the floor. I doubt it marred the place any more, and Jack didn’t even notice.

  “It contains all the nasty little secrets that time and history have forgotten. I had it authenticated by the world’s most renowned expert. It’s real, Mal. It’s written in the special shorthand that the Master used to footnote his work. It was his way of avoiding persecution. Did you know that he invented the shorthand, and that he used a right-to-left style of writing that is referred to as ‘mirror writing?’”

  I rolled my eyes and let my tongue wag out of one side of my mouth. Jesus Christ, get on with it already. He noticed my affectation but chose not to let it bother him.