by Clive Barker
"Swift. Jonathan."
She nodded, almost as though she knew.
"I'm Evelyn Quayle," she said. "Please call me Eve. Everyone does."
"Eve it is."
"What do people call you?"
"Swift," he said.
"Fine," she said. "Would you catch that waiter and get me a fresh glass of champagne? They move so damn fast."
It was not the last she drank. She knew a great deal about the company they were keeping, which she furnished in greater detail the more glasses of champagne and compliments .Grillo provided, one of the latter quite genuine. He'd guessed Eve to be in her mid-fifties. In fact she admitted to seventy-one.
"You don't look anything like that."
"Control, my dear," she said. "I have every vice, but none to excess. Would you reach for another of those glasses before they slip by?"
She was the perfect gossip: beneficent in her bitchery. There was scarcely a man or woman in the room she couldn't supply some dirt about. The anorexic in scarlet, for instance, was the twin sister of Annie Kristol, darling of the celebrity game shows. She was wasting away at a rate that would prove fatal, Eve opined, within three months. By contrast, Merv Turner, one of the recently sacked board of Universal, had put on so much weight since exiting the Black Tower bis wife refused to have sex with him. As for Liza Andreatta, poor child, she'd been hospitalized for three weeks after the birth of her second child having been persuaded by her therapist that in nature the mother always ate the placenta. She'd eaten her own and been so traumatized she'd almost orphaned her child before it had seen its mother's face.
"Madness," she said, smiling from ear to ear, "isn't it?"
Grillo had to agree.
"A wonderful madness," she went on. "I've been part of it all my life and it's as wild now as it ever was. I'm getting rather warm; shall we step outside for a while?"
"Sure."
She took Grillo's arm. "You listen well," she said as they stepped out into the garden. "Which is unusual in this kind of company."
"Really?" said Grillo.
"What are you: a writer?"
"Yes," he said, relieved not to have to lie to the woman. He liked her. "It's not much of a trade."
"None of us have much of a trade," she said. "Let's be honest. We're not finding a cure for cancer. We're indulging, sweetheart. Just indulging."
She drew Grillo across to the locomotive facade which stood out in the garden. "Will you look at this? So ugly, don't you think?"
"I don't know. They've got a certain appeal."
"My first husband collected American Abstract Expressionists. Pollock, Rothko. Chilly stuff. I divorced him."
"Because of the painting?"
"Because of the collecting, the relentless collecting. It's a sickness, Swift. I said to him towards the end—Ethan, I don't want to be just another of your possessions. They go or / go. He chose the stuff that didn't talk back at him. He was that kind of man. Cultured, but stupid."
Grillo smiled.
"You're laughing at me," she chided.
"Absolutely not. I'm enchanted."
She sparkled at the compliment. "You don't know anybody here, do you?" she remarked suddenly.
The observation left him flummoxed.
"You're a gatecrasher. I watched you when you first came in, eyeing the hostess in case she set eyes on you. I thought—at last!—someone who knows nobody and wants to, and me who knows everybody and wishes she didn't. A marriage made in heaven. What's your real name?"
"I told you—"
"Don't insult me," she said.
"My name's Grillo."
"Grillo."
"Nathan Grillo. But please . . . just Grillo. I'm a journalist."
"Oh how boring. I thought you were maybe an angel, come down to judge us. You know . . . like Sodom and Gomorrah. Christ knows, we deserve it."
"You don't like these people much," he said.
"Oh my dear I'd rather be here than Idaho, but only for the weather. The conversation's shit." She pressed close to him. "Don't look now but we've got company."
A short, balding and faintly familiar man was approaching.
"What's his name?" Grillo whispered.
"Paul Lamar. He was Buddy's partner."
"Comedian?"
"So his agent'd claim. Have you seen any of his films?"
"No."
"There's more laughs in Mein Kampf."
Grillo was still attempting to suppress his guffaws when Lamar presented himself to Eve.
"You look wonderful," he said. "As ever." He turned to Grillo. "And who's your friend?" he asked.
Eve glanced at Grillo with a tiny smile on her face. "My guilty secret," she said.
Lamar turned his spotlight smile on Grillo. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
"Secrets shouldn't have names," Eve said. "It spoils their charm."
"I'm suitably slapped down," Lamar said. "Allow me to correct the error and give you a tour of the house."
"I don't think I can manage the stairs, sweetheart," Eve said.
"But this was Buddy's palace. He was very proud of it."
"Never proud enough to invite me," she returned.
"It was a retreat," Lamar said. "That's why he lavished so much attention on it. You should come and look, if only for him. Both of you."
"Why not?" said Grillo.
Evelyn sighed. "Such curiosity," she said. "Well . . . lead on."
Lamar did so, taking them back into the lounge, where the tempo of the gathering had subtly altered. With drinks imbibed and the buffet scavenged the guests were settling into a quieter mode, eased on by a small band offering languid versions of the standards. A few people were dancing. Conversation was no longer raucous, but subdued. Deals were being done; plots being laid.
Grillo found the atmosphere unnerving, and so, clearly, did Evelyn. She took his arm as they ran the gauntlet of whispers and followed Lamar out the other side to the stairs. The front door was closed. Two of the guards from the gate stood with their backs to it, hands fisted in front of their crotches. Despite the drifting melody of show-tunes all celebration had gone out of the place. What remained was paranoia.
Lamar was already a dozen steps up the flight.
"Come along, Evelyn . . ." he said, beckoning to her. "It's not steep."
"It is at my age."
"You don't look a day over—"
"Don't sweet-talk me," she said. "I'll come in my own good time."
With Grillo at her side she started to climb the stairs, her age evidencing itself for the first time. There were a few guests at the top of the flight, Grillo saw, empty glasses in hand. None of them were speaking, even in whispers. The suspicion grew on him that all was far from well here; an instinct confirmed when he glanced back down the stairs. Rochelle was standing at the bottom, looking up. She stared straight at him. He, certain he'd been recognized and was about to have his bluff called, stared back. But she said nothing. She looked at him until he looked away. When he glanced back down to the hallway she'd gone.
"There's something wrong here," he murmured in Eve's ear. "I don't think we should do this."
"Darling, I'm halfway up," she replied loudly, and tugged on his arm. "Don't desert me now."
Grillo glanced up at Lamar, to find the comedian's eyes were on him just as Rochelle's had been. They know, he thought. They know and they're saying nothing.
Again he tried to dissuade Eve. "Can't we go later?" he said.
She was not about to be turned. "I'm going with or without you," she said, and carried on climbing.
"This is the first landing," Lamar announced when they got there. Besides the curious, silent guests there was not much to see, given that Eve had already stated her aversion to Vance's art collection. She knew several of the loiterers by name, and said hello. They acknowledged her, but only distractedly. There was something about their languor that put Grillo in mind of addicts who'd just found a fix. Eve was not one to be so lightly tr
eated.
"Sagansky," she said to one of their number. He had the looks of a matinee idol gone to seed. Beside him, a woman who seemed to have all trace of animation drained from her. "What are you doing up here?"
Sagansky looked up at her. "Sssh . . . ," he said.
"Did somebody die?" Eve said. "Besides Buddy."
"Sad," Sagansky said.
"Happens to us all," was Eve's unsentimental response. "You too. See if it doesn't. Have you had the grand tour of the house?"
Sagansky nodded. "Lamar . . ." he said, his eyes swivelling in the comedian's direction and overshooting their target, then coming back to settle on him, "Lamar showed us around."
"It better be worth it," Eve said.
"It is," was Sagansky's response. "Really . . . it is. Especially the upper rooms."
"Ah yes," Lamar said. "Why don't we just go straight up there?"
Grillo's paranoia hadn't been mellowed an iota by encountering Sagansky and wife. Something deeply weird was going on here.
"I think we've seen enough," Grillo said to Lamar.
"Oh, I'm sorry," the comedian replied. "I was forgetting about Eve. Poor Eve. It must be all too much for you."
His condescension, beautifully pitched, created precisely the effect he intended.
"Don't be ridiculous," she snorted. "I may be getting on, but I'm not senile. Take us up!"
Lamar shrugged. "Are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure."
"Well, if you insist . . ." he said, and led on, past the loiterers, to the bottom of the next flight of stairs. Grillo followed. As he passed Sagansky he heard the man muttering snatches of his previous exchange with Eve. Dead fish floating around in the back of his head.
". . it is . . . really, it is . . . especially the upper rooms . . ."
Eve was already a little way up the flight, determined she could match Lamar step for step.
Grillo called after her, "Eve. Don't go any further."
She ignored him.
"Eve?" he said again.
This time she glanced round.
"Are you coming, Grillo?" she said.
If Lamar realized that she'd let slip the name of her secret he didn't register anything. He simply led her to the top of the stairs and round a corner, out of sight.
More than once in his career Grillo had avoided a beating up by taking notice of the very danger signals he'd been getting since they'd started the climb. But he wasn't about to see Eve's ego undo her. In the space of an hour he'd become fond of the lady. Cursing himself and her in equal measure, he followed where she and her seducer had gone.
Outside, a minor fracas was occurring at the gate. It had begun with a wind that had blown up out of nowhere, running up through the trees that overhung the Hill like a tide. It was dry and dusty, and drove several late-arriving guests back into their limos to fix their streaming mascara.
Emerging from the gusts was a car; in the car a filthy young man who casually demanded entry to the house.
The guards kept their cool. They'd dealt with countless gatecrashers like this in their time; kids with more balls than brains who just wanted to get a glimpse of the high life.
"No invitation, son," one of them told the boy.
The gatecrasher got out of his car. There was blood on him; not his own. And in his eyes a rabid look that had the guards' hands moving towards the weapons beneath their jackets.
"I have to see my father," the boy said.
"Is he a guest?" the guard wanted to know. It was not impossible this was some rich kid from Bel-Air, head fucked with drugs, come looking for Papa.
"Yeah, he's a guest," said Tommy-Ray.
"What's his name?" the guard asked. "Give me the list, Clark."
"He's not on any of your lists," Tommy-Ray said. "He lives here."
"You've got the wrong house, son," Clark told him, having to raise his voice over the roar of wind in the trees, which continued unabated. "This is Buddy Vance's house. Unless you're one of his bastards!" He grinned at a third man, who didn't return the smile. His gaze was on the trees themselves, or on the air stirring them up. He narrowed his eyes, as if he could almost see something in the dust-dirtied sky.
"You're going to regret this, nigger," the kid was telling the first guard. "I'm coming back, and I'm telling you—you're the first to go." He stabbed a finger at Clark. "You hear me? He's the first. You come right after."
He got back into the car, and backed up, then turned around and headed down the Hill. By some unnerving coincidence, the wind seemed to go with him, back down into Palomo Grove.
"Fucking strange," the sky-watcher said, as the last of the motion in the trees died away.
"Go up to the house," the first guard told Clark. "Just check everything's OK up there . . ."
"Why shouldn't it be?"
"Just fucking do it, will you?" the man replied, still staring down the Hill after the boy and the wind.
"Keep your tits on," Clark replied, and did as ordered.
With the wind gone, the two remaining guards were aware of just how quiet it was. No sound from the town below.
No sound from the house above. And them in a silent alleyway of trees.
"Ever been under fire, Rab?" the sky-watcher asked.
"Nope. Have you?"
"Sure," came the reply. He snorted dust into the handkerchief his wife Marci had pressed for the top pocket of his tux. Then, sniffing, he surveyed the sky.
"Between attacks . . ." he said.
"Yeah?"
"It feels just like this."
Tommy-Ray, the Jaff thought, turning from his business momentarily, and going to the window. He'd been distracted by his work, and hadn't realized his son was near until he was driving away down the Hill. He tried to send a call out to the youth, but the message was not received. The thoughts the Jaff had found it easy to manipulate on previous occasions were not so simple any longer. Something had changed; something of great significance which the Jaff couldn't interpret. The boy's mind was no longer an open book. What signals he did receive were confounding. There was a fear in the boy he'd never felt before; and a chill, a profound chill.
It was no use trying to make sense of the signals; not with so much else to occupy him. The boy would come back. In fact that was the only clear message he was receiving: that Tommy-Ray intended to return.
Meanwhile there were more urgent demands upon the Jaff's time. The afternoon had proved profitable. In a matter of two hours his ambition for this gathering had been realized. It had produced allies possessed of a profound purity undreamed of among the Grovers' terata. The egos that had yielded them had resisted his persuasions at first. That was to be expected. Several of them, thinking they were about to be murdered, had produced their wallets and attempted to bribe their way out of the upper room. Two of the women had bared their silicone breasts and offered their bodies rather than die; one of the men had attempted a similar bargain.
But their narcissism had crumbled like a sugar wall, their threats, negotiations, pleas and performances been silenced as soon as they started to sweat out their fears. He'd sent them all back to the party, milked and passive.
The assembly that now lined the walls was purer for its fresh recruits, a message of entropy passing from one terata to another, their multiplicity devolving in the shadows to something more ancient; darker, simpler. They'd become un-particularized. He could no longer ascribe to any of them the names of their creators. Gunther Rothbery, Christine Seapard, Laurie Doyle, Martine Nesbitt: where were they now? Become a common clay.
He had as large a legion as he could hold sway over; many more and his army would become unruly. Indeed perhaps it had already become so. Yet he continued to put off the moment when he finally let his hands do what they had been created, and re-created, to do: use the Art. It was twenty years since that life-shattering day when he'd found the symbol of the Shoal, lost in transit in the wilds of Nebraska. He'd never returned. Even during his war with Fletcher the trail of b
attle had never led him back to Omaha. He doubted there'd be anybody left he knew. Disease and despair would have taken a good half of them. Age, the other half. He, of course, had remained untouched by such forces. The passage of years had no authority over him. Only the Nuncio had that, and there was no way back from such alteration. He had to go forward, to see realized the ambition which had been laid in him that day, and the days following. He'd flown from the banality of his life into strange territories, and seldom looked back. But today, as the parade of famous faces had appeared before him in the upper room, and wept and shuddered and bared their breasts then their souls for him, he couldn't help but glance back to the man he'd been, who would never have dared hope to keep such celebrated company. When he did, he found something in himself he'd hidden, almost successfully, all these years. The very thing he was sweating from his victims: fear.
Though he'd changed out of all recognition a little part of him was still and would always be Randolph Jaffe, and that part whispered in his ear, and said: this is dangerous. You don't know what you 're taking on. This could kill you.
After so many years it came as a shock to hear the old voice in his head, but it was also strangely reassuring. Nor could he entirely ignore it, because what it warned was true: he didn't know what lay beyond the using of the Art. Nobody really did. He'd heard all the stories; he'd studied all the metaphors. But they were only stories, only metaphors. Quiddity was not literally a sea; the Ephemeris was not literally an island. These were a materialist's way of describing a state of mind. Perhaps the State of Mind. And now he stood minutes from opening the door to that condition, in almost complete ignorance of its true nature.
It might lead to lunacy, hell and death as easily as to heaven and life everlasting. He had no way of knowing, but to use the Art.
Why use it at all? the man he'd been thirty years before whispered in him. Why not just enjoy the power you've got? It's more than you ever dreamed of, isn't it? Women coming in here offering their bodies to you. Men falling down on their knees with snot running from their noses begging for mercy. What more do you want? What more could anybody want?
Reasons, was the answer. Some meaning behind the tits and the tears; some glimpse of a larger picture.
