Wolf Howling

by Brian van Brunt

  “Aren’t you coming in?” Wagner asked.

  The maître d’ looked surprised. “Why, no, sir. I am not expected.”

  Wagner passed Landen and noticed something about him that he had not caught before. There was a single round hole beneath the perfectly folded white handkerchief. It was about the size of a penny and was only noticeable up close due to the dark fabric. It stood out because everything else about him was so meticulously well-groomed and professional. It seemed like a careless and odd oversight, for someone who appeared so fastidious.

  Wagner entered the antechamber below La Chute. The room was large, but exceedingly dark, only lit by table candles and a few accent lights. The overall effect was ideal for the space and Wagner felt as if this was, in many ways, the most perfect room he had ever been in.

  Exposed beams of wood crossed the ceiling and were set against copper accents and cast-iron lashings and fasteners. The floor was made from a smooth antique wood and covered by a crisscrossed collection of intricately woven Persian and Indian carpets. Tables with comfortable leather chairs were set back into the far corners of the room and were lit by small trios of red glass candle holders. The candlelight cast shadows against the brick walls.

  In the far corner was a striking water feature that seemed both out of place, given the subterranean room, and also somehow perfect for the location. It was a bronze-cast fountain with three layers of bowls. The water trickled slowly from each layer down the next until it overflowed and fell into the round pool below. Faint lights underneath lit the fountain above in soft purples and blues. This was offset by several flame features crafted into center of the pool’s lotus flowers. It appeared as if the water itself was on fire as the flames rose from the base of the lotus. Wagner imagined this was some kind of natural gas or propane effect. Even so, it was mesmerizing.

  By far, the most prominent feature of the room was a long bar that ran the span of the right wall. The bar top was made of black Belgian marble and ornate wooden chairs with red leather upholstery lined it. There were two tall water containers on the top of either end of the bar. They were filled with ice and water and had four silver spouts set into the bottom of each. Wagner could make out the condensation on the outside of the glass. Cups of sugar cubes sat underneath the water dispensaries. Several large elaborate silver spoons rested next to them.

  The bar had the traditional three shelves of liquor and alcohol. The top shelf was filled with ornate bottles of expensive liquor. There were soft gold accent lights highlighting these choices. The middle line was filled with second-tier quality liquors. The well liquors ran along the bottom shelf. A female bartender was talking to a couple sitting on the left end of the bar.

  Wagner realized he was standing in the entrance of the room like a cowboy in a spaghetti western. He imagined piano music stopping abruptly. He walked into the room and considered where to sit down. He noticed the man’s eyes first. Deep set and ice blue, reminiscent of a Husky’s eyes. The man sat back in his chair and laid his forearms on the old table with an expensive-looking tumbler resting between his hands. He stretched out his fingers and brought them back flat against the soft wood. His clothes matched the table, earth tones in his dusty linen shirt and faded blue jeans.

  He gestured to Wagner to sit down across from him. Wagner sat. He extended his hand to the man at the table.

  “Name’s Dalton,” the man said in a low, warm voice. He extended his hand and shook.

  “Wagner. It’s nice to meet you.” He added, “Friends call me Wags.”

  “Wags. Got it. Need a drink?” Dalton asked in an off-handed way as his eyes drifted over to the bartender. He caught her eye quickly and Wagner was impressed by this; he had spent too many evenings trying to catch the attention of a bartender.

  She came over with a smile and focused on Dalton. He lifted his almost empty glass. Ice clinked against the edge and the last remnants of the amber liquid sloshed across the bottom.

  “Tess. This is my new friend, Wags.” He turned his gaze to him, “What’ll it be?”

  Wagner looked at Tess. “Same as him, I think.”

  “Excellent,” Dalton responded. “Two more, then.”

  “You got it.” Tess flashed her smile to them and headed back to get the drinks.

  “So, what brings you to this place?” Dalton finished the last of his drink and looked over to Tess as she poured two double shots of Johnny Walker Blue.

  “That’s quite a question. I wish I had a good answer to give you. I feel like I wandered here. Kind of drawn in. Though, I suppose that isn’t a very good answer…” Wagner trailed off, rarely at a loss for words.

  “Wandering,” Dalton pondered. “I appreciate that more than you’d know. You could say that wandering has always been part of my life. I’ve seen so many different eyes and smiles—joy and pain.” Dalton looked down briefly and then raised those deep blue eyes to meet Wagner’s gaze.

  Dalton said, “I think that’s been one of my only constants. Ah well, doesn’t do to talk it up too much, right? Talk the whole thing away.”

  Wagner looked surprised, “That’s from one of my favorite Hemingway stories. I didn’t think people read him much anymore.”

  Tess returned with the drinks and set them down between the two men. Dalton thanked her and asked her to add the drinks to his tab.

  Dalton spoke, “I’ve spent my time on the road and books have been fair companions for me. I find they remind me of the Hindu concept of reincarnation, the idea of many lives. The more I read, the more I think I may move up the old reincarnation ladder.”

  “Get to where you are going a little faster?” Wagner asked.

  Dalton smiled and offered a deep, resonate laugh. “Ha! That’s exactly the thing.” He nodded appreciatively. “No, I don’t have anywhere I’m looking to be; I’m one of those ‘it’s about the journey, not the destination’ kind of guys. You should come see my store, one of these times. I’m sure I would have something to interest you.”

  Wagner understood what Dalton was talking about. He had traveled to India and Nepal years ago. The trip had been a powerful one for him, but his one regret with it was how destination-driven it was. The guide pushed him, and there was something good in the physical exertion and the sights he saw from the mountain tops, but it left him wishing he had just slowed down. Took time to let the world pass him while resting on one of those sprawling green farms. Petting the neighborhood dog and getting to know the people in the villages he passed. The journey, not the destination, indeed.

  Dalton said, “There was this group of early monks. The Ascetics. They believed that the pursuit of riches and the idea of structure—even the structure of the church—that all of these things took them away from truly knowing God. Like Thoreau in Walden Pond; even he eventually made a path for himself.”

  Wagner thought about this, finding himself agreeing again with the man. It reminded him of the idea that our vocation becomes a mask of sorts. Wagner had always found himself defined by his early work. He had taught English and creative writing at Emerson College in Boston. He had been tempted to chair the MFA in creative writing at one point, but the idea of vocation pulled him away from that. The more he wanted to be a writer, the more he was distracted from actually writing.

  It had been profitable and comfortable for him, of course, and that was the seduction of it. We convince ourselves that our lives have meaning based on what we call ourselves. Assistant teacher, adjunct instructor, full professor, department chair. When, of course, none of those titles or honorariums amounted to anything. Just masks to keep the darkness at bay. Though, he supposed, masks of our own choosing.

  Dalton shifted and Wagner noticed he seemed to pull at something on his left side. Dalton followed Wagner’s gaze and smiled. “My little Colt snub nose. Doesn’t always stay were its supposed to stay; it was an anniversary gift from my first wife, Luanne. She didn’t always stay where she was supposed to either.”

  Dalton took a long sip of
his expensive scotch and continued, “Love of my life and she left me high and dry two months after our fifth anniversary for a marine biologist from Gulf Shores, Alabama.”

  He drank again, sad and introspective. “It’s like those lions on the beach. They have it figured out. You saw that picture coming in, right? There was something about those lions. Something in their eyes. Something in the way they watch the sea.”

  Wagner drank and watched Tess as she poured a deep glass of wine for the woman at the bar. The woman sat next to a fat man who nervously ran his hand through his thinning hair, talking incessantly.

  “Alice, it’s not all about the truth, you know?” the man said. He gestured to her glass and took a deep pull from his beer. “Bukowski will tell you. You need a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth.”

  She looked at him sideways and rolled her eyes while taking a sip of her wine. She had been quite beautiful once and Wagner wondered why she was sitting here, what turn her life had taken to put her at the bar with that man.

  “Harry,” Alice said, “just drink your beer. Stop acting crazy.”

  “What?” Harry responded, “I’m just talking here. I don’t know…hey! Hey!”

  Wagner looked at them.

  Harry gestured to Dalton and asked, “Dalton, what’s your friend’s name?” Harry waved at Wagner and said, “Hey there, new friend. I’m Harry. This here is Alice.”

  Dalton didn’t speak and instead gestured to Wagner. Wagner spoke up, “I’m Wagner. It’s nice to meet you…”

  “Come settle something for us, Wagner. Come here for a moment,” Harry said.

  Wagner felt the pull of the room—Dalton in front of him sipping scotch and thinking about lions on the beach. Dalton nodded and gestured him to the bar with a wave of his hand. A subtle and nonchalant move. Easy and confident. Wagner liked the way Dalton carried himself. He had the air of someone well-traveled and wander-minded. Wagner reluctantly stood up and walked over to the bar.

  Alice rested her hand against Wagner’s shoulder and encouraged him to sit down. Part of her seemed to long for the company; whether that was a respite from Harry or an interest in him, Wagner wasn’t sure.

  Now that he was closer, he could tell that she was still attractive. Wagner always wondered about people who used to be very pretty. They approached the world with an expectation that people paid attention to them, laughed at their jokes, hung on their every word. And when their beauty faded, not by much mind you, but just enough to lose the intensity of it, they often became difficult to be around. Like a magician who couldn’t quite move fast enough to pull off the illusion. The hang of a tenth of a second where the crowd saw the flash of the card in his sleeve.

  Alice had that. The need to be the center of attention; trying to fill this deep sense of loss. Like it hadn’t always been this way. It hadn’t always been this hard for her. You could see the memory of it in her eyes. It was a mixture of sadness and confusion. Alice evoked the opposite feeling of what he had with Dalton. There was a disquiet about Alice. She was a glass resting too close to the edge of the table.

  “Pull up a chair,” Harry began. “I hate to advocate drugs and alcohol—or insanity—but they have always worked for me.”

  “Harry. Give him a break. And you’re mixing your Bukowski with your Thompson,” Alice added.

  Harry looked down and mumbled something about bat country. He finished his beer and gestured to Tess for another.

  Alice wore a soft blue dress accented with red flats. She had a dark blue velvet choker necklace that covered a portion of her neck. It had the effect of drawing attention to her delicately formed collar bones. Her legs were long and crossed. She wore a series of small silver bracelets on her left arm that gave off the faint glittering sound of bells as she gestured. It reminded Wagner of the soft movement of the prayer flags outside of Kathmandu. He had gone to Swayambhunath, the monkey temple, and climbed up to the top of it. The flags were tied to the trees and provided a background movement that was subtle; that was the way Alice’s bracelets sounded. Her hand moved from Wagner’s shoulder to a much more intimate resting place on his leg. Her eyes drew him in.

  “This city. It speaks softly to those who listen. And you seem like someone who knows how to listen,” she said.

  Harry interrupted while scratching absentmindedly at the back of his head, “Listening. Yes. This is exactly the kind of thing we have been talking about. People don’t know how to listen anymore. They watch things. Sure. They observe. But that isn’t the same as really listening, you know? Really understanding.”

  Alice rolled her eyes again at Harry and sipped at her wine with a kind of unsteady grace that reflected her once beautiful features.

  “It’s the technology. I mean, there is no question about it. Everyone staring into these little boxes. Like something out of a badly-written sci-fi movie. All the people having their brains sucked out of their collective heads by the all-powerful god of ‘what next.’ That’s the problem. Always looking for the next turn of the page. Like some goddamn Bob Seger song.”

  “Oh Harry. It’s always the same with you. The same whining while you sit here drinking your beer and eating your pretzels. Just let it go and have another drink.” She adjusted her choker and finished her glass of wine. She focused her attention back to Wagner. She trailed her fingers against his leg.

  “Oh, you know I’m right, Alice. Vice is where the devil finds his darlings! You know I’m hitting the nail right on the head here. Dalton will tell you. He gets the mindfulness stuff. That uncarved block.” Harry turned and shouted to Dalton, “No one stops to smell the goddamn roses anymore, am I right?” Dalton was momentarily lost in his thoughts but nodded back to Harry and said, “Ascetic wisdom….”

  “Listen,” Alice whispered to Wagner. “What do you say we get out of here, go find our own fun for a little bit?” She pulled at the choker with one hand, as if it suddenly was bothering her. Wagner wondered if that was to imply a desire to be out of her clothes.

  “Will you excuse me for a moment? I’ll be right back,” Wagner said and asked Tess where the bathroom was. She gestured to the back of the bar. Wagner started to walk and then looked back. A small hole in her shirt like the one next to Landen’s lapel. Was the place infested with moths? Wagner pondered and walked.

  Alice looked disappointed as Wagner walked away. Harry didn’t seem to notice and just took a long pull on his beer and continued to talk at Alice, “It’s just that no one really takes the time to try to get to know each other anymore, you know? It wasn’t always like this. Not really. People used to try to…”

  The bathroom was in the back of the bar. Walking back, he noticed the music playing in the bar for the first time. It was some kind of bluegrass or Zydeco, turned down low.

  The bar was unsettling. Wagner thought of a line from Murder on the Orient Express, “There is something about a tangle of strangers pressed together for days on end with nothing in common but the need to go from one place to another and then never to see each other again.”

  Wagner stepped up to the urinal and began to relieve himself. A whisper came from behind him and made him jump. Wagner looked back and saw no one. Just the music and the sound of his urine striking the porcelain. He finished and went to the sink to splash some water on his face. He had a strong feeling of vertigo. He walked unsteadily to the bathroom door and pushed it open.

  He started to understand. It was like that moment when you remember a word that was on the tip of your tongue. On the outside of your memory. The déjà vu resolved. The girl. The white rabbit. He remembered it all and knew what was coming next.

  The hairs on his arms came up and he felt sick. Overcome with that feeling you get when the roller coaster reaches its apex and, just for that small, small moment, it’s all quiet before the fall begins. Sliding down the chute. There is an inevitability in what comes next.

  From his vantage point at the back of the room, he sa
w himself sitting at the bar and then felt the sensation of falling backwards as his chair began a slow arc to the floor. The copper and wood ceiling unfolded in front of his vision like a 70s film low pan shot of an asphalt highway yellow line increasing speed until everything crashes loudly and fades to a brilliant white light. He felt the impact of his head on the floor as he watched himself come into hard contact with it.

  Then the gunshots. He heard Alice as she screamed and Harry was silent, for once. The bullet caught Alice in her throat and the choker split cleanly in two and drifted to the floor. A haze of gun smoke filled the bar following the barrage of sharp pop, pop, pop sounds echoing in the small space. Wagner watched Harry as he turned to Alice. She clawed at the gaping red hole in her throat and started to fall from her bar stool. He tried to catch Alice before she fell. Wagner knew he wouldn’t succeed.

  The shot took Harry cleanly in the side of his head and he tumbled down on top of Alice, speeding her way to the wooden floor. Bright red arterial blood sprayed up across the bar and onto the collection of bottles on the shelves. Wagner watched as the metal horse from the top of the Blanton’s bourbon bottle flew up. Bullets struck the bar as Tess ducked behind it, screaming.

  Dalton pushed back his chair and stood while reaching down for the snub-nosed Colt .38 he kept in a side holster tight on his left waist. He kept it to protect his store and had drawn it twice before in his life; this would be the third time.

  The first round of the Colt hit wide of its mark and sent chips of brick flying against the wooden floor. Wagner heard the quick succession of pop, pop, pop and the metallic sound of the rifle action chambering round after round as Dalton dropped Luanne’s revolver to the floor, with five rounds unfired, as red stains spread across his blue shirt.

  Tess continued to scream. Wagner watched himself scurry backwards, crab-like, on the floor. He remembered the disorientation and the nausea from when his head hit the floor. Her screams stopped suddenly as the pop, pop, pop sounds found her behind the bar.