“You’re fooling yourself,” her mother said.
Amantha opened her eyes.
“Shut up, Mother.”
The woman in the mirror smiled at her, and she looked good.
✽✽✽
She was late to the restaurant, a development caused in part by her war with the dress and in another by her inability to locate the place. Her car’s GPS had twice led her around in circles, forcing her to park off the street and navigate in treacherous high heels a series of labyrinthine alleys until she saw the warm wedge of light cast upon the cobblestones from an unseen window. Closer and the mullioned window came into view and with it, the subdued murmur of a pleasantly full room. The frontage of the place suggested history, class, and secrecy. It was to her wonder that she had never even heard of the place before, but then, she didn’t consider herself much of a foodie and was just as content (if not more) with a greasy pizza or a gyro from one of the neighborhood joints as she was with a high-priced steak at an upscale eatery. Still, as she made her awkward way over the cobblestones toward the restaurant, she felt a flutter of excitement in her chest. The place suggested intimacy, warmth, and pleasure. And, bonus, if it all went to hell, nobody would know her here.
Inside she found herself further seduced by the décor and ambience. Like most high-class places, the class itself was evident even while the menu remained a mystery. No plastic crabs on the walls or fishing nets suspended from the ceiling here. No large chalkboard menus or advertisements for happy hour touting the city’s best margaritas or offering cheap shots till 8. No multitude of television screens designed to hypnotize the patrons into watching them. No cheap sticky carpet. No harried looking wait staff dropping their plastic smiles once they’d turned their backs on their tables. Rather, it was, as she’d suspected, small, quiet, warmly lit, and cozy. She estimated there were perhaps a dozen tables, no more, unless there was another section of the place she couldn’t see from the door, but somehow, she doubted that. The sole concession to the season was a small and radiantly lit Christmas tree by the bar. The well-dressed staff seemed confident and efficient without need to hurry. The hostess seemed genuinely pleased to see her.
“How are you this evening, Ma’am?”
“Great,” Amantha replied, and meant it. Already this felt like something from a dream, or one of the romantic fantasies she often read and intended someday to write.
“Are you meeting someone?”
“Yes, a Mr. August Windham.” As suspected, she liked how the name sounded when spoken aloud.
The hostess moved behind her pulpit and consulted a list. For a moment, watching the girl’s brow furrow in concentration, she felt a twinge of unease and uncertainty. What if he wasn’t here? What if he had stood her up, deciding at the last moment that maybe the woman in those pictures wasn’t really that attractive after all? What if some other woman had stolen his attention from her in the two weeks since they’d first made contact, perhaps someone better looking, someone more confident, with more money, someone who didn’t need to fool herself into pretending her expensive dress fit the way it was supposed to? The unease started to drift toward panic, fumbling up inside her from belly to chest to throat. It started to get harder to breathe, as if the air had abruptly filled with smoke. She coughed into her fist, felt a single bead of sweat trickle coldly out from beneath her armpit and trickle its way down her side, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.
“Didn’t I tell you your silly girlish fantasies would make a fool of you again?” her mother muttered coldly in her ear.
But then the hostess looked up and beamed at her, and that smile was like a blast of heat, killing the chill in one wave. “Right this way, Ma’am.” She turned and led the way, pausing to guide Amantha down a small series of steps into the dining room. And as the hostess moved ahead, Amantha scanned the dimly lit room for the man she had come here to see.
She felt a surge of excitement at the sight of him rising from the table to meet her. He was not, as her mother had whispered from the moment she had agreed to meet him, a fraud, an imposter, someone pretending to be someone else. Even in the limited view afforded him by the mood lighting, he was, as his pictures had shown, handsome. “Debonair” was the word she had conjured up when she saw the one of him in the tux at some function or another. His hair was dark and slicked back, his teeth an orthodontist’s dream. He was anachronistically handsome, like an old movie star. His eyes glimmered with delight as the hostess deposited her at the table.
“Your server will be with you in a moment,” the hostess said, and was gone.
“You made it,” August said, and the look of genuine pleasure at the sight of her threatened to melt her on the spot. She felt as if her whole body was full of butterflies.
“Just about,” she said, feeling suddenly self-conscious standing there before him. She was not quite sure what to do with herself, her limbs apparently receiving instructions from a quartet of masters.
“Please, sit,” he said, and she did.
And from that moment on, with the piped in piano music playing at a low volume from speakers nestled unobtrusively in the shadows, it was as if they had known each other all their lives. The unease fled as quickly as it had come. She relaxed into the evening as if the air itself had become wine. Even her mother had little to say throughout the course of their meal of goat cheese ravioli, King Crab-stuffed sea bass, and afterward, a dual course of crème brûlée, all washed down with a fine Merlot.
Later, over coffee, with the hour growing late and the restaurant all but empty, but with neither one of them inclined to make a move, Amantha knew two things at once. First, she did not believe in love at first sight, and second, she was somehow, inexplicably and wonderfully in love at first sight. And while her mother might have always felt like she had raised a fool for a daughter, Amantha did not believe that the man across the table from her was putting her on or engaging in a charade for the sole objective of taking her home. He was too present in the moment, too engaged for it to be anything but real, and that only inflamed her burgeoning passions further. She did not believe she had anything to fear from him, an increasingly rare quality in men these days.
“I just realized I never asked what you do for a living,” he said, stirring cream and sugar into his coffee.
“I work from home as a medical transcriptionist,” she told him, though it was not quite the truth. She had worked in that field when she needed the money, but with alimony and her inheritance, she hadn’t needed to work for a long time. It would not, however, do to admit such a thing upfront.
He took a sip of his coffee and appraised her anew. “Really?”
“Yes, why?” Had the lie been so apparent?
He shrugged. “I would have thought curator at a museum or gallery owner, or something along those lines. You look like you work in the arts.”
She leaned forward, eagerly. “Oh, I’ve always wanted to. I love the arts, in all its forms. Books and painting especially. It just never really panned out for me. I never had the discipline, or the concentration needed for it.”
“I would think the best kind of art comes from chaos.”
“I suppose it does.” It was impossible to keep the smile from her face. The fondness she felt for this man, his voice, his words, his looks, even the scent of him, was unlike anything she had ever felt before and she couldn’t keep from broadcasting it across the table to him with every look and gesture. Her mother was in her skull somewhere, pacing, chiding her to abide by the rules of etiquette, meant, not just for respectable women, but for those who wished not to be murdered by charming psychopaths. But though she confessed to a certain degree of naivete over the years—the same which had led to two disastrous marriages and equally as many bad dates—she knew in the core of her being that this man was not going to hurt her. She could sense it. You have nothing to fear from me, he had said, and she believed him.
“Honey,” her mother said, for once, not unkindly, “I love you, but se
nse has never been your strong suit. In fact, the absence of that very thing has led to some of your greatest miseries. Please, just be careful.”
Amantha shut her eyes and cut off her mother’s voice as easily as if it had been carried to her via an old radio.
“Are you all right?” August asked.
August and Amantha. “Oh yes. Just enjoying the atmosphere, although I think the wine has me a little buzzed.”
“Should I take you home?”
She opened her eyes and looked at his face for intent. Had he meant he would see her home in the most gentlemanly sense, or go home with her to extend the evening? The longer she looked at him and bathed in their combined aura and all it promised, she realized it didn’t matter one way or another. Sooner or later, they would become one.
Thus, when the night ended with their candle the sole light in a sea of growing dark as the restaurant began to close, she let him take her by the arm. On the way out, she exchanged a glance with the pretty hostess who had been so sweet to her before, and fancied she saw some envy there. Perhaps a soupçon of curiosity too. No bitterness, just a wistful longing to share in the same kind of magic that Amantha had found. Amantha was no stranger to that longing.
“Good night,” she said to the girl, with a wink and a smile. The hostess was young and beautiful. She had her whole life ahead of her, and though she might have to navigate a minefield to get there, and her dreams would lose some of their color, one day she would find good love too. Amantha was sure of it.
“Good night,” said the hostess.
Amantha let August lead her from that place and out into the night. She could feel the warmth of him, could smell the scent of him. It was as intoxicating as the wine. He could take her wherever he wished. She had decided this for him. Tonight, and forever. And when she looked into his handsome, smiling face to convey this to him, she could see he already knew. But he walked her to her car and bid her farewell anyway, because as promised, he was a gentleman and unlike all the others, she had nothing to fear from him. When he made to turn away, she put a hand on his wrist to halt him. He looked back and she closed the distance between them.
The kiss was Heaven and a promise of all the good things to come.
✽✽✽
“Christ, I thought she was never going to leave.” Barry slid home the bolts on the big main door of the restaurant.
“I think it’s kinda sweet,” the hostess said.
“Sweet? She’s fucking nuts.”
“You have no heart, Bryan.”
“I have eyes, Holly. Sometimes that’s enough. And I know a fruit bat when I see one.”
“Well, I thought it was adorable.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I just do.” She knew better than to try to make him understand. And maybe she wasn’t even sure herself why she found the woman so inspiring. Yes, she was odd, acting as though she hadn’t been seated at a table she herself had booked while ordering and eating dinner for two. But still, the look of serenity on her face had brought a smile to Holly’s. The woman had seemed so comfortable, so secure and so happy dining alone. And then later, as she’d walked out, arm crooked as if linked through that of a phantom lover, the look she had given Holly was one she figured it was going to take a long time to forget.
I am safe, it said. I hope someday you will be too.
THE MONSTER UNDER THE BED
“DAAAAAAD!”
“Fuck sake.”
“DAAAAAAAAAD!”
“Jesus Christ, Billy, what?”
“You said a bad w—”
“What do you want now?”
“There’s something under the bed.”
“Go to sleep.”
“There’s a monster.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“There is. I heard it.”
“It’s your imagination, now for the last goddamn time, go to sleep.”
“Check.”
“What?”
“Check under there, please.”
“No. I already told you there’s nothing under there. I thought we were through with all this bullshit? You’re almost ten years old. Time to stop being such a scaredy-cat. I swear, between you and your mother, it’s a wonder I haven’t lost my mind already.”
“I’m not a scaredy-cat.”
“Yes, you are. Only scaredy-cats think there are monsters under their beds.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Then why don’t you look and see for yourself?”
“I want you to do it. Please, just look under there.”
“There’s no need. I can see from here that there’s nothing there but some toys and your dirty laundry. Which, by the way, you were supposed to clean up over the weekend. Now, I’m going to bed and you’re going to sleep. It’s been a shit day, and I have to be up for work in a few hours.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Really? You’re gonna sulk now? Jesus.”
“I’ll go to sleep and promise not to bother you again if you just make sure there’s nothing there.”
“Fine. Christ. Fine. But if you call me again, you’ll be sorry.”
“Okay.”
“Now, see? There’s nothing under your goddamn bed. See? Look.
“Oh, but there is, you fucking ogre.”
“The fuck did you just s—what the? Billy, woah...woah...hey...what are you doing with that? Put that down right this goddamn m—JESUS CHRIST! No, no, NOOOOO. Please, I n—”
“Now the monster’s under my bed.”
“P...please...Bil....Billy....please...call....call an....am.....”
“Right back where it belongs.”
THE HOUSE ON ABIGAIL LANE
THE EARLIEST KNOWN DISAPPEARANCE IS THAT of fifty-eight-year-old Elmore Washington during the construction of the house in June of 1956. Then, as now, there was little to distinguish Number 56 from the twenty-two identical houses that comprised the newly built neighborhood of Abigail Lane. And on that fine summer day sixty years ago, it was starting to come together nicely. The air was punctuated by the bark of hammers and the growl of saws, of machinery grumbling, of trucks grinding their way over the as-yet unpaved streets and driveways. A haze of dust hung over everything. The rough framing had been completed, the plywood sheathing applied to the skeletons of the houses, and the doors and windows had been installed.
According to his coworkers, Elmore, who’d been working primarily on the roof that day, hadn’t exhibited any noticeable sign of preoccupation. He was known as a jovial, quick-witted sort, slow to anger unless raging drunk, in which case, Jeb Foreman said later, “He’d pick a fight with a chair and probably lose.” He was not given to moods or depression. If there were demons nestled in the folds of his life, he kept them to himself. All of which made it even more of a mystery that he, in the middle of an ordinary work day, vanished, and was never seen again. His co-worker Jeb Foreman (who was not the foreman, because that would have been a little too perfect) says the last time he saw Elmore, he was entering the house to retrieve his lunch pail, which he’d left somewhere on the second floor. Jeb claimed he saw Elmore mount the stairs (“saw those big size elevens of his clomping up the steps”) and didn’t give it a second thought until close to quitting time when Ronald Mayhew (who was the foreman) asked if Elmore had left early.
Figuring maybe he’d snuck away for a quick nap, they looked for him. On the stairs in Number 56, they found his lunch pail, the bologna sandwich and apple rotted as if it had been sitting in the sun for two weeks, and another item everyone was pretty sure Washington wouldn’t have left behind on purpose, which was when it was decided that the police should be called.
All anyone knew was that wherever Washington had gone, he’d traveled there without his car, a 1953 Packard Clipper, parked at the construction site, and eighty dollars’ worth of savings he’d kept in a Mason jar beneath his bed. He had never married, wasn’t known as “a ladies’ man” on account of badly pockmarked skin and a glass eye, so
he left no broken hearts behind, only a mother who suffered from dementia and likely died never knowing he’d disappeared.
What he did leave behind, was the eye, which Jeb and Ronald discovered sitting on the second to last step of the stairs. “That thing put the fear of God into me,” Ronald said. “Like that Poe story about the fella with the big eye, looking at that man like it knew all he’d done.” Jeb said he felt sick after emerging from the house. “For some reason I can’t figure, I couldn’t stop clenching my teeth. The air was all wrong in there. I smelled fresh cut grass, and there ain’t a thing wrong with a smell like that, but it made me sick to my stomach.” Before he lost his lunch on the bare earth of the soon-to-be lawn, Jeb told his wife he could have sworn he saw sunflowers there, just for a moment, right where someone in the future would undoubtedly put them. He made her promise she’d never share what he said. “The men will think I’ve gone soft in the head.” And she didn’t, until the documentarian Mike Howard came calling some six years after lung cancer made her a widow.
Of all the theories put forth at the time to explain what had become of Washington, which ranged from the possible (he’d been suffering from depression and, to spare his mother, had committed suicide somewhere the body was not likely to be discovered), to the highly improbable (he was a Communist sympathizer who’d been called back to Mother Russia for an important assignment)—nobody blamed the house.
II
Despite the dilapidation, Number 56 does not appear sinister at all, at least, no more than any house that has fallen into ruin. Of course, for those who want to characterize the building as a Seething House of Evil, the missing shingles, boarded up windows, and the sagging roof is ample fodder. Similarly, the smoke stains on the façade and the smudges of soot around the windows—testament to an attempt to burn the place to the ground back in 1988—make it look sad, tortured, cursed, to those who wish to regard it that way.
We Live Inside Your Eyes Page 14