Cellars

by John Shirley

“There’ll be different sorts of people there,” she said, getting into the cab. “It’s Joey’s way, to invite an odd mix. So don’t sweat it.”

  “Hey, I’m not sweating anything. Not where they’re concerned, anyway,” he said, getting into the cab beside her, aware of her nearness, her subtle perfume, and the fact that she didn’t move to put more room between them on the seat.

  Madelaine gave an address, and the cabdriver, a dark-eyed fellow with a big mustache, said: “I will be getting there good, sure hokay, but please giving directs, I’m in United States only two months, hokay?”

  Madelaine spent the next twenty minutes struggling to make the cabbie understand her directions.

  The cab pulled up in the middle of a row of nineteenth century, gray-stoned, smog-sullied buildings of varying heights but packed side by side with not an inch between them, their façades zigzagged with rusting fire escapes. They were somewhere in the East Village, near University Place. A long pink-and-white-striped awning on thin metal poles cut across the sidewalk to the curb. On the awning’s face, in faded gold-paint lettering, was the single word VALENOA. Strange spot for a nightclub.

  Lanyard paid the driver, nervously overtipping him. A tall, hefty black man, in an orange-and-green flower-print polyester shirt, met them as they stepped inside the glass doors.

  “Private club,” he said in a monotone, “closed party tonight. Invitations?” He didn’t look at them as he spoke, but stood squarely in their way, gazing past Lanyard’s shoulder at the empty street.

  Madelaine showed him her invitation. She didn’t seem to notice the doorman’s brusqueness. The man stepped aside and hooked a thumb at a wide flight of descending stairs. Madelaine took Lanyard’s arm.

  They descended a curving staircase covered with a synthetic pink rug. Lanyard looked twice to be sure: Yes, it was, for God’s sake, pink. The stairwell’s walls were artless mosaics of mirror-glass fragments. Simulated-crystal mini-chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Lanyard looked around in confusion. He had seen an article in New York magazine that called Minder’s country home “tastefully opulent.” It didn’t fit with the tackiness of his private club.

  The room at the bottom of the stairs was at first glance a broad jumble, difficult to assimilate. The centerpiece was a full-length swimming pool. The surface of the chlorinated pool gave off curls of mist, and its shallow end was half-hidden by an artificial waterfall spilling feebly from an arch of brass tubing. The ceiling was made up of mirror squares alternating with small rotating balls of simulated crystal that threw off pseudopsychedelic shards of colored light, stimulated by red and blue mini-spots set on swivels at regular intervals.

  Blurring this contrived ambience further was a glitter-tiled disco dance floor, over which hung a huge mirror ball like a monster spider’s egg sac. The man-high speakers around the dance floor were silent and the DJ’s booth unoccupied. Beyond the dance floor were curved rows of couches and piles of floor pillows. The brick walls, at rear right-hand corner, split into a big fireplace; insignificant in its walk-in hearth, a small fire crackled faintly among artificial logs, giving off multicolored flames.

  Madelaine confidently led Lanyard along a tiled walkway, skirting the swimming pool. Young women in string bikinis decked a long buffet table with a variety of hot foods.

  A number of square metal café tables had been pushed together and covered with a gold-colored cloth; white wrought-iron patio chairs lined the table, empty. The people standing around the table, sipping cocktails from transparent plastic cups, struck Lanyard as having one characteristic in common—self-consciousness. The formally dressed were self-consciously formal and the casually dressed were self-consciously casual; it was all Statement. Minder was nowhere around.

  Lanyard allowed Madelaine to tow him about the gathering; he permitted himself to be introduced to a series of set designers, actresses, art dealers, more actresses, composers, wealthy attorneys, and local politicians. Madelaine invariably introduced him: “Carl Lanyard—Carl’s a writer.” As though that explained his rumpled clothing. She held onto his arm as if to challenge anyone who wondered if he were fit company for her. And it was only then that he admitted to himself that, yes, he wanted her badly.

  She seemed to come alive in the party atmosphere, as if some pressing distraction had left her. Lanyard stood near her, sipping sherry and smiling now and then, laughing when it seemed appropriate, admiring the diversity of her expressions, the internal energy revealed in her eloquent, fluttering hand gestures.

  Only once did he see a shadow cross her face—when someone asked her, in a low voice, almost a shamed whisper, if she could give a “reading.” The request came from a nervous young woman who’d over applied her makeup, and whose white cotton jumpsuit was ostentatiously trendy. She radiated insecurity. “I’m just so funny—well, maybe funny’s not the word—but I just can’t psych myself up for…I mean have this audition and Joey’s supposed to talk to the casting director…” She lowered her voice, looking to see if Minder had come into the room yet. He hadn’t. Lanyard wondered if Minder was always late for his own parties. “And I guess I need a reading on—uh—my career.”

  Madelaine was saved when Minder bulled into their conversational circle. He arrived with a suddenness that was probably calculated to be disarming. “Maddy! Centerpiece of my wet dreams!” he shouted, embracing Madelaine.

  Lanyard stood by, his smile frozen.

  Minder was tall, chubby, soft looking. Lanyard had the impression that Minder wanted to seem jolly, earthy, playfully sexy, like some satyr variation of Andy Devine. His voice was an adolescent cackle. But he had a genuine presence. And Lanyard suspected that Minder was trying out new material on them as he howled, “I had a wet dream about Maddy that was banned in my left lobe—” and so forth. Minder watched them carefully for their reactions. He wore black trousers, an amber silk shirt, and a black bow tie; his clothing was cut to minimize his heavy belly and the shelves of his buttocks.

  Madelaine scoffed amiably at Minder’s ribaldries. “Hey, c’mon, you haven’t got time for fantasies about me, Joey. You can hire the best wet dreams. I might qualify as a mild sort of daydream.”

  “Maddy, you ever hear that song by Rob Hardin, called ‘Live Your Daydreams at Night’? Now that’s where it’s at.”

  Lanyard didn’t like him, but Minder’s grin was infectious. Lanyard didn’t trust him, but he found himself laughing at Minder’s bad jokes.

  “Hey I’m hongry!” Minder shouted, imitating a cowboy at the chuck wagon. He led Madelaine by the arm to the buffet table. The party, everyone gossiping and joking and discussing the selection of foods, queued up at the table behind Madelaine and Minder and Lanyard, taking plates and filling them. “Maddy, try some of this orange-sauce chicken…No, dear, let Elma serve you, that’s what she’s paid for, you just relax…Elma, see that this lady has some…Yeah.”

  Lanyard ate kasha and kielbasa, and he was gratified when Madelaine came to sit beside him, close on his right. Minder sat across from them, beginning to eat even before he’d pulled his chair in to the table. The room droned with conversation; periodically the guests quieted to listen and laugh ritually as Minder raised his voice so the whole room could hear. The waterfall swished into the swimming pool behind Lanyard’s back. Lanyard found himself staring past Minder’s shoulders at a doorway hung with a curtain of translucent pink beads; the curtain was partly tied back, and the room beyond was empty except for what looked like wrestling mats covered in pink sheets. “What’s this?” he asked Madelaine. “That room…they have amateur wrestling tournaments?”

  Madelaine laughed, just exactly as if Lanyard were joking.

  Sometimes Minder sat quietly, listening to the chatter, his eyes panning from face to face, as if assessing some mysterious potential. Those times, Lanyard was disturbed by something predatory in Minder’s sunken, bleary blue eyes. Small eyes, ringed with bluish skin. His hair was wiry black, tailing over his ears, tousled, at first glance, so as to seem
youthfully carefree—when actually it was carefully arranged.

  Lanyard watched Minder—as Minder watched Madelaine. Lanyard didn’t like Minder’s speculative expression.

  Madelaine told an anecdote. Minder laughed excessively and pounded the table. Lanyard smiled and drank red wine.

  An earnest young man in thick glasses and a tuxedo asked Madelaine, abruptly, “Aren’t you the lady with some expertise in psychic phenomena?”

  Madelaine tried to hide her discomfort with an airy wave of her hand. “Oh, no, really. I’m an actress, and not a very successful one. Nothing particularly exotic about me.”

  “But seriously,” the young man went on, “aren’t you—”

  “Actually,” Lanyard interrupted, attempting Madelaine’s rescue, “psychic phenomena is an area in which no one can claim expertise. No one knows enough about it to be an expert in it. Too little is proven.”

  “If I’m not mistaken,” Minder said, “our Mr. Lanyard here is the same Carl Lanyard who writes for Visions.”

  “Used to,” Lanyard said. “I quit. Ceased to believe in the subject matter of the magazine. Never saw any evidence that the supernatural exists. Don’t know what I’m going to do now…”

  “It’s my understanding you’re earning a fee—” He paused, smiling nastily. “—as an investigative reporter on the subway killings.” Heads turned. The steady matter-of-factness in Minder’s voice was a sharp contrast to the cawing he’d indulged in before. Lanyard could feel Minder watching him.

  How did Minder know about his present gig? And the fee?

  “Oh—uh…” Lanyard began, wondering how to explain his position without revealing too much. Lanyard was at first inclined to deny everything, then decided to deny only part of it, the part about the fee. “It’s true I’m doing a little background on the style of occultism involved.”

  “Just public-spirited?” asked a man to Minder’s right. He was a portly little man, nearly bald, wearing a loud suit and a number of gold rings. He looked as if he’d had his face lifted; the skin was unnaturally taut, and bluish. His green eyes glittered. Lanyard had noticed him before, heard him talking to other people. He invariably brought the conversation around to money and influence. “That’s a nice tie,” he’d say. “How much did it cost?…What did you pay for those designer jeans?…Is that twenty-four-carat, or—? Unquestionably, gold jewelry is a good investment, though real estate…”

  Since the man was addressing him, Lanyard smiled politely and said, “I don’t think we’ve met…?”

  “This is George Tooley,” Minder said. “My secretary.”

  “Well, George…” Lanyard noticed a small gold coke spoon on a chain around Tooley’s neck. “It’s not just public-mindedness. The police rather pressured me into it. They practically kidnapped me from the airport. They weren’t particularly gentle about it. I’d say they stepped on my rights two or three times. The detective in charge of the case seems like a nice enough guy, though.”

  “Gribner?” Tooley said. His gold-and-diamond rings flashed as he put a cigarette into a holder and lit it with a personalized platinum lighter.

  “I know old Gribner,” said Minder loudly. “Decent guy, for a cop. Never tried to shake me down—at least not too often.” Polite laughter from the guests.

  “What is your opinion of the case?” Tooley asked, looking up at Lanyard. There was something oddly vibrant in his gaze.

  Lanyard was uncomfortable, realizing that everyone was waiting for his answer.

  Madelaine sat leaning on one elbow, half slumped, thoughtfully stirring her coffee.

  “I’d say,” he began, “that the people who did it are new to the sort of occultism they’re dabbling in. There’s an amateurishness about the way the magic circle was drawn, the way the words were written out, the quality of the foreign script.” He cleared his throat. “I had the impression that it was all copied from a piece of paper.”

  “How do you mean?” Tooley seemed mildly startled.

  “I mean…as if they copied it out of a book, from a diagram or something… without really knowing what the words meant. But it’s so thorough, and the magic symbols involved aren’t commonly available in Western occultist texts. So I’d say that someone knowledgeable is directing an ignorant—uh—lackey. Points to a cult, or at least two people. Bad news. Especially considering that the words in the circle are part of a supplication for power and material gain. There’s a recession on. People out of work are desperate for money. A lot of people could get into it, if they’re dumb enough to believe it’ll work. Human sacrifice to the demon Ahriman, an aspect of Ahura Mazda—the two-faced Persian god. In certain Mazdaen cults, innocents were sacrificed to Ahriman to—ah—appease him, and for material gain. He was the personification of a lust for money and power. He—” Lanyard stopped, feeling his face redder. He took a sip of wine. “It seems,” he said, putting his glass down, “I’ve been pontificating…”

  “Not at all!” shouted Minder, pounding the table. The noise startled Lanyard. “Man’s got a right to pontificate about what he knows best! You should hear Jerry preach from the pulpit about stage sets!”

  It was an hour later that the dinner guests began to leave. A party of three departed, and that seemed to trigger an exodus—since there was a precedent, it was suddenly all right to go.

  As Lanyard helped Madelaine into her wrap—quite unnecessarily, but it was an excuse to touch her shoulders—Tooley stepped up to them and, fingering his coke spoon meaningfully, said softly, “Joey would be honored if you’d stay. The club’s about to open. A lot of interesting people will be coming soon. And you’re here already—you’ll get in for free.” He smiled. “You can meet a lot of influential people here…”

  “The club’s about to open?” Lanyard asked. “Hasn’t it been open all this time?”

  Madelaine looked at him incredulously. “Oh—I see! I thought you knew what the Valencia Hotel was—it’s sort of famous. It’s not a hotel anymore. It’s a swingers’ club.”

  Laughing in surprise, Lanyard turned to look at the room containing the wrestling mats. “And that’s…?”

  “An orgy room,” Madelaine said, nodding.

  Tooley smiled, shaking his head. “There’s no pressure here for you to do anything. Some special friends, an atmosphere of intimacy. There’s a heated pool, a hot tub, music, free refreshments…and entertainment.” He tapped his teeth with the coke spoon.

  Lanyard shrugged and looked at Madelaine. She shook her head fractionally.

  Lanyard said, “No, thanks, not tonight. Sounds lovely, though. But Madelaine has to get up early. I….” He shrugged again, embarrassed.

  “As you please.” Tooley’s smile was sardonic.

  Lanyard felt Tooley’s watching them as they left.

  In the cab, headed uptown, Madelaine said, “You know, it’s funny, but when I’m around Joey Minder…I don’t get any flashes. No psychic intrusion.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “I don’t know. But the effect lasts for a few hours after I’ve left him, too. Like he’s a drug insulating me from it. It’s crazy. That’s the main reason I see him, I guess It’s a relief. I don’t like having to sort through…” Her voice trailed off.

  “The main reason? Not because he’s a connection? A contact?” Lanyard immediately regretted having said it, when her eyes narrowed and she said:

  “So you figure I’m just another rung-climbing stage slut?”

  “No, I—I’m sorry. Didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that I have the feeling that what should be carved on the base of the Statue of Liberty shouldn’t be ‘Give me your tired, your poor…’ Instead it should say, ‘Use Your Contacts.’ That’s New York’s actual slogan.”

  She smiled. “Okay, back out of it, then.” Her eyes were large and soft in the half-light of the car’s interior. “I know you don’t take it seriously when I talk about ‘psychic intrusion.’ You think it’s a crock, so my real motives must be—oh, I don’t know. But si
nce you’re not writing for Visions, I suppose I can talk about it a little. Long as you don’t write anything down.”

  “About your gift? Don’t worry. I’m not here with you because I’m interested in that.”

  They pulled up in front of her apartment building. He paid the cabdriver and they got out of the cab. Then he stopped on the sidewalk, startled by a realization. “Oh…sorry. I got out with you just as if—well, I mean it’s presumptuous of me—”

  “Not at all, It seemed the natural thing to me too. Psychic phenomena of a different sort: two minds with but a single thought.”

  “My mind had nothing to do with it. Do you have any wine on hand?”

  SEVERAL GLASSES OF wine apiece. Two hours of conversation. And lots of eye contact.

  Then came the awkward silence. The usual obstacle.

  Lanyard toyed with various possible solutions, The first step, of course, would be the kiss. They had waited the requisite decent interval.

  But she was sitting on the opposite side of the kitchen table. “Hey,” she said, “how about helping me pick out a record?”

  He followed her to the next room.

  She didn’t have any records. She had old eight-tracks. She fumbled through them with her right hand, her left bringing her fourth glass of wine for another sip. It was red wine, and a few drops sloshed over the rim—she was tipsy, held the glass uncertainly. The wine ran from the corner of her mouth and down across her chin, like diluted blood. Her tongue darted to lick it clean, while her eyes focused on the tape deck. He didn’t care for most of her records—shrill folk-singing. But when the music began—Joni Mitchell—he was relaxed enough to like it. And it sounded better when he slipped his arms around her. She came to him easily. Her kisses were long and slow and wet and crackling with a note of desperation. His hard-on arrived instantly, making him feel ridiculous—his anxiety melting when she snugged her hips closer to him, moving languidly against his erection, welcoming it. Two more glasses of wine. Twenty minutes of whispering and nonverbal sounds. And lots of eye contact.