by James Short
“My name is Aquino, and in case you had any doubts, I am a burglar.”
“My last scream was only a warm-up…”
“While I was working in the room next door, I couldn’t help overhearing your argument with your husband,” he went on, persisting in ignoring her threat.
April reddened. Anger now definitely had the upper hand over fear. “I’ll give you to the count of five and then…”
“Calling the front desk would be quicker,” Aquino suggested. “But why would you care about my intentions since you appear to be on the verge of killing yourself anyway?”
“I was just counting out my pills.” April tried to disappear into the bedclothes.
“Counting out pills? That is certainly an odd way for a bride to pass an evening.”
“How I pass my evening is none of your damn business!” Although April meant to sound angry, her voice came out teary.
“With the materials you have at hand, hanging yourself from the light fixture would be the surest way. I could show you the best knot for the job.”
“Do you make a hobby of hanging people?”
Aquino scratched his nose as if considering a reply. “You know, even though you perhaps made a poor choice of husbands, I don’t see why that would necessarily lead you to take your own life. Although it isn’t my policy to recommend ending a marriage, divorce or annulment are usually better alternatives than suicide. Even homicide may be justifiable in extreme cases, and more practical. You might be acquitted and have his money to boot.”
“None of this is your business. Steal what you need to steal, then get out,” April demanded.
“I’m not here to steal. No offense, but your jewelry is strictly third rate—flashy, tawdry paste and lower-end department store baubles. I’d be embarrassed to fence it. I’m here because you intrigue me.”
April would have attacked him if that hadn’t meant letting go of her covers. With the hand not clenching the bedspread, she jerked the receiver off the hook. “I’m taking your advice and calling the front desk. Don’t try to stop me!”
“Go ahead. I advise you to ask for Abdul. He is the most discreet. But if you make that call, you’ll miss hearing my offer.”
“What can you possibly offer me?” Her finger hovered over the button labeled front desk as the dial tone seemed to increase in volume.
“If you have the courage and imagination, I offer you a different life for one night—this night.” Aquino regarded her steadily as he spoke. “And I can promise your experience will turn out better than a botched suicide attempt. Even if you don’t end up in ER with a stomach pump tube down your throat, tomorrow morning you’ll wake up with a leaden clapper clanging inside your head and a vile beast trying to claw its way out of your gut.”
April made a sweeping gesture with the hand holding the receiver knocking the pills on the night table into the open drawer. “You’re the most absurd man I’ve ever met.”
“Perhaps, however absurdity isn’t cruelty which suicide on your honeymoon would be to your husband whose major fault seems to be that he isn’t quite good enough.”
“I would be freeing him.” April didn’t know whether she was flushing with guilt, shame or embarrassment at the mental image of Philip discovering her dead.
Aquino took a step forward, his quizzical nose seeming to bend as he neared her. “It isn’t true what the little demon, that mean little vixen inside your head, keeps telling you. Life is worth it.”
The receiver’s dial tone was beginning to annoy April. She hung up. “Okay, change my mind. I’ll give you five minutes.”
“Five minutes! You know I can disarm an alarm, tranquilize a guard dog, climb three stories, remove a windowpane, and crack a safe in less time. Convincing a woman against her will is much more complicated and time-consuming. I at least need seven hours.”
“For what? Helping you steal something? Does stealing make life worth the effort? If that is so, then this world is a sadder and sicker place than I thought.” Lacking a weapon, April whetted the sarcastic edge in her voice.
Aquino smiled, again revealing his mouthful of filed teeth, and moved near enough to touch her. April realized with regret that he could now intercept an attempt to use the phone. He spoke softly and with a peculiar intensity. “No stealing, although we may have to commit a few other crimes which won’t harm a soul. You need not be afraid. If you decline my offer, I’ll slip away. In a day or two, if you haven’t accidentally successfully committed suicide, you’ll persuade yourself I was probably a character in a strange dream. If you accept my offer, you can go along for as long as you are interested in what we are about.”
“So what is your offer?” April asked.
“I want you to guide me into the thoughts of a young woman.”
“You already claim to know what I’m thinking.”
“What is going on in your head is obvious. What I’m after is a little more challenging. I want you to enter into the mind of a young woman who is not you—hear with her ears, see with her eyes, think with her brain, feel with her heart. Great stress, intense emotion such as you were experiencing removes us from ourselves and opens us up to becoming something new and different.”
“It sounds like you want me to be possessed?’
“In a manner of speaking, yes, but not by demons.”
“Possessed by what then?”
“Penelope Boller.”
“This is weird beyond belief. You want me to pretend to be a woman who died—”
“—Committed suicide like you were just considering.”
“—Over a hundred years ago. For God’s sake, why?”
“Gold! That’s why. That’s what I get out of it. If the rumors are true, perhaps as much as one thousand lovely gold coins, their worth today, conservatively, five million dollars. And also,” Aquino hesitated, “a gift for a friend.”
He went on hurriedly before April could formulate a further objection: “I’ve come to the conclusion our treasure hunters are mistaken in believing that Thomas Deering hid the gold. Thomas passed himself off as mining engineer. He was a well-known and well-liked public man. People took notice of his comings and goings. Within a month of his death, every place anyone ever remembered seeing him was torn down or dug up. So I asked myself, how would I have hidden the gold if I were him? Both of us being thieves, we would think alike. It immediately occurred to me that I might give the task to a person not so public, and who has her own private places to hide valuable things.”
A sudden spasm of shivering overcame April.
Aquino waited until it passed and then continued: “That leads us to the conundrum of Penelope. Who was she? The public records go no further in enlightening us than beyond her being the sole child of the wealthy widow Madeleine Boller. Aside from a notice of her birth in the San Francisco Weekly Herald and an entry in the baptismal register of Solvidado’s Episcopalian Church of the Epiphany, she is a shadow. Penelope was educated privately. She didn’t seem to have had close friends. There is no record of her participating in civic events. In fact, she wore a veil in public. Being an unusually secretive, literally invisible young woman, Penelope was the perfect person to conceal the treasure. Your job will be to put yourself into her place, into her mind and tell me what she did with the gold.”
“God, you’re such a fool. As if the gold ever existed. Why do you think nobody has found it yet? Even if it did exist once, chances are someone else took it and kept quiet. I’d bet my life there is no treasure.”
“Bet your life? That’s an odd phrase coming from you. You might consider I have to be something of an expert on treasures in order to make a decent living. Nevertheless, to answer your objections: the gold’s existence is a fact, verified by witnesses, contemporary newspaper articles, and investigations done by a federal marshal and the detectives of the Southern Pacific Railroad which always seemed to believe that any large sum of money loose in California must belong to them. And it isn’t true the treasure
completely vanished. Thomas and Penelope carried part of it with them when they fled, so a few gold coins spilled during the chase have been recovered. As for somebody secretly making off with the gold and not letting on: what treasure hunter who has suffered for years the mockery that he knows is going on behind his back could resist proving he was right after all?”
“Even if what you’re saying is true, I still don’t see how I can help. I don’t have any imagination.”
“Oh, I disagree. You have immense powers of imagination. You’re just unable to remove yourself from the starring role in it. So this is my proposal: I want you to become Penelope tonight. I will supply the information I have gathered about her from a private source which will help you begin. We may need a small miracle—only a small one—before you will be able to see with her eyes, hear with her ears, and think with her thoughts.”
“And when I become this dead girl who has absolutely nothing in common with me, I will then lead you to a pot of gold? Now, how exactly are we going to accomplish this? A séance? Oh, God, you’re so full of crap. We can never enter into anyone else’s life. We have only our own eyes. Only our own ears. We can’t think with somebody else’s mind. We are stuck with ours. We are alone. We are alone. We are alone—walking dead-ends, nothing more. Besides, what could I possibly gain from trying to think like the dimwitted girlfriend of a stupid criminal?”
“For one thing, you’d learn you aren’t alone.”
“I don’t believe in the psychic stuff.”
“Neither do I, but I do believe in insight. You won’t be the first person to stretch her mind to visit the past.”
April gave Aquino her hardest stare. “You still haven’t told me how you propose to make me into her? A hundred and twenty years and completely different life experiences separate us. We couldn’t possibly share anything in common.”
“Really? We’ll start with coincidences. Penelope died on April 23, the same day as your birthday.”
“How can you know that?”
Aquino picked up from the carpet the open wallet that had spilled out of April’s purse which showed her driver’s license. “Another coincidence: you’re standing right now exactly where the old Boller mansion used to be and, in fact, the space this particular room occupies corresponds most nearly to the space where Penelope’s bedroom once was. Coincidences suggest connections, one might say. What you don’t have in common is also significant. You are trying to end your life because you feel empty and passionless. Penelope ended her life in a blaze of passion. Take on her passion just this evening, breathe it in, allow it to flow through your veins and fill you. Just tonight. Will you give it a chance?”
“No! Now, will you go?”
“As you wish, but first let me help you with your suicide. I so hate unnecessary suffering. Let’s see… The lamp cord is long enough.” He unplugged the lamp, took out a small knife and cut off most of the cord. “We should test the strength of the fixture.” He stood on a chair and yanked on the imitation crystal chandelier. “You weigh about 128 pounds. This fixture seems to be bolted into the ceiling beams. If you stand on a chair and jump and fall one foot, the initial stress on the fixture will be approximately 250 pounds. Yes, it will work.” As if he were an expert at such things as hangman’s nooses, Aquino made a complicated series of knots and loops in the cord.
“You realize you could be charged with murder,” April said, not liking the look of the lamp-cord noose.
Aquino shrugged. “How would they ever find out? Okay, this will do. Hmm… I’m still worried about the drop. Oh, well, if the drop isn’t enough to snap your neck, you’ll just have to be brave. You can stand anything for ten minutes, can’t you?”
“I’ve stood your company for that long,” April whispered.
“True, you have. After ten minutes it should be all over. I must warn you that the last few moments will be challenging. Your hands will claw at the cord around your neck; you’ll kick wildly and attempt to scream. And you won’t be looking your best with a blue face, a blue swollen tongue bulging out of your mouth, and the contents of your bladder and bowels on the floor beneath you. Of course, you do have the option of coming with me. Since the human heart is inextricable from where it has been, I’ll show you Penelope’s places. Then we’ll visit some very old men who were acquainted with many of the people involved.”
“And if I choose to jump off a cliff?” April intended sarcasm, but the idea originally suggested by Ravela did possess some merit.
“I’ll say a prayer for your soul and step aside. Falling a hundred feet is a more effective way of suicide than swallowing pills or hanging yourself from a light fixture. We’ll arrive at the cliff in the early morning. It shouldn’t be difficult to imagine at that hour what the witnesses saw in the first light when they looked down: the shattered pieces of the wagon, the bloody bodies in the tide pools. You can still see the scrapes the horse’s hooves made on the rocks before they went over.”
“Don’t try to scare me,” April said. “I know what death looks like. My grandfather owned a funeral parlor.”
Aquino’s eyes hardened into two little black stones. April sensed that he would enjoy watching her fling herself off the cliff. “At least, if you plan to do away with yourself, you should end your life boldly—not this self-pitying overdose in secret. People will think you were too much of a coward to live. No, give life one more night. Feel the breeze on your skin. Smell and taste the air. Listen to the ocean. Say farewell to all of those things that never hurt you, then step off the cliff and five seconds later, all the things that have hurt you won’t matter.”
Although she couldn’t figure out exactly why, April felt obliged to this strange man who took an interest in her, although not enough to take up his offer. Then the realization he could very easily call the management of the hotel and inform them of her intentions tipped the scale. Once on the edge of the cliff, it would be nearly impossible to prevent her from jumping. A minor disadvantage was leaving a note for Philip to make sure he didn’t feel too bad. She decided to scribble something on the way that Aquino could post.
“What will you do if I change my mind?” April asked.
“I’ll deliver you back here, virgo intacta.”
“What?”
“Safely. Come with me, my darling.”
“I have to get dressed.”
“Quickly.”
“Please turn your back while I put on my clothes.”
“Hurry. There’s much to do.”
He turned. April didn’t trust him, so when she let the cover fall and hopped out of bed, she went for the first available article of clothing—a loose sundress. Modesty satisfied, April glanced around for underwear. Seeing none within arm’s reach, she decided against it and slipped on sandals. She relished the vaguely stimulating texture of the thin fabric against her bare skin. It gave her a sense of freedom as if she had just removed a chastity belt.
“Let’s go.” April started for the door.
“No, that won’t do, Ms. Ives. A new bride and a man, other than her husband dressed in black, can’t saunter across a hotel lobby without attracting attention. We need to leave the same way I came in—off the balcony.”
Descending the Lattice, or a Bad Idea Made Worse
April watched as Aquino scampered down the trellis making no more noise in the latticework than a bird. This, she realized, was her last chance to back out.
“Your turn now,” he called up softly from the lawn.
April yearned to tell him that she had decided against his crazy enterprise. Both logic and the instinct of self-preservation urged her to declare: “Thank you very much for the generous offer, Mr. Burglar, however, I have another engagement I can’t possibly break. Maybe I’ll be more open to your interesting idea another time in another life.” But April was tired of changing her mind, and a little afraid of being left alone in the room.
With considerably less agility than Aquino, she straddled the balcony ledge, reached
her long arm out to its full extent, groped for and grasped the splintery lattice wood entwined with flowering vines. She slowly edged herself off, lodging first the left foot then the right on what seemed a wooden support only slightly thicker than a toothpick. She found herself clinging to the trellis for dear life. With growing desperation, she realized that what had been child’s play to Aquino was going to be a laborious effort for her.
One flimsy rung at a time, her whole body trembling with the strain, April carefully lowered herself down. She didn’t become aware her dress had snagged until she felt her bare bottom waggling in the fresh air. Willing to settle for a torn dress, April tugged, but the no-iron polyester blend fabric wouldn’t rip, and she lacked the freedom of movement to pull harder. She tried to climb back up working on the theory that if she exactly duplicated her movements, she could free the dress. That didn’t succeed either, and the dress remained securely fixed as if snagged by a fishing hook.
“Leave it,” Aquino whispered harshly.
“Damn you!” April swore, her voice frighteningly amplified in the night air. She climbed down until her dress was bunched up around her armpits, then wriggled out an arm, her head, and her other arm. Calling on unsuspected reserves of strength, she began to pull herself back up towards the balcony fifteen vertical feet above her. The muscles in her shoulders began to burn and spasm. She panted wildly as she made slow progress. One rung away from the balcony and safety, April heard a loud crack and with horror realized the trellis was disengaging from the wall.
Her second descent was rapid—it seemed she was pulling the latticework with her as she scrambled down. Forced to jump the last six feet, she just managed to roll out from under the crashing edifice of wood and foliage. Her dress and her sandals, however, lay beneath a heap of vines and broken wood. A soft breeze reminded her that those had been her only articles of clothing.
Aquino picked April up by her elbow. “This way!” He ordered.