by James Short
“No,” Aquino said. “But it wouldn’t be a bad idea to include her.”
“I make the rules, Father. She’s not part of the game. And if she stays here, I’ll show her my other scars.”
Aquino sighed, “As you wish. April, could you please go to into the next room.”
April waited with the Corbers, who were now embarrassingly attentive and polite. The very nice couple kept offering her lukewarm tea and stale cookies every few minutes. The small talk was indeed very small and repetitive.
“How did you meet Father Perkins?” April finally found a question to ask.
“He has been a real guardian angel for the last four years,” Gary Corber said. “A most fortunate accident. A real accident. We were taking Dory to the hospital one night when our car stalled in the middle of a strange neighborhood. Dory was screaming. He literally came out of the darkness. I knew he was a priest because he was dressed in black like the way priests always dress. He determined that we were out of gas, so he said he’d take us in his car, which was just around the corner. He drove us to the hospital. He then insisted that they call a certain doctor in, which he said was the best in the area, and when the nurse wouldn’t, he called him himself and got him out of bed, though, later on, the doctor swore he had never met any Father Perkins. Then Father Perkins took an interest in Dory and visited her in the hospital several times. And he comes by at least every week just to see how she is doing. He always manages to make her laugh.”
On cue, a laugh came from Dory’s room.
“How did you become involved with the good Father Perkins?” Gary Corber asked.
“He is helping train me to counsel sick children,” April replied, uncomfortable with having to play along with Aquino’s fabrication.
“He is an excellent counselor,” Carol Corber said. “Dory is always so much better after he leaves. If there was ever anyone meant to do God’s work, it’s Father Perkins.”
Aquino emerged from Dory’s room. He had a short conversation with the Corbers on the importance of spiritual strength and belief in the wisdom of the divine.
“You can lie just as easily as you can tell the truth,” April accused Aquino as they left the mobile home park.
“More easily. Lies have a purpose, whereas what most people take as truth is merely description. That’s why I believe in God. Where else would lies with a good purpose come from?”
“I was taught that lying was the job of the devil, the Father of Lies?”
“No, the devil says we are so much and no more. That’s the only real lie because then we are not responsible for the good nor can we resist evil that is in us. We are as significant as a smudge of bacteria on the gears of a huge ticking clock. God gives us a life, tells us to imagine everything we can, attempt everything that we believe leads to good, and if it doesn’t work, we must will ourselves to try again.”
“You just like to say the opposite of what everybody thinks.” Not in the mood for any more philosophizing, April quickly asked, “By the way, did you talk to Doreen about the gold after I left?”
“No, we talked about chocolate sundaes.”
“What?”
“Dory has always loved sundaes. I tell her they are a vice and a mortal sin, and that makes her love them even more. Her new medication has taken away her sense of taste. That was one of the reasons she was in such a foul mood. I promised that that particular side effect would wear off in a few weeks, and I would then bring her the best chocolate sundae in Solvidado.”
“How do you know the side effect will wear off?” April challenged.
“I don’t, but I trust that with her keen imagination and the certitude of my belief, she will begin to taste chocolate again.”
“Didn’t the news she will die in six months also affect her mood?”
“They have been telling her she will soon die for years now, and we’ve had this same conversation six or seven times. Despite what she says, Dory wants to live. And she may. There is an eight percent survival rate for such an advanced stage of her type of cancer. Life has a logic of its own, which isn’t our logic. If death becomes certain,” Aquino’s voice choked, “I will do my best to make her believe that heaven is like enjoying a hot fudge sundae for eternity.”
“How can you possibly believe in heaven? You wouldn’t be doing what you do if you really believed.”
“Thieves depend on heaven as much as priests. Without it, there wouldn’t be anything worth stealing. By the way, I’m both. When the Corbers mistook me for a priest, I considered that a challenge and enrolled in a seminary.”
“You became a priest for Dory?”
“Yes, in part. I had been using the cover of a priest for so long, I began to suspect I might have a vocation. I’m still not certain whether I do or not. At least, it helps Dory to have a priest as a target to express her anger at God. Maybe that’s my role in the divine plan.”
April found the echoes of their footsteps on the deserted street slightly unnerving. Strangely, she wanted Ravela to reassure her there was no such thing as a divine plan.
The Voice from the Corner of the Room
“You know, it’s hard to talk to other ghosts, and we don’t get along because we all believe we know everything. That’s why we annoy the living. We’re lonely.” Jacinto and Philip were walking alongside a nearly dry creek fed by a huge pipe that apparently channeled winter floods around the cemetery. “I can see my problems don’t interest you so I’ll get on with the story.”
In the darkest hour of the night, Tomàs ghosted up the long road to the mansion. Dense patches of fog passed over the terrain, smothering vision, then suddenly clearing, showing the dark outline of the large tilting structure, the rusty blade of a moon and a faint scattering of stars. The frogs and crickets of Solvidado Creek were in full chorus. The hour was too late even for the gamblers and carousers. Dogs barked here and there; cats engaged in their usual nightly commerce, and the night watchman slept soundly in the anteroom of the brothel.
Tomàs ran through the reasons why he shouldn’t be where he was. Breaking into a house with many rooms and four living bodies to see a face, probably a repellant face didn’t make sense. Thievery should be confined to things that didn’t lose value once possessed, hard things like jewelry or money that could pass through a hundred hands and remain pure and inviolate. And if it turned out that Miss Boller possessed an unforgettable deformity, what then? In anticipation, Tomàs had made plans to travel to San Francisco, purge his body in a Turkish steam bath, eat a huge steak, empty a bottle of fine wine, then spend the evening with the most beautiful whore the city could offer. And if Miss Boller wore the veil only out of modesty or shyness or some yet undivined purpose, what was the gain? A secret worth not a cent. But the brain is more a rationalizing than a reasoning organ so his doubts were mere noise.
Tomàs entered through the large double-sided front doors, generously oiling the hinges first, and then picking the lock with great care. The bottom of the doors lightly scraped on the floor as he pushed them open just enough to slip in.
Treading lightly, as noiseless as vapor, Tomàs passed into a great hall, which was sparsely furnished. The air was cold and stale like the air of a closet or a cellar. Halfway into the great room, he discovered that in parts the wood of the floor had warped. With a less skilled burglar, the creaks of the uneven parquet would have advertised his presence like a bow on an untuned string. The room possessed one other unfortunate attribute. When the lock pick slipped out of his hand, the ting as it hit the hardwood surface and its echo, sounded to Tomàs as loud as the peal of a bell.
For the last week, Tomàs had observed the mansion at night, paying special attention to the hours lights appeared and disappeared in the windows in order to learn the routines of the occupants and deduce the bedroom of Miss Boller. He discerned very little in the way of a pattern except for a dull lamp lighting a window on the second floor until eleven or twelve o’clock. Now, as he glided down the hallway of the sec
ond story, he tried to match the outside pattern of windows to the doors he was passing. From the third door emanated the odors of lilac water, quinine, sherry, and burnt hair—the private scents of an older woman. He had never seen the late evening light in this window, so was it Miss Boller who burned the midnight oil?
He moved on, remembering it was the sixth window where the lamp burned. Sure enough, at the corresponding door, he heard a stirring inside. He listened carefully. The deep-throated breathing came from a more capacious chest than what Miss Boller possessed. The sleeper mumbled in a resonant baritone. Incredibly, the black servant slept on the same level and in as large a room as his mistress. Tomàs called to mind the words of Jacinto. Obviously, this man had more privilege and power in the household than was accorded a mere servant.
After Tomàs completed the circuit of the hallway, he was reasonably sure the other rooms were vacant. He chose a servant’s staircase—a cramped spiral in a turret where his footsteps might be muffled—to ascend to the next floor. He had observed intermittent light in a corner window of the third story. That would be the bedroom he would have chosen because it offered the best sunlight and the most advantageous views of the town, the bay, and the expansive sunsets. At the top of the staircase, a locked door blocked his progress. A simple matter for him— but why locked? To protect? To hide? To keep what was inside from coming out? He picked the lock. Ever so slightly his hand shook.
There were three doors, more widely spaced than the ones on the second level. After listening carefully at the first and second, he proceeded down the hall. The last door smelled warmer than the others by a fraction of a degree—smelled because, in Tomàs’s experience, the nostrils were most sensitive to variations of temperature. This must be where Miss Boller was sleeping. He made a mask of his handkerchief and slipped it over his face. Was this door also locked? Anticipating resistance, he turned the knob. He heard a click. Heart pounding with the mad clatter of a runaway horse on cobblestone, he pushed.
The room was smaller than he expected. Curtains were drawn back from a half-open window, which let in the cool moist night air. The blade of the moon emerged from a patch of fog a few seconds after he entered, and hung in the window, a sad ornament shedding a feeble light.
Tomàs prayed, “God, let me see her quickly”—a prayer that invited horror and impurity in equal measures.
He made out the shape of the bed and the suggestions of furnishings. The bedclothes were rumpled. Was that a head nestled in the pillows? He took three measured steps, his lungs unwilling to let in or let out air, intense curiosity and intense fear straining at chains. Tomàs took out a match, steeling himself for the horror—for he was now certain Miss Boller could be nothing less than a monster.
The match would wake her of course. She would open her eyes to a man in a black mask and scream. He would see what there was to be seen, and then out the window, he’d go. There were enough ledges and eaves and architectural conceits to provide footholds and handholds so that he would land on firm ground in a trice and be off before anyone was fully out of bed.
Tomàs bent down and dug his thumbnail into the tip of the phosphorous.
“What are you doing here?” He straightened as if electrified and turned around. Miss Boller stood at a doorway that led to an adjoining room. She crossed in front of him and sat down in a chair in the darkest corner. He strained his eyes and thought he could discern the outlines of the veil.
“There’s a chair to your right, sir. Sit down, please,” she said her tone betraying more anger than fear.
Tomàs obeyed.
One Man’s Paradise
April was nearly out of breath. Aquino had an annoying habit of walking too fast when he wasn’t telling the story, then stopping and waiting for her. She seriously considered asking Aquino to guide her back to the hotel when she caught up with him, but instead inquired, “You said Gaspar wasn’t friendly. Why are we going to visit him?”
“No, he’s not friendly, but we do have business to transact.”
“What sort of business?”
“I’m a thief and he’s a miser. What sort of business does a thief have with a miser?”
April shook her head as her companion set off at his rapid pace. Aquino seemed incapable of giving straight answers.
Sirens and the smell of ash suggested that they were still being hunted. Like an animal sniffing for a predator, Aquino would pause occasionally and cock his head this way and that way, determining the location of danger. He then would set off in a different direction. After zigzags and other evasive moves which seemed to take them to the four corners of Solvidado, they finally arrived at a small house. A worn path led to the front door. A dim light shone through ratty curtains in a dirty window.
April was mildly shocked when Aquino knocked for the first time that evening. In response, she heard a crumpling of papers, a scraping of a chair, and a slow shuffling of feet towards them. A gaunt man opened the door and wordlessly let them into a long room, the far end of which was lit by a twenty watt light bulb. The air had an oozy damp feeling and smelled of mildew and rot and some sort of insecticide.
Their host shuffled back to his chair and in stages settled his rickety body into it. Aquino took the only other chair at the card table, leaving April standing. Gaspar wasn’t easy to look at with his blotched, purplish skin, long yellow teeth, and nose that dangled over his upper lip. Keeping silent, his filmy yellow eyes with black dots at their centers regarded them—eyes that to April seemed possessed of an avaricious leer when they fixed on her.
Clearing the phlegm from his throat, Gaspar asked, “What is a woman doing here? She’s not part of our business.”
Aquino laid his black belly pack on the table between a plate holding a butterless toast and a glass half filled with pale purple juice. With an eye cocked at Gaspar, Aquino slowly unzipped the pack. He extracted a necklace of woven gold and waved it in front of the old man’s invigorated gaze. Then he spilled the rest of the jewelry onto the table.
Gaspar picked up each piece and examined it with exquisite care. He separated out a brooch where clusters of rubies surrounded diamonds like drops of fresh red blood and took the necklace out of Aquino’s hand. “These will do. One thousand.”
“Ten.”
“One, five.”
“Nine, five.”
“Six… plus the girl.” Gaspar’s eyes lighted with pleasure.
“What would you do with her? You are well past the age where you can derive any pleasure from a woman.” Aquino spoke as if he hadn’t absolutely dismissed the idea of including her with the other stolen goods.
“My business! My business!” Gaspar laughed shrilly.
“A woman is not like a piece of jewelry. If you lock her up like you do with all your valuables, she will become ugly.”
Gaspar’s eyes raked April again. “But I will be the last person to see her beautiful.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, she’s not for sale.” The hesitancy in Aquino’s voice disturbed April.
“Then why is she here? You always have a price for everything you bring.”
“Not her. Besides I didn’t bring her, she brought herself.”
“Don’t play word games with me. Let me show this girl where I would keep her. She might be willing.”
Aquino scratched his chin, considering. “April, do you want to see the paradise it took this man seven decades of unceasing dedication to create?”
“Is it a place where he will lock me up after you agree on my price?”
“You can easily overpower him. Besides, you weren’t planning to do much with the rest of your life anyway.”
“I was planning to avoid situations like this. What’s in his paradise?”
“Oh, our old Gaspar has been a most fabulous miser. Since the age of fifteen, he has undergone great personal deprivation; where others spend dollars on themselves, he has spent pennies in order to accumulate a fortune, a tangible fortune, a fortune you can run your hands t
hrough, which he stores in his basement. You’re right to be afraid. If I were you, I wouldn’t accept his invitation to see his paradise because he has already expressed a desire to possess you like he possesses his other things.”
“Gaspar, can you show me your paradise?” April regretted that she hadn’t changed much since the age of three when her parents could always rely on reverse psychology to get her to do what they wanted her to do.
“Yes, come to my paradise. Come and see the treasure where you could be the crown jewel.”
Blind Soiree
Jacinto stopped for a moment and seemed indecisive. “Don’t you think it’s interesting that when I look at a place, I not only see what it is, but what it has been from the beginning and what it will be in the future? Hard for you to comprehend, isn’t it? Hard for me, too, yet that’s what I see. I think we’ll next visit my son Gaspar. He takes offense at being haunted by his father, yet I think he’d miss me if I didn’t bother him from time to time. Besides, he can be very helpful in finding the treasure.”
“Gaspar doesn’t know where the treasure is so how can he help?” Philip asserted.
“The thing is to find the right strand of information. We all have our own stories, but we also know things that seem to be meaningless, yet are part of other stories. Gaspar has memories of events that appear to him irrelevant because it is like paragraph chosen at random out of a long book.”
“Then you’re going to take me to Gaspar’s house?” Philip realized this would be a decisive test whether Jacinto was a ghost or just a hallucination because there was no way he himself could know where that old gentleman lived. Maybe he was even a real person. Philip tried to pass his hand through Jacinto, who nimbly dodged and then gave an embarrassed laugh.
“Sorry, I don’t enjoy being reminded of my lack of substance. How would you like it if somebody stuck his hand through you and you felt nothing?”