mementoMori_-_Nook

by Preferred Customer

  Chapter 2

  “Where the carcass is, there shall be eagles gathered together.”

  —Matthew 24:28

  Tuesday, 7 a.m.

  The endless moaning of the wind caused bad dreams that intruded into the waking hours where they sat like shadows, darkening the mood, causing despair and depression.

  The next morning she did her best to shampoo the sleepless night away before meeting Esteban for breakfast. She was only partially successful and found herself actually reaching for her makeup bag to hide the dark circles her sleeplessness and restless dream had left her. There was no need to go about looking as exhausted as she felt and making Esteban feel guilty.

  The diner was just around the corner from her room and shared a wall with the manager’s office. It hadn’t been redecorated since Elvis was in the movies, and the smell of ancient hamburgers was embedded in the walls and seeped through the plaster until it could be smelled from the sidewalk.

  Juliet paused outside the small café and looked around at the parking lot and the strip mall across the street. The winds continued to blow, making Juliet think of the lost souls who had died in the burning desert. They moaned, those phantoms. The pyros would be out again, capering around their handiwork as they set more fires, and California would continue to burn.

  The winds grappled with things—leaves and trashcans, the plastic chairs by the swimming pool which were now piled against the wrought iron fence. They slammed open doors when people entered or exited buildings and they buffeted cars which protested with alarms that had screamed off and on all night. Thoughts evaporated as soon as they formed, snatched away by the hot breath from the east, leaving the mind dehydrated.

  There weren’t many people about and those who were lurching down the sidewalk looked a bit like dried-out zombies. Los Angeles had been built in a desert and it knew it, no matter how much the builders camouflaged it with swimming pools and palm trees.

  “Someone left the gates of Hell open again,” she muttered.

  Juliet gripped the door handle firmly and let herself inside. Esteban was easy to find since the diner wasn’t crowded. Nothing short of a physical wound would mar his handsome face, but his eyes were shadowed and she knew he hadn’t slept well. Wine and a night swim hadn’t been enough for him either.

  “You look like I feel,” she said with a small smile. “Want to borrow my makeup bag?”

  Esteban shook his head at her. Juliet was the only person who ever teased him. He poured more coffee from the pot on the table. When Esteban was in work mode he went beyond a caffeine habit and into a zone of consumption that pulverized sleep. Juliet preferred lingering tiredness to heart palpitations, but to each his own.

  They ordered from the limited menu that had pictures and were served promptly by a distracted waitress who had her nametag on upside down. The food looked nothing like the photos they had pointed at.

  “Nothing ventured,” Juliet muttered and picked up her sandwich.

  Another car alarm went off. Neither of them even looked up.

  “Are you supposed to sweat when you eat egg salad?” Juliet asked after her first bite, peering between the slices of bread and finding pepper flakes and a confetti of jalapenos hiding between the pieces of sourdough. Her fruit cup looked like it had been sprayed with Scotchgard. Probably she should have just ordered pancakes. Those were hard to mess up. Her digestive apparatus had not yet adjusted to the diner’s bill of fare and the cook’s habit of throwing pepper flakes into whatever he was making.

  Esteban was staring at his omelet, clearly puzzled about what it contained. The menu had said spinach, but that respectable vegetable had never come in that shade of pale green. He stabbed his fork into something that looked like jicama but probably wasn’t.

  “That looks like a parsnip.”

  “Parsnip?” He tasted it and grimaced. “It is like a wooden radish.”

  “Yeah, that would be parsnip.”

  She tried the strangely pink melon next and decided it also tasted like it had come out of a wood chipper. Dye had to have been applied to an extremely unripe piece of fruit.

  Juliet could understand why they hadn’t had to wrestle the other artists staying at the hotel for a table in the diner. There was also that unfortunate trick of the lighting that made the beef look purple, which had drawn a comment from one of the few other diners about how they now had Barney the Dinosaur being served at the breakfast buffet. The idea made her want to gag.

  “Breakfast, the most important meal of the day. So, I think we’re screwed,” she muttered and finally got a smile from Esteban. “Even the museum cafeteria is better.”

  “Next time we’ll know better. I owe you at least one good breakfast for all the help you have been. There is absolutely no way that I would make the deadline without you, Bella.”

  Juliet flapped a hand at him. Except for the damned wind, she had actually been having fun.

  “It’s all de nada. Though I’ll take you up on the breakfast.”

  Thanks to the museum’s location at the edge of nowhere and the barebones hotel that had only basic cable and rather threadbare towels, there was nothing to distract her from her mission except the museum exhibits themselves. They were certainly eye-catching and worthy of horrified study.

  Esteban was assembling his last puppet and hanging it in the mini theater he had constructed in eight pieces. Juliet finished steaming the costumes which had gotten wrinkled in transit though Rose and Elizabeth had packed them carefully. The theater was patterned after the San Francisco opera hall and the skeleton puppets were performing Turandot, or would be if Esteban could get the lights and music coordinated. The display case at twelve feet tall and twenty feet wide was a thing of beauty all by itself. Raphael had taught them how to apply gold leaf to the plaster medallions and pillars which they had done, but sparingly since the theater was supposed to look aged and abandoned, a sort of post-apocalyptic opera house. Juliet thought it the most magnificent of the exhibits, though the audience would also love the re-created Egyptian burial chamber on the first floor. The fascination with the pyramids and their mummies was as undying in adults as the love of dinosaurs was in children.

  “Break time,” she said, putting down the steamer and stretching. She used her sleeve to wipe the condensation from her face and tried to stifle a belch. Esteban grunted around a mouthful of screws and reached for a second screwdriver. He was deep in the coalmine where he did his mental work so she left him without further conversation.

  The Dodgers had a game that afternoon and since roasting in the sun while sucking down high-priced beer wasn’t an option with the museum opening only days away, the game was on the radio in the cafeteria and at the guard’s station. Bowman, who was manning the front desk alone, had on ear buds so Juliet assumed that he was listening too while everyone else worked like slaves in a Roman galley.

  Many museums and art galleries were bland with subtle architecture, deliberately blank and changeable so that exhibits could be swapped with minimal effort and remodeling. The Memento Mori Museum was less noncommittal. It had enough courage of its convictions to build some permanent displays—chiefly the Egyptian burial chamber.

  She hadn’t had a chance to look through the photo gallery and decided to take a moment to examine the Victorian memento mori portraits there. There was a small plaque on the wall near the arch that separated the gallery spaces.

  “The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.”

  —Socrates

  The photos were as grim as she had expected. The babies were the most disturbing all dressed in their christening gowns and surrounded by flowers, but there were whole families as well, wiped out in the great pandemic of 1918, all posed together for posterity in the last family photograph before they were buried in the cold earth under elaborate tombstones. There was a photograph of a girl of maybe six holding a dead baby. The girl had obvio
usly been ill when the picture was taken and she stared at Juliet with frightened and exhausted eyes that were bottomless wells of agony. No child should ever look like that. Too many still did.

  Juliet shuddered. She didn’t enjoy revisiting her own childhood. She couldn’t imagine how awful it had been for that little girl with her ruffled petticoat and tiny laced-up shoes and her predestined life, assuming she lived long enough to have one.

  Juliet forced herself to move on and bear witness for the dead.

  Though it was nothing that she would ever do, she could empathize with the pain that had driven the parents to create these last memorials. She could so easily imagine the shattering intimacy of bearing someone inside her body, giving that child life, and then watching them die because of some unstoppable disease.

  “They’re all so skinny,” Celeste said with a touch of envy. “Even the babies. Look at those cheekbones. How did they manage that?”

  Juliet had heard the clockmaker clatter up in her wooden heels but had tried to ignore her. She thought about pointing out that they were dead but figured the woman must know at least that much even with her catastrophe of a brain. And being a freelance artist, she had had to undergo sensitivity training.

  “I doubt they were ever preoccupied with the need for weight loss,” Juliet agreed without turning her head, wishing Celeste would go away. The woman’s sharp voice was aggravating an incipient headache. Juliet hoped she had some ibuprofen in her bag. She had been taking a lot of it lately.

  “No?” Celeste sounded doubtful, as though unable to believe that anyone wouldn’t be worried about being fat. Juliet wondered if it hurt to be that unaware, to have the effort of compassion be a labor just this side of childbirth.

  Knowing that anger wouldn’t fix anything and that half of her bad mood was because of lack of sleep, Juliet made herself answer calmly.

  “No, a lot of them lived on the edge of starvation and survived only by doing hard, physical labor. They had other things than fear of cellulite to trouble them. At least some of them did. Victorian ladies of the upper class actually had little to do and must have been bored out of their skulls.”

  “Hm.” Celeste turned and tapped away. Juliet wondered if she owned any leather or rubber soled shoes. After a while those wooden heels got on her very last nerve. And Juliet couldn’t see why Celeste was at the museum anyway. Her display was up and she wasn’t offering to assist anyone else. She just seemed to scamper about the exhibition hall getting on other people’s nerves.

  Juliet conceded that Celeste’s display was a good one. Her showpiece was a castle cuckoo clock, nearly six feet tall and about as wide. Death appeared out of the castle on the hour and beckoned the spectators to follow. His scythe looked very sharp and the skull face was very disturbing. The clock had a thirty thousand dollar price tag on it and Juliet would not be a bit surprised if she found a buyer for it. That would be nice for Celeste and also for Samuel Herrick since he got a percentage.

  There were lots of unscrupulous gallery owners who would cheat, bully, and generally take advantage of artists in the early days of their careers. Herrick was not of this breed. He preferred to live in the past but was able to function in the present when necessary. Fortunately he brought an old-fashioned sense of honor to his business dealings. Not that anyone would be able to take advantage of Esteban, but not all artists were as able to defend themselves from the business predators.

  Matt Meyers finally arrived during Juliet’s second cup of coffee and he began setting up a display of his hand-carved coffins and sarcophagi. She knew from a quick Google search that he was a brilliant wood worker and had made a name for himself in building custom furniture before branching out into the more bizarre but still very lucrative field of custom caskets.

  He was an older man with scarred hands, worn plaid shirt, and steel-toed work boots, but since he seemed capable and very strong and had his own helper for the lifting and hauling, Juliet refrained from offering assistance as he began assembling something that looked like an adult-size Erector set.

  The assistant was cadaverously thin and Juliet wondered if he was ever used to model the wares. Certainly all he would need was to close his eyes and breathe shallowly to pass for a corpse. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone, not even his boss.

  She would introduce herself later. Probably. She did allow herself a third cup of coffee and a discreet place on the sandstone stairs where she could watch him work before returning to a distracted Esteban. Not surprisingly, he was setting up his display next to the Spanish hearse and the gallery of death photos where Herrick had reasonably placed him.

  His coffins were elaborate, of varying sizes and woods, and carved with cherubs and flowers, some with fruit, and one with miniature gargoyles. The wood was waxed until it glowed. Juliet was fascinated both with the man and with his work. She would find out later what he charged for a fully carved coffin in cherry wood. Probably more than she would ever be willing to pay, but her neighbors back in the Wood would want to hear all about this, especially Hans Dillmeyer who also worked in wood.

  Just beyond Meyers and the hearse was the display of death masks. The museum had managed a loan of Rastrelli’s mask of Peter the Great and had a wonderful copy of L’Inconnue de la Seine or Resusci Anne, a beautiful French girl who had drowned in the Seine and whose face was put on the Rescue Annie CPR dolls used in cardiopulmonary resuscitation training. Juliet had done some reading about her. The drowned girl’s mask became a fixture in the homes of Bohemian artists after 1900. She also made her mark in literature by being the inspiration for The Worshipper of the Image and A Habit of Dying, and in numerous other works in German, Russian, French, and American literary stories and novels. Not bad for a sixteen-year-old suicide.

  The final exhibit in the northwest corner was one of anatomist Gunther Van Hagens’ plasticized bodies which had been cut in half. The poor thing was more naked than any nude she had ever seen and Juliet found it particularly depressing. It was also located in a “cold spot.” One of those places which for no explicable reason was always colder than the areas around it. Whether the exhibit itself or the unpleasant atmosphere, no one seemed to want to spend any time with the exhibit so it stood in solitude.

  So far, her favorite display was by a Japanese photographer who used enzymes to melt flesh from bones and then dyed the remaining bones and cartilage in shades of purple and blue. They looked like neon. He worked mainly with fish and these were pretty without being overly morbid or dismal.

  Out of coffee and knowing she would be needed to help adjust lights once the puppets were hung, Juliet abandoned her post on the stairs. She decided that she would stick her head outdoors and check on the wind. It had seemed to be dying back, but it sometimes did during the day only to return at full roar at night.

  And there was Geary, right on the steps at the front of the museum, standing in the shade and throwing down his cigarette butts where Jorge would have to clean them up. His lighter lit up his face, making it appear demonic, especially when he leered at her with his yellowed teeth. If the man had a better side he was keeping it to himself.

  Bitches.

  Juliet stepped around him without saying a word. She knew that she could defend herself if she ever had to, but the man made her flesh crawl. She would never ride alone in an elevator with him.

  The sun was a hammer blow and the wind brought tears to her eyes, but she walked around the building where she couldn’t smell Geary’s bitter cigarettes or feel his eyes boring into her back.

  “The dog days of summer,” she murmured, wondering which was worse, the death that had already happened and was immortalized inside the castle walls, or the death that was happening out there as the wildfires roared and the wind laughed and threw sparks into the air.

  Juliet walked to the edge of the parking lot and looked out into the dry wilderness. There were rocky upthrusts of weathered stone, spiny shrubs, and a dry wash in the distance that was choked with debris. A bu
zzard was circling what might have been a canine excavation. At the edge of the tarmac was a scorpion playing sentry. The warning wasn’t needed. Juliet had no intention of wandering into the wasteland which so obviously wanted to kill her.

  The stack of wood for the bonfire had grown and was now densely packed with dried grass. A provisional burn permit had been issued, but there was still a county-wide ban on outdoor fires which would remain in place until the east winds died.

  “Laissez les bons temps rouler.”

  “Juliet?” Esteban called, rounding the building. “What are you doing out here? Are you well, Bella?”

  “Perfectly,” she replied, forcing herself to smile. “I just wanted a little fresh air and Geary was polluting the portcullis with his cigarettes.”

  Esteban was understandably dubious but he didn’t question her statement. With all the fires in the nearby hills, the air was far from fresh.

  “I don’t know why but I have no desire to paint this place. Greece was just as dry and arid, the climate just as harsh. Italy too, but I loved them. Maybe it has something to do with magnetic fields and ley lines.”

  At Esteban’s concerned look she decided to quit talking. There wasn’t any good way to explain her antipathy for the place and the growing sensation that something was very wrong.

  “Perhaps it is time for lunch,” he said, though Juliet knew that he would rather keep working.

  “I’m fine,” she insisted, not trying to explain that she was feeling fey after looking at all those doomed families and beginning to fear that the angel of death was hovering over them. “Let’s finish getting those lights set up and run the program. Then we can reward ourselves with a margarita and an enormous plate of nachos.”