by Paul Monette
And Nick was wrong when he said once that Hey would rather talk to the parrot than to other people. Wrong because Hey and the parrot didn’t talk. Hey wasn’t positive what the parrot did, but for his part he found it relaxed him just to watch the bird preen and blink and sidle back and forth on his perch. It wasn’t that he watched for hours at a time, either, as if it were a fix for a glassy-eyed brand of meditation. He would amble over to the cage while he waited for water to boil, or he’d stop on his way out with the trash. A minute here and there, and it put him in touch with a world as full of form and endless movement as the ballet. The parrot suffered nothing. He wore his beauty in the open and had his million shivers and twitches to execute, and he never tired and never like Hey got so old he couldn’t do it without an agony in his joints.
But today Hey sat at the cage a little longer. He was worried and a little wounded about Rita telling Peter. In his mind, he’d turned it all over to her, so he supposed he ought to trust her with all the decisions. He hadn’t thought to question, for instance, where Rita was taking the loot, package by package, whenever she left the house. He could tell she knew art, and he was sure it would all get put on the proper pedestal. He would have had to admit that Peter knew art, too, but Peter was spoiled and never serious, and he certainly didn’t care a jot for Rusty Varda and the old days. Unlike Nick and Rita, who seemed to feel pangs that something rare had passed for good. Hey would have told Nick months ago, long before Rita, if he could have been sure Nick would keep it to himself. Yet he knew it wouldn’t be fair to demand such a vow of silence, since Nick and Peter were the deepest sort of lovers, who passed on to each other everything, no matter how trivial, to get as close as they could to being one. Or that, at least, is how it looked to Hey. And, in fact, Peter’s loving Nick so well was in Hey’s view what redeemed him, though not enough to make him worth entrusting with the hidden room in the hill. Peter might give it all out to his overdressed, cotton-headed clients. Even Nick might decide to keep it, if only to wrap it up for Peter. It had to go back to the people at large, and Hey was convinced that Rita alone would see it that way.
There was a rustling in the bushes below the kitchen garden, but the parrot got more upset about it than Hey. He stretched out his wings and said “Machu Picchu” very loud. All it was, Hey knew, was a loose dog. One evening at dusk a deer had emerged from down the hill while Hey was cooking, and they had spent a startled moment staring eye to eye before the deer leaped up the hill and away behind the house. People said there were still coyotes in the hills, and a Bel-Air woman, a famous drunk, had once reported to the police a pack of raccoons, a hundred or more, silently crossing her lawn. But that was all at night. At this time of day, it was just a dog. And then the crackling of branches stopped, as if the animal was sniffing out a smell at his feet. Hey forgot about it till he heard the rustle start up again.
One thing didn’t seem to make any more sense with Hey than Rita: How could you keep the flame alive for Rusty Varda if you were at the same time taking apart the room where he’d planned to make his last stand, to keep his own fires going beyond the grave? Hey didn’t find the two goals incompatible, and Rita would have agreed. They applauded Rusty Varda’s extravagant idea, and they both felt their hearts fill to bursting when they lit a candle to go explore it. Rita learned to dream of it in Gothic novels, where brave women came upon ghosts. Hey learned it dancing in the corps de ballet, in a ring around a princess. But they both believed, though they loved the daring of the plan, that it was time to recycle the art and get it back in currency, so as to tempt more visionaries to shoot the moon. Rita and Hey were very democratic. It was like believing that every man can be President. Now let someone try to break Varda’s record, Hey would have liked to announce when they gave the public back its paintings and such. He put no more credence than Rita in the notion that Varda and Frances Dean would actually meet when they were dust and ashes. It was a hero’s project, the secret room, and it made his life awesome. But now it was over.
This time the noise in the bushes came up like crashing, as if whatever it was couldn’t get any purchase on the steep part of the hill below. Hey got up from his stool, very annoyed, and went across the shady kitchen terrace to the dense bushes that fenced it in. Why didn’t the dog go find a nice garbage pail at the next house down? If he had to call the Bel-Air Patrol to come and catch it, they’d track dirt all through the house getting it out. “Go home!” Hey shouted. He bent down and picked up a handful of gravel and threw it into the foliage. It made a moment’s noise like a hard rain, and the rustling stopped. He scooped up more gravel and did it again. And again. He figured he must have scared the animal silly, and it wouldn’t move a muscle till he went away, so he turned around and started toward the kitchen door. It was one of those ordinary moments just before a terrible accident which a man would do anything to retrieve in all its ordinariness. Because suddenly the bushes broke open with a smash like a car going through. He didn’t even have time to turn to face it. He saw the parrot go crazy in the cage and bang against the bars, and then the butt of the gun came down, square on the back of his head.
He was out only five minutes, but time did not go easy on him. He felt as if he’d fled into yet another life when he opened his eyes to the scald of the pain. The gradual, gradual calm that had finally come over him during the years since Varda’s death seemed to have vanished entirely. And when the first thing he saw through the fog was Sam’s face looming grimly over him, he was seized with the certainty that things would never be good again. And that was before he remembered who it was. He tried to talk to plead for time, for anything to stop the throbbing, but he choked on his own horror and gasped and gasped. And when, a moment later, he really saw Sam as Sam, he fell through a time warp. He thought it must be the very day Varda died, but with a slight change in the script—now Sam was killing him, too, on the way out. But he wasn’t going to be permitted the luxury of amnesia. Sam pulled him to his feet and swung him over so that he sat down heavily on the stool.
“Come on, come on,” Sam said impatiently. “You’re not dead yet.”
Hey could hear the parrot flying against the sides of the cage, making an awful racket. Sam held his arm so tightly it was going numb, but Hey turned around on the stool and forced him to let go as he brought his own hands up to the cage. He held them against the bars, palms open, and felt the wings rush against them and then stop. Hey didn’t take his hands away until the parrot made his way back to the perch and settled his wings and shook the disheveled feathers on his head and neck into place again. Then he couldn’t put it off any longer. It was here and now and not ten years ago at all, and even worse, it wasn’t just a terrible dream. He had to go forward and live through this at a time when he was much better at remembering and imagining. He turned full-face to Sam and looked out coldly, only now opening his eyes wide and not at all flinching when the light sharpened the pain in his head. He determined not to be afraid, no matter what. It all fell to him because it was all his fault.
“Now we’re going to play a little game,” Sam said, gripping his arm again and pulling him across the kitchen. The dizziness was bad. Hey hung his head loose and let Sam propel him, and he noticed the butt of the gun protruding out of the waistband of Sam’s jeans, right above the belt buckle. The barrel of the gun pointed insolently into the crotch, like a symbol that had gone too far. He’d come a long way in ten years, Hey thought bitterly. A simple killing with his bare hands must have begun to seem amateur. So by the time they’d gone through the living room to the opium bed, Hey knew he couldn’t save them all by breaking loose and running away on a dancer’s legs. His only advantage was that he knew Crook House better than Sam. That was the one way out, and right away he started to wait for it.
“What does it mean?” Sam asked him, nodding at the trail leading out of the room.
“It’s just some presents they’re giving each other,” he said. Clever Rita, he thought, to try to loosen Peter up for the
big transition into the secret room, to make it a game so he wouldn’t get greedy. Even Sam seemed to know it was child’s play. “Take it all and go,” Hey said evenly. “Please. Tie me up. None of them will be home to find me till after six.”
“Oh, really? You’re the only one here today, is that it?” He kicked the pile of coins and they landed silently all over the rug. Hey couldn’t seem to stop his getting mad. Sam tripped him and pushed him down roughly on his hands and knees. “Follow it, baby,” Sam said. “See where it goes.” And Hey just went ahead and did it. The more he held back, the more he’d get hit. He crawled over the buckle and the watch and Wyatt Earp’s horn, and he paused only when he got to the hallway, to wait and hope that Sam had had enough.
“Can’t you figure it out?” Sam asked. “Let me show you.” And he came around behind Hey and kicked the telescope hard. It flew apart, the pieces landing heavily on the floor, the string of pearls sailing ten feet to burst against the far wall. The pearls rained down like hail. “Can’t you see where this is all going?” Sam demanded, his voice getting more and more pitiless. He couldn’t do a thing to the totem pole, but he picked up the Indian figure and smashed it down and cracked it. Now he was right outside Rita’s door. The length of the hallway separated the two of them, and Hey sat back on his haunches and tried to figure how much time he had if he leapt up now and ran. Not enough, of course, and besides, he couldn’t leave Peter and Rita now that the nightmare had started to net them in, too.
“What do you want to bet me this is Rita’s room?” Sam said, as if it was all too easy. “And you know what I noticed while you were taking your nap out back? This door’s locked from the inside.”
He paused to let it sink in:There was no hope. Did I want to bring this down on all of us? Hey wondered. But being hurt had made him too hard on himself. Until now, he’d have said he was the only one in danger. The reason he blamed himself was that he knew it was Sam a month ago, when he glanced up from the vacuum cleaner and nearly screamed in fear. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t who he thought, and then that night, when Peter was missing, he decided Sam had probably taken him for ransom. Still, he waited to say so till he was sure, trying to wish it away. And then, when it wasn’t true and turned out to be only a snakebite, he was twice as relieved as the others. He decided he must have made a mistake when he’d recognized Sam, and he’d forced it out of his mind from then on. There was too much else going on, anyway, what with Linda and Rita and waiting hand and foot on the convalescent painter in the upstairs bedroom. Hey knew the nature of fate too well. It didn’t pile on the really heart-stopping things, like the return of Sam, until one got the feeling one was coasting along on the flats with a view that went all the way to the horizon. Fate had a sense of occasion.
Sam lifted the Cézanne from the picture hook Rita had lightly tapped into the door. He held it in one hand and pounded with his other fist three or four times like a punching bag. Then he stopped and listened, and when there was nothing, he turned to Hey and grinned. He was having a wonderful time. “She doesn’t seem to understand how bad it is, does she? Why doesn’t she answer the door? Do you think she’s mad at us?”
“She took a sleeping pill,” Hey said, persisting in lie after lie, because all he needed was for one to take hold. “The doctor says she has to rest.”
“Get over here,” Sam ordered, and Hey stood up and came to him meekly, waiting for his move. “We’ll both knock. I can make enough noise to get through a Seconal.” He dropped the Cézanne on the floor, where it landed face up and the glass cracked. Then the two of them banged and hammered the door, four fists, and Sam said, “Louder. Call her.” Hey sang out, “Rita! Rita!” in the saddest voice imaginable. If she heard him, she could never have jumped to the conclusion that it was a fire or a landslide. It had to be something to sorrow over. Hey was as furious as Sam. He beat at the door and cried out, and it felt just fine for a while, to bring it all up from his knotted stomach and his shorted nerves like an Indian crouched at a war drum. But then he was seized with exhaustion. He slumped against the door frame, and Sam stopped too, to goad him on. He was breathing deeply. He’d worked himself into a sweat, and he stood over Hey like a player in the middle of a winning game. Hey couldn’t breathe at all. He shrank back, terrified Sam would punish him into going on. And then they heard Peter’s voice.
“Hey? What’s wrong?” He was right on the other side of the door. “Are you still there? Rita, hurry!” Hey knew, as he met Sam’s eyes, that Rita was going down the row of windows, undoing the locks. Sam put out one hand against Hey’s chest and pinned him there, the pressure so intense Hey couldn’t have shouted again, even if it would have helped. Sam’s face was wild with triumph, and Hey tried to tell himself it was a good sign. We can’t get him mad, he thought. And then, as he heard the lock release on the door, just as they flung it open, he looked away from Sam down at the floor, as if he was ashamed. The heel of Sam’s boot was on the water-color. Hey couldn’t see the damages clearly, because everything started to happen, but it registered in his mind that it was ruined.
“He said you were asleep,” Sam called to Rita over Peter’s shoulder as she hurried toward them along the windows. He ignored Peter as if he weren’t there. “Maybe you were in bed but wide awake, huh?”
“What do you want?” she asked him roughly, still a little blinded by the light through the windows. “If you’re here to see Nick, you wait in his room. The rest of us have some rights in this house.”
“It’s not Nick, Rita,” Peter said quietly. “That’s all over.” He and Rita had never revealed to each other that they’d seen Sam, and they both saw now how loyal they’d been to Nick. Rita still didn’t understand how bad it was. She assumed Nick and Sam were still fighting their way out of a sloppy affair, and she thought Sam had gone over to bullying Hey and Peter and her in order to make trouble for Nick. As if any of them would abandon the others for anything now. The angrier she got, Rita figured, the more she was coming to Nick’s rescue. But when she looked at Peter and Hey for support, ready to drive him out of the house bodily if she had to, both of them were staring at the ground. She looked down. She nearly let out a wail of pain, seeing the litter of all her beautiful things.
“He’s right,” Sam said to Rita. “Nick has nothing to do with this.” He still held Hey by the front of his shirt, and he still didn’t look at Peter. “You have something that belongs to me. Go get it.”
“They don’t know anything about it,” Hey said fiercely. “Lock them up somewhere, and I’ll take you in. I’m the only one who can do it.”
Instead of answering, Sam pulled him up close, grinned again an inch from his face, and pushed him through the door into Rita’s room, scattering the others out of the way. He closed the door and stood there, taking the measure of the room while the three of them grouped at the foot of the bed. Rita couldn’t believe it. It must have been Nick who told Sam, but who told Hey? Did Hey know all along? The walls were breaking down everywhere, and Rita’s first reaction wasn’t fear for the Rembrandt or even for the trusty little band of eccentrics in Crook House. The fears would start attacking in a minute, but just now she couldn’t bear it that she’d lost control of the project. She would have let in everyone in the end. But not yet. Now, she thought, she would no doubt begin to stare into mirrors again, instead of walking through them.
“Tell them who I am,” Sam said, but looking at no one in particular, as if he was asking the house itself. All three of his present victims would have had a different answer, but Hey was first. His was the worst news, and he spit it out like an accusation.
“This is the punk who killed Varda,” he said. And Rita and Peter looked at each other questioningly, wondering what he meant. Sam had only one connection to them, and that was Nick. Hey was rattled, they thought. He was mixing it up with another life.
But Sam seemed to get the idea, and his face stretched tight as he spoke. “How did I do that?” he asked evenly, quite as if he coul
dn’t recall.
“You choked him in his own bed.”
“Is that right?” There was no defining the comic quality in his voice, but as things got less and less funny, he seemed to bristle with little laughs. “Now, as I remember it, he was sucking me off at the time.” And he seemed to plead for reason from Peter and Rita, who flanked Hey like henchmen. “He thinks I don’t understand the difference between killing and sex. And I always know sex when I see it. I’ve never yet mistaken it for anything else.” He paused as if he might go on talking for hours, but then thought better of it. Still giddy, he took the gun from his pants at last. Then he waved them all across the room and into the closet. He didn’t seem to know exactly what he was looking for, but he’d apparently decided it wasn’t out here.
Somehow, Rita thought, there wasn’t a shred of suspense left in the act of opening up. For a brief moment, the four of them stood in the closet like the crew on a rocket ship in a comic strip, ready to man their stations, all systems go. But Rita closed the door and pressed the button without any flair, like someone ringing for an elevator high up in an office building. And when the door went open, the three of them watched Sam get startled, three against one. It diluted the quickened energy of having someone new to show it to, and, anyway, with Sam they were inwardly vowing to play it down. Peter and Rita and Hey had imagined the secret room so differently one from another that they were bound to be fighting for separate corners of it, covering separate gates to its deepest secrets. In that, too, it was three on one.
Rita lit the candles and handed one to Peter. She’d been such a stickler for authenticity that she’d never used any more light than Varda used himself. She’d started out the first week with what probably were the stubs of the candles Varda had taken in with him on his last inspection. Since then, she’d gone through a dozen more. Sam, she thought, would have to find the miner’s lamp on his own, just as she did. She and Peter entered first and stood like acolytes while Hey and then Sam followed them in. Sam made no protest when Hey sat down on a limestone capital from Crete. He took Peter’s candle away from him and looked around guardedly, candle in one hand, gun in the other, trying not to show what he felt. He was annoyed at being overwhelmed by the clicking open of the mirror. He had the sense he’d let them see that he was weak. He was worried for their sake, because he wasn’t weak at all and didn’t want them thinking they could grab the upper hand. They’d get hurt.