by Peter Straub
“Read books. Work on the big jigsaw puzzle. Sit in the pretty garden. Talk to Pargeeta. Have my evaluations and my sessions and my group work. Clean up. Think about things. Remember things. Really remember, like going back to back then. And lots of times, I was so afraid, I had to stay away from the dogs.” He pointed at me. “And I read his book, The Agents of Darkness. He got it all wrong.”
“I know. He couldn’t help it.”
“It’s only natural to be afraid. I was scared for a long, long time.”
“Don was, too,” I said, breaking into this duet.
“But they’re like traffic cops.”
“Or crossing guards,” Lee said. “They’re not supposed to hurt us.”
Dr. Feld stepped forward and rested a hand on the same shoulder where Eel had placed hers. “This is all very interesting, but right now I have no idea what anyone is talking about. None at all. Dogs are like crossing guards? Crossing guards never hurt anybody.”
“They’re not supposed to,” said Hootie, darkly.
Feld swung his body toward Hootie and leaned forward. “Howard, don’t forget our meeting at three. At that time, we can go into dogs and traffic cops and crossing guards as much as you like.”
During the period of Hootie’s residence in Des Plains, Donald Olson began to put into effect the plans he had described in Madison. He printed up cards that offered his services as an experienced teacher of higher psychic truths who had just come off numerous years on the road and wished to settle down in Chicago with a small number of serious students. Long-term commitments preferred, reasonable rates. After Lee Truax had come back to the house on Cedar Street, Don tactfully withdrew into his quarters, which amounted to a small guest suite that lacked only a private entrance to be truly self-contained. He took most of his meals alone and acquired the cell phone with the number he printed on his cards. Don and the Eel got along extremely well, but he knew better than to trade on or exploit her old affection for him. He was not he, she was not she, and it was understood that our three-way friendship would be best served by the former Dilly moving into his own place as soon as he could. Olson and I had lapsed into certain male roommate habits and patterns, among them pizzas and Chinese food ordered in, frequent late hours, and the tendency to postpone doing the laundry, which had to be curtailed after my wife returned. She introduced a certain snap in the routines of the day, and the installation of a brisker schedule permitted Olson and me to get through more work than had been possible when we lived alone. Lee Truax spent four or five hours every day in her office, too, dealing with ACB matters or using Microsoft Narrator or Serotek’s Freedom Box to write on her computer.
After a couple of months, Olson had managed to put together enough money to rent a small one-bedroom apartment in the 600 block of Webster Street, in the section of Lincoln Park near DePaul University, and I helped him with the payment on an old Accord that still ran remarkably well.
Jason Boatman reported that It Takes A Thief, Inc. had opened branches in Milwaukee and Racine. He was busier than ever before in his life. “Before this, I never understood how lazy most crooks are,” he said on speakerphone to the Eel and me. “Burglars and thieves lie around their rooms all day until it’s time to go to work, and the job only lasts about an hour or two.” Boats would come to Chicago anytime we invited him: after having forced Don and me to listen to his sorry tale, he said, it was the least he could do.
Dr. Feld reported that Dr. Greengrass, to whom he been sending regular reports, was now on the administrative staff at the state hospital in Madison. New ownership had taken over at the Lamont, and he’d been forced out. “He’s reasonably content, as far as I can tell. His only lingering sorrow concerns that young woman who befriended Howard, Miss Parmendera. Wasn’t she once a kind of intern, or something? She has become second-in-command at the Lamont, and he still has hard feelings about his treatment by their board.”
“I don’t blame either one,” I said. “They’ll probably be able to repair their friendship.”
“I like your optimism,” Feld told him.
Soon after that, Howard Bly was released from residential supervision into the world at large and the care of his friends.
I had been watching the gradual transformation of the old Cedar Hotel across Rush Street from a down-and-dirty flophouse into a more respectable long-term rental prospect for the working urban poor. Its owners had been guaranteed substantial assistance from the city, state, and federal governments. (Anything but civic-minded, they had seen that a good deal of money could be made from poverty.) In April of 2004, the new Cedar Hotel had just opened its doors, the interiors gleamed and sparkled, and only half of its rooms were occupied. Howard Bly, now on steady disability payments that to him seemed astoundingly generous, was accepted upon receipt of the application I had helped him complete. He moved in on the day he left Des Plains-Whitfield. Many times over, he said it was the happiest day of his life.
Hootie nested in as if he had been waiting all his life to set up on his own. On his first day at the Cedar Hotel, he went to Michigan Avenue and its wealth of side streets and picked up cheap sheets and towels, a secondhand sisal rug, lightbulbs, a strange lamp shaped like a nude woman doing a back-stretch, some unmatched silverware and two plates, and a sturdy chair and not-so sturdy chest of drawers he found on the sidewalk. Later that afternoon, the streets and sidewalks yielded a framed bullfight poster and a framed watercolor of a red barn that reminded him of a photograph at the Lamont. The following day he bought a cast-iron pan, a medium-sized pot, a colander, a spatula, a chef’s knife, a ladle, and copies of The Joy of Cooking and Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Initially, Hootie took every lunch and dinner with either the Eel and me or Don Olson. (He learned to cook in our kitchen, and used his recipes to help prepare some of our meals.) Before two months had passed, he had worked out a more independent schedule. Twice a week, he walked up Cedar Street to share the evening meal with us. On Sundays, Donald Olson came over to our house for drinks and dinner with Hootie. Hootie drank Welch’s grape juice, and Olson drank large quantities of tequila over small quantities of ice.
The Eel herself called Jason Boatman, and Boats made a date with us all on Cedar Street for a Saturday at the end of August. He sounded both expectant and hesitant at the thought of listening to whatever the Eel might have to say. In high school, he remembered with shame, he had so greatly not wished to hear her point of view on the question of Mallon’s ceremony that he had avoided speaking to her, avoided even looking at her. When they had approached each other in the corridors of Madison West, he used to turn his head and scan the facades of the lockers.
On Saturday, the twenty-eighth of August, Hootie Bly came ambling up sun-struck Cedar Street just as Jason Boatman swung his panel van, blazoned IT TAKES A THIEF SECURITY & PROTECTION SERVICES, into a parking space and got out. Because Boats had visited Hootie twice in the Lamont before his transfer to Des Plains, they exchanged a warm, backslapping hug of welcome. (That is, Boats slapped Hootie’s back, twice; Hootie never slapped anybody, back or front.)
“If that slogan drove past me anywhere in the world,” Hootie said, “I’d know it was you.”
“That’s the idea,” Boats said. Then his face fell into the furrows that had been carved by his long habits of pessimism and anxiety. “You know, I haven’t seen the Eel since we left high school. And we weren’t speaking to each other at the time.”
“Don’t worry about any of that,” his old friend advised him. “It certainly isn’t going to bother her.” (I’m reconstructing here.)
“Pretty special, huh?”
“Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait.”
“She always was pretty darn cute.”
The imp of the comic perverse awoke in Hootie Bly, and he made an elaborately deadpan face. “That was then, this is now.”
“Meaning what?”
As if in sorrow, Hootie looked down and shook his head.
Boat
man rotated his shoulders and shook out his arms. “Let’s get it over with.” He gave the doorbell a delicate nudge.
From within came the sound of a pealing bell. Footsteps approached the door.
Boats glanced at Hootie, who returned a solemn, commiserating nod.
“Oh, Lordie,” Boats said.
“Don’t be such a Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown.”
The door swung open to reveal a smiling me, who of course had as yet to hear of Hootie’s wicked game. I shook hands with Boats and threw my arms around Hootie. “This promises to be an interesting day, doesn’t it?”
“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” Hootie said.
Boatman said, “Lee, is everything really … ?”
I raised my eyebrows, entirely puzzled.
“I’m sorry,” Boats said.
“Don’t worry about it, whatever it is,” I counseled. “Come on in, both of you, please. Boats, you’ve never been here before, have you? After we’re done, maybe I’ll give you a little tour, if you’re interested.”
Boatman visibly roused himself into something like his conventional demeanor. “And maybe I could tell you how to burglar-proof your house, if you’re interested. I know you think you have, but believe me, you haven’t even begun.”
“Is that right?”
“You have no idea.”
“We’ll combine tours of the house,” I said, shepherding them both across the pretty vestibule and into the living room.
Don Olson stood up from his place on the sofa and held his hand out to Boatman. “Here you are, at last,” he said. “Have an easy ride down?”
“Until I got close to Chicago, when it was bumper to bumper all the way. How you people put up with that traffic, I’ll never know.”
Boatman was casting glances around the room, checking the door, then glancing back at his host.
“You all right?” I asked. “Can I get you anything?”
“I could use a pit stop. Would you, um …”
“Right over that way,” I said. “Lee will be with us in a couple of minutes. She is very eager to see you again.”
Boats took off toward the bathroom with a hint of alacrity.
“Is he all right?” I asked.
“Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown,” Hootie half-sang.
“You’re making great strides in the popular culture area,” I said.
“Peanuts has the answer to everything.”
“Tell me something, Don,” I said. “Has our Hootie discovered irony? There’s something about him today …”
“I think he invented irony on his own,” Olson said. “The way primitive communities had to invent fire, or horseshoes, or whatever.”
Soft noises on the staircase caused the three men to glance toward the doorway. “Ah, good,” I said.
The footsteps reached the bottom of the staircase. I pushed my hands into my pockets and leaned forward, unable to keep from grinning. The two men not married to the Eel revolved toward the door like weathervanes.
Small, slender, in a sleeveless black tunic and black linen trousers, a long colorful scarf wound around her neck, Lee Truax moved confidently into the living room. As was usual at home, she did not carry a white cane. Her steady internal flame, illuminating from within, rode as always with her, like a familiar spirit.
“Lee,” I said, giving her a reference point.
“Hello, dear ones,” she said, floating up before us. “Sorry to be a little late. I had to come to a decision about this scarf.”
“You made the right decision,” Hootie said, and at the same time, Don said, “Good choice.”
“You look beautiful,” I said, stating the obvious, and the other men murmured assent.
I wondered how she did it. Though I had seen it happen a thousand times, I had never understood the mechanism that allowed her to move from being good-looking to radiant without human or supernatural assistance. She barely used any makeup, and she never fussed. She wound a scarf around her neck, pushed her hair one way or another, applied lipstick, and the miracle had occurred all over again.
“You guys are like puppy dogs. Where’s Jason Boatman? I heard the bell ring, and I heard voices. I thought Jason would be here.”
“He’ll be back in a moment,” I said.
“And he’s in the security business now?”
“It Takes A Thief is the name of his company,” Hootie said.
She laughed, then caught herself. “Tremendous. He made a complete turnaround. I’m proud of him.”
“Why don’t you tell him?” Don asked. “He just came back in.”
Jason Boatman had just entered the room from the other side, and he seemed riveted by the spectacle presented by his hostess.
“He isn’t moving,” the Eel said. “What’s going on?”
“The poor old blind lady claims another victim,” I said.
“Shut up, you. This is different.”
Deep in his throat, Hootie made a low, gravelly sound expressive of mirth.
“Don’t laugh at us, Hootie. What’s he doing now? Ah. He’s coming toward us, isn’t he?”
“How do you do that?” Don asked. “I mean, is it something you feel, or something you hear?”
“Let me poke out your eyes. In twenty or thirty years, you’ll know all about it.”
“Sorry,” Don said. “Anyhow, here he is, our old pal and reformed bad guy, Jason Boatman. Looking a little strained, a little hornswoggled, if you don’t mind my saying so, Boats.”
“How could I mind,” Boats said, his eyes fixed on the Eel’s face, “when I don’t understand what you’re talking about?”
Hootie regarded the handsome ceiling.
“It doesn’t matter, pay no attention,” said the Eel. “I’ll decide how you look, Boats.”
“And I wasn’t a bad guy,” Boats said. “I was a professional thief.”
“A fine distinction,” said the Eel. “But let me get a good idea of you, okay? It’s wonderful to have the pleasure of your company again, and I want to take you in.”
“Eel, you can take me any way you’d like,” Boats said.
Lee Truax simply stood before him, her feet in flat back shoes planted on the floor, her head lifted, neither smiling nor not. Eventually she said, “Yes, I see. Hello, Jason.”
“You could always call me Boats.”
“I was just saying that I’m very proud of you. It’s almost a little bit funny, that you went straight.”
“Being crooked put too much wear and tear on the system.”
“Say what you will, I’m never going straight.”
I put my arm around her shoulders. “Thank God, that would spoil everything for the rest of us. But what do you think, shall we get started? Now that we’re all here?”
“Go for it,” said the Eel.
“All right, everybody. Drinks, coffee? Whatever you’d like, fellows. Let’s get started. Honey, are you ready?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Would you please let me have some water?”
“I’ll have a tequila, rocks.”
“Coffee.”
“Welch’s grape juice, please,” said Hootie.
When I returned with the drinks, we took places on the chairs and sofa facing the woman at the center of our attention. She was waiting with an air of deep personal calm. From her posture, from the level angle of her head and the musing expression on her face, the Eel seemed as transparent as the cool water in her tall glass.
“We’re all set now,” I told her.
“I know,” she said.
If Lee Truax had possessed the power of sight, the way she swept her face from one side of the room to the other, taking us in, would have suggested that she wished not be interrupted in the course of her account.
“I’m set, too.” This time, her sightless glance left no doubt as to her desire for every bit of our attention.
“Don, Hootie, Boats, and you, Lee, please understand what is going t
o happen here. I’m going to describe, as thoroughly as I can, what I witnessed and experienced before, during, and after Spencer Mallon’s ceremony out in that meadow. No matter what happens, please do not interrupt me. Don’t ask questions. Don’t do or say anything that could make me stop talking. I mean that. Even if you are alarmed in some way, or if you hate what I’m saying, or are offended by it, please put your emotions aside, and let me go on as well as I can. I can only do this once. I’m not going to repeat myself, and I’m not going to try to explain things nobody could explain, so don’t ask me to try. You understand, guys? You got me?”
“We understand,” I said, and the others chimed in.
“I’ll begin, then.” The Eel put out her hand for the glass of water and wrapped her fingers around it with no apparent groping or hesitation. After taking a sip that might have satisfied a hummingbird, she replaced the glass in exactly its former position. Her hands came to rest in her lap, and she gave all of us the reassuring hint of a smile.
“And I want to start where we started that day, in the Coliseum Theater. I wonder if any of you remember the bizarre comment Spencer made before that organist sank down beneath the stage again, and the lights faded, and the curtain folded back. I bet you don’t—I bet you all forgot it.”
“Can we answer that?” Don asked.
“This once, yes.”
“I can’t remember anything he said, except that he’d meet us across the street after the second screening. You don’t mean that, do you?”
“No, I mean what he said about movies and secret messages. Spencer thought that certain movies contained hidden communications that were intended only for the few who were capable of understanding them. That morning, he wanted to tell us about a secret hidden in the ending of Shane. Shane was one of his favorite movies.”
| Skylarking |
Apart from Lee, the Eel said, probably they could all remember how Spencer walked them down the aisle to the second row, but how many of them knew why he did that? The screen shed a light of its own, that’s why, and even when the rest of the enormous theater was in total darkness, the first three or four rows were illuminated by a thin, silvery glow that looked like moonlight. Mallon wanted them to be visible.