Agnes Among the Gargoyles

by Patrick Flynn

  The lobby smells of some foul dairy product, sour milk or rancid butter or curdled cream. Several men in hooded sweatshirts and paratrooper boots stare with hate at the TV, which is blaring a rerun of The Love Boat. Prostitutes flounce busily around the front desk, all except the one who is either dead or in a deep sleep on the sofa. Two women in shorts and beach thongs and scarves over curlers rock baby carriages and smoke near the soda machine.

  The desk clerk is toothy, with lots of moles. "Good evening, madam," he says to Agnes. "Welcome to Clinton's Hotel Spitalfields. Please sign the register in pen. May I ask how you heard about us?"

  "I have a friend staying here, I think. Ivan Clarence Kroger?"

  "Room 306."

  When Ivan answers the door, he looks terrified. Agnes expects him to greet her warmly, but he doesn't. He doesn't smile, doesn't say anything, but nods for her to come in. Sitting on his bed is a sickly-looking girl hooker with bleached hair and bitten nails and sad little tits. She picks up her coffee and cigarettes and potato chips and tells Ivan she'll see him later.

  Ivan looks Agnes over. "I suppose I should beat the shit out of you for the honor of my family, but I know I'd lose," he says.

  "I'm sorry how things turned out," says Agnes.

  "I knew he was a psycho, but not like that. Got any pot?"

  Agnes shakes her head. She sits in the spot vacated by the prostitute.

  "How'd you know I was here?" he asks.

  "I didn't. I had a hunch. You'd been in Eftsoons a long time."

  "I only stayed a couple of days," he says. "Very depressing. My mother can't even talk."

  "I was at Sarah's premier tonight," says Agnes.

  "You want half a turkey hero? I just got it. You want a beer?"

  "No thanks."

  He shuts off the black and white TV with the cracked case and taped handle. He had been in the process of sweeping his floor; he gathers up his broom and dustpan and stores them behind the bureau.

  He rubs his arm. "I took my cast off myself. With a hammer. So far, it feels okay. How's your cop friend?"

  "Very good."

  "That's sweet," he says sarcastically. "And my uncle brought you two together. It's like I was telling Paula—"

  "Who's Paula?" says Agnes.

  "Paula. The girl who was just here."

  "Oh, I don't think of whores being named Paula, that's all."

  "You think her mother named her Cherry?" he says.

  "Jesus, how can you stay here?"

  "It's fine. I just don't get room service."

  "Hah, hah," says Agnes impatiently.

  "So like I was telling Paula: I can't go back to Sarah. I'm hiding out here until I work up the balls to tell her. It's over. The way I used to chase her just seems sick to me now. She doesn't understand anything about my family and our problems."

  "Your uncle was adopted. It's not genetic or anything."

  "I just don't want to remember how weird I've been," he says, and Agnes can't help feel a sense of loss. "You know what gets me?" he says. "The Krogers and the Clarences make the Wegemans look normal."

  A neon sign blinks on and off outside Ivan's window. Just like in every seedy hotel in the movies, thinks Agnes. She goes to the window for a better look. The pink and green and orange neon sign belongs to Ellsworth Guaranty, whose new world headquarters is just down the street in Wegeman's Offisquare complex.

  "My mother's a wreck, and they're making it worse," says Ivan. "What Uncle Matt did was terrible, but now they want to hang everything on him."

  "I don't understand."

  "They want to hang all the murders on him. He did the first one, sure."

  "The first two, you mean," says Agnes.

  "Okay, the first pair. And he did the second pair, in the mansion. But that's it."

  Agnes says nothing, and looks profoundly skeptical.

  "It's true," says Ivan. "The singer, and the stewardesses, and the teacher—he didn't kill any of those people. The police just need a neat package."

  "Ivan, he admits everything."

  "He's unbalanced. Right now, he'd admit to killing Kennedy."

  The silence between them is uncomfortable.

  "By the way, Wayne doesn't have AIDS," says Agnes.

  "I knew he was full of shit."

  "How is Neal?"

  "He's a fucking glittering success. He wants no part of me. He doesn't even ask about you anymore. He got involved with some indie label that Columbia bought, and now he's working with Paul McCartney. Very nice. I asked him, you know, what's Paul McCartney like? Give me the dirt on Paul McCartney. You know what he said? He said, Oh, you know, he's a regular guy, just like everybody else. Yes, Neal's doing quite well, thank you, and he's not doing any finking on his fellow members."

  Ivan walks Agnes to the lobby.

  "She's cute," says Agnes.

  "In a very sad way—like a stray puppy," says Ivan. "And she's still not as cute as Prudence and Rosalie."

  "I meant to ask you," says Agnes. "What were you doing with all those comic books in the first place?"

  He smiles his jiggered smile. He raises two fingers to her. "Peace."

  Murmurs, stammers, and handshake and a hug, and the fat boy is out of her life.

  Tommy seems lovely sitting in the yellow flyspecked fluorescence of Stanley's. He looks calm, and tranquil, like a beach in the last light if an evening. Stanley hovers over him, delighted with his presence.

  "He just likes a cop on the premises," Tommy says to Agnes.

  "He's always extremely nice to me."

  "I told him you're a cop, too."

  Chapter Eighty-One

  The Persons With AIDS Coalition passes on StreetWise, but the Gemini Institute in Colorado offers Sarah a six-month stay in their Creative Community.

  "Promise me you'll come out and visit," says Sarah.

  "I don't even go to movies. I don't think I could be with fifty people who hatch them."

  It's a good thing Sarah goes to Colorado: she's not around to see her father's fall.

  The beginning of the end of the Great Man begins on a night in late August. Rain falls in great streaky sheets; lightning flashes like a psychedelic strobe and thunder booms like the end of the world. Agnes sits on her window seat and watches the show. She feels oddly wan and purposeless. She misses the tinkle of Sarah's presence, the physicality of her youthful body (which was a cheerful sight; attractive people really can make you happy) and the great seriousness with which she would prepare those awful vegetarian stews. Ah, youth! Agnes watches a limousine circle her building for the third time. There have been several drugrelated executions in the neighborhood of late, and Agnes watches this prowling auto with morbid interest. The limo pulls up to the curb at Agnes's front door. The driver jumps out to open the front door for his passenger. The driver is topheavy with musculature, and walks in a mincing, pigeon-toed fashion that seems familiar. Finally Agnes recognizes Rolf, Madelaine's trainer. Rolf swings out an umbrella and escorts someone to Agnes's building.

  Agnes has the doorman send them up.

  When Agnes opens the door, Rolf is raking water from his hair with his fingers. Beside him is Clark Ho.

  "Miss Travertine, I am sorry to disturb you at this late hour." The voice is small and cultured. "I would not have come if it weren't an emergency."

  "What's the matter?"

  "It's Mr. Wegeman. He's planning to do something drastic."

  "So what else is new?" says Agnes.

  "You don't understand," says Ho. "I think he may be planning to take his own life."

  Agnes sighs. "What's eating him now?"

  "A multitude of things. The failure of his casino. The departure of his wife. His powerlessness. His paraplegia."

  "Oh, he's no more paraplegic than I am."

  "Miss Travertine, time is of the essence. I think that you should accompany us to the Palace of Versailles. I'm certain you could be of help."

  "He wants to off himself at sunrise," says Rolf.


  "Okay," says Agnes. "I'm game. Let's go."

  The limousine glides slowly toward Coney Island. The rain pummels the roof, and beats wildly against the windows. Agnes can see only rippling headlight beams, no landmarks.

  "I hold a unique position in the Wegeman organization," says Ho. "I move about very freely. I am privy to the movements of all arms of the Wegeman octopus. If a secretary gets fired at WEGE, I know about it. If the linen is dirty at the Scheherazade, I know that too."

  "Why would you want to?" says Agnes. "You're the architect. Stick to that."

  "I have a large interest in the success of the organization," he says. "I have learned that Mr. Wegeman has put his affairs in order."

  Agnes is not impressed. "I thought rich people did that all the time. I thought that was the fun of being rich, changing banks and diversifying and updating your will weekly."

  "I know what I know," says Ho. He seems almost fiendish. He peers at Agnes through those black circular eyeglasses—they look heavy as granite sitting on his face. A protracted flash of thunder illuminates the dashboard, and throws the bulky outline of Rolf into stark silhouette. Agnes has never experienced a more otherworldly car ride. One comic touch keeps her in familiar territory: even through the soundproof partition, Agnes can make out Rolf's off-key warbling to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

  Clark Ho continues speaking. "The paperwork has taken on a different cast. I have read too much of trust funds and testamentary gifts. Mr. Syker has been removed as Mr. Wegeman's executor; one suspects a fear that some money will be diverted to the Dalai Lama. Some of the household staff has been let go. The house in Newport is for sale. And I recently came across this."

  From his briefcase he takes out a sheet of paper folded in quarters. He shows it to Agnes. It is a charcoal drawing of a building. The scale is unclear. The design is pure Clark Ho. It is a tapering ellipsoid crowned by an outsized sphere; a steel ring belts the ellipsoid around its middle, and from the ring sprout six leg-like girders.

  "It looks like a rocket ship," says Agnes. "Or a futuristic tarantula."

  "That," says Ho with something like triumph, "is the design for Mr. Wegeman's mausoleum."

  "Your design, I take it?"

  "A student of mine, Victor Velez. He apes his teacher flawlessly. Mr. Wegeman wanted a Ho design, but he did not want Ho to know."

  Clark Ho shows Agnes a photograph.

  "I confronted Victor, and of course he broke down immediately. He told me everything. There will even be an eternal flame."

  "Good God!"

  "I sent an assistant to Philadelphia, to Mount of Woods Cemetery, to take this picture," says Ho.

  Agnes looks. There is the mausoleum, just like in the sketch. It is at the crest of a hill. On the left are two other mausoleums: one is Gothic Revival, the other a tiny Classical temple. Both of the mausoleums are lovely—everything mausoleums should be. Mr. Wegeman's mausoleum, to Agnes's eyes anyway, is an eyesore.

  "You're starting to convince me," says Agnes. "But what makes you so sure this is the day?"

  "My brother made a joke about it. He is in charge of special security at the Palace, and even I do not know all that entails," says Ho. He goes on to tell her of Tony's knowledge of explosives, and about his unsavory connections.

  Agnes glances at Rolf, who is pounding the steering wheel in time to the music.

  Agnes's gaze falls on a stack of papers beside the telephone. The top sheet is covered with doodles. One form has been repeated obsessively, drawn from dozens of different angles: a twisting tower of stacked vertical planes, like those twisted piles of cocktail napkins favored by showy bartenders.

  He notes Agnes's interest. "One Cooper Union Plaza," he tells her. "Supposedly our next project."

  "What ever happened to addresses?" Agnes wonders. "Why are you so afraid of actual locations?"

  He smiles mirthlessly. "You are a reactionary. You are a preservationist."

  Agnes looks at the doodles again. "And you are a plagiarist. A self-plagiarist, anyway. Isn't that the same design you used for the Fine Arts Building at the University of Gainesville?"

  The observation shocks him.

  "My God," he says. "How could I have done such a thing?"

  Agnes says that she doesn't know.

  "I would have remembered eventually, of course," says Ho. "But it is fortunate that you are a student of my work."

  "A student of your work?" says Agnes indignantly. "Well. I guess in a crazy way I am at that."

  "I think I know what happened," he says. "It's all related to stress. I have done this before. In 1979, when I was designing the new wing of the Museum, this form was my earliest draft. I was going through my divorce at the time. I can't explain it, but it seems that in times of personal crisis, this shape comes out of me. Isn't that curious?"

  Agnes might never again get the chance to confront Clark Ho.

  "You know that I'm in the Telamones Society," she says. "I hate what you build."

  "I know."

  He takes off his black-rimmed glasses. Without them, his face seems incomplete. His eyes are a pale, watery gray; his eyebrows, vague brown smudges, are barely there; his eyelashes are long and white.

  "Why do you do it?" says Agnes. Her heart starts to pound furiously. "Why build these monstrous things? I'm not even singling you out. Why can't modern architects make anything pleasing?"

  He takes a deep breath. "I can smell the sea. We are almost there."

  "Why are your buildings so cold and hateful? Why don't your hotels have front doors, for God's sake?"

  "The canvases of Degas were ridiculed in their day," he says with cold patience.

  "And no one had to look at them who didn't want to," says Agnes. "Your buildings are wrapped up in my life. When I'm not in them I have to look at them. And it doesn't make me happy. It's bad, loud, gargantuan poetry, and I can't turn it off. It's ringing in my ears."

  "What I do is not for everyone," he says placidly.

  He doesn't give a shit, thinks Agnes. He couldn't care less. He feels no responsibility to...to his what? There isn't even a word to describe the relationship between architect and building-user.

  Rolf turns the limousine off Surf Avenue, down a dark side street. The rain has let up, and Agnes presses her face to the car window to see where they are. Everything is closed and shuttered for the night, the frozen custard stands and the shooting gallery, the skee ball arcade and Mrs. Fernandez's Wax Museum of Horror. Speck and DeSalvo and Jack the Ripper are there, of course; the Minotaur is promised; Bundy is there—SEE!!! THE ESCAPE OF CAROL DA RONCH!!!--alongside Berkowitz and the Laughing Man, but all the other listed exhibits, tableux in wax of crimes committed in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, Spain, Cuba and South America, are a mystery to Agnes.

  To Clark Ho's dismay, Rolf drives the limousine through a vacant lot, up a ramp that seems ready to collapse, and onto the boardwalk. The Palace of Versailles is awash in creamy spotlight.

  Ho lowers the partition and speaks to Rolf. "Why are we driving on the boardwalk?"

  "It's quicker."

  "Quicker than what?"

  Rolf slows the limo as two old men in windbreakers cross the boardwalk. "Quicker than taking Surf all the way to Wegeman Plaza. That's always a mess."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," says Ho curtly. "And it is two o'clock in the morning."

  "It doesn't matter. I've been here at four o'clock in the morning and five o'clock in the morning. The cars can't get through because of the delivery trucks. It's very stupidly designed."

  "Is it?" says Ho.

  Rolf realizes his faux pas. "It looks nice though, the cars and trucks waiting to move outside the hotel. It looks busy. It's exciting."

  Clark Ho raises the partition again. Rolf cranks Elton John back up.

  "Incompetent moron," says Ho.

  The hotel may be undergoing renovation, but the casino is open. Insomniac retirees sit on collapsible stools and pull the one-ar
med bandits. Five old Italian men drink espresso and play silent poker. A couple of liquored up old dames argue over blackjack strategy. Chambermaids vacuum discreetly, sucking stains right out of the marvelous 3-M Company carpets. And Reverend Lenten Gunn's night watch stands its post. Bibles are held in white-gloved hands. Men wearing cross-and-chalice pins provide small assistance to the chambermaids. At two o'clock in the morning, the splendor of the Palace of Versailles seems wasted on the clientele, who would drink and gamble in an outhouse.