by T E. D Klein
Of course, my sister left the house on Indian Creek that very day and took rooms for herself in a downtown Miami hotel. Subsequently she moved inland to live with a friend in a green stucco bungalow several miles from the Everglades, third in a row of nine just off the main highway. I am seated in its den as I write this. After the friend died my sister lived on here alone, making the forty-mile bus trip to Miami only on special occasions: theater with a group of friends, one or two shopping trips a year. She had everything else she needed right here in town.
I returned to New York, caught a chill, and finished out the winter in a hospital bed, visited rather less often than I might have wished by my niece and her boy. Of course, the drive in from Brooklyn is nothing to scoff at.
One recovers far more slowly when one has reached my age; it’s a painful truth we all learn if we live long enough. Howard’s life was short, but in the end I think he understood. At thirty-five he could deride as madness a friend’s “hankering after youth,” yet ten years later he’d learned to mourn the loss of his own. “The years tell on one!” he’d written. “You young fellows don’t know how lucky you are!”
Age is indeed the great mystery. How else could Terry have emblazoned his grandmother’s sundial with that saccharine nonsense?
Grow old along with me;
The best is yet to be.
True, the motto is traditional to sundials—but that young fool hadn’t even kept to the rhyme. With diabolical imprecision he had written, “The best is yet to come”—a line to make me gnash my teeth, if I had any left to gnash.
I spent most of the spring indoors, cooking myself wretched little meals and working ineffectually on a literary project that had occupied my thoughts. It was discouraging to find that I wrote so slowly now, and changed so much. My sister only reinforced the mood when, sending me a rather salacious story she’d found in the Enquirer—about the “thing like a vacuum cleaner” that snaked through a Swedish sailor’s porthole and “made his face all purple”—she wrote at the top, “See? Right out of Lovecraft. ”
It was not long after this that I received, to my surprise, a letter from Mrs. Zimmerman, bearing profuse apologies for having misplaced my inquiry until it turned up again during “spring cleaning.” (It is hard to imagine any sort of cleaning at the Barkleigh Hotella, spring or otherwise, but even this late reply was welcome.) “I am sorry that the minister who disappeared was a friend of yours,” she wrote. “I’m sure he must have been a fine gentleman.
“You asked me for ‘the particulars,’ but from your note you seem to know the whole story. There is really nothing I can tell you that I did not tell the police, though I do not think they ever released all of it to the papers. Our records show that our guest Mr. Djaktu arrived here nearly a year ago, at the end of June, and left the last week of August owing me a week’s rent plus various damages which I no longer have much hope of recovering, though I have written the Malaysian Embassy about it.
“In other respects he was a proper boarder, paid regularly, and in fact hardly ever left his room except to walk in the back yard from time to time, or stop at the grocer’s. (We have found it impossible to discourage eating in rooms.) My only complaint is that in the middle of the summer he may have had a small colored child living with him without our knowledge, until one of the maids heard him singing to it as she passed his room. She did not recognize the language, but said she thought it might be Hebrew. (The poor woman, now sadly taken from us, was barely able to read.) When she next made up the room, she told me that Mr. Djaktu claimed the child was ‘his,’ and that she left because she caught a glimpse of it watching her from the bathroom. She said it was naked. I did not speak of this at the time, as I do not feel it is my place to pass judgment on the morals of my guests. Anyway, we never saw the child again, and we made sure the room was completely sanitary for our next guests. Believe me, we have received nothing but good comments on our facilities. We think they are excellent and hope you agree, and I also hope you will be our guest again the next time you come to Florida.”
Unfortunately, the next time I came to Florida was for my sister’s funeral late that winter. I know now, as I did not know then, that she had been in ill health for most of the previous year, but I cannot help thinking that the so-called “incidents”—the senseless acts of vandalism directed against lone women in the South Florida area, culminating in several reported attacks by an unidentified prowler—may have hastened her death.
When I arrived here with Ellen to take care of my sister’s affairs and arrange for the funeral, I intended to remain a week or two at most, seeing to the transfer of the property. Yet somehow I lingered, long after Ellen had gone. Perhaps it was the thought of that New York winter, grown harsher with each passing year; I just couldn’t find the strength to go back. Nor, in the end, could I bring myself to sell this house; if I am trapped here, it’s a trap I’m resigned to. Besides, moving has never much agreed with me; when I grow tired of this little room—and I do—I can think of nowhere else to go. I’ve seen all the world I want to see. This simple place is now my home—and I feel certain it will be my last. The calendar on the wall tells me it’s been almost three months since I moved in. I know that somewhere in its remaining pages you will find the date of my death.
The past week has seen a new outbreak of the “incidents.” Last night’s was the most dramatic by far. I can recite it almost word for word from the morning news. Shortly before midnight Mrs. Florence Cavanaugh, a housewife living at 24 Alyssum Terrace, South Princeton, was about to close the curtains in her front room when she saw, peering through the window at her, what she described as “a large Negro man wearing a gas mask or scuba outfit.” Mrs. Cavanaugh, who was dressed only in her nightgown, fell back from the window and screamed for her husband, asleep in the next room, but by the time he arrived the Negro had made good his escape.
Local police favor the “scuba” theory, since near the window they’ve discovered footprints that may have been made by a heavy man in swim fins. But they haven’t been able to explain why anyone would wear underwater gear so many miles from water.
The report usually concludes with the news that “Mr. and Mrs. Cavanaugh could not be reached for comment.”
The reason I have taken such an interest in the case—sufficient, anyway, to memorize the above details—is that I know the Cavanaughs rather well. They are my next-door neighbors.
Call it an aging writer’s ego, if you like, but somehow I can’t help thinking that last evening’s visit was meant for me. These little green bungalows all look alike in the dark.
Well, there’s still a little night left outside—time enough to rectify the error. I’m not going anywhere.
I think, in fact, it will be a rather appropriate end for a man of my pursuits—to be absorbed into the denouement of another man’s tale.
Grow old along with me;
The best is yet to come.
Tell me, Howard: how long before it’s my turn to see the black face pressed to my window?
Well-Connected
His first mistake, Philip later realized, had been in choosing a room without a bath. Years before, honeymooning in England while still on a junior law clerk's salary, he and his first wife had had great luck with such rooms, readily agreeing to "a bathroom down the hall" whenever the option was offered; they'd gotten unusual bargains that way, often finding themselves in the oldest, largest, and most charming room in the hotel for a third less than other guests were paying. Now, even though saving money was no longer an issue, some youthful habit had made him ask for just such a room, here in this rambling New England guesthouse. Or maybe his choice had been meant as a kind of test, one that might help determine if the young woman he'd brought with him this weekend was too intent on a luxury-class ride with him, or if she was the sort of person who remained un-fazed by life's small inconveniences — the sort who might become, in the end, his second wife.
This time, however, it seemed he had guesse
d wrong; for here at The Birches, the rooms without a bath faced the front lawn, still pitted from last winter's snows, a smooth expanse of newly tarred road that ended in a parking lot behind a line of shrubs, and a large, rather charmless white sign declaring VACANCY and SINCE 1810, beside which stood the woebegone little clump of birch trees that, presumably, had given the place its name; while it was the bigger, more expensive rooms just across the hall that looked out upon the wooded slopes of Romney Mountain, rising like a massive green wall somewhere beyond the back garden. Disappointingly, too, while their room boasted such amenities as genuine oak beams and a working fireplace, it had no telephone, at a time when, with young Tony precariously installed at a private school near Hanover less than thirty miles away, he'd have liked one handy. He envied whichever guest was staying in the room opposite theirs; when he and Margaret had passed it last night as they'd brought their bags upstairs, they'd heard its unseen occupant talking animatedly on the phone, embroiled in some urgent conversation.
It was the off-season, too late for even the most dedicated of skiers, too early for the annual onslaught of hikers, and the inn, from all appearances, was barely half full. It would have been a simple thing to request a different room. Still, some perverse sense of obligation to his youthful self kept Philip from speaking up. He had made his choice, and, vacancies or not, he was not about to pack up and move elsewhere. Anyway, it was only for two more nights.
Today was Friday, the first Friday all year that he'd taken off, though when he'd quit the firm last summer to set up his own practice, he'd vowed there'd be many such weekends. Maybe now, with Margaret, there would be. The two of them had driven from Boston last night, speeding up Route 93 past the brightly lit ring roads curving round the city like lines of defense, through the lowlands of southeastern New Hampshire, and finally, long after darkness had fallen, past the dim shapes of starlit hills and a range of distant mountains, Sunapee and the Monad-nocks looming far to the southwest. Their destination lay twelve miles off the highway, down a series of roads of ever-diminishing width, in a part of the state more settled a century ago than it was today, when men no longer worked the land and once-prosperous farms had been reclaimed by forest. The region around Romney Mountain, with its caves and scenic gorges, had known even grander days, having seen, in the century's opening decades, the construction of at least two lavish hotels; a scattering of summer homes for the well-to-do of Boston; and, it was said, even one clandestine casino. The hotels and casino were long gone, and only recently had the effects of the postwar real estate boom been felt here. The glistening black road that wound through the valley to The Birches had been dirt less than a year ago.
They had spent most of the morning in the king-size fourposter that dominated their little room, snuggled under a patchwork quilt that made up in atmosphere what it lacked in warmth, and didn't come down to the dining room till long after the tables had been cleared. Fortunately the proprietress, Mrs. Hartley, still had enough Westchester in her soul to sympathize with late risers; and she'd kept a pot of coffee warm for them, along with extra helpings of that morning's blueberry pancakes. She and her husband had purchased The Birches only last spring; before that her only connection to ho-telkeeping had been as a part-time pastry chef, and his as a salesman of advertising space to an occasional resort. It was obvious from the look of the place that, with more zeal than knowledge, the Hartleys were trying to restore the inn to something approximating its original appearance, or, failing that, to something approximating a house out of Currier and Ives — a row of whose prints, in matched maple frames, decorated the dining room wall.
While Margaret slipped back upstairs to change, Philip checked the time; Tony would already be finished with his morning classes. In the alcove off the bar he found an old-fashioned wall phone and, through the unit in the office, obtained an outside line. He dialed Tony's school.
Summoned from lunch, the boy sounded distracted. "I didn't think you'd call until tomorrow," he said, breathless as if from running. "Braddon's giving us a multiple-choice quiz in half an hour, and then I've got to try out for the play."
Philip wished him good luck, pleased that the boy was keeping so busy, and asked what time tomorrow would be best to visit. Spending a day with his son was the primary purpose of his trip; relations between them had been strained these past years.
"Is somebody coming with you?" asked Tony warily.
"You know very well I'm here with Margaret," said Philip. "I thought I explained all that in my letter." He immediately regretted the impatience in his voice. "Look, son, if you'd rather I came alone, I'm sure she can find something to do for an hour or two."
"Tomorrow's no good anyway," said Tony, having maneuvered his father into this concession. "We're supposed to have a track meet with Cobb Hill, and it's away. They told us last week, but I forgot." He added, apologetically, "They'll really be mad if I miss it. I'm one of the two best in the relay."
"How would Sunday be then?" asked Philip. "I'd have to leave by three."
"Sunday'd be great. You could take me into Hanover for a decent meal. And Dad . . ."
Philip waited. "Yes?"
"Do you think you'd have time to tell me a story?"
Philip felt an unexpected rush of affection so strong it embarrassed him. "Of course," he said. "I'll always have time for that." It had been years since Tony had asked for a story; once it had been their favorite pastime.
The day passed quickly. It was too cold for swimming — the new semicircular pool at the end of the garden stood empty, in fact — but Margaret, it turned out, was a nature enthusiast, and one thing The Birches had aplenty was nature trails. It was all Philip could do to keep up with her. Still, this Girl Scout aspect appealed to him; till now he'd only seen Margaret's urban side, the tall, studious-looking girl he'd secretly lusted after at his former office, and who'd seemed far too smart for the routine secretarial tasks required of her. Clutching glossy new guidebooks provided by the Hartleys, the two of them trudged along the base of the mountain, dutifully peering at fungi in their various disquieting shapes, admiring the newly blooming wildflow-ers, and searching — in vain, as it turned out — for identifiable animal tracks, all the while snacking on the sausage, bread, and cheese which Mrs. Hartley had packed for them. They discovered, nonetheless, that by dinner time their appetites were quite unimpaired; they shared a bottle of cabernet with their meal, chosen from the inn's small but adequate wine list, and still found room for dessert. Glowing rosily, as much from the wine as from the bay-berry candles that flickered at each table, they staggered into the lounge.
The room, high-ceilinged and handsome, was already occupied by several guests, who themselves were occupied over after-dinner drinks and conversation. Flames danced and sizzled in the obligatory fieldstone fireplace covering most of one wall. Before it, taking up more than his share of a bench by the fire, sat a large, barrel-shaped man, his bald head gleaming in the firelight, eyes sunken in wrinkles like an elephant's. He was wearing loose-fitting white pants and a somewhat threadbare cardigan. They had seen him in the other room, devouring Mrs. Hartley's rack of lamb with considerable gusto. Aside from one wizened old lady who, from her own table, had stared at him throughout the meal with apparent fascination, he was the only guest who'd dined alone. It was impossible to tell his age.
"Am I blocking you from the fire?" he asked. He flashed a smile at Margaret. "Here, you young people, have a seat. April nights are chilly in this part of the world." There was a trace of accent in his voice, a hint of Old World frost-fires and battlements. He eased himself sideways and patted the bench beside him. Margaret politely sat; Philip, with no room for himself, pulled up a wooden chair.
"I trust that you two are enjoying your stay." He spoke as one who expected an answer.
"So far," said Philip. "Actually, we came up to visit my son. He's at prep school a bit north of here."
"And, of course, to relax," Margaret added.
"Of course!" The m
an grinned again. His teeth were long and widely spaced, like tree roots blanched by water. "And have you found your relaxation?"
Philip nodded. "Of a sort. Today we took a hike around the base of the mountain, and tomorrow we may go for a drive, maybe look for some antiques."
"Ah, a fellow antique-lover!" He turned to Margaret. "And you?"
"I'm more of a swimmer myself. Unfortunately, this isn't the weather for it."
The other cocked his head and seemed to study her a moment. "Odd you should say that, because I happen to know where there's an excellent heated pool not half an hour's stroll from here. All indoors, with antique brass steps in each corner and a well-stocked bar right beside it, so close you can reach for your wine while standing in the water. The bar stools are covered in leather from, if the lady will pardon me —" He regarded her almost coyly for a moment. "— the testicles of a sperm whale." Philip and Margaret exchanged a wary glance, then a smile. "It's true," the older man was saying, "I assure you! No expense was spared. The pool has its own underground oil tank which keeps it at exactly seventy degrees. You'll find a painting of Bacchus on the ceiling, best appreciated while floating on your back, and heart-shaped tiles on the floor shipped specially from Florence."
"I've never heard of such a place," said Philip. "There's certainly nothing like it listed in the guidebooks."
"Oh, you won't find it in a guidebook, my friend. It isn't open to the public." His voice was low, conspiratorial. "It's in the private home of a certain Mr. Hagendorn, on the other side of the mountain."
"Sounds like he must be worth a fortune."
The other shrugged. "You've heard of the Great Northern Railroad? One of Mr. Hagendorn's ancestors owned nine million shares. So as you might imagine, Mr. Hagendorn has always been accustomed to getting what he wants. The bed he sleeps in once belonged to an Italian prince, and the house itself is modeled on a Tuscan villa. It has its own greenhouse, a billiard room with six imported stained glass windows, and a sun porch with a magnificient view of the gorge."