The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

  ‘Ups,’ The Saint had said. ‘Amphetamines. You don’t want to miss the witching hour, do you?’

  ‘No. Wouldn’t want to do that,’ he’d replied, once again seeing the need to best the man with some sort of bon mot, but once again failing.

  ‘The shank of the evening, my good man,’ The Saint had added, dropping the pills into his hand. ‘The shank of the evening.’

  The Saint always said things like my good man and precisely. As if he were Michael Caine or someone, which he clearly was not.

  But why hadn’t he refused the pills? How high was high enough? Why hadn’t he simply said that, while he was happy to smoke pot with them, to speak pretentiously about dead poets, to drink cocktails that even their parents considered ancient, he was not about to pop a pair of insufficiently identified pink pills into his mouth at the behest of this self-anointed guru of the AdVerse Society.

  But he’d taken them anyway.

  And they were not amphetamines.

  He found this out at around eleven-thirty, the moment his legs ceased to hold his weight and he found himself on the floor, propped against the large speaker under the window. Right across from Julia, who sat at the foot of the bed, a book of T.S. Eliot on her lap, a joint held clumsily in her small, delicate hand.

  But now, in his frosted vision, she was a Degas painting: lithe, beautiful, sheathed in liquid light.

  As the drug pinned him to the floor, time welded itself, people came and went, faces and bodies drifted into his tunnel. The echo of the music at times was deafening, but he couldn’t even bring his hands to his ears. He saw Dr Keller of all people lean in, smile, ask if he was okay. He tried to answer, couldn’t.

  Moments of clarity came, lingered briefly, dissipated. At one point he saw someone he didn’t recognize leave the room, then return with a pile of clothing. It looked like costume material, with sequins and satin and feathers poking out. Geoffrey looked through them. Benny Crane, too. Much laughter, loud music. Prince was playing now.

  Benny had sobered up somewhat and seemed to be taking charge of the party, holding up various costumes to various people, dictating who should wear what. There was a pirate costume, a vampire’s cape, a set of GI fatigues, a flapper’s dress and boa. Lots of masks.

  But none of that mattered to him because he couldn’t move, couldn’t select a costume if he wanted to. And when he saw Julia having a grand, theatrical time with her new friends, he wanted to.

  Losing her to these people, these phonies, was his ultimate nightmare, a cancerous fear that had eaten at him all semester. And now it seemed to be happening right in front of him.

  Julia looked over at him and smiled.

  Don’t, he thought, weakly.

  Don’t, Julia . . .

  48

  BY SIX-THIRTY the streets of Lyndhurst, Ohio, were overrun with ghosts, goblins, and superheroes of every conceivable pedigree. From the porch at 1728 Edgefield Road she could see Superman, Spiderman, the Terminator, Batman. The sky was clear and black, dotted with stars; the breeze held the promise of cider, cinnamon, caramel apples.

  It was every Halloween of her youth.

  She tried the knob on the front door, found it locked. A rarity when she was expected at her parents’ house. She looked up and down the street, at the cars parked along the curb. She didn’t see Paige’s red Mazda. Paige had said that if she could get away from the store by six, she’d go trick-or-treating with them.

  But Paige hadn’t opened the store today.

  Amelia had tried calling three times, kept getting the store’s machine. And Paige’s leather coat was still hanging over the back of the kitchen stool. Paige had a key. She’d said she would stop by in the morning to get her coat, but there it hung. And now Amelia was a little worried.

  She rang the bell just as a handful of kids across the street chanted,‘Trigger-treeeeeee!’ in unison. The dog next door started barking. After a moment, the door swung wide and Amelia and Maddie were confronted with a tall, swashbuckling pirate, complete with eye patch, scimitar, black boots, and golden earring.

  ‘Ahoy, ye two beauties!’ the pirate said.

  ‘Ahoy!’ Maddie exclaimed.

  ‘And who might ye be?’

  ‘I’m Pocahontas,’ Maddie said.

  The pirate then looked at Amelia. ‘And ye?’

  ‘Ye?’ Amelia replied, raising a solitary eyebrow. ‘I’m Mrs Hontas. Her mother.’

  The pirate laughed. ‘And what brings ye out on such a night as this?’

  Maddie looked at her mother – who smiled and shrugged her shoulders – then back at the pirate. ‘Candy?’

  ‘Yes! Booty! Treasure! Swag!’ the pirate said, stepping to the side. ‘Ye may now come aboard the brigantine Randolph!’

  Amelia, after getting over the initial shock of seeing someone other than her mother or father open the door to her parents’ house, shook a finger at her older brother and ushered her daughter inside.

  ‘Roger here?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Garth said. ‘He called from the airport. Half hour ago, maybe. Should be here any minute.’

  ‘How is he getting here?’

  ‘What?’ Garth replied, that tiny vein making its appearance on the left side of his forehead, the way it always did when he stalled for time. Amelia had read that vein for more than thirty years.

  ‘Did I stutter or something? I asked how Roger was getting here from the airport.’

  ‘Oh,’ Garth began, pouring himself some cider, stretching it. ‘I guess he’s cabbing it. Or maybe somebody from the Clinic was meeting him. I didn’t ask.’ Then Garth’s face registered understanding. ‘Oh, please, Meelie. It’s not the bimbo. I thought you said that he said it’s over.’

  ‘He also told me he’d never do it in the first place, remember?’

  Garth smiled, defeated. ‘He’s taking a cab. I’m sure of it. In fact, that’s what he said, and I just forgot it.’

  Amelia looked at him skeptically for a few moments, then let him off the hook. ‘If I ever find out you’re keeping something from me . . .’

  Garth drew his plastic sword, smiled. ‘Then I would have to do the right thing and hoist myself on my own petard,’ he said. ‘Or something along those lines.’

  Amelia let it go for the moment. ‘What about Paige?’ she asked. ‘Has she called?’

  ‘No. Why? Was she supposed to?’

  ‘She said she might go with us tonight, but I haven’t been able to get hold of her.’

  ‘Well, this morning she said she—’

  ‘Wait,’ Amelia said. ‘You saw her this morning?’

  ‘Yeah. We had coffee.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She didn’t say anything. Said she was going to stop by your house and get her coat, but that’s about it,’ Garth replied. ‘But I’ll tell you, when she walked in, I almost did a double take.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean it could’ve been you. She cut her hair, dyed it. Seriously. Could’ve been you.’

  ‘I knew she colored it,’ Amelia said, feeling a slight shiver. ‘I didn’t know—’

  ‘Except for, you know . . .’ Garth grinned, raised his hands, indicating breasts.

  ‘Funny,’ Amelia said. ‘Really hysterical.’

  At that moment Maddie raced around the corner, into the living room, and came to a halt in front of Amelia, waiting for inspection. Everything was somewhat off center – her wig, her fringed skirt, her mask. Fine Maddie St John form.

  Amelia and Garth looked at each other, laughed.

  She was, of course, being silly. Paige was fine, Roger was fine. Her husband would be there any minute – delivered safely by a big yellow taxi – and life would mercifully get back to normal.

  The foursome walked north on Edgefield Road, toward Huron Road, slowly, with Dag and Maddie on point about five houses ahead, Amelia and Garth bringing up the rear. Just about every house on the street was lit up, decorated with tree-swinging ghosts, bright ja
ck-o’-lanterns, phony spider webs strung along night blue hedges. Maddie took full advantage of this bounty, shuttling up to the porches while Dag stood at the end of the driveways, inspecting his granddaughter’s take before dropping it into the bag.

  Fortunately, after the yearly battle over the wearing of a coat over her costume, Maddie had given in and put on her Little Mermaid jacket. At least it was in the Pocahontas extended family of products, Amelia thought.

  She located her father in this scene, halfway up the Maslars’ drive. He looked rather trim in his beige golf jacket, she thought. And because he was Dag Randolph, he was wearing a plastic hobo mask.

  For a moment, Amelia froze this tableau in her mind. It didn’t get any more Norman Rockwell than this. And that was good. Except . . .

  Except for the fact that Roger was late. So they had started without him.

  ‘Is that Garth Randolph?’ came a voice from a blue compact car trolling along the curb behind them.

  Amelia recognized the nasal whine immediately. Debbie Panzarella. Technically, Debbie Jean Panzarella Martucci Lanzini. Twice married, twice divorced, much hennaed. Debbie had a voice like a Cuisinart full of shotgun pellets.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Garth asked, moving his eye patch over.

  ‘Debbie Lanzini, silly,’ Debbie answered.

  As Garth swaggered over to the passenger window, Amelia saw Debbie conduct a lightning-quick inventory of her face in the visor mirror. She looked back out and smiled her big, phony smile.

  ‘And is that A-me-li-a?’ Debbie singsonged.

  ‘Yes it is,’ Amelia said. ‘How are you, Debbie?’

  ‘Goodnyou?’ she answered, her cashier charms rushing to the fore.

  ‘Still married,’ Amelia answered, hoping the sarcasm dripped through. Her petty feuds with Debbie Panzarella went back twenty-some years and showed no signs of ever abating. She pulled her brother closer, whispered, ‘You’re not seriously—’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Garth said. ‘I’ll catch up.’

  Amelia made her best sour-lemon face.

  ‘Come on, Meelie. I spent fifty-six bucks on this freakin’ outfit. Let me get some value, eh?’ He smiled at her and the conversation was over.

  ‘Okay,’ Amelia said. ‘We’re going left on Huron, then over to Sunview.’

  ‘Right,’ Garth replied without a modicum of interest. ‘Okay.’

  Amelia gave Debbie a half smile, then continued up Edgefield Road, scanning the horizon in front of her. At first she couldn’t see her father or her daughter, and a pang of fear caromed around her stomach. She looked at the next few houses, at the porches, driveways, tree lawns. No Maddie or Dag. She was just about to go back and get Garth when she saw her father and daughter rounding the corner onto Sunview Road, hand in hand.

  Easy, Meelie, she thought. Don’t need to make Halloween any scarier than it already is.

  Still, she doubled her pace.

  When she turned the corner onto Sunview Road, she noticed that far fewer of the houses were lit up with Halloween decorations. She could see some kids scurrying along the sidewalks, but once again, she again could not see her father or Maddie. They couldn’t have gotten far, she thought. Eight of the first ten houses on this side of the street were lit up and had their front doors wide open. Surely Maddie had run up to them. Amelia looked at the porches.

  No little Indian girls.

  Why would they have passed them up? she wondered.

  She looked at the other side of the street. Only two houses had their porch lights on. Maybe they had decided to get those out of the way and tackle the east side of the street all at once. It sounded like a Dag Randolph plan.

  Amelia crossed to the dark side of the street, passing a stretch of five or six dimmed houses, stopping, once, when she heard a rustling in the hedges in front of a gray and white colonial, a rustling that turned out to be a beagle puppy, enthralled to suddenly be on the loose, following some primordial path of its own. When she reached 1749 Sunview Road – a house she knew as the Cameron house growing up, a house long since sold and resold – she caught a glimpse of something moving in the backyard. At first she thought it may have been a towel hanging on a line, or perhaps a T-shirt.

  She stopped, looked up the driveway, tried to focus.

  After a few moments, her eyes adjusted and she saw that it was her father’s jacket she had seen moving in the dark backyard. He was now standing next to a trellis and appeared to be examining a bulging burlap sack on the ground in front of him. It was too dark to tell much else, though, except that he was still wearing his hobo mask. He looked up, spotted Amelia, waved, beckoned her to come to the backyard.

  ‘What, Dad?’ she said in a gruff whisper, as loud as she dared between two dark houses. ‘What’s going on?’

  Instead of answering, he waved her in again.

  Now what has he gone and done? Amelia wondered. Did he get himself invited to a party? As she walked up the driveway, she realized that it couldn’t be a party. At least, not an outdoor party, because there were no lights on in the backyard. Nor were there any lights on in the house, for that matter. The only illumination she could see were the interior lights of the van that was idling in the driveway.

  She approached the trellis.

  Her father waved again, his beige jacket and the white highlights in the mask catching the moonlight, creating a bizarre effect that gave the appearance of a floating head and torso in the darkness, an effect that—

  Amelia stopped a few feet away. Something was wrong. It was her father’s jacket and mask, but somehow, it wasn’t her father. Dag Randolph was five nine on a good day.

  The man who stood in front of her now was six feet tall.

  She turned to run, but a hand shot out of the blackness, webbing her face with iron fingers. A strong arm encircled her waist. Then, in an instant, a thick brown fog enveloped her.

  A mist that smelled like medicine.

  49

  NICKY LOOKED AT his now meager roll of cash. When he stepped into the Army Navy Store on Prospect he had every intention of buying a simple overcoat, maybe a pair of gloves. He had left the house wearing only his sweats the night before – a night that now seemed at least a month ago – and the temperature was dropping fast.

  He was lucky that the store was open late, and after he had picked out a basic pea coat, he was caught by the selection of defensive sprays under glass by the front door. He pointed to the small can of pepper spray, with no idea how he would use it. It just seemed like the right thing to have in his pocket.

  By the time Nicky stepped back out onto Prospect Avenue, Frank Corso’s fifteen-hundred-dollar roll had been reduced to eighty-eight dollars and twenty cents.

  The corner of East Fifty-first Street and Euclid Avenue was deserted, a blasted landscape of rusting, blocked-up cars and empty stores with whitewashed windows. At night, nothing human stirred here. On the northwest corner stood a crumbling four-story redbrick building that at one time had housed the Acme Retail Supply company, long since defunct. The first-floor windows were covered with plywood, their surfaces coated three gangs deep in brightly hued graffiti.

  The building on the northeast corner was imposing, monstrous. Ten stories high, a half block deep, a monolithic cube of soot-blackened stone and brick. The first few floors had tall, narrow windows, covered with decades of grime and exhaust, jailed by thick black bars. From there on up, at least as far as Nicky could see, the windows were bricked in, the color in those squares only slightly less gray than the older brick.

  The top floor, the floor Taffy had told him about, was a mystery. Nicky would have to stand across the street, fully exposed, to see anything above the sixth or seventh floor. He decided to wait until Willie T arrived to check it out.

  There was only one entrance on the west side of the building. The alcove was at least fifty feet from the nearest streetlamp, and the angle allowed a wedge of welcome darkness in the doorway. Nicky glanced at his watch. Nine-fifty. He had slept a few hou
rs in Sandy’s car and awakened to two flat tires. Luckily, Sandy had had two bald but serviceable spares in the trunk. The delay had cost him nearly an hour.

  At just after ten o’clock a car slowed down in front of the doorway where Nicky stood. It wasn’t Willie T’s car, at least not the car Nicky had seen at the Burger King. This was a late-model red Mazda. He couldn’t see inside, but he could hear the pulsing bass of the stereo.

  Nicky flattened himself against the rusted steel door of the warehouse, trying to lose himself in the shadows, but knowing that the occupants of the car had probably seen him. Maybe Willie T had borrowed a car, he thought. Maybe some of his homeboys had come along to kick this crazy fucker’s ass. Bunch of drunk, off-duty cops with AK-47s.

  But nobody made a move. For what seemed like an hour but was in reality no more than a few minutes, the car idled, Nicky idled. There was no sign of life or commerce for three full blocks in any direction. The occupants of the car weren’t there to pick up a forty-ounce. They were there for Nicky.

  He was just about to run when, incredibly, the car started rolling again, slowly, toward the avenue. After a few seconds, Nicky leaned forward slightly, daring the light. The red Mazda made a right turn onto Euclid Avenue and disappeared into the night.

  He leaned back and found that he had been holding his breath the whole time. And that his sweat-slicked hand was wrapped tightly, almost painfully, around the can of pepper spray in his pocket.

  They had seen the power, he thought crazily. Wacko white boy waiting in an alcove. You never—

  Suddenly the rusty hinge of the door behind him screeched like a wounded animal.

  And Nicky fell, backwards, downwards, into the cold, lightless warehouse.

  50

  MAC REWOUND ALL three tapes on all three VCRs. They were the big, old three-fourths-inch U-Matic tapes that universities and electronic news-gathering organizations swore by in the early days of video, even long after the VHS revolution had begun. He had taped so much junk when he ran the Audiovisual Department at Case Western Reserve, yet so much of it had served to keep that time alive for him. Just to see the faces on the news programs reassured him that it was still 1988, that the door might open any minute and Julia would drift into the room, take his hand, laugh at one of his terrible jokes.