Very easy-going folks, although clearly they’ve got piles of moola. Or at least Chester does. Not sure about the others. I said I’d been using the pool and was that okay, and he said sure, anytime.
So I stripped down to my Speedo—the violet one with the white stripe—and they made a big fuss over it. “Hubba hubba!” Chester said. Tony and Celia asked what it was made of and Tony sort of grabbed the material and said it felt like rayon. I thought everyone knew about Speedos. Guess not. “That Speedie going to stay on when you dive in?” Tony asked. Chester explained the physics of how it gripped my glutes and when wet would presumably grip even more, doing it all very scientifically. They’re both funny guys. Meanwhile I could tell Celia was trying not to look at my package too much.
I dove in and did my usual ten minutes of laps. Chester joined me afterward and Tony, without a bathing suit—Celia said she was “shocked. Simply shocked!” and went indoors. The two guys started rough-housing and I got out and found her coming out again, dressed less casually, and she reminded the other two that they had an appointment to visit Chester’s grandmother a few towns over for lunch, so they got out and said I could stay but I put on my shorts and sweatshirt and took off.
I guess they were out late, because I heard that old-time jazz music playing again late last night. So I’m not crazy after all.
June 9, 2000
I said I’d seen people and heard music at Ingoldsby, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something not quite… I don’t know what I’m writing here!
Wait. For one thing, this guy Tony, he’s as queer as anyone I’ve ever met. Certainly queer as Nate, as in “Gay Nate the gay roommate” I roomed with two years undergraduate at Chicago. Yet no one seems to notice it. He looks at me at times like he could swallow me without chewing, then the next minute he’s all over Celia being stupidly romantic.
Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out all of their relationships to each other. Chester said that Celia was his “ward.” I looked that up in the O.E.D. and he seems too young to have a ward, unless that’s their way of saying she’s his girl. His “paramour,” Celia would say, blushing. She blushes at everything I say and half of what the others say, and I actually believe her. Then there’s Chester himself. He’s obviously in charge of the place. It’s his house, he’s told me that. But is he doing Celia? Or is he doing Tony? Or is anyone doing anyone? Or are they all doing each other? Like I say, I can’t quite figure it out.
And some of the words they use! I mean, where do they dig them up? The other day Tony said that surely “a healthy young fellow like yourself must know at least one round-heels in town.”
At least one what?
So Tony explained, surprised that I didn’t know the term: it means a “woman who falls backward into bed easily, as though her heels were rounded.”
Is that nuts or what?
Still, they’re nice folks, easy-going and fun to spend time with. Chester and Tony have known each other since they were little kids, and Celia has known them almost as long. Oh, Chester took me aside and said I should call him, much hesitation, I should call him by his nickname. I waited, wondering what it could be? “Penis-breath”? “Hung-stud”?
Suspense, then—“Bud!”
Well, it’s better than Chester. And he sort of looks like a Bud. Not quite fully formed. A big boy. Oh, and once they all heard I was writing my Ph.D. thesis they were like suddenly very impressed, and it was “shouldn’t you be studying?” or “shouldn’t you be busy writing?” until I cleared that up. I do that here at the gate-house apartment.
But Celia? Well, she is very, very pretty, sexy-pretty, and she knows it, and she flirts all the time. It’s all I can do not to have a chubby when I’m around her. Then I remember if I do, there’s always Tony checking me out.
But hey, at least I’m not bored anymore.
June 14, 2000
They must have brought their own furniture and stuff or gotten some of it from out of storage nearby, because when I stepped into the bathroom—“the water closet,” they call it—looking for a towel, I noticed the bedroom was filled with things, a bed, big reading chair, tables. They were playing music and it was coming out of a console built into this long wall in Bud’s bedroom—the place is filled with built-ins, hidden bureaus, etc.
Bud showed it to me, and it was this ancient and really handsome blond-wood record player, playing these old, long-playing 78 RPM records! So I checked out the rest of the collection—in an adjoining built-in cabinet, natch—and it was all Billy Holiday and Louie Armstrong, Arturo Toscanini and Arthur Nikisch and stuff like that. In the old original covers, which are in great condition too. Totally retro. Very cool, Bud!
Oh, and the retro theme is throughout the bedroom. On the table that’s cantilevered out of—you guessed it—the built-in headboard of the bed, I found all these cool old magazines from like the 30’s, Vanity Fair, Punch, an old New Yorker, and this nifty old issue of Popular Mechanics that had this futuristic drawing of a streamlined car on the cover, and it read “Oldsmobile’s Big Breakthrough—The Hydromatic Transmission!”
How cool is that?
Have to borrow one of the magazines some day. Just love that old Americana.
While the others were busy doing something, I let Celia touch my “Speedie,” as all three of them call it. She said it was soft as a Siamese cat. Mee-oow! A chubby and a lot of blushing.
June 15, 2000
Glory Hallelujah! I finally got laid! What’s it been? Three weeks or more? A record for me going celibate. But the long dry spell is over. And I must have sensed it was going to happen because just before showering to go out with Bev last night, I beat off, just so I wouldn’t be too ready.
After the movie we went to the Chinese place again and talked again. This time she asked me about myself but I kept moving the conversation back to her, asking about her kid and her family and what it was like growing up here in Nowheresville. As much to keep her on topic as because I don’t really want to talk about myself and my lately extremely stupid life. And it paid off.
Seeing her into her doorway, I began kissing her and she pulled me deep into the doorway and she was like all over me, so I turned the key she’d put in the door and opened it and pushed us in, and she said, “Yes, yes, no one should see,” and from there it was the old Bartram smoothness in control, of course along with her being really hot and hungry, I mean her husband’s been dead, what, three years and he was sick the last six months and what if she hasn’t, you know, in a really long time?
So by the time we got into her bedroom, most of our clothing was off and I was eating her out, then pushing her down on me, then BA-BANG. Even with having come earlier I was hot enough for three pops, no pulling out, finish one, go for the next. She popped a minimum six times, she was all wet, grabbing me like a crazy woman. I got away when the old lady upstairs caring for the little boy came down, calling “Is that you, Bev?” Snuck out the bedroom window. Round-heeled woman, huh?
June 16, 2000
Wait one minute. Wait just one minute. Something happened yesterday at the house with the three of them, and I may be crazy after all. I mean seriously fucking nuts. Maybe losing my folks and staying with the thesis despite that and then coming here away from everyone and everything I know really did unhinge me more than I thought, because what happened yesterday afternoon was…
Let me tell it step by step. Ever since the heat wave broke, the weather’s been lousy here. Cool, damp, stormy looking. Yesterday was no exception. So after my morning work I walked over to Ingoldsby to use the pool. They’re all there, wide awake, as I strip down for a swim. When I get back out and put on my sweatshirt, they’re talking about this mystery novel Tony’s reading by one Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, which sounds familiar and he’s making fun of it, reading examples of really bad purple prose. Bud says, “Tony could write better, of course.” Celia—who’s wearing this short-sleeved sky blue sweater and no bra under it—says, “It’s
the hit of the season. Can fifty thousand readers be wrong?” And they’re arguing, while I’m wondering wasn’t that the name of a movie with Bogart and Bacall? Detective Philip Marlowe and all? So I begin asking questions, and sure enough it’s the same story. So that was weirdness number one. Why write a novel based on a movie that’s been out more than fifty years?
Tony meanwhile says what does Celia know about real literature since all she reads is the communists. Then he names John Steinbeck, Ellen Glasgow, and Maxim Gorky, two of which I read stories of in high school, and I remember the teacher called them Regionalists, not Commies. So this argument goes further, until Bud jumps in the pool and grabs Tony and pulls him in too. Celia gets terrifically splashed. Their usual horseplay. But she’s soaking and pissed, especially as it’s a nice skirt she’s wearing. She asks me to go in and get a towel, would I? Then Bud and Tony, who are in the pool, ask for towels too.
So I go into the bath—not the water closet, they’re separate—and find a handful and I hear Bud yelling to come out and see something; looks like lightning coming quickly across the hills toward the house. From indoors the sky has turned weirdly dark, rose-colored if that makes any sense, and as I head out to the pool terrace, I yell to them to get the hell out of the pool, and there’s this enormous crack of thunder and huge bolt of lightning at the same time, hitting I swear to God right over Ingoldsby, absolutely deafening and blinding. I drop the towels and run outside afraid they’re hit and…
Okay I’m going to write, it…and there was no one there. Nothing there. Wait, that’s not true. My sweatpants and book were where I’d left them. The chaise lounge too. But only one. No other furniture. None of the flowers or plants Celia fusses with. The pool was there, with water. But they were gone. All three of them. Not a sound. Then, it gets better, when I turned around, the house was closed and locked and indoors completely empty except for what’s usually covered with sheets and sealed with Scotch tape. Totally different than I’d left it all not a half minute before!
Even the towels I’d just dropped on the lintel were gone and the bedroom door was closed and, yes, locked. Whatever the storm was, it moved away pretty quickly, as I stood there on the terrace. Believe me, I stood there a while trying to figure out what had happened.
I didn’t succeed.
June 19, 2000
One thing’s now straightened out. For better or worse.
The guy who hired me, A.J. Torrington? He phoned on his weekly check-up and after we’d talked a while about the place and its upkeep and all, as casually as I could, I asked if any of the Ingals family who owns the place ever came down for a visit.
“They might. But they’d let me know and I’d let you know in advance. Why? Has anyone been bothering you there?”
I told him no, then asked him to clarify: They don’t ever come down for a week in the summer, or a weekend?
“Of course not. The elder members go off to Maine and the Riviera. As for the ones your age, they go to the Seychelles and Rarotonga and places like that. No one’s used the place in over fifty years! That’s why the Trust is thinking of giving it to the state.”
“To the state?”
“Yes. As a museum.”
I thanked him for clarifying.
Yes, thank you, very much, sir! Oh and by the way, Mr. Torrington, I thought I would let you know that I am totally fucking nuts.
June 20, 2000
Haven’t been back to Ingoldsby since Sunday, and you know what happened. It’s remained stormy and cool, cloudy, so I’ve kept all the windows in the gate-house apartment closed. No yard work to do. Have not swum, but I have done some jogging—in the opposite direction.
In town yesterday afternoon having lunch at Joe’s lunch counter, got to talking to Doc Stansbury—seems Rodman is his first name. I hinted as I’d not had a physical exam in years. He’s semi-retired, but he said I should come over to his office. I did. He had all the equipment, although the office was fairly close and not much used.
Sort of hinted around at what I’d told the librarian, hearing strange noises and stuff. Mentioned what those girls, Ashley and Amanda who always hang around me, said, about Ingoldsby being haunted. He said nothing, then asked if I wanted sleeping pills. Told me I should have more activities to occupy me. He and Joe play gin rummy. They’re missing a third for the summer. Would I join them. Said I would.
So Doc didn’t exactly brush off the whole thing, and I didn’t push it. But as I was leaving, he asked in a low voice, “So these ‘events’? Are they just auditory or visual too?”
“Sometimes visual too,” I admitted. He recommended lots of beer and movie-going and the sleeping pills he was prescribing. Why is it I think he knows something he’s not letting on? Oh great! Now I’m getting paranoiac too.
Just for historical accuracy, the second movie Bev and me saw was Bertolucci’s 1900, another sweeping, this time Italian, history movie. Pretty good. Kinda pervy too at times. As involving as the other one.
June 21, 2000
Still haven’t been back to Ingoldsby. But I did join Joe and Dr. Stansbury for cards at the pharmacy last night. Joe closed up and pulled down the shades. Lots of fun. Nice guys. Of course, I’m one of those really annoying people who doesn’t remember how a card game is played or what’s wild or what wins, until I’m told. Then whammo! We were all three neck and neck for an hour or so, then I pulled ahead and beat Joe and Doc.
Won two dollars and seventy cents. Penny a point.
June 22, 2000
Still not gone back to Ingoldsby. But it seems I have a standing date with Bev on Saturday for the movies—read the fuckies, because we skipped the movies, went to dinner at the Chinese place, then I drove her back and we were all over each other. I didn’t beat off earlier this time and I came while she was doing me with her mouth, and then another three times. Not since that mulatto chick Gina have I had such hot sex. It’s not that we fit so well, or have even once come at the same time. We’re sort of like big cats with each other, licking and biting and all. That is, when we’re not wrestling or wrestling our way out of the sheets. One of these days that kid of hers is going to walk right in on us. I got away in time. Slept to noon today. Totally fucked out. Didn’t even need the pills Doc gave me.
June 23 2000
Okay, so it had been over a week since I’d been there and I was feeling better about my life, so I took my mind in my hands and went for a walk down to, you guessed it, Ingoldsby, Speedo on underneath my shorts and T-shirt. Lovely sunny day. Just going for a swim, right. Like nothing had happened there. Ever.
Okay. I walked down to Ingoldsby and there they were. They were lying around the pool terrace, which of course was fully furnished as before, like nothing had happened. All three seemed to be in various states of prostration. (So If I’m nuts, I’m at least consistent and yet original too, since they’re never quite exactly the same as they were before, are they?) Believe me, I resisted the urge to ask: Uh, would any of you care to tell me where you utterly vanished to the other day?
I resisted partly because it seems like they were preoccupied with hangovers. Seems they’d had a quite busy Sunday night at some playboy pal of Bud’s party. Bunky Huenecker—seems everyone they know has names like Bunky and Muffy and Fluffy. Rich kids! Or rich whatever they are.
Bud was the least incapacitated. He was actually hitting golf balls off tees. And so up and around. Celia, meanwhile, wearing those funny dark glasses even though it was gray outside, insisted that she was making breakfast for everyone. This would consist of—get this! —three pancakes per person, ham, Canadian bacon, three eggs each and toast with no doubt huge gobs of butter on it. I said I’d pass, I’d eaten. Seems she’d gotten a little tipsy the previous night and, I’m quoting Bud now, “danced the kasaztka with someone who claimed to be Russian royalty.” Tony, however, was laid out on a chaise, mostly under a bath towel—yes, one of those towels—moaning now and then. It turns out he also had won a bet by outdrinking some other idiot by
downing a magnum of French champagne, i.e., the Good Stuff. Bud meanwhile sported a tiny little shiner, which, when I probed, it turned out was due to a quote political difference unquote he’d had with another party-goer over… (I stop for effect, should any damn fool except me ever read this)…over Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia. “When I mentioned how repulsive it seemed for Italians with Gatling guns to be casually sipping Chianti and mowing down fellows with spears, he accused me of being a, you know, darkie-lover.”
My first thought was—now I’ve heard everything! Then I asked Bud why he was upset over Mussolini rather than the invasion of Poland or the Anschluss with Austria or the Sudetenland or one of Germany’s other atrocities. He looked me in the face with a completely straight face and said, “But Neal, old pal, everyone knows we’ll have to go to war with Hitler eventually.” Tony asked us to lower our speech to a scream, please.
It was that ever so casually said “eventually” that somehow got to me.
So I watched Bud hit a bunch of balls away from the house, then Celia came out again, with a tray with dishes, silverware, and big glasses of orange juice, saying food would be a few minutes more. And she looked so pretty with her pale yellow short-sleeved little sweater that I said, “Fine. I’ll have some of your cholesterol-drenched breakfast!” And she seemed happy about it, although Tony said, “For someone who eats what looks to me like nuts and bolts and plain water, some real food might do you good.”
And that was when the idea crossed my mind. “Do you two also think that we’ll eventually got to war with Germany?” I asked Celia and Tony when we sat down to eat. They both said they found current events, and European current events especially, far too boring for words. Would I change the subject please.
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