All But a Pleasure

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Angie, are you sure you’re the one they’ve set up with this Officer Dave…Clayton?”

  “Oh, yes, Aunt Sally, I must be. Cory and Julie hit it off so perfectly yesterday at that stupid Spanish Inquisition rolegame.”

  “But are you really sure? How, exactly, did Corwin phrase it?”

  Angela closed her eyes and concentrated. “Well…let me see… ‘I am the recipient of an urgent supplication’—you know Cory—‘from M. Julie Whitcomb, under immediate pressure for a second lady to assist one David Clayton, police detective, herself, and me in comprising a congenial foursome this evening.’”

  “And you’re sure that was the order he named you all in?”

  “Yes…yes, reasonably sure.”

  “Well,” said Aunt Sally, “to me, it sounds a little ambiguous. As if the one they’ve set up with Dave is this Julie…?”

  “Whitcomb, Aunt Sally. Julie Whitcomb. Oh, if you’d seen them yesterday, you wouldn’t be in any doubt. I think they must have been made for each other!”

  “And yet, didn’t you tell me that he got out of that game shortly after you’d left it yourself?”

  “Only because it tickled his fancy to be the first inquisitor caught out as a secret heretic and tortured and burned to death. That was the way he was playing it from the very start of their stupid game, before I even left it.”

  “And promptly came over to join your Raggedy Ann scenario?”

  “As Andy. Raggedy Andy.” Angela sighed again. (She would not cry, not about this!) “Best friends.”

  Good old Angela—he’d never word it like that, of course, but that’d be the boiled-down gist—here’s a nice, staid, respectable, maybe slightly boring polly who should make the perfect blind date for good old Angela. Yes, she could easily imagine Julie Whitcomb wording it something like that. “Best friends,” she repeated to herself in a whisper as she headed for her guest room, not to change, exactly. To re-accessorize. “Best friends for life. Like brother and sister. That’s better than nothing.”

  It might even turn out to be better than whatever Corwin thought of as hot romance. Did she even want to know?

  She was already wearing her apple-green trousers and tunic, with lightly flaring legs and sleeves. She took off her daytime headband and substituted one of pale gold wire mesh with an enamel Mourning Cloak butterfly on each side—very fetching against her blond hair, which was almost exactly the same color as the gold wire. She shed the white silk scarf at her throat and replaced it with her favorite pin-necklace: a white kitten on each of her collar points, the one on the right fondling a ball of yarn and the one on the left holding one paw out to catch it, with the “yarn” stretching loosely between the kittens, glowing because it was strung with pearls only just large enough for the bead holes. She exchanged her white leather belt for a golden yellow silk sash. Last, she changed from white shoes with laces into white driving slippers. No high heels. She didn’t even own a pair of high heels. She didn’t intend to throw her body out of alignment and have later-life problems because of it. Besides, Cory was one point six eight meters tall, and she was one point six five.

  Julie Whitcomb had been wearing spike heels in red Sunday. It had made her taller than him, and he didn’t seem to mind.

  Well, there was still the danger of later-life posture problems.

  Julie was a nurse, wasn’t she? If high heels posed a health danger, shouldn’t she be aware of it? Or did nurses think they were immune and could do anything when they were off duty?

  Angela threw one glance at her reflection in the full-length mirror. One point six five meters of slim blond woman—very wholesome, very girl-next-door—dressed well enough for a blind date at Scoops and Bottles, unless the place had grown a lot more formal than it used to be.

  * * * *

  She knew that once Patrice Davison Hawthorne and Mike Olmstead Dickinson—Corwin’s “mater” and “pater”—had seen their first child, Corinna Olmstead Casanova, safely settled down in Arbor City as a University of Michiana librarian, and their second, Corwin, safely graduated from Astoria State, they had taken off on a world tour for their “second” (actually about their fifth) honeymoon. Money was maybe even less of a problem for the Davison-Olmsteads than for the Garvey-Johansens.

  Angela had known the pleasant Davison-Olmstead family home in the Joliet Park area almost as well as her own, but had not yet had a chance to see the apartment where Corwin was living for at least as long as his parents took exploring the world: two years or longer, if they chose. After what she had seen of the newly graduated Corwin so far this fall, she approached his door just a little apprehensively.

  Instead of his name, the sign on his door, right above the lion’s-head brass knocker, read: “Arnheim.” At least it didn’t read “The Dungeon” or something like that. She lifted the ring in the lion’s mouth and dropped it against the sounding plate, once, twice —

  And the door was open, and he was smiling at her. “How expeditiously you located me! And how exquisitely those sable-hued butterflies set off your hair, how congenially the kittens disport themselves on either point of your collar! Have you a moment to glance over my perhaps temporary abode?”

  He seemed eager, and she didn’t see anything so very lurid or “outre” over his shoulder, so she said, “I’d be delighted, Cory,” and went in.

  To see at a glance that it wasn’t at all what she had feared it might be. The walls and ceiling were painted a sort of silver-gray like mother-of-pearl, the carpet was one of the richest greens she had ever seen, the couch and chairs were rattan with bright gold cushions, there was a round rattan coffee-table that held a few leather-bound books almost glowing in the soft light of a Tiffany lamp. In front of the white drapes along the far wall, one of those miniature waterfalls kept the water circulating in an aquarium of goldfish, seaweed, and white sand at the bottom. Surrounding the aquarium, Corwin’s old bonsai collection, still alive and, she thought, expanded, grew like a tiny forest, with more ordinary houseplants—geraniums, ferns, azaleas, coleus, and so on—crowding one another in a healthy-looking way on the floor around the aquarium table’s legs. Beside and above it, a canary sang in a large white cage. The mantelpiece over the gas fireplace held a row of clothbound books between one bookend with a small antiqued globe of the earth and a matching bookend with a globe of the night sky. A small, antique roll-top desk held the phone beside the doorway to the apartment’s back rooms. The pictures on the walls were Currier and Ives landscapes.

  “Kept in order,” Corwin explained, “by thrice-weekly visitations of the Vermeer Domestic Service. They minister to my rooms each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, in return for which invaluable service I endorse their enterprise whenever opportunity presents itself.” He went on, indicating the canary, “Not ‘Nevermore’—as being a bird of quite a different feather than a raven—but ‘Evermore.’ With an additional courtly bow to Longfellow’s ‘Birds of Killingworth’: ‘Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.’ And here —” He scooped up a tortoiseshell tabby who had appeared out of somewhere, “soliciting in her aloof feline fashion the favor of an introduction to you, is my estimated Caterina, veteran of Forest Green’s highly-to-be-recommended Animal Shelter.”

  “Very pleased to meet you, Caterina.” Angela stroked the tabby’s soft head. Caterina yawned, purred, and snuggled into the crook of Corwin’s arm. Angela took another long look around the apartment.

  “Cory, it’s—it’s beautiful!”

  Maybe he heard surprise and relief in her voice, because he answered her with an ironical half-smile, “You anticipated, perhaps, metal-plated walls ‘rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which charnel superstition has given rise,’ with a circular black rug in the center symbolizing a pit, a scimitar-pendulum depending from the ceiling in lieu of chandelier, table of rough-hewn lumber bedecked with various species of restraints, papered floor-bo
rder thick with portraitured rats, the whole illuminated only by the fitful and wavering glare of thick black candles?” He shook his head. “Such scenes are well enough to while away the coveted idle hour, but not to reside within clockround.”

  “But all this —” She made a gesture to take in the whole room. “It just doesn’t look very Poesque, somehow.”

  “Oh, Angela, let me reassure you that in fact it is. Not slavishly, I confess, but in spirit, which is why I style it ‘Arnheim.’ The Venerable Edgar did not dwell exclusively in settings of horror and decay, as popular opinion would have it. He was—or would have been, if in possession of sufficient pecuniary resources—a well-rounded gentleman of wide-ranging literary tastes, with a keen appreciation of both the sublime and the ridiculous. Alas, his works in the former category tend to be overlooked in toto, and those in the latter all too often misread utterly by persons determined that if Edgar Poe wrote it, it must be horrific in sober earnest, no matter its clearly humorous extravagances.— I have been soapboxing, dear Raggedy. Why did you not remind me of the hour?”

  “You were doing it so well, Cory. I almost understood most of it. You should be a professor.”

  “I should bore half my class into cherubic slumber, whilst maintaining the other half in wondering suspense as to what strange foreign tongue, nameless to their syllabi, I was employing in my lectures.”

  “Well, Cory, as nearly as I’ve figured your rules out, they include: Never use a three-syllable word when you can find one of four or five syllables that works almost as well, and never miss a chance to throw in a long or unusual modifier whether you really need one or not.”

  Grinning, he spread his hands and replied, “What can I do save plead extenuating circumstances? I relish words.” Tossing Caterina gently onto the cushion of the wicker chair, where she curled up, meowed, and set to licking her paw, Corwin offered Angela his arm. “Madam Raggedy Ann, shall we venture forth to our joint assignation?”

  CHAPTER 5

  Still Monday, September 18

  Dave Clayton had been right on time. Julie liked that in a man. They got to Scoops and Bottles and chose a table for four where she had a clear view of the door. He wouldn’t have known so well who to watch for, never having to the best of his knowledge met either of the others socially; when off-duty, the best of pollies was no more omniscient than anyone else. While they waited, Dave entertained Julie by spearing a couple of toothpicks into mint-jelly beans from the courtesy dish on the table and making them “dance” on the tabletop, twirling and kicking like tiny legs. Something he’d seen, he said, in an evening course he’d taken a couple of years ago in classic cinematic literature.

  Another point in his favor. She liked cine-lit, too. It was so graphic, such a solid diving board for the imagination.

  She happened to look up just as Corwin and Angela came through the door. Another instance of E.S.P.? “Ah, here they are now,” she told Dave as she half stood and waved her arm to catch their attention.

  It worked at once. Threading their way through the crowded sweet bar and grill, they soon arrived at the right table. “Angela, Corwin,” she began the introductions, “meet David Clayton. Dave, Angela Garvey, M. Corwin Poe.”

  “Angela” he replied, half rising to shake hands. “Honored. ‘Angie’ to your friends? M. Poe?”

  “It is a privilege and an honor to make your acquaintance, sir,” Julie’s prospective recruit replied, somehow making the outdated formula sound cordial. “And ‘Corwin’ will be fine.”

  Angela, meanwhile, after glancing around the table, seated herself opposite Julie, at Dave’s other hand. Angela really was a dear, sweet little thing, thought Julie: fresh, clean, and wholesome as a spring morning in a meadow. The kind of dear child you simply wanted to hug and protect forever from hurting or being hurt. The kind any nurse would inject as smoothly and painlessly as possible, without even asking.

  Corwin, now. Him she would ask first, and wouldn’t feel at all surprised if he said, “Rough, if you would kindly be so accommodating.” Which might not fit the needs of Dante’s Delight so well, after all. Since nobody was here for flu shots or blood draws, and she was as much off duty as a nurse, as Dave was as a pollydeck, she would have to feel out her potential recruit with conversational clues.

  They placed their orders: for Julie, mixed salad with cilantro chicken and a glass of white wine; for Angela, a shrimp omelet with a glass of iced tea and a chocolate soda to follow; for Corwin, filet mignon rare and V-9 juice on the rocks, to be followed by the establishment’s featured ice cream drink of the day; for Dave, the half-pound house specialty cheeseburger and whatever Chinese beer they had on tap.

  Julie liked to see her dates enjoy their food, and a lot of it. It gave her a sort of vicarious pleasure. It also suggested a hearty appetite for other things…though she always saved that for at least the second date. If he looked like a really strong candidate for her prince, she would test by making him wait until date number three.

  She thought Dave Clayton looked like a solid third-date candidate. He made her laugh. He made them all laugh, telling jokes like a stand-up comedian while somehow making his meal disappear without ever letting a bite get in the way of a punch line.

  Yes, he did monopolize the mealtime chit chat, a little, but nobody complained or seemed to mind. The jokes were too good and he told them too well. After one especially humorous shaggydog, Angela remarked that he should be doing this some place that had a fifty-tridol cover charge, and how lucky they were to be getting the floor show free.

  “Why, shucks, ma’am,” he drawled in stage-comic Western, “keepin’ jest too blame busy with mah reg’lar workline.” It was the closest anyone had yet come to the subjects they had banned for the duration: their workhour occupations, and the weekend’s sad local news.

  This was one of the best rules for life that the Purgatorio had taught Julie: no grave conversation at mealtime.

  They saved more serious sessioning for over their coffee cups, when the minted jelly beans were the only solid foodstuff remaining on their table, and the other tables were starting to empty without being re-occupied. Then Julie remembered she also had designs, of quite a different kind, on the other fellow at the table, and turned to ask him, “So tell me, Corwin, are you really a universalist, or was that only part of your Don Serafino character?”

  “Don Serafino character?” said Dave.

  “In a rolegame they were playing last night,” Angela told him, her voice studiously neutral. “Spanish Inquisition.”

  “Hmm,” said Dave. “I enjoy a good game myself, now and then. But give me Mount Doom or Star Trek or good, old-fashioned Dens and Dragons like they played it when I was a boy, back when we called the dragons ‘dinosaurs’ and watched ’em trample our lawns.”

  “Oh, Dave,” Angela protested. “You can’t be as ancient as all that. I’ll bet you aren’t even thirty!”

  “Twenty-eight,” he grinned. “But I’ve got a long white beard for when I play Gandalf. If I happen to have it with me at the time the game strikes.”

  “In my observation,” Corwin interjected, “twenty-eight may prove a perilous age of life, fraught with angst and a nattering sense of calendrical time marching inexorably on, to leave oneself stranded on the barren shores of unfulfillment.”

  “And you would know this, how?” Dave asked, eyeing the last speaker whimsically. “You’re all of—what—twenty-three? Twenty-two?”

  Corwin inclined his head. “To the charge of excessive youth, I must plead guilty as charged and fling myself on the leniency of the court. You were—presumably—twenty-two yourself once on a time, in the dim light of the primordial dawn. I base my hypothesis on painstaking attention to divers instructors encountered during my late, unlamented collegiate career.”

  “None of which,” said Julie, “answers my original question. Well, Don Serafino?”

  Looki
ng like he had lost track of her original question, Corwin took a sip of coffee and, seeing that they all remained silently waiting, replied, “For the sake of filling what appears to be one of those curious periodic cessations occasionally befalling even the most animated of conversations… Yes, I suppose I must likewise plead guilty to entertaining a somewhat universalist outlook. Not—please understand—that I should ever argue, as Don Serafino might, the notion that some quality in ourselves obligates our Creator to save all of us in despite of our sins; but that I cleave to the more orthodox conception that the Divine Mercy might not elect of Its Own free will to maintain us in existence for the sake of subsequently damning any portion of us to an eternal perdition of unspeakable and horrific pain.”

  “You’re very lucky,” Dave remarked, “or very lacking in imagination, if you’ve never run up against the hard cold fact that there are some scuzzballs in this world who deserve eternal horrific pain.”

  Seeing how close the conversation was skirting to the murdered body found yesterday, Julie held her breath. None of them spoke for a heartbeat or two.

  At last the younger man inclined his head again and said, sounding apologetic, “It would be grave presumption to deny the actual existence of Hell. But may I nevertheless entertain some hope that the damned are tortured, not by God, but by one another, of their own free choice?”

  Julie held back a grin. Yes, maybe they could work with this one.

  “Yeah,” Dave was saying, “okay, I might be able to go along with that. More or less. But look here. If God is maintaining us all in existence every minute continuously, why doesn’t God just stop maintaining the scuzzballs, let them fall apart into nonexistence?”

  Angela said, “Where would it stop? ‘In the worst of us, a seed of good—in the best, a seed of bad.’”