All But a Pleasure

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Angela?” Julie guessed.

  “Angela.” His tone of voice left no doubt that his own happiness far outweighed his disappointment.

  So that was that. She congratulated him, got his reassurances that he would honor the privacy of Dante’s Delight, and signed off. Well, she consoled herself, cradling the receiver, a few more prayers to sweet Jesus to send us somebody else, a little sharper lookout—in a population of 35,000 last census, there had to be at least one somebody else. After all, they had kept it going for almost half a century. And she really was ready for emeritus status. Especially now, with Dave so much in the foreground of her picture.

  Meanwhile, last week’s Saturday session had flipped the regular schedule, putting Julie and Paul on angel duty last night. She was ready and willing for whatever tonight had to offer. A glitch might have gotten into the long-term outlook, but at least the short-term view offered plenty of consolation.

  * * * *

  Angela thought Corwin seemed as giddy as she still felt from the promise of last night’s goodbyes. They decided to be adventurous at The Sorrento today: instead of their usual spaghetti, she ordered layered spinach mostaccioli and he chicken fettuccine alfredo. And wine—house wine, because in spite of never having had to worry about money, neither of them was old enough to have learned how to connoisseur wine, and they felt no special interest in pretending to know anything about it, so it was best just to trust the restaurant.

  Over the menu, she found herself humming the Fairy Rebecca’s famous “Colonel Culpepper’s Favorite Dog” patter song, and remarked, “I wouldn’t mind seeing that production again tonight.”

  “Shall we? Riley High boasts a theater sufficiently commodious to sell out only occasionally, and should the penultimate performance prove the exception—to our disgruntlement, but the enrichment of the educational institution—Hank might be persuaded to tuck us, as cognoscenti, into some inconspicuous corner of the wings, thus affording us an unusual view of a production that we will not see again this side of the Akashic Records. For ‘Foggerty’s Fairy’ we may have always with us, but never again in this unique production.”

  “Actually, in live theater, every single performance is unique, always a little different from all the other performances. That’s one of the things that make live theater so much fun. But tonight wouldn’t be our last chance. There’s the matinee tomorrow.”

  “Sunday. That would necessitate our arriving tardily at the rolegaming…”

  “But there will always be more rolegames.”

  “True, but, as with theatrical representations, each rolegaming session is unique.”

  Their wine arrived. They toasted each other and sipped, exchanged smiles across the table, and sipped again.

  “Gilbert’s original, nonmusical version of 1880,” he said at length, continuing the small talk, “comprises three acts. In adapting and polishing it for the operatic stage of the Savoy, he dispensed with most of Act Three—despite many scenes of rare comedy, its absence is no indispensable loss and, indeed, rather beneficial to the dramatic unity and balance.”

  “How did it all end, then?”

  “Oh, the Venerable William simple amputated the denouement from Act Three and dovetailed it neatly into the end of Act Two.”

  “I think you just mixed a metaphor there, Cory.”

  “Did I? Kindly explicate.”

  “‘Amputate’—a medical operation. ‘Dovetail’—isn’t that carpentry?”

  “So it is, and so I did! I stand—or, more accurately, sit—corrected.”

  It might not have seemed all that excruciatingly funny to anyone else, or even to themselves at another time and place, but that Saturday in that favorite restaurant, after that particular Friday night, they laughed until they became slowly aware of other late lunchers turning to smile at them.

  “Walkinshaw,” he mused at last, with another sip of wine, “might prove a more fertile character than the eponymous Foggerty to roleplay. Walkinshaw at least enjoys a bit of being knocked comically about the stage.”

  Angela asked softly, “Were you too disappointed yesterday, Cory, when I made you promise?”

  “Disappointed? I felicitate myself on negotiating a transaction beyond the most cherished dreams of a Rockefeller or a Carnegie—who according to legend dealt only in mere financial dross. Angela, Angela, you are so far above my merit… I postulate that in the mysteries of space and eternity, the angels must have been named after you rather than vice versa.”

  From anyone else, it might have sounded like overblown parody. From him…

  “That’s very pretty, Cory, but —” She was saved from figuring out what to say next by the waiter bringing their food.

  And she found she was ravenous. Cory must have been, too. For a few minutes they ate saying nothing except the occasional short comment about how tasty it was and how they thought they would order these dishes again.

  Eventually, when their plates were about half full, she fed him a few bites from hers, and he fed her a few bites from his, reaching across the table with their carefully laden forks. Then, at last, she said, “But the angels were certainly not named for me! If you’re looking for a saint on earth, you should meet my faculty advisor up at Minnemagantic U. He once told me that the most heroic thing of all is just to live an ordinary, decent life.”

  “That notable Professor Czarny who may or may not be an authentic, if compassionate, vampire?”

  “Opinion up there runs about half and half. He certainly honestly believes that he is.”

  “Your epistolary communications imparted the tale to me, embellished with numerous salient details. Some accident in pre-adolescence which caused the hospital to despair of his life until, as he later recounted, an older vampire preserved it with the existence-altering bite, following which alleged incident the medical personnel discovered that nothing, to all appearances, provided him nourishment save raw blood from the blood bank, prescribed to be administered orally.”

  “And before that, as a kid, he’d never been much interested in vampires. His favorite childhood horror story was The Phantom of the Opera.”

  “I further garnered from your missives that he follows the diurnal schedule of his professorial profession.”

  “Oh, yes. And eats regular meals, as well as his prescription blood-bank blood, usually after it passes its ‘use by’ date for transfusions. He thinks he only eats regular food for the sociability, the flavor, and to keep his digestive system in order with enough bulk.”

  “As I recollect, you related somewhere that he regards vampires, not as the immortal ‘undead’ of legend, but as exemplars of living humanity with, at utmost, somewhat extended mortal spans? As, in fact, among the earliest known shamans of our race? Adducing the ‘Body’ and more especially the ‘Blood’ of his and our own Catholic heritage, as well as of assorted other religions, as surviving pointers to rites of the Upper if not even the Lower Paleolithic?”

  “And good vampires don’t need to worry about any of the usual taboos—sunlight and crosses and garlic and all that. Only the stake through the heart.”

  “Which would hardly prove salubrious to the illustrious Dr. Van Helsing himself.”

  “So whenever sunlight or garlic or the silver cross he always wears in his right earlobe start to bother him, he knows it’s time to get himself to Reconciliation. That’s why he has to live such a good life—simply to go on living normally.”

  “‘Some are born saints, some achieve sanctity, and some have sainthood thrust upon them.’”

  “Oh, exactly!” Angela applauded the doctored quotation. “Professor Czarny says there might be vampires living all over—only without dressing the part the way he does—you’re like him that way, Cory, always wearing black.”

  “Although with neither swishing cape, nor silver cross in my earlobe, nor luster of holiness.”
/>   “And it’s only the wicked vampires who give them all a nasty reputation.”

  “As do those members of any religion, from Wicca to Islam inclusive, who, quite coincidentally to their creed, dip too deeply into the deceptively alluring tarns of sin and evil.”

  “As did the Spanish Inquisitors,” she teased him. “Shall we go direct to Sam’s tomorrow afternoon, or take in ‘Foggerty’s Fairy’ first?”

  “‘Foggerty’s Fairy’ tonight, in any event. For tomorrow…I relinquish the final determination to you.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Still Saturday September 30

  Dave lived about a kilometer and a half outside town, in an old frame farmhouse he was remodeling in his spare time. For what shelter they could get from winter winds, the original farmers had set it in a slight hollow among their rolling fields and enclosed it with rows of windbreak firs atop the nearest ridges, far enough away not to threaten the house, even large as the trees had grown by now. Closer to the building gathered a small orchard of half a dozen twisty old fruit trees and half a dozen young ones recently planted to replace predecessors that, too old for bearing, had been retired to glory in the fireplace. Closest of all to the front door grew immense lilac bushes that must be wonderful in springtime. Behind the house were raspberry bushes and what had been a small kitchen garden, for the past several years planted exclusively with the kinds of herbs that could pretty well tend themselves. Taken together, it all must make a gorgeous nest of greenery and blossoms throughout the growing seasons. It was still gorgeous now: for some tastes, even more gorgeous with the autumn colors coming out.

  Well to one side of the house were grouped a big old barn, a couple of silos, and some smaller outbuildings designed for assorted uses—these last now dangerously though not yet terminally picturesque. The barn itself was still sound, and the old sign on its side, facing the road, was not so badly flaked off but that people in passing cars could still make out the ad for Old Wabash Brand, though the product itself was no longer available.

  Dave had picked Julie up, wearing casual clothes and her black pearl, at the Pankhurst Arms about 1430 and brought her out here early saying that he wanted a little time to show his renovations off to her before starting dinner.

  As they went through the front door, she saw they could either go straight to the living area, or turn left down a short corridor. He guided her first to the left: to what had been a downstairs bedroom and old-fashioned small bathroom and now was a large bathroom with diamond-shaped tub big enough for two.

  Then back to the living area, where he had knocked down a few nonbearing walls to open most of the downstairs up into one big living room with a kitchen side and a seating-by-the-fire-side, with long, tiled counter semi-setting off the kitchen appliances and work area, dining table in the middle, and, in the wall adjacent to the fireplace, French doors leading to what would eventually be a sunporch but for now was a raised floor and window framing covered in heavy sheet plastic, with ladder, boards, and assorted building supplies piled around.

  “Oh, Dave, please don’t tell me you’re fixing this place up to resell at a profit?”

  “What, lose the legacy that brought me here to Forest Green in the first place? Then maybe have to settle for some second-rate crackerbox in town? Not likely! No, I figure I’m here for the duration. Fixing it up for myself, not for some tridol-laden stranger.”

  The walk-in pantry leading off from the kitchen was the only part of the interior Dave had left more or less in its original condition, just cleaning it up, fitting in a freezer, and adding a modern light fixture. It looked large enough to hold winter supplies for a family of six, and was currently about a quarter stocked. Besides canned goods and canisters for dry staples, it boasted two shelves of Dave’s own canning: glass jars of jams, jellies, peaches, tomatoes, green beans, and so on.

  “Dave! You never brought me that raspberry jam you promised!”

  He grinned an apology. “Gee. In the excitement of Date Number Three at the Geldhoffer and points south, it clean plum’ slipped my mind. Well, we’ll just have to load you up with your pick of the stuff tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow let it be! Speaking of tomorrow, how about filling up a few hours with a little rolegaming on our way back to my shabby, crowded little place with its big bed?”

  “Sure. I’ve rolegamed a little. Hasn’t everyone? Not seriously since school days, but I don’t guess it’d be too much hardship swimming back into it again with you. We may need a break between sessions, anyway.”

  They squeezed each other’s arms.

  Upstairs was still pretty much the way it had been built, six bedrooms and a half-bath, but he explained to her with expressive gestures how he was going to knock the three on the side into a single large master bedroom, with a jumbo-sized bed if they could figure out how to get it up the stairs. On the other side, the present three rooms would become two, one a guest bedroom and one his den. At least, that had been his plan…

  “If not a regular jumbo-sized bed,” Julie suggested, “how about a waterbed, or an airbed, or one of those foam things you can roll up when you want to transport it?”

  “Great ideas! And I could put the frame and headboard together right up here.” A promising peck on her cheek. “Thanks, Dragon Lady.”

  For now, he had an army cot, alarm clock, and his clothes in one of the bedrooms, assorted unpacked boxes and new building supplies in the others. But the couch downstairs in front of the fireplace, he assured her, made out into a luxury-sized bed, and could be very cozy. For now, how about a quick tour of the rest of the property?

  It would still be daylight for another hour or so, but she noticed he picked up a heavy-duty flashlight on their way out the back door.

  Through the yellowing raspberry bushes, past the overgrown herb garden, here an old deserted chicken coop, there an empty tractor shed…and now they were in the big old barn. Julie could almost picture the fine golden motes that would have been dancing in sunbeams, if the daylight had been strong enough, the sun still high enough. As it was, shadows cloaked the interior. Late autumn afternoon outdoors, deep twilight inside the barn. And smelling surprisingly clean and sweet, for an old barn so long past its working days.

  “Not quite sure yet what I’m going to do with the barn, eventually, beyond repainting the outside with a big mural. Maybe open it up to square-dance groups. But I got the inside all cleaned out and ready. Like Hercules cleaning whichever stables they were.”

  “The Augean. He rerouted two rivers to run through them. Did you do the same with the Vigo?”

  “Well, not exactly. I didn’t think the City Parks Commission would be wild about the idea, so I just got in a team of helpers and made a barn-cleaning party out of it, complete with picnic table.

  “Better than a river any day. Maybe that’s what Hercules really did and his PR came up with the rerouted rivers idea.” She sniffed. “But isn’t that fresh hay or something I smell? Timothy?”

  “Gives the place a good, clean, barn scent, doesn’t it?”

  A long staircase, ladderlike but permanently anchored and having waist-high handrails on both sides, led up to the hay loft. Here the sweet smell of fresh hay was stronger, the daylight brighter. And there…yes, there, against the far wall, beneath the window, she saw the fresh hay—a wide, generous pile of it and…was that a folded sheet there on the floor near it?

  “Dave?” she said, turning to wink at him. “But what about dinner?”

  “Salad, bottle of wine, and a steak and kidney pie ready in the fridge. Take the pie half an hour to heat up in the oven, or we can eat it cold. Meanwhile, I’ve heard a lot about tumbling in the hay…”

  “And no time like the present for testing those stories, my Dragon Prince,” she finished for him, snaking her arms up around his shoulders as he seized her round the waist and squeezed her breasts into his chest.

  A
nd they tumbled in the hay.

  * * * *

  “All this, and a gourmet chef, too,” she remarked, much later, as they ate steak and kidney pie, with wine and tossed salad, before unfolding the fireside couch into a luxury-sized bed.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sunday, October 1

  When they arrived at Sam’s about 1350, Julie proposed beginning the afternoon with The Seven Cities of Cibola. It was a good, versatile scenario red-blooded enough for Dave—in a good, manly adventure kind of way, yet Saturday-matinee enough that even Angela might agree to join the living-room group this time. Sam would rulemaster from the role of Awitelin Tsita the Zuni Sun Father; Dave offered himself for Coronado; Julie claimed the not-always-used role of Running Antelope, a sort of pre-Sacajawea Indian guide with, perhaps, secret designs of sabotage on the Vanilla invaders; Paul took Hosteen Coyote; Curly the conquistador second in command; Carmine Jones was proud enough of his Native American ancestors to ask for the Apache Chief hungering for these strange new equine beasts of the invaders; and so on through a baker’s dozen of players. Corwin and Angela being late this afternoon, Julie suggested that Fray Marcos de Niza be a non-player character until he arrived, and Angela, if she could be persuaded to join the quest for Cibola, might be—say—a Fray Angelo to sidekick Fray Marcos, maybe keep his character alive a little longer than usual.

  But they didn’t arrive.

  And didn’t arrive.

  Well, Julie mused to herself, maybe they’d rather be alone together today. She hoped he didn’t think his decision not to join Dante’s Delight meant that he should also drop out of the Sunday rolegames.

  It was past 1500, and the game had lost only three player characters, who promptly went out and brought back snacks for everyone from the refreshments table, one of them staying to see whether or not Cibola would be found this time. They thought they were coming within sight of the seven cities of gold… Hosteen Coyote had planned a wonderful new trick of some kind… Awitelin Tsita was about to roll his die and see how well it would succeed…and Corwin Poe hurried into the room, looking flushed and pale both at once.