Mr. Real

by Carolyn Crane

  She could hear clanking and shouting as she neared the edge of the woods on the way back. Lindy ran ahead. Alix stepped up her pace.

  The monster truck and another truck, both loaded with junk, stood in front of the carriage house doors, which were flung open. The old-fashioned doors opened from the side, like books, and had windowpanes in them. Nice doors—too nice for a garage, but that’s what the carriage house was now. She kept her little car in it. Convenient that Sir Kendall had come complete with car—she needed to handle her oil problem before she drove hers again.

  Or maybe she could just order a new one from the computer.

  Barking from the inside. A man’s voice: “Watch out!”

  Her breath caught as she entered. The whole front half had been cleared out; the place looked so big. You could see a cool old light fixture. And wooden shelving. Even the ceiling was lovely, with its thin slats of wood meeting up at the peak.

  The vision of the partly cleared-out carriage house almost made her forget why she was mad at Paul. Almost.

  “Lindy!” she called.

  Paul’s voice sounded out from the still-cluttered back part: “Back here. You gotta keep her away from us.”

  Alix navigated around a row of mildewed boxes to come upon five sweaty, shirtless men lifting an old tractor body, with Lindy jumping excitedly on them.

  “Lindy!” She rushed in and grabbed Lindy by the collar, pulling her away from the men, who toddled the hulking thing out front into the sunshine. On the count of three they tipped it into the hauler’s truck. She grinned, wondering what they’d made of Paul’s monster truck. And what had he done with his money?

  Paul came back, striding toward her, chest dirty, arms gleaming with sweat. His white bandage contrasted with his flushed face. Paul had a brute masculinity that seemed to pulse with energy; she felt him in a way she didn’t feel Sir Kendall.

  Did Sir Kendall even sweat? She felt bad for wondering it.

  He pulled off his gloves and wiped his brow with his forearm. Her pulse raced. She kneeled next to Lindy, petting her. “You’ve really made some progress,” she said without looking at Paul. But petting Lindy, she was eye-level with his muscular calves, which gleamed with sweat. Hair stuck to the skin.

  “It’s not so bad once you start,” he said. “We’ve already taken out a load. Mostly broken furniture and junk. We consolidated a lot of shit onto the shelves. Anything related to tools or other things you might want to keep. Spare doors, boxes of books.”

  She nodded, feeling like she should keep her grudge against him, but she really was so happy to see the place getting cleared out. And lord, he was hot. “Awesome.” She stood, finally, and eyed him. “I never even noticed the ceiling.”

  “You couldn’t see it for all the crap before. What are you planning on doing in here? Long term?”

  She looked into his eyes, surprised. He’d asked if she had a master plan, a vision. Nobody ever asked her about her plans. Everybody always just wanted to give her advice or warn her off of something, which always made her want to do the thing they warned her about. Sometimes she just wanted to tell people to shut up and say what they really meant—that she couldn’t do it by herself.

  But here, Paul was asking her.

  “I’m not sure what I’ll do in here,” she said. “I never thought about it except as a place for cars. I’m not that good at thinking things through.” Had she really confessed that to him? She checked his eyes for a note of triumph, but he just waited, listening. Like he cared about what she had to say. “But I’m getting better at it,” she added.

  He seemed amused. “Come here. Let me show you something cool.” He led her through an unstable-looking corridor of boxes and junked lawnmowers to the back of the space, where a ladder led up to an opening of some sort. “Have you been up here?”

  “No.”

  “Tonio and I checked it out earlier.” He climbed the ladder to the upper level and then held out his hand. She commanded Lindy to stay, then she climbed up and took his hand; his fingers closed over hers, and he helped her over the threshold with steady strength. “Hayloft,” he said.

  “Wow. I didn’t know this was here.” The loft was like a little room all its own, and it overlooked the space below. He’d imagined she had a special vision for the carriage house. And why shouldn’t she? It was a cool space. Hell, she didn’t have to make it a garage just because that’s what it had been. And it struck her right then that being responsible meant just that—it meant having a vision. A responsible person didn’t just react to things or pursue fun wherever it appeared; they thought a thing through, and then they made a plan and followed it. With Sir Kendall, she had a plan of helping him find a pursuit that made him happy, a niche in life to call his own. And here, she could have a plan for this space and make it so. Being responsible meant you were in charge. It was a strange, heady feeling.

  She smiled at Paul, recalling again the feeling she had on the porch, the impression of their best selves, standing for each other.

  “We’ve got guys coming later to reglaze the windows,” Paul said.

  “There are windows in here?”

  “They’re papered over.” He pointed them out, two on each side.

  “This would be a good event space,” she said. “You could stick musicians up here. Or a priest. For weddings.”

  “The ceiling would look awesome if you stained and varnished it.”

  “And a grand chandelier,” she said. “Hanging right down from the peak. Or maybe one of those Western chandeliers that’s all iron.”

  “Or a disco ball,” he joked.

  She smirked. “I don’t think so.”

  “We’ll have this clear by the end of the day, and tomorrow morning we’re getting mats delivered. Maybe put up the heavy bag. But I have something else for you to see. Related to your aunt.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Come on.” He went back down the ladder and helped her down.

  Tonio and the haulers came by with a wagon, the kind you hitched behind a car. “Whatdya say?” Tonio nodded at the thing.

  “Keeper,” Alix said. She could haul furniture in it. “Thanks.”

  Off they went.

  Alix followed Paul around a heap of junk to a shelving area on the side of the space.

  “Most of the boxes in here were crap, like you thought,” Paul said. “Moldy magazines, rusty kitchen stuff. But check this out.” He pulled a box off a shelf and set it on the worktable.

  It really was nice, Paul being so helpful, like he wanted to be her ally. Of course, men always acted helpful and interested in your thoughts when they wanted something.

  Paul opened the flaps of the box to reveal a small cedar chest inside, shaped like a treasure chest. He lifted it out and set it next to the cardboard box. He opened it slowly. Inside lay a fat envelope of photos next to a hat with horns on it.

  She pulled out the hat. “Cool.” The hat part was furry, and the horns were twisted. She made to try it on.

  Paul grabbed a horn. “Wait—”

  “What?”

  “Don’t want you turning into a toad here. Just to be on the safe side.”

  Alix grinned. “Maybe I’ll turn you into a toad. For being so bossy.”

  He let it go, eyed her. “You really want to put it on?”

  She did want to put it on, but only because she loved his bossiness, loved the feeling of pushing up against the contours of his good sense, his patience. It was kind of sexy. Alix narrowed her eyes and put it aside. “When you least expect it.”

  At the bottom of the small chest lay a book with strange symbols and curly lettering on the front of it. Below that rested an envelope full of photos.

  “Did you look at these?”

  “I thought I’d let you.”

  Alix removed the fat stack from the envelope. The top one showed a stylish fifty-something woman standing on the porch looking off to the side. Her white hair was pulled back in a short, coiffed ponytail, and she wore
a black turtleneck and black pants. The date on the photo said October 23rd, 1992.

  “You think that’s your Aunt Veronica?” Paul asked.

  “She looks like the drawings of her. She has my mom’s eyes. She would’ve been in her late forties in 1992. It has to be her.”

  Paul nodded. There were other photos, some, they agreed, showing even more of a resemblance to Alix’s mother, and even to Alix, Paul thought. Some showed her aunt holding hands with a thickset, burly, bald guy.

  “That must be her man, Max,” Alix said. She paused over the Max and Veronica photos, enjoying the way Max gazed at Veronica. She always noticed that right away in couples, whether the man looked at the woman with love and respect or not. She’d become a connoisseur of that look, observing and cataloguing the variations. She appreciated those looks from the outside in a way that a woman used to receiving them never could. “Max died the day after she did.”

  “That’s sad,” Paul said.

  “But look how happy they seem. Maybe it’s not sad.” The photos went backwards in years, shuffled up a bit. They found some from the 1980’s. She and Paul laughed at the styles. A young, pimply guy with a floppy over-the-eyes hairdo. Max looking younger, slightly thuggish. Aunt Veronica lying on a couch, in a movie star gown and jewels, her arm dangling off the side of the couch, holding a champagne bottle. Alix smiled. Aunt Veronica.

  There were a few pictures taken in the computer room in the basement. A 1979 shot showed Aunt Veronica sitting in front of an old-fashioned keyboard with three yellowy monitors arranged in front of her. Diodes were affixed to her forehead, connected by wires to some sort of box that connected to the computers all around.

  “This is the basement,” Alix said. “All these computers are still down there, but they’re all smashed up. This metal cabinet thingy? It’s a mini supercomputer that takes up the whole wall.”

  “No shit,” Paul said. “Huh.”

  The year 1982 was apparently the party era at Aunt Veronica’s house. The pictures showed groups of people drinking and smoking and playing guitars. Aunt Veronica sitting on the laps of different guys. “Guess this was pre-Max.”

  “She sure knew a lot of…characters,” Paul observed.

  “No doubt! So weird to see all this in my living room.”

  Paul pointed at a man with no shirt. “This guy thinks he’s Jim Morrison,” he said. “With that hair? And that’s the exact same necklace Morrison wore on the cover of ‘The Doors’ album.”

  She pointed to a man strumming an acoustic guitar. “This one’s very Boy George. Maybe it’s Halloween or something.”

  “Wait—” Paul took the photos from her hands, looked at them closer. “No way.”

  “Oh my god,” Alix said, knowing what Paul was about to say.

  They looked at each other.

  “Oh my god,” Alix said again. That was Jim Morrison. It was Boy George. The next one showed a man with a moustache on the couch next to Morrison and a blonde woman. “This guy’s gotta be somebody. And her.”

  “Tonio’ll know.” Paul called Tonio, over. “This guy look familiar?”

  “Get out!” Tonio grabbed the photo. “John Bonham and Jim Morrison? You could get a lot of money for this on eBay. Except, look at the date. It’s a fake. They were both dead by ‘82. Not a bad photoshopping job, but still. You can tell.” He pointed at the woman. “Right. Laurie Anderson.” The next one on the pile showed Laurie Anderson singing with Jim Morrison.

  “That is just freaking wrong,” Tonio said, handing the photo back to Paul. “That is wrong on every level.” He walked off in disgust.

  Paul turned to her. “It is wrong,” he said.

  Alix pulled her lips tight. “Maybe she didn’t realize. Like I didn’t.”

  “How do you not realize it?”

  She held out her hand for the rest of the photos, feeling protective of her aunt.

  He handed them over and picked up the book with the symbols. He touched the curly lettering on the front. “Does that say Grimorie? I think it does. This is a witch book. A spell book, right?” He flipped through the pages. It looked like some kind of an encyclopedia with weird illustrations—mostly strange symbols but some monster faces. The section that seemed most used was called Sigils, pages and pages of symbols with handwriting in the margins—likely Veronica’s—some sort of code with lots of brackets and words like [on/off] and [ps -alxww]. Some chunks were just a lot of ones and zeroes.

  “This is computer code,” he said.

  “Does that mean these are witch symbols translated to computer code?” she said. “Do you think?”

  “Maybe.” He flipped through some more pages. “So, if we type in these things, do they make spells?”

  “Oh my god. We probably shouldn’t. We might make more people. Or demons or whatever.”

  “We need to at least study it. Because here’s my question—all these guys she conjured—where are they?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I think we’d know about it if Jim Morrison had come back to life. Or if there were two Boy Georges running around in the eighties, right? She must have sent them back somehow.”

  “Or they disappeared.”

  “Has any of the stuff you got magically disappeared? Sir Kendall sure hasn’t. My guess is she sent them back with magic. I mean, magic is supposedly reversible, isn’t it?”

  Alix stiffened. She didn’t like where this was going.

  He continued, “If your aunt was sending these guys back, maybe there was a good reason. And the answer to how to do that would be in here. This stuff is in English. I bet we could figure it out.”

  Send them back? “Here’s what I know, Paul—we’re wasting valuable time that could be better spent searching for Elvis pictures.”

  “It’s not funny. This is not somebody with amazing judgment, yet somehow she sent these guys back. Think about it. I think we should study this book. There has to be a road map in there that will guide us in restoring the natural order of things.”

  “Restoring the natural order? Why don’t you say what you really mean? Kill Sir Kendall. A way to kill your hated Sir Kendall without having to actually kill him.”

  “This is not about killing him.”

  “It’s not? You’re a flesh and blood human. Would you want somebody to transform you into just a picture? To turn you into an image? I do believe that’s known as death.” She took the book from his hands and put it back in the box, along with the horn hat and the photos. “You want to kill him.”

  “Alix, let’s at least look and see.”

  “Just look and see. This from the man who thinks Sir Kendall is the anti-Christ. And who majorly went back on his word with me? And you’re supposedly only here to protect me, yet now you want a spell to get rid of Sir Kendall? Excuse me if I’m feeling like not letting you look and see.” She picked up the box.

  “Alix, he could be dangerous.” He spoke calmly, but one lone tendon on his neck had popped out considerably, and his jaw was set hard. No, he wasn’t calm. “You don’t know him like I do.”

  “You played him in a commercial.”

  “This goes way beyond the commercial.”

  “How? How does it go beyond the commercial?”

  “I can’t…” He eyed her—helplessly, she thought. “It’s too twisted. Just trust me on this. He’s evil. He’s dark.”

  “All this because you hate the commercial?”

  He made a little sound—a type of grim laugh, as though the truth of the matter was so vast and disturbing it was incomprehensible, and it was all stuffed inside him, popping out in that tendon, waiting to roar free.

  “Alix—”

  “You don’t get to read the book. I’ll look through it and decide what’s necessary.”

  “You’ll decide what’s necessary?” His eyes blazed out of his beat-up face. “You’ll excuse me if that doesn’t fill me with a ton of confidence, considering you’re the one who unleashed something you don’
t at all understand into the world. And now you won’t consider somebody else’s opinion.”

  “I think one of us is unleashing something, and it’s not me.”

  “We just need to know how he can be contained, neutralized.” He put his hands on the box.

  She tightened her grip, looked warningly from his hand up to his eyes, in full mother bear mode now. He could rip the thing from her grip so easily. He could take it away from her and use it to destroy Sir Kendall. She half-thought he might.

  “It’s stupid to not even want to know,” he said.

  “I guess I’m stupid.” She pulled the box away. “I have a responsibility to him and I’m not going to shirk it. You can freak out all you want, but that doesn’t change my responsibility.”

  “You don’t know what responsibility is. You don’t think things through—you said it yourself.”

  Heat flared into her face. “At least I’m not trying to off someone.” She turned and left, calling Lindy in a low voice that meant business.

  She stormed across the lawn. She’d trusted him, felt like she knew him. So stupid! Paul didn’t care about anything except destroying Sir Kendall. She had to find a way to keep them apart.

  Sir Kendall was heating up water when she entered the kitchen, making more tea, apparently. The man certainly enjoyed his tea.

  “Are you done with your computer stuff?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “A few more emails and look-ups. What’s in the box?”

  “Nothing.” She held the box tighter. “So, I have an idea. Let’s get dressed up and go to the fanciest place in town.”

  “This town has a fancy place?”

  “The Malcolmsberg supper club. It’s a little old fashioned—stained glass and deer heads and all that. Actually, I think the decorations and wait staff haven’t changed since the seventies. Or the menu.”

  “But I’d imagine they have Denali.”

  “You betcha. And really excellent frog’s legs.” She smiled. A rural supper club would broaden his experience. He’d probably only ever been to fancy restaurants. “So are we on?”