‘You just stand there,’ he commanded. ‘Give that doorknob a twist to the right when I tell you, then step inside quick.’
He went into the room and began prying with the screwdriver at a narrow ceiling board. ‘Someone,’ he said, grunting, digging at the board, ‘someone been sneakin’ round, so I’m rigging myself a little security.’ He was wearing jeans and a ripped New Orleans Saints jersey, and his arm muscles bunched and rippled like snakes. His eyes, though, had a liverish tinge. She had presumed him to be in his forties, but now she reckoned him a well-preserved sixty.
He put down the screwdriver and held up his hands beneath the board. ‘Do it,’ he said.
She twisted the knob. The hallway door slammed shut, almost striking her as she stepped inside, and a second door dropped from the ceiling and would have sealed off the alcove if the Baron had not caught it. He staggered under the weight. ‘Sucker must weigh a hunnerd, hunnerd and fifty pounds,’ he said. He noticed Jocundra’s bewilderment.’All the rooms like that. Of Valcours he liked to trap folks.’ He chuckled. ‘And then he give ‘em a hard time.’ He pushed the door back into place until it clicked, then he stared at her in unfriendly fashion. ‘Don’t you recognize me, woman?’ She looked at him, puzzled, and he said, ‘Sheeit! Mama Zito’s Temple down on Prideaux Street. I was the damn fool used to stand out front and drag folks in for the service.’
‘Foster,’ she said. ‘Is that right?’ She remembered him as a hostile, arrogant man who had drunk too much; he had refused to be her informant.
‘Yeah, Foster.’ He picked up his screwdriver. “Cept make it Baron, now. That damn Foster name never done me no good.’ He stepped around her, opened the hallway door, and twisted the knob to the left until it clicked twice. ‘You ever get to Africa?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I quit school.’
‘Yeah, well, I figured you didn’t make it, seein’ how you hangin’ with that green-eyed monkey.’ He registered her frown. ‘Hey, I got nothin’ against the monkey. It’s just that since he come the boy have put a charge into Otille, and that ain’t good.’
‘What’s your relationship with Otille?’
‘You writin’ another paper?’
‘I’m just curious.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘You keep an edge on your curious, ‘cause this one damn curious place. Huh! Curious.’ He walked over to his drawer and took out a shirt. ‘I’m Otille’s friend. Not like one of them raggedy fuckers down at the cabins. I’m her friend. And she’s mine. That’s why she take to callin’ me Baron after the death god, ‘cause she say can’t nobody but death be a friend to her. ‘Course that’s just the actress in her comin’ out.’ He stripped off the jersey and shrugged into the shirt; a jagged scar crossed his right chest, and the muscles there were somewhat withered. ‘She don’t make me do no evil, and I don’t preach to her. We help each other out. Like right now.’ He brandished a fist. ‘I’m watchin’ over you and the monkey.’
‘Why?’
‘You think Otille’s mean, don’t you? Sheeit! She got her moods, ain’t no doubt. But there’s folks ‘round here will cut you for a nickel, squeeze you for a dime. Take that smiley son of a bitch Simpkins…’
‘Baron!’ Otille stood in the door, her face convulsing.
The Baron calmly went on buttoning his shirt. ‘I be down in a minute.’
‘Have you seen Donnell?’ asked Jocundra, hoping the question would explain her presence to Otille.
Otille ignored her. ‘Bring the car around,’ she said to the Baron.
‘Nothin’ to get excited ‘bout, Otille,’ he said. ‘Woman’s just helpin’ me fix my door.’ When she remained mute, he sighed, slung his coat over his shoulder and strode out.
‘I don’t want you talking to him,’ said Otille in measured tones. ‘Is that clear?’
‘Fine.’ Jocundra started for the door, but Otille blocked the way. Her temples throbbed, nerves jumpedin her cheek, her coral mouth thinned. Only her eyes were unmoving, seeming to recede into black depths beneath her milky complexion, like holes cut in a bedsheet. It amazed Jocundra that when she next spoke, her voice was under control and not a scream.
‘Would you like to leave Maravillosa?’ she asked. ‘I can have you driven anywhere you wish.’
‘Yes,’ said Jocundra. ‘But if I left, Donnell would go with me, and even if he stayed, then I’d stay because I’d be afraid you’d hurt him.’
‘Bitch!’ Otille lashed out at the wall with the side of her fist. ‘I’m not going to hurt him!’ She glanced at the wall and saw that her fist had impacted the forehead of a screaming ebony face, and she laid her palm against it as if easing its pain. ‘I’m going to have him,’ she said mildly. ‘Do you like this room?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jocundra, enunciating the words with precision, implying a response to both Otille’s remarks.
‘It takes so much time and energy to keep the place up,’ said Otille, blithe and breezy. ‘I’ve let it run down, but I’ve tried to maintain islands of elegance within it. Would you care to see one?’ And before Jocundra could answer, she swirled out of the door, urging her to follow. ‘It’s just down the hall,’ she said. ‘My father’s old room.’
It was, indeed, elegant. Gobelin tapestries of unicorns and hunts, dozens of original paintings. Klee, Kandinsky, Magritte, Braque, Miro. The black wood of the walls showed between them like veins of coal running through a surreal bedrock. Comfortable sofas and chairs, an antique globe, a magnificent Shiraz carpet. But opposed to this display of good taste, arranged in cabinets and on tables, was a collection of cheap bric-a-brac like that found in airport gift shops and tourist bazaars: mementos of exotic cultures bearing the acultural stamp of sterility most often approved by national chambers of commerce. There were ashtrays, enameled key rings, coin purses, models of famous landmarks, but the bulk of the collection was devoted to mechanical animals. Pandas, monkeys, an elephant which lifted tiny logs, a snake coiling up a plastic palm, on and on. A miniature invasion creeping over the bookshelves and end tables. The collection, said Otille, represented her father’s travels on behalf of the Rigaud Foundation and his various charities, and reflected his pack rat’s obsession with things bright and trivial.
The room appeared to have calmed Otille. She chatted away as if Jocundra were an old school friend, describin family evenings when her father and she would set all the toy animals in operation and send them bashing into one another. But Jocundra found this wholesale change in mood more alarming than her rage, and in addition, she was beginning to make eerie connection between the generations of Rigauds. Valcours with his anthropomorphic toys, Otille’s father’s animals, Otille’s pets and ‘friends.’ God only knew what Clothilde had collected. It was easy to see how one could think of the family as a single terrible creature stretching back through time, some genetic flaw or chemical magic binding the spirit to the blood.
‘I’m afraid I have a luncheon in New Orleans,’ Otille said, ushering Jocundra out. ‘Foundation business. But we can talk more another time.’ She locked the door behind them and headed down the hall. ‘If I see Donnell on my way to the car,’ she called back, ‘I’ll send him along.’
It was said with such unaffected sincerity that for the moment Jocundra did not doubt her.
‘An attic’s the afterlife of a house,’ said Otille, opening the door, ‘Or so my mother used to say.’
The air inside was sweetly scented and cool. She stepped aside to let him pass, and as he did, her hip brushed his hand, a silky pass like a cat fitting itself to your palm. She shut the door, and he heard the lock engage. The gable windows were shuttered, the room pitch dark, and when she walked off, he lost sight of her.
‘Turn on the light!’
‘Why don’t you find me like you did Dularde?’
‘You might fall.’
She gave a frosty little laugh. Boards creaked. ‘Damn it, Otille!’
‘Take off your glasses, and I’ll turn on the
light.’
Christ! He folded the glasses and put them in his pocket. He imagined he could hear her breathing, but realized it was his own breath whining through clogged sinuses.
‘What the hell do you want to show me?’ he asked.
‘You’ll have to come to the window,’ she said softly.
A rattling to his left made him jump. Metal shutters lifted from the row of gables, strips of silver radiance widening to chutes of dust-hung moonlight spilling into a long, narrow room, so long its far reach was lost in shadow. It must, he thought, run the length of the rear wing. The rattling subsided, and seven windows ranged the darkness, portals opened onto a universe of frozen light. Bales, bundles, and sheet-draped mysteries lined the walls. And then Otille, who had slipped out of her clothing, stepped from the shadows and went to stand by the nearest window. Her reappearance had the quality of illusion, as if she were an image projected by the rays of moonlight. Her skin glowed palely, and the curls of black hair falling onto her shoulder, her pubic triangle, these seemed absent places in her flesh.
‘Don’t look so dumfounded,’ she said, beckoning.
From the window, Donnell saw white flickering lights beyond the conical hills. Welder’s arcs, Otille explained. The copper had arrived, and the night shift had begun at once. The peak of the gable cramped them together, and in the course of talking and pointing, her breast nudged his arm. He couldn’t help stealing glances at her, at the lapidary fineness of her muscles, the way the moonlight shaded her nipples to lavender, and whenever she looked at him, he felt that something was pouring out of her, that dampers had been withdrawn and her inner core exposed, irradiating him. Though he had steeled himself against her, his body reacted and his thoughts became confused. He wanted to turn and go back downstairs to Jocundra, but he also wanted to touch the curve of Otille’s belly and feel the bubble of heat it held. Her black eyes swam with lights, her sulky mouth was drawing him toward her, and he lost track of what she was saying, something about his having validated her beliefs.
‘Come along,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I’ll show you my room. It used to be Clothilde’s, but I’ve had it repaneled and decorated after my own tastes.’
At midpoint of the attic three doors were set into the wall, the central one leading along a short passage to yet another door, and beyond this lay a cavernous room hung with shafts of moonlight. The ceiling was carved to resemble a weave of black branches, leaf sprays, dripping moss; and the light penetrated through the glassed-over interstices. Trunks bulged from the walls, their bark patterns rendered precisely; ebony saplings and bushes -perfect to the detailing of the veins on the leaves -sprouted from the floor, and at the center of the room was a carpeted depression strewn with pillows and having the effect of a still, sable eye at the heart of a whirlpool. A control console was mounted in its side, switches and an intercom, and after pulling him down to sit beside her, Otille flicked one of the switches. Colored filters slid across the rents in the carved canopy, and the beams of moonlight empurpled. Donnell lay back against the pillows, watching her rapt face as she unbuttoned his shirt, and when she bent down to kiss his chest, he shivered. It was as if a pale beast the shape of Otille had dipped her muzzle into him and fed.
Her hips rolled beneath him in practised shudders, her fingers traced the circuits of his nerves, yet her love-making was so adept, so athletic, passion reduced to ornate calisthenics, that the spell she had cast upon him was broken and his interest flagged. Still, like a good pet, he performed, pretending it was Jocundra touching him. And then, because he thought it would be appropriate to the mood, he took his first look at Otille’s gros bon ange.
If one of her clever movements had not renewed his passionate reflex, he would have thrown himself off her in revulsion. The pile of the carpet resolved into a myriad of silver pinpricks against which her head was silhouetted like a coalsack; but instantly sparks of jeweled light rushed up from the area of her hips, defining the lines of her breasts and ribs as they flowed, and fitting a bestial mask to her face. It was a thing in a constant state of dissolution composed of emerald, azure, gold and ruby glints that coalesced into patches of mineral brilliance, decayed, and melted into new encrusted forms. Black rips for eyes, fangs of gemmy light. It roared silently at him, its mouth twisting open and gnashing shut. Yet each time their hips ground together, the mask wavered, loosing stray sparks downward, as if his thrusts were inducing its animating stuff to join in. He thrust harder, and the entire structure of the mask dissipated for a split second, fiery wax running from a mold. He felt a desolate glee in knowing he could overwhelm this monstrosity, and he turned all his energies to dismantling the mask, battering at Otille, who moaned beneath him. Whenever he let up, the mask’s expression grew more feral, but at last it melted away, flowing back into her groin. Looking down to where their bellies merged, he saw an iridescent slick like a film of oil sliding between them.
Afterward he lay quietly, collecting himself, angry at his submission to her, still revolted by the aspect of her gros bon ange, her soul, whatever it had been. Finally he began putting on his clothes.
‘Stay a while,’ she said lazily.
‘One bite is all you get, Otille. It won’t happen again.’
‘It will if I want it to.’
‘You don’t get the picture,’ he said. He started lacing his shoes. ‘Out there in the attic it was like the shuffling rube and the scarlet woman. But when it came down to strokes, your little tour of hardcore heaven bored the hell out of me.’
‘You bastard!’
‘What did you expect?’ He unfolded his sunglasses. ‘That one of your Blue Plate Special humdingers would make me profess undying love?’
‘Love!’ Otille spat on the carpet. ‘Keep your love for that dimwitted Bobbie Brooks doll you’ve got downstairs!’
The intercom buzzed, and she smashed down a switch. ‘What is it?’ she snapped.
‘Uh, Otille?’ It was Papa.
‘Yes.’
‘Uh, the hospital called. Dularde didn’t make it. I thought I should tell you.’
‘Then make the arrangements! You don’t need me for that.’
‘Well, all right. But I was wonderin’ could I come up?’
She cut him off.
‘I want you to stay,’ she said firmly to Donnell.
‘Listen, damn it! We have a deal, and I’ll keep my end of it. But if you want hot fun, buy a waterbed and stake yourself out in a cheap motel. I’ll write your name in all the men’s rooms. For a good time, see Otille. She’s mean, she’s clean, she can do the Temple Hussy’s Contraction!’
She tried to slap him, but he blocked her arm and pushed her away. He stood. The lavender beams of moonlight were as sharp as lasers, and for the first time he recognized the room’s similarity to the setting of his stories.
‘What is this place?’ he asked, his anger eroded by a sudden apprehension. ‘I wrote a story about a place like this.’
She appeared dazed, rubbing her forearm where he had blocked it. ‘Just a dream I had,’ she said. ‘Leave me alone.’ Her eyes were wide and empty.
‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the exercise.’
The door at the end of the passage was stuck, no, locked, and the door into Otille’s room, which had closed behind him, was also locked. He jiggled the knob. ‘Otille!’ he shouted. A chill weight gathered in the pit of his stomach.
‘Clothilde called this the Replaceable Room.’ Her voice came from a speaker over the door. ‘It’s really more than twenty rooms. Most are stored beneath the house until they’re shunted onto the elevator. Every one of them’s full of Clothilde’s guests.’
The room was hot and stuffy. He wrenched at the doorknob. ‘Otille! Can you hear me?’
‘Clothilde used to switch the rooms while her lovers slept and challenge them to find the right door. Back then the machinery was as quiet as silk running through your hand.’
‘Otille!’ He pried at the door with his fingertips
.
‘But now it’s old and creaky,’ she said brightly. A grating vibrated the walls, and a whining issued from ducts along the edge of the ceiling. The room was moving downward. ‘I’m not sure how long it takes for the pumps to empty the room of air, but it’s not very long. I hope there’s time.’
‘What do you want?’ he yelled, kicking at the door. His chest was constricting, he was getting dizzy. The room stopped, jolting sideways.
‘You’re under the house now,’ sang Otille. ‘Push the button beside the door. I want you to see something. Hurry!’
Donnell located the button, pushed it, and a section of the wall inched back, revealing a large window opening onto a metal wall set nearly flush with it. He pulled off his shoe and hammered at the glass, but it held and he collapsed, gasping. The metal wall slid back to reveal a window like his own, and behind it, their desiccated limbs posed in conversational attitudes, were a man and a woman. Black sticks of tongues protruding from their mouths, eyelashes like crude stitches sewing their lids fast to their cheeks. Rings hung loosely on their fingers, and they were much shrunken inside antiquated satin rags, the remnants of fancy dress. Donnell sucked at the thinning air, scrabbling back from the window. There was a metallic taste in his throat, his chest weighed a ton, and blackness frittered at the edges of his vision. Otille’s voice was booming nonsense about ‘Clothilde’ and ‘parties’ and ‘guests,’ warping the words into mush. The thought of dying was a bubble slowly inflating in his brain, squeezing out the other thoughts, and soon it was going to pop. Very soon. Then he had a sharp sense of Jocundra standing beneath and to the right of him, looking around, walking away. He could feel her, could visualize her depressed walk, as if there were only a thin film between them. God, he thought, what’ll happen to her. And that thought was almost as big and important as the one of death. But not quite. Otille’s voice had become part of a general roaring, and it seemed the corpses were laughing and pointing at him. Bits of rotten lace flaked from the man’s cuff as his hand shook with laughter. The woman’s mummified chest heaved like the pulsing of a bat’s throat, a thin membrane plumping full of air. The room vibrated with the exact rhythm of the laughter, and the air was glowing bright red.
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