At the Twilight's Last Gleaming

by David Bischoff

  “It’s kind of a long story,” I said. “Say, though. We’re working on this play together. Maybe we could get to know each other better. My best friend and I hang out and listen to music in his basement. And tonight is Thursday. Star Trek night. Why don’t you come over and hang out with us.”

  “I don’t know. I...”

  “You can bring your best friend.”

  His face lightened.

  “We do like Star Trek?”

  “It’s a big screen color TV.”

  He nodded, and a quiet smile touched his lips. Making him look, I thought, rather like an old fashioned movie star. Emory Clarke, I thought, was really rather handsome!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS THE night of the Star Trek party that I first had the notion that I might be getting into something dangerous.

  I went straight over to Harold’s after rehearsal. He lived just a few blocks from school, and so this was something I did once in a while. Mrs. Lumpkin always seemed to have at least one extra salisbury steak or piece of meatloaf for me if I wanted to have dinner there, and I was almost becoming part of the family. A previously clear day had gone cold.

  Clouds moved briskly across the high Eastern sky, and night clamped down like a tight lid. I was very glad I’d worn my heavy down coat with the white fleece hood today. The temperature seemed destined to dive into the twenties.

  I walked to Harry’s house after rehearsal, tingling. Not tingling with with the chill, though. Tingling with the memory of Emory Clarke’s breath on my face. It was very odd. I was still fascinated with Peter. I liked that I got to watch him, be around him. But he seemed no more interested in talking to me with a blonde wig and a British accent on than without.

  Emory, on the other hand, was a surprise. And he was rather sweet as well, and shy and happy to talk, once you got him warmed it up. It wasn’t as though I was a social butterfly, but I’d read enough novels of manners -- from Jane Austen to Georgette Heyer -- to at least try to engage in conversation when the right times arose. Somehow I sensed now that Emory Clarke had that kind of breeding as well. And he wasn’t taking on airs like Peter did. His soft-spoken speech flowed from someplace natural.

  So I guess I had no idea of what I had been doing when I invited him over to watch Star Trek that night. It had been impulsive and reckless and perhaps instinctive...

  And certainly, as it turned out, indeed very, very dangerous.

  Harold was happy to see me. Mrs. Lumpkin was happy to see me as well, her jolly red cheeks glowing with the cold she’d collected out grocery shopping. Why yes, of course Rebecca can stay for dinner. A couple of other guests for Star Trek. Wonderful. I’ll make popcorn for you and I’ve just gotten more soda pop. The idea of bookish Harry socializing always pleased the chubby, happy woman immensely. I didn’t mention that Emory was a Senator’s son, for fear that she’d burst with happiness -- or at the very least, fawn over him.

  I wanted it to be just us.

  Harold, on the other hand, was more than bemused.

  “Emory Clarke? Here? That weird girlfriend of his? Here? What? Are you crazy?” he said later, down in the basement, with some Beatles playing on the stereo.

  “Oh Harold, you know I’m crazy!”

  “What?”

  I shook my head and laughed ruefully, banging my head back into the headrest of the couch.

  “Oh, it was just a really, really interesting rehearsal and I thought that we should get to know each other, that’s all. He seems like a really nice guy after all.”

  “Kinda strange!”

  “Look who’s calling the kettle black!” I said.

  “Right, Vampira!”

  “Okay, Buck Rogers!”

  We glared at each other, doing our evil eye worst. As usual, though, that sent us both into fits of giggles.

  “Okay, gothic lady,” said Harold, adjusting his glasses. “Maybe they are a bit like us. Merely that they aren’t blocks or collegiates.”

  “Outsiders.”

  “Hey, every body else are outsiders,” said Harry. He tapped his chest. “I’m an Insider here.”

  I flung my head back into the pillow with exasperation. “You know what I mean.”

  “Okay, okay, I know what you mean.”

  George Harrison’s ‘Within You and Without You’ was playing. It was my favorite song on Sergeant Pepper, and Harry knew it. We just sat in the dark and a bit dank basement, watching the black vinyl disc rotate on the turntable, the needle and arm riding the grooves.

  When George was finished singing and the sitars stopped, Harry turned to me. “So what? You’re not so ..uhm...keen on Peter. You suddenly like Emory better?”

  “What!” I said, standing up. “You think the crush has magically transferred or something? Well it hasn’t! No no no! How could I possibly get a crush on a guy in just one day. And Emory Clarke at that!” I stamped an adamant foot. “And blast it all, Harold! Who says I have a crush at all? That’s such..such an odious word! I have something...something that should be a French word! Yes, and maybe it is a French word.”

  “You’ll have to ask Madame DuBonnet now, won’t you?”

  “I’ll check the library thank you!”

  Harry held up his hands. “Okay, no need to get intense.”

  “Just what makes you think this ...this business with Emory Clarke...is..is... “

  “Physical?”

  “Okay, that’ll do for now,” I said. “What makes you think that I have....physical feelings for Emory Clarke.”

  “I don’t know. You’re just so ...well, flushed and excited.”

  “I am?” I felt my face. “Harry, I am not.”

  “Well, you kind of were when you came in.”

  “Harry, that was because of the cold. I’m mean, surely.”

  “Point taken. No problem.” He shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “Should be interesting. I mean, if those two are going to open up a bit... Always wondered what they were like.”

  “They were always like that? I mean, chummy and everything...but like you and me. Nothing romantic.”

  “Who knows about that, but they kind of gravitated together last year. That’s the first year I noticed them, anyway. Last year was Crossland’s first year, you know. It’s a very new place. They both came from different schools, I think. Word was that Emory could have gone to another public school, but Crossland worked out better politically for his father.”

  “That’s kind of what he told me, but from a different viewpoint.”

  “Well, he could go to a fancy school for certain, but probably wouldn’t fit in anywhere. So why not here.” His face grew a bit troubled.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, nothing. I just remember something ....uhm... no, never mind.”

  “What is it, Harold!”

  “Okay. Well, you know how Emory’s a bit weird. In a good way from our outsider perspective, okay, but he doesn’t exactly make people feel comfortable. Well, last year, there was this collegiate. A junior named Bulmer. Ted Bulmer. Football player. Lineman. Jock. Big guy. Always said he wanted to go to Yale because that was William F. Buckley’s alma mater -- but Yale didn’t have a good football team, so he was going somewhere else. Well, Ted picked on Emory something fierce. Just really ragged him. Like, when they were both in a room together, you could see hackles going up. Well, ther was a couple of months of this. And then one weekend about a year ago, Ted Bulmer went to Canada to cross country ski. He got lost...and they found him.... It looked as though a pack of wolves got him.”

  “Yikes!” I said. “Ouch! “

  “Well, there were others who bothered Emory -- not just collegiates but some of the more , you know, red-necked blocks. They just laid off him after that happened.”

  “In Canada? You’re
not linking Emory with murder, are you? Sounds like an act of Mother Nature, so to speak.”

  “Well, no, of course not. And there was no connection made by anyone. It was just something that I noticed, you know?” Harold shook his head. “Don’t mention Ted Bulmer to Emory tonight!”

  “Of course not!”

  “You do blurt sometimes.”

  “No blurting... And never that kind of nonsense, ever!” Hmm, though I thought. It did intrigue my inner Nancy Drew, though. I knew that I was going to check into Emory Clark and Emory’s family and background a bit with my library skills. If only for something to talk to him about with.

  “Well okay. You say he likes Star Trek, so there’s plenty to talk about there.”

  “And Cheryl? Does she like Star Trek too?”

  “Not particularly, but she watches it sometimes.”

  I kind of fudged that. I’m not sure why. I wasn’t exactly sure I liked my weird best guy friend getting to know Emory Clarke’s best gal friend. Why? I am not entirely certain. But then, as I look back on all of this, I’m not at all certain why I did any of this. It just seemed so important, so very very important at the time.

  I had a very nice fried chicken and mashed potatoes dinner at the Browns. My mother hadn’t been surprised at all, but admonished me to make sure I did my homework. It was supposed to snow though, so if it did, could I stay in the Brown’s guest room? Mrs. Brown was happy to oblige.

  As we were eating dessert -- jello pudding with that new fangled non-dairy topping -- a pair of headlights splashed through the front window. I looked out through the dining room, and sure enough, a large car was easing into the apron of the front driveway.

  “Good grief!” said Mr. Lumpkin, taking out his glasses and sliding them on as he peered out the window. “That’s a Rolls Royce!”

  With the motor still purring, a tall slender chaffeur in cap and jodphurs got out the car. He opened the back door. Two figures got out, one even taller than the chauffeur, the other short and stumpy.

  “They say he’s independently wealthy, that Senator,” said Mrs. Brown, still a bit taken aback that a Senator’s son was coming to her house. “That he donates his government salary to charities.”

  “Well, John D. Rockefeller always said if you had a lot of money you should money around before it stinks,” said Mr. Brown “But I can still smell this money.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get this,” said Mr. Brown.

  I was quite taken aback by Emory Clarke’s performance then.

  “Good evening,” came a strong Southern twang. “My name is Emory Clarke and this is my good friend Cheryl Ames. I believe we are expected?”

  Sullen and aloof at school amongst his own age group, he was much more the polite Southern gentleman in front of his elders. He simply shone with good manners. He wasn’t exactly in black tie, but he was dressed well in a cashmere sweater with an expensive shirt peeking out. Slacks with stiff creases reached down brown shoes that matched. I had to think then, suddenly of Leslie Howard as Ashley in Gone With the Wind.

  He looks, I thought, just like Ashley!

  Much more than Bela Lugosi, he was also the gentlemen Dracula who knocks on the doors of London society and is allowed entrance. No wonder Mr. Crawley saw him as Dracula! The method to the school play director’s madness was trickling into my head.

  Cheryl, on the other hand, was still quiet and aloof. She didn’t look at me at all as greetings were distributed.

  It wasn’t long until we were shuffled down into the basement. Soft drinks were provided, brownies and popcorn promised.

  Harold gestured to the long column of records lining the shelves.

  “What would you like to hear, folks?” he said amiably. “We’ve got the Beatles through Beethoven.”

  Emory nodded. “I hate to trouble you with what I enjoy to listening to most.”

  “What’s that, Emory?”

  “Emory likes jazz,” said Cheryl. She rolled her eyes, as though this were a peculiarity that almost was too much to bear.

  I felt a bit crestfallen. Emory was going to get psychedelicized and clam up tight. The glimmers he’d been showing in his character fascinated me, and now they’d shrink away under the wobbly guitars and fuzz boxes of Vanilla Fudge and Pink Floyd.

  However, Harold smiled.

  “So. Are we talking bebop? Cool? West Coast? Swing? Big band.”

  Emory’s button dark eyes sparked. “You mean -- you have some jazz? You know about jazz?”

  Harold shrugged. “It’s not my cup of tea morning, noon and night, but my Dad’s a jazz buff and has been collecting it since the early 40s. So we’ve got lots of the stuff. 78s, if you can believe it! Boy, are those wacky! Me, I got Captain Kangaroo’s Guide to Jazz when I was a kid, and just being around my dad. Been to some jazz festivals.... Look at Downbeat sometimes.”

  A smile trembled at the edge of Emory’s thin bloodless lips. “You wouldn’t happen to have any Miles Davis, would you?”

  “Oh sure. Dad’s got miles of aisles of Miles!”

  “Anything by that gifted man would sound good to me right now!” The smile broke out, and it was like the dawn on the delta. It was a warm and genuine smile. It made those impenetrable eyes suddenly seem accessible -- and it was a pleasant, amiable sight indeed.

  “Oh sure. Anything for guests. I’ll see what I can find. They’re upstairs in Dad’s study.”

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” said Emory.

  “None at all! Be back in a jiff!”

  Harold took off, leaving me alone with the dire duo.

  They’d been parked together on the couch. Cheryl was munching at the popcorn. Emory was sitting straight up, hands on his knees, still looking stiff -- but now he didn’t seem at all uncomfortable.

  “You know, Emory,” I said. “I’m just so taken at how good you are as Dracula.”

  “Method acting!” said Cheryl. She squeaked with laughter between chomps of her popcorn.

  “That’s very gracious of you, Rebecca. And I was just telling Cheryl on the way here how nice it is to hear an American able to do a proper English accent.”

  Cheryl, obviously loosening up a bit, cocked a thumb at Emory. “So, honey chile, can you do us one of dem dere Suthin accents.” She snorted, then laughed her odd laugh.

  Emory shrank a bit, obviously embarrassed.

  “Well, there are certainly a wide variety of Southern accents. All of them with a long, distinct and glorious history. I’m sure if I lived in the Deep South for a couple of years, maybe I could pick one up. Who knows -- maybe in a couple of years I’ll be able to do a Maryland accent!”

  Emory brightened noticeably at the idea of the “glorious history” of his accent. “Perhaps, Cheryl, she too will be able to contract ‘Baltimore’ into one syllable.”

  “Oh it’s got two!” said Cheryl. “Bul’more.” Again the laugh. Popcorn sprayed.

  I asked a few more questions of Maryland ‘customs’ and got them both amused. Pretty soon, Harold was back down, holding an LP disk under his arm.

  “Got it!” he said.

  Harold held the cover out for us to see.

  “Birth of the Cool,” said Harold. “Good choice, huh, Emory?”

  “Oh yes! That’s an excellent choice,” said Emory.

  “I’ll just put this on, right now.”

  The black disk was removed from the jacket and placed on the turntable. Not long after, a trumpet with drums and bass backing it began to slip from the speakers, transforming the dank family basement into an intimate night club,

  I didn’t like jazz much, but you couldn’t live in the fifties and sixties and avoid it. But suddenly, I liked it.

  It felt nice.

  It was like....contemplative ev
ening music. It’s tones kind of moved between all the jangled, fractured nerves of the day, healing them with a distracting balm. Jazz was kind of like intelligent company that made you feel good to be human.

  Emory sat back, visibly relaxing even more. The more I looked at his odd narrow face, the more handsome it got. No, I decided. He didn’t look like Ashley of Gone With the Wind. Ashley looked like Emory Clarke.

  We made small talk a while longer. School gossip, current events -- it very relaxed and pleasant conversation and I was quite taken not only with the way the Emory spoke his own mind, but the way he ceded the floor to other ideas -- and most of all the way he intently listened.

  He seemed as though he came from a better world. Some world in where things were more gracious, and where politeness was habitual, but complex and genuine.

  I was enchanted.

  I let Harold and Emory talk about music. Emory listened to Harold wax enthusiastic about Rhythm and Blues, and Emory quietly mentioned that he’d been to all the great places of Southern music. Memphis. Nashville. New Orleans.

  “New Orleans, most of all. Pappy says that if we didn’t have to shuttle back and forth all the time between our houses in Birmingham and here, he’d live in New Orleans.”

  He pronounced “N’arlens.”

  Delightful.

  Before long, Star Trek time was almost upon us.

  Cheryl started getting enthusiastic.

  “Did you see the one last week? It was pretty funny. The wild west on a planet! I like the outer space and weird alien ones the best.”

  “Amen to that, sister,” said Harold. “I’m a big science fiction fan and those parallel evolution shows kind of irk me.”

  “Rebecca, I haven’t got the best eyes in the world. Can I trade seats with you?”

  I was sitting in a old Ottoman very close to the TV out of deference to the guests, who got the couch. But somehow sitting next to Emory was really a nice idea.

  Without further ado, Cheryl grabbed the popcorn and settled happily in front of the TV. Her eyes were already getting tuned into the glassy state of TV absorption. Smiling, Harold happily assumed that position as well in his own folding chair he’d propped up equally close to the other side.