Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  The words that had formed in her mind were not just you asshole, but prick as well.

  Rachel had seen Hugh in a few of her classes, but did not know the handsome man with the winning smile was the same geek who wrote the officious memo. She wrote back to him:

  Dear Mr. Editor,

  Thank you for the delightful reading. It really made my life, honest. How kind of you to fire such knowing bullets my way. How compassionate of you to take into account the extenuating circumstances of my having to return home on the weekends and some weekdays for my father’s last hours on this earth, to say nothing of the fact that a few of us have to work our way through law school while others sit on their asses while daddy pays off all those nasty credit card bills. If you want a secretary, I would be happy to apply for the position assuming, unlike the work many of us do on the review, secretarial work is PAID.

  Again, thank you for such a COMPASSIONATE and MOTIVATING memo. I promise to be a good Girl Scout from here on in.

  Warmly,

  Ms. Brennan

  The next day, Rachel received this brief note:

  Scout,

  Well, I guess this means lunch is out.

  The Big Bad Editor

  This struck her as funny—Rachel had a horrible time bearing a grudge, particularly when in the back of her mind she knew he was right. She had sloppy work habits. She was sure that her only salvation would come in a job where she had her own secretary to handle filing and neatness, because she was a mess. And then a good healthy dose of Catholic guilt had gotten the better of her. She’d been calling Hugh an asshole to everyone within earshot, and she felt bad about it.

  So one Sunday, she returned early from seeing her father, walked right up to Hugh and said: “Lunch would be great.”

  “And you are?…”

  “A good Girl Scout.”

  She immediately saw his wedding ring. That was one of the first things she looked for in a man, that or a tan line where he’d removed the ring. For some reason married men had always been attracted to her, and single men were not interested. Rachel rarely dated. “You’re married,” she said.

  “It’s just lunch,” he told her. “I’m not only married, I’m, wonder of wonders, happily married. Can’t an editor ask one of his staffers to lunch? I promise not to seduce you.”

  Too bad, she’d thought.

  3.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Hugh said. He stood in silhouette against the blinding sunlight that filtered through the dust-streaked window.

  Rachel kissed him. I want to scream, she was thinking, but she knew this was not exactly the thought he wanted to hear.

  He held her tightly, and she looked out the dirty window, down on the park where a woman played catch with her three children while their father opened a picnic basket.

  “It’s so damn humid.” Hugh sounded as annoyed as Rachel now felt.

  Rachel tugged herself free from him. She went over to the other window in the hall. She pulled upwards on the sill, and managed to open the window. “There,” she said, looking out over the patio and the alley behind the house, “get some fresh air in here. Hello down there!” she shouted in a singsong friendly voice, and then turning to Hugh, said, “Mrs. Deerfield looks so lonely, let’s go down to the patio and be neighborly.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You believe in omens?” Mrs. Deerfield asked. Her British accent was like thick clotted cream. Rachel noticed she had trouble pronouncing her l’s; it sounded like she’d said “beweev.”

  “Good or bad?” Rachel produced a grin, which made her feel uncomfortably phony. She had succeeded in dragging Hugh downstairs and outside to examine the split-level patio. Half of the patio was for the benefit of the lower apartment, and was defined by a neat brick rectangle under the wrought-iron staircase. Mrs. Deerfield was sitting at a small table beneath the shade of the stairs, drinking what Rachel thought was tea, but which Mrs. Deerfield assured her was a mug of Kahlua and milk. She offered a mug to Rachel as she came down the stairs ahead of Hugh. Rachel checked her watch: yes, it was only ten a.m. She shook her head to the offer of the liqueur.

  “Well,” Mrs. Deerfield said, “this omen is particularly good. My Ramona vomited a hairball.”

  The real estate woman had warned them that Penelope Deerfield was an odd bird who had been living in the basement apartment since before First Properties had begun handling it. Mrs. Deerfield must’ve been in her early sixties, and her hair was dyed a golden yellow, worn long to her shoulders as if she were still a young girl. Hugh said later, rather cruelly Rachel thought, “She looks like a drag queen waiting to happen.” Her heavily mascaraed eyes were of that clear translucent blue that always seemed to be looking over your shoulder, or through you. She wore a silk dressing gown with a red gold Oriental print, its darted edges revealing a pink calf-length slip beneath.

  Mrs. Deerfield was so short that she appeared to be clinging to the table to keep from shrinking any further, and her hands were small like a child’s.

  Rachel pretended to be examining the perimeter of the patio, testing the gray wooden gate for sturdiness. She was afraid if she stared too long at Mrs. Deerfield it would be rude, and yet she was fascinated by the diminutive woman.

  At the mention of the name Ramona, Hugh called down from the iron landing at the top of the stairs, “You have a daughter, then, Mrs. Deerfield?”

  Mrs. Deerfield, ignoring his comment, continued. “Ramona is a Himalayan of distinct breeding, and she rarely has hairballs, but it is a good sign I think that this should happen on the day you will be moving in. I have a talent for the interpretation of such events. Omens, dreams, portents, new landlords. We have a ghost, you know. That’s right, one of the early occupants of the house. She’s harmless, of course, makes some noise now and again. Rose Draper, it seems, is still waiting for her lover to return home. But ghosts are attention getters, aren’t they? Like little children, they just want someone to watch them, to know they exist.”

  Rachel nodded pleasantly not understanding what in God’s name she was talking about; but just the idleness of the monologue was a delight, nothing about torts, briefs, or depositions. Just pure talk for talk’s sake.

  “May I inquire as to my… status, in this present situation, Mrs. Adair?” Mrs. Deerfield’s voice acquired a curious drop as she spoke, as if she were embarrassed to even be asking such a common question.

  “Call me Rachel, I still have trouble with the ‘Mrs. Adair.’” Rachel, feeling odd standing by the back gate, walked over to the small white table that Mrs. Deerfield draped herself across as she poured out more Kahlua in her mug. Rachel sat down uncertainly in a wobbly wire chair.

  “You sure you won’t have a cup? It’s just like a milkshake. A grown-up milkshake.” Mrs. Deerfield lifted her mug.

  “No thanks.” Rachel heard Hugh ahem from above.

  “Well, Rachel, then, the apartment -”

  “Well, I think it would be great if you were able to stay on in your place.”

  “About the rent increase…” Again that embarrassed dive to the voice, like a child confessing to having wet herself.

  Rachel looked up; she could not see Hugh standing above them, although she saw a bit of his hand clutching the dark, thin banister. His knuckles were white. “Hugh? There’s no increase, is there?”

  Another throat clearing, and Rachel was worried that he might spit. Finally: “No, no. Scout, there’s no rent increase. We’re all status quo here.”

  Mrs. Deerfield reached across the table, patting Rachel on the wrist, “Thank -” but both of them felt it: a shock. Rachel brought her hand away; Mrs. Deerfield kept her arm outstretched. “You’re a sensitive.”

  “Sometimes too sensitive.”

  “No, dear, I mean a sensitive. You’re open, to the influence. A small percentage of the world’s population is and always has been. Have you ever had any kind of psychic experience?”

  Rachel heard Hugh whisper under his breath, “Sounds like
a job interview.” She hoped that their tenant didn’t hear him. Sitting down on the steps, not bothering to be polite and come join them, he said, “Tell that story your mom always tells.”

  “Oh, that’s just silly, and anyway I don’t think it ever really happened.”

  Hugh began speaking for her. “When she was six, in church, she told her mother that the—Scout, you can tell this better than I can.”

  Rachel sighed, grinning as if she were embarrassed. “Well, I—oh, this is stupid.” But Mrs. Deerfield gazed at her attentively, fascinated. “Well, I wasn’t raised really Catholic, but we went to mass at Christmas and Easter, and during one of these Christmas services, I apparently went up to the altar. There was this figure of Mary and the baby Jesus, and I started petting the baby’s head and told it not to cry. ‘Don’t cry, baby Jesus, don’t cry.’ Something like that. I wouldn’t classify that as anything occult.”

  Mrs. Deerfield’s face became pinched; she nodded her head as if thinking of something else. “When we’re in the right place at the right time, and when we are the right person, sensitive to these things, it can happen. I’m of the opinion that these things are perfectly normal phenomena that simply haven’t yet been explained.”

  Rachel was barely listening to her—she was thinking of that other time. “And then with daddy.”

  “Oh, Scout,” she heard Hugh’s voice as if from a great distance.

  “After he died—two years ago—I was still in law school. I didn’t know he was dead; mom didn’t even know. I went back to our apartment between classes and this sounds really dumb, but the lazy susan in the pantry started spinning, just a little. And then I saw him—just for a second. Like an afterimage. Like the second before someone leaves a room, and you blink, and they’re gone and you’re not sure if you saw them or not. I heard him say something, in my head—you know how you know someone so well that your mind can even reproduce their voice? All he said was, ‘It’s done, sweetie, but mom’ll need your help.’ I knew he was dead. And then ten minutes later, mom called in tears.” Rachel was thinking how much she wouldn’t mind lighting a cigarette up right then. What little breeze there had been wafting between the alleyways had died, and she smelled something bad, something decomposing. It must’ve come from the dumpster out back by the car. The odor of rotting meat. I am not going to start crying. If I start crying, Hugh’s going to think I am losing it again the way I lost it over the miscarriage, and I am not losing it. If I keep talking, I will lose it, but if I just shut up like a good Girl Scout…

  Mrs. Deerfield perked up suddenly, as if injected with vitality. “You are special, dear, I’m sure of it.”

  “I’ve always thought so,” Hugh said from the stairs. Rachel looked back to Mrs. Deerfield and felt such compassion emanating from the woman that she felt okay. The moment had passed. Just don’t start talking about hearing babies crying anywhere close by or you will be certifiable.

  Mrs. Deerfield smiled, revealing an impossibly crooked overbite and an enormous gap between her front teeth. Her blue eyes became devilish slits as she said, “You are a nice young couple, aren’t you?”

  “What were the former tenants like?”

  “Ooh!” She shivered as if recalling the taste of a particularly sour medicine. “Horrible, unnatural persons, sexual perversions night and day, loud music, parties. It tested me, it certainly did, their friends tramping across my little garden, their foul language, the orgies, and worst of all, Rachel,” and at this, she leaned over the table almost knocking the mug and bottle over, clutching Rachel’s hand in her own tiny Deerfield fingers, “worst of all, most obscene,” Mrs. Deerfield’s eyes widened like a television tube warming up from a pinpoint to a nineteen inch screen, “they hated cats.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE OLD MAN

  If you glanced over at the sleek cherry-red Jaguar stuck like every other car in the middle of a traffic jam on the Fourteenth Street Bridge—and everyone caught in the tar pit of rush-hour traffic heading across the Potomac was rubbernecking to catch a glimpse of the Jaguar and what was going on inside the car—you would see a fiery flash of red hair whisking up and down like a dust mop just behind the steering wheel while the man who was driving kept a grimace of pain, or embarrassment, or pleasure spread across his fat face like Nero fiddling.

  Gradually, the motions of the red hair slowed, and once, it rose up completely from the steering wheel. It was attached at the scalp to a pale girl with dark circles under her eyes, high cheekbones, sparklingly wet ruby-red lips and spidery false eyelashes. She looked less like a whore from the streets of Washington than a very tired girl of thirty-six who did not appreciate the car’s air conditioner blowing cold air directly on her face as she went about her work.

  “I’m not paying you to stop,” the man said. The skin on his face seemed to have been pulled back tight, as if he’d once had a botched face lift. His hair—white, sparse, and blue in parts—began in a neat ridge at the very peak of his head, combed greasily back. Buttressing jowls supported the gothic arches of his various chins, and you might wonder if you could guess his age by counting those chins, like the rings of a tree. His cheeks and upper lip were spotted with sweat, which he wiped at with his fingers. His small, dark eyes were pushed by the puffy bags beneath them into eternal squints. He’d apparently been sewn right into the dark suit he wore—it looked like it could never come off without undoing the sleeves, the pants legs, and then piece by piece, the rest of the material. It was his exoskeletal armor.

  The girl coughed, clutching her throat. “Something’s caught in my throat, I think it’s a hair.”

  Her voice hit notes that most baritones would be proud of—it was far huskier than her small, fine-boned china doll face, powdered dead white, would suggest. She shook her wispy mane of red hair, with curls as large as malt liquor cans, and pursed her lips as if tasting something sour.

  Between coughs, the girl gasped, “These days you got to be careful.”

  “I’m not paying you to be careful.”

  The redheaded girl began rubbing up and down on her throat—the man noted that it was similar to her hand-job technique. Her voice became garbled with hawking phlegm and intermittent coughs.

  “Sorry,” she said. Tears were coming to her eyes. She began chanting the word ahem, over and over as if it were some mantra to cure throat problems.

  The old man cursed.

  Someone honked their horn from the car in back. Traffic was again moving across the bridge; the old man pressed his foot gently down on the accelerator. The girl had risen completely up in her seat, and was now leaning against her door, the side of her face pressed against the window as she continued to hack away. Her dress was sheer, lollipop red, covered with tiny fairy sparkles. The man would later find sparkles in his underwear and worry if this was a sign of some venereal disease.

  His name was Winston Adair, and he worried constantly about the state of his penis—it was the center of his being, and it was one of the few parts of his body that had not become elephantine and bloated over the years. While procreation had never been his goal (although he had sired two sons and countless bastards that may or may not have survived birth), he enjoyed putting his member in whatever female orifice was for hire and available. Winston Adair had gone to fat in the past twenty years, but it only added to his imposing presence: he looked like a man who carried the excess luggage on his body like an arsenal. People who saw him wondered if he was as wide as he was tall. The streetwalkers who saw what he liked to call his Washington Monument tended to view it more as the part of the balloon where you blow.

  And the redheaded streetwalker coughing next to him in his Jaguar was not inflating the balloon at all. As they crossed the Fourteenth Street Bridge to the George Washington Parkway, he reached across the seat and grabbed her by the wrist, keeping his left hand on the steering wheel.

  She looked like she wanted to say something along the lines of “you’re hurting me,” but the coughing stop
ped her. She was trying to hold the coughs in, trying to swallow them, but they burst through her nose when she kept her mouth shut.

  “Goddamn you, cocksucker, I paid you twenty-five bucks for those lips, and you’re not getting out of it.” Winston was always surprised by his voice in situations like this—in court he could sound like Clarence Darrow, but with a hooker he always sounded like a young naive boy. He turned the car in the direction of the Iwo Jima Memorial.

  When he was twenty-one, he’d been with a whore who seemed as tall as the bridge they were standing under, and she had a face that could stop a truck. Doing her had been like sticking his dick in a muddy hole. He imagined he was doing that when he humped the whore, his penis sliding in and out of a dark hole, loose pebbles tumbling against his sensitive skin—they screwed on the muddy bank, and he felt the ooze sliding like exploring fingers beneath his testicles, her yellow brown rump slapping noisily into the suction cup of earth and water.

  And then, it had happened.

  Just as he was coming, trying to yank himself out of that whore, he felt something other than her fingers, something other than the cool mud of spring beneath his scrotum.

  Something small and hairy and ticklish. Tiny. Crawling. Up his balls. And then several of them. Perhaps a dozen

  Before he saw them and screamed, he saw the look on the whore’s face, the thick-lipped smile, the eyes turned inward on themselves exposing the whites to him.

  The whore knew.

  She’d met him under the bridge because she knew this would happen. Winston, aged twenty-one, glanced down at his shriveling penis.

  They covered his penis, his testicles, his thighs.

  Mud dauber wasps.