Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  “With the kind of work I’m doing this fall and your getting a job I really don’t see how we’ll get another break until sometime at the turn of the century. Except for today, the humidity sucks, the pollution is getting to me, and the last vacation we took was our honeymoon.”

  They entered the zoo from the bike path; hundreds of tourists were milling around the exhibits and cages. They took a path along the seal exhibit, up to the otters. Rachel tried to find the otters, but couldn’t see them anywhere.

  “Look, if going to the beach is what you really want -” Hugh said as they continued walking. The squawks and cries of wild animals filled their ears.

  “I want, I want.”

  “I just don’t want to spend all your money—I’m beginning to feel like a kept man.”

  “Our money.”

  “The car payments and repair, your college loans, your law school loans, et cetera et cetera.”

  “Hey, if you’re going to be in debt, do it big time.”

  “Okay, all right, I just feel so damned guilty. And don’t think I don’t see your little notes around the bathroom—it doesn’t help my highly developed sense of guilt any to see the word paycheck etched across the bathroom mirror.”

  “I know, I’ve been tough on you. Look, you’ll get a job soon enough—I know it.”

  “We haven’t talked about it much,” Hugh whispered.

  She knew what he meant. He meant: the drinking. Rachel was beginning to wish the conversation had not gotten so serious; she’d been enjoying herself, and forgetting about the clutter of her life.

  “I know.”

  “You’ve been good about it. I know I’m slipping up some.”

  “Yeah, well, we all do it sometimes.”

  “The interviews I’ve been on!” He laughed, clapping his hands together. “Bufu Thompson said he’d try to ‘work me in.’ Work me in? I was practically responsible for his getting in to law school in the first place.”

  “The world is full of assholes.”

  “It’s been kind of tense. I’ll try to stay away from it.” The dreaded it. Beer, wine, selected refined liquors. Somehow Hugh’s not naming it specifically made her shiver. It must have some power over him if he could not give it a single descriptive word.

  Rachel had no response to this: the past few months had been tense, to the point where when she was not working she’d been drifting through things, nodding her head when Hugh would say something, but trying not to turn every situation into a confrontation.

  But today. Today had been so good. All of her anxiety seemed to have melted away, changed with the weather.

  She felt happy and even secure with Hugh.

  Hugh said, “We’ll go to the beach, what, maybe Labor Day weekend?”

  “Well, to be honest, the end of next week is good. I think I can get Thursday and Friday off, and the following week if I want it.”

  “Talk about presumptuous—how long have you been planning this little getaway, Scout?”

  “I was just inspired, that’s all. We could drive up Thursday morning. A couple of T-shirts, some shorts, flip-flops… we can get a couple of those big goofy beach towels up there, and order club sandwiches from room service.”

  “A cheap motel with room service?”

  “Okay, we’ll pick up Ding-Dongs and Ho-Ho’s at the drugstore.”

  “Of course we have to think about your clunker car. I guess I could get it to a garage Monday morning.”

  “If it works by Wednesday, we’re set. I’ll ask Mrs. Deerfield to take in the paper, you know, water the plants, turn lights on and off and stuff, and maybe we can get the roach man to come by while we’re gone.”

  “You’re just my one-woman problem solver, Scout,” he said without a trace of sarcasm. His eyes were shining blue as he looked into hers; she reached up and with her fingers twirled the hair that hung across his forehead.

  “Daddy always said: it all comes out in the wash.”

  He grinned and shook his head, his eyes never leaving her face. “If I kissed you right here -” and before she could say anything in protest, Hugh hugged her to him, and brought his lips against hers, softly, softer than she could ever remember a kiss being, cool and moist and unhurried. I love you so much, You- Are-There-Hugh-Adair.

  Behind them, the monkeys shrieked and jangled at the bars of their cages.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FATHER-SON CHAT

  1.

  Ted Adair dreaded visiting his father, but the Old Man was losing it fast and Ted figured he owed him that much. For the past month and a half, Winston had been calling his oldest boy every night after midnight with bizarre stories. One about things that were after him, then something about an old bad debt. (“What, pop, can’t you pay it?” Ted had asked over the phone and the Old Man replied, chillingly, “Of course, I can pay it, Ted, I’ve always paid off my debts!”)

  Then several weeks ago, his father had taken Ted out to lunch—to an outdoor cafe in Georgetown.

  Now, if you knew the Old Man, you’d know he wasn’t one for dining al fresco. But Ted got the feeling that his father wanted to be out in the open, in the daylight, as if something waited for him, something or someone who lurked in darkness.

  Winston Adair took Ted out to lunch to tell him about the dead body in the Jaguar.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Ted almost spilled his beer.

  The Old Man glanced around the cafe—the tables were filled with people, talking, eating and drinking, making such a racket he could be fairly assured of secrecy. He reached across the table to Ted, leaning forward, tugging at Ted’s arm.

  “There’s this whore,” Winston whispered, and his breath was so foul that Ted wondered if the Old Man had brushed his teeth since Christmas. “She died in my car.”

  Then the Old Man began giggling.

  Ted, who prided himself on being able to catch most of life’s curveballs, played it cool. You watch your pop crack like an egg and you want to pretend it’s business as usual. He took a mean swig of his beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “I think we better clarify what we’re talking about here.”

  The Old Man was acting spooky, his head nodding as if this were some under-the-table deal, as if this were a plea bargain or something and he just wanted it to go smoothly. Here he was in a three-piece pin-stripe suit from Brooks Brothers, a little mustard on his red tie from his pastrami sandwich, just a hint of drool at the left-hand comer of his mouth: Pop, dad, the Old Man, Winston Adair, legal counsel to the stars and minor constellations.

  And he was losing it.

  “What are we talking here, pop? Is this some kind of necrophiliac’s dream? You got a dead girl in the trunk of your Jag?” Ted looked around at the other tables.

  “Well,” Winston Adair said, slurping up some of the spit that was running down his chin—he lapped up the slick wet trail beneath his lip with his tongue, “not anymore. You, you know, you can’t keep a good corpse down. Nosiree. She up and walked away.”

  2.

  Ted hadn’t been back to the old family home in McLean since Christmas. Something had been building in the past year, and it had begun with Hugh’s marrying Rachel Brennan. Ted didn’t know what it was exactly, but a change had come over the Old Man, something that Ted didn’t really like about his father, something that had lain hidden for years and was now emerging, coming to the surface.

  Of course, there was a shitload that Ted had never liked about his father—his father was a real asshole most of the time, had spent years building a reputation as someone who would as soon screw you over as look at you, but Ted took this for granted.

  Sometimes Ted felt he screwed people over, too, but it was tax law so who gave a flyer, anyway? Ted counted it a good night when he could drop off to sleep knowing he had, perhaps, screwed over one less person than he had the day before. But it was the nature of the business, and you go with the flow if you want to keep your head above water. Now, Hughie never
understood this, but that wife of his is a real catch, she knows about how things work, how the universe is put together. No flies on her. Marrying her is just about the smartest thing Hughie’s ever done.

  Ted pulled his silver Mercedes SL up to the entrance of Renfield, which was the name of the Adair estate; the large Tudor-style mansion was hidden from the road, dogwood trees clustered about the drive, wisteria entangled like greedy fingers through the front gate.

  The burning sunlight didn’t penetrate the driveway, blocked by the old giant oaks that stood guard for the half-mile drive to the house. The shade was oppressive—Ted, who was boiling from the humidity of the early afternoon, wondered if it was not possible to crack up when you lived down such a dark and lonely road.

  At the front gate, a video camera pointed down at him.

  Something Pop must’ve installed since December.

  Ted rolled down his window and smiled at the camera. He raised his sunglasses up. Finally, the gate began making a humming sound, followed by a series of clicks and squeaks. The tall black gate slid open.

  “Thanks, Pop,” Ted said, flipping the bird at the camera. He pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator and sped up the drive towards the house.

  3.

  Winston Adair sat behind the console and watched his television monitors. His face rippled with uncontrollable ticks, above his eyes, along the edge of his mouth.

  Up near his hairline, a purple vein throbbed with blood. If you could crawl inside his brain (he felt like he had done that and more, that he had crawled inside a small dark cave in his brain) you might find that it had been carved out like a pumpkin. Yes sir, a big fat balloon filled with breath, but at least I’ve got that—a little breath goes a long way these days. There were times when he did not know where he was. Right now he knew. He was safe at home, at Renfield, and his son Ted was coming up the drive. But other times he was buried alive beneath a bone-crushing fear. He was afraid that he would forget how to breathe, the way the redheaded whore in his car had forgotten.

  And then something else had begun breathing for her.

  His white button-down shirt was open to his chest and blotted with sweat; he kept rubbing his thick legs with the palms of his hands. He sat there in his shirttails and his white boxer shorts. He mumbled to himself every once in a while, that was okay, because if you’re talking you’re walking, you know it, Winston. If you can wag your fat tongue then you can wag your fat ass and that means you’re breathing.

  After switching the electric gate closed behind Ted, he glanced quickly from one monitor to another. Every time he looked away from one screen, he thought he just missed seeing something on it. Out of the comer of his eye he thought he saw someone, or something, move.

  But it’s just you, Winston. They haven’t caught up with you. You’ve caught up with you.

  “Just take what you want and leave me alone,” he said to the monitors.

  He rubbed the palms of his hands across his hairy, fat, white legs.

  His hands still burned from the wasps.

  He held his hands up to his face and kissed the center of each palm. He kissed each finger. Kiss it and make it better. His hands were swollen and looked as if he’d blown them up like balloons, but lead balloons because they were heavy and he dropped them to his lap again.

  And it felt, sometimes, hell, most of the time, like the wasps had gotten inside him and he was the wasp’s nest.

  4.

  “Uh, Pop, do you always open the door in such… ah, sartorial splendor?” Ted stood on the front porch of the house. His father, in the shadow of the door, looked like hell—his boxer shorts clung to his thighs, his shirt was yellowed under the arms with sweat stains. Ted thought he smelled something too awful to even wonder what it was. The Old Man’s eyes were dark and sunken into brown circles, and his hands and arms were puffed up an oozing, blistering pink. “Jesus, Pop, you stick your hands in a barbecue?”

  The Old Man grinned. “You’re just a laugh a minute, Ted. The class clown hasn’t grown up any, has he?”

  “Hell with you.” Ted pushed his way past his father. As he went he smelled something that was dead, or Near Dead. One of the Near Dead, Pop, that must be you. You got the look of the grave in your eye, your skin is stretched across your fat and bones to the limit, and you’ve got the stench, Pop, you’ve got the stench like nobody’s business.

  Ted went into the living room. The drapes on the back picture window were drawn, the furniture was covered with blankets and sheets. In a corner of the room were some pillows and a few blankets rumpled up. Next to them were jars filled with some yellowish water which Ted wanted to believe was apple juice or lemonade, but which he knew, because of the odor in the room, was piss.

  The Old Man’s been sleeping and pissing in the living room. Maybe I should call it the Near Dead Room.

  Ted turned back to face his father, who had followed behind him. “Jesus.”

  “I can’t offer you anything to drink, boy,” Winston said. “I’ve drunk most of it.”

  “Where’s your housekeeper?”

  “She left about a month ago. Just packed her things and moved out of the guest house. I wanted to pay her, you know, she had some wages coming…”

  “What the hell is happening to you, Pop?”

  “Oh, the shit has hit the fan, boy, a big wad of the stuff, and that fan just spins and spins and where it stops nobody, not even me, knows. You see these?” He raised his hands up. “I wish I had barbecued them, Ted, I wish I could burn off these bumps. I tried skinning my arms. I just got a razor, boy, and started slicing through them. Just one layer of skin peeling off at a time. I was bleeding like a sonofabitch, and it hurt, but it did no good. They’re still here. A man can’t get rid of his insides just by peeling back the skin—that’s just going to show what’s really under there. Nosiree, it just didn’t work. Because these are bug bites, but not just ordinary bug bites. These are industrial-strength wasp stings and they get buried way down deep and don’t come out. They’re a part of me.”

  Ted backed away from his father.

  “What’s wrong, boy? Where are you headed?”

  “Look, pop, I’m just going to call your doctor. I think maybe you should see somebody about those…”

  “Don't call a doctor. They're useless. I need a miracle," his father whispered.

  Minutes later, Ted drew the drapes back.

  Sunlight sprayed across the living room. Ted opened the sliding glass door to get some fresh air in. “Here, Pop, let’s sit on the back porch.”

  “Make sure nothing’s out there.”

  “You think someone’s on the property?”

  “You’ve got shit for gray matter, boy. It’s wasps I’m concerned about. They might be out there waiting for me.”

  Ted went out and looked beneath the eaves of the house. “All’s clear on deck, pop.”

  They sat around the glass coffee table. A cool breeze spun through and dissipated all too soon—once again the smell of the Near Dead thrust up Ted’s nostrils like two fingers with sharp nails.

  “Pop, look, I think you need some help.”

  “You know I haven’t been to the office for a week?” Ted had been thinking, from the condition of the house, it had been more like six weeks. “You talk to your brother?”

  “Hughie’s never been the most communicative brother, pop. I doubt you’ll hear from him unless he needs a loan.”

  “I hope I’m that lucky—God, I hope you’re right.”

  “He’s a dickhead. He’s got a list of grudges against you and me that you could wrap around Capitol Hill.”

  “He’s your brother, Ted.”

  “And he’s your son.”

  Winston shook his head sadly. “Would a father let his son inherit what I am leaving to Hugh?”

  “Is this what it’s all about? Are you making yourself crazy because of Hughie’s questionable lineage? I knew it—I knew it when I was four. I knew about mom and her little indiscretion.
Hughie probably knows it, too. He’s not completely dense. Your conscience go into overload this week? Or are you still worried about that whore who got fifty bucks from you without finishing her job?”

  “She was dead. I know she was dead. I saw her die. I’ve seen people die before.” Winston broke into a grin. “They even found her in the river later on. It was in the paper, 'Prostitute Commits Suicide.' She was floating, Ted, just floating. Deader than dead. But she died in my car at the Iwo Jima Memorial and she walked down Route 50 and jumped into the Potomac. She was dead, boy, but she went and drowned herself anyway.”

  Ted was trying to think of ways of getting the hell out of his father’s house and then calling some men in white coats with nets to come catch the Old Man. “Onward and upward, pop. I assume there’s a reason you wanted me to come. We both know this isn’t my favorite hangout.”

  “I’ve raised a generation of vipers.”

  “Good ol’ pop. Maybe a martini would help. Maybe a jug of martinis would help. You sure you don’t have a little booze in one of the cabinets?”

  “I have been drunk all week, boy. I have been drunk and scared to death. I’ve been drunk until the hangovers started to taste good.”

  And you sure look it.

  “It’s been pursuing me since I was a young man, Ted. And it’s finally caught up with me.”

  I ain’t sayin’ yes and I ain’t sayin’ no. “You don’t have something like testicular cancer do you, pop? ‘Cause if you’ve got something like that, man, you’ve got a strange way of leading up to it although—heh heh—you do have balls.”

  “Keep the jokes coming, boy, but it won’t keep what I’ve got away. What I have, Ted, is an accounts payable credit—that’s pretty good, isn’t it? I know my figures, don’t I? I owe someone, Ted, someone more powerful than a shitheel IRS—and what I owe, I owe in blood. And this something, this something is here, now, to collect.”