One True Sentence: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 1)

by Craig McDonald

  “Subeditor,” Hem said. Hector had slowed his pace a bit to accommodate Hem’s limp.

  “Right. So how is all that?”

  “Frustrating,” Hem said. “Here they all sit in the City of Lights, the very seat of culture where the ‘Twentieth Century lives,’ as Gertrude says. They’re up to their asses in young modern Turks — painters, poets and fiction writers — yet they seem hell-bent on making the Transatlantic just another staid, safe review. Given the milieu, the potential talent pool, and the funding, hell, they should go for broke.”

  “Sure, it’s what we would do,” Hector agreed. “Who’s watching Ford right now?”

  Hem made a face, then smoothed his dark mustache. “I didn’t agree to move in with the old bastard, Lasso. And I have my limits. He’s with one of his young mistresses. And how do you figure that? How does that old, used-up, foul-breathed limey cocksucker succeed in banging all these pretty young things?”

  “Spoils of literary lionship, maybe,” Hector said. “Something for us to aspire to.”

  Hem snorted. “Christ… But, beats all hollow the alternative, I guess.”

  Hector said, “I finally ran into Molly earlier this afternoon.”

  Hem rubbed at his unshaven cheek. “No scene, was there? No confrontations about your new bedmate?”

  “So far, so good,” Hector said.

  They reached Le Dôme. Hector held the door for Hem. Weaving between tables, Hector said, “Molly seemed distracted, though.” He hesitated, then added, “And Molly looked pretty bad, too…wrung out. Maybe days in her clothes.”

  Hem selected their table — one by a window where they could watch the street. Hem said, “I’ve heard some things. I saw a little that night you met and left with Brinke.”

  “Go on.” Hector threw his coat and hat on an empty chair.

  “Just a crew Molly and Philippe fell in with just after you left. Some group they maybe know too well. Molly didn’t quite seem to fit in. At least not like her beau did.”

  They both ordered rum St. James. Hector said, “This ‘crew,’ what, it consists of more poets?”

  Hem rubbed his hands together, warming them. “Some of them are poets, I think. Some of them I didn’t know. There was at least one other painter with them.”

  “And…?”

  “They’re very much a clique,” Hem said. “Supposedly affiliated with Aleister Crowley.”

  Hector said, “What? Crowley? The diabolist?”

  Hem pointed at his own nose.

  Hector frowned and toyed with his glass. “What do you mean, like some occult thing? That Temple of the Golden Dawn style shit?” Hector knew that several major poets and writers in Paris and elsewhere in Europe had been drawn into the Kabbalah-derived Hermetic Order…not the least of which being the Irish poet, W. B. Yeats.

  “Not quite like that,” Hem said. “It’s linked to a former disciple of Crowley’s. There was some kind of split or philosophical rupture, I hear.”

  “Who is this Crowley disciple?”

  “A poet named Victor Leek,” Hem said. “Heard of him?”

  Hector shook his head. “Nah. But he’s some kind of goddamn Satanist?” He smiled crookedly. “No pun intended.”

  Hem smiled back. “Maybe he was back then. A Satanist, or whatever stuff Crowley and his ilk are really all about,” Hem said. “But Leek and Crowley had some big break, like I said.”

  Hector drank some of his rum. “So what then? Like some left-hand version of Martin Luther, this Leek has since gone off in a huff and formed his own church?”

  “A little like that, I guess,” Hem said. “Leek is a nihilist. He’s still a poet, but a nihilistic one. And he is the head of a movement of sorts. Something like dark Dada, maybe.”

  “And he’s attracting acolytes?”

  “Appears so. Poets and painters, mostly. No fiction writers yet, as I can see.”

  Hector squeezed the bridge of his nose. “A nihilist novelist? Can you imagine enduring the writing of such a book? And would anybody ever read it?”

  “Way I see it, writing it, or reading it, would be at odds with the underpinning philosophy that spawned it,” Hem said. “Paradox.”

  “Jesus wept,” Hector said. “Dada, Surrealism… Leek put a name to his tent show yet?”

  “Nada,” Hem said.

  Hector nodded. “Probably just still casting around for that perfect moniker to put it over the top,” Hector said.

  “No,” Hem said. “‘Nada’ is what Leek calls it.”

  Running his fingers back through his dark brown hair, Hector said, “Dada, Nada….” He rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “We are truly living in the end times, Hem. Where are you getting all of this, anyway?”

  “Jeremy Hunt.” Hector recognized the name — a tubercular poet…and yet another little magazine editor. “They made a run at Hunt,” Hem said. “Unsuccessfully.”

  “A ‘run’?” Hector signaled the waiter for refills. “You mean they tried to recruit him?”

  “And his magazine. They’re hungry for an organ of their own,” Hem said. “Seems nihilism, and liquidity, are an elusive mix.”

  Hector laughed. “I can see how that could be. But Hunt balked?”

  “Yeah,” Hem said. “He’s a little too old to fall for Leek’s nihilistic patter, I think. Victor seems to do better with what Gertrude imperiously calls ‘the Lost Generation.’” Hem paused. “You know — our generation.”

  “And Molly’s been drawn in?”

  “Her boyfriend certainly has.”

  “I should talk to Molly,” Hector said. He couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for that.

  Hem stared at his empty glass. “Sure. But you’ll need to get her away from her painter, too, I think, for any of it to take or to matter. And I suspect the only way that will happen is if you can offer her some incentive, Lasso.”

  Hector didn’t like where Hem was headed. He said, “You can stop there.”

  “Hadley says it’s much, much worse than you know, Lasso.” Hem shook his head, grimacing. “Fuck. You’re right. Forget it. This is pointless.”

  Seething, Hector said, “You’ve come this far, pal. Might as well finish it now.”

  The waiter brought them their fresh drinks. When he left, Hem said, “Okay. In the short time we were in the bal musette with Molly and Philippe — after you left with Brinke and before we crossed paths again at Gertrude’s — Molly confided some things to Hadley.” Hem hesitated again. “Lasso, buddy, I’m telling you, if I go on, it’s only at your insistence. And with all my heart, I’m telling you, you don’t want to know this bullshit.”

  Hector rubbed his jaw. “You push me back with one hand and beckon me with the other, Hem. Fuck this: spill. I can take it. My conscience is a pretty elusive target, anyway. So serve it up cold.”

  Hem nodded. “Between last Thanksgiving and Christmas, you were unattached. Or so Molly told Hadley.”

  “More or less.”

  “Right.” Hem’s fingertips traced the grain patterns in the tabletop. “Molly thought she saw her chance. Christmas season…the romance of Paris. You get it. Molly had big visions. Then she saw you with someone else.”

  Hector rested his head on his fist. “Someone else” was likely Justine Joly, a dancer in the Folies-Bergère. The relationship had been all about the sex and it had been over before New Year’s Eve.

  “Molly took some pills,” Hem said, his voice raw. “They filled her full of charcoal at the hospital. Brought her back.”

  Hector took several deep breaths, his head bowed. Hem said softly, “Lasso, you hanging in there?”

  “Yeah. And Philippe? Where was he when all this was happening, Hem? What was Philippe’s reaction?”

  “Philippe never knew,” Hem said. “They split — Molly ended it — when she anticipated being with you. They reconciled on Christmas Eve.”

  “How romantic,” Hector said, and immediately regretted it.

  Hem licked his bottom lip. “You kno
w, Hector, sometimes no comment at all is the better way to go.”

  “You’re right.”

  “So now what?” Hem still seemed fascinated by their tabletop’s grain patterns.

  “Damned if I know,” Hector said. “I can’t fake what I don’t feel. Can’t live some lie to get Molly grounded again. Particularly not now. Not with…”

  “Brinke in your bed,” Hem finished for him. “I agree with all that. And to try and talk to Molly to address any of this means confronting her unreciprocated feelings for you. And God only knows what effect all that might have on her. Poor kid.”

  “Offer me some advice?”

  “Any advice you’d maybe best seek from Hadley,” Hem said. “If it was me, I’d maybe leave everything as it is. Sometimes a holding action is the best strategy, Lasso.”

  Hector shook his head. “When a suicidal young woman, a poet, is sliding toward nihilism?” Hector drained his drink and picked up his hat. “Doing nothing doesn’t seem an option to me.”

  “It wouldn’t. Where are you going?”

  Hector threw some francs on the table. “Sylvia’s bookshop. Seems Molly’s been getting peeks at my work there. I should maybe finally return the favor. Sample some of her poetry.”

  Hem scowled. “All this time knowing her, and you’ve never read any of her writing?”

  “That’s right,” Hector said.

  “Christ, this really has been a one-sided affair.”

  Hector’s pale blue eyes flared. “Laisse tomber.”

  Hem held up his hands. He stood and said, “Like I said, sometimes no remark is the only remark to make. Tolerate my sorry company to Sylvia’s? I need to check my mail.”

  “Sure,” Hector said. “It’s probably better you’re with me, anyway. So I can watch your back, I mean.”

  They stepped out onto the street. “Yeah,” Hem said, “and why is that? Why in hell would my back need watching?”

  Hector said, “Because even with the prefix of ‘sub’ you’re a little magazine editor now, Hem, and therefore a potential target.”

  15

  Sylvia handed Hector an accordion file folder. “I generally drop what’s new in toward the back.”

  “That’s good,” Hector said. “I’d prefer to read them in publication sequence…figure it might mirror composition sequence.”

  “Given that it’s poetry, and most of it very short, it might at that,” Sylvia said.

  Hector pulled out the folder’s contents — a stack of small chapbooks, little magazines, a couple of folded broadsheets, and one small, leather-bound anthology. “More here than I figured,” he said.

  “She’s really fairly accomplished for one so young,” Sylvia said. Then she added, “You didn’t know that?”

  He could feel his own blush. “I didn’t. Poetry isn’t really my thing.” He pulled an ashtray closer and offered a cigarette to Sylvia.

  “No thanks, Hec. I prefer my own. Why, after all this time, are you suddenly interested in Molly’s poetry?”

  “I’ll answer that, but…well, you read all these poems of hers as they appeared?”

  “Yes…just like your stories, Hec.”

  Hector said, “Have you noticed any changes in Molly’s work recently?”

  “In her work, and in Molly, herself,” Sylvia said. “What’s going on?”

  Hector held up in hand. “We’ll get to that in a second. Indulge me, please, Syl.”

  Her brow furrowed. “All right, Hector.” Sylvia bit her lip. “How to put it? Molly’s poems seem to me to have become…darker. Darker, and a good bit less coherent.”

  “Well, goddamn.”

  “She hasn’t looked so good the past couple of days, either.”

  “I know.”

  “Hec, what’s going on with her?”

  “I don’t know. Or maybe I do. Have you heard of Victor Leek?”

  This sour look. “Him I know. He’s been in once or twice. I don’t like him, not at all.” Strong words from Sylvia.

  “Tell me about Leek. Hem gave me a little, but not much.”

  Sylvia rose and walked behind her desk. She poured two cups of coffee and then splashed a little whisky in each cup. “I probably don’t know much more than Hem,” she said. “Leek, it seems to me, is more about reputation than accomplishment. He’s also a former acolyte of Aleister Crowley’s.”

  “So Hem said.” Hector sipped his spiked coffee. It hit some spot he hadn’t known needed hitting. “You’ve met him, Syl. What’s your personal impression of Leek?”

  “Intense,” Sylvia said, furrowing her brow. She closed her eyes to help her memory. “Leek is charismatic enough in his way…darkly present. Black hair and mustache. He’s trying to inaugurate a literary movement, I gather.”

  “Nada.”

  “That’s right.” Sylvia sipped from her own cup. “Daft, isn’t it?”

  “That’s a polite term for it,” Hector said. “Yet it’s finding followers, crazed as it may seem to us.”

  “Hec, what’s this all got do with Molly?”

  “I’m afraid Molly may have been drawn into Leek’s orbit.”

  Sylvia sighed. “Merde, merde, et merde.”

  Hector nodded and opened the first chapbook, flipping pages until he came to Molly’s poem.

  “I’ll leave you to read,” Sylvia said.

  “Thanks, Syl.” He looked back over his shoulder at her. “Hey, do you have any published pieces by Leek around? I want to start taking his measure.”

  “You looking for a guru, Hec?”

  Hector held up his fist. “More like a speed bag.”

  She winked. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  Hector sipped his coffee, lit another cigarette, and began reading Molly’s poetry. He still couldn’t gauge its quality. Hector’s experience with poetry was largely shaped by grade school readings of Robert Service and Rudyard Kipling.

  He read a few poems by others in the first of the chapbooks…a poem by Pound and one by Eliot…another by William Carlos Williams. Hector thought Molly’s poem stood up rather well against Ezra’s and Tom’s. Hector flipped to the second periodical, then to a third. Hector began to discern a recurring motif — unrequited love.

  Increasingly uncomfortable, Hector pushed on, reading against a massing sense of guilt.

  Then, in the last publication carrying a poem of Molly’s, there was an abrupt tonal shift. Hector checked the publication date: the first of February 1924. Molly’s most recently published poem read like a blank verse suicide note or wish for death…a dark, empty howl of despair.

  Hector closed the magazine, profoundly disturbed. He restacked the various publications and slipped them back into their file folder.

  A firm hand on his shoulder. “That last is very unsettling, isn’t it?”

  He closed a hand over the bookseller’s. “You have a gift for understatement, Syl.” Hector patted her hand and then reached across the table and ground out his cigarette. “Any luck on the Leek front?”

  “No,” Sylvia said. “Even my standards are evidently too high. Sorry, Hec.”

  “You’ve already been a great help.”

  “I wish I could do more,” Sylvia said. “I’m very worried about Molly. I know enough about writers to be careful to avoid confusing persona for personality, but that new poem, “The Dark,” that’s not poetry.”

  “More like a distress signal,” Hector agreed. After a time he said, “I heard Crowley might currently be in Paris.”

  “It’s true,” Sylvia said. “He was recently run out of Italy on Mussolini’s orders. I sold him a copy of Assier’s Le Diable en Champagne last week. Something old I had buried in the back. That, and Jean Wier et la Sorcellerie. Glad to get them out of my shop. His stay here is being underwritten by Frank Harris. Or so Crowley claimed.”

  “Harris, that name resonates, but I don’t know why,” Hector said.

  Sylvia said, “He’s a journalist; newspaperman from back in the States. Though he isn’t origin
ally American. Harris is from Galway, Ireland. He fancies himself a memoirist now, though his ‘Life’ is only available in German. He gave me a peek last year, thinking I might actually publish it in French. It reads like The Autobiography of a Flea…if Henry James had written Flea.”

  Hector didn’t know what to make of any of that. He said, “I take it you’re not publishing him?”

  Sylvia said, “Hardly. Oscar Wilde had a wonderful observation about Harris. Wilde said, ‘Frank Harris has no feelings. It is the secret of his success. Just as the fact that he thinks that other people have none either is the secret of his failure that lies in wait for him somewhere on the way of life.’”

  Hector smiled. “Bravo, Oscar. Do you know where Harris lives?”

  Sylvia returned to her desk and flipped open a tin box. She sorted through cards, then handed one to Hector. “I don’t know about this, Hec. You calling on Crowley…he really is quite mad. Perhaps even dangerous. You probably shouldn’t go alone.”

  “He won’t be alone.” Hem was standing behind Sylvia.

  She smiled. “I suppose then I should fear for Aleister.”

  Hem shook his head, a thick finger to his lips. “No sympathy for the devil.”

  ***

  Voices down the hall; two men arguing over various ailments and whose were the worse. One of the men had an Irish accent. The conversation broke off and a fat, bald middle-aged man in a dark suit made his way down a dimly lit corridor to the foyer. From a distance he said, “I’d invite you in, but it isn’t my house.”

  “That’s all right,” Hector called back. “We shouldn’t be here long.”

  Crowley was clutching an old leather-bound book under one arm. Hem gestured at the book. “Wharton?”

  Crowley smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile. He was thick-featured and his eyes looked foggy. Hector guessed he was drunk on something…opium, laudanum, or cocaine, but something. “Bossard,” Crowley said. “Gilles de Raiz, Maréchal de France, dit Barbe-Bleue.”

  “The child murderer and rapist,” Hector said.

  Crowley waved a fat hand. “And a lieutenant of Jeanne D’Arc.”

  “Some would call that the blind leading the blind,” Hem said. “Or the crazy leading the criminally insane.”