“Evangeline . . . Evangeline . . . Evangeline . . .”
“Working hard?” Evangeline asked Nathaniel from his office doorway.
Nathaniel quickly forced the needle from the record which brought a screeching sound.
“Evangeline,” Nathaniel said to her, standing from his chair. He crossed in front the Victrola. “Mademoiselle Evangeline. Hello.”
“Bonjour, Monsieur Cauliflower. I’ve come to tell you that I’m one peg from retiring,” She told him while stepping into his office. “And I . . . I have to ask where Management will send me?”
“Why are you asking me?” Nathaniel asked. The moment that it came out of his mouth, he considered the question too harsh. He politely rephrased. “What I mean to say is: ‘why do you think I would know the answer?’”
“Because you’re our caretaker,” Evangeline asked, taking several steps closer to him and the Victrola. “You’re our envelope aficionado. The one who receives the colored pegs from Management and assigns them to the muses. You’re the one whom Management has given the task of transcribing Victrola records into encyclopedia entries. You, in short, have all the information.” She studied him. “I’ve barely seen you. You’re either creating another muse’s office or you’re in meetings with Fiona forming retirement parties, or you’re buried in stacks of records as high as the domed ceiling. I figured that as our time together is expiring so I might at least sit with you. Perhaps listen to the records?” Her attention rested on the record behind him which Nathaniel tried to hide. “That one sounded as if it had a lovely melody.”
“Did it?” Nathaniel asked. He lifted the record and fit it into its square sleeve. “You don’t want to listen to these dusty things.”
Evangeline flipped through the pages of the leather bound volume in which he had been writing.
“You listen to the records and transpose the notes into words which are entered then as the person’s destiny?”
“That’s right.”
“It appears as if you’ve come across a rather complicated melody on that record.”
“Yes, I suppose it is a complicated melody.” He stored the record. “A melody that might complicate things if heard too many times.”
“Complicate things?”
“Yes.”
“For whom?”
“For whomever its message is referring.”
“And to whom is its message referring?”
“No one,” Nathaniel stammered. “No one important.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind if I listened to it with you?”
Nathaniel wasn’t sure if she was being slyly snappish or if she earnestly wanted to spend time with him and share his experiences. Either way, he loved her too much to deny her anything. He turned and removed the record out of its sleeve setting it on the turntable.
They listened to the tune seven times. She sat beside him watching as Nathaniel scribbled the notes into the encyclopedia volume. When the page was scooted to her, she pensively read her destiny. Worry on her face blotted what shards of hope had remained. The record was switched off, extinguishing the lyrical message.
“Say something,” Nathaniel begged. “Please.”
Evangeline stood and left his office without speaking. As she left his office he closed the volume and stared at it with a blank expression.
A reassigned peg descended from the oculus to his inbox. Nathaniel inserted the green-colored peg and went to inspire his client, Lucas Richardson, by way of a guitar pick. As he stood in the World Trade Center cubicle, staring at a framed photograph of two young boys holding a guitar, he held the picture and stared at the image. He remembered the times that he and Evangeline had shared. Nathaniel recalled how innocent he and Evangeline had been. Nathaniel left the photograph and delivered the guitar pick to Lucas’ classroom. Arriving back to his office, he found Fiona waiting for him looking quite concerned.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s happened?”
“She needs you.”
He rotated Evangeline’s final colored peg and found her standing at a mailbox holding a letter as storm clouds slithered like rapacious anacondas. He sensed her hesitation in this timeline and it sickened him.
“Mademoiselle Evangeline,” Nathaniel whispered to her. He stood behind Evangeline affectionately. “Breathe, darling, it will all be over in a moment.”
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Evangeline told him.
“I had too.”
“You didn’t think I could do it alone?” Evangeline accused.
Nathaniel frowned.
“Well, don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ve completed the assignments you’ve asked of me. Why would today be any different?”
“When you left my office, you had that look in your eyes.”
“What look?”
“The look you get when you’re thinking sinister thoughts.”
“So you really did come because you believed I couldn’t deliver the letter.”
“I came for job security . . . and because I love you,” he confessed. “I know you, Evangeline. And I know that if you had intentions of delivering the letter as instructed, you would have done so.”
Evangeline’s tears grew. Raindrops fell from the clouds. Choked for words, she said “I can’t.”
“Then let me help you.” Nathaniel guided Evangeline’s hand, and the envelope, to the mailbox. The process was agonizingly slow but Nathaniel remained patient.
“Please,” Evangeline pleaded. “Please don’t make me play the postman.”
“If I could deliver the envelope myself, I would. But it has to be you, and only you. It’s just an envelope,” said Nathaniel. “That’s all it is. One little envelope.”
Evangeline shook her head.
“Yes, Mademoiselle, that’s all it is. And when the envelope is in the mailbox, we can go home.”
“Home,” she sighed.
“Yes,” Nathaniel told her. “Home: I’m picturing a quiet country house with an apple orchard. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“Tell me more about the apple orchard.”
“The apples will be ripe when autumn comes. And we’ll pick them together, you and me. The life that we can lead will be a simple one. No muses, no murderous painters, no dandelions and circus tents haunting our dreams.”
Nathaniel’s attention was then drawn to the sound of flapping heavy fabric. To his left he found a circus tent illuminated by a flash of lightning. Its exterior was made of mismatched Persian carpets and faded burlap. There was a posted sign which read as it had previously requiring three dandelions for admittance.
“Yes,” Nathaniel told Evangeline. His voice cracked causing Evangeline’s outstretched hand to falter. “All you have to do is put the envelope into the mailbox and we’ll go away from here.”
Evangeline looked to the left, seeing the circus tent for herself. She gasped.
“Yes, my love. I see it too.” Raindrops poured heavily. Clouds twisted and tumbled in a thunderous roar. “We don’t have much time. Ignore it. You have to put the envelope into the mailbox.”
Evangeline parted from Nathaniel and pulled on the lid.
“That’s it,” Nathaniel said. “That’s right . . . inside the mailbox.”
Evangeline looked into the darkness of the space. Raindrops chased the wrinkles of her face cascading down the contours of her chin. And as she had stood there, contemplating what was to follow once the envelope was delivered, Evangeline closed the lid with envelope still in hand. She turned to Nathaniel.
“Evangeline,” Nathaniel told her.
“I’m sorry,” Evangeline told him. “I love you, but I’m sorry.” She surrendered the envelope dropping it to the wet ground.
Nathaniel scrambled to save it from the flood.
As he did, Evangeline turned her back on him, the mailbox and the circus tent. With every step that she took, the cement splintered and cracked.
Nathaniel screamed above the din of the storm: “Evangeline!”
Evangeline turned to him. “I’ve wasted over one hundred years waiting for you. But it seems that every opportunity I spend with you things fall dramatically to pieces. I’ve missed so many opportunities, so many chances, so much happiness while waiting for you to come back to me. And yet, when you did, instead of feeling complete, I’m miserable. I love you, I do. But that love has proven a fatal toxin I can’t shake.”
“Evangeline . . .” Nathaniel began to plead.
“One hundred years, Monsieur Cauliflower! I’ve lived over one hundred years and not once did a muse come for me. Where was my muse when I needed him? Hmm? Where was he?” Evangeline shook her head: “I want you to forget about me. I want you to forget my face, forget my voice and forget about the memories you and I share. For my sake, please!”
“You don’t know what you’re asking!”
“If you love me, you have to release me from this curse you’ve put us under. Allow me to live my own life for me without you in it. You have to allow me a chance to find happiness elsewhere, because as much as I want to, I’ll never find happiness with you.”
These words were as painfully afflicting as a bullet to his heart. He wanted to provide her happiness but her words rang true nonetheless. Evangeline disappeared into the storm’s gloomy sheet of rain. It was then that the colored pegs descended. The sky was torn to shreds as if it were an impressively deconstructed canvas. Nathaniel looked at the smudged letter in his hands. He looked at the mailbox and frowned. His expression was fierce.
Nathaniel pocketed the drenched envelope and shifted his stare from the mailbox to the circus tent which stood defiantly against the squall. Another flash of lightning ignited the sky. In that brief instant, the circus tent disappeared and Nathaniel was left alone with the storm. The increasingly fractured ground split further underfoot. Soon, the pop-up book flickered out like a defective attic light bulb. All that was left was Nathaniel, Evangeline’s undelivered envelope and an endless cascade of colored pegs.
Evangeline’s office returned to the bland four white walls as if her existence had been erased. Even the lingering smell of her lavender perfume had been vacuumed. Nathaniel found a discarded item on Evangeline’s desk: the opal necklace she had worn. The stone caught the light. No doubt Evangeline had passed through the swirling white light at the end of the waiting room taking the memories they had shared. Though her sudden absence had caused the triggering of the numbness within, he granted her wish and freed her.
Fiona accompanied him for a walk along a real bustling creek in the living world’s woods. The air was refreshing, balmy eighty degrees. There were birds twittering in overhead canopies. Stray twigs snapped beneath Nathaniel’s weight as he sauntered.
“You could’ve told me that the record was hers,” Nathaniel said to Fiona.
“Oh,” Fiona said coyly. “Was that Evangeline’s record?”
“You know it was.” He stopped in front of the creek. He held in his hands the single volume in which Evangeline’s destiny had been written. Questions trickled from his lips in the same fashion as the water washed over submerged stones. “What if I had never come to her chateau that afternoon in 1807 to paint her portrait? What if she and I had never met? What if I’d never held her or shown her the portraits of the ghostly faces? What if the painter had never found the paintings in the attic loft? What if we were able to live out our love story unhindered? What if the Dandelion Sisters had never bothered me? What if I was just a normal person? What if . . .”
“What if . . .” Fiona interjected. “It’s a common question. The important thing to remember, Nathaniel, is that the words ‘what if’ are often wrongly placed in the past. ‘What if’ could also be placed when thinking about what’s coming. But even then there’s a conundrum. One should never focus too much on the ‘what ifs’ in either the past or the future. We must live for today.”
“Please,” Nathaniel told Fiona. “Call me ‘Cauliflower.’ If I can’t be with her, it would be nice to hear the name that Evangeline so often used.”
“It would be my pleasure, Mr. Cauliflower.” Fiona smiled. “I’ll give you a moment with your thoughts.” With that, Fiona walked the path without him.
Nathaniel held the encyclopedia volume inspecting the spine where the letters “Sl” had been scribed. He frowned. There were other destines inside that book; additional lives that had been documented. But he knew that holding onto the volume would bring him additional pain. “What if . . .” he whispered to the book, and to the wind, hoping that it might carry his wish to the proper recipient “. . . what if Evangeline came back to me someday? Or perhaps . . . I may find someone else to love?” He tossed the volume into the creek. It was carried downriver. “Perhaps I may find someone else to love,” he softly repeated.
“Mr. Cauliflower?” He turned to find Fiona waiting for him.
*
Nathaniel strained to open his eyes. There was a pain on the back of his head which had been slightly elevated.
“He’s awake!” Fiona told the others. She was kneeling down beside him. “Mr. Cauliflower, are you alright? Are you with us?”
“I’m with you.” He sat up, looking around.
Edgar Allan Poe and the Nine Greatest muses surrounded both Nathaniel and the Head Muse. Annette stood from the others in a corner. The muses still donned their ball gowns and tuxedos. Some held on to their masks from the Masquerade.
“Took a nasty spill, did we?” he asked Fiona.
“The department floor collapsed under the weight of the falling colored pegs,” Fiona explained. “Most had the wind knocked out of them but you hit your head and went unconscious.”
Nathaniel nodded. He discovered that his tie had been loosened and the top few buttons were undone. Evangeline’s opal necklace could visibly be seen around his neck. He concealed it with the shirt fabric, straightening his tie.
Nathaniel could see the seventy-five degree steep incline of the tilted musing floor. At the base of the near-vertical slant was a junk pile of desks, postboxes and Lite-Brite boards. Included in the heap were torn sheaths of retirement party illusions, overturned culinary dishes and a fluttering of both white and violet envelopes. The energy efficient bulbs short-circuited and occasionally showed the showering colored pegs.
The contents of the glass combination cabinet had been haphazardly scattered. There were shards of broken kerosene lamps and punctured portraits. Annette shuffled her way through the exposed paperwork of Nathaniel’s manuscript and, as she did, uncovered the final portion regarding his seventh life. She examined the last chapter he had kept from her and looked at Nathaniel with disappointment. Annette retreated a few steps into the awaiting crowd looking at him expectantly for instructions.
Nathaniel wasn’t sure where to begin with his apologies.
“Well then,” Nathaniel told them over the din of falling pegs, standing. “Until further notice, our retirement party has been postponed. Our recourse is to wait for the pegs to stop and assess the situation from there.” Even though the caretaker had yet again failed to keep the integrity of his bureau, he advocated a sense of optimism sharing that confidence among his peers as a good muse, in Management’s eyes, is expected to do.
CHAPTER 16: A WEATHER WIZARD’S INFLUENCE
In the same layered style of Nathaniel’s strange personal adventures, so were there several unmapped layers to the hereafter. When the colored pegs of the severed six storylines had fallen, and when the department’s floor had collapsed beneath the inspiration-offering coworkers, the debris had inevitably landed into a cavernous Purgatory where the resonance of the descending colored pegs echoed the vast bulwark of invisible crypts.
Six markedly dissimilar thunderheads dominated the gloom releasing a visual ongoing outpouring of fulsome minutiae. This image depicted how much damage had been inflicted on humankind due to Jonas’ manipulations; a palpable reminder of history’s fragility. These luminous cinematic flakes of Jonas’ victims plunged amongst the actual
pegs in a steady cascade of wrecked dreams and interrupted hopeful futures.
Though the other muses had sought immediate shelter from the tempest, Nathaniel maintained a close vigil over the storms hoping that the falls would ease. He barely noticed his glasses which had slid down his nose several centimeters. His arms were crossed before him almost in defiance of the pegs.
Fiona was beside Nathaniel, reverently watching the exhibit.
“When I was a boy in my seventh life,” Nathaniel told her “my mom and I were alone. She worked double shifts and, due to that, asked me to visit my loving great aunt at our family farmhouse. She sent me with suitcases filled with handpicked library books. It was an undersized home complete with a tiny living room, cramped shotgun kitchen, a petite dining room of aged dark wood and two narrow bedrooms with four poster beds. The covered back porch held storage units and an ancient washing machine. The weather-beaten front porch was constructed of a green-painted wood which creaked underfoot. There was an old porch swing with groaning chains. Open windows were dressed in thin, white lace curtains. The lumpy beds were topped by handcrafted, white cotton quilts. In one of the corners of the largest bedroom was, and I remember this perfectly, a red wooden rocking horse on squeaky springs.
“There were all sorts of treasures in that house: a stereoscope from the turn of the century coupled with a box of black and white photographs, cabinets of sparkling china, frying pans with leftovers that were fed to the stray cats, a sapphire peacock-shaped perfume bottle resting on the green and yellow striped vanity, a wood burning stove, a chimney stack and a farmer’s calendar hanging beside the outdated icebox and a Frigidaire. There was a tapered staircase to the right of the only television. The stairs led to a door and, through that door, there were rickety stairs which led to a confined attic that smelled of mothballs. On rainy days I used to go into the attic and examine the photo albums, studying the black and white memories. Though I loved the library books that I brought with me, there was something spooky about looking through those photos and wondering what their stories had been. I daydreamed about what their voices might have sounded like. It’s like they were in the attic with me whispering blameworthy admissions.
Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles Page 24