“I’ll come back,” Annette started to duck out of the doorway.
“Nonsense, Miss Redmond.” Fiona’s words and tone of voice were friendly as she stepped aside so that Annette could enter. Pleasantly, as an aside to Nathaniel, Fiona added: “We’ll talk about this later?” Without further ado, Fiona left them alone in the room.
Upon seeing her in her wedding dress, Nathaniel pursed his lips.
“The main door to your office was open, so I . . .”
From where Nathaniel sat, he could see a reddened loop around Annette’s neck; a keepsake from the cord of Christmas lights that Jonas had shaped into a lariat during their rescue. She had attempted to cover it with foundation but parts were partially noticeable. His visage, though he tried to disguise it, was emphatically saturnine.
Fretful, or possibly self-conscious, Annette brought a hand up to her throat. “What?”
“Nothing,” he lied. “I see you’ve found your wedding dress.”
“When I stepped into my cathedral office, I found it had been dry-cleaned and placed into a hanging wardrobe bag.” As she looked at her dress and spun to make sure there weren’t any imperfections she may have missed, Nathaniel noticed that the circlet ran the back of her neck as well creating a reddish-purple necklace of skin discoloration.
Nathaniel stood quickly and returned to the collection of encyclopedias on the back wall. He asked to the books, “Did you need me, Miss Redmond?”
“I have a parting gift for you.”
He shook his head. “No. No gifts.”
“Why not?”
“Not necessary.”
“What do you mean ‘not necessary’? Of course it’s necessary.”
Nathaniel shook his head, circled around the desk and led her to the door.
“Look,” Annette sighed as they approached the cabinet with the repaired library books on the way to the office’s door. “It’s not like I picked some crappy bagatelle from a twenty-four hour convenience store.”
“Whatever it is, I’m not interested.” He opened the door to the hallway.
Annette, who was pushed slightly out the door, stopped, turned and asked “Why not?”
“Still stuck on those same two words, are we?” He started to close the door an inch or two, hoping that she would take the hint to leave. Annette didn’t take the hint and acted the role of an immovable doorstop. “See here, Miss Redmond. I appreciate that you want to revisit this, this, this . . .” evidently at a loss for the accurate word, he waved his hand as if shooing a fruit fly from his ear. “. . . This, whatever you call it.”
“. . . Bickering?”
“Thank you. Bickering.”
“I didn’t come here to bicker.”
“Didn’t you?” Nathaniel said dryly.
“I came here to say goodbye to a friend, Mr. Cauliflower. I wanted to give you a gift to show my appreciation for your hospitality.” She added a brief addendum: “Unless . . .”
Nathaniel took his glasses off and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Unless, Miss Redmond?”
“Unless you’d prefer me to stay.”
Nathaniel fitted his glasses back on his face and repeated, “Stay?”
“Would you like it if I stayed here, Monsieur Cauliflower?”
A part of him wanted Annette to stay. He wanted her to choose him over Adam and to remain in the afterlife where they would continue their bantering, which he thoroughly enjoyed despite what he had claimed. Nathaniel imagined, for a brief moment, a life where he and Annette would lose themselves in witty, perhaps borderline imprudently romantic repartee like leads in a screwball comedy. But the bruising around Annette’s neck brought Nathaniel to the unforgiving actuality that congested his constructive excitement.
He looked Annette squarely in the eyes and said, “No. I don’t want you to stay here.”
“Then close your eyes,” Annette ordered “and hold out your hands.”
He closed his eyes and listened to suggestive acoustic sonances that might give him a clue as to the type of gift he was about to receive. He heard the scuffling of her footsteps. When he received the tenor of a cabinet’s latch being unhooked, Nathaniel started to peek. He thought better of it when he heard the fabric of Annette’s dress as she walked to him. Though Nathaniel guessed that Annette had opened the cabinet of repaired library books, he was stunned that the object was not the weight of a book but something lighter. With his eyes closed, he could determine that Annette took steps to her original position.
“May I open them?” he asked.
“Yes.”
In his hands was a recognizable rain-blotted misdirected envelope that Annette, during her years as Evangeline, had neglected to deliver.
“Found it in a pile of items from your office when the department plummeted into Purgatory. It was sticking out of my copy of Canterbury Tales.” They looked at the envelope then to each other. Annette smiled and said to Nathaniel, “I was hoping that, as a last field trip, and because we’re in a habit of repairing damaged timelines, we might reexamine that off-course moment. And as I’m subsequently retired, you’ll need to reassign my corresponding destiny from the broken record into someone else’s capable hands.”
Nathaniel felt a swell of outworn sentiments. All he could do was repeat Annette’s words, “‘one last field trip . . .’”
He looked at Annette and nodded. “Absolutely, Miss Redmond. Have no worries. From the moment we return you to your wedding with Mr. McCloud, your fortune will be someone else’s problem. There’s nothing that I can think of that will deter Management, or myself, to find a suitable replacement for the commission.”
*
“Do you know why you can smell the rain before it arrives?” Jonas asked Harriet.
“What makes you think I’d care?” she said with a heaving, angry sigh.
“The zing in your nostrils as a storm approaches is the scent of ozone.” As he said this, his grey eyes turned to one of the open archways. “The electrical charge of lightning as it splits atoms in our sky and also the smell of ozone as it’s carried to higher altitudes by downdrafts. When rain arrives, the water repositions molecules on all manner of dry objects including vegetation or a paved street of concrete or asphalt. Some things, when struck by the rain, reveal a pleasant smell of the given surface while other odors can be foul. I love the smells right before a thunderstorm. They’re idiosyncratic.”
He turned his eyes from the archway to Harriet.
“It sort of reminds me of the aroma that I sense the longer I sit here with you.”
Harriet, hearing this, glared at him. “I don’t smell, thank you.”
“Oh, Harriet.”
She crossed to him with a balled fist. Jonas didn’t blink. “Go on, say my name again. I dare you.”
“You wouldn’t stoop to the same level as your abusive father and ex-husband, would you? You remember those days of your father’s red pick-up truck outside of your childhood home and how that stirred such hostility within. And those mornings, afternoons and evenings, covering up your bruises with your face cream and foundation and how you would, so often, stare at your reflection thinking ‘I’ve become my mother.’”
There was a look of fury in Harriet’s eyes. She raised her fist for a right-hook blow to Jonas’ jaw line but, the longer she poised for attack, the more Jonas’ words sunk in. The separate skies in the archways grew darker as the dense clouds formed. There were consecutive blazes of lightning and rolls of thunder as she righted herself and stared at him.
“You smell different because you’re not like the muses here. You may act like the Head Muse protégé. You might play with your Lite-Brite pegs and eagerly await envelopes in your postbox. You might drink your water from the water coolers like everyone else. But you’re not like them. There’s something unique about you, isn’t there? Something that you’ve been keeping from them that not even Annette, Lucas, Nathaniel or Fiona know. Something that runs deeper than your past abusive relationships but
is ineradicably tied. Maybe you’ve been lying to yourself for the reason that, if they discovered what you really are, you wouldn’t belong here. Am I right, Harriet?”
“How . . .” Harriet looked frightened. “. . . There’s nothing different about me,” she said defiantly. “I belong here! I. Belong. Here.” Harriet grabbed the scuff of Jonas’ shirt and screamed “Say it! Say ‘There’s nothing different about you. You belong here!’” Rain poured through the porches flooding the dark-stained wood. When Jonas didn’t say it fast enough, she held him tighter. She shook him hard and said “Say it, you animal!”
“How can I say it if isn’t true, Harriet?”
She felt hands on her shoulders and, in a fit of rage, spun to find Lucas offering a comforting embrace. Harriet’s fury turned to severe melancholy. As Lucas consoled her, urging Harriet not to look at him, Jonas talked with his eyes out to one of the storms.
“Like the smell of an oncoming storm, you should’ve known I’d poke at you, Harriet. I mean, come on, with a battered woman like you who keeps lethal life-altering secrets from her co-workers so she can stay where she is, it’s too easy! However, my beef isn’t with you, or your blithering fairy friend. It resides with a definite cheeky ginger and her four-eyed friend to whom I must return.”
There was a burst of lightning that set the floor on fire. A crash of thunder shook one of the boards loose from a porch banister. Howling wind ripped through the room bringing a sheet of rain to spatter their faces. Lucas and Harriet found the chair empty. The handcuffs, which had bound Jonas, swayed from side to side in the wind. They were latched but without a prisoner.
“Where did he go?” Harriet wanted to know. “Where did that bastard run to?”
Lucas searched the corners of his office and poked his head out to inspect the hallway. His face, and his clothes, were dripping wet. He turned to Harriet who looked both parts water-logged and emotionally wracked.
Lucas told Harriet while looking provoked, “He pulled a Harry Houdini, you know?”
*
A blue umbrella was opened by Annette as Nathaniel’s office folded and unfolded into the same suburb street that had been abandoned during Evangeline’s term. Strong wind gusts, pointed white strands of lightning, resounding thunder and sheets of rain shot from the billowing deep indigo cumulonimbus mass above. Here they were, standing in the same rain-soaked downdraft, about to put an end to a longstanding appointment.
Sadly, joining them was a surly Jonas who propped himself against the mailbox.
“This thundershower reminds me of the afternoon that you came to inspire me as a Ninth Generation muse, Annette,” Jonas sneered. “That was the day that you told me about your work as an inspirer. It was the day that I challenged Management to show me the kind of procedure they had included you in so that perhaps I could fix everything to my liking. That same storm, once I died, latched on to me during my journeys. It’s appropriate that you called me the Thunderstorm Man in your reports. I suppose you could say that the storm isn’t a part of me. It is me. I intend to take that misdirected envelope and that destiny from your fingers. And I’m going to do so with your consent or not.”
The wind became gradually tornadic bringing several microbursts in their circling periphery. Tree lines flattened, shingles shook and windows on the neighboring cul-de-sacs shattered. Lightning struck power lines bringing death to the lingering streetlights. Annette, with Nathaniel beside her, hurtled through golf-ball sized hailstones which punctured holes in neighborhood cars. Each draft of blustery weather acted as a series of punches similar to a thousand battering rams with the ferocity of fired cannon balls which tore at Annette as she landed at the foot of the mailbox. As she reached to open the latch, a flash flood engulfed the neighborhood submerging the street, cars and mailboxes. Though she and Nathaniel held tight to the mailbox the surging water’s current was too strong. She was running out of air and losing consciousness. Nathaniel glanced at the envelope in Annette’s hand, looking bereft.
His glasses were taken by the current which slightly blinded him. He could see streaks of igniting lightning beyond the water’s surface. Debris weaved through the current. The mailbox slipped from the waterlogged sediment. Nathaniel tried, and failed, to keep the mailbox and Annette who clung to it. He was horrified as the mailbox, and its female lodger, were separated from him. Nathaniel had never learned how to swim. In the most placid of waters, he could barely tread or practice a decent backstroke. Despite this setback, Nathaniel dizzily pawed at the fuzzy, gurgling water bubbles. He felt powerless. He felt doomed to failure.
The inspiration folded and unfolded bringing with it a dispersing tributary. Leaving the thick river of water and the maelstrom in the pop-up book, Nathaniel collapsed to his knees gasping for air. A collision of wood and glass was heard. He could see the floorboards of his office but that was as far as his near-sighted vision would allow. He padded on his hands and knees until his fingers touched broken glass. He traced the glass to an overturned bookcase. Beneath the bookcase was Annette’s outstretched arm and motionless hand which held the misdirected envelope.
“No . . .” Nathaniel gasped, checking Annette’s wrist for a pulse. “No. No! Annette! Mademoiselle . . . Mademoiselle Evangeline?”
It wasn’t Annette that answered. “You know, Broccoli . . .”
Nathaniel set his clammy forehead against Annette’s cold skin.
“. . . If you stop and think about it, history is filled with many ways to die. Being pushed off an attic loft, burned alive by an overturned kerosene lamp . . . or several lamps depending on how many you have in your collection . . .” There came another breakdown of glass and a wave of fire that ate the floorboards. Nathaniel could tell, from the sound and temperature, that Jonas had smashed several of the kerosene lamps forcing his office to a conflagration. “Stabbed to death by garden shears, choked by a string of Christmas lights. But there’s something about seeing your beloved bookworm crushed under the weight of your library books that adds certain flavor to this verse.”
There was a crunching of his glasses that announced Jonas’ shoes as they stepped closer. Nathaniel opened his unfocused eyes to see Jonas’ hand as it snatched the envelope.
“I gave her a chance to live, Broccoli. And she chose wrong. I also gave you time to conform but you wouldn’t. You brought this upon yourself, step-brother. Remember that, in what little time we have left in Management’s afterlife. The Sisters are prepared to change everything.”
Jonas’ hand, and the envelope, disappeared from sight. His footsteps became faint.
Fire reflected in the shards of glass at Nathaniel’s fingertips. There were explosions as the remaining kerosene lamps tipped and added size to the blaze. He could smell the scent of burning leather and ashen paper as the encyclopedias caught fire. He could smell the melting acrylics on the canvases. Though he couldn’t see it, Nathaniel knew that his office was destroyed. It mirrored the state of his heart upon looking at Annette.
He stood and turned to the door of his office. With a limp in his step, Nathaniel found the blurred image of Jonas who walked the hallway to the waiting room door. Gathering as much energy as he could, Nathaniel stumbled toward Jonas. He shoved himself into his step-brother who came into plain view. A struggle ensued in the waiting room. The nine identical chairs were overturned. The single black and white clock on the wall collapsed to the floor.
Nathaniel snapped the dandelion key free from Jonas’ chain. Without a candle, Nathaniel made his own optimistic wish. Nathaniel grabbed the knob of the asphodel door at the far corner of the waiting room. He inserted and twisted the key clockwise. The door swung open. Nathaniel elbowed Jonas inside. Where there would have typically been a swirling white light, there was a vaulted crypt. Though he couldn’t see where he’d taken Jonas, Nathaniel could only ascertain from its smell of rot and decay that the sealed tomb was made of profoundly dense dry stone and packed sand. He ripped the misdirected envelope from Jonas’ hand and shoved him i
nto the blackness. Nathaniel heard the overturning of stone jars as Jonas fell to the floor.
“Where have you and that door taken me?” Jonas wanted to know as he scraped at the floor to regain a comfortable stance.
Nathaniel didn’t have anything more to say to his step-brother. He headed to the open door and the waiting room’s yellow rectangle of light.
“Broccoli, where are we?” Jonas tried to stand but tripped over unseen objects.
By now, Nathaniel had stopped at the door and considered the set of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in the nearest stone. The markings were made visible by the hallway light. Nathaniel stepped from the threshold of the ancient Egyptian crypt and closed the door sealing Jonas within.
From Jonas’ perspective, when he found his footing he ambled through the shadows expecting to find the door. What he felt was the cold inescapable stone of his imperishable, pitch-black cage which was void of helpful Lite-Brite boards and transitory thunderstorms.
In the waiting room, Nathaniel turned the key in the dandelion keyhole and locked the Thunderstorm Man inside his own burial place where the grating discouragements could no longer be heard. Nathaniel pressed his forehead against the wood. He pocketed the key and found a fistful of asphodels at his feet. To Nathaniel, the flowers trumpeted the conclusion of Jonas’ period of influence.
Icarus’ fuzzy shape, which sat in one of the waiting room chairs, spoke to Nathaniel with a shaky voice. “That door, Mr. Cauliflower,” the wingless mythological hero looked at the asphodel entrance. “That’s the one that my father, Daedalus the door maker, found in his workshop, isn’t it?”
Nathaniel didn’t want to talk about the door or its origins. As confirmation, he respectfully handed Icarus the asphodels and walked through the smoke to the fire-picked bones that was his office.
*
Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles Page 40