I woke up feeling less than well-rested. I nuked a frozen burrito for dinner, washed it down with orange juice, then drove to Ernst’s, to talk to Lissa. A cold fog was rolling in, thick as attic insulation. My headlights illuminated a few feet of asphalt in front of the Volvo. Ahead, the beams diffused into a milky glow. I was struck by the insular mobility of that singular twentieth-century artifact, the automobile, a cavity of engine-warmed hospitality and bucket-seated civilization easing along through what in ancient times would have been perceived as hostile, impenetrable, Grendelish mists. I came to a stop at the light at Twenty-sixth and San Vicente, by the Brentwood Country Mart, where I used to buy Mad magazines as a teen. At the edge of the cloud bank, a few miles from the ocean, the fog was breaking up, exposing occasional patches of clear night. Even though the low grayish clouds were blowing by fast, custom made my mind see them as stationary, and behind them the moon looked for a moment as if it were running out to sea. Thus distracting myself with mind games and optical illusions, I made it to Echo Park without once thinking myself into a panic over the ugly truth: In the short time since I had last talked with Lissa, the stakes of the game had been jacked up profoundly. If there had been any doubt that my life was on the line, now there was none.
The front door opened as far as the chain would allow. A slice of Lissa’s face appeared in the opening. Music, only by the very loosest definition of the word, was coming from the back of the house. It was a draggy funk-fusion number, seemingly performed by a congress of eunuchs whose shrieking penetrated to the marrow and resonated there sickeningly,
Takin’ it to the streets,
Takin’ it to the streeeeeets.
Still peering through the crack between door and frame Lissa said, “Harmon.” She sounded surprised and not overjoyed to see me.
I cried out with a forced breeziness, “I’m home, dear. Throw your arms around the best thing to come into your life since the Lesbian poets.”
She didn’t fling the door open and embrace me, but she did after some hesitation unlatch the chain. Passing through the narrows between Lissa and the doorjamb, I jerked my face toward hers in an awkward attempt at a kiss, which she dodged by turning her face deftly away, leaving me to suck hair. Alert to the subtleties of human interaction, I commented, “You seem a little aloof.” Understate the obvious, expose the implicit.
“Oh no, everything’s fine.” she assured me. In the background an amplified bass continued to pound out the monotonous, rhumbaesque beat, and above the slow fender-thumping and sausage-sizzling of studio-reprocessed drums Lissa said, “Ernst’s in back, resting.”
“Knowing Ernst’s intellect and taste I would have guessed Debussy, not the Doobies or whoever does that lame tune.” I said.
“Me too. But you know what they say about taste.”
“I make it a point never to listen to them.”
“Who?”
“See, you are out of it.”
“I’m just a little distracted. I’m in the middle of some research.”
“Good. For a minute I was afraid you’d just used me for sex and then dumped me.”
“We never had sex, Harmon.”
“Are you sure? I guess I’m a little distracted, too.”
“I’m sure.”
“How far have we gotten?”
“We sat on the floor together.”
“And …?”
“And that’s all. We decided to wait. Listen, Harmon, I’m kind of busy right now. Can I help you with something?”
A fine fare-thee-well: First Jeannie Kraepelien splits for San Jose; then my father ups and dies on me; then Brenny leaves, taking custody of my little cuties Enzo and Rashid; next she refuses to let me visit the kittens or take them to the beach; then my mother splits for Tucson, leaving me to heat my TV dinners for myself; and now this unexpected coldness from Lissa. No wonder Liz says I have unresolved feelings of abandonment. I complained, “‘Can I help you with something?’ What is this, the Campus Casuals department at Bullocks?” I seized Lissa by the shoulders and mock-shook her. “You’re holding back, shweetheart.” I said, trying to do Bogie but failing because of my adenoids, “and I want to know why. Don’t make me get rough with you.”
Unexpectedly, Lissa broke. She wept quietly, running her hands back through her hair, as though stroking a frightened child. Since I had come to cheer Lissa, not dismay her, I started to apologize abjectly, but she interrupted, “I know you wouldn’t threaten me, Harmon. But it’s been pretty tense around here lately, and no one’s feeling particularly safe.”
Recalling viscerally the horrors and degradations of the original break-in, aborted rape, and theft of Doctor Syntax, I asked, “They didn’t come back, did they?”
“No, but somebody has been doing … we’ve been getting messages.”
“Messages?” I imagined cryptic warnings burned into exposed ceiling joists by nameless, faceless preternatural wraiths, or omens channeled through toasters and other small appliances.
“Phone calls. Threatening ones.”
“Oh, phone calls.” I said in a tone of lightsome dismissal. “Probably just pranks, completely random.” I conjectured. “I used to make them all the time, for fun. Once I called a meat packing house and had them ship a side of beef to a teacher I didn’t like.”
“These didn’t sound like junior-high pranks.”
“Neither was the beef. I did it last year. I wonder what old RearWind did with all that flank steak.”
“Harmon, this is no joke. The last one went something like, ‘We put a good scare into that punk Nails. Next time he won’t be so lucky.’ What did he mean by ‘good scare’?” With some reluctance I told her about the gas-filled house, the broken light bulb and the possibility that, but for an all-night poker game, my mortal remains could be part of the studio’s wallpaper right now. “But it was strictly an amateur job.” I concluded. “I’m still in the way, just as much as ever.” I tried to sound chirpy for Lissa’s sake, but to tell the truth, all this talk of lethal admonitions brought my former dread back up into my mouth, with a taste like vinegar and green chili.
“My stepfather may be a lot of things, but he’s not an amateur. If he’s involved in this, if you’ve somehow stepped on the toes of Laurence Sterne and the Combist League, that cavalier attitude is going to get you hurt.” She paused. “They’ve even threatened Ernst. The man on the phone said if I didn’t stay away from you and forget about Doctor Syntax, they’d …” She stepped back from me, interposing a volume of negative space that seemed somehow inflated, as though an institutional-sized mound of particularly yeasty dough had risen up between us. “Harmon, you can’t come around here anymore.” Lissa said. “Not until all this is settled.”
An unfamiliar sensation washed over me, a wave of something like the selflessness parents describe when they talk about protecting their kids. Even my own mild-mannered father once told me, “I’d fight a buzzsaw bare-handed before I’d let anyone hurt you.” At the time I thought he was just grandstanding for my affection, but now that Lissa was in danger I understood. This is love, I marveled. It must be, for me to forgo swooning at the prospect of an early grave, or for me to abstain from pouting at being sent away. My uncharacteristic maturity dazed me. I heard myself agree with Lissa, in a measured, resonant, reassuring grown-up’s voice, “You’re right. Until I get Sterne busted and out of commission, I don’t want to put you and Ernst in jeopardy.”
Lissa looked relieved, and some of the old warmth returned to her regard.
“There’s this cop.” I said, still sounding uncommonly adult. “His name is Freitag and he knows what’s going on. I’ll ask him to look in on you. He’s a good man, even if he does like Browning. You can trust him.” She nodded.
I stopped on the threshold. “But before I go.” I said, “I need to know a few things. Like what the fuck is a Combist League?”
TWENTY-ONE
We stood on the porch, the front door
open, the bug-repellent porch light haloing Lissa in golden light while at the same time keeping moths off us. Lissa leaned against the doorframe and, exhaling forcibly, puffed out her lips with her breath. “The Combist League.” she said and then stopped as though gathering energy for some task that required superhuman strength, just as that poor sod in mythology—the one who had to keep pushing a boulder up a hill for all eternity—must have done before he put his shoulder to it. “It’s kind of complicated.” she began. “The Combists are something between a satanic cult and the Jane Austen Society, but closer to a cult.”
“That’s reassuring.” I said. “Last year I took a whole quarter of Jane Austen, and if I learned anything in that class it’s that if you spend too much time with them, Austen enthusiasts will sparkle you to death with their conversation. I’ll take my chances with devil-worshipers any day.”
“You wouldn’t be so flippant if you knew anything about the Combist League.” Lissa said ominously.
“I don’t know anything about them because you still haven’t told me anything about them.” I responded in a confrontational though by no means hostile tone. “All I know so far is that they don’t read Jane Austen, which doesn’t tell me much. Nobody reads Jane Austen unless they have to.”
With lips still pursed Lissa exhaled again and more sharply, so that I was reminded for a moment of the sound orcas make when they clear out their breathing apparatus upon surfacing.42 “The Combist League.” Lissa fragmentized for a second time, still searching for a firm handhold on the obviously precipitous and crumbly face of the topic. She tilted her head back, resting it against the painted wood of the doorframe, and exhaled yet again, this time with more of a weary sigh than a cetaceous blowhole-blast. “Have you heard of Laurence Sterne?” she asked.
I gave her a puzzled look. “Weren’t we just talking about Sterne?”
“Not my stepfather. The writer.”
“Oh, that Laurence Sterne. Sure, like I said, every English undergrad has to take a novel survey class, and Tristram Shandy’s always included in the list of required books. I forget most of what it was about but it was pretty funny, which in itself is rare for old novels; most of them are like four-hundred-page soap operas. I remember there was a blank page in there somewhere, which broke up to monotony, and some pictures, and—oh, yeah—I think a window comes down on the hero’s dick.”
“No wonder you’re having trouble with your dissertation. You don’t always pick the most … relevant details to remember.”
“I can’t help it. It’s like a disease.”
“You love it. It makes you feel as though you’re different, special. Unique.”
Ordinarily I won’t let anyone get away with using poop-butt dimestore psychoanalysis on me—even uncannily accurate poop-butt dimestore psychoanalysis as this probably was. I knew, however, that any protest by me would occasion lengthy discussion of my alleged developmental strictures, and I didn’t have time for that tonight: I needed to find out what I could about Sterne and the Combists and then report back to Freitag. I therefore reined the impulse to defend myself and waited patiently.
Patience, as it always is, was rewarded. Lissa continued, “Anyway, my stepfather is apparently a descendent of that Laurence Sterne, the one who wrote Tristram Shandy. And Sterne the novelist was a close personal friend of William Combe, the author of your Syntax books. Sterne the novelist used to rave about Combe, his brilliance, the ‘divine gift’ of his wit.”
I put my finger down my throat and made guttural heaving sounds. Lissa said, “You’re right, Sterne’s praise for Doctor Syntax was probably motivated more by his friendship with Combe than by any literary merit in the writing itself. Some biographical critics have even suggested Sterne and Combe were … more than friends.”
“Quelle scandale.” I said.
“It’s probably not true, but … whatever. The idea of Combe as a divinely inspired genius got handed down through generations of Sterne’s descendents until it reached one real loony—my stepfather’s grandmother, Lady Commody. She transformed Combe into a kind of pseudo-God.”
My head lolled to one side, mouth open, eyes bulged out as though I had thirty-gauge hemp around my neck and the trapdoor just dropped. In response to my zany antics Lissa said, “It’s not so unbelievable, really: When poor people are deranged, they get stuck in asylums, but rich crazies are tolerated as amusing, or eccentric. Lady C. carried the term to new heights. She adopted Doctor Syntax as her Bible and saw in it a kind of holy trinity, with Syntax as the father, Johnny Quae Genus as the foundling son, and Betty Broom the laundress as the holy mother.”
“JQGENUS.” I exclaimed, making another keen investigative connection.
“What?”
“The license plate on the silver El Camino that tried to run me off the road.”
“You didn’t tell me about any license plate.”
“I didn’t tell you about my stamp collection, either, did I, or the pet turtle I had when I was ten. His name was Finger. Finger Nails, get it? Because of his claws. My parents made me return him to the animal shelter because they thought I was mistreating him.”
“Were you?”
“All I did was melt a candle on his back and then light it so I could follow him around at night. But first I had to drill a little hole for the candle.” Actually I’d never do anything as inhumane as drilling a hole in a tortoise, but fictions are often more interesting than facts,43 and it made me sound as though I were somehow different, special. Unique.
“It’s an apt image. Having a conversation with you is kind of like following tortoises in the dark.”
“Oh, and I suppose you don’t redefine the term ‘loose association.’ So who’s this Genus?”
“Didn’t you read your Doctor Syntax like I told you?”
“Er, no, ma’am … you see, there was this little south swell pumping from a hurricane in Baja, and the tide was just right, and I just happened to have my board in the car …”
“Brat.” she said. “If you did your homework, you’d know that Johnny Quae Genus was the son of Dr. Syntax—not his real son, but an adopted orphan, a foundling. Betty Broom the laundress was Genus’s real mother. Lady C. called her secret Combe society the Order of the Hump, because Betty Broom was a hunchback.”
“Foundlings, humps.” I repeated numbly. “I still can’t buy that anyone, even the most bonkers, could believe the Syntax poems are inspired by God. Have you read The English Dance of Death?”
“Of course I have. My stepfather raised me on Combe the way most kids get nursery rhymes and psalms. The writing makes me embarrassed for the English language. But as far as believing goes … don’t you have anything irrational that you believe in, something so embarrassing that you’ve never told anyone?”
“I do, actually.” I allowed.
“Well …?”
“Distances are getting shorter.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear this.”
“You know how Olympic athletes are always breaking records: running faster, jumping higher and farther. It seems to me human beings can’t be evolving that fast. In fact, given all the technology we have to take the place of physical work, we’re probably going backward, physically. So the only explanation for all these broken records is that we’re subconsciously altering our own weights and measures to satisfy our collective desire for ego-aggrandizement as a species. I’d estimate that a foot today is really only nine inches. Give or take an inch.”
She couldn’t resist fixing her eyes on the crotch of my trousers and speculating, “And seven inches is actually only three? Give or take an inch?”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re serious.”
“How else would you explain all the broken records?”
“I wouldn’t explain it because I wouldn’t think about it; if I did, I’d start worrying about my mental balance. Anyway, we’re talking about Lady Commody’s insanity here, not yours.
Her legacy to my stepfather was this Combist League, along with a few fanatical followers and a lot of money—an unstable combination. Unfortunately, my stepfather isn’t harmlessly bizarre as she was; there’s no limit to his ruthlessness and cruelty. He saw in the Combist League an opportunity to wield power in a way that few people can, especially people who act within moral or legal bounds. He kept some of the trappings of the Order of the Hump but added his own ground rules. They’re very simple and compelling: Just as Quae Genus had to sin before he was saved, so do we all. Each of us has to sink to the depths of depravity before we can be reborn into a state of grace. It’s that Blakean innocence-experience-innocence thing taken to criminal extremes.”
“A convenient paradox.” I observed. “The more evil you do, the more holy you become.”
“That’s it in a nutshell. Before my stepfather settled here, the Combist League had a practically nonexistent enrollment—just a few street people willing to believe anything in exchange for a handout—but when he got to southern California he was delighted to find that the League really took off. All of a sudden he had more recruits than he knew what to do with.”
Having worked in a local “alternative” bookstore44 and watched occultist fads, cults, and religions blow in and out like spring storms, I knew what she was talking about. “Compared to astral travel, pyramid power, UFO abductions, and trance-channeling, I guess the Order of the Hump would be welcomed by New-Age junkies as reasonable. Conservative and scientific even.” I conjectured.
“Exactly. All Sterne had to do was put some ads in the paper, give some talks, feed people the motto, ‘Sin to be saved,’ and they ate it up. Of course when people found out what was really going on, most of them dropped out, but that was part of Sterne’s plan: The more sociopathic ones—the ones Sterne really wanted—found a home and stayed. So now he’s got a core group who obey him unquestioningly, like he’s some kind of führer. That’s the mentality you’re going to be dealing with if you don’t give up chasing your Doctor Syntax.”
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