The Night Villa

by Carol Goodman

  “When did you meet Dale?” I ask.

  “At the beginning of this year,” she says. “At first it was really nice to meet someone outside my group, you know? By senior year it’s like you’ve met every boy on campus and he’s, like, already dated half your sorority sisters. Dale was older and he thought it was really cool that I’m a classics major. Most of my friends thought it was pretty lame when I declared…oh, no offense!”

  “No offense taken. It’s not the most practical major. What are most of your friends majoring in?”

  “Business, communications…Sam’s in poli sci. Dale was a philosophy major until he dropped out this spring. He seemed, well, I know this sounds so weird after what he did, but he seemed so sweet when I met him…just kind of lost…” Agnes takes a deep shuddery breath and flutters her fingers in front of her face. I pluck a box of Kleenex off the desk and sit down next to her on the bed. “I’m sorry,” she says after blowing her nose. “I bet you don’t want to hear that the man who shot you and killed poor Mrs. Renfrew and Professor Biddle seemed sweet.”

  “I haven’t always been the best judge of people myself.” I look around the room again at all the young faces—all healthy and glowing with days spent in the sun. What possible preparation had Agnes Hancock from Sweetwater, Texas, had for assessing someone like Dale Henry? “You said he seemed lost?”

  “Yeah. His father was in the military and so his family moved around a lot. He wasn’t used to having friends. At first he seemed to like that I did, but then he started finding fault with most of them. I mean, some of my friends might seem a little silly, especially the girls from my old sorority, and he thought all the business majors were too materialistic, which they kind of are…I mean, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, and since my father’s a minister I was taught to give to charity and to help people who are less fortunate. Most of my friends think I’m really old-fashioned, but Dale thought it was quite admirable. I think he liked that I had a religious background. At least at first.”

  “Did something change?”

  “Around Christmas he got kind of depressed. I invited him to come home with me, but he said he was afraid my parents wouldn’t approve of him, which, to tell you the truth, was probably right. But I should have made him come. When I got back something was different. Maybe it was being by himself during the break. He wasn’t sleeping much and he’d gone on this weird diet, all raw foods or something, and he’d gotten real skinny. He was staying up all night reading philosophy books, for the GREs I thought, but when I looked at the books I saw that something was wrong.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, my skin prickling.

  “He should have been reading a wide range of materials, but he’d gotten stuck on the pre-Socratics. And half the books were some New Age stuff he’d picked up at Book People…like crystal healing and astral projection. He kept telling me that my aura was the wrong color and I had to stop eating meat. He thought he knew things about people because of what color their aura was—like Professor Lawrence only cared about worldly success and that Sam was really in love with me, which was just so silly because Sam’s been like my brother since we were kids.” Agnes laughs and for a second she looks like the girl in the pictures, but then a shadow falls over her. “We went away together spring break because I thought it would make things better, but it didn’t…”

  She stops, her chin wobbling, and I guess that whatever happened during spring break is not something she wants to talk about. “And then you moved in here?” I prompt.

  “Yes, but now I wonder if I had just tried harder to understand what Dale was going through…”

  “Your friends were right, Agnes. Dale needed professional help.”

  “I did talk him into seeing a counselor at the clinic, but now they’re saying that the pills they gave him just made him worse.”

  “You couldn’t have known that.” I squeeze her hand and get up from the bed and go over to the bookshelf above her desk, scanning the titles.

  “Gosh, I’m sorry, Professor Chase. Here I am going on about my problems while you came all this way for your books. Here they are—” She hands me the first two volumes of Athenian Nights. “Isn’t it just so exciting that Professor Lawrence has found a new book by Phineas Aulus!”

  I smile, and am about to point out that Elgin didn’t exactly find the new book, but then, looking down at the books in my hand I notice something.

  “Is something wrong?” Agnes asks.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” I begin, but when she keeps staring at me I reply, “It’s just that I thought I gave you all three volumes.”

  “Oh.” Agnes colors deeply, staring at the books in my hand as if she could turn them into three with the force of her mind. “Did you? Gosh, I don’t remember. These were the only ones here when I got back and I’m pretty sure I didn’t take any Latin books home with me.” She starts rooting through her shelves and I’m sorry I said anything. Poor Agnes, if she’s this guilty over a lost book, how’s she ever going to get over her ex-boyfriend killing two people?

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s easily replaceable. I know where I can pick up a secondhand copy cheap.”

  “Really?” Agnes asks, her face relaxing. “Are you sure? I feel just horrible. Please let me pay for it.”

  “If you insist,” I say, already planning to halve the price for her. I put my arm around her shoulder, only meaning to give her a reassuring pat, but she surprises me by leaning in for a full hug, her arms wrapping around me so tightly that I’m afraid she’s going to pull loose my stitches. I squeeze back. I only wish I could replace everything we’ve lost so easily.

  Agnes sees me down the stairs, walking so close to me that her shoulder brushes against mine. She’s found some comfort in my presence and would, I think, follow me out the front door and back to my house except that Sam is waiting in the foyer to take my place.

  “Chamomile,” he says, handing her a steaming mug. I notice that another mug is sitting on the coffee table in the living room next to a stack of books. Sam’s obviously been camped out here, waiting for Agnes.

  “That’s so sweet, Sam, thank you. Hey, do you know if anyone went in my room while I was away? There’s a book missing that Dr. Chase needs.”

  “I made sure your door was locked at all times,” Sam says, giving me a suspicious look. “I did go in a few days ago to air it out, but I didn’t take any books.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Agnes says, turning to me. “I’m sorry, Dr. Chase, I can’t imagine what happened to it.”

  Sam glares at me and I realize he’s angry that I’ve bothered Agnes about something as trivial as a lost book. He looks as if he might leap on me if I so much as say an unkind word to Agnes. “That’s really all right. As I told you, I won’t have any trouble replacing it.”

  Agnes gives me a parting smile but Sam’s face is immobile. About halfway down the block, though, I hear the slap of bare feet on pavement and turn to find Sam jogging to catch up with me.

  “I need to have a word with you,” he says, not in the least out of breath even though he must have sprinted to catch up with me.

  “Sure, Sam, but please let me start by saying that I really didn’t come over to bother Agnes about that book—”

  “It’s about the book,” Sam says. “I didn’t want to go over it in front of Agnes. You see, she was working in the living room the day before her interview, practicing her presentation in front of me and a couple of the guys, and when she went to the campus the next morning she left her books downstairs. Right after she left, Dale Henry came to the house. He stormed in, shouting for Agnes, and when he saw her stuff in the living room he started ransacking through it. Of course, I grabbed him and threw him out—”

  “You physically ejected him from the house?”

  Sam nods grimly. Most young men Sam’s age would be gloating, but Sam pales under his tan.

  “You realize how lucky you are that he didn’t shoot you?”

&nbs
p; “Yeah, that’s why I didn’t tell Agnes about it. I called her that morning to warn her that he came to the house, but I never told her that he forced his way in. Anyway, I remember he had a book in his hands when I threw him out. It fell to the ground when he stumbled on the front lawn and he scooped it up right away. I didn’t think anything of it at the time because he was always coming over with a book in his hands to show Agnes something very important, like a fucking Jehovah’s Witness or something. But now—”

  “You think it might have been one of Agnes’s books. Do you remember what color it was?”

  “It was red, just like all those Latin books Agnes has. Was that the book you were looking for?”

  “It could have been,” I say, thinking that there are plenty of red books in the world. “But I can’t imagine what Dale Henry would have wanted with a Roman religion historian of the first century AD.”

  Sam shakes his head, which makes his hair fall over his eyes. He pushes it away angrily. “I’ve stopped trying to figure out what that sick fuck wanted with anything. I mean, ‘That way madness lies,’ right?”

  I nod, surprised that Sam has a Shakespeare quote ready at hand. “I understand. And if you brought it up in front of Agnes—”

  “She’d start thinking about how easy it would have been for Dale Henry to blow the whole house away…”

  He lets his voice trail off and I finish it for him. “And that way madness lies?”

  He looks back at me, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. Does he think I’m making fun of him? “I meant it figuratively, of course,” I say.

  “Of course,” he says, giving me his first smile. It makes the sun-burnt skin around his turquoise eyes crinkle. I feel like I’ve earned a prize.

  “Well, thanks for telling me. I promise I won’t mention it to Agnes—” I’ve taken a step backward, but he reaches out his hand, tentatively grazing my elbow with his fingertips to hold me back.

  “Can I ask you a favor?”

  When I nod he reaches into the pocket of his denim cut-offs and pulls out a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “I’m teaching rock-climbing at this camp in Switzerland this summer, so I can’t come to Italy and keep an eye on Agnes and I’m worried about her. Most people think that because she’s so pretty everything’s easy for her, but I grew up with her and I know, well, she’s more fragile than she seems. Anyway, I got one of those cell phones that work over in Europe and this is the number. If she’s having a hard time, would you call me?”

  “I’m sure Agnes will be fine,” I begin, but when I see the stubborn determination in his eyes I take the slip of paper. “But I’ll call if I have any concerns. She’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

  A shadow flickers across his blue-green eyes, like a shark moving through shallow water, but then he forces a smile. “I’m the one who’s lucky,” he says. “Look how close I came to losing her.” He turns and walks away. I watch him pad back to the house, the sight of his bare feet on the hot pavement making me cringe for his vulnerability. When I turn around I think that Dale Henry got at least one thing right: I may not be able to see Sam Tyler’s aura, but it’s clear as daylight that he’s in love with Agnes Hancock.

  Instead of heading home I turn left on 38th Street and head reluctantly over to Guadalupe. I’d told Agnes the truth when I said I knew where to find a replacement for the lost volume of Athenian Nights; it just wasn’t a place I wanted to go. Archetype Books, the dusty used-book shop sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and juice bar on Guadalupe, had been the third point on the New Age triangle Ely had sketched out that first night we noticed the Tetraktys house. I hadn’t at first realized that it had become a place he frequented as much as Starwoman and the Tetraktys house until a month before he left town, when I noticed the Mandala logo of the store on a bookmark inside one of his books on Pythagoreanism. The same bookmark I saw inside one of the books Agnes had just returned to me.

  I had gone there one morning when Ely hadn’t come home the night before. The man behind the counter had looked up from the book he was reading when I came in and studied me without saying a word. He had eyes a yellow color I’d only ever seen in cats before. And just as a cat sometimes stares at empty space, so he seemed to be staring not at me but through me, as if he had X-ray vision. Indeed, he had the high cavernous forehead and oblong face of a mad scientist in some horror movie. I’d taken a step backward, mumbling some excuse that I’d gotten the wrong store, and stepped on something that screeched and then whirled around my feet like a furry dust devil.

  “That’s just Gus,” the book clerk said as if explaining a meteorological phenomenon. The maelstrom of black and white fur surged up onto the counter and bunched itself into the shape of a fat black and white cat who glared at me with eyes the same color as his master’s.

  “I didn’t mean to step on his tail,” I said, holding out my hand to the cat as a propitiatory offering. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d gobbled it like a hungry idol, but he merely sniffed at my fingertips, the white triangle over his nose twitching, and then rubbed his face down the length of my arm. I had to step closer to the desk or the cat would have fallen on the floor. I noticed then that the clerk had a tattoo at the base of his throat: a triangle made out of ten dots.

  “Are you looking for something?” he asked.

  I had the feeling he wasn’t talking about a book.

  “Um…I think my boyfriend comes in here sometimes…Ely?”

  “I know Ely,” the clerk said with such an emphasis on I that I expected him to follow with, “Do you?”

  “I’m looking for him,” I said, swallowing my embarrassment. I felt like a fishwife tracking down her errant husband. “He didn’t come home last night.”

  “A teacher came to speak last night at meeting and afterward some of the followers went to one of the member houses to hear about the community in New Mexico. I think Ely might have been one of the ones who was interested.” The man paused. He must have seen the tears rising to my eyes. At the mention of New Mexico, my throat had gone as dry as the desert. My worst fear was that Ely would leave me to join a Tetraktys community far away from Austin. I was surprised to see that the clerk looked sorry for me. “I imagine he would have called to say where he was, but the teacher asked that anybody who came to listen observe a vow of silence for the night. We believe initiates should be silent while learning.”

  “According to Pythagoras,” I said, desperate to seem like I wasn’t a total idiot, like I was in on at least some of the secret rites and rituals. The name Pythagoras made the cat look up and meow. “Don’t tell me,” I said, “the cat’s a Pythagorean, too.”

  The clerk smiled and chucked the cat under the chin. “He just recognizes his name. Gus is short for Pythagoras.”

  I didn’t learn the clerk’s name on that first visit, but in the coming weeks I stopped by the bookstore often and learned that his name was Charles. In addition to New Age stuff, Charles carried a remarkable selection of Greek and Latin texts, some of which were hard to find anywhere else. “I specialize in myth,” he explained, “so of course I carry the classics.” I made his classics selections an excuse for my increasingly frequent visits, but we both knew I was using him as a link to Ely. Charles was the only member of the Tetraktys I ever spoke with or knew by name—and I didn’t even know his last name or where he lived.

  I am afraid as I reach the store today that I’ll find it closed—or Charles and Gus gone. When I open the door, though, and step into the store, I might be stepping back in time to my first visit. Charles is in the same spot at the counter, his head bowed over a book until my entrance draws his amber eyes up to mine. I feel something furry brush against my calf and look down to find Gus twining himself around my legs.

  “I wondered how long it would be before you came in,” Charles says, reaching under the counter. “I’ve been saving this for you.” I step forward, nearly tripping over Gus, and reach for the book. An index card with my name hand-printed on it
is paper clipped to the cover, obscuring the title, but when I move the card and read the gilt-pressed lettering I see that it’s the third volume of Phineas Aulus’s Athenian Nights.

  I open my mouth to ask a question and then shut it. Experience has taught me that a direct question usually yields unsatisfying results with Charles. If I asked how he knew I needed this particular book he could very well tell me that the knowledge had come to him in a dream. So instead I ask which translation it is.

  “The Reverend F. P. Long, MA, Sometime Exhibitioner of Worchester College. Published by the Clarendon Press in 1911,” Charles replies without looking at the title page. “Not as good as the LaFleur translation, of course, but those are getting pretty scarce these days.”

  I lay my fingers on the smooth leather cover and flip through the gilt-edged pages to the marbled end papers at the back. “The end pages look new,” I comment. “Did you do the rebinding yourself?”

  “No, I farm that work out now to New Mexico. The dry climate is better for old books.”

  Gus abandons my ankles and leaps onto the counter. He pushes the white triangle of his nose against my limp hand, demanding attention.

  “So, you’ve been out there recently?” I ask, petting the cat.

  “Last month,” Charles says. “I took a truckload of damaged books I got at the Albuquerque Book Fair and picked up these.”

  Gus has managed to snake under my arm and push his face against my chest. When he reaches my left ribs, where my bandages are, I’m afraid he’s going to dislodge my stitches, but he only sniffs and looks up at me, his yellow eyes solemn.

  “You’re going to heal well,” Charles says. “I can tell.”

  I stifle the urge to ask “How? By my aura?”

  “For a while you’re going to feel like something’s missing there,” he goes on, touching the spot below his own ribs.