Weber has looked at that picture often, carefully or nostalgically, happily. . . . We have so many ways of looking at a photograph that means something to us. But although he has looked, he has never seen what's important there. Not that it's easy.
Why do we photograph, why do we look, why do we remember so little but forget so much? It isn't coincidence. The ancient Romans discovered what to do: haruspication. Studying the entrails of dead animals, the order and form of anything in the world, they hoped to decipher clues to the future within that order.
They were right. If Weber were to look at that photograph correctly, he would see so much of what will happen to him. Not because it is a picture of me, but because of the way the masks sit on the floor, the tight knot in the silk, the half-light across the side of my face. When he took the picture, he kept saying, "Turn your head. Move your hands. Look a little away. I have to get the masks in too. . . . That's it!"
Why was that it and not something else? Because in some part of him, my friend knew he was about to capture a splinter of his future on film. Unfortunately, his other parts didn't know how to see it, so he only framed the splinter and put it on the shelf with others.
This is true about everything. The cigarette he is about to smoke: how he holds it, the number of puffs he will take. So many answers floating lazily in the air above our lives, like the gray smoke at the end of Weber's face.
"Did Phil ever tell you about the dog and the time death came into his room?"
"Wyatt, what happened to Pinsleepe the angel? I thought you were going to tell me about that."
He pursed his lips and nodded. "I am, but we've got another – hours to go.
"That's what I like about The Decameron and Canterbury Tales – everyone sat around telling sensational stories, since there was nothing else to do while the plague was raging outside or there were another hundred miles to ride till Canterbury.
"First let me tell you about the dog and death. It has something to do with Phil and Pinsleepe anyway.
"When he was a boy, Phil's family had a dog named Henrietta. They let her run free on the streets, so she had puppies pretty regularly. She slept in a corner of Phil's room, and when it was time to have the babies, she went over to her bed and just let them come.
"One time she had a litter with one real sick runt in it. Phil said you could tell from the first it was going to die, but Henrietta was crazy for the pup and treated it best of the bunch. Which is queer, because animals usually ignore or even kill a runt.
"But Henrietta loved it and made sure it got enough to eat and had lots of licks. . . . For a while it looked like the puppy was going to surprise everyone and actually pull through, but then it got worse somehow and started dying.
"While doing his homework one night, Phil looked up because he heard Henrietta start growling. She wasn't a growler, and when he looked around he saw there wasn't anything to growl at. But she wouldn't stop. Grrrr! On and on. Besides that, she kept looking toward one window in the room. Phil checked there too but didn't see a thing. Her tail was wagging like mad, she was snarling: all the signs of a dogfight about to start. But there was nothing there!
"Suddenly she jumped up and just stood there, back legs shaking, teeth showing, tail whipping back and forth. She was still looking toward the same corner of the room, but then her head started moving slowly, as if watching something cross the floor and come toward her.
She'd been lying next to the puppies, giving them dinner, but now all of them were staggering around on –day-old legs, searching blindly for Mom. Except for the runt. It was so weak it couldn't move.
"Phil said he felt something in the air: not some cold wind or creepy hand on his neck, just something else. It might even have been pleasant; he didn't remember. But whatever it was sure made its nearness known to both boy and mother dog.
"For a couple of seconds Henrietta went stiff and silent. Frozen. Then she began whimpering and looking at the puppies. They were wiggling and whining, all except the sick one. It was dead. Very obviously dead."
"Death came in the room?"
He nodded. "That's what Phil thought. He said the mother watched it cross the room right over to the puppy, which was dead a moment later. How else would you explain it?"
"It's a scene out of Midnight."
"Exactly what I said. I asked how come he'd never used it. He thought it was too beautiful to use there. I think he planned to put it in Tiddlehead,' though."
"What does it have to do with Pinsleepe?"
"Pinsleepe was the Angel of Death."
Strayhorn was rich, famous, and under forty. He'd survived an earthquake and been called an eminent artist by one of the most influential critics in America. He wrote a column about whatever suited him for a celebrated men's magazine.
Other people's lives come in two sizes, life size and dream size. Phil had the latter. What's more, he remained a good and sensitive man till the end of his life, which is not typical Hollywood.
I haven't said enough about Phil's humanity, and that's altogether necessary before I describe his involvement with Pinsleepe.
We lived together four years at Harvard, and there were enough late-night bullshit sessions for me to get a clear perspective of his dismal and touching childhood.
His parents cared but not enough. They substituted authority for concern, and strong adult handshakes when hugs should have been given. It's an old story and boring too, if it weren't for Phil's reaction. When they offered to shake his hand, he jumped in their laps and tried to make them laugh. They were such dour people that he considered their smiles and rare laughter to be the only true signs of their love: his real success with them. That might be why he and Finky Linky liked each other so much. It wasn't "make 'em laugh" or "all the world loves a clown" but more – if you grin, I can breathe; if you laugh, I have enough food in me to go another couple of days.
Mr. Strayhorn had a fountain pen store and for a hobby raised poodles. He'd gone to Harvard but graduated with only a diploma and the silly haughtiness that often accompanies a first-rate education to get him through the rest of his life. But after a couple of years or a first job, the world doesn't care where you went to college, as long as you succeed. The old man couldn't, so he retired from the real world on a pension of arrogance and dismissal that kept him minimally alive until he contracted cancer in his early sixties and became even more difficult.
His wife was no better. A small-town girl who never got over being grateful to her husband for marrying her, Betty Strayhorn believed what he said, no matter how outrageous – "Your father went to Harvard, remember" – but when he was wrong she kept her mouth shut. Her favorite phrase was "for the peace of the family." There was peace in the Strayhorn family, but only because Father knew best about everything and you got smacked if you ever tried for the last word.
Phil did everything "right," his sister Jackie everything wrong. He studied while she got into trouble. He made their parents laughing and proud; she made them scared and furious. He told his father he got all A's, she told the old man to fuck himself. The two kids fought together like rabid dogs but protected the other's flanks whenever the parents swooped down for a kill.
Jackie is unmistakably the model for Janine, the heroine of all the Midnight films. They even look alike. Although he was never clear about how he did it, over the years Phil helped her climb over all this self-destructive rebellion and straighten her life out. She became interested in science in her teens and went on to become a biologist. She gave full credit to her brother and none to their parents.