“I’m trying to figure out whose work this is.”
“Oh. You’re into architecture?”
“Not really,” I said.
She looked puzzled and held the door open for me. I entered, and she led me down to the studio to show me her etchings. Finis.
I stopped typing a few hours ago, took the last page out of the machine, and set it facedown on the pile to my left, as if I had finished and wouldn’t resume. I’ve spent the intervening time sitting here, staring into space. I suppose I might as well keep typing.
This room, the one with the typewriting machine, seems to have been redone in the 1950’s, then partly redone again in the late seventies, probably just before the house was abandoned. There used to be wallpaper, but now there is bare plasterboard thick with splotches of greenish glue. The windows are boarded shut, and I type by the light of a single candle, one of those thick tall ones that can stand on its own without a holder. It has been scented with what someone thought was apple blossom, and I suppose it is closer to that than anything else, but it isn’t very close, nor is it strong. I can still smell the wood as it collects pockets of moisture and rots. The desk drawers, still full of desk things, are heaped next to me, as if when Professor Carpenter moved away he wanted to take it with him, then changed his mind, not thinking the desk worth the trouble. I guess he was right; it is small and cheaply built of plywood. I wonder why he left the typing machine, though. One of the desk drawers contains most of a ream of paper, however; good enough paper to have survived these ten or fifteen years.
I am pleased at how well my skill at working this machine has returned. The sound of the type bars striking the paper and the little rattle of the keys do not echo, perhaps because of the textured ceiling. There are still a few mice in the walls; I wonder what they live on.
What else to talk about?
I suppose I could continue where I left off a few hours ago, and bring matters up to the point where they stand now.
I left Jill sleeping deeply on the cot in her studio, went back to the train depot, and the next day went and looked at the house. The neighborhood is quiet, not too well lit, and situated not far from Twain. I decided it would do, so I made the arrangements to have my things moved.
Bah. I don’t want to talk about all of that. It was more than a week ago, and old news is dull, even when writing to one’s self. What about last night? That’s more interesting, because I’ve finally heard from Kellem.
I spent all night looking for a place to play cards without finding one. When I finally gave up, I made my way to this place that is home for here and now. I threw my coat over the end table next to the window, closed the window against the increasing chill, and opened the front door. There was a small slip of paper in the mailbox. It was in Gaelic for some reason, and said, “Day after tomorrow, 10:30, outside Howard’s-L.” I went back inside, burned the note in the fireplace, and stretched out in what was left of a bulky stuffed gray chair that someone had decided wasn’t worth moving. The springs on one side of it were broken, so I sat with a list to starboard.
These tenses are interesting. I don’t know whether to write, “the springs were broken,” because they were when I was sitting on it, or, “the springs are broken,” because as I sit here they still are. The first way is somehow more entertaining, like I’m telling myself a nice little story, but it also seems contrived. Funny, the things you never think about until you set about committing them to the page.
For that matter, I hadn’t given much thought to Laura Kellem, although she is the reason I’ve come to this little star in the map next to Lake Erie. Even now, when I think of her, all I get are moments, ripped out of time, with emotional harmonics but no melody for context. I can close my eyes and see her, looking at me with an expression that, at the time, I took for tenderness, but that I later came to believe was only a vague cousin-the fondness one might feel for a cat who lived with a close friend.
Odd, that. How long has it been since I have had a close friend? Will I ever again? Perhaps. Jim and I seem to be hitting it off rather well, I suppose because neither of us has anything the other wants. Which, now that I think of it, was never true of Laura and I, even when we were close-or what passed for close between us.
It was close on my part, I think. I cared for her. I’d have to say that I loved her, with the sort of burning passion that I then knew how to feel, and now know how to inspire. It would probably be trite to say, “What goes around comes around,” but that’s what it feels like.
I remember how I felt, though, when she would escort me through Vienna or Paris. I can still recall the pressure of her hand on my arm. To this day, I don’t know how much affection she felt for me and how much she just found it amusing to have me so infatuated with her. I certainly can’t ask her. And I’m not even sure I want to find out.
And yet I know that she is capable of intense feelings, or, at any rate, she was once. I remember sitting in a cafe in, well, somewhere where they had cafes. It was closed, and the streets were deserted, but we were sitting there nevertheless, and she started telling me about a man named Broadwin or something like that. Her eyes became soft, almost misty, and she said, “He had such big hands, Jack. When he held me he was all the world. I’d look up into his face and see nothing but his eyes looking down at me.”
“Where is he now?” I asked casually, because I felt the stirrings of something like jealousy.
“He’s dead,” she told me. “Years later, he became involved with some bit of fluff in Scotland, and lost his head. Figuratively, at first.” Then her voice changed and she came back to the present. “Take that as a lesson, Agyar Janos.”
“I will,” I told her. And I did, too. A couple of lessons, in fact. One of them is that, at one time in her life, she felt something. I wonder if it could ever happen again? Probably not.
But where was I? Right. I was sitting in the chair, just at the point when Jim the ghost came noiselessly down the stairs and stood translucently in front of me, nearly six feet tall, well dressed, black, with a round face, thick neck, broad shoulders, and very short white hair. He was dressed, as ever, in his funereal best; white shirt and string tie. “You look disgruntled,” he said.
“This is a boring city.”
“Maybe. You seemed to like the party last week.”
“It wasn’t bad. For a college party. I was surprised at the number of disciplines in attendance.”
“That’s a trademark of Artie. What did you think of him, by the way?”
“Artie? Professor Carpenter?”
“Yes.”
“Never really had the chance to talk to him. His mistress let me in. Why?”
“His grandfather was one of my instructors.”
“Is that how you know him?”
“No, he used to live here.”
“Oh. That’s right. Why did he leave?”
“He began to think the place was haunted.”
“Oh,” I said. And, “He has an ugly mistress.”
Jim laughed and looked at the pendant I wear on my chest, which is a large chunk of black petrified wood, polished and set in silver. He was only looking at it because he never looked anyone in the eyes, I suspect even when he was alive. Since I’m an eye-contact person, that always makes conversations with him a little uncomfortable. It was also a little disturbing to see the black vertical line of the fireplace poker through his clothing, as if it were a decoration on his trousers. I should imagine that I’ll become used to this sort of thing, if I remain here for any length of time.
Which subject, in fact, Jim brought up sometime while we were talking. “Do you know how long you’ll be staying?” he said.
“You mean in Lakota? Or in this house.”
“Well, both.”
“Am I bothering you?”
“Au contraire. I like the company.”
“Au contraire?” I said. “What is this au god damn contraire?”