Afterward he lay quietly, collecting himself, angry at his submission to her, still revolted by the aspect of her gros bon ange, her soul, whatever it had been. Finally he began putting on his clothes.
‘Stay a while,’ she said lazily.
‘One bite is all you get, Otille. It won’t happen again.’
‘It will if I want it to.’
‘You don’t get the picture,’ he said. He started lacing his shoes. ‘Out there in the attic it was like the shuffling rube and the scarlet woman. But when it came down to strokes, your little tour of hardcore heaven bored the hell out of me.’
‘You bastard!’
‘What did you expect?’ He unfolded his sunglasses. ‘That one of your Blue Plate Special humdingers would make me profess undying love?’
‘Love!’ Otille spat on the carpet. ‘Keep your love for that dimwitted Bobbie Brooks doll you’ve got downstairs!’
The intercom buzzed, and she smashed down a switch. ‘What is it?’ she snapped.
‘Uh, Otille?’ It was Papa.
‘Yes.’
‘Uh, the hospital called. Dularde didn’t make it. I thought I should tell you.’
‘Then make the arrangements! You don’t need me for that.’
‘Well, all right. But I was wonderin’ could I come up?’
She cut him off.
‘I want you to stay,’ she said firmly to Donnell.
‘Listen, damn it! We have a deal, and I’ll keep my end of it. But if you want hot fun, buy a waterbed and stake yourself out in a cheap motel. I’ll write your name in all the men’s rooms. For a good time, see Otille. She’s mean, she’s clean, she can do the Temple Hussy’s Contraction!’
She tried to slap him, but he blocked her arm and pushed her away. He stood. The lavender beams of moonlight were as sharp as lasers, and for the first time he recognized the room’s similarity to the setting of his stories.
‘What is this place?’ he asked, his anger eroded by a sudden apprehension. ‘I wrote a story about a place like this.’
She appeared dazed, rubbing her forearm where he had blocked it. ‘Just a dream I had,’ she said. ‘Leave me alone.’ Her eyes were wide and empty.
‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the exercise.’
The door at the end of the passage was stuck, no, locked, and the door into Otille’s room, which had closed behind him, was also locked. He jiggled the knob. ‘Otille!’ he shouted. A chill weight gathered in the pit of his stomach.
‘Clothilde called this the Replaceable Room.’ Her voice came from a speaker over the door. ‘It’s really more than twenty rooms. Most are stored beneath the house until they’re shunted onto the elevator. Every one of them’s full of Clothilde’s guests.’
The room was hot and stuffy. He wrenched at the doorknob. ‘Otille! Can you hear me?’
‘Clothilde used to switch the rooms while her lovers slept and challenge them to find the right door. Back then the machinery was as quiet as silk running through your hand.’
‘Otille!’ He pried at the door with his fingertips.
‘But now it’s old and creaky,’ she said brightly. A grating vibrated the walls, and a whining issued from ducts along the edge of the ceiling. The room was moving downward. ‘I’m not sure how long it takes for the pumps to empty the room of air, but it’s not very long. I hope there’s time.’
‘What do you want?’ he yelled, kicking at the door. His chest was constricting, he was getting dizzy. The room stopped, jolting sideways.
‘You’re under the house now,’ sang Otille. ‘Push the button beside the door. I want you to see something. Hurry!’
Donnell located the button, pushed it, and a section of the wall inched back, revealing a large window opening onto a metal wall set nearly flush with it. He pulled off his shoe and hammered at the glass, but it held and he collapsed, gasping. The metal wall slid back to reveal a window like his own, and behind it, their desiccated limbs posed in conversational attitudes, were a man and a woman. Black sticks of tongues protruding from their mouths, eyelashes like crude stitches sewing their lids fast to their cheeks. Rings hung loosely on their fingers, and they were much shrunken inside antiquated satin rags, the remnants of fancy dress. Donnell sucked at the thinning air, scrabbling back from the window. There was a metallic taste in his throat, his chest weighed a ton, and blackness frittered at the edges of his vision. Otille’s voice was booming nonsense about ‘Clothilde’ and ‘parties’ and ‘guests,’ warping the words into mush. The thought of dying was a bubble slowly inflating in his brain, squeezing out the other thoughts, and soon it was going to pop. Very soon. Then he had a sharp sense of Jocundra standing beneath and to the right of him, looking around, walking away. He could feel her, could visualize her depressed walk, as if there were only a thin film between them. God, he thought, what’ll happen to her. And that thought was almost as big and important as the one of death. But not quite. Otille’s voice had become part of a general roaring, and it seemed the corpses were laughing and pointing at him. Bits of rotten lace flaked from the man’s cuff as his hand shook with laughter. The woman’s mummified chest heaved like the pulsing of a bat’s throat, a thin membrane plumping full of air. The room vibrated with the exact rhythm of the laughter, and the air was glowing bright red.
Then he could breathe.
Sweet, musty air.
He gulped it in, gorging on it. The door to the attic had sprung open. His head spinning, he crawled toward the light of a gable window and slipped; a splinter drove deep into the heel of his palm. He rolled onto his back, applying pressure to the point of entry, almost grateful for the sensation. Blood and gray dust mired on his hand.
‘I”m sorry, Donnell,’ said Otille’s voice from the speaker. ‘I couldn’t let you leave thinking you’d won. But don’t worry. I still want you.’
Chapter 16
August 17, 1987
On the morning of Dularde’s funeral, Donnell told Jocundra he had slept with Otille. He was contrite; he explained what had happened and why and said it had been awful, and swore there would be no repetition. Jocundra, who had tried to prepare for this turn of events, believed he was truly contrite, that it had been a matter of circumstance allied with Otille’s charm, but despite her rational acceptance, she was hurt and angry.
‘It’s this place,’ she said mournfully, staring back at the angelic faces sinking into the black quicksand of their bedroom walls. ‘It twists everything.’
‘I can’t leave…’ he began.
‘Why should you? You’re the king of Maravillosa! Otille’s prince consort!’
‘You seem to think everything’s fucking normal,’ he said. ‘That I’m a guy and you’re a girl, and we’re stuck in this little unpleasantness, but soon we’ll be off to some paradisiacal subdivision. Three kids with sunglasses, a green-eyed dog, the veve in the back yard next to the barbecue. I’m walking a goddamn tightrope with Otille!’
‘Is that what they’re calling it now?’ she sneered. ‘Walking a tightrope? Or is that Otille’s erotic specialty?’
‘Maybe Edman’s right,’ he said. ‘Maybe you groomed me to be your soulmate. A sappy, morose cripple! Maybe you wanted someone to pity and control, and I’m not pitiable enough anymore.’
‘Oh, no?’ She laughed. ‘Now that you’ve risen to the status of pet, I’m supposed to be in awe? I watch you swallow every treat she feeds you…’ Tears were starting to come. ‘Oh, hell!’ she said, and ran out of the door, down the stairs and onto the grounds.