“I don’t have to listen to you.”
“Of course not! And yet you do, don’t you. Here. This one?” He held out daintily a card chosen from one end. I snatched it from him with disdain. On the other side was a slightly blurred black-and-white photograph of the same nun standing with her back to the viewer and looking over her shoulder with a smile. Her wimple was down and her long blond hair lay fanned across her back. She was holding up her habit, revealing black high heels, black fishnet stockings, tense black garters, and the round white bottom of one firm buttock.
I swept my hand through his outspread cards. “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” I said. Falling slowly, as if they were dry leaves, the cards floated down to the bed, to the floor, to the arms of the chair, and lay still.
“Very nice, Robert. Very nicely done. A nice effect.” Suddenly he sat upright. “It’s unbearably hot in here. Mind if I take off my head?” Placing his hands on his jaw he began pushing, pushing, his eyes were twisted in anguish—“Stop!” I commanded. He dropped his hands and looked at me with a sly smile.
“Why certainly, Robert. Anything you say.” His expression changed to intense concern. “May I speak frankly? You’re not a well man, Robert. Maybe you ought to — you know, go away for a while.” He sighed. “And now I’m tired. Why is that? Good God!” He glanced at his wrist, which was without a watch. “So late already? By jingo, I hope to heaven she. By Jove, I hope it isn’t too late to.”
“I’m not listening to any more of this crazy—”
“Have it your way, Bob. Hey, what are you—”
I squeezed past the chair, stumbled over a bookpile, scraped against a bookshelf. At the door I looked back at him. “Nighty-night,” he said, wiggling his fingertips, but I was already halfway down the attic stairs, already the screen door was closing behind me.
It was late, a brisk wind blew; now and then in the dark streets the obsidian windows gave off a shine of streetlights. Once I passed a faint yellow glow behind a curtain, where perhaps in a flowered armchair under a brass standing lamp an insomniac in summer pajamas sat reading a thick novel set in Berlin or Morocco. In my anxiety I followed an erratic route: scarcely had I passed the first corner-post of a black front porch when I found myself rounding the final post of a porch two blocks away, no sooner had I passed that porch than I found myself before a luminous window containing tennis rackets and exercise bikes, the edge of the window shaded into a winding lane bordered by tall thistles and tiger lilies, and turning a corner I came to the edge of a dark wood. Olivia’s house was invisible from the road. I made my way along a path of pinecones and oak leaves, stumbling in the dark. Around a bend the house loomed on a rise, all its windows ablaze, its black towers and gables sharply outlined against the stormy sky. A faint sound of music and voices drifted down to me. I passed several cars parked on the side of the unlit path and soon found myself in an overgrown garden. A weathered statue with decayed, pocked breasts and a single arm stood tilted at a dangerous angle; the arm was held out gracefully, and someone had hung a watering can from the thumbless hand. I passed a crumbling fountain, a child’s wagon containing a three-pronged gardening tool and half a tennis ball, an immense bush with heavy black blossoms. A topiary hedge had been cut to resemble a swan, but the swan was badly in need of trimming: it had a ruffled, shaggy look, and here and there long stems poked up, as if the swan were bursting at the seams. There was something hasty and slapdash about this garden, as if it had not been thought out very carefully, small paths branched off in all directions, and following one path I came to a cul de sac that turned out to be the side of the high front porch. Through the balusters that began at the height of my head I saw glowing yellow windows beyond which shadows moved. Holding to the posts I made my way through bushes and flowers to the front of the porch and climbed the stone steps to the front door, which opened suddenly to release a big tawny cat who hesitated before rushing past me into the wilderness of the garden. “Poor kitty,” murmured a woman with eyeglasses who stood holding the inner doorknob and peering into the dark. Without changing the direction of her glance she said, “Please come in, I’m so glad you could come,” and as I stepped past her into the hall she turned to me with a puzzled expression.
“Robert Herendeen,” I said, “and you must be Olivia’s mother.” “Oh no, heavens,” she said, raising a spread hand to the top of her chest, “whatever gave you, oh no, I’m just answering the — you know, the door. May I take your coat, Roger? You don’t seem to have a coat, do you. Are you a friend of—”
“Yes, she’s expecting me.” Through a doorway I saw a crowd of revelers in eye-masks, and brushing past a leaning coat tree and an umbrella stand containing an orange yardstick I entered the room. At a glossy black piano sat a woman in a brilliant green dress and a pink eye-mask, playing barbershop quartet tunes while she leaned forward to peer at a sheet of music held open by a bright yellow Schirmer album of Beethoven sonatas. Three masked and bearded men stood singing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Masked men and women talked in loud groups, a glass fell on its side and a ruby liquid rushed across a tabletop, a silver-masked woman in bluejeans and a gray sweatshirt threw back her head to laugh and plunged her frizzy long blond hair into a passing tray of drinks. A hand with long mint-green nails appeared in front of me, holding a black mask by its rubber string. I slipped the mask over my eyes and pushed my way through the crowded room toward another doorway, which admitted me to a den or sitting room where revelers sat on couches and armchairs. An elderly woman in white pants handed me a narrow glass on a stem, containing a green liquid. I took a sip and felt a burn in my throat; someone applauded. A tall fellow with a red mask waggled his fingers at me. Was he here, then, too? I found another door and passed into the dim-lit kitchen. On the counter beside an empty dishrack sat a masked woman in a knee-length skirt, her hands tucked under her thighs, one leg swinging slowly back and forth as she talked to someone who sat on the floor in the dark. At the end of the kitchen I opened a door and found myself in a hall. It appeared not to be the front hall, for in one direction I saw a high, closed door and in the other I saw rows of doors leading into darkness. I walked toward the dark, past paneled doors with fluted glass knobs, until the corridor ended at a transverse hall. I turned left. As I proceeded along the almost dark corridor, past closed doors, the black gleam of a mirror, a high-backed narrow chair on which sat a black telephone, I realized that I had only a vague sense of this part of the house, which seemed to extend back and back. Here other hallways began to branch left and right, the doors were of different sizes, through an open arch I saw a room with armchairs and glass-doored bookcases; and as I continued I felt that I was penetrating deeper and deeper into a region where rooms and corridors sprouted in the lush, extravagant dark.
One of the halls ended in a carpeted stairway and I began to climb. On the dark landing I bumped a small table; something rattled glassily and slowly became still. Four more stairs led to an upper hallway, dark except for a weak night-light in the baseboard. At the end of the hall I turned into another hall, where all was black except for a strip of yellow light running along the bottom and up the side of a barely open black door that rested against the jamb. I made my way to the door and stood listening but heard no sound. “Olivia,” I whispered, “are you there?” Slowly I pushed open the paneled door, which revealed a big empty bed with the reading light on. The covers of the bed were turned down and a panda lay under the blanket, holding out stiffly both plump paws. There was a tall mahogany bureau, a desk with a fat typewriter squatting on it, an armchair with its back to me. A standing lamp shone down over the armchair’s left shoulder. Olivia’s black hair at the top of the chair was glossy as licorice. I tiptoed up to her and bent over.