City of Masks

17

By the time Cree returned to her hotel room, it was fivethirty. She dropped her purse, kicked off her shoes, and fell over onto the bed. Only after she'd lain there palming her eyes for a few minutes did she remember that she'd missed her four o'clock appointment with Dr. Fitzpatrick. The message light blinking on the phone was probably him, wondering where she was.

Too bad. Tomorrow maybe. She had a lot to discuss with him, but she was too drained to deal with it now.

She had sat with Lila in the hall for as long as she could bear to, fearing that the boar-headed ghost would return. Eventually Lila had stirred and opened her red eyes to look at Cree. The eyes were neither hopeful nor grateful nor even fearful. They were just desolately empty: This is how it is. This is what I am. It was a state of hopeless stasis Cree knew too well. She saw that same hollow resignation in the mirror, in her own eyes, after something had awakened her grief for Mike and the knowledge of how little she could do about his absence. How little the wound had healed despite the passage of years.

When Lila finally sat up, Cree retrieved her shoes, helped Lila get them on, and made her stand.

Downstairs, they picked up Lila's purse. Cree urged her out the door and down the gallery steps, and they went to sit in Cree's car, two utterly emptied women side by side in the heat. Cree's ankle throbbed, and she discovered that her elbows and thighs were bruised from the tussle in the hall. It was still bright daylight, the repair crew down the block was still at work. A few more tourists strolled the sidewalks, gazing around appreciatively and pausing to snap photos. Gradually, reality had reassembled around these ordinary things, and Lila had begun to talk.

The hotel phone wheedled, and Cree's hand reflexively snatched the receiver.

"Cree? Paul Fitzpatrick. What's going on? I missed you at four, called your room, couldn't find you. Now I just got through to Jack Warren, who said – "

"She went over to the house. Alone. I came by while she was there. She was… it was bad."

"Oh, Christ! Why'd she go there?"

"To fight back. Confront it all. Show she was tough. Didn't quite work out that way."

"So she talked to you?"

"Yeah."

Fitzpatrick chewed on that for a moment. "Are you up for meeting with me tonight?"

"I don't think… I mean, we do need to talk, as soon as possible. But frankly, I'm… it was… grueling. I'm really tired."

"You sound like someone who could use a good dinner and a glass of wine. We could kind of combine our psychiatric conference with some R and R. I know the restaurants around here pretty well – I could introduce you to some regional cuisine."

Somehow, it didn't seem like a come-on. Fitzpatrick sounded straightforward, as always, concerned and reasonable. It had been an overwhelming day, and part of Cree felt that the last thing she needed was one more intense interaction. But it really was urgent that they compare notes on Lila. And Cree did need to eat something.

And, yes, Fitzpatrick was okay to be around.

"All right. As long as you know I'm more than a little out of it. I really am" – Cree groped for the right word – "kaput. Seriously."

"Kaput is just fine. Kaput is eminently doable. I'll pick you up in an hour."

The silver BMW swooped up to the hotel canopy only a moment after Cree made it downstairs. Paul Fitzpatrick waved, but to Cree's relief he didn't jump out and open the door for her or otherwise conduct any ceremonies that might make this seem more like a date. Determined to conceal her newly acquired hobble, she walked to the car, opened her own door, and slid into the leather interior.

Fitzpatrick gave her a small grin. "You look like hell," he said. "You look kaput."

Cree returned the smile. She had showered and changed, but she still felt like crap, and somehow it was just the right thing to say. "Thanks."

"Seafood okay?"

"Perfect."

"You want fancy, folksy, um – "

"Right now I want normal. I want simple."

He looked at her appraisingly for a moment, stroking his chin, then nodded and put the car into gear. "There are a lot of choices, but I think I know the right place for tonight."

Cree was grateful to have someone else decide things. She leaned back, accepting the easy pressure of the BMW's acceleration. Fitzpatrick swung the car north on Canal Street, away from the French Quarter. The sky was dark, leaving the boulevard lit only by street lamps, signs, windows, headlights. She laid her head against the headrest and looked out at the big, strange city she was just coming to know, and Fitzpatrick had the good sense not to say anything at all.

Deanie's Seafood turned out to be a casual place half a block from the lake, not too far from the park where she and Fitzpatrick had walked. Aside from the brightly lit fast-food place across the street, the neighborhood was composed of seafood distributors and light industrial buildings.

"Antoine's this is not," Fitzpatrick told her as they crossed the parking lot. "It's where you go when you're hungry and want very fresh fish and clams and crabs and lots of 'em. I like it because it doesn't go for the overdone Cajun or old-timey New Orleans themes you see too much of, and it's cheap. I thought you probably wouldn't be in the mood for anything too elaborate." He stopped, suddenly uncertain. "But if you are, we could – "

"This is just right."

The restaurant was an unpretentious place, just the kind of grounded, homey environment she needed: middle-class, mom and pop, guaranteed to keep existential anxiety at bay. The air outside was full of the smell of deep frying, reminding Cree how hollow her stomach felt. When they went inside and she saw people being served mountainous platters of golden-brown, battered sea things, her knees went weak.

They took a table at the far end of the back room, near the lobster tank. Cree dropped into her seat and watched the green-black creatures bumbling around the perimeter of their glass cage, claws held shut by rubber bands.

"I need you to tell me what you know about Lila," Cree said immediately.

"Don't you want to relax a bit? I thought you wanted to – "

"It's probably best just to get to it. I can't think about anything else right now. Dr. Fitzpatrick, if she were my patient, I'd be considering immediate intervention."

That brought his eyebrows up. "Not to digress, but could I ask you to call me something other than Dr. Fitzpatrick?"

"I'm not going to call anyone Fitz, I'll tell you that. How about Paul?"

"Paul will do." His weak smile faded quickly. "So Lila's really at risk."

"She spent the afternoon literally bouncing off the walls of Beauforte House, knocking over furniture." Cree glanced around to make sure no one was near enough to overhear, and then went on in a quieter voice: She was in a state of absolute panic. Her clothes were torn and she had bruises and scratches all over. She was being chased by a pigor boar-headed man who took sadistic pleasure in the pursuit, who drew it out, hiding, popping out at her, chasing her, and then hiding again."

Fitzpatrick looked aghast. After a moment, he spread his hands helplessly. "I have to admit, even from a psychiatric perspective, this is a little beyond my experience. More than a little. This is – "

He stopped when a waitress appeared, a harried-looking middle-aged woman who set down a bowl of boiled potatoes and then stood, one pencil behind her ear and another poised over her order pad. "Can I get you something to drink? Wine? Cocktail?" she asked.

"I'd like a whiskey," Cree said. "Bourbon, whatever's cheap. And a beer to knock it down with. Anything on tap, you choose for me."

Fitzpatrick ordered a glass of Chablis. When the waitress left, he looked at Cree with a mix of concern and amusement in his eyes.

"A family remedy," Cree explained. "My father wasn't a regular drinker, but he believed that extreme circumstances demanded extreme measures."

Fitzpatrick pursed his lips and nodded.

Cree leaned forward across the table. "It's beyond my experience, too, Paul. I can't explain the boar head, and I can't find any of the

… 'handles' I usually look for. I can't find his dying experience in him, he's very one-dimensional. I've never even read of anything like it. Nothing legitimate, anyway. You'll think this sounds strange, coming from me, but this is almost like a – a fable, or a horror story. Something teenagers tell each other around a carnpfire. But it's very real to Lila."

"That's all it did? The… pig-headed ghost? It chased her?"

"It raped her, Paul. That's what it does when it finally catches her. That's what happened back in December. It scares her to death, and when she can't run any more, it rapes her. And it does it again and again." It was the first time Cree had said it out loud, and the enormity of it struck her. Cree believed Lila's account, but in one sense it made little difference whether this was a real manifestation or purely the savage hallucination of a tormented mind: Both were equally, deeply frightening.

Fitzpatrick was looking shaky, as if suddenly he'd lost confidence in his ability to cope with Lila's condition. He picked up his fork and played with it for several seconds, then dropped it with a clang as if he were disgusted with it.

"Hospitalization," he said. "I'll get her admitted tomorrow. Cranial diagnostics, sedation. A complete blood workup. I know a neurologist with an excellent reputation, we'll get him on it."

They both were quiet for another moment, and then the waitress came back with their drinks. "You ready to order, or do you need another few minutes?"

They hadn't even noticed their menus yet.

"Another few minutes, thanks," Fitzpatrick said.

Cree lifted her whiskey glass, sighted quickly through the amber fluid, and raised it toward Fitzpatrick. "Skoal," she said automatically. Before he could raise his glass, she tossed hers back. The unaccustomed burn brought tears to her eyes, but she swallowed it down and quickly followed with a draft of beer that replaced the fire with ice. Her eyes popped wide.

Fitzpatrick watched with interest. When she set down her half-empty stein, he tipped his stemmed glass and took a moderate sip. "You drink like a… Jeez, I don't know who drinks like that. My mother used to tell me, 'You burp like a stevedore.' Nowadays, people don't even know what a stevedore is, but – "

"I drink like a plumber. My father taught me."

"Does it help?"

Cree pondered the warmth growing in her midsection, the tentacles of anesthetic already reaching out to the nerves in her hands and feet. The ball of icy jitter in the center of her chest remained unthawed.

"No," she admitted.

"So what does a ghost buster with a Ph. D. in clinical psychology make of Lila's situation?"

"I saw the shoe tips. I didn't see the boar face. But I did see the shoes."

"Oh, man." Fitzpatrick moaned. He tasted his wine, made a face of disapproval, shook his head. "I don't know what to do with this. What the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

"Think back to your sessions with Lila. Before you knew what I've told you, what would you have said? Preliminary diagnosis?"

He gave it a moment's thought. "Well. So far, I've tagged chronic depressive tendencies, as indicated by low self-esteem, morbidity, indecisiveness, preoccupation with smaller problems. She told me she'd had a previous bout of depression around the time she went off to boarding school. My father was the one who treated her, actually – he was Richard's friend and physician back then."

"Did you know her when you were younger?"

Fitzpatrick shook his head. "Oh God, no. Lila's six years older than me. I was barely getting into baseball cards by the time she was getting into boys. We never played with the Beauforte kids. After my father died, about fifteen years ago, our contact with the family kind of fell off."His eyes narrowed and he looked at Cree with a touch of accusation. "If you're wondering if they came to me because of the old family connection, I like to think I have enough of a reputation in this town, on my own – that they came to me because I am good. Even if I didn't win the Christ-forsaken Haverford."

Cree grinned. "Never crossed my mind. I can tell you're good."

"In any case, I'm not surprised she got the blues back then – that's a tough time for any kid. But in Lila's case it was a particularly lousy period. Apparently her uncle had died in a fishing accident the year before, and just before she went off to school her father died of a heart attack."Fitzpatrick stared out into the bustling restaurant, drumming his fingers."Beyond that, I'd have said I've got a patient in some kind of denial. A lot of repression, especially in her feelings toward her birth family, focused on ambivalences – pride and resentment, love and dislike. A yearning to live up to expectations and a desire to be free of them. Has a domineering mother who probably found her kids a bother and a disappointment and didn't mind letting them know it. Loved her father, his loss hurt her probably more than she admits, doesn't want to get too close to that. Poor self-esteem, probably based on a sense of failure. Guilt for those supposed failures." He thought about it some more. "But she's a patient who's hard to probe, reluctant to reveal too much. One minute she's defiant, her pride won't let her open up, the next her guilt and shame take over and she's too ashamed to talk about it. It's hard for her to let anyone near her."

Fitzpatrick glanced at Cree and then looked away. "I know it's not much. Could fit a lot of women her age. Doesn't explain what she claims to be seeing. I've really only had, what, four sessions with her," he finished apologetically.

Cree was thinking that the oscillation between poles of affect and response Fitzpatrick reported matched exactly Lila's behavior in the last two days. Going to the house alone was one such extreme act of defiance; the backside of it was hopeless collapse.

"Paul, what's your take on the repressed memory theory?"

He tossed an equivocal hand. "I've read both sides. I guess I'd say repression is possible, but the satanic ritual abuse business really discredited it. Recovered memories of buried trauma are too often programmed by the therapist. They say more about the therapist's unconscious fantasies and fears than they do about any experience of the patient's."

He stopped as the waitress appeared again. She regarded them with expectant disapproval.

"Sorry," Cree told her. "We'll need just another minute. We'll be good, I promise." She picked up her menu to prove it.

When she'd gone, Cree put the menu down. "I agree completely. But, Paul, /experienced something there. I know you can't readily accept my

… approach… but I believe Lila is reacting to the presence of an entity at that house. It is interacting with her. I don't know who or what it is, but there's something there. I agree with you about conducting diagnostics, but don't be too surprised when they come back clean."

Fitzpatrick had turned sideways on his chair, staring with a frown at the lobster tank. One lobster was particularly active, climbing on the backs of its sluggish fellows, working its way clumsily up the glass and falling back.

"Can I ask you a question?" he said finally.

"Sure. I guess."

"Where'd you grow up?"

"Northeast and New England. Bom in Philly, lived in eastern New York State and New Hampshire as a kid. Why?"

He tossed his head, puzzled. "Your accent. Listening to you tonight, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were a local. Lou'siana born and bred. I didn't notice it so much when we first met."

Cree felt a tingle of alarm. Part of her wanted to tell him the truth: that she'd been appropriating it from the environment, and most of all from Lila, as her borders seemed to dissolve. But by his standards that was beyond far-fetched. And even if he believed it possible, he wouldn't approve of it as a therapeutic process. She wouldn't blame him.

" I… I guess I just do that," she said lightly. "Pick up accents fast. I've been told that before. You know, we should probably look at these menus, or that waitress is going to throw us out of here." She tried to smile.

"You're duckin' me, Dr. Black." He turned toward her, looking straight into her eyes.

Cree returned the gaze, trying not to reflexively rebel against his probing. She liked his eyes: intelligent, honest, insightful. A sweet sensuality in their blue clarity and dark lashes.

"You are something of a medium, after all, aren't you?" he went on quietly. "You pick up on things. That's one of your skills, right? Your talents? You… resonate. You've got your… antennae… up there in Jung's transpersonal space, you probe the collective unconscious. Only you're not a medium just for ghosts. You do it for the living, too."

Cree took a breath, exhaled. "You're not too bad at it yourself."

"Not in your league. Not even close."

Their eyes remained locked. The hubbub of the restaurant seemed distant, and for a long moment they paused in a sudden intimacy. Cree felt a growing warmth inside her, a magnetism that was at once foreign and deeply familiar. It was alarming but exhilarating, and for once she didn't recoil from it.

And then the waitress reappeared. This time she didn't say anything, just stood flat-footed as if indicating she intended to stay there until they damned well ordered.

"I'll have the special," Cree blurted.

"Same for me," Paul said.

The waitress jotted something on her pad, snatched their menus, and spun away.

"Whatever the hell the special is," Paul whispered.

They attended to their drinks, as if the moment of intimacy, once shattered, had made them both shy. The warmth ebbed, leaving only the jitter ball in Cree's solar plexus.

"Why'd you ask about repressed memory?" Fitzpatrick asked. "Is that what you think this is about?"

Cree drained the last of her beer. "I believe Lila is the victim of some past trauma. If she was, the ghost could be someone who had a role in the original trauma. Or it could simply be that the ghost triggers her memory of it, and she conflates the two experiences. But there's some reason, psychological or situational, why Lila connects with it."

"Trauma like rape?"

"Rape, or the emotional equivalent of it, yeah. Some extreme violation of self, of boundaries, of self-determinacy."

Fitzpatrick nodded in agreement. "Her defiance-submission thing – a common affective polarity for rape victims. Especially incest victims."

They warmed to the topic, Cree speaking in her language, he in his, yet somehow able to ignore the divergences in their pursuit of a common goal. Fitzpatrick became more animated, and Cree knew it wasn't the wine. It was the joy of the hunt: Fitzpatrick was a fellow bloodhound.

The special turned out to be a mixed seafood plate, everything dunked in a slightly peppery batter and fried: soft-shell crabs, shrimp, oysters, and catfish, stacked carefully in a pyramid a foot high. Cree began eating tentatively, feeling simultaneously starved and a little sick, but the flavors soon got to her and she indulged her appetite. She'd never had soft-shell crabs before and couldn't get over their sweet, nutlike flavor. Fitzpatrick warmed to his plate, too, eyeing Cree with amusement between bites.

"I know," she said, "I eat like a stevedore."

"Or a plumber."

"Gotta eat." Cree held her fork in her fist and stuffed in an oversized mouthful.

The warmth burgeoned again as they laughed, and they set to in earnest, eating in preoccupied silence for a time. When they talked again, it was about other things; Paul told her some scandalous tales of New Orleans city politics.

As Cree's hunger waned, the exhaustion returned, ashes and shards. The active lobster continued to trundle around on the backs of its fellows and climb the glass, a tiny, muck green, coral-speckled dragon. Then a cook came from the back of the restaurant, hesitated briefly over the tank with a pair of tongs, and snatched up the most obvious and available choice. The lobster came up waving its legs and claws in slow-motion panic, a stranger to the air, and Cree looked away. Somehow it struck her as a dour omen.

Fitzpatrick seemed to sense her mood. He set down his fork, wiped his mouth, and tipped his head to look around the restaurant. "I gotta get you home. Where's our waitress? She was here every two seconds when she wanted our order, but when you want the check she's nowhere in sight. You know?"

They came out into a night chilled by a breeze that whispered in off the water. Over the top of the levee, a block away, the darkness of the lake's western horizon was stitched with a string of pinpoint lights that dwindled and disappeared into obscurity, the famous Ponchartrain causeway. Above, a few stars dotted the night sky.

Fitzpatrick frowned over at her. "Are you limping?"

Cree had forgotten it. "Had a bit of a tussle at Beauforte House. Sprained my ankle a little. It'll be fine."

"Jesus." He shook his head. "The rigors of parapsychological fieldwork. We got to get this woman to bed."

Cree didn't think he intended a double entendre. Paul unlocked his car and this time opened the door for her, solicitousness for an injured person.

They drove east along the lake, then dipped south through darkening neighborhoods, saying nothing. The silence was somehow pregnant but not disagreeable, and Cree relaxed and watched the city slide by. They had been driving for about five minutes when suddenly she sat bolt upright.

"What is that?" she asked pointing.

"Hm?" Paul was startled out of his own ruminations. "Oh – the cemetery. I think this one's Greenwood. Or Saint Patrick's, they all kind of run together here." He looked over at Cree, saw the intensity of her interest, and pulled over to the curb. "Another beloved peculiarity of New Orleans. This isn't the best time of day to see 'em, though. Looks a little grisly now, but in daylight they're really very charming places."

Cree had never seen anything like it. Stretching off into the darkness was what seemed to be a miniature city. The streetlights cast an angular chiaroscuro of silver-blue and black shadow over a tightly packed, haphazard jumble of masonry walls, pitched roofs, gables, and columns. The crypts appeared to be built of white marble, their roofs just over head height – tiny temples, or giant doghouses, many topped with stubby crosses. Hundreds and hundreds were ranged along little streets that diminished in the distance and darkness. The architecture was Old World – probably, as Paul said, charming – but the streetlights on pollution grime gave them a stark, metallic look.

"It's a whole… city," Cree said.

"Yeah, that's what people call them – 'cities of the dead.' I should have realized they'd be of particular interest to a ghost hunter."

"No. That's folklore. Cemeteries are among the least haunted places nobody's ever lived or died in them. I've just… never seen anything like this." Cree couldn't stop looking at the scene. The cemetery hung in the dark, its miniaturized perspectives confounding the eye like a theater set or museum diorama.

"You really didn't know about burial customs here?" Paul chuckled."Well. It seems weird to an outsider, I suppose, but it all makes perfect sense. When the first Europeans came here, they tried to bury their dead underground, but New Orleans is too low and too wet. Whenever the river would rise, or after a good rain, the water table would come up and the coffins would float out of the soil. Pretty gruesome. So they had to start burying aboveground. You just build a little house, put your departed in there, brick up the door, fait accompli. Perfectly sensible."

He put the car into gear and drove on for half a block more, then turned onto another street to continue along the wall of the seemingly endless graveyard. "You see some of those bigger crypts?"

Cree could see a few larger structures, rearing square topped above the gabled roofs. Their flat facades held many panels, three or four rows tall and six or eight wide. Each panel was about the size of an oven door, just big enough to receive a coffin.

"They look like apartment buildings in a neighborhood of single residences."

"Yeah, exactly! Those're society crypts – kind of burial cooperatives. There are society crypts for fire departments, nurses' organizations, fraternal clubs, you name it. Say you were of Italian descent, you might have yourself buried in the Sons of Italy crypt along with a few dozen of your compatriots. Saves space and burial costs. And the wall here? Can't see it from this side, but it's crypt, too, with hundreds of vaults in it. That's kind of the low-rent district."

Paul turned again onto another, smaller street.

"Where are we going?" Cree asked.

"I'm hoping we'll get lucky," Paul said mysteriously. He was obviously enjoying playing the tour guide. He drove slowly, glancing often toward the cemetery wall. "This is Metairie Cemetery, now, biggest one in town."

Cree looked out the window, spellbound. "You said a few dozen could be buried in the society crypts. But that would have to be a pretty huge one. I don't see any with that many vaults."

"Aha! But the peculiarities of the tradition don't end with aboveground burial. See, space was at a premium in the old city – not much room in this swampy terrain for the living, let alone the dead. But they discovered that if you build an aboveground, closed masonry structure in this climate, it turns into an oven. In summer, lots of sun and hundred-degree heat every day, it gets very hot in those things. Reduction and decomposition are very fast, it's actually almost a form of cremation. So back when, they came up with the 'year-and-a-day' law, which is still in effect."

"What's that?"

Instead of answering, Paul yanked the wheel and pulled the car to the curb. They were at a break in the cemetery wall – a service entrance, Cree realized, judging from the functional shed and big Dumpsters ranged to the side of the iron gate. Sticking at odd angles out of the Dumpsters were several rectangular shapes that looked familiar but were so incongruous it took Cree a moment to recognize them.

Coffins, she realized. Lidless coffins, plush interiors open to the city night. A couple more lay on the ground, lids stacked nearby.

Paul watched the involuntary start she gave at the realization. "Yeah coffins. Used coffins. We practice multiple burial here. After a year and a day, you can bury someone else in the same crypt. You just pull out the old coffin, rake the remains into a plastic bag, shove the bag back in there, and you've got room for a new customer. Like I say, aboveground burial is more like cremation, all that's left is dust and chunks of bone. Doesn't look like there'd be room, but behind each of those doors are the remains of several people. All those individual crypts you saw? Whole families, many generations, are in some of them. Very cozy, very efficient. And since nobody's too keen on reusing a coffin, they go into the Dumpster."

Paul gazed with satisfaction at the scene: stained, shadowed coffin interiors emerging from the Dumpster in the streetlights, the eerie miniature city disappearing into gloom behind. Caught up in his narrative, he seemed oblivious to how nightmarish it might look -the Gothic, funereal elegance of coffins juxtaposed with the crude, industrial functionality of the garbage containers, all in the harsh mercury-vapor light.

"Do I detect a note of civic pride?" Cree asked.

Still smiling, he thought about that. "I guess so. We're fond of our own peculiarities hereabouts." He looked at her face for a moment and must have seen her fatigue there. "I'm sorry, Cree. I shouldn't have taken this detour. I guess I got carried away – 1 don't often get to initiate an out of towner to our quirkier traditions. Provoking that appalled and astonished look – it's kind of irresistible." He looked back to the coffin scene. "You're right, this probably isn't the best thing to show you right now. It's different in sunlight, really… I am sorry."

He resumed driving. The city flowed past and Cree was thinking and then she realized she must have dozed because suddenly the lights were bright and they were pulling up at the hotel. She stirred, momentarily disoriented.

Fitzpatrick turned to her. "I know you're kaput. But can I ask one more personal question?"

"I think so."

He hesitated, then reached out and with his thumb swept her hair up off her forehead, out of her eyes, and tucked it behind her ear. His touch was gentle, yet the contact startled her with what seemed an electrical charge. He looked at her, considered, then shook his head, smiling. "I changed my mind. No questions. Just, thanks for dinner, Dr. Black. This has been really fine. A real surprise. That's all."

Cree found her purse. She gave him a tired smile, opened the door, and got out without saying anything. She'd made it all the way through the glass doors and the BMW had pulled away before she realized she had leaned over and kissed him, quickly, good night.