Green Eyes

Chapter 15

Those first weeks at Maravillosa, Jocundra had time on her hands. She wandered the corridors, poking into the cartons and crates that were stacked everywhere, exploring the various rooms. The motif of ebony faces and limbs emerging from the walls was carried out all through the house, but in the downstairs rooms most of the faces had been painted over or disfigured, and it was common to see nylons fitted over a wooden leg, coffee cups hooked to fingers, a black palm holding a soiled condom. The furniture was wreckage. Footless sofas, stained mattrsses, cushionless chairs, everything embedded in a litter of beer cans and wine bottles. And here Otille’s ‘friends’ could be found at any hour of the day or night. Drinking, making love, arguing. Many of the arguments she overheard involved the virtues of religious cults and gurus; they were uninformed, usually degenerating into shoving matches, and their most frequent resolution was the use of sentences beginning with, ‘Otille said…’ It soon became clear that this interest in religion only mirrored Otille’s interest, and that the ‘friends’ hoped by arguing to gain some tidbit of knowledge with which to intrigue her.

To pass the time further, Jocundra decided to put together an ethnography of the estate and went about securing an informant. Danni (‘It’s really Danielle, but there’s so many Danielles who’s actresses already, so I dropped the endin’, you know, just said “to ‘elle with it,” kept the i and accented it. I think it sounds kinda perky, don’t you?’) was typical of the women. Pretty, though ill-kempt; blond and busty; accustomed to wearing designer T-shirts and jogging shorts; an aspiring actress in her mid-twenties. She had come to Maravillosa in hopes that Otille would ‘do something’ for her career. ‘You see what she’s done for Downey, don’t you? I mean he’s almost a star!’ She identified the other ‘friends’ as gamblers in need of a stake, poets looking for a patroness, coke dealers with a plan, actors, singers, dancers, musicians and con artists. All young and good-looking, all experts on Otille’s past and personality, all hopeful of having something done.

‘But what do you do for her?’ asked Jocundra one day. ‘I understand you provide her with companionship, an audience, and she gives you room and board…’

‘And actin’ classes,’ Danni interrupted. ‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the classes.’

‘Yes, but knowing Otille, it seems she’d expect more for her money.’

‘Sometimes she entertains,’ said Danni, uncomfortable, ‘and we help out.’ When Jocundra pressed her, Danni became angry but finally said, ‘We sleep with the bigwigs she brings out from New Orleans! Okay?’ Ashamed, she refused to meet Jocundra’s eyes. ‘Look,’ she said after a petulant silence. ‘Otille’s a terrific actress. Bein’ taught by her, it’s… well, I’d sleep with the Devil himself for the chance. You learn so much just watchin’ her! Here.’ She affected a pose Jocundra recognized as a poor caricature of Otille. ‘Baron!’ she snapped. ‘Bring Downey to me at once. If he’s not here in ten minutes, I’m not going to be responsible!’ She relaxed from the pose and grinned perkily. ‘See?’

The hierarchy of the pets was, according to Danni, the main subject of study among the ‘friends’; they spent most of their energy trying to associate themselves with whomever they believed was in the ascendancy. Going to bed with Otille’s favorite was the next best thing to going to bed with Otille herself: a rare coup for a ‘friend,’ so rare it had been elevated to the status of a myth. Clea was currently much in demand, and Papa, because of the reliability of his gift, was always ranked first or second. Simpkins was scarcely more than a ‘friend’ himself, and Downey, due to his star quality, could have his pick regardless of hisstatus in Otille’s eyes. Even Clea had a crush on him. And as for the Baron, he was apparently neither ‘friend’ nor pet and Danni was of the opinion that he had some sort of hold over Otille.

‘I used to be Downey’s girl,’ said Danni one day while they were having coffee in Jocundra’s room. ‘I used to live right down the hall. Otille even invited me upstairs a couple of times. Boy, is that gorgeous! But then’ - she made a clownishly sad face - ‘she took a fancy to him again, and I got kicked back down to the cabins.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘That could be what happens to you pretty soon, at least the way I hear it.’

‘I know Otille’s after Donnell,’ said Jocundra. ‘But I doubt she’ll succeed.’

‘You’d better not doubt it,’ said Danni, ‘Men don’t stand a chance with Otille. She’ll have him doin’ lickety-split before…’ She gave herself a penitential slap on the cheek. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just used to dealin’ with the others, and you’re so nice and all. I shouldn’t be talkin’ to you like that.’

‘I’m not offended,’ said Jocundra. ‘I admit I worry about it.’ She sloshed the dregs of her coffee. ‘We’re in a difficult position with Otille.’

Danni took her hand and said it would probably be all right, that she understood.

Despite the difference in their backgrounds, Jocundra enjoyed Danni’s company. Having a girlfriend made the wormy atmosphere of the house easier to bear, and Danni, too, seemed to enjoy the relationship, taking special pleasure in helping Jocundra search for clues to the estate’s history among the crates and cartons. One morning, while digging through a dusty crate in a downstairs closet, they found an old book, a diary, embossed with the gilt letter A and bearing another gilt design on the foreleaf; this last, though wormtrailed beyond recognition, was obviously the remains of a veve.

‘I bet that’s, you know, what’s his name…’ Danni banged the side of her head. ‘Aime! Lucanor Aime. The one who taught ol’ Valcours his tricks.’

The initial entry was dated July 9, 1847, and graphically described a sexual encounter with a woman named Miriam T, which sent Danni into fits of giggles. There followed a series of brief entries, essentially a list of appointments kept, saying that the initiate had arrived and been Well received. Then Jocundra’s eye was caught by the words les Invisibles midway down a page, and she went back and read the entire entry.

Sept. 19, 1847. Today I felt the need for solitude, for meditation, and to that end I closed the temple and betook myself to the levee, there spending the better part of the afternoon in contemplation of the calligraphy of eddies and ripples gliding past on the surface of the river. Yet for all my peaceful reverie, I could not arrive at a decision. Shortly before dark, I returned to the temple and found Valcours R waiting in the robing room…

‘Valcours!’ breathed Danni. ‘I don’t know if we should be lookin’ at this.’ She shuddered prettily.

… his noxious pit bull at his feet, salivating on the carpet. Suddenly, my decision had been made. As I met Valcours’ imperturbable stare, it seemed I was reading the truth of his spirit from his wrinkled brow and stonily set mouth. Though by all he is accounted a handsome man, at the moment his handsomeness appeared to have been remolded by some subtle and invisible agency, as by a mask of the clearest glass, into a fierce and hideous countenance, thus revealing a foul inner nature. Without a word of greeting, he asked for my decision..

‘No,’ I said. ‘What you propose is the worst form of petro. I will not trifle with les Invisibles.’

He exhibited no surprise and merely pulled on his gloves, saying, ‘Next Saturday I will bring three men to the temple. Together we will penetrate the mysteries.’

‘Keep your damned mysteries to yourself!’ I shouted.

‘Sunday,’ he repeated, smiling. Then he inclined his head in one of those effete bows I find so irritating and left me, his accursed dog at his heels.

It is in my mind now that I should work spells against him, though by doing so I would in effect be practicing petro of the sort he wishes me to practice. And yet, it would be strictly in the service of the temple, and thus not a violation of my vows, only of my self-esteem. Be that as it may, there is an aura of significant evil about Valcours, such as I have not met with in all my experience, and it is time our association came to an end, one way or another.

Thereafter the diary continued in ordinary fashion, lists of appointments and more sex with Miriam T, until a third of the way through the volume, at which point the entries ceased.

Aime’s account only posed new mysteries, and reading it had knotted Jocundra’s muscles and set her temples to throbbing, as if it had contained the germ of an old disease. She begged off the rest of the morning, telling Danni she wanted to lie down a while, while Danni insisted on coming along and giving her a massage.

‘There ain’t nothin’ like a massage for tension,’ she said; she winked slyly. ‘I learned all about it out in Hollywood.’

She accompanied Jocundra back to the room, had her remove her blouse and unhook her bra and lie flat on her stomach. At first the massage was relaxing. Danni straddled her, humming, rubbing out the tension with expert hands, but then she slipped a hand under to cup Jocundra’s breast, kissed her shoulder and whispered how beautiful she was. Shocked, Jocundra rolled over, inadvertently knocking Danni off the bed.

‘I thought you wanted me,’ sobbed Danni, completely unstrung, her facial muscles working, tears glistening in her eyes. ‘Don’t you like me?’

Jocundra assured her she did, just not that way, but Danni was inconsolable and ran from the room.

Their relationship deteriorated swiftly. Jocundra tried to convince Danni to leave Maravillosa, pointing out that Otille had never given substantial help to any of the ‘friends’, and offered to lend her money; but Danni rejected the offer and told her she didn’t understand. She began to avoid Jocundra, to whisper asides to her companions and giggle whenever Jocundra passed by, and a few days later she made an ineffectual play for Donnell. That, Jocundra realized, had been Danni’s objective all along, and she had been foolish not to anticipate it. The pathos of the ‘friends’, of this talentless child-woman and her imitation of Otille, her Otille-like manipulations, caused Jocundra to wonder if she had not underestimated the evil influence of the place. Donnell was becoming moody and withdrawn again, as he had not been since leaving Shadows, refusing to talk about what transpired during the days; and one night toward the end of the second week, waiting for him to return, staring out of their bedroom window, she had a new appreciation of Maravillosa.

Screams, some of them desperate sounding, arose from the cabins. Torches flared in the dark thickets behind them. The half moon sailed high, sharp-winged shadows skimming across it, and the conical hills and the vine-shrouded trees washed silver-green under the moonlight had the look of a decaying city millennia after a great catastrophe.

Morning sunlight shafted from the second-story windows, the rays separate and distinct, leaving the lower half of the ballroom sunk in a cathedral dimness, but revealing the wallpaper to be peeling and covered with graffiti. Crudely painted red and green veves, including that of Ogoun Badagris, occupied central positions among the limericks and sexual advertisements. Otille held her acting classes in the ballroom, and wooden chairs were scattered throughout, though only five were now taken, those by Otille, Donnell, and the rest of the pets. Except for Otille and Donnell, they sat apart, ringed about Clea, who was hunched over a chewed-up yellow guitar, looking pale and miserable. Without her wig, she lacked even the pretense of vivacity. She wore a slip which showed her breasts to be the size of onions, and passing her in the door, Donnell had caught a faint rancid odor that reminded him of spoiled milk. Around her feet were half a dozen cages filled with parakeets and lovebirds.

‘What are you going to play for us, dear?’ Otille’s voice rang in the emptiness.

‘I ain’t ready yet,’ said Clea, pouting.

Simpkins sat with folded arms; Papa leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees, affecting intense interest; and Downey sprawled in his chair, bored. The birds hopped and twittered.

‘Allrighty,’ said Clea bravely. ‘Here goes nothin’.’

She plucked a chord, humming to get the pitch, and raised a quavering soprano, souring on the high notes.

‘Aw, God!’ said Downey, banging his heels on the floor. ‘Not that. Sing somebody else’s song!’ ‘I wanta sing this,’ said Clea, glowering at him. ‘Let her alone, Downey,’ said Otille with maternal patience. She put her hand on Donnell’s arm. ‘Downey wrote the song when he thought he was in love with me, but then he entered his narcissistic period and he’s ashamed to have written anything so unabashedly romantic’ She turned again to Clea. ‘Go ahead, dear.’

‘We’re behind you, sister,’ said Papa. ‘Don’t be bashful.’

Donnell wondered if anyone could possibly buy Papa’s cheerleading act. His face was brimful of bad wishes, and by course of logic alone it was obvious that Clea’s failure would improve his lot. She lifted her reedy voice again, and it seemed to Donnell to be the voice of Maravillosa, the sad, common sound of the dead trees and the ‘friends’ and the ebony faces, of Otille herself, of the sullen and envious relationships between the pets, the whine of a supernatural nervous system which governed them all. Even if no one were there to hear it, he thought, the sound would go on, arising from the wreckage of evil. A futile transmission like the buzz of a half-crushed wasp.

Clea faltered, a high note shrilled. ‘I can’t sing when he’s grinnin’ at me,’ she said, gesturing at Downey. ‘He’s makin’ me too nervous.’

‘Oh, hell!’ said Downey. ‘Lemme help her.’ He stalked over and took the guitar from her.

‘If it won’t interfere,’ said Otille. ‘Will it interfere?’

Clea could not hide her delight. She blushed, casting a furtive glance at Downey. ‘Maybe not,’ she said.

He pulled up a chair beside her, picked a fancy introduction of chords, and this time the song had the courtly feel of a duet between a country girl and a strolling balladeer.

Some of the birds were fluttering up in their cages, chirping, agitated; others perched on the bars, trilling, throats pulsing in a transport of song. Donnell felt Otille tense beside him, and he focused on Clea. Her magnetic field was undifferentiated by arcs, a nimbus of white light encompassing her and Downey and sections of all the cages. Through the glow, she looked like an enraptured saint at prayer with her accompanying angel. The face of her gros bon ange was ecstatic, a mosaic of cobalt interlaced by fine gold threads. Nearing its end, the song grew more impassioned and the white glow spread to surround the cages and every one of the birds was singing.

Otille was disappointed at song’s end. She praised Clea’s effort, acknowledged the result, but her displeasure was evident.

‘Lemme have a crack at them birds, Otille,’ said Papa. He popped his knuckles, eager to get started.

‘We all know what you can do, Papa,’ said Otille. ‘It will prove nothing to see it again. I was hoping for something more… more out of the ordinary.’

Clea hung her head. Downey picked out a brittle run of blue notes, uninvolved.

‘It’s obviously a matter of mood,’ said Simpkins. ‘When poor Pavarotti was struck down, I recall Sister Clea as bein’ in a snit, whereas today, makin’ music with her heart’s desire.,.’

‘He’s not!’ squawked Clea; she leapt up and pointed at him, fuming. ‘Lessee what you can do with ‘em! Nothin’, I bet!’

Downey smiled, strummed a ripple of chords.

‘If I begin to tweet,’ said Simpkins, ‘then indeed we have a proof positive of Sister Clea’s talent. But frankly I’m more interested in seein’ what Brother Harrison can achieve with our feathered friends.’

Otille pursed her lips and tapped them with an ivory finger. She cocked one eye towards Donnell. ‘Would you mind?’ she asked.

Donnell stretched out his legs and folded his arms in imitation of Simpkins, returning his bland smile. Simpkins was obviously a force to be reckoned with, despite his failed gift, and Donnell did not want to establish the precedent of following his orders by proxy. ‘I’ll pass,’ he said. ‘I didn’t come here to kill birds.’

‘You don’t have to kill them,’ said Otille, as if that were the furthest thing from her mind. ‘I’m much more interested in the variety of psychic powers than their repetition. Why don’t you just see what you can do. Experiment. I won’t hold it against you if nothing happens.’

But you will if I don’t try, thought Donnell. ‘All right,’ he said. He took Clea’s place in the midst of the cages, and she and Downey settled into chairs.

The birds appeared none the worse for wear, bright-eyed and chirping, swinging on their perches. Their plumage was beautiful - pastel blues and pinks, snowy white, bottle greens - and their magnetic fields were hazy glimmers in the air, easy to influence at a distance like the fields of telephones and cameras. He found if he reached out his hand to a cage, the birds within it stilled, quieted, and their fields glowed. But he could produce no other effect. The two cages closest to him contained nine birds, and by spreading his fingers magician style he managed to still all nine controlling each with one of his fingers, feeling the tug of the fields. He doubted, though, that this would satisfy Otille. Then following Otille’s advice - ‘Experiment’ - and wondering why it had never occurred to him to try before, he maintained his hold on the fields and shifted his focus into the darkness of the gros bon ange.

Bits of whirling blackness and jeweled fire hung in the silver cages. Tentatively, he pushed a forefinger against one of the fields, stroking it, and a thread of iridescent light no thicker than a spiderweb shot from his fingertip. He withdrew the finger, startled; but since the bird displayed no ill effects, its fires undimmed, he tried it again. Eventually nine threads of light connected his fingertips with the nine birds, and the refractions inside their bodies flowed in orderly patterns. The pressure of their fields against his hands increased, and when he involuntarily crooked a finger, one of the birds hopped down off its perch. He repeated the process, and soon, feeling omnipotent, the ringmaster of the magical circus, he had gained enough control to send them marching about the cages. Tiny jewelbox creatures hopping onto silvery feeders and swings, twittering and parading around and around.

Clea gasped, someone knocked over a chair, and someone else contributed slow, ironic applause. ‘Thank you, Donnell,’ said Otille. That’s quite sufficient.’

He relaxed his control, brought the ballroom back into view and saw Otille smiling at him. ‘Well,’ he said, stung by the pride of ownership in her face, ‘was that out of the ordinary enough?’ Then he glanced down at the cages.

He had not killed the birds. Not outright. That would have been merciful compared to what he had done. The delicate hues of their feathers were dappled with blood, and freed from his control, their cries had grown piercing, stirring echoes in the sunlit upper reaches of the room. Their beaks were shattered, crimson droplets welling from the cracks; their wings and legs were broken; and the membranes of their eyes had burst and were dripping fluid. All lay flapping on the floors of the cages except for a parakeet, its legs unbroken, which clung to its perch and screamed.

‘Papa,’ said Otille. ‘Will you and Downey take the undamaged ones to my office?’

Downey was frozen, grim-faced; Clea buried her head in his shoulder. Papa hesitated, eyeing Donnell nervously.

Three, no, four of the birds had quit fluttering, and Donnell sat watching them die, stunned.

‘Simpkins,’ said Otille. ‘Take the others out to my car.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Simpkins. He came over to the cages, and as he bent down, he whispered, ‘Poor Dularde never knew what hit him, did he, brother?’

Sick of his snide comments, his contemptuous air, Donnell jumped up and swung, but Simpkins easily caught his wrist and with his other hand seized Donnell’s throat, his fingers digging in the back of the Adam’s apple. ‘I ain’t no goddamn parakeet, brother,’ he said. He tightened his grip, and Donnell’s mouth sprang open.

‘Simpkins!’ Otille clapped her hands.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Simpkins released Donnell and hoisted the cages, once again bland and smiling.

Donnell headed for the door, holding his throat.

‘Where are you going?’ called Otille.

He didn’t answer, intent on finding Jocundra, on washing away the scum of Otille and her pets. But he turned back at the door, waylaid by a thought. Why, while he was killing the birds, had their… their what? Make it their souls. Why not? Why had they showed no sign of injury? He stared at the bloody heaps of feathers, blinking and straining until the cages gleamed silver. They were empty. Then movement caught his eye. Up above Simpkins’ head rising and falling and jittering like jeweled sparks in a wind, the souls of the slain birds were flying.

Near the end of the second week, Jocundra ran into the Baron in the hall outside his room. He was adjusting his doorknob with a screwdriver, muttering, twisting the knob. He had never said a word to her, and she had intended to pass without greeting, but he called out to her and asked to borrow her for a few seconds.

‘You just stand there,’ he commanded. ‘Give that doorknob a twist to the right when I tell you, then step inside quick.’

He went into the room and began prying with the screwdriver at a narrow ceiling board. ‘Someone,’ he said, grunting, digging at the board, ‘someone been sneakin’ round, so I’m rigging myself a little security.’ He was wearing jeans and a ripped New Orleans Saints jersey, and his arm muscles bunched and rippled like snakes. His eyes, though, had a liverish tinge. She had presumed him to be in his forties, but now she reckoned him a well-preserved sixty.

He put down the screwdriver and held up his hands beneath the board. ‘Do it,’ he said.

She twisted the knob. The hallway door slammed shut, almost striking her as she stepped inside, and a second door dropped from the ceiling and would have sealed off the alcove if the Baron had not caught it. He staggered under the weight. ‘Sucker must weigh a hunnerd, hunnerd and fifty pounds,’ he said. He noticed Jocundra’s bewilderment.’All the rooms like that. Of Valcours he liked to trap folks.’ He chuckled. ‘And then he give ‘em a hard time.’ He pushed the door back into place until it clicked, then he stared at her in unfriendly fashion. ‘Don’t you recognize me, woman?’ She looked at him, puzzled, and he said, ‘Sheeit! Mama Zito’s Temple down on Prideaux Street. I was the damn fool used to stand out front and drag folks in for the service.’

‘Foster,’ she said. ‘Is that right?’ She remembered him as a hostile, arrogant man who had drunk too much; he had refused to be her informant.

‘Yeah, Foster.’ He picked up his screwdriver. “Cept make it Baron, now. That damn Foster name never done me no good.’ He stepped around her, opened the hallway door, and twisted the knob to the left until it clicked twice. ‘You ever get to Africa?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I quit school.’

‘Yeah, well, I figured you didn’t make it, seein’ how you hangin’ with that green-eyed monkey.’ He registered her frown. ‘Hey, I got nothin’ against the monkey. It’s just that since he come the boy have put a charge into Otille, and that ain’t good.’

‘What’s your relationship with Otille?’

‘You writin’ another paper?’

‘I’m just curious.’

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘You keep an edge on your curious, ‘cause this one damn curious place. Huh! Curious.’ He walked over to his drawer and took out a shirt. ‘I’m Otille’s friend. Not like one of them raggedy fuckers down at the cabins. I’m her friend. And she’s mine. That’s why she take to callin’ me Baron after the death god, ‘cause she say can’t nobody but death be a friend to her. ‘Course that’s just the actress in her comin’ out.’ He stripped off the jersey and shrugged into the shirt; a jagged scar crossed his right chest, and the muscles there were somewhat withered. ‘She don’t make me do no evil, and I don’t preach to her. We help each other out. Like right now.’ He brandished a fist. ‘I’m watchin’ over you and the monkey.’

‘Why?’

‘You think Otille’s mean, don’t you? Sheeit! She got her moods, ain’t no doubt. But there’s folks ‘round here will cut you for a nickel, squeeze you for a dime. Take that smiley son of a bitch Simpkins…’

‘Baron!’ Otille stood in the door, her face convulsing.

The Baron calmly went on buttoning his shirt. ‘I be down in a minute.’

‘Have you seen Donnell?’ asked Jocundra, hoping the question would explain her presence to Otille.

Otille ignored her. ‘Bring the car around,’ she said to the Baron.

‘Nothin’ to get excited ‘bout, Otille,’ he said. ‘Woman’s just helpin’ me fix my door.’ When she remained mute, he sighed, slung his coat over his shoulder and strode out.

‘I don’t want you talking to him,’ said Otille in measured tones. ‘Is that clear?’

‘Fine.’ Jocundra started for the door, but Otille blocked the way. Her temples throbbed, nerves jumpedin her cheek, her coral mouth thinned. Only her eyes were unmoving, seeming to recede into black depths beneath her milky complexion, like holes cut in a bedsheet. It amazed Jocundra that when she next spoke, her voice was under control and not a scream.

‘Would you like to leave Maravillosa?’ she asked. ‘I can have you driven anywhere you wish.’

‘Yes,’ said Jocundra. ‘But if I left, Donnell would go with me, and even if he stayed, then I’d stay because I’d be afraid you’d hurt him.’

‘Bitch!’ Otille lashed out at the wall with the side of her fist. ‘I’m not going to hurt him!’ She glanced at the wall and saw that her fist had impacted the forehead of a screaming ebony face, and she laid her palm against it as if easing its pain. ‘I’m going to have him,’ she said mildly. ‘Do you like this room?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Jocundra, enunciating the words with precision, implying a response to both Otille’s remarks.

‘It takes so much time and energy to keep the place up,’ said Otille, blithe and breezy. ‘I’ve let it run down, but I’ve tried to maintain islands of elegance within it. Would you care to see one?’ And before Jocundra could answer, she swirled out of the door, urging her to follow. ‘It’s just down the hall,’ she said. ‘My father’s old room.’

It was, indeed, elegant. Gobelin tapestries of unicorns and hunts, dozens of original paintings. Klee, Kandinsky, Magritte, Braque, Miro. The black wood of the walls showed between them like veins of coal running through a surreal bedrock. Comfortable sofas and chairs, an antique globe, a magnificent Shiraz carpet. But opposed to this display of good taste, arranged in cabinets and on tables, was a collection of cheap bric-a-brac like that found in airport gift shops and tourist bazaars: mementos of exotic cultures bearing the acultural stamp of sterility most often approved by national chambers of commerce. There were ashtrays, enameled key rings, coin purses, models of famous landmarks, but the bulk of the collection was devoted to mechanical animals. Pandas, monkeys, an elephant which lifted tiny logs, a snake coiling up a plastic palm, on and on. A miniature invasion creeping over the bookshelves and end tables. The collection, said Otille, represented her father’s travels on behalf of the Rigaud Foundation and his various charities, and reflected his pack rat’s obsession with things bright and trivial.

The room appeared to have calmed Otille. She chatted away as if Jocundra were an old school friend, describin family evenings when her father and she would set all the toy animals in operation and send them bashing into one another. But Jocundra found this wholesale change in mood more alarming than her rage, and in addition, she was beginning to make eerie connection between the generations of Rigauds. Valcours with his anthropomorphic toys, Otille’s father’s animals, Otille’s pets and ‘friends.’ God only knew what Clothilde had collected. It was easy to see how one could think of the family as a single terrible creature stretching back through time, some genetic flaw or chemical magic binding the spirit to the blood.

‘I’m afraid I have a luncheon in New Orleans,’ Otille said, ushering Jocundra out. ‘Foundation business. But we can talk more another time.’ She locked the door behind them and headed down the hall. ‘If I see Donnell on my way to the car,’ she called back, ‘I’ll send him along.’

It was said with such unaffected sincerity that for the moment Jocundra did not doubt her.

‘An attic’s the afterlife of a house,’ said Otille, opening the door, ‘Or so my mother used to say.’

The air inside was sweetly scented and cool. She stepped aside to let him pass, and as he did, her hip brushed his hand, a silky pass like a cat fitting itself to your palm. She shut the door, and he heard the lock engage. The gable windows were shuttered, the room pitch dark, and when she walked off, he lost sight of her.

‘Turn on the light!’

‘Why don’t you find me like you did Dularde?’

‘You might fall.’

She gave a frosty little laugh. Boards creaked. ‘Damn it, Otille!’

‘Take off your glasses, and I’ll turn on the light.’

Christ! He folded the glasses and put them in his pocket. He imagined he could hear her breathing, but realized it was his own breath whining through clogged sinuses.

‘What the hell do you want to show me?’ he asked.

‘You’ll have to come to the window,’ she said softly.

A rattling to his left made him jump. Metal shutters lifted from the row of gables, strips of silver radiance widening to chutes of dust-hung moonlight spilling into a long, narrow room, so long its far reach was lost in shadow. It must, he thought, run the length of the rear wing. The rattling subsided, and seven windows ranged the darkness, portals opened onto a universe of frozen light. Bales, bundles, and sheet-draped mysteries lined the walls. And then Otille, who had slipped out of her clothing, stepped from the shadows and went to stand by the nearest window. Her reappearance had the quality of illusion, as if she were an image projected by the rays of moonlight. Her skin glowed palely, and the curls of black hair falling onto her shoulder, her pubic triangle, these seemed absent places in her flesh.

‘Don’t look so dumfounded,’ she said, beckoning.

From the window, Donnell saw white flickering lights beyond the conical hills. Welder’s arcs, Otille explained. The copper had arrived, and the night shift had begun at once. The peak of the gable cramped them together, and in the course of talking and pointing, her breast nudged his arm. He couldn’t help stealing glances at her, at the lapidary fineness of her muscles, the way the moonlight shaded her nipples to lavender, and whenever she looked at him, he felt that something was pouring out of her, that dampers had been withdrawn and her inner core exposed, irradiating him. Though he had steeled himself against her, his body reacted and his thoughts became confused. He wanted to turn and go back downstairs to Jocundra, but he also wanted to touch the curve of Otille’s belly and feel the bubble of heat it held. Her black eyes swam with lights, her sulky mouth was drawing him toward her, and he lost track of what she was saying, something about his having validated her beliefs.

‘Come along,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I’ll show you my room. It used to be Clothilde’s, but I’ve had it repaneled and decorated after my own tastes.’

At midpoint of the attic three doors were set into the wall, the central one leading along a short passage to yet another door, and beyond this lay a cavernous room hung with shafts of moonlight. The ceiling was carved to resemble a weave of black branches, leaf sprays, dripping moss; and the light penetrated through the glassed-over interstices. Trunks bulged from the walls, their bark patterns rendered precisely; ebony saplings and bushes -perfect to the detailing of the veins on the leaves -sprouted from the floor, and at the center of the room was a carpeted depression strewn with pillows and having the effect of a still, sable eye at the heart of a whirlpool. A control console was mounted in its side, switches and an intercom, and after pulling him down to sit beside her, Otille flicked one of the switches. Colored filters slid across the rents in the carved canopy, and the beams of moonlight empurpled. Donnell lay back against the pillows, watching her rapt face as she unbuttoned his shirt, and when she bent down to kiss his chest, he shivered. It was as if a pale beast the shape of Otille had dipped her muzzle into him and fed.

Her hips rolled beneath him in practised shudders, her fingers traced the circuits of his nerves, yet her love-making was so adept, so athletic, passion reduced to ornate calisthenics, that the spell she had cast upon him was broken and his interest flagged. Still, like a good pet, he performed, pretending it was Jocundra touching him. And then, because he thought it would be appropriate to the mood, he took his first look at Otille’s gros bon ange.

If one of her clever movements had not renewed his passionate reflex, he would have thrown himself off her in revulsion. The pile of the carpet resolved into a myriad of silver pinpricks against which her head was silhouetted like a coalsack; but instantly sparks of jeweled light rushed up from the area of her hips, defining the lines of her breasts and ribs as they flowed, and fitting a bestial mask to her face. It was a thing in a constant state of dissolution composed of emerald, azure, gold and ruby glints that coalesced into patches of mineral brilliance, decayed, and melted into new encrusted forms. Black rips for eyes, fangs of gemmy light. It roared silently at him, its mouth twisting open and gnashing shut. Yet each time their hips ground together, the mask wavered, loosing stray sparks downward, as if his thrusts were inducing its animating stuff to join in. He thrust harder, and the entire structure of the mask dissipated for a split second, fiery wax running from a mold. He felt a desolate glee in knowing he could overwhelm this monstrosity, and he turned all his energies to dismantling the mask, battering at Otille, who moaned beneath him. Whenever he let up, the mask’s expression grew more feral, but at last it melted away, flowing back into her groin. Looking down to where their bellies merged, he saw an iridescent slick like a film of oil sliding between them.

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.’