Life Among Giants (33 page)

PART FOUR

Destroying Angel

17

As the restaurant came into focus, Kate and I grew further apart. It's possible I was trying to push her away, but that was not conscious. Jack didn't want her around me, for one thing—we caused one another too much excitement, he said, but he was being polite: excitement was hardly the word. For another thing, I hadn't launched the great worldwide search for Dad's briefcase that my sister had envisioned, and she was plain mad. Also, though she'd made peace with the idea, she really didn't like me opening a restaurant in Westport, felt it exposed us both to something she couldn't quite articulate, pity or scorn, or some sort of combination—those tragic Hochmeyer kids, their loser father.

T
H
E FIRST DAY
of my involuntary vacation before Firfisle opened was unseasonably freezing, depressing, Lizard alone at Hochmeyer Haven, Etienne and RuAngela having taken for themselves the room they'd booked for me at some quaint inn in Southport—no refund possible, so why shouldn't they? I much preferred house arrest to a pile of pillows stinking of potpourri.

Major League Baseball playoffs were underway, but I could hardly make sense of the games. I kept turning off the television, feeling I had to get to work. I perambulated, back and forth from the kitchen table to the couch to the car, back and forth, forth and back, TV on, TV off.

Light snow already ended, maybe a half-inch when I'd hoped for a blizzard, still only October.
Th
e truth slowly sank in: I was frazzled. Etienne had made me a gallon of some kind of Fusion udon-noodle soup, a complicated pot of flavors with tempura of root vegetables for me to heat and add.

With the prospect of relaxation all my ghosts visited, of course, or anyway called: Kate let the phone ring a good fifty times to get me out of the shower. “I dreamed of waiting tables,” she said. “I was very good at it.”

“Well,” I said warily. “Of course you were.”

Th
en the classic Kate non sequitur: “You want to know the difference between a mental hospital and prison?”

“Okay. But first, your dream. Where did it take place?”

She was not to be deterred: “People in prison? Most of them are guilty as charged. But they think they've done nothing wrong. At McLean? Everyone sick and blameless?
Th
ey're sure they've done wrong.”

“Do you think you've done something wrong?” I said.

“Don't psychoanalyze me,” she said.

Quickly, I said, “
Th
ere's probably a job for you at Firfisle. I mean, there's definitely a job there for you. We're opening in a week and if it takes off, we're going need all kinds of people.”

“All kinds of people. I see what you mean. What kind am I?”

“Kate, why are you talking about McLean?”

She hung up, bang.

I opened the rice wine that RuAngela had packed with E.T.'s soup, tried a tiny glass, found it strange, tried to move my thoughts forward from Kate, found my way only as far as Emily, a blessing, as the next stop on that particular train was Barb and Nick Hochmeyer, sitting right there, either side of me at the table. I poured a bigger glass of the wine. RuAngela was right. It was very fine cold. I drank more. Somehow, the soup didn't seem necessary.

Just a couple of weeks to go.
Th
e town had approved us, though not unanimously—one of the selectmen had gone to high school with Dad and recalled him at the public hearing as a “one-man crime wave.” Luckily, the others weren't in favor of visiting the sins of the father upon the son. Our twenty-one tables had come, a hundred chairs in transit. Ferkie the mushroom man would bring wild fungi on Mondays starting the day I was back.
Th
e produce was coming from four farms local, one bigger distributor, also our own garden, which had had a fine first summer.

Th
e pasta flours were coming down from Canada with the pasta chef, Colodo Doncorlo, a tiny older woman who barely spoke English. No reason we couldn't fit Kate in, if it would help her.

Okay, I was back to Kate. Also, the rice wine was gone. I climbed the stairs unsteadily, performed my ablutions, fell into bed and tried for sleep. Midnight, two o'clock, four o'clock, four-thirty, five, each ghost returning for her hour: Emily, Kate, Mom. And of course Perdhomme and Kaiser, and my completely vincible dad. So sleep didn't come, didn't come, didn't come, something rapping at my bedroom window, dreamcraft no doubt, even as distinct as it was:
tap-tap, tap-da-tap,
impossible rhythm, second floor, must be hail, that kind of night, that trippy, tricky Japanese wine. So to the kitchen for the big glass of water. I ate a banana, then a nice pear, stood staring, listening, eventually pulled out a couple of pounds of dried, mixed-species wild mushrooms Ferkie had provided as samples. I'd sneaked them from the restaurant's incipient pantry days before, didn't want my partners shutting me down too completely. I could rest when I was dead. As my mother used to say.

Ferkie had dried the fungi in a homemade sun-and-wind system of his own invention, and it was true, they were unusually fragrant and whole. My plan was to make a kind of flour out of them, something you could use to make pure-mushroom pastas, perhaps, or mushroom breads. I got the mortar and pestle out, broke the mushrooms down, went to work experimenting with rare powders.

Tap-tap
at the patio doors, more sleet, lively images of Emily after she'd ditched her parents on the way to Ancestor's Day in Korea, the way the pants she'd borrowed from Kate's closet fit her: baggy, gaping, plenty of room for a hand. Why contemplate the difference between love and lust? Emily Bright loved me, and love for her was inextricably a physical thing. She lived for the moment, and my moments with her had been fine. I hadn't been as lucky as Kate, hadn't found grown-up romance before the cataclysm.

Tap-tap-tap.

Outside I stood barefoot in the soggy snow, the precipitation having simply stopped, cloud cover breaking into a chill pink dawn, the world still as an egg in a nest. I don't know how long it took me to notice the footprints, someone in misshapen bare feet, nearly a child's prints. No, stocking feet, toes indistinct, the wrinkles of fabric evident, that kind of packing snow, a one-way trail. What creature was this? I ventured out into the night hugging my pajamas around me, followed the elfin prints, leaving my own more monstrous ones, painfully barefoot. Hurrying, I followed the sprite's trail down to the pond and along its partly frozen shore. At the dam end whoever it was had made an incredibly long leap over the boggy, half-frozen brook, a leap I couldn't hope to make, even with a stride like mine. I landed in the icy water running, then sprinting, nearly falling, catching my balance and trotting as fast as I could on the impressionable snow up the great lawns of the High Side, followed the trail to an ornate hatchway cut into one of the large carriage doors of the poolhouse.

Th
is was the only building on the premises I hadn't been allowed to see in the weeks I'd hung around the High Side during the run-up to
Children of War:
“Something must be private,” as Sylphide had told me disingenuously. I gathered even then that it was a place Dabney had used, just the look on her face, the fade in her voice. To call it a poolhouse was correct in that it housed the pumps and heaters and equipment for the maintenance of the two enormous old-fashioned pools, but the building was another of the Chlorine Baron's fantasies, a half-size replica of the carriage house at Balmoral, the queen's residence in Scotland, twelve carriage bays with mini-grand doors, two dozen horse stalls just big enough for the legendary teams of miniature horses the bogus Baron had affected. Anyone who'd read the big
Life
magazine story on Dabney in the early sixties knew that. I stood there freezing in the snow a long moment, then—no other choice but frostbite—quietly tried the hatch, found it open.

Inside, something of a barn, slightly warmer than the night. I looked in each stall, each bay, dancing from foot to foot. One of the miniature carriages was still there, a beautifully made thing, tiny lamps, small wheels, gilt frame, leather seats, all kid-size, no one inside. At the back of the building I found a wet sock on the bottom step of a set of otherwise unpromising stairs, climbed them to another door. Which creaked open to reveal a splendid drawing room, everything a little too small, certainly too small for me, decor unchanged from the 1920s. Shivering, I spied another sock in its own puddle under an archway. I ducked through and into an elegant little living room, looked into a scaled-down kitchen, a formal dining room huge even in half-size, pair of soggy blue jeans on the floor in front of an open door. Which led into a hallway along which were several little bedrooms decked out as for the children of royalty: canopy beds, candelabra, bathrooms, sink rooms, toilet rooms.
Th
e Chlorine Baron had been a Napoleon, under five feet tall, I'd read, and a famous lover of plumbing, human or porcelain.

A dozen small doors to try. Nothing. At the end of the hall, I spied a tiny pair of green-striped tap-pants, scrunched where they'd been shed in front of an open closet door, shelves of neatly folded sheets and towels, a lot of towels, perhaps hundreds, puzzling shaft of light. I knew enough about the High Side by then to venture in. Of course the back wall was a door. I pushed through into a grand little bedroom, found my snow fairy asleep under a neat sheet and quilt in the oddly small double bed. She breathed emphatically, not quite snoring, curled up on herself like a forest fawn, no pretending. I leaned close, kissed her pocked cheek, forever the smell of jasmine about her.
Th
e bed had been made up for two, the pillow beside hers so inviting, the guest-side covers still folded back. Her naked shoulders rose and fell. She snuffled, pulled her hands up in front of her face.
Th
e light came from a bathroom, like sunlight through the flung door. I felt my heart in my chest, pushed the ingenious false panel closed, checked the ornate lock on the real door to the room (it was snapped tight), stepped over a wet gray T-shirt and into the bathroom lights, bright and hot and yellow as the sun. I could wait for her to wake.

Th
e bathroom was not one room but several, in the style of the Baron, a kind of porcelain landscape, grottoes and glens. Toiletries were laid out on a bench as if for an expected guest—toothbrush, comb, razor, towels, soap, shampoo and conditioners, everything I needed to get ready for bed. I pulled off my wet trousers, hoped that in my weariness I was reading the situation correctly, stripped out of my shirt and underclothes.
Th
e bathtub was a kind of fjord with high walls.
Th
e sun, an enormous heat lamp in the ceiling, seemed to go behind a cloud. What if at home I'd slept soundly, hadn't noticed her footprints in the snow? What seemed a fanciful rockslide turned out to be a stile to climb into the tub; what seemed a great carved vine supported by snakes was a railing to hold. Had that been she tapping at my windows? I turned the heads of a pair of matched oxen, and the water came plummeting off several shelves that made waterfalls, quickly growing very hot. She must have been given a ride by Chun, then run home. My own thawing feet felt scalded. I plucked at the oxen, pulled at the wheels of their cart, but the diverter for the shower turned out to be the head of the drover, who, if he looked to the left, released a dozen spouts from the mouths of all the various creatures around him, and rain—an absolute tropical downpour—dozens of nozzles hidden in the clouds painted in the ceiling tiles, quickly warming.
Th
e sunlamp came in and out as if clouds were passing. I washed, rinsed luxuriantly. When I turned the water off, the sun reappeared, as if after a storm. I climbed out, wrapped myself in the heavy bathrobe I hadn't noticed till that moment, brushed my hair down over my shoulders with the Baron's golden brush. As I finished scrubbing my teeth, the artificial sun blazed.

Back in the warm bedroom, Sylphide had rolled onto her side, pulling the covers with her—she'd invaded my half of the elfin bed, leaving only an alley of mattress pressed up against the wall. Clean and warm, timid but tumid, too big to be a real lizard, and feeling as though I were following instructions, I slithered up onto the high old bed from its foot, crunch of horsehair beneath me, delicate unfolding of sheet and quilt, gradually assumed my narrow allotment, on the way inspecting her skin from ankles to forehead minutely. Finally her face was at my clavicle, my ear on the pillow that had awaited me, my feet hanging off the other end. Her breath was warm. I passed a hand through the air around her head, passed it closer, stroked her soft hair. She stretched, pushing a muscular leg between my thighs, then further between, lifted her arm across my ribs, continued her untroubled breathing. I put my own arm over her, spanned her night-warmed butt with my hand, slowly pulled her hips into mine, using all my strength to make it easeful, gentle.

But not imperceptible: her green eyes opened, very serious. Who was this?

Well, it was I.

She looked pleased with the results of her plan, not at all surprised to see me. “I am dreaming,” she mewled, stretching—each limb, every finger, all her toes, her neck, her back, all the muscle groups, but in that instance working against another body, my own, thorough and languid, in the process pulling herself up and upon me like I was a mountain and she was weather.