Résumé With Monsters (24 page)

"On the contrary," Philip said. "Hypnosis was a great idea. Without it I think the world as we know it would have ceased to exist."

Later that day when Philip went to Group, Olivia asked how he was doing.

"I think I have had a breakthrough," Philip said. "I'm beginning to see Amelia's side of things."

"Amelia?"

"My ex-girlfriend. I'm beginning to understand why we broke up."

"Yes?"

"I think she wanted someone a little more solid. I mean, what kind of life can a woman have with a novelist?"

part three

the perils of pelidyne

1.

Four months after the publication of the first volume of
The Despicable Quest
(entitled
The Blight
), Philip received his first fan letter, forwarded by his publisher without comment. The envelope was purple and the letter was handwritten on purple stationery in a large, exuberant script:

Dear Philip—

I stayed up all night reading this book, and all I can say is Wow! and Wow! again. It was
sooooo
good.

I can't wait to find out what happens next. Does Daphne escape from
Bleakham
? Don't tell me.

Dirk, my boyfriend, doesn't like you. He is jealous. Ha
Ha
. He wanted some action last night, and I said, "No thank you. Get that thing away from me. I am reading this great book, and I can't be bothered."

Naturally, we had a fight. When he passed out I took my picture out of his wallet.

I am sending you this picture to serve him right. I think you are a great writer, and I hope the next book comes out soon.

Love, Sissy Deal

PS I liked your picture, but I think you should get a new one made for the next book. You look too sad, I think. I also think the mustache should go. My guess is it was just an experiment, and maybe your friends have already voted and you have shaved it off. I can tell by your eyes that you are a very sweet and caring person, so the mustache doesn't fool me, but it is kind of shifty and some people might find it a definite turn-off.

Philip studied Sissy's photo and rubbed his upper lip; the mustache had been a mistake, deleted soon after the book's publication, and he was impressed by this stranger's insight. He was equally impressed by the photo which showed a young woman wearing a Panama hat and nothing else. The photo was taken outside, next to a bright yellow plastic wading pool. She had obviously been persuaded to remove her bathing suit—the blue bikini top lay in the grass at her feet—and the whiteness of her breasts and hips indicated that she was not in the habit of going nude outdoors. She rested her hands on her hips, leaning slightly forward, her lithe body easily dispensing with any artistic cavils regarding composition and lighting. She was laughing, her red hair tumbling over her shoulders in a shining tangle. Philip couldn't see her eyes, which were lost in the shadow of the hat's brim, but he knew they were full of high-spirited mischief, and he suspected they were blue.

If he were only going to get one fan letter, Philip thought, this wasn't a bad one to get. He wrote her back—to an address in Tallahassee.

"Dear Sissy,"
he began,
"Your Letter arrived at a low point for me, professionally and personally, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate your kind words and the charming photo you enclosed. I fear I have bad news for the both of us. My publisher has just informed me that the dismal performance of my first book makes continuing the series untenable. I have also learned that my ex-girlfriend is getting married, which destroys my dream of a reconciliation."

When Philip had gotten out of the psychiatric hospital, he had hoped to persuade Amelia to come and live with him. "I'm a changed man," he told her. "I had some major revelations in treatment. I see your side of things, now. And I'm on very effective medication. No more
Cthulhu
. No more
Yog-Sothoth
."

Amelia had been skeptical, of course, but that was just to be expected. He hoped to win her back with patience and love.

But he made no progress toward the harbor of her heart. Although she agreed to see him for an occasional Saturday lunch date, she remained skittish, as though he might at any moment tie her up and deposit her in another mail cart.

Philip was worried about Amelia's employment at
Pelidyne
, and when he saw her, he was often dismayed by the extent to which the workplace ruled her conversation. He saw no signs of domination by malevolent creatures from outer space—this medication really did work— but her world seemed narrow and airless and unhealthy. She seemed paler than usual— although this might be a new cosmetic experiment—and her mouth had lost some of its lively delight in the words it formed.

He loved her. He was worried about her. He felt that she was moving away from him.

Philip secured the occasional word processing job through a temporary employment agency called On Time. These jobs would last a few days or a few weeks and then end. There was plenty of time for the writing of novels, but Philip found that the medication that kept the monsters at bay was equally effective in repelling the muse. During his off hours, he thought about Amelia.

He lay in his apartment on rainy nights listening to the water pour through the system of pipes that he had cleverly rigged to send the ceiling's waterfall directly to the sink in the bathroom. He drank beer, more than was, perhaps, prudent, and he thought about Amelia in her small garage apartment in Hyde Park where she had settled after she left her sister's house.

Philip missed her with a kind of stretched- tight yearning that was exhausting. If he could be with her, he would ask nothing more. He would be content to be invisible in her presence, a well-behaved ghost.

This thought (engendered, no doubt, by a fatal combination of psychotropic drugs and alcohol) evolved into a plan of action. It required a movie theater that was next to a hardware store. Once such a theater was discovered, Philip had to wait until a movie was showing that appealed to Amelia. Then he had to convince Amelia to go. She was disinclined to go, indeed she was growing more remote with every meeting or phone conversation, but Philip eventually prevailed. It was a Saturday afternoon. That too was critical, since the hardware store closed at five in the evenings and was not open Sundays.

Philip easily slipped Amelia's apartment key from her purse at the start of the movie, left Amelia in the darkened theater— "I've got to get popcorn," he told her—and took the key to the hardware store. The clerk made a duplicate, and he was back in the theater buying popcorn in less than fifteen minutes. "Long line," he whispered to Amelia. He dropped her own key back in her purse.

During the day, he would let himself into her apartment and lie on her bed. Sometimes he would drink a couple of beers while lying there. The effect was soothing, reassuring. Surrounded by Amelia's sweet clutter—she was not an orderly woman—Philip would sense a kind of karmic marshaling of powers. She never made her bed, and he would lie on top of the sprawl of pale yellow sheets and smell the dazzle of different perfumes she wore and imagine her there. He knew, of course, that he was invading her privacy, and that what he was doing was indefensible, but, as is the case with all lost souls, he reveled in his abject condition.

He would bring a small travel clock with him, setting it for four in the afternoon in case he dozed. He did not want Amelia to catch him sleeping in her bed. He expected that such a discovery would seriously impair his efforts to win her back.

He was right.

His heart recognized the sound of the key in the lock and all its implications before his clouded brain knew anything. He came out of sleep with his heart racing and blinked at Amelia's stunned features at she stared at him from the bedroom door. She had come home early. Without a word, without a scream, she dropped the briefcase and fled. Philip jumped up and ran into the living room. The door to the apartment was open.

He saw her climbing into her car.

"Amelia!" he shouted. She did not turn around.

He went back inside and gathered the beer cans and the travel clock and put them in a paper bag. He locked the door behind him and walked down the stairs. Amelia was sitting in her car at the curb. She glared at him as he approached. When he was ten feet from her, she leaned on her horn, and roared away.

Downcast, Philip got in his own car and drove back to his apartment.

There was a message on his answering phone.

"How could you?" Amelia sobbed. "How? Don't ever, ever talk to me again."

Philip was fairly certain that there was nothing he could do—at least immediately—that would improve the situation.

Philip was still seeing Lily Metcalf once a week. She told him, "You wobbled outside the bounds of acceptable social behavior, Philip. I suppose you can see that? I'm sure you have a better grasp on such things than poor Jay Martin, who, if you will recall, was not one of your favorite people in treatment and who urinated in the saltwater aquarium without giving it a second thought. I like to think that your understanding of society's little rules is sharper than Jay's."

Amelia had called Lily, who had persuaded the younger woman not to go to the police.

“I told her you weren't dangerous," Lily said, "although I confess my opinion there is intuitive and not exactly reinforced historically. She said you tied her up once and put her in a mail cart with a tarp over her."

"I saved her life," Philip said.

Lily nodded. "Uh huh. Well, I assured her that you would leave her alone."

"Maybe you could explain how I have been going through some hard times."

Lily shook her head slowly. "No. I don't think mitigating circumstances are what she wants right now. I think she wants a reassurance that you will leave her alone."

"The thing is—" Philip began.

"Philip!"

"Well, okay, sure. I understand how this is a major setback."

"Philip," Lily said, "Amelia is engaged to be married. You are not winning her back."

And the very next day, when Philip watched Amelia pull into evening traffic from the parking lot of
Pelidyne
, when he followed her—in a rental car; he was no fool—north on Lamar, he knew the truth of what Lily told him. He didn't have to have it spelled out. He didn't really need to see them embrace on the porch steps.

Amelia's fiancé was a tall, good-looking guy, obviously just off work himself, his tie loosened. He kissed her long and hard in the dappled sunlight. They were both wearing suits, and there was a certain androgynous aspect to their lovers' clinch until he slid a hand in her blouse and she laughed and pushed away, exposing a wanton glimpse of breast and bright red bra.

No, Philip felt that this scene was overdone. The Dark Gods must have thought he was particularly dense, that he had to have everything spelled out.

All right. All right. She's romantically involved.

It was fitting that a letter should arrive, the very next day, from his publisher saying that
The Despicable Quest
was terminated.

2.

“Wow!"
Sissy wrote back.

I went out to the mailbox and there was your letter, and I called up my friend Louise and said you sent me a letter and she said What did it say ? and I said I don't know cause I haven't opened it and she said You goof and we both had a good laugh and when I hung up I read the letter and it u»as so sad I cried so that Dirk asked me what was the matter and I told him and we got in another fight and I crashed his car, which is a long story. He blames you for crashing his car. Can you believe it?

Anyway, I think it is awful about your book and I hope your publisher eats poison snails in some geeky New York French restaurant and dies, and excuse me but your old girlfriend doesn't sound like your type anyway, and I think you are well off without her.

You need a woman who is also a big fan. I guess that is not a hint, but you could take it that way and I wouldn't mind.