They walked together through the city streets, dodging bicycles. Joe knew he was making a mistake. He just didn"t know how big.
They reached West-Kruiskade. The nightclub-WATT-was located between a public park and an Asian fast food restaurant. Dozens of bikes were parked outside. Bouncers looked over a steady stream of clubbers as they entered. Joe and Mains joined them.
They waited to be served at the bar.
"The gla.s.ses are made from recycled materials," Mains said.
"Right," said Joe.
A bartender cracked open two brown bottles and poured the contents into two plastic gla.s.ses.
"They have a rainwater-flush system for the loos," Mains went on.
"Brilliant," Joe said in a deliberately flat voice.
"The lighting is all LEDs. Renewable energy sources."
"This is why you wanted to come here?" A disgusted grimace had settled on Joe"s face.
"The best part is over there." Mains turned and pointed toward the dance floor, accidentally brushing the shoulder of the girl next to him, who turned and stared at the two men. "It"s a brand new concept," he continued, ignoring the girl, who eventually looked away. "Sustainable Dance Club. Energy from people"s feet powers the lights in the dance floor."
Joe concentrated on trying to remain upright. He drank some beer from his recycled plastic gla.s.s. Something Mains had said in the restaurant came back to him.
"You know you said grave-robbing is never a good idea?" Joe looked at Mains, whose face was unreadable. "Surely what we"re doing is a form of grave-robbing? Adapting the work of a dead man without his approval." Joe finished his beer. "I"m not saying I wouldn"t have done the adaptation, offered the chance, but still, eh?"
Mains stared back into Joe"s eyes and for a moment Joe thought he had outwitted the scriptwriter.
"I prefer to think of it," Mains said eventually, "as recycling."
Joe held his beady gaze for a second or two, then, with an air about him of someone conceding defeat but slipping a card up his sleeve at the same time, said, "I have some ideas."
"Uh-huh?"
"Mike Nelson."
"The installation artist?"
"Works a lot with abandoned buildings, something Vos told me to keep an eye out for. Plus, he"s a fan of Lovecraft. He ent.i.tled one of his works To the Memory of H. P. Lovecraft. To the Memory of H. P. Lovecraft. Admittedly he"s quoting a dedication from a short story by Borges, but why would he do that if he wasn"t a fan?" Admittedly he"s quoting a dedication from a short story by Borges, but why would he do that if he wasn"t a fan?"
"So what about him?" Mains asked.
"Get him on board as production designer. I suggested it to Vos. Do you know what he said? "Production design"s not art, it"s craft.""
Mains appeared to alter the direction of the conversation. "Vos optioned your novel, didn"t he?"
Joe nodded."You realize if the Lovecraft adaptation gets made it increases the chances of yours going into development?"
Joe nodded again.
"It would make a good movie," Mains added.
"You"ve read it?" Joe asked before he could stop himself.
"Vos gave me a copy."
Joe felt more conflicted than ever. If Vos had given Mains a copy of his book it could mean he wanted him to adapt it, and whereas Joe would rather write any script himself, the ultimate goal was seeing a film version on the big screen, whoever got the writer"s credit.
Joe saw himself buying more beers, which was madness, given how seriously drunk he was by now. He turned around to pa.s.s one to Mains, but the writer was not there. The back of his jacket could be seen threading its way between the crowds toward the dance floor.
Joe looked at the beers in his hands.
The rest of the evening was a maelstrom of pounding music, throbbing temples, flashing lights. Grabbed hands, shouted remarks, glimpsed figures. Time became elastic, sense fragmentary, perception unreliable. Joe was aware, while staggering back to the hotel, of feeling so utterly isolated from the rest of the world that he felt alternately tiny and huge in relation to his surroundings. But mainly he was unaware of anything that made any sense; there were pockets, or moments, of clarity like stills from a forgotten film. The giant white swan of the Erasmus Bridge glowing against the night sky. A heel caught between rails as the first tram of the day screeched around a bend in the track. His hotel room-leaning back against the closed door, astonished to be there at all. Looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and not being convinced it was his, until he reminded himself this was how a man might look after drinking as much as he had. Cupping water in his hands from the tap, again and again and again. Finally, lying in bed staring at the door and hallucinating one of Antony Gormley"s cast-iron figures standing inside the room with its back to the door.
Waking was a slow process of fear and denial, the inside of his head host to a slideshow of rescued images from the night before. Tattooed flesh, strobe lights, red flashes. Someone grabbing hold of his crotch, taking a handful. A mouth full of teeth. The pulsing LEDs in the kinetic dance floor. The Erasmus Bridge. The Gormley figure in his room.
The open window admitted the sounds of traffic on river and road, the city coming to life.
Knowing he would soon be spending a long period of penance in the bathroom, he looked over toward the door. The figure he had thought he had seen just before falling asleep was not there, but there was something not right about that corner of the room. He closed his eyes, but then opened them again to stop his head spinning. There was something on the wall, something that oughtn"t to be there. Feeling his gorge begin to rise, he clambered out of bed, naked. To get to the bathroom he had to pa.s.s the end of the bed where there was a bit of s.p.a.ce between it and the wall opposite. The door was beyond to the left. There was something there on the floor, some kind of dummy or lifesize doll, or a picture of one painted dark rusty red by a child. There was a lot of red paint splashed on the floor and the walls and the end of the bed, but Joe had to get to the bathroom. He threw up in the toilet, his brain processing the images from the floor of the room, against his will. All he wanted to do was be sick and cleanse his system. As he vomited again, a small knot of pain formed toward the front of his skull, increasing in severity in a matter of seconds. He knew he had to go out of the bathroom and have another look at the floor between the wall and the end of the bed, but he didn"t want to do so. He was frightened and he didn"t understand. What he had seen was just a picture; hopefully it wasn"t even there, it was a hallucination, like the figure as he"d lain in bed.
He turned and looked out of the bathroom door. The bedspread had a busy pattern, but even among the geometric shapes, the purples and the blues, lozenges and diamonds, he could see streaks and splashes of a dirty brown.
He crawled to the doorway, his heart thumping, and peered around the corner. He spent a few seconds looking at the thing that lay on the carpet before retreating into the bathroom and being sick again.
He remembered Mains telling him, at the start of the evening, that he hadn"t booked a hotel room. Had they come back together? Or had Mains followed him back and had he-Joe-let him in? Or had he broken in? Had the glimpsed figure been the writer, not one of Gormley"s cast-iron facsimiles? Or had Mains already been there pa.s.sed out on the floor while Joe was drifting into sleep in bed, and had the cast-iron man done this to him?
It was no more bizarre an idea than that Joe had done it. Had slashed at the writer"s body until it was almost unrecognizable as that of a human being, never mind as that of Mains. There could be little blood left in the vasculature, most of it having soaked into the carpet and bedspread or adhered to the wall in patterns consistent with arterial spray.
Joe inspected his hands. They were clean. Perhaps too clean. His body was unmarked.
Very deliberately, Joe got dressed. Stepping carefully around the body, he left the room and took the lift down to the ground floor. He glanced at the desk staff as he left the hotel, but they didn"t look up.
He walked toward the western end of Nieuwe Binnenweg until he found the mix of shops he needed and returned to the hotel with a rucksack containing a st.u.r.dy hacksaw, a serrated knife, some cleaning materials, skin-tight rubber gloves, and a large roll of resealable freezer bags. As he stood facing the mirrored wall in the lift to go back up to the fourth floor, he pictured himself as the boys in the bar would have seen him, shouting at Mains. He recalled the waitress in the restaurant, who had been at their table precisely when Joe had been giving Mains a hard time, and then there was the girl by the bar in WATT. The latter part of the time they had spent in the club was a blank. Anything could have happened and anyone could come forward as a witness.
The lift arrived with a metallic ping and Joe got out and walked the short distance to his room. Once inside, he dumped the rucksack and stripped down to his underpants. He slipped his iPod inside the waistband and inserted the earphones into his ears. "Rotterdam" by Githead, on repeat. If it meant he would never again be able to listen to Githead, so be it. Just as he had never been able to listen to Astral Weeks Astral Weeks since the traumatic break-up with Marie from Donegal, or to Cranes. He"d been to a Cranes gig in Clapham the night before his father had died and every time he tried to listen to any of their alb.u.ms, it put him right back where he was the morning he got the phone call from his mother. since the traumatic break-up with Marie from Donegal, or to Cranes. He"d been to a Cranes gig in Clapham the night before his father had died and every time he tried to listen to any of their alb.u.ms, it put him right back where he was the morning he got the phone call from his mother.
He moved a towel and bath mat out of the way, then dragged the body into the bathroom and lifted it into the bath, not worrying too much about the smears of blood this left on the floor and the side of the bath. He stood over the bath with the hacksaw in his hand and suddenly perceived himself as Vos might film him, looking up from the corpse"s-eye view. He hesitated, then reached for the towel, which he placed over the head and upper torso.
His first job was to cut away the remaining sc.r.a.ps of clothes, which he dumped in the sink, and then he began working at the left wrist, just below the tattoo. The hacksaw blade skittered when it first met substantial resistance. Blood welled from the cut in the flesh and trickled down toward the hand, causing Joe"s hand to slip.
In his earphones, the girl vocalist sang, "It"s a nice day," over and over.
It took at least five minutes to get through the radius and another minute or so of sawing to work through the ulna. There was a certain grim satisfaction in having removed one of the hands, but the exertion had brought Joe out in a sweat and his head was throbbing. In his dehydrated state, he could little afford to lose further moisture.
He knew that he had a long job ahead of him and that it would never seem any closer to being completed while he was still thinking forward to-and dreading-the hardest part. He sat down on the bathroom floor for a moment, letting his heart rate slow down. He knew what he was about to attempt. He had decided. It was necessary if he was to survive.
It"s a nice day.
Taking a breath, Joe shuffled along the floor. He turned around and leaned over the edge, pulling the hem of the towel up to reveal the neck. He placed the serrated edge of the hacksaw blade against the soft skin just below the Adam"s apple. A little bit of pressure and the teeth bit into the skin, causing a string of tiny red beads to appear. He leaned into the saw and extended his arm. Back and forth, back and forth. His hand pressing down on the chest and slithering and sliding.
It took a few minutes. He wasn"t timing himself. It felt longer. He bagged the head by touch alone, using a plastic carrier from one of the shops on Nieuwe Binnenweg. He recycled one of Mains"s shoelaces to tie it shut, then placed it in the sink.
It would be easier now. It could be anyone.
It"s a nice day.
At several points over the next two hours, Joe thought he would have to give up. What he was doing was inhuman. If he carried on, he would lose his humanity. Even if he evaded capture, he would never be at peace. But each time he merely restated to himself his determination to survive. Yes, what he was doing was a crime, but it was the only crime he knew for certain he had committed.
The clean-up operation took longer.
It was some time in the afternoon when Joe presented himself at the front desk to settle his bill. The rucksack was on his back, his own bag, bulkier than on arrival, slung over one shoulder. Outside in the street he stopped and looked back. He counted the floors up and along until he spotted his open window. On an impulse, he walked back toward the hotel. There was a poorly maintained raised flower bed between the pavement and the hotel wall. Joe rested his foot on the lip of the bed as if to tie his shoelace and peered into the gaps between the shrubs. At the back, among the rubbish close to the hotel wall, was a broken brown bottle. Joe reached in and his fingers closed around the neck. He placed the bottle in his shoulder bag and walked away.
On a patch of waste ground at the end of one of the docks behind Keileweg, un.o.bserved, he started a small fire with bits of rubbish, locally sourced. When the fire was going well enough to burn a couple of pieces of wood salvaged from the dockside, Joe took Mains"s torn and bloodstained clothing from his bag. He dropped the items into the flames, then added Mains"s wallet, from which he had already extracted anything of use. The broken bottle, which could have originally been a beer bottle from WATT but equally might not have been, went over the side of the dock.
Satisfied that the fire had done its most important work, Joe left it burning and started walking back toward the city center, the rucksack still heavy on his back.
At a bus stop across the street from where one of Antony Gormley"s ubiquitous cast-iron molds stood guard on the roof of another building, Joe caught a bus to Europort and boarded a ferry bound for Hull, using Mains"s ticket. The writer would have approved, he thought. When the ticket control had turned out also to involve a simultaneous pa.s.sport check, a detail he had somehow not antic.i.p.ated, Joe"s heart rate had shot up and a line of sweat had crept from his hair line, but the check had been cursory at best and Joe had been waved on to the boat. He sat out on the rear deck, glad to relieve his shoulders of the weight of the rucksack. With an hour to go before the ferry was due to sail, he watched the sky darken and the various colors of the port lights take on depth, intensity, richness. Huge wind turbines turning slowly in the light breeze, like fans cooling the desert-warmed air of some alien city of the future. Giant cranes squatting over docksides, mutant insects towering over tiny human figures pa.s.sing from one suspended cone of orange light to the next. Tall, slender flare-stacks, votive offerings to some unknown G.o.d. The lights of the edge of the city in the distance, apartment blocks, life going on.
Soon the ferry would slip her mooring and glide past fantastical wharves and gantries, enormous silos and floating jetties. She would navigate slowly away from this dream of the lowlands and enter the cold dark reality of the North Sea, where no one would hear the odd splash over the side in the lonely hours of the night.
Tempting Providence
Jonathan Thomas
Jonathan Thomas is the author of numerous short stories that have appeared in Fantasy and Terror, Studies in the Fantastic, and other magazines. His first short story collection,Storiesfrom the Big Black House (Radio Funk, 1992), is a rare collector"s item; a second collection, (Radio Funk, 1992), is a rare collector"s item; a second collection, Midnight Call and Other Stories, Midnight Call and Other Stories, appeared in 2008 from Hippocampus Press. appeared in 2008 from Hippocampus Press.
*ustin, till a month ago, had never expected to be here again, but three decades and several dead-end career later, he was back as an "honored alumnus," no less. The room, true to memory, was on the scale of a hospital ward, and the walls were a dull aseptic white, typical of countless other gallery s.p.a.ces. His photos were of "The Beautiful and the Condemned: Parting Shots," and were on a two-week sojourn in Providence between exhibits in Boston and Philly.
From humble beginnings as snapshots of lopsided red barns, his work had evolved into highly polarized, finely etched silver nitrates of charming landscapes, buildings, or neighborhoods about to be bulldozed for development. Their pathos had touched a mainstream nerve somehow, earning him grants, and articles in the New New York York Times, Times, and NPR interviews, and calendar contracts. Meanwhile, the irony of displaying these images someplace that stood atop a former charming site was evidently lost on the faculty, homecoming alum, and students at the opening, bless their uncritical hearts. If his alma mater wanted to show him off as a successful graduate, he guessed he could live with that much boosterism. No, nothing much had changed about the List Art Building since grad school, except he strongly doubted he"d run into the ghost of H. P. Lovecraft tonight. and NPR interviews, and calendar contracts. Meanwhile, the irony of displaying these images someplace that stood atop a former charming site was evidently lost on the faculty, homecoming alum, and students at the opening, bless their uncritical hearts. If his alma mater wanted to show him off as a successful graduate, he guessed he could live with that much boosterism. No, nothing much had changed about the List Art Building since grad school, except he strongly doubted he"d run into the ghost of H. P. Lovecraft tonight.
Justin, in fact, had never set foot in the building after that incident. He"d been offsetting his tuition as a night watchman for Campus Security, and had refused any further a.s.signments there, and what"s more, he"d admitted why. And why not? He saw what he saw, and youthful principles dictated he "tell it like it is," in the parlance of the day. True, he"d been reading up on Lovecraft for his Comparative Literature thesis about local-color fantasists, so he knew that Lovecraft"s Early American home had been uprooted and towed over the hill to make way for the List Building. Untrue, however, were rumors he"d been on acid, as fabricated by those intent on a "common sense" rationale for any brush with the supernatural. Luckily, suspicions of drug use rendered n.o.body a pariah at the time, or the entire university population would have been on the outs with itself. Vexing enough that LSD and "some s.p.a.ce cadet" figured in every recap overheard at parties, or worse, thrown back in his face by unknowing raconteurs.
In any case, the unvarnished facts had remained in Justin"s drug-free head, and one of the more remarkable was that the ghost had behaved exactly as he"d have antic.i.p.ated. Justin, in baggy blue uniform, had been on midnight rounds in the building and had entered the room where his work would someday surround him. Track lighting with dimmers set extremely low barely alleviated the darkness; there were no windows.
From out of the murk burst someone pacing rapidly, who nearly collided head-on with Justin before performing a lastsecond about-face and pacing away. Justin had time only to gasp and stumble to a halt, heart thumping, while the trespa.s.ser paced toward him and away once more. At second glance, Justin took note of short hair parted on the left above a high forehead, a thin lipped mouth that seemed small because of a substantial chin, and a gaunt physique in a 1930s suit replete with white shirt and black tie. The similarity to Lovecraft in off-register photos on yellowing newsprint was unmistakable.
In keeping with his fitful stride, the revenant"s expression was of confusion and distress, readily understandable in anyone who found himself in a bleak hall where his snug parlor should be, and in someone so skeptical of the spirit world who was suddenly one of its denizens. Trembling Justin drew flashlight from belt holster and asked meekly, and sympathetically he hoped, "Can I help you?"
The ectoplasm must have been too delicate to withstand spoken vibrations. The agitated Lovecraft failed to re-emerge from the shadows. Darting flashlight beam detected no one anywhere in the gallery. Justin hightailed it out of there, pausing only to lock up behind him with unsteady hands. Thus began and ended his sole occult adventure.
None of his instructors or cla.s.smates were at the opening. Good! Chances were minimal of having to endure urban legends about himself. By the grace of free wine, though, numerous alum, whether staid and middle-aged or impossibly young, saw fit to b.u.t.tonhole him on ever more familiar terms. He extended cordial thanks for generic compliments, even when some cranelike dowager pumped his hand and actually exclaimed, "Nice captures!" And what harm in disclosing that he lived in the Catskills, and that he wasn"t going to the "big game" tomorrow against Princeton because he hated football? Or that he was staying on Benefit Street at a Victorian bed-and-breakfast, yes, every bit as quaint and genteel as it sounded, maybe a little rich for his blood in fact. Did he travel with his family? He"d been twice married in haste and divorced at leisure, thanks for asking. "Irreconcilable differences of standards and values," he explained, "but everyone"s amicable. The exes are too humane to try squeezing alimony from a stone. Anyway, no children, thank G.o.d!" Was Justin coming off as brusque? No matter, if it kept tipsy parents from bragging about their overachiever kids. He"d been hitting the wine himself, after all, and was at the point of wishing Lovecraft"s ghost would reappear, if only to light a fire under this whitebread crowd.
Aha, someone with whom Justin needed a word was crossing his line of vision. Dr. Palazzo, head of the Pictorial Arts division and a darling of ARTnews ARTnews and its slick-paper ilk, was homing in on a few equally overdressed attendees. St.u.r.dy Dr. Palazzo exuded brash corporate airs in powder-blue three-piece suit, yellow tie, and wavy silver hair too majestic to be real. Had he ever in his life so much as handled a crayon? He came across as governor of a military occupation, but Justin steeled himself and essayed an engaging smile. Reimburs.e.m.e.nt for lodgings had been a condition before Justin agreed to wedge this fortnight into his itinerary at the last minute. The exhibit would otherwise have gone into storage at his Boston or Philadelphia venues, and he"d have been home resting up days ago. Typo-laden e-mails from the gallery director promised that only the formality of Palazzo"s signature stood between Justin and repayment, but he had yet to hear a straight answer about that after a full day in town. and its slick-paper ilk, was homing in on a few equally overdressed attendees. St.u.r.dy Dr. Palazzo exuded brash corporate airs in powder-blue three-piece suit, yellow tie, and wavy silver hair too majestic to be real. Had he ever in his life so much as handled a crayon? He came across as governor of a military occupation, but Justin steeled himself and essayed an engaging smile. Reimburs.e.m.e.nt for lodgings had been a condition before Justin agreed to wedge this fortnight into his itinerary at the last minute. The exhibit would otherwise have gone into storage at his Boston or Philadelphia venues, and he"d have been home resting up days ago. Typo-laden e-mails from the gallery director promised that only the formality of Palazzo"s signature stood between Justin and repayment, but he had yet to hear a straight answer about that after a full day in town.
Justin flagged Palazzo down and introduced himself. Palazzo congratulated him on the show without acting especially impressed. He was clearly en route to more important conversations. Justin presented his case with all due tact, while ruminating that the sum in question wouldn"t have bought one of Palazzo"s shoes. Palazzo"s curt advice was to discuss petty cash with the gallery director.
"She referred me to you," claimed Justin, a shade archly.
"I can"t do anything right now." Oh? That much "petty cash," and then some, was probably wadded up in Palazzo"s back pocket.
"Why don"t I drop by your office Monday morning? What time is convenient for you?" Justin swallowed a belch an instant before it was too late.
"You"ll have to call my secretary." Palazzo rushed off before Justin could say anything else.
The gallery director had been across the room all along, but Justin didn"t want to make her evening any worse. She looked like h.e.l.l. Curly brunette strands were stuck to her clammy brow, her eyes were bulging, and she was dividing frazzled attention between a cell phone and the micromanagement of slowpoke undergrads in catering uniforms. Dr. Palazzo, meanwhile, was hobn.o.bbing with the impeccable few, as if n.o.body else were around. Justin downed one more plastic goblet of Chablis and slunk out and down the hill to Benefit Street.
He awoke in a sweat under fleece comforter. Between the cushy down-filled mattress and the hiss of a radiator going full blast before Columbus Day, he felt decadent as much as overheated. He also felt he might have been a bit uncharitable toward last night"s attendees, and even Dr. Palazzo. He couldn"t, in fairness, object if the lives of others led them to perspectives different from his own.
According to bedside digital clock, it was earlier than he thought. He could still catch the tail-end of breakfast. He rolled out of bed and into the bedraggled, off-balance aftermath of more plastic goblets than he cared to tally. In the dining room downstairs, the other guests had come and gone, and the staff had yet to clear the self-serve table. Justin grabbed three cups of coffee to be sure they"d be there when he wanted them, along with croissants and orange juice. The second cup was lukewarm, but did the trick. His frilly surroundings became sunnier, and he gamely conceded that even if they were overly precious, they attracted the clientele without whom this address might devolve into one of his silver nitrates. Justin had been pleased to find the East Side pretty much as he"d left it, thus far at least, including Geoff"s Sandwiches, still in business across the street. Or did it use to be Joe"s?
Justin had wisely packed an okay digital camera, to make the best of imposed leisure. The B&B counted homecoming as a "special weekend" and obliged him to book three nights, which was just as well, in view of Monday morning business. At a whim, he headed south on gloriously unchanging Benefit Street, and at the first major intersection spotted a white cardboard rectangle taped below a "No Left Turn" sign. Big black letters proclaimed "Alumni Tent," with an arrow pointing up the curve of Waterman Street. The phrase put Justin in mind of a circus, and despite the low odds of reality bearing him out, he opted to go see what was what.
The street skirted the drab, postwar School of Design campus and the List Building again and the venerable Main Green of the university, and at the corner of shopping-strip Thayer Street another white placard directed him one block farther, where an arrow sent him north. He winced at vinyl siding on historic walls in a neighborhood that should have known better, and then smiled. A circus tent indeed dominated the little urban meadow of Pembroke Field. Cl.u.s.ters of red, white, and brown balloons bobbed at the tent entrance and along the chain-link fence around the field.
The illusion of a Big Top dissolved as soon as Justin trudged amidst a gaggle of merry old graduates through the gate. Demographically, he was back at the gallery opening, only with a much stronger turnout here, and the addition of many babies in strollers. A guy in a cartoonish bear costume was posing for photos with happy couples. Justin was mildly amused at his inability to look upon the jaunty mascot without thinking "narc." Name tags adhered to the majority of sweaters and jackets, and sociable babel emanated from a dining area where a pregame box brunch was underway. The "Alumni Pub" was doing a lively business, and Justin vetoed the pa.s.sing thought of a beer to wash down breakfast.
These people were having fun, and more power to them, but black loneliness latched onto him and gnawed deeper, the longer he steeped himself in the festivities. He had a master"s degree from this school, and every right to be here, and had come at departmental behest, hadn"t he? But he wasn"t feeling particularly "honored," and suspected that the Gallery Director"s invitation to him had somehow fueled bad politics between her and Palazzo. He also suspected that somebody sooner or later would notice him languishing in solitary discomfort and ask him to leave. He needed no outside confirmation that he didn"t belong. Out on the sidewalk, he breathed easier.
He retreated to Thayer Street, and his eyes widened in immediate dismay. d.a.m.n his vivid recollections! A dorm complex with red and green brick facade, like a dull-witted kid"s Lego project, had replaced a row of cla.s.sic Victorian mansions, mansard roofs and gingerbread eaves and all. He continued down Thayer and wished he could stop himself. He remembered a second-hand bookshop notorious for buying stolen collections, and a locksmith whose illegal dupes of dorm keys abetted countless student flings, and a hole-in-the-wall deli where a grouchy octogenarian sold expired yogurt and treated the customer like a sissy for not eating it, gray fuzz and all. These and other upwellings of robust personality had no latter-day counterparts. Clothing and restaurant chains were in ascendancy, some chichi, some tacky, but all with deep pockets to absorb the likely sky-high rents. Something he didn"t recall was the excessive number of trust fund babies out making fashion statements. He had meager faith in the survival of a record store, a pizza joint, and a few other mom-and-pop operations beyond their next lease renewals. To discover a new generation of panhandlers in front of Store 24 was heartening, though he wasn"t about to waste any cash on them. A little scruffiness, a little waywardness remained of the Runyonesque street of his less uptight era. That was the kindest spin he could manage.
Thayer outside the commercial strip was even more appalling. His mental map contained a neighborhood with attractive houses, a popular breakfast place, a clothier who specialized in dated formalwear, and a corner grocer"s-Boar"s Head Market, wasn"t it? Progress, or science, or capitalism, if any distinction applied in this context, had rolled over all of it, and on its dust the university had installed gigantic barracks of lab facilities and gussied-up bunkers of congested dorms. Regrets about hanging his work anywhere on this overreaching campus were weighing more heavily on him. He was glad Lovecraft couldn"t see any of this pox of oppressive architecture. Or could he? What was a ghost, and what was the extent of its awareness, its powers of observation? Justin"s mind wandered aimlessly in and out of these meditations, while his feet led him back to the solace of Benefit Street. He was sure now only of what he had been sure of all along: he had not been on hallucinogens, that night in List.
He ordered lunch at Geoff"s, where sandwiches bore the names of local celebs, none of whom rang a bell. He took his Antoinette Downing a few blocks north, into the secluded old graveyard behind the stately Episcopal cathedral. Poe had courted Sarah Helen Whitman here, and Justin thought he"d read somewhere that Lovecraft had done likewise with his fiancee Sonia. He tried reviving the tradition one night while dating his first wife-to-be, till a humorless geezer cradling a yappy pug appeared at a window overlooking the churchyard and threatened to call the cops on them for "scaring everyone half to death." Today Justin sat on a tabletop sarcophagus off to one remote side and ate in peace. For all he knew, the humorless geezer was buried somewhere in here.
At the B&B again, he slept all afternoon under the fleece comforter, without breaking a sweat. His eyes opened to the waning hour when the outlines of things softened, though he could still navigate by natural light. He retained no contents of any dreams, yet was firmly convinced he"d been dreaming. Or more precisely, he had the sensation of something external impinging on his sleeping self, which, according to received wisdom, had altered the course of those dreams he"d otherwise forgotten. Room service? Intruders? He gave the bedroom a wary once-over and switched on bedside lamp. Neither his duffel nor the items on top of his bureau showed signs of disturbance. He was picking up none of the eerie vibes he imagined would accompany a haunting. If he couldn"t shake the feeling of having been watched, then he"d sensibly ascribe it to pigeons on the windowsill.
What he needed now was to get out and walk, preferably in the direction of supper. He had done nothing to work up an appet.i.te, but hunger pangs and a nervous energy were prodding him toward the door. The East Side had depressed him enough for one day. Grabbing the camera, he headed west, confident of eating well on Federal Hill.
A Holiday Inn on the far side of downtown doubled as a gigantic, informal welcome sign to the Hill, luckily for Justin. Traversing the business district, he felt like a rat in a water-maze. His most substantial old landmarks were proving ephemeral. A puny three decades had obliterated railroad trestles, Civil War monument, a huge department store, the bus station, and a sprawling annex of the state university. He peevishly navigated around the multiple sore thumbs of upstart high-rises and was never happier to be making steady headway toward a shamelessly boxlike hotel. He hadn"t planned on going in, but there he was at the desk, asking an aloof clerk about the availability of rooms on Monday. Not a problem, allegedly. All the college types in town for girls" hockey or whatever were checking out tomorrow. Justin said he might be back, and the clerk grunted and re-entrenched himself in a sudoku book.
Like a great X marking the spot, a four-membered arch now spanned the beginning of Atwells Avenue. By way of keystone it featured an outsize bronze pinecone, or maybe a pineapple. He rejoiced at recognizing the Old Canteen and Blue Grotto, evocative fixtures from yesteryear, and still prosperous. But on his budget, he was more delighted about the warm light from the windows at Angelo"s. Inside, the tin ceiling and white enamel tables and the menus nailed like eye charts to big square support posts conceivably looked the same as in 1971 or 1931. And at 5:30, he had his pick of the seats. A chipper waitress called him "sweetie" as she placed his order for sausage, peppers, and French fries, with a gla.s.s of the house red. No knots of fat or gristle were hiding in the sausage, the clear outer skin sloughed right off the peppers, and the fries had entered the kitchen as fresh potatoes. The burgundy wasn"t bad, either. Justin tapped the bottom of the gla.s.s to coax the last drops into his mouth, and pushed away from the table, contented, and thought, This is the good life for me. Should that be so hard? Plus, Justin had beaten the dinner crunch! He left a nice tip and continued up Atwells.
Bewilderment made his steps drag at times. What had happened to the solidly Italian enclave of yesteryear? Chinese and Caribbean takeouts, a nouveau hippie coffee house, an Indian eatery felt incongruous, as if plunked down by some cosmic joker. And where to go from here? The night was in its infancy. If he wasn"t mistaken, one of the Lovecraft sites mentioned in his thesis was a few blocks away. Maybe the Historical Society had bolted a commemorative plaque to its door by now.
Justin gradually sped up from minute to minute, till he identified the silhouette of a church across a tiny courtyard. He peered more closely and harrumphed. No, this wasn"t it. Too recent, and too wholesome for a horror yarn. And he had gone too far. He was well over the hilltop and halfway down to Olneyville, if memory served. This, unlike the locale in the story, wouldn"t be visible from Lovecraft"s address on College Hill.
He backtracked. How had he missed an entire church? He had a bad feeling about an open s.p.a.ce at the corner of Sutton Street. The sidewalk widened into a modest plaza, with an ash-gray disk embedded at its center. He glossed its incised text by streetlight, and by the third line was too incensed to follow the rest. Since its founding in 1875, the Catholic church of St. John had been important to "many ethnic groups" and in local working-cla.s.s history. Then in 1994 it was demolished. Just like that. Persons unknown to him had designated the resultant vacant lot a park and relinquished it as a "gift to the city."
Disgusted, Justin glared past the plaza and the remnant church steps toward a curb-bound circle of dirt with spa.r.s.e patches of defeated-looking gra.s.s. On the outer perimeter was one park bench, paintless, with a number of broken slats. To its left, springing mushroomlike from the soil, was a pair of cement tables with inlaid checkerboards, flanked by three and four cement chairs, respectively. These furnishings wore a thick coat of rustorange paint, which reinforced an appearance of being salvaged from a fast-food chain. So even in 1990s Providence, a repository of clear-cut neighborhood and literary value could come to this. What good would it do, though, to burst a blood vessel over other people"s disordered priorities?
A wire fence behind the bench denoted one edge of the property. Beyond were three tenements: beige, with flat roof; blue, with pitched roof; and green, with hipped roof. A powerful security light between the uppermost windows in the blue house cast a surprising level of brightness on the park grounds. From stark shadow in back of the checker tables, somebody was careering straight at him. Getting mugged would be the perfect finish for a day like today!