The Paper Grail (39 page)

“Show him your Mensa card, Gwen,” the thin man with the cigarette holder said. And then to Howard he said, “She’s had it laminated.”

Howard smiled at the man, not knowing whether he was being funny or nasty. Probably nasty. “Where can I buy your work?” he asked the woman, anticipating the answer. “I’d like to read some of it.”

“Ms. Bundy is largely self-published,” Mrs. Lamey said for her, as if saving her embarrassment. She put her hand on the woman’s arm and gave her a squeeze as if in encouragement, and then let her hand trail away down her forearm until their fingers touched for a moment.

“City Lights carries three volumes of my poetry,” the woman said resolutely to Howard. She wore khaki clothes with a sort of political air, and had the long, straight hair of a practicing political activist. There was something in her eyes that said she despised Howard, along with all the other men in the room. “You wouldn’t find them very entertaining, I’m afraid—no sex, no fistfights.”

“Her poetry is very erudite,” Mrs. Lamey said. “Very avantgarde. An utter disregard for traditional poetic contrivances. She was among the vanguard of nonsense-syllable verse and what has been called flat meter. An investigation of the theme of the existential woman that common publishers can’t begin to fathom.”

“Nor men, either,” the Reverend White said, sticking his head out of the kitchen and winking broadly. “There’s a number of us that can’t fathom the existential woman, I’m afraid. I’ve probed the subject more than once in my time, and they’re still a goddamn mystery.” He guffawed, hiccuped loudly, and disappeared back into the kitchen, still chasing Howard’s champagne.

The man with the cigarette holder snorted just then, as if he had tried to laugh but the laughter had come entirely out of his nose.

“He’s got money,” Stoat whispered loudly at Howard, jerking his head toward the kitchen. “That’s enough to recommend him.”

“And this is our artist.” Mrs. Lamey extended her hand toward the man with the cigarette holder. “Jason, be a good boy and say hello to Howard Barton. He’s the curator of a very large museum in Los Angeles, aren’t you, Mr. Barton?”

“Not actually,” Howard said. “I’m afraid it’s a very small museum in Santa Ana, specializing in local history more than anything else. A lot of Indian bones and pot shards. It’s got pretensions of becoming more grand someday.”

“I welcome a humble man,” the artist said, standing up and bowing at the waist. “The world is full of poseurs. It’s uncommon
to run across someone who sees clearly what he amounts to and has the courage to admit it.”

Howard bowed back at him, swallowing the insult as the Reverend White handed him a champagne flute, which Howard passed in front of his nose as if to better appreciate it. He thanked the man, thinking that he wouldn’t bother to drink it but would pour it into a potted plant when he had the opportunity. There was no profit in being either drunk or poisoned. He had pretty dearly fallen into a nest of snakes. The entire company seemed to be prepared for him. The introductions being made were for his benefit only; he had clearly been discussed, and the idea of it put him on guard.

Ms. Bundy, the poet, cast Reverend White a disparaging glance just then and wandered off toward the kitchen again with Mr. Touchey … Howard realized that he didn’t like these people at all, except maybe Stoat, ironically, who was the only one among them who wasn’t playing any sort of complicated game. Howard realized that he was in danger of becoming flippant, along with all the rest of them, and that wouldn’t do. Not only was he outnumbered, but what he needed was to project the notion of being enthusiastic about the company and their no-doubt-formidable talents. Things had changed since his adventures at Jimmers’. He was there with a purpose now, although he had no idea what that was.

He sat on the couch and leaned his cane up against the arm of it, resting his hand along the back and feigning interest in the conversation that had sprung up again between Stoat and the artist, who Howard still knew only as Jason. He couldn’t address the man as that, though, because it was too familiar, and he couldn’t address Stoat as Stoat, either, any more than he could have addressed him as Elephant or Wildebeest. So he listened to the two of them carry on about performance art, and about a Bay Area artist whose name seemed to be Heliarc and who had, apparently, developed a way to plug himself into an electrical socket in order to shoot light beams out of his eyes and elbows.

“Really?” Howard asked. “Light beams?” He meant it to sound sincere, but the artist gave him a sharp glance and then ignored him, lighting another cigarette off the end of the last one. Mrs. Lamey had disappeared, but came out just then with a tray full of tiny sandwiches made of goat cheese, nasturtiums, and dill weed.

“Nouveau California,” she said. “The cheese is from a farm up near Caspar and the nasturtiums are out of my own garden.
You’ll notice that they’re green instead of orange. That wasn’t easy, and I won’t tell you how I accomplished it, but I will say that the flavor of these canapés is unique.”

“Just ate,” Howard said, as if he regretted it vastly but couldn’t do anything about it beyond that. He patted his stomach and tried to imagine what gruesome liquids Mrs. Lamey had stained the nasturtiums with—pulverized tomato worms, probably.

Just then there was a squeal, like a piglet with its foot caught in a gopher hole, followed by the sound of a champagne glass smashing down onto the kitchen floor, a burst of shrill laughter, and someone being slapped. Mrs. Lamey looked up sharply, along with the two men, and in that instant, when their eyes were on the kitchen, Howard poured his champagne out into a potted plant and then set his glass down decisively on the coffee table as if he had drained the glass at a single gulp.

Ms. Bundy stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room, looking back over her shoulder, her face livid. “You’d screw a chicken,” she said, “if you could get close enough to it without making it blind or sick.”

Stoat bent over in Howard’s direction and said, “Gwen is very witty. That’s the key to the success of her poetry.” He winked cheerfully. “She doesn’t like men touching her, though, even if it’s Glenwood Touchey. They’re a pair, Glenwood and Gwen, but she’s afraid he might heat up untapped passions. Her verses couldn’t stand it. They’d have to be written on asbestos.”

Mr. Touchey came out looking sour-faced, and the artist, taking his cigarette holder out of his mouth, said, “Don’t touch me, Touchey,” in an effeminate voice, which drew an intake of breath from Mrs. Lamey, who asked very sincerely whether Ms. Bundy was all right.

“You old whore,” the poetess said to her, and stalked off down the hallway in the direction taken ten minutes earlier by Reverend White. Mrs. Lamey looked sincerely hurt and then a little puzzled, like a mother insulted by her daughter. Moments later there sounded a titter of laughter from a distant corner of the house, which seemed to infuriate Mr. Touchey and Mrs. Lamey about equally. The artist winked at Stoat, and Howard stood up and moved off toward the kitchen, carrying his cane.

“Champagne out here?” he asked Mrs. Lamey, nodding in that direction.

“In the ice bucket. Be liberal with it.”

There was the ice bucket on the kitchen counter. Howard poured himself a glass but didn’t taste it, looking around at the
furnishings and the layout of the kitchen. Through a glass door at the back lay a service porch, and beyond that a door, which, if he had things laid out clearly in his mind, must lead out to the backyard and the alley. Left down the alley would be Ukiah Street and Little Lake and the bluffs beyond; right would lead past the blocked-up Volkswagen bus, back toward Main Street. In a pinch, he could head up Little Lake toward the highway and reach Pine Street, where Sylvia was hustling crystals and herb teas.

No one had followed him into the kitchen, and he could hear conversation rattling away in the living room. So he poked his head around the door and into the ill-lit service porch, which was immense, with a couple of big pantry cupboards, a washer and dryer, and a service-porch sink. It was carefully organized, with a big metal-boxed first-aid kit hung on the wall alongside a fire extinguisher. The linoleum floor was waxed like glass. After glancing over his shoulder he stepped across and unlocked the back door, both a chain lock and a dead bolt, and then went back out into the kitchen, where he pretended to study a row of hanging pots and pans made of polished copper.

“Do you cook, Mr. Barton?” asked Mrs. Lamey from the doorway. She regarded him almost happily, as if something had happened to restore her.

“Can of Spam now and then,” Howard said. “I’d love to have a set of copper pans, although they’d probably be wasted on me.”

“Well, truthfully,” she said, “they’re rather wasted on me, aren’t they? I buy most of my food at the deli. I’m too busy for domestic chores. The kitchen was designed by one of the foremost decorators on the West Coast, though, a man from Palo Alto. Do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful,” Howard said truthfully. “I love the mossy color of the counter tile. It’s perfect with this white linoleum. How do you keep it spotless like this? Is there some kind of trick to it?”

“Yes. Never cook in your kitchen, and avoid walking on the floor whenever you can. My decorator insisted on it, though. He drove up here personally to study the climate and landscape. He spent a week in town before he laid a hand on my kitchen. It was a matter of studying my personal space, vis-à-vis the concrete units of my existence. It was very complicated, I assure you, but I think he succeeded admirably. I learned a great deal from him—modes of perception.”

She paused for a moment as if summoning the right words, and then said, “I’ve paid attention to
your
space, Howard, over
the last few days, and the place you occupy in the local—what?—universe, you might say. I’ve become a shrewd judge of people, of human frailty. You’re a puzzler, though, aren’t you?” She took a good look at the cane right then, seeming to see it for the first time. There was something like surprise in her face, which, disappeared at once. She turned toward the sink with a distracted air, cranking on the water and rinsing the already clean porcelain.

Howard shrugged, trying to think of something to say about his “space” but unable, really, to catch her drift. “It’s a strange world you all seem to inhabit up here,” he said. “I felt a little like an outsider, a tourist, when I got up here a few days ago. I guess that’s partly why I’m here, you know. To strike up a few new acquaintances, get to know a couple of people. Don’t want to be the only living boy in New York and all that.” He smiled at her.

“New York?” she said, a little puzzled.

“Just a saying from a popular song.” What would Uncle Roy do in my shoes? he wondered, raising his still full champagne glass at Mrs. Lamey. Then he asked, “What on earth is that?” and squinted out toward the window of the living room.

Mrs. Lamey spun around to look, expecting heaven knew what, and Howard dumped half his champagne down the sink. Outside, the moon was higher and the night had lightened. Bennet’s Humpty Dumpty waved frantically at them from across the street, driven by the wind. Howard hadn’t meant to call attention to it, specifically, but Mrs. Lamey apparently thought he had. “That’s a nuisance,” she said. “An eyesore and an insult.”

‘This is first-rate champagne,” Howard said, grinning loopily at her and topping off his glass again. “I’m drinking too much of it.”

“Nonsense,” she said, brightening up. “That’s an interesting sort of walking stick you have there. Is it decoration, mostly?”

“Not really. I’m sort of lame these days. Minor knee injury.”

“Do you mind if I have a look at it? It quite fascinates me.”

“Sure,” Howard said. “I don’t mind.” He handed Mrs. Lamey the cane, knowing that he shouldn’t but not really seeing how to avoid it. Still it was obvious that letting her examine the thing wouldn’t cause him any real trouble.

Ms. Bundy came up just then and slipped a hand through the crook of Mrs. Lamey’s arm. Her face was flushed and her hair disheveled.

“Glenwood has come up with a first-class idea,” the poetess said, and she whispered it into Mrs. Lamey’s ear, giggling just a little.

“Oh, that’s naughty!” Mrs. Lamey said.

Ms. Bundy let go of the old woman and took Howard’s arm now. “
He’s
not any kind of wallflower,” she said. Her khaki blouse was unbuttoned halfway to her navel and she was clearly braless underneath. She rubbed against Howard’s arm seductively, and she tossed her hair out of her face and cocked her head at him, giving him a sort of come-hither look. He knew that he ought to be repelled by it; the more pleasant the company became, the more dangerous it was.

The fingers of her left hand snaked around his waist, vaguely tickling him, and he grinned crookedly.

“He’s not the daring sort,” Mrs. Lamey said, smiling at the two of them and unconsciously licking her lips.

“Stoat has his video camera with him,” Ms. Bundy said. “We can film it, all of it.” She adjusted her blouse, pushing it open indecently, as if by mistake.

“I don’t know,” Howard said, horrified now. He thought about the back door. Thank God he’d unlocked it. He could turn and bolt. Right now …

“Oh, I see what
you
thought I meant,” Ms. Bundy said, tittering through her fingers. “He
is
a naughty boy!”

“Let’s go!” shouted someone from the living room, and Touchey strode into view, waving the video camera that must have belonged to Stoat. Ms. Bundy opened her blouse for the camera, kissed Howard on the cheek, and curtsied. The Reverend White appeared just then behind Howard, carrying a ball-peen hammer, his face flushed with drink.

Howard very nearly ran for it. It was the hammer that did it. But Ms. Bundy shouted “We’re off!” just then, and hauled Howard into the living room.

“Where?” Howard shouted back at her, determined not to show his fear. This was what he had come for, wasn’t it? Of course it was.

“To kill the Humpty Dumpty!” Ms. Bundy yelled, and led Howard and the rest of them out into the night.