He walked over to Holly to make sure the fires were out and he helped her collect the sooty leaves. They were architectural drawings. Floor plans. Holly recognized the demarcations showing the living room, kitchen, dining areas, the tiny crescents drawn with dotted lines to show which way the doors opened. Bathroom fixtures were inked in, square sinks, and the toilets like tiny Bartlett pears.
“I’m sorry,” he told her.
“What is this?”
“It’s a villa at Château-sur-Mer, but my mother’s not ready to go.”
“No, I should say she’s not,” she told him. She could smell his sweat tingeing his synthetic jogging sweater as he stooped over the curls of ash.
He said, “My mother’s got cancer. Maybe that explains this kind of behavior, I don’t know.”
“Your mother doesn’t look sick,” Holly said.
“Today she’s wired. Another day, she’s doubled up.”
“That’s terrible,” Holly said, “but aren’t there two people over there? A sick fellow and his nurse?”
“That other one, he’s a stray. Wait here, I’ll clean this up,” he told Holly. He walked across the clamshells and into Rennie’s house to get some cleaning solvent. He didn’t look at his mother, who waited at the top of the stairs. Her hair was in two taut braids the blue-white color of cement block; everything about her looked strong and tricky. She came down the stairs and walked over to Holly, but Holly wasn’t sure how to greet her.
“I’m not an arsonist at heart,” the woman said. “Some people start fires for less reason than this.”
Holly didn’t know what to say.
“You moved over here from town?” the woman said.
Holly looked at her and nodded.
“I saw you consorting with the enemy. I’ll forgive you. I’ll just assume you didn’t know what you were doing.”
“Excuse me? Those scraps hit my porch. What was I supposed to do?”
“My oldest is putting the screws to me. I almost died last fall. That’s what they
think.
He says I should sit at Château-sur-Mer and play Euchre. He says I’m running out of time, but he means I’m running out of money.”
“I see,” Holly said. She didn’t want to hear any more.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was making a point—”
“I guess
so
,” Holly said. The woman opened her hand. Holly wasn’t herself; she stared at the woman’s hand. The woman kept her hand open until, at last, Holly accepted it.
“Rennie. Rennie Hopkins,” she said, pumping Holly’s hand.
The woman was at least sixty-five; she was tiny and hardly a hundred pounds, but Holly felt her grip. It reminded her of those schoolyard games when children hold hands and the leader jerks her fist to make the whole line whip.
“I’m Holly Temple. I work up at Saint George’s School. I cook.”
“You’re renting your place from Nicole Fantasy?”
“Isn’t her name Fennessey?”
“Fennessey. Fantasy. Nicole goes around in another dimension.”
Holly said, “Oh. I don’t know anything about that. I haven’t seen her today. I don’t know when she gets home.”
Rennie lifted the back of her hand to her lips and whispered. “Miss Fantasy—Fennessey to you—comes and goes, depending on her customers.”
“Her customers?” Holly was just about to ask Rennie what she meant when another car pulled up the clamshells, going too fast. It was a large, old sedan; its rear end fishtailed as the driver braked hard. The clamshells sailed, hammering the clapboards. The driver stepped out of the car and left the door swinging.
“Where’s Munro?” the young man called to Rennie. “Just tell me where and I’m taking care of it. Don’t ask me how.”
Rennie pointed to her big house and told him, “Make it short and sweet, please. He’s giving me the hard sell.”
Holly noticed that the young man had a broken arm in a new cast; its glistening length caught the porch light in blinding swipes. Instead of walking over to Rennie’s house, he climbed onto Holly’s porch and popped into the kitchen. He started rustling through her utility drawers. Using one hand, he jerked the silverware bin open too far and the Oneida stainless clattered to the floor. Holly walked after him. “What are you doing? There must be some mistake, you’re in
my
house.”
“Just a second,” Willis told her.
“What’s going on? I’m telling you, this is my place.”
Rennie came in. She stopped at the rubberized threshold, letting the storm door slap her hip.
“Who is he?” Holly said.
Rennie said, “This one is Willis. The other one is Munro. Willis is my stepson. Munro is the real McCoy.” Rennie was shaking her head in wonder, as if she couldn’t make sense of it herself.
“Are you saying you know this person? Well, can you ask him to get out of my house?” Holly said.
“You must have a knife somewhere in here?” Willis said.
“A knife? You want a knife—”
In his haste, Willis upset a cardboard box of skillets. Heavy cast-iron disks clanged like tiny manhole covers; one pan rolled into Holly’s ankle and she felt a painful vibration, her funny bone.
He paced another way and kicked something over. It was her plastic sack of stained marine specimens.
“Have you got enough fish heads for supper?” Willis said. His smile threw her off balance.
She grabbed the bag from him and it spilled onto the linoleum in a fetid heap. Tarry scallop shells, skate eggs,
black nuggets of moon snails, sand eels with tiny peppercorn eyes.
“These things are ecological victims for my students. From that oil spill,” she told him. She felt her teeth grinding, her fillings meshing their silver saddles. She was amazed at his nerve. She was a couple years his senior, but he didn’t seem to acknowledge the earned distance of those years.
Willis said, “What kind of exhibit? That’s just regular gurry. Fish slop.” He was watching her when he turned around and walked into an opened drawer. He banged his wrist and yiped. His eyes were shiny. His face seemed broken into sharp planes under the geometric pattern of his thoughts, or it was from simple pain. His skin was very pale, with a bluish tint like the bone china features of ceramic dolls; his face was hardly a tone deeper than his plastered arm. His arm dangled awkwardly unless he pulled it in and held it against his waist. Once or twice Holly thought she caught him wincing.
“Look, I just need something to chase a vulture,” he told Holly. He was eyeing the kitchen clock which was part of the furnishings. The clock was shaped like a coffee percolator with a lighted glass knob at the top that bubbled in sync with the second hand. Right below the clock there were some kitchen decorations, two oversized wooden utensils like the kind displayed above a salad bar in a steak house. A three-foot wooden salad fork and a matching spoon were bolted to the wall. Willis tried to pry the fork loose. It wasn’t coming.
Holly looked over at Rennie Hopkins. “What the hell is he doing? Is he trying to wreck something—”
Munro returned to Holly’s porch. He plucked at the knees of his nylon pant legs before he squatted down. He
tried to clean the soot from the floorboards with a soapy sponge. He had an open bottle of ammonia. Holly read the bottle label that said
WARNING
:
IRRITANT
in bold letters.
She walked onto her porch and told Munro Hopkins, “You don’t have to bother with that. I’ll take care of it myself.”
He didn’t look up.
“Really. It’s perfectly all right,” she told him again. Munro didn’t listen to her and he scrubbed the porch floorboards, rubbing the sponge in brisk circles until the foam rose over his hand. Then he saw Willis. Willis came out of the kitchen with half of the giant wooden spoon, leaving its splintered remains still bolted to the wall.
Munro threw the sponge down and walked across the driveway to his car. Willis sailed after him, taking long strides. He tapped Munro with the broken utensil. The spoon was softwood but it made a dull smacking sound when it struck Munro’s skull.
Munro reached his car and turned around. “I’m warning you,” he told Willis. Then he started to cackle. His laughter had an ominous clarity in the still twilight. It was more than an older sibling’s power; it had the villainous tenor of someone on a higher perch. He stopped laughing and told Willis, “Look at yourself. A cripple. Look at that spoon. Where’s your Maypo?”
Willis said, “Rennie doesn’t want you around here. Don’t pull in here again.” He gripped the spoon in his left hand and rolled it across his knee, rubbing the denim the way he might clean fish guts from his knives.
Munro leaned back against his car. He crossed his arms, giving it a chilly, patronizing flourish.
Willis told his stepbrother, “Take that retirement crap and cram it up your ass. Maybe this spoon goes in and I dig the shit out with it.”
“I’ll tell you what. This is a legal matter in which you have no input. Try something like this again and I go into town. I’ll let them handle you down there. I can get the correct paperwork for you. I don’t need Rennie’s signature.”
“She lives here with
me.
She
dies
here with me,” Willis said.
“Now, that shows a lot of sensitivity. Say it again so she can hear you.” Munro sat down in his car and started the ignition. It was a new sport coupe; the engine whirred quietly, like a dishwasher.
Munro leaned out the car window and signaled to Holly. “Ignore him. He’s a pest. Thanks for the chat,” he said and he steered the tiny sports car over the clamshell driveway.
Willis yelled, “Clear off, horse ass—”
He came back to the women.
He held out the broken spoon to Holly. “I’ve seen these at Apex. I’ll get you another one. I’ll install it.”
“Install it? You’ll screw it on the wall?”
“He can fix it for you,” Rennie said, “he’s handy with everything.” She turned to go back inside her house.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” Willis told Holly, fingering the spoon. “Maybe I can glue it.” He was still concentrating on his stepbrother’s car, watching until its diamond-shaped taillights were gone. Then he looked at Holly. “You talked to my brother? What about?”
“I didn’t talk about anything.” Her denial of it sounded more ridiculous than Willis’s accusation.
He stood squared before her. His showy leather boots had thick heels which pitched him to a threatening height above her, and his lean frame looked postmodern, post-punk invasion, all in all like some nihilistic cowboy. She felt him turning it another notch, thumbing the psychological dial. His eyes pinned her. His eyes gave her the impression that they not only saw but
generated
whatever he saw about
her. Willis Pratt made her feel nondescript. His skin was pale as milk, like anemic Victorian maidens, but his hair was dark and luscious. Beside him, her own dark hair looked coppery. Then, he was, of course, insane. That was it. Isn’t it true that certain madmen had luxurious manes. What about Manson? Madmen glowed.
Then Willis reached into her Toyota, touching the radio knobs.
“ ‘Sounds in the Night,’ with Jack Lazar,” Willis said. “WHDH. Ever listen to Jack Lazar?”
“No, never,” she said.
“A word of warning: your lonesome minutes make empty hours—”
Holly pivoted on her heel and walked six feet away from him. He kept talking. His voice was rich and smooth, expertly tongue-in-cheek, like a disc jockey who talks over a record. He started to whistle a tune as he prowled around Holly. Willis continued to whistle the song. He slowed it down, held its phrases, until Holly thought she recognized the melody. “I Can’t Get Started,” a deliberately smoky, yet faithful interpretation. He whistled through his teeth, the haunting, almost atonal sound of men who have learned to whistle in any number of situations, at all hours. Then he was singing the lyrics,
“I’ve flown around the world in a plane—I’ve settled revolutions in Spain—I’ve got a house, a showplace—but I get no place—”
She turned around to face him.
He shrugged.
He said, “ ‘The Music of Your Life’—do you ever catch that program? It’s one my favorites.”
“You’re kidding? What about rock ’n’ roll?” she asked him.
“What about it?”
He walked a circle around her. “Here’s a tip: the half-moon talks half-truths.” He looked at her, grinning.
She looked up at the sky. She didn’t see any moon. The evening sky was overcast. He’s crazy, she was thinking. One of these idiot savants who can memorize radio patter. She thought of the others, Rennie and her older son, they too didn’t promise an easy spring. Why they included her in their confrontation, Holly didn’t understand. She was just
in the way
of it, like a dog or cat at the center of a family argument, sure to be kicked. After her arrest, she promised herself that she would never again exhibit her personal trials for public scrutiny. If she was a vessel of bad nerves and disappointments, the vessel should never tip. The image of a bed on fire seemed a remote dream, yet it had been a high point for Holly. No other feeling had equaled that triumph.
She watched Willis Pratt brushing up the remaining soot on her front porch. She told him not to bother with it.
“This situation got out of hand while I was away. I wasn’t around to look out for her. Rennie’s pretty good, she’s usually wise to things, but Munro shouldered his way in when she was sick. Now I have to take control.”
Holly said, “Well, there sure seems to be a difference of opinion—”
“That’s right. There is a basic conflict of opinion.”
“What exactly?”
“I’ll tell you exactly. My stepbrother thinks he exists. I have news for him. He does not exist.”
Holly was convinced of Willis Pratt’s conviction to ignore simple irrefutable fact. He twisted the blackened sponge and his cast became cuffed in grey suds. Sometimes his bottom lip betrayed a spasm somewhere else in his body. He handed her the sponge.
“That’s not mine,” she told him. She wrung it out and handed it back. “That’s from
your
house.”
Her voice clearly revealed the burden of making his acquaintance. She hated letting on that he was just too much for her. She watched him walk across the driveway. He hadn’t even said good night to her. Except for his radio voice, he didn’t use any small talk. Perhaps he knew that small talk would have tipped it a new way. She waited on her front porch for a minute, searching the black seascape. When she looked again at the big house, she saw a hall light switch on. It was the stairwell window between the first and second stories; Willis was climbing the steps. Holly waited for him to reach the landing. She was startled to see him searching the window for her, shielding his eyes from the overhead bulb. She turned away and went back inside the duplex.