Nicola was right: the house was enormous. Edgar’s disgust that the National Record would coddle any correspondent with such palatial accommodations failed to undermine exultation at his own good fortune. Aside from the one tiny round tower, the villa rose only two stories high, but spread across what must have amounted to half a New York City block. Its Moorish architecture expressed the clean, wide lines of Frank Lloyd Wright fare, without the iciness of modernity. Hanging tapestries and Oriental carpet softened the perpendiculars of mosaic tile and marble parquet. Downstairs was constructed on a variety of levels, the floors landscaped into benches cushioned with rotund pillows. The dining area’s table, like the bath, was sunken.
Though the western windows looked frosted, their panes were pitted irregularly: dulled by gale-borne sand. When the wind would poom a door against its frame, like a body slammed from the patio, it took practice not to jump.
Edgar’s favorite room at ground level was the atrium: open and Romanesque, lit by skylights slit around the ceiling, and organized around a rectangular pool whose fountain still plashed in Saddler’s absence. The atrium called out for scantily clad slave girls offering fleshy grapes, palm-leaf fans, and a flow of red wine as ceaseless as the fountain. While Edgar formed an instantaneous affection for the hall, it also made him nervous. Lassitude! Indiscipline! Sloth!
In fact, the entire villa was imbued with an indulgent sensibility to which Edgar was constitutionally hostile. The drinks cabinet clinked with a bonanza of top-shelf booze. Beckoning pillows plumping every room made Edgar’s head list and his eyelids heavy. Numerous guest bedrooms invited all-night social excess. The pantry, chock-full of absurd gift tins and jars—hazelnuts in Cointreau, glacé cherries, pickled quail eggs, smoked baby oysters—enticed three a.m. binges when no one was watching. Though the airy kitchen was fitted with every convenience, Edgar couldn’t picture Saddler chopping onions, and sure enough there was a Post-it note gummed to the Silver Palate Cookbook: “B, Could I leave this here for next time? See page 46—yum! —E.”
Since Edgar could no more envision Saddler plowing through The Peloponnesian Wars in original Greek than slicing zucchini, the upstairs study’s glassed-in leather-bound library—rows of erudite European histories and biographies in multiple languages from Flemish to Hungarian—was expensive paneling.
It was the study that showcased the got-the-T-shirt trinkets of a foreign correspondent, keepsakes that recalled the We Were There series that Edgar had devoured as a kid. In We Were There at Pearl Harbor . . . at Appomattox . . . at the Boston Tea Party, a pack of lucky brats always popped up at the right time and place. He should have told Wallasek that he quit being an attorney in order to jump between the covers of We Were There before it was too late, since no one was about to write a book about kids who serendipitously visit a corporate law firm in a season of hostile takeovers.
At any rate, Barrington Was There. The room overflowed with souvenir booty: a rifle slug, a rubber bullet, a melted metal bicycle pump, a human skull with a patch of scalp sun-dried to the bone. A U.S. Army C-ration kit gritty in the crevices may have commemorated the Gulf War or the invasion of Panama; a tin ladle cleverly fashioned from a can of potted beef, marked “Gift of Finland,” must have been saved in fond remembrance of a famine.
On the wide, curly maple desk sat a clear, catering-size mayonnaise jar, the sort coveted in primary school for terrariums. It brimmed with coins, from rands to bahts, including currencies, like the Zaire, that had become so devalued that its silver was no longer minted. Next to this cosmopolitan piggybank lay an unopened letter from Amnesty International addressed to Mohamed Siad Barre, a Spider-Man comic book in Russian, and a sheet of ghoulish “AIDS Has No Cure” postage stamps from Kenya. The left-hand desk drawer was brimming with electoral buttons: Vote for Marcos, Mengistu, Mobutu, Duvalier, Rabin . . . Mostly demagogues, plus Rabin had been assassinated: quite a cynical tribute to democracy. One file opened on the desk appeared to include every SOB atrocity claim and policy statement ever issued; another drawer rattled with microfloppies alluringly labeled SOB STORIES. The floppies could save Edgar some work.
A set of three-ringed notebooks lined one bookshelf, and Edgar pulled the first volume: Saddler’s clip files. Edgar scanned the initial feature, an impassioned exposé about Thai prostitution—the slave wages, diseases, indentured servitude. Touching, if overwritten. But reading is the ultimate submission. Edgar shoved the notebook back. Turning gruffly from his predecessor’s accomplishments, Edgar started as a pair of eyes met his own.
Well, well. The big, big, big man in the foreground of that black-and-white enlargement had to be none other than Himself. Saddler was seated on the downstairs ottoman, bulwarked by pillows. His barrel-chest burst with such self-satisfaction that it strained the rhinestone buttons of the tuxedo shirt. His eyes sparked with the sinister twinkle of Santa Claus paging kiddy porn. And his right arm was hooked in a virtual headlock around Nicola.
Edgar was consternated. Sure, he’d caught the wink-and-nod in Wallasek’s office, but that was before he’d met her and before he knew she was married. Edgar was mystified why such an elegant and estimable woman would muck in with a scumbag like Saddler.
Yet a second revelation rankled more considerably.
Edgar had verified in childhood what the New Testament only hints at. Yes, mobs will reprieve murderous hooligans before they acquit a babbling messianic head case; Barabbas was merely wicked, and Jesus was actually irritating. What the Bible failed to illustrate was Edgar’s personal Apocrypha: that people will exonerate sadists, braggarts, liars, and even slack-jawed morons before they’ll pardon eyesores. If you’re attractive, people need a reason to dislike you; if you’re ugly, people need a reason to like you. They don’t usually find one. In his tubby school days, Edgar had learned the hard way that every vulgar slob on the block was an aesthete.
Now along comes this absentee paragon, about whom no one from New York to Cinziero can stop talking for more than ten minutes even using a stopwatch, and guess what? Barrington Saddler wasn’t even handsome.
Saddler was built like a grain silo. Drawn practically into his lap, Nicola looked like a stick puppet in comparison. His eyelids were swollen, his cheeks loose; he had an infant double chin. Some great frames afforded no end of abuse, but in a few years’ time the likes of that full back-up case of Beefeaters in the pantry would begin to show. His lips had a faintly feminine fullness, and his neck was thick. His features were pinched, gathered too closely into the middle of his face, as if someone had laced a drawstring around its perimeter and pulled. Though shaggy around the ears, in front his hair was thin. This was no Romeo, but a sybaritic lout well on his way to a stout and gouty middle age. How did he do it?
Defiantly, Edgar tossed the golden robe onto an overstuffed leather armchair. He began his daily one hundred push-ups, keeping his back perfectly straight, lowering his nose fully to the floor. From overhead, Saddler seemed to find the hale-and-hearty exhibition bemusing. For no reason that Edgar could fathom, he stopped at ninety-nine.
Chapter 9
G;p[[u Mpmdrmdr
EDGAR’S TOPSY-TURVY SCHEDULE gave the rest of the night the anarchic atmosphere of a school snow day, as the wind screamed wheeeee! like faraway kids on a sled. While the sun set through his own morning, Edgar discovered several bulbs out, maybe from having been left on when Barrington beat a hasty retreat. Vigorously finding spares and replacing the bulbs helped to offset the mesmerizing idleness that exuded from the plague of cushions. Unpacking took if anything too little time, though limping next to Saddler’s thick, satinate wardrobe Edgar’s wrinkled short-sleeves looked insipid.
Nicola’s warnings were warranted; the place was pretty disheveled. Everything was dusty, and the fridge hadn’t been cleaned for months. Inside, the smoked salmon was swimming, the caviar had hatched, and the liqueur-filled dark chocolates had turned fright-white. Numerous anonymous concoctions had grown branches of exotic molds the size of bonsais. Tautl
y cellophaned and lovingly garnished with desiccated sprigs, these rows of leftovers portrayed an unabating string of doting culinary benevolence.
Gagging, Edgar chucked the remnants of Saddler’s tête-à-têtes and washed the reeking bowls. As reward, he sank at the kitchen’s long middle table with a stiff shot of small-batch bourbon from his host’s ample cabinet. Where were Edgar’s adoring crumpets to scour the toilet bowls with their toothbrushes? The sensation might ebb, but for now he felt not only like a guest in what was presumably his own abode, but like the help. As if Barrington had suggested, be a good lad would you and do something about that dreadful ice box? Attaboy.
Edgar drained the shot resentfully and slammed down the glass, which rattled the lone cup of coffee and ashtray left at the far end. The black coffee had evaporated to leave a thin sediment of dried powder. The ashtray was a distinguished pewter affair, and offered up a single partially smoked cigarillo, which had burned half an inch of ash before extinguishing. Edgar reached for the butt, along with the classy brass lighter left graciously alongside. He tapped the ash, lit up, took a drag. The tobacco was stale, but underneath smoldered a more disturbing flavor—the tinge of a breath whose very foulness was arresting, like the unsettling allure of high French cheeses. The cigarillo was vile and Edgar didn’t even smoke fresh ones, yet after a second furtive drag Edgar had to force himself to stub it out.
By now it was five forty-five a.m. Disorientation set in, and loneliness. Angela would have found this place a hoot. She’d have extended naked on the cold marble parquet by the fountain, her keen ribs flickering in the flames of sconces, and Edgar might have figured out what that room and all its pillows were good for. As it was, the villa’s opulence mocked the paltriness of his imagination. Let loose in a palace, Edgar Kellogg dusted furniture and threw old salmon in the trash. This was a house you had to live not only in, but up to.
Scrounging for amusement worthy of his fanciful surroundings, Edgar returned to the study and stuck a SOB STORIES microfloppy into his laptop. Though the computer seemed to recognize the program code, the files were nonsensically titled:
2” Er;vp,r yp yjr
3” Nsttomhypm’d Gotdy Sytpvoyu
4” Dpm pg Nsttomhypm Od Nptm
5” Yrttptod,
6” Nstns :ppld S;obr
When Edgar loaded in 2” Er;vp,r yp yjr
Vpmhtsyi;
[email protected] Nu mpe upi ,idy jsbr dryy;rf om’ O fp jp[r upi gomf yjr svvp,,pfsyopmd dioysn;r/ Niy im;rdd upi gp;;pe fotrvyopmd vstrgi;;u. mp mi,nrt pg syytsvyobr;u vtpvjryrf [o;;ped eo;; [tpyrvy upi gtp, yjr [ortvomh nptrfp, pg yjod fidy npe;. s diovofs;;u frno;oysyomh rmmio yjsy [rmrytsyrd upit rbrtu [ptr ;olr yjr htoy om yjsy dpffomh eomf/ Es;;sdrl vjpdr er;;/ Ypp er;;/ Jsf jr hobrm ,r sy ;rsdy s g;pert djpe pt yep yp vpbrt. O ,ohjym
y jsbr nrrm gptvrf yp hrmrtsyr ,u pem mred/
Yjod kpitms; esd nrhim gpt ,u pem rmyrtysom,rmy. niy upi eo;; gomf ,ptr yjsm rmpihj omgpt,syopm eoyjom oy yp vsttu pm ,u hppf eptl/ Yjrm. ,pdy kpitms;odyd str yo,of vtrsyitrd. ejp etoyr dyptord sd s dindyoyiyr gpt ;obomh yjr,. smf og upi str pmr pg yjsy ;py. upi ,su n;pe yjr ejody;r pm pit ;oyy;r drvtry og upi ;olr/ Ury s;trsfu O djpi;f estm upi” kidy ytu/
Was Saddler out of his tree? Edgar and his brother Jeff had produced similar drivel playing with their father’s typewriter as kids, but a grown man mashing mindlessly at keys for paragraphs on end was unnervingly reminiscent of The Shining. Edgar fiddled around a little more, testing to see if the computer was malfunctioning, and his own files loaded fine. Yet each floppy in the drawer was all ypys; hpnn;rfuhppl . . . The words didn’t read backward, they suggested no simple pig-Latinate cognates and contained no systematically inserted syllables. Though a few shorter clumps were acronyms for real words, most of the longer ones were short of vowels.
Edgar wandered to the last part of the villa still unexplored. The entrance to the turret was on the second floor at the back, and Edgar found the little wooden door locked and thumbtacked with a printed sign that read, ABRAB WAS I ERE I SAW BARBA. I don’t know, buddy, thought Edgar, those files looked pretty abrab to me.
He hesitated before fitting the smaller key into the padlock. Remembering Nicola’s hushed caution that this was the one place no one had looked for the remains of the villa’s master, he visualized a gaseous three-month-old corpse farting overhead. Twisting up the tight spiral staircase in the dark, Edgar gripped the cold railing, catching his breath on the landing before the final flight. Naturally he dreaded confrontation with a large-scale version of the salmon sliming in the fridge. But he was equally distressed by the prospect of Saddler’s demise. When Edgar took on an antagonist, he wanted some fight left in the guy.
Chapter 10
The Empty Wingchair
ASIDE FROM BEING endearing—with little square windows at each point of the compass, a desk and lamp, even a separate computer printer—the tower was a disappointment at first. Yet after poking around (Edgar was a snoop), he found three things that he couldn’t explain.
The first was a pile of stationery on the desktop, letterheaded with a variety of Barban hotels. But Edgar couldn’t picture the extravagant lord of this manor snitching paper before checkout to scrimp, and the study exhibited a powerful prejudice toward souvenirs with patches of human hair.
Second, in the top desk drawer lay a six-inch-long, two-inch-wide metal pipe, with wax paper rubber-banded over one end and a single hole drilled through one side. While the gizmo looked crudely practical, it served no function that Edgar could fathom.
Third and most peculiar, in the bottom drawer sat a box of latex surgical gloves, once holding three hundred pairs and about half-full. Had Saddler been handling corrosive substances? Checking the advancement of an illness, like prostate cancer? Or might the new narcotic elite inject heroin with perfectly clean hands?
Edgar was puzzled, but in the absence of cadavers charmed by the private hideaway. It offered a cozy reprieve from the expanse of the lower two floors, which he couldn’t begin to inhabit. Saddler’s tower had the exclusive, barricaded aura of the tree houses into which neighborhood boys had never allowed him to clamber as a porky pariah. He’d break the ladder, they jeered. It was no big deal, but like most of his classmates’ parents his own were divorced, and his father’s uncomfortable, coffee-sipping visits were never long enough to help Edgar build a tree house of his own. Besides, his father had always seemed faintly disgusted. Edgar couldn’t really blame him; the guy had never reckoned on having a fat kid.
After trotting down to retrieve his laptop and the bottle of bourbon, Edgar booted up in his new cylindrical retreat and started a letter to Angela. Breezily he informed her that he now had a full-time post in Barba, where fair enough it was dangerous, but she shouldn’t worry, since worry never saved anyone from harm. He’d already made several sharp acquaintances, and the politics were fascinating . . .
After a little more bourbon, he cleared the screen and started again:
Dear Angela—I’m terribly lonely and wondering if I made a big mistake leaving you in the lurch so suddenly. I have no idea what I’m doing in Barba, and so far all these geeks can talk about is this annoying turd I’m standing in for. I miss you terribly—
It wouldn’t do to use “terribly” twice. After several more attempts, Edgar didn’t print out a single version, much less post or e-mail one, though he did save the letters to his hard drive for archival purposes. Maybe later he’d find them funny.
By the following evening Edgar had grown so accustomed to the vento slamming doors against their jambs that at first he didn’t recognize the knocker-pounding of a visible visitor at the front entrance. Dark cape whipping around a turtleneck, skirt, and stockings all in black, Nicola stood on the veranda, proffering a basket, like Little Red Riding Hood in mourning—for the wolf, presumably. Edgar wrestled the door shut behind her.
“I brought you a few leftovers from the party.” She handed Edgar the basket, w
hose caning lurched with the signature skew of another homemade handicraft. “I thought maybe you’d not have managed to market, with your schedule unsettled.”
Edgar peeked inside the cloth. “These aren’t two-day-old sandwiches.”
She blushed, throwing back the hood. “I added a few fresh bits.”
“Are you always this considerate?” he asked, foraging a cheese twist. “Worrying about a stranger’s jet lag, and baking welcome-wagon cookies?”
“Only when I feel guilty,” she admitted, trailing him to the kitchen. “I hate you. And that’s not fair.”
“Funny way of showing it.”
“Not you personally. You seem—”
“How do I seem?” Edgar took his hand out of the fish balls and raised his chin.
Flustered, she stared at the parquet. “To be honest, I haven’t really noticed.”
“Not like Barrington?” Edgar proposed.
At last Nicola looked up at him, truly looked. Hitherto she’d addressed this surrogate Saddler from an angle of ninety degrees, as if in the blur of her peripheral vision he might shimmer into the real thing.
She laughed. “I’m sorry. The robe . . .”
Edgar was wearing his own jeans and plaid flannel shirt underneath, but the golden dressing gown to keep off the chill. In private, the robe lent him a regal flourish, and while reading Edgar had spread its resplendent train across the pillows. “I wouldn’t have pilfered the closet, except—”
“No, the robe’s apt, in a way. You look lost.”
“Swell,” said Edgar, arranging hors d’oeuvres on a platter; no matter how many snacks he added, the finger food looked friendless. “I guess Barrington never looked lost.”
“Barrington was at home everywhere.” Discreetly, Nicola nudged a pickle this way, a kalamata that; she placed a cheese twist on the diagonal, and voilà: the food suddenly appeared convivial.
“Though there’s a desolation to that, don’t you think?” she supposed, licking her fingers. “Getting too comfortable? No longer finding any corner of the world strange? Here you’re abruptly in a new country; you walk smack into a party of strangers; the guests are intent on making you feel like a wally because you don’t know the niggly details of an arcane political movement . . . It’s disorienting. But that’s part of life. Barrington was left out of that. He was never at a loss for words; he never told jokes that went down like a dose of salts; he never felt small. You know the days you have nothing to say to anyone and you feel like, almost, a tree? Barrington never had those. Now that I think of it, Barrington couldn’t have understood anyone else very well.”