All this is the debris of forty something years of tenants. Here there might even be castoffs and lost property of over a hundred years of hotel guests.
They haven’t lowered the ceiling. It’s still up there, fifteen feet above my head, painted a once creamy white. Fat little cupids, pink-cheeked and smirking, stare down through garlands of green leaves and pink and yellow flowers. The twelve foot tall windows, once flung open for air when great balls brightened the room, are sealed shut. I think that here people laughed, people danced, people said things that did not matter.
Meanwhile, I’ve looked everywhere. There are no stairs from the ballroom up to the tower. There is no closet, large or small, positioned over my closet two floors below, to conceal an old staircase. There’s no repair to the ceiling indicating an opening long sealed off.
I don’t understand. Do the stairs in the back of my closet go only up to the fourth floor? How does anyone get up to the tower? Once it was built, did anyone ever go up to the tower?
If there is no way into the tower, how could someone who looked like my mother have been up there? (Certainly not my actual mother who’s been dead for at least twenty years; I wasn’t there when it happened, didn’t hear of her death for some time, so don’t actually know when she lied her last lie.) Am I making another mistake, the same mistake I made when I thought I’d seen someone in my own window?
There must be a way into the tower.
~
I sat in the pocket park again today. Watched the furtively defiant kids, each a perfect clone of street cred, share a joint. Listened to two shaggy men compare the free food program of the Congregationalist Church to the free lunches dished out by the Baptists. So far, I’ve resisted bringing any booze with me. If I ever do, it won’t be in a brown paper bag. I once worked in Hollywood. I once won a literary prize. Woody Allen once stared at me with actual longing over a hotdog at a celebrity baseball game at Yankee Stadium. In London, Terence Stamp once gave me a lingering kiss. Richard Brautigan once read me his as yet unpublished Trout Fishing in America all through a San Francisco night. Marlon Brando once sat until dawn on a Malibu beach tempting me with talent. I once sat on Dizzy Gillespie’s knee while he told me off-color jokes.
And I once found where he hid his bottles, and there I changed wine into water once and once and once upon a time.
When I become a drunk on a bench, I’ll use my stainless steel traveler’s mug, the one that says “Carmel by the Sea.” And I’ll be drinking screwdrivers through a bendy straw.
A bee buzzes by my ear. I swat at it, but miss.
~
Almost three in the morning. I’m in bed and I’m working. This time I’m writing a sad tale of sad times. It’s a little bit stark. A little bit gritty. Stark and gritty signals I’m serious. A writer to reckon with. As for sad…sad is always a winner. Not only that, sad is a snap to write. Want to know how easy it is to work on people’s heartstrings? This is how. Set up something they have to like: a kid, a dog, a cranky but cute old man, an amiable half-wit, whatever—then kill it. Like life does. In time, life kills everything.
I’d like to think life killed the puppy I had when I was twelve. But I did. I killed him. After my stray kitten had wandered off, I’d won a puppy by drawing his likeness from a kid’s TV show that cleverly saved dogs from the pound by making them prizes in drawing contests. I’d named him Prince. Actually, the name I gave him was longer than that, but out of respect for my long lost dog, I’ll keep the rest of it to myself. When I rode my bike, he’d race behind, a bundle of black with lolling tongue and bright eyes. I knew he’d do that, was proud of him for it, yet one day I turned onto a street with too much traffic. I knew it had too many cars, I knew he would follow no matter where I went, yet still I made that turn. The man who hit my dog drove us to the nearest vet, and he did it fast. All the way I cradled Prince in my arms, sobbing. “Don’t die,” I whispered to him, “don’t die.” But he did. And when he did, his poor little body gave up such a sickening gassy smell, I gagged. I cried out for him for months.
Whoops. Almost spilled my drink. What you get from using your tummy as a table. Anyway, sad gets the prize every time. Oscar only goes to tales of woe.
Now, funny is hard. Funny is much harder than sad. To make people laugh takes real talent. Like laughing itself. Real laughter is a rare talent. He had it. He could laugh. He could make people laugh. He made me laugh.
I think I’m drunk. No. I know I’m drunk.
Ironic as hell, this. Before the end, I rarely drank. But he was almost always drunk. Being a drunk defined him. It defined who we were. It defined what happened to us. And here I am now, all that’s left, still defining away.
Us writers are full of quotes. We quote everybody. If we get desperate enough we quote ourselves and hope nobody will notice we’ve used the line before. So anyway, Bertrand Russell said: “Drunkenness is temporary suicide.” He said more than that, but that little bit’s not bad for an old crank like Bertie. A year after meeting and marrying my favorite movie star, I could have come up with the same thought myself.
~
What’s that? Is someone at the door? Is she out there again? I turn my head, listen for a moment. G’way. Got no time for mad people walking at night. Got sad stuff to do here.
~
Knew I had a headache long before I awoke. Headache was part of my dream. Dream was about an old house, lots of misshapen rooms, up and down stairs, looking for something. I often dream of old houses, strange rooms. Though they are always different, they’re all the same: somewhere I once lived, somewhere I think I’ve long forgotten. In them, I am always trespassing. Moving from room to room, I’m always looking for something or someone so precious, I weep with loss.
I reach out for the aspirin before I reach for my laptop, take four with what’s left in the glass by the side of my bed. Then I reach for my laptop. Meaning to begin again where I left off, I’ll read my stark and gritty sad new book. One paragraph, two, three—I shudder right down to the curled bones in my toes.
It’s crap. Another night of writing crap.
He once threw a box of his own videos out a Manhattan hotel window. Then he threw out the DVDs. Every movie he ever made landed in duplicate on West 23rd Street with a hideous series of cracks. That time he was lucky. That time, no one died.
Even writing crap, I don’t think I’m ready to throw my laptop out a window. But I might throw me.
~
It’s still dark. What time is it? A little after four. Four fourteen in the morning. River House sleeps all around me. Wherever her home might be, the girl who walks alone must be sleeping as well. Or if not, she walks alone elsewhere. Nothing happening below my window. Little Sokoki has finally gone home, whether home be house or car or cardboard box. No one drives along Main Street. Nothing’s going up or down High, or on any of the small side streets. At least not those I can see, and I can see quite a few of them. No plane passes overhead full of silently terrified passengers. There is no sound at all.
Except me, breathing in the dark.
I sit in my bed on the floor, propped up against a wall by pillows. All that lights my room is the computer screen, now showing my screen saver. Nothing personal, something straight out of the Microsoft desktop selection: points of light passing like stars at warp speed. Yet I can see into my closet as if it were day. For some reason, this does not strike me as strange.
I fall asleep like that, sitting up in bed.
~
Open my eyes who knows how long later, and it is still dark, still quiet. I still have a headache. What time is it? Fourteen minutes after four in the morning.
I won’t fix the clock. Who really needs to know what time it is?
~
When I open my eyes a third time, it’s four fourteen. My closet door is closed.
Need more aspirin. Need to pee. Need to pee desperately. Probably throw up as well. Crawl to the bathroom on my hands and knees by the light of my computer’s sta
rry screen. Embrace the toilet bowl, staring down into its dark open mouth, my mouth open too. God. Life is hell. There is no hell but life.
Whatever time it actually is, morning is not broken. It’s not even hanging by a snagged nail. No pale light washes the shoulders of the unseen mountain rising from the eastern side of the river. New Hampshire’s mountain that was once the Sokoki Indian’s mountain that always was and ever will be its own mountain, is darker now than it was an hour ago. It’s darker outside than it is inside, and the outside dark has a slant and a weight to it that could shatter the glass of my window. I don’t mean to, but I lean away.
For more light, I call up the file of the crappy book I’ve been working on, the bad sad one. Nothing comes up on my screen but—
CHAPTER ONE
I must have deleted my latest mess. I don’t remember deleting it.
~
When I open my eyes again, it is ten minutes after eight. At night? In the morning? Whichever it is, it’s still dark.
It’s dark. Still dark.
I am a crudely made thing. I have no feeling for feelings. All I have are words. All I can see are primary colors. I get lost in rainbows.
Suddenly, I’m terrified. There is nothing wrong with my clock. There is something wrong with me. Something wrong with my room. There is something very wrong about the dark inside my room, outside my room.
Here’s what’s worse than never writing my first, my only, good book—what if the sun never dawns? What if the dark is all that’s left? I am struck by the most primitive fear of all, the one that begat all those religions we’re still stuck with: no light.
But there’s light in the closet. I can see it through the door that was open, then closed, and is now open again.
Panicked, I’ve scrambled off my bed, thrown myself headlong across the floor. By instant dumb instinct, I’ve crawled into the closet. Like a child would. Like early woman or man would. Like anyone would when face to face with a world gone dark. To hide. To have walls close around me when life grows too large to bear. Seeking light. As all things seek light. Except bats and rats. And, of course, vampires—the foolish overheated creations of those who would live forever. I understand the longing to live forever—but in the same body, as the same person, doing the same bloody thing?
I find my hammer. I’d left it on the floor of the closet when I’d cleared up the mess. I pick it up. A little light and a good hammer. What else could anyone need?
~
The day it all ended, something had suddenly come up, a producer’s meeting, an agent’s business lunch, something vitally “important”—no time to find a sitter. Besides, her father was home. So I left her there, with her father.
Kate was three years old and she died. He did not die. Not that day. He died five weeks later. So he was right after all. He died young. Not as young as a “real” artist, but young enough.
In the closet, I can see his face. My hand tightens around the hammer.
~
I am no longer drunk. I wish I were. If I were drunk I could rule out that I’ve gone insane. Peering out from the closet into my room, I can see that it is still dark. Has the world come to an end? If it has, has anyone else noticed? Or is it just my world, my version of reality that’s stopped? I cannot leave the closet. Out there someone’s world has turned its face away. In here, the light still shines. It’s coming from behind my suitcase, shining through the hole I made in the closet wall. In here, even over the thud of my relentless heart, I slowly realize I hear music. Faint and distant music. Is it coming from the apartment next door? Do I still have neighbors? I don’t know; I’ve never seen them. But I always know when they’re home. When they’re home the television is never off. It goes on and on and on and on, beginning first thing in the morning and straight on through to late at night. And to think I wrote some of what I hear through the walls. TV is like a drip feed: drip drip dripping into the brains of my fellow man like sugared water—feeding nothing, but causing all sorts of interesting illnesses. If I could feel, I’d feel ashamed.
The music is sweet, melodic, nothing like the hostile noise that thumps from passing cars or shouts abuse from behind open windows. It sounds like Cole Porter when he was young and his music was young and it’s coming from somewhere behind my closet.
It’s coming from the stairs behind the closet wall.
I move my leather bag, remove the plastic ceiling tiles; expose the hole I’ve made in River House. The light and the music tumble out.
Holding my hammer, my hand slick with sweat, I climb through the hole and onto the stairs.
~
Up and up and round and round. Behind my closet, the stairs are circular stairs, and perhaps they once stood away from the inner wall of River House. But now they are inside the walls, and they wind up and up and up. And as I climb I remember Faye and my own The Windigo’s Daughter.
Faye sights along her taut slingshot. A bird, a chipmunk, a cat: anything will do.
Here comes a bee. Now what?
"Buzzzzzzafayebuzzzzaway," says the bee, as ordinary as any ordinary bee—except perhaps for the tiny voice. And the fury behind it. But Faye has already left the porch and is slamming her door.
It's later now. Faye hurries to the church on Cherry Street in her blood-red wedding gown. The wedding guests are surprised. Naturally, they had expected a bride—pure or not—to appear in driven white. (On the other hand, they whisper each to each, in modern times, in times such as these, who can be called pure…and what does purity signify anyway? Such an old fashioned word.) But Faye does not like white. It reminds her of snow and snow reminds her of the cold and cold reminds her of caves and caves remind her of…why go on? The dress is red because red is Faye's favorite color.
The first thing Faye does when she arrives at the church is to go round checking the sash windows. She asks an usher: are they closed? Every one of them? And the doors? Are there any cracks in the walls, open venting, grillwork? She explains that outside a chill has sprung up…but there is no chill.
Faye's guests—all of them her neighbors on West Hackmatack Street or from the bigger houses farther north on Hackmatack Common or the folks from the shops where she buys what little she ever buys—turn in their polished seats once they've got over Faye's red dress and Faye's inspection of the windows and doors. (After all, everyone agrees, a bride often acts in mysterious ways: it's a case of wedding day jitters.) But where is Mr. Honig? And what will he be wearing?
Mr. Honig isn't here yet. Where is the groom?
A slow buzz, almost like the murmur of bees, hums through the wedding guests. What if Mr. Honig doesn't come?
Faye has thought of this too…but dismissed it. Mr. Honig will come. He knows better than that.
It’s bright in here, lit by what seems a naked two hundred watt bulb somewhere far above my head. And I’m not wearing red and there is no Mr. Honig. But there is someone singing Cole Porter’s Love for Sale and I think it comes from a stereo or perhaps a radio, turned low so that no one else is disturbed in the night. Except me.
Words reach me now. Love for sale/Appetizing young love for sale/If you want to buy my wares/Follow me and climb the stairs/Love for sale.
I laugh softly to myself, at the irony of it, laugh that my life is full of irony in the last of my days. He’d think it was funny that not only have I gone mad before I died, but I’m also providing the music.
But the real hell of it is, even if I’m no longer sane, I can still be terrified. I say to myself: this is a musical dream. A dream musical. In movies, moments like this moment are almost always dreams. In dreams, like movies, anything might happen and we can remain whole. Sane. Safe. In dreams, we are strong enough to experience anything at all. It’s only in waking life we demand order: gravity, time ticking by, cause generating effect, consistency. Or, all else failing, any kind of order, no matter how nuts. Like our religions. Now, there’s crazy. Imposing our childish need for Daddy, our childish terror of Daddy, on the
cosmos. (And where’s Mommy? Did Daddy kill her?) In waking life, most of us are not only cowards, we’re out of our minds. He was. I am.
In the hope that I am dreaming, I climb the stairs.
~
I open my eyes. It is seven minutes after two in the afternoon and my window is painted with sun. My headache is no longer merely a headache, it’s an abomination. I look down the long stretch of my arm lying outside my covers. My hammer is there, in my hand. I’m holding my hammer. Dropping it as I’d drop a snake, I crawl away from my bed, barely able to raise my head. But I have to find out. The closet door is open. My leather bag is pulled away from the hole in the wall. Ceiling tiles are tossed every which way. The stairs behind the wall at the back of my closet are not spiral; they are narrow steps going up at an angle along the inside of the outside wall. Taking courage, I stick my head in the hole, look up. There’s nothing to see but the dirt and the dust of the staircase disappearing into the rising dark. I look down. Nothing but the stairs disappearing into the lowering dark.
Drink was his ruin. It looks like it might be mine. I shall stop drinking immediately. If I’m to die, it won’t be this way. It’s too messy. Too common. Too stupid. And too scary.
~
On the top floor of the Little Sokoki Library there is a big airy room devoted to the history of Little Sokoki. It’s where I found the book I browsed, the one full of old photographs. More framed photographs hang from the walls. Blow-ups of Little Sokoki in the 1860s, early in the Twentieth Century, in the 1950s. People, but not places, gone forever. Under glass are Sokoki Indian arrow heads, yellowing bones, trinkets lost and then found in old farmhouses, bits of this or that early device to milk cows or turn water wheels or render tallow.