Houdini Heart

  Shaky, my head aching, slightly nauseous but freshly showered, I’m sober, and I have a plan. I’m writing a book about River House. I’m a little surprised I didn’t think of it before. But here I am now, looking for its original architectural designs.

  The only person in the room besides me is a fat man at a corner desk. There seems no chair under his tremendous ass, no bones in his body. From time to time he peers out at me through tunnels of flesh. He’s making sure. For all he knows, I could be someone come here to confuse the files. Or to steal something. Or spill a forbidden drink. Or stick my chewing gum under one of his tables. He makes me feel naughty. As if at any moment I could do something wrong. Something terrible. Something he’d have to blow a police whistle for.

  He doesn’t know the half of it.

  So far, I’ve found nothing to steal. If there are architect’s drawings of River House still extant, they aren’t here. Not even those made by Benjamin’s father.

  Pushing my chair back from the table, I stand up. Of course! Benjamin’s father.

  ~

  Before I go to see the son of the man who “saved” River House on the one day he “works,” I try to make myself presentable. It’s not as easy as it was. I still have a nice dress, but I’m thin. The dress hangs on me; my slacks look empty. As for my hair, the Rodeo Drive cut that cost me a third of my monthly River House rent, is shapeless. But if I smooth my hair straight back, I look decent enough. Even innocent.

  For an hour, I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, learning to talk again, to shape my face into smiles, to raise my eyebrows with interest, use my hands to show trustworthiness. I imagine myself any one of a dozen actresses I’ve watched working themselves into a scene.

  “Of course, I shall be careful with the plans, Mr. Willow.” Or Benjamin? Should I call him Benjamin? “I’ll have them back before you know it, Ben. I’m researching for a book I’m writing. Oh, you didn’t know I was a writer?” Eyes down, mouth up in a small shy smile. “I’ve enjoyed some modest success."

  And then he’ll want to know if I mean to include him in my book. After all, if it’s to take place in his building, the one his father redeveloped, the one he does his best to keep the city from destroying with their ordinances and their taxes and their insistence on capping his rents so that Little Sokoki has more low income housing for the low, doesn’t he merit a mention? And I will laugh, just a little, and hint that it’s just possible he might see himself in any book I write about River House.

  But then I think: if I admit I’m a writer, will it trigger his memory? Will he recognize me from newspaper photos? Miss Jackson didn’t. Or wouldn’t. When she rented to me, Miss Jackson seemed thoroughly disinterested in anything about me save my credit report. And when I told her I never use credit, never had, never would (the police follow credit card trails like sharks follow blood in the water), her interest turned to cash. “Six months in advance, thank you.” But perhaps Mr. Willow is more aware of what’s what in the world? If I tell him I’m a writer, it could remind him of headlines. Even in Vermont, the death of an Oscar winning movie star is very big news. And he was surely that, a movie star. And he had won the Oscar. He was also a tender dear heart, and a complete bastard. Plus, he didn’t just die as he’d always expected. He was murdered. Gruesomely. Which he did not expect.

  But if I’m not a writer researching a new book, why do I want to see the designs of River House?

  I’ll tell him I’m an architectural historian.

  ~

  No one brings a little kid to the Oscars. But he did. Besides bringing me, he brought Kate. Up for his third best actor award (he lost the first and second time), he strode through the enormous portal of the Kodak Theater and then up the red carpet to the Rotunda with Kate riding high on his shoulder. I slipped my arm out of his, held back for a moment, so that I might walk slightly behind them. Not out of deference, though that night I certainly felt it (he was so good at his craft, so wonderfully good), but in order to see my little beauty on his shoulders, to see her long curling red hair bouncing down her back, to watch her wide-eyed watching of the crowd, and their surprised and delighted watching of her, and of course, him, the proud father, the brilliant nominee.

  I wore a white retro Hollywood gown by Valentino. Kate wore green chiffon to go with her hair, something he’d had an up-and-coming local designer make for her. It doesn’t matter what he wore: it was stylish, it fit him, he was sober.

  It was our last completely happy moment. We were all dead in less than a month.

  ~

  Benjamin Willow isn’t in his office. No one is in his office.

  When I knocked, the door swung open. It’d been slightly ajar, as if the latch hadn’t quite caught. So, if he’s stepped out for a moment that means at any minute he could be stepping back in.

  My back to the small antechamber that exits into the second floor hallway, I stand in his doorway (one door down from Miss Jackson’s much smaller office), and I stare. The architectural designs of River House are on the wall to the right of his desk. Preserved behind glass, they hang just far enough away so that from the doorway I can see them, but I can’t see them clearly.

  I could wait. I could leave and come back another time. Both of these choices mean I have to do a song and dance with a man called Benjamin Willow. Or I could just walk in and have a look. If caught, I get to play the scene as a dizzy dame. I can do that.

  Walking quickly across his office, I position myself under the first and largest of the drawings. This is a detailed rendering of the building as seen from Main Street. I am smiling. So odd to feel a smile. I thought I had none left. I smile to see I was not wrong. In the drawing, it’s a palace again. It’s full of glamour. It’s fey. There is the deep balcony of lacy black ironwork that once graced the second floor. There are the black iron pillars at the edge of the sidewalk to hold up the block long balcony. I glance to my left. The second drawing is a floor plan of the original ground floor level. The third is the second floor. And so on. Moving along, I try to find my own apartment, or at least the larger space that my small studio was carved from. I’m looking for the spiral stairs. Or any stairs.

  The elevator’s coming. I can hear the squeal it makes closing its doors and I suddenly remember myself. I’m trespassing. I don’t want to be found here, snooping. I must leave, and I must leave now. Turning, I see a corkboard mounted on the wall behind Benjamin’s large untidy desk. It’s pegged for keys. Duplicate keys to every apartment in River House, keys to the ground floor shops, the laundry rooms, the storage rooms, the movie house, the basement, to Miss Jackson’s office, to the office I stand in, the one hung round with the designs of River House. Without thinking once, I snatch a set of both office keys from their pegs and hurry from the room, closing the door. This time it catches.

  Just as I disappear down the stairwell to the lobby on the first floor, I hear the elevator arrive on the second floor. I’ve made my escape, as they say, in the Nick Charles of time.

  ~

  A sickening truth has just become clear to me. It’s only gone noon and I want a drink. I’m standing with my back against my own closed door, my hand tight on its doorknob just in case I was seen after all, and someone come after me to demand an explanation for trespassing, for the theft of keys, and I’m staring at the bottle of vodka I left in my sink. It’s in the sink because I’d meant to pour it down the drain. But didn’t.

  Moving quickly, I tip the bottle so that it falls over and empties itself.

  He could do things like that. Make grand gestures. He could pour an entire bottle of the world’s most expensive whiskey into the ocean, smash it against a wall, stand in the shattered glass howling of release. He could do that because all along he had another bottle hidden somewhere fiendish. I couldn’t find them all. He knew I couldn’t find them all.

  I have no other bottle.

  ~

  All I have to do now is wait. Benjamin Willow will leave for another week, get into his dar
k blue high-riding SUV and whisk himself away to wherever it is he lives. Miss Jackson will catch her small town bus. The maintenance man will hunker down in his own utility unit and pretend he isn’t home in case something might actually need maintaining. And I will sneak into Benjamin Willow’s office. A piece of cake. I have the key.

  But first, I have to wait for the dark.

  ~

  I’m down by the river again, crossing the Vermont bridge, walking along the sandy fringe of the island. This long hot day is taking forever to pass. I do not sweat. I never sweat. But my skin is slick and my pulse races in the heat. I will swim. I will swim in the river even though it is full of toothy fish and slimy garbage and broken glass and toxins. I can’t see any of these things, but I know they’re there, just under the surface.

  On the tangled green bank across from the island, the beautiful boy-man sits amongst the nightshade and fire-red sumac. There’s a huge block of cracked and stained cement there, part of what underpinned the old bridge, the one that swept away in the flood a long time ago. That’s what he’s sitting on, the cement block. He has a book in his hand. I don’t think he’s reading it, I think he’s writing in it. It’s a journal. Another writer. My god, we get around. By the shape, I think that’s his camcorder on the cement beside him. And so is the dog. Nothing like my puppy, nothing like my puppy would have become if he hadn’t died thanks to me. (Would my Prince have thanked me? Why do we say that?) Someone (the youth?) has tied a blue kerchief round its neck. From here it looks bigger, tidier, more content. Dog and man sit on the cement block on the bank below Little Sokoki. I have a feeling they’re not together. And yet they are. No one can see them from above. Only I can see them, although I can’t see the crane which has dominated the rooftops for so long as I’ve been here. And I can’t see the bridge I’ve just crossed, the one they built to replace the old bridge with its new cement blocks. Or, for that matter, any cars. I should be able to see all these things. I haven’t gone that far from the bridge or the road. For this one moment, Little Sokoki looks as it must have done eighty years ago.

  The youth seems to find me fascinating. Not good.

  The dog also seems to find me fascinating. His ears are pricked forward, his teeth showing. The youth is putting down his journal, is about to pick up his camcorder. Shit.

  In cut-offs and a tee shirt, I quickly wade out to above my knees where the water is blue on top, murky tea underneath. Can’t see the bottom, but I can feel it. Out here it’s not sand, it’s mud. Youth and dog must think I’m nuts. Unless they fall in from boats or bank, or are the children of rats, no one swims in the Connecticut. Little Sokoki long ago turned its hard brick back on the river.

  Too bad what they think. It’s hot. I’m suffering in the heat. But I am not entirely a fool; I keep my mouth shut tight as I dive into the tea colored water. Bending at the waist, and kicking, I push myself under. Something brushes my thigh. I shake another something from my foot. Out here in the deep water, it’s colder, and the pull of the river sweeping down to the sea is stronger. Deep underwater now, I stop swimming. Where is the bottom? There is no bottom. The river goes down and down and down.

  Like a dead thing, I drift with the current, my mouth closed but my eyes open. Even so, fuck knows what drifts with me.

  Coming up fast for air, I pop out of the river like a seal. I’m very close to the Vermont shore. Very close to the tangled bank but much farther downstream than where I started. First thing I see is the youth and dog. They’re standing up. They’re both staring at me. The youth is holding his camcorder. At this distance, the boy’s face, slightly Slavic, very exotic, a dancer’s face, is twisted with…what? Fear? Horror? Ears pricked forward, front paws planted deep in river mud, the dog barks. Over and over.

  They must have thought I’d drowned.

  No such luck.

  I wave. I am not Stevie Smith, a poet who longed to go exploring, but instead lived out her quiet English life with her "Lion" aunt, getting no farther than the exploration of words. I’m still waving, not drowning. Dog and youth turn as one and disappear into the green gloom of their riverbank.

  I swim back to the island, climb out onto fine white river sand. Then I walk home up Main Street drip drying in the heat. Hot people smirk. What are they smirking at? Who suffers now?

  At the end of Maple Street, the huge crane turns on its tiny base. The parking lot is not finished after all.

  ~

  I went into labor at six in the morning. We were in England at the time, stuck in a hotel somewhere near Shepperton Studios because he was making a picture. Even though I was virtually full term, he couldn’t resist the offer. Cream of British talent, he said, from the director down to the best boy. Not to mention going up against Anthony Hopkins. He always needed to test himself against what he called the “Big Boys.” And I had to come along, all the way from Malibu; he couldn’t do it without me. What he meant was, he was afraid he’d lose to a “Big Boy” and then where would he hide? In me, of course.

  In any case, of the two of us only I could give birth, and only I could drive the rental car. So I drove him to the hospital. But first I had to get him to a liquor store, which wasn't easy. Buying alcohol isn't the same in England as it is in Hollywood. But, believe you me, we succeeded. I may have been in ever increasing pain, but he was having a full blown head-on contrapuntal of a panic attack.

  I also found the hospital after a lot of stopping and asking.

  He arrived in maternity bearing a clanking canvas bag of some strong North Country brew, and I brought up the rear, bearing Kate. I spent the next thirty-six hours squeezing Kate out of me and into our unsuitable world, and he spent it coming and going and filming and drinking and becoming more and more British by the swallow. When Kate was finally hauled out into the cold chrome and colder white of an English delivery room, he took one look at her tiny gray body and howled, "Where's its bloody willy!"

  He had Anthony Hopkins down pat.

  ~

  I can write a thing—but can I do a thing?

  “Midnight. Our hero enters the forbidden room, silently slipping in & out of shadows. He is wary, but determined.”

  No director, no camera, no script—just me standing on the edge of revelation. I’ve already discovered that what can be done in a heated frenzy of passion is not so easily accomplished in cold blood. Here I am, in the night, in the dark, a true intruder, a real sneak thief—and I am about to pee myself. It’s not so much fear, as embarrassment. How foolish I’ll feel getting booked down at the Little Sokoki cop shop.

  With this thought, the fear of feeling foolish is swiftly replaced by the terror of getting caught. I can’t get caught.

  But here I am anyway.

  Gone two in the morning. I’ve waited until the last show at the River House Theater let out (my Malibu neighbor’s latest comic book superhero flick had a short run; it’s been replaced by something animated), until The Last Ditch emptied its patrons into the streets, until River House had settled into sleep. And then I waited a half hour more. In case “she” came walking and knocking at my door.

  Now, I insert stolen key into the lock and turn. Door opens with a shriek. Didn’t do that this morning. I freeze against the wall as the eternal seconds tick by. But no one opens another of the doors along the hall of the second floor.

  What am I thinking? Why should they? We all live with the walking girl-woman. By now, it seems it would take Jacob Marley’s ghost to attract their midnight attention.

  Wary, determined, tongue stuck to the top of my mouth, I slip inside and lock the door.

  It’s pitch black in here. Benjamin Willow’s drapes are drawn. I knew they would be. On the single day he spends “at work,” Benjamin opens his drapes. On the days he is not here, they’re closed. But I dare not turn on a light. Light might leak around the drapes. There might be someone out there, unable to sleep, and walking. The police might cruise by.

  But I’ve planned for this. I’ve brought my Price C
hopper flashlight. And my hammer.

  ~

  The stairs behind my closet are real. I know they are. I’ve coughed their dust out of my lungs, been comforted by their light. Yet I can’t find a trace of them on a single drawing. By flashlight, I’ve made my way to the remembered right hand wall, peered at the framed architectural designs of the 1867 River House for an hour now. Floor by floor. Room by room. From lobby to ballroom.

  I’ve discovered that my third floor room was carved from a much larger room, was once rather nice. That Benjamin Willow’s second floor office was once two rooms, and neither one as grand as mine once was. That the trendy dry goods store on the corner of Main and High, two floors below my room, and now just beneath my feet, was once a very grand hotel desk and, behind that, private offices. Best of all, Miss Jackson’s office was once the linen supply closet. Being as petty as the next person, I like that.

  But aside from the main stairs in the center of the building (which are still there), and aside from smaller emergency staircases on each end of the two wings (also still there), I can find no other stairs.

  Even so, I’ve discovered how one gets into the tallest tower.

  There is a sixth floor. Actually, it does not qualify as a floor. More like a cottage. A private cottage. On the roof of the Main Street wing of River House, and seen only as a curious ridge of extra roof from below, is a conceit, a folly, a very small one-story building sitting atop a very large five-story building. And in it was once a bijouterie of an apartment. Kitchen, two bedrooms, parlor, dining room, formal drawing room, office (called here a library), bath, separate toilet. There is a hallway running the length of the roof top apartment which divides the bedrooms, the library, and the large bath from the parlor, the drawing room, kitchen and dining room. At one end of this hallway is a tall window looking out over Main Street and what was once the large island in the middle of the Connecticut River. At the other end of this hallway there is a French door leading out onto the roof. From this roof, it is a short, and I’ll bet, slightly dangerous walk to the central tower sitting like a single pawn on the edge of an empty chessboard. In the central tower there is a lower window that can’t be seen from the street.