Black House

23

"ONE MORE !" says the guy from ESPN.

It sounds more like an order than a request, and although Henry can't see the fellow, he knows this particular homeboy never played a sport in his life, pro or otherwise. He has the lardy, slightly oily aroma of someone who has been overweight almost from the jump. Sports is perhaps his compensation, with the power to still memories of clothes bought in the Husky section at Sears and all those childhood rhymes like "Fatty-fatty, two-by-four, had to do it on the floor, couldn't get through the bathroom door. "

His name is Penniman. "Just like Little Richard!" he told Henry when they shook hands at the radio station. "Famous rock 'n' roller from back in the fifties? Maybe you remember him. "

"Vaguely," Henry said, as if he hadn't at one time owned every single Little Richard had ever put out. "I believe he was one of the Founding Fathers. " Penniman laughed uproariously, and in that laugh Henry glimpsed a possible future for himself. But was it a future he wanted? People laughed at Howard Stern, too, and Howard Stern was a dork.

"One more drink!" Penniman repeats now. They are in the bar of the Oak Tree Inn, where Penniman has tipped the bartender five bucks to switch the TV from bowling on ABC to ESPN, even though there's nothing on at this hour of the day except golf tips and bass fishing. "One more drink, just to seal the deal!"

But they don't have a deal, and Henry isn't sure he wants to make one. Going national with George Rathbun as part of the ESPN radio package should be attractive, and he doesn't have any serious problem with changing the name of the show from Badger Barrage to ESPN Sports Barrage ¡ª it would still focus primarily on the central and northern areas of the country ¡ª but . . .

But what?

Before he can even get to work on the question, he smells it again: My Sin, the perfume his wife used to wear on certain evenings, when she wanted to send a certain signal. Lark was what he used to call her on those certain evenings, when the room was dark and they were both blind to everything but scents and textures and each other.

Lark.

"You know, I think I'm going to pass on that drink," Henry says. "Got some work to do at home. But I'm going to think over your offer. And I mean seriously. "

"Ah-ah-ah," Penniman says, and Henry can tell from certain minute disturbances in the air that the man is shaking a finger beneath his nose. Henry wonders how Penniman would react if Henry suddenly darted his head forward and bit off the offending digit at the second knuckle. If Henry showed him a little Coulee Country hospitality Fisherman-style. How loud would Penniman yell? As loud as Little Richard before the instrumental break of "Tutti Frutti," perhaps? Or not quite as loud as that?

"Can't go till I'm ready to take you," Mr. I'm Fat But It No Longer Matters tells him. "I'm your ride, y'know. " He's on his fourth gimlet, and his words are slightly slurred. My friend, Henry thinks, I'd poke a ferret up my ass before I'd get into a car with you at the wheel.

"Actually, I can," Henry says pleasantly. Nick Avery, the bartender, is having a kick-ass afternoon: the fat guy slipped him five to change the TV channel, and the blind guy slipped him five to call Skeeter's Taxi while the fat guy was in the bathroom, making a little room.

"Huh?"

"I said, ¡®Actually, I can. ' Bartender?"

"He's outside, sir," Avery tells him. "Pulled up two minutes ago. "

There is a hefty creak as Penniman turns on his bar stool. Henry can't see the man's frown as he takes in the taxi now idling in the hotel turnaround, but he can sense it.

"Listen, Henry," Penniman says. "I think you may lack a certain understanding of your current situation. There are stars in the firmament of sports radio, damned right there are ¡ª people like the Fabulous Sports Babe and Tony Kornheiser make six figures a year just in speaking fees, six figures easy ¡ª but you ain't there yet. That door is currently closed to you. But I, my friend, am one helluva doorman. The upshot is that if I say we ought to have one more drink, then ¡ª "

"Bartender," Henry says quietly, then shakes his head. "I can't just call you bartender; it might work for Humphrey Bogart but it doesn't work for me. What's your name?"

"Nick Avery, sir. " The last word comes out automatically, but Avery never would have used it when speaking to the other one, never in a million years. Both guys tipped him five, but the one in the dark glasses is the gent. It's got nothing to do with him being blind, it's just something he is.

"Nick, who else is at the bar?"

Avery looks around. In one of the back booths, two men are drinking beer. In the hall, a bellman is on the phone. At the bar itself, no one at all except for these two guys ¡ª one slim, cool, and blind, the other fat, sweaty, and starting to be pissed off.

"No one, sir. "

"There's not a . . . lady?" Lark, he's almost said. There's not a lark?

"No. "

"Listen here," Penniman says, and Henry thinks he's never heard anyone so unlike "Little Richard" Penniman in his entire life. This guy is whiter than Moby Dick . . . and probably about the same size. "We've got a lot more to discuss here. " Loh more t'dishcush is how it comes out. "Unless, that is" ¡ª Unlesh ¡ª "you're trying to let me know you're not interested. " Never in a million years, Penniman's voice says to Henry Leyden's educated ears. We're talking about putting a money machine in your living room, sweetheart, your very own private ATM, and there ain't no way in hell you're going to turn that down.

"Nick, you don't smell perfume? Something very light and old-fashioned? My Sin, perhaps?"

A flabby hand falls on Henry's shoulder like a hot-water bottle. "The sin, old buddy, would be for you to refuse to have another drink with me. Even a blindman could see th ¡ª "

"Suggest you get your hand off him," Avery says, and perhaps Penniman's ears aren't entirely deaf to nuance, because the hand leaves Henry's shoulder at once.

Then another hand comes in its place, higher up. It touches the back of Henry's neck in a cold caress that's there and then gone. Henry draws in breath. The smell of perfume comes with it. Usually scents fade after a period of exposure, as the receptors that caught them temporarily deaden. Not this time, though. Not this smell.

"No perfume?" Henry almost pleads. The touch of her hand on his neck he can dismiss as a tactile hallucination. But his nose never betrays him.

Never until now, anyway.

"I'm sorry," Avery says. "I can smell beer . . . peanuts . . . this man's gin and his aftershave . . . "

Henry nods. The lights above the backbar slide across the dark lenses of his shades as he slips gracefully off his stool.

"I think you want another drink, my friend," Penniman says in what he no doubt believes to be a tone of polite menace. "One more drink, just to celebrate, and then I'll take you home in my Lexus. "

Henry smells his wife's perfume. He's sure of it. And he seemed to feel the touch of his wife's hand on the back of his neck. Yet suddenly it's skinny little Morris Rosen he finds himself thinking about ¡ª Morris, who wanted him to listen to "Where Did Our Love Go" as done by Dirtysperm. And of course for Henry to play it in his Wisconsin Rat persona. Morris Rosen, who has more integrity in one of his nail-chewed little fingers than this bozo has got in his entire body.

He puts a hand on Penniman's forearm. He smiles into Penniman's unseen face, and feels the muscles beneath his palm relax. Penniman has decided he's going to get his way. Again.

"You take my drink," Henry says pleasantly, "add it to your drink, and then stick them both up your fat and bepimpled ass. If you need something to hold them in place, why, you can stick your job up there right after them. "

Henry turns and walks briskly toward the door, orienting himself with his usual neat precision and holding one hand out in front of him as an insurance policy. Nick Avery has broken into spontaneous applause, but Henry barely hears this and Penniman he has already dismissed from his mind. What occupies him is the smell of

My Sin perfume. It fades a little as he steps out into the afternoon heat . . . but is that not an amorous sigh he hears beside his left ear? The sort of sigh his wife sometimes made just before falling asleep after love? His Rhoda? His Lark?

"Hello, the taxi!" he calls from the curb beneath the awning.

"Right here, buddy ¡ª what're you, blind?"

"As a bat," Henry agrees, and walks toward the sound of the voice. He'll go home, he'll put his feet up, he'll have a glass of tea, and then he'll listen to the damned 911 tape. That as yet unperformed chore may be what's causing his current case of the heebie-jeebies and shaky-shivers, knowing that he must sit in darkness and listen to the voice of a child-killing cannibal. Surely that must be it, because there's no reason to be afraid of his Lark, is there? If she were to return ¡ª to return and haunt him ¡ª she would surely haunt with love.

Wouldn't she?

Yes, he thinks, and lowers himself into the taxi's stifling back seat.

"Where to, buddy?"

"Norway Valley Road," Henry says. "It's a white house with blue trim, standing back from the road. You'll see it not long after you cross the creek. "

Henry settles back in the seat and turns his troubled face toward the open window. French Landing feels strange to him today . . . fraught. Like something that has slipped and slipped until it is now on the verge of simply falling off the table and smashing to pieces on the floor.

Say that she has come back. Say that she has. If it's love she's come with, why does the smell of her perfume make me so uneasy? So almost revolted? And why was her touch (her imagined touch, he assures himself) so unpleasant?

Why was her touch so cold?

After the dazzle of the day, the living room of Beezer's crib is so dark that at first Jack can't make out anything. Then, when his eyes adjust a little, he sees why: blankets ¡ª a double thickness, from the look ¡ª have been hung over both of the living-room windows, and the door to the other downstairs room, almost certainly the kitchen, has been closed.

"He can't stand the light," Beezer says. He keeps his voice low so it won't carry across to the far side of the room, where the shape of a man lies on a couch. Another man is kneeling beside him.

"Maybe the dog that bit him was rabid," Jack says. He doesn't believe it.

Beezer shakes his head decisively. "It isn't a phobic reaction. Doc says it's physiological. Where light falls on him, his skin starts to melt. You ever hear of anything like that?"

"No. " And Jack has never smelled anything like the stench in this room, either. There's the buzz of not one but two table fans, and he can feel the cross-draft, but that stink is too gluey to move. There's the reek of spoiled meat ¡ª of gangrene in torn flesh ¡ª but Jack has smelled that before. It's the other smell that's getting to him, something like blood and funeral flowers and feces all mixed up together. He makes a gagging noise, can't help it, and Beezer looks at him with a certain impatient sympathy.

"Bad, yeah, I know. But it's like the monkey house at the zoo, man ¡ª you get used to it after a while. "

The swing door to the other room opens, and a trim little woman with shoulder-length blond hair comes through. She's carrying a bowl. When the light strikes the figure lying on the couch, Mouse screams. It's a horribly thick sound, as if the man's lungs have begun to liquefy. Something ¡ª maybe smoke, maybe steam ¡ª starts to rise up from the skin of his forehead.

"Hold on, Mouse," the kneeling man says. It's Doc. Before the kitchen door swings all the way shut again, Jack is able to read what's pasted to his battered black bag. Somewhere in America there may be another medical man sporting a STEPPENWOLF RULES bumper sticker on the side of his physician's bag, but probably not in Wisconsin.

The woman kneels beside Doc, who takes a cloth from the basin, wrings it out, and places it on Mouse's forehead. Mouse gives a shaky groan and begins to shiver all over. Water runs down his cheeks and into his beard. The beard seems to be coming out in mangy patches.

Jack steps forward, telling himself he will get used to the smell, sure he will. Maybe it's even true. In the meantime he wishes for a little of the Vicks VapoRub most LAPD homicide detectives carry in their glove compartments as a matter of course. A dab under each nostril would be very welcome right now.

There's a sound system (scruffy) and a pair of speakers in the corners of the room (huge), but no television. Stacked wooden crates filled with books line every wall without a door or a window in it, making the space seem even smaller than it is, almost cryptlike. Jack has a touch of claustrophobia in his makeup, and now this circuit warms up, increasing his discomfort. Most of the books seem to deal with religion and philosophy ¡ª he sees Descartes, C. S. Lewis, the Bhagavad-Gita, Steven Avery's Tenets of Existence ¡ª but there's also a lot of fiction, books on beer making, and (on top of one giant speaker) Albert Goldman's trash tome about Elvis Presley. On the other speaker is a photograph of a young girl with a splendid smile, freckles, and oceans of reddish-blond hair. Seeing the child who drew the hopscotch grid out front makes Jack Sawyer feel sick with anger and sorrow. Otherworldly beings and causes there may be, but there's also a sick old fuck prowling around who needs to be stopped. He'd do well to remember that.

Bear Girl makes a space for Jack in front of the couch, moving gracefully even though she's on her knees and still holding the bowl. Jack sees that in it are two more wet cloths and a heap of melting ice cubes. The sight of them makes him thirstier than ever. He takes one and pops it into his mouth. Then he turns his attention to Mouse.

A plaid blanket has been pulled up to his neck. His forehead and upper cheeks ¡ª the places not covered by his decaying beard ¡ª are pasty. His eyes are closed. His lips are drawn back to show teeth of startling whiteness.

"Is he ¡ª " Jack begins, and then Mouse's eyes open. Whatever Jack meant to ask leaves his head entirely. Around the hazel irises, Mouse's eyes have gone an uneasy, shifting scarlet. It's as if the man is looking into a terrible radioactive sunset. From the inner corners of his eyes, some sort of black scum is oozing.

"The Book of Philosophical Transformation addresses most current dialectics," Mouse says, speaking mellowly and lucidly, "and Machiavelli also speaks to these questions. " Jack can almost picture him in a lecture hall. Until his teeth begin to chatter, that is.

"Mouse, it's Jack Sawyer. " No recognition in those weird red-and-hazel eyes. The black gunk at the corners of them seems to twitch, however, as if it is somehow sentient. Listening to him.

"It's Hollywood," Beezer murmurs. "The cop. Remember?"

One of Mouse's hands lies on the plaid blanket. Jack takes it, and stifles a cry of surprise when it closes over his with amazing strength. It's hot, too. As hot as a biscuit just out of the oven. Mouse lets out a long, gasping sigh, and the stench is fetid ¡ª bad meat, decayed flowers. He's rotting, Jack thinks. Rotting from the inside out. Oh Christ, help me through this.

Christ may not, but the memory of Sophie might. Jack tries to fix her eyes in his memory, that lovely, level, clear blue gaze.

"Listen," Mouse says.

"I'm listening. "

Mouse seems to gather himself. Beneath the blanket, his body shivers in a loose, uncoordinated way that Jack guesses is next door to a seizure. Somewhere a clock is ticking. Somewhere a dog is barking. A boat hoots on the Mississippi. Other than these sounds, all is silence. Jack can remember only one other such suspension of the world's business in his entire life, and that was when he was in a Beverly Hills hospital, waiting for his mother to finish the long business of dying. Somewhere Ty Marshall is waiting to be rescued. Hoping to be rescued, at least. Somewhere there are Breakers hard at work, trying to destroy the axle upon which all existence spins. Here is only this eternal room with its feeble fans and noxious vapors.

Mouse's eyes close, then open again. They fix upon the newcomer, and Jack is suddenly sure some great truth is going to be confided. The ice cube is gone from his mouth; Jack s

upposes he crunched it up and swallowed it without even realizing, but he doesn't dare take another.

"Go on, buddy," Doc says. "You get it out and then I'll load you up with another hypo of dope. The good stuff. Maybe you'll sleep. "

Mouse pays no heed. His mutating eyes hold Jack's. His hand holds Jack's, tightening still more. Jack can almost feel the bones of his fingers grinding together.

"Don't . . . go out and buy top-of-the-line equipment," Mouse says, and sighs out another excruciatingly foul breath from his rotting lungs.

"Don't . . . ?"

"Most people give up brewing after . . . a year or two. Even dedicated . . . dedicated hobbyists. Making beer is not . . . is not for pussies. "

Jack looks around at Beezer, who looks back impassively. "He's in and out. Be patient. Wait on him. "

Mouse's grip tightens yet more, then loosens just as Jack is deciding he can take it no longer.

"Get a big pot," Mouse advises him. His eyes bulge. The reddish shadows come and go, come and go, fleeting across the curved landscape of his corneas, and Jack thinks, That's its shadow. The shadow of the Crimson King. Mouse has already got one foot in its court. "Five gallons . . . at least. You find the best ones are in . . . seafood supply stores. And for a fermentation vessel . . . plastic water-cooler jugs are good . . . they're lighter than glass, and . . . I'm burning up. Christ, Beez, I'm burning up!"

"Fuck this, I'm going to shoot it to him," Doc says, and snaps open his bag.

Beezer grabs his arm. "Not yet. "

Bloody tears begin to slip out of Mouse's eyes. The black goo seems to be forming into tiny tendrils. These reach greedily downward, as if trying to catch the moisture and drink it.

"Fermentation lock and stopper," Mouse whispers. "Thomas Merton is shit, never let anyone tell you different. No real thought there. You have to let the gases escape while keeping dust out. Jerry Garcia wasn't God. Kurt Cobain wasn't God. The perfume he smells is not that of his dead wife. He's caught the eye of the King. Gorg-ten-abbalah, ee-lee-lee. The opopanax is dead, long live the opopanax. "

Jack leans more deeply into Mouse's smell. "Who's smelling perfume? Who's caught the eye of the King?"

"The mad King, the bad King, the sad King. Ring-a-ding-ding, all hail the King. "

"Mouse, who's caught the eye of the King?"

Doc says, "I thought you wanted to know about ¡ª "

"Who?" Jack has no idea why this seems important to him, but it does. Is it something someone has said to him recently? Was it Dale? Tansy? Was it, God save us, Wendell Green?

"Racking cane and hose," Mouse says confidentially. "That's what you need when the fermentation's done! And you can't put beer in screw-top bottles! You ¡ª "

Mouse turns his head away from Jack, nestles it cozily in the hollow of his shoulder, opens his mouth, and vomits. Bear Girl screams. The vomit is pus-yellow and speckled with moving black bits like the crud in the corners of Mouse's eyes. It is alive.