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CHAPTER 4

Still Monday, September 18

Julie Whitcomb lived alone in a moderately priced four-room apartment in Pankhurst Heights, one of Forest Green’s most respectable upper middle-class neighborhoods. The Pankhurst Arms—lodge-style lounge, changing rooms, and bar downstairs, four tidy apartments upstairs—was a piece of pleasantly retro-style architecture only two degrees removed from imitation Frank Lloyd Wright, set down with an artificial pond pretending to be a lake on one side and a small but rolling park on the other three. “Pankhurst Lake” really could accommodate rafting and oar-boating, though neither full-sized sailboats nor anything motorized. They even kept it stocked with pan fish. Both pond and park were free and open to the entire Pankhurst Heights subdivision: four blocks of duplexes and single-family residences on each side of the park.

Thirty years ago, Pankhurst Heights had been both posh and somewhat less respectable than it was today, with—local legend whispered—a high-class courtesan house in the building that had been “saved,” like any other poor sinner, into a nondenominational community church with angels in stained glass windows and a real organ. Thirty years ago, Julie Whitcomb could never have afforded an apartment in the Pankhurst Arms. The big reason she could afford it now was because activities in the lodge lounge and bar just below the apartments, as well as Theater in the Park and the various school picnics, family reunions, summertime rowboat races and wintertime skating parties, Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve fireworks over the pond, and so on, while good, clean family fun, were both frequently scheduled and frequently on the raucous side. Not like the weekly wraparound activities at Sam’s house, which never disturbed the neighbors.

Also, the management gave Julie an additional discount because, as a trained nurse, she could be on call in case of need for these races and parties and other affairs, whenever she got enough advance notice to juggle it with her hospital hours.

Her life sometimes made it challenging to sandwich in her Life, but what was Life without a challenge?

Anyway, someday—probably soon, seeing she was already twenty-seven—her prince would come and she’d leave all this behind, both life and even some of Life, without a second thought, move on to her next incarnation as wife and, sweet Jesus willing, mommy.

Maybe that prince of hers had come already. Not, of course, Paul Osaka, who had the apartment catacorner to hers. He was a great floater, only he swang the other way; and, besides, Dante’s Delight Purgatorio had its guiderules, which let out Sam as well. But maybe, just maybe, the one she’d met this morning… Well, if not, she’d give that prince just six more years to reach her. If he didn’t, at the symbolic age of thirty-three she was phasing on alone if necessary: adopt an orphan or two grown to the age where they were hard to place, maybe get herself artificially inseminated, find a bigger apartment or even a nice little house…sweet Jesus knew where she’d get the money, but sweet Jesus should know, providing for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and all that!

And then, she’d already budgeted and bought the last big expense she expected to want until age thirty-three, anyway.

She closed her bedroom drapes, turned on her nightstand lamp, peeled off her garments down to the last stitch, and studied her naked body in the mirror. Not that it actually looked naked any longer. Not since a month and a half ago. Her fellow Purgatorians understood; Curly even approved. Not that Sam or Paul would ever see the whole thing in all its glory. That was reserved to serious candidates for her prince.

A blue and crimson dragon, puffing out roses and daisies instead of flames, rose up across her belly to her breasts, the tip of his pointed tail just touching her pubic nest, while his wings shelled her nipples and continued around her torso to her back, where they helped disguise her scars, at least to sight. The symbol of Dante’s Delight danced with its lower half resting in an interlinked host of blue snowflakes and frostlike patterns that wove from just above her right breast, around her upper arm, and back across her shoulder blade, incorporating more of the old scars, left from before they’d gone over exclusively to rubber hoses and beading needles. And high time, too! The bodies of those earlier Purgatorians must have ended downright embarrassing after years of scourges, votive flames, and the woodcutting tool they used to use for the old scarification symbol, before they intelligently went to a stamped tattoo.

Julie smiled. These last five had been good years, useful years, and she felt she’d done her little part in polishing the old Purgatorio and its good work. Still, she was definitely feeling the need to move on. She might not even stay with it all the way to age thirty-three, whether her prince showed up or not. But that meant they really needed someone to replace her. Four was the minimum functional membership, six the maximum—on paper. They’d never actually had six in practice. Five, once, for a while, but that had been before her time.

When her prince showed up, she’d know. She’d know by the way he looked at her naked for the first time and saw, not a one-night stand, but a good piece of art on a body he would be proud and happy to spend the rest of his natural life with. For his eyes and hers only, from that hour on.

She patted the still-blank hollow between her collarbone and left breast. This area, she was saving for when she had her prince to decide what should grace it. Maybe by then she’d be able to afford—or maybe he’d afford it as a wedding gift—to go to the very best, to Dupont and O’Toole, who attracted clients from all over the fifty-five states.

Her phone chimed. She hurried over and snatched it up from the nightstand. “Hello?… Oh, yes! Oh, yes, I remember you…”

A long exchange of smalltalk-type feelers. She was amazed, glancing at the clock, to see it had lasted almost ten minutes. Then:

“Yes, yes, I think I can make it tonight.… Scoops and Bottles? Fine!… Yes, I know the place, it’s very versatile. Ideal for a first date.… You know, I always like to go doubles on a first date.… No, you can leave that to me. I’m sure I can line someone up on short notice.… Yes, yes, I’ve done it before. My friends know me.”

After another several minutes of sweet talking about how she’d better get busy lining up that double date before the notice got too short, she finally signed off with him.

“My prince?” she wondered again, cradling the phone receiver. Cautious, girl! You’ve been stung before. That’s the reason for doubling on the first date, also for leaving each potential prince on the doorstep until at least the second date. If he was the prince, he’d call for date number two. If he didn’t, he wasn’t.

Now, who could she recruit this time? She thought Sam met with his Shriners gang on Monday evenings. Curly tended to be a little too boisterous for times like these. Paul’s apartment was just down the hall, and he never minded going with Lizette or Pearl for the sake of appearances and good conversation.

Or… Julie exchanged a grin with herself…why not bake two cakes in one oven? She looked up the number, lifted the receiver again, and dialed.

* * * *

Should she get a place of her own here in her old home town…a large apartment or tidy little bungalow for one…and maybe find some kind of service job? Money was not a problem for the Garvey-Johansens, but idleness was, at least for a person like Angela, who liked to feel both busy and of some social usefulness.

She’d had some thought of…but now it appeared to be just as well she’d never hinted anything about that. Maybe if she’d come home to Forest Green right away after graduation, hadn’t left him all summer to get acquainted with Julie… Well… Friends, best friends—she hoped, for life. Don’t spoil it by reaching for anything else. Besides… Best friends was good. Very good. And he had been fine as Raggedy Andy. She couldn’t help chuckling when she thought about that game…

Just then, the phone chimed.

“Hello?” she cried, snatching up the receiver. “Angela here.… Raggedy Andy? I was just thinking about you.… Yes, it does resemble mental telepathy, doesn’t it?… Tonight?” (Too eager? Too flustered-sounding?) “…Oh, oh, I see.… Oh, yes, yes, I can stop by for you at eighteen hundred hours.… Yes, it’ll be nice to see Scoops and Bottles again. Is that place still as good as it used to be?… They’ve actually improved it? Oh, I can’t wait!… Yes, as you say, ‘copacetic.’… Well, good-by for now, I’ll see you in—oh, my, in less than an hour!… Yes, yes, I’m as good as ready now. See you soon.”

She cradled the receiver, stood for a moment with her hand resting absently on the telephone, and heaved a great huge sigh, just as Aunt Sally came into the living room.

“Who was that, Angie?”

“Corwin.”

“Oh, good. He’s a nice boy—young man, I should say.”

“No, Aunt Sally, I think maybe we should stick with ‘boy.’ But, yes, he is nice. A little strange. But…nice.”

“Well, they say that no males and only ten percent of all females ever really grow up. What was he calling about?”

“He asked me to go out with him and Julie and a floater named Dave Clayton. A sort of blind date for me. I’ve never met this Dave, but Cory said he’s a police detective, so it should be very safe. Besides, Cory will be with us. And Julie Whitcomb. So I told him I’d go. We’re going to Scoops and Bottles. We’re all meeting there at eighteen hundred thirty. I’m picking Cory up at the Marquette House. “

“Angie, are you sure you’re the one they’ve set up with this Officer Dave…Clayton?”

“Oh, yes, Aunt Sally, I must be. Cory and Julie hit it off so perfectly yesterday at that stupid Spanish Inquisition rolegame.”

“But are you really sure? How, exactly, did Corwin phrase it?”

Angela closed her eyes and concentrated. “Well…let me see… ‘I am the recipient of an urgent supplication’—you know Cory—‘from M. Julie Whitcomb, under immediate pressure for a second lady to assist one David Clayton, police detective, herself, and me in comprising a congenial foursome this evening.’”

“And you’re sure that was the order he named you all in?”

“Yes…yes, reasonably sure.”

“Well,” said Aunt Sally, “to me, it sounds a little ambiguous. As if the one they’ve set up with Dave is this Julie…?”

“Whitcomb, Aunt Sally. Julie Whitcomb. Oh, if you’d seen them yesterday, you wouldn’t be in any doubt. I think they must have been made for each other!”

“And yet, didn’t you tell me that he got out of that game shortly after you’d left it yourself?”

“Only because it tickled his fancy to be the first inquisitor caught out as a secret heretic and tortured and burned to death. That was the way he was playing it from the very start of their stupid game, before I even left it.”

“And promptly came over to join your Raggedy Ann scenario?”

“As Andy. Raggedy Andy.” Angela sighed again. (She would not cry, not about this!) “Best friends.”

Good old Angela—he’d never word it like that, of course, but that’d be the boiled-down gist—here’s a nice, staid, respectable, maybe slightly boring polly who should make the perfect blind date for good old Angela. Yes, she could easily imagine Julie Whitcomb wording it something like that. “Best friends,” she repeated to herself in a whisper as she headed for her guest room, not to change, exactly. To re-accessorize. “Best friends for life. Like brother and sister. That’s better than nothing.”

It might even turn out to be better than whatever Corwin thought of as hot romance. Did she even want to know?

She was already wearing her apple-green trousers and tunic, with lightly flaring legs and sleeves. She took off her daytime headband and substituted one of pale gold wire mesh with an enamel Mourning Cloak butterfly on each side—very fetching against her blond hair, which was almost exactly the same color as the gold wire. She shed the white silk scarf at her throat and replaced it with her favorite pin-necklace: a white kitten on each of her collar points, the one on the right fondling a ball of yarn and the one on the left holding one paw out to catch it, with the “yarn” stretching loosely between the kittens, glowing because it was strung with pearls only just large enough for the bead holes. She exchanged her white leather belt for a golden yellow silk sash. Last, she changed from white shoes with laces into white driving slippers. No high heels. She didn’t even own a pair of high heels. She didn’t intend to throw her body out of alignment and have later-life problems because of it. Besides, Cory was one point six eight meters tall, and she was one point six five.

Julie Whitcomb had been wearing spike heels in red Sunday. It had made her taller than him, and he didn’t seem to mind.

Well, there was still the danger of later-life posture problems.

Julie was a nurse, wasn’t she? If high heels posed a health danger, shouldn’t she be aware of it? Or did nurses think they were immune and could do anything when they were off duty?

Angela threw one glance at her reflection in the full-length mirror. One point six five meters of slim blond woman—very wholesome, very girl-next-door—dressed well enough for a blind date at Scoops and Bottles, unless the place had grown a lot more formal than it used to be.

* * * *

She knew that once Patrice Davison Hawthorne and Mike Olmstead Dickinson—Corwin’s “mater” and “pater”—had seen their first child, Corinna Olmstead Casanova, safely settled down in Arbor City as a University of Michiana librarian, and their second, Corwin, safely graduated from Astoria State, they had taken off on a world tour for their “second” (actually about their fifth) honeymoon. Money was maybe even less of a problem for the Davison-Olmsteads than for the Garvey-Johansens.

Angela had known the pleasant Davison-Olmstead family home in the Joliet Park area almost as well as her own, but had not yet had a chance to see the apartment where Corwin was living for at least as long as his parents took exploring the world: two years or longer, if they chose. After what she had seen of the newly graduated Corwin so far this fall, she approached his door just a little apprehensively.

Instead of his name, the sign on his door, right above the lion’s-head brass knocker, read: “Arnheim.” At least it didn’t read “The Dungeon” or something like that. She lifted the ring in the lion’s mouth and dropped it against the sounding plate, once, twice —

And the door was open, and he was smiling at her. “How expeditiously you located me! And how exquisitely those sable-hued butterflies set off your hair, how congenially the kittens disport themselves on either point of your collar! Have you a moment to glance over my perhaps temporary abode?”

He seemed eager, and she didn’t see anything so very lurid or “outre” over his shoulder, so she said, “I’d be delighted, Cory,” and went in.

To see at a glance that it wasn’t at all what she had feared it might be. The walls and ceiling were painted a sort of silver-gray like mother-of-pearl, the carpet was one of the richest greens she had ever seen, the couch and chairs were rattan with bright gold cushions, there was a round rattan coffee-table that held a few leather-bound books almost glowing in the soft light of a Tiffany lamp. In front of the white drapes along the far wall, one of those miniature waterfalls kept the water circulating in an aquarium of goldfish, seaweed, and white sand at the bottom. Surrounding the aquarium, Corwin’s old bonsai collection, still alive and, she thought, expanded, grew like a tiny forest, with more ordinary houseplants—geraniums, ferns, azaleas, coleus, and so on—crowding one another in a healthy-looking way on the floor around the aquarium table’s legs. Beside and above it, a canary sang in a large white cage. The mantelpiece over the gas fireplace held a row of clothbound books between one bookend with a small antiqued globe of the earth and a matching bookend with a globe of the night sky. A small, antique roll-top desk held the phone beside the doorway to the apartment’s back rooms. The pictures on the walls were Currier and Ives landscapes.

“Kept in order,” Corwin explained, “by thrice-weekly visitations of the Vermeer Domestic Service. They minister to my rooms each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, in return for which invaluable service I endorse their enterprise whenever opportunity presents itself.” He went on, indicating the canary, “Not ‘Nevermore’—as being a bird of quite a different feather than a raven—but ‘Evermore.’ With an additional courtly bow to Longfellow’s ‘Birds of Killingworth’: ‘Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.’ And here —” He scooped up a tortoiseshell tabby who had appeared out of somewhere, “soliciting in her aloof feline fashion the favor of an introduction to you, is my estimated Caterina, veteran of Forest Green’s highly-to-be-recommended Animal Shelter.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Caterina.” Angela stroked the tabby’s soft head. Caterina yawned, purred, and snuggled into the crook of Corwin’s arm. Angela took another long look around the apartment.

“Cory, it’s—it’s beautiful!”

Maybe he heard surprise and relief in her voice, because he answered her with an ironical half-smile, “You anticipated, perhaps, metal-plated walls ‘rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which charnel superstition has given rise,’ with a circular black rug in the center symbolizing a pit, a scimitar-pendulum depending from the ceiling in lieu of chandelier, table of rough-hewn lumber bedecked with various species of restraints, papered floor-border thick with portraitured rats, the whole illuminated only by the fitful and wavering glare of thick black candles?” He shook his head. “Such scenes are well enough to while away the coveted idle hour, but not to reside within clockround.”

“But all this —” She made a gesture to take in the whole room. “It just doesn’t look very Poesque, somehow.”

“Oh, Angela, let me reassure you that in fact it is. Not slavishly, I confess, but in spirit, which is why I style it ‘Arnheim.’ The Venerable Edgar did not dwell exclusively in settings of horror and decay, as popular opinion would have it. He was—or would have been, if in possession of sufficient pecuniary resources—a well-rounded gentleman of wide-ranging literary tastes, with a keen appreciation of both the sublime and the ridiculous. Alas, his works in the former category tend to be overlooked in toto, and those in the latter all too often misread utterly by persons determined that if Edgar Poe wrote it, it must be horrific in sober earnest, no matter its clearly humorous extravagances.— I have been soapboxing, dear Raggedy. Why did you not remind me of the hour?”

“You were doing it so well, Cory. I almost understood most of it. You should be a professor.”

“I should bore half my class into cherubic slumber, whilst maintaining the other half in wondering suspense as to what strange foreign tongue, nameless to their syllabi, I was employing in my lectures.”

“Well, Cory, as nearly as I’ve figured your rules out, they include: Never use a three-syllable word when you can find one of four or five syllables that works almost as well, and never miss a chance to throw in a long or unusual modifier whether you really need one or not.”

Grinning, he spread his hands and replied, “What can I do save plead extenuating circumstances? I relish words.” Tossing Caterina gently onto the cushion of the wicker chair, where she curled up, meowed, and set to licking her paw, Corwin offered Angela his arm. “Madam Raggedy Ann, shall we venture forth to our joint assignation?”