A Butterfly in Flame (4 page)

Chapter Seven

Fred washed and dried the dishes and figured out what might be an acceptable approximation of putting them away. He took his perishables from the sack and put them into the fridge: four cans of ale, bread, cheddar, bananas, carrots, apples, sliced ham. If he got hungry either he’d go out and find something, or slap a sandwich together here. The cans of beans and tea bags he left on the counter, and he was moved in.

The bag of trash, under the counter beside the cleanser and the wooden box of onions and sprouted potatoes, he could go through later. No. Might as well get it done. Egg shells and an empty egg carton. The bone from a beefsteak. No coffee grounds? No, a collection of cardboard cups from the Stillton Café holding a residue of whitened liquid that smelled of coffee and vanilla and, even worse, hazelnut. A foam package had held some kind of meal. Empty cans were in an orange recycle container in the broom cupboard (one broom; one red plastic dustpan), along with catalogs from Land’s End and L. L. Bean. No magazines or newspapers. Of course not. If Morgan Flower wanted news, he’d get it from his BlackBerry or iPhone.

“Brave new world,” Fred muttered. If these people’s machines disappeared along with them, you’d never know who they had been. On the other hand, find the machines, crack the codes, divine the obvious passwords, and you’re in. The individual laid bare.

Would Stillton Academy provide faculty offices to search through? Not likely.

Fred carried his ale back to the bedroom. The liquid’s level was lowering only slowly. He’d wanted it as a diversion more than as a beverage. The desk was placed perpendicular to one of two windows that overlooked the same view as the living room. Rain stroked the glass. The other window, Fred noted, gave access to a wooden porch and fire escape. The window was not latched. Fred sat on the desk chair. It was a penance: stiff, hard, the wrong size and the wrong shape for any human born of woman. Start with the books. Tomorrow he’d be standing in front of classes, and he didn’t have a clue.

If you could take seven books with you to the desert island, would it be these? An
American Heritage Dictionary,
college edition, the red paperback. Well, why not? The skinny Laurel Poetry Series
Emily Dickinson
—“Of course!” Fred said, and thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “It’s little Emily.”—Thomas Craven’s
Famous Artists and their Models,
Gauguin’s
Tahitian Diary—
“Good choice!”—
Moby Dick; The Stranger,
and Sir Kenneth Clark’s
The Nude,
also in paper. “If that’s his idea of teaching art history, it’s kind of a cop out.”

Fred picked up the Emily Dickinson and thumbed through the index to confirm.
I died for beauty,
on page 54, was checked in pencil. Missy Tutunjian’s so-called message from beyond the grave was an assignment, as in, “OK, class. Choose one stanza of any Dickinson poem you wish, and leave it behind in such a way that folks think it’s a suicide note.”—or, rather, taken from an assignment. “I died for beauty, but was scarce / Adjusted in the tomb, / When one who died for truth was lain / In an adjoining room.” He ran his eye down the two remaining stanzas. Beauty and truth—you could argue about it—seemed to be strangers, not lovers. They referred to themselves as brethren and kinsmen and there was no hint of carnal intimacy. Just two strangers chatting between graves until their names were mossed over.

Just to be sure, Fred checked Melissa’s transcription against the poet’s text. Some altered word might signal a dark intent. No, aside from the little hearts, the transcription was accurate. He leafed through the book noting the couple of dozen additional check marks, most applied to the obvious candidates for assignment:
Because I could not stop for Death; Hope is the thing with feathers; I never saw a moor;
along with others you’d have to work at longer to figure out if they meant anything different if you read them backwards.

Fred opened the notebook. Class records. Good. He carried it with him into the living area and sat down to it in the chair he had adopted as his own. The book held records for the past two years. It would be useful at least to give him a hint of what the devil he was supposed to pretend to teach as well as to whom. For each of the three classes he was assigned for the present semester, the students’ names were listed under the titles of the class, in a crabby handwriting Fred would have guessed was an old lady’s. Next to each name was a record of attendance, as well as an occasional grade.

Melissa Tutunjian was where you would expect to find her, toward the bottom end of the current victims of
English One, Intro to Literature.
Her attendance record was commendable, her grades, until recently, tending to remain at the high C’s level. She’d been doing better since the January thaw.

The other two courses were entitled
Lives and Loves of the Artists
and, for third year students,
Writing About Your Problems.

“I see a far horizon,” Fred remarked. “And nowhere upon it do I sense a hint of the remotest possibility of accreditation for Stillton Academy of Art. Unless there are truly no academic standards left in this land. Maybe you’d get away with the
Intro to Lit
class—who could take exception to Emily and Moby Dickinson? But the other two courses? Forget it.
Lives and Loves of the Artists?
For serious art students? It’s an abomination. Whomever they hump has nothing to do with art. It’s just how they direct their excess energy.”

He’d dropped the record book to the floor and was staring out the window at the rain and the dark water and the missionary work of the lighthouse, busy in its task of spreading light that was immediately swallowed up. The light shining in darkness. Like all the rest of those who lived (or died) for beauty and/or truth, no? Get over it, Emily.

Fred rose and strode to the closet. What was the size and heft of the instructor in whose living space he found himself? A quick comparison of himself against a pair of the missing teacher’s pants, and a brown sport coat that was mostly elbow patches, proved that Fred would need to drop four inches of height, and a good deal of girth, if he wanted to make a convincing match tomorrow. Better that he not try to look like the man he was replacing.

“Do they work from anything like a plan, or wing it?” Fred wondered. “Lecture from notes? Talking points? Don’t I recall one moth-eaten old guy reading from a yellow legal pad? If I’m hoping for any kind of cover, what in blazes am I going to do for an hour and a half, three times over, just tomorrow? Are these people crazy?”

There must be something useful in the file cabinet.

Fred took one of the two chairs from the small table in the living area and carried it into the bedroom. The desk chair wasn’t even good enough to burn. He shoved it aside and replaced it with something a human could tolerate. There should be financial records, class notes, the beginnings of hopeless manuscripts Flower would never finish, papers awaiting grades, old blue books with mid-terms or whatever they did here…

No. If Morgan Flower had a financial profile, it was rattling around in the ether. He’d gone paperless. Address? Where did Morgan’s mama live, or the cousins, siblings, the whole Christmas card list? Nothing. All on the iPhone? If he lost that, Morgan wouldn’t even know himself who he was.

There was a folder filled with lamentable student prose, all of it hand-written, whose subjects would fit within the broad umbrella
Writing About Your Problems.
The title
The time I was almost pregnant
caught Fred’s eye. Judging from the dates on the papers, he’d meet this gang tomorrow. If he had time, maybe he’d skim through the collection tonight; get an introduction to his students. They deserved something for their money. Something better than Fred, anyway.

Jeekers! Did Morgan Flower let the kids read each other’s work? Did he make them read it aloud? Would the other half of the almost-pregnancy be present in the room? That could be fun.

Then, in the next folder along, in the bottom drawer—what was this?

Chapter Eight

The penciled title on the Manila folder read
Stillton Sound—A Private Community.

“Not that I saw,” Fred said, letting the folder fall open on the desk. Inside were many sheets of the yellow lined paper Morgan Flower favored, from the tablet on the desk or from another like it. The handwriting, in pencil, with many erasures and emendations, was the same as that preserved in the class record book; a hand Fred would have guessed belonged to a constipated older woman.

The Inn and Spa at Stillton Sound,
one page began.
Indulge in all the responsible luxury of life at Stillton Sound. The lovingly restored Residences feature multiple exposures, ocean views, windowed kitchens, wood-burning fireplaces, and impeccably re-engineered interiors—and all executed with such elegant understatement you will assure yourself that you are truly living in Thoreauvian simplicity. Meanwhile the pleasures of daily life are enhanced and enriched by the unique club privileges that are the hallmark of your membership in the Stillton Sound Community. The spa and heated indoor pool, overlooking the sound, provide for unique year-round
“blah, blah, blah,” Fred grumbled,
while the elegant dining room, under the magic touch of acclaimed three-star chef [name to be supplied]…

Fred flipped pages, allowing phrases to float up from the morass of Morgan Flower’s imaginings.
Quaint small town; unspoiled; a spectacular unique commitment to the ultimate in green restoration; marina and lap pool; guaranteed privacy; contemporary traditional; traditional contemporary; just minutes to Logan Airport, Paris, Venice or Shanghai; impeccable perfection; superb…

There must be twenty pages of these exercises in the pastiche of fragments of filched puffery. Their superlatives were clearly designed to appeal to people who would prefer to live at considerable remove from those who are employed to clean their toilets.
Minutes from Logan Airport, Paris, Venice and Shanghai
had a nice ring if you were in the market for nice ring. “Is it not also true,” Fred mused, “that we are just minutes from the War of 1812? Are we not mere minutes from the North Pole, traveling by dogsled?

During what must be long tedious winter nights in which he was obliged to entertain himself by plumbing the remarkably shallow depths of his creative romance, Flower had evidently concentrated not on his own love poems, nor on yet another definitive biography of Emily Dickinson, but on this palpable fantasy—worthy almost of being made into a video game—of inventing the idle cloud cuckoo-land
Stillton Sound—A Private Community.
Stillton Sound haunted his waking moments and tormented his sleep. On the last page in the folder, drawn with an obsessive attention to detail Fred had not seen since the battle pictures made by colleagues in the fourth grade, there was even an aerial view of the entire fiction, fully laid out and elaborated.
Stillton Sound—A Private Community
occupied all of the area presently filled by the town of Stillton. A gate was drawn across the peninsula that permitted access only to the elect. Gate? Why not a moat? It was as complete and absurd as a cross between Celesteville and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Living City. As Fred puzzled out Morgan Flower’s fevered imaginings, he realized that the focus of the creation, the
Inn and Spa at Stillton Sound,
so labeled on the map, was to be found where the main buildings of Stillton Academy of Art presently stood.

The Inn and Spa at Stillton Sound,
indeed, might constitute the lovingly (and “greenly”) “restored” buildings that presently stood overlooking the ocean in so non-profit a way. Here were guest cottages, three restaurants, two pools, the gym, a concert and movie and lecture hall, blocks and blocks of residences, the marina on the northern coast and, on the less exposed southern side, a bathing beach. An area marked “commercial” more or less where the present attempts at commerce were, included an X labeled “office.”

“His big problem is gonna be golf,” Fred said, putting the frenzied fable back in the file cabinet. “There’s no room left on the point to swing a club. The peninsula, on one side or the other, of that two-lane road, might give you room enough to drive the ball—but no possibility for eighteen holes unless you do it in a straight line east-west. That’s much too inventive for New England. Plus the odd slice costs windshields here and there. Even if you are rich enough to aspire to Thoreauvian simplicity, can you do without golf?

“Hell, if he plans to pump that much imaginary money into the operation, what’s wrong with a floating golf course? Reel it in in the winter, roll it and store it or—this could be better—roof it and heat it. In the worst of the winter the kids can still go clamming in the sand traps.

“Holy Toledo.”

The strength of Fred’s response had lifted him from the chair and carried him out of the bedroom and into the living area again. What was this? He was pacing? The isolation of living and working in Stillton, Massachusetts, had already driven him to such a pass? Soon he’d be designing his own wave-lapped rest home and retirement village, complete with all the luxurious responsibility that could be desired. No, that was wrong. Responsible luxury was the
phrase juste.

It was just after eight o’clock. The rain was steady, but Fred had a jacket in the car. He couldn’t rest until he had a sense of where he was. More than these rooms. The bigger where. The geographical setting as a whole made him uneasy, since it had only one exit, unless you counted the water, in which case it was almost all exit.

***

Streetlights were sparse, but present, and worked through the rain sufficiently to allow a general idea of the terrain. The flavor was genuinely working seaside, uncontaminated by either success or extraneous money. However the local fishing economy might fit into the big picture that included packing, freezing, warehousing, and sales, that could not be inferred from what was visible. Lights in the windows of the small clapboard or shingled houses showed either couples or small families at a table, or doing dishes, or watching television or, in some houses, a lighted blind upstairs might show where a child was being readied for bed.

The fog horn continued its work.

The sidewalks everywhere but on Main Street were dirt, lined with wet bushes that would turn out to be lilac or privet or the invasive barberry. To quote one of the phrases Morgan Flower had not hit upon for his rhapsodies, it was all
pleasantly impoverished.

Closer to Stillton Academy’s main buildings, the houses were more lively. The inhabitants were students, in larger groups, with music, loud talk. Some lighted windows showed rooms that were serving as studios, with paintings in progress on easels, or tables serving as desks, the walls around them festooned with mixed sketches and ideas, including many geometric essays in black and white.

He hadn’t thought about it before. “The students live here?” Fred marveled. “Of course it’s the back of beyond. How are they going to commute from anywhere, gas being what it is?”

More cars were parked in this part of town, many of them as seedy even as Fred’s.

Fred’s walk along portions of the outside circumference of the town had brought him to Stillton Hall, where he’d be teaching tomorrow. The building was dark. Its front door did not respond to his tug.

“Milan locks up at eight-thirty.” The male voice spoke from behind him. Fred turned and discovered a couple. Inside their rain gear they looked young: a male and a female in a close unit.