Festival of Fear (19 page)

He cried for almost ten minutes and then he couldn't cry any more. He stood up, wiped his eyes on one of the table napkins, and blew his nose. He looked around at all the empty tables. He doubted if he would ever be able to open again. Keller's Far-Flung Food would become a memory, just like Jacqueline.

God, he thought. Every morning you wake up, and you climb out of bed, but you never know when life is going to punch you straight in the face.

He went back into the kitchen, turned off all the hobs and ovens, and hung up his apron. There were half a dozen Inuit moccasins lying on the chopping board, ready for unstitching and marinating; and yew branches for yew branch soup. He picked up a fresh, furry moose antler. That was supposed to be today's special. He put it down again, his throat so tight that he could hardly breathe.

He was almost ready to leave when the back door was flung open, and Punipuni Puu-suke appeared, in his black Richard Nixon T-shirt and his flappy white linen pants. Jack didn't know exactly how old Punipuni was, but his crew-cut hair looked like one of those wire brushes you use for getting rust off the fenders of 1963 pick-up trucks, and his eyes were so pouchy that Jack could never tell if they were open or not. All the same, he was one of the most experienced bone chefs in San Francisco, as well as being an acknowledged Oriental philosopher. He had written a slim, papery book called
Do Not Ask A Fish The Way Across the Desert
.

Punipuni took off his red leather shoulder bag and then he looked around the kitchen. ‘Mr German-cellar?' (He always believed that people should acknowledge the ethnic origins of their names, but translate them into English so that others could share their meaning.) ‘Mr German-cellar, is something wrong?'

‘I'm sorry, Pu, I didn't have time to call you. I'm not opening today. In fact I think I'm closing for good. Jacqueline was mirrorized.'

Punipuni came across the kitchen and took hold of his hands. ‘Mr German-cellar, my heart is inside your chest. When did this tragedy occur?'

‘This morning. Just now. The police were here. I have to go home and see what I can do.'

‘She was so wonderful, Mr German-cellar. I don't know what I can say to console you.'

Jack shook his head. ‘There's nothing. Not yet. You can go home if you like.'

‘Maybe I come along too. Sometimes a shoulder to weep on is better than money discovered in a sycamore tree.'

‘OK. I'd appreciate it.'

He lived up on Russian Hill, in a small pink Victorian house in the English Quarter. It was so steep here that he had to park his Ford Peacock with its front wheels cramped against the curb, and its gearbox in reverse. It was a sunny day, and far below them the Bay was sparkling like shattered glass; but there was a thin cold breeze blowing which smelled of a fisherman's dying breath.

‘Jack!'

A maroon-faced man with white whiskers was trudging up the hill with a bull mastiff on a short choke-chain. He was dressed in yellowish-brown tweeds, with the cuffs of his pants tucked into his stockings.

‘I say, Jack!' he repeated, and raised his arm in salute.

‘Major,' Jack acknowledged him, and then looked up to his second-story apartment. Somebody had left the windows wide open, Jacqueline probably, and the white drapes were curling in the breeze.

‘Dreadfully sorry to hear what happened, old boy! The Nemesis and I are awfully cut up about it. Such a splendid young girl!'

‘Thank you,' said Jack.

‘Buggers, some of these mirrors, aren't they? Can't trust them an inch.'

‘I thought this one was safe.'

‘Well,
none
of them are safe, are they, when it comes down to it? Same as these perishing dogs. They behave themselves perfectly, for years, and then suddenly, for no reason that you can think of,
snap
! They bite some kiddie's nose off, or some such. The Nemesis won't have a mirror in the house. Just as well, I suppose. With a dial like hers, she'd crack it as soon as look at it – what!'

Jack tried to smile, but all he could manage was a painful smirk. He let himself into the front door and climbed the narrow stairs, closely followed by Punipuni. Inside, the hallway was very quiet, and smelled of overripe melons. Halfway up the stairs there was a stained-glass window with a picture of a blindfolded woman on it, and a distant castle with thick black smoke pouring out of it, and rooks circling.

Punipuni caught hold of his sleeve. ‘Your God does not require you to do this, Mr German-cellar.'

‘No,' said Jack. ‘But my heart does. Do you think I'm just going to hire some removal guy and have her carted away? I love her, Pu. I always will. Forever.'

‘Forever is not a straight line,' said Punipuni. ‘Remember that your favorite carpet store may not always be visible from your front doorstep.'

They reached the upstairs landing. Jack went across to his front door and took out his key. His heart was thumping like an Irish drum and he wasn't at all sure that he was going to be able to do this. But there was a brass ankh on the door, where Jacqueline had nailed it, and he could see her kissing her fingertips and pressing it against the ankh, and saying, ‘This is the symbol of life everlasting that will never die.'

She had been naked at the time, except for a deerstalker hat like Sherlock Holmes. She loved Sherlock Holmes, and she often called Jack ‘Watson'. Without warning she would take out her violin and play a few scraping notes of Cajun music on it and proclaim, ‘The game is afoot!'

He opened the door and pushed it wide. The apartment was silent, except for the noise of the traffic outside. There was a narrow hallway, with a coat stand that was clustered with twenty or thirty hats – skimmers and derbies and shapeless old fedoras – and the floor was heaped with smelly, discarded shoes – brown Oxfords and gilded ballet-pumps and $350 Guevara trainers.

Jack climbed over the shoes into the living room. It was furnished with heavy red-leather chairs and couches, and glass-fronted bookcases crammed with leather-bound books. Over the cast-iron fireplace hung a large colored lithograph. It depicted a voluptuous naked woman riding a bicycle over a hurrying carpet of living mice, crushing them under her tires. Only on very close examination could it be seen that instead of a saddle the bicycle was fitted with a thick purple dildo, complete with bulging testicles. The caption read ‘
The Second Most Pleasurable Way To Exterminate Rodents – Pestifex Powder
.'

The bedroom door was ajar but he hardly dared to go inside. At last Punipuni nudged him and said, ‘Go on, Jack. You have to. You cannot mend a broken ginger-jar by refusing to look at it.'

‘Yes, you're right.' Jack crossed the living room and pushed open the bedroom door. The pine four-poster bed was still unmade, with its durry dragged across it diagonally, and its pillows still scattered. On the opposite side of the room, between the two open windows, stood Jacqueline's dressing table, with all of her Debussy perfumes and her Seurat face-powders, and dozens of paintbrushes in a white ceramic jar.

In the corner stood the cheval mirror, oval, and almost six feet high on its swiveling base. It was made out of dark, highly polished mahogany, with grapevines carved all around it, and the face of a mocking cherub at the crest of the frame. Jack walked around the bed and confronted it. All he could see was himself, and the quilt, and Punipuni standing in the doorway behind him.

He looked terrible. His hair was still disheveled from taking off his apron, and he was wearing a crumpled blue shirt with paint spots on it and a pair of baggy Levis with ripped-out knees. There were plum-colored circles under his eyes.

He reached out and touched the dusty surface of the mirror with his fingertips. ‘Jacqueline,' he said. ‘Jacqueline – are you there?'

‘Maybe there was mix-up,' said Punipuni, trying to sound optimistic. ‘Maybe she just went out to buy lipstick.'

But Jack knew that there had been no mistake. In the mirror, Jacqueline's white silken robe was lying on the floor at the end of the bed. But when he looked around, it wasn't there, not in the real world.

He leaned close to the mirror. ‘Jacqueline!' he called out, hoarsely. ‘Jacqueline, sweetheart, it's Jack!'

‘Maybe she hides,' Punipuni suggested. ‘Maybe she doesn't want you to see her suffer.'

But at that moment, Jacqueline appeared in the mirror, and came walking slowly across the room toward him, like a woman in a dream. She was naked apart from very high black stiletto shoes with black silk chrysanthemums on them, and a huge black funeral hat, bobbing with ostrich plumes. She was wearing upswept dark glasses and dangly jet earrings, and her lips were painted glossy black.

Jack gripped the frame of the mirror in anguish. ‘Jacqueline! Oh God, Jacqueline!'

Her mirror image came up to his mirror image and wrapped her arms around it. He could see her clearly in the mirror, but he could neither see nor feel her
here
, in the bedroom.

‘Jack . . .' she whispered, and even though he couldn't see her eyes behind her dark glasses, her voice was quaking with panic. ‘You have to get me out of here. Please.'

‘I don't know
how
, sweetheart. Nobody knows how.'

‘All I was doing . . . I was plucking my eyebrows. I leaned forward toward the mirror . . . the next thing I knew I lost my balance. It was like falling through ice. Jack, I
hate
it here. I'm so frightened. You have to get me out.'

Jack didn't know what to say. He could see Jacqueline kissing him and stroking his hair and pressing her breasts against his chest, but it was all an illusion.

Punipuni gave an uncomfortable cough. ‘Maybe I leave now, Mr German-cellar. You know my number. You call if you want my help. A real friend waits like a rook on the gatepost.'

Jack said, ‘Thanks, Pu. I'll catch you later.' He didn't turn around. He didn't want Punipuni to see the welter of tears in his eyes.

After Punipuni had left, Jack knelt in front of the mirror and Jacqueline knelt down inside it, facing him, although he could see himself kneeling behind her.

‘You have to find a way to get me out,' said Jacqueline. ‘It's so unfriendly here . . . the people won't speak to me. I ask them how to get back through the mirror but all they do is smile. And it's so
silent
. No traffic. All you can hear is the wind.'

‘Listen,' Jack told her. ‘I'll go back to Sonoma, where we bought the mirror. Maybe the guy in the antiques store can help us.'

Jacqueline lowered her head so that all he could see was the feathery brim of her funeral hat. ‘I miss you so much, Jack. I just want to be back in bed with you.'

Jack didn't know what to say. But Jacqueline lifted her head again, and said, ‘Take off your clothes.'

‘What?'

‘Please, take off your clothes.'

Slowly, like a man with aching knees and elbows, he unbuttoned his shirt and his jeans, and pulled them off. He took off his red-and-white striped boxer shorts, too, and stood naked in front of the mirror, his penis half erect. The early-afternoon sun shone in his pubic hairs so that they looked like electric filaments.

‘Come to the mirror,' said Jacqueline. She approached its surface from the inside, so that her hands were pressed flat against the glass. Her breasts were squashed against the glass, too, so that her nipples looked like large dried fruits.

Jack took his penis in his hand and held the swollen purple glans against the mirror. Jacqueline stuck out her tongue and licked the other side of the glass, again and again. Jack couldn't feel anything, but the sight of her tongue against his glans gave him an extraordinary sensation of frustration and arousal. He began to rub his penis up and down, gripping it tighter and tighter, while Jacqueline licked even faster.

She reached down between her thighs and parted her vulva with her fingers. With her long middle finger she began to flick her clitoris, and the reflected sunlight from the wooden floor showed Jack that she was glistening with juice.

He rubbed himself harder and harder until he knew that he couldn't stop himself from climaxing.

‘Oh, God,' he said, and sperm shot in loops all over the mirror, all over Jacqueline's reflected tongue, and on her reflected nose, and even in her reflected hair. She licked at it greedily, even though she could neither touch it nor taste it. Watching her, Jack pressed his forehead against the mirror in utter despair.

He stayed there, feeling drained, while she lay back on the floor, opened her legs wide, and slowly massaged herself, playing with her clitoris and sliding her long black-polished fingernails into her slippery pink hole. After a while, she closed her legs tightly, and shivered. He wasn't sure if she was having an orgasm or not, but she lay on the floor motionless for over a minute, the plumes of her hat stirring in the breeze from the wide-open window.

Mr Santorini, in the downstairs apartment, was playing
Carry Me To Heaven With Candy-Colored Ribbons
on his wind-up gramophone. Jack could hear the scratchy tenor voice like a message from long ago and far away.

San Francisco folk wisdom says that for every ten miles you drive away from the city, it grows ten degrees Fahrenheit hotter. It was so hot by the time that Jack reached Sonoma that afternoon that the air was like liquid honey. He turned left off East Spain Street and there was Loculus Antiques, a single-story conservatory shaded by eucalyptus trees. He parked his Peacock and climbed out, but Punipuni stayed where he was, listening to Cambodian jazz on the radio.
That Old Fish Hook Fandango
, by Samlor Chapheck and the South East Asian Swingers.

Jack opened the door of Loculus Antiques and a bell jangled. Inside, the conservatory was stacked with antique sofas and dining chairs and plaster busts of Aristotle, and it smelled of dried-out horsehair and failed attempts to make money. There was a strange light in there, too, like a mortuary, because the glass roof had been painted over green. A man appeared from the back of the store wearing what looked like white linen pajamas. He looked about fifty-five, with a skull-like head and fraying white hair and thick-rimmed spectacles. His top front teeth stuck out like a horse.