Résumé With Monsters (35 page)

Running through the rain, her red hair darkening, she looked as beautiful and full of salvation as any angel, although less serene, looked concerned, a little scared perhaps. Philip smiled and waved.

EPILOGUE

Megan was two, and she ran everywhere. She was running across the lawn, herded slightly by her older brother Michael. Michael was five and full of sad wisdom and resignation acquired, Philip assumed, in a previous incarnation.

"Megan doesn't trust walking," Philip explained. "Running has the law of inertia going for it: A body upright and moving fast tends to remain upright and on the move."

"
Daaaaaaaaaa
," Megan said, colliding with Philip's leg and presenting her father with a crushed daisy that had lost most of its petals.

Philip thanked her and fluffed her fiery hair.

AL Bingham reached down and lifted Megan in the air. She giggled.

Sissy and Lily came down across the lawn. Sissy was carrying a tray of iced drinks.

It was a year since Lily and Bingham had last visited, and Philip had been initially troubled by Lily's new fragility. She had lost weight, turned gossamer and insubstantial.

Perhaps some metaphysical law of energy conservation was at work here, for when she spoke it was clear that she was grumpier than ever, more opinionated and peremptory, as though her soul had put on weight.

"Philip is just naturally secretive," Lily was telling Sissy. "It's pathological. Has to do with control, power. It's a male thing, the little-boy, clubhouse mentality. Secret rituals, codes, passwords. He ever tell you where he got all that money?"

"Sure," Sissy said. "He said he earned it working as a temp."

Lily snorted her disgust. "It's women like you that keep men from growing up."

They all sat in lawn chairs and looked out at the North Carolina ocean, which, excited by news of an approaching storm, raced and tumbled over the sand.

Megan walked over to a blanket and dropped into sleep instantly, her thumb in her mouth.

Michael, relieved of his sister watch, climbed solemnly into his father's lap.

"I open up that envelope," Bingham said, perhaps for the five hundredth time, "and there is a check for one hundred thousand dollars and I'm shaking my head and thinking it's a sorry shame that Philip has gone so far round the bend, and Lily, she snatches that check and says, 'We'll just deposit it and see."' Bingham laughed. "Guess she knew something I didn't."

"Philip's a wild card," Lily said. "I knew that."

They sat in the lawn chairs enjoying the last warm rays of the sun and the way the salt wind licked their faces. After an hour, they got up and went inside, Bingham carrying the conked-out Megan.

After dinner, they sat in the living room and talked about old times. Lily remembered the first time she met Philip. "I wasn't sure I could help him," she said.

At around ten that evening, the phone rang. Philip went into the bedroom to answer it. It was
Azathoth
. The connection was bad; the Old One was somewhere out beyond Andromeda. He asked about the kids.

Strange how old adversaries can gain respect for each other, learn that what locks them in combat is a common interest, a shared obsession.

"The Amelia one,"
Azathoth
asked, "what of her?"

He had never asked before.

"I hear she is still married," Philip said. "And glad to be shed of me. She has a new job, working for a company called
Findel
Limited."

Azathoth
made a noise that was difficult to interpret.

"You've heard of them?"

"A rival,"
Azathoth
said.

"You sound tired," Philip said.

"I am thinking your Wordsworth poet was right,"
Azathoth
said.

"How's that?"

"It is of rats and their race,"
Azathoth
said. "You know. I utter the quote: 'Getting and spending we lay waste our powers."'

"Well, that's true," Philip said.

"It has its kind of truth, yes." Silence. The electric crackling of light years. "I must go now. Meteors eat the Mind Gates. Goodbye."

"Who was that?" Sissy asked when Philip came back into the living room.

"
Arnie
."

"Your friend from Virginia?"

"Yes."

"How is he doing?"

Philip shrugged, flopped down in the ancient armchair. "Oh, I don't know. He's confused.
Mid¬life
crisis, I suppose."

"How about you?" Sissy said. She came over and sat on his lap, leaned forward, kissed him on the cheek. Lily and Bingham had retired. The children were asleep.

"I love you," Philip said. “I am the world's most fortunate man. I have a beautiful, loving wife, model children, good friends—and two weeks ago I resold
The Despicable Quest
and it will be published as a single, massive hardback."

"Lily's not entirely happy about that development, you know." Sissy ran her fingers through Philip's thinning hair. "She still thinks the book might, well, aggravate your condition."

"That was long ago. Things have changed."

"How?"

For answer, Philip lifted Sissy in his arms and carried her into the bedroom.

"I've made peace with my demons," Philip whispered in her ear. "My Enemy has become my Muse."

Sissy put her arms around her husband. "I love it when you talk literature."

"Kafka, Vonnegut, Poe,
Peake
,
Barth
." Wet kisses, a deluge. Small, bright lightning of tongues. "
Brautigan
, Matheson, Dickens, Defoe."

"
Lovecraft
."

"
Lovecraft
."

"Love."

William Browning Spencer was born in Washington, D.C. He has held a variety of dismal, dead-end jobs (excellent research for Resume with Monsters). Like Philip
Kenan
, the novel's protagonist, Spencer has often worked as a typesetter or graphic artist (he illustrated and designed the covers for his first two books). Resume with Monsters is his most surrealistic novel but also, he maintains, his most autobiographical. Joe Lansdale, writing in the Austin American Statesman, has compared this novel to the work of Philip K. Dick, asserting that Spencer possesses that same ability to "warp reality to such an extent you find yourself looking over your shoulder to see if the world is being dismantled behind you."