Skull Session (13 page)

A thought occurred to him: "Do you think it was Rimbaud's disease that killed my father?" he asked.

Vivien looked at him shrewdly. Again, she seemed to save away whatever she gleaned from his question. "I can't answer that for you. Perhaps if you encounter more of his letters as you're sorting my things, you'll find an answer for that as well. Certainly Ben loved to ponder such metaphysical questions and to write letters about them. You may be surprised to find how much you have in common with your father." She observed his reaction with a small upturn at the corners of her mouth, her eyes steady on his. "Or, if I understand your predicament correctly, you might be relieved that you have so
little
in common with him."

They had taken another turn, a short block between commercial streets, lit by angry orange vapor lights, the curb lined with trash cans and glistening plastic garbage bags. Abruptly a shape rose up in front of them and stood, blocking the sidewalk.

"What the fuck?" Paul said. Absurdly, his first feeling was embarrassment for using profanity in front of Vivien.

"Indeed," the man said. He was bearded, big, dressed in layered rags. Paul pulled Vivien to the left, to walk around him, but the man moved to block them. Vivien recoiled, disengaging her arm and falling behind Paul. Paul was glad to have both hands free. He stood facing the man, appraising him. Tall, beard and hair matted, face dirty. Hands out and forward, ready.

"Stand and deliver," the man said. "Your purses or your lives." There was a crazed pleasure in his face.
Only in San Francisco,
Paul thought,
Years of LSD and who knows what else. A mugger who inhabits a private world,
who fancies himself a highwayman of old England. A nutcase.
The thought did nothing to reassure him.

"Leave us alone," Paul told him.

Suddenly the man rushed forward, his gap-toothed mouth open in a joyful rage, and Paul had no choice but to meet his charge. The mugger's weight hit him and he fell backward, hard against a lamppost. The stinking beard was in his face, and then Paul's head rocked as a punch nearly crushed his cheek. The next punch hit him in his Adam's apple, and an explosion of pain burst in his windpipe, gagging him.

The pain seemed to wake Paul up. He broke free of the mugger's grip, ducked another punch, hit him with an uppercut, felt the shock of impact in the bones of his hand. He swung him by the rags on his shoulders, hurtling him with all his strength into an iron railing. The mugger hit hard, fell, was up immediately. The look of joy was gone, replaced by a glowering anger. A trickle of blood ran down from a cut on his cheek.

A knife appeared in his hand, long and very thin, sparking in the orange light. And then he was lunging at Paul, the knife moving almost too fast to see, up and under, going for the soft places below his rib cage. Paul dodged backward, avoided the blade, avoided a counter-slash, almost feeling the parting of his own flesh, the burning blade in his guts. His veins surged with adrenaline, a toxic mix of fear and anger.

As the mugger came on again, Paul's hands found a steel trash can and swung it suddenly up at the snarling face. It was a lucky blow, hitting the arms, sending the knife spinning away into the fog. The can upended, spewed garbage.

Paul picked up another can, swung again, connected solidly, followed up, shoving it at him, knocking him down. The mugger fell onto his back, head cracking the sidewalk, and Paul was on him immediately, putting one foot on his neck as he gulped for air.

"Mother/wcfeer/" Paul said, panting. "Fucking screwball nutcase!" Pain throbbed in his cheek and his outrage flared. He felt an urge to stomp the guy's throat but checked it in time. Anyway, the bearded face that stared up at him was full of fear now, as if staring through a crack in the stage set of his Robin Hood world.
The scariest sight of
all,
Paul thought:
the reality we deny every day of our lives. Poor son of a
bitch.

He settled for a token kick in the ribs, just a reminder, then glanced back to Vivien, trying to catch his breath. "You all right?"

"I—I think so," she said. She stared in unabashed fascination at the mugger as he moved tentatively on the littered sidewalk. "Oughtn't we call someone, or whatever one does under such circumstances?"

Paul glanced up and down the empty street. He didn't like the idea of Vivien walking on her own to find a phone, and he couldn't leave her with this twisted fuck. "If we can find a phone."

The mugger was up and gone by the time they reached the end of the block. Knowing it was pointless, Paul called the police from a pay phone, gave them a description: big, bearded, crazy. It was dark, Officer, foggy—there wasn't much time.

He hung up and turned back to Vivien, who had waited, leaning against a wall, hugging her arms to her chest against the cold, observing him with a disconcerting intensity. His own hands were still shaking, but she seemed to have recovered completely. In fact she looked refreshed, almost pleased. Of course, he thought: The evening's excitement was a nice short-term respite from Rimbaud's disease.

When they reached the brightly lit portico of the hotel, she paused, arched one ironic eyebrow at Paul. "Thank you for a most
stimulating
evening," she said. "What is the expression? 'You certainly know how to show a girl a good time.'"

14

P
AUL SPREAD HIS NOTES AND photos under the spotlight of Vivien's desk lamp. When she'd inspected each one closely, she clasped her hands in her lap, listening to him passively. Although she'd been confrontational all evening, the sight of the damaged house seemed to wound her. She'd poured them wine again when they sat down—maybe it was beginning to get to her.

Despite his growing fatigue and the bruises he'd gotten in the fight, he plugged ahead, outlining his plans. First, get the house closed off against the weather, then subcontract out the repair of the main systems—electricity, heat, plumbing. Install a permanent, lockable gate at the bottom of the driveway. Inside the house, her papers would be the first priority. Paul would set up a temporary heater in the smoking room, sort Vivien's papers, get them safely stored. Then begin work on the monumental task of sorting the rest of her belongings, disposing of them or taking them for repair as needed.

Paul handed her one of the estimates he'd prepared. "This is just for the short term, basic repairs. Bear in mind, my estimates for subcontracting costs are very rough and could go a lot higher. But my own work won't exceed these numbers. So, for closing off the house and putting your belongings into basic order, I expect I'll need four weeks, about four thousand dollars. Subcontracting and materials expenses come to around ten thousand, which I'll need in hand before I begin. I also need two weeks' advance pay for me—say two thousand." He slid several sheets across to her. "This is a personal-services contract between you and me, based on the estimate. There's a copy for each of us, and I've also made a copy for your insurance company. They should also get notice soon, since they'll want to look the place over before I start."

"Insurance!" Vivien laughed darkly. "What a lovely, sensible idea! I have no insurance. I stopped paying those crooks ten years ago when they doubled my premiums for the third year in a row. No, this will be coming out of my pocket—which I hope you'll remember when you are billing me. Fourteen thousand—that's a lot of money."

"That's just for the first phase. A rough estimate for the longer term work might be $50,000 to $100,000. It'll depend on your decisions: Do you want to pay to have paintings professionally restored, or for taxidermy? How far are you willing to go to repair your furniture, clothes? And some things won't be repairable—how much will you choose to replace at value?"

She digested it all in silence for a time. "Very well. I'll expect you to keep costs down wherever possible. After the first phase, I'll look for a more accurate estimate, and we can decide at that time about the rest of it." She found a pen and signed the contracts with a jagged signature. Her movements were listless, careless. Paul wondered if it was the shock of seeing the house, or the attack, or the cumulative effect of the wine they'd drunk.

"One other expenditure you should consider," Paul said, folding his copy of the contract, "is a security system. Until you've got one installed, the house just isn't safe. In the short term, while we're doing repairs, I'll camp out in the carriage house. At least until the gate is up. I expect to be working long hours anyway—it'll save me money and commuting time."

"I'd be very grateful. But why not sleep in the house?"

"The carriage house is in much better shape. I can set right up. I won't get in my own way."

"You're not afraid of ghosts, are you?" She was rallying already, finding a way to goad him.

"The idea of ghosts hasn't figured large in my planning."

"Perhaps
presences
is a better term. Forces. But you don't believe in ghosts?"

"I'm really not sure—"

"Maybe spending time at Highwood will help you make up your mind." A cunning voice.

Paul had to smile. Suddenly the pattern of it came clear to him. "My sister warned me that you enjoy being difficult," he said.

"Is
that
what I enjoy."

"Maybe I should say you enjoy challenging people, provoking them.

Surprising them. I think you're asking to be challenged and provoked in return. Asking to be surprised. Maybe you're still not entirely free of Rimbaud's disease."

She looked at him, pleased. "I didn't claim I was free of it. Only that it hadn't killed me yet. But yes, you're correct. Very insightful. Your father understood that about me also."

The weary pleasure in her look told him something more: that she solicited confrontations because she wanted engagement, companionship. That was there in her face too, he realized:
loneliness. Almost forty
years,
Kay had said,
alone on that hill.

"What happened to Erik Hoffmann? Where is he now?" The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

Vivien pulled back, the pleasure gone from her face. "My husband is dead. He died in 1985."

Your ex-husband, you mean,
Paul thought. "I'm sorry," he said. "I suppose a person never really stops caring, even after all those years apart." He went on, trying to change the subject, aware that he'd somehow offended her. But she interrupted him.

"Tell me, Paul, are you really such an innocent?"

"I don't think of myself as—"

"All that compassion, that virtue. Doesn't it ever bother you that no one really seems to appreciate that supposed virtue of yours?"

He was unprepared for her intensity, the change in her. He took a moment to answer, trying to decipher the reason for her sudden change of mood. "You're talking about supposed virtue. You seem to believe that the real thing doesn't exist."

"Unalloyed goodness? With no sordid underbelly of greed and self-interest and who knows what? Show me some." Vivien drank again and with one hand caught a drop of wine from her lower lip. "You seem to believe you can banish all your dark feelings, leaving only the good, wholesome Paulie Skoglund. But you can't really shed those feelings—all you can do is suppress them. They're still there, inside you. Can you really tell me otherwise? Anger, pain, resentment, frustration, set aside every day, never dealt with? Bottled up and stored away deep? You drop your eyes—you know I'm right. You very nearly crushed that man's windpipe, didn't you? And another question: What has this philosophy, this idealism, done for
you?
How has it empowered you? Are you using your full potential? Are you particularly happy? Fulfilled?" Vivien's voice had been rising, her eyes catching fire.
"How do you know what's inside if you
suppress it all the time? How do you know what you're capable of unless you let it
loose?
I suspect many of your ideals are nothing more than ways of rationalizing your paralysis, justifying your self-deceit."

He had begun to accept her sudden and extreme changes of mood, but this unexpected attack threw him offbalance. "You know, I came to San Francisco ready to be solicitous of my aunt's sense of propriety and her concern for her house and possessions. You've done a terrific job of putting that behind us." He swigged some wine and put his glass down harder than he'd intended. "Maybe I'm not as angry as you are."

"Perhaps not. And perhaps you've just buried it more deeply. Hidden it, along with your tics and your creativity and half your IQ, beneath a medication-induced stupor. What is it, still haloperidol? Or are you on Prozac and Prolixin?"

Paul stood up. More than anything else, he hoped he wouldn't tic or show any other sign of stress, which would no doubt gratify her enormously. "Well," he said, "time for me to go." He brushed the sleeves of his jacket, straightened his collar. "Been a long day for me. It's been lovely, Vivien. We'll have to do it again in another thirty years.

Good luck with your house."

He walked to the hall.

"Your control is admirable, but you're only proving my point," Vivien said.

Paul turned. "I'm impressed that you've done your homework on Tourette's. I'd respond to your goading, but it's never hard to get advice on how to live, and you're not the first to offer it to me."

"So you'd rather dodge conflict. I take it running away is something you're accustomed to doing."

"What I'm accustomed to is more courtesy. Maybe, while I'm reflecting on the value of letting go,
you
ought to consider the value of some restraint. For example, you might find that ifyou indulged your anger and bitterness a little less, you'd have
some friends.
Or maybe you haven't yet come to grips with why you're so alone."

He immediately regretted using her most obvious weakness against her. For an instant her eyes looked startled. Her chest started to rise and fall rapidly, as if she were starting to sob. When she took a sip of her wine, she swallowed it with a grimace and the wine tilted crazily in her glass before she set it down.

Paul went to stand at the window, his back to Vivien, thoroughly sick of the sight of her but unwilling to leave it like this. He felt as he did after his occasional arguments with Aster: No matter how awful it had gotten, you tried to bring it around to some kind of peace before you parted ways. Because this was your family. You swallowed your pride when it came to family. Whether he liked it or not, he couldn't deny that Vivien was, felt Uke, family.

Outside, traffic had died down, the city had started to go to sleep.

When he turned around, he found that Vivien had subsided again, as if their battle had exhausted her. To Paul's surprise—he'd never have believed her capable of it—tears rimmed her dragon eyes and slid down her, cheeks. Sitting awkwardly in her chair, she looked suddenly pathetic, her face streaked. She rubbed one of her wrists as if it ached.

Her resemblance to his mother was stronger now that her fragility had been exposed. He felt a stab of pity for her.

"What can I do for you?" he asked. "Can I get you something?"

"I'll tell you what you can do for me. You can restore my things, put my house in order. Restore my possessions to me. Give me back my life. I need my things, my papers. /
need to have something to prove I've had a life.
Can you understand that?"

"Of course. Why don't I get you some water or—"

"You can get me some Kleenex. On the table near the bookshelf."

Paul brought the box to her and waited as she mopped her eyes and blew her nose. When she was done, she looked somewhat better—forlorn, empty, but in control again.

"Have we concluded our business? I am quite exhausted," she said.

"There's just one other thing. Given the extraordinary level of damage, I wondered if you had any idea who might have done it."

"Why should you care?" Her voice was flat.

"I'd feel better if we found out, if only to assure that it doesn't happen again. On a practical level, if you're going to have the police in, they should come before I clean the place up. I'll be effectively disrupting a crime scene, destroying evidence."

"No. No police. Absolutely not. I'm not going to have my house invaded by yet another bunch of strangers, with prying eyes and gossiping tongues. I've had my dealings with the police over the years.

I'm entitled to more discretion than they're capable of."

"I'd think you'd be eager to know who did this."

Vivien waved her hand. "Don't misunderstand me. Of course I am.

But I have been exposed and invaded enough. You're not to bring the police into my house." She locked her eyes with his, driving the point home.

Paul took a frustrated turn on the carpet. "It occurred to us that maybe it was someone who had a grudge against you. Someone who would take revenge on you by smashing the place. Can you think of anyone?"

"I have no doubt accumulated many such grudges. Some people seem to consider me less than tactful."

"Anyone in particular?"

She stared blindly into the middle of the room for a moment. "There was a fellow in the town. He worked as my gardener for a time, and then I had to fire him. A great big bull of a man. A terrible temper."

"Why would he—"

"He stole things from the house, so I fired him and called the police. He blamed the trouble on me. This was many years ago, but he told me he'd never forget."

"What was his name? Is he still in the area?"

"An Italian. Falcone—Salvatore Falcone. Yes, I believe he's still there. Although I can't imagine why he'd suddenly fly into a frenzy at this late date." Vivien walked to the window and stood looking out, her back to him. "Now it is time for you to go. I will have my bank send you a check immediately. You will excuse me for not seeing you to the door."

She didn't lift her eyes as Paul said good night and embraced her briefly.

"Look," Paul said, "try to relax now. I'll do everything I can to make sure your things are preserved and put in order." He left her at the window, then paused in the hallway and turned to face her. "Are you sure you're okay?"

She turned her head and glared at him. "Save your pity for someone else." The hard edge had returned to her voice. "I have no use for it."