The Broken Hours: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft (16 page)

She clacked the bottle of ink back down on the counter, displaying long, pink fingernails.

Oh, I know some would say it’s, you know, furvolous, but I always think: Treat a thing right and it’ll come back to you. Treat a thing bad, well, that comes back, too. Comes back even stronger. It all comes around. But I don’t have to tell you that. You types know all about that, about how what goes around comes around, how everything does, all the time.

Types?

Oh
, she said, leaning forward in a hot waft of some flowery cologne,
it’s always in the eyes, you know.

What is?

She waved her hands and laughed.
Oh, now, I’m just fooling with you. I can see you got ink stains all over your fingers, so you’re either a writer or you work for one of them newspapers, and I sure hope you ain’t that or I’ll have to give you an earful. Are you?

Am I?

A newspaperman?

No.

Well, good. You don’t even want to get me started. Only thing worse than a newspaperman is a banker. The nonsense in those pages. This new technology, funny cameras, who knows what they can do. Anyway, you know what it means if something funny is in the papers.

No,
I said.
What does it mean?

Something else is going on they don’t want us to know about, that’s what. So somebody plants some silly story, ghosts or, you know, creatures.

Creatures?

Space monsters.

I must have given her quite a look. She had the good sense, at least, to look embarrassed.

Oh, well,
she said,
they don’t come right out and say that, of course. They don’t say space monster, but just that it’s inidentifiable. And we fall for it. They could pass off any kind of nonsense. Like that fly-girl.

Fly-girl?

That lady pilot, flying all the way around the world.

Amelia Earhart?

What nonsense. And then, too, just the other day, right there in the paper, that thing they found on the beach, down at Narragansett.

I looked up at her sharply.

Some big tentacle or other. But, you know, awfully big. So now everybody’s talking sea monsters. I mean, really. All that talk. It’s been around since,
she waved a hand,
just forever. But what am I saying; you didn’t come in here just to visit now, did you? Say, you feeling all right?
She narrowed her eyes at me across the counter.
Here
, she said, picking up the aspirin,
let me ring these through.
She punched some numbers into her till, carefully, with the pads of her fingers, so as not to damage her nails.

I’m all right
, I said.

Not sick, are you? Lot of stuff going around.

No, not sick.

She stared at me, as if waiting for, expecting, more.

Tired,
I said.
Rundown, I guess, is what you’d call it
.

Well
, she said,
you know what they say about the man who was feeling rundown.

She handed me the aspirin, and I cranked open the lid and fished out the cotton batting and took two tablets, wincing at the sour, chalky taste.

Thank you
, I said, screwing the cap back on the bottle and slipping it into my overcoat pocket.

Don’t mention it
, she said.
Feel better?

As if the aspirin were already doing its work. I nodded.

Now this
, she said, and punched in the ink.
Can’t have you leaving without that
.
I thought you said you weren’t a writer.

It’s not for me, actually
.
Just the aspirin; that’s mine. The ink …
I waved a hand meaninglessly across the counter.
I’m on errands
, I said, then paused.
For a friend.

She must have sensed my awkwardness over the word, and I can’t say myself why I used it. It was easier than attempting to explain a situation that was inexplicable, and she seemed just the sort to inquire.

But
, she said, raising a pencilled eyebrow,
you’ve been in here before?

No, indeed.

But I’m quite sure … that ink—

For my friend. My employer, actually. He is the writer, not me.

She neatly placed my purchases into a paper bag.

Well
, she said, taking my money,
I just work here. I don’t mind other people’s business.

Something in her tone had changed, and I felt I had put her off somehow, or offended her, though I could not see how.

Thank you
, I said, inviting a return to her former cheeriness. But she did not respond. I tapped my fingers on the counter.
Normally I’m healthy as a horse
, I said.

All right
, she said.

I picked up my bag, puzzled at her change in demeanour.

By the way
, I said,
what do they say? About the man who was feeling rundown?

Oh
, she said, waving a hand again, not looking at me,
just an old joke. I hardly remember. Something silly. Never mind.

She busied herself rearranging things behind her counter, and I said,
Well. Thanks.

Mm-hmm
, she said.

At the door, I turned back, but she had already put up a sign on her counter that read,
Next till please
, and moved away to the back of the store, one hand in her hair, her black skirt swishing purposefully.

I’d scarcely shut the door of Sixty-Six behind me when Flossie popped her yellow head out from the landing. She was standing on a tasselled footstool, holding something in her hands. She looked fresh and bright. Swing music—I might have guessed as much—drifted through her open apartment door, the rich, toasted smell of fresh coffee in the air. She looked at me, I thought, a little warily.

It’s so dull and gloomy on this landing
, she said.
I thought it could use some brightening up. I hope you don’t mind.

We had not spoken since our strange, unhappy parting in the midst of the storm the previous day. No doubt she still thought I was angry. I had certainly behaved so.

She held out the thing in her hands for me to see. It was a small painting. The ocean impossibly green. Inky clouds rolling in or away. Before or after a storm. In the middle distance, a small red boat, eerily empty.

Hardly what I’d call bright
, I observed.

The colours are pretty
, she said, looking at it again.

She hung it firmly on the wall, adjusting it one way, then the other.

There
, she said with finality, stepping from the footstool.
A woman’s touch.

She came down to meet me in the foyer. Her hair was pulled back from her face with a filmy scarf and she wore a peacock blue Chinese dressing gown belted tightly at the waist. She looked at me cautiously.

You’re out early
.
I saw you go. I thought maybe you were on your way to work?

Ah, no. I work at home, actually.

Do you?

I thought I’d mentioned that.

I don’t think so. I would have remembered. Anyway, I saw this
, she said, brushing a hand against her own chin,
and knew you couldn’t be going to work, anyway.

This?

Your beard. It’s growing quite thick.

I lifted a hand to my own chin, felt the stubble there. It was hardly what one would call a beard, and, of course, I was aware it was there, but with the lack of a mirror in the upstairs apartment, I hadn’t noticed or cared.

It looks rather dashing, I think
, Flossie said.
Some of my brother’s friends had them, back in Indiana, even though they’re not the fashion. But then nothing is, back there. I had crushes on them all. The friends, that is. How’s your aunt?

My aunt?

With the grippe.

Grippe?

Were you visiting her?

I collected myself.
Indeed. Yes. Improving. Thank you. For asking.

Home soon?

Home? Yes. I hope so.

But then you’ll leave, won’t you.

She leaned against the wall in the light from the window. Her face scrubbed and shining, eyelashes so pale they looked golden. At times, I thought, in the right light, she gave the impression of being so ethereal, so translucent, one could see right through her. So different from Jane’s solid, dark handsomeness.

Anyway, that makes two of us, I guess,
Flossie went on.
Working at home. No auditions for me today. I suppose you guessed as much.

Why’s that?

I’m not exactly gussied up, am I.

The Midwestern turn of phrase was charming. She misread my slight smile, looked embarrassed.

Oh, you must find me awfully unsophisticated.

On the contrary.

Anyway, I’m hoping something will come up tomorrow, some hostessing work or something at least, maybe up in Boston, some stupid convention where they want girls to stand around with trays of business cards, smiling until their feet bleed or something.

Not exactly acting.

It’s acting, all right. Believe you me. Oh, there I go again. Anyway, if there’s anything going, I’ll take the train up, but this miserable spring is putting a damper on things everywhere, no pun intended. Or so my agent tells me. But then one never knows with agents. Sometimes I think they just tell you what you want to hear.

You want to hear there are no auditions?

Well, not that, of course.
She looked solemn then.
I’m glad you’re not angry.

Why would I be angry?

The other day. What the neighbour said. It was stupid of me.

You’re hardly to blame for any nonsense some neighbourhood crank spouts.

I’m glad you feel that way. You seemed so angry. I’ve been just a wreck about it all. I couldn’t bear to think you were upset with me. Say, do you have time for coffee? I just made a fresh pot. And there’s a lemon cake I picked up at that little Italian bakery. I swear the box weighs ten pounds. I broke a darn sweat carrying it home and I’ll just die if you make me eat it all myself. I’ll have to starve for a week. Unless you’re busy, working?

The best answer, of course, would have been that in fact I was working and could not spare the time. Flossie stood staring at me, waiting. The bright room behind her looked so inviting. The day was still young and the aspirin was doing its work and with everything that had happened, and the conversation with my employer still heavily on my mind, a cup of coffee and a slice of cake with a pretty girl in a silk dressing gown seemed at that moment too pleasant to pass up. And then, too, I recalled, Helen was back. I was quite eager to meet her, as if she were a strange player come late to the stage.

Just a quick one, then,
I said.
I do have a good deal to accomplish today.

That sounds intriguing,
she said, closing the door behind me. The locks rattled from their hooks.

You know, I could remove those for you,
I offered.
They’re quite unnecessary, I assure you.

Yes
, she said, turning the music down,
you said that already.

Have I?

Anyway, I don’t mind. It’s kind of pleasant, in a way. A poor girl’s door chime. And a good reminder, too
.

Really. Of what?

Beats me
, she said,
but something. Independence?
And she laughed again in that odd way she had, when a thing didn’t seem at all funny to me.

She disappeared into another room I supposed was the kitchenette and I stood looking around. The room was supremely untidy. On the coffee table, bottles of nail polish and wadded tissue like crumpled flowers amid several halfdrunk cups of milky coffee; the floor and sofa littered with women’s magazines and catalogues, torn-out pages on the carpet in some inexplicable feminine order. A saucer of hairpins. An opened jar of hand cream. A single, nibbled sugar biscuit. As if there had been quite a party.

But there was more. On the sofa were several violet silk cushions that had not been there before. The heavy green draperies had been replaced with sheer ones in a similar shade of violet, and a thick white rug rolled out beneath the coffee table. The potted ferns were gone and in their place were several vases of white chrysanthemums. A crystal candelabra dripping with light stood on the mantel where the horse had been.