The Fan-Shaped Destiny of William Seabrook (15 page)

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J
USTINE WAS INSISTENT
on strolling the Riverwalk one more time from the convention center back to the Marriott. Secretly, I was elated as she held
my hand and demonstrated to downtown San Antonio that we were a unit. I was only sorry that there wouldn’t be an opportunity
for her to knock their socks off at the Cadillac Bar. In the lobby we met Joe coming down from the convention suite, so at
least he had a chance to meet Justine in all her splendor. When she kissed me and ran upstairs to retrieve her belongings,
his eyes were properly wide.

“What have you done did?”

“Don’t ask, because I don’t know,” I told him, admitting to my growing supposition that I could claim no credit for mechanicking
any of this situation. I explained that I was going to have Cris see to Kong while I took off to Atlanta with this young babe.
I gave him a quick outline of our meeting and the presumed connection with Seabrook and an original Justine.

“No shit! She has the mural?” Since we’d first learned of it, Joe had been beguiled by the notion of Marjorie’s painting.
I told him that was the presumption, though I could honestly care less should she turn out to be thoroughly delusional. I
mentioned the various faces of Justine, and how she’d seemed when I’d first encountered her. “Goth, huh?” Joe mused. “She
doesn’t look like one now; don’t know how to characterize her. She sort of defies description, doesn’t she?”

“Well, yesterday, about all she was lacking was a Mohawk.”

“I don’t know about you,” Joe ruminated, “but the thought of that red hair in a Mohawk makes me hot.” He offered me a high
five. If you are very lucky in life, you get to meet a few people who honestly wish you well, without secret agendas or personal
designs.

Justine drove an electric blue Honda Del Sol. Seeing her off from the parking garage, I noted her fingernails were painted
to match her car. I had the distinct feeling that the swatches of gaudiness about her were not in the way of a fashion statement,
like Joe’s fantasy of a red Mohawk. The affects bespoke a fundamental personality template, as did the absolutely frightening
way she hit the exit ramps going down.

Who knew what this girl might do? Heading for the house, I lectured myself to the effect that, if this were a chimera, I would
know soon enough. Though a comedown would be a hard fall, either she would come for me or she wouldn’t; it was that simple.

I looked about my house, at the pathetic remnants of my life, as I had known it. If I let myself think, if I began to pick
up the little mementos about me, the old hurts would begin all over. Was it my imagination, or had I just failed to notice,
as everything had grown so dark and shabby? How long had it been since I had ceased opening the curtains? There was nothing
left here but memories that burned like the bite of a whip. There was nothing to be lost that compared to what I might sustain
if I let myself hesitate at this crucial moment.

I got food and water prepared for Kong, then came back in to find him sitting hopefully by my prepacked bag at the front door.
Seeing that hurt, too—remembering how he used to go everywhere with Linda and me. I assured him that he would see me again,
hopefully soon, and got a bit emotional thinking how he was the last part of my life, as it had been, about which I still
cared.

Then I began to gather my essential materials into a large leather file-folder case I’d gotten off one of the lawyers with
whom I worked. This included my basic Seabrook file, the photocopy I’d made of the library’s reference copy of
Witchcraft,
and disks with my rough draft and additional notes on such as DeWitt and the works of J.W. Dunne. The case being legal-length,
there was some space at the end, where I carefully packed the copy of Willie’s autobiography and Marjorie’s book as well.

Had the kid been up prowling about longer than I’d thought? Apart from the
Witchcraft
file and the books, it seemed as though there was nothing I could readily lay hands on. It was one of those moments when
nothing seems to be as you left it.

As an afterthought, I went back and added a copy of Borges’s “Garden,” and other loose sheets with obits and bios that I really
should have gotten scanned so it could all go in my pocket. Union work was far behind the corporate side, and I didn’t have
easy access to the new technology yet. Then I dressed more comfortably in jeans and a blue work shirt and pulled out a corduroy
jacket. The professorial thing seemed to sell real well.

I tried to settle down and wait, but the silence in the house made me antsy. I made sure everything was turned off, pausing
in the bedroom to remember the night before, which already seemed like a dream. There, too, something seemed different. Endeavoring
to isolate the numinous effect, my scrutiny abruptly leapt back to the headboard of the bed. The old ties I had used to bind
Justine’s wrists were nowhere to be seen. What the hell? Had she taken them with her, as trophies? The thought disturbed me.
Treasuring mementos in place of the actual person struck me as too reminiscent of JJ’s approach to things.

I went back and sat down once more, then remembered to get my copy of Ward Greene’s book. There being no more room in the
legal case, I put it in my coat pocket along with my stash of Valium (as much security blanket as necessary medication) and
sat down yet again. The hour had elapsed. I pulled out the Greene book and studied the garish cover inside the protective
plastic wrap. It was nothing less than
Ride the Nightmare
reprinted as a paperback in 1949. While tediously trying to locate the original, I’d been unaware of this version, due in
part to its having been retitled:
T
HE
L
IFE AND
L
OVES OF A
M
ODERN
M
ISTER
B
LUEBEARD!
⁵⁵

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What popular fascinations of 1949 the screaming association with Gilles de Rais had served, I had no clue. The lurid cover
illustration presented Greene’s fictionalized Seabrook, in overalls, as an artist instead of a writer. He was seated on an
ottoman with a drawing pad on his knees. Apparently secured to an easel, rather than a canvas, was the model herself, with
her wrists crossed above her head. To all appearances unconscious, she was stripped to the waist, though a lock of long blonde
hair strategically covered her breasts and the implied bonds were not visible. All this at “the amazing pre-War price of twenty-five
cents,” the back cover touted.

Just before visiting Charles in Fort Worth, I’d gotten together with Joe and his wife Diane. Since it was near my birthday,
they wanted to visit an interesting bookshop where Di had seen an item she wanted to get for me. Having about an hour to prowl
before the store closed, Di went to find my present, Joe was about to go off to the science fiction, and I was headed for
the erotica downstairs. Joe first pointed out a section of locked cases containing first edition science fiction, old occult,
and other interesting items.

I’d noticed a job lot of old paperbacks on some open shelves below the cases and had begun perusing them, amused by the campy
covers. “God, look at this,” I’d said, showing a book to Joe. Only as I had been about to return it to the shelf, did I notice
the author and subtitle. After I’d despaired of owning Greene’s book, my friends had inadvertently led me to an unknown edition,
of which probably only a few copies still existed.

Even before the event at Charles’s house involving
Witchcraft,
this had gone into my record of synchronistic events. There had been, however, an anomaly that I’d dismissed as inconsequential
until that further find obliged me to rethink all these matters. For long moments, as I’d knelt beside the bookcases, I’d
seemed to deny the reality of what I held in my hand. I’d even entertained the irrational supposition that the very evident
original title must refer to
another
book by the same author. Later, I’d taken hours before carefully examining it, even actually forgetting a few times during
the evening about the remarkable item, which seemed as if it had been waiting for me.

Were aberrations of perception and memory common to instances of synchronicity generally? Did some censorial function in the
brain dictate, “Now, here’s how it
must
have happened,” and, failing that, blank it out if possible? Certainly, anyone experiencing such would not be prone to report
that aspect. If you’re making a point that something untoward has occurred, you don’t cast aspersions on your own memory in
the same breath. Or, might this observed behavior, repeated by the bookseller, Charles, and me be linked instead to the peculiar
“forgettability” of Seabrook’s historical record?

I leafed through this other present from the “Library Angel,” a semifacetious concept of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Collaborator
with Jung in the study of synchronicity, Pauli had been renowned for such events in his personal and professional life. Justine
would get a kick out of the parts about her namesake character, whom Greene had devised a full ten years before Seabrook had
ever written of his Justine. Another hour had passed, and there was a heavy weight on my chest. Did it end like this, a flash
in the pan that never went anywhere? Another “what if?” to torture me into old age? My experiences in bouncing off young women,
even in my youth, did not inspire hope. How long before I heard the predictable “I just can’t right now?”

Maybe an old boyfriend calling, while she was at her mother’s, with a revelation of cosmic significance that she had somehow
overlooked? All that crap that they go through as they flail about without a clue as to what they want. “Didn’t know I needed
you, baby, till you left town.” A bitter lampoon of self-serving young male bullshit ran through my mind as I paced the floor.
“Well hell, I almost got off my dead butt to find you. Now that somebody else wants you, I’ll have to kill you or myself if
I can’t have you.” Or worse, her addressing me with
“… if only you weren’t so much older.”

In my nervous stalking about, I’d wandered back into the bedroom. Idly inspecting the closet, I spied the errant ties hanging
on a rack with other unused items. Now, why in hell would she have troubled to hang those up? I wondered, in the suddenly
oppressive silence of the enclosed room, as I fingered the neckties. Then came an eerie perception that their material was
to no degree crumpled or creased, as though they had been hanging there for years, like their fellows—untouched, unused.

An irrational fear gripped me. Momentarily, it seemed as though I might have stepped briefly into a universe that had housed
such a magical little being, then been transported back—back here. Here, to a sad and lonely place where she did not exist
at all, where my memories of her were sheer dementia. Oh no, oh please God…

I snapped to as a revelation nullified my gloom. I was not going to let it happen! If she didn’t show, I’d call Joe before
the convention offices were boxed up, get her address and other registration information, and catch a few hours’ sleep. One
way or another, night would find me on the causeway across the Atchafalaya swamps, on my way to Atlanta.

By God, I would
make
it happen! Between her sexual tastes and involvement with the Seabrook saga, there was enough for me to work with. There
were levels here, true enough. Part of it was the old Halloween thrill again, but there was something so much more—that would
move me at any cost.

Was it significant that I confronted the fact of having fallen hopelessly in love with her at the very moment she pulled into
my driveway?

I watched through the window as she got out of her car. In tight blue jeans, studded denim jacket over a halter top, she was
as exquisite as she had been the night before. Relief was tempered as I saw her dab her eyes under her dark glasses. Not out
of the woods yet, I thought; but unlike minutes before, I felt ready to deal with anything. Inside the door, she laid her
head against my chest. I asked her what was wrong, hoping I exuded the confidence I’d acquired by taking a fundamental decision.

“Y’know the thing where you can’t remember ever being called a ‘child’ till after you’re age of consent?
Then,
we wanna get all parental…” she answered, gesturing with an upturned palm. “Believe me when I say, if some people don’t have
a thing in their lives, they’re all—about how nobody else should.”

“The bad news is, babe, that’s the great majority around us.”

“I never know what’s up, with Mother and me. She’s not too stoked by me on the road alone. Hey, I really thought she would
fret less with someone ‘looking after me.’ I am such a
retard.
I flipped her off, was way harsh on her to deal with my going. Now I feel all gnarly.”

“Well, you’re of age and have your own means,” I spoke carefully, surmising that the means were precisely the issue.

She mockingly slapped her forehead. “I forgot!” She grabbed up the heavy leather case with an air of urgency, “We’re outta
here.” We’d just started out the door when the phone rang. I cursed under my breath and began to put down my bag. “Nay, please,
let it go.” There was alarm in her voice, and I looked at her curiously. She tugged on my wrist in a childlike gesture I was
coming to recognize. Something about taking the hand was important to her. “I’m way sure it’s her,” she explained. “She was
going off about calling you and ‘taking care of this.’”

It’s true. I’ve become a cranky old man, especially on issues of sex and politics. “Justine, nobody is going to put any paternalistic
threats over on me. I grew up around all that trailer-trash behavior, too. But, after fifty years, I’ve been around too many
blocks to take it.” Yes, I did take it personally. It brought back thoughts of JJ and everything that had gone into tearing
us apart.

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“W
E’RE SO NEW AND BEAUTIFUL.
” The strange cadence had returned to her speech, a stress thing? “It’s about not wanting her to even touch us right now.”
Her voice begged, “I don’t want anything to touch us!” I shook my head, not because I wasn’t impressed.