The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

An Interview Amongst the Antiques

Previously: "Getting to the Root of Things" 

"You're shitting me," Joe says. "Stuff happened in this town?"

It's Tuesday afternoon, and Joe is riding shotgun in your car. He taps the window arhythmically with a knuckle, as though grooving to music only he can hear, and casts you a bemused, side-long glance.

You had a late class on Monday, and today he wasn't available for anything until after five, so you arranged to pick him for dinner. You mind if we stop and see someone before that? you'd asked, and he said he didn't.

And who is the appointment with? The chairwoman of the city historical society, whom Melody hadn't been able to get in to see before today. It seemed a lucky stroke: You could see Mrs. Grissom while bringing Joe along, and in that way you'd get some more work done and maybe tie Joe a little more tightly to yourself.

It also meant telling him that you're interested in the city's history, because of some interesting doings associated with its founding. Hence, his snort of amused skepticism.

"Stuff happens in every town!" you retort.

"Pff, right. Like, a McDonalds opens, or the mall closes. So what happened around here?"

"Here?" you ask, for you are turning onto Grant Avenue, where Mrs. Grissom lives. "This is where all the old, rich folks live."

"Yeah?" He cranes his neck to look out your side of the car, at the immense, gingerbread-and-gables houses that line that side of the street. (The university occupies the other side.) "They keep 'em under glass? These all look like a bunch of museums!"

"Am I going to be able to take you anywhere?" you tease.

He catches your eye, then leans over to kiss you on the side of the neck.

"I'm housebroken," he says. "But that's about all."

* * * * *

"Quiet!" You nudge Joe hard in the side of the ribs as the locks in the front door slide back. When you'd pushed the doorbell, he'd replied to the chimes with a surprisingly deep and resonant, You rang? The last thing you need is some goofball pissing off your hostess with a lot of wisecracks about how her house looks like someplace Frankenstein would live.

She's a small woman who answers the door, with a wizened, kittenish face. She peers at you nearsightedly and with a dubious frown.

"Mrs. Grissom?" you say. "I'm Melody Weiss?"

She stares at you a moment. Then her expression clears up.

"Oh, my dear!" she exclaims. "Of course! Do come in."

"Thanks. Oh, and this is— Hup!" You have to quickly stifle a shriek of surprise as Joe presses up behind you and clasps his palms over the sides of your hips. Attached to you this way, he follows you in, and doesn't let go until you're inside. "My friend Joe," you lamely conclude.

It is, as you'd told Joe, one of the city's grand old houses, one of those erected as a memorial to themselves by the town fathers and bankers and politicians in the 1870s and 1880s, and which have kept up their splendor even as the shadow of age has fallen over them. This is one of the largest, a three-story monster under a large cupola, with two projecting, two-story wings. It swallows up almost its entire lot, so that there is only the most notional of front yards between the iron fence at the sidewalk, and the steep steps leading up to the porch.

Yet its occupant is a tiny woman, and tiny too is the sitting room she leads you into. It is also claustrophobic with furniture and decorative bits: a low settee draped with a vermillion blanket and a white-and-green quilt; a low coffee with a glass top, on which rests a silver tray with a yellow teacup; a tall bookcase with glass doors against one wall, and a tall cabinet, packed with chinaware behind its glass doors, on another. Behind the sofa hangs a large painting that shows a hunting scene in the English countryside: hounds and horses making arcing leaps over the rolling hillsides. Only the large, flatscreen TV that hangs on the wall opposite the settee strikes a modern note.

"Would you like something to drink or eat?" Mrs. Grissom asks as she settles onto the settee, and gestures you and Joe to take a seat in the nearby chairs. "Nothing for now, Zaila," she calls when you politely decline. You glance over your shoulder to see an enormous black woman, with a head the size of a basketball, standing in the doorway. She regards you and her employer with a kind of glum hostility before withdrawing. Joe catches your eye, and briefly waggles his brows at you.

"You told my secretary that you are working on an honors thesis," Mrs. Grissom says. "About the history of the city?"

"Yes. Particularly—"

You hesitate. You don't want to sound like a crank, especially in front of Joe, but if you only say you are studying its founding, you will just get a lot of dates and names. So you plunge on. "Particularly about the Tabernacle of Jehovah. And whatever ceremonies or liturgies they might have performed at its founding."

Mrs. Grissom doesn't react, except that she blinks and her brow lowers into a soft frown. Joe himself only reacts with a polite smile.

"Oh my," Mrs. Grissom says. "That is an obscure subject. May I ask what drew you to it?"

Again, you can't resist a brief glance at Joe. If anything is going to scare him off you as a lunatic, it is what you have to say next.

"I'm studying anthropology and history, and to be frank my main interest is in, um, heterodox Christian sects of the medieval and post-medieval eras. There is a ... possible connection between these and Saratoga Falls."

"Really, in what way?" she asks with a clear-eyed curiosity.

"Via the Tabernacle. Irving Henry—its founder—lived in Europe for a few years before he founded the Tabernacle. He might have met and corresponded with a group there called the Temple of the Rose. They may have been an influence on him and on the Tabernacle's, um, customs and practices."

"Well, I'm afraid those of the Tabernacle didn't leave much behind," Mrs. Grissom says. She picks up her tea cup, finds that it is empty, and puts it down again.

"There are some, um, suggestive traces in some of the civic architecture."

"Really." Her tone and gaze briefly sharpen. "Where?"

"The, um, the pagoda at Stewart's Hole, for one. It's a very early structure—"

"It's a reconstruction," she corrects you.

"Yes, but it's—"

"Can you be sure that its, um, ornamentation is authentically reconstructed?"

"Well, we know it's not—"

"So there you are!"

"But there are photographs of it before the reconstruction. The layout is the same, and the changes— Well, there are records of some of the changes, and what was there originally."

"I see." Her tone is cool, and you have to wonder that she doesn't know all this herself.

"There's also the medallion in the floor of the gazebo at Potsdam Park—"

"Zailla!" Mrs. Grissom calls. "I'm sorry, my dear," she apologizes. "Do go on."

"Well, the medallion has an inscription that—"

"Zailla, I seem to be having one of my spells." Mrs. Grissom addresses the servant, who has silently appeared in the doorway. "Could you prepare—?"

"Are you okay, Mrs. Grissom?" you ask.

"Only one of my spells," Mrs. Grissom says. She lays back on her sofa, and rests her head on the cushion. Her eyes flutter shut. "But do go on."

* * * * *

Well, the upshot is that you excuse yourself and thank her for her time. She accepts your apologies, and suggests vaguely that you might see her some other time.

But Joe, who was silent the entire time, did go and make a scene just before you left her.

"Vampire eyes?" you exclaim when you're on the front porch and stomping for the car. "Why did you have to say—?"

"Didn't you see it?" he says. "That photograph or painting or whatever, in that glass cabinet—"

"But did you have to say he had 'vampire eyes'? You heard her, that was one of her ancestors!"

"No, she only said he was one of the town founders. And she's so old she probably babysat him when he was still a vampire brat."

"But where do you get off with that 'vampire eyes' business?"

"I just said he looked like he had vampire eyes! Can't I say—?"

"He did not! And Joe— you've just gone and ruined any chance of me getting to talk to her again! She almost threw something at you when you said that! 'Who's the dude with the vampire eyes?'"

You reach for the car handle, but he grabs you first, and pulls you close. All the breath explodes from your lungs as he clasps you to him, and gazes down into your face.

"You don't need her, Melody," he murmurs. "She wasn't going to tell you anything anyway. She was shutting you down, you could see that. The minute you started asking about occult this and werewolf that, she—"

"I was asking about civic architecture!"

"And she didn't want to tell you anything about it. For reasons, whatever they are."

He squeezes you, and your insides go all squishy under the warmth of his smile.

"You don't need her, Melody, not when you got me. This stuff sounds fascinating. Fuck, I'm getting a hard-on just thinking about it! Or," he adds with a wicked grin, "maybe it's you."

You squeal and slap at him. But you can't help melting further into him.

Fuck me, you groan from deep inside Melody's consciousness. If I wind up giving this guy a blow job, I'm gonna have to put a gun in my mouth afterward.

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"