Skull Session by Daniel Hecht

Author:Daniel Hecht [Hecht, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-06-08T04:00:00+00:00

34

THEY CAME OVER THE CREST and again the headlights panned the demolished garden and the dark lodge, its wet-looking window plastic bulging and going slack again in a slight breeze, as if the house were breathing. When Paul cut the lights, the blinding darkness seemed to suck into the cab. They both sat in the dark, unwilling to leave the warmth of the car.

"What happened when you guys went out to the shop?" Lia asked. "Did you talk to Dempsey about—?"

"Yeah. He says there are some letters he wrote to Vivien that he'd like to find."

Lia made a little noise in her throat. "Letters of a compromising sort, I take it. So Dempsey and Vivien had an affair."

Paul just looked at her, barely able to make out her silhouette in the blackness.

"I suspected as much, from the way he's been acting about this. All that melancholy, anxiety, his falling out with Vivien—"

"Well, that all blew right past me. Anyway, he requested that we avoid reading the letters if and when we come across them. He said he thought we should respect Vivien's privacy more too, not read any letters."

"Well, I'm not reading anything much, really. I certainly scan each page to see where it should be filed. It's a very fine line. Anyway, how'll we ever figure anything out? Besides, now the cat's out of the bag, right?"

Paul went to the dark kitchen to call Vivien, leaving Lia in the warmth of the smoking room, sorting papers. He shoved aside some rubble and sat on the counter, blowing steam into air as still and cold as a meat locker. Leaning forward from his seat, he could see the rectangle of bright light around the smoking room door, suspended in the cavernous darkness of the big room. A series of irresistible tics pulled the right side of his face into a snarl, and he waited for them to subside before shining the flashlight on the phone and dialing Vivien's number.

"Oh, Paulie," Vivien said. "Are you calling from Highwood?"

"I am. We just got back from dinner, and I thought I should check in." He brought her up on their activities to date.

"I'm glad you have matters so well in hand," she said when he finished. "I have been worried about . . . everything." There was a reedy, tired sound in her voice, almost a wistful quality. "Recently, I find myself feeling quite ambivalent, Paulie. There's a part of me that misses the place, that looks back fondly and wants to protect all the things I left behind. As I told you, they're the only proof I have that I've ever been young, or married, or a mother." She sighed, then went on. "The other half of me, frankly, is relieved to be out of the lonely castle on the hill, and only too eager to shed the accumulated detritus, the confining shell of my old life."

"Yes, I sense that ambivalence," Paul said carefully.

"And what about your own existential quest? No sign of Rimbaud's disease, I hope? I've wondered if it's contagious.

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