Starry Nights

by Leonard Schlenz

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

I have never claimed to be a moral man. She lives in a brick Queen Anne with a spacious yard surrounded by an iron fence, near a nursing home not fourteen blocks northeast of the abandoned place Jean-Marie and I have spent the night. I only lived there a short time. I walked these streets as a child and know them well.

Morning’s strong shadows tell me it’s going to be a sunny day. It had started to cool about four last night, it’s still warm. Today, like most mornings, you can smell bread and cinnamon rolls and tortillas from the ovens. Me and Jean-Marie split half a dozen donuts from Winchell’s.

“What about your wife?” I ask.

“What about her? Last thing I know she is still selling trinkets on Bourbon Street. I have not seen her. I don’t think we are really married.”

I don’t know what that means. I prefer not to pursue that line of conversation. “Tell me, Jean-Marie, why are you willing to do this for me? We could go to jail, you know.”

“I have been there. It’s not so bad.”

“If we fail, Zsa Zsa could put a curse on us both, turn us into pigs.”

“I know when you are joking.”

“I have to admit, Jean-Marie, I’m glad you’re my friend. Life is looking up. I’ll make it worth your time, I promise. I hate to say it but I was thinking of, you know, putting an end to all of it for good. I like your plan better.”

“Can she really do these things you say, like steal these nightmares?”

“Like I said, I don’t think she can make people die, and I don’t even think she can make them fall in love...”

“Can she make a man ill by poking sharp sticks in a doll?”

“No, no, oh hell no, Jean-Marie. That’s primitive.”

“Primitive? I seen my old lady once take out her glass eye and tell her cousin’s future. You call that primitive?”

“Look, I’m only saying I don’t think she’s into that sort of thing. No, I don’t think so, but I’m going to show you the dirty little deeds she collects in her jars.”

The plan in all its complexity is to say we have come to talk. Jean-Marie says he has killed before, and so he will kill her, but not before I have broken her little curses that reside in the mason jars.

The iron gate unlatches easily; there are no dogs or cats, at least outside the confines of her cauldron. Jean-Marie does not find my humor amusing, it is nervous humor after all.

The doorbell bongs loudly, for witcherly effect, a little extra thrill for her clients. Her business, after all, is dealing with the occult and requires a certain ambiance. There’s a giant banner hanging from the eaves of her place offering a variety of cosmic services and special readings.

She’s home, as always, and opens the door and I look to Jean-Marie more than my ex to see his reaction. He shrinks in her presence, pulls the cuffs of his shirt towards his hands, and nods his head. “Ma’am.”

“This is my friend, Jean-Marie,” I say. “We need to talk.” Her eyes size us up. Her hair has turned redder since last I saw her, her wrinkles deeper, paler and powdered. She shows us in as if we have an appointment.

It’s a creepy damn place just the way I remembered. She shows us through what was once the dining area and now used to impress her clients, and she leads us to the kitchen where I smell toast and see her lipstick imprint on half a cup of coffee. I spy magazines strewn on the kitchen table: Business Week, and Cosmopolitan. Even Good Housekeeping, for God’s sake.

“Let’s show your little friend what we have in the cellar,” she says, her voice deep and controlled as always.

She is too accommodating, I think, but we’re prepared. Oddly, I sense no second thoughts, no cold feet coming from Jean-Marie.

Un-typically, she adds, “It was once quite a nice wine cellar. It’s been updated.” I detect almost an upward curl of friendliness on her lips. We have come to kill her and she deflects us with this one little hint of niceness.

She leads us through a gallery, pictures of me enlarged and framed, on the cover of Art Dealer, frowning in Bohemian disdain, another next to it sitting with the owners of Mattie’s in Greenwich Village. She still retains some pride in my work. “Did your little friend know you were famous?”

I look at Jean-Marie. He is reasonably impressed, but it doesn’t matter now. My hands tremble worse than usual. I remember the floor plan of the old place and help her pull the Formica table away from the trap door rigged with cylinders of lead weight that make it rise magically. I believe I recall it was once used to monitor coal deliveries before it was a wine cellar, before being used for the captured incarnations of tormented souls.

I lead, my eyes giving Jean-Marie full authority to do as he wishes, when he wishes. He follows with Zsa Zsa in the rear; her workshop needs no theatrical embellishments. She has even added signage: Watch your head.

“Here they are,” I say, introducing the cellar, “this godless piece of real estate holds the old lady’s collected dreams.” Before us there are the many shelves I remember lugging home from Costco, roped onto the old Chevy in three trips and assembled where they now stand, in this very place, now filled with not less than a hundred mason jars that glow like bottled fireflies with the collected demons of Zsa Zsa’s clients — mine not least among them. In some dark part of my soul I’m proud to show off the ex’s extraordinary hobby.

“I call them Zsa Zsa’s bottled blackmail. Some folks have jars of pickled beets and jams in their cellar, Jean-Marie. This one probes the minds of the naive and steals their deepest, darkest thoughts. Has anyone ever spilled the beans, Zsa Zsa?”

“I don’t understand... Oh, do you mean reported me to the police? Don’t be silly.” She has retained the Soviet accent that once charmed me. I think Jean-Marie should kill her now. His right hand is behind his back. Perhaps he holds a stiletto in his hand.

I know the bottles are alphabetical. Grabbing Jean-Marie by the arm, I escort him clumsily to my very own labeled ghosts. He is shy and awkward, but clearly curious. We both need a drink and I hear Zsa Zsa clinking glasses in the cabinet behind us, not needing to read our thoughts. She doesn’t seem to sense that she’s about to die.

She hands us each large drinks in crystal glasses, saying, “Scotch,” and we three hold our drinks and sip for a while staring at the glow coming from three jars marked,

Spouse 09/12/07
Spouse 02/14/08
Spouse 08/04/08.

Pieces of me, like DNA of the soul, reside in those jars, good memories and bad, fear loathing and love. Enough fodder to make a man crazy in his own nightmares, yet my ex holds up her glass of Scotch and we three oddly clink glasses without smiling.

Then Jean-Marie pulls his knife quickly from behind his back like a magic trick and snaps the blade to attention. He steps behind me and holds the blade to my ear, “Sorry, my friend.”

Zsa Zsa holds her glass for a toast: “And how is your wife, Jean-Marie? I hope she’s well.”

I’m no trouble for Jean-Marie, though he’s smaller by far. I’m not a fighter by nature, only a myopic coward with a talent for art. I should have smashed the jars on first sight. But then, why? “Are you going to kill me, Zsa Zsa?”

I sit upright against cold stone, alone, immobile, in fact paralyzed. He has delivered me. I’m somehow not angry, only empty. I should have noticed the under-taste of my Scotch. I once knew fine Scotch.

She’s counting out the bills into Jean-Marie’s shaky hand. They might be twenties but I have no idea what it was worth to her. Maybe they’re hundreds. I should have known no man would really befriend me. She shows him up the stairs, and on returning, she sits on a stool and looks down. “I have drawn up the divorce papers,” she said. “Three years is long enough. They’re backdated of course, and I’ve had our little friend sign them as witness. The paintings will go to me of course.”

Of course. And there would be rules to the game. I had forgotten the little formality of legal divorce, assuming there was some sort of abandonment clause long in effect. There’s feeling in my toes. I believe I can wiggle them. I can mumble, but not talk, I can hear well enough. “You will sign here,” she says, pointing to the big X on the bottom of a simple form.

She’s patient while I recover. I sit and measure time in the tingling in my toes. My ears are cold. “You have two choices,” she says. “Neither is perfect of course.”

I grunt and make a question with my brow. She takes pictures with a digital camera, shots of her alcoholic beloved, driven to despair. It’s a nightmare, but it’s all a very bad joke as well, So I’m sitting there in this cell, see, and this witch, my ex, is going to kill me, or these two guys walk into a haunted house, see....

She helps me to my feet. I couldn’t crush a bug between my fingers, can hardly walk. The stairs are steeper going up. At the top I trade my signature for a drink, and then we come to the room where I know my works are stored, thirty-five oil impressions of my soul, my soul upon canvas now sold for a drink to a witch who was my wife, whom I also have just signed away.

“What do you want, Zsa Zsa? Go ahead and kill me, if you can.” I really don’t care. My head is beginning to ache.

“I can’t, and you know it; we can only drive you there, to the abyss, the rest is up to you.”

“Then let me go, give it up. This is nuts.”

“I’ve prepared a special place for you, in your old studio, with potions made of pigments and God knows what all, pieces from your collected dreams of course. You can’t escape. Your stupid studio is waiting for you, a place you can live in forever. Go on, it’s yours, behind that door. I dare you!”

“No thanks.”

“Of course, you can always drink poison.”

It wasn’t so long ago; I remember them well. There are two doors, behind one my old studio, behind the other a sunroom leading to freedom.

“Don’t even think it,” she says. I see a gunmetal heaviness in her hands. It turns out she owns a gun after all and cuddles it in her bosom like knitting.

I’ve never been so afraid. Somehow I know she can’t kill, and yet... there is the thought of a fate worse: more monsters. I’m feeling stronger. I want to be free. A small hope frets on the edge of catastrophe, so much emotion, so little time. If free, I can run to the farthest end of earth where even witches might not go, Nepal. Bethlehem. Mumbai.

I can stall. My strength is returning. I slump as if exhausted, eyeing the weapon. “One more thing, Zsa Zsa. I have a name, you know. That bothers you, doesn’t it? Why don’t you ever use it?”

“What are you babbling?”

“It’s not the paintings you want, is it? Wealth is nice but there’s more you want, something I’ve known for some time. You want revenge.”

“You’re a fool. Always the fool.”

“You’re jealous, aren’t you?” I see I’ve hit my mark. “That’s it,” I continue, “admit it!”

“Jealous? Of you?”

“My art is greater than yours and you can’t live with that; it’s always goaded you.” Her slap is hard and cold, and the gun dangles in her other hand and I fear what emotion can do. It’s almost close enough to grab. I’ve hit the central nerve, and now is my chance while her blood is boiling and she’s off-balance from my teasing.

“I hate you, Henry,” she says, “I’ve always hated you and your damned paintings,” and as she speaks I shove hard and quickly and only vaguely sense her flailing backwards onto the carpet, and I scramble into the sunroom where I know there’s an exit, and I turn and lean against the door to keep her out.

Through the door her voice is strong, but sad. “And you want the real truth, Henry? I hate you because you loved your art more than me.”

I’m a double fool then. And I’ve fallen into her trap. I lean my backside against the door and survey the room. I’ve chosen the wrong door. She has moved my studio into the sunroom where I stand. I hear the scratching of the skeleton key that’s hung there from the day we moved in.

The room is misty and damp and dark, and my paintings are aligned, pictures mostly of the old Highlands of North Denver, the Egyptian Theatre, the corner markets, each painting a piece of me, captured as no other painter could. There’s yet the other door to the outside, my escape.

Why has she switched rooms? It’s all too easy. I feel my way to the other side, and fling myself through the French doors into the warm night air.

The infected studio through which I walked was cursed indeed. She has tampered severely with my world.

The moon is squeamish and pale, blended in smudged blues and yellows in a sky of dappled dark clouds artificially lit with fake starlight. Frantic and afraid I stumble outwards, freedom calling in owl hoots but nothing else. It’s quiet, unpopulated; the house I’ve just fled is oddly impressionistic in the squiggly moonlight, not even that same house it seems, but an image; and the fence is magical but not real. She’s cursed me with my own talent.

I look into the sky again, out of breath; its swirls make me dizzy. The whole of my world is an oily shadowy darkness, smudges here and there for effect; the disproportionate stars tinted orange and oddly pixelled. There’ll be no returning. The house behind me might as well be gingerbread. My new penalty for not loving, I fear, will be these starry nights, forever.