The Night Villa (7 page)

He lets his voice trail off and I finish it for him. “And that way madness lies?”

He looks back at me, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. Does he think I’m making fun of him? “I meant it figuratively, of course,” I say.

“Of course,” he says, giving me his first smile. It makes the sun-burnt skin around his turquoise eyes crinkle. I feel like I’ve earned a prize.

“Well, thanks for telling me. I promise I won’t mention it to Agnes—” I’ve taken a step backward, but he reaches out his hand, tentatively grazing my elbow with his fingertips to hold me back.

“Can I ask you a favor?”

When I nod he reaches into the pocket of his denim cut-offs and pulls out a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “I’m teaching rock-climbing at this camp in Switzerland this summer, so I can’t come to Italy and keep an eye on Agnes and I’m worried about her. Most people think that because she’s so pretty everything’s easy for her, but I grew up with her and I know, well, she’s more fragile than she seems. Anyway, I got one of those cell phones that work over in Europe and this is the number. If she’s having a hard time, would you call me?”

“I’m sure Agnes will be fine,” I begin, but when I see the stubborn determination in his eyes I take the slip of paper. “But I’ll call if I have any concerns. She’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

A shadow flickers across his blue-green eyes, like a shark moving through shallow water, but then he forces a smile. “I’m the one who’s lucky,” he says. “Look how close I came to losing her.” He turns and walks away. I watch him pad back to the house, the sight of his bare feet on the hot pavement making me cringe for his vulnerability. When I turn around I think that Dale Henry got at least one thing right: I may not be able to see Sam Tyler’s aura, but it’s clear as daylight that he’s in love with Agnes Hancock.

I
nstead of heading home I turn left on 38th Street and head reluctantly over to Guadalupe. I’d told Agnes the truth when I said I knew where to find a replacement for the lost volume of
Athenian Nights;
it just wasn’t a place I wanted to go. Archetype Books, the dusty used-book shop sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and juice bar on Guadalupe, had been the third point on the New Age triangle Ely had sketched out that first night we noticed the Tetraktys house. I hadn’t at first realized that it had become a place he frequented as much as Starwoman and the Tetraktys house until a month before he left town, when I noticed the Mandala logo of the store on a bookmark inside one of his books on Pythagoreanism. The same bookmark I saw inside one of the books Agnes had just returned to me.

I had gone there one morning when Ely hadn’t come home the night before. The man behind the counter had looked up from the book he was reading when I came in and studied me without saying a word. He had eyes a yellow color I’d only ever seen in cats before. And just as a cat sometimes stares at empty space, so he seemed to be staring not
at
me but
through
me, as if he had X-ray vision. Indeed, he had the high cavernous forehead and oblong face of a mad scientist in some horror movie. I’d taken a step backward, mumbling some excuse that I’d gotten the wrong store, and stepped on something that screeched and then whirled around my feet like a furry dust devil.

“That’s just Gus,” the book clerk said as if explaining a meteorological phenomenon. The maelstrom of black and white fur surged up onto the counter and bunched itself into the shape of a fat black and white cat who glared at me with eyes the same color as his master’s.

“I didn’t mean to step on his tail,” I said, holding out my hand to the cat as a propitiatory offering. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d gobbled it like a hungry idol, but he merely sniffed at my fingertips, the white triangle over his nose twitching, and then rubbed his face down the length of my arm. I had to step closer to the desk or the cat would have fallen on the floor. I noticed then that the clerk had a tattoo at the base of his throat: a triangle made out of ten dots.

“Are you looking for something?” he asked.

I had the feeling he wasn’t talking about a book.

“Um…I think my boyfriend comes in here sometimes…Ely?”

“
I
know Ely,” the clerk said with such an emphasis on
I
that I expected him to follow with, “Do
you
?”

“I’m looking for him,” I said, swallowing my embarrassment. I felt like a fishwife tracking down her errant husband. “He didn’t come home last night.”

“A teacher came to speak last night at meeting and afterward some of the followers went to one of the member houses to hear about the community in New Mexico. I think Ely might have been one of the ones who was interested.” The man paused. He must have seen the tears rising to my eyes. At the mention of New Mexico, my throat had gone as dry as the desert. My worst fear was that Ely would leave me to join a Tetraktys community far away from Austin. I was surprised to see that the clerk looked sorry for me. “I imagine he would have called to say where he was, but the teacher asked that anybody who came to listen observe a vow of silence for the night. We believe initiates should be silent while learning.”

“According to Pythagoras,” I said, desperate to seem like I wasn’t a total idiot, like I was in on at least some of the secret rites and rituals. The name Pythagoras made the cat look up and meow. “Don’t tell me,” I said, “the cat’s a Pythagorean, too.”

The clerk smiled and chucked the cat under the chin. “He just recognizes his name. Gus is short for Pythagoras.”

I didn’t learn the clerk’s name on that first visit, but in the coming weeks I stopped by the bookstore often and learned that his name was Charles. In addition to New Age stuff, Charles carried a remarkable selection of Greek and Latin texts, some of which were hard to find anywhere else. “I specialize in myth,” he explained, “so of course I carry the classics.” I made his classics selections an excuse for my increasingly frequent visits, but we both knew I was using him as a link to Ely. Charles was the only member of the Tetraktys I ever spoke with or knew by name—and I didn’t even know his last name or where he lived.

I am afraid as I reach the store today that I’ll find it closed—or Charles and Gus gone. When I open the door, though, and step into the store, I might be stepping back in time to my first visit. Charles is in the same spot at the counter, his head bowed over a book until my entrance draws his amber eyes up to mine. I feel something furry brush against my calf and look down to find Gus twining himself around my legs.

“I wondered how long it would be before you came in,” Charles says, reaching under the counter. “I’ve been saving this for you.” I step forward, nearly tripping over Gus, and reach for the book. An index card with my name hand-printed on it is paper clipped to the cover, obscuring the title, but when I move the card and read the gilt-pressed lettering I see that it’s the third volume of Phineas Aulus’s
Athenian Nights.

I open my mouth to ask a question and then shut it. Experience has taught me that a direct question usually yields unsatisfying results with Charles. If I asked how he knew I needed this particular book he could very well tell me that the knowledge had come to him in a dream. So instead I ask which translation it is.

“The Reverend F. P. Long, MA, Sometime Exhibitioner of Worchester College. Published by the Clarendon Press in 1911,” Charles replies without looking at the title page. “Not as good as the LaFleur translation, of course, but those are getting pretty scarce these days.”

I lay my fingers on the smooth leather cover and flip through the gilt-edged pages to the marbled end papers at the back. “The end pages look new,” I comment. “Did you do the rebinding yourself?”

“No, I farm that work out now to New Mexico. The dry climate is better for old books.”

Gus abandons my ankles and leaps onto the counter. He pushes the white triangle of his nose against my limp hand, demanding attention.

“So, you’ve been out there recently?” I ask, petting the cat.

“Last month,” Charles says. “I took a truckload of damaged books I got at the Albuquerque Book Fair and picked up these.”

Gus has managed to snake under my arm and push his face against my chest. When he reaches my left ribs, where my bandages are, I’m afraid he’s going to dislodge my stitches, but he only sniffs and looks up at me, his yellow eyes solemn.

“You’re going to heal well,” Charles says. “I can tell.”

I stifle the urge to ask “How? By my aura?”

“For a while you’re going to feel like something’s missing there,” he goes on, touching the spot below his own ribs.

“So what else is new?” I ask. “At least Dale Henry left me with my life. Others were not so lucky.”

Charles shakes his head sorrowfully. “The emptiness inside him was bigger than the hole he put in you. It was a like a black hole, dragging everyone into it.”

“So you knew Dale Henry?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

“He came in here sometimes. A lot of lost souls come looking for something to fill their empty places.” Charles holds up his large hands, bracketing the empty air between us to demonstrate the idea of emptiness. I wonder if that’s how he saw Ely when he started coming here. As a lost soul. Had he offered him the Tetraktys as something to fill that empty place? I’ve always wondered if Charles was the one who introduced Ely into the Tetraktys, but as much as I’d like to ask about Ely I have a more important question to ask.

“What did Dale Henry use to fill his emptiness?”

“He used a big gun,” Charles says, dropping his hands.

“So he wasn’t a member…?”

“Of the Tetraktys?” Charles’s eyes slide away from me and his fingers splay over the counter like spiders ready to pounce. He’d looked exactly like this when Ely left town for good and I asked him where he’d gone. “You know we don’t advocate violence. Pythagoras wouldn’t even allow the slaughter of animals.” I notice that Charles hasn’t said that Dale Henry
wasn’t
a member. Pythagoreans aren’t supposed to lie, either, but they can avoid telling an inconvenient truth to outsiders like me.

“But he attended some meetings?” I ask. “He was interested.”

“A lot of people are
interested,
” he says, making it clear by his intonation what he thinks of the dilettantes who flit from one New Age interest to another.

“So he came to meetings, but wasn’t initiated?” I suggest.

“Many are the narthex bearers,” Charles quotes, “but few are the Bacchoi.”

I know that once Charles starts spouting quotations I’m about to lose him. I don’t have to read auras to see he’s shutting down. If Dale Henry was a member of the Tetraktys, it’s not a fact its members are going to advertise. I’m not going to get any more information about Dale Henry out of Charles, so I change tacks.

I look back down at the marbled end pages and trace the swirling patterns—a mélange of blues and greens. “These are my favorite colors,” I say to Charles. “Ely used to say it was because I’m an Aquarian and these are the colors of water.”

Charles’s face softens. “Yes, I’m sure that’s why he chose them. He wanted you to have this. He said he took your copy of the last volume when he left.”

I look up, startled. “He
said
I would want this?”

“Yes, it’s been five years. Ely’s vow of silence has ended. I was there on the day it ended so those were practically his first words.” I look up at Charles to see if he’s having a joke at my expense, but his eyes are as solemn as Gus’s had been a moment ago. I struggle not to laugh. Five years of silence and Ely’s first message to me is “Hey, here’s the book I borrowed from you.”

“Okay,” I say, “so how much do I owe you?”

“Nothing. It’s a gift.”

“Thanks, Charles, and thank—”

“I won’t be able to thank Ely because he’s already left the community. Once the five-year period of silence is over, the initiate is sent out on a mission.”

“Do you—”

“I have no idea where he’s gone. No one is told another initiate’s mission.”

“And this was last month?”

He checks the ledger he keeps beside the cash register. “I was in New Mexico the second week of May. I saw Ely on the fifteenth.”

More than three weeks ago. He could be anywhere by now. “Okay, thanks, Charles.” I pick up my book and turn. Gus stands by the door as if he were Janus, the ancient doorkeeper of the Romans, waiting for a tip. I bend to rub his head before going out, like patting a Buddha’s belly for good luck. I figure I could use it.

I walk back to my house trying to sort through all the disparate threads I’ve followed today. “It’s a small town,” I’d told Ely when he started seeing coincidences everywhere. It didn’t necessarily mean anything that a crazy like Dale Henry had wandered into Archetype Books—after all, he was a philosophy major—or a few Tetraktys meetings. Or that the book he stole from Agnes happened to be the replacement of the book that Ely took from me five years ago. A book which Ely happened to be handing over as a gift to me around the same time as the shooting…was it only
around
the same time, though? When I open my front door—swiping at the coral vine that has made another tactical assault on the screen—I go straight to the calendar on my desk and, still standing, flip back to May.

The words
Papyrus Project Internship Interviews
are printed in the box for May 14. Charles said that he saw Ely on May 15, which had been the day his vow of silence ended. So if Ely had wanted to warn me about Dale Henry…

It’s absurd. Even if Ely had known that a crazed gunman was targeting one of my students, which required him to know more about my present life than an initiate of a cloistered community would have any obvious way of knowing, would he really be satisfied with as cryptic a warning as coded telephone rings?

“No,” I think, touching the cover of Phineas Aulus’s
Athenian Nights.
No doubt the gift was part of some twelve-step program for completion of the initiation process.
Return all worldly goods wrongly borrowed,
or some such ridiculous dictum. Ely was probably just trying to purge himself of any reminder of me. The good thing, I tell myself, is that if Ely felt the necessity of sending the book back with Charles, then chances are he’s not planning on coming back to Austin.

Unless the book was some kind of advance calling card announcing his imminent arrival.

I’m startled out of this alarming train of thought by the sound of a loud thump that comes from the back of the house. I get up and walk quickly through the kitchen and my bedroom looking for the source of the noise but find nothing. It must have come from the study. I stand in front of the closed door, chiding myself for the ridiculous idea that has popped into my head: Ely is in there. Released from his five-year vow of silence, he’s come back to me. I’m his mission.

And even though I should be frightened, especially if Dale Henry was involved with the Tetraktys, the electric charge surging up through my core is more excitement than fear.