Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies Page 9

  She had told him her secret. He could leave now if he wanted. She had given him the power to leave.

  Sipping from a glass of sherry on the nightstand beside the bed, reading from a book of composers’ lives, he decided to wait until morning.

  Yet after a few hours, nothing could keep his mind away from Miss Parkhurst’s prohibition—not the piano, the books, or the snacks delivered almost before he thought about them, appearing on the tray when he wasn’t watching. Oliver sat with hands folded in the plush chair, blinking at the room’s dark corners. He thought he had Miss Parkhurst pegged. She was an old woman tired of her life, a beautifully preserved old woman to be sure, very strong ... But she was sweet on him, keeping him like some unused gigolo. Still, he couldn’t help but admire her, and he couldn’t help but want to be home, near Momma and Yolanda and the babies, keeping his brothers out of trouble—not that they appreciated his efforts.

  The longer he sat, the angrier and more anxious he became. He felt sure something was wrong at home. Pacing around the room did nothing to calm him. He examined the opener time and again in the firelight, brow wrinkled, wondering what powers it gave him. She had said he could go anywhere in the house and know his way, just as he had found his room without her help.

  He moaned, shaking his fists at the air. “She can’t keep me here! She just can’t!”

  At midnight, he couldn’t control himself any longer. He stood before the door. “Let me out, dammit!” he cried, and the door opened with a sad whisper. He ran down the corridor, scattering moonlight on the floor like dust, tears shining on his cheeks.

  Through the sitting rooms, the long halls of empty bedrooms—now with their doors closed, shades of sound sifting from behind—through the vast deserted kitchen, with its rows of polished copper kettles and huge black coal cookstoves, through a courtyard surrounded by five stories of the mansion on all sides and open to the golden-starred night sky, past a tiled fountain guarded by three huge white porcelain lions, ears and empty eyes following him as he ran by, Oliver searched for Miss Parkhurst, to tell her he must leave.

  For a moment, he caught his breath in an upstairs gallery. He saw faint lights under doors, heard more suggestive sounds. No time to pause, even with his heart pounding and his lungs burning. If he waited in one place long enough, he thought the ghosts might become real and make him join their revelry. This was Miss Parkhurst’s past, hoary and indecent, more than he could bear contemplating. How could anyone have lived this kind of life, even if they were cursed?

  Yet the temptation to stop, to listen, to give in and join in was almost stronger than he could resist. He kept losing track of what he was doing, what his ultimate goal was.

  “Where are you?” he shouted, throwing open double doors to a game room, empty but for more startled ghosts, more of Miss Parkhurst’s eternity of bookkeeping. Pale forms rose from the billiard tables, translucent breasts shining with an inner light, their pale lovers rolling slowly to one side, fat bellies prominent, ghost eyes black and startled. “Miss Parkhurst!”

  Oliver brushed through hundreds of girls, no more substantial than curtains of raindrops. His new clothes became wet with their tears. She had presided over this eternity of sad lust. She had orchestrated the debaucheries, catered to what he felt inside him: the whims and deepest desires unspoken.

  Thin antique laughter followed him.

  He slid on a splash of sour-smelling champagne and came up abruptly against a heavy wooden door, a room he did not know. The golden opener told him nothing about what waited beyond.

  “Open!” he shouted, but he was ignored. The door was not locked, but it resisted his entry as if it weighed tons. He pushed with both hands and then laid his shoulder on the paneling, bracing his sneakers against the thick wool pile of a champagne-soaked runner. The door swung inward with a deep iron and wood grumble, and Oliver stumbled past, saving himself at the last minute from falling on his face. Legs sprawled, down on both hands, he looked up from the wooden floor and saw where he was.

  The room was narrow, but stretched on for what might have been miles, lined on one side with an endless row of plain double beds, and on the other with an endless row of freestanding cheval mirrors. An old man, the oldest he had ever seen, naked, white as talcum, rose stiffly from the bed, mumbling. Beneath him, red and warm as a pile of glowing coals, Miss Parkhurst lay with legs spread, incense of musk and sweat thick about her. She raised her head and shoulders, eyes fixed on Oliver’s, and pulled a black peignoir over her nakedness. In the gloom of the room’s extremities, other men, old and young, stood by their beds, smoking cigarettes or cigars or drinking champagne or whisky, all observing Oliver. Some grinned in speculation.

  Miss Parkhurst’s face wrinkled in agony like an old apple and she threw back her head to scream. The old man on the bed grabbed clumsily for a robe and his clothes.

  Her shriek echoed from the ceiling and the walls, driving Oliver back through the door, down the halls and stairways. The wind of his flight chilled him to the bone in his tear-soaked clothing. Somehow he made his way through the sudden darkness and emptiness, and shut himself in his room, where the fire still burned warm and cheery yellow. Shivering uncontrollably, Oliver removed the wet new clothes and called for his own in a high-pitched, frantic voice. But the invisible servants did not deliver what he requested.

  He fell into the bed and pulled the covers tight about him, eyes closed. He prayed that she would not come after him, not come into his room with her peignoir slipping aside, revealing her furnace body; he prayed her smell would not follow him the rest of his life.

  The door to his room did not open. Outside, all was quiet. In time, as dawn fired the roofs and then the walls and finally the streets of Sunside, Oliver slept.

  “You came out of your room last night,” Miss Parkhurst said over the late breakfast. Oliver stopped chewing for a moment, glanced at her through bloodshot eyes, then shrugged.

  “Did you see what you expected?”

  Oliver didn’t answer. Miss Parkhurst sighed like a young girl.

  “It’s my life. This is the way I’ve lived for a long time.”

  “None of my business,” Oliver said, breaking a roll in half and buttering it.

  “Do I disgust you?”

  Again no reply. Miss Parkhurst stood in the middle of his silence and walked to the dining-room door. She looked over her shoulder at him, eyes moist. “You’re not afraid of me now,” she said. “You think you know what I am.”

  Oliver saw that his silence and uncaring attitude hurt her, and relished for a moment this power. When she remained standing in the doorway, he looked up with a purposefully harsh expression—copied from Reggie, sarcastic and angry at once—and saw tears flowing steadily down her cheeks. She seemed younger than ever now, not dangerous, just very sad. His expression faded. She turned away and closed the door behind her.

  Oliver slammed half the roll into his plate of eggs and pushed his chair back from the table. “I’m not even full-grown!” he shouted at the door. “I’m not even a man! What do you want from me?” He stood up and kicked the chair away with his heel, then stuffed his hands in his pockets and paced around the small room. He felt bottled up, and yet she had said he could go anytime he wished.

  Go where? Home?

  He stared at the goldenware and the plates heaped with excellent food. Nothing like this at home. Home was a place he sometimes thought he’d have to fight to get away from; he couldn’t protect Momma forever from the rest of the family, he couldn’t be a breadwinner for five extra mouths for the rest of his life...

  And if he stayed here, knowing what Miss Parkhurst did each night? Could he eat breakfast each morning, knowing how the food was earned, and all his clothes and books and the piano, too? He really would be a gigolo then.

  Sunside. He was here, maybe he could live here, find work, get away from Sleepside for good.

  The mere thought gave him a twinge. He sat down and buried his face in his hands, rub
bing his eyes with the tips of his fingers, pulling at his lids to make a face, staring at himself reflected in the golden carafe, big-nosed, eyes monstrously bleared. He had to talk to Momma. Even talking to Yolanda might help.

  But Miss Parkhurst was nowhere to be found. Oliver searched the mansion until dusk, then ate alone in the small dining room. He retired to his room as dark closed in, spreading through the halls like ink through water. To banish the night, and all that might be happening in it, Oliver played the piano loudly.

  When he finally stumbled to his bed, he saw a single yellow rose on the pillow, delicate and sweet. He placed it by the lamp on the nightstand and pulled the covers over himself, clothes and all.

  In the early hours of morning, he dreamed that Miss Parkhurst had fled the mansion, leaving it for him to tend to. The ghosts and old men crowded around, asking why he was so righteous. “She never had a Momma like you,” said one decrepit dude dressed in black velvet night robes. “She’s lived times you can’t imagine. Now you just blew her right out of this house. Where will she go?”

  Oliver came awake long enough to remember the dream, and then returned to a light, difficult sleep.

  Mrs. Diamond Freeland scowled at Yolanda’s hand-wringing and mumbling. “You can’t help your momma acting that way,” she said.

  “I’m no doctor,” Yolanda complained.

  “No doctor’s going to help her,” Mrs. Freeland said, eyeing the door to Momma’s bedroom.

  Denver and Reggie lounged uneasily in the parlor.

  “You two louts going to look for your brother?”

  “We don’t have to look for him,” Denver said. “We know where he is. We got a plan to get him back.”

  “Then why don’t you do it?” Mrs. Freeland asked.

  “When the time’s right,” Reggie said decisively.

  “Your Momma’s pining for Oliver,” Mrs. Freeland told them, not for the first time. “It’s churning her insides thinking he’s with that witch and what she might be doing to him.”

  Reggie tried unsuccessfully to hide a grin.

  “What’s funny?” Mrs. Freeland asked sternly.

  “Nothing. Maybe our little brother needs some of what she’s got.”

  Mrs. Freeland glared at them. “Yolanda,” she said, rolling her eyes to the ceiling in disgust. “The babies. They dry?”

  “No, ma’am,” Yolanda said. She backed away from Mrs. Freeland’s severe look. “I’ll change them.”

  “Then you take them into your momma.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The breakfast went as if nothing had happened. Miss Parkhurst sat across from him, eating and smiling. Oliver tried to be more polite, working his way around to asking a favor. When the breakfast was over, the time seemed right.

  “I’d like to see how Momma’s doing,” he said.

  Miss Parkhurst considered for a moment. “There’ll be a TV in your room this evening,” she said, folding her napkin and placing it beside her plate. “You can use it to see how everybody is.”

  That seemed fair enough. Until then, however, he’d be spending the entire day with Miss Parkhurst; it was time, he decided, to be civil. Then he might actually test his freedom.

  “You say I can go,” Oliver said, trying to sound friendly.

  Miss Parkhurst nodded. “Anytime. I won’t keep you.”

  “If I go, can I come back?”

  She smiled ever so slightly. There was the young girl in that smile again, and she seemed very vulnerable. “The opener takes you anywhere across town.”

  “Nobody messes with me?”

  “Nobody touches anyone I protect,” Miss Parkhurst said.

  Oliver absorbed that thoughtfully, steepling his hands below his chin. “You’re pretty good to me,” he said. “Even when I cross you, you don’t hurt me. Why?”

  “You’re my last chance,” Miss Parkhurst said, dark eyes on him. “I’ve lived a long time, and nobody like you’s come along. I don’t think there’ll be another for even longer. I can’t wait that long. I’ve lived this way so many years, I don’t know another, but I don’t want any more of it.”

  Oliver couldn’t think of a better way to put his next question. “Do you like being a whore?”

  Miss Parkhurst’s face hardened. “It has its moments,” she said stiffly.

  Oliver screwed up his courage enough to say what was on his mind, but not to look at her while doing it. “You enjoy lying down with any man who has the money?”

  “It’s work. It’s something I’m good at.”

  “Even ugly men?”

  “Ugly men need their pleasures, too.”

  “Bad men? Letting them touch you when they’ve hurt people, maybe killed people?”

  “What kind of work have you done?” she asked.

  “Clerked a grocery store. Taught music.”

  “Did you wait on bad men in the grocery store?”

  “If I did,” Oliver said swiftly, “I didn’t know about it.”

  “Neither did I,” Miss Parkhurst said. Then, more quietly, “Most of the time.”

  “All those girls you’ve made whore for you. ..”

  “You have some things to learn,” she interrupted. “It’s not the work that’s so awful. It’s what you have to be to do it. The way people expect you to be when you do it. Should be, in a good world, a whore’s like a doctor or a saint, she doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty any more than they do. She gives pleasure and smiles. But in the city, people won’t let it happen that way. Here, a whore’s always got some empty place inside her, a place you’ve filled with self-respect, maybe. A whore’s got respect, but not for herself. She loses that whenever anybody looks at her. She can be worth a million dollars on the outside, but inside, she knows. That’s what makes her a whore. That’s the curse. It’s beat into you sometimes, everybody taking advantage, like you’re dirt. Pretty soon you think you’re dirt, too, and who cares what happens to dirt? Pretty soon you’re just sliding along, trying to keep from getting hurt or maybe dead, but who cares?”

  “You’re rich,” Oliver said.

  “Can’t buy everything,” Miss Parkhurst commented dryly.

  “You’ve got magic.”

  “I’ve got magic because I’m here, and to stay here, I have to be a whore.”

  “Why can’t you leave?”

  She sighed, her fingers working nervously along the edge of the tablecloth.

  “What stops you from just leaving?”

  “If you’re going to own this place,” she said, and he thought at first she was avoiding his question, “you’ve got to know all about it. All about me. We’re the same, almost, this place and I. A whore’s no more than what’s in her purse, every pimp knows that. You know how many times I’ve been married?”

  Oliver shook his head.

  “Seventeen times. Sometimes they left me, once or twice they stayed. Never any good. But then, maybe I didn’t deserve any better. Those who left me, they came back when they were old, asking me to save them from Darkside. I couldn’t. But I kept them here anyway. Come on.”

  She stood and Oliver followed her down the halls, down the stairs, below the garage level, deep beneath the mansion’s clutter-filled basement. The air was ageless, deep-earth cool, and smelled of old city rain. A few eternal clear light bulbs cast feeble yellow crescents in the dismal murk. They walked on boards over an old muddy patch, Miss Parkhurst lifting her skirts a few inches to clear the mire. Oliver saw her slim ankles and swallowed back the tightness in his throat.

  Ahead, laid out in a row on moss-patched concrete biers, were fifteen black iron cylinders, each seven feet long and slightly flattened on top. They looked like big blockbuster bombs in storage. The first was wedged into a dark corner. Miss Parkhurst stood by its foot, running her hand along its rust-streaked surface.

  “Two didn’t come back. Maybe they were the best of the lot,” she said. “I was no judge. I couldn’t know. You judge men by what’s inside you, and if you’re hollow, t
hey get lost in there, you can’t know what you’re seeing.”

  Oliver stepped closer to the last cylinder and saw a clear glass plate mounted at the head. Reluctant but fascinated, he wiped the dusty glass with two fingers and peered past a single cornered bubble. The coffin was filled with clear liquid. Afloat within, a face the color of green olives in a martini looked back at him, blind eyes murky, lips set in a loose line. The liquid and death had smoothed the face’s wrinkles, but Oliver could tell nonetheless, this dude had been old, old.

  “They all die,” she said. “All but me. I keep them all, every john, every husband, no forgetting, no letting them go. We’ve always got this tie between us. That’s the curse.”

  Oliver pulled back from the coffin, holding his breath, heart thumping with eager horror. Which was worse, this, or old men in the night? Old dead lusts laid to rest or lively ghosts? Wrapped in gloom at the far end of the line of bottle-coffins, Miss Parkhurst seemed for a moment to glow with the same furnace power he had felt when he first saw her.

  “I miss some of these guys,” she said, her voice so soft the power just vanished, a thing in his mind. “We had some good times together.”

  Oliver tried to imagine what Miss Parkhurst had lived through, the good times and otherwise. “You have any children?” he asked, his voice as thin as the buzz of a fly in a bottle. He jumped back as one of the coffins resonated with his shaky words.

  Miss Parkhurst’s shoulders shivered as well. “Lots,” she said tightly. “All dead before they were born.”

  At first his shock was conventional, orchestrated by his Sundays in church. Then the colossal organic waste of effort came down on him like a pile of stones. All that motion, all that wanting, and nothing good from it, just these iron bottles and vivid lists of ghosts.

  “What good is a whore’s baby?” Miss Parkhurst asked. “Especially if the mother’s going to stay a whore.”

  “Was your mother... ?” It didn’t seem right to use the word in connection with anyone’s mother.

  “She was, and her mother before her. I have no daddies, or lots of daddies.”