The Everborn Page 20

  Without interruption.

  ***

  The directions Andrew had given Mel during the prior day’s brief phone conversation proved simple enough to follow, but it was only until she was en route early that Sunday evening when it began to strike her as curiously odd that the place Andrew called home lay right smack in the armpit of The Crow Job’s nefarious backyard. It didn’t seem to make much sense that Andrew would choose such an unlikely dive of a region to reside in. Working under Ralston Cooper’s wing should have elevated his living standards alone, unless Andrew’s income was grossly unjust or unless there was a premeditated purpose to it all.

  Melony arrived at the address, pulled up and parked along the street’s curb directly in front of Andrew’s three-story apartment complex. She hoped she hadn’t underdressed, but the date was informal and her goal wasn’t to seduce him but to get to know him. And maybe she would allow him a bit of insight on herself, too. Maybe more than a bit. She gathered a Nikon and its shoulder strap from the passenger seat into her purse and emerged with the purse, from her vehicle, locked the door and set the alarm. She wore blue jeans and an almost silky thin orange tank top.

  The apartment complex was plain, but maintained noticeably well for its hum-drum and run-down surroundings. Entering through the building’s towering wrought-iron security gate after finding it unlocked, she made her way past a battalion of mail boxes beneath a curved archway, and across a concrete floor which split into separate directions leading through an arena of green grass and hedges and a spacious, lawn-chaired gazebo.

  The setting appeared remarkably quiet and restful, and perhaps catered to a select clientele of respectful, low-income and low-profile adult types with no children and habitually tedious lives. There were no signs of the tenants which lived there but for a dozen or two lights within windowed and curtained front rooms.

  Melony made an immediate right and proceeded up three flights of stairs and across the top floor walkway, while she rationalized how Andrew’s choosing to live here seemed more and more fitting, as fittingly low-profile as he was.

  At the corner of the walkway she made a right into an enclosed hallway, which reached in the direction of the street and sheltered the doorways of three separate apartments. She approached the only door at the inner hallway’s left. She took a deep breath to calm herself from the constricting assault of tension that threatened to make her flake out at the last minute. A polite series of knocks to announce her arrival and the finality of crossing over the threshold between consistent reality and persistent curious abandon and it would be behind her.

  It’d better be.

  Because when she knocked and then waited a minute and then a few seconds more, raising her curled knuckles to try again, the door opened and what she saw on the other side was a reality as consistent and as unimpressive as her own.

  Then again, what did she expect, anyway?

  The next moment found Melony crossing the threshold without so much as a second thought to it, forsaking her expectations, but for the simple rule of thumb to expect the unexpected.

  As she entered and greeted the shy young man, dressed modestly in a black dress shirt and white tie as he was and clearly delighted by his date’s arrival, it came to her that consistent reality was what she’d expected all along. After all, she wasn’t boarding a crystal ship to the stars. It was all down here on Earth, in a down-to-earth apartment; Melony was simply beginning to fear that perhaps everything about Andrew had a down-to-earth explanation.

  But that just couldn’t be.

  “Melony, welcome,” Andrew said cordially. He was in the gladdest of spirits, free and easy and lighthearted. If she had a coat, he would’ve offered to take it for her. He was indeed no ordinary gentleman. “I’m ecstatic that you’ve made it! Dinner is pretty well done, Chinese like I promised. But in French, je vis de bonne soupe et non de beau langage, it’s good food and not fine words that keeps me alive. First, though, let me give you the grand tour. It’s not very often I get to show off.”

  “Really,” Mel said with a smile, enchanted. She set her purse down upon the black recliner. “So show off.”

  “Would you like anything to drink?”

  “What do you have?”

  Andrew listed several beverages in almost rehearsed order, and Mel surprised herself in agreeing to a brandy against her own projected intentions.

  His grand tour was a thorough presentation but determinedly hurried, as Andrew interjected more than once that they’d better sit down to dine before he’d be resigned to microwave the finger foods. His attitude and the way he carried himself was like a humble rich kid host on an excursion through a luxurious mansion that wasn’t a mansion nor was it luxurious. Andrew maintained the same innocence and boyish charm which had so attracted her to him at the club. She found herself fascinated by the littlest things, all the while alert to those little things which might present a small portion of insight or clues to what may be hidden behind his innocent persona.

  But then, she also found herself forgetting what she was truly there for, caught up as she was in the intriguing normalcy of it all.

  His bedroom tour went first, after the introduction of where the bathroom was and she would’ve taken this as a sly insinuation if it wasn’t for his preoccupation with a closeted toy collection, something he was quite proud of. Melony distracted him with minor questions concerning his workspace, a lengthy wooden desk flanked by file cabinets and enthroned by shelves of books and a typewriter surrounded by piles of papers and office accessories, all a few feet from his Niagra adjustable bed.

  He didn’t seem at all interested in his writing or of his affiliations with Cooper. This was all his forum, with his interests and flamboyant showmanship, until they could both get comfy and settle down in the kitchen. Mel could wait for that.

  The living room was the final and only frontier as eccentric but otherwise cozy as it was, with its atmospheric black-and-green-clovered wallpaper and legions of books, and its prominent large-screened television. Melony was drawn to the exhibited relics of yesteryear, the framed book cover of Into The Grave II, penned by Andrew himself in his late teens and of his once-famous director father’s signed and framed poster of a sixties B-horror flic....

  To my son,

  I in you, and you in me.

  Loving timelessly,

  -your Dad, A.J.

  A.J. was just as much a mystery as Melony was convinced Andrew was, maybe more so in consideration of his sudden and still yet unsolved disappearance, though Mel seemed certain that the matter was unsolved in Andrew’s mind as well. Or was it? Only dinner conversation would tell.

  Then it would be her forum.

  The Chinese food was splendid. Every last morsel of it. Andrew’s conversation was tedious, talk-of-the-weather, but Melony made sure to turn that around as subtly and as mannerly as she could. But it was important to listen to Andrew regardless of what he said, for each word was an insight into a personality somewhat foreign to her, somewhat familiar, somewhat universal in the underlying human loneliness of it all. And she couldn’t help but notice how handsome he was, how attractive he was to her, though regardless of everything else she had at least ten years on him. And she was married. To an asshole.

  A half an hour had passed, give or take some minutes. Fleetwood Mac were repeating their rundown of song selection from the living room stereo. Mel discussed her safe drive to Andrew’s, commented on the wonderful food, reiterated over her likes and dislikes of Ralston’s gig the other night.

  Andrew took it from there, “So tell me more about what you do, Mel. This Diverse Arcanum newsletter. It’s a newsletter, and yet you got yourself a table for Ralston’s big night when more reputable publications were knocked back to corner barstools.”

  “I’ve got connections,” Mel told him. She sipped her second glass of Brandy. “Besides, I got lucky. There was only so much space in that dive to begin with. Is there a reason why you happen to live down the street fro
m such a place, a place which eventually happened to be the showcase for such a night?”

  “There’s no coincidence. I’ve lived here for a while. Ralston and I hung out together to discuss projects at that club. It’s his kind of place. He’ll go on to bigger and better places, whether or not he did well there. It was an experiment, to see if he could do well with his dream......which was music, not really writing at all.”

  “Oh yeah,” Melony said, “but your dream is writing, isn’t it? And surely writing must be part of Ralston’s own dream. How could it not be? He’s an international bestselling author, for Godsake. No one put a gun to his head. He must love his work.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” Andrew told her. “I don’t like working for him. He uses me and that’s all I do now. It pays the bills and I’m just fine living here. Until I can....”

  “Until you can write something for yourself again...?”

  Andrew felt suddenly restless, squirmish, uneasy and wary with this. Was she hinting at his personal life just then, his personal track record, could she know his intimate history, had brushed up on these things since their introduction to one another Friday? Or had he disclosed to her some disconcerting bit of information that Friday night that since then memory could not summon?

  “I can’t write for myself anymore,” he found himself saying. “I just do what I do, and I live my life here. It’s a good life, actually.”

  “Something’s not right here,” Mel told him in response, agitated, pressing further to the point. “Back up a minute. Tell me again, how exactly do you make a living?”

  Numerous questions sprung from the inner wells of Andrew’s suspicions. Didn’t he make that clear to her? Surely he couldn’t have hinted of the truth during their discussion the other night! And why is she concerning herself so, over his income? Is her business hurting for a buck, is she spying around for the next great score with a good-looking guy and a notable meal ticket? Like Jessica, Ralston’s girlfriend, perhaps? Or is she behaving like the journalist, asking questions for media, while not really maintaining a personal interest in him at all?

  Say it isn’t so!

  “I’m sorry,” Melony told him and reached a hand out to his across the corner of the table that they shared. Andrew was quite oblivious in his momentary lapse of frustration. “I’m just asking. I’m curious. Maybe it’s the journalist in me. I wanna know more about you. It’s plain to see how working for Ralston Cooper upsets you so. You want to be a writer in your own right, and he just gets in the way. Doesn’t he? I’m sorry.”

  Mel said nothing more than what she’d meant to and she knew nothing of the deep secrets kept between Andrew and Ralston. She was only too aware of other secrets even more unsaid and she would find her way towards them, regardless of how wrong or unfair it was beginning to seem. The interview was proceeding rather wel, and she was confident enough to request another brandy. Yet she had obviously struck a nerve in Andrew and it felt good to know she could ease whatever upset him outright and re-establish a bit of friendly trust between them both, as a good interviewer should.

  But there was an element of mutual understanding growing here, haunting her with the realization of the obvious things they together held in common, of how the two of them had burrowed their careers into the unsatisfying comforts of two opposing mock-mentors, who each separately dictated the lives of Andrew and Melony to their highly successful demands, all the while denying the two of any success of their own. And to top it all off, one mock-mentor had virtually built a career upon pursuing the mysteries of the other.

  And here was Andrew and Melony, on a date in Andrew’s apartment, the servile followers of two celebrity icons who wouldn’t be what they were today if it weren’t for what Andrew and Melony had done for them.

  Andrew appeared to understand her, to accept her apology. Melony was beginning to understand all too well. She tamed herself from being so outwardly nosey. She had another forkful of wonton.

  Andrew was absently busying himself with his chop sticks, toying with his soy-sauce-saturated chow mein. He was trying to read her, wondering what she was all about, but by now it was curiosity and not suspicion, which drove him to it. Mel was comforted to pick up on this, trying to read him as well but with fragmented triumph.

  Andrew was the first to speak after the considerable unease of silence. “So, we both have questions about what the other does. Nothing wrong with that. We’re both starving for harmless answers about one another. You must like me, or you wouldn’t be here, and I’m sure you’re not here to win the Pulitzer Prize on my humble life. Tell me about yourself, or ask me anything you want. I’m sorry too, for that passing bit of awkwardness.”

  Mel raised her brandy glass in a toast and Andrew raised his in turn. “Here’s to informal introductions,” she proposed. Glasses clinked, and spirits lifted. “Now, if you want to, ask me a question about myself.”

  Andrew sipped his drink. It was brandy also, and more of it, diluted with Coke in a tall glass. “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Orange. It used to be black, but black is too common.”

  “Like your hair,” Andrew noted. “But your hair is far too beautiful to be common. Come on, black is supposed to be beautiful. That’s my favorite color.”

  “Okay, let me ask a question,” Mel said. “What turns you on?”

  “Well....orange, now.” Andrew found himself less comfortable now than with the previous subject, though he tried his best not to show it. He hoped this was working. “And you?”

  “What turns me on is how we have so much in common.”

  “We do?” A sip of brandy-Coke, a mouthful of vegetables.

  “Ask me more about myself."

  “All right,” Andrew swallowed. “What do we both have in common?”

  “We both serve two masters: ourselves and the one we’re servants to. We hate one, and despise the other. It doesn’t matter which. We hate ourselves for clinging to the other as much as we do and we hate our other for having us be that way.”

  “Yet we don’t completely despise the other, do we?” Andrew replied, delighted by the depth of conversation the evening had submerged into and barely even an hour had passed since it began. “I mean, there’s something we appreciate in them still, isn’t there, important things that we have learned from them, throughout what they’ve turned into?”

  “What I’ve learned is to not appreciate my master so much anymore,” Mel said, almost bitterly, mesmerized as she was by the utter honesty of it all, how she so desperately needed a release to her deep tremulous burdens like this. “I used to love him and part of me still does, but all I find lately is that I try too hard to keep that love going and he simply keeps defeating the purpose. All I ever wanted to do was paint, to be an artist, and to explore myself, not someone else’s obsessions, as intriguing as they always were,” and then, “...are.”

  Perhaps it was the brandy talking. She only had three, or was it four? It was at least four when she asked Andrew for another. How many bottles of that shit did he hold there within his kitchen cupboards, anyway? This was not the direction the interview was supposed to have gone. Who was interviewing whom, here?

  “So, Melony,” Andrew asked his date, curious and unaware of her struggle to maintain her preplanned interrogative approach to talking to him, “Who is this master you despise?”

  A short distance behind Melony and from Andrew’s point of view, somewhere in the direction of the refrigerator’s car—shaped Zat’s Auto & Body promo magnet, a blurry distortion appeared. It was the left side of Bari’s head, displaying an attentive ear up and listening.

  Bari was merely humoring him; Andrew knew she could hear just as well unseen. This was also an attempt to remind Andrew that she was listening and if there was anything else she was doing, she was annoying him.

  What Bari was doing was more than that, Andrew realized. She was feeding Melony thoughts and ideas. This was not a manipulation, but an...influence. Bar
i was known to do this sort of thing.

  He was going to have to talk to her about that.

  He focused onto Melony, deliberately, despite Bari. To Melony, his expression suddenly hinted of determined concentration.

  Thus her answer: He was interviewing her.

  And her answer to Andrew’s last question: “Max Polito. You’re right, though, I don’t completely despise him and I’ve learned a great deal of good through him, a lot of insight in many areas. Maybe some insight into you.”

  She was saying too much and she wasn’t sure why. Yet she was truly speaking her mind and it felt so intensely good to do so. This was a rare opportunity indeed and she instinctively longed for it. She’d wrestled with the notion of spilling her guts earlier that afternoon, but she didn’t expect this.

  Yet, alas, there it was. Out there smack dab in the naked open spaces.

  Andrew’s reply, after an expressionless stare and then a contemplative pause: “Who is Max Polito?”

  Bari's distorted image disappeared. Most likely, Andrew would not detect any sign of Bari for the remainder of the date. Whatever Bari had done, she had obviously gotten away with it. And that was all it would take.

  Melony looked at him as though she’d just said something obscene, as though she’d caught herself after the fact.

  Now, it was her turn to answer.

  Who was Max Polito? Didn’t he know? Countless people Melony never even met knew the celebrity’s name, at least, even if they mistook it for a sports announcer’s.

  Surely Andrew must know who Max was, must know it was Max who had been trailing him and his antics throughout the past decade and earlier, dispersing tidbits of his research concerning Andrew’s “kind” in his PBS series and nearly every Polito publication that made the Book-of-the-Month Club’s alternate selection. Of course, Max took care to never mention specific names or references, but rather made use of general theories and a few unspecific facts. He knew how to watch his ass.