When the late riser emerged from his bedroom, he was brought up short in the doorway by sight of a darkly attired gentleman seated in the straight-back chair across from the portrait of a distant relation. The fellow’s head inched toward a studied greeting.
The insignificant bookrack blocking the front door had been nudged forward, though more probably by wind than by this man in a broad-shouldered tuxedo.
“Who are you?” jabbed the question.
No name or apology for the intrusion was offered. Only a brazen proclamation was made. “You are the fellow who fell down my hole.”
“Excuse me?”
“My trapdoor,” he explained. “You are the one who wandered on stage and fell in it.”
The flustered resident circled his couch and brushed its stiff twill skirt, but did not sit. “I fell in no hole.”
“You do not deny you were in the Waverly Bean Municipal Theatre?”
“I occasionally walk by the theatre. The doors are often open to passersby.”
“You saw something?”
“Nothing, I assure you.”
The interrogator bristled. “You are not candid.”
“Does whatever I saw merit you barging into my house?”
The trespasser lectured, “I am in the business of selling tickets; and in a small town, it is not good for business if a snoop goes around telling everyone my secrets.”
Liam was about to reject this accusation when the performer, rising to his feet, snapped the end of his long crisp cape.
“I have come here to strike a deal with you,” he stated plainly. A glance around the room was made, although it was clear an examination of it was taken before the homeowner awoke. “You are a painter of portraits, and I wish to commission you. I will pay you a generous fee in exchange for your silence.” A long slender envelope was produced from a vest pocket. “Instructions are inside.”
The performer evidently believed more was seen in the theatre than was confessed. Liam leveraged the bride, holding up his wilting wrist. “And this is to compensate me for my injury?”
“Injury?“ huffed the intruder. “No bump on your head as I see. Let me have a closer look at you. Sit.”
The lagger sank to the sofa, struck by the audacious command, and the gentleman stepped briskly forward like a phrenologist about to dip his hands in a brainpan. “Look that way,” he gestured.
Liam followed the stabbing finger, which was gloved in white, finely stitched felt. “Do I have a concussion?” he inquired facetiously.
The hovering stare over his face became periscopic, seeming to track a body inside an ocular cavity. The examinee could only envision a mass, or some invasive, shape-shifting spore, plodding around inside his eye.
The examiner’s comments drifted toward the guest room doorway, where the aunt’s cardboard box lay at the end of a bed. Semblance of conversation grazed the seated man’s scalp. It was perfumed and hypnotic among disturbed tufts of his hair. The performer seemingly read his mind, or at least surmised where Liam’s line of sight converged on his. “The box,” he interpolated. “Did it belong to the previous resident?”
“It belonged to my aunt.”
“She died here?”
“No. In a nursing home.”
“Here,” the fellow reiterated, “though in another bed.”
“You are mistaken,” the nephew insisted.
“The line between life and death can grow transparently thin,” the gentleman postulated. “It’s a simple business, really: an untroubled line to cross when the difference between choosing death and being chosen by it comes down to whether one takes a dose of medicine, or forgets, or takes two doses because one thinks one has forgotten. When one sees the writing on the wall, and the difference between living independently or going into a nursing home lies in the balance, dignity and God do not judge those with faulty memories. Necessary phone calls are made, a good meal is had, business is concluded, and noble Socrates drinks from his cup as readily as a light is turned out on a bed table. It is no more momentous than any other moment where one lives with Death as a bedfellow, as all moments pale in the monumentality of that which lies beyond it. All one can say is this: Some die on their terms, on very good days; and these things are comforts for those who grieve.”
The lecturer did not let his effect overripe into self-awareness or belabored theatre; and as these developments were an anathema to one in his trade, he retreated into kinder woods. Leaning away, the swaying cape became a metronome.
This interval allowed the subject to form a second impression of his stranger: This was not a man at all but a mature woman dressed as a man. The costume, worn miles from any stage where it might prove effective, was surely intended to obscure gender as well as identity. Age lines were penciled in grey over a thick coat of white greasepaint covering her cheeks and forehead, and her toupee was unnaturally black. More to the charade, the hairpiece was coming unfastened where it attached to refractory sideburns. The smell of spirit gum used to plaster the pieces in place carried strongly throughout the room.
Sensing his realization, the woman abruptly asked in a loud penetrating voice. “Do you imagine yourself to be under a spell, sir?”
“Have you put me under a spell?”
“If I had you under a spell,” she explained, “it would not be so simple as a waving finger. I would liken the experience to a boy who waits on a bedtime story, with his mother’s voice being the last thing he hears before falling asleep. He is under long before the end of the story is reached.”
Liam saw through the beguiling poetry.
A bow and tip of a top hat preceded the performer backing toward the entrance. “Where one’s heart dwells in blindness, one is doomed to never know it. Follow the instruction on the card precisely,” came her parting injunction, and with it, her coat tails brushed her off over the welcome mat on the porch.
The theatrical exit required the door being opened further, and Liam was sure his nonpareil home invader had not come so easily this way. After a moment or two of paralysis, he rose toward the window but saw nothing of this visitor on the dusty road.
When Liam was at liberty to move about his house, he placed the envelope on his studio table. The guest room was inspected, but items in the cardboard box were untouched.
He puzzled over his disquieting spate of disruptions, which began with dreaming and proceeded to the present moment. Moving into the kitchen with breakfast plans, he stopped short of the cupboards on comprehending that his calendar no longer hung alongside them.
It made little sense that his trespasser, in demonstration of her largess, made off with a worthless calendar. If this had been the object of her intrusion, then why loiter in the house to draw up a business proposition?
The artist should have been miffed to think himself robbed, but a cashier’s check for the full cost of a painting commission was enclosed with the letter. He was handsomely compensated for his loss of a free, defected calendar. A bonus was also promised if the project was finished in three days time. The typed card concluded with:
Bring materials with you to Tazewell Manor Rural Route One today at six, where accommodation for your stay will be provided. The downstairs parlor is set aside for you to paint from a subject (easel in place). You will sleep and eat your meals in a room upstairs. You must work on the painting everyday between ten and five in the afternoon as you please, and may not leave the premises until it is completed.
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