The Manor

CHAPTER 11

"Honey?"

Spence pounded on the typewriter keys, pretending not to hear her.

"Jeff?" Bridget put a hand on his shoulder.

He stopped typing and looked up. "You know not to bother me when I'm working."

"But you didn't even come to bed last night."

He hated the plaintive note in her voice, her eagerness to please. He despised her concern. Mostly, he was annoyed by the distraction.

"I hope the typewriter didn't keep you awake." He didn't really care whether it had or not. He was making progress, chasing the elusive Muse, and that was all that mattered.

"No, it's not that," Bridget said. "You just need your rest."

"There will be plenty of time for rest after I'm dead. But at the moment, I'm feeling particularly and effusively alive. So be a dear and let me continue."

"But you missed lunch. That's not like you."

Spence wondered if that was some kind of barb at his weight. But Bridget never criticized. She hadn't the imagination to attack with words. Spence was the reigning master of that genre.

"It's also unlike me to interrupt my work to have a little romantic chat," he said, then stretched his vowels out in his Ashley Wilkes accent. "Now, why don't ya'll make like Scahlett and get yosef gone with the wind?"

"Don't be mean, honey. I'm only trying to help. I want you to be happy. And I know you're only happy when you're working on something."

"Then make me ecstatic," he said. "Leave."

A small sob caught in Bridget's throat. Spence ignored it, already turning his attention back to the half-finished page and the thirty other pages stacked beside the Royal. He would do some revision, he knew, but it was excellent work. His best in many years. And he didn't want it to end.

The door opened and he called to Bridget without looking. "I'll see you at dinner," he lied.

The door closed softly. Spence smiled to himself. She didn't have enough self-esteem to slam the door in anger. She would be apologizing by this evening, thinking the little scene was all her fault.

She was by far the most enjoyable of Spence's corruptions, out of all the English majors and married professors and young literary agents and assistant editors who thought they'd fallen in love with him. But, in the end, they were nothing, just meaningless stacks of bones, scaffolds to prop him up when the loneliness was unbearable. When he was working and working well, he needed no one's love but his own.

"And yours, of course," Spence said to the portrait of Korban, lest his creative benefactor frown.

Spence picked up the manuscript and began reading. The grace of the language, the tight sentence structure, the powerful description were all superb. He'd never been shy about patting himself on the back, but now he had topped even his own lofty literary standards. He would shame them all, from Chaucer to Keats to King.

He didn't question the origin of the words. That was a mystery best left to those whose livelihood was derived from the scholarly vivisection of the humanities. But he'd never before written with such ease as he had last night and today.

Automatic writing. That's what it felt like.

What Spence always called, during those few occasions when the ink flowed so freely, "ghostwriting." As if the paper and typewriter themselves were sucking words out of the air. As if his fingers knew the next word before his brain did. As if he were not even there.

Appropriate to the manuscript, to call it ghostwritten, he thought. It had a Gothic feel, somewhat darker than the southern-flavored literature that had once made him the darling of New York. And then there was the protagonist, the handsome, bearded, and odd man whose name he still hadn't decided upon. That was strange, to be so far along in the manuscript and not even know the main character's name.

He caught himself looking, for the tenth time, at the painting of Korban that hung on the wall above the desk. Then he closed his eyes. After a moment, he resumed ghostwriting.

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"A thumping sound."

Adam strained his ears. Paul was probably just being paranoid. He had slipped outside and smoked a joint after dinner. Paul was two things when he was stoned, paranoid and horny.

"Probably that fat writer banging his chippy in the room below us," Adam said.

"If it is, they're the most uncoordinated couple in the history of the human race. Quickest, too."

"All I care about right now is us," Adam said, resting his head on Paul's shoulder. "Thanks for the good time."

"No, thank you."

"And I promise not to bring up the subject of adoption for at least a week."

"You just brought it up."

Paul. "Forget I said anything."

Adam pulled the covers up to his chin and curled his body against Paul's warmth. Adam was afraid he'd have trouble sleeping. The mountaintop estate was too quiet for a city boy, and Adam had never experienced such near-total darkness. He still missed the bright lights, traffic, and aggravation.

"Do you feel like getting out the radio?" he asked.

"Did you bring batteries?"

"Yeah. Figured we might need a little contact with the outside world. The radio's in my bag."

"I'd have to crawl over you to get it."

"I won't bite."

"I'm too tired, anyway. 'Fagged,' as that phony-assed photographer would say."

"You just drank too much wine, that's all. And you know what pot does to you."

"Tonight was for fun. Tomorrow, I'm going to be working again."

Adam collected the radio, brought it back to bed, and switched it on. He twisted the dial, switched bands from FM to AM. Nothing but weird static. "I guess radio waves get blocked by the mountains."

"Or else cool-freaky pop gets censored up here."

They lay for a moment in the darkness. The house was still and hushed. The embers had grown low in the fireplace, and Adam didn't feel like fumbling for a match to light the oil lamp on the bedside table.

"I've been thinking," Paul said.

"News flash. Stop the presses."

Paul elbowed Adam in the ribs. Adam tickled him in return.

"But seriously," Paul said. "I'm thinking of doing a documentary on this place."

"This place?"

"Korban Manor. It's pretty unique, and I could get a lot of scenic footage. Ephram Korban's history sounds pretty interesting, too. An industrialist with a God complex."

"A historical documentary?"

"Something like that?"

"What about all the footage you've already shot, all those weeks in the Adirondacks and the Alleghenies?"

"I'll keep it in the can. I can use it anytime."

"I don't know, Paul. The grant people might get upset. After all, you signed on for an Appalachian nature documentary."

"To hell with the grant committees. I do what I want."

Paul was pulling his Orson Welles bit. Even in the dark, Adam could visualize the famous "Paul pout."

So what if Paul spent months on footage, and still had weeks of postproduction, editing, and scripting left? Those were only technical details. Paul wanted to be the artist, the posturing auteur, the brash visionary. Stubbornly refusing to sell out.

No matter the cost.

But Adam wasn't in the mood to argue. Not after the good time they'd just had.

"Why don't you sleep on it, and we can talk about it in the morning?" Adam stroked one of Paul's well-developed biceps. Lugging a twenty-pound camera and battery belt through the mountains all summer had really toned him up.

"I mean, this is like an alien world or something," Paul said. "No electricity, people living like they did a hundred years ago. And the servants, all of them still live here, like serfs around the castle."

Adam was drifting off despite Paul's excitement. "Uh-huh," he mumbled.

He must have fallen asleep, because he was standing on a tower, the wind blowing through his hair, dark trees swaying below him No, it wasn't a tower. He recognized the grounds of the manor. He was on top of the house, on that little flat space marked off by the white railing-now, what had the maid called it? Oh yeah, the widow's walk-and Adam found himself climbing over the rail and looking down at the stone walkway sixty feet below, and the clouds told him to jump, he felt a hand on his back, pushing, then he was flying, falling, the wind shook him, why "Adam! Wake up." Paul was shaking his shoulder. Paul had sat up in bed, the blankets around his waist. A decent amount of time must have passed, because a little moonlight leaked through the window.

"What is it?" Adam was still groggy from the dream and the after-dinner drinks.

Paul pointed toward the door, his eyes wide and wet in the dimness. "I saw something. A woman, I think. All dressed in white. She was white."

"This is the southern Appalachians, Paul. Everybody's white." Adam shook away the fragments of the nightmare.

"No, it wasn't like that. She was see-through."

Adam gave a drowsy snort. "That's what happens when you smoke Panamanian orange-hair. It's a wonder you didn't see the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover in drag."

"I'm not joking, Adam."

Adam put a hand on Paul's chest. His boyfriend's heart was pounding.

"Get back under the covers," Adam said. "You must have fallen asleep and had a weird dream. I think I had one myself."

Paul lay back down, his breathing rapid and shallow. Adam opened his eyes momentarily to see Paul staring at the ceiling. "No drinks or smoke tomorrow, okay?"

There was a stretch of silence, one that only a noise-polluted New Yorker could truly appreciate. Finally Paul said, "I told you I'd be working."

Adam knew that tone. They'd argued enough for one vacation. Adoption, Paul's video, his drug use. And now Paul was seeing things. Adam suddenly wondered if their relationship would survive six weeks at Korban Manor.

He turned his back on Paul and burrowed into the pillows.

"She had flowers," Paul said.

Mason's hands ached. Sawdust and wood shavings were scattered around his feet. Wood chips had worked their way down the tops of his tennis shoes and dug into the skin around his ankles. He tossed his chisel and mallet on the table and stood back to look at the piece.

He had worked in a fever, not thinking about which grain to follow, which parts to excise, where to cut. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. The room had grown warmer. The candles had long since melted away, and the oil was low in the base of the lantern. He must have worked for hours, but the soreness in his limbs was the only evidence of passing time.

Except for the bust before him on the table.

He'd never attempted a bust before. He brought the lantern closer, examining the sculpture with a critical eye. He could find no flaws, no features that were out of proportion. Even the curves of the earlobes were natural and lifelike, the eyebrows etched with a delicate awl. The sculpture was faithful to its subject.

TOO faithful, Mason thought. I'm nowhere near good enough to produce this caliber of work. I've had successes along the way. But this… Jesus Henry Christ on a crutch, I couldn't do Korban's face this well if I'd KNOWN the old geezer.

But it was Korban's head on the table, the Korban that filled the giant oil paintings upstairs, the same face that hung above the fireplace in Mason's room. Most amazing of all was that the eyes had power, just as they did in the portraits. That was ridiculous, though. These eyes were maple, dead wood.

Still…

It was almost as if the figure had life. As if the true heart of the wood had always been this shape, as if the bust had always existed but had been imprisoned in the tree. The face had been caged, and Mason had merely inserted the key and opened the door.

He shook his head in disbelief. "I don't have any idea where you came from," he said to the bust, "but you're going to make the critics love me."

The love of the critics meant success, and that meant money. Success meant he'd never have to step foot in another textile mill as long as he lived, he wouldn't have to blow chunks of gray lint out of his nose at every break, he wouldn't have to wait for a bell to tell him when to take a leak or buy a Snickers bar or race the other lintheads to the parking lot at quitting time. Sure, he still had years of carving ahead, but success started with a single big break.

He was already planning a corporate commission, the gravy train for artists. He'd buy Mama a house, get her some advanced text-reading software and an expensive computer, and then find all the other ways to pay her back for the years of handicap and hardship. Best of all, he could make her smile.

Or maybe he was being suckered by the Dream Image, the high that came after completing a work. He still had to treat the wood, do the fine sanding and polishing. A hundred things could still go wrong. Even as dry as the maple had been after years in the forest, the wood could split and crack.

Mason rubbed his shoulder. His clothes were damp from sweat. The weariness that had been building under the surface now crested and crashed like a wave. Even though he was tired, he felt too excited to sleep. He took one last look at the bust of Korban, then covered his work with an old canvas drop cloth he'd found in the corner.

The first red rays of dawn stabbed through the ground-level windows. Mason's stubble itched. Back in his old life, he'd be on his third cup of coffee by now, waiting on the corner for Junior Furman's pickup to haul him to work. The start of another day that was like a thousand other days.

Mason traced his way back across the basement, ducking under the low beams and stepping around the stacks of stored furniture. He finally found the stairs and went up to the main floor. The smell of bacon, eggs, and biscuits drifted from the east wing, and kitchen-ware clanged in some distant room. Mason's stomach growled. An older couple passed him in the hall, steam rising from their ceramic coffee cups. They nodded a wary greeting. Mason realized he probably looked bleary-eyed and unkempt, like an escaped lunatic who'd broken into the medicine cabinet.

When Mason reached his room, he looked at the painting of Korban again, marveling at how closely his sculpture resembled that stern face. But the face seemed a little less stern this morning. And the eyes had taken on a little more light Don't be bloody DAFT, he chided himself in William Roth's accent.

Mason took a long, hot shower, then lay in bed as dawn sneaked through the cracks in the curtains. In his mind's tired eye, he saw Korban's face, then that dissolved away and he saw Anna. Then his mother, features worn, made even sadder by the pathetic light of hope that somehow still shone in her diseased eyes. Then he pictured Miss Mamie, with her haughty lips. Ransom, clutching his warding charm. Korban, dark pupils holding wretched secrets. Anna, soft and somehow vulnerable, harboring her own secrets.

Korban. His mother. The bust. Anna.

Miss Mamie. Ransom.

KorbanAnnaMissMamieAnnaKorban.

Anna.

He decided he liked Anna's face best, and thought of her until he slept and dreamed of wood.