The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub
“Their thing was over by then. It was no big deal in the first place.”
“Unlike your grand passion. Stealing your old man’s slut away from him must have perked the old ego right up. Kind of a primal victory.”
“I didn’t know about her and my father until later.” Davey’s left leg began to jitter, and he chewed on his lip some more.
“Did you get any comparisons? Length? Endurance? The sort of thing you boys worry about so much?”
“Shut up,” he said. “Of course not. It was no big deal.”
“Nothing is a big deal to you, is it? You have no idea what your feelings are. You just push them aside and hope they’ll go away.”
“Nora, I had a fling. People all over the world do the same thing. But if I’m as emotionally stupid as you say I am, why are we having this conversation? I’m worried about you, I know that much. The only way I know to explain these things is what I just said. And if you’re going off the rails, I don’t know what to do with you.”
“But I didn’t do it! You had this sneaky little affair, you betrayed me, and then you took your guilt and handed it over to me. If I’m crazy, your adultery is justified.”
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe there is some other explanation. I hope there is, because I really can’t say I like this one very much.”
“Oh, I love it,” she said. “It shows so much trust and compassion.”
“So I guess we’ll wait and see.”
“I can’t stand this anymore,” Nora said, electric with rage. “I can’t stand you anymore. I’m furious with you for sleeping with Natalie, yet if you can show me that you might begin to understand who I am, I could probably get over that eventually, but this garbage is so much worse that I . . .” She ran out of words.
“If I’m wrong, I’ll crawl over broken glass to apologize.”
“Gee, it makes me so happy to hear that,” she said.
He stood up and hurried from the room without looking at her.
32
AFTER THE DOOR to the family room had opened and closed, Nora unclenched her hands and tried to force her body to relax. The beginning of Manon Lescaut drifted up the stairs. He was going to hide, presumably until a squad of policemen showed up to drag her away in shackles to the lunatic asylum.
He had reduced her, dwindled her. In his version of their marriage, a criminally irrational wife tormented a caring, beleaguered husband. Nora was not too angry to admit that their sex life had been imperfect, and she knew that many marriages, perhaps even most, had repaired themselves after an unfaithfulness. She could acknowledge that her night terrors, apparently far worse than she had imagined, might have played a role in what Davey had done. She found herself ready to take on her share of guilt. What she could not forgive was that Davey had written her off.
As soon as the difference in their ages had become a difference—Davey had started to panic. A woman’s forty-nine lay several crucial steps beyond a man’s forty. Menopause, not nightmares and irrational behavior, was spooking Davey Chancel.
This was really bleak, and Nora pushed herself away from the table. She piled their dishes and gathered the silverware, resisting the impulse to hurl it all to the floor. She put the plates, cups, and silver into the dishwasher, the pans into the sink. If Davey left her, where would she go? Would he move into the Poplars while she stayed in this house? The idea of living alone on Crooked Mile Road made her feel almost dizzy with nausea.
She could remember what she had done every day since Natalie’s disappearance. She had shopped, made the bed, cleaned the house, read, exercised. She had phoned agents on behalf of Blackbird Books. The afternoon of the day after Natalie’s disappearance, when Davey would have had her tormenting the missing woman on the South Post Road, Nora had run into Arturo Landrigan’s wife, Beth, in a Main Street café called Alice’s Adventure. In spite of being married to a man so crass that he felt he should bathe in a golden tub (“Makes you feel like a great wine in a golden goblet,” Arturo had confided), Beth Landrigan was an unpretentious, smart, sympathetic woman in her mid-fifties, one of the few women in Westerholm who seemed to offer Nora the promise of friendship, the chief obstacle to which was their husbands’ mild mutual antipathy. Davey thought that Arturo Landrigan was a philistine, and Nora could imagine what Landrigan made of Davey. The two women had taken advantage of their chance meeting to share an unplanned hour at Alice’s Adventure, and at least half of that time had been spent talking about Natalie Weil.
Maybe I really am crazy, she said to herself twenty minutes later as she drove her car aimlessly down Westerholm’s tree-lined streets. Nora took another turn, went up a curving ramp, and found herself surrounded by many more cars than she had noticed before. Then she realized that she was driving down the Merritt Parkway in the direction of New York. Some part of her had decided to run away, and this part was taking the rest of her with it. They had covered about fifteen miles; New York was only twenty-five more away. In half an hour she could be ditching the car in a garage off the FDR Drive. She had a couple of hundred dollars in her bag and could get more from an automatic teller. She could check into a hotel under a false name, stay there for a couple of days, and see what happened. If you’re going to change your life, Nora, she said to herself, all you have to do is keep driving.
So there were presently two Noras seated behind the wheel of her Volvo. One of them was going to continue down the Merritt Parkway, and the other was going to get off at the next exit and drive back to Westerholm. Both of these actions seemed equally possible. The first had a definite edge in appeal, and the second corresponded far more with her own idea of her character. But why should she be condemned always to follow her idea of what was right? And why should she automatically assume that turning back was the only right course of action? If what she wanted was to flee to New York, then New York was the right choice.
Nora decided not to decide: she would see what she did and add up the cost later. For a few minutes she sped down the parkway in a state of pleasantly suspended moral freedom. An exit sign appeared and slipped past, followed by the exit itself. The two separate Noras enjoyed their peaceful habitation of a single body. Ten minutes later another exit sign floated toward her, and she remained in the left-hand lane and thought, So now we know. Several seconds later, when the exit itself appeared before her, she flicked her turn indicator and nipped across just in time to get off the parkway.
33
NORA PULLED HER Volvo into the empty garage. That she would not have to explain herself to Davey came as a relief mixed with curiosity about what he was doing. At first she thought that he must be visiting his parents, but as she moved to the back door, she realized that Holly Fenn might have called with news of Natalie. A vision of her husband murmuring endearments to Natalie Weil made her feel like getting back into the Volvo and lighting out for some distant place like Canada or New Mexico. Or home, her lost home, in upper Michigan. She had friends back in Traverse City, people who would put her up and protect her. The notion of protection automatically evoked the image of Dan Harwich, but this false comfort she pushed away. Dan Harwich was married to his second wife, and neither groom nor bride would be likely to welcome Nora Chancel into their handsome stone house on Longfellow Lane, Springfield, Massachusetts.
She glanced into the family room and continued on upstairs. She wondered if Davey had gone out to look for her. The most likely explanation for his absence was that he had been summoned to the police station, in which case he would have left a note. She went to the usual location of their notes to each other, the section of the kitchen counter next to the telephone, where a thick pad stood beside a jar of ballpoint pens. Written on the top sheet of the pad were the words “mushrooms” and “K-Y,” the beginning of a shopping list. Nora went to the second most likely place, the living room table, which held nothing except a stack of magazines. Then she returned to the kitchen to inspect the table and the rest of the counter, found nothing, and went finally to the fourth
Feeling as if she should have become the irresponsible Nora who had disappeared into New York, she was moving toward the living room when the telephone rang.
She lifted the receiver, hoping in spite of herself to hear Davey’s voice. A woman said, “I made up my mind, and I want you to do it.”
“You have the wrong number.”
“Don’t be silly,” said the woman, whom Nora now recognized as her mother-in-law. “I want to go ahead with it.”
“Is Davey there?”
“Nobody’s here. I can shoot right over and give it to you. I’ve been alone with the thing so long, I think it’s crucial that you read it. I won’t be able to sit still until I hear from you.”
“You want to bring your book over here?” Nora asked.
“I want to get out and around,” Daisy said, misunderstanding Nora’s emphasis. “I haven’t been out of this house in I don’t know how long! I want to see the streets, I want to see everything! Ever since I made up my mind about this, I’ve been absolutely exalted.”
“You’re sure,” Nora said.
“I bless you for offering, I bless you twice over. You can bring it back to me Tuesday or Wednesday, when the men are at work.”
“You’re going to drive?” Daisy had not undertaken to pilot a car as far as the end of the driveway in several decades.
Daisy laughed. “Of course not. Jeffrey will drive me. Don’t worry, Jeffrey is completely dependable. He’s like the Kremlin.”
Nora gave up. “You’d better do it fast. I don’t know when Davey’s coming home.”
“This is so exciting,” Daisy said. She hung up.
Nora released a moan and slumped against the wall. Davey could never know that she had seen his mother’s book. The entire transaction would have to be conducted as if under a blanket in deepest night. Daisy would give her the manuscript, and after a few days, she would give it back. She did not have to read it. All she had to do was give Daisy the encouragement she needed.
Nora straightened up and went to the living room window, not at all comfortable with the idea of treating Daisy so shabbily.
When she thought that Daisy’s car would soon be turning into Crooked Mile Road, she left the house and walked down to the end of the drive. A Mercedes came rolling toward her. Daisy began to open the door before the car came to a stop, and Nora stepped back. Daisy leaped out and embraced her. “You darling genius! My salvation!”
Daisy leaned back to beam wildly at Nora. Her eyes were wet and glassy, and her hair stood out in white clumps. “Isn’t this wonderful, isn’t this wicked?” She gave Nora another wild grin and then turned around to wrestle from before her seat a fat leather suitcase bound with straps. “Here. I place it in your wonderful hands.”
She held it out like a trophy, and Nora gripped the handle. When Daisy released her hands from the sides, the suitcase, which must have weighed twenty or thirty pounds, dropped several feet. “Heavy, isn’t it?” she said.
“Is it finished?”
“You tell me,” Daisy said. “But it’s close, it’s close, it’s close, and that’s why this is such a brilliant idea. I can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it. My God!” Her eyes widened. “Do you know what?”
Nora thought that Daisy had read about Dick Dart in the morning paper.
“They’ve gone and put up this hideous fortress on the Post Road, right where that lovely little clam house used to be!”
“Oh,” said Nora. Daisy was talking about a cement-slab discount department store which had occupied two blocks of the Post Road for about a decade.
“I think I should write a letter of complaint. In the meantime, Jeffrey is going to expand my horizons by driving me hither and yon, as you are going to do, also, my dear, by talking to me about my book. While I’m taking in the sights, you’ll be peering into my cauldron.”
“Enjoy yourself, Daisy,” Nora said.
“You must enjoy yourself, too,” Daisy said. “Now I think Jeffrey and I had better make our getaway. I will be calling you this evening for your first impressions. We need a code word, to announce that the coast is clear.” She closed her eyes and then opened them and beamed. “I know, we’ll use what you said when I called you. If Davey’s in the room, you say ‘wrong number.’ That’s perfect, I think. I do have a gift for this sort of thing. Perhaps I should have been a spy.” She climbed back into the car and whispered through the open window, “I can’t wait.”
Nora bent down to see what Jeffrey made of all this. His face was rigidly immobile, and his eyes were dark, shining slits. He leaned forward and said slowly, “Mrs. Chancel, I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but if I can ever do anything for you, call me. My last name is Deodato, and I have my own line.”
Nora stepped back, and the car moved forward. Daisy had turned around in her seat, and Nora tried to return her smile until Daisy’s face was only a pale, exulting balloon floating away down the street.
34
NORA HOISTED THE case onto the sofa and undid the straps. Scuffed and battered, variously darkened by stains, the suitcase appeared to be forty or fifty years old. When Nora finally yanked the zipper home, the top yawned upward several inches, the mass of pages beneath it expanding as if taking a deep breath.
Thousands of pages of different sizes, colors, and styles rose up. Most of these were standard sheets of white typing paper, some of them yellow with age; some of the remainder were standard pages shaded ivory, gray, ocher, baby blue, and pink. The rest, amounting to about a third, consisted of sheets torn from notebooks, hotel stationery, Chancel House invoice and order forms used on their blank sides, and the sort of notepaper that is decorated with drawings of dogs and horses.
Where could she hide this monstrosity? It would probably fit under the bed. She knelt to get her arms under the bottom of the case, lifted it off the sofa, and staggered backwards, barely able to see over the top. A faint odor of dust and mothballs hung about the weight of paper and leather in her arms.
The first sheet floated along in front of her and resolved itself into a title page which had never managed to make up its mind. Over the years Daisy had considered an ever-growing number of titles, adding new inspirations without rejecting the old ones.
In the bedroom Nora cautiously made her way toward the couch, then bent down to lower the case onto an outflung leg of a pair of jeans and a blouse she had been intending to iron. Holding her breath, she put one hand on top of the suitcase while with the other she tugged the jeans to one side, the blouse to the other. Then she sat beside it. She looked at it for a moment, regretting that she had ever offered to read this unwieldy epic, then grasped it front and back and lowered it to the floor. Yes, it might just, it probably would, fit under the bed.
Nora regarded the bright double window in the wall to her left. She stood up to raise the bottom panes as far as they would go and returned to the couch. She looked down at the untidy stack of pages at her feet, sighed, picked up sixty or seventy pages, turned over the title, or nontitle, page, and read the dedication. Typed on a yellowing sheet with the letterhead of the Sahara Hotel, Las Vegas, complete with an idealized front elevation of the building, it read: For the only person who has ever given me the encouragement necessary to any writer, she who alone has been my companion and without whose support I would long ago have abandoned this endeavor, myself.
On the next page, also liberated from the Sahara Hotel, Las Vegas, was an epigraph attributed to Wolf J. Flywheel. The world is populated by ingrates, morons, assholes, and those beneath them.
Nora began to enjoy herself.
PART ONE: How the Bastards Took Over.
She began reading the first chapter. Through a maze of crossed-out lines, arrows to phrases in the margins, and word substitutions, she followed the murky actions of Clementine and Adelbert Poison, who lived in a decrepit gothic mansion called The Ivy in the town of Wes
When she reached the end of the first chapter, Nora looked up and realized that she had been reading for half an hour. Davey had still not returned. She looked back at the page, the last line of which was “You know very well that I never wished to reclaim Egbert,” said Adelbert. Reclaim him? Egbert did resemble something reclaimed, like a lost dog.
The telephone rang. Hoping to hear her husband’s voice, Nora picked it up and said, “Hello?”
“Goody goody, you didn’t say ‘Wrong number,’ so you can talk.” Daisy’s voice, slightly slurred. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s interesting,” Nora said.
“Poop. You have to say more than that.”
“I’m enjoying it, really I am. I like Adelbert and his telescope.”
“Alden used to spend hours looking for topless girls on sailboats. How far are you?”
“The end of chapter one.”
“Umph.” Daisy sounded disappointed. “What did you like best?”
“Well, the tone, I suppose. That sort of black humor. It’s like Charles Addams, in words.”
“That’s because you’ve only read the first chapter,” Daisy said. “After that it goes through all kinds of changes. You’ll see, you’re in for a real treat. At least I hope you are. Go on, go back to reading. But you really like it so far?”