Odd Apocalypse

In ordinary times, if there ever were any in Roseland, Wolflaw was Mount Vesuvius in a quiet phase, a solid figure of such calm demeanor that he seemed as enduring as any lofty cloud-capped peak of granite. But you sensed his power, volcanic and always pending, the energy that had made him such a successful and wealthy man.

Tall, large-boned, with flesh forged to his frame as if by a maker of armor, he was imposing even when he wasn’t carrying a short-barreled, pistol-grip 12-gauge. The planes of his face were bold geometry, gray eyes set deep in perfectly elliptical sockets, nose a great isosceles wedge, chin a jutting plinth from which his jawbones rose like buttresses. His thick dark hair was a mane that any stallion or lion might have coveted. Only his mouth, full- lipped and yet seeming smaller than it should have been, encouraged you to imagine that inside this strong man might be a weak one.

“Thomas!” he declared upon seeing me.

He addressed me that way not with an imperious refusal to grant me a mister, but because he found my first name so peculiar that he felt uncomfortable using it. On the day we met, he informed me that he would treat my surname as my first because “ ‘Odd’ makes me feel as if I’m spitting on you.” He didn’t seem to be a man of such delicate sensibilities that my name should trouble him, but perhaps he found himself uncharacteristically chivalrous and courtly in the company of Annamaria, who enchanted everyone she met.

Wolflaw’s shotgun alarmed me nearly as much as had the recent encounter with the primate swine, but he didn’t threaten me with it, as I half expected that he would.

Instead, he said, “How does she do what she does? And what is it that she does? I always talk to her with clear intent, and she answers in the most gracious way, yet I wind up bewildered, having either forgotten or abandoned my intentions.”

He was speaking of Annamaria, of course, and I could only say, “Yes, sir, I sympathize. But I always have the feeling there’s truth in everything she says and that I’ll understand it in time. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next month, maybe not next year, but eventually.”

“She’s got that regal graciousness Grace Kelly used to have, though Grace Kelly was a real looker. You’re probably so young you never heard of Grace Kelly.”

“She was an actress. Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief. She married the prince of Monaco.”

“You’re not the clueless pup that some might take you for.”

This was how he talked to me — and pretty much to everyone — when Annamaria wasn’t present. “Thank you, sir.”

As he spoke, he warily surveyed the eucalyptus grove around us, which was ribboned with shadows and sunshine that fashioned a kind of camouflage in which something might lurk and be difficult to see. “I came here to tell her the two of you have to leave. Today. Within the hour. Now. Do you know what she said to me?”

“I’m sure it was memorable.”

His gray eyes were made for glaring, like stainless-steel blades going for the bone. “She told me that what I wish to see come to pass would not happen if the two of you left now, that you would leave in the morning at the earliest, when my purpose in bringing you here was fulfilled.”

“Yes, that sounds like her.”

“I’ve never before had a guest refuse to leave when told to.” Anger creased his beetled brow, and when he leaned toward me, a beam of sunlight piercing the eucalyptuses seemed to lay a sharper edge on his steely stare. His voice was buttered with menace, and the threat slipped from him without hesitation: “If you presume to tell your host when you’ll leave, maybe you’ll never leave when all is said and done.”

I didn’t take his meaning to be that he feared we would stay forever. I took his meaning to be a promise of an urn and a niche in the mausoleum.

That was an extraordinary and revealing thing for him to have said. Pressure was building in Vesuvius.

“Who the hell does she think she is?”

“Did you ask her that, sir?” I wondered, because her answer was of interest to me, as well.

The steel went out of his eyes, the menace out of his voice, and he looked around the fragrant woods again, not as if worried that a pack of mutant swine was closing in this time, but as if he couldn’t quite recall how he had wound up here.

“No. She did this trick with a flower, like an illusionist’s act in Vegas or something.” He seemed rattled by the memory of her bit of magic. “Have you ever seen her do the trick with the flower?”

Before I could reply, he rolled on.

“Suddenly, I hear myself telling her that of course she could stay, the two of you, stay as long as necessary, if that’s what she wanted. I said I was just concerned about your welfare, you know, with the mountain lion on the prowl. And I apologized for being so thoughtless. I think I might even have kissed her hand. I never in my life kissed a woman’s hand. Why would I kiss a woman’s hand?”

He inhaled deeply, blew out a long exhalation of frustration, and shook his head as if astonished by his behavior.

He continued: “So she says you’ll both leave when what I wish to see come to pass has happened, when my purpose for bringing you here is fulfilled — but what the hell purpose is she talking about?”

“Your purpose, sir.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass, Thomas.”

“No, sir.”

“I don’t know why I brought her here. It was a crazy thing to do. Reckless. I don’t want her. I told Paulie that I might want her, just as an excuse, because I didn’t know how to explain myself, but he knew she wasn’t my type.”

“Mr. Sempiterno is very insightful.”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll be gone tomorrow,” I promised.

Now he seemed to be talking more to himself than to me: “I don’t want her. She’s disgusting, repellent, knocked up and bloated like a cow. Nothing to get a man’s sap rising. I don’t want anything to do with her, and I never will.”

“We’ll be gone tomorrow,” I repeated.

His attention returned to me, and his too-small mouth puckered with distaste, as if I were something he would never want to find stuck to the sole of his shoe, let alone talking to him face-to-face. “You told Henry Lolam you met the one who calls himself Kenny. No one’s seen him in years. You told Chef Shilshom you saw bears with red eyes.”

“Maybe not bears, sir. Just something.”

He swept the woods with his gaze again. Even with his hard but handsome face and steely eyes, he didn’t look as strong as before, because a tremor worked his mouth.

“You see any of them in broad daylight?”

“No, sir,” I lied.

“Night’s one thing, daylight’s a whole different ball game.” He focused on me once more. “You’re always picking at people, Thomas, always trying to get information out of them, picking and picking.”

“I’m just a curious guy, sir. I always have been.”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nothing here is any of your damn business. Do you hear me, Thomas?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I’ve abused your hospitality.”

His scowl was even more impressive than his glare. “Are you being funny?”

“No, sir. If I say so myself, when I’m actually being funny, you’d find it hard not to laugh.”

“When I say shut up, I mean shut up. Shut up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Until you leave tomorrow, stay in the guest tower.”

In consideration of the shotgun, I nodded.

“Stay in the tower, lock the doors, lock the windows, draw the draperies, and wait until morning.”

I nodded.