Miller’s beer.
“Well, isn’t that just about perfect?”
He removed his right glove and touched one of the beer cans. Immediate flash of a uniformed waiter, same old load of distracting, irrelevant information. He put the glove back on and opened the can. He drank down half of it in deep cold swallows. Then he climbed to his feet and went into the bathroom and pissed.
Even in the soft morning light coming through the slatted blinds, he could see his shaving kit laid out on the marble dresser. He took out his toothbrush and toothpaste and brushed his teeth.
Now he felt a little less headachy, hung over, and downright miserable. He combed his hair, swallowed the rest of the can of beer, and felt almost good.
He changed into a fresh shirt, pulled on his trousers, and taking another beer from the ice bucket, he went down the hallway and stood looking into a large, elegantly furnished room.Beyond a gathering of velvet couches and chairs, the Englishman sat at a small wooden table, bent over a mass of manila folders and typewritten pages. He was a slightly built man with a heavily lined face and rather luxuriant white hair. He wore a gray velvet smoking jacket, tied at the waist, and gray tweed trousers, and he was looking at Michael with an extremely friendly and agreeable expression.
He rose to his feet.
“Mr. Curry, are you feeling better?” he asked. It was one of those eloquent English voices which make the simplest words take on new meaning, as if they’ve never been properly pronounced before. He had small yet brilliant blue eyes.
“Who are you?” Michael asked.
The Englishman drew closer, extending his hand.
Michael didn’t take it, though it hurt him to be this rude to somebody who looked so friendly and earnest and sort of nice. He took another sip of the beer.
“My name’s Aaron Lightner,” the Englishman said. “I came from London to see you.” Softly spoken, unobtrusive.
“My aunt told me that part. I saw you hanging around my house on Liberty Street. Why the hell did you follow me here?”
“Because I want to talk to you, Mr. Curry,” the man said politely, almost reverentially. “I want to talk to you so badly that I’m willing to risk any discomfort or inconvenience I might incur. That I’ve risked your displeasure is obvious. And I’m sorry for it, truly sorry. I only meant to be helpful in bringing you here, and please allow me to point out that you were entirely cooperative at the time.”
“Was I?” Michael found he was bristling. Yet this guy was a real charmer, he had to give him that. But another glance at the papers spread out on the table made Michael furious. For fifty bucks, or considerably less, the cab driver would have lent him a hand. And the cab driver wouldn’t be here now.
“That’s quite true,” said Lightner in the same soft, well-tempered voice. “And perhaps I should have retired to my own suite above, but I wasn’t certain whether or not you’d be ill, and frankly I was worried on another count.”
Michael said nothing. He was fully aware that the man had just read his mind, so to speak. “Well, you just caught my attention with that little trick,” he said. And he thought, Can you do it again?
“Yes, if you like,” said the Englishman. “A man in your frame of mind is, unfortunately, quite easy to read. Your increased sensitivity works both ways, I fear. But I can show you how to hide your thoughts, how to throw up a screen if you wish. On the other hand, it isn’t really necessary. Because there aren’t very many people like me walking about.”
Michael smiled in spite of himself. All this was said with such genteel humility that he was a little overwhelmed and definitely reassured. The man seemed completely truthful. In fact, the only emotional impression received by Michael was one of goodness, which surprised him somewhat.
Michael walked past the piano to the flowered draperies and pulled the cord. He loathed being in an electrically lighted room in the morning, and he felt immediately happy again when he looked down on St. Charles Avenue, on the wide band of grass and the streetcar tracks, and the dusty foliage of the oaks. He had not remembered the leaves of the oaks as being so darkly green. It seemed everything he saw was remarkably vivid. And when the St. Charles car passed beneath him, moving slowly uptown, the old familiar roar-a sound like no other-brought the excitement back to him. How drowsy and wonderfully familiar it all seemed.
He had to get back outside, walk over to the First Street house again. But he was keenly aware of the Englishman watching him. And again, he could detect nothing but honesty in the man, and nothing but a sort of wholesome goodwill.
“OK, I’m curious,” he said turning around. “And I’m grateful. But I don’t like all this. I really don’t. So out of curiosity and in gratitude, if you follow me, I’ll give you twenty minutes to explain who you are, and why you are here, and what this is all about.” He sat down on the velvet couch opposite the man and the messy table. He switched off the lamp. “Oh, and thanks for the beer. I really appreciate the beer.”
“There’s more in the refrigerator in the kitchen behind me,” said the Englishman. Unflappably pleasant.
“Thoughtful,” said Michael. He felt comfortable in this room. He could not remember it really from childhood, but it was pleasant with its dark papered walls and soft upholstered pieces and low brass lamps.
The man seated himself at the table, facing Michael. And for the first time Michael noticed a small bottle of brandy and a glass. He saw that the man’s suit coat was on the back of the other chair. A briefcase, the briefcase Michael had seen in the airport, was standing by the chair.
“You wouldn’t care for a little cognac?” the man asked.
“No. Why do you have the suite just overhead? What’s going on?”
“Mr. Curry, I belong to an old organization,” said the man. “It’s called the Talamasca. Have you ever heard the name?”
Michael thought for a moment. “No.”
“We go back to the eleventh century. More truly, we go back before that. But sometime during the eleventh century we took the name Talamasca, and from that time on we had a constitution, so to speak, and certain rules. What we are in modern parlance is a group of historians interested primarily in psychic research. Witchcraft, hauntings, vampires, people with remarkable psychic ability-all of these things interest us and we keep an immense archive of information regarding them.”
“You’ve been doing this since the eleventh century?”
“Yes, and before, as I said. We are in many respects a passive group of people; we do not like to interfere. As a matter of fact, let me show you our card and our motto.”
The Englishman drew the card out of his pocket, gave it to Michael, and returned to his chair.
Michael read the card:
THE TALAMASCA
There were phone numbers given for Amsterdam, Rome, and London.
“You have headquarters in all those places?” Michael asked.
“Motherhouses, we call them,” said the Englishman. “But to continue, we are largely passive, as I said. We collect data; we correlate, cross-reference, and preserve information. But we are very active in making our information available to those who might benefit from it. We heard about your experience through the London papers, and through a contact in San Francisco. We thought we might be able to … be of assistance to you.”
Michael took off his right glove, tugging slowly at each finger, and then laid the glove aside. He picked up the card again. Jarring flash of Lightner putting several such cards in his pocket in another hotel room. New York City. Smell of cigars. Noise of traffic. Flash of some woman somewhere, speaking to Lightner fast in a British accent …
“Why not ask it a specific question, Mr. Curry?”
The words brought Michael out of it. “All right,” he said.
