Mr. X

things.'

    'Edward Rinehart may not be the author for you, he surmised.'

    She closed the book. 'Tell me about Donald Messmer.'

    Icondensed Messmer's tale without mentioning what he had said about Joe Staggers. “It's funny. I thought there'd bemore. I'm almost disappointed there isn't.'

    “It's amazing, how much you got done in one day. Now you can think about the rest of your life.'

    Posy Fairbrother swung around the entrance to the kitchen and came as far as the central island. 'Your admirer awaits you. He hasn't looked atGoodnight Moon for so long it took me ages to find it, but he promised to go to sleep after one reading. Laurie, what can I do while Ned is being wonderful?'

    'Help me with the hollandaise for the artichokes, and if you put a salad together, I'll handle the rest.'

    'Do you want me to clean up afterwards?'

    'One of us will.' Laurie pushed her chair back and stood up in a single gesture. The glowing shield of her face revolved toward me. 'Ready to be wonderful all over again?'

 •56

 •Separated by expanses of ocher wall, doors stained to look like rosewood marched toward a floor-to-ceiling window with an arched fanlight. The second door on the right stood partially open.

    Sending out waves that would set off a Geiger counter, the book lay on the chair beside Cobbie's bed. Already yawning, he was hugging the teddy bear. A stuffed black cat and a stuffed white rabbit stood guard at the foot of his bed, and a foot-highTyrannosaurus rex reared on the headboard.

    Margaret Wise Brown's hymn to bedtime seemed almost poisonous. To distract myself, I asked Cobbie how my namesake was getting along. Ned the bear andTyrannosaurus rex had become excellent friends. Was Cobbie ready for his book? Yes, emphatically. Hoping that I was as ready as he, I opened the book, turned sideways and held it out so he could see the pictures, and began to read.

    Instantly, my phobia disappeared, and all sense of danger went away. Cobbie's eyelids reached bottom when I was five pages from the end. I closed the covers and, in the spirit ofGoodnight Moon, whispered good night to all and sundry. The phobia reasserted itself when

    I placed the book on the headboard. I turned off the lamp, realizing that I had learned something as mysterious as the original phobia: I was afraid of the jacket, not the hook.

    In my inner ear, Frank Sinatra belted out a fragment of 'Something's Gotta Give':Fight . . . fight . . . fight it with . . . aaaall of your might. . .

    Halfway down the stairs, I met Posy Fairbrother coming up. She was in a rush; she had to do at least four hours of work that night. All the more beautiful for being attuned to the task ahead, Posy's face seemed nearly kittenish as she wished me a wonderful evening.

 •57

 •Laurie Hatch and I were borne along on a tide of conversation that seemed infinitely expandable into realms more and more intimate by grace of a shared understanding. I had not had an evening like it in at least ten years, and none of those soulful interchanges of my twenties had felt so much like real contact.

    The conviction that one's own experience has beenmirrored by the other's, that whatever is said will be understood, soon begins to confirm itself out of sheer momentum, and, of course, I did not dare to be as open as I appeared. Neither did Laurie. Of my 'attacks,' Mr. X, the weirdness of the Dunstans, and the shadow-double who had saved my life, I said nothing. I never considered being completely honest with Laurie Hatch. She would have been alarmed, taken aback—I did not want to make her think I was crazy.

    If conversations like ours did not always contain a degree of falsity, they would not be so profound.

    We managed to get through a bottle and a half of wine, and the table was covered with serving dishes. 'Why don't we clear this stuff up?' I said.

    'Forget it.' Laurie tilted back in her chair and ran a hand through her hair. 'Posy will take care of that.'

    'She has hours of work ahead of her. Let's give her a break.' I carried bowls to the sink and scraped artichoke leaves into the garbage disposal.

    Laurie helped me load the dishwasher and filled its soap trays. “I feel like one of the shoemaker's elves. What were we going to do now, do you remember?'

    'Did you want to hear the end of that Rinehart story?'

    'The perfect farewell to Mr. Rinehart.' She emptied the last of the wine into our glasses and led me back to the sofa.

 •Curled next to me with her head on an outstretched arm, Laurie said, 'This is the story you were reading when I showed up?'

    “I was almost done.'

    She took a sip of wine. 'Professor Arbuthnot has discovered a book of the extremest age and rariosity. The three old men murdered in an opium den had been tattooed on their left buttocks with an ancient Arabic curse. On his way to interview a sinister dwarf, our hero catches sight of an infant with yellow eyes and a forked tongue.'

    'This one's a little different,' I said. 'The whole first half sounds almost autobiographical.' I condensed Godfrey Demmiman's early life into a couple of sentences and briefly described his adventures in the village of Markham, the obsession with his ancestral house, his simultaneous flight from and pursuit of the Other, leading to the night when he was drawn to the library on the top floor.

    'Carry on, she implored.'

    With the conviction that it was on this night that he should encounter the figure so long hidden from view, Demmiman entered the old library and eased the door shut behind him. Immediately, Demmiman became aware that his conviction was no mere fantasy. The Other's presence etched itself upon the endings of his nerves, and as he took it in, he took in also the state in which he should discover his adversary.

    After preparations no less fearful, no less uncertain than his own, the Other awaited his arrival with an equal terror, which served only to chill the blood in Demmiman's veins. Nonetheless, Godfrey found it within himself to advance forward and cast his eye over the musty vacancy.

    'Who are you, unholy figure?' he brought forth.

    There came an irresolute, hesitating silence. 'Come forth. By all that is within me, I must see you.'

    The pressure of the silence about him nearly sent him in flight to the door. At the last moment of his endurance, a footfall sounded from a distant region of the library.

    “It's no good if the guy comes out, and he's just another monster,' Laurie said.

    'We'll see,' I said.

    Slowly, with dragging step, an indistinct figure emerged from the shadows. Demmiman found himself unable to breathe. Here was what for either release or surrender he knew he must confront at last. The intensity of his curiosity gave him the dim figure of a man decades older than himself and formed by experiences far beyond his own, experiences before which Demmiman knew his own imagination to fall short.

    His dark, formal dress was that of a provincial man of business elevated to a tyrannical success. Scarcely had Demmiman taken in a white, exposed froth of beard than he saw, upon a forward step, that what had made the face indistinct was the pair of raised hands concealing it in— Demmiman felt—a gesture of shame.

    He separated his feet and planted himself on the dusty floor.

    The figure lifted its head and spread its fingers, seeming to sense his shift of mood. Then, as if in a sudden moment of decision, it dropped its hands and bared its face with an aggression Demmiman knew beyond his own capabilities. Horror held him fast. A thousand sins, a thousand excesses had printed themselves upon that face. It was the record of his secret life, hideous and inescapable, and yet, however coarsened and inflamed, the Other's