Diary

at the time he wrote. You have to study the pressure and speed of the writing, pressing as hard as the writer pressed. Writing as fast as it seems the writer did. Angel says this is all similar to Method acting. What he calls Konstantin Stanislavski’s method of physical actions.

Handwriting analysis and Method acting, Angel says they both got popular at the same time. Stanislavski studied the work of Pavlov and his drooling dog and the work of neurophysiologist I. M. Sechenov. Before that, Edgar Allan Poe studied graphology. Everybody was trying to link the physical and the emotional. The body and the mind. The world and the imagination. This world and the next.

Moving Misty’s finger along the wall, he has her trace the words: “. . . the flood of you, with your bottomless hunger and noisy demands . . .”

Whispering, Angel says, “If emotion can create a physical action, then duplicating the physical action can re-create the emotion.”

Stanislavski, Sechenov, Poe, everybody was looking for some scientific method to produce miracles on demand, he says. An endless way to repeat the accidental. An assembly line to plan and manufacture the spontaneous.

The mystical meets the Industrial Revolution.

The way the rag smells after you polish your boots, that’s how the whole room smells. The way the inside of a heavy belt smells. A catcher’s mitt. A dog’s collar. The faint vinegar smell of your sweaty watchband.

The sound of Angel’s breath, the side of her face damp from his whispering. His hand stiff and hard as a trap around her, squeezing her hand. His fingernails dig into Misty’s skin. And Angel says, “Feel. Feel and tell me what your husband felt.” The words: “. . . your blood is our gold . . .”

The way reading something can be a slap in your face.

Outside the hole, the homeowner says something. She knocks on the wall and says, louder, “Whatever it is you have to do, you’d better be doing it.”

Angel whispers, “Say it.”

The words say: “. . . you, a plague, trailing your failures and garbage . . .”

Forcing your wife’s fingers along each letter, Angel whispers, “Say it.”

And Misty says, “No.” She says, “It’s just crazy talk.”

Steering her fingers wrapped tight inside his, Angel shoulders her along, saying, “It’s just words. You can say it.”

And Misty says, “They’re evil. They don’t make sense.”

The words: “. . . to slaughter all of you as an offering, every fourth generation . . .”

Angel’s skin warm and tight around her fingers, he whispers, “Then why did you come see them?”

The words: “. . . my wife’s fat legs are crawling with varicose veins . . .”

Your wife’s fat legs.

Angel whispers, “Why bother coming?”

Because her dear sweet stupid husband, he didn’t leave a suicide note.

Because this is part of him she never knew.

Because she wants to understand who he was. She wants to find out what happened.

Misty tells Angel, “I don’t know.”

Old-school building contractors, she tells him, they’d never start a new house on a Monday. Only on a Saturday. After the foundation is laid, they’ll toss in a handful of rye seed. After three days, if the seed doesn’t sprout, they’ll build the house. They’ll bury an old Bible under the floor or seal it inside the walls. They’ll always leave one wall unpainted until the owners arrive. That way the devil won’t know the house is done until it’s already being lived in.

Out of a pocket in the side of his camera bag, Angel takes something flat and silver, the size of a paperback book. It’s square and shining, a flask, curved so your reflection in the concave side is tall and thin. Your reflection in the convex side is squat and fat. He hands it to Misty, and the metal’s smooth and heavy with a round cap on one end. The weight shifts as something sloshes inside. His camera bag is scratchy gray fabric, covered with zippers.

On the tall thin side of the flask, it’s engraved: To Angel—Te Amo .

Misty says, “So? Why are you here?”

As she takes the flask, their fingers touch. Physical contact. Flirting.

Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious with chances of betrayal.

And Angel says, “It’s gin.”

The cap unscrews and swings away on a little arm that keeps it attached to the flask. What’s inside smells like a good time, and Angel says, “Drink,” and his fingerprints are all over her tall, thin reflection in the polish. Through the hole in the wall, you can see the homeowner’s feet wearing suede loafers. Angel sets his camera bag so it covers the hole.

Somewhere beyond all this, you can hear each ocean wave hiss and burst. Hiss and burst.

Graphology says the three aspects of any personality show in our handwriting. Anything that falls below the bottom of a word, the tail of a lowercase g or y for example, that hints at your subconscious. What Freud would call your id. This is your most animal side. If it swings to the right, it means you lean to the future and the world outside yourself. If the tail swings to the left, it means you’re stuck in the past and looking at yourself.

You writing, you walking down the street, your whole life shows in every physical action. How you hold your shoulders, Angel says. It’s all art. What you do with your hands, you’re always blabbing your life story.

It’s gin inside the flask, the good kind that you can feel cold and thin down the whole length of your throat.

Angel says the way your tall letters look, anything that rises above the regular lowercase e or x, those tall letters hint at your greater spiritual self. Your superego. How you write your l or h or dot your i, that shows what you aspire to become.

Anything in between, most of your lowercase letters, these show your ego. Whether they’re crowded and spiky or spread out and loopy, these show the regular, everyday you.

Misty hands the flask to Angel and he takes a drink.

And he says, “Are you feeling anything?”

Peter’s words say, “. . . it’s with your blood that we preserve our world for the next generations . . .”

Your words. Your art.

Angel’s fingers open around hers. They go off into the dark, and you can hear the zippers pull open on his camera bag. The brown leather smell of him steps away from her and there’s the click and flash, click and flash of him taking pictures. He tilts the flask against his lips, and her reflection slides up and down the metal in his fingers.

Misty’s fingers tracing the walls, the writing says: “. . . I’ve done my part. I found her . . .”

It says: “. . . it’s not my job to kill anybody. She’s the executioner . . .”

To get the look of pain just right, Misty says how the sculptor Bernini sketched his own face while he burned his leg with a candle. When Gericault painted The Raft of the Medusa, he went to a hospital to sketch the faces of the dying. He brought their severed heads and arms back to his studio to study how the skin changed color as it rotted.

The wall booms. It booms again, the drywall and paint shivering under her touch. The homeowner on the other side kicks the wall again with her canvas boat shoes and the framed flowers and birds rattle against the yellow wallpaper. Against the scrawls of black spray paint. She shouts, “You can tell Peter Wilmot he’s going to jail for this shit.”

Beyond all this, the ocean waves hiss and burst.

Her fingers still tracing your words, trying to feel how you felt, Misty says, “Have you ever heard of a local painter named Maura Kincaid?”

From behind his camera, Angel says, “Not much,” and clicks the shutter. He says, “Wasn’t Kincaid linked to Stendhal syndrome?”

And Misty takes another drink, a burning swallow, with tears in her eyes. She says, “Did she die from it?”