Odd Apocalypse

To be fair, the light that I had seen might be visible only to someone with my sixth sense. My suspicion, however, was that Chef Shilshom was a lying pile of suet.

The chef hunched over the cutting board, peering so intently and closely at the pecans that he might have been Mr. Magoo trying to read the fine print on a pill bottle.

To test him, I said, “Is that a mouse by the refrigerator?”

“There you go.”

“No. Sorry. It’s a big old rat.”

“Mmmmm.”

If he wasn’t totally immersed in his work, he was a good actor.

Getting off the stool, I said, “Well, I don’t know why, but I think I’ll go set my hair on fire.”

“Why indeed?”

With my back to the chef, moving toward the door to the terrace, I said, “Maybe it grows back thicker if you burn it off once in a while.”

“Mmmmm.”

The crisp sound of the knife splitting pecans had fallen silent.

In one of the four glass panes in the upper half of the kitchen door, I could see Chef Shilshom’s reflection. He was watching me, his moon face as pale as his white uniform.

Opening the door, I said, “Not dawn yet. Might still be some mountain lion out there, trying doors.”

“Mmmmm,” the chef said, pretending to be so distracted by his work that he was paying little attention to me.

I stepped outside, pulled the door shut behind me, and crossed the terrace to the foot of the first arc of stairs. I stood there, gazing up at the mausoleum, until I heard the chef engage both of the deadbolts.

With dawn only minutes below the mountains to the east, the not-loon cried out again, one last time, from a far corner of the sprawling estate.

The mournful sound brought back to me an image that had been part of the dream of Auschwitz, from which the first cry of the night had earlier awakened me: I am starving, frail, performing forced labor with a shovel, terrified of dying twice, whatever that means. I am not digging fast enough to please the guard, who kicks the shovel out of my grip. The steel toe of his boot cuts my right hand, from which flows not blood but, to my terror, powdery gray ashes, not one ember, only cold gray ashes pouring out of me, out and out. …

As I walked back to the eucalyptus grove, the stars grew dim in the east, and the sky blushed with the first faint light of morning.

Annamaria, the Lady of the Bell, and I had been guests of Roseland for three nights and two days, and I suspected that our time here was soon drawing to a close, that our third day would end in violence.

Four (#ulink_b50a4b68-9b35-5acd-8d1c-6fe55e7cc9cf)

BETWEEN BIRTH AND BURIAL, WE FIND OURSELVES IN A comedy of mysteries.

If you don’t think life is mysterious, if you believe you have it all mapped out, you aren’t paying attention or you’ve anesthetized yourself with booze or drugs, or with a comforting ideology.

And if you don’t think life’s a comedy—well, friend, you might as well hurry along to that burial. The rest of us need people with whom we can laugh.

In the guest tower once more, as dawn bloomed, I climbed the circular stone stairs to the second floor, where Annamaria waited.

The Lady of the Bell has a dry wit, but she’s more mystery than comedy.

At her suite, when I knocked on the door, it swung open as though the light rap of knuckles on wood was sufficient to disengage the latch and set the hinges in motion.

The two narrow, deeply set windows were as medieval as that through which Rapunzel might have let down her long hair, and they admitted little of the early-morning sun.

With her delicate hands clasped around a mug, Annamaria was sitting at a small dining table, in the light of a bronze floor lamp that had a stained-glass shade in an intricate yellow-rose motif.

Indicating a second mug from which steam curled, she said, “I poured some tea for you, Oddie,” as though she had known precisely when I would arrive, although I had come on a whim.

Noah Wolflaw claimed not to have slept in nine years, which was most likely a fabrication. In the four days that I’d known Annamaria, however, she was always awake when I needed to talk with her.

On the sofa were two dogs, including a golden retriever, whom I had named Raphael. He was a good boy who attached himself to me in Magic Beach.

The white German-shepherd mix, Boo, was a ghost dog, the only lingering canine spirit that I had ever seen. He had been with me since my time at St. Bartholomew’s Abbey, where I had for a while stayed as a guest before moving on to Magic Beach.

For a boy who loved his hometown as much as I loved Pico Mundo, who valued simplicity and stability and tradition, who treasured the friends with whom he’d grown up there, I had become too much a gypsy.

The choice wasn’t mine. Events made the choice for me.

I am learning my way toward something that will make sense of my life, and I learn by going where I have to go, with whatever companions I am graced.

At least that is what I tell myself. I’m reasonably sure that it’s not just an excuse to avoid college.

I am not certain of much in this uncertain world, but I know that Boo remains here not because he fears what comes after this life—as some human spirits do—but because, at a critical point in my journey, I will need him. I won’t go so far as to say that he is my guardian, angelic or otherwise, but I’m comforted by his presence.

Both dogs wagged their tails at the sight of me. Only Raphael’s thumped audibly against the sofa.

In the past, Boo often accompanied me. But at Roseland, both dogs stayed close to this woman, as if they worried for her safety.

Raphael was aware of Boo, and Boo sometimes saw things that I did not, which suggested that dogs, because of their innocence, see the full reality of existence to which we have blinded ourselves.

I sat across the table from Annamaria and tasted the tea, which was sweetened with peach nectar. “Chef Shilshom is a sham.”

“He’s a fine chef,” she said.

“He’s a great chef, but he’s not as innocent as he pretends.”

“No one is,” she said, her smile so subtle and nuanced that Mona Lisa, by comparison, would appear to be guffawing.

From the moment I encountered Annamaria on a pier in Magic Beach, I had known that she needed a friend and that she was somehow different from other people, not as I am different with my prophetic dreams and spirit-seeing, but different in her own way.

I knew little about this woman. When I had asked where she was from, she had answered “Far away.” Her tone and her sweetly amused expression suggested that those two words were an understatement.

On the other hand, she knew a great deal about me. She had known my name before I told it to her. She knew that I see the spirits of the lingering dead, though I have revealed that talent only to a few of my closest friends.

By now I understood that she was more than merely different. She was an enigma so complex that I would never know her secrets unless she chose to give me the key with which to unlock the truth of her.

She was eighteen and appeared to be seven months pregnant. Until we joined forces, she had been for a while alone in the world, but she had none of the doubts or worries of other girls in her position.