Notes (VII)

Stopped earlier because I was getting to the part when things go from all crisply crystalized in my mind’s eye to blurry and multiple. This will not be precise; revise later.

(Replace “crystalized.” Crisply crystalized, crystalline constraints he hewed to. A crystalline world, a sea of glass, a glass wave. Don’t wear out the gifts Salby gave you.)

Where were we? Marsh’s dad (Ken, I might as well introduce Ken qua Ken here: Kenneth Sheridan, father of Marshall Sheridan, our Marsh, who like his full name was robust and hushed in equal measure)—anyway, Marsh’s dad had begun, haltingly, to speak again.

“Len, you know”—he called this man he’d met only a handful of times not Salby or even Leonard but Len—“Len . . . had a friend, later on. Or . . . whatever he was.”

Ken paused, took a swig of Budweiser. On the couch, his audience sat rapt.

“William Chen,” he said. “W.C. William Chen. He was a guy who loved Chesscourt. I mean, more than any of us do, if you can believe that [a very forced chuckle]. He went to meet Len sometime after Regained came out. Must have been . . . what? ’91?”

“Sounds right, dad,” Marsh muttered.

“So anyway, uh, I don’t want to be a downer here, guys, while you’re having a good time, I mean—”

“Out with it, dad,” Marsh blurted, in an eye-rolling tone. As if to say, you can’t go back now.

“Well so the thing is . . .”

Ken paused to re-jigger his limbs. He assumed a jaunty, angular posture, resting his full weight precariously on the doorframe via his right elbow, one leg crossed over the other. A cool-dad display of relaxation which looked like pure, nervous artifice, but which might be no less sincere for that. I didn’t know Ken well enough to judge, at the time. (At the time? Now, in retrospect, I’m still not sure.)

“So the thing is that William Chen was a kid . . . like, late twenties. I mean, older than you guys but a kid to me [a relatively unforced chuckle]. So William died in, I think it was, late ’94? He fell off a cliff. It was an accident. Anyway, that’s what Len said, and I believe him, but Marsh’s Aunt Wrath, I mean, Elena [another very forced chuckle], she thought that Len killed him. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Elena was a fantastic woman. And, you know, R.I.P. and all that. But she had something against Len, I always knew, and so she said he’d killed William, and she got some people to think that, I don’t know how. It’s really . . . I mean, can you believe this family? [pause, as if anticipating sitcom laugh track]”

I couldn’t believe this family. I mean, I liked Marsh’s dad, or I thought so anyway. He was awkward, but he meant well, in a way that came across more transparently because he was so awkward—even if he had wanted to deceive me, I didn’t think he was capable of doing it convincingly, and so I trusted him. He seemed guileless and benign, and he was. But what was I supposed to make of this supremely uncomfortable monologue about potential murder? It would have been much more reassuring if he’d framed it more seriously: L.S. was accused of murder by a relative, this was stunning and strange, but (he might have contended) there was no reason to believe the allegation. But this chummy, our-Len-would-never-do-that vibe was impossible to believe, and that made me wonder.

Which was right of me to do. Because, let’s get this straight, guys. I’ve heard rumors ranging from “Salby was the leader of a suicide cult” to “Salby killed his lover in a fit of passion.” The cat’s out of the bag, except it’s transformed into some sort of demonic tiger in the process. Let’s get this straight:

—Did Salby kill W.C.? No.

—Did W.C. commit suicide? Yes.

—Did W.C. commit suicide with Salby’s endorsement, inspired in part by concepts (Mundum, the Mundal Spire, exechamp etc.) which he learned from Salby? Yes.

—Would W.C. have died sooner, later, or at the same time had he not gone to live with Salby? We don’t know. He wasn’t a happy guy to begin with.

Need to write a sort of “FAQ” for stuff like that. Obviously. But I’m worried if I do that people will read only the “FAQ,” misinterpret it, and I’ll be to blame for the fallout. Keep writing for now.

Anyway, I was engrossed in these sorts of thoughts when my attention was commandeered by an external phenomenon. Aaron, who had looked distinctly uncomfortable since Marsh had read the journal entry, now stood up from the couch and began, unaccountably, to pace around the room. He was slick with sweat. We looked at him, and back at each other, furtively, none of us sure what to do.

Aaron broke the silence, at last.

“It’s always going to be something like this,” he said, in an oddly placid voice. He was poised close to the wall, dramatically contrapposto, face turned slightly upward, as if addressing not any of us but a distant God or, better, a retinue of mercurial gods. I want to describe him as musing, as in “he mused” as a dialogue tag, but really it was more like the sort of pose someone might strike if they self-consciously wanted to be described, by some nearby novelist, as musing. Which isn’t quite the same thing.

“It’s always going to be something like this,” he continued. “It always ends up drivel.

“Don’t even try because two times two makes four, gentlemen, is not life but the beginning of death.” This last said more dramatically and self-consciously, my brain now reinterpreting the pleasant half-light of the living room’s overhead lamps as a gothic chiaroscuro, giving Aaron only half a face.

And with that Aaron was off. He rushed through the door not occupied by Ken’s frame, a solid brick traveling at constant velocity, bearing a portentous momentum.

We all glanced at each other, and then instantly away. Ken still stood in the doorway, his unnatural pose now unnaturally fixed in place. Outside, the sun had fully set. Lacking other acceptable resting places, my gaze fixed on Marsh and Ken’s kitchen table. It stood immaculately before me, framed prettily in the commingled light and shadow, ready for the cover of some Chthonic equivalent of Better Homes and Gardens, a periodical for gentle and morbid spirits of the rain and soil. Wine glasses in the dish-rack gleamed dimly in the hyper-detail supplied only to the visual fields of the intensely nervous. I wondered, for a moment, about Marsh’s mother, whom I had never heard mentioned. It wasn’t the sort of topic one should raise casually, and so I quickly resigned myself to ignorance, at least for the moment.

“Aaron isn’t well,” Kelsey said in her small voice, with gnomic compassion: Deanna Troi on a bridge filled with hopeless geeks. “Someone ought”—I remember she said ought, because it struck me as odd—“to go check on him.”

Someone ought indeed. I was frantic; I was full of nervous energy; I needed a task, the more dire and necessary the better. I volunteered, of course.

Natural break here—next up is my confrontation with Aaron in the bathroom, and our fateful decision to Go Into The Caves. I’m going to go out and watch the sun set over the front porch, pour myself a glass of scotch, and then—onward. One way or another, this damn report is getting written, and it feels good.