The bloodstone, p.3
The Bloodstone, page 3
She was just about to call it quits, when she noticed a little ad tucked away in the lower left-hand corner of the page. It read:
RELOCATING FURNISHED SPECIALISTS
Luxury furnished apartments. Studios to four bedrooms. $300 & up. Choose your own furniture. All apartments located in modem highrise buildings. Minimum one year leases. Call BU8-3448.
Chandal immediately cautioned herself not to become overly optimistic. The lower-priced apartments were probably no longer available. Or it could be one of those infamous “come-on” ads. Promise them anything, the moon, just as long as you get them there. After that, it’s a matter of fast talk, persuasion and sales hype.
Still, Chandal found herself reaching mechanically for a dime. She was doing most things mechanically by now. Riding down in the elevator, picking up a newspaper at the local newsstand on the corner, walking across the street amidst a crowd of people with glazed eyes, sitting quietly in the corner of the little cafe, pressing the fingers of her right hand into the middle of her forehead to relieve the tension brought on by a sudden dizziness or to ward off the intermittent click-click sound located in the back of her skull, a sound not unlike that made by a sharp pair of steel knitting needles.
“Friendly Realty,” the voice said.
And Chandal mechanically began speaking.
A jaunty, lopsided sign proclaimed the place to be Friendly Realty. Its wide-open door was painted a flaming orange, the welcome mat a screaming yellow, over which came the low roar of inflamed voices and the blare of electronic music. This had to be the most swinging realty company in New York.
Chandal hesitated for a moment. Then she shrugged, what the hell? She had tried everything else without much luck. Why not this?
She stepped inside the crowded office, slowly inching her way through the sea of faces, searching for someone in charge. She stood then, patiently, looking at the walls of the large room, blinking in amazement. Each wall had been decorated, apparently out of some mad desire, by many framed art posters ranging from the works of Goya to Warhol. The effect was chaotic and bizarre.
“You are?” the voice asked.
Chandal turned and saw that the voice was talking to her and that it belonged to a statuesque woman of indeterminate age, whose brunette hair hung freely about her face like Spanish moss. She was fashionably dressed and seemed quite harmless, not at all what Chandal had expected. But then again, Friendly Realty was not at all what she had expected.
“Oh,” Chandal breathed. “I’m Chandal Knight. I just called a little while ago.”
“Ah, yes. You spoke with me. Hi, I’m Miss Ramsey,” stated the woman in a soft-spoken voice. “Let’s step into my office, shall we?” She winked. “It’s quieter.”
“Right.” replied Chandal as she entered the room.
Miss Ramsey wasted no time in making Chandal feel right at home. She immediately motioned to a comfortable chair and offered Chandal coffee.
Chandal found herself saying, “No, thank you. I’m a tea drinker.” And this surprised Chandal, because for the life of her, she couldn’t recall ever having liked the taste of tea before. She had always been an ardent coffee drinker, so much so, that it had taken three cups to get her started this morning.
“Tea it is.” Miss Ramsey smiled.
“I don’t want to be a bother.”
“Nonsense. It’s no bother at all.”
Teacup now in her hand, Chandal listened as Miss Ramsey ran down the list of available furnished apartments. It was just as Chandal had expected. Underneath the glare of bright colors, wild decorations, rock music and cordial demeanor, beat the same old con-game heart.
Chandal placed her half-emptied teacup on Miss Ramsey’s desk and tried to muster a polite smile. “I see,” she said easily. “Well, thank you for your time.”
The woman eyed Chandal intently. “Is something wrong?”
“The ad in The New York Times said three hundred dollars and up. All you’ve mentioned so far is the up.”
“I see.”
“Thanks again for your time.”
Chandal rose and walked to the door, the woman following closely at her heels.
“I’m sorry that our ad was misleading,” she said, holding the door open for Chandal. “But surely you understand that the cost of maintaining a highrise during this difficult time is expensive. Naturally the cost must be passed along to the tenant.”
Chandal nodded indifferently.
“Perhaps what you’re looking for is something along the lines of an apartment in a brownstone.”
Chandal flinched, aware of a feeling of strain between her eyes. She felt something jerking within her—didn’t feel it, really, but became conscious of it, became conscious, too, of a voice within her about to scream.
The fire flashed before her eyes. Thick lashing tongues of flames licked at her face, neck and hair. Just that fast the fire spread, engulfing her entire body. Hissing and crackling—a sudden flash, and then just as quickly the image vanished.
Still she stared, frightened eyes fixed on some distant spot in the past. People had died in that fire. Justin. He had died. Magdalene and Elizabeth Krispen, the old ladies who had owned the brownstone. They had died too. Now the image loomed again, burning deeper, claiming her. She could feel herself gasp for air as the fire began to consume her supply of oxygen. Screaming. Someone was screaming.
Chandal leaned unsteadily against the door frame.
“Miss Knight, are you all right?”
“I don’t want to live in a brownstone,” Chandal’s voice was saying weakly.
“Here, you had better sit down.”
The woman escorted her back to the chair. Chandal sat down, folding her hands in a matronly, spinsterish manner in her lap. Her posture was rigid. “I guess I should have eaten a little more for lunch,” she said.
“Jesus, you gave me a real start there. I thought... well, it happens, I guess. Here, let me get you a glass of water.” The woman chattered on, talked about dizzy spells and eating properly, the fast pace at which most people were living their lives these days.
Chandal listened, nodded. The room grew cool and dim. The thick brown carpet looked almost purple in the fading afternoon light and the garish pink walls appeared gray. Outside, dark clouds galloped across a slate-covered sky, and Chandal knew that she still had not won her battle. The fire—that night, the brownstone ablaze, sending incandescent sparks upward into the heavens, screams, Elizabeth’s face in the flames, clutching at her shawl—it was all too familiar, and every horrible detail of that moment still lived within Chandal’s mind.
“Don’t you want the water?” Miss Ramsey asked, carefully studying Chandal’s face.
“Oh, yes. Thank you.”
Chandal sipped slowly, taking tiny swallows, allowing the cool water to moisten her dry lips, rather than actually drinking.
“Have you just arrived in New York?” the woman asked.
“Yes. On Monday.”
Chandal forced her face into a reassuring smile as if to indicate to Miss Ramsey that she was all right. Still, the woman looked pale and distressed, like a mother whose child had just had a near brush with death, and who still waited for absolute proof that what she had feared most was not at all true.
Another strange face. Chandal blinked up at it.
“Lucy,” the man said, “Marshall’s on the phone. He needs a yes or no now.” The face disappeared out the door.
“Will you excuse me,” Miss Ramsey said, reaching for the telephone.
Chandal put her hand to her mouth and sighed. There was no doubt in her mind now as to the correctness of Dr. Luther’s advice not to take up residence in New York. There were still too many destructive influences in the city that could trigger her illness all over again. Why risk it, he had said. You are totally well now. A few missing moments perhaps, time still unrecalled, but is the regathering of that time worth another possible breakdown?
Yes! Chandal thought in a sudden fit of determination. Justin and she had lived in that brownstone for the last remaining days of their lives together. She had doubts about those days, about her relationship with Justin. Could she go on with the rest of her life without knowing if those doubts were justified?
Often, under the careful supervision of Dr. Luther, she had come close, very close to remembering. So close, in fact, that images started to unravel themselves, and shadows though they may have been, they were images nonetheless. And with those smokelike, vaporous visages of the mind, sound. A baby crying. A cry? Perhaps only a bird in the night, its cry penetrating the thick walls of her room, causing her to dream a sudden image of desolation. Yet she was sure it was a baby crying. And the laughter and singing, voices that seemed to be celebrating a joyous occasion. It was all there, locked away in her memory. If only she could remember. She had to remember. Wanted so desperately to piece those sounds and images together, to piece her life back together and start anew. If only...
“Sorry,” Miss Ramsey said, placing the receiver back into its cradle.
Chandal stared at her for a moment, then said, “I need to find an apartment soon. I haven’t much money. I know I’m asking the impossible but isn’t there anything you can do?”
The woman leaned forward and tapped tattoos on the desk with the tip of her pencil. “Are you married?” she asked.
“Widowed.”
“I’m sorry.”
For a moment the throbbing beat of Miss Ramsey’s pencil was the only sound in the room. Chandal fumbled in her purse for a cigarette.
“Is it all right if I smoke?”
“By all means.” She paused, allowing Chandal to light her cigarette, before asking, “Would you mind telling me what your occupation is?”
“I’m an actress,” Chandal said, exhaling. She reached over and flicked out the match, dropping it into the ashtray in front of her.
“Actress,” Miss Ramsey echoed.
If Chandal had had her wits about her, she probably would have lied, knowing that actors and actresses fall on the very bottom of the not-to-be-trusted list. Still, the woman’s voice seemed unquestioning.
“Now, how come I knew that,” the woman said with a smile. “The moment I saw you standing out there, I said to myself—she’s an actress. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. Are you in the theater?”
“Films, mostly.” She shrugged. “Things were slow in California, so here I am.”
“I see,” observed the woman.
“Can you help me?” Chandal asked, feeling the anxiety starting to build in the center of her chest.
Leaning forward, Miss Ramsey said, “I’ve got something that just came in today. There’s this brownstone....
“I’ve already told you,” Chandal interrupted, “that I really don’t want to live in a brownstone.” She crushed out her cigarette, her hand mechanically returning to the base of her neck, where it grasped the red speckled pendant like a worry bead, and began to rub the stone’s smoothness.
“Oh, it’s not the brownstone I’m talking about,” the woman said with a knowing smile. “It’s what is behind the brownstone that I’m talking about.” She allowed a cryptic pause to hang in the air for effect, then added, “A carriage house.”
“Carriage house?”
“Illegal, you know. Not supposed to be rented anymore. But, well—it’s a friend of mine who owns the building. So if we’re careful, if everyone shuts their eyes—nobody minds.” She paused and smiled.
“Is it furnished?” asked Chandal.
“From top to bottom, with priceless antiques. Or so I’ve been told.”
“Top to bottom?”
“Yes,” Miss Ramsey said. “It’s a duplex.” She paused, then added gently, “Interested? Like I said, it’s strictly illegal. That will bring down the price a bit.”
Chandal could see the gears turning in the woman’s head, a third eye observing her like a debit and credit sheet, ascertaining just how much she would be willing to pay for the rare privilege of living in an “illegal” dwelling.
“I can pay five hundred a month,” Chandal said, biting her lip.
The woman smiled. “Let’s go take a look at it.”
Chandal stood up and followed the woman as she walked into the outer office, where she removed her black leather coat and fur hat from the closet. “Tony, if Marshall calls back, tell him I’ve gone out but the papers are on their way.”
“Check,” the unfamiliar face said without looking up.
“That’s my nephew,” Miss Ramsey whispered to Chandal. “He’s a real shit.”
Chandal chuckled.
Miss Ramsey kept muttering her way through varying subjects until they had reached the bottom landing. They stepped onto the street into a horde of scrambling people. “Let’s walk, it’ll be faster. Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
“Christ knows, it’s cheaper.”
Chandal nodded absently. Her attention had focused on the almost tangible pace of New York City that now hurried her forward. It was a phenomenon not to be found anywhere else in the world, this breathless feeling of being on one’s way toward something. Something’s coming, something’s coming, she thought joyously, but suddenly in back of the exuberance a premonition ran through her like a chill. What? What was she racing so fast to catch up to?
CHAPTER FOUR
TWO AVENUES EAST AND SEVEN BLOCKS NORTH, THEY BEGAN looking for the house.
Chandal was immediately struck by the quiet tree-lined street that had escaped modernization. The buildings that lined the street were no taller than five stories and many of them had balconies with ancient, wrought-iron balustrades. There were a half dozen shops, several restaurants, two banks and a bar at the corner.
“It’s a quiet block, isn’t it?” Miss Ramsey declared.
“Yes, it is,” Chandal said and glanced at the brownstone façades, the last remains of the American dream that seemed lost in the hazy sunset-colored brick. Worn-out buildings of yesterday, Chandal thought. These were weather-drab, pockmarked phalanxes, grim-faced and somber. Symbols of a more genteel era that had imperceptibly come to an architectural as well as a spiritual halt, to its last frontier.
Miss Ramsey stopped suddenly, bent her head forward to peer at the slip of paper she held in her hand, then squinted up at the building directly in front of her.
“It must be further east, toward the park,” she said.
They walked a little further, passed the front of an amorphous blue-brick building, recently renovated, that seemed to intrude like an alien tower in an otherwise subdued neighborhood, and then on a little further, until Miss Ramsey stopped again, scanning the slip of paper which she had rolled up in the palm of her hand while walking.
“Here we are,” she said cheerily.
Chandal stood there for a few uncertain moments looking up at the brownstone. It was very narrow, and peering into the walkway on the left, which separated it from the adjacent building, she saw just the edge of what she hoped would become her new home.
“Let’s see if the gate is open.” Miss Ramsey moved forward to the rusty iron gate and gave it a tug. Next she tried the latch. “Locked,” she said. “Let’s see if the super is in.”
They climbed the slate-brown steps, passed through the glass lace-curtained exterior door and stopped in the hallway to press the super’s button.
“It’s still damn cold out, isn’t it?” Miss Ramsey said, doing a little two-step to get her blood circulating. “What is it they say about March? In like a lion, out....”
The interior door opened suddenly and Chandal found herself peering over Miss Ramsey’s shoulder at a vivacious, cheery girl, whose red hair and blue eyes made her pale complexion sparkle. Dressed in a miniskirt, her hair pulled back into a pony tail, she resembled a relic from an earlier time.
“Hi, Doreen,” Miss Ramsey said. “Is Mike in?”
“Oh, hi. No, he’s down at the garage trying to get the car fixed.”
“Do you have the keys for the courtyard gate?”
“Sure. Just a sec.” The girl turned and headed down the hallway.
“You can also give me the keys to the carriage house, just in case I’ve brought the wrong ones,” Miss Ramsey hollered after her.
“Right-o.”
“Nice young couple. Her husband was wounded in Viet Nam. Nice fellow, though. If you should ever need anything, he’s always willing to help.” Miss Ramsey’s expression changed to that of a protective mother. “You really should be wearing warmer clothing.”
Chandal smiled. “It was eighty-six degrees the day I left California.”
“Are you getting homesick?”
Chandal nodded. “A little.”
“Well, let’s see if we can help you get settled in all nice and cozy. The rest will take care of itself. A pretty girl like you should have no trouble finding new friends.”
Chandal smiled. “Thanks.”
“Here you go,” Doreen said, handing Miss Ramsey the keys.
“Thanks. We shouldn’t be long.”
“Right. Just yell if you need me.” Doreen was moving down the hallway again as if in hot pursuit of some fabulous orgiastic pleasure.
Chandal imagined her propped up on a sofa, her bare feet tucked under her body, watching “As The World Turns,” while popping handfuls of jelly beans into her mouth.
“Where does she get such energy from?” Miss Ramsey sighed. “I never feel old until I’m around her.”
Chandal laughed and followed Miss Ramsey down the steps, waiting with a heightened air of expectancy as she unlocked the gate. They passed easily along the walkway, which was a series of flagstones pressed solidly into the good, rich New York earth, until they rounded the corner and entered the courtyard.
Chandal could feel the color returning to her cheeks. The courtyard was not to be believed. It had two trees which hovered over the tiny carriage house, and a fountain, of all things, near center. Two rose bushes were planted on either side of the house’s front door, their stems growing upward and forming an archway just above the doorway.
