Night Film(114)

It was as searing and sad as I’d found it to be in college—maybe more so, now that I was no longer an arrogant young man of nineteen, now that the lines about time and I grow old … I grow old …meant something. The poem’s narrator, Prufrock, was a sort of insect specimen, mounted and pinned, still squirming, to his tedious little life, a world of endless social gatherings and parties and inane observations; the modern equivalent would probably be man alone with his phones and screens, Tweeting and friending and status updating, the ceaseless chatter of Internet culture. The man’s thoughts veered between resignation, the stuttering, delusional belief that he had time, and a profound longing for more, for murder and creation.

The whole family lived in answer to that poem, Hopper had said.

If that was true, it was doubtlessly a ferocious, intoxicating way to live. It even corroborated the mystical afternoon Peg Martin had described at the dog run and some of those early stories about Ashley. But it could also be an enslavement, a hell, to keep searching for the enchanted, keep plunging down, down to the lonely chambers of the sea. To seek mermaids.

It was a tragic thing to do, like looking for Eden.

I closed my eyes, my limbs so heavy they seemed to melt into the bed, my mind untying all thoughts so they flew into the air, unattached and disordered.

She attacked a guest. He’s called the Spider. Knowledge of darkness in the most extreme form. You’ve no respect for murk, McGrath. The blackly unexplained. Within that family’s history there are atrocious acts. I’m certain of it. Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.

The only sound was the rain, playing like an exhausted orchestra on the windows. Only when I was drifting to sleep did the storm let slip a few delicate notes—strands of some new song—and abruptly disband.





81


“That’s him,” I said.

I left Nora and Hopper seated on the guardrail at the dead end of East Fifty-second Street—just outside The Campanile, an elegant limestone apartment building overlooking the East River—and walked swiftly down the sidewalk toward the approaching man wearing the gray doorman’s uniform.

He was very short and very bald, carrying a small deli coffee cup, an impish spring in his step. He might have been Danny DeVito’s cousin.

I caught up to him under a gray awning. “You must be Harold.”

He smiled cheerfully. “That’s me.”

I introduced myself. He nodded in immediate recognition. “Oh, right. The hotshot reporter. Mrs. du Pont said you’d be stopping by. So, you, uh …” He raised his chin to glance over my shoulder, lowering his voice. “You want to get in to see Marlowe.”

“Olivia said you could arrange a time for me to talk to her.”

He smirked. “You don’t talk to Marlowe.”

“What do you do?”

“What do you do with any man-eating beast? Tiptoe around and pray they’re not hungry.” He laughed again and then sobered when he saw my confusion. “Come back tonight. Eleven o’clock sharp. I’ll take you up. But, uh, then you’re on your own.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I make a rule never to go past the laundry room.”

“I’d like to speak to Marlowe. Not break into her apartment.”

“Yeah, that’s how you speak to Marlowe. It’s how Mrs. du Pont visits. Mrs. du Pont pays for the big spread, so technically she’s sneaking into her own place.”

“Olivia sneaks into her sister’s apartment in the middle of the night?” I found it difficult to imagine Olivia du Pont sneaking into anything.

“Oh, yeah. Marlowe Hughes and daylight’s a bad combo. At night she’s, uh, more chill.”

“And why’s she chill at night?”

“Her dealer comes at eight. Coupla hours later? She’s riding a magic carpet over Shangri-la.” He grinned, but then, seeing my reaction, shook his head defensively. “I swear it’s the only safe way to enter. That’s when we do repairs, take out her trash, make sure she hasn’t left on a gas burner or clogged the toilet with her fan mail. Once a week Mrs. du Pont takes up fresh food and flowers. If she did it during the day, there’d be carnage. This way, when Marlowe wakes up, she thinks she’s been visited by Santa’s elves.”

He took a sip of coffee, squinting at something over my shoulder. I noticed one of the other doormen at The Campanile had wandered outside.

“Artie needs to go on break. Just, uh, come by at eleven and I’ll get you up there. But …” He squinted. “You know those electric tiger prods they use in circuses? You might want to bring one.” He guffawed heartily at his own joke, taking off down the sidewalk. “ ’course, it proved ineffective for Siegfried and Roy,” he added over his shoulder, “so no promises.”





82


Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting in the window of the Starbucks at Second Avenue and East Fiftieth.

“It’s an ideal situation,” said Hopper. “If Hughes is out cold, we’ll have plenty of time to look through her place.”

I was relieved to see this morning Hopper seemed to be all right after everything he’d told us. After disclosures such as his, it was difficult to gauge how the person would react afterward. But he appeared to be more focused.