The House Read online

  (VII)

  It also occurred twenty-four hours before Melvin and Gwyneth would first step into the Vinchetti house, after which Melvin would drive a considerable distance to procure carry-out Chinese food only to have it eaten in its entirety by a malnourished prostitute named Squirrelly, who would not only grace Melvin with the first sort-of hand job of his life but also convey quite a bit of pertinent information regarding the house itself...

  ««—»»

  Dad seemed questioning at first, his brow squished up into a net of ridges. "And where is this house?"

  "Pennellville," Melvin said. "Or I should say past Pennellville. Dirk wants me up there for a week or so."

  "Oh, so it's for your job."

  "Right, Dad." Melvin manufactured a quick, harmless lie. "I'm writing a piece on classic old homes of upstate." He didn't think it wise to tell Dad the whole truth: that he was actually writing bullshit about classic old haunted homes of upstate. "So I just wanted to let you know I'll be gone for a while."

  "Excellent," Dad approved. "It'll be good for you, getting out, interacting, being in a new place and meeting new people."

  Melvin was terrified of meeting new people but that was neither here, nor there. He didn't bother telling his father that there would likely be no new people to meet, not unless the realtor's description of the area as remote was exaggeration. "Yeah, Dad. I'm really trying to break out of my shell."

  "Good, good. Well, since you'll be away for a week or more, you'll need money."

  Bingo. When Dad was in the right mood, he was very favorably predictable. "That would be great," Melvin said. "Maybe a hundred or so?"

  "Nonsense." Dad flipped open his wallet like the communicator on Star Trek. "You'll need more than that, because you'll be doing me a service at the same time."

  Before Melvin could ask, Dad handed him two grand in hundreds. Do I have a great father or what?

  But what was this "service?"

  "It just so happens that I'll be in Providence all next week for a business conference. It's the annual meeting for the American Automobile Dealers."

  "Oh," Melvin said. "What a coincidence."

  "Yes. And I don't want Gwyneth alone in this big house for all that time." Dad leaned over and whispered, "She's a little nutty. God knows what she'd get into—"

  "I heard that!" Gwyneth's voice sailed down from upstairs.

  Dad frowned. He whispered even lower. "So I want you to take her with you. I don't want her in my hair at the conference."

  "I heard that!"

  Now Dad sighed. "So look after her for me."

  Melvin looked at the two grand. "Sure, Dad. Anything for you."

  "Good boy. And take whichever cars you want."

  The Hummer, Melvin thought.

  "I'm taking the Vette!" Gwyneth's voice sailed down again.

  "Whatever you want, honey," Dad agreed toward the stairs.

  Gwyneth's voice sounded sourceless. "So where are you packing me off to?"

  Melvin spoke up to answer. "A solitary old house way out in the hills."

  "Oh, that sounds wonderful. I could do so much work in a natural setting like that."

  "Like Thoreau at Walden Pond," Melvin added insightfully.

  Gwyneth squealed with delight from wherever she was upstairs.

  Dad put his arm about his son's shoulder. "Now I know you probably weren't counting on company for this writing assignment, Melvin, but you'd be doing me a big favor—"

  "No problem, Dad."

  "And I need to add that, as far as Gwyneth is concerned... there are a few perks."

  Perks? Melvin scratched his head. "What do you mean?"

  "She's a naturalist."

  Now Gwyneth's voice lanced their ears, objecting, "I've told you a million times! Not a naturalist! A naturist!"

  "I know what a naturalist is," Melvin—former English major that he was—said. "A film-maker like Bergman, or a writer like Ibsen. The literary movement that embodies social realism against concrete modern objectivity—"

  "Your son's so smart!" Gwyneth called down.

  Melvin continued, "but...naturism? An interest in natural beauty? Devotion to the land? I'm not sure what naturism is."

  Dad's eyes gestured toward the second floor landing. "Take a look."

  "Naturism is synonymous with nudism," Gwyneth said. Her voice seemed much closer now. When Melvin glanced up, his expression registered the same way an adolescent's would, when happening upon his father's secret stash of Playboys.

  Oh—oh—oh!

  Gwyneth stood atop the landing dressed in nothing but her wedding ring and a pair of Earth shoes. Her long curly-blond tresses fell over frost-white shoulders, and more immaculate alabaster flesh flowed downward in ultimate feminine curvatures. Her navel—an inny—was an adorable slit, and an abundant pie-wedge of light-mocha-colored pubic hair puffed forward between the white thighs. Melvin's eyes actually began to water at sight of these breasts: chiffon orbs, bigger than life—centered by pig-pink bolts of flesh. She was a Peter Paul Rubens painting standing before them...

  ...in which case, Melvin would've been desperate to ejaculate on the Baroque master's canvas.

  "That's some woman I married, huh, son?" Dad expounded.

  Melvin's mouth fell open to never utter a word. One wouldn't speak before an angel, would they? This was better than an angel, this vision of beauty nearly heavenly itself.

  Gwyneth's appearance on the landing only lasted for the few seconds it took her to physically demonstrate a definition of naturism. She disappeared in a blur white as Cool-Whip.

  Melvin stammered, "She-she-she... You mean she's going to be walking around naked the whole time we're in Pennellville? With that body?"

  "That's a fact, my boy," Dad said. Then he blurted a fatherly laugh and slapped Melvin hard on the back. "I knew you wouldn't have a problem with her going."

  No, indeed. Melvin would not.

  He excused himself, citing the need to get his things packed for the trip, and instead retreated quickly to his cottage to masturbate in grand style.

  PART TWO

  (I)

  A two-hour drive through endless, green pastures, rolling hills, and unspoiled woodland took them to the infamous Vinchetti house. Melvin led the way in the shiny HUM-V, while Gwyneth followed in candy-apple-red Corvette. Once they'd passed the small strip mall at the Route 10 junction, they didn't see any other vehicles on the road. The Vinchetti house was, indeed, out of the way.

  "What a wonderful dump!" Gwyneth excitedly exclaimed when they parked in the barely defined, unpaved drive. She sauntered up the graveled sidewalk to the porch, unaware that nearly thirty years ago a heroin addict named Sissy dragged herself on her elbows out the front door, innards in tow. The poor gaunt woman had been cut in half at the waist by...

  Well, that was another story.

  "So this is it," Melvin muttered to himself once he disembarked from the Hummer. "This is the big bad haunted house."

  "What?" Gwyneth said from the porch.

  "I said what an old house." Jeez, she's got good hearing! It was all he could do not to shake his head looking at her just then. The high sunlight clarified every physical detail. She wore the Earth Shoes, of course, and a pair of unseemly maroon corduroy jeans that made her lower half appear to have been dipped in tacky scarlet paint. She also wore a pink T-shirt bearing the face of Vladimir Ilich Lenin and the bold words WORK WILL MAKE YOU FREE! I guess that's why you married a millionaire, Melvin thought, and won't ever have to work again. Her hypocrisy blared...with her breasts...

  Melvin was trying to look at the house, but her physical presence on the porch—the basic fact that her body occupied space in front of the house—left Melvin hopelessly sidetracked. His masturbatory impulses raged as his vision was welded to the image. Oh. Jeez. No, he thought choppily. The raving sunlight burned the vision of her on the porch into something so crisp, so detailed, it was like the highest resolution macro photography: the contours of her
body below the waist with the ever-so-tight corduroys enameled to her body, the texture of the fabric defining her rump, the plush thighs, the satcheled pubis straining against the material. Her perfect globose breasts in the tissue-thin T-shirt burned in his eyes even more intensely, every detail of each plumpened nipple highlighted by the sun's revealing sheen: the lactiferous nodes stuck out like the first joint of a human index finger, then the graduated areolae prominent as poker chips. The remaining mammarian mass seemed mounted on Gwyneth's chest, perfect orbicular sculptures, painted in pastel-pink. Melvin could've groaned aloud as his penis squirmed, his urethra filling with pre-ejaculant.

  "And it's so quaint," Gwyneth was remarking. "It doesn't matter that it's run-down—it's so solitary! I'll be able to get so much new insight for my art!"

  Melvin chose not to refer to her craftwork as "art"—more like unusual knickknacks—yet he just as quickly elected not to tell her that. Instead, he tore his attention off her breasts like someone pulling hands off them. The house, the house, Melvin kept telling himself. Focus on the house! That's what you're here for!

  "It is pretty nondescript," he finally said.

  She meandered the porch, dreamily waving her arms up and down. "It's an honest house. I can feel its aesthetic verity reaching out for me!"

  Melvin frowned.

  The house was...just a plain old single-story house, probably built in the '50s. New and very white paint made its clapboard seem radiant, and the roof appeared to have been re-shingled recently, plus new shutters and a new door with a square peep-hatch. The door shined in a wild-cherry red. The realty company had clearly gone to efforts in giving the house this bright new face but still...it looked like nothing more than a fixed-up dump that would hardly attract any practical buyers or renters. The house itself sat atop the highest hill in the vicinity, overlooking a stunningly scenic panorama.

  This place is about as haunted as a dog turd, Melvin thought. There was virtually nothing scary about it.

  Gwyneth traipsed back to the Corvette to grab her blue cigarettes and her big brown bottle of Hershey's Chocolate Syrup, the straw sticking out the top. She paused, looking off. "What's that down there?"

  Melvin kept his hands in front of his pants, to conceal the erection. Down the hill, about a mile off, he spied a fenced perimeter full of drab gray buildings like barracks. Melvin remembered what Dirk's brother had said. "It's some kind of a compound. The realtor mentioned it, said it was the only thing other than this house in twenty miles in either direction."

  Gwyneth slurped through her straw. "A compound?"

  "It used to be a ranch or something."

  "Hmm." Then her eyes lit up on something in the yard. "Oh my God! Look!"

  Melvin sighed, watching her rush to the center of the scape of weeds that comprised the front lawn. She squatted, looking down with enthusiasm. She began collecting tiny things off the ground.

  "What is that?" he asked, his nose turned up.

  "Bird bones," she answered. "They're perfect! There's no rot left or anything! Totally clean!"

  Oh, come on... "You mean you're going to make—"

  "Bird bones are great for tracery details," she informed him, intent on picking up the tiny needles.

  Melvin remained intent on her breasts and the way they hung down against the confines of the Lenin T-shirt.

  She looked up at him with an excited grin. "I'll bet there's all kinds of bones out here. Animals that died during the winter, and nobody living here to clean them up?"

  "You're the first person I've ever met who gets excited over dead animal bones."

  "Bones are the ultimate medium for ossarial artwork, and when you find them in the wild like this? Bones of animals that have died naturally? They galvanize the true meaning of the artwork, actually imparting the animal's spirit into the work."

  You're a kook, Melvin thought. You're a nut-cake.

  "Melvin, these bird bones are magnificent; I need to get started right away. Get my things out of the car and take them inside please."

  "Sure." Now I get it. I'm the luggage boy. He shook his head, chuckling. Bird bones for a bird brain. Heavy boxes of veneered mahogany plaques, supplies, and, yes, more bones, filled the Corvette's trunk. Melvin began to haul them out and lug them to the house. Since he wasn't psychic, there would've been no way for him to be made aware of the coincidence: that 28 years ago a 33-year-old man quite similar to him had been lugging film equipment out of the trunk of a Cadillac and trudging it up the same gravel and dirt driveway.

  "Oh, and Leonard?" she called out.

  Melvin frowned at her. "Leonard? Who's Leonard?"

  Her face upturned in the sun appeared confused. "Did I just call you Leonard? I—I guess I did. I don't even know anybody named Leonard. Why on earth would I call you Leonard?"

  Melvin stood in the drive, his back bowed as he cradled heavy boxes. "I have no idea," he replied.

  "Anyway, Melvin. What I was going to say is when you get done carrying my things into the house, you can bring back some Chinese carry-out. I'm sure there's a Chinese restaurant somewhere around here. I'm starving!"

  Not for twenty miles at least, he knew. "Great," he muttered. He nearly waddled back up toward the house.

  "While you're doing that," she added, "I'm going to the front yard for more bones."

  Gwyneth, alas, wouldn't find many animal bones, but she would indeed find one.

  A particularly interesting bone indeed.

  (II)

  The interior of the Vinchetti House had been made-over too, of course, plainly but tidily. New paint, new carpet, modest furniture. Several small bedrooms branched off from the hall off the living room. The living room itself sported still more new but obviously budget-warehouse adornments: a chocolate-and-tan striped couch, K-Mart bookshelves and end tables, a recliner. Above the couch hung a framed print of a pasture rising above plush farmland. It hung crooked and Melvin didn't bother straightening it. A large clean white kitchen occupied the rear wing of the house.

  This house is trying real hard to look nice, he thought, but it's still a dump.

  Gwyneth had claimed the largest bedroom which also would catch the sunrise. Melvin dragged his suitcase into a smaller one. A little bed, a little dresser. It would do. His nose crinkled, though. Did something smell bad? Place hasn't been aired out in a while, he dismissed.

  "Melvin, could you put my work stuff in the third bedroom please?" Gwyneth's cool voice resonated through the walls.

  She's hogging everything, he thought. He'd wanted that room to set up his laptop in, though he still didn't really know what he would write about, nor how he'd begin. It didn't matter. But then she said something else he didn't hear.

  "What's that?" he asked, nudging into her bedroom.

  His heart must've stopped for a few seconds.

  Gwyneth still wore the flesh-clinging Lenin T-shirt, but she'd removed the corduroys, the immaculate white bottom and legs facing Melvin when he stuck his head in.

  "I said," she repeated, "put the kitchen table in there too. I'll need it."

  Melvin's jaw dropped.

  Her back was still to him. She was bending over her opened suitcase on the bed, pulling clothes out. Melvin's eyes held fast to the beautiful little gap at the bottom of the buttocks, traced by dark-blond down ghosting the rear cleft of her vagina.

  "Did you hear me, Melvin?"

  Melvin couldn't speak. In one graceful motion, then, she stood upright, skimmed off the T-shirt, and turned around to look at him. "I'll need that kitchen table to work on. Why don't you drag it in there before you go get our Chinese?"

  Some disconnected aspect of Melvin's consciousness managed to automatically respond "Okay" while his eyes remained helpless on her blaring nakedness. The breasts were like a pair of snow-white flesh-planets floating in the room.

  Gwyneth looked back at him, seeming confused. "Oh, I hope this doesn't bother you," she said and subconsciously ran her hands down her plush sides. "But your fath
er did tell you I go sky-clad most of the time when I'm inside."

  "Sky-clad?"

  "Dressed in the air. Naked. That's what naturism is: acknowledging the natural self. Humans are naked creatures. All nakedness is the epitome of human beauty. It's not sexual at all."

  Melvin's angry erection might debate that claim.

  The bare bosom lifted when she inadvertently ran her fingers back through the golden tousles. Her pubic hair was an ample tuft yet thin at the same time. Melvin's eye could've been a zoom lens cranking down, sharpening every detail to surreal clarity: the shiny downy hair puffed out and all the lambent flesh between each root. The tender pink groove beneath it all made him want to cry.

  "But if it makes you self-conscious, I'd be happy to—"

  "No, no," came his next automatic response. "It doesn't make me self-conscious at all. I'm just...not really...used to..."

  "Of course. But while you're getting dinner, I'm going to look around the grounds."

  "You're going to...be naked...outside?" he asked.