The House Page 20

  "No, Dad. You don't," Melvin guaranteed.

  "Let me take a shot, then. Gwyneth got bored up at the house so she drove out to the nearest bar, hooked up with a guy, and made some whoopie. Am I right?"

  Melvin gave that one some thought. Well, she injected heroin into her breast, had sex with over a dozen bikers, and right now she's got a prostitute's foot up her ass and she's eating shit. Does that go a bit beyond the definition of "making whoopie?" I'd say so. But before Melvin could actually respond, his father piped right back in:

  "I should have told you in advance, but Gwyneth and I have what's called an ‘open' marriage. It's only practical in this day and age, son. We agreed that we'd be able to see other people on the side, to follow our natural instinct. If I want to fool around, I can, and if she wants to fool around, she can."

  "She's fooling around bigtime right now, Dad," Melvin nearly choked.

  "And that's perfectly fine with me. Hey, your old man gets some sideline nookie, too, you know. And it's all kosher, so don't you worry about it. Look, son, I'm at this conference and I've got to give a lecture right now, so I'll talk to you soon, okay? Have fun up there!"

  click

  Melvin put his phone away, dismayed. He didn't know what to think.

  He jumped when someone tapped on the window. He expected to see a biker standing there but to his relief, it was Squirrelly, not looking happy.

  "Shit, man, it's a fuckin' mad house in there. Some slutty rich chick with big tits just pulled a train on the whole room, man. You'd think a fuckin' stripper just walked into a rest home for old men the way those animals are carryin' on. Big tit bitch, I'd like to slap the shit out her, man."

  "Oh," was all Melvin could say.

  Her chipmunk face was creased with indignation. "Then you know what the sick fucks made me do? Had me take a fuckin' shit on the pool table and stick my foot up the bitch's ass, and then she ate my shit! No lie!"

  "I, uh, oh," Melvin said.

  She held her flip-flopped foot up, streaked brown. "Look at that, man. I got the bitch's shit on my foot!"

  "Uh, sorry," Melvin said.

  "Hey, can I have that pizza you said you'd get me?"

  "Sure," Melvin said. He passed the box out the window. "Uh, have a good, uh, day," he finished, then pulled out of the lot and drove away.

  (III)

  Disillusioned, dejected, and aghast, Melvin drove back to the Vinchetti house and immediately took a nap. He awoke in fits, chased by sour dreams he instantly forgot—an instance he was very grateful for—and once he awoke with a numb, pulsing erection. Melvin, as usual, masturbated with a fury, contorting into laughable shapes, and the fuel for the necessary imagery was again provided by Gwyneth.

  And violence.

  Rap Daddy M. made the scene, laying more hefty pimp-hand across Gwyneth's angel face. Uh-huh, he stepped it out. "I own dis hood, bitch, and I own you!"

  Then Melvin ejaculated on his stomach in grand style.

  He slept again, struggling to push away less welcome images: Gwyneth's chicanery in the tavern. I didn't even know it was possible for a human anus to admit a human foot, he thought, but, lo, it was, the proof all too detailed in his memory. Then an even more demented thought: I wonder what Squirrelly's...poop...tasted like... A few minutes after he finally fell into a decent state of slumber, a cacophonic staccato-burst voice exploded through his mind: "—that's right, be there or be square and speaking of square, that last cut was ‘Square-Headed People,' off the brand-new solo album by Steppenwolf's lead throat, John—that's right!—John Kay, and up next—you heard it here first because the Sauce Boss knows what's best for you, that's right, I predicted this tune would make the charts and here it is, number twelve this week on the billboard, ‘Evil Woman,' by Crrrrrrrrooooooooooooow...," and then a discordant yet eerily melodic hard rock song ground between Melvin's ears, "Black cats lay atop your satin bed, you sure wish that you could see me dead. Evil woman don't play your games with me..."

  Melvin snapped awake and jerked up, staring hard into space. He whipped his head back and forth as if there was some way to actually look for sound, in which case all he wound up seeing was...silence.

  Man...

  He got up, splashed water on his face and without much conscious thought found himself meandering in the back yard. In the back of the horse stable he discovered a storage room containing what appeared to be some very old photographic equipment: spotlights, empty film magazines, a reel-to-reel film editor. Leonard D'arava made pornographic movies for the mob, he knew, and this must be some of his equipment. Hair on the back of Melvin's neck stood up when he considered the exact nature of these films. What had Squirrelly said?

  ...that place was a snuff-house, but they also made scats and wet-flicks, nek-flicks, and a whole motherfuckin' shitload of fuckin' animal movies, man. Dogs, goats, horses... Pigs.

  "It's a sick, sick world," he muttered to himself and left.

  Next he found himself looking down into the hole Gwyneth had dug near the dog pens. The hole was considerably deep; it must have taken quite a bit of physical effort on Gwyneth's part. That really is bizarre, Melvin realized. What would compel her to dig right there? What would compel her to dig at all?

  He picked up the shovel and fished around, then shuddered when he remembered still more of Squirrelly's words:

  That place is a fuckin' graveyard, man! It was a body-dump for the mob!

  Melvin dropped the shovel by the mound of earth, and took long strides back into the house. Gwyneth found a pig skull in that hole. God knows what else is in it...

  Next, he puttered around in Gwyneth's work room and saw that she had indeed smashed most of the pig skull into dime-sized fragments with the hammer. In the corner of the table lay the plaque she'd been working on. Melvin's eyes narrowed as he bent to inspect it.

  Hmmmm...

  The shield-shaped cutting of mahogany had now been meticulously fitted with the bone fragments to conform to the shape of a cross. The pieces had been lain into some kind of resin which had hardened clear as glass, and around the cruciform configuration, much tinier bones—the bird bones she'd found when they'd arrived—had been just as meticulously arrayed about the center crux, to a fascinating effect that resembled a halo. Melvin stared harder, amazed. Something about the way she'd arranged and set the piece made the plaque seem multi-dimensional, the bone-white of the fragments hovered over the fudge-brown wood, and when he stepped back to re-view it from a distance, the effect was trebled.

  Well... I'll be, he thought.

  The piece was stunning, beautiful. In fact, Melvin had never seen anything like it. What he had seen of her other work seemed mediocre, or downright hackneyed. But this?

  I hate to say it but I'm impressed, he admitted. It was an utterly unique piece of artwork and proof of exemplary craftsmanship. With talent like that, Gwyneth could indeed make money with such wares, not that she needed to now, not married to a millionaire.

  Before he left the room, an impulse caused him to take another look at the plaque. The pieces of the mosaic seemed to focus a clarity that maximized the more one looked at it, an optical puzzle which shifted between blinks.

  Was it jealousy that urged Melvin to smirk now? The quality of Gwyneth's talent proved that she was more than a frivolous ditz. She possessed considerable skills that Melvin had overlooked. But I've got some skills too! he insisted. Maybe I don't write for a very good paper, but I AM a good journalist!

  He spent the next several hours in the converted pantry but those hours flew by. He started off with a bit of history, followed with incremental exposition, then cited witness accounts. This is going great! he thought a while later. All of a sudden, the spurious article he was being forced to manufacture was demonstrating some craft of his own. Dirk will love it...

  Melvin's journalistic jubilation carried him through another hour, then another. Then—

  He heard the front door barge open; Gwyneth stumbled in.

  I guess
the party's over, Melvin thought.

  "Where are you—oh," she slurred, standing unevenly in the pantry doorway.

  "Hi, Gwyneth," Melvin said. It was hard not to shake his head. "How was your day?"

  "I—I...don't remember, I guess." She almost fell over when she rubbed her face. It was no surprise to Melvin that she looked an absolute mess, hair askew like a handful of hay, tight lavender top crooked and pocked with flinty smudges, and her jeans...

  Oh, that's priceless! Melvin thought in a revel. "I hate to tell you this, Gwyneth, but those designer jeans you're wearing? You've got them on backwards."

  "I do not," she droned, then stared down at herself for a good 30 seconds. "How did I..." She rubbed her face again.

  "Where'd you go?" He stared up for the answer. "You look pretty messed up. Did you, by chance, maybe, go to a bar?"

  Her fingers opened over her face, bloodshot eyes peeking through. "A...bar? I...don't know but I think maybe I did. Why don't I remember? I'm usually not forgetful." The words continued to pour out in a slow, dreadful slur. "Could I have dreamed it? I remember, earlier today, when you left to get lunch... I finished the plaque, and-and-and— I don't remember anything after that."

  "Interesting," Melvin remarked. "I'm sure it'll come to you."

  She brought her hand to her forehead and moaned, "And, God, I feel so woozy. I don't understand why."

  Well, Melvin thought in delighted sarcasm, I'm not a clinician, but do you think that the mainline of heroin in your TIT might have something to do with it?

  She stammered on, "And-and-and—yuck! I've got the worst taste in my mouth..."

  Might that be—oh, I don't know but let me take a wild guess—the prostitute feces you were eating earlier?

  She turned in the doorway, taking very small, calculated steps. "I have to go lie down."

  "Good idea."

  She clacked her teeth together at an obvious stab of pain when she took one step forward. Her back stiffened, and she brought a hand back to her buttocks. "Oh, God!"

  "What's wrong, Gwyneth?"

  "I— Oh! What is that?"

  "What is what, Gwyneth?'

  "It hurts so much..."

  "What?"

  "I—" She shook her head as if in some arcane resistence. "I can't tell you."

  "Sure you can," Melvin insisted.

  "It's private."

  "Tell me."

  "No! I don't even know..."

  Melvin had to toy along. "Gwyneth, you're in obvious pain. Tell me what's wrong. Where does it hurt?"

  Finally she sighed and simply gave up. "If you must know, Melvin, my asshole hurts real bad and I don't know why!"

  I do, Melvin thought.

  (IV)

  Well past sundown, Melvin called it a day as far as the article went. He felt coolly satisfied with the work. He microwaved a few slices of pizza, then went to Gwyneth's bedroom to look in on her.

  Jeez...

  She lay atop the bed like a ledgejumper on a sidewalk, limbs oddly angled, neck crooked, hair in a tousled mop across her face. To his amusement he quickly recognized that she'd obviously passed out in the middle of an attempt to take her backwards jeans off; they'd been pulled halfway down, their butt at the front of her thighs. It was a mortician's ultimate masturbatory fantasy: the intact yet outrageously sexy suicide victim spraddled on the bed after ingesting a bottle of valium. Still warm, still soft, breasts full, and—well, not an expository term but none other would do for such a passage—her pussy still plump, perfect, and gorgeous and in some otherwordly way begging to be derricked by a hard cock one last time before the inevitable redeposition into a casket. Was Melvin The Mortician's penis up to the task?

  Of course not. I can't have sex with my father's wife while she's unconscious! But it was a hearty thought nonetheless, and he took the vivid fantasy with him, to the bathroom, where he masturbated in grand style, ejaculating on the same pair of noon-blue Victoria's Secret panties he'd drained his vesicles on earlier.

  THUNK!

  Melvin turned with a start, pants still at his knees. What was that? Something solid had hit the floor. At first he thought Gwyneth might have fallen out of the bed but the sound...

  Came from the living room, he realized, not the bedroom.

  It was with more than a titter of fear that Melvin moved out of the bathroom and slowly peeked around into the living room.

  Oh, jeez, that's all it is!

  The cheap pastoral print hanging over the couch had fallen down. It didn't even have glass over it, so nothing had broken. He picked it right up ro re-hang it but then discerned the cause: the weight of the frame had pulled the nail out of the wall, and now the print, complete with "faux" brushstrokes, couldn't be put back up. I'll have to get another nail...tomorrow, he decided. He set the print face-out on the couch, but then caught himself staring at it: the pasture in the sweeping green valley. Then he glanced up at the wall and saw the hole in the sheetrock that the print had been covering.

  He remembered feeling ill at ease last night when he'd first discovered it, right after the bizarre dream he'd had, the dreams populated by ghosts of what his imagination had turned into Leonard D'arava and his two skeletal cohorts. Next, he remembered...

  That smell.

  An unpleasant odor had drifted from the hole. He squinted. Did I dream that or was it real? His mind felt wiped out after working on the article most of the day. He couldn't recall so he leaned forward and sniffed the hole—

  Ho-boy!

  No, the dirty stink had not been dreamed, that was for sure. Must be a dead animal in the wall. A mouse or something. And guess what? I don't care.

  But a second later something glimmered in the carpet. Melvin picked it up: the nail.

  "Might as well rehang it now," he grumbled aloud. But he'd need a hammer.

  Gwyneth has one in her workroom.

  He loped to the room, switched on the light, but didn't see the hammer anywhere. It was here earlier, on the table. He felt sure. All that remained there now, though, was the completed plaque along with a scattering of unused bone fragments.

  Hmmm.

  Would she have taken it into the bedroom? There was no logical reason for her to have done so but...Gwyneth was probably significantly less than a well of logic right now with biker heroin in her blood.

  He looked back in her bedroom and saw she wasn't there.

  Where on earth could she have gone? She was out cold less than ten minutes ago...

  "Gwyneth? Where did you go? I need the—"

  BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

  When Melvin rushed to the living room, his jaw dropped.

  Gwyneth, jeans still backwards and down past her butt, was—

  BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

  —turning the small hole above the couch into a great big hole that was running toward the floor.

  "What are you doing!" Melvin shrieked so loud his voice went hoarse.

  She wielded the hammer with a wild precision, knocking out more divets of plaster.

  Outraged, Melvin snatched the hammer away, threw it to the couch, then grabbed Gwyneth by the shoulders and shook her hard—one of the most aggressive acts of his life.

  "Are you insane?" he bellowed into her face. The tiniest speck of pepperoni stuck to her cheek. "You just destroyed the living room wall!"

  Gwyneth wobbled on her feet. She looked at Melvin as if trying to focus on an eye chart. "There's...evil in the wall," she droned.

  "No, Gwyneth, there isn't evil in the wall! There's plaster in the wall, and you just knocked a whole lot of it out! Now I'm going to have to fix that! My boss's brother owns this house!"

  "Where's the bucket from my dream? Pam and Tom own a football team." She blinked glassily. "Hey, that rhymes!"

  "You're out of your mind!"

  "The weather!" she blurted, then pointed at him like a gun. "The leather!"

  "What!"

  "Gee, that's a swell map..."

 
Melvin checked his temper for a moment. Of course she's delirious and not making sense. She's on drugs. "Stay right there!" he ordered. "I'm getting my cell phone to call Dad."

  Melvin hadn't even made it back to the kitchen before—

  BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

  —Gwyneth was at it again with the hammer. Melvin tackled her this time, wrestled her to the couch, and now his aggression took on another aspect quite rare in him: profanity. Melvin almost never cussed; in fact, it took quite a bit of active anxiety to cause him to do so. Cursing was uncivilized; it was the way rednecks spoke, and plebeians and other low-lifes. Bad language proved an affront to Melvin's intelligence and refinement.

  Fuck!

  Anyway, his even more rare spate of anger caused him to completely abandon this tenet of sophistication, and he yelled in her face: "What kind of a fuckin' moronic ditz are you? You ridiculous, preposterous ASSHOLE! Did you see what you did to that WALL?"

  Gwyneth's eyes rolled up at the wall, and she giggled.

  This is how mad Melvin was: at the moment, his legs were wrapped around Gwyneth's hips, her bare stomach and pubic hair pressed against him...and he wasn't the least bit aroused. Women! he thought. Are they all this insane? Dad really picked himself a winner!