The Gargoyle

XXII.

Keeping a low profile is not easy for a burn survivor at the best of times, but it becomes exponentially harder when he is in a fabric store with a wild-haired woman holding up swaths of white cloth against his chest, measuring out the proper amount for his angel’s robes.

When it came time to pay, I stepped between Marianne Engel and the cashier, thrusting forward my credit card. Funny the sense of independence it inspired, given that payment would ultimately come from one of her accounts anyway. Still, I could live with the illusion.

After we had procured all our costume-making supplies, we ran a rather strange errand to a local bank. Marianne Engel wanted to add my name to the access list for her safety deposit box, and the bank needed a signature sample to complete the request. When I asked her why she wanted it done, she answered simply that it was good to be prepared, for God only knew what the future might bring. I asked whether she was going to give me a key for the safety deposit box. No, she answered, not yet. Who else was on the list? No one.

We went to a coffee shop to drink lattes with no foam, sitting on an outside deck while Marianne Engel educated me on the Icelandic version of Hel. Apparently it is a place not of fire but of ice: while English speakers say that it’s “hot as Hell,” Icelanders say helkuldi, “cold as Hell.” This makes sense: having spent their entire lives hammered down by the frigid climate, how could they fear anything more than an eternal version of the same thing? For the burnt man, might I add, it is particularly attractive that the notion subverts the Judeo-Christian idea that the means of eternal torment must be fire.

That Hell is tailored to the individual is hardly a new idea. It is, in fact, one of the greatest artistic triumphs in Dante’s Inferno: the punishment for every sinner fits his sin. The Souls of the Carnal, who in life were swept away by the gusting fits of their passion, are in death doomed to be carried on the winds of a never-ending tempest. The Souls of the Simoniacs, who in life offended God by abusing the privileges of their holy offices, are doomed to burn upside down in fiery baptismal fonts. The Souls of the Flatterers spend eternity buried in excrement, a reminder of the shit they spoke on Earth.

It made me wonder what my version of Hell-if I believed in such a thing, that is-would be like. Would I be doomed to burn forever, trapped inside my car? Or would Hell be a never-ending stint on the dйbridement table? Or would it be the discovery that when I was finally able to love, it was already too late?

As I contemplated this, I spotted one of my secret fraternity coming down the street. It was a strange feeling, the first time that I’d seen another burn survivor in public, and one whom I knew, no less: Lance Whitmore, the man who’d given the inspirational talk at the hospital. He came directly to us and asked whether we’d met before. I couldn’t blame him for not recognizing me, because not only had the contours of my face changed while healing, they were also hidden behind my plastic mask.

“It’s nice to see one of us out in the daylight,” he said. “It’s not that we’re ghosts, exactly, but we do a pretty good job of not being seen.”

We made small talk for perhaps ten minutes and it never seemed to bother Lance that we drew curious stares from nearly everyone who walked past us. I don’t doubt that he noticed, but I admired the way he could pretend he didn’t.

I was in a white robe and my wings were made of stockings stretched over coat hangers, trimmed with silver tinsel. Marianne Engel adjusted my halo (pipe cleaners, painted gold) before rolling up my angelic sleeve to administer a shot of morphine, which flowed through me like the slightly curdled milk of human kindness. Bougatsa ran around nipping at our heels, and I wondered how the brain of a dog might process such a scene.

She was also dressed in a robe-or, more accurately, a dress that hung and bunched so loosely that it looked like a robe. Her hair was somehow even wilder than usual, despite being tied with a band that encircled her temples and came together in a knot on her forehead. A wide tail of fabric escaped her curls and cascaded down her back. She gathered this excess material into the crook of her elbow, letting it drape over her forearm as a waiter might hold a napkin. In her other hand she held an old-fashioned lantern, without oil, and around her left ankle-the one with the rosary tattoo-was a circle of leaves. She explained that it was to represent the laurel crown that should be on the ground at her feet, because a real one would impede her movement around the dance floor. I asked her who she was.

“One of the Foolish Virgins,” she answered.

The party was at the oldest, most expensive hotel in town. A doorman with top hat opened the taxi door and took Marianne Engel by the hand. He bowed deeply, before looking at me quizzically as if trying to understand how my burn makeup could be so convincing. “Are you to be Lucifer, sir?”

“Excuse me?”

“The only fallen angel I know, sir.” He bowed curtly. “Well done. Might I add the voice is an excellent touch?”

As we entered the lobby, Marianne Engel took my arm. The lights were low, and dark streamers fell from the ceiling. Spider webs clung to the room corners and dozens of black cats patrolled the place. (I wondered where they got so many; did they raid an animal shelter?) Guests were gathering in the main ballroom. There were half a dozen skeletons moving about, jangling their painted white bones on black leotards. Marie Antoinette, with powdered wig and plunging dйcolletй, was talking to Lady Godiva, whose long blond hair fell over a flesh bodysuit. A Canadian Mountie was having a whiskey with Al Capone. A woman dressed as a giant queen carrot, waving a vegetable scepter, stood beside her boyfriend the rabbit. A drunken Albert Einstein was arguing with a sober Jim Morrison and, in a far corner, two devils were comparing tails. A waiter glided by with a silver tray and Marianne Engel deftly plucked a martini glass, taking a gulp before kissing me on my maskcheek.

We found a table covered with a bloodred tablecloth, on which a candle stuck out of a collection of glass eyeballs. We sat together: on Marianne Engel’s outer side was a man dressed as a rubber duck and on my outer side was a sexy policewoman.

It did not take long before I understood that Halloween would now be my favorite holiday. When the policewoman complimented my costume, I made up a story about how “in real life” I was an English teacher at a local high school. After Marianne Engel downed her third martini-interesting, in that she rarely drank alcohol-she dragged me onto the floor. She knew that I was secretly dying to dance with her; I wasn’t exercising so diligently with Sayuri so I could spend my life as a wallflower.

The band struck up a waltz, and Marianne Engel drew herself to her full height and gathered me in her stonecutter’s arms. She looked intently into my eyes and, for just a moment, I felt as if the sea were rushing up to meet me. I don’t know how long we stood motionless before she launched us into the lilt of the music. I needed only to follow; she seemed to have an intuitive sense about the strength of my body. Never once did I worry about pushing my weaker knee beyond its limits as we spun in wonderful circles among the Romeos and the Juliets, near the Esmeraldas and Quasimodi, past the Umas and Travoltas. Marianne Engel’s eyes were directly upon mine, at all times, and the other dancers in the room faded into a spin of unimportant background colors.

This went on, I don’t know how long, and it would have continued longer if my gaze had not caught, out of the corner of my eye, a most interesting couple. At first, I thought my mind was playing tricks and I told myself that they could not really be there. They disappeared when Marianne Engel spun me in a half circle, and I fully expected they would be gone on the next turn. But they weren’t.

I couldn’t deny it this time: there was a Japanese woman in religious robes whose shaved head contrasted sharply with the red hair of the Viking with whom she was dancing. She was so graceful and he was so lumbering that it was like watching a sparrow ride on a bull’s horns. Her mouth was held resolutely shut as his scabbard clanged awkwardly against her hip and when she readjusted her arm for a better position on his waist, some dirt fell from the folds of her sleeve.

Marianne Engel swung me around again and by the time we swiveled back to our original position, the couple was gone. “Did you see them?”

“See who?” she asked.

Just then, I saw a different couple. This time the woman was wearing Victorian clothing but it was practical, like something that would be worn not for dancing but for farming. It was not an outfit that would normally rate a second look at a costume party-except that it was drenched: water dripped from it onto the floor, pooling beneath her. The man looked jovial despite the wetness of this woman in his arms, not seeming to mind in the least. He wore a leather smock and had big arms and a bigger gut. She was smiling politely as he talked, but kept glancing over his shoulder as if looking for someone else. We were just close enough that I could tell that he was speaking in Italian and that she was answering in English. “Tom? I don’t know…”

Marianne Engel tried to spin me again, but I pulled free. My eyes left the couple for only a moment but that was long enough for them to disappear. I looked wildly around the crowd for any trace of them, but there was nothing.

I returned to the area where the Victorian woman’s dress had been dripping. But the floor was dry. I searched the floor for the dirt that had fallen from the Japanese woman’s sleeve. But the floor was clean. I was on my knees, sweeping my hands over the floor, and the other dancers parted around me as if I were mad. I crawled around, searching for anything but finding nothing. Marianne Engel leaned down to whisper in my ear. “What are you looking for?”

“You saw them. Didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The ghosts!”

“Oh. Ghosts.” She giggled. “You can’t fixate on them, you know. It’s like trying to catch slippery eels by the tail. Just when you think you’ve got them, they get away from you.”

We stayed for another few hours, but I spent all my time looking for phantoms. I knew that I had seen an impossible thing: it was not a trick of my mind. I had seen them. YOU’RE AS CRAZY AS SHE IS. Fuck you, snake. I’m going to douse you with so much morphine it’ll make you want to shed your skin early.

When we arrived home, Marianne Engel served tea in an effort to calm me. When that didn’t work, she decided to continue telling me our story. Perhaps knowing whether or not we got married, she said, would make me feel better.