999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [101]
She squeezed my arm. “Good, then you’ll come with me to the opening of the new exhibition.”
I licked my lips. “First, I need a drink.”
She went to an antique sideboard, poured a liquid into a squat glass of cut-crystal, and brought it back to me. I put the glass to my lips. My nostrils flared at the scent of mescal, and I threw my head back, downing it in one long swallow.
“That’s always helped before, hasn’t it,” she said as I put the empty glass aside.
Normally, I’d be pissed as hell at that kind of comment, but Vav had a way of speaking that held no judgment. It was as if she were simply holding up for me to examine a facet of my life. It was entirely up to me what I thought of it.
“It certainly has its place,” I said as we walked across the apartment’s living room. I got a brief impression of deep-cream-colored walls, a long Deco-style sofa, a couple of Art Nouveau lamps, all of which seemed to have been put there with a minimum of thought. Then there was the antique Oriental carpet on which was curled a black cat with a single white spot in the center of its forehead. The cat awoke as we passed, its luminous citrine eyes following us as Vav led me out the front door.
At the bottom of a well-worn stone staircase, we found ourselves in a high, musty vestibule typical of Parisian apartment buildings. It smelled of stone softened by the dampness of the ages. A light came on as we entered, then winked out as we departed.
Mist borne like a flock of birds on the evening wind fluttered in gossamer veils past the iron streetlights. We began to walk east, into the night.
“The gallery is only a few blocks away,” Vav said.
“Listen, I can see for myself I’m in Paris, but how the hell did I get here?”
We came to a curb and crossed the street on a fairly steep upgrade. “Which explanation would satisfy you?” she said. “The scientific, the metaphysical or the paranormal?”
“Which one is the truth?”
“Oh, I imagine they’re all equally true … or false. It all depends on your particular point of view.”
I shook my head in frustration. “But that’s just it, you see. I don’t have a point of view. To do so I would have to understand what is happening, and I don’t.”
She nodded, thinking through every word I said. “Perhaps it’s only because you aren’t ready yet to hear what I’m saying. In the same way you aren’t ready to see the paintings.”
As we turned left, then left again, past the Art Nouveau entrance to the Anvers Métro station, I curiously found my mind wandering backward in time. I saw with astonishing clarity my mother’s face. She had been a handsome woman, powerful in many ways, weak and frightened in others. In her dealings with other people, for instance, she was rock solid and extremely forceful. Once I’d seen her wrangle the price of a Rolex watch down a hundred dollars by telling the shop owner she had nine sons (instead of the two she really did have), all of whom would one day require graduation presents just like this watch she’d picked out for me. I remember having to keep my eyes cast down lest I giggle into the shop owner’s greedy face. Outside, the Rolex encircling my right wrist, my mother and I had laughed until we cried. That moment still reverberated inside me, though she was long gone.
On the other hand, my mother was riddled with fear and superstition, especially when it came to her children. Her own father, whom she had adored, had died when she was only fourteen. She once told me that when I was born she was consumed with all the terrible things that could happen to me: disease, accidents, being gulled by the evil people she imagined on all sides. She did not want me taken prematurely from her as her father had been. She dreamed of him, of seeing him asleep in his chair at night, in shirt and vest, carpet slippers on his feet, his gold pocket watch lying open in the palm of his hand, as if he needed its weight