Evening, 30 April

Henri turned away from the mirror and went to the kitchen. He stared in the ice box for a time, and at last took out some cheese. He ate his cheese with some bread and had a glass of wine. It was all he'd eaten all day. It made him feel less shaky.

Henri went back to his desk and stared down at the papers. He arranged them so that the ones he thought he might be able to make sense of were on top.

So the Anya of the poem was someone or something the Swami had been looking for when he went to the library-like place--was that description that of the library? Henri paused. When had he decided that the repository of his dream was real, that Ramanuja could go there just as Henri did? Henri sighed. He wanted very much to not be alone right now. He glanced at the clock. 11 pm. Too late to politely phone any of his ladies, even for an evening romp. 

Henri pushed back from his desk, and went to his room. He put on his evening suit, boiled shirt front with his ruby studs, and white tie. In the parlor he put on his gloves and coat then went out into the night. He would go out to a club, listen to some jazz, ask some ladies to dance, drink a little 'tea' and feel much better for it.

Evening, 29 April

When he arrived home, Henri was surprised to find the Swami's notes still clutched in his left hand. He put them on his desk. Henri carefully fed Pierre and changed his water and made sure his straw looked fresh enough. Henri's legs felt rubbery and his arms trembled with weariness. He wasn't sure how much of these feelings were physical and  how much he imagined because of his experience.

He took off his jacket and his collar, tossing the celluloid collar away and hanging the jacket on the back of a chair. The shoulders wouldn't lay right, he knew. He should hang it, but he could not make himself care. He lay down on his made bed and stared at the ceiling.

He turned the experience over in his mind. Could it have been real? Could Peter the doppelgänger actually be another person and not some horrible Freudian version of himself? In retrospect, Peter had not really looked that much like Henri. The similarities were superficial: blond hair worn slicked back with pomade, blue eyes, a narrow face... If it had been real these things could all be coincidence. He would not have been struck by such a person if he'd met him on the street. The hair was simple and fashionable in style and the man's clothes were so unremarkable as to be nearly remarkable again. Peter could be someone not a product of a drugged imagination.

He could. Did that mean he was? 

Henri pinched the bridge of his nose. He could worry about it all night, chasing himself (ha!) in circles. Nothing could prove or disprove what he had seen was imagination. He shuddered, thinking again of the horrible, cyclopean thing in the cloak. He had to stop thinking about it, had to get some sleep. He had clients in the morning.

He put his mind to thinking about his ladies, and how he would dress them. It helped him sleep, though the back of his mind still worried and fussed and hoped he would not have nightmares.

April 29

Henri woke feeling queasy and strangely tense. Fractured images of his strange nightmare kept nagging at his attention, but not making themselves clear. He shaved carefully with shaky hands, checked and on Pierre. He put some fresh water and alfalfa in the cage and then went back inside.

Henri dressed carefully, charcoal suit suitable for a hospital visit, primrose tie and orchid colored shirt, peach pocket square. He tucked pearl grey kid gloves in his pocket. The ritual of dressing calmed him as always. He smoothed his hair back with lilac-scented pomade and went downstairs to await the others.

April 25

Henri set the phone in its cradle. Were all police like Delaney or was he special somehow, a perfect blend of man and bulldog? He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he went over to the shirt-front box he'd set on the floor. Pierre looked well enough in his shredded paper. Henri refreshed his dish of water and gave him some more leaves of lettuce and a tomato. He didn't know if rabbits ate tomatoes, but he was low on fresh vegetables at the moment.

First he'd phone his usual handyman to have the fellow come round and build a hutch on the balcony, then he'd go shopping for something suitable for breakfast for both him and Pierre. An extra dollar a week should keep the cleaning lady from getting too upset over cleaning the cage. After breakfast he could go down and open the shop.

He had three appointments that afternoon, pert little Mary R., elegant Daphne S. and old, fat, but rich Hannah W. As always he chatted with them easily, dressed them beautifully, and entertained them entirely. However this time he also probed delicately for information. He wasn't sure if the news was public about M. Whitcombe's death, so he couldn't start conversation sighing about that tragedy and he refused to use Millie's death similarly. That left asking his ladies about parties and other functions they'd attended and getting to M. Whitcombe (and hopefully her swami) that way.

That evening, after looking over his new hutch and--satisfied--settling Pierre into it, Henri went to the library. He was most interested in locating any of the books or essays mentioned in the ashen scraps and trying to find out what the referred to 'planks' might be. He also wanted to look at some history of clothing books and see if anything similar in shape and form to the skin hat had been worn in the past.

After the Show

After the show, Henri went home. He felt restless, unnerved by the night's events. He examined his gloves for any stains or marks, a ritual he always observed after a night out. He decided they needed to be cleaned and set them aside.

He had spoken lightly with the photographer--Jones--and young Miss Predoviciu, but only to calm his own nerves. Whatever he'd seen, whatever it had meant, he wanted not to think about it, and yet could only think about it. He forced himself to pay attention to his clothes, not the whirring of his mind.

He put away his evening cape and undressed, brushing his clothes carefully before putting away his evening jacket and pants. He examined his boiled shirtfront and decided a new one was in order and tossed it in the waste can with his collar. he put his sapphire shirt studs and cufflinks as well as his pocket watch and chain away in his jewel case and locked it. After pulling a robe on over his undergarments he went downstairs into the shop and put his jewel case in the safe.

Henri paced for a time once he was back upstairs and at last decided he'd worked off enough nervous energy to sleep. But he was wrong. He lay in the dark and dozed and woke over and over. Fragments of dreams came and went, unsettling in their vagueness, yet also strangely specific.

Every dream was full of singing, but not singing, but rather chanting, like some religious ritual. There was a nurse who was more than she seemed in both volume and number but he couldn't explain even to himself what that meant, as though he had understood it but forgotten it at the same moment. And there was the chanting. There was a room, a destination, like a church but not a church, a place of making, a place he had been trying to reach. And there was the chanting. There was a woman, a beautiful woman, a terrible woman, a helpless woman of great power. Did he love her? Surely not. Did she love him? He didn't think so. Yet she was his somehow, like a gift, like an animal, like a meal, or was he the meal? And there was the chanting. There were kings, like the wise men, come to see him, come to belong to him. A multitude of people to be his, in this place that was like a church--the same room as before?--that was also his. And there was the chanting. And he was chanting too but he could not hear the sound of his own voice.

Henri woke up with the muscles of his throat taut, as though he were trying to cry out but could not. He lay panting in sheets damp with his sweat. When he finally could, he sat up and pushed his hair out of his face. He felt exhausted physically and mentally, as if he had not slept at all.

He stood and went to the bathroom and stared at his reflection. He hadn't looked like this since he'd been living on army food. His skin looked grey, his blond hair lank. He brushed his teeth and took a shower.

"That's what I get," he thought, "for going to creepy shows after already drinking champagne. Nightmares."

He ate some toast for breakfast. Then came the all important ritual of dressing Today a pale grey suit, sky blue shirt and a tie of the most perfect orchid-colored silk. He chose a turquoise handkerchief for his breast pocket and went downstairs to the shop. 

Henri got his plain gold cufflinks and his favorite wrist-watch from his jewel case and then went to his appointment book.

Martha V. this morning. Another nightmare! Charming girl, but with such an unfashionable figure. Nothing and no one could make Martha look svelte and boyish. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He would get the daffodil peau de soie and the apple green charmeuse and see how each of those would look on her. If neither suited he would have to design something specially.

M. Henri was pleasantly surprised at how easily his appointment with Martha V. went. Despite her very feminine figure, both dresses suited her admirably and she purchased them both. Each would only require moderate alterations from him to hang properly over her unfashionable bosom. She also ordered an evening dress and left it to Henri's discretion as to style and color. He loved when his ladies trusted him so well. Best of all, she mentioned that everyone was saying Anita S. was probably having an affair with her doctor.

M. Henri was mulling over this last bit of news when the door of the shop opened.