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.
27 comments:
Thelonius enters the shop, pausing to wipe at his nose as he is assaulted by the scent of an expensive French perfume. The man is apparently wearing the same rumpled suit from the previous evening, but this morning he smells faintly of acetone and other chemical preparations.
"Is Mr. Dumonde in?" He asks of the first employee who bothers to make eye contact.
"Tell him it is Mr. Jones, from the Theater last evening."
M. Henri glanced up as the Maggie, the stockroom girl, cleared her throat.
"Sorry, Monsieur. I thought the shop was empty. I was bringing out that orange--"
"Coral," Henri interrupted curtly.
"That coral silk you asked and there's a man in the shop a Mr. Jones. Sorry he saw me, Monsieur."
Henri stood, waving off her apology. The mousy creature was bad for business when the ladies saw her. Mr. Jones was not likely to be buying any gowns, though the image amused.
M. Henri went to the front of the shop.
"Mr. Jones, how merveilleux. Come to one of the dressing rooms. There is a place to sit and Maggie will bring coffee."
And no potential customers will see that suit, Henri thought.
Henri led Mr. Jones into a dressing room where he looked as out of place as a penguin in the desert amongst the hanging pink silks and long mirrors.
"Something intéressant?" he asked eagerly while offering a tufted silk bench for Mr. Jones to seat himself.
Thelonius takes a seat on the bench, "Why don't you have a look for yourself. Tell me what you think of these."
He hands Henri a large manilla envelope bulging with photographs.
"They are in chronological order. Please, I'm curious as to what you make of them."
He leaned forward, resting his chin in in his hands as he watched Henri review the photographs.
Henri settled himself on the little pink ottoman and started going through the photographs.
"You have quite the eye, mon ami," he murmured as he did. "Perhaps one day you make take pictures of my gowns for the publicité. I think you are very--"
Henri stopped and drew in a sharp breath. His narrow face went pale.
"What is that? What on God's green earth is that?" he gasped.
He held up a photograph--one from more than halfway through the stack--with shaking fingers to look at it more closely. One of his hands went up to his throat, hovered over the knot in his tie.
He looked up, face still pale. He held out the photograph to Mr. Jones.
"What is that?" he asked, as plaintively as a child, obviously hoping for some reassuring answer.
(Henri holds out photograph 5 from series 2, where the anomaly is in Cati's skirts.)
Thelonius simply stared back at Henri, watching the man's eyes rather than the photograph.
"I was hoping you could tell me that. I first thought it was simply folds in the fabric of the dress, but now I am not sure."
He rustled through the stack of photos, pulling out the one from 1:3.
"What do you think about this one? Is that anyone you recognize?"
Henri looks at this new photograph. His color is coming back a little and he seems composed.
"Non," he says, shaking his head. "I do not know this person. How did that face happen? Is it the exposition double? I do not know how to say it in English. The picture taken twice? Or is it like the other one?"
A taxi pulled up outside the shop, and Cati stepped out. After a few quick puffs on a thin cigarette, she dropped it on the sidewalk and went into Henri's shop.
Seeing that the place appeared to be empty, she said, "Mr. Dumonde? Anyone in?"
Henri glanced up at the sound of the voice in the main part of the shop.
"Pardonnez-moi, M. Jones," he said quickly. He went to the door of the dressing room and saw the young lady from the night before.
"Ah, Mlle. Predoviciu. It is good to see you. Come. M. Jones is here with the photographs. Some are very affreux indeed. You will want to look, non?"
He opened the door a bit wider to allow her to pass into the dressing room.
Cati stopped before she went into the dressing room, put her hand on Henri's arm, and said quietly to him, "I'm so sorry about your friend. It was such an unfortunate accident. Too bad the Rama-swami had to be right about that one."
Thelonius stood at Caiti entered, "Miss Predoviciu, hello."
He awkwardly held out the sheaf of photographs to her.
He commented to Henri and Cati, "No...there are no double exposures. I don't know how those images got there. I was hoping one of you would recognize something."
He scratched at his chin before continuing, "Something unfortunate has happened? Something that you are connecting to the Swami's predictions?"
"Pardon?" Henri looked at her quizzically. "What do you mean? I do not understand."
Cati took the photos from Jones, as she looked at disbelief at Henri. "You didn't hear? I was sure someone would have told you. Your friend — the woman you were with last night — was in a terrible cab accident last night. We — Emma and I — saw her after the show. I'm so sorry to have to be the one to tell you, Mr. Dumonde."
She looked at Jones and went on, "It was just like that swami said. Didn't he say someone was going to die?"
"Millie?" he asked, shocked. Henri sat down hard on the pink ottoman. "No. No one told me. I am only her dressmaker. No one would think to tell me."
He put his face in his hands.
"Poor Millie," he said, muffled by his palms.
"Um," Cati said, a little uncomfortably. She lifted the photographs to take a better look at them.
"Oh!" she exclaimed and looked at Thelonius again. "There's a face in Mags' dress! How'd you do that? Is this the real McCoy, Jones?"
M. Henri scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. He took a deep breath and stood and stepped over to look at the photographs as Mlle. Predoviciu did.
He too wanted hear about how the strange images came about. More importantly he didn't want to think about he himself had hailed the taxi that had led to Millie's death.
"I do not know how the images came to be." Thelonius began, taking a seat and setting his hat down beside him.
"I have heard of such spirit photography before, but everything I have examined has been an obvious hoax."
He removed a dirty white handkerchief from his jacket pocket and mopped his brow. It was clear that the photographs in some way disturbed the man.
"These photographs are no hoax. At least I did nothing to cause the images to appear. I frankly have no explanation for them. I was hoping one of you would remember something about the evening that would help provide an explanation."
He gave a pleading look to Cati and Henri as he nervously flipped over the stack of photographs
"What could do that? Something is wrong here," Henri said, frowning. "If Millie died when he said one of my ladies would die, and there are these things, these sinistre things in the spittle of this man, what do we do? This qui fait froid dans le dos. You say in English it gives me the heebie-jeebies, yes?"
"Now wait a minute," Cati said. "I didn't understand everything you said there, but it sounds like you seriously think that there's an actual face in that photo. That's baloney!" She looked again at the photo of the "face" on Mags' dress. "It's blurry anyhow."
"But this one," Henri protested, pulling out picture 2:5. "Here it is on your dress and is much more surnaturel than even the other. I see something, something that is not right. I believe M. Jones when he said he did nothing and I believe the swami was truly ill. No tricks, no illusion. That is your dress now. Do you not see? That face is not human, but I do not think it is just a shadow and a bit of silk playing tricks on my eyes."
He holds the picture out to her.
"On my dress? I didn't see anything." Cati took the picture and looked at it again. "Well, there does seem to be something of a face there... but it must just be the angle of the photograph and the way the light falls on the fabric. Right, Mr. Jones?"
Before waiting for a response, she went on, "Look, fellas, I was kinda hoping to find out more about what happened to the Ramaswami. I'd like to know what caused his collapse. I was hoping these photos would show us something, but I'm not convinced by blurry images that could be anything. I think we ought to go find the swami and try to get more information."
She looked at Henri and added, "But if you're that concerned about something you think you see on my dress, you're free to examine the genuine article. It's laying on the floor at my apartment — I haven't bothered to take it to the cleaners yet."
Henri frowned a bit.
"I agree we should find out about this swami, but the dress--It may be good to take another photograph of it, but I do not know," he paused glanced at Jones. "What do you think, monsieur?"
"I think it may be better to go check on the Swami."
Thelonius gathered up the photographs and began putting them back into the folder.
"If...and I say if....I captured something supernatural in the photograph, I do not think it is still attached to Miss Predovicu's dress. Perhaps the Swami will recognize the face and the....thing...in the other image."
(Please carry on with this scene or close it as you all see fit. Allow me to suggest the following: Investigations into Ramanuja's whereabouts might start with a new post in Thel's blog and efforts to rephotograph or otherwise examine Cati's dress might start off with a new post in her blog. Of course, it's up to you how and if the characters should go about doing these things. There is also a new post in the Manhattan blog. Any efforts in that direction may start as comments there.)
Henri nods.
"Then we should find the swami," he says. "I can close the shop. I have no more ladies today."
(to Dan's blog as suggested?)
"Swell," Cati said. "I have one small thing I must do first. I'll meet you at the hospital?"
Off the top of their heads, everyone understands that Saint Lawrence Hospital on 163rd Street in Washington Heights would have been the closest location to the Audubon with emergency care. That would be the obvious first place to look.
Post a Comment