Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

“I think we should talk right away. I’d also like Mrs. Templeton to be present. How about meeting me downstairs in the restaurant bar?”

“Impossible. We can’t leave our child alone.”

“Carole Federico might be willing to sit with Ivy for an hour or so.”

Janice could well understand the long pause that followed this remarkable statement. She could sense Bill’s shock at the scope and depth of Hoover’s knowledge of the most intimate corners of their lives.

“I’ll see,” she heard Bill stammer at last.

“Say, eight thirty?”

“I’ll see.”

The phone clicked twice before Janice placed hers back on its cradle.

Ivy broke into a giggle. She had picked up a Snoopy book and was browsing through it while they talked on the phone. Inwardly, Janice reacted harshly to the laughter, felt it was all wrong, inappropriate, totally out of place—like someone laughing at a funeral.

Except for two functioning tables and a lineup of tuxedoed waiters, silently manning their posts at strategic peripheral intervals, patiently awaiting the nine thirty closing time, the Des Artistes Restaurant seemed poised on the precipice of sleep.

Bill and Janice quietly made their way through the hushed, somber atmosphere, en route to the barroom, which lay just beyond the restaurant in a small, partially enclosed niche.

Kurt, the bartender, gave Bill and Janice a smile of recognition as they stood on the threshold of the darkly paneled room, searching among several faces for a sign of Hoover. There were only five customers present.

“Mr. and Mrs. Templeton, I’m Elliot Hoover.”

Janice jumped, startled; Bill swung about, too fast, betraying his surprise. Hovering before them was a face they would have sworn they’d never seen before.

The hairless pale skin, clear and unwrinkled, belonged to a man of twenty. The smile, sweet and ingenuous, disclosed two rows of small white teeth sandwiched between colorless thin lips. On closer inspection, the light-brown hair was somewhat sparse and receding, yet could this be the forty-six-year-old man they had read about in Who’s Who?

Hoover noted their surprise, and his smile deepened, as he suggested, “There’s a quiet table over there in the corner.”

Bill and Janice followed him like a pair of sheep being escorted by a Judas goat to the killing room. They sat together, against the wall, at the wave of Hoover’s hand, while he took the chair opposite them across the table.

“I want to thank you both for agreeing to see me tonight,” Elliot Hoover began, in a low, soothing voice that seemed to dicker over the selection of each word. “I truly appreciate it.”

Marie, the pretty barmaid, appeared at their table, smiling inquiringly.

“Would you care for something, Mrs. Templeton?” Hoover politely asked Janice.

“No, thank you,” she replied.

“I’ll have a scotch and water,” Bill said.

“Do you have Chinese gunpowder tea?” inquired Hoover.

“I think they may have some in the kitchen,” Marie ventured.

“That’ll be fine for me, thank you,” he said, dismissing Marie and turning his attention back to Bill and Janice. “I also want to apologize for the mysterioso behavior these past few weeks,” he continued with a small, embarrassed chuckle. “I know how frightened you must have both been, and I’m sorry, but it was necessary. You had a perfect right going to the police, Mr. Templeton; under the circumstances I probably would have done the same thing myself. But all the subterfuge, the clumsy disguise were necessary steps that had to be taken before this meeting could be arranged.” Hoover paused a moment to allow the words to sink in before he continued. “Actually, the preparation for this meeting has taken seven years to arrange. Seven years of travel, investigation, and study, calling for a total reconditioning you might say, of my spiritual and intellectual perspectives.…”

Bill felt Janice’s cold hand steal into his beneath the table as Hoover continued to talk, the words tumbling out of his mouth in quick, short, explosive bursts that, Bill decided, sounded labored and prearranged. Many phrases he used were stilted, uncomfortable, as though he’d read them in a book and had memorized them.

He was in the midst of telling about the seven years he had spent traveling, how Pittsburgh, his home, could not provide him with the proper background for his investigations, and how his search had taken him to India, Nepal, the frozen reaches of Tibet, where in the sanctuaries of certain lamaseries, he first began to glean (“glean” was his word) the light of truth, when Bill interrupted him in midsentence.

“Er … excuse me, Mr. Hoover, but what the hell is this all about?”

“It isn’t easy saying what I’ve got to say to you,” Hoover spluttered. “It requires a certain foundation of knowledge, of understanding.…”

Hoover’s hand shook as, obviously flustered, he gratefully reached for the tea Marie placed before him. Bill had drained half his scotch before Hoover was able to go on, groping for words.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve placed myself in your position and how unbelievable what I’m going to tell you sounded to me. I’ve done many things since arriving in New York—committed many bizarre acts, indeed—which are totally alien to my nature. I mean, the bio in Who’s Who should have given you some insight into the kind of man I am.… I’m not the kind of person who would do these things for no reason, you must believe that.”

Hoover flung the disjointed sentences across at Bill in a quavering, impassioned barrage. He met his cup halfway and took a sip of the strong black tea, which gradually brought his shaking hand under control.

“Before I go on, I must ask you both a question. Do either of you know anything about”—here he paused a moment before measuredly pronouncing the word—“reincarnation?”

The tension in Janice’s grip on Bill’s hand relaxed a bit as she slowly shook her head in the negative. Bill, convinced he had heard “green carnation,” could only stare dumbly at Hoover and wait for further information.

“My entire upbringing,” Hoover continued, “has always steered me away from a serious belief in Karma.…”

The statement was utterly baffling to Bill, it didn’t connect with his train of thought. What the hell was Karma and what did it have to do with flowers?

“But after seven years of seeking and meditating, I began to experience the reality of reincarnation and now believe, as the Koran tells us, that ‘God generates beings and sends them back, over and over again, till they return to Him.’”

“Did you say ‘reincarnation’?” Bill suddenly asked, finally linking into the drift of Hoover’s words.

“Yes, Mr. Templeton,” Hoover replied warily, “the religious belief of nearly one billion people on earth, a doctrine accepted by some of the greatest men our world has produced, from Pythagoras to Schopenhauer, from Plato to Benjamin Franklin.…”

“Oh,” Bill said lamely, swallowing the last of his drink.

“Understand, I don’t expect you to accept or believe in the ethics of Karma, any more than I did at first. What I am asking is that you keep an open mind to the things I’m about to tell you. You will doubt them, of course. You may even think I’m insane. Quite natural. I accept your skepticism beforehand. But do hear me out.”

“Okay,” Bill said. “Go ahead.”

“Ten years ago”—Hoover began his story on a note of solemnity—“there was an accident. And in this accident my wife and daughter were taken from me. It was very quick, very sudden. For a long time it left me paralyzed mentally. For a year I did nothing, went nowhere, avoided people. The vacuum they left in my life was unbearable.” A quick mote of brightness flecked his eyes. “And then, one day, I had this distinct feeling that they were near me. I felt as if my daughter, her name was Audrey Rose, was very close to me. I had never believed in life after death or the supernatural; I thought it was probably an aberration of my mind brought on by the painful loss, as if my mind were trying to compensate—to fill in the gap. But it was a good feeling, and I didn’t reject it. In fact, the sense of Audrey Rose’s closeness gained in intensity as time went on and served to put me back on my feet, brought me to the point where I could deal with life again and with people—”