Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

“No. I can hardly imagine me here.”

At the sink Ali clattered and smoked. Jamie filled a teakettle and put it on to boil, and I rested my head on the table. From the living room music echoed, and Hillary sang along in his reedy baritone—

And then I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew I was jolted awake by the teakettle’s piercing whistle, and a man’s voice booming.

“Why aren’t you kids in school?”

I sat bolt upright. Ali dropped her cigarette in the sink and looked around furtively, but Jamie only took the kettle and began to pour boiling water into a brown ceramic pot.

“Hello, Dad,” he said. “How’s it goin’?”

It was like a fast-forward glimpse of how Jamie would look in twenty years. Into the kitchen strode a wiry man in faded coveralls and carpenter’s belt heavy with tools, his shoulder-length blonde hair going to gray and receding from a high sunburned forehead, so that you could see the taut lines of face and skull. The same haunted eyes, mocking as Jamie’s; the same wry mouth. He walked over to his son and jabbed him with the blunt end of a screwdriver. As he passed me I caught the distinct smell of marijuana smoke.

“You young scalawag, you,” he said, peeking into the teapot. “Wait’ll the truant officer gets here.”

“It’s night, Dad.” Jamie gestured at the window. “See? Dark: night. No school.”

The man turned to survey the rest of us. “Well, well. Our nation’s youth in revolt. I’m Jamie’s Dad. Ralph Casson.” He nodded and shook my hand, then Ali’s, then Hillary’s, repeating his name solemnly each time. “Ralph Casson. Ralph Casson. Ralph Casson.”

I glanced at Hillary, but he just grinned. “Hi, Ralph. We met this morning.”

“Of course we did.” Ralph Casson slid the screwdriver back into his toolbelt and grabbed one of the enameled mugs. He sipped, made a face, and handed it to me. “So. Which ones are you? Debutante daughters of Miss Broadway 1957? Antonioni extras in town for the fall foliage tours?”

Ali found a windowsill wide enough to perch on and settled there. “I’m Alison. This is Lit—”

“‘Lit’? What the hell kind of name is that?”

“It’s for Charlotte,” I said, and felt myself reddening. “But nobody calls me that.”

I stared at my clunky boots. My hair cascaded into my face but I let it stay there, until I felt a hand brush it away.

“Charlotte. You’re right, I don’t think you’re a Charlotte.” I looked up into Ralph Casson’s frank, slightly manic gaze. He pulled his fingers gently through my tangled curls, let the hair fall back into my eyes as he drew away. “How about Thalia?”

“How about Bigfoot?” suggested Ali. Hillary and Jamie laughed, but Ralph shook his head.

“‘ A lovely being,’” he said, “‘scarce formed or moulded, a rose with all its sweetest leaves yet unfolded.’”

“Oh, bra- vo, Dad.” Jamie’s sarcastic voice drowned out Ali’s hoot. Ralph Casson winked at me, then crossed to the sink and began washing his hands.

“Watch your step, Jame,” he remarked over his shoulder. “You don’t want to get into bad company in this place.”

“ Who’s bad company?” said Ali. Ralph turned and shook his hands, sending water over all of us.

“You.” He tilted his head at Ali, then me. “Her.”

Hillary pretended to be affronted. “What about me?”

“You?” Ralph regarded him disdainfully, then said in an arch, Glinda-the-Good-Witch voice, “You have no power here!”

“And they do?”

“Oh, Christ, please don’t get him started—” begged Jamie.

“Don’t you know the Mahamudratilaka ?” Ralph raised one hand as though delivering a benediction. “‘ Go not with young women over twenty, because they have no occult power.’” He sighed. “Kids these days. What do they teach you?”

“You sound like my old man,” said Ali.

“Does he know the Mahamudratilaka ?”

“Probably,” said Hillary. He sniffed at a glass of milk left over from breakfast, then poured it into his tea. “So what are you doing here? Fixing up this place for Kern or something?”

“Or something.” Ralph began rummaging among canisters and mason jars on the counter, finally settled on a large Earl Grey tin. He pried off the top and fished out a plastic baggie full of marijuana, opened it to remove a packet of ZigZag papers, and began rolling a joint. I quickly turned my attention to a jar of marmalade, trying not to look shocked. I knew adults in Kamensic who smoked (there were certainly enough who drank ), and probably did other things as well, but I had never actually witnessed somebody’s father crumble a bud into a rolling paper. Ralph finished rolling the joint, lit it, and inhaled deeply.

“Hillary?” Smoke leaked from his nostrils as he leaned over to pass the joint to Hillary. Hillary waved it on. So did Jamie—he seemed wary around his father, not afraid exactly but tense.

But Ali took the joint and sucked it eagerly. I did the same. I actually hated getting high. It made me cough, and I worried so much about saying something stupid that I would just sit in paranoid silence until it was time to go home. But I was too self-conscious to refuse, certainly in front of Jamie’s father.

“Thanks,” said Ali.

“No prob.” Ralph leaned against the counter and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “So. Axel’s coming back this weekend. I gather you guys know him?”

Hillary cocked a thumb at me. “He’s her godfather.”

“Oh yeah? That’s cool. So you heard about the party, right?”

“No.” I took a spoonful of marmalade and sucked it. “What party?”

“There’s a big bash this weekend. Halloween party. I gather there’s gonna be a lot of the usual suspects around. Rock musicians. Pulitzer Prize winners. Norman Mailer, local riffraff. You see Axel much?”

I shrugged. “Not for a long time. He’s hardly ever here. I think my folks saw him, I dunno—maybe two years ago? He doesn’t stay in Kamensic much.”

“Why would he want to?” Jamie turned to Ali. “How come he’s not your godfather?”

“I wasn’t born with a caul.”

“What’s a caul?”

“It’s a joke,” I explained. “He and my father’ve been friends for a while, that’s all. I didn’t even know he was back in town.”

“He’s not, yet,” said Ralph Casson. “He’s getting the money together for Ariadne. ”

Ali frowned. “Ari Who?”

“Ariadne auf Naxos. The sublime music that was playing when you arrived, before Jamie put on whatever the hell this crap is. It’s an opera. You guys know what an opera is?”

I laughed, but Hillary cleared his throat and warbled in his best falsetto—

Ralph gave him a thumbs-up. “Hope for the future! Yeah, that’s Axel’s new baby. He’s got some big backer in Italy, one of the DeLaurentises or somebody, wants to sink a bundle in it. That’s why we’re here—I’m doing the sets.”

Hillary and I glanced at each other. Anything connected with Axel Kern would be a plum assignment, and Ali’s father could have used the work. I stole a look at her. She seemed surprised by this revelation, but said nothing.

“Well, anyway, some kind of Big Do this weekend. Maybe catch some of you there.” Ralph stretched and began patting absently at the tools dangling from his waist. “Okay. Back to work. Jame, you seen my T square around here?”