Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

“That’s what I meant to do,” the kid said. He turned around and opened the till, counting the singles, giving his back to Krumholtz.

Once out of D—— and headed up Happy Valley Drive, Krumholtz had consulted his directions. He was supposed to turn off Happy Valley onto Eitel Avenue, which would take him to County Road M, and then to Valhalla Road, where Mallard lived. But now, having twisted and turned on the roads that seemed to have no destination at all in mind, that wandered through swampy areas and then back up to rocky plateaus before descending again, he had found himself in this post-wilderness spot that looked as if the first-growth trees had been cut years ago before the spruce and maples had replaced them. He had never been in northern Minnesota before, but the manufacturer’s rep on the airplane headed toward D—— had told him that there were still wolves up here. He could believe it. “Wolves,” his fellow passenger had said. “And moose.” The passenger sat back. “Oh, and the bears. I forgot to mention the bears. And they all eat things.”

How many places could you find in the world where a cell phone wouldn’t work? Krumholtz checked his watch again, a cheap drugstore brand, and noticed that it had stopped. The time was still two thirty and would be two thirty from now on. He was very late. Folding himself back into his car — he was a big man, and the top of his head had almost continual bruises and bumps from lintels and beams and overhead luggage racks and doorframes — he started the engine and edged forward back onto the road. Overhead, the hawk circled away.

Ahead of him the road began another series of indecisive twists and turns, heading into a forest so dense that a desolate canopy of branches blocked the sky and shielded the road from the sun. He felt as if he were drifting into a tunnel of vegetation where the usual norms had been reversed. Here the trees were permanent, but the route was temporary and subject to disappearance. At almost exactly the moment when Krumholtz thought he should turn the car around and head back, he came upon a long expanse of hurricane fencing with razor wire at its top. He saw a driveway on the right-hand side, and a high gated barrier with the word MALLARDHOF carved in wood at the top. The driveway, behind the fencing, angled up to a high bluff. A sign in front of the gate announced VALHALLA DRIVE. The hurricane fence stretched away in both directions, north and south.

An intercom with a white button stood in front of the gate. Krumholtz drove up in front of it and pressed the button.

“Yes?” A woman’s voice.

“It’s Jerry Krumholtz.” He waited. The silence continued for five seconds, ten seconds, almost half a minute. “From Success magazine. I have an appointment? With James Mallard?”

Now he might have a story: Mallard, perhaps emulating Howard Hughes, feared the world’s toxicity.

“It’s been arranged. I’m here to interview James Mallard. ”

From the forest came an insucking breath of wind.

“This interview was set up a long time ago . And … and a photographer will be here in a few days for the artwork.”

He waited. The engine of the rental car hummed quietly.

“This has all been arranged . It’s been agreed to.”

“You don’t have to plead,” the voice on the intercom said. “Do you believe in angels?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a simple question.”

“Well, it may be simple, but I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if you believe in angels?” Just then, the gate lifted as if on invisible wires, and Krumholtz drove in. He had the impression that video surveillance cameras were trained on him as his car made its way up a switchback dirt road around the bowl of a valley to the crest of the bluff, where he saw the house splayed out lengthwise across the top.

The house, Mallardhof, built of concrete and glass, commanded a distant view of Lake Superior in one direction and the forest in another. A green Jeep speckled with dried mud sat in the driveway along with a car whose make Krumholtz didn’t recognize. A small perennial garden had been planted to the right of the garage. From where he had parked, Krumholtz could not quite see where the house ended; it just went on and on. It was in Martian Embassy style: ostentatiously inhuman. Near the front door was a display area consisting of a fragile-seeming pile of rocks, like a cairn, possibly a sculpture of some kind, encircled by bricks. The austere lavishness of the house presented the viewer with showy neutrality, as if the old styles of grandiose display — Italian palazzos, Tudor palaces, and castles — had given way to a nondecorative fortress brutalism of glass and stone. How the floor-to-ceiling glass supported the concrete roof was a mystery, unless the glass was thicker than it appeared to be and was load-bearing, as required by law. Krumholtz did not feel like getting out of his rental car, but when he saw a woman emerging from the front door, he thought he had better get to work.

“Hello hello hello !” she said, smiling with what must have been forced cheer, but the smile was so dazzling that Krumholtz thought for a moment that she might actually be happy to see him. She wore beige capri pants and a simple gray blouse, and she looked, as the wives of the rich usually did, like a professional beauty. In fact she was terribly beautiful, so much so that he could hardly keep his eyes on her. Beautiful women had always made him shy, and gazing at this one was like looking at the sun. After a few seconds, he had to turn away. “Mr. Krumholtz,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m Ellie Mallard.”

“Jerry,” he said. “Please call me Jerry.”

“I shall call you Mr. Krumholtz,” she said, holding her ground. “For the sake of your dignity .” Her skin, which at first he had assumed to be deeply tanned, he now saw had a permanent attractive darkness to it. Did she have an African-American mother or grandmother? Or was her family Persian? How to ask such a question? Her black tangled hair fell down to her shoulders, and gold hoop earrings sparkled against her skin in the fading light. “Please come in,” she said, holding the door open for him. “You must be tired out.”

“Well, I got lost,” he said.

“Everyone does. Absolutely nobody knows how to get here. I still get lost myself sometimes, when I’m not paying attention. But anyway you’re here now, and welcome to Mallardhof.”

“Why is it called Mallardhof?” he asked.

“No reason at all!” she said with a practiced dry humor. She moved fluidly, like the perfect beauty she was. “We just decided that it needed a name and that’s the name we gave it. Maybe we should find another name. It’s so German. What would you call it? Did you like the sculpture out in front? It’s a Rocco Steiner.”

“Very impressive,” Krumholtz said absentmindedly. He was looking down the front hallway into the depths of the house: the corridor disappeared in the distance as if replicating the geometry of infinity. “My goodness,” he said, under his breath.

“Goodness had nothing to do with it,” she said, quoting Mae West, “but it is rather stupendous, I’ll grant you that.” The diamond on her finger was the size of a grape. “Of course we love it, but sometimes it’s simply white-elephant time around here, especially on cleaning days and wash days.”

“Yes. I’ll bet. So. How many square feet is this house, anyway?” he asked, feeling her hand on his back as she guided him toward a living room — which he imagined to be the first of many — down the front hallway.