Two-Faced
Liko had passed through the living room the night before but it was in darkness.
Now wintery sunlight flooded the windows and revealed it was a beautiful space with built-in bookcases and a large fireplace with a stacked stone mantel.
Artwork and objects crowded walls and surfaces, but this was no off-limits gallery.
Rather it was a homey room conducive to prowling and exploring, then bringing a bit of treasure to a chair and settling in.
“I’ll put the coffee on if you can coax the fire back to life,” Diane said. “Unless you prefer tea?”
His back to her, Liko could roll his eyes. “Coffee’s fine.”
“Mind where you put the doughnuts. Salma will insist she hasn’t been fed. She is lying.”
Liko set the pastry box on a high shelf, then built up the fire. On the wall above the mantel was a large, square painting Liko immediately recognized: the iconic cover for Gideon Perfect’s double album, Two-Faced.
He stood up and crossed his arms, puzzled. He’d seen this famous album cover a million times, could envision it behind closed eyelids, took it for granted as one piece in the mural of pop culture. But he’d always thought the cover was a collage of photography.
He peered closer. It was all a painting, even the lettering. The eponymous two-face, the abstract squares, the naked girl cowering at the bottom and the strange, flayed and mutilated man at one side. All painted by hand.
“That’s not right,” he murmured, reaching for his phone. He Googled the album and confidently tapped an image. Closed it and tapped another, frowning. He made sure with a third, now slightly offended.
“Huh,” he said again, zooming in on the minute brushstrokes he’d never noticed. The cover was entirely a painting. He stepped back, staring from phone to wall. Stepped in again. “I’ll be damned,” he said admiringly.
Diane came back in with a genteel tray of coffee cups, milk and sugar. She’d shed her jacket but still wore her red hat. The sunglasses had been swapped for large, heavy framed glasses. Behind the lenses her eyes were a supernatural blue, precisely outlined in black makeup and long lashes.
Liko blinked, trying to pin down what it was about her appearance that bothered him. Some women wore makeup to enhance what was there, while others wore it to keep you from seeing what was there.
“I texted Dane and told him he was being extremely rude to his new friend,” she said. “He hasn’t answered.”
He smiled, feeling that like the makeup, she was laying it on a little thick. He pointed to the painting over the fireplace.
“Is this the original artwork for the album? Or a copy?”
She glanced up, expression a little puzzled, as if she’d never noticed the picture before. “Probably a copy,” she said slowly. “But in this museum of a house, who knows?”
She sat on the opposite side of the coffee table and later it would occur to him she kept a deliberate distance all throughout the visit.
If he got up to examine something close to where she sat, she got up and moved.
He chalked it up to prudence, remembering he was a strange man invited into her house when no one else was home.
“What do you do?” she said, predictably.
“I’m a ghostwriter.”
“Really? What genre.”
“Mostly thrillers.”
“Would I know any?”
“You probably would, but I’m not at liberty to share titles.”
“Why? Because of NDAs or something?”
“Exactly because.”
“Oh. Is that aspect of it hard? I mean, that you can’t share your accomplishments?”
“Sometimes. But the money is a very nice consolation.”
The minutes ticked off, aching with small talk. Finally Diane reached for her phone, examined the screen and smiled. “Dane’s on his way back. Consumed with guilt.” She gathered the cups. “I have to get on a work call. Make yourself at home. Look at anything, read anything, love the dog.”
“Point me toward the loo?”
“Down that hall, second door on the right.”
This second door was closed. Liko had a morbid fear of busting in on strangers in the loo, or, God forbid, being busted in upon. So he rapped with a knuckle first.
No answer. His hand dropped on the doorknob.
And memory dropped on him like a boulder.
Because it just never stopped. A doughnut couldn’t be a doughnut and a closed bathroom door couldn’t just be a closed bathroom door.
Of all the innocuous things that ambushed him on a daily basis, this was possibly the most cruel. Walking along the upstairs hall of his lonely house, passing the shut bathroom and stopping cold, knuckles itching to knock and inquire, Kyle? You fall in?
Most times he just thought it. On bad days, he knocked and asked aloud.
“Kyle? You fall in?”
No answer of course. But once upon a time, in those tender years of little boyhood, a singsong voice would have piped up: “Here I sit, broken-hearted…”
Liko would sing back: “Came to poop…”
A wicked giggle. “But only farted.”
Liko would laugh too, before doing his due diligence. “Remember those wipes aren’t flushable, kiddo. They go in the bin.”
Time was a thief. One day you woke up and your nudist son was shrouded in baggy jeans and hoodies, and you couldn’t remember the last time you saw his bare ass.
You jokingly knocked on the bathroom door and asked if he’d fallen in, but no reply because he was plugged into music, videos, social media, another world you had no access to.
Or he was just flat-out ignoring you, so over those childhood rituals.
Then one night you woke up and flung yourself against a closed, locked bathroom door because water was pouring from beneath it.
Screaming to 911 on the phone in your hand while you battered the door with your shoulder, finally ramming your heel above the knob and breaking the whole thing down to get to your son who was slumped in the overflowing tub.
There was his bare ass, but there also were his empty, dead eyes.
Either the aneurysm had felled him instantly, or he’d drowned in the rising water.
Here I lie, broken-hearted.
Came to bathe, but only parted…
Six months after Kyle died, Liko had the entire loo gutted down to the studs and redone. Out went the tub, replaced with a walk-in shower. New tiles, new fixtures, new lights, new everything. All traces of that hideous night demolished and gone.
Except for the goddamn door. It was new, too, but when closed, it was the same old pain. Still here. Because it just never stopped.
Liko ran the cold tap and splashed his face. Took a few deep breaths in the privacy of a hand towel. Then went back to the living room.
As he trawled the bookshelves, the fire crackled, a clock on a side table ticked, and Salma yawned with a little keening whine.
Liko yawned too, as he placed two precise fingers on a large tome and drew it out.
Harefoot, by Ethan J. Hasen. Twin to the copy Liko had thrown into his backpack this morning, along with his laptop and notebooks.
The pack was still in his car. He thought about getting it, then yawned again and sat.
As he skimmed the familiar photographs and text, his mind tried to assemble notes taken during Diane’s tour of the farm. The ubiquitous presence of the Green Man. The long pergola wrapped in thick wisteria vines, the multitude of hare statues, the copper wind spinner.
O wisteria hares turning.
Wisteria vines that survived Hiroshima. Descendants planted in the soil of New York.
Resilience, Liko thought. Survival. Beginnings and endings. From the earth to the earth. Hares chasing hares chasing hares. The Green Man ever watchful.
And here I sit, broken-hearted…
He fell asleep mid-thought. Socked feet stretched toward the fire, the heavy book open on his lap and Salma curled against his hip.