Chapter 5 Job Interview
Green walked to Valentina’s camp feeling the lack of cell service like a pebble in his shoe.
He wanted a map. He wanted a distraction.
He wanted to search for Valentina Blackwood on social media and find pictures of her playing with her basset hounds or holding up a chunky knitting project.
All the while, Dancer’s reminder that the day would pass quickly felt like a burning fuse racing toward another deadly night.
He kept touching his pockets to make sure that his phone, his keys, his wallet were all there, then remembering that none of those objects meant much in the way of utility or safety on his current errand.
He imagined that giant ink stain of a wolf bursting out of the trees.
Which relic of his old life would he reach for to save him?
His Global Fitness card? His weather app?
Yes, in lieu of devouring me, would you accept this Starbucks loyalty program card? That’s correct, Starbucks is my ally and if you harm me there will be hazelnut-flavored reprisals.
Only a day earlier he had been interested in actively courting the unknown.
It’s easy to be on good terms with the unknown when it keeps its distance.
Explorers in a history book. A probe visiting a far-off world.
That tingle when we think about the deepest parts of the ocean or the unpeopled forests of the far past. It’s different, much different, when the unknown becomes a prominent part of your daily life, there on your pillow, stirred into your morning coffee.
Dancer was right. One mercy about Valentina’s place was that you really couldn’t miss it.
Her site was littered with half a dozen sheds, two old campers, a small log cabin, and an honest-to-god tree house the size of a small apartment.
A lopsided spiderweb of black wires and orange extension cords hung about the place, stitching together the mismatched structures.
Tidy rows of solar panels protruded above several of the roofs.
There were no vehicles in sight. A ribbon of white smoke rose from the cabin and hung in a haze.
Even with all its eccentricities, Green’s first thought upon seeing the place was that it looked like a real home, something lived-in, especially in comparison to his own camp, which looked like a crashed car abandoned in the woods.
An unexpected sorrow welled up. He felt the acute lack of such a place in his own life.
Maybe ever. White couches and rooms he wasn’t allowed to track mud into.
A condo he hired someone else to decorate.
He stood on the narrow road unsure of what to do next.
There was no obvious front door. No doorbell. No signs.
“Hello?”
No answer.
“Valentina?”
A door latch clicked, and Valentina emerged from the log cabin.
She was a small woman, precise, dressed practically in mostly gray.
Her silver hair was pulled back and the two turquoise studs in her ears stood out like twin patches of sky glimpsed through a cloud bank.
She stood just outside the cabin and studied Green.
“Yes?”
“Good morning. I’m Green. I’m your new neighbor. Sort of.”
“Ah. Hello.”
“Oh, um, Dancer sent me.”
“Yes, I noticed your hat. Good to meet you, Mr. Green.”
She spoke with an accent that Green couldn’t quite place. Part Eastern European. Part something else.
She turned to reenter her cabin.
“Hang on a minute.”
She looked over her shoulder.
“Yes?”
Green suddenly couldn’t remember what a normal person did with their arms while talking, so he glued them to his sides.
“I was hoping we could talk. I mean, I need to speak with you.”
“Mr. Green, I have time-sensitive work this morning. Not a good time for social calls. Pleasure to meet you.”
She began to turn away again.
“It’s just that Dancer thought you could help me. I was attacked by a thing and she said you were an expert on the subject of…things.”
“A thing?”
“A giant wolf with a horn and not enough skin. Last night. Just down the road.”
He hated the words he was saying.
She paused.
“Well. Business then. That is different. Come in if you can.”
She reentered her cabin, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Green frowned at the place she’d been standing, then followed.
He pushed open the door and stumbled over the high log sill to enter.
The interior was warm and smelled like earth, smoke, and burnt coffee.
The floor was packed dirt. One wall was all wire shelves filled with storage containers of every description. A broad hearth dominated the rear wall, smoldering with dying embers.
A cast iron stove flickered in the corner and a caged lightbulb hung low over a wide wooden table.
On the table a moth the size of a bathrobe was splayed out for study beneath a huge gooseneck magnifying glass. Valentina stooped over the moth, apparently returning to the work Green had interrupted.
The massive insect was a tattered thing. It was obviously dead. At first glance, it looked like a model made from burlap and old cardboard. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. A closer look confirmed it.
The folded legs were too perfect for it to be a fake. The byzantine pattern of hairs on the abdomen. The dull inner light of the faceted eyes. The broad antennae like drought-parched ferns. It couldn’t be real, but it was.
It was real and, like the wolf and the deer, it was impossible.
“Do you study…monsters?” Green said.
Valentina repositioned her magnifying glass. She didn’t look up.
“That is a child’s word. Too simple and too subjective to be useful.”
Green felt his cheeks grow warm. It surprised him. For the second time that morning, he had walked into the role of scolded student. He was getting tired of it.
Sure, he had been more concerned with ad copy and SEO in the past few years, but he had a master’s degree in literature.
Maybe he didn’t know anything about camping or wildlife, but he could talk about words.
This wasn’t like Dancer criticizing his camping ignorance.
He decided to hold on to this one area where he could claim expertise.
“Monster seems like an appropriate idiomatic term in this instance.”
She still didn’t look up.
“Mr. Green, idioms are useful insofar as they transmit meaning within the communities that share them. Yes? Tell me what ‘monster’ means in this instance.”
He had a sudden sinking feeling that he had just picked a fight above his weight class. Again. It was too late. He had to try.
“Strange or frightening creatures of unknown origin. Like…this moth.”
Valentina spared Green a strange look.
“So, it is a subjective qualifier. Strange to you. Frightening to you. Akin to ‘cute.’ Or ‘favorite.’ ”
Valentina continued to scrutinize some structure on the moth’s wing.
“Might it be fair to suggest, within the context of biological study and taxonomy, that categorizing organisms by purely subjective terms such as ‘cute’ or ‘favorite’ or ‘monstrous’ is overly broad? Even childish?”
Green swallowed.
“Yeah. I suppose that’s fair.”
Valentina nodded the tiniest of nods.
She pulled two long, red glass chopsticks from a pouch and used them to pluck a feathery scale from the moth’s wing and deposit it in a glass vial. She held it up to the light and the scrap of fluff sprouted black legs that wriggled before the object righted itself and began crawling up the glass.
“What is that thing?”
Valentina cocked her head and held up the vial.
“You can see this?”
“Yes, and it looks like it’s going to escape.”
She put a stopper in the vial just before the crawling thing reached the top and rose to deposit it on a shelf beside a dozen identical vials.
“Parasite. The last of them, I believe.”
She took her seat again and met his eyes.
“Are you alright, Mr. Green? You appear injured. Your shirt is soaked with dried blood. You mentioned a wolf of some kind?”
Something about Valentina’s attention felt weighty, like he was being billed by the minute, though the cost and currency were unspecified.
“No. I’m not alright. Something like a wolf attacked me. Only it was huge and it had a horn. And it spoke. But not with words. It was a monster. I mean…subjectively.”
Valentina’s eyes smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her lips.
Anger flashed in Green’s mind like distant lightning. She wasn’t taking him seriously.
“I almost died last night. A man a little way down the road did die. Yes, I get why you don’t like the word ‘monster,’ but you weren’t there. You didn’t see it.”
“I heard about the man. Kyle Cartwright was his name.”
She looked back at the moth, then at her guest. She appeared to make a decision.
“Come, Mr. Green.”
She retrieved two camp chairs and unfolded them near the stove. She gestured for Green to sit. It was too warm so close to the hot iron, but Valentina held her hand toward the heat and closed her eyes, relishing the warmth.
She turned and took a narrow cup from the floor and pulled a long-handled brass vessel from the edge of the stove using a pot holder. She poured a very dark drink into her cup. She didn’t offer any to Green.
Noticing his attention, she said, “Coffee, Mr. Green. Turkish style. I’m afraid I only have the one cup. I wasn’t prepared to entertain. Please, proceed.”
He told her everything he could remember about his first night.
Valentina didn’t look particularly surprised or sympathetic, but she watched him with the steady focus of a kestrel studying a meadow for movement.
When he finished, she looked up at the low roof, as if gazing into the attic of her memory.