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16

Friends at Dinner

This was a century of rapid change so disorienting that many people could cope only by medicating themselves. Therefore, it is no surprise that, in the years during which the three amigos were gone from Maple Grove, Adorno’s Pizzeria had become Adorno’s Ristorante with a full menu of Italian dishes in addition to their legendary pizza. The premises had doubled in size. The speckled vinyl flooring had been replaced with porcelain tiles made to look like limestone. Gone were the red Formica tables with chrome legs; now tables of unknown construction were covered with white tablecloths. The red leatherette booths had been upholstered in black; even the tables flanked by facing banquettes were draped in white, and between booths were new etched-glass panels to provide a measure of privacy. Gone, the policy of self-seating; there was a hostess now, and the waiters wore uniforms of black slacks, white shirts, and white aprons. There was no chance whatsoever that pizza was still sold by the slice.

Because Adorno’s had been a refuge for the four amigos back in the day, Spencer Truedove felt the urge to protest the new Adorno’s by screaming Nooooooo as the hostess led them to a booth, but he restrained himself. Although he painted bizarre, repulsive subjects of mysterious nature that adoring critics called “the most riveting depictions of existential despair ever committed to canvas,” Spencer was a traditionalist when he wasn’t lost in a fugue state. He found change distressing, and he was suspicious of the progress that so many people celebrated. The atomic bomb was progress when compared to lesser explosives before it, and then came the hydrogen bomb, and lately the supersonic hydrogen bomb, which could blow up the world twenty-two minutes faster. Wind and solar power were killing entire species of birds; mining and processing of the rare-earth minerals needed to service those industries and to make billions of lithium batteries was creating more devastating pollution in one decade than occurred in the past half century of fossil fuels. Now that Adorno’s Pizzeria had become a ristorante, any change could be forced on the world; anything could happen. Anything.

Spencer and Bobby sat on one banquette in the booth and Rebecca sat on the other banquette. As the hostess put down three menus, she said, “The wig and glasses are okay, Ms. Crane, but your perfect nose gives you away. You should add a bad nose to your disguise, maybe one that has a hook or one that’s squashy-looking.” Rebecca thanked her for the advice. The waitress winked at Bobby. She said, “Cool hat,” to Spencer. And then she went away.

“I’m not gonna take off my hat,” Spencer said with the firmness of a man who knows his rights. “I lent it to Ernie to get him out of the hospital, but I’m not taking it off again, not even for dinner.”

“No one’s asking you to take off your hat,” Bobby said.

Spencer surveyed the restaurant. “When we came here as kids, guys wore baseball caps, knitted caps, Stetsons, straw hats, any hat they wanted, but it’s not that kind of place anymore. No guy in here except me is wearing a hat at dinner, but I don’t care.”

“Nobody cares,” Rebecca assured him.

“I might even sleep in my hat.”

“Good for you,” she said.

“They ruined a fine thing.”

“The food is probably still delicious,” Bobby said. “It smells great in here.”

“Everybody’s got to go and change what doesn’t need changed. Take that wall, for instance.”

Bobby looked where Spencer pointed. “What about it?”

“There used to be a big, damn, wonderful mural on that wall.”

“Hey, I forgot about the mural,” Rebecca said. “The Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Colosseum ...”

“The Arch of Constantine, the Pantheon,” said Spencer.

“Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf,” Bobby recalled.

“Caesar’s legions marching to war,” Spencer said, “the Trevi Fountain, and what we thought was a pissoir but were afraid to ask Mr. Adorno about.” His voice was thick with nostalgia that had an edge of grief. “All gone. Nothing now but a plain wall. Changed.”

They were silent for a moment, and then Bobby said, “I’m sorry about all that about your mom. I know it still hurts.”

“Thanks, amigo. Mom still lives in New Orleans. She calls herself Constanina de Fornay. She never writes.”

“What about your dad?”

“He’ll be up for parole in six years. I never will understand how he went from founding a church to robbing armored cars. I guess he wasn’t who I thought he was. He had a secret self.”

“Well,” Bobby said gently, “the church wasn’t a church like we think of churches.”

With the warmth that was so natural to her even before she learned how to fake compassion and charm an audience, Rebecca said, “Sweetie, don’t put all the blame on your dad. That stripper, Venus Porifera, she was a bad influence.”

“And sweaty,” said Bobby.

“She didn’t intend to be sweaty,” Spencer said, “and it wasn’t a smelly or disgusting sweatiness.” He avoided putting down people for something they couldn’t control, like being short or skinny or having a wart on the nose—or being sweaty without effort. He had endured more than his share of put-downs in his youth because his ears were large, his hands small, and he played the fife in the school band until they decided they didn’t need a fife.

“It must be wrenching,” Rebecca said with tenderness, “to visit your dad in prison.”

“I never do. He refuses to add me to his approved-visitor list. Last time I saw him was thirteen years ago. I came back from Chicago to visit Ernie, decided to drop by the rectory, just to see if Dad was doing okay. He was in a meeting with twelve deacons. They were all wearing black robes, stag antlers, and goat masks. I didn’t stay very long. To tell you the truth, when he was sent to prison, I was relieved. I know that’s a terrible thing to say about your father.”

“Not at all,” Bobby assured him, and Rebecca said, “You didn’t desert your family, your family deserted you.”

The freckled, red-haired waiter arrived at the table, looking unusually Irish to be working in an Italian restaurant. He said his name was Vito, which seemed to be an obvious lie. He asked if they would like bottled or tap water, still or sparkling, domestic or imported, with or without ice, accompanied by a slice of lemon or plain, and if they might also wish to have a cocktail. The aqua choices were so numerous that the amigos passed on water altogether and ordered two bottles of Caymus cabernet sauvignon so that the second could breathe while they consumed the first. Following the events of this day, they didn’t expect to be able to sleep without alcohol. Vito assured them that they had made an excellent choice, as though they usually drank wine that came in a box and had only recently earned sufficient funds to try the finer things in life. Then he went away smiling, perhaps calculating his potential tip.

After lubricating himself with a little Caymus, Bobby asked, “Does the name Wayne Louis Hornfly mean anything to you?”

A frisson of terror shivered through Spencer, but it shook nothing from his compromised memory banks.

Rebecca’s hand spasmed when Bobby said “Hornfly,” and a dribble of wine escaped her glass, and for a moment she looked like she had in Shriek , when she had been running for her life through a moonlit cornfield with Judyface in pursuit. Then she put down her wet glass and wiped the bowl and the stem with her napkin.

The napkins were white cloth. Spencer longed for those paper napkins provided in the Adorno’s of yesteryear. They were square with tiny images of pizza slices pointing the way around all four sides. He could see one of those napkins in his mind’s eye, and then he saw one of the coasters with the Coca-Cola logo that the original Adorno’s got free from the soda company and put on the red Formica table when they served an iced drink in a sweating glass. Then he saw a straw wrapped in a paper sleeve and his fingers peeling the paper off the straw with an almost erotic delicacy. He might have toured longer through memories of Adorno’s Past if, here in Adorno’s Present, Bobby hadn’t said, “It means something to you, doesn’t it? ‘Hornfly’ means something.”

Some readers might find it difficult to believe that Spencer’s frisson of terror would catapult him through mundane memories of paper napkins and coasters bearing advertisements and soda straws. However, you must remember that he was a visual artist who tended to recall moments of his life in images instead of words. That is one of many traits that make artists seem like oddballs to the rest of us, as they stare slack-jawed into space, picturing their way to one conclusion or another.

“Hornfly!” Rebecca said, dragging Spencer fully out of his reverie. “Wayne Louis Hornfly. I don’t know who he is, but when you spoke the name, I saw Anthony Perkins is Psycho , Bela Lugosi in the original Dracula , Boris Karloff in Frankenstein , and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs .”

It may be necessary to note that, as an actress in films and television, Rebecca was a visual artist of a kind and, in her way, not unlike Spencer Truedove in how she processed information. Unlike painting, acting requires speech, and Rebecca had plenty of that, too, as you will see.

“Bobby, you spoke that name, and my stomach clenched, tightened like a fist, and I felt as if my heart stopped, which of course it didn’t, but I couldn’t breathe, I really couldn’t. I had a horrible moment of vertigo, as if this booth were a spinning gondola in a carnival ride. Wayne Louis Hornfly is someone we once knew, some creep or sicko. But damn it all, I can’t remember anything about him. My memories of him are erased, maybe repressed, but by whom? Why? What does it mean?”

“In the labyrinth of our past,” Bobby said, “something worse than a Minotaur waits around every turn.” Being a writer, he often thought in metaphors, though they were usually better than that one.

“Google him,” Spencer said.

“He doesn’t google.”

“Everyone can be googled.”

“I tried. If there ever was a Wayne Louis Hornfly—and we all know beyond a doubt that there was—he passed through the world without leaving a trace. The name came to me in the plane, when we were in an unusually powerful lightning storm. Hornfly. It fills me with dread.”

“Lightning?” Rebecca asked. “You mean lightning has something to do with him?”

“Maybe.”

They sat in silence, taking refuge in wine.

The restaurant became busy. To Spencer, a lot of the patrons looked as if they were scientists and mathematicians. They were not a glamorous bunch. Eyeglasses were prevalent. There was an air of arrogance about them, a smugness, as if they knew things no ordinary mortals would ever know. A few wore shirt-pocket protectors and were well equipped with ballpoint pens. They were somewhat better dressed than the locals, yet a bit unkempt. One wore a black T-shirt with white words that proclaimed Einstein Was No Bill Nye , referring to Bill Nye the Science Guy on television. Spencer was pretty sure he could sort out the employees of the Keppelwhite Institute from the regular folks.

Then Bobby said, “I keep thinking about the church, Saint Mark’s. All those bodies lined up in the basement. Maybe our minds are connecting puzzle pieces. Maybe the bodies in the basement are somehow tied to Hornfly.”

Vito returned to ask if they knew what they wanted for dinner. They did. He took their order. The process was uneventful. Vito went away, if his name really was Vito.

“After dinner,” Bobby said, “we should go to Saint Mark’s when we’re finished here.”

“What?” Spencer said. “Tonight?”

“That’s when I expect to be finished eating,” Bobby confirmed.

Rebecca said, “Churches don’t stay open twenty-four/seven like they once did. These days, too many crazies are out there who want to damage or desecrate churches. Saint Mark’s will be locked tight.”

“I can get in anywhere,” Bobby said.

“How’s that?”

“Because I’m a novelist who’s written about burglars and done his research.”

Vito brought their food. It was wholesome and delicious. In some novels, meals are described in luscious detail and poetic terms in order to help create the ambience of the scene. Not in this one.

“Okay,” Rebecca said, “so we’re going to the church because Ernie’s not dead even though he sure seems to be, and maybe if we don’t do something in a timely manner, then he might die for real, and we can’t think of where else to go anyway. But what do we hope to find there, guys? You don’t think there will be ten dead bodies lined up on the basement floor, do you?”

“Maybe not,” Bobby said. “But there’ll be something—a clue, a lead—because that church was always a weird place even before what we found that night.”

Rebecca frowned, but that expression in no way diminished her beauty. Spencer was pretty sure that nothing could make her less attractive. If you came upon her by surprise, while she was hunkered in a cave, covered in filth and blood, greedily devouring a sackful of kittens, her face twisted in an expression of insane glee, she would still be gorgeous, elegant, graceful. It was a gift. Rebecca said it was sometimes a curse, as when a film director, addled by LSD and PCP, wanted to cut her head off and preserve it forever in his freezer. But being down-to-earth and honest, she acknowledged that looking the way she did had so many advantages that it was worth the risk of decapitation.

Frowning exquisitely, Rebecca sought clarification from Bobby. “Weird? What was weird about the church before those bodies?”

“For one thing, Pastor Larry.”

“Ah. Yes. I almost forgot. Pastor Larry.”

Through Spencer’s mind’s eye, seven faces turned in succession, as if painted on a revolving drum. Four were Larrys with whom he had been friendly—Jenkins, Eckstein, Block, and Fukagami. Then appeared Larry from the Three Stooges, Larry the golden retriever who lived with a neighbor in Chicago, and finally Pastor Larry. The reverend had a round face and blond hair as fine as that of a baby. His blue eyes were watery, suggesting he sorrowed over the fallen condition of humanity without surcease. Yet his mouth curved in a perpetual dreamy half smile in both times of rejoicing and times of tragedy, as if he were equally amused by the triumphs and tribulations of his parishioners, though no one could recall seeing him actually laugh.

“I never liked Pastor Larry,” Spencer said. “I couldn’t begin to understand why Ernie was drawn to him even if it did irritate the hell out of Britta. I hope we don’t see him tonight.”

Rebecca said, “Maybe he’s not at Saint Mark’s anymore.”

“Oh, I imagine he’s still there,” Bobby disagreed. “He’ll only be maybe fifty-five. And he’s not the kind of charismatic preacher that churches all over the country are scheming to lure away.”

“Even if he had nothing to do with those bodies,” Spencer said, “there’s something twisted about him.” He touched his porkpie hat as if to ward off evil, like a pilgrim might touch a sacred object.