A Butterfly in Flame Read online

  No. If Morgan Flower had a financial profile, it was rattling around in the ether. He’d gone paperless. Address? Where did Morgan’s mama live, or the cousins, siblings, the whole Christmas card list? Nothing. All on the iPhone? If he lost that, Morgan wouldn’t even know himself who he was.

  There was a folder filled with lamentable student prose, all of it hand-written, whose subjects would fit within the broad umbrella Writing About Your Problems. The title The time I was almost pregnant caught Fred’s eye. Judging from the dates on the papers, he’d meet this gang tomorrow. If he had time, maybe he’d skim through the collection tonight; get an introduction to his students. They deserved something for their money. Something better than Fred, anyway.

  Jeekers! Did Morgan Flower let the kids read each other’s work? Did he make them read it aloud? Would the other half of the almost-pregnancy be present in the room? That could be fun.

  Then, in the next folder along, in the bottom drawer—what was this?

  Chapter Eight

  The penciled title on the Manila folder read Stillton Sound—A Private Community.

  “Not that I saw,” Fred said, letting the folder fall open on the desk. Inside were many sheets of the yellow lined paper Morgan Flower favored, from the tablet on the desk or from another like it. The handwriting, in pencil, with many erasures and emendations, was the same as that preserved in the class record book; a hand Fred would have guessed belonged to a constipated older woman.

  The Inn and Spa at Stillton Sound, one page began. Indulge in all the responsible luxury of life at Stillton Sound. The lovingly restored Residences feature multiple exposures, ocean views, windowed kitchens, wood-burning fireplaces, and impeccably re-engineered interiors—and all executed with such elegant understatement you will assure yourself that you are truly living in Thoreauvian simplicity. Meanwhile the pleasures of daily life are enhanced and enriched by the unique club privileges that are the hallmark of your membership in the Stillton Sound Community. The spa and heated indoor pool, overlooking the sound, provide for unique year-round “blah, blah, blah,” Fred grumbled, while the elegant dining room, under the magic touch of acclaimed three-star chef [name to be supplied]…

  Fred flipped pages, allowing phrases to float up from the morass of Morgan Flower’s imaginings. Quaint small town; unspoiled; a spectacular unique commitment to the ultimate in green restoration; marina and lap pool; guaranteed privacy; contemporary traditional; traditional contemporary; just minutes to Logan Airport, Paris, Venice or Shanghai; impeccable perfection; superb…

  There must be twenty pages of these exercises in the pastiche of fragments of filched puffery. Their superlatives were clearly designed to appeal to people who would prefer to live at considerable remove from those who are employed to clean their toilets. Minutes from Logan Airport, Paris, Venice and Shanghai had a nice ring if you were in the market for nice ring. “Is it not also true,” Fred mused, “that we are just minutes from the War of 1812? Are we not mere minutes from the North Pole, traveling by dogsled?

  During what must be long tedious winter nights in which he was obliged to entertain himself by plumbing the remarkably shallow depths of his creative romance, Flower had evidently concentrated not on his own love poems, nor on yet another definitive biography of Emily Dickinson, but on this palpable fantasy—worthy almost of being made into a video game—of inventing the idle cloud cuckoo-land Stillton Sound—A Private Community. Stillton Sound haunted his waking moments and tormented his sleep. On the last page in the folder, drawn with an obsessive attention to detail Fred had not seen since the battle pictures made by colleagues in the fourth grade, there was even an aerial view of the entire fiction, fully laid out and elaborated. Stillton Sound—A Private Community occupied all of the area presently filled by the town of Stillton. A gate was drawn across the peninsula that permitted access only to the elect. Gate? Why not a moat? It was as complete and absurd as a cross between Celesteville and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Living City. As Fred puzzled out Morgan Flower’s fevered imaginings, he realized that the focus of the creation, the Inn and Spa at Stillton Sound, so labeled on the map, was to be found where the main buildings of Stillton Academy of Art presently stood.

  The Inn and Spa at Stillton Sound, indeed, might constitute the lovingly (and “greenly”) “restored” buildings that presently stood overlooking the ocean in so non-profit a way. Here were guest cottages, three restaurants, two pools, the gym, a concert and movie and lecture hall, blocks and blocks of residences, the marina on the northern coast and, on the less exposed southern side, a bathing beach. An area marked “commercial” more or less where the present attempts at commerce were, included an X labeled “office.”

  “His big problem is gonna be golf,” Fred said, putting the frenzied fable back in the file cabinet. “There’s no room left on the point to swing a club. The peninsula, on one side or the other, of that two-lane road, might give you room enough to drive the ball—but no possibility for eighteen holes unless you do it in a straight line east-west. That’s much too inventive for New England. Plus the odd slice costs windshields here and there. Even if you are rich enough to aspire to Thoreauvian simplicity, can you do without golf?

  “Hell, if he plans to pump that much imaginary money into the operation, what’s wrong with a floating golf course? Reel it in in the winter, roll it and store it or—this could be better—roof it and heat it. In the worst of the winter the kids can still go clamming in the sand traps.

  “Holy Toledo.”

  The strength of Fred’s response had lifted him from the chair and carried him out of the bedroom and into the living area again. What was this? He was pacing? The isolation of living and working in Stillton, Massachusetts, had already driven him to such a pass? Soon he’d be designing his own wave-lapped rest home and retirement village, complete with all the luxurious responsibility that could be desired. No, that was wrong. Responsible luxury was the phrase juste.

  It was just after eight o’clock. The rain was steady, but Fred had a jacket in the car. He couldn’t rest until he had a sense of where he was. More than these rooms. The bigger where. The geographical setting as a whole made him uneasy, since it had only one exit, unless you counted the water, in which case it was almost all exit.

  ***

  Streetlights were sparse, but present, and worked through the rain sufficiently to allow a general idea of the terrain. The flavor was genuinely working seaside, uncontaminated by either success or extraneous money. However the local fishing economy might fit into the big picture that included packing, freezing, warehousing, and sales, that could not be inferred from what was visible. Lights in the windows of the small clapboard or shingled houses showed either couples or small families at a table, or doing dishes, or watching television or, in some houses, a lighted blind upstairs might show where a child was being readied for bed.

  The fog horn continued its work.

  The sidewalks everywhere but on Main Street were dirt, lined with wet bushes that would turn out to be lilac or privet or the invasive barberry. To quote one of the phrases Morgan Flower had not hit upon for his rhapsodies, it was all pleasantly impoverished.

  Closer to Stillton Academy’s main buildings, the houses were more lively. The inhabitants were students, in larger groups, with music, loud talk. Some lighted windows showed rooms that were serving as studios, with paintings in progress on easels, or tables serving as desks, the walls around them festooned with mixed sketches and ideas, including many geometric essays in black and white.

  He hadn’t thought about it before. “The students live here?” Fred marveled. “Of course it’s the back of beyond. How are they going to commute from anywhere, gas being what it is?”

  More cars were parked in this part of town, many of them as seedy even as Fred’s.

  Fred’s walk along portions of the outside circumference of the town had brought him to Stillton Hall, where he’d be teaching tomorrow. The building was dark. Its front door did not respon
d to his tug.

  “Milan locks up at eight-thirty.” The male voice spoke from behind him. Fred turned and discovered a couple. Inside their rain gear they looked young: a male and a female in a close unit.

  Chapter Nine

  Assume the absence of suspicion.

  “That’s why,” Fred said. “Just curious.”

  The pair gathered its forces to move on.

  “Don’t know the town,” Fred told them, approaching. He never bothered with a hat, and rain was coursing down through the stubble of hair he kept short, and down his face and neck. “I’d heard of Stillton Academy, took the turn, and here I am on a bad evening. Where should I go for a meal?”

  “There’s two places, you want to sit down,” the female said. She wore what might be her big brother’s black raincoat, if her big brother happened to be a police officer, and a blue hat that went with someone else’s big brother’s outfit.

  “But one of them’s closed,” the male added. “Closes at eight. Bee’s Beehive. What’s open is the Stillton Café.” He pointed down Main Street, away from the sea, the lighthouse, and all the rest of the view. His outer garb was the transparent plastic raincoat the drug store sells you in emergencies—ripped and splattered with paint. He was tall, lean, and dark-haired, and as recently as yesterday had been clean-shaven.

  Fred told them, “Thanks,” and followed the direction they suggested. When he turned to look back at where he had left them, they were turning the corner of Stillton Hall as if to go behind it. “Not much privacy in Stillton, Massachusetts,” Fred observed, “Maybe there’s shelter back there? A shed? A summer house or bandstand?”

  Main Street offered, absolutely and absurdly, nothing for tourists. Again, the easiest explanation seemed to be a pervasive influence of the Taliban and the Stillton Historical Commission. No antique or thrift shop. No real estate office. No gift boutique or shop specializing in cheese and wines from far away. There was a bait-and-tackle shop near the docks, but Main Street was without its upscale equivalent, Le Chandlerie, where you could meet your scrimshaw needs.

  Maggie’s Provisions was closed, but through the generous front windows Fred could see that it was a place to buy an honest pickle, toilet paper, the Boston Globe or Herald, a lettuce or green pepper, frozen food, a ready-made baloney sandwich, beer or wine that didn’t claim to come from anywhere. Etc. Art supplies? Where did those come from. Books? There wasn’t even a used book store to aid in the recirculation of vacation reading.

  The Stillton Café stood out by being open, under most of a blinking neon sign in blue and orange. It was across Main Street from Bee’s Beehive, which was closed. The café was a single large storefront room with a counter along the back separating the tables from the small, very visible kitchen. There might be a dozen people in evidence, between clients, the man cooking, and waiters. No one was older than the mid-twenties. Fred took an empty table from which he could see the room, hung his wet jacket over a chair back, and used a couple of paper napkins to swab his head, face and neck.

  “Use my towel,” a young woman suggested, taking the white cloth from the sash of her apron. The label on her left breast said Marci. Fred used the towel, which left behind it on his skin a redolence of the concentrated essences of hamburgers and fries.

  “Thanks, Marci.” He handed back the towel, which was folded again and replaced at the ready, over the sash of the apron emblazoned with the motto Stillton Café. That was company issue, but the waitress hadn’t been forced to wear a uniform. Fred demanded cheeseburgers and fries, with water from the tap and “coleslaw, if you have it.”

  “Of course,” Marci assured him. “We don’t make it, but we have it. He gets it in big tubs. No problem.” She yelled past the counter in back, “Two Stilltons with cheddar.” On her way to the counter to deal with the issues of Fred’s water and off-the-rack coleslaw, she stopped to talk with two male students who were drinking beer intently while disregarding the silent basketball game on the TV above the counter.

  The conversation was too discreet to be overheard, other than the name, repeated several times, “Hag Harrison.” Everyone in the café, like everyone else Fred had seen on the peninsula, was one of the variant mongrel mixtures Americans call “white.” It was disconcerting, this close to the city of Boston, to seem to have arrived so very far away.

  Marci came back to his table with the water and a shallow dish of coleslaw, along with a plate with two slices of one-size-fits-all white bread and a suspiciously yellow pat of something greasy. “You don’t want a beer?” Marci asked.

  “Student at the Academy,” Fred said.

  “You are?” Marci asked. “Oh. You mean, am I? Sure. My first year.”

  “But you’re not from here,” Fred said.

  She shook her head and laughed. “Colebrook, New Hampshire,” she said. “About as far north as you can go before you fall off.”

  “Into Canada,” Fred finished. “No beer, thanks.”

  Marci shrugged and wandered back toward the counter, pausing to tell the couple of students drinking beer, over her shoulder, “What I did, I’m holding a broom.”

  “Just like Daygah would have done,” the rosier and plumper of the two men said. He and his companion laughed in the patronizing way that demonstrates the tenuous self-confidence that comes from barely superior age. “We all get over it eventually,” he added.

  “Not Lambert. He should have used the Meeker Method.” The chuckles continued into conversation.

  At another table it was two young women in consultation over a basket of fries into which each dipped now and then, in order to select a strand of potato to swirl in a puddle of ketchup and eat with deliberation, after using it to make a point in the air. Fred raised his glass to them, having caught their eyes, and was rebuffed. Both women wore jeans that had seen hard times, and shapeless sweaters. One had an orange kerchief over red hair. The other—her name might be Anna if he’d heard correctly—had black hair in a thick braid down her back.

  Marci returned with a large plate fragrant with cheeseburgers and piled fries. “Not to hurry you, but if you’ll be wanting dessert, can you tell me? We start cleaning the kitchen in ten minutes. There’s chocolate cake and two slices of apple pie left that isn’t bad.”

  Picking up the first of the pair of burgers, Fred shook his head and remarked, “I was half expecting to run into Morgan Flower.”

  The room grew still and paid attention.

  “The weed?” Marci said, and bit her lip. “No disrespect,” she added hastily.

  “English One. And the rest of it,” Fred said. “Emily Dickinson. Moby Dick.”

  “Moby Dick?” The question came from one of the two women who were entertaining fries.

  There was a clattering in the kitchen and the man who had been cooking, swishing his stained yellow apron as if herding chickens, came to the counter to call out, “Kitchen’s closed.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Relax,” Marci called. “Eat, take your time.” But the room had changed as if Fred’s identity had suddenly been exposed as a poisonous fog.

  “I’m in his class,” Marci said. “We all are. One class or another. Except for part-timers. They make you.”

  “He wasn’t here earlier?” Fred asked.

  One of the beer-drinking men took a final pull and put his glass down with a sharp clack. “He eats sometimes,” he said.

  “Not tonight,” one of the pair of young women with French fries said, punctuating her observation by inserting a red-tipped fry into her mouth.

  Her partner added, “He missed that thing on Saturday he calls a seminar. I had to get up for it and he didn’t show.” She shrugged. “I went back to bed.”

  “After twenty minutes,” Marci explained, “they can’t mark you absent if they’re the one late.”

  “Speaking of late, I guess it’s too late for that pie,” Fred said.

  “Steve’s got the mop out,” Marci said.

  The student diners were gatherin
g themselves and their belongings, and putting on whatever rain gear they intended to interpose between themselves and the weather. “Since I’m kind of his guest speaker tomorrow,” Fred said, picking up the last of his fries. He let it hang.

  People were leaving the café in a more or less general way. Marci took a slip of paper from her pocket and put it beside Fred’s plate, frankly face up. “Since I guess you can’t want anything else,” she said.

  Fred started counting money from a damp wallet. “You’re first year, so you’re Intro to Lit,” Fred said, adding an ostentatious five dollar bill to the cost of the meal. “So I’ll see you in class. I’ll catch him in the morning before class, but that doesn’t give me much lead time. If Morgan Flower was here to clue me in, what would he tell me to do or say? What’s missing so far?”

  Marci twisted his money with the bill, shoved it into an apron pocket, and said, “We figured he might not show. You want change?”

  Fred shook his head. “Thanks for the use of the towel.”

  “You’re going to get wet again,” Marci told him, gesturing toward the street.

  “It was good to be dry while I ate,” Fred said. “See you tomorrow.”

  Marci’s repeated shrug defied interpretation.

  The rain hadn’t let up, but it had taken on a different slant. Or was it that Fred was now walking in a different direction? In ten wet minutes he had reached the cottage occupied by Meg Harrison and by now, for all anyone knew, by Morgan Flower himself, back from an unexpected trip to China, and even now turning out the contents of Fred’s bag, speculating about the identity of the absent intruder. Nothing had looked permanent about the instructor’s absence.

  “I might have telephoned Molly,” Fred mused. “And I would now if Flower had a land line. It’ll wait till tomorrow.”