The Girl in the Glass by Jeffrey Ford Read Free Book Online

about a vacation?" said Antony.
    "Not a bad idea," said Schell, "but it seems rather criminal to take a vacation in the midst of a depression."
    I threw caution to the wind and said, "By depression, you mean the economic crisis or your own?" Antony winced and said, "Oo-faa."
    "Crisis, me?" said Schell, wearing an expression of incredulity.
    "Boss," said Antony, "I wouldn't have brought it up, but now that the kid's mentioned it…He's right, you've been dogging around here like some kind of ghost yourself lately." Schell reached over to pat me on the shoulder. "I confess," he said, turning his gaze toward the table. "I know what you're saying. Things have been very…how shall I put it?…sodden for me lately. I can explain it less than my seeing the image of that girl."
    "How about we go to the city, like in the old days, get a couple of rooms at the Waldorf, catch a show, meet some ladies, grab a rasher of cocktails? The kid can stay here and keep an eye on the butterflies."
    "Hey," I said, "how come I have to stay home?"
    "There could be some dubious rigmarole," said Antony.
    "Let me think about it," said Schell.
    INNOCENT
    I n the days that followed, I made it my mission to get to the bottom of Schell's predicament. This, of course, was easier said than done. Wandering around like a somnambulist, he skipped meals, slept late, and forsook his usual work of perfecting new seance techniques. The classical dirges never stopped flowing from his Victrola. More than once I found empty wine bottles in the kitchen garbage. Whatever time he did spend employed in some conscious task was spent in the Bugatorium, away from Antony and me.
    I knew I couldn't get him to discuss his feelings (I'd have had more success with Wilma the snake were she still alive), and whenever through the years I'd tried to get him to talk about his past, he'd always slyly change the subject. Instead, I decided to pump Antony for information, thinking that the key to the trouble lay somewhere back in the caterpillar stage of Schell's life. It made sense to me that the grim aspect that had recently emerged and spread its dark wings had its origin sometime in those early years before I knew him. Otherwise, I was sure I'd have understood. I didn't agree with Antony's assessment that it had to do with the " unhonestness " of our present occupation. I'd read Freud just the previous year and rather believed the issue was something more fundamental.
    On the third day following our engagement with Parks, I asked Antony to take a walk with me. Schell was holed up with his butterflies. We left the house through the back door and struck out on the path that led through thick woods to a cliff overlooking the sound. I carried a notebook and pencil with me. He was amused by my earnest nature, but I didn't care.
    "Who are you, Walter Winchell?" he asked.
    I cut him a look, and he knew from then on I meant business.
    We came to the end of the trail—an awe-inspiring vista of the sound framed by two huge oak trees, their gnarled roots growing out of the cliff-side into thin air. He sat down on a fallen log and lit a cigarette. I took up a position on a flat rock some few feet across from him. It was a clear, windy day. Branches swayed and leaves fell around us.
    It had struck me at the wake, when Schell had told me a snatch of how Morty had taken him in from time to time when he was a kid, that I had never heard the story of his early years.
    "I'll tell you what I know," said Antony, "but I'm not saying it's the truth. Schell's a strange cat. The man has secrets."
    I nodded.
    "Okay," he said, "here goes. What I know is he was born in Brooklyn, I think. His mother died when he was a babe—two, three maybe. Only kid. His old man was a piece a work, a gambler. I'm not just talking like a poker game here and there, I mean a real gambler, a shark and a sharp. A legend with the cards. You see the stuff that Schell does with a deck? Child's play compared to what his old man could