Not Exactly A Ghost Story (Chapter Two of Longing For Catastrophe)
Regence
Tonight/ Ce Soir
24 Dec
It’s A Wonderful Life 19h 00
A Christmas Carol 21h 30
Cold rain smacking plastic letters and times. Muddy windows. Lobby dim. Slush-prints up and down the plush red stairs. Smell of coffee. Bathroom cleaner. Popped corn shrapnel on the ground. Vacuum sound.
Infantino pulled the plug and looked up.
“Hey.
Anne slid her boot heel down the slick bottom step.
“Hi. Um, did you see--?"
“The presents? Yeah. Don’t worry about it."
One brown eye tilted closed.
“Thank God…"
Infantino’s arms spread wide, dangling mugs by their handles.
“Want some coffee?”
Smile-corners sharpened.
“Okay.”
“Milk?”
Anne nodded.
“Sugar?”
“Two.”
“Nutmeg?”
Lips contracted. A fist crimped black hair.
“Um…"
“You sure? It’s good stuff.”
“Maybe… maybe next time.”
“Alright.”
Anne reeled in a blue-speckled mugfull, unspiced. She took a phantom sip of steam. Her free arm jumped ninety degrees. A finger skewered the air.
“Can we go to my office?”
“Sure.”
Rippling old movie stills on corridor walls. Echoing concrete. Static heat. Red exits in the dark.
Faded newsprint scotch-taped to a half-open door—classic Peanuts. Plastic holly. Silver bells.
White lights—strung through dried branches sticking out of a pot. Glistening bundles piled on the desk. Memo on a notepad in careful blue ink. Globe paperweight. Framed Woody Allen on the wall, looking worried.
Anne switched on the lamp. She placed the coffee on a Miramax coaster. Infantino sat down. Anne took off her glasses, wiped the lenses clear, and locked them back into red grooves on the sides of her nose. She ran a finger down the smooth-wrapped corners of the presents.
“I don’t even know what I bought."
A shrug.
“It’ll come back to you.”
Anne’s fingers rolled out flat onto the desk.
“Probably not until I see the snapshots…”
“Who takes the pictures?"
“Oh, someone always does."
“Big family Christmas?”
The fingers curled back.
“Yes. It gets crowded.”
“You mean you get crowded out.”
A stack of order sheets ready to fax. Bookcase full of directories. Correspondence and catalogues filed in the cabinet. Snoopy legs dangling over the edge.
“I’m an only child. I need my room."
Infantino set his mug down. Coffee and nutmeg dribbled onto the carpet. Green eyes blinked. The mess sank in.
“It’s a nice office."
“Thanks.”
“Going home for breakfast?”
“Breakfast? No. I want to sleep in… I only moved out last month… I’ll show up in the afternoon, with everyone else.”
“My mom always makes pancakes.”
Anne rubbed a reddening cheek against her bicep.
“She does?”
A smile.
“Yeah… So, what do you think you’re gonna get?”
“I asked for a toaster and Chanel Number Five.”
“Sounds good.”
She squinted.
“How about you?”
“I don’t know. They can’t get what I wanted.”
Anne’s chin jumped off the desk.
“Why not?”
Infantino leaned back.
“My parents’ place got robbed about ten years ago. They took the electronic stuff, some jewelry, and all my best comic books… I was pretty upset. I mean, I got most of them in the eighties—before prices went crazy—and I knew I’d never get them back.
“Anyway, I heard they were reprinting my favourite old saga in a hardbound edition. It’s supposed to be eighty dollars, which is pretty sick, but that’s about what my mom usually spends…"
“So they’re not reprinting it?”
Infantino curved a palm around the back of his neck.
“Not ‘til next fall.”
Anne seethed forward.
“So what’s the story?”
“A big chunk of The Pastmaster series, from the early seventies… You know that character?”
“Um… No.”
“Oh. Well, he’s this history student—Calvin Ranke—who just wakes up one morning with the power to make others relive moments of his life…”
“Relive?”
“He just touches them and they feel things exactly the way he did. And, of course, he goes through it too. We’re not talking good times here. In some cases, it’s stuff he isn’t normally conscious of at all… It’s a thankless power. And a strange one. I mean, comics were getting more sophisticated in the sixties, but face-smashing still ruled the day. Suddenly, Calvin starts foiling crime by dragging thieves through the birth channel… There’s an early issue where the police find the Pastmaster and Dr. Fallout crying on the curb over kindergarten—day one.”
“That sounds… draining.”
“Well, like any of these guys, he hones his craft over time. Eventually, only the villains weep.”
“But they kept recycling the same old traumas?"
“Pretty much. I mean, there were some interesting variations. He learned to juxtapose memories, laying some before-and-after whammies on the worst offenders—you know: expectation to the power of disappointment… But still, the series did lose its edge, after a while. So they killed his girlfriend—Ellen.”
“Poor Ellen…”
“Yeah, I used to feel that way, but really, it had to happen. She was beautiful, hard to please, hard to understand. She came into the series that way, and nothing ever changed—the characterization was airtight. It’s not that she was a caricature, or one dimensional, or anything like that… Not at all. She was a protean swirl, vacuum-packed. The reverse of a zombie. She was very much alive, but dead weight just the same. Killing her made sense, dramatically speaking. The letters poured in. I remember wishing I had been there--but the pages were brown by the time I got hold of them…
“Issue one-twenty-one. That’s when it happens. It’s Archimedes, of course—a complete sociopath, born with a center of consciousness somewhere outside of the space-time continuum. He’s omniscient, as far as human action is concerned. But he has no concept of interiority.
“He’d been introduced early in the series, as the leader of a criminal organization held together through blackmail. He usually lurked just out of Calvin’s reach, tormenting him with cryptic references to the future, never challenging him directly, despite the obvious possibilities. And when he finally does make his move, it’s against Ellen.”
“How does she die?”
“Oh, you know, melodrama. The couple strolling through Central Park—it’s supposed to be a perfect night. Crisp autumn, no one else in sight.”
He coughed, landing an arm on the desk.
“It looked about right—moon-gleams and gauze-fog… Leaves a good shade. They do some talking—the kind they always did, where you’re never sure if everything’s great or it’s over. Then she takes off for some reason. He follows sounds that could be laughter; finds her lying on the ground, quiet. The last mist of her breath congeals on his cheek… Archimedes just gloats.”
“That’s… horrible. That’s a comic?”
Infantino smiled.
“Sure. That’s what they’re like."
An empty gold picture-frame, flat on its back, reflecting the ceiling and a crossfire of mouths. Blank photocopier paper, piled against the back wall. Next year’s schedule—half-planned—on a calendar in erasable red.
"Calvin flips out. In the next issue, he lunges at Archimedes—grabs him by the throat, starts strangling him. But that’s not enough. He wants to confront the man where he lives –which, basically, is nowhere. That’s a problem. But after about fifteen pages of something like astral travel through the killer’s mind, Calvin finds the ‘core’—a black hole of soulless perception. He dives in, with the memory of Ellen’s death running in loops through his brain and irradiating the void.
“Archimedes somehow gets caught in the net, and the immediacy does him in. The worst is that he’s always known this would happen—and he’s grateful. It’s an elaborate suicide. Calvin finds himself alone in Central Park, between the corpses. He makes an anonymous call to the police and goes home.”
“That’s only two issues.”
“That’s all they needed for starters. To get all the elements in place, I mean. Even Lydia.”
“Lydia?”
“A long-time character. Usually dating someone else in the cast. She was party girl scenery for years. Very bright teeth. They gave her one thought bubble in ten years. But then she shows up on the last page of one-twenty-two and touches Calvin’s shoulder. He brushes her off, but she sticks with him. Just for one panel, they zero in on her mouth, and you could almost swear it’s about her…”
Infantino’s elbow grazed the presents. A box smashed glass out of the frame. Faces multiplied in the shards.
“But it’s not.”
“Well, no, it’s still The Pastmaster. But that past starts to look differently—if not to Calvin, then at least to the fans.”
“You really love those letters pages, don’t you?”
“Oh yeah. The drawings light your way, and the dialogue helps a bit, but the frame gets built up in the commentary. Motivations are explored, meanings teased out, inconsistencies explained. Of course, no two letters agree… It’s great.”
“What’s so great about that? It sounds like that game where everyone makes up part of a story.”
“A little bit.”
“I hate that game.”
A burst of laughter.
“Well…it’s not…it’s not exactly like that… I mean, there are no constants in that game—everything’s in flux. With what I’m talking about, there are always those images—no matter how faded the inks—to anchor things. The letters trace lines between dots—but they don’t create new dots… You take what’s given.”
“Hmm…”
“By the same token, you never let anyone forget what’s been given. That’s how the two issues grew.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a vested interest—in comics—against letting stories go long. Keeps new readers from buying in--especially back then, when there were hardly any comic-stores, let alone ebay, and you couldn’t find the old issues… So they started something new, every two months or so.
“Calvin doesn’t brood much, after the killings. There’s a funeral—and then more villains. But the fans brood for him, keeping Ellen’s death alive for people who never read issue one-twenty-one. Otherwise they could never have done it—no one would’ve cared.”
“Done what?”
“Brought her back. Quite a while later.”
“Oh…So that scene with Lydia goes nowhere?”
“That’s a good way to put it. Or maybe it goes everywhere. Anyway, it doesn’t go where people expected it to... Calvin‘s memory powers a restless march through the months. His steps back are steps forward—and the goal is Ellen, whatever she is. He builds himself up, burying villains with his past. That’s the series, up ‘til one-twenty-two. It could’ve gone on that way—trading Ellen for Lydia, using Ellen for fuel. But it doesn’t. Like I said before, it’s still The Pastmaster, but now we get the story through Lydia. Or reflected off of her, I guess… Instead of gothic obsession, we get banter and chats, mixed with the violence—screwball romance. And that’s it for progress. She cuts the supply-line. They dig in. Talk things over. Talk over things. But that’s no good. You don‘t beat things with talk—and there’s nothing down there to uncover. You can shout things down. And deafen yourself. Or you can wait for them to settle."
“So they do settle?”
“Let’s just say they’re settling. But then, at a party in Greenwich Village, Calvin sags into a window, his mind almost blank—and sees her on the street. It’s just some hair and a walk, but he’s sure. He runs out, with those black confusion lines swirling ‘round his head. He doesn’t find anything…”
“But it ruins everything."
“No, he’s used to ghosts… Then, in one-forty-three, he kisses Lydia, and weird things start to happen. The memory-transfer process revs up, against Calvin’s will. But instead of flashing back as one, they wind up in Archimedes’ position--watching everything—as two. And Lydia says (although they’re still kissing): ‘You’re the Pastmaster.’”
A hard squint.
“She never gets any closer?”
“No."
“Where does it go from there?”
“They snap out of it.”
“Hmm…”
“And then, of course, Ellen does show up. She just rings Calvin’s doorbell and walks in, as if nothing’s happened… It’s paralyzing. Things with Lydia stop dead—I swear she has to fight her way onto every panel from then on… Ellen hovers in the spotlight, dressed in her old clothes, drawn like she was in the sixties. She’s an anachronism. A bright object. Twirling.
“Calvin doesn’t make any decisions—he’s hoping it’s all part of some villainous plot. Then Archimedes comes back too. But that doesn’t solve anything, because Archimedes doesn’t know what’s going on either. He’s nothing like his old self—plotting behind the scenes. All he wants to do is kill Ellen again, and again, and again… Once every issue for the next three months. And Calvin follows in murderous orbit.”
“That’s insane."
“But no one else dies. Just Ellen and Archimedes… And each time Calvin finishes the cycle, there’s more grit in the rinse. It’s not just a brain washing, it’s the fabric of reality; more delicate than you’d think—maybe not just in comics. And it’s all out of sync. The past runs patterns through the series—and with every go ‘round, the material wears thinner… Later on, some editor says the shock of Calvin’s encounter with Lydia—the kiss—causes his power to go haywire and externalize itself…”
“But you just told me he sees Ellen before that!”
“You’re right. He does."
“What--?”
“Oh, there were letters about that, believe me, but who knows--?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“See why I need them back?”
Anne stood up.
“Tell me how it ends.”
“Well, the fourth time around, things change. There’s no explanation for it. The finality lifts. Other things seem more important. Archimedes just cracks. And Ellen walks off. That’s all."
Anne started gathering the presents.
“Sounds pretty final to me."
Infantino jumped out of the chair.
“You can’t let these things run on. People don’t want it. You didn’t…”
He looked at her.
“Let me help you with those.”
“Thanks,” she smiled. “I guess you’re right.”