Husbands And Lap Dogs Breathe Their Last Read online

  After dinner, as they were walking back to the car, Luther pulled Cummings aside.

  “Do you have plans tomorrow?”

  “Not really,” Cummings replied.

  “I have been invited to a meeting of the Mathers Society.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I do not know exactly, but it has something to do with the occult. Of course, I would never invite Rockland or Odin. They are just too left-brained, but I thought you might like to accompany me.”

  “You don’t think I’m left-brained?” Cummings asked, mildly offended.

  “Not like they are. I think of you as more open-minded on dubious matters.”

  “Perhaps. Still, why would we want to go to the meeting of an occult group?” Cummings responded.

  “Because it is something entirely different. Also, I feel it is politic to make an appearance, as the invitation came from Anunciación Hollingberry.”

  “Who is Anunciación Hollingberry?”

  “One of the benefactresses of the music department and a delightful, if slightly unusual, lady I consider to be a personal friend.”

  “Unusual? In what way?” Cummings asked, intrigued.

  “Several ways,” Luther said teasingly, “but you will have to accompany me to experience her idiosyncrasies.”

  “Okay,” Cummings said. “What time will you pick me up?”

  Mid-morning the following day, Luther appeared at Cummings’s door wearing an Edwardian morning suit, complete with top hat and cane.

  “Ready to go?” Luther asked Cummings.

  “You didn’t say it was a costume party.”

  “Did I not mention that Anunciación said that Steampunk dress was preferred?”

  “What on earth is Steampunk?”

  “As I understand it, it started as a genre of science fiction in which nineteenth-century technology, particularly steam power, was reimagined in a fantasy world of the future. I believe the movement has now gone far beyond literature. There are Steampunk conventions and Steampunk music and Steampunk crafts and heaven knows what. Late Victorian and Edwardian clothing with certain embellishments is de rigueur.”

  “What does that have to do with the occult?”

  “There is no direct connection that I am aware of, but it may be that the two elements are juxtaposed in time. I say that because the Mathers Society seems to model itself on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but that’s just a guess.”

  “The Hermetic what?”

  “A famous occult group active in Great Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It had a number of distinguished members, including William Butler Yeats, Bram Stoker and Aleister Crowley. So you see, there’s a chronological overlap between the Golden Dawn and Steampunk.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because I was a strange but exceptionally intelligent child in the deep South. Now then, what are you going to wear?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t own anything that looks even vaguely like what you’re wearing.”

  “What about that Dracula outfit you wore for Halloween?”

  “All right. I suppose we can try that.” Cummings returned a few minutes later decked out as a vampire. “What do you think?”

  “I would not bother with the fangs,” Luther suggested. “People might think you are not taking them seriously.”

  Chapter Three

  Chicago is a francized American Indian word meaning “stinky onion,” a reference to a malodorous native plant. Stench is an echt metaphor for the history of Chicago.

  Chicago might as well be a biblical city of plagues. Built on a bog, the early city was prone to insect-borne diseases, and the spring mud made parts of the town impassable. Later, there were sewer and water problems, followed by fire, riots, slaughterhouses, and graft. Fortunately, there was also vibrant commerce and robust architecture, or everyone would have fled the place.

  Of Chicago’s various maladies, graft is the most enduring. In some years one needs two hands worth of fingers to count the major political scandals and several bodies of fingers and toes to account for the minor ones. An even deeper problem is patronage. This frequently results in pervasive incompetence, exacerbated by Midwestern practicality. Once someone has an ill-gotten job, they tend to stay until death. Often they stay much longer.

  Still, Chicago has its compensations: a veneer of progressive politics, affability, affordability, a lack of pretension, and stellar arts and culture. In the few years since moving to Chicago to be with Odin, Cummings had decided the city suited him as well as most places and better than many might have.

  Even though it was Sunday morning, Cummings and Luther encountered traffic. Livestock were once packed in pens near the city’s slaughterhouses, waiting to die; today, humans have a similar experience on Chicago roads.

  As they sat in traffic Cummings proposed a number of routes but could not decide which made the most sense. He set his timer for five minutes and considered the various merits of each. When the buzzer sounded, and he could not decide on one, he let Luther make the call.

  Eventually they arrived at their destination in the Bucktown neighborhood. Luther parked, and they walked a few blocks to an English-style pub called the Red and White.

  The building, which was squeezed between a car wash and a funeral parlor, was an old Chicago commercial building; it was small, about a century old, made of red brick, and now painted a currently stylish shade of brownish beige. The sidewalk outside the main door was decorated with an elaborate medallion of red and white roses. These referred to the War of the Roses, the fifteenth-century English dynastic feud between rival factions in the House of Plantagenet: Lancaster (symbolized by a heraldic red rose) and York (represented by a white rose).

  The décor inside was more William Morris than Henry Tudor. The walls were covered in ornate floral wallpapers, and the furnishings were heavy, wooden and overstuffed. On one side of the room, a great oak bar and surrounding lounge area circled an extravagantly tiled fireplace. The dining area, a phalanx of oak tables and chairs, was on the other side.

  “We are going to a private room upstairs,” Luther informed Cummings, indicating wide, dark oak stairs at the far end of the space.

  Cummings looked up from the bottom of the stairs. The walls were a dark purple, and the interior lighting was dim.

  Arriving at the top, they emerged into another seating area surrounding another Arts and Crafts fireplace. To the right, down a dimly lit purple passage, there was a door flanked by picture windows that revealed a large outdoor roof deck. To the left was a long bar. There were French doors at the far end, presently open, leading into the private dining room. From it, they heard a cacophony of indistinct conversations that grew louder as they approached.

  The private dining room was large, carpeted in blood red wool, swirled with complex paisley patterns in tourmaline, canary, chocolate and black. The windows were covered in the heaviest red velvet, blocking even the possibility of light, while the walls were slathered with red damask wallpaper reminiscent of an 1890s New Orleans cathouse. Freestanding bronze censers at each corner of the room emitted languid clouds of Dragon’s Blood incense.

  The center of the room was dominated by a massive walnut dining table with marquetry inlays of cavorting peasants, flanked by thirty-two chairs, fifteen on each side and one on each end. A walnut podium stood near one end of the table.

  Most of the chairs were filled with ladies and gentlemen in Neo-Edwardian garb, their outfits not precisely historical due to the presence of odd accessories: aviator goggles; metal face masks; World War I gas masks; multi-lensed monocles; walking sticks topped with skulls, black ravens, pentacles, runes, and other oddities; grotesquely overplumed women’s millinery, and men’s black top hats embedded with gears and washers. Cummings assumed these were the Steampunk embellishments to which Luther had referred.

  A bit overwhelmed by the Alice-in-Wonderland-meets-opium-den environment, Luther and Cumm
ings moved cautiously toward two empty chairs at the podium end of the table.

  Cummings noticed an odd mixture of scents. At first he thought it was just the billowing incense. After sniffing a few times, he suspected there was also something else, but he wasn’t sure what.

  “Oh, look, there’s Anunciación,” Luther said, pointing to an imposing woman on the other side of the table. She smiled and came toward them.

  Anunciación was a charismatic, zaftig older woman who made one think of Rodin’s statue of Balzac. She had henna-dyed hair and dark brown eyes accentuated with liberal applications of kohl. Her long and menacingly sharp fingernails were lacquered Chinese red. A friendly but cryptic smile suggested she had reached the age of wisdom but wasn’t sharing what she knew. She wore a long, white lace gown and white shoes, and her hair was swept up and embedded with flowers. Diaphanous fairy wings extended from her shoulders.

  “Isn’t this the most marvelous frock?” she said in a hybrid accent, two-thirds Midwestern American and one-third tony English. She slowly turned and modeled the outfit for Luther. “It’s Titania’s costume from an 1898 London production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I bought it at auction.”

  “You are just dazzling!” Luther said appreciatively. Anunciación shrugged with artfully feigned modesty. “May I introduce my dear friend, Cummings Flynn Wanamaker? Cummings, this is Anunciación Hollingberry.”

  “It’s nice to meet you. You have an interesting name,” Cummings commented.

  “People often say that, but there is a sensible explanation, don’t you know,” Anunciación replied. “I am the result of a coupling in a cave during the Spanish Civil War of an English prima ballerina and a Republican soldier.”

  “Really? How did an English ballerina find herself in a cave?”

  “Stalactites,” Anunciación continued. “Mama was also an amateur speleologist. She acquired this interest as a child whilst assisting grandfather in the collection of bat dung. Quite the best thing for the garden, don’t you know. And what is your provenance, Cummings?”

  “Eastern European and Jewish,” Cummings responded. “I am named for E. E. Cummings and Errol Flynn. My father liked word play, and my mother liked sword play.”

  “Isn’t that charming? Have you and Luther been introduced to the assembled?”

  “Not yet,” Cummings replied.

  Anunciación clapped her hands several times. The conversation stopped, and all eyes shifted in her direction.

  “We are among virgins, don’t you know! These gentlemen are new to us at Mathers,” Anunciación announced. “This is Luther Bannockburn and his friend, Cummings Flynn Wanamaker. Perhaps we could introduce ourselves. Winky, why don’t you start?” She indicated a muscular man to Luther’s immediate left. His ginger hair and sallow complexion seemed at odds with his flowing black poet shirt, jodhpurs and knee-high black leather boots.

  “I’m Winky Carmello. This is my husband, Crandall Hobb,” Winky said, referring to a middle-aged man sitting next to him, perhaps of Japanese descent, with long graying dreadlocks and a gray goatee. He was dressed in a black morning suit and top hat, giving him the appearance of an Edwardian undertaker. A pair of goggles hung around his neck, and he wore a pair of rubber “mad scientist” gloves.

  “That’s Lolita Gobble next to Crandall,” Anunciación said, “and her husband, Rothwell Falconer, next to her.”

  Lolita, who had the angularity and height of a Giacometti sculpture, wore a pageboy haircut dyed a rather tawdry shade of pink. She wore a draped gown, more Ancient Greece than Edwardian England, that fastened over her left shoulder, leaving her right arm and shoulder exposed. A flock of birds tattooed in a delicate shade of midnight blue flew across this shoulder.

  Rothwell, who was also tall, was lightly muscled and intensely blonde; indeed, his hair was almost white. His skin was a pale alabaster, giving him the appearance of someone who rarely ventured outdoors. Ironically, he was dressed for exploring in the tropics in a khaki military suit with a jacket, jodhpurs, knee-high boots, and a white shirt and dark brown tie. His head was covered by a pith helmet and his eyes were framed with goggles.

  On the other side of Rothwell, a woman sat in a Victorian wedding gown, complete with lace veil and train. “That’s our speaker today, Surendra Hickok,” Anunciación explained. “Dear, who is your companion?”

  “I’m Rutley Paik. Hello, everybody,” he said. Like many of the gentlemen, he wore an Edwardian morning coat. However, his was scarlet red and worn over a pair of jeans and red athletic shoes. Cummings noticed he was tall, red-haired, clean-shaven, a bit pudgy and quite handsome. Something about his physiognomy suggested a man far too practical to be dallying with these eccentrics.

  “Rutley is ...” Surendra began, then hesitated for a moment before starting the sentence over. “Rutley is an old friend.”

  “We are also graced by the presence of Queen Victoria, otherwise known as Tom Daniels,” Anunciación continued, referring to an excessively thin man in drag at the end of the table. He had bloodshot eyes the color of cooling lava and was dressed in an ornate black gown. Atop his head, a brown wig was pulled into a tight bun and covered with a lace cap. Like Victoria herself, his features were irregular and uninviting. His nose was overly prominent, and his lips seemed to express indiscriminate contempt. He was presently coughing into a white lace handkerchief.

  Cummings noticed that three chairs at the table were empty. Anunciación looked in their direction and exclaimed, “Otto and Sebastian are late again!”

  “Do you mean Otto Verissimo and his husband?”

  “Who else? They are incapable of arriving on time, don’t you know,” Anunciación said with distaste. “I think we should move on to the victuals.” She picked up a handbell from the podium and rang it three times. Waitresses appeared from the twenty-first century with computer-printed menus.

  “Why does everyone have such exotic names?” Cummings whispered to Luther.

  “I think it is part of the Steampunk aesthetic,” Luther whispered back. “Fantasy clothes, fantasy personas.”

  “I see. And who is Otto Verissimo?” Cummings responded.

  “The writer,” Luther answered.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Not personally, but I am a devoted fan.”

  “What does he write?” Cummings asked.

  “He is the author of our finest queer romance novels,” Luther said. “You must have heard of him. They call him the gay Barbara Cartland.”

  “Who is Barbara Cartland?” Cummings asked.

  “Do you mean to tell me you have never heard of Barbara Cartland?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  Luther glanced at Cummings in a manner that conveyed both pity and horror, and then he shifted his attention to selecting a sandwich.

  Some minutes later, three men entered the room.

  The first man was dressed as a Prussian military officer, in a smart blue coat heavy with metals, a spiked helmet, tight black trousers, and knee-high boots. One of his arms was covered in brass armor adorned with cogs, wheels, and grommets. This man was perhaps thirty-five and not a beauty: he had a broad forehead, bushy brows, eyes that were too small, a nose that was too large, and pitted, oleaginous skin. He moved in a languid but graceful manner.

  The second man, who was perhaps forty-five, tall, hirsute, chubby, and had a beard, was dressed as an Edwardian minister. He wore a severe black suit and a clerical collar. A Christian cross, which descended from a gold chain around his neck, was adorned with spokes and gears. His round, slightly asymmetrical face wasn’t exactly handsome, but he exuded the dispassionate authority that suggests a forceful leader. This gave him a certain sexiness.

  The third man, who was focused on photographing the other two, looked like a hobbit that had emigrated to Israel. He was rotund, short and in early middle age. His pate was bald and covered by a yarmulke. From just above his ears, carrot-colored hair, frizzled as if it had been electrified, descended a foot o
r more. A long beard, robust and streaked with gray, cascaded from his chin. He wore a white button shirt, a tartan kilt, and highland boots.

  “Otto!” Anunciación said to the first man. “We’ve gone ahead and ordered.”

  “I am so sorry to be tardy,” Otto said in a wispy, nasal voice. “There was a bit of a crisis. My cologne atomizer clogged.”

  “That is Otto Verissimo,” Luther, awestruck, whispered to Cummings.

  “Who are the other men?” Cummings whispered back.

  “The second man must be his husband, Sebastian Grinnell. He owns a few bars in Boys Town. I don’t know who the red-haired one is,” Luther said.

  Anunciación had everyone introduce themselves again, and then lunch was served. An hour later it was cleared away. Anunciación rang her bell again and called the meeting to order.

  “As the President of the Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers Society, I am very pleased to welcome you to our 245th monthly meeting. As many of you know, Mathers was an English occultist of the Edwardian era. He was a radical vegetarian, an early translator of neglected occult texts, and using his mediumistic talents, a passionate player of chess with the Gods. Unfortunately, he did not leave a record of his wins and losses.

  “The Mathers Society meets once a month to advance the knowledge of the arcane. We dance with the unusual and delight in the obscure, don’t you know. When it appeared about ten years ago, we embraced Steampunk as a modern aesthetic reinterpretation of the English occult consciousness we bring from the past. Thus, we have fused these elements in a historical yet modern whole.”

  Cummings coughed. He wished someone would put out the incense.

  “We are privileged today,” Anunciación continued, “for another presentation in our mini-series on famous women of the occult. As you all know, Surendra Hickok is a historian of the occult and the author of a biography of Wilhelm Reich. Today, she will speak on her latest project, a biography of Ida Craddock. Surendra?”