CHAPTER FIFTEEN ON LINE MUSTACHE MAN

            Pete felt a shiver run down his spine as Carlton turned her chair toward him and waited. He waited for her to blink but those god damn blue eyes kept staring at him.

            “Pete, if you don’t mind…your “god damns” really upset up. I’ll tell you anything I can about myself but keep the cursing to yourself.”

            “What are you a fundamentalist?.”

            “Where I come from we don’t curse our creator.”

            “Why not? Why not curse god or the creator or Vishnu or whatever you want to call him for making the mistake of creating us, the deadliest species ever to stalk this planet?”

            “Pete, I’m joking. Keep your thoughts clean of that kind of cursing and I’ll talk to you about myself.”

            Pete laughed that deep baratone laugh of his. Carlton smiled. Her smile lit up the perpetual half lit darkness of The Vault.

            “Jesus, you have a beautiful smile.”

            “Uh…would you mind not using his name in vain either.”

            Pete got up and did an impromptu somersault across the floor.

            “I have it. You were brought up in some fundamentalist house with benevolent tyrants who had devotional books in every room, even the bathroom.   And your mother discouraged you from the Thespian society because she thought theater was profane and you loved being in school plays because until you discovered computers in q college lab being in plays was the only way you could stay out of drugs, sex and rock and roll.”

            Carlton smiled again. Actually Pete could have sworn she grinned and even blushed. It was hard to tell in the half lighting of The Vault.

            “You’ve just lit up my life. Yes my blessed mother who I haven’t seen in years was a very devout Christian and if I swore she’d quietly take me in the bathroom and wash my mouth out with soap. Three times. I hated her.”

            “When did you leave home?”     

            “Seven years ago. When I entered the police academy and met Shul, Detective Robert Schulman.”

            “Are you a virgin, Carlton?”

            Carlton leaned forward and took the Mustache Man’s hand in hers.

            “Do you feel chastity in my skin, Pete?”

            “Jesus, you, I mean when you touch me my balls light up like someone is sticking a cattle prod on my testicles. Sorry.”

            “I’ve heard it all, Pete. I grew up with three brothers.”

            “When did your mother first suspect you weren’t mortal?”

            Carlton swiveled around on her chair and rolled it across the floor.

            “Still on this angel thing, are you?”

            “Yeah. Still on this angel thing. Oh I believe you had a mother who was a version of Mother Mary from a horror flic and I believe you had brothers….”

            “If I am an angel then I was sent here to learn the sufferings of mortals so I wouldn’t ever dare judge another human being. I was molested by my father and my brother.”

            “I didn’t ask for all this.”

            “How am I going to get you to really probe those dark storms inside you unless you know you’re who talking to. So I ran away. One night when I was on a boat up at Lake Tahoe with the captain of the football team from our high school he tried to rape me. I dove off that boat, spent five hours in the water until I came to a dock and there was a woman there and she fished me out and she’s still my friend to this day, Sister Mary Margaret Miller.”

            “You’re catholic.”  

            “I am.”

            “How did you ever get to the police academy?”

            “I was so good at computers they recruited me in college and Shul was teaching the class I was part of. Can I take a breather? Have I told you enough about me now to pass the ball back to you?”

            Pete paused and looked at Carlton. If she blinked he couldn’t catch her at it.

            “Yeah. I’m good for now. “

CHAPTER SIXTEEN ON LINE MUSTACHE MAN

            Pete looked up. She’d broken the intimacy between them. She was very distant after she’d revealed herself. Her eyes were pale blue and withdrawn.

            “No,” he said.

            “No, what?“

            He reached out and took her hand and this time he felt the coolness, an icy coldness. Carlton stared at him, as though she were apologizing for the coldness of her skin. There was nothing he could feel from Carlton except the coming of a cold wind.

            “What are you, Carlton?” he said again. “Maybe you’re not something called an angel but maybe you’re not human either. You’re not a human being, Carlton, I know it.”

            Carlton didn’t reply. She was silent.

Pete got up and he went to another level and he stretched and stood on one leg.

            “The Karate Kid” said Carlton. She turned the film on in black and white and fast forwarded to the end of the film where the kid is stretching and extending on one leg looking like a big whooping crane.

            The screens were everywhere so the Mustache Man saw it and he laughed.

            “Is that what I look like? “

            Carlton nodded shyly.

            “Nick.”

            “Who was Nick?”

            “Saint Nick on the street. He taught me this. When I stretched to stop looking at oh some visual point, pick a point, close my eyes and focus on the darkness. It was after that I began to disappear, for just seconds at a time at first but then it would take longer. “

            “Did you have any control of it?”

            “Not like you. You can disappear at will, right Carlton?”

            “Yes.”

            Carlton paused and then she said, ”Take me into your storm, Mustache Man.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ON LINE MUSTACHE MAN

            Pete stopped stretching and said. “Carlton, if I took you into the storm there’d be a wind, no not a wind a hurricane. It would shred all your screens and hurl your monitor against the wall. I don’t know if even this vault could survive it.”

            “The vault was built to survive anything. We’re in a shelter that can shield us from any storm. ”

            “Would you follow me, really?”

            “Oh, yes. I’d follow you and I’d find out who’s hunting you. “

            Later it was as simple as this. There was a small breeze and Carlton knew he was going to take her into his storm. Then there came a popping sound as if someone had let the air out of a balloon. The air smelt of smoke. They were inside darkness. There was the soft stroke of lightning against water. Behind them something walked on the water making a grinding buzzing sound.

            Carlton heard the Mustache Man singing: “ Who’s that walking on the water/ while my boat is sinking fast./ He’s doing what I think I oughta /There’s a god walking on the water.

            “New Testament.”

            “Yeah I read the book.”

            “I love your voice, Mustache Man.”

            No wind gathered, not yet.   Carlton reached out and took Pete Vargas’ hand in hers. He was not afraid. He had been inside this place so many times there was a kind of peace to it.

   ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

            They had been inside this vault at least a week or so. All that time Pete had been growing back his mustache. When they disappeared together all that was left of him in the vault was his mustache quivering in the air then wavering then his mustache was gone and all that was left was screen after screen playing the scene from the Asphalt Jungle where the thief falls among the horses and they nuzzle him as he dies. But the Mustache Man was not dying he was alive in a moving storm with something behind him grinding down matter like a walking blender and Carlton’s hand in his. It was not Carlton the angel who comforted the Mustache Man it was Pete Vargas who comforted her.

           They were in the storm. The Mustache Man was talking again to Carlton even as they heard the steps of the figure grinding down matter behind them.

            “I go into churches, catholic, Presbyterian it doesn’t matter. I’ve been doing this a long time since I hit the streets. And I sing the hyms, really simple ones like “Hear my prayer Lord, hear my prayer” and that one about the “lamb of god you take away the sins of the world have mercy on us. “ And I just let my voice blend with the band playing on this little stage and once at a catholic church called The Casa this big fat priest who looked like Friar Tuck with red splotchy cheeks invited me to come on stage and sing with the band and I did that. But the best part has always been when some little old lady or some woman in her forties and fifties r sings with me or listens to me. Once this little old lady told me as the mass ended that “she loved my voice.” Carlton, this is the only time I’m grounded enough to stay around for a while and live.”

            There was an explosion of sound behind them, more grinding, buzzing. Carlton wanted to turn around but the Mustache Man squeezed her hand tight and whispered, “not yet, Carlton. I’m not ready to see who’s following me, not yet.”

            “And the only other time I’ve been grounded, wanted to stay without yielding to the urge to let the storm take me somewhere, someplace is when I was with Chance and Jewels and Bert.”

Then it hit Pete. With Carlton’s ice cold hand in his, with the grinding buzzing figure following him into the storm, he knew when they had disappeared they’d broken the connection with chance. He’d lost Chance and Jewels and Bert once again.

“And now I’ve lost her,” said Pete as the wind began to pick up inside the storm.

            Carlton smiled at him and then she turned around at the thing coming toward them devouring everything in its path. She extended her arms and light grew out of her arms like two swords. Pete heard her say, “Don’t worry, Mustache Man. I’ve got your back.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

            It didn’t matter. He couldn’t locate Chance and Jewels and Bert as the wind gathered in sound and shrieked all around them. For years after he had left them he had always known where they were, could picture them. Chance had said before he’d left “You’ll always know where I am” and she was right. He could smell her juicy perfume even in a dust storm high up above in the Arizona desert just before he entered the mountains. He didn’t need her texts to know where she was. And now he couldn’t find her.

            Chance couldn’t find him either. She walked away from the screen as the connection broke. Jewels held her hand and that bulldog, Bert who never left their side (except at night when he took strange long journeys) he was there as well. She walked with Jewels and Bert out into the house filled with her paintings and sculpture and into the courtyard she shared with others in this apartment complex in this western city called Denver. Then she stared at the card on which she had written the address of a man Carlton said used to be a detective, Robert , “Shul” for short. Carlton had left her the key to his apartment.

Detective Robert worked at the University, only twenty five miles away. She packed a lunch and gathered up Jewels and the bull dog and canceled all her appointments. There was no phone number only an address and an apartment number. She canceled all her appointments with clients and took to the road. It was summer. There would be no snow on the roads, no ice, just a little bit of wind that came down from the mountains. Jewels was happy about the trip. She made up tunes with that odd little whistle she had developed. Birds sung back to Jewels with their songs. Bert rode on Jewels’ lap. It was only a two hour journey from the mountain town called Vortex to Denver and the University.      

            They left at four in the morning and arrived just as the sun rose. Chance found a parking place a few blocks away from University Avenue and walked with Jewels and the bulldog by her side. They climbed three flights of stairs then found the apartment and knocked. Bert barked when no one answered. His bark sounded like a cross between a muffled lion’s roar and the holy ghost with a rasping cold. When no one answered Chance unlocked the door. They stepped into darkness, boxes, and the smell of stale cigars, pizza and beer. When Chance found the light she saw what Carlton had warned her about, a place piled high with books and trash. She and Jewels began to clean as Bert investigated.

            When Bert returned with a half eaten pizza in his mouth Chance slapped his flanks to make him drop the pizza then looked into his deep pale milky way eyes and saw that hint of stars that always made her wonder if he was a dog or a being hiding inside a dog with a temporary visa to be an animal.

            By noon she had cleared the place of cigar ash, half eaten food, taken out the trash and collapsed on Shul’s big leather couch with Jewels in the crook of her arm and Bert lying across Jewel’s chest. That was how Shul found them when he walked in as the sun began to set.

            Bert opened one eye and greeted Shul with a low growl. Shul made himself a sandwich out of left over cold cuts, opened a beer and sat in the big soft chair watching the bulldog. Bert ignored him and went back to sleep. He knew who they were. Carlton had warned him she might not return this time, that she was sending him Pete Vargas’ family. Detective Robert Schulman took in the clean apartment and sighed. He knew her name. He had wanted to meet Chance Montclair for a long time. She was the one human being who had lived with Pete Vargas, the man Carlton called the Mustache Man.

            He had wanted to interview her for a long time.

            “I forgive you for cleaning up my apartment,” said Shul. “I forgive you for dumping my cigar ash. I forgive you for going into my frig, taking out my five day old pizza I was going to broil to a crispy texture but I won’t forgive you for rearranging my papers and books. I knew where everything was. I may not be able to locate certain case files now for years.”

            Then Chance began to interrogate Detective Robert Schulman.

THE FIFTH INTERVIEW BEGINS