House of Leaves (20 page)

Before I could order a drink, a Jack and Coke, she told me her boyfriend was out of town, working on some construction site in Poland, single handedly dislodging supertankers stuck in dry dock in Gdansk or something. It was a dirty job but someone had to do it, and what’s more he wasn’t going to be back for a few more weeks. Before I even took a sip of my drink, Kyrie was complaining about all the people filtering in around us and then as I finished my drink in one long gulp, she suggested we go for a drive in her new 2 door BMW Coupe.

“Sure” I said, feeling vaguely uneasy about wandering too far from where I lived, which I realized, as I took a second to think that out, was absolutely absurd. What the fuck was happening to me? My apartment’s a dump. There’s nothing there for me. Not even sleep. Cat naps are fine but for some reason deep REM is getting more and more difficult to achieve. Definitely not a good thing.

Fortunately, I was falling under the spell of Kyrie’s blue eyes, like sea ice, almost inhuman, reminding me again—as she herself had already pointed out—that she was alone, Gdansk Man more than half a world spinning world away.

In the parking lot, we slipped into her bucket seats and quickly swallowed two tabs of Ecstasy.

Kyrie took over from there.

At nearly ninety miles per hour, she zipped us up to that windy edge known to some as Mulholland, a sinuous road running the ridge of the Santa Monica mountains, where she then proceeded to pump her vehicle in and out of turns, sometimes dropping down to fifty miles per hour only to immediately gun it back up to ninety again, fast, slow, fast- fast, slow, sometimes a wide turn, sometimes a quick one. She preferred the tighter ones, the sharp controlled jerks, swinging left to right, before driving back to the right, only so she could do it all over again, until after enough speed and enough wind and more distance than I’d been prepared to expect, taking me to parts of this city I rarely think of and never visit, she dipped down into some slower offshoot, a lane of lightless coves, not stopping there either, but pushing further on until she finally found the secluded spot she’d been heading for all along, overlooking the city, far from anyone, pedestrian or home, and yet directly beneath a street lamp, which as far as I could tell, was the only Street lamp around for miles.

Seems all that twittering light flooding down through the sunroof really turned her on.

I can’t remember the inane things I started babbling about then. I know it didn’t really matter. She
wasn’t
listening. She just yanked up on the emergency brake, dropped her seat back and told me to lie on top of her, on top of those leather pants of hers, extremely expensive leather pants mind you, her hands immediately guiding mine over those soft slightly oily folds, positioning my fingers on the shiny metal tab, small and round like a tear, then murmuring a murmur so inaudible that even though I could feel her lips tremble against my ear, she seemed far, far away—”pinch it” she’d said, which I did, lightly, until she also said “pull it” which I also did, gently, parting the teeth, one at a time, down, under and beneath, the longest unzipping of my life, all the way from right beneath her perfectly oval navel to the tiny tattoo, a Japanese sign, the meaning of which I never guessed, marking her lower back, and not a stitch of underwear to get in the way, the rest very guessable though don’t underestimate the danger which I guess really wasn’t so dangerous after all.

We never even kissed or looked into each other’s eyes. Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my only tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound, hers screeching, mine—I didn’t hear mine—only hers, probably counter—pointing mine, a high-pitched cry, then a whisper dropping unexpectedly to practically a bark, a grunt, whatever, no sense any more, and suddenly no more curves either, just the straight away, some line crossed, where every fractured sound already spoken finally compacts into one long agonizing word, easily exceeding a hundred letters, even thunder, anticipating the inevitable letting go, when the heat is ultimately too much to bear, threatening to burn, scar, tear it all apart, yet tempting enough to hold onto for even one second more, to extend it all, if we can, as if by getting that much closer to the heat, that much more enveloped, would prove
. .
.—which when we did clutch, hold, postpone, did in fact prove too much after all, seconds too much, and impossible to refuse, so blowing all of everything apart, shivers and shakes and deep in her throat a thousand letters crashing in a long unmodulated fall, resonating deep within my cochlea and down the cochlear nerve, a last fit of fury describing in lasting detail the shape of things already come.

Too bad dark languages rarely survive.

As quickly as they’re invented, they die, unable to penetrate much, explore anything or even connect. Terribly beautiful but more often than not inadequate. So I guess it’s no surprise that what I recall now with the most clarity is actually pretty odd.

When Kyrie dropped me off, she burped.

At the time I thought it was kind of cute but I guess “man eater” did cross my mind. Then as I opened the door, she burst into tears. All she was in that $85,000 car could not exclude the little girl. She said something about Gdansk Man’s disinterest in her, in fucking her, in even touching her, running away to Poland, and then she apologized, blamed the drugs still roaming around in her veins and told me to get out.

She was still crying when she drove off.

In the end, the whole thing had been so frantic and fast and strange and even sad in some ways, I completely forgot to ask her about the German phrase. [
99—“But here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear.” As translated by Stephen Mitchell.
—
Ed.]
I suppose I could call her (Lude has her number) but for some reason these days dialing seven let alone eleven numbers feels like an infinite stretch. The phone’s right in front of me but it’s out of reach. When it rings at four AM I don’t answer it. All I have to do is extend my hand but I can’t run that far. Sleep never really arrives. Not even rest. There’s no satisfaction anymore. Morning shrinks space but leaves no message.

Resistance to representation, however, is not the only difficulty posed by those replicating chambers and corridors. As Karen discovers, the whole house defies any normal means of determining direction.

Apparently while Karen had been struggling with the explorers’ invasion of her home, her mother had managed to acquire the number of a Feng Shui master in Manhattan. After a long conversation with this expert, Karen is relieved to learn she has been putting all the ceramic animals, crystals, and plants in the wrong places. She is still told to use the Pau Kua table,
I Ching,
and the Lo Shu magic square, but to do so with the assistance of a compass. Since much of Feng Shui, especially in the Compass School, relies on auspicious and inauspicious directions, it is crucial to get an accurate reading on how the house sits in relationship to points north, south, east, and west.

Karen immediately goes out and buys a compass—this while the men are in the midst of
Exploration #2
. Upon returning home, however, she is astonished to find the compass refuses to settle on any one direction inside the house. Assuming it must be broken, she drives back to town and exchanges it for a new one. Apparently this time she tests it in the store. Satisfied, she returns to the house only to discover that once again the compass is useless. [100—Rosemary Park considers Karen’s dilemma highly emblematic of the absence of cultural polarities: “In this case, Karen’s inability to determine a direction is not a fault but a challenge, requiring tools more capable than compasses and reference points more accurate than magnetic fields.” See “Impossible Directions” in
Inside Out
(San Francisco: Urban B-light,
1995
),
P. 91.]

No matter what room she stands in, whether in the back or the front, upstairs or downstairs, the needle never stays still. North it seems has no authority there. Tom confirms the strange phenomenon, and during
Exploration #3
Holloway, who up till then has relied solely on neon arrows and fishing line to mark their path, demonstrates how the same holds true for a compass read within those ash-like halls.

“I’ll be damned,” Holloway grunts as he stares at the twitching needle. [101—David Lettau wrote an amusing if ultimately pointless essay on the compass’ behavior. He asserted that the minute fluctuations of the needle proved the house was nothing less than a vestibule for pure energy which if harnessed correctly could supply the world with unlimited power. See
The Faraday Conclusion
(Boston: Maxwell Press, 1996). Rosie O’Donnell, however, offered a different perspective when she wryly remarked on
Entertainment Tonight:
“The fact that Holloway waited that long to use a compass only goes to show how men — even explorers — still refuse to ask for directions.”]

“I guess all we’ve got now is your sense of direction,” Wax jokingly tells Jed, which as Luther Shepard wrote: “Only helps to emphasize how real the threat was of getting lost in there.” [102—See Luther Shepard’s chapter entitled ‘The Compass School” in
The Complete Feng Shui Guide for
The Navidson Record
(New York: Barnes & Noble, 1996), p. 387.]

In light of this new development and in preparation for
Exploration #4
, Tom makes several trips into town to purchase more fishing line, neon markers, and anything else that might serve to mark the team’s path. Since Holloway’s plan is to spend at least five nights inside, Tom also picks up extra food and water. On one of these excursions, he even takes Daisy and Chad along. No Hi 8 records their trip but the way Chad and Daisy relate to their mother the details of their shopping spree reveals how fond they have become of their uncle.

Unfortunately, Tom also has to buy a ticket back to Massachusetts. With the exception of a few weeks in July, he has not worked in over three months. As Tom explains to Karen and Navidson, “the time’s come for me to put ass in gear and get on with my
life.”
He also tells them the time has come for them to contact the media and find a new house.

Originally Tom had intended to leave right after
Exploration #3
but when Navidson begs him to stay through
Exploration #4
, he agrees.

Reston also sticks around. He had briefly considered taking a leave of absence from the university but managed instead to somehow arrange for a week off, despite the fact that it is late September and the fall semester has already begun. He and Tom both live at the house, Tom in the study, [103—Neekisha Dedic’s “The Study: Tom’s Place” Diss. Boston University, 1996, examines the meaning of “study” when juxtaposed with the ritual of territory, sleep, and memory.] Reston crashing on the pull-out in the living room, while Holloway, Jed, and Wax—at least up until
Exploration #4
—stay at a local motel.

From all the clips leading up to
Exploration #4
, we can see how both Navidson and Holloway expect to gain a great deal of fame and fortune. Even if Holloway’s team does not reach the bottom of the staircase, both men agree their story will guarantee them national attention as well as research grants and speaking opportunities. Holloway’s company will more than likely thrive, to say nothing of the reputations of all those involved.

This kind of talk, on the day before
Exploration #4
is scheduled to start, actually manages to bring Navidson and Holloway a little closer together. There is still a good deal of unspecified tension between them but Holloway warms to discussions of success, especially to the idea of, to use Navidson’s words, “going down in history.” Perhaps Holloway imagines himself joining Navidson’s world, what he perceives as a place for the esteemed, secure, and remembered. Nevertheless, what these short clips do not show is the paranoia growing within him. As we are well aware, future events will ultimately reveal how much Holloway feared Navidson would get rid of him and thus deprive him of the recognition he had a spent a lifetime trying to obtain, the recognition the house seemed to promise.

Of course, Karen will have nothing to do with such talk. Upon hearing what the men are discussing, she angrily withdraws to the periphery of the house. She clearly despises anything that might suggest a longer, more protracted relationship with the oddities of their home. Daisy, on the other hand, keeps close to Navidson, picking at tiny scabs on her wrists, always sitting on her father’s shoulders or when that proves impossible on Tom’s. Chad turns out to be the most problematic. He spends more and more time outside by himself, and that afternoon returns home from school with a bruised eye and swollen nose.