
Chapter 7
Gold Hill, Oregon, where balls roll uphill and
people appear to stand sideways, is known as the Oregon
Vortex.
THE CALLER ID SHOWED “PRIVATE NAME”
and a number with a local area code and exchange.
It rang a second time.
I hesitated.
Pick up the damn phone, Scrap yelled into
the middle of my mind.
Okay. I could do this.
A deep breath for courage.
A third ring.
One more and it would go to voice mail. I could
return the call.
He might not leave a message.
I’d not hear his clipped tenor voice with hints of
upstate New York mellowed by the dozen languages he spoke and
read.
Desperate, I grabbed the phone in the middle of the
fourth ring. “Hello.” I tried to keep my voice from sounding
breathless with anticipation. My heart raced and my teeth nearly
chattered.
A long moment of dead air.
“Hello?” I tried again.
“Tess,” he breathed.
“Who is this?” As if I didn’t know.
“It’s me, Guilford ... um, Gollum.” I could almost
see him blushing.
“Good morning Dr. Van der Hoyden-Smythe. A little
late to be calling.”
“Tess, please. We need to talk. I’ve found some new
information about your ... um ... problem.” He rushed through that,
as if afraid I might hang up on him.
I thought about it.
“What kind of information?”
“Not over an open line. We need to talk. In
private. Before it gets any worse.”
“How could it be worse? Seven women in less than a
year.”
“The problem is escalating. Please. Where can I
meet you?”
“How did you get this number?” I’d changed it right
after leaving Cape Cod.
“JJ and Raquel gave it to me. They said you’re in
the book.”
Damn.
Yeah!
What did I really feel?
Anger certainly. Fear. Deep and abiding longing to
keep this conversation going forever.
“Tess, where can I meet you? Neutral territory if
you like.”
“Do you know Bill’s Café on Bancroft, right off
Macadam?” Two blocks away. Surely I could manage to hobble two
blocks on my crutches. No way I could drive my car with a stick
shift. Maybe I could hotwire Steve’s rental ... No, he was leaving
at zero dark thirty and returning the car. Allie was staying with
me. I wouldn’t ask her to drive.
“I’ll find it. Eight-thirty tomorrow ... this
morning?”
“Why not earlier?” He’d always been an early riser,
even after a late night of deep conversation and a bottle of single
malt between us.
“I can’t get away until eight when Julia’s nurse is
available. Then I have to be back at the college for a ten o’clock
class.”
“Back up. Julia? Your wife is with you and not
locked up in an insane asylum?” I started shaking with chills that
began in my gut and spread outward. My hands grew so cold I almost
dropped the phone.
“She’s had a remarkable breakthrough but I’m not
comfortable leaving her alone ...”
I dropped the phone back in its cradle, cutting him
off.
The phone rang again.
I turned it off without answering.
Too angry to cry, too filled with loneliness to
think, eyes too full of tears to see the computer screen, I hauled
myself off to my sofa, hugging a pillow so tight I burst the seams.
It spewed down feathers, like a snowstorm had vomited all over my
living room.
I watched tiny specks of white flutter to the floor
at the same speed as the tears dripping off my cheeks.
As dawn crept around the edges of the blinds I
turned on the gas log in the fireplace and cleaned up the mess. I
had to use a hand broom and dustpan while crawling. Scrap didn’t
help much, fluttering around, scattering clumps of feathers to the
far corners.
I kept at my silent sweeping. No sense in letting
Steve and Allie know how much I hurt.
Or Donovan.

At eight-thirty on the dot I swung up to the front
door of Bill’s Café, sweating and limp with fatigue. Manipulating
crutches is hard work. I had to stop and breathe deeply before
figuring out the awkward process of getting through the heavy
swinging door.
A long arm reached from behind and above me to hold
the door open.
I knew that hand. Long fingers, hairless knuckles,
ink stains on the middle finger.
“Thank you, Gollum.” I had to close my eyes and
force air into my lungs.
“I wasn’t sure you’d show up,” he said
softly.
I couldn’t not show up.
He looked damp and a bit rumpled. His usual polo
shirt and khakis had lost their crispness. I hoped I looked less
battered by life than he.
Fat chance.
Bill, the café owner, bustled up and swung the door
open further. Balding, middle-aged, once heavy but slimming down
nicely from all the hard work of owning, managing, and cooking in
his own place, Bill and I had struck up a friendship right after I
moved into the neighborhood, a week after he opened.
“Tess, what happened?” He ushered me to a center
table and pulled an extra chair over for me to prop my foot
on.
“I tripped while jogging.” I followed him very
slowly.
“Tsk, tsk. You must be more careful. You’re my best
customer. I might have to close down if you stopped coming.”
Fat chance of that. People filled the line of
booths under the windows on two walls. The five tables in the
middle of the long narrow room were mostly occupied as well.
Big windows offered a glimpse of the river between
tall office buildings across the highway, and a good look at the
state of the rain. I’d learned that in the Pacific Northwest people
depend upon a lot of big windows to let as much light in as
possible. We consider the sun a UFO.
Maybe that’s why we have such excellent coffee, to
brighten our moods when the sun can’t do it.
“Nothing’s broken. You won’t get rid of me so
easily,” I quipped back.
“The regular, Tess?” he asked, helping me
settle.
“Yeah, the regular. Black coffee and whole wheat
toast with strawberry jam.”
Gollum quirked a questioning eyebrow at me. Then he
handed his menu back to Bill without looking at it or sitting.
“Pancake sandwich. Eggs over medium, patty sausage. Blackberry
syrup if you have it. Coffee with cream and sugar.”
At least one of us hadn’t changed appetites. And he
hadn’t tried to change my order to something more substantial.
Donovan would have, in the name of taking care of me.
As I dropped into a seat ungracefully, Gollum
gently raised my injured foot to rest upon the extra chair. “That
should be more comfortable for you.”
“You’ve talked to JJ and Raquel so you know what
happened.” I fingered the pearls nervously, wondering if I’d have
had better luck in the forest if I’d worn them.
“Yes.”
We stared at each other in uncomfortable
silence.
“Do you still have Gandalf?” I asked about the
long-haired white lump of a cat Gollum took everywhere.
“Of course. He’s quite the elderly gentleman now.
Spends more time sitting on the windowsill looking out than
anything else. But he has become quite attached to Julia. She needs
him.”
“Oh.” His wife again.
“What are you teaching this term?” I finally asked
just to break the silence.
Bill brought us big eggplant-colored pottery mugs
and an emerald thermal carafe of coffee—freshly ground beans, dark
roast, the house specialty. A ceramic cream pitcher in Bill’s
colors and a clear sugar dispenser were already on the table along
with cutlery wrapped in printed, paper napkins also in the same
deep colors.
We fussed with the details of pouring and
accessorizing our drinks.
“Oh, Tess, I almost forgot.” Bill came back with a
second pitcher, this one in beige plastic. “I laid in a supply of
soy coffee creamer. You aren’t my only lactose intolerant customer.
Try it. If you don’t like it I’ll get you a fresh cup. Your orders
will be up in just a minute.”
He left us alone again, too busy to chat. Although
with the six booths and three tables nearly full we weren’t really
alone. Not the best place to carry on a private conversation about
otherworldly critters I needed to fight with the Celestial
Blade.
Gollum took a sip of his coffee, smiled and nodded
at the excellent brew, then answered my question. “McLoughlin
College hired me to teach all levels of anthropology, including a
class on the persistence of old folklore into modern urban
myths.”
“Your area of expertise.”
He nodded, falling back into silence.
“Why McLoughlin? With your credentials you could go
anywhere.”
“When I knew for sure I’d have Julia with me, I
needed more than adjunct work, a term here, a year there. I applied
to fifty different colleges. McLoughlin was the only one to offer a
tenure track position. And it’s three thousand miles away from
Julia’s mother. And mine.”
“So tell me about your wife’s breakthrough.” I had
to know just how well she’d recovered after fifteen years of
institutionalization. Maybe if I knew she was fully functioning in
modern society I’d finally accept that Gollum was lost to me.
But if she were fully functional, why did she have
a nurse? Why couldn’t he leave her alone for more than a few
minutes?
A small niggle of hope burned in my heart.
I squashed it.
“Julia’s caregivers noticed years ago that on
Wednesdays she was bright, cheerful, and coherent. Then on
Thursdays her mother visited—blew in and took over. Within the hour
Julia reverted to mute wandering, and refusing to acknowledge her
surroundings, or other people. By the following Wednesday she was
on the road to recovery again.”
“Until her mother descended and convinced her she
was useless, a hypochondriac, and a drain on her resources,” I
finished the thought.
My own relationship with my mother had been weird,
but at the end we’d found rapport. Mostly I’d given up running my
life in a futile attempt to win her approval. She’d never
acknowledge that I could do anything right until ... until after
Donovan’s foster father died. But she depended on me to take care
of her, no matter what guise she put on her actions.
“How’d you get her mother to stop exerting control
over Julia, keeping her dependent and useless?”
“Bridget found a new charity. She’s turning vacant
lots into mini parks, planting trees and community gardens, and
commissioning murals on ugly walls. She doesn’t have time to run up
to Boston every week.” He flashed a half smile. Just a brief
glimpse of the warped sense of humor we shared.
“Are you well? Other than the bunged up ankle that
is?” he asked before I could pursue the topic of his wife.
“Mostly.”
We fell back into silence that lasted until Bill
brought our plates. He fussed about for a moment, refilling coffee
mugs, grabbing extra butter, and satisfying himself that we
wouldn’t starve in the next few moments if he left us to tend other
patrons.
“I found a psychiatric nurse who works swing shift
at the local hospital,” Gollum blurted out between bites. “I give
her room and board. She gives Julia companionship when I’m tied up
at the college.”
“Precautionary or necessary?” No polite way to ask
that.
“Necessary. Julia had a couple of relapses early
on, short-lived, but scary when they happen. Nothing serious for
nearly three months now.” He stared at his half finished
meal.
I wanted to ditch my toast. Bill had put too much
butter on it.
We both found solace in coffee.
“I’m not sharing her bed,” Gollum finally said. He
kept his mug close to his mouth, muffling his words.
My heart skipped a beat and my breath caught in my
throat. I don’t know why. I was the one who ended our affair. I
couldn’t carry on with a married man and I couldn’t ask him to
divorce the woman who always asked for him first during her moments
of coherence.
“I’m sorry, Gollum, I can’t do this. I need all of
you or nothing.” I knew that he was safe if not happy.
More than I could say for myself with the Nörglein
preying on women in the hills above Portland.
I fumbled for my crutches and ended up losing my
balance, banging my cast on the floor and nearly falling off my
chair.
Gollum was right there helping me with a strong
hand. He settled me on my feet and escorted me to the door after
flinging money on the table. More than enough to cover the bill and
a generous tip.
“Take this file, Tess. I printed out something that
might help you. Call me if there’s anything else. But please, I beg
you, don’t go deeper into this until you heal.” He handed me a
manila file folder from the folds of his leather jacket.
“I’m going to High Desert Con in three weeks. I
should be mostly healed by then,” I mentioned the science fiction
convention in Pasco, Washington where we’d first gotten to know
each other and begun our adventure with Sasquatch and hellhounds
out of Indian legends. “I won’t do anything about the Nörglein
until after that.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” He kissed my cheek and ran
off into the rain, disappearing into the mist rising from the
river. As substantial as a dream.