“Professor Kein! Bonjour.”
A young-old man in a motorized wheelchair rolled in their direction, to greet them with a wide smile.
“Bonjour, Professor Kinch. Thank you for seeing us!”—gaily Madelena stooped to brush her lips against the young-old man’s cheek, even as he stiffened just perceptibly as if fearing being touched, yet not wanting to offend. “And here she is, the granddaughter from the wilds of the Midwest, Naomi.”
“Ah yes—‘Na-o-mi Voorhees.’”
So Kinch knew her name. Her full name. Well, that was not so surprising perhaps. Madelena must have told him.
Naomi wondered if Voorhees meant anything to Kinch? Surely he would know that Madelena had been married to a man with that name, though she’d never taken on the name; and possibly, he knew of Gus Voorhees.
(Except: Madelena was so elusive, and so exulted in secrecy, it was possible that even her longtime New York City friends didn’t know of her former marriage or that she’d had a doctor-son who had been assassinated.)
“Naomi, this is Karl Kinch—you need not call him ‘Professor’—but he does not like to be called ‘Karl.’”
Naomi had no idea what this might mean. Surely she could not call him Kinch?
Now came the motorized chair in Naomi’s direction. Kinch’s manner was playful as an adolescent with an oversized dangerous toy. Do you dare step aside, try to escape me?—Kinch’s wide smile, filled with discolored teeth, seemed to be taunting her. Naomi guessed that, wheelchair-bound, a man would resent having always to look upward, crane his neck, at persons of normal height. Kinch lifted a long slender soft-boned hand to be shaken by Naomi even as she tried to sidestep the motorized chair.
“Bonjour, Naomi! Welcome to the mausoleum.” The word was given an exuberant French pronunciation.
In an aside Madelena murmured to Kinch, “Elle est belle, est-elle?” and Kinch murmured, “Pas si belle que tu, ma chère.”
Madelena smiled with a look of irritated pain to signal that she did not approve of this remark. Naomi pretended not to have heard.
Kinch had a large head that looked sculpted out of some fragile material like eggshell. Sparse graying hair fell in ringlets to his bowed shoulders. He wore formal clothes—white dress shirt buttoned to his thin throat, dark trousers with a crease. He might have been any age between thirty and fifty—his skin was papery-smooth and white, presumably from lack of sunshine. Yet his manner was youthful, even boyish. A sort of bad-boyish. He fidgeted constantly, his legs and long white toes in (open) sandals twitched on the footrest of the wheelchair. Except for a subtle deformation of his face and the exceptional size of his head he would have been an attractive man. His features were fine-chiseled. His voice was subtly modulated like an actor’s or a singer’s voice. He was not wearing glasses though one of his eyes was milky and the other appeared severely myopic. His mouth was strangely wide, his lips wetly sensuous. From the way he blinked, smiled, squinted at Naomi she supposed he was seeing her as a blur.
“Please sit, ‘Naomi Voorhees’! Wherever you wish. Just push those books aside.” Kinch’s tone was both mocking and tender.
They were slender books of poetry with stiff, slightly warped hardbound covers that gave off an odor of mold. Not in a language Naomi recognized.
She sat. The sofa was of well-worn leather though seemingly of high quality like other furnishings in the room. How strange it was in this airless place! Very little light was allowed here. All was dim as if undersea. The very reverse of Madelena’s high-rise apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows rarely shaded from the sun. Madelena had said that Kinch’s eyes were sensitive to light. He could not watch television, he could not go outdoors—during the day the sun’s rays were too bright, even if the sky was overcast; at night, streetlights and neon lighting gave him migraine headaches. He could not work with the shimmering screen of a computer that affected his sensitive brain but had to write by hand, or type manuscripts on an old-fashioned manual typewriter, though such typing required muscular coordination of a kind he could no longer depend upon. So Madelena had reported, with a curious sort of detachment.
Naomi felt something beneath her foot on the carpet—a cigarette butt? She was noticing ashtrays on tables, with a look of having been hastily cleaned with a paper towel; and on each table, a book of matches formally displayed.
Madelena didn’t smoke, of course; she would never have allowed anyone to smoke in her apartment. Most of her friends whom Naomi had met did not smoke nor was smoking allowed in any restaurant in the city. How bizarre, that the invalid Kinch should smoke . . .
“Naomi, don’t worry! No one will force you to smoke in this den of iniquity.”