Le Carte Rouge

Rod had that stupid smile that says he knows what life is all about as he joined Angie back on the street. He shoulder bumps her to communicate something good has happened. They are on the way to the motel and away from the book store. Rod looks at Angie, holding a book at chest level.

Angie gives in, ‘Okay, what is the book?’

 Rod smiles broadly holding the book closer to his chest. ‘It is the book.’

Angie smirks, ‘What book?’ she asks, looking both ways as they cross the street.

Rod slowly shakes his head as he looks both ways while crossing. ‘The book.’

‘What is that the name of the book…the book?’ she smiles, returning his smile, then she looks seriously at him. ‘You don’t mean the book?’

‘Yep, I do mean the book.’ he steps up with her on the curb and stops. Rod holds the book outward with his fingertips gently holding its edges. ‘ Angela Demarche, may I introduce you to the Le Carte Rouge.’ He passes it gently to her and she takes it with crossed brow.

‘Naw, can’t be.’ she opens it and her eyes widen. She reads aloud, ‘Le Carte Rouge.’ she looks up at Rod, ‘But, this can’t be.’ Shaking her head to fathom the finding.

‘Come on, Angie, think of it without the comedy. Henri says, as we are leaving, and rather secretly, to find some book for him that will somehow find me and voila it finds me in this city with all its libraries and book shops. I mean, what are the chances?’ taking the book back and softly patting the book black leather bindings with his fingertips.

She smirks in thought, ‘Okay, this is the book? The exact same book? The title is exactly the same?’

‘This is exactly the same name.’ Rod looks at it then back to her without opening it.

‘Let me see it again?’ Angie puts out a hand.

‘Don’t open it again until we get back to the room though. I looks kind of brittle.’ He hands it over to her. ‘The cover is strong but the pages look, you know, kind of, like if a breeze comes it might all blow away. Probably why they were throwing it away.’

She runs her fingers upon the edges of the gold leaf pages, nodding at the book’s apparently fragility. She finds herself smiling at the richness in texture of the binding and smells from the types of trees and cotton used in the production of the paper. ‘This is a beautiful book. Yeah, I agree we should hurry and get back to the room, Rod. Play it safe.’ She holds the book against her breast and quickens her pace.

‘You are into it now.’

‘Things happen, Rod, and this is too interesting to just accept or acknowledge without seeing what we have here and pulling up a conclusion. Finding this like that can both be easy to grasp and difficult to understand but there is a book here and it has a certain resonance for me that I do not remember ever having with a book. This is very interesting.’

In the room, Rod opens the curtains and goes over to the phone. He pauses to look through the list of numbers to dial Haiti and Henri. The phone connects and rings the double ringing that after the couple of years of living in the Caribbean he still wasn’t used to.

‘Allo?’ Henri’s voice sounded tinny.

‘Henri? This is Rod. I found your book, the Le Carte Rouge. We found it.’ Rod looked over at Angie who, without taking her jacket off was laying on the bed with pillows propped to work her fingers through the book.

‘Rod. You found Le Carte Rouge? Oh, my god, this is wonderful. This is wonderful. I had a feeling. No. I knew.’ There was a pause and Rod knew some instructions were on the way. Henri the lawyer was quelling his excitement. ‘Okay, this is what you do: first, put the book in a safe place, like your pack, no, wrap it in something protective. It has to be sensitive, no? Wrap it good and put it in your backpack or the duffel, no backpack because when you get on the plane you carry it, no, you carry it with you. Do not put it above but at your foot, feet, no?’

‘Henri, wait, man. We just got it and our flight isn’t until tomorrow, but we were thinking of spending some time down in Key West.’

‘No!’ Henri almost shouted, ‘that is not what you do. Please, this is so important. You have something that is powerful and must be gotten here as soon as possible… Rod, do you understand me? This is an urgent thing, my friend. I will pay for a ticket for the next flight you can get and I will pay for you to return to the States and Key West and I will pay for you to have a good room in Key West for a week if you want, but please bring Le Carte Rouge back to Haiti.’

‘Back? Did you mean it was in Haiti before or do you mean just to bring it there?’

‘I will explain it all to you when you are here. It is a long story. Where do you have the book now?’

‘Angie has it on the bed.’

‘Okay. Now, wrap it and put it in your backpack.’

‘It might be a little hard to get it away from her.’ Rod chuckled, looking at Angie’s intense expression and concentration.

‘She is reading it?’ there was alarm in Henri’s voice over the phone.

‘Yeah, she…’

‘Tell her to put it down now.’

‘Hunh?’

‘Hurry. It is dangerous, Rod.’

‘Dangerous?’

‘Yes, please tell her to put it down now.’

‘Angie, Henri says to put the book down.’

She looks over to Rod blinking herself back to the motel room. ‘What?’

‘Put it down. Henri says to put it down now.’

She looks at Rod, then the book, then the phone in his hand. Angie gently closes the book to the point that her index finger marking her page allows.

‘Okay, she stopped reading it.’

‘Put it in the backpack.’ Henri ordered.

‘Look Henri,’ Rod did not like the tone, ‘we will get the book to you and take you up on Key West. I will check and see about the flight and switching the tickets and pay with you refunding, so see you as soon as possible.’

‘Let me know and I will pick you up at the airport.’

‘Okay. Bye, now.’ Rod hung up trying to stop the irritation at being ordered around.

Angie was already back in the book and lightly smiling.

‘Angie, he said to put the book down. Maybe it has poison on the pages or something weird.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Angie nodded comically. ‘Look at this pen and ink.’ She turned the book so Rod could see.

He moved over to look down at a detailed scene of a man and a woman peering over a ravine of tangled growth reaching down into a black abyss with writhing figures etched in outlines of grotesque and mournful stares. He could make out their mouths twisted in anguish and did not want to look at the illustration again.

‘Put down the book, Angie.’

She looked at Rod, ‘Don’t you see what we have here?’

‘I think I am seeing too much.’

‘No, not the hocus-pocus stuff but the value of a book like this? I think we have some money here, Rod.’

Rod slowly shakes his head, ‘No, Angie. This is Henri’s book and it is not a good one to do anything with but give to the guy.’

‘Fuck him, Rod. He is just gonna sell it and I’ll bet for a fortune. He is a treasure hunter, for god’s sake.’

‘He is a lawyer for treasure hunters. Henri never gets his hands dirty. Naw, there is something about this book that he knows and we don’t. Look, when we get the book to Haiti, we keep it until he explains what it is and what it is about and what he plans on doing with it. Then, we make up our minds about what we will do about it.’

Angie looks at Rod incredulously. ‘Rod,’ she said in an exasperated tone, ‘we have the book. We found the book. This is right here in our hands. Let’s go to an antique book dealer, look one up in the phone book, and see what a value is. Then, we make up our minds about what to do with it. Shit, I really wish I could remember half of the Latin I had in school, just a third. Some of this stuff is just phenomenal… the stuff I can get that is. But my conjugation is no good anymore and I only can get some of the stuff. Mixtures of stuff are just not translatable but amounts are and the warnings are simple.’

‘Warnings?’ Rod’s eyebrows raise up. ‘What warnings?’

‘Relax, it’s just some stuff about some of these mixings, potions, you know the dangerous stuff he told you, woouooo, hahahaha.’

‘Hey, Angie, what if there is a danger with this kind of thing?’

‘Look, I am not touching the pages too much and I doubt the words can kill, so…, look, Rod, I didn’t know you were so tender, man.’

Rod frowned. ‘You know, you are right. I got caught up in his thing. This might be valuable and we take it to him? Strange. I don’t know what came over me.’ Rod shakes his head and looks down the book, then at Angie’s concentrated face fixed on the elaborate pages of mixed inks. There are browns and whites and some hints of pink with a thread of red slightly visible. The pages are not rotten, just lightly papered, like rice paper but of some other material. The colours of the images almost move with an unfocussed vibrancy. He moves closer with the paper tending toward glowing behind the inked words. He licks his lips in curiosity, and bends over to study the scripted words almost all joined with interlocking curlicues and slants. Rod blinks and pulls his head back. The book seems to draw him in and he recognises it. 

‘Angie.’ he shouted to her though she was only a few inches from his mouth.

She jerked her head up, ‘What?’ she was looking around the room and toward the door.

‘Something about that book makes me want to go into it.’ he says with wide eyes.

She smiled, ’Yeah, exactly. That was what you were yelling in my ear about?’

He moved back a bit, ’Unhunh. I don’t like this.’

Angie smirks, exhaling impatience, ‘Cut it out, back off. Take a walk or something. I know, I am hungry and you must be too. Why not go out and get us some Chinese from that place down the street?’

He looks down at her, trying not to look at the book. His mouth opens but no words would come out. He did not know what he wanted to say. He breathes in deeply and comes to the conclusion that her logic overshadows what was becoming his superstition. Henri planted that see, Rod thinks to himself. Maybe some air was exactly what he needed, and food, especially Chinese food was a very good idea. He nods in agreement, but she is already back studying the book. Rod goes to the door, opens it, looks back at Angie laying comfortably on the bed with the book hiding her nose but her eyes completely staring and moving in the tiniest of jerks. He wondered if he was falling in love with her. 

‘What do you want? Duck? Chow Mein? Pan fried noodles?’

She looks and up back at her place in the book. ‘Yeah.’

He goes out and closes the door softly. It is hot outside. Rod walks between two parked cars, a black one and a beige one. He is noticing pieces of paper on the ground and a broken whistle laying under one of the tires of the beige car. It was almost dark already and the amber street lights seem slightly blurred.

When he returned with the meals she gave him a hungry look that he recognised as a swelling of passion. He must have reacted in a protective of his person way because she physically backed off. They ate in silence. He wanted to ask her what she found in her study of the book but felt it was wrong somehow. When they finished she acted shyly when taking his paper plate. She took the boxes and everything into the bathroom. The shower ran with pressure and he felt relieved like things were going back to normal. Then the thought came to him of why had he thought things were not already normal?

He could not sleep. The air conditioning made noises and the bed creaked when he or she turned even slightly. There was a drip in the bathroom that he did not want to investigate and loose his chance to fall asleep. He did not want to look at Angie though he feeling an erection thinking about her lying next to him. His mind raced with snatches of dream that were probably just thoughts. Sailing, water and placid horizons that were neither the sea nor the land. No people. The window drapes were pulled back and a street light gave contrast to the room’s shapes. The dead television on its weird, long, dark table that was a chest that could not be used. The curving shadowed lamps sitting on the side tables, on each side of the bed, with small hoods that let the little baldness of the bulbs show just slightly above.

Rod pulled his covers to the side careful not to wake Angie. He forgot why he pulled them off as he was rising and just lay back down and pulled them back up to keep off the dull chill of the air conditioning. The book lay on her side table aside her lamp. He swallowed, wanting to reach over her to get it though he knew nothing in Latin. That realisation had him smirk, ‘What am I going to do with the thing? Hold it? Lick it?’ Rod grinned with that thought. Then, he looked at her with a touch of dread. What would she do if he licked the cover? He looked down at her and was shocked to find her looking back at him.

‘Rod,’ she smiled, do you want to lick something?’

He jerked his head back.

Her face in the street light held a smile. Her eyes were intense in a stare that he did not know. She pulled the sheet off the bed and parted her pubic skin and hair, still staring at him. ‘Lick.’

Rod breathed easier recognising that that was what she was talking about, not that she heard his thoughts.

They both slept late the next morning. The plane they were taking was to leave within two hours and they had to get to the airport so there was a hurrying with no showers. Rod wiped his stickiness off with a damp towel and she laughed fully dressed with the Carte Rouge under her arm. They made the flight.

They followed the orders and placed the backpack holding the precious book in a plastic bag under the seat in front of them and smiled at each other. When the plane landed they waited until most of the passengers were off and all the jostling with bundles and children and pushings were gone. Rod picked up the pack that seemed lighter, so he unsnapped the the two catches, loosened the drawstrings and looked at this underwear and socks but no book. He tilted his head and dug his hand into the pack only finding softness. He looked at Angie who was looking down at the pack.

‘What the fuck?’ Rod told the back of the seat with its worn magazine in a torn holder. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed the torn holder before, then remembered what he was doing and pulled out his underwear.

Angie looked at him, then at the underwear, then back to him. ‘Shit.’

When they met Henri in the echoing airport hall, he said before they said anything, ‘You lost it?’

Rod’s mouth opened. ‘How did you know?’

Henri smiled and said matter of factly, ‘Because it is at my home in my book case.’

‘Henri,’ Rod rolled the word out, ‘what do you mean?’

‘This morning when I came down for breakfast, Michelle, the maid, you met her, she said that a book was on the floor and told me I should not leave old, maybe valuable books on the floor. She had put it up on my bookshelf. I went over and saw what it was and thought you guys had played a trick on me but there were no flights before this one. I looked through it and took some photos on what I needed to.’ He smiled at both of them. ‘You did good.’

A month later Henri was dead. The book disappeared again. Rod and Angie broke up on that same day after finding out about Henri. Rod left Haiti for the States and never returned. Angie opened a beauty parlour.