CHAPTER 4
Gaston always has a bit of inclination to the collie-mollie. I guess it's because he works so hard, he tires himself out. Makes him susceptible to getting ghosts in his blood — that's what the doctors say it is, right? Those doctors are smart, they have to cut up dead people to learn what they know, and the scams they use to acquire dead people prove that they know something, at least how to avoid the authorities. Anyway, once you see Gaston starting one of his moods, you have to hurry to get his spirits back up, or else he'll be sitting there thinking all night. It's not a good thing when Gaston starts thinking, at least not when he's in that condition. He thinks up a lot of bad ideas. Like when he wanted to brew his own New World style tequila out of worms. That stuff barely even got you drunk.
Everyone from the wedding is at the tavern, except for the priest who had to hurry off because of a wrestling match he promised to participate in. He has this character called "Monsignor Murder" and he's very popular. You know the wrestling is all fake though. Before Gaston's wedding came up, he and the guy who goes by "The Sausage" were already promised to perform at a different wedding. He does this side-hustle wrestling gig because priesthood just doesn't pay what it used to after the Huguenots started competing. Got to feel for the guy. Hard times.
Anyway, we've all been plying Gaston with beer, but I bring him another mug and he just tosses it — and mine too — in the fire.
"What for?" he laments in a beery self-pity. "Nothing helps! I'm disgraced."
"You?" I reassure. "Never! Gaston, you've got to pull yourself together. Gosh, it disturbs me to see you, Gaston, looking so down in the dumps. Everyone here'd love to be you, Gaston, even when taking your lumps." I go on like this, singing to add to the festive atmosphere.
Soon I'm joined by several of the others, and we sing and sway in a true beerhall bonhomie. We remind Gaston how fantastic he is, how talented he is. It's when we remind him how attractive he is that he starts getting into it.
"As a specimen, yes, I'm intimidating!" he joins in. Then he makes sure to show to us all of his talents — his strength, his spitting, his body hair. Really, Gaston loves being the center of attention. People would pay money to just sit around and watch this guy be himself, you know?
Right when we finish the song, the door of the tavern flies open. Not quite as a far as Gaston flew when he hit the puddle earlier, but you know, like a fly flies. The person at the door is Belle's father, whose name I don't remember.
"Maurice?" says the barkeep, which I find very convenient.
"Please, I need your help!" says Maurice, running around like a madman. "He's got her — he's got her locked in a dungeon!"
"Who?" someone asks.
"Belle!" insists Maurice. "We must go, not a minute to lose!"
The mention of Belle seems to have attracted Gaston's interest. "Whoa, slow down, Maurice. Who's got Belle 'locked in a dungeon?'"
"A beast!" cries Maurice, running towards Gaston. "A horrible, monstrous beast!"
Everyone starts to tease him. "Is it a big beast?" — "With a long, ugly snout?" — "And sharp, cruel fangs?"
"Yes, yes!" says the old wackadoodle. "Will you help me?"
The taverners go full bully and push him around, forcing him to the floor in front of Gaston for the final judgment.
"Alright, old man," says Gaston. "We'll help you out."
"You will? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Maurice is so relieved that he doesn't notice he is being dragged out the door. So they chuck him out! Serves him right. Crazy old man thinks he can just come round here being all old and stinking of explosives.
A couple of the guys make remarks about crazy old Maurice. Gaston seems to get an idea from this.
"Crazy old Maurice, hm?" he says. "Crazy old Maurice… hmm…" He starts to address me, which requires him to bend down and stare between his legs since I've been trapped underneath the chair he's sitting in since we stopped the Gaston song. "LeFou?" he says. "I'm afraid I've been thinking."
"A dangerous pastime!" I say, peeking up at him all aghast.
"I know!" says Gaston intensely as he lets me out. "But that wacky old coot is Belle's father, and his sanity's only so-so." And he starts to tell me about his plan while he's tossing me about the room and bashing me on the floorboards.
Now, I haven't mentioned any of my other cousins. One of them is Michel, Gaston's younger brother. I haven't seen him in years. Thing is, Michel came out seriously not-right. You couldn't even bet on him in lieu of a turtle, because a turtle moves around more and is probably more verbal. Michel just sort of… is. Anyway, after Aunt Eugenie — Gaston's mom — passed away, Gaston was only fifteen and couldn't take care of Michel by himself. Heck, a month later he broke his arm and needed me to move in with him because he couldn't take care of himself himself. Anyway, so, Michel was sent away to the asylum that Monsieur d'Arque runs. Gaston still goes out there a couple times a year to check on Michel, and through this, he and Monsieur d'Arque have become friends.
What Gaston is telling me now, is he thinks he can get d'Arque to agree to forcibly commit Belle's father, Maurice. That actually sounds like a good idea to me. However, Gaston then elaborates that the reason for doing this is not for the genuine safety of the town, but so he can force Belle to agree to the marriage in return for Gaston using his supposed "influence" to change d'Arque's mind about her father.
"No! Would she…?" I ask, thinking this might be another of Gaston's over-elaborate collie-mollie bad ideas that are going to lead to a corpse pile.
"Guess!" he smiles.
Aw, he seems happy, at least. I don't want to take that from him. "Now I get it. Let's go!"
"Let's go!" says Gaston. We begin dancing around the room and everyone sings and cheers for us, seeing that our favorite hunter is back to his old self. But then there's work for me to do. Gaston has some more preparations to make, and meanwhile I have to go out to the asylum and bring Monsieur d'Arque back here to have a talk with him.
It's starting to snow, and the asylum isn't all that short of a walk. It's kind of the point of an asylum that you don't want them located in the middle of town. Folks might get out, and then you'd think they were just anyone else around here. If it's a few miles away, you know anyone wandering loose has to be an escaped crazy person, because why else would anyone be out there in the middle of the night? Shit. I look suspicious, don't I? I do my best to look like a sane person as I approach.
The asylum is a big, old building, painted solid black and has some kind of vegetable garden out front with a lot of large, freshly tilled plots each about seven-feet long. A couple of liveried workers are filling a new one with irregular cloth-bound sacks of what I guess must be seeds or bulbs, like maybe one of those mandrakes with the human-shaped roots to judge by the human shape of it.
"Good-evening-my-good-man," I call out to them in the manner of a respectable sane person. "Is-Monsieur-d'Arque-here-tonight?"
"Indeed-my-good-man," answers one of the workers in the manner of a respectable non-suspicious character. "He-is-right-through-the-door-and-to-the-left. You-are-in-luck, he-is-still-awake."
The worker motions to a window in which you can see Monsieur d'Arque cackling and rubbing his hands together as he watches us. I wave hello. He stops and waves back. I hurry in.
When I enter Monsieur d'Arque's minging old office, a tarantula scuttles across the wall being chased by a rat, and a human skeleton falls out of a hole in the ceiling. D'Arque cheerfully waves me inside, holding a glass of sherry in one hand.
"Don't mind the skeleton," he says with a smile. "That is simply where we store the decorations for the yearly haunted house event. It's an excellent fundraiser for our institution. Now, how may I help you, sir?" As he says these last words, a tied up man with a gag over his mouth starts wriggling out of the same hole in the ceiling. "Don't mind him. He's another decoration," d'Arque reassures me.
"My name's Robert LeGume," I say, holding out a hand to shake. "I've been sent here by my cousin, Gaston."
"Oh! So Gaston LeGume is recommending us a new patient?" he says, eyeing me eagerly.
I realize he may be getting the wrong impression. "Ah — well, no, I mean — yes, he does — but — well, Gaston wants to talk to you in person."
"Is he here?"
"No, that's why he sent me. He wants you to come out to the village to see him. He's busy, you see."
"As am I," says d'Arque, and he drinks the entire glass of sherry in one gulp. "I don't normally leave the asylum in the middle of the night. It makes one looks crazy."
"Well," I say, "Gaston knows what he's doing, and he says he has some incentive for you. I think it's — you know, like, ka-ching incentive."
"He's giving me Chinese pottery?"
"I don't know, man," I say wearily. "Just come with me and talk to him, so he can explain it? It's about crazy old Maurice, the inventor, and his lunatic daughter Belle. Gaston's a lot smarter than me. He can say it more better."
D'Arque agrees, but he insists on riding out in the official Asylum de Loons wagon. I come along with him, and we arrive together at the tavern. It's closed up and empty, but Gaston is waiting inside. He shows us in and offers a beer to d'Arque, who politely refuses.
"I don't drink anything but sherry," he says, taking a seat.
"Ah! That's right," says Gaston. "For your health?"
"For my health," confirms d'Arque, who looks about as healthy as a revivified mummy can. "In addition," he says, and he pauses for a really long time. I'm starting to think he forgot what he was saying, but finally he resumes. "…I don't usually leave the asylum in the middle of the night, but he said you'd make it worth my while."
Gaston and me have big steins of beer in front of us. Gaston finishes his in one gulp, then takes a large purse full of money from the bench beside him and tosses it across the table to d'Arque.
"Ah! I'm listening," says d'Arque, taking a coin and giving himself one of those salon-style gold facials as he talks. Probably needs a pick-me-up after such a long day.
"It's like this," says Gaston, already very chummy with the old man. "I've got my heart set on marrying Belle, but she needs a little… persuasion."
I laugh, trying to be chummy as well. "Turned him down flat!" I add.
Gaston elbows me and I get my face stuck in the stein. This is the rare disadvantage of the body-fat cushion.
"Everyone knows her father's a lunatic!" says Gaston, his tone aggravated. "He was in here tonight, raving about a beast in a castle!"
"Maurice is harmless…" replies d'Arque, almost like it was a question but then he changed his mind about the inflection at the last second. Like he knows the situation is too shifty for a guy to be asking stuff.
"The point is, Belle would do anything to keep him from being locked up," says Gaston.
"Yeah!" I say, laughing and trying to keep up the cheer. "Even marry him!"
Gaston raises his hand to slap me but in a strange and uncharacteristic moment of self-control resists the urge. And that's what actually scares me.
Hesitation means he's thinking.
Monsieur d'Arque agrees to the proposal.