I awoke the next morning to find the television on and a mustache drawn over my upper lip. I found a mascara pencil on the living-room table alongside a mirror. I vaguely recalled Clair wondering what I’d look like with a mustache, but that had been months back. I took my vitamins, brewed my tea, and ate two apples and a bowl of oatmeal, wondering if I should just throw out the bacon and sausages in my fridge; not on my healthy list. Or maybe toss everything and start anew by filling a trolley at the health-food store. As I ate, I listened to an Italian flutist on NPR. I found the sound lyrical and intoxicating, the most soothing sound I’d ever heard.
I whistled flute sounds all the way to HQ and was steeping a teabag when Harry arrived. He wore a red linen jacket over an iridescent green polo shirt, yellow pants, black running shoes. The ensemble was so loud I should have heard his approach.
“Is that tea?” he asked, aghast at the bag floating in my cup.
“Ginseng with rose hips. I’m off coffee. And I’m going to learn to play the flute.”
A pause. “Good, I guess. Got a minute? I want you to see a videotape I found on the web. I need your opinion.”
I followed my partner to the computer in the side meeting room. I saw blue sky through the window, a storm’s dark edge to the south. Harry took a chair and pulled the keyboard close. I watched over his shoulder as he went sailing through cyberspace.
We’d entered Scaler’s home and I saw Scaler sitting restlessly at his huge white desk. There was a blue mug on the desk, a white remote, and a spiral-bound report.
Scaler plucked a white linen handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. He tucked the cloth back into his pocket, subconsciously tugged his lapels straight, the final motion of a performer before taking the stage. He frowned into the camera, his face and voice subdued, like at the groundbreaking ceremony.
“A parable,” he announced. “I paid a man to do work for me. I had built a house and wanted assurance its foundation was solid.”
He stopped and gathered the handkerchief from his pocket again, dabbing a head shiny with sweat. He sighed and hung his head. All I saw was the crown of his head and eroding hair at front and back. When he lifted his head, a transformation, the sorrow in his eyes replaced with anger.
“I PAID a man to do WORK for me. I had built a HOUSE. I had built a house on SMUGNESS and SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS and LUST for POWER AND GLORY. Though I inherited the foundation and built with the help of many…” he paused, as though weighing a word, “– false friends. I tell you freely that I BUILT THIS HOUSE WITH MY OWN HANDS.”
Scaler spoke through clenched teeth, punctuating words with rhythmic explosions of volume. It was his audience voice, his drama voice. But I’d always heard overblown stagecraft behind his pulpit pronouncements and dancing runs across the boards; this anger sounded deep and painful. His head drooped.
“You found this with the other Scaler stuff on YouTube?” I said.
“No. It took some looking. I couldn’t sleep, found it at three a.m.”
“Why didn’t you find it with the others?”
“There’s maybe five hundred Scaler vids on various sites. It’s a long haul to see them all.”
I glanced back at the screen, Scaler’s head still down, hands rubbing his face.
“What’s it filed as?” I asked.
“It’s listed under Truth,” Harry said. “Then under Scaler.”
“What?”
“Shhhh,” Harry said, pointing at the monitor. Scaler was back. He straightened his lapels and continued:
“The man I had hired was the expert in the world at his work. He came to my door one day. I said, ‘Come in, Brother, and prove the perfection of my house for I am the great Richard Bloessing Scaler and God has spoken to me since my childhood.’ I said to my learned expert, ‘Tell me the truth of the perfection of my house.’
“‘I am sorry, Reverend Scaler,’ came the learned man’s response. ‘I cannot.’”
“‘HOW DARE YOU TELL ME I CANNOT HEAR THE TRUTH!’ I railed at the learned man of science. ‘WHY CAN YOU NOT TELL ME THE TRUTH?’”
Scaler waited for the anger to drain from his face, replaced it with fresh sorrow.
“And my learned man said to me, ‘Because it will cause your house to crumble into ashes.’”