Free Angelology by Danielle Trussoni Page B

not come to that. I will not allow it to come to that. Now go and rest. I will take care of Mr. Verlaine.”
    Percival stood and, leaning heavily upon his cane, hobbled from the room.

St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York
    V erlaine parked his car—a 1989 Renault he’d bought secondhand during college—before St. Rose. A wrought-iron gate cut across the passageway to the convent, leaving him no choice but to climb over a thick limestone wall that surrounded the grounds. Up close, St. Rose proved to be much as he had imagined it: isolated and serene, like a castle enchanted in a spell of sleep. Neo-Gothic arches and turrets lifted into the gray sky; birch and evergreen trees rose on all sides in tight protective clusters. Moss and ivy clung upon the brickwork, as if nature had embarked upon a slow, insatiable campaign to claim the structure as its own. At the far end of the grounds, the Hudson edged alongside a riverbank crusted with snow and ice.
    As he walked up a snow-dusted cobblestone path, Verlaine shivered. He felt unnaturally cold. The sensation had come over him the moment he left Central Park, and it had remained heavy and stifling throughout the drive to Milton. He had blasted the heat in his car in an attempt to shake off the chill, and still his hands and feet remained numb. He could not account for the effect the meeting had had upon him or why it unsettled him to discover how truly ill Percival Grigori really was. There was something eerie and disturbing about Grigori, something that Verlaine couldn’t put his finger upon. Verlaine had a strong sense of intuition about people—he could discern much about a person within minutes of an introduction, and he rarely wavered from his initial impressions. From their first meeting, Grigori had provoked a strong physical reaction in Verlaine, so strong that he felt instantly weakened in Grigori’s presence, empty and lifeless, without a trace of warmth.
    The meeting earlier that afternoon had been their second, and it might, Verlaine surmised with relief, be their last. If he himself didn’t terminate their arrangement-which would happen very soon if this research trip went as planned—there was a real chance that Grigori wouldn’t be around much longer anyway. Grigori’s skin had appeared so colorless that Verlaine could see networks of blue veins through the thin, pale surface. Grigori’s eyes had burned with fever, and he could only just hold himself up on his cane. It was absurd that the man would leave his bed, let alone conduct business meetings outside in a blizzard.
    More absurd, however, was his sending Verlaine to the convent without the prerequisite preparations in place. It was impetuous and unprofessional, just the sort of thing Verlaine should have expected from a delusional art collector like Grigori. Standard research protocol required that he get permission to visit private libraries, and this library would be even more conservative than most. He imagined that the St. Rose library would be small, quaint, filled with ferns and hideous oil paintings of lambs and children—all the cheesy decor that religious women found charming. He guessed the librarian to be about seventy years old, somber and gnarled, a severe and pasty creature who would hold no appreciation whatsoever for the collection of images she guarded. Beauty and pleasure, the very elements that made life bearable, were surely not to be found at St. Rose Convent. Not that he’d been to a convent before. He came from a family of agnostics and academics, people who kept their beliefs closed up within themselves, as if speaking of faith would cause it to disappear altogether.
    Verlaine climbed the wide stone steps of the convent’s entrance and rapped upon a set of wooden doors. He knocked twice, three times, and then searched for a doorbell or speaker system, something to draw the attention of the sisters, but found nothing. As someone who left the door of his apartment unlocked half