Joe Avery
by Charles C. Cole
Sometimes reason and logic are the best tools. After a small-time detective assists a supernatural client, big-city faery folk line up at his door. Everyone is watching, including the highest authorities from both worlds.
Chapter 24: Joe Avery Meets the Morally Bankrupt
My “lucrative” private detective business had dried up. Two weeks was all it took. It was like we’d forgotten to unlock the front door. As near as I could tell, the Elf King’s nephew had made good on his threat to “encourage” my exotic clients to abandon my humble human interference for the much more uplifting experience of kneeling before him in his new digs, a convenient and roomy throne room made from an abandoned cathedral, exchanging vows of fealty for royal favors.
At my insistence, my half-rosebush receptionist, Calendula, had taken time off to hang out with her extended relatives in the city arboretum. This was the peak of growing season, and the last thing I wanted was to keep her indoors. Confined within our tiny office, the sweet aroma of her blossoms had been surprisingly alluring. A simple susceptibility to spring fever in my case or, maybe, an assault on my vulnerable senses courtesy of a certain love-crazed demigod.
My human clients would return eventually, now that they didn’t have to share the waiting room with larger than life, big-eyed, broad-shouldered folktale creatures, but I wasn’t ready to quit my quixotic questing for a future more ordinary. We’d made a difference. Over and over, though success was never guaranteed, we’d faced seemingly insurmountable circumstances and, through a fresh human perspective, found practical solutions.
There was a tentative knock at my chamber door.
“Come in.”
The man who entered was dressed like a well-to-do Dickens character with peacock feathers in his broad hat, bright colors over multiple layers, lace at his cuffs, a crisp apricot handkerchief in his breast pocket matching his cravat, and shiny black boots that came up to his knees.
From a short dowel in his hand, he held up a simple white mask with holes for his eyes — like something from traditional Japanese theater — with which he covered his face. He glanced about the empty waiting room. “I need help.”
“Here for you. I’m obliged to tell you the Elf King’s men are watching my place, and you might consider visiting him first. I wouldn’t want your life to get ugly.”
“It already is!” He dropped his mask a mere moment. The face revealed surely did not belong to the carefully crafted costume. It was garish and cartoonish, drooping like stained glass exposed to high heat, with wide white eyes, wild dark devilish brows, splotches of bright rouge on his pale cheeks as if applied by a child on a doll. An exaggerated face reflecting a morally bankrupt life.
“Dorian Gray, as I live and breathe!”
“What’s left of him.” He replaced the mask. “It’s telling that you should guess so quickly.”
“What happened, if I may ask?”
“With the coordinated secrecy of my enemies, the magical painting of which you’ve no doubt heard appealed its case before the Elf King, seeking so-called justice. You see it was, originally, a brilliant work of art. There’s no argument there. Museum quality. As you can imagine, I spare no expense when it comes to my vanity.”
“Your choice.”
“It was! Now it’s the painting’s choice. It wants to be pretty again, as I was when I posed for the artist, before my life took a darker path. To that end, all of my recent lapses in character, the blemishes that I’d been transmuting into the oils of that portrait, have vanished from within the frame and returned to me, as a permanent disfiguration!”
“I see.”
“The whole world sees! I am not strong enough to take on the Elf King directly, but I hear you can. Ironically, the painting hangs now in the Museum of Natural History. If you were to slash it, I think—”
“The painting’s alive?” I asked, adding the facts.
“Not by my work. And quite an attraction. Magic, it seems, is a two-edged sword.”
“Then I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Have you looked at me?!” he howled.
“There must be other options.”
“Yes,” hissed my guest, “I can hide out in the belfry of Notre Dame for the rest of my days, playing pinochle with Quasimodo.”
“I have an idea, but it’s not an overnight cure.”
“Go on.”
“If your current appearance is due to the effects of a squandered life, what if you tried turning the ship around?”
“Live virtuously?” He laughed hard and loud. It was grating on the ears. And the saddest sound I’d ever heard.
I persisted. “Try it. Small things at first, until it comes easier. Feed the pigeons in the park. Rescue a stray cat. Give money to a beggar. Hail a taxi for someone who shouldn’t be walking alone.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It is,” I insisted.
“Fine! But I’m not paying for advice found in a fortune cookie. Good day!” He stormed off.
A mere week later, he returned, the mask still in place. He didn’t knock. “Pardon my intrusion, but I figured you had time on your hands.”
“No luck?” I asked.
“On the contrary.” He dropped the mask, revealing a pale, wanting visage but one without prominent distortions.
“Congratulations!”
“Does it make me bad, to do things for people while wanting something in return?”
“You see a young boy drowning. You save him because you want a public pat on the back, but you still risk your life and failure. The boy’s parents don’t care a whit about your motivation. How do you feel?”
“Different. A little less angry, though honestly, I’d still like to take a match to a bit of familiar canvas. The world doesn’t need the Elf King’s kind of help.”
“No, but when you’re top dog in the kennel—”
“I think there’s someone higher,” he hinted. “You should ask around. Ask your receptionist.”
“Calendula?”
“Thank you for helping me. You’re everything they say you are. It will be sad to see you go out of business.”
“For now, I’m still here, helping one client at a time.”
“And driving the Elf King green with envy.”
Copyright © 2022 by Charles C. Cole
