CHAPTER 11-1

Early in June, Matt found himself saying good-bye and promising to come back in three months. He left his Prius with Laura and flew back to Pennsylvania. Because he had deleted his draft novel and his journal, he had nothing to show for his time off.  Zip. Zero. Nada. Just a story he couldn’t tell and no one would believe if he did.

Back home things did not go well for Matt. It seemed like years before that he had been a popular tenured professor in the film department, writing a novel and a biography, enjoying life in a rural university. But now everything seemed colorless, not even black-and-white-- just washed out grey. His whole life stretched out as an exercise in the boring bands of the grey scale, a still photo without much contrast. The juicy double burgers with fries in the local pub made him yearn even more for the Pelican Inn's shepherds pie.

The austere apartment in university housing was not an English inn with dark halls where who knows what hid in the shadows. Conversations with his boring colleagues in the coffee room just reminded him of the splendid debates about physics with Dr. Frankenstein in the Snug before a blazing fire or on the lawn in front of the inn. When his former best friend wanted to play handball, all he could think of was Joe. “What’s up with you, Matt? You seem lost.” And when the woman he had looked forward to dating when he returned called, all he could think of was: you are not Laura. You’re a nice woman, but, oh, you are so not Laura.

He mourned for the racy journal of his adventures. Mostly he missed the deleted black-and-white as well as color photographs, the ones he had so carefully positioned as illustrations in his journal. Those photos could have proved his story as words could not. Laura and Joe, Laura and Frankenstein, Father Max. But none of Laura and Matt. He was the photographer. He hadn’t thought to take selfies. He hadn’t planned on having to prove his story.

When he found a printout of the notes for the novel he had taken with him to write on his sabbatical, he wondered how he could have written such crap. The opening, meant to be facetious, made him cringe. "It was a dark and stormy night." Seriously? Page by page he fed it through his shredder. His credit card bills he put in the trash. Who would bother to steal his pathetic identity? And the anxiety about being late for class when he had a flat tire was nothing like the adrenalin he felt the day they all fled the sniper at the inn. He could still see Joe racing in, saying, "Grab your gear, we're out of here." No, “It was purse, laptop, we’re out of here.” He thought of leaning into coast road curves on the back of a Harley as they fled the exorcism at Green Gulch.

Worst of all was that first class. He showed the movie Laura. As the opening credits rolled he realized what a mistake that was. What was he thinking, letting those barbarian children see Laura? The football players in the last row were texting about some ugly young woman doing a Lady Gaga imitation, ignoring Gene Tierney on the screen. Laughing, missing her saying "I'm calling the police." Matt went out into the hallway to hide his tears.

What was he to do? He thought of seeing the department therapist, a young man who cut his beard to look like Freud. But he had promised not to say anything, not that it would matter. Who would believe him if it got out that he thought he spent most of his precious sabbatical year sleeping under a goose-down comforter with Gene Tierney, sharing secrets about the physics of parallel universes with a renegade scientist, nibbling drug-laced strudel that opened his mind to the most wondrous images and ideas? Was his whole adventure to be reduced to a drug-induced illusion? He would lose tenure. He would be laughed at. Colorless men in suits from Homeland Security would spirit him away. They would water board him to reveal Laura’s secret. No, he had to remain silent about everything. Ahead he saw only a downward spiral, a deepening depression. Worst of all, memories were turning from a refuge to a source of painful loss. What was he thinking, coming home without a supply of strudel drug?

Frankenstein, Laura and Joe were still living the great adventure while he, Matt, worried over notes for a class he dreaded. Yes, he hated those unimaginative, text-messaging students. He had fantasies of heaving one of the football players into the blackboard. But he wasn't strong enough to pull that off. His bravery on the road was faltering, slipping away, losing definition. He was again a weakling with an untenable fantasy life. He no longer experienced an inner debate because there was no conflict. The voice that urged him to open dangerous doors or steal gold coins from Buddha statues had disappeared. Whatever happened to the happiness and, yes, courage that he felt at the Safe House?

CHAPTER 11-2

And then one day, when the sky was particularly monotone and grim, he turned the key in his apartment lock, flipped on the light switch and saw that a square rose-colored envelope with his name on it in thick black script had been slipped under the door.

Matt took the envelope to his desk and put it on his desk blotter and turned on the lamp. His name was written at an angle, underlined with a sharp line that was duplicated above with a line that did not intersect the two last letters in his name: Matt. He turned the envelope over. It had been sealed, but there was a half-inch that had not been sealed at the right corner, as if someone had licked the flap but not to the end. He lifted the unsealed quarter of an inch and hesitated.

Matt carried the envelope with him to class the next day in his briefcase. What was he afraid of? That it would be nothing. A request to water a neighbor’s plants or something.

That night he opened the envelope.

Inside was a piece of matching rose-colored paper.

In the same black ink as his name on the envelope was this message:

Meet me on the left side of the cafeteria in the back at 1:00.

Alfred

Alfred? Who was Alfred? What day in the cafeteria? If this unknown Alfred had meant the next day, he would have missed him.

CHAPTER 11-3

In the morning Matt woke eager to meet the mysterious Alfred, if whoever it was showed up a second day. In his one class before lunch, he told his students that instead of a discussion, he would be moving up a lecture on the origins of film noir, which he could and did give by rote. Except for one attentive young woman in the first row who probably only wanted to get a good grade, no one seemed very tuned in to what he was saying, which was fine. After class he took a long walk by the river. He followed a duck with a string of ducklings.

The cafeteria was almost empty when he got there. He saw no one out of the ordinary.  He walked toward the back of the room and turned to the left. Sitting alone at the table in the corner was a chubby balding somewhat familiar-looking man with his chin resting on his hands.

"Are you Alfred?"

"You do keep a gentleman waiting."

The voice could belong no one else.

Matt dropped into a chair and stared.

The chubby man stared back.

Matt experienced a flashback that would have made Alfred Hitchcock himself proud.

He was having lunch by himself in the Pelican’s greenhouse restaurant. He looked up to see a man with a familiar profile walk slowly across the dark inside dining room. And then he was gone. Matt observed a resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock and thought nothing more of it. Until now.

Matt broke a long silence stating the obvious.

"You are Alfred Hitchcock."

"Yes, dear boy, I am. Though I suppose you would say I am Alfred II, which perhaps makes me sound like I am my own son. That I am not. But you if anyone knows how this works."

"And that was you, that day at the Pelican?"

"Yes. I was messing with you. I made sure you were the only one who saw me, and not long enough to jump to conclusions. Matt listened to the words as if in slow motion. He was feeling massive thrills streaming throughout his body. He didn’t know where this would lead, but it would lead somewhere, again, and that was enough for now.

How many evenings when he was a child had he watched Alfred Hitchcock Presents, watched the master walk into the line drawing of his own shape and make wry comments about the program, ending with "Good evening," but good evening pronounced as no one else could ever say it. What was the theme music?  He could hear it playing now, so real he wondered if this Alfred had arranged to have it played in the cafeteria. Would he ever again be able to distinguish what was inside his head and what was outside? This was inside, he was sure. He remembered: it was Charles Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette." He played it once to introduce his Hitchcock retrospective.

This was not Alfred on film however. If he spoke and Alfred answered, he was creating brand new Hitchcock sentences in response to what he said. He itched to take out his iPhone and film the whole thing. Matt filming Hitchcock. No way. How could he ever teach his Hitchcock seminar again?

"Young man. You must focus up. We don't have that much time."

No time! Why? This cannot end! Back to the room, to the cafeteria. His stomach growled.

"I'm listening."

CHAPTER 11-4

“You probably thought Frankenstein only made one living human copy,” Alfred said.

"Yes. I did. I know he only made one. He told me. I believed him."  Matt was stunned.

 "Well, he was telling the truth. Our Dr. F is a truthful man. But Curt decided to try his hand while Frankenstein was at the Pelican. Frankenstein shared everything with Curt except for the final step. The one that brings the creation to life. But he underestimated Curt’s ability as a hacker. Curt broke the code. He knew how to create a dead body from dead-body DNA. How could he resist doing what Frankenstein did with Laura? He couldn’t. Maybe he was planning to sell the secret if he was successful. Probably not. Anyway, he went to the same museum where he found Laura and got another sample. It was me or Lana Turner. Big mistake.” Matt remembered that Lana Turner had syphilis so maybe it wasn’t such a big mistake after all, but he didn’t say anything.

 “What Curt learned from me was it works better if you take young DNA."

 "You mean fresh DNA?"

 "No, I mean DNA from a young person, someone with a vibrant, young morphogenetic field. Do eggs from younger women make healthier babies? I don’t know.” He sighed.  “Gene was twenty-three. I was, well, look at me.”

 Matt was silent.

 "So I wasn't as much of a success as Gene. Curt never told Frankenstein about me. He was aware of the danger and Frankenstein had enough on his plate protecting Laura. He would have recycled me. Of course I’m very good with that type of plot."  Alfred Hitchcock was being modest, sweet.

 “I do know that you are. Good with plots.”

 “So, long story short, Curt gave me a large stash of cash and set me free. It was a risk he took, trusting me. But he was in a bind. He just couldn’t kill me. I could have planned it for him, of course. He could have stabbed me in the shower.” Alfred didn’t laugh and Matt wasn’t sure if he should or not.

 ”And I’ve been good to my word.”

 “Except for the day you went to the Pelican and did your cute little cameo walk on.” Matt knew all of Alfred’s signature cameo walk-ons from all of his films.

 “Precisely. I was lonesome. You were all having such a good time with each other.”

 “And coming here. Now you’ve put me in a bind,” Matt said.

 “By the way, how do you know so much about what we were doing at the Pelican?”

 “Frankenstein keeps Curt informed. He trusts him, you know. Frankenstein gave him one of the gold coins. I depend on him for money and strudel drug.”

 “Does Curt know you’re here with me?”

 “God no!”

“So you’re trusting me to cover for you? Damn it, Alfred!” Matt was furious and in a turmoil wondering what this would mean for him.

 “I guess I have to. But I’m leaving for Morocco after this.”

 "You are pretty identifiable. Aren’t you worried you’ll be recognized?"

 "Not really. A fat bald man with some resemblance to an old film producer, dead many years? Beside I usually wear a disguise. And I've learned to speak like an American." The last said without his British accent, which was quite funny.

 Alfred took off his jacket and reached into a duffle by his chair.  He put on tinted glasses and a straw hat and a put a golf shirt over his tee shirt.

 True, he did not look much like Alfred Hitchcock.

Matt went to the counter and got two burgers and fries with extra ketchup and two coffees, leaving Alfred in the corner.

When he returned, they ate in silence.

What was he to do with the sad, aging, copy of a film director?  Bring him in as a guest lecturer? Class, I have a surprise for you today.

"What do you do with your time now, Alfred?"

"I play golf. Would you like to join me?"

CHAPTER 11-5

Alfred had added to his belly, and Matt had gained some weight back, so when they showed up at the golf course, they looked like anything but sportsmen. Alfred, who had taken up a golfer's persona as a good disguise because of how unlikely it was—he had never taken part in any sport—was dressed for the part, with clothes covered with designer insignias and an expensive set of clubs. Matt was wearing his cow tee shirt from Olema and jeans. Alfred had a golf cart ready when Matt, who had never played golf and had no intention of learning now, showed up with misgivings about this as a way of continuing his new friendship. But Alfred insisted. What Matt knew about the game consisted of some dim knowledge that you hit a ball toward far away small holes and tried to get it in with not many strokes. Alfred was a terrible golfer who always played only against himself and cheated when it suited his fancy.

Alfred seemed genuinely glad to see him and Matt founded himself happy to be there, relishing the smell of the lush green grass and the warm breeze. Alfred carried on a dialog with himself as partner, lavishly congratulating himself on every stroke that didn’t miss the ball entirely. Matt was amused that Alfred carried on conversations with himself much as he himself did, or had begun to do, again—the difference, and that not a small one—being that Alfred spoke out loud, unabashed. And Alfred's two personas liked each other whereas Matt was painfully aware that his would, at various times, probably have killed each other off if given the chance.

 Matt, professor of film history, had a million questions for Alfred but he was too shy to begin.

For now, Alfred seemed content to be in the present. Matt wondered if he had the same reluctance Laura had to revisit her previous life, if he missed Hollywood.

Alfred put the ball on the tee and positioned himself so that he could swing without his belly getting in the way. He hit the ball which sailed a short distance.

 “Nice shot! If I do say so myself," he said beaming at Matt.

The summer session passed quickly with Alfred who was busy planning his trip to Morocco. Alfred wanted to move in with Matt, who considered it but couldn’t come up with a story to explain his presence. They agreed it was safer for Alfred to stay in a hotel in town. The students no longer annoyed him. He just didn’t care. He amused them in class. He did not show any films starring Gene Tierney, or for that matter, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He counted the days.

 When it was finally time to return to the Pelican, Matt felt anxious—half excitement, half fear that something would go wrong. He knew that the Pelican life could not continue forever. But for now, everything was fine. He would cherish whatever time he had left with his friends. They were all still there and he was to be with them very soon. He contracted his time horizon to focus on that: being with them. Soon.

Alfred was depressed—no, more like in despair—as Matt’s departure time approached. He wanted to go back to California with Matt, and although they discussed possibilities, in the end, they knew it just could not be.

Alfred drove him to the airport in a car Matt borrowed from a colleague. At the curb, he wrapped his arms around Matt and wouldn’t let go. He was crying. Matt broke free finally and the two men stared at each other.

“Take care of yourself Alfred, my friend.” And then he was gone.