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Me and Lanzo exited the bus at an open square that was beginning to become familiar, near the Saint Isidore bridge, where commuters were walking over from the banlieues under the watchful gaze of more gendarmerie.Most were dressed for work. Others were the poorer type of tourist, walking over into Old Town from the low-end hostels. We moved against that current until we broke away from the bridge traffic to head along the river, following the pedestrian path next to the road. Realizing where we were, I started scanning for the path down the embankment, trying to place anything that might be a landmark that would help me find my way here again.
The path was difficult to spot from atop the gorge, the embankment monolith in the bright sun. I only saw it only after Lanzo stepped over the chain between bollards that separated the drop from the road. I scanned the area for any witnesses, but we had gotten a good away from the crowds. We climbed down, zig-zagging back and forth along the switchbacks, down towards the river.
The rusty door of the hutch at the bottom of the embankment was exactly the same as before. As we got closer, I could hear voices from within. I couldn’t distinguish which language, though, so I stopped Lanzo to go in first. I was surprised that he was able to get more irritated at this than he already was, but I ignored it.
Peeking in, I saw only the Idiots. The three of them were in nearly the same places as before, the only difference being that now they were sitting up instead of passed out. Max took a cigarette out of his mouth to wiped his face with the balaclava, all of them laughing, tinged with hysteria.
I pushed into the room with enough force that the rusty hinges on the door let out a squeal that got everyone’s attention. I was about to say some roustabout bullshit from a drill sergeant memory, but all three of the Idiots stood up with a surprising speed, blinking into the sudden brightness. Recognizing me, Max actually smiled past the hand he held in front of his eyes, which made me instantly suspicious.
This only increased when he moved forward to shake my hand. I took it, but mostly to get a feel for him. Even with the light coming through the open door, Max had a slight glow to him, with a friendlier grin on his face than any I had seen to date. He spoke rapidly, too fast for me to understand, and gestured with his other hand in exaggerated twerks that translated out to the rest of his body. I realized he probably hadn’t slept since the last time we had spoke. None of them had.
I wasn’t an amphetamine counselor, so I didn’t see a point in drawing attention to this. Instead I examined the room. It was cleaner than before, the trash having been thrown out, but it was much the same with each of the Idiots own nest of dirty sleeping bags and cushions nestled into the corners. I could only hope they had found a new place to take Nika.
I took my hand back from Max’s speed-induced grip. “Things are moving fast.”
Max grinned even wider, “Paux, we are already ready.” I found this artificial confidence from his upper high only stoked the anger that had been smoldering since I had nearly smacked the cigarette out of Lanzo’s mouth.
Swerving my head like an unhappy bull, I made a show of taking in the room. “It doesn’t look that way to me. Are we taking the princess someplace else?”
Grinning impossibly broader, Max said, “Oui, oui,” and planted his cigarette back in his face while gesturing for me to follow. He didn’t lead me out of the hutch, though, but instead towards the interior door that the Algerian had been leaning against. Max threw it open like he was showing off the bridal suite and strode into the darkness beyond.
I stepped into a passage that had probably been carved by the Idiots’ ancestors, rough-hewn walls rising up into an arched corridor from a dirt floor. This man-made cavern was lit by a series of light bulbs strung together by wires, from one corner to another, four in total, making a square of fairy lights that seemed to float in the air like something from a carnival.
Underneath these lights, sitting in the square formed by the lights, was a clean, over-sized mattress piled with pillows and comforters. When I saw it there was a part of me that was surprised it wasn’t covered in stuffed animals.
I wasn’t sure how they rigged up the electricity or how the Idiots were capable of putting something like this together without fucking it up. But the bedroom was clean and dry, the lights wired into some patch job that had been routed down here from God knows where.
And there was no clerk to check in with, no one to demand a passport, no lobby witnesses to ask about who had seen what. Nika could be moved down here and kept away from the world and no one might know it. It was perfect. If she had Lanzo with her, she might not even get bored.
I turned from the mattress to see the Idiots standing behind me, grinning. In the face of their gloating, I hated to made admit they had done a good job. But I did, causing them to grin even wider.
“I’m going to meet with Mitnick tomorrow, so I’ll have a chance to get a message to Nika then.” The Idiots nodded, the speed turning their heads into emphatic axes. The Corsican hid his face from his friends, reminded that they were betraying him even as he was anxious to see Nika. When no one drew the obvious conclusion, I stated, “We need to give her a time and a place to meet us.”
There was a long moment when no one said anything until, God bless him, Fatty asked, “The Factory?” This was immediately cast down on, for good and obvious reasons, but it did open up the flood gates and the Idiots began to toss out ideas. Trying to coordinate this bombastic flow of amphetamine-enhanced brainstorming made me feel a bit like a grade school teacher wrangling a creative outburst from an excited class.
Eventually, a quiet and dark abandoned warehouse was decided on. A cousin of the Factory, it wasn’t far from the club, but wasn’t a place that was routinely inhabited by Mitnick (or Sartre’s) men. The Algerian also pointed out there was a large sign (‘Distributeur International’) above one of the main doors, making a good landmark.
“OK,” that sounded like a good place that I could wait for her without drawing too much attention. I thought about how long it might take Nika to get out of the house. Would she try to arrange some shopping trip and get away from her handlers? Or would she try to slip out in the middle of the night? Hell, for all I knew she would seduce and betray one of Mitnick’s guards. Maybe that’s what had happened to Sergei. I decided there was no way to know so I said, “We tell her to meet there tomorrow night.” It might not be enough time to allow her to get away, but it was a chance we’d have to take.
I turned to Lanzo. “The letter needs to come from you. She won’t come out unless it’s you asking. You know what you need to say?” I wasn’t sure I knew what needed to be said, so I wasn’t hopeful. Not surprisingly, Lanzo himself looked doubtful, chewing on his bottom lip as he considered it.
“OK, come on then.” I took him by the shoulder and steered him out of the hutch, leaving the Idiots with assurances that we’d be back.
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Who had tried to burn down the Enchanted Forest? And why?
Many different types of people had tried to control the Enchanted Forest. Warriors, princes, witches, wicked sisters, lumberjacks and, one on occasion, some of the trees themselves. As such, the nearest township, afraid of what the blaze might portend, chose a noble firefighter and inspector of arsons, John Bailey, to go see what he could learn. As Inspector Bailey strapped on his coat and helmet and climbed into his engine, the rest of the firefighters, brave men and women all, breathed a sigh of relief that they had not been chosen.
Arriving in his engine at the scorched portion of the Forest, Bailey noted that even the smell of the forest’s ashes was beautiful, like a midnight perfume, but he also detected a hint of gasoline. He walked through the ash that crunched like frozen snow, until he saw a figure on the edge of the where the trees began again. Lithe and shadowed by branches, its outline could have been a part of the woods themselves.
“You there,” Bailey cried with as much authority as he could muster in this strange place. “Did you see what caused this?”
The figure stepped into the light. It was feminine in shape, but oak bark was its clothes and leaves its hair. From the thicket of its head grew antlers, shaped from the coarsest wood, multi-pronged and sharp, enshrouded in an ethereal moss.
“We have summoned you, John Bailey, because those from your kingdom have caused this.” It spoke in a voice of bird song and shadow.
Deciding it was best to ignore how the creature knew his name, Bailey asked, “Do you know who did this?”
The figure drew itself up, nearly as high as a stag. “We have called to them, but they refuse to answer for their crimes.”
“Men fear your justice,” Bailey replied honestly.
“Men fear justice.”
Bailey found he couldn’t argue with that. To be the distributor of justice was often a terrible thing. To be its recipient, almost always. Summoned by this strange creature or no, it was correct, and he was here to find those responsible. Under the uncanny gaze of the creature, he returned to investigating the burned ground. While the blackened soil revealed nothing to him, near its edge he found the ground disturbed. No woodsman, Bailey was still keen enough of eye to see the earth churned up there, grass reduced to mud under bootprints and tire tracks.
Reluctantly, Bailey returned to the direction of the Forest, to speak to its representative. He nearly fell backward into the mud, though, when he found the creature standing mere feet away, having vanished the distance between then.
Recovering quickly enough to keep his helmet from falling off his head, Bailey dropped his eyes to its feet, roots entwining with the mud. He could feel its gaze on him but could not meet it, feeling it strip away any importance that his uniform or position might hold. He tried to speak forcefully, but mumbled, “These tracks might lead to the fire-starter.” Bailey gestured to the prints in the mud and the direction they headed. “I will leave you now, and return when I find answers.”
Before he could move further away, the creature took Bailey’s closest hand in an appendage not dissimilar to his own, but made of shaped wood and leaves. It was smooth like a leaf, rough like bark, and cool as a forest shadow. So Bailey gasped when the creature pressed a digit into the back of his hand and it burned like fire. Even as he tried to pull away, Bailey felt himself fill with knowledge as a welt raised where the creature had touched him.
Bailey looked into the protective eyes of the what he knew now as the Dryad. “Worry not, Bailey. The Forest provides.” Then it released him.
As he shook his hand in pain, Bailey thought, “The Forest also eats its young,” but wisely said nothing. Instead, he tipped his helmet by its hard, wide brim and climbed into his engine to follow the muddy tracks. Before he got too far, he heard the shadowed figure say, “Bring them here, John Bailey, whoever has done this.”
Bailey paused, uncertain of who had started the fire or why, and knowing it was his duty to bring the accused before human courts. Slowly, fearing to anger the Dryad, he said, “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You must. Those responsible must face us, or their children and their children’s children will. The Forest’s memory is long and its soul unforgiving.” Bailey nodded, more reluctant than ever to execute his orders, but feeling honor bound to do so.
Bailey followed the muddy tire tracks for many miles before he heard a cacophony and smelled a great medley. At the top of a hill Bailey spotted the cause of this commotion. On the plain before him was a round tent so massive that it was encircled by smaller tents, as if they orbited a larger cousin. Each was otherwise identical, circular and striped and held upright by many poles surrounding the tallest in the center.
Between these tents, performers of all types, from contortionists to strongmen to fire-eaters, made their way through the crowds of townsfolk that milled between these wonders. This only ceased when a man in a tall hat would cry from the main tent, ponderously calling out through a black megaphone the new fascinations that awaited them in the big top.
From his far away perch Bailey could see the wonder and splendor that drew the crowd, but he could not see which of these many people might have been fool enough to start a fire in the Enchanted Forest. So he walked down into the fairgrounds.
The man in the tall hat was operating by some kind of schedule, almost like a clockwork, emerging from the big tent at regular intervals to pontificate on absurd claims that were surely lies. He promised that within the tent were mermaids, swordsman that couldn’t die, women who could fly, and men that could tame untamable beasts. He seemed a good place to start.
Bailey approached the man in the tall hat, realizing that his dress was a mirror of the tents, his clogs the same color as the nails that held them in the ground, his pants and vest the red and white stripes of the canvas, his very fine top hat the same black as the flag at the top.
Standing in front of the man, despite Bailey’s obvious uniform and the copper badge of authority, he was ignored. Continuing to call out to passersby, he was eventually forced to inhale for a breath. Bailey jumped into this minute gap. “Hello! May I ask you a few questions?”
The caller only paused long enough to take the bullhorn away from his mouth to say, “Sorry, son, business is brisk,” and went back to his calling. Bailey glared at the man for a time, but was pushed aside as more and more people poured into the main tent. Seeing no alternative, Bailey reached up and took the bullhorn from the caller, snatching it out of his grasp. The silence that followed, complete with the indignant stare of the caller, was extremely satisfying to Bailey. Until he realized the crowd had ceased moving as well. No one on the fair grounds stirred or spoke. The balls from a juggler fell out of the air. For a strange moment, Bailey felt himself in danger.
Seeing familiar faces in the crowd, Bailey called out to a few of them, “You there Susan Sartre, Phil Barber, Roy Cooper, you know who I am. I need to speak to this man.” Bailey indicated the caller, but his fellow townsfolk stared at him with the eyes of strangers.
This eldritch tension broke when the caller snatched the bullhorn back from Bailey and said to him, “Wait your turn, son. We’ve got a permit to be here.” Then he went back to clamorously ushering folks inside.
When the last of the circus visitors had entered the tent, the caller jumped down from his box and moved to follow the crowd inside. Before the caller could escape Bailey grabbed him by the elbow and said, “Now wait a minute.”
The caller stopped, and glanced down, unperturbed, at Bailey’s hand. “I’ve got to get inside, son. I’m the Ringmaster.”
“You can spare a moment,” Bailey insisted. “There’s been a fire near here and I need to ask you a few questions.”
The Ringmaster, towering over Bailey in his tall shoes and fine hat, scanned the fairgrounds. “I don’t see a fire.”
“It didn’t happen here, but a few miles from here. You would have seen the smoke.”
The Ringmaster frowned and made a show of looking towards the horizon. “We haven’t seen any smoke. Look, son, the whole town is here, so no one’s in danger from any fire.”
“The fire finished a few days ago.”
“So much the better. Forget about it and come inside.” The Ringmaster handed Bailey a ticket, “See what all the fuss is about.”
Without thinking about it, Bailey took the ticket and watched the red and white stripes of the Ringmaster disappear into the tent. Bailey looked around to see if there might be anyone else he could speak with, but realized everyone else was already inside.
The main tent was voluminous enough that Bailey was surprised he could find no place to sit. This was made more difficult as the only lights shone on the massive ring at the tent’s center. With the Ringmaster striding out into it, Bailey quickly found a spot by one of the tent poles to stand.
There, the Ringmaster spoke through his megaphone, already introducing the next act as a clown pedaled his unicycle off stage, only pausing to throw one of his juggling blades to embed itself into the wooden pole Bailey leaned against.
“Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, the Circus of Wondrous Times has come from afar to bring you the impossible. We will show you exotic animals that you thought only existed in legend, magicians with unbelievable powers executed upon beautiful assistants, clowns that will bounce and stretch beyond human capacity, strongmen that will lift impossible weights, men of machine and their calamitous canines. We will transform this very big top into a sweltering jungle and then into the most arctic of wastes so we may all be transported wherever we wish to see all of the wonders of the world.”
With each strange and bold claim, Bailey found his incredulity decreasing, ceasing to think of the Ringmaster as a loud-mouthed liar, but a purveyor of the fantastic. Forgetting himself, he leaned on the pole he stood next to, eager to see whatever came next in this true oddity of civilization. Bailey had to admit, despite his initial dislike of the Ringmaster, there was something magical about this place.
That thought had only just entered his mind when Bailey’s hand brushed against the pole he leaned against. The back of his hand burned as if a brand had been pressed into it. The gasp of pain he let out was loud enough to draw the irritated attention of the closest spectators.
Stung by the tent pole, Bailey stared at it, wondering if some wasp or viper climbed upon it. But it was only a wooden pole. Rubbing the pain in his hand, his mind cleared and he realized it was where the Dryad had touched him. It was then that he saw the pole was new and roughly hewn, fresh from a forest.
Bailey examined the wood from where it was planted into the ground to where it held up the canvas ceiling. He examined the rafters, the bleachers, and realized everything, even the bones of the tent, were all made from the fresh wood of the Enchanted Forest. The wonder he had felt a moment before shed itself, revulsion taking its place. He was no longer in a circus tent, but standing in a cage made from the bones of a murder.
When next the Ringmaster made his way into the center ring, Bailey strode out between the caged lions and strongmen to snatch the black bullhorn. Before the man could protest, Bailey threw the megaphone to the ground and crushed it under his boot. Sure to his theory, under the horn’s canvas wrapping was a wooden skeleton crudely constructed from whittling of the Enchanted Forest.
The Ringmaster was already protesting this action when Bailey punched him in the mouth. Unaccustomed to violence, the strike hurt his fist, but the brand on his hand burned more.
Standing over the Ringmaster, Bailey felt all attention turn towards him, the clowns and strongmen brandishing fists and clubs, the crowd growing angry at their entertainment being disrupted. Slowly rotating so he could be seen and heard by all, Bailey cried, “This man has taken wood from the Enchanted Forest without permission and then set a fire to cover his crime. He will answer to the spirits there!”
Protests erupted from the crowd, the carnies, and the Ringmaster all at once, so none were understood. Bailey yelled for quiet and, at the center of the big top, found the acoustics carried his voice above all the others. “You know the Enchanted Forest is real. Some of you have been there. And wood was stolen from it to make this circus a magical place. You know it. You can feel it. It has built this place to entertain all of you and to make this man,” he pointed at the Ringmaster, “money.”
Looking down at the Ringmaster, Bailey proclaimed, “And then he ordered a fire lit so he might escape his crime.”
The Ringmaster smiled as a child caught misbehaving might. “Which of us, even you Bailey, hasn’t done something like this? Who’s axe is bloodier?”
Before this logic could take root, Bailey asked, “If he does not answer for these crimes, then who among us will? Or will we ignore it until the Enchanted Forest seeks revenge in our homes?” At that question, the crowd and carnies silenced, each remembering an encounter with the Forest, or someone’s tale of it. Better for the Forest to stay where it was, so we might pretend its borders contained it.
Bailey continued, “I will take this man to face the justice the Forest wishes to dispense. Is there anyone here that would stop me?” The spectators, considering Bailey’s word, only shuffled in their seats. Before anyone changed their mind, Bailey grabbed the Ringmaster by the collar of his cape and dragged him towards his exit.
As he left the big top, the crowd erupted into boos and condemnations. The Ringmaster, hearing it, smiled as Bailey pushed him into his engine, and Bailey knew why. Under whatever hex that had been fashioned from the Forest’s wood, they would always hate Bailey for this.
Bailey was glad for the noise of his engine as it covered the Ringmaster’s talk during the journey. Without the megaphone, his words were no more persuasive than anyones, but he nonetheless cajoled, bargained, bribed, and begged for Bailey to release him. Bailey ignored him.
Bailey only stopped the engine on the Forest’s blackened edge. He dragged the protesting Ringmaster from the engine, across the ash, the scent of night jasmine rising up from the footprints they left in the soot. “Forest! I have your man!”
When nothing changed or appeared, Bailey waited patiently, long enough that he began to feel foolish under the increasingly smug countenance of the Ringmaster. It was only when his eyes widened and his mouth opened but was empty of words that Bailey knew the Dryad had arrived.
It stood there, wooden antlers like a crown, its eyes as baleful as uncontrolled fire. Too afraid of the avatar to even feel shame at his fright, Bailey stepped away from the Ringmaster. The Ringmaster, for the first time in a long time, said nothing.
The Dryad spoke in a voice like a cold autumn wind rustling through empty branches. “We may have granted you permission to some of our trees, Ringmaster, had you asked.” It stepped across the ash, closer to the man. “Now it is too late for that.”
The Ringmaster looked at Bailey, at the forest behind the Dryad, at the ash. Anywhere but at the creature. “Please, I was just trying to feed my family.”
“How many lies will you tell today, Ringmaster? You have no family to feed and had enough to feed five families if such was required of you. But you fed no one but yourself, and wanted more besides. Is that not why you stole the trees, why you lit the fire?”
“I didn’t do it alone. There were others – “
“There are always others. But they obeyed your commands.”
The Ringmaster narrowed his eyes and rubbed his hands, reverting to form as a dealmaker. “Oh, OK, look I’m sorry. I can cut you in. How much money is it going to take to set this right?”
“Money is of no use to us here, and it is far too late for that.” The Dryad raised an appendage, the spider-like hand at the end of it alighting with flames. The twigs of it blackened and withered as it reached for the Ringmaster who recoiled in sweating fear. “What you have taken from us will one day be renewed. We will heal.”
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The tomb had been closed for millennia and yet it was a crime scene. When Dr. Jonte broke the seal on the final chamber door, he knew what should lay inside. It was depicted in Roman murals and medieval tapestries. In the chamber seventeen corpses would be interred in sarcophagi, sixteen of them flanking the nave, with one at the altar, a golden chalice sitting upon it.
There was no chalice, though. Everything else was exactly as Jonte had expected, but no golden goblet, not tarnished by age or somehow knocked from its place. It simply wasn’t there. Exacting examination showed the chamber had never been breached.
Years of theories and investigations would result in the conclusion that the original crime wasn’t in stealing the chalice. It was in the original description of the chamber, which the writer, giving into the inclination of all writers, exaggerated by adding something that wasn’t there: A golden chalice for the saints.
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I didn’t need the umbrella or the trench coat, so both of them went under my arm as I pretended to study the lagoon while scanning for Russians. There was a part of me that was disappointed I didn’t see any. Imagining their black-clad presence and cold-climate ancestry struggling in the Mediterranean heat made me chuckle.
I realized I was spending a little too much time fantasizing about punching something. As much as I might like to see Sartre and Mitnick destroy one another, despite the lies that I had been telling Atwell and now Rotella, all of that had become complicated enough that I was losing sight of the simple thing Sophie wanted to accomplish. Get the girl out, reunite her with her boy, watch everything else burn down.
OK, that last part was a broad interpretation, but I couldn’t keep the smile from my face. That caused me to consider the motivations of everyone in this mess, which was enough to drive anyone mad.
I tried to put that out of my mind, watching over the sun-baked garden as the warmth and mist of the lagoon surrounded me, tempting me to sink in. In those sensations I found my vigilance floating in a memory of the Alhambra, an ancient Moorish fortress that had been sitting in Spain long before Cheryl and I visited it. With its palm trees and flagstone pathways and surrounding fountains, the botanical gardens reminded me of that place and I sighed, thinking of the peace I had felt there.
The memory pinged me with guilt as I wondered what Cheryl would think of Sophie and I. Bringing Sophie to mind produced an entirely different reaction, however, and I felt myself heat up. After a time, though, I realized I wasn’t sweating from lust, embarrassment, or shame, but that the sun had fully shed its winter coat, and my shaven head couldn’t take it. I headed into the pyramid.
Inside the greenhouse, the moisture of the lagoon and irrigation fountains misted the inside of its glass, muggy with a hothouse humidity. A path led through it a forest of the pinnate leaves, shrub fronds, and orchids. They created a canopy that covered the flagstone walks like a jungle, keeping the area cool, making staying out of sight easy.
There was no sign of Lanzo. With the vegetation obscuring my field of vision, I set myself on a roving patrol, hoping that I’d run into him at some point after his entry. Making these rounds, I found under the pyramid’s pointed center a clearing of diamond-shaped flagstones. A bench sat at each of its sides. Some caretaker of the place, recognizable by the brown uniform that matched the stone, disappeared into the jungle, either wanting to grant me privacy or wanting some himself.
Just looking at the benches reminded me of how much time I had been spending on my feet lately. I sat down, folding the trench coat into my lap like some kind of traveling blanket. I still felt sore from some of the bruises that had been left on me, the idea of another Russian catching me unaware the only thing that kept me from dozing in the wet heat of the garden.
When Lanzo emerged from the edge of the jungle into the diamond clearing, he saw me and walked over with the long strides of a young man who’s trying to establish his own confidence. He stopped in front of me and I lifted my head as if it weighed as much as a bag of hammers. Despite the temperature, Lanzo was wearing his black leather jacket, visibly sweating, the perspiration adding to the continual oiliness of his hair. Neither of us said anything immediately. This silence dragged on long enough that he reached into a pocket to fish out a cigarette.
The careful attention and maintenance that had been put into this place and the slight peace it had granted me made me stand and say, “You can’t smoke in here.”
The Corsican looked around at the garden, indicating the lack of anyone else, so I stepped closer, imposing my size next to his slighter frame. I repeated my words more forcefully.
Realizing there was, in fact, someone there to stop him, Lanzo turned his gaze from the garden to me. His eyes suggested he was considering how our initial encounter might have gone if he hadn’t been handcuffed. However, his desire to cooperate overrode his masculine pride and he said, “Let us go outside.” We strode out, the near confrontation giving me a small shot of adrenaline to wake me.
Lanzo walked to the railing around the lagoon and lit his cigarette with a pink disposable lighter. For some reason the action made me want to pick him up and toss him into the water, but instead I looked out over the pond, making sure we were alone before I said, “Things are moving fast.”
“Oui. You said that.”
I breathed slowly through my nose, calming myself in the face of what felt like disrespect towards his elder, a man trying to help him, and his physical superior. Lanzo wisely deciding to say nothing more. “Mitnick,” I continued, “wants to meet me tomorrow afternoon. We need to have everything ready by then.”
Lanzo bumped himself off the railing with a thrust of his hips and, for a moment, I thought I could understand why Nika, or any girl, might find him attractive. But then he ruined it by speaking. “Let us go talk to le hommes.” I almost corrected him with ‘the Idiots’, but just nodded and followed Lanzo as he headed out of the park.
Not far, we made our way to the Augustin north-south bus stop. This close to the ocean, I could smell the tides mix with the downstream of the river. Out of whatever pathetic sense of operational security I could maintain, I kept quiet while we waited, trying to appear as the clueless American. When the bus arrived, a few tourists exited the coach. Judging by the looks the skinny, smoking Corsican and his hulking companion received, I didn’t do a very good job.
The air-conditioning and padded seats of the bus were welcome, especially as it was crowded. While I had been busy, tourist season had truly begun. In that crowded coach, we traveled down a narrow parkway, the bus windows leaving a narrow, sun-bleached view of the city. With every pothole we ran across, it reminded me of traveling down the narrow canyons of a desert city in a crowded humvee. It didn’t take long before my imagination conjured shattered windows and scorch marks left from explosions.
That illusion was gratefully interrupted by a German couple, fair-haired as they were smiling, embracing one stereotype while shattering another. They got on, a baby strapped to the mother’s chest like some kind of suicide bomb. The father was trying his best to keep the child entertained, playing peekaboo, as the woman held onto a commuter pole. The simple joy of the father and child made me smile until I saw the fatigue of the mother, a woman clearly not accustom to the heat. She had a long day ahead of her.
I stood, then rapped Lanzo lightly with the back of my hand and said, “Get up.” Not accustomed to taking directions he shot back irritation. I just gestured again for him to move and, with an expression of frustrated disgust, he did. The vacancy created, I gestured at the Germans to the seats. The woman hardly noticed until her husband pointed to the empty bench. An undisguised relief came over her, and the family moved to sit down, both of the parents nodding their thanks. I nodded back, then pushed Lanzo towards one of the exits, hoping we’d be getting off the bus soon.
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It had been a long time since Lee had been happy. And she felt ungrateful for being unhappy, because she knew how lucky she was. She was successful at her chosen profession after decades of hard work. Her husband was a loving man who tended their house and child. Their child was a precocious boy that had all of his parents’ talent and, unfortunately, their unhappiness.
This, perhaps, bothered her most of all. A guilt had settled onto her unhappiness as she felt it had infected her family. Particularly her son, who could smile so sweetly that it broke her heart when he could see through her facade.
She should be grateful, and she knew it. She didn’t feel grateful, though, and that only dug her further into the hole of her disquiet. As an actress Lee had worked hard to be successful, and gotten lucky, an essential combination in such a competitive field, and now she was making enough money that Keb could stay at home to work on his painting and watch Robi. Now she felt like the lynchpin to their fragile existence.
It was on days that things were their worst that she rose before dawn, while Keb and Robi were soundly asleep, strapped on big sunglasses despite the dim light, and took the train to the day’s shoot. She could have called for a ride, but without the make-up or clothes that wardrobe would layer her in, she’d feel as ugly on the outside as she did on the inside. Like that, she’d crowd into a train with people who looked mostly as surly as she felt, in the hopes that it might make her realize how much better she had it. It never worked.
Waiting on the platform on a particularly bleak Wednesday, she heard someone call her name. There was a young man there, handsome in a sort of bland, sandy way, that somehow, without the make-up, without the lights and perfect camera angle, smiled with the recognition of a fan. She smiled back, feeling her soul retreat behind the walls of her cynicism. Would this one fawn over her, make demands, or become irate when Lee inevitably had to extricate herself from the exchange so she could get on with the business that had made her famous to begin with?
This young man, though, just smiled at her through bright brown eyes and said, “Love your stuff. You should be really proud of yourself. You’ve made a lot of people very happy.” Lee stood, mouth closed, not sure what to expect next, afraid such kind words be followed by some demand or request.
This one, though, continued to smile and let his words sink in as the train’s doors opened. With nothing else, he wished her, “Well, keep up the good work.” He stepped onto the train, the pneumatic doors closing behind him, leaving Lee on the platform with the knowledge that, for some people, she had made the world a brighter place.
When Lee arrived home, she hugged her husband, hard.
Keb was at the kitchen sink, washing up whatever pile of dishes had accumulated in the course of a day feeding their child. He let out an exhalation that became an exaggerated groan as he realized he was in the grip of his wife’s enthusiasm. He smiled over his shoulder at her, her face buried in his back. “Hi. How was your day?”
Lee loosened her grip enough to look up at her husband and share the grin with him she’d been wearing the entire ride home. “It was the best day I’ve had in a long time.”
“Really?” Keb tried to keep the surprise out of his voice, grabbing a towel. “You certainly worked late enough.”
Lee let go of her husband to begin unwinding her scarf, walking to their dining table. “I know, I’m sorry, but things just clicked today.”
Keb tamped down envy, putting his thumb on that gremlin as he dried his hands. “No trouble. I got Robi fed and he’ll be down to work on his homework in a bit. You can help if you’ve got the energy.”
“That sounds great.” Lee surprised Keb again with her answer. She usually came home drained.
Happy to see his wife happy, but curious, he asked, “Something different happen today?”
“Yah. It was the strangest thing. A fan come up to me at the station.”
Keb slowed the process of drying his hands, unsure of how to proceed into the potential minefield of his wife’s fame. “Oh? And how did that go?”
“He was lovely. He didn’t yell, ‘Hey! Are you famous?’ or hit on me or demand a selfie or autograph or just keep talking and not shut up. He just said I’d made a lot of people happy and I should be proud of myself.” As she struggled out of her coat, Lee’s back was to her husband, so she didn’t see the slow change to questioning on his face. “And then he just told me to keep up the good work. That’s it!”
Placing her coat down, Lee turned to her husband, about to expound on this last part, when she stopped, seeing that he was covered in splashes of primary colors. These were not the hues he usually worked in, nor was the untidiness. For an abstract painter, Keb was meticulous. But here he was, looking like he’d been involved in a finger-painting riot.
“What happened to you?”
Keb looked down on his smock, his curiosity about the stranger displaced by his own mess. “Oh, yeah. Me and Robi worked together in the studio today.”
“What?” A small jealousy stabbed at Lee. “You never let Robi in your studio.” Or me, she didn’t add.
Keb finished drying his hands, embarrassed by this truth. He guarded his time in his studio, never letting his wife or son in when he was trying to do serious work. He shrugged sheepishly, an action that Lee always found endearing from such a large man. “It’s strange, I had a similar experience today.”
“How do you mean?”
“We were playing at the park.” Keb paused, frowned. “Well, Robi was playing and I was watching him from a bench.” Keb left out, ‘Feeling sorry for myself,’ instead continuing with, “And this guy sat down next to me and bummed a smoke.” Lee clucked, unhappy at the habit, but Keb plowed on. “Then Robi hurt himself on the swing and I did the Dad thing.” Lee held her tongue, frustrated by Keb always minimizing how good he was at ‘The Dad Thing,’ but not wanting to turn this into another fight. Keb thought he kept the secret of his own unhappiness, but Lee knew. Thus, the cigarettes, the time alone in the studio, so many other little signs.
“Anyway, when I got back to the bench, the dude had this big grin on his face and told me what a great Dad I was. I don’t remember exactly what he said. Which is a bit weird, because I sat on the bench and thought about it a long time.” Keb’s expression took on the same wondering cast it always did when he ran into something strange in the city.
That was Keb, unable to take praise, but Lee asked. “What did you think about?”
“Oh – just that I’ve been silly, keeping Robi out of the studio. It’s not that I don’t need time to myself. It’s just most of the time these days I’m experimenting, so what does it matter if he’s there?” Keb smiled at his wife. “Robi is an agent of chaos anyway, so why not introduce that? Couldn’t hurt, right? It’s not like my art has has been selling.”
“Keb…”
“Oh, don’t ‘Keb’ me. I’m not feeling sorry, myself. It’s true. When we came home I brought Robi into the studio and we painted together for awhile. It was great fun.” He gestured to his paint-covered smock. “And he’s got a great eye for color.”
“That’s fantastic!”
“It is.”
“Then…why do you seem sad?”
“Oh, I’m not,” Keb shook his head. “It’s just…do you know how long it’s been since I’ve enjoyed painting?”
Lee laughed loud. “I do!” Thinking of how similar her own day had been, she added, “I guess we all need our own sandy, pale boy to show us what we’ve been missing.”
Lee’s chain of chuckles stopped with Keb’s question. “What did you say?”
“Oh, it’s just today on the set went really well…”
“No, I mean about a sandy, pale boy.”
“Oh! The stranger on the subway — “
Keb interrupted. “Was about this tall? Sandy hair, pale face? Bright green eyes?”
Lee side-eyed her husband, his hand held up at the height of her stranger. “I think he had brown eyes…?”
Husband and wife stared quizzically at one another, forming questions when they noticed Robi standing at the door of the kitchen. He was staring at them with his knowing eyes, the ones that made Lee always think of that ‘old soul’ phrase she disliked so much.
Bundled in his small arms were a ruler, glue, scissors, and batches of colored paper, all promises of a school project. Instead of greeting them, though, their son smiled. “I saw someone like that today. I know you say not to talk to strangers, but he was just nice and then left.”
Lee and Keb stared at each other. At the same time, they turned to their son and asked, “What did this person look like?”
——————————————————————————————————
Lee stared into the violet eyes of Aggie McPherson trying not to feel foolish. Not only was her story difficult to convince herself of, but the detective had stared at her throughout the telling with a kind of indifferent intelligence that made Lee uncomfortable.
“That’s all very interesting, Ms. Sinnoh. But I’m not sure how I can help.”
Lee continued to stare at Aggie, thinking about the pebbled glass on the door with its stenciled words, Aggie McPherson, Spectral Analyst, and wondered what she had come here expecting. “Well, I knew I couldn’t go to the police. What was I going to tell them, ‘Hello, my family is being stalked by a polite young man who says the nicest things?’ I don’t want to think about if the tabloids got ahold of that.”
Behind her desk, the diminutive detective smiled mischievously. “No, I suppose not. So let me ask, do you think you or your family are in danger?”
“Well…no.”
Aggie stood up and moved around her glass and steel desk, revealing small, well-shined shoes at the bottom of herwell-tailored suit. She sat in one of the chairs across from Lee, facing her without the barrier of the desk between them. Still she had the smile, but there was a kindness to it that hadn’t been there before. “Mrs. Sinnoh. May I call you Lee?”
“Of course.”
“What I can tell you is that Slakterquay has had stories of this young man, in one capacity or another, for quite some time. If you were to spend time combing the city, you’d eventually find a number of strangers with similar stories, meaningful positive messages delivered to individuals in a time of need by a young man matching a strikingly similar description.” Lee watched Aggie, realizing the detective may have conducted this search. This was only confirmed when she added, “I’ve even heard rumor he’s an angel.” Aggie’s smile fell away. “But you don’t believe in angels, do you?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.” Aggie slapped the arms of her chair and stood up, moving to stare out the window behind her desk, the city, bifurcated by its river, behind it. “So what would you like to know? You’re not in danger. You’re encounter with him has assisted you and your family. What else is there?”
Lee thought about that. Aggie let the silence stretch on, giving her client all the time she needed. Eventually, Lee said, “I suppose I want to know if he’s happy. Or at least OK.”
“You’re worried about him?”
“Well, yes. It doesn’t seem possible that he could have spoken to all of us in the same day. It almost feels like he would have had to be in multiple places at the same time.”
Aggie shrugged. “Perhaps he was. But I think you’ll have to accept this as one of Slakterquay’s more benevolent mysteries.” She walked back around her desk, extending a hand with well-polished nails.
Lee took her hand gently, standing as she did, unaccustomed to being the tallest person in the room. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Ms. McPherson.”
“It’s just Aggie. Given the discretion I’m sure you’d like, let’s just stick to first names, Lee.”
Lee smiled, happy at least one of her desires satisfied. “I suppose – have a nice day?”
“You as well.”
When Lee left, Aggie returned to her desk and picked up the sole framed picture on it. It was of a pale young man with brown hair and bright hazel eyes. She stared at it for a long time. “Come back to me, you idiot.”
