13 Little Blue Envelopes (5 page)

41

Whoever he was, he’d let Aunt Peg stay long enough to decorate an entire room. It must have taken time to make the collage and sew the bedspread. She had to have been here for months.

She got up and retrieved the package. After brushing a spot clean, she laid the envelopes out on the table. She looked over each of the eleven unopened ones. Most had been decorated with some kind of picture as well as a number. The front of the next one had been painted in watercolors in the style of a Monopoly Community Chest card. Aunt Peg had created her own version of the little man in the top hat with the monocle, with a very fat and round plane going by the background. She’d even managed to sketch out letters that looked like the Monopoly typescript. They read: TO BE OPENED THE MORNING

AFTER THE SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF ENVELOPE #2.

That required her to find out what Richard had sold the queen and getting to an ATM. She needed money anyway. All she had left was a handful of strangely shaped coins, which she hoped would be enough to get her back to Harrods.

Ginny snatched up the directions that Richard had written for her minutes before, dumped the offending juice down the sink, and headed for the door.

42

Richard and the Queen

A red bus was coming down the street in Ginny’s direction. The sign on the front listed several famous-sounding destinations, including Knightsbridge, and the number matched one of the bus numbers Richard had given her. There was a small bus shelter a few feet away, and it looked like the bus planned on stopping there.

Two black poles with illuminated yellow globes on top of them marked the opening of the pedestrian crossing. Ginny ran to these, glanced to make sure the coast was clear, and started to run across the road.

Sudden honking. A big black cab whizzed past her. As Ginny jumped back, she saw something written on the road.

LOOK LEFT.

“It’s like they know me,” she mumbled to herself.

She managed to get across the road and tried to ignore the fact that everyone on one side of the bus had just witnessed her 43

near-death experience. She had no idea what to pay the driver.

Ginny helplessly held out her little bit of remaining money and he took one of the fat coins. She went up the narrow spiral staircase in the middle of the bus. There were many seats available, and Ginny took one at the very front. The bus started to move.

It felt like she was floating. From her perspective, it looked like the bus was running over countless pedestrians and bicyclists, squashing them into oblivion. She pushed herself farther back into the seat and tried not to pay any attention to this. (Except they
had
to have just killed that guy on the cell phone. Ginny waited to feel the bump as the bus rolled over his body, but it never came.)

She looked around at the imposing facades of the stately buildings around her. The sky went from cloudy to gray in the space of a moment, and rain started hammering the wide windows in front of her. Now it looked like they were mowing down huge crowds of umbrella carriers.

She looked down at her smattering of remaining coins.

Aside from the 4th Noodle Penthouse, there was one other thing about Aunt Peg’s life that had been completely consistent—she was broke.
Always.
Ginny had known this even when she was very small and wasn’t supposed to know things about her relatives’ finances. Her parents somehow made this fact apparent without ever coming out and saying it.

Still, it never seemed like Aunt Peg was wanting for anything. She always seemed to have enough money to take Ginny for frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity, or to buy her piles of art supplies, or to make her elaborate Halloween 44

costumes, or to get that jar of really good caviar she bought once just because she thought Ginny should taste it. (“If you’re going to do fish eggs once, do it right,” she had said. It was still gross.)

Ginny wasn’t sure if she believed that there was any more money waiting for her in an ATM. Maybe it would be there since it wasn’t going to be
real
money—it was going to be pounds. Pounds seemed possible. Pounds sounded like they should come in the form of tiny burlap bags tied in rough string, filled with little bits of metal or shiny objects. Aunt Peg could have
that
kind of money.

It took a few tries on the escalators and a few consultations of the Harrods map to find Mo’s Diner. Richard had gotten there first and was waiting in a booth. He ordered a steak, and she got the “big American-style burger!”

“I’m supposed to ask you what you sold to the queen,” she said.

He smiled and dabbed some ketchup onto his steak. Ginny tried not to wince.

“My job is to take care of special orders and customers,” he said, not noticing her distress over his condiment choice. “Say a star is out on a movie set and can’t get their favorite chocolate, or soap, or sheets, or whatever. . . . I make arrangements to get it to them. Last year, I made sure all of Sting’s Christmas hampers were properly packed. And occasionally,
occasionally
, I get to set up royal visits. We open at special times for those, and I make sure that there’s someone in the necessary departments. One day, we got a call from the palace that the queen wanted to come 45

over that evening, in just a few hours. She never does that. She’s always very carefully scheduled weeks in advance. But this night she wanted to come in, and there was no one else available. So I had to take care of her.”

“What did she want?” Ginny asked.

“Pants,” he said, dabbing on even more ketchup. “
Underwear
pants. Big ones. Very nice ones as well, but big ones. I believe she also got some stockings, but all I could think as I wrapped them up in the tissue was, ‘I’m packing up the queen’s pants.’ Peg always did like that story.”

At Peg’s name, Ginny looked up.

“It’s a funny thing,” he went on. “I don’t know what you’re meant to be doing here or how long you’re supposed to stay, but you’re welcome, as long as you like.”

He said it very sincerely but kept his eyes trained on his steak.

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess Aunt Peg asked if I could come.”

“She mentioned that she wanted you to. I mailed the package. I suppose you know that?”

She didn’t, but it made as much sense as anything else.

Someone had to send it.

“So,” Ginny said, “she was your roommate, huh?”

“Yeah. We were good mates.” He pushed his steak around for a moment. “She told me a lot about you. About your family. I felt like I knew you before you ever got here.”

He poured a bit more ketchup, then set the bottle down very deliberately and looked at her.

“You know, if you want to talk about it at all . . .”

“It’s fine,” she said. His sudden directness . . . the closeness of the topic, the
it
. . . it made her nervous.

46

“Right,” he replied quickly. “Of course.”

The waitress dropped a handful of forks next to their table.

They both stopped to watch her pick them up.

“Is there an ATM in here anywhere?” Ginny finally asked.

“Several,” he said, looking eager to take up this new topic of conversation. “I’ll show you when we’re done.”

They were done just a few minutes later, as they both developed a sudden interest in eating very quickly. Richard showed Ginny to the ATM and returned to work, with the promise of seeing her in the evening.

To her relief, Ginny found that English ATMs looked exactly like American ones. She approached one and stuck in the card. The machine politely asked for a code.

“All right,” Ginny said. “Here we go.”

She entered the word
pants
into the keypad. The machine purred and showed her a few advertisements about how she could save for a home, and then it asked her what she wanted.

She had no idea what she wanted, but she had to pick something. Some number. There were lots of numbers to choose from.

Twenty pounds, please.
That seemed like a good, basic kind of number.

No. She was on her own. She would need to buy things and get around, so . . .

One hundred pounds, please.

The machine asked for a moment. Ginny felt her stomach drop. Then a stack of crisp purple and blue notes (different sizes: the purple ones were large, the blue ones little) emblazoned with 47

pictures of the queen popped out of the slot. (Now she got it.

Aunt Peg’s little joke also ensured that Ginny would never forget the code.) The large notes didn’t fit in her wallet, so she had to crush them in.

Her balance, the machine said, was £1856. Aunt Peg had come through.

48

#3

#3

Dear Ginny,

Let’s get right down to business.

Today is MYSTERIOUS BENEFACTOR DAY. Why

Mysterious Benefactor Day? Well, Gin, let me give you a because: because talent alone doesn’t make an artist. You need a little serendipity, a little luck, a little boost. I stumbled right into someone who helped me out, and it’s time to return the favor. But it’s also good to be mysterious. Make someone think that wonderful things are happening to them for no reason they can see. I’ve always wanted to be a fairy godmother, Gin, so help me out here.

Step one: Withdraw 500 pounds from the account.

Step two: Find an artist in London whose work you like, someone you think deserves a break. This is going to require some looking around on your part. Any kind of artist—a painter, a musician, a writer, an actor.

Step three: Become A MYSTERIOUS BENEFACTOR.

Buy a new invisible box for a mime, get a mile’s worth of violin strings for a violinist, roll up in front of a ballet studio with a year’s supply of lettuce . . . whatever you want.

Now, I think I know what you’re thinking: This can’t be done in a day! You are so wrong, Gin. Those are your orders. When you’ve successfully done this, you can open the next letter.

Love,

Your Runaway Aunt

The Benefactor

The next morning, after reading her letter and splashing around in the tub, Ginny joined Richard at the kitchen table. He was loosely dressed—unbuttoned shirt, undone tie—and was roughly flipping through the sports section of the paper and shoving pieces of toast into his mouth.

“I have to find an artist today,” she said. “Someone who needs money.”

“An artist?” he said, his mouth half full. “Oh, dear. Sounds like a Peg task. I don’t really know much about that stuff.”

“Oh. That’s okay.”

“No, no,” he said. “Let me think a moment. It shouldn’t be hard. Giving people money can’t be hard.”

He munched on his toast thoughtfully for another moment.

“Hang on,” he said. “We’ll have a look in
Time Out
. That’s what we’ll do.”

He reached under a pile of shirts that sat on one of the 53

kitchen chairs, felt around for a second, and produced a magazine. Ginny had a strange feeling that leaving laundry on the kitchen chairs was something Aunt Peg probably didn’t allow when she was here. For someone who lived pretty randomly, she was a bit of a neat freak.

“They list everything in here,” Richard said brightly, opening the magazine. “All kinds of movies, art events. Here’s one, and right near here. Izzy’s Café, Islington. Shelia Studies, paintings by Romily Mezogarden. And here’s another . . . a bit strange sounding. Harry Smalls, demolition artist. That’s just around the corner. If you’re ready, I can walk you there.”