Lasher (8 page)

She stopped. As she looked down, she saw that the carpet was no longer the red wool carpet. It was an oriental runner, very worn, very thin. She felt the change of texture. Or rather she became aware of standing on something more threadbare, and she followed the cascade of Persian blue and pink roses down the stairs. The walls had changed around her. The wallpaper was a deep dusty gold, and far below an unfamiliar chandelier hung from the oval cluster of plaster leaves on the hallway ceiling—something frothy and Venetian that she could never recall having seen before. And it had real lighted candles in it, this little chandelier.

She could smell the wax. The song of the soprano went on
with its reliable and swinging rhythm, making her want to sing with it again. Her heart was brimming.

“Oncle Julien!” she whispered, almost bursting into tears. Oh, this was the grandest vision she had ever beheld!

She looked down into the hallway. More lovely patterns that she’d never seen before. And through the first of the high parlor doorways, the very doorway through which a long-ago cousin had been shot from this very stairway, she saw that the room was no longer the room of the present, and that tiny flames danced in the graceful crystal gasoliers.

Ah, but the rug was the same rug! And there were Julien’s gold damask chairs.

She hurried down, glancing to right and left as the details caught her—the old gas sconces with their fluted crystal saucers of light, and the leaded glass around the huge front door, which had not been there before.

The music was as loud perhaps as a Victrola could get. And ah, behold the whatnot shelf all crowded with tiny ceramic figures, and the brass clock on the front mantel, and the Greek statues on the rear mantel, and the draperies of a mellow old velvet, burnished and fringed, and puddling on the polished floor.

The doorframes were painted to look like marble! So were the baseboards. It was that old kind of graining, so popular at the end of the century, and the gaslight flickered steadily against the darkly papered ceiling as if the little jets were dancing to the rhythm of the waltz.

What flaw could there be in this fabric? The rug was the very same rug she’d seen earlier, but that made perfect sense, didn’t it, it had been Julien’s, and there were his lovely fauteuils grouped together for conversation in the very center of the rooms.

She lifted her arms, and found herself dancing on the balls of her feet, in a circle, round and round, till the narrow nightgown flared around her, making a perfect narrow bell. She sang with the soprano, understanding the Italian effortlessly, though that was the most recent of all the languages she’d learned, and enchanted with the simple rhythm, and then swaying wildly back and forth, bending from the waist and letting her hair whip out and all over her face and tossing it again, so it tumbled down her back. Her eyes swept the veined and yellowed paper of the ceiling, and then in a blur, she saw the big sofa, Michael’s new sofa, only it didn’t have the beige damask
on it now, but rather a worn gold velvet like the draperies which hung from the windows, gorgeous and warm in the flickering light.

Michael was sitting motionless on the couch looking at her. She stopped in mid-step, her arms curved downward like those of a ballerina, and felt her hair shift and tumble again off her shoulders. He was afraid. He sat in the middle of the couch in his cotton pajamas staring at her, as if she were something utterly terrifying or grotesque. The music went on and on, and slowly she took a deep breath, getting her pulse under control again and then coming near to him, thinking that if she had ever seen anything truly scary in her life, it was the sight of him sitting there in this room, staring at her, as if he were about to go out of his mind.

He wasn’t trembling. He was like her. He feared nothing. He was just all anxious and upset and horrified by the vision, and he was seeing it, he had to be, and he was hearing the music, and as she drew closer, and sank down on the sofa beside him, he turned, looking at her, eyes wide with gentle amazement, and then she locked her mouth on his, pulled him down to her, and slam, bang, it connected, the chain reaction snapping through her. She had him. He was hers.

He pulled back for one instant as if to look at her again, as if to make sure that she was there. His eyes were still cloudy from the drugs. Maybe they were helping now—putting his sublime Catholic conscience to sleep. She kissed him again hurriedly and a little sloppily and then reached between his legs. Ah, he was ready!

His arms locked around her, and he gave some soft complaining sound that was very like him, like it’s just too late now, or something, or God forgive me. She could all but hear the words.

She pulled him down on top of her, sinking deep into the sofa, smelling dust, as the waltz surged and the soprano sang on. She stretched out beneath him as he rose up, protectively, and then she felt his hand, trembling slightly in a beguiling fashion, as it ripped up the flannel and felt her naked belly and then her naked thigh.

“You know what else is there,” she whispered, and she pulled him down hard again. But his hand went before him, pushing gently into her, awakening her, rather like setting off a burglar alarm, and she felt her own juices slipping between her legs.

“Come on, I can’t hold back,” she said, feeling the heat flood her face. “Give it to me.” It probably sounded savage, but she couldn’t play little girl a moment more. He went into her, hurting her deliriously, and then began the piston motion that made her throw back her head and almost scream. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“OK, Molly Bloom!” he cried out in a hoarse whisper, and then she came and came and came—gritting her teeth, scarce able to stand it, moaning, and then screaming with her lips shut—and so did he.

She lay to one side, out of breath, wet all over as if she were Ophelia and they had just found her in the flower-strewn stream. Her hand was caught in his hair, pulling it too hard maybe. And then a shrieking sound shocked her and she opened her eyes.

Someone had torn the needle from the Victrola record. She turned, just as he did, and she stared at the bent little figure of Eugenia, the black maid, standing grimly beside the table, her arms folded, her chin jutting.

And quite suddenly there was no Victrola. The sofa was damask. The dim lights were electric.

And Eugenia was standing by nothing, having merely taken a righteous position, dead opposite to them, as they lay tangled on the sofa, and she said:

“Mr. Mike, what do you think you are doing with that child!”

He was baffled, distressed, ashamed, confused, probably ready to commit suicide. He climbed up off her, tightening the string of his cotton pajamas, and staring at Eugenia and then at her.

It was time to be a Mayfair. Time to be Julien’s great-great-granddaughter. She stood up and went towards the old woman.

“You want to keep your job in this house, Eugenia? Then go back up to your room now and shut the door.”

The old woman’s dark wrinkled face froze for an instant in conscious outrage, and then softened as Mona looked right into her eyes. “Do as I tell you. There’s nothing here to worry about. Mona is doing what Mona wants. And Mona is good for Uncle Michael and you know it! Now go!”

Was she spellbound, or merely overwhelmed? It didn’t matter. Witch power was witch power. The woman gave in. They always gave in. It was almost a cowardly thing, to make them
do her bidding, staring them down this way. But she had to do it.

Eugenia lowered her gaze uncertainly and hurried from the room, with a crazy, twisted neurotic gait, and went rustling up the stairs. What a surprise that she could do it so fast.

And there was Michael sitting back on the sofa, staring at her with his eyes narrow now, and very calm, as though trying to recall what happened, blinking a little to show his confusion. “Christ, Mona,” he whispered.

“It’s done, Uncle Michael,” she said. And suddenly her voice failed her! Her strength was failing her. She heard the catch as she spoke again, she felt the quaver. “Now, let me go up to bed with you,” she said, almost breaking down. “Because I am really really sort of scared.”

They lay in the big bed in the dark. She was staring at the pleated satin of the half tester, wondering what pattern Mary Beth had once looked at. He was quiet beside her, druggy and worn out. The door was locked.

“You awake?” she whispered. She wanted so badly to ask him what he had seen. But she didn’t dare. She held the picture of the double parlor in her mind, like a sacred sepia photograph—hadn’t she seen such pictures, with the gasoliers, and those very chairs?

“Can’t happen again, honey,” he said groggily. “Never, never again.” He nestled her close to him, but he was very sleepy, and his heart was laboring just a little now, just a little but it was OK.

“If you say so, Uncle Michael,” she whispered. “But I wish I had something to say about it.”
In Mary Beth’s bed, in Deirdre’s bed
. She snuggled close, feeling the warmth of his hand now, lying idly on her breast.

“Honey,” he whispered. “What was that waltz? Was that Verdi?
La Traviata?
It sounded like it was but…” and then he was gone.

She lay there smiling in the darkness. He’d heard it! He’d been there with her. She turned to him and kissed his cheek, carefully so he didn’t waken, and then she slept against his chest, one arm slipped beneath his shirt against his warm skin.

A
DREARY ENDLESS
winter rain poured down on San Francisco, gently flooding the steep-sloped streets of Nob Hill and veiling in mist its curious mixture of buildings—the gray ghostlike Gothic facade of Grace Cathedral, the heavy imposing stucco apartment houses, the lofty modern towers rising from the old structure of the Fairmont Hotel. The sky was darkening heavily and quickly, and the five o’clock traffic was about as unpleasant as it could get.

Dr. Samuel Larkin drove slowly past the Mark Hopkins, though whatever they called that hotel now he didn’t know, and down California Street, crawling patiently behind a noisy crowded cable car, wondering vaguely at the perseverance of the tourists who clung to it, in the dark and in the cold, their clothes soaked. He was careful not to skid on the car tracks—the bane of out-of-town drivers—and he gave the cable car a head start as the light changed.

Then he made his descent towards Market Street, block after block, past the pretty exotic wooden entrance to Chinatown, a route which he always found slightly frightening and very beautiful, and which often reminded him of his first years in this city, when one could ride the cable car to work with ease, and the Top of the Mark had indeed been the highest point in the city, and none of these Manhattan skyscrapers were here at all.

How could Rowan Mayfair have ever left this place? he thought. But then Lark had only been to New Orleans a couple of times. Nevertheless, it had been like turning your back on Paris for the provinces, and it was only one part of Rowan’s story that he did not understand.

He almost went by the unobtrusive gates of the Keplinger Institute. He made a sharp turn, plunged a little too fast down the driveway and into the dry darkness of the underground garage.
It was now five-ten. And his plane for New Orleans left at eight-thirty. He did not have a moment to waste.

He flashed his identification card for the guard, who at once called up to verify the information, and then let him through with a nod.

Once again, in front of the elevator, he had to identify himself—this time to a woman’s voice strangled by a tiny speaker beneath a video camera. Lark hated it, being seen but unable to see who saw.

The elevator carried him soundlessly and quickly up the fifteen floors to Mitchell Flanagan’s laboratory. And within seconds, he had found the door, seen the light behind the smoked glass and knocked hard.

“Lark here, Mitchell,” he said in answer to a murmur on the other side.

Mitchell Flanagan looked the way he always did, half blind and utterly incompetent, peering at Lark through thick wire-rimmed glasses, his thatch of yellow hair the perfect wig for a scarecrow, his lab coat dusty but miraculously unstained.

Rowan’s favorite genius, thought Lark. Well, I was her favorite surgeon. So why am I so jealous? His crush on Rowan Mayfair was dying hard. So what if she’d gone south, gotten married and was now embroiled in some frightening medical mayhem? He’d really wanted to get her into bed, and he never had.

“Come inside,” said Mitch, apparently resisting the urge to pull Lark right into the carpeted corridor, where strings of tiny white lights softly outlined both the ceiling and the floor.

This place could drive me mad, Lark thought. You really expect to open a door and find human beings in antiseptic cages.

Mitch led the way—past the numerous steel doors with their small lighted windows, behind which various electronic noises could be heard.

Lark knew better than to ask to be admitted to these inner sanctums. Genetic research was entirely secret at Keplinger, even to most of the medical community. This private interview with Mitchell Flanagan had been bought and paid for by Rowan Mayfair—or the Mayfair family at any rate—at an exorbitant price.

Mitchell led Lark into a large office, with huge glass windows open to the crowded buildings of Lower California Street and a sudden dramatic view of the Bay Bridge. Sheer drapery, rather like mosquito netting, was fixed to the long chrome
poles over the windows, masking and softening the night, and making it seem to Lark even more close and rather terrible. His memories of San Francisco before the era of the high-rise were simply too clear. The bridge looked totally out of proportion, and surely misplaced.

A wall of computer screens rose on one side of the large mahogany desk. Mitchell took the high-backed chair facing Lark and gestured for him to be seated in the more comfortable upholstered chair before the desk. The fabric was the color of claret, a heavy silk probably, and the style of the furnishings was vaguely oriental. Either that, or there was no style at all.

Beneath the windows, and their spectacle of the frightening night, stood rows and rows of file drawers, each with its own digital coded lock. The rug was the same deep claret as the chair in which Lark had made himself comfortable. Other chairs here and there were done up in the same color so that they all but vanished into the floor or into the darkly paneled walls.