The Fine Art of Truth or Dare (17 page)

“Nope. Neither.” I rested my chin on my forearm. “To me, you are perfect. You are loyal and reliable and completely lacking in surprises.”

“That is a good thing?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “It's an excellent thing. I don't want any more surprises, ever.”

“Hardly an admirable goal, that.”

“Maybe not,” I agreed, “but pleasant. Among all the other bizarreness tonight, I found something new to be afraid of. Evil girlfriends.”

“Now, Ella. You can't go on being afraid forever.”

“Oh, yes, I can. As far as Amanda Alstead is concerned, I can.”

Edward tilted his head and studied me for a moment. He looked annoyed. “Why do you insist on having these conversations with me when you ignore everything I have to say?”

It was a pretty good question. “Fine.” I sat up straight and folded my hands in my lap. Home Truth time. “Go ahead. On this night when we celebrate the mysteries of life and death . . . Say something profound, something startling.”

There was a long silence. Then, “Boo,” Edward said.

“Thank you, Mr. Willing.”

“Don't mention it, Miss Marino. I am yours to command.”

21

THE WOMAN

I decided the Monday after Halloween would be a very good day to cut classes. Not all of them. That would have provoked a call home, and I just didn't feel like explaining to my parents why I preferred not to go to Mr. Stone's English class with Chase and the Hannandas ever again. So I went to history, where I paid a little attention, French, where I paid none, and then to art.

I convinced Ms. Evers that I (a) would benefit from outside time, and (b) should be excused from all further classes because I was running out of time at the archive and I needed to be there ASAP. I have no idea if she believed me. She wrote me a note anyway.

So, long before the lunch bell rang and any possible encounter with Alex or Amanda, I was on my way to the Sheridan-Brown. I could have gone shopping; I could have gone home. I could have gone anywhere. But without Sadie or Frankie, it was all similarly uninspiring. Besides, we'd spent all of Sunday together, drinking too much coffee at Java Company and eating contraband Cinnabons in Sadie's room.

My sudden departure from the dance had taken surprisingly little explaining. A bent-truth tale of an Alex encounter in the hall, a brief recap of Scary Amanda's psycho-bitch moment, and the suggestion that Chase Vere is subhuman, and they left me alone. Probably they wouldn't have, ordinarily, but they took me at my I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it. Possibly because there were other matters to discuss. Frankie needed to analyze the end of his date. (“If he only kissed me once, does that mean he's seeing someone else?” “Is ‘dinner with Grandma' code for something?” “Do you think his teeth are too shiny?”) Sadie thought she might kinda, possibly, but no, really probably not have had a very nice time with Jared-the-Walt, and wouldn't mind it if he called but couldn't possibly, absolutely not, no way could she call him. All of which effectively kept the attention off me.

I was still suffering very slightly from that fourth Cinnabon as I took the elevator up to the archive floor. I could have gone home to a bottle of ginger ale and an afternoon of TV talk shows. Inevitably, at least one would have been about Girls Who Love Dead Guys or Live Guys Whose Girlfriends Would Like Them to Be Dead. There always is. But for all my faults, I'm not lazy. My term project on Edward was barely a blot on paper, and December was coming faster than it should. I wanted to have a really complete outline done before winter break. So far I had half a title:
Ravaged Man: Edward Willing (something something Diana something).
I figured I had plenty of time to work on that part.

I heard the music when I was still only halfway down the third-floor corridor. It was faint, but not so faint that I couldn't make out a wild drumbeat and a series of screams. Some, I thought, were guitars, the others human. I tried to walk quietly in order to hear. I didn't think I was getting the lyrics quite right.

“Under armadillo, we are green . . . Under armadillo, we scream.”

Words aside, it wasn't bad. I could imagine Cat Vernon and her friends dancing to it in a club. A little Red Bull, an earnest but mediocre opening band, and this could even seem pretty good. It got louder the farther down the hall I went. I kept following, not quite believing the evidence, but knowing there wasn't really an alternative.

Maxine's office door was open partway. Through it, I could hear the music (
“Kick me in a hairy pot”
) and see her sitting behind her desk. Today she was wearing a pair of thick-framed black glasses with dramatically sharp corners. I stood in the doorway, uncertain whether to knock. I waited. I was too curious about the lyrics.

“. . . under armadillo, feed me the rubber boots. Whenever you kick me, I know we're green roots . . .”

I gave up and knocked on the doorframe. She gave a visible start, then slapped at a button on her keyboard. The music cut off mid-armadillo. “Oh,” she said on seeing me. “Ella.”

“Hi,” I offered, then waited, face turned slightly toward her computer.

It didn't take long. “My son's band,” Maxine said stiffly. “They're called Genghis Khan's Marmot.”

Oh. I'd actually heard of them, which said something. “I've heard of them,” I told her. “And I'm pretty clueless when it comes to local music. The people in the know at Willing think they're great.”

“Really?” For an instant, her face lit with pleasure and, I thought, pride. “They've had some interest from a couple of indie labels. Of course, it's a rough business, the recording industry.”

I figured anything Maxine Rothaus called rough was, in fact, vicious and lawless and inclined to eat its own young. “They'll get a deal,” I said. “It's just the sort of stuff my generation wants to listen to.”

Like I knew anything about that. But it seemed just the sort of assurance her generation would swallow.

She hit another button with a flourish. “Give me your e-mail address. I'll send you their demo file.”

I did. She even hummed a little as she typed. When she was done, she folded her hands on her desk and looked at me almost pleasantly over her glasses. “So, what do you hope to find today, and is there any way I can help in the next three minutes? I have a conference call with Berlin. They have an original Man Ray photograph they might consider selling us.”

I thought of spiky irons and disembodied eyes. “Doesn't seem like your . . .”

“Bailiwick? Territory? Thing?”

Actually, it seemed exactly her thing. “I was going to say niche.”

She shrugged. “Man Ray was from Philadelphia. Plus, I speak more German than the Dada curator. So . . . your plans?”

I didn't really have any. I didn't think I should mention that. I figured Maxine probably had bathroom trips preplanned and efficiently choreographed. “I'll go through the files one more time in case there's something I missed. Unless there's more . . .” I said hopefully.

She smiled slightly, but shook her head. “Even if I had the time and desire to take you downstairs, nothing I could show you would be of much use. His niece put most of what we have into that ghastly book of hers, and trust me when I tell you that there's a reason the rest never was published. Deadly dull.” She almost sounded apologetic when she said, “I can't let you handle the Cézanne letters. Besides, they're in French, which you've told me you don't speak. Most of the Wharton letters are in French, too, although I wouldn't show you those even if I could.”

“Too racy?” I asked.

She snorted. “Too asinine. For being such a brilliant woman in all other respects, apparently, she was completely flummoxed by sex. When she wrote about it, it was either all buttoned up or completely, pardon the expression, screwy. Between you and me, the letters to Willing are just sloppy and boring. The spicy bits read like old
Cosmopolitan
s now. The rest is just simpering and scolding him for not writing in kind.”

“Of course he didn't. He loved Diana.”

Maxine swept a shred of paper from her desk with a quick backhand. “Oh, for heaven's sake.” She huffed out a breath. “The heart of the teenager.” She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a single key attached to a ruler-size wooden strip with a jump ring. She slid it across the desk to me.

Hand-printed along the wood was “I
SHALL WRING HIS NECK LIKE A GOOSE
. —
Tomb Curse, Egyptian 6th Dynasty
.”

“Bring that back when you're ready to leave.” I thought I might have seen a ghost of a smile as she added, “Don't lose it!” Then she turned back to her computer screen, as clear a dismissal as could be.

I didn't pull her door shut all the way behind me. I stood in the hall for a minute, waiting. The music didn't come back on.

I let myself into the archive room and carefully balanced the key over the door handle. Then I weighed my options. I'd pretty much expended the file cabinets. Not that I didn't enjoy the tailors' bills, but they wouldn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

An hour later, proven absolutely right, I slid the last drawer closed, sat on the dusty floor, and had a good, sorry-for-myself “what now?” moment. My eyes fell on the bookshelves. I wasn't optimistic, but I had time on my hands and nowhere else I especially wanted to be.

I decided to be bold, splash out, cross a line. I would start from the bottom right this time. Most of the books there, I discovered quickly, were just like the ones on the upper left: old, obscure, and uninspiring.
Heat and Light: An Elementary Textbook, Theoretical and Practical.
Goethe's
Theory of Colours. Instructive Rambles Extended in London and the Adjacent Villages, Designed to Amuse the Mind and Improve the Understanding of Youth.

Occasionally, I am convinced that the amount of my brain over which I have control could fit into a pistachio shell. Taking its cue from no message I was sending, it led my eyes right to the faded, green leather spine of
The Flora of St. Croix and the Virgin Islands
by Heinrich-Franz-frigging-Alexander. Then to
Love, from the French,
followed by
The Romances of Alexandre Dumas.

Okay, so I was feeling grouchy and a little sad, but I figured I could at least take a gentle flip through that one. Who doesn't like a good musketeer or three? The book was sandwiched firmly between
Analytic Keys to the Genera and Species of North American Mosses
, and the
Complete English–Russian Dictionary
by A. Alexandrow, which had me actually speculating on just what terrible crimes I might have committed against love and peace in a former life to have earned myself this one.

I reached for the Dumas. As I started to pull it out, my watch caught on the frayed binding of the Alexandrow dictionary. Before I could catch it, it had tipped from the shelf, landing at my feet with a crash that sounded like it could have been made by a cannonball. My heart gave a lurch; the spine had cracked. I had broken one of Edward's books. I started to bend, then froze, certain I'd heard the clack of heels in the hallway. He would forgive me; Maxine, I was sure, wouldn't. But it was only the nymph clock, sounding abnormally loud in the still air.

The scene was eerily familiar: a heavy book tented on the floor, a few loose papers underneath. One small one had landed upside down a foot away. Its edges were deckled, raw like an old novel. I scooped up the book first, with the loose sheets under it. When I went back for the smaller paper, I realized it was a photograph. I turned it over and felt my pulse skitter.

It was Edward. Not young, but still beautiful, his hair thick and wavy, his jaw firm. He was sitting on the ground on a cloth in some sort of park or garden; I could see what looked like a row of peony bushes behind him. He was in shirtsleeves, an arm resting on his bent knee, the other leg stretched out in front of him. He was smiling. But not at the camera. I followed his gaze to the figure next to him.

It was a woman, dressed in the pleated blouse and flowing skirt of the first decade of the twentieth century. Even seated, I could tell she had a nice rounded shape, curved like a violin. Like a Man Ray photo. The woman's face was completely hidden by the wide brim and feathery spray of her hat. I could see part of a knot of pale hair. It was impossible to tell for certain in black and white, but I assumed she was blonde, rather than white-haired. Edward's blond hair had the same glowy look.

So did his face. Even in profile, I could read the expression. It was happiness, adoration. I knew him. I'd seen dozens and dozens of photographs, spanning his life. I'd seen the almost goofy joy in his engagement picture. The young, arrogant pride in the formal wedding portrait. I knew how he looked beside Diana on the gangplank of a yacht bound for the Caribbean, how he looked at her in the garden of Cézanne's Aix-en-Provence house. This photo wasn't of that garden.

This photo wasn't of Diana, either, whose hair had been the shiny dark auburn of wet autumn leaves.

I might have stood there for a very long time, picture of the other woman Edward had clearly loved gripped in my fingers. But the dictionary got heavy fast in my other hand. I knew what I should do. No question, the right thing was to tuck everything back inside the book and hand it over to Maxine with an apology and an “Isn't this
amazing
?”

I sat down on the floor again. There were three folded sheets of paper that I'd picked up with the book. I didn't open any of them at first. Instead, I carefully checked for anything else that might be tucked inside, no mean feat, considering the dictionary had several hundred onionskin pages. Finally, heart still going a little too fast, I unfolded the first sheet.

There were five words there, in familiar handwriting:

 

My Dear, I must express

 

He got a little further on the second sheet:

 

Dearest, How confounding I find to be at any loss for words. The importance of secrecy

 

The last one just said:

 

I dream, Dorogaya

 

I looked toward the door I had closed behind me, the curse-bearing key still balanced on the handle. I wondered if Maxine was in her office. I slowly got to my feet. Then I tucked the dictionary back onto the shelf, right where it had been.

I put the photograph and the aborted letters into my bag.

Heart hammering so loudly now that I thought it had to be audible, I headed out of the archive. I allowed myself a shaky sigh of relief when I saw that the pebbled glass on Maxine's door was dark, no light shining behind it. I knocked anyway. When I didn't get an answer, I pushed the key under the door. She would get it when she was done with Man Ray.

Then I walked, stiff but not too fast, down the hall, into the elevator, and past the security desk, where the guard barely even looked up.

The house was empty when I got home. I still shut my bedroom door behind me. Then I made my shaky way over to my desk. The pad I'd taken from the art room Saturday night was there. Opening it, I chose the most complete sketch: the urn base that, in the dark, had taken on the shape of a sea creature, the half-fish, half-mythological beasts that had been so popular on sixteenth-century maps of the world. Cartographers had marked the waters where they were with the words
Here Be Monsters
. I tore out the drawing and tacked it to the wall above Edward, covering his image. I couldn't face him yet.