The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense (8 page)

“It seems such a waste.”

“Nothing is wasted,” she assures him, “if even the sight of it gives you pleasure.”

This is a different cart than usual. There is no bed tray. The top of the cart itself swivels over the bed, conveniently presenting all these delicious items within easy reach.

After adjusting her uniform blouse, Arula sits on the edge of the bed, grabs one of his feet, which is under the blankets, and gives it an affectionate squeeze. “You’re a fine and thoughtful boy, worrying about wasting things.”

Although his memories of the past evening remain shapes in a fog, Crispin remembers something from the previous afternoon. “Why did you bathe Mirabell in milk and rose petals?”

Only after he asks the question does he remember that he knows of this event because he and Harley were eavesdropping.

Arula neither frowns nor pauses in surprise, but answers as if no one keeps secrets in Theron Hall. “In the very, very best European families, there are traditional beauty regimens that girls as young as six are expected to follow.”

“We’re not European,” Crispin mutters.

“You’re Crispin Gregorio now, and you certainly are European, at least by marriage. Remember, the family lives only occasionally in Theron Hall and has houses all over the world. Your mother wants to be sure you assimilate well and know how to live in any country in which you find yourself.”

“I don’t want to take a bath in milk and roses.”

Arula laughs sweetly and squeezes his foot again. “And you won’t. That’s just for girls, you silly thing.”

Nibbling grudgingly on a croissant, Crispin says, “I’ll bet girls don’t like it, either.”

“Mirabell loved it. Girls like to be pampered.”

“I’m going to ask her, and I’ll bet she didn’t like it.”

“By all means, ask her the first time she calls from France.”

Confused, Crispin says, “What do you mean—France?”

“Well, if you weren’t such a terrible sleepyhead, you’d know. We’ll all be going to France in October. This morning, Minos and Mrs. Frigg flew to Paris to prepare the house there, and Mirabell went with them.”

The filling of almond paste in the croissant, which has been sweet, suddenly seems bitter. He puts down the pastry.

“Why would Mirabell go to France before the rest of us?”

“There’s no bedroom in the Paris house suitable for a little girl,” Arula explains. “Mr. Gregorio wants his daughter to be as happy as possible. He’s authorized the expenditure of whatever is necessary to give her the most wonderful bedroom suite that she can imagine. She needs to be there to make choices.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” Crispin says.

“What doesn’t?”

He frowns. “I don’t know.”

Her hand moves up his leg, and she squeezes his knee through the blanket. “Oh, it’s right as rain. Mr. Gregorio is a generous man.”

“What about me and Harley? Where are we gonna sleep when we get there?”

“The Paris house already has bedrooms suitable for boys. You’ll be quite happy with yours.”

He has been sitting up to the breakfast selection. He slumps back against the mound of pillows. “I don’t want to go to Paris.”

“Nonsense. It’s one of the greatest cities in the world. You want to see the Eiffel Tower, don’t you?”

“No.”

“I swear,” Arula declares, letting go of his knee and rising from the bed, “you must have taken a grumpy pill this morning. Dear boy, France is going to be a grand adventure. You’ll love every minute of it.”

“I don’t speak French.”

“You don’t have to. All over the world, everyone who works for Mr. Gregorio speaks perfect English as well as other languages. When you leave the house in Paris, there will always be a companion with you to translate. Now eat something for breakfast, child. I’ll be back to collect everything later.”

When he’s alone, Crispin pushes the cart aside, flings back the covers, and gets out of bed. He restlessly walks the room, stopping repeatedly at the windows to gaze out at the city.

Having remembered spying on his mother, Mirabell, and Proserpina in the sewing room, the boy knows there is something else that he has forgotten. It eludes him.

Finally, he recalls Nanny Sayo visiting him and his brother briefly during dinner to report that their sister had a migraine and would eat in her room after the headache passed.

Don’t worry. Mirabell will be fine. But you must not bother her tonight
.

He remembers going to bed before nine o’clock. He wasn’t sleepy. When Nanny checked on him, he pretended to be deep in dreams. After she left, he had watched the bedside clock count down to nine-thirty.

He remembers nothing after that. Nothing. So he must not have been as awake as he thought. He must have gone to sleep, after all.

In the bathroom, he turns the water in the shower as hot as he can stand it. He steps into the large cubicle, closes the door behind him, and inhales deeply of the billowing steam.

The soap produces a rich lather. He always uses a washcloth to soap himself, but suddenly he realizes that he is using his hands instead. For reasons he can’t quite put into words, he is embarrassed to be touching himself in this fashion, and he resorts to the washcloth, as usual.

The shampoo makes an even richer lather than does the soap, and as he washes his hair, he closes his eyes because sometimes the suds sting them. As always, the shampoo smells vaguely of carnations, but after a moment the scent changes to that of lemons.

This fragrance is so extraordinarily intense and so unexpected that reflexively Crispin opens his eyes, and as he does he thinks he hears someone speak his name.

The water drumming-splashing on the marble floor, the constant
slish-slish-slish
of it echoing back and forth off the three glass walls, creates such a screen of noise that he wouldn’t hear someone speak unless the speaker shouted or was in the shower with him. This voice is not a shout, but a murmur.

The sting of shampoo blurs his vision, and the whirling steam further hampers him, but as he turns in place, squinting at the bathroom beyond the glass walls of the shower, he glimpses a hazy figure, someone watching him. Shocked by this intrusion on his privacy, he wipes at his eyes with both hands, sluicing the suds from his lashes. When his vision clears, no one is watching him, after all. He is alone in the bathroom, and the visitor must have been a figment of his imagination, a trick of light and steam.

Dried off, dressed, he is suddenly famished. He eats the fresh strawberries and cream, the English muffin, the croissant, and the sticky bun with pecans. He drinks most of the hot chocolate, taking his time, savoring every sip.

He’s fifteen minutes late for lessons in the library, but Mr. Mordred never expects punctuality.

Harley has news. “Mirabell called from Paris!”

Crispin shakes his head dismissively. “She can’t be in Paris already.”

“Well, she is,” Harley insists.

“They left very early,” Mr. Mordred says, “but in fact they aren’t there yet. Mirabell called from Mr. Gregorio’s private jet, somewhere above the Atlantic.”

“She’s on a
jet
!” Harley says, thrilled by the idea. “She says it’s super-great.”

“Are you sure it was Mirabell?” Crispin asks his brother.

“Of course it was.”

“How do you know—just because she said so?”

“It was her. I know Mirabell.”

Harley is seven and gullible. Crispin is nine and feels that he is not just two years more mature than his little brother, but three or four, or ten. “Why didn’t she call me?”

“ ’Cause she wanted to talk to
me
,” Harley says with pride.

“She’d want to talk to me, too.”

“But you were snoring your head off or stuffing your face or something,” Harley says.

“I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you the next time she calls,” Mr. Mordred assures Crispin. “Now what should we do to start? Should I read you a story or teach you some arithmetic?”

Harley doesn’t hesitate to consider. “Read! Read us a story!”

As Mr. Mordred chooses from several books, Crispin stares at the horsefly birthmark on his left temple. He thought he saw it move just a little. But it isn’t moving now.

Over dinner, December 3, the eve of Crispin’s thirteenth birthday …

Amity Onawa, formerly Daisy Jean Sims, also the Phantom of Broderick’s, has put a plate of little tea cakes on the table for dessert. They are flavorful but not too rich.

The dog begs, receives half a cake, and lies down to sleep.

With her black hair, compelling blue eyes, and knowing attitude, the girl looks like a Gypsy about to read someone’s fortune by the glimmering candlelight.

“So, Crispin Gregorio.”

“That’s not my name.”

“Crispin Hazlett.”

“That’s the name my mother used.”

“And you never did?”

“I did but not now.”

“Why not?”

“I never knew any man named Hazlett.”

“So it’s what—just Crispin?”

“That’s right.”

“Travel light, huh?”

“One name’s enough.”

“So, Crispin, what do you want for your birthday dinner tomorrow night?”

“Whatever. I don’t care.”

“Got a walk-in refrigerator full of stuff. And for Christmas, they have an entire special department of delicacies down on the second floor.”

“Anything. It doesn’t matter.”

“Everything matters,” she disagrees.

He shrugs.

Cocking her head, Amity asks, “Still got your deck of cards?”

“Same deck,” he confirms. “Bought the night me and Harley met.”

“You still do with it what you used to do?”

“That’s all it’s for.”

“Did you turn up the four sixes yet, one after the other?”

“Not yet.”

She shakes her head. “You’re a strange one, boy.”

Smiling, he says, “Not just me.”

With the small bankroll and the eight gold coins that she had when she fled from that house of murder, Amity lived many months on the streets. She dressed tough, acted tough, and over time she
became
tough.…

In that year, she learns many things, one of which is how to fabricate a life. Any kind of dope is available, and fake but high-quality ID is no more difficult to score than pot or coke. She has no interest in drugs, but she is determined to make Amity Onawa as real as Daisy Jean Sims once was.

In time the police conclude that the missing Daisy must be dead, and she is dead to Amity, as well. Dwelling on memories of her former life is too painful to endure—and dangerous. Her psychic moment with the scissors sometimes recurs in dreams, and she remains
convinced that any contact with relatives or even old friends will be the death of her
and
them.

After six months of sleeping in a bedroll—in parks, in church basements, under bridges—she uses a bogus but convincing driver’s license and Social Security card to rent a tiny studio apartment with a half-kitchen and a minuscule bath. She needs to shower every day and to wear fresh clothes if she is to find a job and keep it.

In the current topsy-turvy world, jobs are scarce; and if you know how to game the system, the dole pays better than work. Most street types she’s met are grifters, and their favorite mark is one program or another of the Department of Health and Human Services, from which they finesse more than a single income stream.

Amity, however, is a wide-awake girl. She knows that dependency is another word for slavery. Besides, in the long run, counting on Uncle Sam to see you through is like expecting to find sure footing across a sea of quicksand.

On her first job, she spends three hours a day cleaning and chopping vegetables in a joint serving pretty good Mediterranean food, followed by three hours of busing lunch-hour tables. Soon she is promoted. She makes and plates salads and performs a host of other culinary chores.

When she applies for an opening at Eleanor’s in Broderick’s Department Store, she is hired at once. She is only fifteen, but her ID says that she’s six months short of her eighteenth birthday. After her time on the streets, she has an air of been-there, and she can look anyone in the eye longer than they can meet her stare.

In time she comes to see that Broderick’s potentially offers more than a job. It can be also a home, and more than a home, a haven.

Each employee has a personal locker with a combination dial in either the men’s or women’s change room on the ground floor. Here she keeps her purse and, in cold and inclement weather, her coat, scarf, gloves, rubber boots. Many keep their bag lunches in their lockers, but as a benefit of being on the staff of Eleanor’s, Amity receives her lunch free in the kitchen at the end of the noon rush.

Over several days, Amity brings a complete array of toiletries to stash in her locker. A hair dryer. A few T-shirts and sweaters. Two pairs of jeans. Socks, underwear. She keeps everything folded and out of sight in a couple of carryalls, so that when she opens her locker in front of others, it doesn’t look like a closet.

Each day, at the end of her shift, she appears to leave, but she in fact deceives. She knows scores of places in this immense building where she can hide until Broderick’s closes for the night and the last departing guard has set the perimeter alarm.

The first-arriving employees—stockroom guys, guards, cleaning crew, and some front-office types—clock in at 7:30
A.M.
to prepare for a 10:00 opening. But for the ten previous hours, Amity has the department store to herself. Ten hours of blissful solitude and security. On Sundays and holidays, of course, this magnificent temple to disposable income is hers alone all day and night.

As the Phantom of Broderick’s, by night-lights on the ground floor and by flashlight on the upper three, she can shop for hours if she wishes, try on fancy dresses and other clothes that she will
never wear in the world outside, and indulge whatever fantasies this vast realm of merchandise encourages.

In the general manager’s office on the fourth floor, there is a private bathroom in which she can shower. If she wipes it down with a squeegee afterward, the stall is dry only three hours later, and no one can know that she used it.