The Music of Razors (15 page)

He waits by the cold footlights looking out over the rotting seats, up at the family of pigeons cooing inside the wet skeleton of the vaulted ceiling. He is a desert of a man, dressed in a long, dark coat. She imagines the dust that layers the sleeves and shoulders as that of extinct towns, cities, nations. He is taller than she expected, and as she draws near him the instrument within her begins to sing, but not alone. Within the long coat worn by the man by the footlights a great many more chiming voices sing. He has brought the remaining instruments with him. Now he has them all, save for Tub’s.

“How do you do,” Nimble says, by way of announcing herself.

The man turns, looks her over from the floorboards up. “Dorian had a good eye,” he says, and the quality of his voice reminds Nimble of a slow storm just over the horizon. An American accent, she also notes, which—she supposes—explains the lack of manners. The watery light that makes its way through the ceiling is not terribly bright. Nimble cannot properly make out his face beneath the rim of his hat.

“You see me in terms of your work,” she says.

This seems to take the man by surprise—having a creation speak its mind. He looks back at the seats. “Did you enjoy the theater, then?” His face is narrow. Like a young man grown old too quickly.

“I would watch from upstairs, or from empty boxes.” She gestures to the seating around the wall’s periphery, their curtains damp-sagged or gone. “We would discuss them together, Millicent and I.”

“Dorian’s daughter.”

“Yes.”

“I never saw too many shows,” he says, with a kind of melancholy.

He is strange; not quite what Nimble expected from a murderer.

Nimble thinks about that. “You killed Dorian,” she says.

He takes off his hat and smooths back pale red hair with the pass of one gloved hand. His eyes are blue. She thinks of Tub and in that moment her resolve almost shatters. “I’m not proud of it,” he says.

“Then…” She tries again. “Then why did you do it?”

“Have you never done anything you regret?”

“No.”

Above them a pigeon shuffles on its perch, coos into its wing, disturbs its mates.

He holds his hat by the rim with both hands. “I have to take what you have,” he says.

The gaps in the roof are bright. It is spring outside, but the sky doesn’t seem to know it.

And he is next to her. She hadn’t even felt him move.

The instruments’ song changes before Nimble knows she is paralyzed. Her gaze remains where last it rested. She watches the sky as, from within her, things vanish. First she cannot remember how she came to be here. Next her memories of the years-long exile, and tending Millicent’s grave. The most tenacious part of her—the one with roots deepest throughout her—is the memory of a little ogre patting her hand. For a moment Nimble has a last glimpse of him standing before a nighttime window, beside a small child whom Nimble cannot recall, and both of them dancing for the moon.

And then it is gone.

The Drop. The place never seems to get warm. High ceilings and more rooms than a person can count will do that. Right now he’s got himself seated on one of the slabs in the operating chamber. The slabs are stretches of hard dirt raised from the ground, divided off with veils and scrims. The ceiling’s so far away he can barely see it, and what he can make out ripples like dark waves.

He’s been living in this place ever since he said yes. He had been, what, twenty-one? Twenty-two at the time? That was over a hundred years ago now.

Lost his family for nothing. Killed a man for nothing. Lost his dreams, for nothing. Lost himself in the eyes and laugh and smell of a woman he’d never dreamed could exist. Lost her at the hands of an angel, so Dorian could make life good for himself. Lost his shot at throttling the bastard, despite five years of searching for him. Then, having made his peace with it all, had Dorian handed to him. Throttled Dorian after all, expected to feel avenged, and felt nothing. Had both his dream of becoming a great surgeon and the universe itself handed to him on a platter. Listened to the tale of an angel robbed just like he was robbed. Saw the enemy in the face of the biggest bastard there is. Accepted it all just so he could make anything pay. It had all felt so right, hadn’t it?

Henry looked down at his hands, one cradled in the other. He still wore the silver ring, its tendrils woven through his skin, up his arm, down his spine, and back up into his brain. All the ballerina’s memories were in it, all of her memories were in his mind, as native as his own.

They were building an army, the angel had said. A body. God would not be able to look away, and the angel would exist once more. And this time, it would have an army of its own.

He has spent a hundred years robbing people the same way Dorian had robbed him.

It was cold, in this place. It had been cold for a very long time.

Nothing had changed.

In a forgotten room through a hole in a wall in the backmost section of the underground corridors of an abandoned theater, a letter lies folded upon a bed of stuff that was once fine theater velvet. It is tied closed with long locks of dark hair.

The theater’s life is behind it, and it never reopens. With the passage of years, and then decades, the old palace becomes even more dilapidated, precarious, skeletal. Eventually a socially conscious bureaucrat commissions a wooden barricade to be erected around it for the public safety. Eventually, finally, the theater is demolished and its remains are sorted, divided, and carted away. The crater that remains is filled in. The land is sold. Another building is erected on the spot where once the theater stood.

And it is as though the letter never existed.

FIVE

HOME

H
OPE WITHERSPOON WAS LIKED BY MOST PEOPLE, AND
although she didn’t have a regular group of friends she was happy that way.

On this particular day she was sitting by herself when she spotted a boy doing the same thing. She had seen him once or twice before, sitting under the windows of 7B, looking at the sky.

She was done with sitting alone for the time being, and decided to go over and say hi.

How familiar you look, she thought.

“Hello,” she said. The boy looked up, and Hope saw that he had been making a bird out of folded paper.

“Hello,” he said.

“How did you make that?” she asked, sitting down in front of him.

The boy hesitated. “My father showed me. I can do a better one.”

“Can you show me?”

The boy seemed unsure. “This one or the better one?”

“The better one,” she said.

“I don’t think so. But this one’s easy.”

Hope screwed up her face. “Easy’s boring. Show me how to do the good one.”

“I really don’t think I—”

Just then the bell rang. Out on the field, kids finished what they were doing and began walking toward the school buildings.

“Tomorrow,” she said, turning back to him. “Show me how to do the better one…” Her eyes fell on what the boy held close to his chest—a cooing white dove. He stroked its head with one small hand.

“It’s really not easy,” he said timidly.

Hope decided she was going to find out everything she could about the new boy. She reminded herself to ask his name.

He seemed much younger than she was (which was eight and a half ). He didn’t share the same classes with Hope, so she had to quickly search him out after school and spotted him walking a block away. Slinging her backpack onto her shoulder, she jumped the fence and crept along behind him.

She thought it very strange that he didn’t have a school bag.
Everyone
had a school bag. How else were you supposed to take lunch and books and stuff? There really was something curious about him. He didn’t give anything away, didn’t say more than he had to…

Somewhere in the back of Hope’s mind was a question. The question was:
Who does he remind me of?
It was a question she never quite got around to asking herself. There was always some other question, some other new thing, that seemed more important, more interesting, and it carried her away. The world was such a big place, such a pretty place, there was no time, rhyme, or reason to be anything but fascinated. She couldn’t understand why people couldn’t see that the way she could. Everything made life an adventure, from the breeze on your face to the feel of new shoes to the way a scab itched so good on a grazed knee.

After fifteen minutes or so, he was still walking, and she began to wonder how far away he lived. Her mother would be worried if she didn’t get home soon, but Hope didn’t much like going home these days. She decided that if he was still walking after five blocks she’d head home.

Another fifteen minutes passed. Her quarry had walked into one of the nicer parts of town, where all the homes looked like houses from storybooks—all white and new looking, with white fences or stone walls and nice, flat green lawns with tall trees. Flower beds—delicate and colorful—blossomed around them. Hope’s parents had never taken her to this part of town. Now he was opening the gate to one of the houses.

“Are you coming?” he called out.

Hope wondered who he was talking to…and then she realized.

That really annoyed her.

She stood from behind the hedge, dusted off her uniform, and with all the dignity she could muster replied, “Don’t be so impatient.” She walked over—pausing only to comment “Lovely house”—and breezed past him and into the yard.

Her new friend closed the gate behind them. His house had a bright green yard with a big tree with white bark and orange leaves out front, and a red wooden door with a small square window framed in lacy black iron. The door opened and a little dog ran out. Yipping and barking it danced around the boy’s feet.

“Hey, Spud!” he said, scruffing its head. “Who’s a good dog?”

A woman in a neat blue housedress and ruffled white apron stood on the doorstep, hands clasped before her, beaming happily at her son. Behind her stood a man, one cardigan-sleeved arm wrapped around her.

“Welcome home, son!” said the man, pipe clenched between his gleaming teeth.

The boy ran past Hope and into his mother’s arms. She gathered him lovingly to her. His father took the pipe from his mouth and held his wife all the tighter.

“What did you learn today?” his mother asked.

“I learned about the Spanish armada,” the boy said.

“Yeeeess?” his mother crooned, all excitement and eager to hear more.

“…and multiplication tables…”

“Yeeeess?” she said again.

“…and,” he said. “That more people live in fear of being alone than anything else.”

His mother gasped, like it was the most shocking thing she had ever heard.

“You don’t say,” replied his father.

“More than spiders?” the boy’s mother gawked.

He nodded. “More than spiders.”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it, honey?” his father said.

“More than drowning?” his mother said, her eyes growing wider.

He nodded again. “Even more than drowning.”

“Hard to believe.”

His mother’s jaw dropped a little. “And even more than the slippery things that get born beneath beds when the lights go out?”

And he nodded again, even more vehemently. “Even more than that. People are ab-so-lutely terrified of being alone.”

Mother oohed. “And how did you learn that?”

“I could just tell.”

“Oh, you are clever.”

“Chip off the old block,” said his father.

Mother, father, and son embraced once more and smiled fit to burst.

Hope thought this was an extremely weird conversation to be having, but rather than feeling she really should be leaving, Hope wondered what the rest of their life must be like.

“Mum,” he said. “Dad.” He turned in their arms and smiled at Hope. “
This
is Hope.”

With all their eyes and smiles upon her, Hope suddenly felt very small, awkward, and nervous. Her own mother would be wondering where she was. “Hello,” Hope said, grasping for something to say. “Um…” Just then she remembered she didn’t even know this boy’s name. “He…He’s going to show me how to make birds,” she fumbled.

Her friend’s father clacked the pipe from his mouth and looked fondly down at his son. “Birds? That’s what they teach in schools now?” He cuffed his son’s chin, grinning. “Best bird-maker they’ve got, I’ll bet.”

Her friend wriggled out of his mother’s arms and straightened his clothes.

“Ice cream, anyone?” his mother trilled.

The boy’s mother ushered them both into the dining room, which was dominated by a long table of polished wood in its center. The room was lined with family photographs. They showed all three doing a variety of family things like picnicking and fishing and bike riding. The parents were always smiling, arms around each other, hands placed proudly on the shoulders of their son. In one photograph they were clustered together on a checkered blanket, a hamper of food by their side. In another, father and son larked around in a three-legged race. Another one showed them winning some kind of prize. Hope thought it strange that none of the photographs showed anyone else but mother, father, and son; no aunts or uncles or even family friends.

They all seemed so happy. It all seemed so…

Hope was shoo-shooed into a high-backed wooden chair and a bowl of white ice cream was placed before her.

It all seemed so perfect. She was about to ask him about his parents—and politely ask for his name—when his mother plopped a bright red cherry atop Hope’s mound of ice cream, giggling playfully. Before Hope could say thank you, she vanished back to the kitchen, humming a familiar tune:

You’ve got everything you want,

You don’t know what to keep,

The dreams you abuse,

As they rock you to sleep…

“I like your dog,” Hope said.

“Actually, I don’t like dogs,” the boy said. “Bad experience as a…when I was little.” He tasted his ice cream. “Scared me senseless, actually.”

Hope had seen pictures of her own brother with the dog her mother and father had before she was born. It was a big ugly thing, and it looked smelly. A lot of the photos of Walter from when he was awake had the dog in it, licking his face, lurching over him. In most of them Walter had looked like he was about to cry. No one in any of the photos in this house looked like they were about to cry, no one looked sad at all, and that was how thoughts of her brother slipped away from her.

“This certainly is a nice house,” Hope said. She felt so small in such a big room—just her and the boy at this enormous table, with their white bowls of whiter-than-white ice cream. “You’re very lucky.” She wanted to ask him about the dove. Her own father could make paper birds—she had seen them left by Walter’s bed—but she never wanted to ask him about it.

“Thank you,” he said around a mouthful of ice cream.

“You’ve got really nice parents,” she said.

The boy was eating his ice cream and didn’t answer.

Hope picked up the big silver spoon from beside her bowl and scooped a little bit of ice cream from the biggest ball. The taste of it slid over her tongue like the richest of creams. It wasn’t as sweet as the ice cream she was used to. It was almost salty in a way…

“Good, isn’t it?” he said…. and for a moment she wasn’t in the house anymore, but somewhere far away—somewhere dark and noisy. She saw a boy in an army uniform lying sprawled in a muddy trench. A dead soldier from long ago. The whiz and flash of shells exploding nearby. Clouds of mud thrown into the air on the crest of a dull, shattering
whumpf.
She saw herself reach toward the boy—his face rained with pulverized sod—with a long and slender hand that was not her own. The boy opened his dead eyes. Muscles flexed in Hope’s back. She heard the beating of her wings.

“Angels’ tears,” he said, finishing the last of his ice cream. “That’s what it’s made with. Want to see my room?”

Nodding, and without taking another mouthful, Hope stood from the table.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Angels’ tears? You mean
real
angels’ tears?”

The boy was already on the stairs. “Angels do that a lot,” he said. “Cry. You would, too, if you saw half the things they had to. Tears aren’t so hard to come by.” And as if that were answer enough, he raced up the stairs to his room.

The boy opened the door.

“Like it?” he asked.

“It’s…I’m…” Hope was lost for words. “It’s a circus,” she said.

He smiled broadly. “Yes. It is, isn’t it?”

The room was vast, its edges shrouded in blackness. They stood beneath the sand-colored arches of a vast cathedral, its cut-stone floor blanketed thickly with sawdust. Rows of pillars sprouted from the floor and spread like treetops across the roof—the impenetrable canopy of a stone forest. There was no way a room this large could have been contained within the four walls of the suburban house Hope had walked into.

Her first thought was that perhaps his parents had put something in her ice cream. Then there was an explosion of noise and the thought was forgotten as tumblers and acrobats sprang from the shadows, cavorting across the expanse. Jets of flame lit the alcoves, filling the air with the pungent odor of burning oil. From somewhere in the deeper darkness Hope heard a lion roar and whips crack. A spotlight illuminated a distant tamer, replete with leopardskin leotards and slick black hair, bullwhip raised high in one hand above the snarling beast. Suddenly there were clowns—gaily colored clowns in baggy silk outfits jumping and rolling and unicycling back and forth, barping at her. Plastic flowers pinned to floppy lapels squirted water, and painted faces were slapped with fish. Laughter and the shouted commands of the tamers filled the space.

Hope found she was smiling. She could smell the animals, hear the beeping clowns, see the sweat on the tamer’s face. This was real. This was all as real as it came.

The spotlight swiveled. High above, Hope saw spangly-garbed men and women fly and flip from swing to swing. Below them, in the center ring, the ringmaster—dressed in gaudy red with a big, black handlebar mustache—directed the spectacle as a conductor instructs an orchestra, a curled bullwhip for a baton.

“I…,” Hope said. “I…”

The band started up—all brass and percussion. Loud, silly, playful music. Hope wiped her eyes and laughed.

She had finally come home.

A large, low shape ambled with a kind of sleepy indifference through the carnival; a pale creature of casual strength navigating the crowd with intuitive choreography. A white tiger—relaxed and powerful—with the blackest stripes Hope had ever seen. It padded over to the boy, purring like a well-tuned engine, the heavy closeness of it like waves that rattled Hope’s ribs. The tiger had bright blue eyes.

“Hey, Mike,” the boy said.

The tiger purred louder and sidled up against his stomach. The boy gently stroked between its diamond eyes, two finger running slowly up the bridge of its nose. “This is how you tell a cat you’re a friend,” he said.

Mike’s eyes were closed now. If it weren’t standing up, Hope would have thought it asleep. She reached out and touched its nose, ran a hand over its downy furred cheek.

“He’s lovely,” she whispered.

“You’ve always wanted this, haven’t you?”

Hope nodded, enraptured by Mike’s happy face. Far away in the darkness there was a sudden burst of flame. A pale-faced harlequin was breathing onto a flaming torch, sending gouts of fire toward the black stone ceiling. The clowns applauded, the harlequin bowed politely, and while his head was down they grabbed him by the hem of his tights and threw him into a tiny car. The clown at the wheel cackled and took off around the room, weaving in and out of pillars, barping the horn loudly.