Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (16 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Perfection. “She was at her most attractive when the space between her pupils was just under half, or 46 percent, of the width of her face from ear to ear. The other perfect dimension was when the distance between her eyes and mouth was just over a third, or 36 percent, of the overall length of her face from hairline to chin.”

In foam, drifting.

“A University of Toronto study found that the facial proportions of Jessica Alba were close to the average of all female profiles.”

Faces. Roddy, Elizabeth, Momma, Harold. What was it that last time with Harold?
Before.

I saw him swinging by his neck, eyes open, motionless and dull, though they had cut him down before I got there. Yet I saw him so clearly. What they told me made no sense, broken clusters of words. Sorry. Gone. Dead. Suicide. Disbelief. Disorder. Still disorder. Blank spaces.

I let him down
.

A void.

Then questions from the police.

No, the last time . . . with him. Where was it? What had he said?
Forgive me
. No, after that. He’d carried trouble around the house. As usual. No, this was different. Tense. Distracted. Afraid. He was sinking, a man caught in a mire. Wearing my thin camisole, he could see my areola. He loved that. He hardly noticed.

He’d been reading about Dickens, the train crash Dickens had survived. Harold re-read the pages, not as if he’d lost concentration but rather to confirm his disbelief. I asked him why.
I’m gathering
, he said, but there wasn’t a hint of joy in the exploration or that his hero had survived, no explanation of what he was gathering or why.

Eventually he came to me as I read. As he passed I saw the doubt, just as you can see rings on the water’s surface and know a rock lies below. The way he looked at me.

But he would deny anything of the sort. Doubt like mine. Not quite. Like he’d been fooled. Deeply. I couldn’t tell by
what
because he came behind me and grabbed my shoulders, rather stiffly. I was frightened to see his face so I didn’t turn around.

But he loosened. His ache closed around me. I wanted to run from it. It made me angry.
He
made me angry. He rubbed my shoulders, softer gentler. Then my arms, brushing my breasts as he moved past them. Like he was apologizing.

His hands, running along my arms . . .

Feeling
his hands. I opened my eyes. A small room, though the walls were out of focus, with bluewhite bright light. It hurt. I closed my eyes.

“I’ll turn down the light.” A woman’s voice.

Even with my eyelids shut I saw darkness descend.

“Is that better?”

Slowly, very slowly, I adjusted to the darkened room and the woman standing over me. “Ya took quite a fall.” A mermaid and serpent tattooed on her neck. Cat eyes! The young female orderly! The urge to bolt, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

“I’ve cleaned ya up the best I could, but when ya a bit better I can wash ya hair.”

Dull in my sight, she was late-twenties with large jade aquamarine eyes and thick black eyebrows. Long, lavish ebony hair pulled back. Full lips not needing cosmetic support. Something exotic drew down her cheeks, hard and smooth like carved rocks sculpted by water. She stroked my arm again . . . soothing, even stimulating.

“They want to keep ya a few more days for evaluation, then they want to send you to Bellevue CPEP. You stirred it up, even more than the first time. There’s still some talk, but in a hospital like this you’ll be quickly forgotten. You’re gonna feel disoriented, maybe even nauseous for a while, but they think your concussion isn’t that serious.” Her touch was tender, consoling.

“I’m not supposed to tell ya this,” she went on, “but I don’t think you should go to Bellevue. They want to do an EOU, an Extended Observation. For up to seventy-two hours. It’s a different evaluation. Psychiatric.”

I organized a few bits of the floating debris in my head and wrung out the words. “How many?”

“How many what?”

“Days. Been. Here?” I was ready to revisit the galaxy.

“Two, two days. Is it okay if I rub your head?”

Electrons scattered. I closed and opened my eyes affirmatively. “Work?”

The orderly began massaging my temples and eyebrows. Back to darkness, savoring the orderly’s touch.
It’s been so long.
This once I would let go of Harold. I wouldn’t resist.

“No one knows where you work. Would you like me to call?”

“I can’t miss . . .” But I couldn’t finish. Exhaustion flooded over me.
Please don’t stop
. But the orderly did stop. I wanted more.

“I can call for you. They must be wondering where you disappeared, huh? But you won’t be able to return to work for a few more days.”

Warring! What would Warring say? Not showing up.

“Do you want to go to Bellevue?”

Psychiatric evaluation.
If Warring finds out
. . . “No, I . . .”

“Listen, I think I can get you out of it.”

Opening my eyes was like lifting weights. The orderly parted those full lips; she smiled sweetly. I could’ve swum in those green eyes. “You can call me Nan. I’m a Nurse Assistant. I can get access to records. If I’m careful, you know, I could do that for you.”

The weight prevailed and I went willingly into darkness, Nan’s hands applying exactly the right amount of pressure.
Why not. The hell with this
. “Yes,” I said. Yes.

***

The hospital’s lobby doors slid open. “Thank you,” I said to Nan. The nurse, nurse assistant, had been appropriate. Nice, actually.

I tried to count the days I’d lost, three or four. This one felt crisp, the sun setting. I attempted to lift myself out of the wheelchair but my weight and the oscillating buildings around me dragged me back down.

Nan reset me, tapping me on the shoulder and bending over me. “Let me take you home.”

By any measure she was a beauty, exotic, maybe one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.

“No, no. You’re on duty.”

“Not anymore.”

“Well, I live a ways from here so— ”

“You live right over there.” Nan pointed to The Octagon and began wheeling me that way.

“How’d you know?”

“Clairvoyant.”

I couldn’t turn to see her expression and I was too drained to make sense of her comment. Perhaps she was like me, perhaps she had a special gift, if such things existed.

Nan pushed the wheelchair forward. “Sit, relax.”

All I could think of was lying in bed with Nan stroking me, the beauty of it.
Her
beauty, and how it might somehow be a link in my investigations. She seemed to be deep in thought as well, because neither of us spoke again until we reached The Octagon’s entrance.

“I’m sure that was degrading.” Nan interrupted my trance. “Depraved, really.”

“What? I can make it from here, thanks.”

“Some Christmas. I guess you were trying to help that poor man, but you end up paying for it instead of being thanked. Let’s everyone just keep the system flowing. Check the boxes. Next. Everyone keeping themself out of harm’s way. ‘I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.’”

“Matthew something-something.” With effort I raised myself out of the wheelchair. “‘Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough troubles of its own.’ I’ve heard it all before. Momma’s a Lutheran, though probably not like many other Lutherans, thank goodness.”

“Hmm. Okay. So can my husband and I lend you a hand?”

“A hand? I’ll be fine. I may not look like much but I’m pretty capable.”

Nan tore a piece of thin cardboard from the Kleenex box in the basket behind my head and pulled a pen from her pocket. It clicked. I heard her scribbling on the cardboard. “Maybe you’ll need someone, you know, to lean on.” She handed me the paper and a phone number. “We’ve gone back to the basics.”

“I’m not much on religion.”

“We’re not born again.” She laughed. “Well, maybe we are. But in a
very
different way. Like I said, back to basics. The things that
naturally
drive us. Anyway, all of us can use a hand from time to time. Maybe you could help me.”

“Well I do appreciate you getting me out of that place, Nan.”

“I hope to see you again. Call that number.”

The Octagon tenants filtered in from their day. On went my shaded glasses and hood. I made my way into the building.

***

In the elevator up I was lucky enough to encounter only one man, older, probably in his sixties and distinguished, wearing a dark blue striped suit and carrying a newspaper.
Cufflinks!
He stood to my left. I could read the headline:

“Times Square hacked. Police narrow search.”

“Good evening.” He surprised me.

“Good evening.” I stood slightly behind him. I must’ve appeared odd, covered in my hood and shaded glasses. Nonchalantly, I removed them both.

Almost immediately the elevator seemed to speed up. In my ears and chest. The man stared straight ahead. It wasn’t just my hospital hangover. Atoms ricocheted, the pressure a bit unpleasant, a bit arousing. Very physical, absolutely sexual. If I’d acknowledged the fragments of myself dancing in the elevator glass, I would’ve passed out, I’m sure.

I bowed my head, put my shaded glasses back on. The elevator settled at the eleventh floor. The man got out.

“Good evening,” he said again as the doors slid closed.

The atoms disassembled. Maybe it
was
hospital hangover.

***

This was an unusual time for me to be in my hallway, early evening, when I was usually at work or, on the weekends, locked in. The final beams of daylight at each end of the hallway softened the sand-colored carpet. I was still pleasantly medicated as I approached my apartment. Until a chill passed through me. Something wasn’t right.

Posted on my door in cobalt blue ink was the notice:

MANDATORY MEETING

Tonight 7:15 PM

Homeowners’ Association Meeting Room

EVICTION HEARING

HOA Members only are asked to attend and provide a

quorum for discussion regarding the possible eviction of

Penthouse Studio B owner/tenant.

The Lease-to-Own Tenant will be expected to attend and speak to the HOA Members.

(signed Helen Dorward, President,

Homeowners Association)

Like I said, I was a little slow. But a pall was breeding in me, what Momma called
svingete ark
. I re-read the notice posted on the door.
My
door. P-Studio B. “Oh god, they’re evicting me.”

I unlatched the door and held onto the table as I put down my keys. My phone, the one I’d left more than three days earlier on the counter, buzzed frantically.

The first message: “Eunis. It’s Elizabeth. Where are you? I’m going to have to call someone if you’re not here soon. Call me.” I closed my eyes.

I listened to the second message. Again Elizabeth. “Where are you? What am I supposed to put in my report? I’m worried that you’re okay. And this won’t look good with what’s going on here. Please call.”
Oh geez
. I rubbed my temples.

Third call. “Came by your place this morning. No answer. Please call me. The cops won’t do anything for forty-eight hours.”
Cops!
I saw a shroud undulating around my heart.

Fourth call. “Damn you, Eunis, if you’re trying to stiff me on the eight grand, I’ll call the cops. You were supposed to meet me at the coffee shop. Call me and make this right. I’m not kidding.”
Oh no
.
No!

Fifth call. “Eunis, this is Carol Warring. Why didn’t you show up for work? Are you okay? Have you quit because of the investigation? Please call and give some explanation.” Then as she hung up, I heard her say, “Highly irregular. I don’t need this bullshit.” A winding sheet constricted around my heart.

The clock hit 7:15 PM. I opened my eyes. I needed to get to the homeowners meeting.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The basement. According to Dickens I was descending into the asylum’s cage for the criminally insane. The HOA meeting was in session. But I could make this right. Once the neighbors understood they were only seeing a fragment of the situation, this would all be behind me and I could get back to my work. But neither my hand on my chest nor deep, deep breaths stopped my growing dread.

Out of the elevator, the buzz of voices and the rapping of a gavel dropped a dank apprehension around me. My breath came in short, fast hitches. A muffled voice addressed the room and the crowd quieted down. I stood at the door. I could hear the speaker clear enough.

“This is the most disgusting, depraved tenant we’ve ever had. And I’ve seen it with my own eyes and smelled it with my own nose.” More rumble from the crowd.

“It’s in our bylaws. Capital improvements will benefit. We get to keep the deposit as well as the security deposit. Most important, our membership can safely walk the halls and lobby, day or night. This tenant must vacate. It’s all there in our contract. God knows we have enough witnesses to this degenerate.”

A pause.

“I don’t see Mrs. Cloonis anywhere to defend herself, though I can’t see what she’d have to say under the circumstances. So I guess we can vote or have some discussion.”

How often had I ever spoken to strangers? Now to a roomful . . . But all that I’d worked toward would be lost. Harold’s sacrifice, for nothing.
I’d
be left with nothing. Penniless. My job, my career. My pledge to Harold —his death wasted. The oaths I’d made to myself reduced to the same ashes, with nowhere but Momma and the farmhouse in my future. Plus all the witches, goblins and ghosts that she’d promised.

I opened the door. A tidal wave of light engulfed me in the windowless room. My ears began to clog. Forty or so people turned to look at me. Some gasped. My hand shook securing my shaded glasses. I hung my head.
No, head up
.

“Mrs. Cloonis, how nice of you to grace us with your presence. Don’t bother sitting. You can speak first, if you have anything to say.”

It was a restless crowd. As I passed them the undertow dragged on my thighs and feet. My chest wavered between panic and primitive hostility, as if I moved through currents of warm and cold water, trying to balance between benign and beast. But I
wanted
to lose myself in the savage.

Somehow I kept moving toward the lectern. The energy inside and out was uncontrollable,
that worst possible feeling
, tossing me in waves, this way and that. To steady myself I grabbed for a chair and a shoulder. I was slapped away and cursed.

The woman at the lectern was the woman from the elevator, the one with the Santa hat and the expensive jewelry and the laundry basket in the middle of the night. She’d inhaled Sam rotting and Malcolm shitting himself.

“I’m Helen Dorward, President of the Homeowners Association,” I heard the woman say, though I couldn’t see her mouth move. “I’m glad you took the time to come here. Perhaps there is something about your behavior and the behavior of your friends that we don’t understand.”

A few in the audience chortled.

“Please, please come up here, Mrs. Cloonis. Tell us why allowing you into our home was not a terrible mistake.”

I stumbled up the platform to the lectern, my legs slack, my usual physical strength missing. My eyes burned with dull, dry heat; a fish out of water, curling in the sun. Inside, a voice taunted me.
Where’s the beauty now, bitch?

A dry heave soured my throat and tongue. I blinked hard hoping I could steady myself, make sense of it. I thought of swimming in the lakes, but the room had its hold on me. It rippled in and out of focus. I lowered my head.
So many eyes
.

The wet, diluted sounds didn’t match the audience. Grunts. Hissing. The clank and thud of heavy chains dragging around me.
Dickinson would say you’re not waiting for Eternity; you’re close to it
. A cough. The blur that must have been Helen Dorward moved quickly away and to the side, eventually inching her way off the platform.

Through a scorching weariness, I stared at the floor, at the shoes in the front row.

“Say something, you freak,” yelled a man.

More rumble.

I was so tired and so dry. I could barely lift the words. “I . . . I was trying to help . . .” There was laughter. Derisive.

Eyes on the lectern. I searched for strength, anything that would return moisture to my body, to my spirit. I imagined myself in Minnesota, in the lake, swimming. Then I just let it fly . . .

“I don’t know if any of you have ever been in the water with someone who’s drowning.”

A shrill female voice. “You’re gonna give a lecture? What’s your point?”

I lifted my eyes and turned her way but couldn’t pick out a single face in the crowd. They
all
looked up at me with disgust. Men, women, mostly white, East Indian, a few blacks and Asians. Afflicted with the same . . .
anger
.

I took a breath. Eyes returned to the lectern.
You’re swimming
. “I know this sounds wild coming from someone who looks like me, but a lot of faces scare me.”

A little laughter. It sounded like a few in the crowd were
with
me.

“Yeah. But one of the scariest was of a man who lived 150 yards from you/us, in that old tower.” I swung my head in that direction. “That’s not a legend. Perhaps you’ve seen him, often dressed in a calf-length mid-Victorian frock coat. Have any of you looked?”

“Again, what’s your point?!”

I gathered myself. “That man was drowning, and he was only 150 yards away. Did any of you know he was calling for help?” I waited. “Did any of you know and look away?”

Another voice in the crowd, gravely and deep for a woman. “What’s this got to do with you smearing excrement over our elevator and lobby?”

The crowd swelled, guttural and agreeing.

“And smelling like a rotted corpse.” Added a new voice.

My gaze again on the front row feet. I continued, “Well, I looked away from that drowning man once, and I felt like shit.”

“Ooh.”

“Oh come on, you’ve heard that word before. It’s the same as ‘
excrement
.’” Another breath. “So the second chance I had, I offered him a shower and shelter for the night. One night. But without his meds he was in trouble, which is when you saw me taking him to the Metzinger next door.”

“You shouldn’t have brought him into our building.”

“One night. One night out of the killer cold. He was drowning and that’s what I did.”

“Jeopardizing the whole building.”

“The building?” A dark storm wailed out of my chest, a force I couldn’t suppress. “You don’t know how fucking lucky you got it here.” Silence.

I left the room and the voices erupted behind me.

I traveled up the elevator. Shards of my face circled me. The moment had been disastrous, but it had also been beautiful. Harold was with me, quoting Dickens, something about the safety of the simple truth.

Into the apartment, I was on the phone:

“Elizabeth, I’m okay. I’ll be at work tomorrow night. I’ll explain. Tell Warring I’ll explain.” What did that mean?

I staggered to my bed, curled onto it. The drugs continued to dissipate. The reality of what had just happened began to sink in. Tiny tremors started vibrating, circulating, through my body, intensifying, treacherous currents in an endless sea, no land in sight, nothing to hold on to.
Keep swimming
.
Keep swimming. Keep swimming.
And when I could no longer stay above the waves, I plunged into sleep.

***

“Eunis, would you like to explain, because I think I know what’s going on.” Carol Warring leaned back in her chair, sliding her fingers over the temples of her glasses the way you’d sharpen a blade. She’d drawn the blinds to ward off the morning light that would spread across me, but still I stood motionless, coat folded over my arm, unable to look Warring in the eye.

I’d rehearsed different explanations, including the simple truth, but I was loath to mention the hospital, loath to offer any link to the psychiatric notes that might reveal my rash but documented suicidal thoughts. Loath to pull Elizabeth into it. And perhaps Ruchika had mentioned seeing me in the server closet, or . . .

Warring filled the space. “Are you seeing someone? Because I think he, or she, is battering you.”

“What?! No. No.” I almost giggled. I was so relieved.

“Your welts, your bruises. Your odd behavior the other day. Now this disappearance. Look at your face.” I started to cover myself but thought better of it. “More scratches than the other day. I can get you help, but I can’t have you in my labs.”

Explaining the first bruises would have exposed Elizabeth to serious trouble. And I couldn’t explain what happened at the hospital with Charles Dickens . . . Malcolm.

“When I asked around,” continued Warring, “one of your lab mates said she didn’t know, but that you were often covered up. Quite a bit, actually.” She wouldn’t release her gaze. “These are all the signs of a battered relationship. I know because a family member had the same issues. You’ve got to be strong because I’m going to have to put you on temporary leave. It might explain why there are problems in the lab, with the results. But I can’t jeopardize my lab, our research. And you will need to seek help.”

“But I’m not — ”

“That’s the standard response. But you disappeared for three days without explanation. Not even a phone call. That alone is sufficient for me to put you on leave. I’m not going to terminate you because you seem to be a nice young woman, and you need help — for whatever is haunting you — but I
will
need to suspend pay until we have an explanation or you can provide proof that you’re stable enough to perform. Do you understand?”

I contemplated lying. But what was I going to say? I dropped chin to chest and started for the door.

“Can I offer you a thought?”

I turned and nodded.

“Our work here, finding ways to impact beauty with our products, it’s premised on beauty’s finite coordinates.”

“Yes.”

“But there are infinite possibilities, and we shouldn’t lose sight of them.”

I felt her support, even if I couldn’t process her words. “It’s complex, but it’s not what you think.”

“Then what is it?”

I waved my hands in futility. “You’re making a mistake about me. My numbers are good. Just because I can’t explain everything . . . Anyway, I appreciate your concern.”

As the door of Warring’s office closed behind me, with all the ramifications of my suspension not yet even clear, my heart was oddly lighter.

***

On the way to the apartment, Warring’s words rolled over and over in my head.
If beauty was agreeable to most because of its determinate qualities, wasn’t ugliness, with all its possibilities, a genus of bedlam? Warring may have meant it as a salve, but instead I reconsidered the enormity of my task and how emphatically I was failing. It would take a cocktail of DNA genes from the swamp to create beauty and I hadn’t even isolated one ingredient. Not one!

In something of a daze I met Zoe at the coffee shop. We stood in the coffee line without looking at each other. I slipped her the money.

“Well I hope it was worth it, the research,” she said looking straight ahead, pocketing the envelope, now a bit more taciturn.

“Disappointing. Nothing clear cut.”

“With that large sampling? Maybe it’s simply eye of the beholder and all that. Subjective.”

“That’s always been one of the arguments. But there’s plenty of contradictory data, a 2008 Tel Aviv University study—”

“I gotta go. Don’t call me again. Good luck.” She headed uptown through the heavy pedestrian traffic. I guess we would never be friends.

Without work I felt aimless. I tarried at a large newsstand, searching newspaper headlines for an update on the hunt for the notorious Times Square Hacker. I scanned cover photos on the rack of celebrity magazines. I stopped for more coffee, and by the time I got to The Octagon it was late, and all I remembered of the trip was that some idiot left a wad of gum for me to sit on in the subway.

Agitated, I couldn’t make the damn key work in the lobby door. I was sure they’d changed the lock until I realized I was forcing one of my lab keys into it. Then I spilled the remaining hot coffee over my blouse.

Once in the apartment, I switched on my small TV as a distraction. Stupid sitcom reruns, a cooking show, a cop show, and the nightly news.

“. . . What’s so frightening about this breach,” said the female executive pointing to the massive billboard above her, “is that if hackers could stop Kate Upton, terrorist hackers could do much more serious harm.”

The caption showed the woman speaking as a Vice President of A.C.E. Media. She looked earnestly at the reporter holding the mike. The frame cut to two in-studio news anchors, one male and one female, a static photo inserted to the upper left of the female.