Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (27 page)

I moved closer. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

The young man — a boy, really, I could now see — was startled. He shifted his head toward me but didn’t turn to face me. “I’m waiting for Nan. Are you Nan?”

“No.” My chest filled with liquid, the air squeezed out of me. “Maybe you shouldn’t be here.”

He stared intently across the tub to a bare wall. “I’m not sure. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

I stepped closer to him. “What has Nan promised you?”

“I’m not sure. She said it’s what every sailor desires.”

I could barely contain my breathing. “I think you should come with me.”
Come with me.
He turned, he looked right through me. “You’re blind.”

“Yes, Libya.”

“Will you trust me? You shouldn’t be here.” I reached for him, like I was pulling him out of a deep well. He reached haphazardly for me.

“I think you’re right.” His voice shook. He began spinning nervously.

“Take my arm.” His flailing knocked the bulky scrapbook to the floor and strewed pages across it. I let go of him and fumbled for my book. A mistake.

“Where are you?”

Just before he tumbled over I caught him and —like a hot poker branding me— heat seared from shoulder to sacrum. I was going to need both arms.

It was him or my scrapbook. All those years . . . all that would be denied me.

“I’m here.” I gave him my hand just as Harold gave me his. “Follow me.”

The small rake sat on the tub’s edge. Fierce frequencies emerged from my heart, scorching rings that pierced my chest and banded me in fire. My right arm trembled, my veins popped, my hand closed to a fist with the pain. A fury took me from the inside, calling for force, anything to protect the young man.

The rake:
that
I could handle. I grabbed it with my free hand.
It could hurt if necessary
. I could kill if I had to.

I led him with certainty,
like Freyja the warrior,
out of the bathroom, out of the Moroccan Room and into the hallway. A very tall couple, draped on each other, came toward us. I let the rake fall to my side.

“Please trust me,” I whispered to the young man, fastened my arms around his waist and hauled him to me, planting my lips ferociously on his. His arms flailed for a moment then settled around my head, his mouth opening wider, his tongue welcoming me in.

“A foursome?” wondered the dizzy woman, before her lanky partner yanked her farther down the hallway and I released the young man from our embrace.

“Don’t stop.” The young Navy man leaned into me for an encore.

I regarded the beautiful young boy with the empty blue eyes. “Let’s get your pants back on.” I directed him into my old bedroom. I closed the door. I couldn’t let go of the rake; it had become part of me.

“I think I’ve found what I want,” he said.

“Not tonight.” I handed him his pants, then his peacoat.

He put them on begrudgingly and, as soon as he was done, I steered him back into the claustrophobic hallway. He ran his free hand down my body. “You feel
so
good. I’ve never felt anyone who felt so . . . complete, so right.”

“You’re young.” I hustled him toward the living room and the front door.

“Hey, Eunis,” said Maurice, now untangled from his man friend. “I was hoping I’d see you tonight. Maybe it’s our night.”

“That’s sweet,” I said, shoving the boy Adonis in front of me, out of the apartment, and up the steps to the sidewalk. A cab throttled down the street. Shouts and whistles hailed the cab; a rowdy bunch a half block away. I leapt off the curb and stood in front of the oncoming taxi. My hand tightened around the rake handle waiting for impact. The cab screeched to a halt.

“Geez lady,” said the cab driver. Then seeing my face, “Oh my god!”

“You got money?” I asked the young sailor, propelling him into the cab.

“Yeah.”

“You got an address here in the city besides this one?”

“Yeah, but you and I —”

“Take him home,” I said to the cabbie. “And don’t cheat him.”

“You’re beautiful,” said the sailor.

“So are you.” I tapped the side of the taxi. As it sped off I finally exhaled.

Oh, shit. Lyle
.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Returning to the pleasure boat was madness.
Madness
. At least I could recognize that. I studied the odd child’s rake. Its grip on me had loosened but I felt compelled to hold on to it, just in case.

Damn it, Lyle
. Whatever happened to him would be my fault.

I checked my cell phone for the time. Jeez! I tried calling him. No answer, mailbox full.

Perpetually drowning, thoughtless, irresponsible and reckless. Always reckless. Heedlessly jumping into waters without measuring to the other shore. He didn’t want to be saved. Perhaps a family trait.

I’d been a spectator long enough. I could have done what so many others have done; I could have tried to make a deal with God. But that was lazy. Even in that moment I could have promised God that if he let me safely rescue my brother, I’d give up the scrapbook.

And anyway, maybe it was the scrapbook’s extra weight taking me down the vortex. All the hours I’d stared at those faces, tried to decode their common magnetism; it hadn’t shown me the answers, it had only created more questions. Maybe it was time to let it go. It was a deal worth contemplating, but it was one I had to make with myself.

The front door finally opened and, child’s rake ready, I pushed past two familiar women who greeted me without fanfare as I entered. I’d fully integrated into that society. There, at the bar, the same woman who let Lyle in, who offered the joint, was draped around his neck, a full Old Fashioned glass part of the ensemble. He was trying to break free.

A collective
oooh
issued from the Cinema Room, then applause, and I knew where most of the
benefactors
had congregated. The cinema door opened and the crowd began to file out, lead by Atara surrounded by four men, the most attractive a shirtless, curly-haired man. Atara laughed at something he said. He drew closer to her.

Particles dashed around my chest. I hustled across the room and stood directly behind the woman trying to suck Lyle’s face, my back to Atara and her oncoming entourage. I tapped the woman’s shoulder. When she turned around the best she could do was a little peeping sound, and her drink dropped to the floor, shattering.

“That hunk over there’s been asking about you all night,” I said. A head feint to the shirtless guy. “You don’t want to miss out on him.” As if I was experienced.

She turned and tracked him.

“Congratulations, you’re a lucky woman.” I grabbed Lyle as the woman gaped at the guy, then forlornly at her lost bourbon, and then back to Lyle.

“This guy, “I patted Lyle’s shoulder, “he’s a lot kinkier than he looks.” I brandished the child’s rake at her. “Trust me, he’s more than you could handle. I know.”

“But—” she said.

I nodded to the shirtless guy. “Delicious.”

She took a step toward him.

And with that I marched Lyle to the front door, pushed it open and pressed Lyle through it, my second salvaged man of the night.

***

On the ride to Ruthie’s we sat quietly in the squeaky cab, which sounded as if bolts were coming loose though neither of us dared mention them. Lyle stared straight ahead. I held the rake in my lap. Even without the scrapbook I was exhilarated.

“It’s not like you to turn down an offer of anything, certainly not sex and drugs,” I said.

Lyle stared ahead, like he didn’t hear me.

“I’m glad you’re safe . . . You don’t usually follow directions.”

He leaned to the side window, watched the street streak by. “I had a few tokes, a couple drinks.” His breath fogged the window then disappeared.

“Yeah, but the sex? You looked like you weren’t interested.”

“Just didn’t,” is all he said.

So unlike him to show self-restraint, to actually
fight
it. “She wasn’t bad looking.”

“Wasn’t interested, okay? Just drop it.”

Maybe it was his lack of success with Vinnette. “Okay.”

“D’ya get that all-important scrapbook you had to have?” Teeth in those words, he was angry.

I pictured it strewn across the Moroccan floor mopping up Atara’s spillage, being shredded in a venomous fit, lost forever. “Why’re you so angry? I thought you were cool with danger.”

He sulked in the dark. I didn’t push it.

***

The next morning I took my place in the kitchen and setting my coffee on the table I addressed Ruthie. “I’m getting rid of the duppy.”

She made a grunting sound and went back to skinning a goat, its head dangling, eyes absent. The last of its blood trickled into a large Maxwell House coffee can emblazoned with its ironic slogan.

“What’s that?” Anthony gestured at the rake and opened the refrigerator. He poked around until he reemerged with a couple eggs then pecked Ruthie on the cheek.

“Don’t know,” I said. “Some kid’s toy. Another one. A place like that, having kids toys around seems . . . I can’t imagine a child being there. You saw the kid’s plastic comb, the X-Men comb.”

Ruthie grunted, concurring.

“Let me see.” Anthony put down the eggs and picked up the rake with some reverence. The longer he inspected it the more contempt rose in his eyes. “Where’d you get this?” He turned it over.

Ruthie grunted again. I watched her. She held the carcass and pelt with her left hand, and making a fist with her right, slid it forward, separating the skin from the body. A large awl and a broad stubby knife lay on the counter to her right. Her neck glistened. Another grunt.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked again.

“A place I was staying. It has a strong strange smell –iron or something. Strange place for a child’s rake. Never saw a child there, thank God, and there wasn’t a blade of grass within two blocks. Nothing to rake.”

“This isn’t a rake.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I do, right?” Anthony barely took his eyes off the rake.

“Something at a museum.”

“I inventory for a curator at the Metropolitan. Middle Eastern stuff . . .” he fluttered his hand, “six hundred to twelve hundred.” He rotated the rake again, carefully. “One of Muhammad’s first converts to Islam —a very young man— was tortured with something like this.”

Ruthie turned around. We all stared at the rake.

“It isn’t a rake. It’s a carding comb,” said Anthony.

“Like for combing wool or something.” Vinnette stepped into the kitchen and followed our eyes to the comb.

“Originally. Not this one. Observe the size of the teeth. And they’re too rigid.” He pushed lightly against one of them. It sliced him anyway, blood bloomed from his finger. “Shit! Sorry,” he said to me, as if I’d never heard language like that.

I waved him off with a not-to-worry, never taking my eyes off the carding comb.

“The duppy,” said Ruthie, alarm warping her face.

I glanced at her. “I don’t think so.”

“Somehow,” she said. “You have more than one.”

I refocused on the comb. Anthony carried on. “It could have gold in the handle, but even if it didn’t it would be worth a lot of money. A museum piece. Who would want something so horrific in their home?”

“I can think of one woman,” I said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“It’s not that weird, Sis. She just needs you.” Lyle had gotten comfortable that week at Ruthie’s and I hadn’t. It wasn’t just Ruthie’s snoring.

“Please stop calling me sis.” I paced, as much as it was possible in Ruthie’s kitchen. “It’s not like Carly couldn’t take care of Momma for a while, Carly’s her favorite.”

Lyle took it like a punch to the stomach then tried to hide it by standing and walking to the fridge. But he’d just eaten, and left most of his food on his plate. He quickly ran out of room and paused.

“She loves you too,” I said. “And why now?” Why when I had two days left on my apartment and serious questions surrounding my job?

“She says she’s got real bad arthritis, gettin’ to the end. Says she’s dyin’.” Lyle loitered on the thought. “Carly, ya know, she’ll never stop what she’s doin’ until the funeral; maybe not even then. You’re the responsible one.”

“Dying? You talked to her doctor?” I shrank from the truth or lie of it, wanted nothing to do with the consequences of Momma’s condition, whatever it was.

His eyes drifted across the kitchen to the darkened TV. He fiddled with a cabinet knob. “O’ course.”

“Hmm. What’s the diagnosis?”

“I don’t understand that stuff. Listen, the old buzzard needs you. She didn’t sound too good.”

“What about you?”

His face went deep and lost for a moment. “Ya know I wouldn’t be any good at it. I’d forget her pills, or take ‘em myself. She’d need me and I’d be out at some bar.”

“Or getting laid.”

Something stirred across his mouth, a grin gone melancholy, something I hadn’t seen before. I felt it too. Not wiseass as expected. More like he was slowly drowning and knew it. New York had failed him like all the rest.

I rallied past it. “You’d do fine with Momma and you don’t have anything here. Might be good for you.”

He gave me an are-you-kidding look.

“Sorry,” I said. Momma couldn’t be good for anybody except maybe Sarah Pooley.

“I’ll be goin’ too,” he sniffed, “but I’m not made up for it. I ain’t takin’ care of Momma. I just ain’t.”

“You’re going back? To Bemidji?”

“And you gotta come with me.”
Come with me
looped around my brain. It sparked anger then resistance in my chest.

“I don’t gotta do anything.” I wagged my face in his.

He didn’t back off, he didn’t attack. “Sis—”

“Don’t friggin’ call me that!”

“You gotta come back.” Matter of fact, guile gone from his face —first time I’d seen it in years.

I browsed Ruthie’s linoleum. Spoke to the floor. “I have done my part. The woman is not good for me.”

“Oh, and it’s a fucking picnic for me.”

Oh really!
“You never did a fricking day of work that I ever saw. Of course you weren’t home that much.
Except
the two times we had to bail you out. And now, miraculously, we have the third performance in the frickin’ series.”

“Maybe that’s all true. But my venues are gettin’ bigger.” He laughed at himself. He hung his head. “But she needs you.”

“It’s bullshit.” I threw my glasses on the table.

***

I circled the lab. Elizabeth was feeding her rat and spoke to me through a row of cages. “I guess it never occurred to Warring that Ruchika would screw up results on purpose, just to keep her contract re-vesting.”

“Me neither.”

“How’d she take your resignation?”

“She didn’t really understand but she seemed sympathetic enough when I told her about my mother. She’s happy with her cages and little else.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Well, I care.”

I rested my hand on her shoulder. She closed the cage and squeezed my hand without looking up. “I’m going to miss you,” she said, then turned and gave me a hug. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

We both got misty.

I patted her shoulder and walked away, ambling down the aisle, zigzagging from one side to the other, my hands a half inch off the mesh of cages —the whole row— listening and feeling for a clue.

At the end of the aisle I entered the lab 18 Mouse Room, the freezer buzzing for more attention. Without stopping I opened and grabbed the bag of frozen mice, breezed through the room and into the Rat Room, where I leaned against the larger freezer. Then opened the door and pulled the bag of frozen rats to the table. Another large haul.

I removed a cardboard bio waste box from the second shelf cabinet, unfolded it, laid first the mice, then the rats into their disposable coffin. Then I drew
Tell-Tale Heart & Other Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
from under my lab coat where I’d tucked it into my waist. Slowly, I opened the book for a final look.

Just like the first time I’d come upon it, I shuddered. It was no normal book. The pages had been mortised out, and in the guts of it lay a mass of mousey brown hair, a full scalp’s worth, unclean, even at a glance. Eerie. Just gazing into it, it was a trap door I knew I couldn’t enter without consequences.

Along the top layer were two braids of hair, each with the same orange and blue bead, the size of a small walnut. Despite my misgivings I ran my fingers along one of the braids. It was coarse. Oily. The smell. Like it’d been fermented.

My blank spaces propagated. The atoms again, the way my heart reacted to more and more. It was uncomfortable. Not all the time but . . . but I had set something in motion. Or perhaps my time had come. Whatever. A clue: that was progress, even if it scared me. Just doing
something
was better than not. Why Harold had that book, with that hair, panicked me. But I’d brought it from Bemidji and Bemidji had some answers. It was as good a reason as any to go back, since there really weren’t any
good
reasons.

I closed the book. I placed the book in the box between the frozen mice and the frozen rats, doing my best to tuck it out of sight. I sealed the box and double-checked the seal. I placed the box into the lab 19 Biological Waste Freezer. The door closed with an irrevocable click. The box would be taken off site and incinerated.

***

“Keep this in a safe place.” I handed the torture comb to Anthony.

“Do you want me to get it appraised?”

“No, it’s insurance.”
I hope
.

“That’s what I mean. The museum might buy it. Somebody will.”

“No. You said it’s pretty much one of a kind.”

He nodded.

“And if it’s that old and that valuable,” I went on, “the owner probably had it appraised. And there’ll be a record of that somewhere, something that identifies the current owner.”

“Probably, yes, but —”

“I’m not the current owner, but I’ll bet he — or she — wouldn’t want to draw a lot of attention to this thing and themselves. There could even be DNA on it.”

“DNA?”

“Keep it in a bag somewhere safe.”

Veins in his brow swelled with worry. “If you stole it —”

“I traded for it. Trust me, it’s my insurance.”

“Insurance?”

“As much as I’ve got.”

There was no trusting Atara. Not with that vindictive streak. And I was pretty sure the torture comb could implicate her in
something
. She’d used it on someone or maybe several people, people who were too frightened or too twisted to tell. Maybe she’d even gone too far on someone. I could see now she was capable of anything. Yes, the comb might be a reach, but it might be my only leverage.

***

Brytney and Vinnette had taken everything out of my Octagon penthouse except Harold’s box of books and a People magazine on the counter. “You’re sure you don’t want any of it?” asked Bryt. The apartment was barren and very bright.

I slipped my shades on. “Absolutely. Keep what you want, sell the rest, and put the money toward Junior’s medical expenses.” Not that it would make the slightest dent. That family was in trouble too.

“What about the box?” asked Vinnette.

“Heavy,” said Bryt.

Harold’s box of books. A burden or part of the solution? Maybe my resistance to scouring through it for clues was that, in some way, Harold and I weren’t that different, that in some way we were very much the same. That raised my ire. Maybe Harold’s dad would change his mind; maybe he’d take his son’s Poe and Dickenson and Dickens. But I knew he wanted nothing to do with them.

“I’m taking it to Minnesota,” I said. “They’ll pick up in a half hour.”

“Optimist.” Bryt checked her watch. “One o’clock? I don’t think so. Count on four-thirty or five.”

“Just leave the door open, Eunis. There’s nothing to steal but the books, and they’re too heavy.” Vinnette started for the door.

“You comin’?” Bryt asked.

“No, I’ll meet up with you later.”

The women began jabbering and were gone. Alone in the penthouse I sat on the large carton of books facing the New York skyline.

“Well, it was quite an experiment. I’m still not sure of the results. There were times when I almost thought you were helping me, like you knew this was the wrong place, that my future was elsewhere.” The farmhouse in Bemidji? I searched each corner for a response, from Harold or the inmates. “I know you’re here.”

The skyline was marinated in light. “It’s spectacular. The building is magnificent.” A downdraft. “A lot of pain here.”

“Knock, knock.” A man’s voice. Two United Parcel guys stood in the doorway. The younger one craned his neck searching for someone else in the apartment. “Wasn’t she talking to someone?”

The older guy smacked his shoulder. “United Parcel, lady. You had a pick up?”

“You’re early.”

“The sooner we’re done, the sooner we’re done.”

I showed them the box. Unconcerned by its size, they lifted it as if it were a box of balloons. “Have a good day, lady,” said the older guy.

“Did you see her face?” whispered the younger one as they disappeared out of the apartment.

“Schmuck!” I heard the older guy say.

The elevator pinged and all traces of them disappeared.

“Sam,” I said to the empty studio. “I don’t know if your soul sailed to heaven in that cedar box like Malcolm said. Maybe you’re with him. Or maybe your soul’s still here and you’re enjoying the view with the inmates. Not many rats get this view.”

One last time I inhaled the skyline.
And according to the funeral ritual?
The wife of the deceased man lays on the funeral pyre, alongside her husband.

Yes, but before the fire is lit, she is asked to rise from his side and rejoin the living.