Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies (10 page)

If he unnerved her slightly, this woman positively terrified him. She was beautiful and smooth-skinned, and he could smell the sweet roses and camellias and magnolia blossoms surrounding her like a crowd of familiar friends.

“This way,” she repeated, gesturing through the doors.

“I'm looking for my momma. I'm supposed to meet Miss Belle Parkhurst.”

“I'm Belle Parkhurst. You're Oliver Jones ... aren't you?”

He nodded, face solemn, eyes wide. He nodded again and swallowed.

“I sent your momma on her way home. She'll be fine.”

He looked back at the hallway. “She'll be on the Night Metro,” he said.

“I sent her back in my car. Nothing will happen to her.”

Oliver believed her. There was a long, silent moment. He realized he was twisting and wringing his hands before his crotch and he stopped this, embarrassed.

“Your momma's fine. Don't worry about her.”

“All right,” he said, drawing his shoulders up. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Yes,” she said. “And more.”

His nostrils flared and he jerked his eyes hard right, his torso and then his hips and legs twisting that way as he broke into a scrambling rabbit-run for the hallway. The golden eagle claws on each side dropped their candles as he passed and reached out to hook him with their talons. The vast house around him seemed suddenly alert, and he knew even before one claw grabbed his collar that he did not have a chance.

He dangled helpless from the armpits of his jacket at the very end of the hall. In the far door appeared the whore, angry, fingers dripping small beads of fire onto the wooden floor. The floor smoked and sizzled.

“I've let your momma go,” Belle Parkhurst said, voice deeper than a grave, face terrible and smoothly beautiful and very old, very experienced. “That was my agreement. You leave, and you break that agreement, and that means I take your sister, or I take back your momma.”

She cocked an elegant, painted eyebrow at him and leaned her head to one side in query. He nodded as best he could with his chin jammed against the teeth of his jacket's zipper.

“Good. There's food waiting. I'd enjoy your company.”

The dining room was small, no larger than his bedroom at home, occupied by two chairs and an intimate round table covered in white linen. A gold eagle claw candelabrum cast a warm light over the table top. Miss Parkhurst preceded Oliver, her long dress rustling softly at her heels. Other things rustled in the room as well; the floor might have been ankle-deep in windblown leaves by the sound, but it was spotless, a rich round red and cream Oriental rug centered beneath the table; and beneath that, smooth old oak flooring. Oliver looked up from his sneaker-clad feet. Miss Parkhurst waited expectantly a step back from her chair.

“Your momma teach you no manners?” she asked softly.

He approached the table reluctantly. There were empty gold plates and tableware on the linen now that had not been there before. Napkins seemed to drop from thin fog and folded themselves on the plates. Oliver stopped, his nostrils flaring.

“Don't you mind that,” Miss Parkhurst said. “I live alone here. Good help is hard to find.”

Oliver stepped behind the chair and lifted it by its maple headpiece, pulling it out for her. She sat and he helped her move closer to the table. Not once did he touch her; his skin crawled at the thought.

“The food here is very good,” Miss Parkhurst said as he sat across from her.

“I'm not hungry,” Oliver said.

She smiled warmly at him. It was a powerful thing, her smile. “I won't bite,” she said. “Except supper.
That
I'll bite.”

Oliver smelled wonderful spices and sweet vinegar. A napkin had been draped across his lap, and before him was a salad on a fine china plate. He was very hungry and he enjoyed salads, seeing fresh greens so seldom in Sleepside.

“That's it,” Miss Parkhurst said soothingly, smiling as he ate. She lifted her fork in turn and speared a fold of olive-oiled butter lettuce, bringing it to her red lips.

The rest of the dinner proceeded in like fashion, but with no further conversation. She watched him frankly, appraising, and he avoided her eyes.

Down a corridor with tall windows set in an east wall, dawn gray and pink around their faint silhouettes on the west wall, Miss Parkhurst led Oliver to his room. “It's the quietest place in the mansion,” she said.

“You're keeping me here,” he said. “You're never going to let me go?”

“Please allow me to indulge myself. I'm not just alone. I'm lonely. Here, you can have anything you want ... almost ...”

A door at the corridor's far end opened by itself. Within, a fire burned brightly within a small fireplace, and a wide bed waited with covers turned down. Exquisitely detailed murals of forests and fields covered the walls; the ceiling was rich deep blue, flecked with gold and silver and jeweled stars. Books filled a case in one corner, and in another corner stood the most beautiful ebony grand piano he had ever seen. Miss Parkhurst did not approach the door too closely. There were no candles; within this room, all lamps were electric.

“This is your room. I won't come in,” she said. “And after tonight, you don't ever come out after dark. We'll talk and see each other during the day, but never at night. The door isn't locked. I'll have to trust you.”

“I can go anytime I want?”

She smiled. Even though she meant her smile to be nothing more than enigmatic, it shook him. She was deadly beautiful, the kind of woman his brothers dreamed about. Her smile said she might eat him alive, all of him that counted. Oliver could imagine his mother's reaction to Miss Belle Parkhurst.

He entered the room and swung the door shut, trembling. There were a dozen things he wanted to say; angry, frustrated, pleading things. He leaned against the door, swallowing them all back, keeping his hand from going to the gold and crystal knob.

Behind the door, her skirts rustled as she retired along the corridor. After a moment, he pushed off from the door and walked with an exaggerated swagger to the bookcase, mumbling. Miss Parkhurst would never have taken Oliver's sister Yolanda; that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted young boy flesh, he thought. She wanted to burn him down to his sneakers, smiling like that.

The books on the shelves were books he had heard about but had never found in the Sleepside library, books he wanted to read, that the librarians said only people from Sunside and the suburbs cared to read. His fingers lingered on the tops of their spines, tugging gently.

He decided to sleep instead. If she was going to pester him during the day, he didn't have much time. She'd be a late riser, he thought; a night person.

Then he realized: whatever she did at night, she had not done this night. This night had been set aside for him.

He shivered again, thinking of the food and napkins and the eagle claws. Was this room haunted, too? Would things keep watch over him?

Oliver lay back on the bed, still clothed. His mind clouded with thoughts of living sheets feeling up his bare skin. Tired, almost dead out.

The dreams that came were sweet and pleasant and she did not walk in them. This really was his time.

At eleven o'clock by the brass and gold and crystal clock on the bookcase, Oliver kicked his legs out, rubbed his face into the pillows and started up, back arched, smelling bacon and eggs and coffee. A covered tray waited on a polished brass cart beside the bed. A vase of roses on one corner of the cart scented the room. A folded piece of fine ivory paper leaned against the vase. Oliver sat on the edge of the bed and read the note, once again written in golden ink in a delicate hand.

I'm waiting for you in the gymnasium. Meet me after you've eaten. Got something to give to you.

He had no idea where the gymnasium was. When he had finished breakfast, he put on a plush robe, opened the heavy door to his room—both relieved and irritated that it did not open by itself—and looked down the corridor. A golden arc clung to the base of each tall window. It was at least noon, Sunside time. She had given him plenty of time to rest.

A pair of new black jeans and a white silk shirt waited for him on the bed, which had been carefully made in the time it had taken him to glance down the hall. Cautiously, but less frightened now, he removed the robe, put on these clothes and the deerskin moccasins by the foot of the bed, and stood in the doorway, leaning as casually as he could manage against the frame.

A silk handkerchief hung in the air several yards away. It fluttered like a pigeon's ghost to attract his attention, then drifted slowly along the hall. He followed.

The house seemed to go on forever, empty and magnificent. Each public room had its own decor, filled with antique furniture, potted palms, plush couches and chairs, and love seats. Several times he thought he saw wisps of dinner jackets, top hats, eager, strained faces, in foyers, corridors, on staircases as he followed the handkerchief. The house smelled of perfume and dust, faint cigars, spilled wine, and old sweat.

He had climbed three flights of stairs before he stood at the tall ivory-white double door of the gymnasium. The handkerchief vanished with a flip. The doors opened.

Miss Parkhurst stood at the opposite end of a wide black tile dance floor, before a band riser covered with music stands and instruments. Oliver inspected the low half-circle stage with narrowed eyes. Would she demand he dance with her, while all the instruments played by themselves?

“Good morning,” she said. She wore a green dress the color of fresh wet grass, high at the neck and down to her calves. Beneath the dress she wore white boots and white gloves, and a white feather curled around her black hair.

“Good morning,” he replied softly, politely.

“Did you sleep well? Eat hearty?”

Oliver nodded, fear and shyness returning. What could she possibly want to give him? Herself? His face grew hot.

“It's a shame this house is empty during the day,” she said.
And at night?
he thought. “I could fill this room with exercise equipment,” she continued. “Weight benches, even a track around the outside.” She smiled. The smile seemed less ferocious now, even wistful; younger.

He rubbed a fold of his shirt between two fingers. “I enjoyed the food, and your house is real fine, but I'd like to go home,” he said.

She half turned and walked slowly from the stand. “You could have this house and all my wealth. I'd like you to have it.”

“Why? I haven't done anything for you.”

“Or to me, either,” she said, facing him again. “You know how I've made all this money?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said after a moment's pause. “I'm not a fool.”

“You've heard about me. That I'm a whore.”

“Yes, ma'am. Mrs. Diamond Freeland says you are.”

“And what is a whore?”

“You let men do it to you for money,” Oliver said, feeling bolder, but with his face hot all the same.

Miss Parkhurst nodded. “I've got part of them all here with me,” she said. “My bookkeeping. I know every name, every face. They keep me company now that business is slow.”

“All of them?” Oliver asked.

Miss Parkhurst's faint smile was part pride, part sadness, her eyes distant and moist. “They gave me all the things I have here.”

“I don't think it would be worth it,” Oliver said.

“I'd be dead if I wasn't a whore,” Miss Parkhurst said, eyes suddenly sharp on him, flashing anger. “I'd have starved to death.” She relaxed her clenched hands. “We got plenty of time to talk about my life, so let's hold it here for a while. I got something you need, if you're going to inherit this place.”

“I don't want it, ma'am,” Oliver said.

“If you don't take it, somebody who doesn't need it and deserves it a lot less will. I want you to have it. Please, be kind to me this once.”

“Why me?” Oliver asked. He simply wanted out; this was completely off the planned track of his life. He was less afraid of Miss Parkhurst now, though her anger raised hairs on his neck; he felt he could be bolder and perhaps even demanding. There was a weakness in her: he was her weakness, and he wasn't above taking some advantage of that, considering how desperate his situation might be.

“You're kind,” she said. “You care. And you've never had a woman, not all the way.”

Oliver's face warmed again. “Please let me go,” he said quietly, hoping it didn't sound as if he was pleading.

Miss Parkhurst folded her arms. “I can't,” she said.

While Oliver spent his first day in Miss Parkhurst's mansion, across the city, beyond the borders of Sunside, Denver and Reggie Jones had returned home to find the apartment blanketed in gloom. Reggie, tall and gangly, long of neck and short of head, with a prominent nose, stood with back slumped in the front hall, mouth open in surprise. “He just took off and left you all here?” Reggie asked. Denver returned from the kitchen, shorter and stockier than his brother, dressed in black vinyl jacket and pants.

Yolanda's face was puffy from constant crying. She now enjoyed the tears she spilled, and had scheduled them at two-hour intervals, to her momma's sorrowful irritation. She herded the two babies into their momma's bedroom and closed a rickety gate behind them, then brushed her hands on the breast of her ragged blouse.

“You don't get it,” she said, facing them and dropping her arms dramatically. “That whore took Momma, and Oliver traded himself for her.”

“That whore,” said Reggie, “is a rich old witch.”

“Rich old bitch witch,” Denver said, pleased with himself.

“That whore is opportunity knocking,” Reggie continued, chewing reflectively. “I hear she lives alone.”

“That's why she took Oliver,” Yolanda said. The babies cooed and chirped behind the gate.