The Mysteries (8 page)

The lights went down and the murmur of voices died away as a spotlight revealed a man standing on the stage.

Hugh's narrative, fluent and full of detail until this point, now faltered.

“Obviously a folksinger, dressed up like a gypsy, or one of those pop singers from the early eighties, what were they called? New romantics, something like that. But the music he did was older than that, moany old folk songs, not my sort of thing at all. But Peri loved it.” He scowled and fiddled with his chopsticks.

“Anyway, this singer turns out to be the owner of the club, and he's the one, the one who took Peri, or at least she went off with him—he disappeared, too. Find him, you'll find her.” He sounded as if he'd finished.

“Describe him.”

He sighed. “Big. Handsome. Almost ridiculously good-looking. And blond—hair down to his shoulders. Silk shirt, knee-high boots. Very theatrical.”

Very mechanical. I said impatiently, “Forget the costume. I want to know what
he
was like.”

Hugh shut his eyes and I saw the color drain from his face. He swallowed hard, and whispered, “Monster.”

“What?”

Blue eyes blazed at me out of a white face. He gave himself a little shake.

“I can't explain.”

“Try.”

“It was his presence—charisma, power, whatever it is; I've met people with it before; some are gorgeous with it, like he was, others, it's more to do with being powerful, and knowing it—it's like you'd expect a king would be.”

I thought I knew what he meant. “OK. Powerful vibes. But—a monster? You mean, like Hannibal Lecter?”

He shook his head. The color was coming back to his face. “Not evil. But not human. I don't know what I mean, really.” His shoulders slumped. “I'd know him straightaway if I saw him again, no question. Even in disguise, I'd sense him. There's no point me trying to describe what he looked like—the way he appeared that night was just something he'd put on. He'd look different every time.”

“Heavily made up?”

“No. Not at all.”

“So . . . what do you mean? Why can't you describe him?”

He shook his head in frustration. “The truth is, I can't remember much about how he looked. The hair, the stupid clothes . . . but nothing for a composite sketch. When I think about that evening—and I have some
very
vivid memories of it—when I try to remember
him
all I can think of is
me:
how I felt, how he made me feel.”

“That's perfectly normal.” I was getting impatient with all this agonizing, although I had to admire his honesty. In my experience, witnesses who gave the most precise and vivid descriptions, absolutely certain of what they had seen, were most often the fantasists. “What was his name?”

“Mider.” His pronunciation, more or less, was “mither,” but he spelled it out for me. “That was the name of the club on the invitation, and that's what the singer said his name was. It was his place.”

The name was familiar, although I couldn't think why. I stored it away to consider later, and concentrated on Hugh's story.

While Mider sang, accompanying himself on guitar, Hugh tuned out and speculated about the rest of the audience. It was unlikely to be a family gathering with everyone belonging to the same generation, but something more than chance had brought them all there. The more he looked around the room, the more certain he felt that everyone was related somehow.

By the time the singer had finished his set, Hugh had finished the bottle of water and had to go off in search of the toilets. There was just one, unisex, with four enclosed stalls and a purple carpet on the floor, every bit as posh as the rest of the club. He had it all to himself, and took his time washing his hands with lavender-scented soap, checking out the progress of his stubble in the ornately framed looking glass above the sink.

When he came out he saw that his place had been taken by the singer, who leaned across the table, much too close to Peri, his eyes fixed upon hers, his lips rapidly moving: clearly no casual conversation.

His gut clenched in a spasm of jealousy, and Hugh felt ready for a fight as he strode across the room.

Then Peri got up so suddenly she knocked her chair over. She whirled around, and Hugh saw she wore a panic-stricken expression. He caught her quickly in his arms and glared over her head at Mider. But the singer had turned away, presenting the back of his golden head to Hugh's angry gaze.

“What happened?” he murmured, pressing his lips to her hair.

She relaxed in his embrace and peeped up at him. “Where's the ladies' room?”

“Peri, what's wrong? What did that bastard say to you?”

When she didn't respond, he let go. “Right, I guess I'll have to ask
him.
”

“No!” She grabbed at him. “Don't make a big deal out of it! Please, Hugh, just show me the restroom.”

“Tell me what he said.”

She was tense, her eyes wide and fearful. “Nothing!”

“‘Nothing' made you run away from him, looking scared to death?”

She pressed her face into his chest. Hugh felt embarrassingly exposed, standing in the middle of the room, but, to his relief, no one paid them the slightest attention. They might have been wrapped in a protective shell. Whoever these people were, they were experts at ignoring others, that particularly British form of politeness.

“Come on, we're leaving.”

“No! Hugh!” She looked up, shattered.

He sighed. “We're not staying here if he's made you uncomfortable.”

“He wasn't. He just said something . . . that reminded me of a dream, and it scared me.”

“A dream?”

She nodded. “There was this dream I used to have all the time when I was little. I never forgot it. You could say it haunted me. I even wrote a story about it, just before I met you. That man over there reminded me of my dream. He said something and it was kind of like
déjà vu,
you know? My dream all over again, coming true. It freaked me out.”

Hugh didn't know what to say. He shook his head. “You're sure he didn't say anything . . . unfriendly? Or nasty? Or . . .” He flailed around. “Was he hitting on you?” But that was such a stupid question. Of course he had been. It was almost inevitable. Somebody as gorgeous as Peri . . . Only a psycho would try to pick a fight with every hopeful who tried to get off with his girlfriend. As long as he hadn't crossed the line in some way, turned what might be flattery into offense.

“He was really nice, honestly.”

He glanced across at that golden head, still turned away. It was as if everything had frozen. He had the odd feeling that time had stopped for them, and nothing would progress until he'd sorted this out with Peri.

“What were you talking about?”

She looked vague. “Oh, I don't know . . . I asked him about one of his songs. I thought I knew it from somewhere, but he said he wrote it himself.”

“So what was your dream like?”

He saw from the set of her chin, the drift of her eyes, that she wouldn't tell him about it, and was hurt that she still wanted to have secrets from him. He would have told her everything, stripped his soul bare for her inspection, if she'd asked.

“Can we go to the restroom?” She squeezed his hand.

It would give him a chance to talk to the singer on his own. He stood a little straighter. “Go on, then. It's just back there.”

She clung to him. “Come with me.”

So he did. It was a relief, after all, to delay the confrontation. When they reached the restroom, Peri pulled him inside and pushed him against the wall and almost before he knew what was happening, they were fucking.

Telling me, Hugh hunched down in his seat, avoiding eye contact. It excited him to think about it even now, and I'd bet he'd thought about it a lot. But no matter how many times he'd replayed it on his own internal screen, he'd probably never shared it with anyone. And who was I, to deserve this intimacy?

“It was like something out of a movie, man. She was all over me. She really wanted it.”

“She didn't usually like sex?”

He looked at me as if I'd crawled out from under his plate, waving my feelers. “Of course she did. But this was a public toilet—even if it was awfully nice—no lock on the door, anybody could have come in. We'd never done it like that before, up against the wall, somewhere we might have been caught. I wouldn't have thought she . . .” He flushed and dropped his gaze. “But it was her idea, it was what she wanted, and . . . It was exciting. She was totally hot. I guess she'd missed me so much . . .” Entranced again, he drifted for a few seconds before coming back to the present, to me, to finish, flatly, “It was all over in about three minutes. Then she made me leave.”

In a happy, relaxed stupor, he went back to the table, where Mider was waiting. He'd added a third chair, and on the table there was a fresh bottle of Perrier, and, unexpectedly, a gaming board with piles of white and black stones.

Hugh found that his annoyance with the man had totally vanished. Well, after all, Peri had just proved how little reason he had to be jealous.

Mider nodded. “Will you have a game with me? I had the impression that my singing was not to your taste.”

“Oh, it was fine. You sing really well,” he said awkwardly.

Mider raised an eyebrow. “Shall we play?”

The board and stones were for the Japanese game Go. It had been a passion of his once; he'd been very good at it. He'd started playing with some friends in his final year of school, as a protest against the popularity of computer games and the snootiness of the chess club, and he'd grown to become something of an expert player.

Hugh looked at his host more closely, wondering if they had met before. How had he known he played Go?

“What do you say? Will you give me a game?”

“It wouldn't be fair to my girlfriend. She'd be bored just watching us play.”

“She won't be bored. Someone else will be singing soon.”

Peri returned, bright-eyed and golden. His heart ached with longing. He wanted to rush off with her then and there, but Mider was waiting. He felt curiously obliged, unable to refuse, and turned to Peri: “I honestly don't care; we can leave anytime you like.” He scanned her face, her posture, for any sign that she was uncomfortable. She smiled into his eyes as intimately as if they were alone.

“Let's stay for a while. If there's going to be more music, I'm happy.”

The new singer was one of the beautiful, elegantly dressed women from another table. She looked enough like Mider to have been his sister as she took his guitar and his place in the spotlight. She sang “fa la la” and “my love has gone,” and as Peri sighed happily, sinking into the ballad as into a hot bath, Hugh tuned it out and concentrated on the game.

Time flew by, enjoyably, and quite suddenly it seemed, Hugh had won. It hadn't been an easy game; his opponent was good. He could feel proud of himself.

“Name your forfeit,” said Mider.

“How do you mean?”

“You've won. Since we didn't name stakes beforehand, that's your privilege now.”

“Oh, that's OK,” said Hugh. “We were only playing for fun.”

“There's no fun in a game without a stake.”

“I don't agree. And since nobody said anything about it beforehand—”

“Careless, you.”

The arrogance stung, as it was meant to. “Careless
you
. I'm the winner, after all. I can ask for whatever I want?”

“Yes.”

“Anything?”

“Do you doubt me?”

“I'm just checking out the rules. You'd give me whatever I asked?”

He expected a laying out of boundaries, some more reasonable definition of “anything,” but Mider said only, “I would. On my honor. And you're then honor bound to grant me another game.”

“Ah, I see. So you can win it back.”

The faintest frown touched the handsome face. “What you win, you may keep. Likewise, whatever I win from you. I don't always lose.”

“No, I'll bet you don't.” It had to be a scam, although he couldn't see how it was supposed to work. Hugh was not by nature a gambler. He didn't even waste his money buying lottery tickets. He couldn't guess the object of this con, if it was one. So Mider let him win a couple of times and lulled him into a false sense of security before sweeping the board—so what? Hugh had forty pounds on him, money that had to see him through the week ahead. There was no way he was going to blow it all on a bet with a stranger. He shrugged. “How many games?”

“Three.”

“OK. Shall we say ten pounds a game?”

The other man's eyes narrowed, his face darkening. “Are you mocking me?”

There was no music. When had the singer stopped? There was no background buzz of conversation, either. Hugh had the feeling that everyone in the room was watching them, listening with bated breath. And these were Mider's people, not his.

He held up his hands. “No! Look, I don't know how you're fixed, but I'm on a tight budget. I have a lousy job and can't even afford to run a car. Ten pounds might be nothing to you, but it's a lot to me. Really.”

“But Hugh,” said Mider gently, as the tension eased out of the room, “you don't have to pay me—you've won this game! You can ask for whatever you want.”

“Sure, great. And if I don't win the next game, it would be your turn to ask me for something. Would it be
honorable
of me to ask you for something I couldn't match?”

“Ask for what you want.”

There was some trick to this that Hugh couldn't see. Lessons absorbed long ago from stories, fairy tales, and jokes jostled in his mind with enlightened self-interest, logic, and greed. There must be some moral strategy involved, a right and a wrong. Ask for too much and get nothing at all; ask for too little and lose even more . . .

Mouth dry, he gazed around the dimly lit room. He noticed that although all had the ornate red goblets, theirs was the only table with a bottle on it. Peri had asked for a Coke, and the waiter had brought her a can. None of the other tables had anything but goblets. Now that he thought about it, Hugh recalled seeing waiters moving among the tables carrying large, opaque decanters. The liquid in the other goblets might have been anything, but from the way the other people drank, he was willing to bet it wasn't water.