Gretchen Hummel's Author Website

 

 

October 2060

 

Panorama

Chapter 1

Blair brought her attention back to the cards Rhoda spread across her marred desk. This was never an easy feat, given the life-like mannequins in various stages of dress that stood about Rhoda’s Tailortown office. Over the years that Blair had been giving Rhoda weekly tarot readings, the fiberglass figures had become more and more convincing as real models. Their presence always gave Blair the creeping sensation that they were peering over her shoulder, eavesdropping. She drummed her fingers on the desktop and jiggled her foot as she waited for Rhoda to lay out her cards.

“Relax,” Rhoda said. “Drink your tea. You’d think this was your first Entourage.”

“It is my first Entourage, while we’re under quarantine,” Blair said, as she reached for the cup of spiked “tea” Rhoda served. “Everyone’s first Entourage while we’re under quarantine,” she added, taking a bracing mouthful.

“I’m shocked, to tell you the truth,” Rhoda said, her high-gloss lacquered nails glinting in the light as she turned over the cards. “It’s so brazen and foolhardy—even for the Vigilant.”

Blair nodded. “And, listen to this. There’s a physician with the Entourage. He, especially, should know better. And he’s bringing his family. I mean even if they’ve all had the plague, to blatantly ignore the possibility of re-infection.”  She shook her head. “It makes no sense.”

“I bet they don’t even talk about re-infection on the mainland.”

“They don’t even talk about initial infections, from what I hear,” Blair said. “Every time a case breaks, it’s hushed up, denied, or renamed. Nobody wants to admit there’s plague in their family.”

“Poor devils,” Rhoda muttered.

“Poor devils?  We’re the poor devils. Just ask them; they’ll tell you. Of course, they’d leave out the “poor” part,” Blair said, dashing her straight burgundy bangs out of her eyes. “No, I can’t say I’ll ever feel sorry for them.”

“Well, hell’s bells, Blair. I wouldn’t either if they’d kidnapped one of my children. It’s just that we’ve learned so much from the plague. All of which they miss—”

Rhoda halted abruptly in mid-sentence, interrupted by the low insistent moan of a foghorn. Blair and Rhoda lifted their heads together and stared at one another as they waited for it to sound again. After three blasts Blair shoved herself away from the desk and jumped up.  “Mon Dieux!  The Entourage!  They’re here already,” she said, as she swept up the cards and slid them into their velvet sleeve. “They weren’t supposed to get in for at least another four hours. Damn!  Do we still have time to dress me?”

As Rhoda’s eyes took in the state of Blair’s attire, a corner of her mouth took an ill-concealed dive. “Well, I’d strongly advise it. But you tell me.”

Blair glanced down. “That bad?  Okay, but we’ve got to hurry,” she said, as she kicked her shoes off, one after another, yanked her shirttail from the waistband of her pants, and swore as she fought with a knot in the drawstring.

Moments later, Blair emerged from Tailortown’s main warehouse transformed. She rushed down the sidewalk headed for the hotel a few blocks away. In her hurry, she sidestepped a puddle of rainwater nearly twisting her ankle. The suede pumps Rhoda had fitted her with were turning out to be too big. But the suit fit her perfectly. Glancing down at the short flared jacket and matching skirt, Blair had to admit the outfit was a bit of an improvement over the shapeless tie-dye trousers, the non-matching tee and canvas clogs she’d worn when she walked into the warehouse.

The triple blast of the ear-splitting foghorn, distinct from the single foghorn warnings for seafarers, had parents up and down the street drop whatever they were doing. They burst from their homes onto front porches and doorsteps calling out for their children in urgent, anxious voices. One woman on a balcony pushed back the mask of a welding-hood before she searched the street. An intricate copper sculpture dangled, forgotten, in her hand. Another woman held up her arms slimed with gray clay to her elbows. She shouted to her children, “Didn’t you hear the alarm?  Get your little tails inside, now!”  A boy dropped his scooter on the sidewalk; the girl abandoned her jump rope and ran for the door. “Don’t leave your toys out there, either!”  Once the children were inside, window blinds were drawn. Doors dead-bolted. Shop owners hung large bold-lettered CLOSED signs. An Entourage of the Vigilant had arrived.

Blair strode past townhouse after tall townhouse, each painted a different color. Peach, teal, rose, and dark violet, they leaned shoulder-to-shoulder down both sides of the roller coaster of a thoroughfare known as Main Street. Main Street, of what the Vigilant called, “Dream City.”  While the islanders considered the name complimentary, it was just the opposite for the Vigilant. To them it was a slur on the islanders, a slur on the order of blasphemy. Ever since the Plague of Black Dreams swept the earth thirty years ago, the content and meaning of dreams had become a

charged issue.

Though Blair knew she’d have a little time to spare while the Entourage was shown to their hotel rooms to unpack their belongings, she preferred to be on the hotel premises from the moment they arrived. You could tell a lot about a group simply in the way they made eye contact or not, in the way they shook your hand or not, and in the way they looked about them, shifty-eyed or terrified.

Though it had rained earlier in the day, another bank of clouds was approaching. Heavy fog was forecasted. Gray clouds roiled overhead and to the west, yet the sun’s rays still managed to filter through, staining the town for a brief moment in an eerie deep-crimson glow. The hospital, a white monolith on the hill, was awash in the ruddy, blood-red, light. Neither did the light neglect the endless rows of otherwise, white head stones that studded the hills behind the hospital. From a flagpole on the hospital roof, a huge quarantine flag flew. Heavy with rain, it flapped fitfully in the breeze off the bay. Blair wondered if the Entourage would be making a visit to the hospital in the next few days.

She hurried by several art galleries, a grocer, and a shop called “When the Lights Go Out” that dealt in all manner of electrical generators.

The closer Blair drew to the hotel the more deserted the street scene in front of her. As a result, she was surprised to see the school-age girl sitting alone on a bench in front of a music shop. The child stared at her feet as she idly swung them back and forth scuffling at the sidewalk. She raised her head at Blair’s approach.

Blair pulled a green scarf from around her neck that Rhoda had insisted the suit was “unfinished” without. Nonetheless, it was too flashy for the Vigilant she’d decided, at least this early in their visit. As she came up to the girl, she said, “May I?” Once the child nodded, Blair draped the scarf around her shoulders. “It’s perfect. It brings out the green flecks in your eyes.”

The child glanced down at it and back at Blair. “I can have it?”

Blair nodded. “But you shouldn’t be out here. Where’s your mother, child?”

Sliding nail-bitten fingers along one edge of the scarf, the girl glanced up at the hospital. After a pause, she said, “The Entourage is here, isn’t it?  But it’s all right. I’m a tenderfoot at the music shop.”

Following the girl’s eyes to the hill, Blair nodded. While the child was a tenderfoot or underling apprentice at the music shop, she actually lived at the orphanage, housed on hospital grounds.

“What’s your name?”

“It’s Dulcie!  You know me, Ms. Blair.”

“Why, Dulcie, of course. I thought I knew all the hill children. I didn’t recognize you. Something’s different.”

Dulcie reached up and ruffled her fingers through her chin-length hair. “I got my hair cut. Maybe now someone will adopt me,” she said. The girl’s hopeful smile revealed an old scar from the repair of a cleft lip. Although the scar was only mildly disfiguring, it may very well have prevented her adoption.

“Maybe they’ll like me with my new haircut. Maybe they’ll take me this time. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

If only her own daughter had had a cleft lip or a clubbed foot, Blair mused, maybe she’d still be here today, too. Even though Blair’s hopes of finding her daughter, kidnapped eight years ago, had dimmed over time, she hadn’t given up. She’d done all she could do, including place herself in the dangerous position of tour guide for Entourages of the Vigilant. Her thinking was that she might get lucky and overhear something, anything, about her daughter. Yet nothing had panned out—until very recently. The break for her, when it did come, was from a completely unexpected direction. It was the arrival of a young exile, a young man whom she believed she recognized and whom she also believed may know something of her daughter’s whereabouts. That the shred of a possibility of seeing her daughter again even existed made Blair reach out and give Dulcie a spontaneous hug.

“That would be lovely, dear,” Blair said, with what she hoped was an encouraging smile. Her smile faded however, as she turned away and covered the remaining distance to the hotel.

 

 

 

The Agenda

Chapter 2

The black boxy vehicle that Entourages of the Vigilant preferred was parked under the porte cochere of the hotel. It was polished to a high shine and was efficient-looking in a militaristic manner, function being its one and only design concern. There weren’t many automobiles in Dream City. But the ones the islanders did have at least had pleasing lines and a little color, Blair thought, as she climbed the front stairs of the hotel.

Squaring her shoulders and straightening her fitted jacket, she entered the hotel lobby.

Grayson, manning the registration desk, was cadaver-thin, and even with the slight stoop he carried in his shoulders, he stood startlingly tall. When she walked in the door, his mouth flattened into one long thin line. Without a word, he pointed a gloved finger toward the dining room.

She was glad to see he’d kept the gloves on that she had insisted he wear. Without them he’d be scratching his face and hands nonstop. His psoriasis always flared up when an Entourage was in town.

Blair pushed through the swinging doors into the dining room. The Entourage, consisting of the doctor and his two daughters, was seated at the back of the dining room with a view of the garden behind the hotel.

Nijel, the hotel tenderfoot, was refilling glasses and serving their dinner.

The doctor’s daughters couldn’t keep their eyes off Nijel. They covertly eyed his checkered waistcoat, the ornate Celtic buckles on his boots, the jade pendant around his neck and his charcoal-dark hair that was pulled back in a chord and hung down his back to his shoulder blades.

The doctor, in turn, kept a watchful eye on his daughters. All three picked at the unfamiliar dish Sophie placed before them. But after tasting it and finding it more than palatable, they quickly forked it in.

Blair observed with pride the broadening in Nijel’s shoulders and his newfound height. While the Vigilant had denied Blair the privilege of raising her daughter, at least she’d had a hand in raising Nijel. Though he was helping them out with this Entourage, she really couldn’t call him a hotel tenderfoot any longer. He’d come of age. Officially, he was an apprentice.

Blair approached the table and held out her hand in greeting. “Hello, Dr Lourdes. I’m Blair, hotel concierge and your guide while you’re here at Dream City.”

The doctor stared at her for a brief moment and blinked several times. She thought he acted almost disoriented. But he shook himself loose from whatever it was that captured his thoughts and rose to shake her hand. He introduced himself as Lincoln Lourdes, and his daughters, as Leigh and Mellie. He was tall and a little too slender, almost gaunt-looking. He had a dark, closely trimmed beard, and soft blue eyes behind small rectangular lenses.

“Please, sit down. Finish your dinner,” Blair said. “I’m terribly sorry for being late, but I—”

Dr. Lourdes dismissed her apology with the wave of a hand. “No, no. You’re not late; we’re early. Besides your hotel staff has taken very good care of us.”

Perhaps this would be a congenial group. Blair could hope.

“The girls were anxious to be off this morning,” Dr. Lourdes said, gazing fondly at his daughters. “In fact, they dragged me out of bed at 4:30 this morning to get on the road.”

When Blair got a good look at the older daughter, introduced as “Leigh”, her heart fluttered in her chest. She inwardly gasped; the girl reminded her so much of her own daughter. Or of what her daughter might have looked like had Blair been allowed to see her grow up. Her heart lodged in her throat, and she held her breath, as she searched the girl’s features. But the color of the girl’s hair was too dark, the shape of her face seemed too round, and the color of her eyes—green, not the midnight blue of her daughter’s. Blair sighed. She managed to carry on with the Entourage as if nothing had happened. She’d had a lot of practice. But her gaze kept straying back to the Leigh’s face, until that is, she really looked at the younger sister, Mellie.

Mellie was disagreeing with her father, saying he’d been as eager to leave as they were. Here again the girl’s features, a younger version of her sister’s, if anything looked even more like what Blair had pictured her daughter might look like. Her hair was a little lighter shade, but as with her sister, she also had green eyes. Blair shivered a little and imperceptibly shook her head. Everyone lately reminded her of her daughter.

As Mellie reached for her water glass, Blair thought she glimpsed a red lace strap of an undergarment on the girl. Other than the fleeting shoulder strap, Mellie was dressed all in black, as was her sister. Blair had a hard time believing teen-age girls could be content with such somber colors day in, day out.

While Blair studied the girls, they seemed to be staring back at her, or at least at her hair. Blair reached up and patted the pulled-up do Rhoda had executed on her so deftly. Her fingers grazed the green glittery bobble Rhoda had stuck in Blair’s hair at the last moment and which Blair had meant to take out after she’d left.

Mellie, seeing her movement, said, “That is so, so—showy. We could never wear anything like that.”

“Except maybe on All Hallows Eve,” Leigh said. “And even that’s a big maybe,” she added, glancing at her father.

“A very big maybe, indeed,” Dr. Lourdes said, with a frown.

Blair managed to extricate the clip from her hair without too much damage. She slipped it in her pocket. “It’s too showy for my taste, too. I didn’t dress my own hair and unfortunately didn’t look in the mirror before I came.”

Mellie said, “But . . . you didn’t have to take it out—”

Blair smiled at her, as she said, “So I understand you’re in the market for All Hallows Eve costumes?”

“They are,” Dr. Lourdes said. “But I hope there’s not too much of that glitzy stuff—I mean, I don’t want them to go overboard with this costume-buying business. I want them to have a little fun with it certainly, but within proper Vigilant bounds, within proper bounds.”

“We do get to see a fashion show, though, don’t we?  You said we could,” Mellie said, looking from her father, to Blair and back again

“I suppose,” Dr Lourdes said, glancing at Blair. “If that can be arranged.”

“Certainly,” Blair said. Turning to the girls, she added, “I saw some of Tailortown’s newest creations today and you two are in for a treat. The designers have completely outdone themselves this season, all within proper limits, of course.”

She’d better send Nijel ASAP to Tailortown to have them whip up a show geared for the teenage set. Rhoda would be delighted to arrange this, especially for teenagers. This was Rhoda’s bliss, to turn the staid expressions of the Vigilant into smiles in spite of their valiant efforts to suppress them.

Turning to Dr. Lourdes, she added, “I usually give a general tour of Dream City to start off your visit and then spend more time at your areas of interest, unless you had other plans.” Blair watched Dr. Lourdes closely for his reaction.

“That sounds satisfactory enough. The girls, as you’ve heard, are interested in amending their wardrobes,” he said. “We would also like to visit the orphanage. Maybe spend the second day there. The girls believe they need a companion.”

A companion, Blair thought, bitterly. More like a play-toy for them to dress up and parade around like a living paper doll. The Vigilant couldn’t alter their own dress, but they could for an adoptee. They were, after all, Dream City children, fresh from Devil’s Island. The Vigilant were both repelled and fascinated by the dreamers, as they were with the island in general.

“I’d also like to speak to some of your physicians, particularly a Dr. Rorie about some brainwave experiments I hear he’s working on.”

“Brain-wave experiments?” she said, nonplussed. “Is Dr. Rorie expecting you?”

“We’ve been in communication this past year. I mentioned I might drop in with the girls for a shopping trip.”

“And you’re fully aware we’re under quarantine?”  Blair asked, glancing at his daughters. “The orphanage is on hospital grounds.”

“Yes, but I’m not worried about it.”

Blair wanted to say, ‘Why the hell not?  You’ve had no preparation whatsoever.’  Instead, she said, “Sir, I’ll have to ask you to sign a waiver of liability for yourself and your daughters. I hope you were told this would be required. As you know, when the quarantine flag is raised, someone at the hospital is ill with the plague.”

“It seems odd that Dream City still has such frequent outbreaks. They’re much less common for the Vigilant. I’ve even heard rumors you’re experimenting with the plague virus itself?” he said, cocking an eyebrow.

Blair was careful with her response. “Experimenting?  With the plague virus?  That would be rather irresponsible, wouldn’t it?  But you’ll have to ask Dr. Rorie about this. He’s much better equipped to answer those questions for you, sir. Now, let me get that waiver.”

As she went out the door, Blair wondered what he meant by experiments. He couldn’t have heard they kept the plague virus on hand, could he?  Blair panicked. This Entourage may not be as benign as she’d hoped.

Grayson, registrar and hotel butler, met her just outside the door. He held the waiver forms and pen in his hand.

“How can he know?” Grayson said, trying to scratch his face with his gloved hand.

“Get to Dr. Rorie,” Blair whispered. “Tell him what the man wants to know so he can have some time to compose his answers. The sooner, the better.”

Grayson nodded. His shaggy eyebrows knit together in a look of perplexity. “There’s something familiar about that Lourdes fellow, but I can’t quite put my finger on it,” he said, as he tapped a gloved fingertip on his skeletal cheekbone.

 

 

 

 

Deck of Lost Souls

Chapter 3

The moment Blair came through the front door of her house, Ajax landed on her shoulder, his big green wings batting her hair about. She soothed his neck feathers only to have him nip none-too-gently at her ear.

She glanced at his cage, the door wide open, and spotted the empty dish. “Uh oh, I forgot to feed you this morning, didn’t I?”

“‘Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,’” the bird mimed. “‘Green figs and mulberries’”.

“Apricots, not apricocks—”

“‘ . . . apricocks and dewberries.’  You question the bard’s bird?”

“Heaven forbid,” she said, as she stroked the parrot’s head.

Ajax had belonged to Blair’s late husband, Sebastian. A Shakespearean actor and amateur playwright, Sebastian had practically lived at the theatre, Ajax his loyal companion. From a fluffy gray innocent, if ugly, nestling, Ajax had grown into a handsome opinionated Shakespeare-spewing provocateur. The parrot soon became the theatre mascot. During intermission, Ajax reigned over the crowd in a giant gilded cage that hung from a chandelier above Will Call. A brass sign bolted to the cage read, “Speak to the Bard’s Bird—at your own peril.”

Blair shrugged out of her wrap, simultaneously launching Ajax into the air. He flew into his cage and pecked at the empty dish until she poured in some seed. “Bon appetite.”

Blair was out of everything in her kitchen except a carton of eggs and a greenish wedge of cheese shoved into a corner. She made herself an anemic-looking omelet. As her eggs cooked, she glanced over at Ajax occupied with his dinner. She could only imagine Ajax’s horror, his sense of betrayal at the sight of an egg of one of his distant cousins cracked open and dumped into a sizzling pan without ceremony, or even with ceremony for that matter.

Through the kitchen window, beyond her autumn-darkened garden, Blair could see the fog rolling in. She hoped the weather would clear before she took the Entourage on tour tomorrow.

On her walk home from the hotel, Blair had been thinking of what Grayson said about Dr. Lourdes looking familiar. There was something disconcerting about his face, but it was the girls’ faces she couldn’t stop thinking about. Even though she knew neither of the girls from the Entourage could be her daughter, it was their resemblance to Haley she couldn’t quit thinking about. Or, at least, their resemblance to a painting she’d done of her daughter, as she’d imagined she might look fully-grown. She’d included it in a tarot deck she’d painted years ago.

Tarot decks, with their beautiful artwork and enigmatic archetypes had fascinated Blair from a young age when she used to watch her Aunt Belle, the true tarot aficionado of the family, give readings. While Blair considered herself a fair tarot card reader, her passion with the cards lay more in the creation of them.

She consumed her omelet standing and went into the parlor, where she opened a black trunk that doubled as a coffee table. She knelt in front of it and sorted through dozens of tarot decks, the Marseilles, Thoth, Visconti, Golden, and Fornier. The deck she was looking for she’d painted during an especially bleak point in her life. At that time, loss was all she could see. Painting was a welcome solace.

She found the deck near the bottom of the trunk, sat down with it at her tarot table, and reached over to light a lantern. She slid the deck from its satin sleeve and fanned the cards in her hands. The backs of the cards she’d block printed with the design of a famous optical illusion. Depending on which way you looked at the image, it could be either two profiles facing one another, or a single urn. The deck used to be one of Blair’s favorites to use for readings, but it had been years since she’d even looked at it.

Shuffling through the deck, she stopped at the King of Cups card. The face for the King of Cups she’d modeled after Sebastian’s face. Sebastian had been killed eight years ago when he’d tried to stop the Entourage that had wrenched their daughter out of their lives. She glanced at a group of photos on a shelf above her tarot table. There was one of she and Sebastian with their daughter, Haley, riding on his shoulders, which was the photo she’d copied from for the King of Cups tarot card. There was also a photo of Haley and her cousin, Melody, facing one another in profile and an older yellowing photo of herself and her brother.

She continued flipping through the cards and passed a card with her father’s face, another with her mother’s face, and yet another with her brother’s until she finally found the Princess of Hearts card modeled after her daughter’s face. All these people she’d lost from her life, either dead or missing, she’d memorialized in the deck. Her Deck of Lost Souls, she called it.

She nursed a glass of wine she’d brought with her from the kitchen as she gazed at Haley’s face. Her hand was unsteady as she set the glass down and sloshed dark red liquid over the rim of the glass. The lantern on the table lit up the cut-crystal of the glass, scattering prisms of light over the cards and the pictures on the shelf above them.

Ajax had long since finished his dinner, and flown in from the kitchen to settle on her shoulder. He nuzzled his head against her cheek, cooing, “‘Sigh no more, lady. Sigh no more.’”

He bowed low to accommodate her as she stroked the back of his neck.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Ajax flew from her shoulder to the top of the curtain rod, a favored vantage point for receiving visitors. “‘Whence is that knocking?  How is’t with me, when every noise appalls me?’” he squawked, his feathers aruffle.

When Blair opened the door and saw who was standing there, she took an involuntary step backward and her mouth fell open in disbelief. Out of the fog, which had since thickened to a frothy soup, stepped her cousin, Madeleine. She wondered how long it had been since she’d had an actual conversation with her cousin?  Seven years?  Eight?  Not since both of their daughters had been kidnapped. And especially not since Madeleine had decided Blair was partly responsible.

Madeleine wore her signature green jeans, work boots and raingear, but had left off the coolie hat, that Blair, in a gray mood one day, had decided made her look like a witch.

“I need to talk to you,” Madeleine said, without fanfare. “I’ve heard a rumor and I just want to know the truth. You owe me that much, at least,” she added, giving Blair a pointed look. “Well, can I come in?”

“Of course.” Blair stood aside to let Madeleine in. “Here, let me take your manteau.”

“Take my what?”

“Coat, I mean your coat.”

Madeleine gave her a doubtful look. She put her knapsack down and shrugged off her mist-covered wrap.

“Hi-ya chickie,” Ajax commented from the curtain rod.

“What . . .?”  Madeleine craned her neck in the direction of the bird’s voice. “Oh, you still have that obnoxious bird.”

“Give me a kiss,” Ajax quipped, hopping from one foot to the other.

Madeleine waved off Ajax’s comment. “He always was a nasty rascal.”

Ajax flew to another of his favorite perches, atop the plaster head and bust of William Shakespeare. “‘This rascal, I could brain him with a lady’s fan,’” he mimed.

Blair was gratified to see Ajax’s comment bring at least a hint of a smile to Madeleine’s face.

She invited her in and offered her a chair. “Can I get you anything?  Cup of tea?  Glass of wine?”

Ajax intoned with, “‘Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly:  and in women out-paramoured the Turk.’”

“Ajax!” Blair scolded. “You’re asking for the cage. I’ll wire the door shut, mind you.”

“Not the cage. Murder!  Murder!”

Madeleine sank down onto the sofa, un-amused. “Well, this isn’t a social call, but I could do with a cup of tea, since you’re offering.”

Blair gave Ajax a stern look as she went to the kitchen for Madeleine’s tea.

The bird answered her with, “Zip it, Ajax.”

When Blair returned with Madeleine’s tea, Madeleine had gotten up and was standing looking down into Blair’s open trunk. “I recognize many of those,” she said, nodding at the collection of tarot decks inside. “But I see you’ve added to mother’s collection.”

“Two hundred and twelve decks in there last I counted, most of which I did inherit from your mother, some I painted, some collected over the years.”  After an awkward pause, Blair added. “Well, since you didn’t want them—”

“Father thought it was all hogwash.”

“Hogwashed, boil-brained, harpy,” Ajax echoed.

“Until the plague came along and Aunt Belle researched the archetypes, you mean,” Blair said.

“‘A plague on both your houses: Beware the ides of March.’”

Madeleine took the cup of tea that Blair held, turned away and returned to the couch. “That bird’s got quite a tongue in its head,” Madeleine said.

“‘A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours,’” Ajax quoted.

“I’m amazed he’s retained such a repertoire, after so many years. What’s that quote from, anyway?  Do you know?”

“Much Ado About Nothing, I believe,” Blair said.

Ajax piped up with, “‘To an ass were nothing: she is both ass and ox.’”

Madeleine smiled briefly. “Yes, I remember Sebastian made sure Ajax got his insults down pat.”

“Unfortunate, but true.” Blair said, glad that Madeleine at least wasn’t taking Ajax’s comments personally.

“So, tell me,” Madeleine said, putting her cup down on the end table with emphasis. “Who is this Ed Spade you’re so anxious to interrogate?”

“Ed Spade?”  Blair shook her head, confused. “Ed Spade?”  I don’t know any Ed Spade.”

“You know exactly who I’m talking about. That new exile in town.”

“Exile? . . . Oh!  You mean— ”

“Don’t play coy with me. I overheard Dad and your boyfriend, Danny, talking about it at McPherson’s. The overheads were out. They were eating dinner and it was so dark in there, they didn’t see me sitting behind them. I was about to go over and speak to them, when Danny started talking about you and some wild-hair of a dream you’d had, that you were determined to find and grill this Ed Spade and that you thought you might have been given a plague gift. They even said you were planning another re-infection.”

“Ed Spade, so that’s his name . . . Danny must have found out,” Blair murmured.

“So you do know who he is. Why do you want to talk to him?  It’s something about the girls. I know it is.”

“The girls?”

“Haley and Melody!  Our daughters, for heaven’s sake!  What does Ed Spade have to do with them?”

“He . . . he doesn’t. I was just curious about him. He reminded me of someone in a dream, is all. I mentioned it to Danny at one point. But I don’t see what all the fuss is about? It’s got nothing to do with the girls, really. And it’s certainly nothing to get excited about.”

“Well, the way Danny was talking, he said you had a wild hair up your ass about it.”

“He said that?  Wild hair?”

Madeleine shrugged impatiently. “He also said you’ve been talking non-stop about Hayley and about some scouting trip you and he took.”

“Wild hair?  He said that?  That was just a dream I had—I told him that. Not a delirium dream. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, aren’t you?”

“Funny. That’s what Danny said about you.”

Blair rubbed the back of her neck. Did she dare confide in Madeleine?  No. Certainly not yet, anyway. Instead, she feigned a look of hurt and embarrassment that ignited into anger. When she looked back at Madeleine, her deep-blue eyes flashed nearly black. “A wild hair. A mountain out of a molehill. Mon Dieux!  And for pity’s sake, you’d think he’d be a little sympathetic—I’m missing my daughter. And yes, I do dream about her and, yeah, I suppose I probably talk about her, too. You can’t tell me you never dream of Melody. What else did he say?”

“Whoa,” Madeleine said, holding up a hand.

“No. Tell me. What else did he say?” Blair said, leaning forward out of her chair.

“This isn’t Danny’s fault. I happen to like . . . Danny, not that I really give a damn about your relationship issues, but—”

“Well, he’s going to get an earful about this.”

Madeleine sank back into the cushions and sighed as she frowned at Blair. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?  Why I expected you to . . . I just . . . I don’t know what I thought. I suppose I’d hoped somehow you knew something new about the girls.  Which upset me—the thought that you’d learned something and not told me. Again, why I expected you to . . .”  Her voice trailed off and her shoulders sagged.  She pulled out a handkerchief, but just crumpled it in her fingers. “Melody would have been eighteen this month. No, Melody is eighteen this month—somewhere.”

Hearing the sorrow in Madeleine’s voice, Blair’s throat constricted. She could feel her own emotions welling up. “Madeleine,” she said. “I’m so sorry about . . .about all of it, of what happened . . .back then. You must know I was literally at wits end. If you could have seen the way that woman looked at Haley, like she wanted to inhale her.  I just reacted. I panicked. It wasn’t conscious or premeditated. The girls do look alike and well, I—”

“Tried to give them Melody in place of Haley. What am I saying—tried?  You succeeded quite well, until they took both of them, that is.”

“It wasn’t like that. I was just trying to distract the woman, derail her obsession with Hayley, to show her there were other desirable children in the world. I was desperate. You must understand that. You’ll do anything to save your own child. Absolutely anything.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have. To intentionally put someone else’s child in their path—I think it’s utterly monstrous.”

Blair swallowed. “But it wasn’t intentional. You know I loved Melody, too. Believe me, I’ll regret that decision until the day I die.”

“The only thing you regret is that it didn’t work.”

“That’s not true. I’m trying to redeem myself –”

“Yeah?  Well, good luck with that,” Madeleine said under her breath, as she rose and picked up her knapsack. “I know you’re not telling me everything. Something’s going on. All I know is you’re hot to talk to that exile, and I’m certain it’s connected to the girls. Or to re-infect.”

“Well, I do want to re-infect. But it’s because I’m curious about the archetypes that show up in the plague’s delirium. You know that,” Blair said, with a glance back toward her tarot table where her cards were strewn.

“Uh, huh.”

“Madeleine, maybe if we tried to talk to each other more—”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Nothing we could say would bring either one of them back, would it?”

Blair stood up and let Madeleine out. After she closed the door, she knocked her head against its cool surface a couple times. What Madeleine had said about her dream and the exile, Ed Spade; it was all true. She’d yearned to tell Madeleine something, to give her some hope, to see her cousin’s eyes light up again like they used to when they would play together as girls. But how could Blair raise Madeleine’s hopes only to dash them to pieces again.

She couldn’t. Not yet, anyway.

Ajax hopped down from his perch to the back of the chair where Madeleine had been sitting. On the antimacassar he left a little deposit, sidestepped and said, “Oh, for pity’s sake. Would you look at that?”

 

Complete manuscript available on request.