Jane, Unlimited

  “It’s damned amusing, you getting all huffy about provenance,” says Octavian. “I know what you’re up to with your mother. How do you explain the provenance of the art she supplies you with?”

  Ravi peers at Octavian without expression. Crosses his arms. “There’s no reason to do a provenance study on the Brancusi,” he says coolly. “Vanny and I know everywhere it’s been since Brancusi created it.”

  “Well, surely you don’t think someone stole it?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Ravi says, swiping a hand through wet hair and turning away from his father. “It’s not like you not to care. You used to be a normal person, who slept normal hours, and had normal conversations, and loved the art as much as I do, and gave a shit.”

  “Watch your language,” says Octavian sharply.

  “Whatever,” says Ravi. “At least you give a shit about something. I’m tired and cold. I’m going to bed.”

  The courtyard has its own matching interior staircases, on the east and west sides, that rise to the top floor. Ravi chooses one and begins to climb.

  After a moment, his father takes the pipe from his mouth and says, “Welcome home, son.”

  Ravi stops climbing. He doesn’t turn around to face his father, but he says, “How’s Mum?”

  “Your mother is tiptop, of course,” says Octavian. “She always is. What did Patrick need that kept you out so late? Brooding again? Affairs of the heart?”

  Ravi breathes a laugh and doesn’t answer. “He’s a silent brooder, you know that. How’s Kiran?”

  “Your sister has not yet deigned to visit me.”

  “Well, you don’t make it easy, you know, with your vampiric hours. And Charlotte?”

  A draft touches Jane’s throat, making her shiver. “Your stepmother is still away,” Octavian says sadly, glancing up at the glass ceiling and showing Jane, suddenly, where Kiran gets her snub nose, her broad face. Then Octavian turns and wanders through the north arches into a part of the house Jane hasn’t seen yet.

  Ravi continues to climb, his footsteps echoing. The house seems to settle into a sigh around the aloneness of the two men. A long, deep breath.

  Jane knows Ravi’s rooms are near hers on the third floor, but he stops at the second floor and disappears into the bowels of the house. Interesting, thinks Jane, remembering that Lucy St. George introduced herself as Ravi’s girlfriend, “so to speak.” Whatever that means.

  She’s trying to decide where to go next when Jasper appears, making small whining noises at her and hopping.

  “Shush,” Jane whispers to him, bending down to soothe him.

  He moves closer to the main staircase that leads down to the receiving hall, and whimpers again. He seems to be trying to lure her to those stairs. “Do you need to go outside, Jasper?” she whispers, going with him, beginning to follow him down the stairs.

  The spotlights are no longer turning on as Jane moves. It’s quite dark. She follows Jasper’s low, black, descending shadow, clings to the banister, and wishes she’d paid more attention to the location of light switches earlier.

  Jasper stops on the second-story landing so suddenly that she walks into him and loses her balance, tumbling against the banister, grabbing on to it with a gasp. When she pushes herself back toward the nice, solid wall, Jasper trots around behind her and begins to head-butt her calves over and over.

  Everyone is bonkers, Jane thinks. “Jasper,” she whispers, swatting at him. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Before her, dimly, Jane recognizes the huge oil painting she was admiring earlier, the painting of the house interior with the umbrella left open to dry on the checkered floor. Jasper is still head-butting her. “Enough!” she whispers. “Knock it off, screwball!” She starts down the next flight of steps, but he makes an urgent yipping noise behind her. She turns back. “What? What is it?” but she can barely see him, and when she climbs back up to the landing, he’s gone.

  Jane turns up the steps, wondering if maybe he’s returned to the third floor. But she doesn’t find him again. She’s just decided to return to her rooms when a figure appears across the way, gliding past the opposite archways, then out of sight.

  Ravi again? Or maybe Octavian the Fourth?

  No. It looked like Philip Okada, Phoebe’s germophobic, Chuck Taylors–wearing husband. Jane hears a door swing open and closed and recognizes it as the door to the servants’ wing.

  What business does Philip Okada have going into the servants’ quarters at four-something in the morning?

  On impulse, she rounds the perimeter of the courtyard and slips silently into the servants’ wing. There’s no sign of Philip. She’ll be spotted if anyone comes out of a room, unless she manages to dive into one of the small side hallways in time. Holding her breath, she tiptoes along and sets herself to the lunatic task of resting her ear against doors.

  Nothing. Door after door after door, the only thing she hears is nothing. The servants of Tu Reviens are enviable sleepers. She puts her ear to the door she knows is Ivy’s. Also nothing. She’s as relieved as she is ashamed of herself. I hardly know her. It’s none of my business what she does or whom she does it with and I shouldn’t be sneaking around spying on her. What is wrong with me? She moves back into the main corridor, determined to return to bed.

  Suddenly, a door opens and light spills out from a small hallway near the end of the main corridor. Jane freezes, then jumps into a nearby side hallway and flattens herself against the wall where she can’t be seen.

  “You’ll have to stay there until the final phase,” says a deep voice Jane recognizes. Patrick Yellan.

  “While not knowing where I am?” says the English-accented voice of Philip Okada, dryly. “Won’t that be lovely.”

  “Be grateful for it,” says Patrick. “The less information you have, the safer you are.”

  “Yes, yes,” says Philip. “Who doesn’t like a mystery holiday in a room with no windows?”

  “Not everyone is swallowing the story you’re putting out,” says a third voice, female, brusque, English-accented. Phoebe Okada.

  “Don’t worry about it,” says Patrick.

  “When it involves the safety of my husband?” says Phoebe sharply. “Go to hell, Patrick.”

  “We’ll handle it,” says Patrick roughly.

  The voices are receding. Jane, not entirely in her right mind, can’t help herself: She edges out of her hiding place and directs one eye into the corridor. The three conspirators are at the far end, passing through the big wooden door that leads to the west attics. Patrick is in front. Phoebe is next, wrapped in a pale green, silky robe. Philip Okada brings up the rear, still wearing his blue suit, carrying a plush white bag with orange ducks on it, and holding a gun.

  The door closes behind them. Jane turns and dashes out of the servants’ quarters, heart racing. While she was in the west attics earlier, she saw a spire through the big windows, somewhere in the east wing. She wonders now if she might be able to see into the west attics from that spire.

  Starting around the atrium, Jane barrels headlong into the dog, then falls over him, trying not to cry out or crush him. Scrambling to her feet, she tries to get around him, push him away, but he’s head-butting her again and his low center of gravity makes him stick in place like a tree stump.

  “Jasper! Move!” Jane whispers, then accidentally steps on one of his toes. He squeals.

  “Sorry!” Jane whispers. “Sorry!”

  He barks.

  “Jasper-Bear?” rises a voice from below. “You okay? Come here, boy.”

  It’s Ravi, climbing the courtyard steps from the second level. “Yes,” Jane whispers to Jasper, “go bark at someone who’s not trying to be stealthy. Hey!” she cries as the dog takes her pajama leg in his mouth and starts pulling. Jane grabs her waistband as it slides down her hip. “What are you trying to do, pants
me?”

  “Who the hell are you?” says Ravi, behind Jane, out of breath from running the rest of the way up the stairs. “And what are you doing to my dog?”

  “Your precious dog is mauling my pajamas,” Jane retorts, not even looking around. “Jasper! Stop it, or I won’t take any more pictures of you with the umbrellas!”

  “Oh, hell,” Ravi says, “a weirdo. My mother didn’t bring you here, did she? Oh, god, I don’t even want to know where you’re from.”

  “Your sister brought me here,” Jane says, “and your dog is the weirdo.”

  Jasper, who’s finally released Jane, now stares at her reproachfully. Then he turns and marches away.

  “That dog may be weird,” says Ravi, “but he’s still my dog.”

  Turning to Ravi, Jane finds that shadowy, predawn light suits him. Spectacularly. Ravi is tall and solid, electric, with scowly eyebrows and a face that flashes with feeling. He’s got dramatic white streaks in his hair too, surely premature, since he’s Kiran’s twin.

  “You’re sure my mother didn’t bring you here?” Ravi says. “You look like you’d be one of her projects, not Kiran’s.”

  “I’m my own project, thank you very much,” Jane says coldly.

  This startles a smile onto his face. “Ravi,” he says, holding out a hand. He’s shivering, but his hand is warm.

  “Janie,” she says. She decides not to tell him about Patrick and the Okadas and the gun. She has no idea where anyone fits in here.

  She falls into step with him, walking down the east corridor. He has a grin that’s never more than a few words away and eyes that are careful to catch hers frequently. He carries his motorcycle helmet under one arm. He smells like wet leather.

  “You haven’t seen a fish sculpture anywhere, have you?” he says. “Looks a little like a squashed bean, on a mirrored pedestal?”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar,” Jane says.

  “I like your Doctor Who pajamas,” he says. “Which Doctor do you favor?”

  “I like the companions,” says Jane automatically.

  “Sure,” says Ravi, “who doesn’t? But I think I’d go for Ten. Ten is yummy. And youthful.”

  “The Tenth Doctor was nine hundred and three years old,” says Jane loftily.

  “Well, yeah, but Ten was youthful in spirit,” Ravi says. “Yeesh. Do you let anything past?”

  Before they get to their rooms, he stops at an unusual door Jane hasn’t yet noticed. It’s wooden and arched, with a doormat that reads WELCOME TO MY WORLDS. It has a mail slot and a bellpull and it occurs to Jane that it may be the entrance to the east spire.

  “I feel like I’m in a Winnie-the-Pooh story,” Jane says.

  Ravi grins again and says, “Those are favorites of mine. Someday, somewhere, I’ll meet a Heffalump.” Then he slips his hand inside his coat and pulls out one perfect nasturtium blossom. He pushes it through the mail slot and lets it fall through.

  Together, Jane and Ravi walk on. “G’night then,” he says, retreating into the room right before hers, yawning mightily.

  “G’night,” she responds, as much to Captain Polepants as to Ravi, who’s already gone.

  * * *

  There’s no point trying to get any more sleep now that she’s seen what she’s seen. Philip with a gun. Patrick, who’s Ivy’s brother. Patrick, who keeps telling Kiran he has something to confess, but never confesses. Ivy, who clammed up yesterday whenever Philip was around, or whenever Jane asked her what should have been innocuous questions.

  Jane finds a clear wedge of yellow shag carpet near the morning room windows and lies down. She needs to think. The moon is smaller now, higher, paler than it was before, a slice of apple. Slowly it slides out of her view. The sky lightens and dissolves the stars.

  No matter how many times she goes over the conversation, she can’t make sense of it. Philip is going somewhere and it’s dangerous. Philip is going somewhere, but he doesn’t know where? Patrick and someone else have put out a story that not everyone’s buying. Okay. A story about what?

  Phoebe and Philip had been playacting at dinner; Jane had suspected it, and now she’s sure of it. Pretending to care about Kiran and her job. Pretending to care about the Panzavecchias. Pretending to be snobbish about Jane and her aunt.

  Is the Panzavecchia story the one that not everyone’s buying? It’s true that Lucy St. George isn’t buying it. But what could Patrick and the Okadas have to do with a bank robbery, the Mafia, and a pair of missing socialites?

  There’s the missing Brancusi too. How does that fit in?

  Jane wonders, suddenly, if she’s being naïve; if it’s normal for rich people in fancy houses to walk around with guns. This is the USA, after all; judging by the news, doesn’t every third person have a gun? Maybe what’s remarkable is that she’s never seen anyone casually carrying a gun before this.

  Then again, aren’t the Okadas British? Do Brits wander around with guns?

  Why would Patrick, who’s a servant, be in charge of whatever’s going on? And if Patrick is in charge of something underhanded . . . does Kiran know? And what does it mean about Ivy? About all her strange moments of deliberate nonchalance?

  It depresses Jane to think about that. She doesn’t want reasons not to trust Ivy.

  Breathe, Aunt Magnolia would say. Wait. Let it settle. The pieces will start to fit together in a way that makes sense. And be careful, my darling.

  What would an umbrella look like if it were a mystery? Jane wonders suddenly. Even better, what if it were a weapon of self-defense?

  The ferrule, the tips, and the rod would be sharp. The springs would be tightly wound so that the canopy opened hard and fast like a blow from a shield.

  “And I’ll choose shades of brown and gold that suit Jasper,” Jane mutters as she rolls up onto her feet.

  An hour later, she’s trimming down the diameter of a birch rod using the lathe, wearing goggles and a heavy canvas apron, when she hears someone explode through her outer door. She pushes her goggles up into her dark curls.

  Ravi looms in the morning room doorway, wearing black silk pajama bottoms and nothing else. It’s impossible not to stare.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he yells, wincing at the light. “Do you know what time it is? Do you appreciate that I’m sleeping on the other side of the wall? My mother brought you here from a hell dimension!”

  “You seem obsessed with your mother,” says Jane. “Have you considered therapy?”

  He moans, rubbing his face. “No one would believe the truth about my mother.”

  “Mm-hm,” says Jane. “Is that because it’s your own special truth?”

  “What the hell are you building?”

  “An umbrella,” says Jane.

  “Are you kidding me?” he says, then sweeps his hand out in a gesture that encompasses the entire room. “You aren’t satisfied that there are enough umbrellas?”

  “I make umbrellas,” Jane says, shortly. “It’s . . . what I do.”

  Wearily, he rubs his head. His white-streaked hair must’ve been wet when he lay down, for it’s dried in a funny orientation, flat and sticking out to the right, like it’s secretly trying to point Jane in that direction without him knowing. “You know, I think Patrick mentioned you last night,” he says.

  “Patrick talks about a lot of things,” says Jane significantly.

  Ravi scrunches his nose. “Maybe to you,” he says. “He’s the strong, silent type to me.”

  “He’s never . . . confessed anything to you?”

  “That’s a really odd question,” says Ravi. “Why, did he confess something to you? Didn’t you literally just meet him, like, yesterday?”

  “Yeah. Never mind.”

  “I think Kiran mentioned you too.”

  “Wow, you must know everything about me,” Jane says, with a touch
of sarcasm that alarms her. Ravi is a college graduate, an heir to the Thrash fortune, but he doesn’t make her feel like a child. He makes her feel like she might be about to do something unwise.

  “Do you hate me or something?” he says, grinning.

  “I’m working,” says Jane.

  “Yes,” he says. “On umbrellas, at five thirty in the morning.”

  “You’re interrupting.”

  He’s looking around the room now with curiosity. “You made all these umbrellas?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “What do you mean, how?”

  “Well, how does one build an umbrella? What’s the first step?”

  “I don’t know,” says Jane. “You could start a few different ways. I’m not, like, an expert.”

  “As an art appreciator,” he says, “I’m curious.”

  “Well,” Jane says in confusion, “I mean, you can watch if you want.”

  He sighs, then yawns, then marches out, then marches back in again, wrapping the blanket from Jane’s bed around himself. He weaves his way through the saws, umbrella parts, and umbrellas to the striped sofa Jane has pushed against the back wall, then settles himself down. For the next couple of hours, he alternates sleeping on her sofa with waking grouchily to the noises of her saws and asking intelligent questions about umbrella-making. “How do you keep the ribs from rubbing through the canopy after repeated openings?” he mumbles, then grasps his hair. “Christ. I keep dreaming about that damn Panzavecchia baby. Little Leo, you know?”

  “I insert a small piece of fabric between the joints and the canopy as a buffer,” Jane says, focusing hard on the work of her fingers. “It’s called a prevent.”

  He’s already half-asleep again. Jane notices, through her absorption, that his cleverness fades from his face when he’s sleeping. She wonders if she’s wrong to believe that he’s ignorant of the Patrick stuff.

  “And yeah,” she says, speaking to herself. Speaking to the house, which groans back at her. “I dreamt about him too.”