Leon nodded his head back over his shoulder. “Behind me.”
“You’re going to walk me there without calling attention to yourself,” she directed, training the gun on him.
In answer, Leon leaned against the wall of the corridor. “First you tell me who you are, and what you want with Nora,” he suggested.
Bonnie snickered. “Can’t you figure it out for yourself?”
“I’m kinda dumb that way. You tell me.”
“Why, drugs of course,” the woman drew in her breath. “Didn’t you find her cache? She took off about a week ago with a stash, and didn’t pay the cartel. So they sent me to recover the goods.”
“So she’s a small-time drug dealer and you’re the woman above her on the totem pole?”
“That’s how you could put it.”
“Liar,” Leon said flatly. “Liar. This isn’t some drug cartel payback. This is character assassination. Maybe starting to go beyond just character.”
The woman snorted. “So she’s been working her charms on you too, huh? I can imagine what kind of story she told you. Are you going to start moving or do I have to get nasty? I’ve got hollow point bullets in this gun, and they’ll rip your insides to shreds if I shoot you. It’s a bad way to die.”
Brother Leon scrutinized her, standing his ground. Despite her threats, he was fairly certain that the lady wasn’t going to fire that gun, which would alert everyone to their position. “What’s with the eyeshade?” he said easily. “You’re a little too eccentric, even for a bag lady.”
Not bothering to answer his question, she brandished the gun once more and said, “Move!”
Brother Leon went on the offensive again. Keep her talking. “Funny, I know quite a few drug dealers, and I find your story hard to believe. If you want to get rid of her, why the disguise and the fooling around with choker necklaces and perfume? Why not just take her out? In fact, why don’t you just take me out instead of letting me talk your ear off?”
“I was just asking myself that,” the woman said.
“I’ll tell you why,” Leon said, pointing at her. “Because you’re not a drug dealer any more than Nora is. You’re some high-class uptown lady and you’re trying to ruin this girl’s reputation for some reason of your own. And you’re trying to do it carefully so that you don’t get any stain on your own name.” He spread his hands. “I’m right. Aren’t I?”
“If I were you, I would be worrying about the consequences your run-down monastery will be suffering for harboring a criminal.”
“First of all, we’re a friary, not a monastery,” Brother Leon said, folding his arms. “Second of all, who is Nora that she’s such a threat to you?”
“None of your business.”
“Oh, if my brothers are going to be getting in trouble with the police for sheltering her, I think it’s our business.”
“And she’s your particular concern, isn’t she? And you’re just another man who’s fallen in love with her.”
Brother Leon stared at her, taken aback by the change in gears, but seeing the trap. “Well, you’re wrong,” he said. “I haven’t.” He was glad he had been reading his own heart on this subject, and he knew, as he said it, that it was true.
“So blind, so blind!” Bonnie purred. “Don’t you know what beautiful women do?”
“Manipulate men, you mean?”
“But of course. That’s how the game is played. The great war game between the sexes.”
“It’s no war, and it’s no game,” Brother Leon said. He was watching her carefully, and listening. She couldn’t get out without getting past him. He wondered if he dared to tackle her with the gun, but he didn’t quite trust that he would be quick enough.
“Then perhaps you’ve met very few really lovely women. Perhaps that’s why you’re in a monastery in the first place,” the lady hissed.
“Friary,” Brother Leon automatically corrected her as he gauged himself. With a quick prayer, he seized a nearby desk and half-shoved, half-threw it toward Bonnie, ducking as he did so. As he had guessed, she didn’t fire the gun, just dodged. Then she got behind a stack of metal school desks jutting out from the wall and shoved them towards him with vehemence. The stack teetered.
Ho boy, Mother Mary…were his last thoughts as the metal pile came crashing down on him. He had just enough time to throw up his arms to shield his head from the onslaught. The noise of ten desks hitting the floor in three seconds was deafening.
III
“You want me to drop you off here?” Rose sounded puzzled as Bear pulled over to the side of the curb.
“Yes.” Bear turned off the car and tossed the keys to Rose. “Go and get Fish out of his lecture. Tell him it’s very important and to meet me back here.” He grabbed the suit jacket he had worn to Mass and got out of the car into the sweaty heat of the New York evening. Darkness was coming on fast.
“Okay,” Rose tried to sound cheerful as she slid into the driver’s seat and fumbled around for the seat adjustment. “Are you sure you can’t tell me what this is all about?”
“I probably can later on, but there is someone I need to speak to first,” Bear said. “Sorry I can’t be more specific.” He didn’t want to talk about this until he had actually done it.
“That’s okay,” Rose said. She slid the seat forward several inches until she could reach the pedals. “Boy, are you tall!” She pulled away, leaving him on the sidewalk to stare at the great house, alone.
This was where Blanche had been making her visits, and he had never known. Why hadn’t he persisted in asking her more about it? Did she know? How could she not know?
Somehow or other he made his way up the steps to the regal front door. But once there, he stood, looking from side to side, unsure as to whether or not he should go further.
Hardened with a new resolve, he rang the doorbell. He hadn’t been here for a long time—a year? Two years? No, he realized now it had been almost four years. That had been back when...He swallowed and stopped the memory by ringing the bell again.
No one was coming to the door. He glanced upwards and saw a light on in one of the upstairs rooms.
When another two minutes had gone by without an answer to the doorbell, he pulled out his key ring and carefully picked through it. He never threw away keys, but all the same, it had been so long ago that he might have gotten rid of this key, since he had been sure he would never come back here again. The situation had seemed so hopeless. He found the key.
Still, they might have changed the lock. Sliding it into the door, he turned it and heard a click. The outer door opened.
He stepped inside the long narrow entranceway that led to the internal door of the house—an oversized black door with a stained glass window, a golden coil snaking through huge red poppies. Through the clear glass surrounding the flowers, he could see the staircase and hallway beyond. There was no sign of life within. He walked down the short corridor to the door, wondering as he did whether he was tripping burglar alarms. He didn’t care.
Below the door window was a long brass plate that read THE FAIRSTONS.
For a moment, he paused, taken aback. Was this the right house? Then he figured it out: Fairston. His father must have amalgamated his name with that of his second wife’s, something Bear supposed was a trendy New York thing to do. Instead of Fairchild-Denniston, just Fairston.
No wonder Blanche hadn’t made the connection—nor had he or Fish. He knocked on this door, just in case. Once again, no answer.
He took out the matching door key and unlocked the door. “Hello?” he called cautiously.
Inside, the air conditioning made the house frigid after the warm oven outside, and he shivered and shrugged on the jacket. Only the overhead chandelier lit the cold darkness, three stained-glass lotus-shaped flowers dripping orange glass tendrils over his head. He looked around at the staircase, the door leading into the downstairs office, and then met his own eyes in a huge mirror to his left.
That hadn’t been
there before. He stared at the vast mirror, festooned with stained-glass ornaments of dragonflies and red fire flowers. It was nearly ten feet high, and its shiny surface reflected mainly the shadows of the rest of the dim interior, the reflection of the lotus lamp blending into the mirror’s other adornments. His father’s second wife had always had a thing for stained glass, he remembered now, though she hadn’t cared for churches at all.
“Hello?” he called again, and paused, listening. There was only the faint murmur of the air conditioning. Quickly, he walked down the passageway to the kitchen. There was a light on over the stove, but the rest of the kitchen was dark. He could see that someone had had a meal recently—dirty dishes on a tray sat beside the sink. Fresh yellow bananas sat on the counter, and an apple peel was left on the kitchen table. He guessed the servants still came in every morning, to clean up. His dad never cleaned house, and Bear couldn’t imagine his second wife doing so.
He opened the door to the garage and peered inside. Two cars sat in the garage, with space for a third. The garage doors opening on the back alley were tightly shut. No sign of life.
Shutting the door, he paced down the hallway towards the light at the other end, past several doors into a little sitting room that opened into the dark living room. There was a reading light on, and a fashion magazine was overturned on a coffee table.
It was a small room, but with marble tables, angular statues, sculptured metal lamps, lots of hard metal surfaces, more impressive than comfortable. His mother had never lived here—this had been the home his father had purchased after their separation. Painful memories welled up too quickly.
He had to see his father, but he didn’t like this place. It was almost as if there was a peculiar smell in the place that made him queasy. Unfortunately, it was all too familiar—that unpleasant feeling in his stomach.
But your past has a hold on you. Blanche had told him in her last letter. Do you think that maybe you can’t find peace because, on some level, you won’t forgive? Though she might not have made her observations in a way that motivated him to change, she had been right about this.
“Hello?” he called once more, loudly, this time.
He listened hard, for the sound of the television, anything. There was silence, except for the usual vibrations of the City beyond the well-insulated walls that shielded the dwellings of the wealthy from the outside clamor. Now he became uneasy. Didn’t anyone hear him? Why wasn’t someone coming? Was there no one here, after all?
Finally, he stepped through an archway into the adjoining living room, and began prowling through the darkness, searching for light, for sound. He made his way to the windows and tried to look out, but couldn’t figure out the drapes. Giving up, he looked back at the lighted sitting room. All was stillness.
His eyes began to adjust to the darkness of the living room. The shelves on the walls had once held books, he remembered, but now he saw the outlines of various objects d’art, probably of the woman’s choosing. They had certainly remodeled this house since he had last been there. No surprise.
He moved toward a second wide archway. Before, this room adjoining the living room had been the music room. Cautiously he stepped inside the deeper darkness.
There had once been a piano here, and he had spent some of his lonely hours in this unbearable house here, working on piano lessons. Playing music had been a distraction with some satisfaction, an excuse to numb his outer senses to concentrate on those fascinating patterns of notes and bars. Bear put out a hand and touched smooth wood. The piano was still here. He caught a whiff of the smell of ivory and dusty innards, and lemon oil, and memories closed around him swiftly, inexorably. It made him want to run, but he stood his ground stolidly. He had hated it, hated the long corridors and stuffy interiors of this house, where everything was silence and secrecy and lies.
* * *
Trying to put his life together again, after prison. Sitting next to his brother on the couch in the living room behind him. His father, tight-lipped, standing before him, lecturing his sons about probation and accountability and curfews. “If you’re going to live in this house, I am going to expect high standards of behavior from both of you.” Arthur had listened, rather sarcastically thinking what a paragon of morality his father had suddenly become.
That had been his first day home from prison, also the day he discovered that the same blond woman he had caught with his father was now living with him. Although they were still not married, she had become a fixture in his life. She had begun to take possession of the house, rearranging things. Talking about plans for extensive renovations. Returning home blissfully from shopping with his father’s credit cards.
Arthur couldn’t figure out if it was moral for him and his brother to live with them. His father’s affair was about as interesting to him as one of the sordid soap operas the blond woman followed with professional interest, having once been an actress in television and off-Broadway plays. His father was fascinated with her. She wanted to start an investment firm, like the one his dad owned, but more “cutting edge.” She and his father discussed marketing strategies constantly. Arthur and his brother tried to tune it out as much as they could. They were preoccupied with far more visceral matters.
His last afternoon at the house, he had had a fever. His brother had been at a GED class, and his father was at work. Arthur had been playing the piano, but the melody he had been attempting to recreate had faltered into dull silence, and he was leaning on the piano lid, staring at nothing. His health hadn’t been great since his mother had died. The grief had become an ache that surfaced in bouts with the flu, and resulted in a sort of mental paralysis, where he would sit for long periods, doing nothing, half dozing, half aware.
His motionlessness must have made him invisible, because he had woken up to hear the blond woman in the next room, talking on the phone. He could see her long curving leg bouncing on her knee as she chattered, sitting on a cushioned chair. He buried his head in his arms to escape looking at her, though he could still hear her voice.
“Yes, it’s finally about to happen. I’m about to become a sinfully wealthy woman.”
The sluggishness of gloom was still infecting his mind, and he hadn’t quite understood.
“… Now that his wife’s really out of the picture, things are finally moving. Yes, it’s been almost a year. That annoying little woman. She kept hanging on forever, too. Fortunately for me there’s no cure for cancer.”
She laughed, apparently at someone else’s joking response. Her voice made his skin crawl.
“Yes, as soon as he makes the vows, I’m getting the company up and going. Yes, he’s promised to fund everything. I can’t wait.”
When the woman hung up the phone and rose from the chair, he didn’t want to move and let her know that he had heard. Anger surged through him, followed swiftly by a wave of hopelessness. Part of him cynically said if Dad wants to marry a fortune hunter, let him. But part of him grieved for the father he had once believed in and insisted that he not keep silent.
All this time, he was straining his ears, trying to figure out where the woman had gone. In the insulated silence of that house, it was difficult to know if she was still in the living room or if she had left.
At last, he had slowly lifted his head, to see her standing in the doorway watching him. A smile flitted around her red lips when she saw his expression.
“Go ahead and tell him. Your father’s never going to believe you,” she had taunted.
That night, his father had called Arthur into his home office and confronted him with the marijuana he had found in his son’s room. His face was taut. “I see I still can’t trust you.”
Arthur set his jaw, knowing that it was useless. After all, his father hadn’t believed him the first time. But he said it anyway. “It’s not mine.”
His father raised his eyebrows. He was turning red, which told Arthur that his father was dangerously angry, even though his tone was civil. “Just like the crack
in your locker was not yours.”
“Yes.”
His father fumed. “Young man, tomorrow, I am checking you into rehab.”
I’m not going,” he said obstinately. “I’m not a user.”
“Oh really? Then how do you explain these joints?”
And just as before, his father hadn’t listened to his explanations. Now he started interrupting and talking back to his son, as though he were another teenager. “So why are you trying to blame all of this on Elaine, Arthur? Trying to spread the guilt around? You pretend to be so religious, and all I see is sneaking and lies.”
Something snapped inside Arthur, and he turned on his dad. “You only see what you want to see! You didn’t want to see how you were hurting Mom. You don’t want me on your conscience, so you pretend you don’t know me. You won’t see your sin, so you won’t see anything.”
“Shut up!” his father barked. “I’ve had enough of your dramatics!”
There was silence while his dad ran his hands through his silvered hair in frustration, and Arthur threw himself back down in his chair.
At last his father got up, walked over to him and looked him in the face, his eyes cold. “I will tell you this, son. You are not getting one single penny from me from this moment forth unless you go to rehab. You can’t stay in this house until you decide that you will. I am freezing all your bank accounts, I am taking away your checkbook, you are getting zip, nothing from me. Nada. You understand?”
He looked back at his dad. “You can’t take away the money I got from Mom,” he said, and regretted it as soon as he had said it.
“I most certainly can. I have control of those assets until you’re twenty-one.” His father walked away, then swung around and added, “And that goes for Ben too. You two might as well be the same person—he does everything you do.”
“That’s not fair! Ben has nothing to do with this!” Arthur exclaimed.
“A jury found you both guilty,” his father shot back.