From Hell to Breakfast

by Meghan Tifft

  Nodding, Dracula grips his own fist as he swishes out the door. The drink in the other sloshes under its plastic lid.

  Some oncoming pedestrian skims up from his other side. “Nice hat.” For a moment, he thinks of the mailman, coming back the other way, but it isn’t. Dracula reaches for the hat. He can’t even tell if it’s there. His head right now feels like a chunk of freezer frost.

  Is he speaking to the man? He seems to have already said something. “It isn’t my hat,” he just said.

  The Puppet

  Lucinda senses a winking atmosphere at rehearsal today. Marty is dancing the puppet around the coffin. “You are what you eat,” says Marty’s puppet, in the voice of a pop celebrity. Lauren is actually winking. Lucinda is realizing something. The puppet looks an awful lot like Dracula. And her teacher looks an awful lot like Lauren’s mother.

  Lauren seems any second about to laugh with Rory over something. Lucinda finds all this disconcerting, all things considered.

  “Hey—remember the playbill I put up at your work?” Lauren flaps the new stack in her hand. “Somebody took it down.”

  “I don’t work there anymore,” Lucinda says.

  Lauren tilts a look at her—playful, like a puppy. “What are you so afraid of?”

  Lucinda’s heart opens like a mouth. It’s as if the question has never been asked of her before. It’s as if the question consumes her as it forms her. It’s as if the question is all there is.

  “It’s okay. I’m here,” says Lauren, mocking her with a patting hand. Lucinda sometimes thinks that Lauren knows all there is to know and has already foreseen Lucinda’s improbable truth—whatever that is. Lucinda hopes this is not in her head. She doesn’t know if it’s good or bad. Either way, there is some magic talisman that she clasps whenever she’s with Lauren.

  “Sorry,” she says, not knowing what she’s sorry for. Suddenly Lucinda wonders what Lauren thinks of her, what she believes about her and what she doesn’t. You are what you eat—were they all just making fun of her?

  Last night on the way home, Lauren made a point of bringing it up. “I noticed you didn’t eat any food at dinner.”

  “Oh,” said Lucinda, taken momentarily off guard. Lauren leaned pertly into the steering wheel—the one Lucinda usually saw Rory steering. Lucinda brushed at the suggestion. “I never really eat.” Was that okay to admit? As she said it she realized that she didn’t, at all. She hadn’t eaten anything in quite a long time. Those sunflower seeds the other day were just for show, to see if Vlad would notice the bag after she found it in the coffin. You are what you eat. As she looked at Lauren she felt her blood run colder.

  “You know what you need?” Lauren was looking back at the road.

  “What?” said Lucinda.

  “A sheath.”

  “A sheath?”

  “You’re always shivering like that.”

  Lucinda was already wearing a parka. And how did Lauren even see her shivering?

  “I’m surprised Marty hasn’t said anything. It’s not very angelic.”

  “Oh,” said Lucinda. “You mean—for my costume?” Marty liked the air to be cold as a brisk beach wind in the theater, and she was always shivering through rehearsal.

  That’s when Lauren gasped out a big smile. “I just thought of something.” Her eyes frolicked over Lucinda’s face.

  “What?”

  Lauren leaned forward. “It’s nine fifty. Can I take you? They’re still open.”

  Lucinda felt a familiar slamming of dread. “Where?”

  “It’s this shop. It would be so perfect for your costume.”

  “You mean—like something to wear?” She felt a moment’s relief realizing it was an item of wardrobe. Still, she was inclined to conjure a refusal. “Is it expensive?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Lauren. She winked. “I do this thing.”

  Lucinda watched her put on the turn signal.

  “You’ll see. Or maybe you won’t,” Lauren said, as if to answer a question Lucinda hadn’t asked. And that was how they ended up in Lucinda’s mother’s shop.

  As ever it had been, the pawn shop was in piss-poor condition. Lucinda’s mother presided over it like a cave of plundered loot, keeping sporadic hours and discouraging all but the most desperate specimens from bringing in their wares. It all looked the same—dodgy and picked over and random as a pimply face. Lucinda remembered when she was a child, having to go with her back and forth between the pawn shop and the bank and listening to those infinitely cryptic exchanges about money transfer and debt and accrual. Standing insensate under the hot and cold ozone of voices she would stare down at the waxed linoleum and will herself to pass into that skin of light where some other lost, insoluble version of herself welcomed her forever away from the adult world.

  “Well well well,” her mother said.

  Now Lucinda wasn’t even allowed in the shop.

  “Here you are,” her mother said.

  Lucinda crinkled her lip, as if at a bad smell. She couldn’t help herself. Not only was she unabashedly disgraced to be standing in the caged yellow light that had lately been a welcome forbiddance, but she was rankled by Lauren’s arms and elbows further jostling her from behind. “No,” she said, “I’m not—” Lucinda turned, trying to deflect both forces at once and ending up even more before her mother. She realized she was still angry. And inexplicably guilty. “I didn’t know Lauren was bringing me here.”

  She turned for Lauren and saw nothing but the playbill on a corkboard. Lauren had disappeared from sight.

  “Oh my God,” said Lucinda.

  Her mother put up her hands in a pantomime of confusion. “Who?” she said, “What?”, and her look stayed deliberately on Lucinda. She continued to smile. “How’s that boyfriend of yours?”

  Lucinda crossed her arms, shivering. “Fine,” she said.

  “Is he getting his exercise these days?”

  Lucinda knew when she was being needled.

  “You should get a birdfeeder,” her mother said. Then her mother thought this was very funny. “So, what are you eating these days?”

  Lucinda could feel the playbill behind her. She could feel its poster-weight heft curling out, its whiteness consuming all the space on the corkboard. “Nothing,” she said.

  “Well, why not, don’t you want to live?” It was such a direct question that Lucinda took it like a punch. “Who’s telling you not to eat?” said her mother.

  Lucinda shrugged. She didn’t think her mother really believed she wasn’t eating. She thought of the Russian, telling her over and over to eat, as if he was looking at her through a series of spy holes and just wanted to say it so she would know he saw everything. That was as good as telling her not to eat. She still doesn’t know why her not eating should be killing him, as he so cloyingly puts it.

  “Well—as long as you’re around,” her mother said into Lucinda’s silence, and it seemed like she was insinuating more than that with her phrasing. A little man with a cowl of dark hair was coming down the long counter with a box in his hand. “Meet Bruno. My new assistant.”

  Bruno gave her a tight nod. “Howdy ho.”

  Lucinda looked back over her shoulder. “Hi.” She felt like she was forgetting her manners. Was Lauren still here?

  “He’s coming to dinner Sunday.”

  “Yepsiree.” His little pipe-cleaner mustache on his serious face seemed like a joke. His brown suit was farcically big. Lucinda was losing her bearings. Was that actually a girl?

  “I have to go.” She was sure that Lauren had just left her in here. When she turned, the playbill lifted a coy corner.

  “So soon?” her mother said, but her tone had the familiar flint of eviction in it. “Why don’t you invite your friend to dinner?” she called after her. “The one with the granny sack and those sticky fingers?”

  Uh oh. Lucinda plucked the playbill down.

  “That’s pawn shop property now.”

  Outside Lucinda wa
s barely relieved. The idea of these two variations of herself, somehow alighting in mixed company, seemed swiftly obliterating. She’d be the bug at the lip of a flytrap. Her mother had an actual flytrap. It was one of those gruesome plants Lucinda liked to pluck the petals off of.

  Now Lucinda had pulled the playbill down twice—once at work and once here. It was satiny and fibrous, much like one of those predatory pods dangling over the clay pot—and then not.

  The keys and bill were now bunched in her pocket.

  She found Lauren waiting in the truck, her smile a big wet slice of triumph. Lucinda still didn’t know what joke had just blindsided her, or whether it was at her expense. Lauren tossed her ragamuffin sack in Lucinda’s lap and pulled into traffic. “Ha,” she said. Lucinda had forgotten what they had come in there for. Now looking at the ragamuffin sack she tried to still the spokes of spinning confusion. “Look inside,” said Lauren.

  Lucinda groped at the bag’s opening. “You took something?”

  “That’s my thing,” Lauren said. “There’s these two shops I love. Nobody ever notices me.”

  “That was my mother’s shop.” Lucinda wondered whether she felt disgraced or somehow vindicated by this—Lauren stealing from her mother.

  “Oh my gosh,” said Lauren, her eyes turning to black swarms in the streetlight. She was openly aghast and laughing. Was she actually? “I’m sorry. That’s so—the one you hate?”

  “I don’t”—Lucinda let a look of distaste bloom on her face and hoped it seemed more offended than that—“actually hate her.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”

  Lucinda brushed her off. She still wasn’t sure how convinced she was by Lauren’s performance. It somehow had her mother’s wiles written all over it. She opened the sack and pulled something out—a shawl—and watched it beam back the light of the street. “She invited you to dinner Sunday,” she said, her heart tolling. The shawl was slithery and warm. Or else the whirring pulse of her suspicions had heated her through. It was such a perfect seesaw of intrusion and dispensation, the conniving weave of her mother’s chaos. The air was now so temperate Lucinda couldn’t feel it. “I have a feeling you should come.”

  “If I can,” Lauren said. Her voice seemed to be dimming. “There’s going to be a lot of cleanup after the play and I signed up.”

  Lucinda’s eyelids began to droop. “Signed up?”

  “Marty passed around a sheet before you got there.”

  She should take the shawl off. Her mother often had this effect on her. Or maybe it was the shawl. She should take the shawl off.

  She couldn’t help thinking of her mother. The day she came barging in with Lucinda’s mail.

  “Okay missy,” she said. “Sit.”

  That was when Lucinda sat.

  Lucinda always cooperated when her mother told her to sit. Her mother told her to sit and then she tied Lucinda up. Lucinda has been tied up two or maybe three times. It was for her own good, her mother has said.

  She went looking through the apartment. Lucinda was pretty sure she knew for what.

  After a minute her mother scuffed across the hall. “That girl went missing,” she said, pointing to the mail she had plopped in Lucinda’s lap. There was a name there, Amory Sinclair or Current Resident. “I knew I recognized that name.”

  Lucinda stared at it. Recognized that name? Did she mean from Lucinda’s mail or somewhere else? She went missing? Did she mean from here?

  “You should be careful,” her mother said.

  What did that mean? Then her mother was in the bedroom for a while, riffling books.

  Lucinda couldn’t help thinking of Richard’s daughter. She didn’t like that he had said just the same thing to her the day before. She’s really missing.

  “Aha.” The startled spray of feathers had followed her mother’s invading footsteps. She had come to the bathroom. “You should keep this door closed.”

  Lucinda rolled her eyes.

  “It’s not healthy. Birds have germs.”

  “I know.”

  Her mother came out and looked at her. “I’m so mad at you,” she said. She sniffed. Either it was the birds or something else. “You can just untie yourself,” she finally said. “That dumb boyfriend will do it. Or I’ll let the neighbor in to help you.”

  “No,” said Lucinda.

  “He likes to hear himself talk, doesn’t he? Do you know him?” Her mother had gone to the window and was aiming a grimace out through the crack in the curtains now.

  “I don’t like him.”

  Her mother of course heard her. But she pretended not to.

  “Lucinda?”

  That was the last thing Lucinda heard in the car. The next thing she knew she was waking up in her own bed, a smell of burned rug around her. Lucinda slammed back the covers. What had just happened? The sound was atrocious, like a fish hitting linoleum. She’d heard that sound many times in her mother’s kitchen. Oh God. She stared across the room, her eyes landing right where Vlad, supposedly behind that closet door, was sitting like a corpse waiting to fall out on her. This was life.

  Now she went creeping from the bed on crackling feet, every bone popping. She was still wearing her flimsy costume. When she got to the hall door she was so severely swabbed by fear she went out like that, at a terrible slovenly slouch, frisking lights and slipsliding through an undisturbed apartment, looking for anything amiss or awry. How had she gotten here? It looked like dawn was gloaming through the curtains, cloudy and sepulchral. Lucinda went into the bathroom and found a half dozen stiff garments hanging on the fixtures and smelling of turpentine. She thought strickenly of the shawl. None of them was the shawl. A note on the mirror said, My bad. I’ll fix. She didn’t like it, but it was his handwriting. Fix what?

  In a slice of uncanny quiet, Lucinda opened the apartment door. Outside, she tried simply to breathe, hoping no one would see her.

  Of course, two surveillance cameras saw her plenty, giving dusty blinks from under the eaves. There were two others on her side of the courtyard, looking out just as she was. And, she knew, one vultured over the basement door on the ground floor, and one stared dumbly at the dumpster like a mute raccoon. Why so many? What was there to see? Nobody would have an inch to steal anything around here, she thought.

  Then she thought of her mother. Then the Russian had walked by. Then he was whistling.

  He made a big production in front of Lucinda of unlocking his door. She went back inside.

  The clock in front of her said three P.M. So that cloudy light outside was not dawn, she thought. She had slept through morning and much of the day.

  When it was time to go to rehearsal she put a note on the lampshade for Vlad and then went down to the parking lot to wait for Rory. The note told Vlad to take his shower right after he woke up, the excuse being that his four A.M. showers always woke her. Vlad’s four A.M. showers never woke her, and they both knew it. It was getting just that finite, her feints and calculations, the inane sliver of window she had for this deception. Lucinda was so sick of deception. She’d be so glad when the play was over.

  She stood slumped in the parking lot, shivering, like a girl who had to stand at the bus stop before dawn, hating the slow, leeching world. She didn’t even know if Rory was coming—considering the way things ended at his house. Then, he did, and she started to feel the scrim on that pane of misgiving vanish, like a fist rubbing out a breath of steam, the distance between her and the world smudging away, everything coloring slightly in the rosy flush of his cheeks as he puffed her a smile to tilt the coffin quietly, because they were doing it with only a rush and tumble of water between them and Dracula.

  “I’m that burly guy in a heist,” Rory muttered to her. He seemed oafishly sneaky and gleeful tonight. “He never notices it’s gone?” His lip curled in a babyish way.

  “No,” said Lucinda, looking away. “He keeps the closet closed.” Though she herself liked to open it.

  Outside Rory clippe
d the coffin around corners and strutted it down the steps. They went out to the truck. “You left this in here.” He held up a handful of cloth when she hoisted herself into the cab. “Lauren said it was yours.”

  “Oh, sorry,” said Lucinda, putting it on her lap, feeling a raw buzz in all her bones.

  “Act two rehearsals,” said Rory.

  “Here we come,” she said.

  “We’re almost there, people,” said Marty by way of greeting them. Then Lauren was arriving, just as it was starting.

  Now, while Marty performs his salutary antics with the puppet, Lauren answers Lucinda’s query: “I did carry you,” she whispers from behind her hand. “You were literally weightless.”

  Lucinda gawks at her. “You are what you eat,” says Marty’s puppet. Can she believe that?

  Lauren cracks a wider smile. “Just kidding. Rory helped,” she says. “I called him.”

  “Oh.” Lucinda doesn’t like that. It makes Rory’s giddiness tonight seem dodgy at best. Sitting a few people over in the circle, he has a dazed look of mirth on his face, like he wants to laugh at some joke he keeps retelling in his mind. “Were you there?” she implores. “What happened?”

  Lauren leans in. “Your boyfriend came home.”

  “What?” Lucinda says, too loudly. A few eyes dart her way. “Excuse me,” says Marty, but still in the voice of the puppet. “Aren’t I the only one here? I thought I was the only one here.”

  Lucinda can’t tell if it’s aimed at her or not. She gives Lauren a prodding look.

  “Rory had to park in the manager’s spot, so he brought you in and then went down again.” Lauren speaks behind her hand.

  “With my key?” Lucinda interrupts.

  “Then I was getting your shoes off and he came home.”

  “What time was this?” Lucinda says. What was he doing at home?

  “I don’t know. Like maybe eleven?”

  Lucinda can feel her heart sagging with each new detail. He was supposed to be at work last night. So he has been lying.

  “He was doing laundry. He went into the bathroom and I snuck out.” Lauren cringes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. You seemed fine or else I would have called an ambulance. Should I have told him?”