The After-Room

by Mailie Meloy

  “It’s convenient timing, right?” Benjamin said. “Kind of a coincidence?”

  “Well, except that they’re trying to get work all the time. So maybe now is just when it happened.”

  Benjamin frowned. “I hope so. I don’t trust coincidences.”

  “Do you have any of those mushrooms that help with languages?”

  “Two small ones,” he said. “They won’t do much.”

  Just then she remembered the straw in the hospital room, and the beaker on the lab shelf.

  “Benjamin, look!” she whispered. She held up her hand and concentrated on the telegram on the table. It was harder to do it with Benjamin watching—it made her self-conscious. But after a moment, the piece of paper trembled as if there were a breeze in the room, then slid across the table into her hand. She pinched it with her thumb and forefinger, feeling a wild exultation.

  His eyes widened. “How did you do that?”

  “I’ve been practicing,” she said. “To distract myself, when I get upset. Try it!” She put the telegram down.

  Benjamin stared at the piece of paper, and held up his hand to summon it, but nothing happened.

  “I couldn’t do it at first, either,” she said.

  Benjamin glared harder at the telegram.

  “Janie!” her father called from upstairs. “Benjamin! Come pack!”

  They spent the evening getting ready to close up the house, her parents gleeful and frantic. Janie tried to make sure Benjamin didn’t stand near any windows, and couldn’t be seen from the street. They ate a picnic dinner of all the perishable food in the house: the rest of the soup, cheese with apples, an open box of crackers, a loaf of bread.

  Janie slept badly that night, drifting in and out of dreams in which the blue sedan kept appearing around every corner. Then her father was shaking her awake, singing, “Oh, what a beautiful morn-ing! Oh, what a beautiful day!”

  Janie groaned and pulled the covers over her head.

  “Up!” he said. “Arrivederci, baby!”

  “Mmph,” she said. “That means good-bye.”

  Then it all came back: Joey the Haberdasher. The Bel Air. The telegram. Rome. She struggled out of bed. She found the jar of powder and considered throwing it into the fireplace, or pouring it down the drain, but instead she stashed it in her suitcase with her hairbrush and toothpaste. You never knew.

  The sun hadn’t risen when they climbed into the taxi. Benjamin wore a wool cap pulled down low over his eyebrows and his collar up. The taxi took them to the airport, where Janie was seized by nervousness as they presented their passports. She couldn’t believe that the ticket agent would really think this English boy was her cousin, Benjamin Scott. But the agent smiled and sent them right through, saying, “Buon viaggio.”

  On the plane, Janie looked at every one of the other passengers as she found her seat. When she was sure the man with the dark glasses wasn’t on board, she bunched her jacket up against the window and went back to sleep.

  Chapter 20

  At Sea

  Ned Maddox’s boat, hidden in the mangrove swamp, was deliberately ragged and patched-together, to blend in among the working boats in Chinese waters, but it was also fast and seaworthy, with a small berth in the bow where two people could comfortably sleep. It was the perfect boat in which to move unnoticed, and Jin Lo wondered again at the fact that she had washed up on Ned Maddox’s beach, of all the possible beaches.

  They loaded the lockers with provisions and fuel cans and blankets and warm clothes. Jin Lo coiled her hair up under a hat, to look more like a boy. Ned Maddox backed the boat out of its hiding place, turning it toward the sea when the inlet became wide enough. He would have to stay hidden much of the time—as a foreigner, he would draw attention.

  “What if we’re stopped?” he asked. “What’s our story?”

  “I am bringing my American husband to meet my family in Beijing,” she said.

  An uncomfortable look crossed Ned Maddox’s face. He pushed the throttle forward, and the boat started to lift and plane, heading north toward Hangzhou and the mouth of the Grand Canal. The sun was setting over China, all orange haze. Fish raced beneath them, going about their business, knowing nothing of the stolen bomb that could poison their waters for years to come.

  Chapter 21

  Cinecittà

  When the Scotts and Benjamin changed planes in New York, Janie again surveyed the passengers for the man in the dark glasses, or for anyone who might be watching them with sinister intent. But no one was, as far as she could tell. The other passengers were all absorbed in their own travels. She told herself to stop worrying and to be proud of her parents for getting a job at exactly the right time.

  Her father, meanwhile, was acting like a starry-eyed kid. “Italian cinema is the best thing happening in film right now,” he said. “You have to see I Vitelloni.”

  “What’s it about?” Janie asked.

  “Youth,” he said. “Young men. Boredom.”

  “Sounds great,” Benjamin said, in a voice that said it didn’t.

  “Don’t be smart,” her father said. “It’s also about finding a moral compass. You might find it useful.”

  Janie said, “You’re usually so cynical about show business.”

  “A film like that is art!” he said. “And you’ll find I’m much less cynical when I have a job.”

  They arrived at Ciampino Airport rumpled and tired, and her parents went looking for their bags. As they walked through the terminal, Benjamin passed Janie the two small dried mushrooms that made languages easier to learn.

  “You keep one,” she whispered.

  “They’ll do you more good,” he said. “One’s not really enough.”

  Her mother turned. “Don’t dawdle,” she called.

  Janie popped the mushrooms into her mouth and chewed.

  A taxi carried them the short distance to the studio. The streets were dusty and scrawled with graffiti. Many of the walls of buildings were crumbling at the corners. Strange smells came through the open windows of the cab, not all of them good.

  Her father tried to talk to the driver, and the mushrooms made the mangled, enthusiastic sentences intolerable to Janie. “Vamos a hacer un film, qui!” he said.

  “Dad, that’s mostly Spanish,” she said.

  “He understands me.”

  “Yes,” the driver said. “I understands!” But really, he wanted to practice his English, so they were spared her father’s Italian.

  The studio had a high wall with a gate in it, and inside, a receptionist gave them directions. The buildings were all painted the same brown and reminded Janie of huge cardboard boxes, lined up in rows. The only buildings that looked real were fake: a city street set with storefronts and apartments, held up by scaffolding behind.

  An actor walked by in a dark suit, his face an unnatural orange, with tissues tucked into his stiff white collar to protect it from his makeup. He gave Janie a brilliant smile. “Ciao,” he said, in a deep, warm voice.

  Benjamin, who’d seemed asleep on his feet, came fully awake, and looked from the actor to Janie.

  “Um, ciao,” she said, taken aback.

  “Hey, that’s my daughter, chum!” her father said.

  The actor reached out and shook her father’s hand. “Complimenti,” he said. “Good job.” He gave Janie’s mother a wolfish grin, too, then turned back to look at Janie again as he passed.

  Her face felt hot. Benjamin watched the actor go.

  “Welcome to Italy,” her mother said wryly.

  A short, silver-haired man in a green suit came rushing out of the nearest cardboard-box building. “Buon giorno!” he cried. “I signori Scott! Benvenuto!” He kissed her mother on both cheeks and pumped her father’s hand.

  Then he turned to Janie and clasped her hand in both of his. She was surp
rised to feel him slip her a piece of paper, unseen. “Come stai, carina?” he asked. “I am Tonino Clementi. Call me Tony. Your parents are saving my film. Let me show you where you live! Did you keep your taxi?”

  “Our bags are in it,” her father said.

  “Wonderful!” he said. “Come!”

  He rushed off toward the studio gate, and her parents followed.

  Janie unfolded the piece of paper. It was a handwritten note:

  Welcome to Rome! Hope all suits. Tomorrow you must see the Trevi Fountain. Around ten?

  x Vili

  Janie suddenly felt as though everything was a film set, not just the street with the scaffolding. At the edge, the world might end, and she would fall off. She showed the note to Benjamin.

  He read it and looked up at her. “Vili’s here?”

  Her parents had turned to call them onward, so she folded the paper quickly into her pocket. Outside the gate, Tony crowded them into the waiting cab.

  As they drove, Tony told them about the neighborhood. “There is a ruin of the old aqueduct over here,” he said, waving. “That brought the water. The ancient Romans knew how to do everything. Running water, a bath every day, poetry, philosophy, the most beautiful houses. Then Europe forgot these things for three hundred years, and lived in holes. In filth. It is absurd.”

  The cab stopped at a nearby building, and Tony showed them into a flat on the second floor. The apartment was simple and the plaster walls were scarred where chairs had scraped against them, but it was clean. Between the living room and the kitchen was a small table with four chairs. They put down their suitcases and looked around.

  “It’s not a palace, okay, you know?” Tony said. “It’s, what you say, comodo.”

  “It’s perfect,” Janie’s mother said.

  Tony beamed. There was a basket of oranges on the table. “A little gift from me,” he said. “They are dark red inside, in the Roman way. For your breakfast. And look, there is a balcone!”

  Glass-paneled doors opened out onto the balcony, and yellow light poured through. They stepped outside.

  “You like it?” Tony asked.

  They said that they did, very much. Janie still felt that everything was staged and unreal. And maybe it was.

  “The script is una porcata, I’m telling you,” Tony said. “It needs everything new. New dialogo, new scenes, a new girl, new heart.” He struck the left side of his chest with his right fist.

  “We’re good at heart,” her father said.

  “You start tomorrow,” Tony said. “There is a very good trattoria on the corner, for your dinner. Tell Angelo I am sending you. I leave you to unpack. Ciao! A domani!” He gave Janie a wink, and she looked away, embarrassed.

  Her parents went to open cupboards. Janie and Benjamin stayed out on the balcony.

  In a low voice, Benjamin said, “So—do you think Vili set all this up?”

  “We did write to him,” she said. “And say there was trouble.”

  “Does he know movie people?” Benjamin asked.

  “He knows everyone.”

  Her mother called out, “Did you guys pick your rooms already?”

  “Could Vili invent a whole movie so fast?” Benjamin whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Janie said. “It seems real, right?”

  “I don’t know what a real movie seems like,” Benjamin said. “What will happen when they find out Vili’s behind it?”

  Her parents were still inspecting the flat, their happy voices ringing out with discoveries, and Janie was filled with resolve.

  “We’re not going to tell them,” she said. “So they won’t.”

  Chapter 22

  Roman Holiday

  Janie woke at four a.m., her body hopelessly confused about what time it was. She had been dreaming about playing badminton in Penny Meadows’s backyard in Los Angeles with Penny and her mother. That had really happened, once upon a time. Janie must have been eight or nine, and after a few games she had realized that Penny’s mother was missing the birdie on purpose, cheating to let the girls win. Mrs. Meadows was kind and generous and made delicious brownies, but Janie had been furious with her. She didn’t know the word “condescension” yet, but she knew the feeling of not being taken seriously because she was a child.

  She had stormed home that day and asked her parents if they let her win at games on purpose. Amused, they said no. They said the world was a tough place, and it was important to learn that you didn’t always win. You needed both luck and skill to do it, and you had to know how to lose gracefully.

  In her exhausted state, in the strange room in Rome, the badminton incident loomed in her mind. As fervently as her parents wanted to make a living as writers again, and as unfair as their treatment in Hollywood had been, she knew they wanted to get a job on their own merits. They would be crushed if Vili had made the whole thing happen.

  Tony had asked them to come to breakfast at the commissary, so all four of them walked to the studio and checked in with the receptionist at the gate. The commissary had white tablecloths and silver water pitchers, and men in suits having breakfast meetings. The waiters were deferential to Tony and brought coffee for everyone and a plate of cone-shaped pastries. Janie sniffed the coffee and her father raised his eyebrows at her.

  Tony described the movie her parents were going to rewrite, with a lot of enthusiastic hand gestures. It was about a Swedish princess, frustrated with her constrained life—she can’t do this, she can’t do that—until her English cousin shows up and they have an adventure in Rome.

  “That’s Roman Holiday,” Janie said.

  “No, no!” Tony said. “This script was from before.” Then he saw someone he knew, waved in greeting, and left the table to say hello.

  “It’s the exact same movie,” Janie said to her parents. In Roman Holiday, Audrey Hepburn played a visiting princess who sneaks out of her country’s embassy in Rome. Gregory Peck played the handsome American reporter who shows her around the city.

  “Well, Shakespeare used existing stories, too,” her father said.

  “Old stories,” she said. “Audrey Hepburn got an Oscar for Roman Holiday last year.”

  “That’s why they need us to fix this one!”

  “Will you two go scout locations for us?” her mother asked. “We need places for the characters to go exploring.”

  “You mean besides all the places they went in Roman Holiday?” Janie asked.

  Benjamin kicked her under the table.

  “Ow,” she said.

  “Of course we’ll scout,” Benjamin said. “Should we start with the Trevi Fountain?”

  Tony, returning, overheard. “The Fontana di Trevi!” he said, his face betraying nothing but pride in his city. “You must go there. You throw a coin in, to make sure you’ll come back to Rome. I will arrange a car for you.”

  The chauffeur-driven car, black and shiny, left them in the center of the city, and they stood in front of the Trevi Fountain, with the roar of water all around them. The fountain was an enormous sculpture, with wild-looking horses ridden by muscular men, and a god standing over them all—maybe Neptune? Or Triton? At the base were giant rocks that the water poured over. Janie thought it would be a good place to have a conversation you didn’t want to be overheard, because the roar of the water drowned out everything. Then she wondered if she was capable of a simple, appreciative response to anything anymore—just, It’s magnificent. What a nice place. No imagining how it might aid a secret life.

  “Do you think that’s Neptune?” Benjamin asked.

  “Oceanus, actually,” a voice said.

  Janie turned to see Count Vili beside her, round and sleek as a seal, wearing a white linen suit and a green silk scarf. “Vili!” she cried, and the noise of the water swallowed it up. She wanted to throw her arms around him, but that seemed inappropriat
e at a clandestine meeting. He leaned over to kiss both her cheeks in his European way.

  “Oceanus was one of the Titans,” he said. “The god of the great river that surrounds the world. This was originally the mouth of an aqueduct, bringing water to the city. And are you settled? Is everything acceptable?”

  “Yes, sir,” Benjamin said, shaking his hand.

  “Thank you for getting my parents a job,” Janie said, a little stiffly.

  Vili waved a hand in dismissal. “It was easier than going to Michigan myself, at this time,” he said. “And I have been thinking they should be writing again. Some people are born teachers, but perhaps not your parents.”

  “Is it a real film?” Benjamin asked.

  “Of course it is!” Vili said, looking insulted.

  “We thought you might’ve invented the whole thing,” Janie said.

  “That would take a little longer,” he said. “No, I assure you, it’s perfectly real. Though perhaps I gave it a little nudge. Now, shall we walk to the Spanish Steps and you can tell me how you are? Your telegram was a bit—vague.”

  They walked through the narrow cobblestone streets, around corners and up hills. The count had always been nimble for his size, and he set a brisk pace, swinging his blackthorn walking stick. They told him about Benjamin’s discovery of the After-room, and how he’d stopped breathing when he took the powder to go there, and about the magician who could read minds but didn’t want to. Benjamin told him about the deal they’d made with Doyle, and the way the magician had changed after taking the filter, how he’d refused to teach them what he’d promised, and no longer cared about other people’s thoughts or feelings. Janie described how Doyle had been beaten up for poker debts to a retired gangster called Joey Rocco, and how a man had started following them in a car, asking about the powder.

  “When the telegram came about a job in Rome,” Benjamin said, “we thought it might be a trap.”

  “Of course, you would,” Vili said thoughtfully.

  “I’m so glad it was you,” Janie said. Telling the story had made her feel grateful for their escape, and less concerned about her parents’ egos.