by Olivia Boler
Before we go out the barnyard gate, I look back at the ducks. The vested one nudges his toy around with his beak so I can see the screen. Among the gibberish are the words wings, toes, elder, and Peking. His companion puts down her knitting and waddles over to the place where the girls fed the goats. She pecks at whatever infinitesimal niblets are left.
I catch up to Tyson, who is trailing the girls at a leisurely pace. He holds himself straight, which makes him look taller than he is, and I wonder about his military days, about what that was like for him.
The duck finishes her snack, quacks, and goes back to her knitting. Alice used to knit, and nostalgia floods me. “Ty,” I say, forcing myself to stop before the son. “I miss Alice.”
He doesn’t stop walking, but there is a catch in his step, and his aura darkens. How easy it is to read him. Almost too easy. I wish it weren’t, and I wonder why it is.
“Me too,” he says. He clears his throat. “I mean, she—she was my little sister.”
“She was one of my best friends.” My best normal friend. “She was good to me.”
I only received one missive from her when she was in Africa, a postcard with the briefest outline of her surroundings. I’ve read it so many times, I have it memorized, no charm needed: The Bantu are so cool, such a gorgeous group of people! Not to say they are perfect, but most are kind. Been going by train and boat to get to villages, and of course on foot. I thought it would be more dusty. Bailey’s French classes are coming in handy, for sure.
I was so happy she had sent the card—still am—because we had had a disagreement right before she left. She’d been having an affair with a married man, which was partly why she had decided to join this little-known charity group and work with refugees in Africa, to get some distance and clarity about her life’s direction. She didn’t want to end things with her lover, but I thought she should since she wasn’t his only mistress and he said he would never leave his wife. She accused me of being judgmental, which I’ve never denied.
I tried to say sorry. I made the protective amulet for her without her permission, and she made fun of it. She almost wouldn’t accept the gift, she was so pissed at me. But Alice could never stay mad for long. And as always, I figured I knew better than she did.
Tyson is nothing like her. He’s more like me, a little reserved.
He looks at me, and I can imagine the inside of his glasses fogging up. But he doesn’t take them off. “You took it hard, yeah?”
I nod, thinking, You have no idea. “Pretty hard. It changed my life.”
“Mine too.”
I’m about to say more, but the children interrupt us.
“Ty!” Romola calls out. The girls have tired of the seesaw and moved on to the swings. “Push me!”
“Me!” Cleo says. “Me me me!”
“No sweat.” He gives a fake little cough as we make our way over to them. To me, he says, “I figure by now you’ve heard the rumors about me and Cheradon.”
“I’ve read some stuff.”
“Right. Finally catching up on your press kit reading. Good one.” I try to pinch his arm, but he dodges swiftly away. He grabs on to Romola’s swing and pulls back, the muscles in his arms taut. Her jaw drops open and he holds her in the air for a moment, suspended. After releasing her, he does the same for Cleo. “Anyway,” he says to me over their screaming laughter. “That stuff going to be a part of your investigative reporting?”
I sit down on a tire swing. “This isn’t exactly investigative reporting. It’s more like”—I shrug in apology—“fluffy fluff.”
He stares at me, his eyes still obscured, and after a moment he smiles. “It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me.”
“Your manager requested me,” I say. “I didn’t ask for this assignment.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Do you think that I’m stalking you or something?”
He laughs. “I remember that about you. That you like to jump to conclusions.”
I know what he is thinking of. “My infamous overactive imagination,” I say, remembering. “Like my theory about what Mr. Kiplinger really kept in his ubiquitous cigarette box?” Mr. Kiplinger. My ninth-grade geography teacher.
“Sure, like that.”
“Wacky tobacky laced with a garnish of angel dust. I stick by my guns.”
“Are you high?”
“No, but he was.”
Tyson laughs. “I suppose you got confirmation from Mister—from your boyfriend.”
The girls have found their own momentum on the swings. Ty grabs the nearby rings and does a shaky but decent iron cross. The idea that he is flirting crosses my mind, but I push it away. Get over yourself, Memphis. He jumps down into the sand and grabs the chains of my tire swing. I tip backwards, but hang on, the tang of the metal chains rubbing into my hands. Ty braces his feet on the tire, bends his knees, and we begin to rise. I try my best to be his counterbalance.
“Whatever happened to that guy you liked?” he asks.
“What guy?”
“You know. The guy.”
“Ty, a high school girl has a lot of crushes.”
He shakes his head. “You and Alice. Passing your notes, giggling your giggles.”
Alice was sweet, not too bright, totally trusting, and a bit of a flirt. Some might say a trollop. A good-natured one. She would have been a wonderful pagan. I was her straight man, sidekick, and designated driver. I often wonder if it was her sweet, trusting nature that got her killed, and if my protection spell, rather than shielding her, amplified the vulnerable bits of her personality. The ingenuous are so easily dispatched.
“Come on,” Tyson says. “Letter-jacket dude.”
“Ah. Jake.” I allow myself a dreamy look, for Ty’s benefit. Jake. My biggest crush. He was the starting varsity quarterback. It was practically a graduation requirement that we pine for him. “I have no idea what happened to him.”
“That’s funny. I thought you would have kept track.”
“I’ve kept track of very little.” I smile at him. “I’m not all that sentimental.” But just for fun, I try to find Jake’s trace. It’s fairly easy—I sense a great weight and confusion, and then it becomes clear: Jake has acquired a post-college gut and is stuck in law school in Sacramento.
“I am.” Tyson sits down on the tire. “I’m a big old sentimental softie.”
We watch the girls as Romola jumps off the swing and heads for the slides. Cleo, smaller and slower, slithers off and runs after her sister.
“You’re not going to ask me about Cheradon,” he says, his eyes still on the girls. “Are you?”
“Do you want to talk about it on the record?”
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
I lean back, letting my arms stretch until my shoulders pop. “Maybe I won’t have to ask you about her at all.” I know he feels love for her, but just because I know it doesn’t mean I can publish it. It’ll depend on the tone Ned lets me take.
I sit up. My thoughts are all over the place. I have the urge to make a list, to corral everything that’s happening in some concrete way. I look over to the ducks. They are standing by the fence watching us, and I realize their wings are clipped and they can’t get away. They flap their useless limbs anyway, holding them open.
From a distance, the duck in the Dodgers jacket has snow-white feathers, good enough for angels. But the other one—the one wearing a vest—is severely disfigured. I have to look twice to see it. The undersides of his wings look scaly and raw, like they’re diseased or decaying. There’s something on the ground in front of them—a perfect white oval. An egg. The ducks lower their beaks and peck at the egg until a clump of yolk and clear runny goo as well as something solid falls out from between the pieces of shell. It’s bloody and dead.
I feel my heart skip a beat and I look to Viveka’s girls to make sure they aren’t watching. They are tackling the corkscrew slide, oblivious to everything but the speed of their descent. I look back at the
ducks, and they are looking right at me with black eyes, their wings folded.
“Hey,” Tyson taps me on the shoulder. “I’m glad we came to this cool little park. Nice call.”
Chapter Eleven
It’s well established in my mind, though not something I’ve felt the need to declare or even think about much, that ducks are a little scary. I trace this opinion to a very non-magickal childhood incident. Gru kept ducks at her place in Mendocino, and she gave a duckling to Viveka to keep in the city. Viveka brought it to one of our coven potlucks, a fluffy yellow baby. I tried to pet it and it nipped me. The moral of this story? Soft things can still cause big-time pain.
So I’m not surprised to have encountered some freaky waterfowl. What gives me pause is their message. Are they on my side, or some unfriendly type’s? I can’t help but wonder what this might have to do with Viveka and her daughters. Because I’d be a real live idjit if I thought they weren’t connected.
An hour outside Santa Barbara my cell phone rings. It’s Ned, and he’s yelling. While I’m used to his sarcastic style—he’s like a grousing fishwife—the yelling is a new component.
“Is it true?” he barks.
“Hi, Ned,” I say, trying to hit the speakerphone button while simultaneously steering into the Highway 1 slow lane.
“Is it true,” he continues, ignoring my greeting, “that you have children with you?” Children said like hookers.
“What does it matter?” I try for jovial, or cavalier. I grin stupidly at my dashboard hula girl as if we’re in cahoots.
There’s a brief silence and for a second I think I’ve been blessed with a gloriously timed dropped call. “Hello?”
“What does it matter?” he whispers through the tinny speaker. “What does it matter?” I’m beginning to get the idea Ned doesn’t really have any ammo. “What about liability?”
“If you’re going to talk legal talk, then yes, liability means nothing to me.”
“You are walking a thin, red line, young miss.”
I glance at the girls in the mirror. They’re ignoring my hard-to-hear conversation, too wrapped up in feeding their dolls imaginary bottles of milk.
“Ned,” I say. I wish I could see him, face to face. In order to bring a subject around, I usually have to have eye contact. Casting with just my voice has never been my strong suit, even though Gru always said that sound is the most underestimated tool a witch has. Speaking something can make it come true. “Relax. I’m going to do this job, and there’s nothing you have to worry about.”
“Memphis, it’s not cool. It’s not rock and roll.” I want to laugh. This coming from Mr. Square Pants. “They’re not even your kids. You don’t have kids. It’s part of the reason you’re a decent writer.”
“Chad Beane thinks I’m a decent writer. And he doesn’t mind that I’m bringing the girls.” This is plainly not true. Chad Beane doesn’t know I have the girls with me. Yet.
“Chad Beane doesn’t know your writing from Seymour Hersh’s,” Ned says.
Perhaps Ned is suffering from early onset dementia. “Chad’s the one who liked my writing so much. He’s why I’m doing this.”
“Yeah, he’s the one who asked for you, but he’s not the one who read your piece. It was the other one.”
“The other one what?”
“The other manager.”
I’m soundly confused. As far as I know, Arsenic Playground only has one manager.
“The manager for that other band,” he says.
It takes me a moment. “You mean Yeah Right?”
“Yeah, right. Yeah Right.”
Someone is talking to Ned. He doesn’t even cover up the phone with his hand, so when he yells at that person it fills the car with its clanging report. “Does it look like I want a goddamn Frappuccino? Get your imbecilic coffee list out of—”
I end the call. So much for psycho-manipulation. With one haphazard eye on the road, I scroll through my recent calls until I find the number I need. Marisol is in the office—I can hear Ned in the background still cussing out what I assume is the Planet’s young college intern trying to make an afternoon coffee run. There’s also the distinct sound of weeping.
“So, I have a question for you,” I say after pleasantries are duly exchanged. “Do you know who told Ned about the girls?”
“Man, is he on a tear,” she whispers. “I’m trying to get out of here and meet this new guy for drinks at the Old Ship. What girls?”
That’s right. I haven’t even told Marisol about Viveka’s visit. I haven’t had time to talk to her since this all happened. I think of the people who know: Cooper, Viveka, Auntie Tess, and Tyson. Viveka seems the least likely informant—and besides, she’s off to who knows where. Cooper is also unlikely. There’d be no reason for him to do that, and he’s at work and highly unreachable in his classroom. Auntie Tess—no. That leaves Tyson. With the added connection of Chad Beane being Ned’s college friend.
But why would Tyson talk about the girls?
“What girls?” Marisol asks again.
“A friend’s kids,” I say. “I’ll fill you in when I get back.”
“Playing house with Cooper? His daughter’s not catalyzing your maternal instincts?”
“Ha ha. Goodbye, Marisol.”
“Ciao.”
****
Our Santa Barbara hotel is mid-century in style and lower-tier fancy, with self-parking, a bellhop, and a lobby that doubles as a continental breakfast buffet in the mornings. The windows face the ocean as well as a busy boulevard, which the landscape architects have tried to block out with shrubbery. We’re a few blocks from State Street with its trendy shops and restaurants. There’s the distinct fragrance of surf in the air, slightly briny, that overpowers the odor of furniture polish. The bellhop takes our bags and I face the concierge, name-tagged as Kevin, who bristles with trepidation, excitement, and a bit of defiance, his aura urine yellow.
“I’m afraid, Ms. Zhang, that the nanny we arranged for you has come down with a case of tuberculosis,” he tells me with baleful eyes.
“Tuberculosis!” People in the first world still get TB? “That’s awful.”
“She and her assistants as well as the children they usually take care of have been quarantined.”
Quarantined. Like aliens. “Well, isn’t there anyone else?”
“I’m sorry to say, we don’t have a contract with another nanny service for the hotel. I’m so sorry.”
How can this be? I look at the girls and they look up at me, and I try to think of alternatives, but I can’t. Cleo looks a little pleased. I try to tell myself it’s because she likes me so much. But I’m screwed. My hands reach for Cooper’s locket. It’s warm from my skin and I run my fingers over the etching on its surface. Playing with my necklace is a nervous habit I’ve avoided by not wearing jewelry.
“Perhaps you have friends in town who could recommend someone?” Kevin simpers.
“We’re here on business.”
The concierge glances at the girls. “I see,” he says. He follows up with more apologies and offers of complimentary treatments at a local day spa. Even Cleo can get her eyebrows waxed and tinted. I shove the gift certificates in my bag and head to the elevators, the girls trailing.
The interior of the elevator is all mirrors and wood. Cleo entertains herself by pushing her nose up with her finger so she looks like a pig. Romola looks up at me.
“We’ll be okay by ourselves, Memphis,” she says. “Don’t worry about us.” Her words are brave and comforting, and I would hug her if she or I were huggy people. I’m just about to tell her how inappropriate it would be to leave two little girls alone in a hotel room, how I’d probably get arrested and so would their mother, wherever she is, when Cleo says to herself in the mirror. “It’s not safe here tonight.”
The elevator doors open on our floor, but we don’t step out. Romola and I stare at Cleo.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“It’s better not to
be here for playtime. But bedtime will be okey-dokey.” She nods to herself then looks up at my mirror image. She smiles and chatters her teeth together. “Look, I’m a monkey.”
The doors start to close and I put my hand out to stop them. The girls run out. Romola, apparently reassured enough by her sister’s words that bedtime will be okey-dokey, leads the search for our guestroom.
“Cleo. Cleo!” I hurry down the hall after them. “What are you talking about? What do you mean?”
She laughs and says it again: “Playtime isn’t safe here but bedtime is okey-dokey. Okey-dokey, okey-dokey!” She continues to chant, and I try a couple more times to ask what she means but finally give up. She’s three—she’s incapable of breaking her own loop. I wonder, not for the first time, what it is little Cleo knows and what it is she can do.
In the meantime, there must be something I can do. Part of me says, Cancel. Go home. But that’s not a part of me I want to listen to. I actually want to go to this concert, meet my celebrity heroine Cheradon Badler (fiancée of Tyson Belmonte or not), write this article, perhaps move ahead in my journalism career, and restore these little girls to their mother. Now is not the time to wimp out. I have to think creatively.
I can think of nothing.
The hallway’s forest-green carpeting muffles the sound of our footfalls and the ocean smell is completely gone. We find our room and I slide in the key card, which works on the second try. The bellhop is in our room, busily putting our bags on luggage stands. He looks a little distracted, as if we caught him in the middle of something important. But he’s emanating a glowing, olive aura, traces of which are smeared on the lock of my suitcase. His chin is blotchy and covered in pinch marks, and I know that after he failed to open my bag, he sat on the bed and picked at a whitehead, only hanging around and waiting for the sound of our arrival so he could get a tip. After he shows us the bathroom, the TV hutch, and the minibar—as if we couldn’t find any of it ourselves—I give him a few bucks and he leaves.
Whatever Cleo meant by what she said, she’s on to something, although the bellhop with his mundane shenanigans is low on my list of possible baddies. There’s a lingering scent of weed—if the bellhop isn’t already high, he’s going to be soon. I can’t leave the girls alone here. Maybe that’s why the ducks committed eggicide—a reminder to keep the girls close. Maybe. Skeptics believe nothing is connected and paranoids believe everything is connected. Me, magick chica, I like the middle ground. I want to believe Bellhop is a common thief/stoner, but can life be that clear cut?