For once, Barrett was speechless.
“And there’s more. I recognized him too. He calls himself Lucius Doyle now. He has a fancy antiques shop over on Bedford. And that’s where Jen took me to have the platter mended! But there was something about him that creeped me out, so we left—but not before he’d written down my name and address.”
This was too much for Barrett to absorb. He got up and walked in circles again, as he had the day before.
One of the things I’d liked about Barrett right from the start was how he cared so deeply about things. He loved books, he was excited about science, and he was a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes. So it made sense that he’d care just as deeply about his friends and their problems—which made me like him even more than I already did.
After a while he came back and sat down. “Okay,” he said. “Keep going.”
“Well, Hans had learned his lesson about showing off his wealth. So he set himself up as an ordinary tradesman. He opened a shop that sold Dutch china and settled in to live a quiet life. He lived comfortably, you understand, but he wasn’t ostentatious.
“After about twenty years, he packed up and moved to a different neighborhood, changed his name, and started over again with a new shop, new friends, a whole new life. This happened over and over. You see, he was afraid that people would notice that he never got any older. And once they started wondering why, he would be in danger again.
“Being immortal had consequences he hadn’t considered before. It wasn’t just that he had to keep moving and reinventing himself. He met women he fancied, for example, but he could never marry or have a normal family life. Imagine—his children and grandchildren would grow old and die and he would not have changed at all. He was stuck, same as me. I believe he came to regret his wish.”
“Couldn’t he just unwish it, then?” Barrett asked.
“I expect he could have. But before he had absolutely made up his mind, he lost possession of the platter.”
“Was it stolen?”
“No, and that’s a very important point. Because only the legitimate owner of the platter can harness its power. If it had been stolen, Hans could still have gone on making wishes, no matter where it might be. But this was a legitimate sale. The platter was sold by the shop assistant and paid for in cash. It was just a foolish mistake.
“You see, Hans—or Thomas Quince, as he was called then—had gone out for lunch, and his assistant sold it to one of their regular customers, a wealthy merchant. I guess there had been so many shops by then, and so many assistants, that Hans had somehow forgotten to tell this particular man that the platter hanging on the wall behind his desk was never to be sold.
“He was very angry when he found out. He went to the merchant’s house to buy it back. But the man refused to part with it, probably because Hans made a fuss and lost his temper. Things got so heated that the merchant’s wife sent a servant down to the street to summon the police.
“That was the last time I saw Hans until last night. The merchant sent the platter to Providence as a gift to his son. Over the years it passed from hand to hand, place to place. I believe Hans has been searching for it ever since. Now he’s found it and—”
“Sofie?” Barrett said. “Excuse me for interrupting, but there’s a man sitting over there—don’t turn around!—who’s been reading the same page of the newspaper for, like, twenty minutes.”
“What does he look like?”
“Hard to tell. He’s mostly hidden behind the paper. Also, he’s wearing a baseball cap and it casts a shadow over his face. But there’s definitely something strange about him.”
“Like what?”
“His jeans are baggy and too long, like they don’t really fit him. And they still have the creases from the store. Also his sneakers are new. I think he bought those clothes so he’d blend in at the park.”
“Barrett,” I said, “can you see his hands?”
“Yeah.”
“On the right hand, does he have a big ring on his index finger, gold with a blue stone?”
“Yes.”
“Another one on his little finger?”
“I see something gold. It’s hard to see from here.”
“We need to get out of here right now.”
15
Whatever It Takes
OUR UNEATEN LUNCHES WERE STILL in the Gristedes bag. So we moved the bag aside and shook out the blanket, and Barrett calmly rolled it back up. Then we strolled away from Strawberry Fields toward the Seventy-Second Street station—cool and calm, like we didn’t have a worry in the world.
Like we weren’t being stalked by a four-hundred-year-old demonic magician.
As soon as we were out of sight, we broke into a run.
I gripped Sofie’s hand as we raced down the stairs to the subway station, out of the sunlight, and into the eerie, fluorescent-lit darkness. It occurred to me about halfway down that the whole escape thing was pointless. Lucius Doyle didn’t need to follow us. He already knew where I lived.
Even so, I was glad he still hadn’t appeared on the platform when the train came into the station. And I didn’t mind when Barrett got all Sherlock Holmes and had us get off at Columbus Circle, switch to the D train, get off at Rockefeller Center, wait for the next train, then get back on. It was all pretty silly, like something out of a movie, but also kind of exciting. And when we came back up at the West Fourth Street station, Lucius Doyle was nowhere to be seen.
We walked over to Washington Square Park to eat our lunches. Barrett suggested we sit near the tables where the local chess freaks played speed games for money. Lots of people hung around to watch them play, so there would be safety in numbers. If Doyle should suddenly appear, he wouldn’t bother us in public.
I’d watched the speed games in the park before, and I still couldn’t imagine anyone figuring out a chess move that fast. Their hands were absolutely flying, plopping their pieces down and hitting the timer in no more than a second. You’d have to be a genius to do that. Or have a mind like a computer, with every chess move preprogrammed and ready to use.
I wondered what it would be like to have a mind like that. Would everybody you meet seem unbearably stupid and slow? And were they all-around geniuses, or just brilliant about chess?
“Earth to Joplin,” Barrett said.
“Sorry. Did you say something?”
“I was just wondering why Doyle would go to all that trouble—disguising himself, following us to the park, hiding behind a newspaper. What did he have to gain?”
“The thing he wants most in the world,” I said. “The platter and the power to make wishes again.”
Barrett shook his head. “He already knows where the platter is. And he can’t steal it—or rather he could, but it wouldn’t do him any good. He could try to force you into giving it back, but he didn’t do that either. He just sat there and watched us talk. He couldn’t hear what we said. He was too far away. So what was the point?”
“He learned a lot, actually,” Sofie said. “First of all, he saw me with you. So he knows that Joplin has discovered the power of his magic and has wished for me to become a person again. That in itself is an important discovery. And watching our conversation in the park—mostly me talking, the two of you listening, and seeing how you reacted to what I said—that was useful too. Even though he couldn’t hear our words, it will be obvious to him that I was telling you my story. So now it’s clear what he’s up against, and that there isn’t an easy solution. Tricking Joplin into selling him the platter is no longer an option.
“What he doesn’t know is that we saw him outside the apartment last night—both of us did—so we figured out that Lucius Doyle and Hans are one and the same. And that we recognized him at the park just now. He’ll build his strategy based on the information he has—and we have more than he does.”
“What sort of strategy?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it takes to get what he wants.”
When we got to the apartm
ent, the cushions were back on the couch, Jen was awake and sitting next to Leonard, and Mom was pouring champagne into tall, skinny glasses. There was a huge arrangement of flowers on the coffee table and bowls of nuts and olives and chips. It was like they were having a very small party.
“Um, we’re back?” I said from the doorway, a little confused.
Jen waved us in. “Come celebrate,” she said.
“Okay. What are we celebrating?”
“Wedded bliss: Leonard and I are getting married!”
“Oh,” I said.
That was, of course, the wrong thing to say, and the wrong way to say it. I could see surprise mixed with disappointment written all over Jen’s face. Leonard actually blushed. And Mom gave me a stern look of warning.
I knew it was mean and selfish of me to act like that on Jen’s special day, but the news had hit me really hard. My feelings were already churned up about Mom; I was worried about Sofie and scared of Lucius Doyle. Now, on top of all that, I got to be heartsick too. Because Jen getting married meant Jen would move away. And I couldn’t imagine just me and my mother living there alone, especially since she’d gotten all weird and depressed. Jen was the glue that held us together, the peanut butter in our sandwich. Without her, we’d fall apart.
“That’s great!” I finally managed to say. But it came much too late and sounded horribly fake.
“Joplin,” Jen said, “the wedding isn’t till next spring. And we’re just moving to the Upper West Side, not Australia.”
I nodded stupidly and tried to smile as I sat there feeling heavy and cold, every ounce of joy draining out of me. Apparently I was draining all the joy out of the party too, because Mom rushed in to fill the silence and smooth things over. She introduced my friends to Leonard, topped off his champagne, and searched her mind for some way to pull me out of my mood.
“Abby dropped by this morning,” she said, hitting me with her laser gaze. “I told her you’d gone to the park with your friends.”
This time my smile was real. “What’d she want?”
“To see you. She said she’d come back tomorrow. She looked . . . what’s the word?”
“Wretched?” Jen suggested.
“Pitiful? Desolate? Hangdog?” Leonard tried, clearly relieved by the change of subject.
“Wretched will do. So be kind to her when she comes—okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Can’t wait.”
More awkward silence followed. Leonard ran his fingers through the tight, black curls of his very short hair. Then he picked up a bowl of cashews and offered them around—first to Jen and Mom, then to Sofie, Barrett, and me.
I’m not proud of this, just so you know. But I couldn’t bear that he was acting like the host. He didn’t live with us. He wasn’t part of our family. So I pretended like I didn’t notice him standing there holding out the bowl. Finally he put it down, sighed softly, and went back to sit next to Jen.
I don’t know what Barrett and Sofie thought of my behavior—that I was being a little brat, probably. Or maybe they knew me better than I knew myself. Saw that I was sick with grief and desperately needed some help. Needed, at the very least, to think of something besides once again losing my best friend.
So Barrett leaned over and whispered in my ear, reminding me of what we’d discussed on our way back to the apartment. We’d all agreed that, as long as we went about it carefully, there was no harm in telling Mom the identity of the mystery man. And it might buy us some added protection.
I nodded and did my best to pull myself together.
“Oh, Mom,” I said. “Remember that call last night from the security people?”
“Yes.”
“The man he asked you about, the one who’s been lurking around outside? Well, I know who he is.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. Sofie and I went and looked out the window, remember? It was Lucius Doyle, the guy who was going to repair my platter.”
“No!” Jen was shocked. “Really?”
“Absolutely positive. I saw him, clear as day.”
“Apparently he’s been passing by a lot,” Mom said, “multiple times a day, always slowing down when he gets close to our apartment. When there are reporters around, he tries to blend in with them. And he always invents some excuse to stop—lights up a cigarette and stands there to smoke it, or makes a really long call on his cell. But what he’s actually doing is watching us.”
“Well, you don’t know the half of it,” I said, and launched into the story of our visit to Lucius Doyle—his increasingly extravagant offers to buy my “worthless” broken platter, the sweating and panting, and the fact that he reminded me of the devil.
“Sounds like he’s planning a robbery,” Leonard said.
Jen agreed. “Sounds that way to me too. Remember what we talked about after we left?” she said to me. “How he had that look like he’d just hit the jackpot? That platter must be pretty rare, worth a lot of money, for a man like him to even consider stealing it.”
“And,” I said, holding up my hand to say that I wasn’t finished yet, “guess who showed up in Central Park this morning.”
“You’re kidding me!” Jen was absolutely crushed. After all, she had taken me to his shop, setting this whole thing in motion.
“Lucius Doyle. In disguise. Spying on us.”
“He was hiding behind a newspaper,” Barrett said, holding up an imaginary New York Times. “He had on this ‘ordinary guy’ getup—new jeans, new sneakers, a Yankees cap. Maybe he knew your security people had spotted him, so he was trying to be inconspicuous.”
Mom shot to her feet. “I’m calling the agency right now,” she said, grabbing the phone and punching in the numbers.
I had no problem with that. None at all. Because the thought of Doyle working on some unnamed “strategy”—whatever it takes to get what he wants—made chills run along my arms and up to the top of my head.
By the time Mom hung up, Eddie had promised to investigate Lucius Doyle. A third agent would be brought in to tail him the next time he passed by.
I wondered what they’d find.
Back in the olden days, when Hans started changing his identity every twenty years or so, it probably wasn’t that hard. All he had to do was pick a new name and move across town to a different neighborhood. Maybe tell his friends, assuming he had any, that he was moving to Boston or someplace like that, so they wouldn’t wonder why he’d suddenly disappeared.
But it wouldn’t be that easy in the modern world. There was public information on file about everyone—birth certificates, social security numbers, school records, email accounts, credit card histories, tax records, phone accounts, rental contracts—and computers to search for it. You’d have to be as smart as those chess freaks in the park to reinvent yourself that many times and not leave a trail.
And Doyle hadn’t even had the option of moving somewhere far away—to another state, another country. He’d needed to stay in New York and keep working in the antiques trade, so he’d know if any old Dutch platters just happened to come up for sale. It was his only chance to undo that fateful wish.
“I’ll walk you to school for a while,” Mom said. “Till we get this thing sorted out. Just to make sure you’re safe.”
“No, please!” I said, horrified. “Don’t!”
“What—are you afraid the kids will tease you?”
“Yes!”
“And that’s more important than your safety?”
“You just hired an agent to follow him. I’ll be plenty safe.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”
From across the room Jen made a little chopping motion with her hands, and Mom got the message. “Just be careful, then—all right?”
“I will, Mom. Don’t worry.” I shot Jen a quick smile of gratitude and resolved to be kind to Leonard from that moment on. Fair was fair.
Soon they went back to talking about the wedding, and for a while, we just sat there ch
owing down on the cashews. Leonard had left the bowl right in front of us, and we just kept reaching for more until they were gone.
“We’re going to my room,” I said. And, judging by the grown-ups’ startled expressions, apparently I cut Leonard off in midsentence. Only this time I hadn’t done it on purpose. I just wasn’t paying attention to their conversation.
“I’m sorry, Leonard,” I said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Really, really, really!”
He looked up and smiled. Gave me a little nod.
I’d talk to Jen about it later, explain why I’d been such a bear. She’d understand. She always did.
Sofie and Barrett got up, muttering polite things. When we left, the room was dead silent and it lasted for a long time. I know because I stood with my ear pressed against my closed bedroom door, hearing nothing, picturing them mouthing words and making faces.
Then, finally, Leonard’s voice.
“Whoa, what happened to all those cashews?”
16
Still Warm from the Oven
SUNDAY LUNCH WAS A TRADITION in Barrett’s family. His dad always cooked a roast and the grandparents came, along with an aunt and uncle and a bunch of cousins. That day Barrett left as soon as he could without hurting anybody’s feelings, but it was almost two before he got to our apartment.
“Sorry,” he said. “It sort of went on and on. But I brought you this.” It was a brown paper grocery bag, rolled at the top. He opened a corner of the bag and held it out to me. “Close your eyes and take a whiff.”
So I did. I smelled apples, cinnamon, and pastry, with maybe a hint of lemon peel. I did an over-the-moon eye roll and gave him a dreamy sigh.
Then it was Sofie’s turn. She leaned down and sniffed, as I had, but her response was altogether different. She seemed shocked, or amazed, or full of wonder. I couldn’t quite tell which.
“What?” I said.
“It smells like home.”
“You mean home home?”
“Yes. Oh! It makes me shiver all over.”
“We’ll get you back there, don’t worry,” I said, reaching out and giving her a squeeze.
Joplin, Wishing Page 9