The governor was charmed, of course, and a bit perplexed to have such a bubbly admirer. She took out a pen and replied with some bland pleasantries.
Simon tried to horn in on the conversation, leaning awkwardly to poke his head around her. “Wendy, dear —”
“Wendy Darling,” interrupted Wendy, keeping up her kiss-kiss tone. “My dad’s the one you work for, remember?”
Her hands were shaking. She glanced at the tables of guests eating and chatting. No one was paying any attention to the young lady getting an autograph. She caught Peter’s eye in the crowd. She nodded to him. He wasn’t the only one with mad skills.
As the governor handed back the program, Wendy gushed, “Thanks a billion. I can’t wait to show this off!” She stepped back, taking care to bump into the podium as she walked. She knocked over her glass of champagne, right on the Book of Gates.
A synchronous gasp from Simon, Professor Darling, and Peter brought the hubbub to a halt. Every guest, waiter, and coat checker stared as champagne soaked the ancient artifact. Professor Darling was the first to act, scooping up the book and dabbing it with his napkin. Simon wedged himself into the fray, not really being helpful.
The governor stepped to the podium and addressed the crowd. “No need to be alarmed. That was just a small gift from Marlowe, which will be presented at another time. After our Professor Darling has had a chance to take the artifact back for cleaning. No need to worry yourselves. It’s just a little moisture at the edges.”
“So sorry,” said Wendy, secretly cheering.
“I’ll give the speech, and then we’ll need to take the book back home, where I can clean it,” said Professor Darling.
“Maybe you kids should wait outside,” said Simon, glaring at Wendy. He couldn’t hide the fury in his voice.
Wendy glared back. She said, “Yeah, come on, John.”
While John was off trying to find Tina, Wendy leaned on the car, staring up at the New York high-rises shining in the night.
“Nice job,” said a voice a little too close.
Wendy jumped. Peter was standing right beside her.
“How do you do that all the time?” she asked.
“Skills, remember?”
“Right . . . that,” she said. Even when they weren’t saying anything, she felt like she was in the middle of a conversation. “Well, the book’s not going to Albany,” she said proudly. She was still exhilarated from what she’d done. “What now?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. He didn’t thank her. He just leaned beside her on the car, as if he had known all along that things would work out. “You worry too much.”
When he didn’t say anything else, Wendy felt a pang. Connor would have thanked her. She wished Peter would just do something to make her stop doubting all she’d given up for him. “I don’t worry as much as you think,” she said coldly, knowing that they were no longer talking about the book. “In fact, I don’t care at all.”
“Don’t say that,” whispered Peter, feigning hurt.
Then, right there in front of the banquet hall, and all the people on the street, Peter reached out and pulled her close. He kissed her full on the mouth — no more cutesy games. His lips were warm in the chilly air. Wendy’s head began swimming. Her heart started to race even faster, but she didn’t care. Her mind emptied of all the worries of the past few days. She forgot about Peter’s strange behavior, about Tina, about the labyrinth and Simon and her dad. She didn’t wonder how many girls this strange boy had kissed or whether he would leave, the way her mother had. And best of all, she didn’t second-guess giving up Connor. It was perfect until . . .
“Wendy Darling!”
Wendy’s eyes flew open. Peter took a step back. Her dad was standing right there, looking irate. Wendy stumbled to explain, but Peter spoke first.
“Well, anyway, thanks. I’ll see you later.” He began to walk off as if this was just an ordinary greeting, a chance meeting of two old friends. He nodded to the professor.
Wendy was about to say something, explain that it wasn’t Peter’s fault, that she had been panicked and he had just been trying to reassure her. But right in that moment, she looked up and saw Tina, her hair a mess from the night’s activities, watching from a dark alley nearby. Suddenly, all the latent worries rose to the surface again. Why had Peter stepped away from her so casually? What was Tina doing there? Had she been there this entire time? Wendy had imagined herself being kissed by Peter in front of Tina many times before. But in her dreams, it had always been a victorious moment, one of those magical movie scenes when the heroine is chosen and the vixen is cast aside. But looking at Tina’s face, Wendy didn’t feel like a winner. She felt like the worst kind of girl, selfish and uncaring. Maybe she had inherited this trait from her mother. Tina slinked back into the alley, the expression on her face unchanging as she disappeared.
“No, you won’t,” said Professor Darling. “Stay away from her, Peter!”
Wendy bit her lip. This was the first time her father had called Peter by name. Peter turned, cocked his head, and said, “Huh,” as if trying to remember something. He looked Wendy up and down, then fixed his gaze on her father.
“Why should I?” he chanced, recognition flooding his brown eyes. “George . . . is it?”
Wendy gasped. Peter had not just called her father by his first name. Didn’t he realize how much trouble she was already in? Now John, too, had joined the audience.
Professor Darling laughed and shook his head. He rubbed his hands over his balding head and said, “Because I’m asking you, Peter.”
“You still have that gap in your teeth, George?” Peter said, now smiling, his arms crossed. “Of course not. Now you got a case of old.”
John’s jaw dropped.
Wendy said, “I don’t get it.”
Professor Darling tapped his tooth. The canine, upper left. It had always been a little bit whiter than his other teeth. “I had it fixed with my very first paycheck. Now, for old times’ sake, I’m asking you to stay away from my daughter.”
“I don’t take orders from my boys,” said Peter as he turned and started down the nearby alley, as though he knew Tina would be waiting there. “Even if they are grown and washed-up.”
There was nothing Professor Darling could do. After all, Peter had done nothing wrong.
Wendy had never seen her father so angry, not even when their mom had left. And she’d never seen him so confused, so nervous. It was obvious now that her father, and Peter, and the exhibit hadn’t just come together by accident or luck. And it was obvious that her father’s interest in the Book of Gates wasn’t all that he’d let on, either. Why hadn’t either of them told her? She didn’t say anything. John, at least, was smart enough not to make any quips. Her dad said, “Get in.” She got in the car. As they drove away, Wendy wondered if Peter had kissed her only to get back at her father, whom he obviously knew from another life. Was he only using her to get back inside the labyrinth? No, thought Wendy, Peter had chosen her over Tina. He had said so himself. She thought about Peter, keeping that withered Elan toe in his pocket for such a long time. Had it been there for decades? Had it been there so long that it had kept him locked in his teenage years through generations of LBs, including her father? She tried to imagine Peter searching through the labyrinth, finding the Elan toe (and maybe much more of Elan than she knew, used up over the years) not with the help of wireless handhelds and dreadlocked LBs but with bell-bottoms and ancient walkie-talkies. And her father, her own father, might have been there. Had he been inside the labyrinth? Maybe that’s why he became an Egyptologist. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want them involved in all this — not because Peter was trouble but because Peter was his old friend.
My mama calls me useless ’cause I won’t watch her sister’s kids
My papi calls me from his new family’s house sometimes
My girls, Ronnie and Lia, call me the puta ’cause Lia used to crush on Richard Lubenstein
Richar
d calls me a tease ’cause I wear what I want (for me, not for his stupid pizza face)
Mrs. Waxman calls me a failure of the system
Poet calls me a typical oversexed Latina
Cornrow calls me used goods (when he thinks I can’t hear)
Peter calls me Tina
I never assumed I’d have to lie and say I’m a widower to avoid the awkward conversation. I never thought I would have to raise Wendy and John by myself. I never knew you didn’t have to iron jeans. I never laugh so hard as when John does his Jeopardy! routine. I’ll never know how Wendy ever came from her mother and me. I never forgot the smell of her hand cream. I suppose I’m still the never-never man.
Peter crouched outside Wendy’s window, listening, waiting for the family to come home. It was night, but Peter didn’t feel anxious. He didn’t feel any doubts or regrets or other night creatures creeping back into his soul. He felt happy, exhilarated, powerful. For the moment, the night didn’t seem so endless. It seemed exciting, because in those last few minutes with Wendy, he had had more happy thoughts than in all the previous decades.
Wendy fell into her bed, exhausted. Her father had just left her room after an hour of nonstop yelling. He had paced back and forth across her pink fuzzy rug, red-faced, sweating, pointing his index finger in Wendy’s and John’s faces. She hadn’t seen him so physically wrecked since that time he’d gotten food poisoning during a dig in Egypt. He looked even worse now. His gray hair was ruffled — sad, thinning chunks poked out in every direction, woefully inadequate for the task of covering his scalp.
Through their father’s entire rant, John sat quietly at Wendy’s desk with his hands in his lap, picking at a torn nail and glancing at Wendy once in a while. He was trying to figure it all out in his head, to convince himself that it wasn’t true — that his own dad hadn’t been an errand boy for the arrogant prick. But however you looked at them, the pieces fell into place the same way. John tried to work out the math. If his dad, who was fifty-eight years old, had been a stooge for Peter when he was, say, fifteen, then that would mean that for at least forty-three years, Peter had stayed the same age. And that’s the minimum, because who knows if John’s dad had been in the first batch or the twentieth batch of LBs? John thought about all the old men living all over the world who had worked for Peter — all the geezers who were written off as insane or senile for telling nutty adventure stories to their grandkids. All the wrinkled old ladies who had been the sultry Tinas of Peter’s past.
“Gross,” said John out loud, thinking of his sister kissing someone that old. No one heard. Professor Darling was in the middle of a particularly effusive part of his speech. In the back of their car, on the way home, Wendy had nudged John and passed him a note scribbled on a gum wrapper with lipstick. Elan. Just toe? She had written. She didn’t have to say any more. Peter had found Elan at least forty-three years ago. He must have found a whole lot more of him than that. He must have used the mummy all this time to stay young until he could find all five parts of the immortal bonedust. He must have waited for decades for the book to fall into obscurity and go somewhere unguarded, somewhere easier than the British Museum. What a loser, thought John, searching for one stupid thing for all that time.
During Professor Darling’s very loud, very dramatic monologue, Wendy had interrupted to ask if their father had been with Peter when he had found the first bone. She hinted at it without giving away too much, because after all, Professor Darling had no idea that the gates of the underworld were now attached to the underside of Marlowe. He had no idea that the Book of Gates was the key to it all. He just knew that the legends were real and that Peter was living proof. Of course, he couldn’t tell anyone that. So he had worked and researched, trying to pinpoint the one artifact that opened the door, and talked and talked till he was old and dry and branded a kook.
“Were you there,” Wendy asked carefully, “when Peter found . . . you know?”
“Wendy Darling,” he shouted. “Do not interrupt me.”
That was all he said.
Then, after he had gone through the full roster of their crimes (damaging a priceless artifact, embarrassing him in front of his colleagues, burdening him with extra work, and most likely catching a lip fungus) and doled out their punishment (grounded indefinitely, no television, no phones), he dropped his tired head and started to leave. But before he left, he turned to Wendy and said, “That boy is dangerous. But if you do know something . . . about what he’s found . . . I would hope that you would tell me.”
After a moment, Professor Darling gave a resigned nod and turned toward the door.
Before leaving, he paused momentarily, his hand on the doorknob, a look of nostalgia on his face. Slowly, a small smile crept onto his lips. “No, Wendy,” he said. “I wasn’t there when he found the first mummy. He had already had it for twenty years.”
Wendy shot John a look, and they both sat up. Their father continued.
“But I was there to witness another event. Do you want to know something about your friend Peter? He is the most single-minded creature I’ve ever met, Wendy. He doesn’t love you. He never will.”
Wendy blanched. Her father had never been so cynical. Even after her mother left, her father had assured her that Mrs. Darling still loved her children. Wendy didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to know about another person who didn’t love her. Her father didn’t notice the look on her face, and so he went on with his story.
“On my last day as Peter’s friend — we were living in London then — Peter came to our hideout near Leicester Square, and he was raving. He turned over all the card tables. He threw things around. He basically destroyed the place. He punched my best friend in the face so hard that his nose gushed with blood. And then he turned on me. I stood up to him, of course. I asked him why he was behaving like a loony. He had just come back from the British Museum. He was very vague about what he had done. He never told us anything back then. Back then, he didn’t trust any of us with the details of his mission. All he said was that he had found something he had wanted for years and that he’d lost it again. He said he’d been poking around the museum, that he had it in his hand, and that some guard had found him too soon. He said he dropped it and ran out and that he’d never be able to find it now. After that, I left Peter’s gang. He was too dangerous, and life with him was pointless. I went back home to my parents. I wanted to do something with my life, so I went to college, and I studied Egyptology — Peter’s favorite subject. Only then did I understand what Peter was doing, what his life’s goal was all about. Only then did I realize that, on my last day, Peter had lost another mummy.”
So now her father had left the room, and Wendy was lying on her bed in her nightgown, torn between the people she cared about most, and as emotionally spent as a sixteen-year-old can be. On the one hand, she was still riding the high of that long-awaited kiss. On the other hand, her father had been the only person she had ever really trusted. How could she lie to him now? She kept thinking about the Peter her father had described. Sure, he sounded terrible, but he had a right to be mad, after all he’d been through. Besides, after dumping Connor and hurting Tina and doing so many underhanded things that made Wendy hate herself, Wendy was not ready to believe that it had all been for the sake of a person who didn’t love her — who didn’t care about anyone but himself. She wasn’t ready to admit that she had deluded herself about Peter. John was sitting at Wendy’s computer in his pajamas, surfing the Web. “I can’t believe it,” he kept saying, over and over. Wendy closed her eyes and replayed the scene outside the Four Seasons over again in her head. She decided that, for the moment, she would just be happy. She lay back and tried to think happier, more relaxing thoughts. . . .
That lasted for exactly two minutes and fifty-nine seconds, because three minutes later, the window blew open and Peter popped his head in, looking unruffled and relaxed, as always. He straightened his hair and gave them his classic upturned nod, as though climbing to th
e second story of a house in New York City was as easy as walking in through the front door. Wendy jumped out of bed, and John spun the computer chair around to face Peter. They were both stunned speechless.
Peter swung his long legs over the windowsill and hopped inside, not bothering with greetings or explanations.
“All right, where is it, then?” he said.
“Are you insane?” asked John. “If our dad sees you, he’ll have you arrested.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “because we are not going to get caught.”
“We?” said Wendy, flush with excitement.
“As in, the three of us,” said Peter. “When we steal that book and go after the fourth mummy. Come on, now — Marcus Praxis awaits!”
“We can’t steal the book now!” said John in a shrill voice. “It’s in my dad’s room. And besides, do you know how much trouble we’re in already? We’re grounded till we’re a hundred, and some of us don’t have bonedust to make the time worthless.”
“Time’s not worthless to me,” said Peter quietly. “I don’t have all five yet.”
“It looks to me like one’s enough,” said John. “It kept you the same for sixty years.”
“I haven’t stayed the same.” Peter laughed. “I was thirteen when I found Elan. Now I look, what, eighteen? Without all five, growing up doesn’t come to a full stop. Elan just slowed it down for me.” He looked at John’s face, still hard and unsure. Then he added, “Come on, man, I need your help. I can’t do it without the Johnny.” He took out his handheld and shook it in front of John like an invitation.
For once, John didn’t make a smart-mouthed comment. He looked around for a while, searching for an answer, and then said, “Fine.”
A few hours later, long after Professor Darling had fallen asleep, Peter convinced Wendy and John to climb out the window in their pajamas (much less suspicious in case Professor Darling woke up) and sneak into their father’s room from the window ledge. Outside, the sky was clear, and Wendy could see a few scattered stars. She could see all the way down the street, where people were darting in and out of houses, attending dinner parties, going to the movies, or just returning home from work. As the trio stepped over the windowsill onto the thin ledge outside their house, Wendy glanced inside at her unmade bed, the comfortable yellow light of her bedroom. What was she doing climbing out the window with Peter? Boyfriends weren’t supposed to lure you into a life of crime. Connor had never gotten her into trouble once. In fact, she was pretty sure her grades had gone up during the time she was with him (lots of study time during games). Those thoughts made her want to go back and put an end to this craziness. But then she thought about how much they had accomplished together. She thought about how without her Peter wouldn’t have found the second bone, or the third, and about how quickly her confusion had left her when Peter had kissed her right in front of everyone. And she thought about Simon, how he was probably scheming to get the book right now, so he could build a glorious career. He might break into their house tonight or steal the book tomorrow. Or he might be waiting for them at Marlowe, knowing that they would go looking for the fourth item. She thought again about how Peter had kissed her, and how he would kiss her again. And knowing all that, how could she possibly say no?
Another Pan Page 24