Shannon wiped the liquid off her face. “What the fuck, you crazy dumbass,” she yelled and pushed her into Anton. The two tumbled to the floor with a horrible crash. That, apparently, was Hyde’s cue.
“Hey. Hey!” Hyde strode into the warzone, grabbing the model’s scrawny forearm and lifting her to her feet. “What the hell is going on here?”
And that was Protester Number Three’s cue. She came out of nowhere; her hand rising out of her purse with a balloon that I knew was most certainly not filled with water.
“Swan labor is slave labor!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs. People gasped. “Bella Magazine should be held accountable for its crimes against humanity! Freedom not fashion!”
With an arm built like a pitcher’s, she threw two huge balloons. One hit Hyde in the face. The last one got the model’s neck, but only because by some twist of fate she was accidentally shielding Anton. Dirty gray pigeon feathers swimming in a stream of syrup dripped down their skin, down the model’s chest, into Hyde’s mouth – the cheaper and possibly more humane version of tar and feathering.
The model shrieked. Hyde grunted angrily, wiping the slop off his face. Anton gaped at the two of them, utterly dumbfounded, as Shannon and her friends hightailed it out of there. Anton knew as well as I did. His plan was off.
I gasped, wide-eyed, because it was what everyone else was doing. “Hyde? Hyde!” I ran up to him, positively frantic. “Oh my God, Hyde! Are you OK?”
What now, Anton?
17
FORFEIT
“Let me help, Hyde.” Lots of people had gathered around, either to take pictures, offer their sympathies or both. A select few actually stooped down to help. Service had been called to clean up the mess that had managed to drip onto the floor. Meanwhile, I used the napkin I’d grabbed off the bar counter to wipe Hyde’s cheek. He flicked his head away.
“It’s all right. That won’t do much,” he said, grabbing it from me. He was right – the flimsy paper was already soaked and starting to fall apart in spots. Little bits of feather and syrup dripped onto my fingers. Hyde threw it on the floor at Anton’s feet. “I’m going to go find a restroom. Wait here.”
Stifled anger strained his voice. He’d contained it well, but it wasn’t too difficult to tell from his heavy stride or his knitted brows that he was pissed.
“I’ll go with you,” I called after him, partly because I didn’t want to be left alone with Anton. But Hyde had already disappeared behind the gaggle of startled patrons.
Anton grabbed my arm and pulled me close. “How did this happen?” he hissed.
“What?”
“Those weren’t my models.”
I kept a healthy mix of fear and disbelief slathered on my face while I met his glare. “What? How the hell–?”
His eyes narrowed. “What happened, Deanna?”
“Why the hell are you asking me? You texted me, I came.” I said it loudly, pretending as though I’d forgotten there were people around. Anton let me go almost immediately, his hands flying to his jacket pocket. He was feeling for something – a vial, probably, the one that was meant to be Hyde’s undoing. Judging from his panic, and the way he started to pat the other pocket frantically, it was clear he couldn’t find it. Must have flown out when he and his model took that tumble. And now there were far too many people milling about. Too many feet to check the ground for illegal drugs.
I pretended not to notice, instead peering out over the crowd. “Look, I gotta go find Hyde to make sure he’s OK.”
Leaving Anton to fret by the bar, I made my way through the crowd towards the restroom. It was slow going. Nosy socialites and gossipy fashion personnel kept pulling me aside to ask me for the inside scoop.
For some reason, the women’s restroom was in a different spot entirely from the men’s restroom, so it took me way too long to find it. But when I finally did, a line of disgruntled-looking males blocked my path.
“They kicked us out,” said one guy in a sleek white jacket who looked as if he were trying valiantly not to lapse into the gotta-pee-dance.
“They?”
“Beatrice, Hyde, and that guy. They’ve been in there way too long. I mean seriously I wish I were powerful enough to commandeer a bathroom for no reason.”
Beatrice is in there with Hyde? Running my non-syrupy hand through my hair, I stared at the door, eyes narrowed. Swallowing, I glanced back at him. “Do you have any idea what they might be doing? And who’s the other guy?”
“Honest to God, if I end up peeing my pants because they’re having a threesome in there, I will scream,” he said. “Not that I’d put it past Beatrice.”
I stomped over to the door, only to have it burst open before I could get there. Hyde strode out.
“Hyde?” I grabbed his arm, but when our eyes met, all the air rushed out of my parted lips. Desolation. He’d never shown it so clearly, so obviously before. His arm shook in my grip, rough against my palm, as if he were crumbling from the inside. The tension between us thickened and slopped to the floor, pooling at our feet, ready to sink us both. I realized in that one moment that the game had changed. I just didn’t know how.
Silently, he slipped his arm out of my hand and walked on without looking back. Beatrice Hoffer-Rey, triumphant in her open-toed pumps, slipped a brown envelope into her purse while a thickly set man with a toupee-like black mop on his head moved towards the door. At the sight of me, he merely adjusted his suit and passed by.
“What did you say to him?” I asked as Beatrice followed.
She barely spared me a glance as she left.
I slept away half of Sunday. Anton hadn’t called me since the party, not that I was waiting doe-eyed by the phone. Shannon finally replied to one of my thousand emails to let me know that she and her friends hadn’t been caught yet. No one had even pressed charges.
Hyde wouldn’t answer any of my calls. Something was going on and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what.
“Door,” Ade yelled from her room, as the doorbell rang and R&B softly hummed from her stereo into the hallway. Since I was an un-showered mess still stuffed into my pyjamas, I stayed resolutely under my sheets, screaming at Ade to go get it instead. Dad was currently engaged in yet another rousing poker night at his friend’s shack in Queens, so it was between the two of us.
Another doorbell ring, then a slew of knocking. Ade turned her stereo up, the bass thumping beneath the floor boards. The old lady in the other unit was going to start shrieking soon.
With a groan, I flung my bed sheets off, threw on some sweatpants and a t-shirt and stomped downstairs, telling Ade to go screw herself as I passed her room, not that she heard me. I opened the door.
“Ericka?”
My oldest sister stood at my doorstep with her baby in one hand and a suitcase in the other. “Can I come in?”
Silently, I stepped back and let her in. I’d probably been too hasty in assuming she only had the one suitcase with her. As soon as she stepped inside the house, I finally noticed the Rolls Royce behind her, out of which the driver pulled several more. Each could have stocked its own room.
“Oh wow. This place hasn’t, um, changed.” She’d been here just a few weeks ago for the funeral, but apparently she’d forgotten what a dump it was. “Ivan, just set those down anywhere.”
“What… are you doing here?” I asked as the driver started lining the couch with her suitcases.
“Oh, I didn’t tell you? I’ll be staying over for a while.”
Um, what? I stepped out of the way as the driver rolled another suitcase in front of me. “Why?”
With her baby, François, sleeping in her arms, Ericka walked over to the kitchen, peering wearily at cookie crumbles and stains on the counter. “Do I need a reason to visit my family for a while?”
“Well, since it’s us–”
“I left a message earlier today. Didn’t you get it?”
I’d been busy hiding under my bed sheets trying to block out the horror and confusion
that had almost entirely defined the past few weeks of my life, so perhaps I hadn’t heard the phone ring.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Ade clambered out of her room just in time to see the driver shut the door behind him. “Ericka? What are you doing here?” Staring at the suitcases, she added, “What, did they run out of room at the Hilton?”
Ericka’s bottom lip curled into an indignant scowl, scrunching her nose up as she frowned. “No. Like I said, I wanted to visit my family for a few days. God, you two are acting as if hell just froze over or something.”
Because it had. The room had certainly grown more frigid, at any rate. With a haughty puff, she laid her infant down gingerly on the couch and took off her ebony beret so she could run her fingers through her black, short-cut curls. “I thought François and I could use a break from Manhattan.”
“So you came here?” I glanced at Ericka’s baby wearily. He was an angel now that he was dreaming. But once his eyes were open it’d be nonstop screeching. Ade knew it as well as I did. “Ericka, there’s not enough room for all this stuff. And where are we going to put François? Where are you even going to stay?”
“I thought of that.” Ericka straightened up and patted off her sleeveless red dress. “I figured you and Ade could share a room and I could take one of yours. I already brought a portable crib – it’s in one of the suitcases. Ooh, did you guys buy more of those chocolate ice cream bars?”
As she rummaged the cupboards, Ade and I exchanged weary glances. “Ericka,” I started, carefully. “Did something happen between you and Charles?” It was hard to forget the utter disdain in his tone while he talked down to her at the ball.
Ericka didn’t turn when she answered. “No, no, that’s not it.” She took out a box of Graham Crackers. Stress eating: a Davis family trait. “Though he has been pretty busy today. Apparently there’s some drama over at Hedley Publications.”
I frowned. “Drama?”
“Yeah. This morning, Edmund Rey was arrested for embezzlement. Charles’ firm is already preparing his defence.”
Embezzlement. That other day Hyde had told me he was working on “something big”. So Hyde really had been trying to get some dirt on his uncle. And indeed he had.
But where did that leave me?
I’d failed. Anton’s dad was going to jail. What was he going to do to me?
“That’s not even all of it, apparently,” Ericka went on, probably because she couldn’t see my hands shaking on my lap. “Tons of drama to go around over at Hedley Publications. I tried to ask Charles, of course, but he didn’t… well, he didn’t quite have time to tell me what it was. And you know, when he’s stressed, he… Well, that doesn’t matter.” Taking one of her suitcases by the handle, she dragged it up the stairs.
More drama? I thought of Hyde’s broken expression last night, the silence between us as he’d passed by me without a word. The image haunted me while I moved my things into Ade’s room, lingering while she helped me set up the crib. What the hell else was going on at the company? I couldn’t even guess. Soon, I didn’t need to.
“Uh, guys?” Ericka called us from downstairs. “You might want to see this.”
As we came downstairs, we found her watching the news with the volume down low to keep François from waking up. She didn’t say another word. The headline was enough:
Hyde Hedley loses the company. Beatrice Hoffer-Rey takes over Hedley Publications.
A TALE
Bring your youth and bring your maidens! Come; let them dance the Dance of Cranes!
Boys and girls – they crowd the market place. Boys and girls, their hands full of orchids. They dance together, the Dance of Cranes.
Swaying and lurching and feathers flying. Crouching and singing and bells chiming. They dance together, the Dance of Cranes, and music blesses the capital with spring.
Bring them, bring them!
The king arranges it.
They dance through the marketplace. They dance in the streets. They dance to the tunnels.
The tomb shudders shut and they are left in darkness.
18
CAUGHT
“What in the hell is going on with these people?” I shouted, loud enough for François to jolt awake and start crying. Ade groaned from behind the couch.
“Deanna!” Ericka shot me a dirty look as she picked her baby up and started bouncing him up and down on her lap. “Do you know how hard it is just to get him to close his eyes?”
But it was all background noise. Even the reporter’s blather slipped past my notice. It was Beatrice I was focused on. Lean, arrogant and surrounded by a gaggle of press at the center of the Hedley building’s rotunda, she wielded her red smile like a sword as she answered questions about the sudden switch up.
“We both felt as though this was the best choice of action,” she bullshitted. “As we all know, Hyde Hedley is a very smart young man, but just not ready to take on such a big responsibility. We both decided that his father’s company would be better left in the hands of someone with a little more business experience and worldly wisdom.”
I called Hyde’s cell. No answer. “She did something,” I whispered, hanging up.
Ade blinked “Huh?”
“That evil woman did something to him, I can tell!” I rushed over to the shoe mat. Anton and now Beatrice – God, was that entire family insane? “I’m going to go see Hyde!”
I slipped on some sneakers and headed out the door. I called Hyde about a dozen times throughout the trip over, and each time my rings went unanswered. The taxi dropped me off at the gate where swarms of press were already gathered outside, snapping photos, chatting into cameras. Forcing my way through would be next to impossible. I tried his cell again. No answer. I tried his house phone too. No answer. I texted. Nothing. What was he doing?
Deflated, I left the reporters to scrounge through his garbage. A day passed. Two. Finally, an entire week was dead and gone. I called, emailed, texted, begging him to talk to me. Not one of my pleas was answered.
Maybe this was a good thing. At the end of the day, Anton wanted Hyde out; he’d left and even passed Anton’s stepmom the crown and sceptre. That was probably why Anton hadn’t bothered contacting me at all since the party. The mission had been accomplished, after all, somehow. But it was the somehow that bothered me.
“Are you going out?” said Ericka from the kitchen, stirring the beef stew she hadn’t made in years – as evidenced by the smell: a bizarre mixture of garlic and what I assumed was stale toilet water. A week had gone by and Ericka was still sleeping in my room, forcing me to contend with Ade elbowing me in the head every night.
Dad was both thrilled and ashamed when he’d found her sitting on the couch, trying to placate François. I’d figured things would fall apart pretty soon with the family dynamics shot to hell so suddenly, but the two of them had actually been getting along quite well. I would hear their long conversations at night in the living room, unable to pick out words, yet still fascinated by the eager hisses of their whispers.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I’m going to try seeing Hyde again.”
“Are you sure that’s wise? If he wanted to talk to you, he’d have done it by now.”
I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets. “He probably just needed some time to adjust or something.”
Ericka sighed and shook her head. “Deanna, I know you’re worried, but don’t be naïve. When girls are naïve they can be easily taken advantage of. You’re still young. Don’t get caught up in something you don’t have to.” For a moment, I wondered if Ericka had forgotten who I was – or if she’d been staring at her reflection in the pot’s dirty steel while lecturing me.
“I know, I know. But it won’t take long.”
I left. This time when the taxi pulled up to Hyde’s townhouse, there wasn’t a single soul outside his door. I supposed the press had already burnt through that story and were off chasing reality TV stars outside courtrooms. The sun was sinking; soon evening w
ould streak yellows and violets across the sky. I knocked.
“Hyde? It’s me!”
No answer. I peered up at the double windows above the terrace, but the windows were tinted. I called his cell. It rang several times before someone finally picked up.
“Hello?” The voice rasped on the other end, fizzling out at the end before the last syllable could sound.
“Hyde?” I paused. “Is that you?” I had to ask because the voice could only belong to a newly excavated corpse.
“Deanna. What do you want?”
The blunt edge of his words stunned me into silence for a few moments. “I’m outside your place. Can I… Can I come in?”
Several moments of silenced passed. Suddenly, the door opened. Hyde stood with his phone in one hand while the other slipped through his dishevelled hair. “I’m busy, so this’ll have to be quick.”
I followed him in, too shocked to say anything about his filthy T-shirt and crumpled jeans, which looked like they’d been worn every day for exactly a week. A stale odor had infested the house, as thick and sluggish as Hyde’s steps. Open bottles of whisky on the bar counter. Clothes on the stripped Persian rug and leaves of paper all over the couch.
“What’s… going on?” I watched him with a frown as he poured himself another drink.
“Isn’t that my question to ask? What are you doing here? Why have you been calling me?” A cold, brisk tone. This Hyde was light years away from the one who’d crushed me to him in the flickering glow of the candlelight.
“I’ve been worried, dumbass!” I barked, striding up to him and snatching the glass out of his hands before he could empty it down his throat. He was probably already drunk. “What is going on? Why did you give Beatrice Rey of all people the company? What did she do to you?”
At the sound of her name two things happened. He flinched, first. It was hard to ignore. His fingers had jolted so violently, I thought a nerve had been cut. But his eyes... his eyes softened. Not at all tenderly, of course. Having been the target of Hyde’s affection, I knew all too well what tenderness looked like in his eyes. The way they softened this time… I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it felt wrong. Hollow.
ARC: Feather Bound Page 16