Ruby

by Francesca Lia Block

I told Mrs. Martin the whole story—well, most of it. Then I told her that I loved her like a mother but that I had to leave. She hugged me and kissed me and rubbed the lipstick stains off my cheek. There were tears in her eyes.

  “I understand, Ruby,” she said. “You’re meant to have whatever your heart desires. Did you know that? Whatever your heart wants that much is already a part of you.”

  She didn’t know that my desire was you and I couldn’t tell her, but I know she really would have understood. Once she’d told me she grew up in a trailer park. On the wall above her bed was a magazine photo of a tall, blond woman with a broad smile and her two children, posing in a room among cloisonné vases filled with pink peonies.

  Whatever your heart wants that much.

  The next day I gave my notice and bought a plane ticket to England.

  it might as well be me

  THESE WERE THE THINGS I knew about you:

  You were twenty-five years old. You were born in a small village in the English countryside, the only son of Isabelle and Phillip Woolf, a scholar, professor, and author of the acclaimed book Fear of the Dark: The Repression of Magick in the Modern World. Isabelle and Phillip still lived in the village, and Isabelle owned a small shop called Cauldron of Wisdom. You had performed in plays since you were a young child. At eighteen, you left home to study theater in London, where you were cast, almost immediately, as Hamlet and discovered by a talent scout from the States. After appearing in minor parts in a few films, you won the role of the angel disguised as a man, Lugh, in Knights of the Sun. This made you a star overnight. You were chosen as one of the most beautiful people in the world by one magazine and the most eligible bachelor of the year by another. Other interviews revealed that you were a daredevil, loved to travel, sky-dive, bungee-jump, horseback-ride, and sword-fight. You also read poetry and even wrote a bit. Keats was your favorite. You could recite Endymion. And Shakespeare’s sonnets. Most of the money you made went to charitable causes for the environment and animals. You worshiped your mother and were looking for the perfect girl, but you knew she would come to you when the time was right, and meanwhile you were just enjoying your work, friends, and adventures. Some of this I found out on the Internet and at newsstands. Some of it I learned by sneaking into Mr. Martin’s private office and looking up a file on you from the film he had produced. It was the only time I had done something dishonest to the Martins. I felt badly about it, but I also really didn’t believe I had a choice not to do it.

  I thought, someone has to get you, right? Look at all the wives of famous, brilliant, beautiful men. They had one thing in common, didn’t they? At one point, they all said to themselves, it might as well be me. They did what had to be done.

  There was one other thing about you. You had recently vanished from the public eye. No upcoming roles, no interviews, no recent photos in the tabloids. It was as if you had disappeared. Rumors were rampant that you were drug-addled, dying, or dead. Your publicist refused to comment in detail, only reassuring everyone that you were fine. There was nothing about this in Jack Martin’s files.

  Someone has to find you, I told myself.

  It might as well be me.

  IT WAS DAWN AND RAINING when I arrived in London. I took the underground to the hotel I’d found online. It was way over my budget, but I had decided I’d treat myself before I got serious about what I was doing here. The hotel was small and elegant, with a cozy, plush lobby. My suite smelled of lavender. There was a tiny, slightly sunken sitting room, botanical prints on the walls, soft, white towels wrapped in pale blue ribbons, and large windows that looked out over the fountains in the gardens beyond. The concierge had told me that Princess Di could be seen walking there when she was alive. I took a bubble bath and ordered a huge breakfast of poached eggs and pastries in my room. I was going to try to sleep for a while but I was too excited, so I went out right away and just started walking. My clogs clicked on the stone pavement and the rain netted my hair. I imagined being here with you. We would go to Hampstead Heath and the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert and Buckingham Palace. We would go to Keats’s house and read the original versions of his poetry, written in his hand, shielded behind glass and brocade. A poem about a shepherd so beautiful that the moon herself fell in love with him. I wanted to see everything, but not yet. I would see it with you. This I knew. Remember, Ruby, you have the knowing. Don’t doubt it.

  I stopped at a few shops and bought the clothes I had put on my list. A secondhand black riding jacket and pants, black riding boots, a white shirt, green cashmere sweater, a yellow silk skirt and blouse, a vintage green satin dress with a full skirt, high-heeled golden sandals and shiny red ones. I also got a large, emerald-green leather satchel that I couldn’t resist. I had planned this carefully before I left (with only jeans, T-shirts, sneakers, a white cotton nightgown, and two handmade dresses packed into my suitcase along with my laptop, toiletries, and a few books), knowing about your love of horses, the color yellow, and your penchant for natural yet glamorous, adventurous yet nurturing, demure yet sexy women. That’s what the silly fan magazines said, but I had decided not to discount anything.

  The shopping took longer than I’d expected and made me hungry, so I went straight to dinner. I’d planned this as well. I knew you loved Indian food and you’d been spotted here more than once before. It was a tiny place, next to one of the iron-gated gardens that pop up every few blocks. The patio opened out onto the garden and there were lanterns hanging from the trees. I thought about my favorite childhood book, where the young heroine heals herself and her friend by taking him into the secret garden. Poor Mary—jaundiced and orphaned. I wondered what the contemporary version would be. Mary abused and cutting herself. Colin an up-and-coming star who has dropped out of the public eye to overcome his addictions. Maybe I’d write it. That was when it came to me—my new identity. I would tell anyone who asked that I was here to research and write a book. Someday that was what I would tell you.

  You weren’t at the restaurant. I saw a group of laughing boys with dark, curly hair and shiny eyes, but none of them were you. I ate channa masala and alu gobi and basmati rice, sopping up the sauce with the naan. Everything was warm, spicy, fragrant in the little metal dishes. Garlic, cardamom, cloves, ginger, fennel. My eyes watered so that I could hardly see. In the blur of my tears and the candlelight and the Indian beer I drank, one of the boys could almost have been you. But he wasn’t.

  For a moment, walking home, I felt afraid. The streets were deserted. I had assumed that in a city where the police are called bobbies, I wouldn’t have much to worry about. But you never know. Even with a knowing. You can even be unsafe in your own home. You are unsafe everywhere when you’ve seen what I’ve seen. That’s what I was thinking when I started to run.

  I saw a pub and darted inside. It was dark and smoky, warm after the cool outside air. A group of people about my age were gathered around the bar. I bumped into a girl with a drink in her hand. She turned and grinned at me. She had long, curly, blond hair worn up in a bun and was dressed very chicly in a short tweed jacket, a silk blouse, jeans, high-heeled sandals, and strands of pearls and chains. I was startled when she kissed me on the cheek with her pretty mouth.

  “Do I know you? Welcome to my party, even if I don’t know you! What’s your name?”

  I told her and she started giggling. “Hello there, Ruby Tuesday. Come join the fun. I don’t think I actually know you?”

  She ordered me a drink and handed it to me. I gulped it down all at once. A little while later, I was walking in a pack along the streets to the girl’s flat. It was in a tall, white building overlooking a busy, brightly lit square. The rooms had polished wooden floors, filigreed white walls, and almost no furniture except for a large, green velvet chaise lounge in front of a fireplace. Someone put on some old funk music, and pretty soon everyone was dancing. I sat on cushions on the floor. The girl came over to me. She smelled of flowers, and I saw that there were tiny blossoms stuck in
her hair now. She had put on more lipstick. Her mouth was very wide and her lips looked soft. She reached out and touched my arm.

  The strangest sensation. I felt desire when she touched me. I pulled away and she smiled.

  “It’s all right. It’s just a bit of a magic night. Everything you touch will make you feel like that.”

  What had she put in my drink? I watched as she danced away, rubbing her hands on the green velvet chaise as if it were alive.

  I got a cab back to the hotel and packed my bags before I fell asleep.

  It was time to leave London. Someday, I will come back here, I told myself. Not alone. I will see the Ma-donnas at the National Gallery and the dollhouses at the Victoria and Albert. The changing of the guards. I will sip wine with you in a hidden, gated garden and make love with you in the starched, lavender-scented sheets of a hotel overlooking fountains and the home of a dead princess. This I knew.

  HE WAS STANDING AT THE WINDOW of his hotel suite, looking down at the pavement below. He was wondering how thick the glass was and if he kicked it, what would happen? Would it shatter? Would he fall?

  He didn’t understand why he was thinking these thoughts. He had everything a young man could ask for. Here, in a room filled with champagne, chocolates, fresh sheets and towels, bouquets of yellow roses from his fans. There were girls waiting in the lobby, wearing yellow dresses and high heels, their hair back in ponytails, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Some of them were crying into each other’s perfumed necks. His new film was going to be released in a few days. Everyone was saying it would confirm his status as the most eligible bachelor and sexiest man alive. Is that really what they were saying? He thought it was a load of shit, really. Who was it they were talking about? They liked his face and voice and his abdominal muscles. They admired how he could inhabit a character like some kind of shape-shifter. In a few years or months or days, they would choose someone else. His agent told him to enjoy it while it lasted, but he didn’t know how to enjoy it at all.

  He took another swig from the bottle of champagne and swished it around in his mouth. He was drinking too much. The back of his eye sockets ached with lack of sleep. His mother had told him to come home for a little while. She had heard something in his voice on the phone, even though he tried to disguise it.

  She didn’t ask too many questions, just said, “I’ll bake you fresh scones every morning. You can roam the woods or sleep all day.”

  He saw the stretch limousines pulling into the circular drive. Their dark glass windows seemed foreboding, like eyes hiding emotional clues behind sunglasses. He saw the gray stone facade of the natural history museum across the street—a tomb for bones of extinct creatures. The glass-and-chrome shops filled with decapitated mannequins now seemed ostentatious and even ominous instead of alluring. He felt the loneliness of fine hotel rooms, that cool, peaceful, haunting loneliness, the loneliness of clean sheets that countless other bodies have used before, and polished magnifying mirrors into which countless other faces have gazed, scrutinizing their imperfections.

  He knew he would book a flight home tomorrow.

  cauldron of wisdom

  IT WAS LIKE SOMETHING out of one of those coffee table books, The Most Picturesque Villages in England. Meadows, fallow with autumn now, surrounded the little village with its curving, cobbled streets. The buildings were whitewashed with brown half-timbering or made of rich gray stone. Some leaned out as if begging me to touch them. The trees were huge, sprawling, overgrown with vines. I wanted to climb the trees so much, to hear their secrets. The wood smoke made me light-headed and the damp early-morning air clung to my skin like gossamer, but I felt grounded, my feet stepping solidly over the stones. I was at home, as if I’d been here before. The foliage and climate weren’t so different from where I’d grown up. Maybe that was it. Or maybe I really had been in this place. There was some kind of enchantment. Even my memories that day were only the sweet ones, as if the demons were not allowed here.

  IN THE AUTUMN, my whole family would walk to the high school to watch the evening football games. We’d crunch through the backyards full of red, brown, and golden leaves. The air smelled like bonfires, and later my hair would be a cloud of wood smoke. We’d sit on the bleachers and watch the game and eat hot dogs and drink root beer. My father was happy then. The whole town knew him. People used to joke that he was so popular he could have been mayor. It always amazed me and Opal how well he could deceive them. There were times we wanted to believe in this fantasy father, too.

  When we got home at night, Opal and I couldn’t always fall asleep right away. It was cold, and we’d meet in the hallway, squatting over the floor heater in our thin nightgowns, letting the warm air blow up onto our legs. We didn’t say much, just sat there together.

  On Halloween, my mother always helped us make our costumes. We were usually black cats. We sewed headbands with ears and made fuzzy tails for our one-piece body suits. Every year, Mom was a witch in a huge pointy hat and green face paint. She put dry ice in a big cauldron and stood on our front porch, cackling. She had sharp incisors—I got them from her—and when she laughed, you could see them. It used to terrify me when I was little. I’d have dreams about her trying to bite me with those teeth. But on Halloween, it was fun. We gave out candy corn that made our molars ache and then we ate grilled cheese sandwiches and drank milkshakes while the lights flickered out in the jack-o’-lanterns.

  One Halloween, Tommy Walden and I dressed up as ghouls. It felt good to become the monsters instead of always fighting them off. Tommy was small and scrappy, with a forelock of hair that fell into his eyes. He and I ran through the fields screaming at the top of our lungs, collapsing in the tall grasses. We climbed trees and sat up there all day practicing bird calls. We’d dare each other to jump out in front of cars on the road, then run off and dive into the bushes, breathless and laughing, when the driver hit the brakes. We did that on Halloween, too, immortal in our black clothes and fluorescent face paint. No cars would possibly hit us. He was my best friend, and I was so sad when we had to move away again. Later, I found out his mom had a new baby and he insisted she name her after me.

  So it wasn’t all bad, where I came from. It wasn’t all bad.

  I HAD DONE MY RESEARCH on the village, so I recognized the pub right away. It was a pale yellow building, intricately half-timbered. But I hadn’t seen a picture of the inside. The walls were paneled with large rectangles of dark wood. There were a few small, square wooden tables, scrubbed clean, with candles dripping their wax into strange sculptures. Other candles burned in sconces on the walls. Toward the back of the room was a dark, shiny wooden bar and some red-leather bar stools. A large stuffed raven was perched on a stick above a print of a winter wheat field where a crow in old-fashioned lace-up boots posed under a gray sky. There were other pictures on the walls, too. Silvery, distorted tintypes, black-and-white shots from the fifties and more recent pictures of family patrons, local war heroes, cricket teams, May fair queens. None of the pictures made me take a second glance. Until I saw the autographed head shot. But even that was not what made my heart stop pumping blood; I had seen pictures of you like this before. It was the picture of the scrappy little boy with a fishing rod and bucket. Maybe he reminded me of Tommy Walden because I had just been thinking about him, but that is what I thought of—splashing through the river in big rubber boots with Tommy Walden. Maybe because of Tommy Walden I felt I already knew that little boy grinning under his cotton fisherman’s hat. Maybe I felt I knew him already because he was you.

  I had worked as a bartender back home for a while. It was at this little place at the edge of town, with sawdust on the floors and TVs blaring all day and night. The owners, May and Rupe Cling, were kind to me. They said I was like their own daughter. But once Artis Woodbridge’s nephew Darryl came in there. He said that he remembered me from school and he’d heard I’d moved here, too. He was a tall, handsome, athletic-looking guy studying law at the local university. So nice. I
told him I’d love to have a drink with him after work. But the attitude the Clings gave him in the bar! It was disgusting. Darryl spent most of the evening talking about how weirdly they treated him and what a messed-up town and he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. I agreed with him and tried to make him feel better but I knew it was too late. He called me once after that and said, “Ruby, you are a lovely young lady and I enjoyed your company but I just can’t handle the vibes.” And that was that. I knew it wasn’t that unusual and that it could happen almost anywhere, but I also knew that nothing like that would happen here. White, black, and Pakistani people were drinking together. The mingling voices had a lulling sound. A short, plump, round-faced woman was scurrying around, clucking, making sure everyone had what they needed. She came over to me with a big smile.

  “You’re new in town? Nice to have visitors. Can I get you something? We brew our own ale.”

  I told her I’d love some and we got to talking. Her name was Marge Bentley and she and her husband, Edward, owned the pub and the nearby inn. I told her I’d read up on their establishments, and she was delighted about that. She kept refilling my glass and showed me all around, introducing me to everyone, and by evening I felt as if she were some kind of long-lost auntie.

  Edward, her mild-mannered, towering spouse, got me a room at the inn, and that night, when I slid into the small, dark bed with the bright white sheets, in a room smelling of cedar, I slept better than I had in years and maybe a lifetime.

  The Bentleys’ inn resembled an overgrown dollhouse. I kept wanting to be able to see what it looked like without the back wall, to peer into tiny, wallpapered rooms with everything set neatly in its place—the needlepoint settee, the velvet love seats and tasseled cushions and handmade lace curtains.