by Paula Cox
“Families merge all the time,” Theo adds, a little testy. “No one got tired.”
I drink a finger’s worth of Scotch. It slips down into the pit of my stomach and sits there like a ball of lead. Believe it or not but it’s tough sitting in a room with a couple of grandpas and listening as they go on about the good old days of killing each other. You’d think just from hearing them talk and seeing them joke around with each other they might just as easily come from the same family.
So I sit here for a while and suck down the scotch and listen to the two mobsters going on about the older days when the door is thrown open and Maya bursts inside. She’s wearing this pink dress with a jumpy skirt on it that makes her look like she’s the petal-half of a spring tulip, and has little, twisting rings of hair she probably spent an hour on earlier that morning.
“My dear.” Theo holds his arms out and embraces her hug. She rotates, giving one to Mattias, and then waves at me. Weird how Theo was only just talking about how things change. Comparing the girl in the room with us today to the one I drove along the coastline yesterday is like comparing salad to beef. And then I’m thinking, how in the hell could I have thought of her as a ‘young woman’ when now she doesn’t look any older than fifteen?
“Did you sleep well?’
“Par-fait.” She smiles, with glittering white teeth. “Can I feed Michelangelo? I promise he won’t bite my fingers off.”
“Not too much, now.” Theo smiles. Maya beams again, indiscriminately tuning her teeth on her father, Mattias, and me. A second later she’s out the door, leaving the whole room smelling like her. Like juicy flowers.
“What a dear she is,” Mattias says admiringly. “What a charming child!”
Just the kind of thing a grandpa would say. The people in Maya’s life were comprised solely of the very old and the very young, which included herself.
“She is,” Theo says, putting his cigar down in the ashtray. “An absolute dear.”
Both men go quiet. Then, Mattias leans in towards me like he’s sharing a secret.
“That is a relationship to be envied,” he says. “Of course, she loves him more than life itself. Theo has done nothing but care for that child with everything he possessed, all her life. It’s no wonder at all she feels so affectionately towards him. My son, alas, does not feel the least bit of warmth towards me.”
“My dear friend,” Theo interrupts. “I don’t think it’s right at all to say that. Not right at all.”
“No?” Mattias cocks an eyebrow at Theo and then turns back to me. “But I would. I most certainly would. See, the boy has everything he’s ever wanted. Never had to work a day in his life. Never had to experience what his father or grandfather experienced. And I’ve loved that boy as well as I could, since the day he was born. He’s ungrateful, you see. And I’ve spoiled him.” Mattias has the tone of someone who has just admitted to breaking a diet and doesn’t give a damn what you think about it. “He’s spoiled,” he says again, “that’s my fault. Completely my fault. But what can be done now? The boy’s twenty-seven, or twenty-eight: I’ve forgotten which. He ought to be taking care of himself. He ought to be married. Now I loan him some sums of money each week, and if I don’t, I fear I’ll wake up one morning and find him in the obituaries. He’s here now, in the hall.” Mattias finishes the Scotch-soaked water rolling around in his tumbler. I recall the tall, thin guy in the expensive coat. He did look an awful lot like his father—the same thin hair, jawline, and sharp blue eyes as cold as two hunks of ice.
“Oren’s a fine young man,” Theo says with a note of finality and the same false ring of praise that came with his first remark. “My dear friend Mattias’s a crabby old grandfather. Precisely like myself—the reason we’ve managed to get along so merrily with one another these past few years. Kirill’t trust him to breathe a word of truth if he’s got a breath left in him. My Maya and he used to know each other very well. But that was ages ago. Everything that seems worth remembering happened ages ago I feel.”
Theo wheels himself out from behind the desk, and I get the idea that we’re all supposed to exit with him, like Mattias’s doing already. He’s still got that towel wrapped on his lap, and I try my best not to consider the fact that if he’s concealing a twelve gauge shotgun beneath the fabric, at the angle he’s sitting in, it wouldn’t take more than a quarter of a second for him to blow my brains out.
“I’m going to take a slight rest before my breakfast,” Theo announces. “You’re welcome to share my table if you wish, although I believe, at some point, my daughter has plans for you. No doubt you’ve noticed she’s something of a social butterfly—one of the many skills that I lack.”
“You don’t like talking with people?”
“No,” Theo says frankly. “I leave that to my daughter. And to my associates.”
“Sounds like everyone has their work cut out for them.”
“People management—person management—Mr. Tolliver is the single most valuable skill in the world. Get to live as long as I have, and you’ll learn it thoroughly.”
“I certainly hope so,” I say and follow the two out, back into the main hall.
Chapter 7
So here we go. Days start to pass and those days turn into weeks, and before long it’s been a month since I first set eyes on Maya Butler. Since I first started chaperoning her around Portsmouth. Since I had my first drink in Theo Butler’s boiling office. Since I first set eyes on his collection of prized pigeons and his posse of don’t-fuck-with-us bodyguards. A month full of firsts and no end to them in sight.
Theo had mentioned that my job would be something along the lines of glorified taxi driver and he was right about that. The only problem is that he forgot to mention that glorified taxi driver was just one of the jobs. He might just as well have said glorified elementary school teacher or therapist or bouncer or policeman. So, the guy’s tight-lipped. That’s nothing new for a mobster.
Kirill’t know how I could have thought before I started this job that a lot of it would be just me sitting around reading back orders of popular magazines and sizing up coats to see if they concealed weapons. Trailing behind Maya Butler is like trailing behind a prisoner who hasn’t seen the light of day in twenty years.
“When’s the last time you went to a wax sculpture museum?” was the first thing she asked one day when she’d jumped into the seat next to me, her hair bobbing like a slinky down a stair.
“When I was six.”
“You’re kidding. You’ve never seen Portsmouth’s gallery of murderers?”
“No. Didn’t know there’d been enough murderers in Portsmouth to merit a gallery,” I said and winced, thinking about her father.
“Sure there is,” she said offhandedly. “Plus a gallery of torture. And a gallery of ghosts and the supernatural. Let’s save that for another month, for Halloween.”
“As the princess commands.” She’d shot me a look that was supposed to indicate she didn’t appreciate the sarcasm, but I held on to it until it wilted and she turned away to strap the seatbelt in.
We went to the gallery of famous murderers (and murderesses, Maya was quick to correct) and stayed four hours. Maya read every single plaque in the place, even the one about late nineteenth-century zoning ordinances under Mr. John Tweedy, who set out to dig the city’s main canal and ended up uncovering the seven dead victims of Miles Hendrick Carpenter A.K.A. the Barber of New England.
“I feel like I’m on a middle school field trip,” I told her later. “I don’t think I’ve ever even been inside a museum before.”
“That’s strange.” Maya had frowned with real or very well acted concern. “Where else do you go to be away from people?”
“Parks, I guess. The docks. The places where people go.”
“But then you have to walk around the entire time. The great thing about a museum is that you can just stand and do nothing. You don’t even have to look at anything or talk to anyone. You’re just there.”
> “That’s not much for advertising.”
“Wasn’t trying to advertise. The more boring I make it sound, the better it’ll be for the people who go there and don’t want anyone else to be there.”
“What’s next on the list, then?”
“What are your opinions on modern art?”
“Kirill’t have any. Is that where you want to go?”
Maya brought up the seven-day forecast on her phone and saw that Thursday expected ‘light showers with the possibility of a thunderstorm later in the afternoon.’
“Nothing better than being inside a museum during a thunderstorm.”
“I don’t know another person in the world who’d agree with you.”
“And this coming from a guy who hasn’t been inside one since middle school. Give it a try. You’ll see.”
Maya marked the day in her calendar, along with several other planned trips to various parts of the city I’d told her I’d never seen before and, frankly, had no desire whatsoever to go and visit. The whole thing had this tourist in from out of town feel to it, and more and more I was discovering that a girl like Maya probably doesn’t get many opportunities to make friends. Unless you counted the guys her father saw. The Ceallaighs, for example—the old guys her father wined and whiskeyed and shared stories with about the days of war and anarchy.
“Your father told me you and the Kroll guy used to be close,” I said once we were back in the car.
“The horn kid? Like a rhinoceros?”
“Oren Kroll,” I remembered.
“Oh, sure,” she said. I waited for more, and when it became apparent that more was not coming, I pressed a little further. “Childhood friends or something like that?”
“No, not like that. Ex-boyfriend.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? It was a long time ago. I’m happy we’re not together anymore. He was crazy. Everyone knows that.”
“Isn’t that something most girls say about their ex-boyfriends?”
“Probably. I wouldn’t know. I don’t spend time talking with other girls about their exes. Guys are another story.”
She looked out the window and flipped some hair over her eyes so I couldn’t see the expression in them. It was a bad topic evidently, and I didn’t care all that much, so there wasn’t any reason to go on with it.
Thursday came. I got to the mansion at seven. We drove to some diner at the edge of town Maya swore by and had Eggs Benedict and coffee. The museum was back in the center of town, near what I knew now was Mr. John Tweedy’s murder canal. We got there right as the sun started to peak through the clouds.
“It won’t last,” Maya said, meaning she hoped the sun wouldn’t last and spoil all her plans for a rainy, miserable day inside a giant cube of modern art. “This is Portsmouth weather. Give it ten minutes and the whole place is gonna be drenched.”
We gave it ten minutes; finishing up the coffee we’d taken away from the diner. The sun got brighter, the air crisper. It was cool, late September weather and there were no more sudden heat spells, but a temperate refrigerated cool.
“The hell with it. Let’s just go in. It’d better not stay like this the whole day.” She finished her coffee and clacked her heels through the double-wide glass doors I held open for her. The museum was super big and super modern. From the outside, it looked like a crumpled newspaper made out of glass. Inside was a space shuttle, with seven different floors full of exhibits. Maya read the plaque beneath the statue of the architect, Sigird Aethelred, which explained how the building had been designed completely without the use of right angles because why the hell not.
“That’s cool,” I said.
“You betcha,” she replied and waited near the drinking fountain for me to buy the tickets.
I’d never seen a place so deserted. All seven floors, in every room of every exhibit: not a single person. Half the rooms didn’t even have security guards. Maya continued on anyways, not giving a damn. I couldn’t tell if she preferred it this way or if she was just being stubborn, or maybe a bit of both. She’d certainly be too stubborn to tell me how she really felt, so I didn’t mention anything other than a few offhand comments about the exhibits.
We walked around for five hours hardly without saying much of anything to each other; she was buried in her headset with its commentary on the different artists and me doing whatever I could do to stay awake. She tried explaining a couple of the works to me, talked about lines and geometry and history: a whole lot more than I thought she knew about this stuff. She must have realized I wasn’t paying attention to any of it because pretty soon she stopped trying and went on by herself.
The day got warmer. Up against the slanted wall near the main entrance where they kept the registers, the souvenir shop, bathrooms and museum maps you could see the sun getting brighter. The place was so quiet too that we could hear the people walking along the canal and the people who kept the little wagons filled with baubles, coffee mugs, and miniature Queen Anne-style houses you buy for cousins and friends for $39.99.
At some point in the afternoon, Maya decided she’d give it one more hour—enough time to see the exhibit on mid-twentieth-century photography in Estonia. We stayed a whole ten minutes before Maya mentioned needing a glass of wine. Then we left.
Thirty minutes and half a glass later, we’d found a patio in a fish and chips type joint near the canal.
“Now just try telling me that wasn’t the most fun you’ve ever had. And don’t you dare lie to me. I can tell when people lie,” Maya said.
“Do you really like places like that?”
“They’ve got better stuff, usually. There was a whole exhibit on graffiti during the summer. Another on statues people had messed with—some guy had taken this old stone angle from Prague and put jets where its wings should have been.”
“So you like art?” I asked.
“I like everything.” She smiled. “All the stuff that’s good and interesting. If you ask, I might even sing you my song about all my favorite things.”
“You have a song about your favorite things?”
She dropped her piece of halibut and snorted. I couldn’t believe what I’d heard and raised my eyebrows.
“Kirill’t give me that look. I may look girly-girly, but that’s not the whole story, bud. Sometimes I like putting my elbows up on the table.”
She set them both on the glass table. One. Two. The silverware clattered. Then she opened her mouth and munched her fish with big, slow bites.
“I got it.”
“You’re sure? I think I can burp too if you just give me one second.”
“No need. I got it.”
“Good. But c’mon—you know the my favorite things song, right?” She frowned when I drew a blank. “From The Sound of Music? The Mary Poppins lady?”
I shook my head.
“Geez.” She took her elbows off the table and scrubbed the grease from her fingertips and the corners of her mouth before she sat up straight. All of a sudden, she looked like a princess again. “Classic American cinema. Right up there with The Big Heat and Casablanca. And I thought I was the one living under a rock. Then again, I’ve never been hired because I look dangerous enough to kill another guy with my bare hands. Maybe the rules are different for you.”
“Maybe.” I finished my water. “So what’s next on the list?”
There was still plenty of afternoon left, even with five hours spent in the museum. Maya offered to show me the Docks at the end of the canal where the water intersected with Ehpit Bay, a little land-locked puddle with a river flowing out that if you follow south long enough will lead you right to the Gulf of Maine. Fishermen keep their trawlers here because there aren’t rocks to worry about or winds to smash them up. The only problem is the water levels. When they dug the bay they made it a little higher than the river, I guess for issues with tide and overflow and so they’ve got this big cage-like thing rigged up at the mouth of the river that raises and lowers the water levels f
or the boats coming in and out. It’s a big tourist thing to watch the water come up and down, and there’s a crowd standing by watching someone take his yacht in. Like people have never seen water move before.
Maya goes right up on the bridge that goes from one side of the cage to the other and pushes her way to the front so she can see better. I stay behind to comb through the people. No one here I couldn’t handle if it came to hand-to-hand. No Items from the looks of things. Everyone’s shed their coats because of the weather, but they’ve got them tied around their wastes so you can’t exactly rule out the possibility that someone’s got something stashed in the back of the belt, like me with the glock. The water rises and I can see the boat crowning up with the family on the deck waving to the onlookers.
“Quinn!” Maya waves me over, but I’ve got a good spot of surveying the crowd from where I’m standing so I just wave but don’t go any closer. She keeps on waving but then she gets annoyed that I’m ignoring her and stops and turns back to the yacht.