Carpet Diem

by Justin Lee Anderson

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Simon had badly needed the shower. Between the prison, the tunnel, the cliff, the boat, the helicopter, the prison again, the fight and the monster, he smelt wholly unholy.

  Of course, the more badly one needs to shower, the more pleasant it is when one does, and Simon had thoroughly enjoyed his return to the Amazon, staying under its massaging waters for a good half hour. He found himself thinking of Cherry and wondering what she was doing. And wishing she was there with him. The memory made him smile. He wondered when he would see her again, and what would happen.

  He came out of the bathroom with a towel draped around his waist. He usually tended towards a dressing gown, but was actually rather enjoying the shape and sight of his new body now, and was therefore comfortable with showing it off, even if it was just to himself in the mirror.

  “Hey, Narcissus…”

  Simon jumped a proverbial mile, grabbing at his towel to prevent it falling down.

  Harriet grinned. She sat in a dressing gown, her hair wrapped in a towel.

  “God, Harriet, don’t you knock?”

  “I did, but you were in there forever. So I let myself in.”

  “How?”

  She held up a white, plastic card.

  “Housekeeping card. Swiped it from the maid.”

  That wouldn’t even have occurred to Simon. He was, again, glad she was on his side.

  “Listen, I’m going to tell you something, but if you ever repeat it, I’ll kill you.”

  It was an idle threat from most people. Simon knew well enough to take her at her word.

  “OK.”

  “I was impressed.”

  Simon grinned awkwardly.

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because you reacted instinctively, and the things you did were to rescue the nutjob and then put yourself in danger to help Bob. You may be a huge dweeb, my boy, but your subconscious might just be a hero.”

  Simon felt himself reddening. Praise was, to be understated about it, not something to which he was accustomed.

  “I just did what you did,” he shrugged, trying to hide the full extent of his pleasure, and having to avoid her eyes to do so.

  “No, you didn’t. I had a torch. Sean had a sword. You didn’t have anything except that cage between you and that thing. You were in a much more vulnerable position, but you did it anyway. That was brave, Simon.”

  Looking at his feet, Simon wasn’t sure what made him more unsteady: the praise, the realisation that she was right about how much danger he’d put himself in, or the fact that Aunt Harriet, who was the most insulting, caustic person he could imagine, had just called him by his first name, with no sense of irony or insult. He smiled, despite his best efforts.

  “Like I said,” she continued, standing up, “repeat that and I’ll rip your bollocks off.”

  But she laughed, and so did he.

  There was a knock at the door. Both were still on their guard, despite the apparent safety of their immediate situation. Simon looked for Harriet to take her lead. She shrugged.

  “Hello?” Simon called. He was still fairly unaccustomed to answering doors.

  With a roll of her eyes, Harriet crossed to the door and opened it. There stood an attractive young girl with a trolley; on which was perched a silver platter and an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne in it. Harriet looked at Simon, whose face showed no knowledge of having ordered anything.

  “Good afternoon,” the girl said with a smile. “Your host sends this with his compliments. He hopes you are both feeling better.”

  “Dancer!” said Harriet, stepping back into the room to allow the girl in.

  She wheeled the trolley in to the table at the window, placed the platter and the bucket on it, then turned to the pair.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you while I’m here?” she asked, pleasantly.

  Harriet smiled mischievously at Simon and raised her eyebrows toward the girl. Realising what she was suggesting, he immediately reddened again, and headed for the bathroom.

  “No, thanks!” he sputtered over his shoulder as he closed the door behind him.

  “Don’t mind him,” Harriet said, “he’s a little shy around women.”

  “I don’t know why,” the girl responded with a smile.

  “What have we got?” Harriet asked, lifting the bottle out of the ice to examine it.

  “Bollinger,” the girl took the lid off the platter, “and a selection of tapas.”

  Harriet looked down at the collection of olives, potato things and meats. Simon would probably like that. She’d have the bubbles.

  “Cheers,” Harriet said, popping the cork. A little of the champagne bubbled over the top, so she quickly put the bottle to her mouth for a large glug.

  “Can’t go wasting it, now, can we?” she said, wiping her lips.

  “Of course not,” the girl smiled.

  “What’s your name, missy?”

  “Star.”

  “Well, Star, do you by any chance do massages?”

  “I do.”

  “Fantastic. My whole body is killing me!”

  Harriet dropped her robe and flumped forward on the bed, bottle still in hand. Three-headed monsters notwithstanding, this was some hotel.

  ----

  An extremely uncomfortable half hour later, Simon emerged from the bathroom after hearing Star leave. He was hopeful that Harriet’s moans and groans had simply been the result of an excellent massage, but he couldn’t be entirely sure, so had decided to stay well out of sight until it all stopped. Harriet sat up on his bed, dressed again in the gown, but now with her damp hair hanging over her shoulders.

  “This place is bloody magnificent, isn’t it? Oh, I asked her to bring back another one,” she said, noting his disapproving look at the empty bottle.

  Simon had dressed and shaved while hiding. He was delighted to find the tapas and sat down to begin nibbling his way through them.

  “So, I actually came round to tell you I’ve had an idea,” said Harriet.

  “Oh?” Simon said through a mouthful of chorizo.

  “This,” she said, holding out her hands to show each wrist sporting a brown, wooden bracelet.

  “What are those?” Simon asked.

  By way of an answer, Harriet pulled open the dressing gown to further expose her unadorned cleavage.

  Simon scowled at her in confusion before realising her necklace was missing.

  “You made it into bracelets? Why?”

  “Well, we need to get Mrs Faunt off the island, right? And as it stands, that would mean kidnapping her. But if I can get her to wear one of these, maybe it would break Priest’s control over her, and she could decide to leave all by herself.”

  Harriet crossed to the table and casually picked at Simon’s food.

  “Do you think that would work?” he asked.

  “I have no bleeding idea. But at the moment, I can tell you that, wearing both of them, I still feel like I could tell Priesty to go fuck himself, if I wanted to, despite the fact I spent the last half hour fantasising about him.”

  Simon found himself slightly indignant on Sean’s behalf.

  “OK, but what if you were only wearing one of them?”

  “I dunno,” she answered, thoughtfully.

  Simon’s hands began to tremble slightly. He hoped the girl came back soon. Maybe she would bring two bottles.

  ----

  Bob knocked at Amelia’s door. He’d washed, slept and generally pampered himself all afternoon. The wounds on his body had largely healed thanks to Edoard’s potion. He'd have a few new scars to add to his collection, but no more than that. And, ridiculously, he’d been through worse…

  The girl opened the door slowly, as if she was afraid of what she’d find. When she saw him, she visibly relaxed, then tensed again.

  “Hi. How are you?” she asked, in a failed attempt at casual.

  “Better,” he smiled. “I’m on my way to dinner with your fa
ther and I was wondering … if you're coming?”

  “Do you want me to?” she asked, quietly.

  “Very much,” Bob answered.

  Amelia stood up to her full height and smiled.

  “Give me five minutes!”

  She closed the door in a hurry. Bob moved across the hallway and looked out the window at the sea. It was beautiful, and smelled of summer and potential.

  ----

  Seven minutes of urgent primping later, Amelia emerged.

  “Wow,” said Bob. Thankfully, she got her looks from her father’s side.

  “Thank you,” Amelia smiled up at him.

  Bob offered his arm, and the girl took it enthusiastically.

  Small talk, the common staple of an early date, is often most difficult to begin. Once you broach a topic, conversation usually flows naturally, if the couple are at all compatible. If it doesn’t, they’re most likely in for a long night and several bottles of wine.

  When your day has included the death of your date’s mother after your own near death at her hands, and the evening ahead is going to be spent with your date’s father and the step-mother you’re actually here to kidnap, finding any kind of starting point which does not leave a great, galumphing elephant in the room is somewhat of a challenge.

  “So,” Bob began, “your mother…”

  “What about her?”

  “She’ll be back soon, will she?”

  “Oh, she already is!”

  Bob had been fairly confident the evening couldn’t get more awkward. It was a stupid assumption, in retrospect.

  “She is?”

  “Yeah, but don’t worry, she’s not coming tonight. They’re stoning her.”

  “They’re... what?”

  “Stoning her,” Amelia answered chirpily. “Look, we’ll probably see it from here.”

  She pulled him toward a window and, true enough, on the concourse below, a woman was handcuffed to a wall, having stones thrown at her by a group of about ten other women.

  “But… why?”

  “It’s her punishment,” Amelia answered.

  “For trying to kill us?”

  “Oh no!For failing!”

  Bob felt like he was on the right end of the wrong conversation.

  “For failing?”

  “Yeah, the Socialites are not big on being made to look bad and her losing the challenge and then summoning The Furies and getting herself killed without even taking one of you with her? They’re way unimpressed. She’ll seriously have to work her way up again. She may even have to do the drinks runs for a while.”

  The light-hearted way that Amelia relayed this information to Bob was disarming and, instead of finding himself appalled, he decided just to trust her judgement. What was to be gained from pointing out to her that the whole situation was barbaric, medieval and disgusting? Sleeping dogs and all that.

  Plus, Mummy definitely wasn’t coming to dinner.

  ----

  Simon was not scared of heights. But riding up to the top of a mountain in a cable car constructed entirely of glass was definitely testing his agoraphobia.

  The other three seemed absolutely fine with being pulled through the air in a see-through box. Bob and Amelia were utterly engrossed in each other. She was enthusiastically telling him stories as she pointed out far off parts of the island, and he was a wide-eyed schoolboy, drinking in every word.

  All Simon saw when he looked down was an awful lot of nothing with a very hard something at the bottom.

  Harriet, on the other hand, was drunk. Well, in so much as she was well into her third bottle of champagne and, to be fair, was probably well used to seeing her surroundings wobbling around. Simon wondered whether the combination of her inebriation and the movement of the cable car would cancel each other out. She certainly looked fairly steady, standing almost gracefully at the rear in her flowing white dress, her hair elegantly adorned with flowers.

  Harriet had visited the Island’s complimentary hairdresser after her massage. Having her hair tied back and looking good was both pleasant and practical, in that it would be out of her way if she threw up later.

  Simon moved next to her, hoping she could distract him from the view.

  “You know what’s nice?” she asked, rhetorically. “Having someone cut your hair. I’d forgotten. I’ve forgotten a lot.”

  “Have you?” Simon asked, in that polite way that people do.

  “Yeah.” She looked down. “I’m going to miss this body…”

  She paused, leaving just a moment’s more silence than was comfortable, then looked at Simon.

  “You could pretty much get yourself looking like this again, though, ay? Join a gym. Hell, buy a gym.”

  Simon hadn’t really thought about ‘after’; what he would do next. He had been very much focused on the immediate priority of not dying.

  “I suppose I could – well, as much as a man of my age can.”

  “A lot more than a woman of my age can, sunshine.”

  Simon nodded in silent acknowledgement..

  Harriet sighed. “People take things for granted, you know? Today, I can put both feet behind my head. A week ago, I’d have needed two new hips, a heart massage and a mop if I’d tried to touch my toes.”

  She looked straight in his eyes.

  “Be grateful.”

  She raised her glass in salute, then knocked back the remaining liquid in one gulp.

  “Eat, drink and be merry…” she said, looking wistfully down at herself.

  Simon couldn’t help but finish the adage in his head.

  ----

  Calderon looked down at the hideous shirt and wished he’d thought to pack some spares for himself. It looked like a rainbow had thrown up on him.

  The thing that had been driving the boat had been insistent that he wasn’t getting on without an invite. Calderon had been equally insistent that he was, and that the thing had the option of driving the boat for him or swimming. In the end, it had done more sinking than swimming.

  Still, its teeth were sharp, and the damage it had done to his shirt made it unwearable, unless he wanted to announce to the first people he saw on the island that he’d been in a nasty disagreement.

  On the other hand, Calderon’s efficiency with his knives had left the Captain’s shirt largely intact, and the few spatters of blood were lost amongst the maelstrom of colour.

  Still, wearing the hideous thing offended his every sensibility. He’d find a shop as soon as he reached the island and take something less abhorrent to wear. In fact, he’d take two.

  One was certain to end up covered in blood again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Disembarking the cable car, Simon found himself, yet again, surprised. He had expected a grand, palatial residence of some sort for a man of Priest’s standing. Instead, he was looking at a fairly simple log cabin, with an impressively large balcony, which was built onto the side of the mountain in a way that suggested gravity was another of the laws to which Priest was immune.

  A set of wind chimes danced in the breeze as they approached the door. Simon’s left arm began to twitch involuntarily. He grabbed it with his right hand, hoping to squeeze it still.

  Amelia knocked briefly and opened the door.

  “Hello? We’re here!”

  A lithe blonde woman with intensely green eyes appeared from a doorway. She looked maybe a few years older than Amelia at best. Maybe less. She gave a warm smile and opened her arms to embrace the girl.

  “Hello, darling. I hear you’ve had a few days of it.”

  “Hi Cass,” Amelia answered, returning the embrace. “Yeah, it’s been kinda mental.”

  They kissed on the cheek before separating.

  Amelia turned to Bob, who was hovering politely behind her.

  “Cassandra, this is Bob. Bob, this is my step-mother, Cassandra.”

  Bob glanced at Harriet before taking her hand gently.

  “It’s a real pleasure to meet you,” he sa
id.

  “You are tall, aren’t you?” she smiled. “And polite.”

  She batted Amelia on the arm.

  “I like him, already.”

  “And these are his friends,” Amelia added, “Simon and Harriet Debovar.”

  “Ah, hello,” Cassandra said, offering her hand to whichever of them took it first.

  Simon reacted first and took it, hoping he wasn’t still shaking noticeably.

  “I’m sorry, I hadn’t realised you were a couple. I don’t think Priest had either. We can organise you a double room instead of the two singles, if you like?”

  Harriet snorted.

  “Um, no, sorry,” Simon stumbled, “we’re not … she’s my…”

  “Sister,” Bob finished for him.

  “Oh of course, how silly of me,” Cassandra said, reaching for Harriet’s hand now. “I see the family resemblance.”

  “No problem,” Harriet said, returning the handshake. “That’s still funny.”

  Cassandra looked confused. Harriet smiled serenely, swaying slightly as she did.

  “Harriet found this morning rather stressful, I’m afraid,” Bob intervened.

  “Oh, of course,” Cassandra said, “It must have been awful. Come, let me get you all a drink. Priest is in the kitchen.”

  She turned to go.

  “Harriet,” Simon piped up, “didn’t you have a gift for our hostess?”

  Harriet looked blankly at him for a moment.

  “Shit, yes!” she said. “I mean, sorry, yes, of course.”

  She fumbled with her wrist, freeing one of the makeshift bracelets.

  “Oh, there’s no need, really,” Cassandra objected.

  “No, no, please,” Harriet said, proffering the jewellery. “We figured you have enough flowers here, so maybe something more unusual would be better.”

  Cassandra cocked her head and smiled again. “How thoughtful.”

  She took the bracelet and looked at it closely. Her face was difficult to read.