by Kitsy Clare
I shrivel up inside. But he’s right. I need to be strong, be proud. “Okay, fine. Shall I continue shoveling sugar after lunch?”
“Way too tedious,” he announces. “Let’s play a game.”
“What game? Not so sure I want any more of those.”
“Oh, don’t be a wimp,” he says wryly, and jumps up. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.” I track his butt, this time blessedly covered up by unblemished red sweatpants. Hey, we’re freaking sweats twins! I can’t lie; his gluteus maximus looks like sculptural perfection in them.
We wind along a different path than I ever took with Tommy.
Entering a massive room, I see dozens of the same type of metal vats Caz is drilling. There are also blue-tinged machines along two of the walls. Big square boxes with a jungle of pipes connecting them.
“The packaging room,” Caz explains.
After that, we wind down a long hallway with grimy windows facing the East River. Looking up, I see stalactites of that black, hardened sugar reaching down from the ceiling. A few items are embedded in the crusty black sheen of the walls—a rubber glove, a man’s cotton hanky, a time card.
“Look at that time card,” I exclaim. “It’s from 1939.”
“Yeah. It gives me chills to think of this place in its prime—workers buzzing about. The boats coming in and out of the harbor, delivering raw cane.”
It’s cool how Casper’s face animates when he’s talking about stuff that excites him. It’s contagious, and I picture the huge stalks of cane being hauled inside, chopped into manageable pieces, and shoved into the cooking vats by laborers. “I suppose it was a blessing to have any job during the Great Depression.”
“As hazardous as this job was, those guys were lucky.” Caz guides me into an industrial elevator—more like a rickety chicken coop, with the looming shaft below visible on all sides. I take a deep breath and grip the grating when he flicks a switch and the thing grinds upward.
“Scared?” he asks, a bit too gleefully.
“After my almost fall, I guess I am.”
He shrugs. “Fear can be a good thing. Keeps you on your toes.”
“Depends on how much.” But isn’t this what I was looking forward to last night, imagining a thrill ride on Casper Mason’s conceptual rollercoaster? “I can handle anything you can dish out.”
“That’s the spirit!” His approval fills me with an odd pride.
We rumble up many floors until the air chills and a gray-blue light pours down. Is he serious? The roof?
When we exit the elevator cage, the wind whips us around like a pair of ungainly saplings. My hair slaps at my face and temporarily blinds me. Caz takes sudden hold of my arm. Steadies me. His touch is like iced lightening. Shocking bolts shoot along my arm and down into my abdomen.
It’s giddying, exciting.
For balance, I grip the horizontal poles that help support the massive overhead Schneitryn Sugar sign. “I’m good, thanks.” He releases my arm. It’s safer not touching him because I don’t trust my roiling emotions.
On the East River, white-capped waves violently rock a barge and one lone tourist boat. I make a face. “Wouldn’t want to ride the Circle Line today.”
“Seasick isn’t fun,” he agrees.
Seagulls squawk overhead on their way past the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to the ocean. Just ahead, where Casper is beckoning me, is a sort of open-air bridge linking the factory proper to a row of enormous barrels. Some daredevil street artist has tagged the barrels in graffiti swirls and slogans.
“Those were the holding tanks for the cane,” Casper explains while we wind our way along the bridge. “The boats used to dock here and load ’em up. I’ve seen photos of the ships—from Guyana, Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic.”
“Sounds exotic.”
“Yup, huge, rugged clippers, decked out with so many flapping flags they looked like confetti. Makes you wonder what it’d be like to work on a ship.” Not me, but I can see Casper on one, wavy hair whipping in the marine wind, the angles of his tanned face turned to some distant horizon.
We’re headed to what looks like a set of windows that Casper has set up—each one bolted upright to the railing of the bridge. I count around twenty.
“Is this one of your conceptual pieces?” I ask. But the wind sweeps my voice away. Besides, he’s already ten paces ahead, leaning down and fiddling with a case that he’s left near the windows. He straightens up, a flash of metal in his grip. A gun? What the hell?
He signals for me to come closer. Is this where he morphs into a psycho and turns his crosshairs on me, felling me in a hail of bullets. I imagine my bloody corpse falling into the whitewater below, anonymous, forgotten. I should’ve heeded Harper’s warning. I could still call her...or 911. My cell’s in my pocket.
“C’mon!” yells Casper again, but this time he doesn’t wait for me to inch over, trembling from nerves and from the movements of the ticky-tacky bridge in the roaring wind. He takes aim and fires at one of the windows. The blast hurts my ears as the glass shatters.
I shamble over to him. “Why are you shooting out windows?” I yell, at this point more angry than scared. “Breaking glass is your idea of fun? What the hell’s wrong with you?” I don’t care if he’s famous. He needs some hardcore discipline.
In answer, he shoots another one out, laughing hard. “It’s not glass.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s crystallized sugar! Tommy makes them for me. It’s what they use in films when they have the villains bust the windows out.”
Holy freaking shit! My nerves are settling into my legs, rendering them into quivering Jello. “Sugar? Are you sure?” I shake my head, baffled, still pissed off, but with a tiny tremor of hilarity in my belly.
Unbidden, I start to laugh. He laughs with me, his charismatic eyes flashing with mischievous joy, and he hands me the gun. Holy hell! It’s heavy, a cold boulder of death in my hand. I’ve never held a revolver, and it wigs me out.
“No, I’m not into guns,” I say firmly, and press it back into his hand.
“It’s not real,” he insists. “It’s only a BB gun.”
Oh my God. He really had one over on me. My legs are still wobbly noodles. He places the gun back in my hands.
“C’mon, try it. Get over your fear, Sienna. It’s good for you.” He draws closer until his burnished shoulder brushes mine. He swings his arm around me and helps me aim. The warmth and strength of it, even under my jacket, is like liquid fire. I could get used to this. I shudder with unexpected desire. My traitorous libido is exposing me. Raising the gun slowly, carefully, I aim it at the second window. Fire. The pane of crystallized sugar explodes, sending candied shards out in a glittering explosion of flying diamonds. It’s freeing, exhilarating.
Dangerous. Everything that Casper is and I’m not.
“Fun, eh?” he says, and gives me a playful jab.
“Terrible, wicked fun.”
“Hey, we’re not hurting anyone.”
“But you’re a bad influence.”
“The worst,” Casper admits with a wink.
I shoot out the third window, and we spend the next half hour aiming, firing, watching diamond-like fragments soar up, out, and shimmer down, lost in the haze of the water below.
6 CHAPTER SIX
“You make the perfect gothic white witch,” I tell Harper, who’s trying on a snowy-brimmed hat over a long, ivory wig. She admires herself in the dressing room mirror while I help smooth down her silky dress and pull up her elbow-length white gloves. “All you need is pale makeup and a dose of heavy black eye shadow to pull off the witchy thing.”
We’re in the Halloween store, deciding on our costumes. She’s still mad at me but not enough to un-invite me to the big Halloween party she and Dave are throwing this Friday. I’ve figured out what I’ll be: a fortune-teller with a paisley scarf wound around my head, tons of clinking bangles, and blood-red lipstick
. “I thought of one more thing to complete my costume,” I say.
“What’s that?” Harper asks distractedly, unzipping the long dress and shimmying out of it. She hands it to me, and I hold it out to the impatient salesgirl who’s wearing black cat ears and snapping her gum. She tosses it in Harper’s buy bag, along with the costume makeup, wig, and hat.
“Let’s stop by that paranormal store near my place,” I suggest when we head to the checkout area with Harper’s items.
She frowns. “Do we have to? That place creeps me out.”
“More than this place?” I stare deliberately at the counter guy, decked out as a slimy green monster with a fake axe poking out of his skull.
“Point taken.”
***
At the paranormal store, I scout around for one more thing to complete my fortuneteller look. “Not sure what it might be, but I have a hunch I’ll find it here.”
“Yeah, a creeptastic hunch.” Harper looks askance at the line of skulls on a shelf. Fake ones, but they’re so realistic, they could’ve fooled me, too.
“Come on, get over your fear. It’ll be good for you.” I laugh inside, realizing I’ve taken a line straight from Casper Mason’s playbook. It’s the first time I’ve gotten the nerve to come in here myself, and I pass this place lots on my way to the subway. Maybe it’s the sign advertising a monthly séance that freaks me out, or the jar of gooey eyeballs. Swimming in raspberry syrup or blood?
My eye hits on a basket of Tarot. I went through a short phase when I was fifteen where I read them sometimes with a friend. It was fun. “That’s it! A psychic reader needs her cards.”
“She certainly does,” the black-cloaked counter lady agrees. She’s got a ring on every finger, teased up bottle-blonde tresses, and about ten piercings in each ear. Dead ringer for Stevie Nicks.
Harper whines, “But those cards are black magic.”
“Actually,” corrects the counter lady, “they were simply Italian and French playing cards called Trionfi and Tarock until the 1800s, when people started to use them as divination cards, to predict mystical pathways.”
“Is that so?” Harper paces the room while I sift through the pile, amazed at the incredible, detailed artwork.
There’s a deck that looks like Bosch’s gargoyles, one of Scottish druids, and a pagan one celebrating nature, with exquisite depictions of leaves and berries. I choose the gargoyle deck. After all, Halloween should be scary.
When we leave, Harper makes sharp clicking noises with her heels, marching along Tenth Street. I hurry to keep up. “Rude, rude, rude,” she chides. “Who asked that know-it-all lady?”
“You’re touchy today. Aren’t you and Dave getting along?” Often, when she’s testy, it’s because they’re fighting.
“No. We’re not.”
“What’s the problem?” I gasp, when I finally catch up with her.
“You really want to know?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “You! You and Casper Mason.”
“Huh? Care to elaborate?”
She releases an irritable huff of air. “Ack, you know how I feel about Casper.” I flash on what Casper said about Harper and me—that I don’t know my friend. “But Dave disagrees with me,” she adds. “He wants to get to know Casper. You know how Dave gets moon-eyed over art royalty. He’d love to get his hands on a Casper Mason piece to show at his aunt’s gallery. He wants me just to get over what happened. He had the nerve to suggest I invite you both to the party.”
I can’t help it; a grin tugs at the corners of my mouth.
“What’s so funny?”
I shake my head. An amusing image of us marching into their party, arm in arm, plays across my mind. “I wonder what costume Caz would pick, that’s all.”
“A devil outfit?” she muses. “A poisonous lizard?”
“Hm. Caz wouldn’t be quite that literal.”
“Caz, eh?” she sneers. “On a first name basis, and it’s been one mere week?”
I’m weary of defending myself, and I don’t want this to flip into another nasty argument. “Hey, you’re mad at Dave, not me, remember?”
“I’m mad at both of you.”
I stop and face her. “Harper, is there something you need to tell me?” I’m being presumptuous, but the question’s been poised on my tongue for days.
“About what?”
“About Casper.” I glare at her.
“What are you insinuating?”
“Why did he tell me I don’t know you? Why would he say that?”
When a look of absolute horror strikes her, I know I’ve gone too far. “I told you, he’s a monster, and he’s trying to turn you against me, just because he can. He likes peculiar games. He’s a sadist or something.” Her voice breaks. “And it hurts me that you’d take his—”
“Now wait a minute,” I interrupt. “You’re the one who broke into his locked room. And you’re the one who’s acting mean.” But he does play unsettling games. He is weird.
“The room you said you’d try to break into, too? Hah. Why don’t you and Casper Mason cozy up together on Halloween?” Her face reddens “He’s obviously more important to you than my party. I’ll walk the rest of the way on my own, and, Sienna?” I’m too flabbergasted to answer her. “I guess you’re still invited, but don’t even think of bringing Caz to the party.” She spits out his name like it’s garbage.
Tears pricking my eyes, I watch her stalk off toward Third Avenue.
***
While I torture over which print to take to Casper’s, I bake chocolate chip cookies from a Marie Claire recipe. I rarely cook, and my cooking sucks, but he’s fed me a lot, and it feels right to feed him back. Hopefully, it’ll sweeten his mood when he critiques my work.
The thought of it sets my teeth to grinding. But it’s also exciting he suggested I bring in work. Who gets a chance for a private critique from the great Casper Mason? Even if the guy’s nuts, he’s the art-world equivalent of no less than Leonardo DiCaprio! Harper’s irritating rant reminds me that I’d better act fast before the great and wonderful Caz fires me.
I’m only taking one print. It’s the luck of the draw. If he dislikes one print, especially if it varies from my usual style, he can’t devastate me by declaring an entire line of prints weak and flawed. That would put me in a swampy funk for a few weeks.
I choose an unusual print—spiky, with two round, blobby shapes in the middle. A darker shade of blue than my normal cool pastels. More masculine, more Caz. I hate myself for thinking this way, but I want him to at least half like it.
I’m meticulously wrapping it in bubble wrap when I smell something burning. “Darn, the cookies!” I yell, dashing to the oven. Luckily, only a few are black-edged, and I toss those.
I find a tin from last Christmas, arrange the salvaged ones in it, and gingerly place the tin in my messenger bag. They bump against a glossy box.
Ack, it’s the Tarot cards I bought with Harper. The feel of the card box in my fingers brings a rush of anger mixed with guilt. If I were Harper and my boss fired me, and then hired my friend, I’d be mad if that friend reported scuttlebutt the boss had said about me. I stuff the cards farther down in my bag.
I should apologize to Harper. But a part of me keeps thinking, what if Caz is right? What if she is hiding something from me? What if she did something with Caz? No, it couldn’t be that. But if his accusation was totally unfounded, why didn’t she just laugh it off? Why did she get so incredibly upset? My gut tells me there’s more to the story.
I’ll force myself to go to Harper and Dave’s party after the internship tonight. I want to see all of the wild costumes because Halloween’s my favorite holiday. As an afterthought, I lob two little pumpkins from the greenmarket into the bag. Harper’s having a jack-o’-lantern carving contest, and it may take me a couple of tries to carve a contest-worthy impish grin.
I hope we can talk about our Caz issue, have a private chat in the bathroom to work it all out. I miss the old, sweet Harper. Plus
, if I’m a no-show, she’ll be even more upset with me.
7 CHAPTER SEVEN
Caz leans against his desk, hands on hips and head cocked at a rakish angle, watching me lift off the bubble wrap. Why does it always feel like I’m stripping naked when I unveil my art? A flurry of heat rises from my chest to my neck and cheeks. Hope my nerves aren’t completely obvious.
We’re in his office, which feels awfully intimate. He’s given Tommy the afternoon off, so we’re alone.
Earlier, Tommy was uneasy about a coming storm, which Caz shrugged off.
“Who’s afraid of a little storm?” he chided.
“They say it might ramp up into a hurricane,” Tommy cautioned.
“Those weathermen are such drama queens.” Caz took a gulp of his coffee. “Anything for ratings. Sienna?” He glanced over for my reaction.
“I didn’t have time to watch the news this morning.” Truth be told, I was, and still am worried about a possible hurricane. But I wasn’t going to let anything keep me from seeing Caz.
Shrugging off the memory, I wonder why Caz has led me to his office. I’m giving him a sidelong look when my eye flashes on a set of keys in a ceramic bowl by his laptop. They’re on a red suede keychain. Whoa, those are the keys to his locked treasure trove that got Harper used to snoop before she got fired! Why would he leave them out in the open? He must know she and I talk. Is this another test?
“Hang your work up on the wall where I can really see it,” he commands.
“Oh, almost forgot, I brought cookies for you.” I forage in my bag for them. Somehow it’s imperative that he eats a cookie before he says one blasted thing about my art. To sweeten the deal.
Caz wags his brows. Lord, he’s so cute when he does that. “You didn’t need to bring me anything.”
“I know, but you’ve been generous with your food.” I watch him take a bite before I attach my print to his clothesline. He’s got a line with clips specially designed for showing prints. Duh. That’s why he wanted to do this in here.