“Don’t worry about it. I had a pleasant afternoon. In fact, I learned a few things. Would you mind if I came over and shared them with you?”
“Not at all. If you’d like, we can have lunch.”
“That would be wonderful. Tell me. Is Domingo available to join us?”
“He’ll be out with the painters,” I said. “It is a work day.”
“If Domingo can take a break,” Mikey said, “I really would like to speak with him.”
“I’m sure he’ll leave off if you want to ask him something.”
“Good. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
We rung off and I went back out into the garden. Domingo was busy pulling grass from between the border stones of the garden. His fingers remained busy as he listened to my question.
“I’ll be here all day,” he said. “I will tell the crew that the trustee for your estate wants to review my custodian work. They will pity me, and maybe even work harder so that I’ll look good.”
I chuckled. “You’re probably right. Come on in as soon as you can take a break after Mikey gets here.”
Mikey arrived slightly more than fifteen minutes later, but the reason for his delay was explained along with the heavy grocery sack he carried into the house.
“I thought I really have been imposing on you,” he said, “so I went and picked up a few things to add to lunch.”
I peeked in and saw neatly wrapped packages of deli cold cuts, some chips, and a small bag of apples.
“You’re not imposing,” I said truthfully. “I feel that I’m imposing on you—especially making you stay in a hotel.”
“I’ve been drawing my fee as your trustee for a good number of years now,” Mikey said, “and this is the first time since you were settled with the Fenns that I have had to do more than review a little paperwork. And I assure you, staying in the hotel is no burden. Large as this house is, I think that right now you need your space.”
“There has been a lot for me to adjust to,” I admitted, leading the way into the kitchen. “Tell me, Mikey, will using the kaleidoscopes always hit me so hard? I mean, I feel like a kid riding a bike that’s too big for her. It takes more effort than I have to give.”
Mikey looked grave. “In order to use power, you must give something back. That’s one of the oldest principles of magic, found in every tradition there is. It’s the true meaning behind the tale of Adam naming the animals. In doing this, he asserted his sovereignty over them, but he also gave them names—individual identities. In many magical traditions, knowing the true name of something is knowing how to control it. That’s why true names are kept secret.”
I wrinkled my nose, feeling doubt. “But Adam named the animals. Doesn’t that mean he knew their names and so still kept power over them?”
Mikey chuckled. “Adam also named Eve, and how much control did he have over her?”
I shared his laugh, but didn’t let myself be distracted from how this applied to me specifically. “Leaving out Adam, Mikey, should using this ability stay so hard for me?”
“I don’t think so, but I honestly don’t know. Mira, I sense a great deal of ability, power, whatever you want to call it, inherent in you, but I will admit, I have been puzzled by the effort it takes you to use it. It’s almost as if something is blocking you.”
“Phineas House, you think?” I asked, finding myself glancing up at the ceiling as I had noticed Mikey doing a couple of time.
“No. I don’t think so,” Mikey replied. “I’m something of an expert on Phineas House—at least as much as anyone who is not keyed to it can be—and my feeling is that it is pleased with you. Certainly the behavior of the silent women would seem to bear witness to this.”
“They took care of me last night again,” I said. “Brought me a tray and your note. But if it isn’t the House, what then?”
“I’ve been wondering if it’s something that Colette put in place,” Mikey said. “Her behavior toward you was always strange—protective and antagonistic at the same time. Her father viewed her as a rival. I wonder if she feared that Phineas House would pass her over in favor of you once you had developed some skills. Maybe she did something to prevent you from coming into your potential.”
I thought about this as I put the extra groceries away.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe. In any case, we don’t need to worry about it until we can use Saturday’s kaleidoscope.”
Mikey didn’t press me to try using Friday’s to garner hints about my anonymous father. I think how hard I’d been hit by our sessions had made him cautious.
Domingo knocked on the kitchen door about fifteen minutes after Mikey’s arrival. He’d clearly taken time to go back to the carriage house and clean up from painting. He was wearing slightly faded blue jeans and a collarless button-down shirt. His hair was slightly damp, as if he’d just gotten out of the shower, and I found myself thinking of that indecisive daisy petal.
The men exchanged their greetings and some small talk about the work on the exterior of Phineas House. We made elaborate sandwiches, and continued our small talk through an early lunch. Afterward, Mikey turned to me.
“Mira, would it be possible for us to adjourn to your library? I have some papers to show you, and the desk would be convenient.”
I nodded. “Refill your drink and come along. There are three chairs there. I’ll let you have the one at the desk.”
When we were settled in, Mikey began without preamble. “I knew that we had found a reliable caretaker for Phineas House, but it wasn’t until I met Domingo that I realized what an extraordinary person he was.”
Domingo shuffled his feet in the carpet, obviously uncomfortable with this effusive praise—and perhaps suspicious of it as well.
Mikey went on. “Domingo, Mira has told me that she has confided to you a great deal about the—oddness—both of her own history and that of Phineas House.”
“That’s right,” Domingo replied a trace defensively.
I didn’t blame him. I was feeling defensive, too. Mikey was leading up to something, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like whatever it was, but Mikey was still smiling and still being his affable self. I made myself listen without saying anything.
“As we’ve discussed your work on Phineas House,” Mikey said, “one thing has become clear to me. This extraordinary paint job was not Mira’s idea, was it?”
Domingo shook his head. “I have never said so, nor has she. It was the House’s idea. Mira was kind enough to think it was a good idea, and encouraged me to complete it.”
“Tell me,” Mikey said, addressing us both. “Neither of you thought it the least odd that Domingo should be so in tune with Phineas House’s wishes?”
Domingo let me answer first.
“Not at all,” I said. “At first, I didn’t know Phineas House could have wishes. I took Domingo’s statements as figurative. If you’d been around as many artists as I have, hearing that an ornate house—one whose current paint scheme was clearly at odds with the demands of the structure, let me remind you—anyhow, hearing that that ornate house ‘wanted’ a more suitable paint job seemed pretty normal, like hearing a sculptor talking about there being a fox or a child or a naked woman in a chunk of marble.”
“And, later,” Mikey asked, “when you realized that Domingo wasn’t speaking figuratively? It didn’t strike you as odd then?”
I shrugged. “How I realized Domingo wasn’t speaking figuratively was when I started experiencing the same prompting. You’ve got to understand, Mikey, it’s not like Phineas House says ‘Paint those dragons crimson, would you?’ It’s just that if you look at the house long enough and let your imagination drift, pretty soon you get a strong feeling for what combination of colors is, well, right. After that, anything else seems wrong.”
“And you, Domingo?” Mikey asked. “Was it like that for you?”
Domingo shook his head. “No, not quite like that. Choosing the right colors is not so easy for me. I have
to concentrate a lot, even try samples. I have a computer program for this, but sometimes I have come out and tried a splash against the wood and looked at it. I have a cousin who works at a paint store, and he’s okay about giving me samples because he knows that when the time comes I’ll be buying a lot of paint.”
“I don’t just mean,” Mikey said, “how you select the paint colors, I mean how you communicate with the House.”
“Like Mira says,” Domingo replied, “it’s not like talking. It’s just a feeling. I’ve always had it, from when I was small and coming here with my father to tend the gardens. I could feel how the gardens should be, and that those fences in between shouldn’t be there. Later, I could tell that the House felt sad because she was colored so dully. Even later, when Colette vanished and Phineas House was shut up, I felt the House becoming more and more quiet. I would come here sometimes to trim the lawns and make sure nothing had broken in, and it felt like the gardens surrounded a great sleeping creature.”
Domingo looked at Mikey, then at me. “I’m not crazy. I know some people think I am, or even that maybe I am a little slow, a little thick, but I am not. When the real estate company offered me the job of caretaker rather than just groundkeeper, I was very pleased. I took jobs in renovation so I would know what an old structure needed. When in the early 1980s the Montezuma Castle grounds were taken over by the United World College, I was offered work there, and I took it because then I could better serve Phineas House’s needs.”
“When was this?” Mikey asked.
“Early 1980s,” Domingo repeated. “That’s when the college bought the land, but they didn’t use the Castle right away. It was in too bad shape. They used other buildings. The big renovation was more recent—I think it started in 1997 or maybe 1998. The rededication of the Castle was just a few years ago. It was a huge event with celebrities from all over the world coming. I met a queen, even, Queen Nur of Jordan.”
“Bingo …” Mikey said very softly, but he didn’t elaborate. Instead, he returned his genial attention to both of us. “Well, despite the capacity of the two of you to take the extraordinary as if it were quite usual, it is not usual for people—even the ‘liminally talented’—to get messages from Phineas House. Yet I do not doubt for one moment that this is what Domingo has done.”
“And me?” I asked.
“Of course you,” Mikey said. “You’re the heir to the House. In a very real sense, you’re the one person I’d expect Phineas House to talk to. That’s why Domingo’s ability, which I could sense for myself, struck me as unusual. So, when Mira didn’t need me, I took advantage of my free time to do some research. Would either of you be very surprised to learn that Domingo is also a descendent of Aldo Pincas?”
We were, but neither of us said anything. We just stared at Mikey, waiting for him to clarify.
“Aldo Pincas, the builder of Phineas House, and his wife, Rosamaria, had three children. The first was Amerigo, who inherited the House. The other two were Carita and Fernando. I’ve done some checking through old records here and elsewhere—the Net is really wonderful—and confirmed to my satisfaction that Domingo is a descendant of Fernando Pincas.”
“Really?” I asked. Domingo was too astonished to say anything.
“Really,” Mikey confirmed with a crisp nod. He started unfolding papers, spreading them on the cleared portions of the desk. “When he was a young man, Fernando went to seek his fortune away from Las Vegas. He never returned, but years later his daughter, Florencita, returned with her new husband. As far as I can tell, Florencita did not associate very much with the residents of Phineas House. They were cousins, true, but they had been raised apart and had little in common. I do not even know if Florencita had any talent beyond the normal for sensing liminal space. In any case, some of Florencita’s descendants have remained in Las Vegas, but where Amerigo’s children married Anglos, Florencita’s alliance was to the Spanish town. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the next generation, the two families had so little in common they did not even associate.”
“Another duality,” I said, my voice hardly louder than a whisper. “Two branches of the same family living side by side in the same small town, gradually forgetting they were related. It’s weird …”
“Weird,” Mikey agreed, “but interesting. What do you think, Domingo?”
“I’d like to see your records,” Domingo said, rising to bend over the spread papers, “but I am inclined to believe you. The name Florencita remains a family name for us. My mother’s sister is Florencita, though mostly she goes by Florie.”
“Look as much as you want,” Mikey said. “Copiers are wonderful, too, especially when,” he twinkled mischievously, “you can slip in after hours and copy things not usually available to the public.”
I didn’t bother to ask about how Mikey had managed that. For all his friendly affability, Michael Hart was a sorcerer or something very like, and a locked door or two probably wouldn’t stop him from going where he would.
We all poured over the papers for a long while, tracing lines and deciding that Mikey’s leaps of faith—which he had been forced to make from time to time as the old record keepers seemed to have been rather cavalier on matters of spelling—weren’t large enough to make it seem that the connections had been forced.
“Happily,” Mikey said, folding up the records, “genealogy is a hobby of mine. Some of us who use liminal space are still trying to figure out exactly what makes it likely for the trait that allows conscious use of liminal space to be passed on between generations. Not all my children have it, but I’d like to know if one of their children might. In any case, it seems that Domingo still carries traits inherited from his great, great, great whatever grandfather Aldo Pincas, and that Phineas House, desperate in her abandonment as she had never been before, reached out and connected with him.”
I sat staring at Domingo. The blood connection was tenuous enough that it wasn’t even like we were real relations, but still it was a great deal to take in. Domingo wasn’t looking at me. He really wasn’t looking at anything in the room but back across time and the ebb and flow of generations. When Domingo’s gaze focused again, he was looking at Mikey.
“Could I have a copy of those papers?” Domingo asked. “My family has never been too into written genealogies, but there are old Bibles and the like. I could probably confirm at least some of this.”
Mikey bent and pulled a fat manila envelope from his briefcase. “I thought you might like a copy, so I made you one.”
I understood why Mikey hadn’t handed the copy over immediately. Domingo might have resisted knowing that he was related to the family that, in the present day, he was employed by, the same family that had not let his father over the threshold, even into the kitchen.
I wondered about that now. Initially, the restriction had seemed just another example of Colette’s snobbishness. Had she, in fact, sensed a connection, and decided not to risk attenuating her connection to Phineas House? It seemed possible, but then again, the way things were going it also seemed possible that the full-length portrait of Colette that still hung in her bedroom would come to life and begin ordering around the servants.
Right now, just about anything seemed possible, and I felt the dull throb of a developing headache. I shook it away, exasperated. So what if the universe was more complex than I had ever imagined? It was also a whole lot more interesting.
Eventually, Domingo excused himself to return to supervising the painters.
“I would rather remain,” he said in gentle apology, “but this is Friday, and I think I should make certain that they do not grow sloppy as the weekend beckons.”
We assured him that we understood, and with a slight bow Domingo rose and departed. When he was gone, Mikey looked seriously at me.
“Mira, is that door tightly closed?”
I checked, and it was. “There’s a window open behind you, though. The House isn’t air-conditioned, you know.”
Mikey nodded. “Y
es. I recall. Perhaps it would be wisest if we adjourned to that upstairs parlor again. No one is working on that side of the House, are they?”
I shook my head. “No. The front of Phineas House was the first part Domingo painted—a brave face to the world or something like that.”
“Good.”
We stopped by the kitchen long enough to refill our glasses, and I excused myself to use the bathroom. As I washed my hands, I frowned at my reflection in the mirror over the sink. What did Mikey have to tell me he didn’t want overheard? For the last half hour or so our conversation had been general, so that implied it was something he didn’t want Domingo to overhear either. That didn’t please me, but I kept my suspicions to myself as I joined Mikey in the front parlor.
He was seated on one of the love seats, looking around at the elegant room where Colette had most often held court with her favorite of the moment.
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