by Darren Shan
“True.”
A lull in the conversation for a while. Then she said, “That’s a funny thing to want. It’s not nice. Ferdy was a gangster. Then he said he wasn’t, but he was really. Why do you want to be a gangster, Capac?”
I shrugged. “You earn respect,” I tried to explain. “You get power, privilege, a say in the running of the world. People look up to you.”
“Is that so important?”
“Yes,” I said fiercely. “I’ve been a nobody. I’ve known what it’s like to be one of the walking dead and I didn’t enjoy it.” I was thinking of that night in the warehouse when death kissed my cheeks and let me go on a whim. “I want power. I want the protection, comfort and safety that it brings. Without power you’re nothing, a corpse waiting to be reaped.”
“Capac? I respect you.” She looked at me with sorrowful eyes, a lot like the young Judy Garland who was singing of life beyond the rainbow. “Isn’t that enough?”
I shifted uneasily and wished she’d drop this and get back to watching the movie. You were safe with movies. They can’t hurt you. Not like reality can.
“You have to hurt people when you’re a gangster,” she said. “To get your power you have to take theirs. Isn’t that right, Capac?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Would you hurt someone?” Her voice was low, steady.
“If I had to,” I answered truthfully.
“I don’t think you could,” she said. “You’re too nice.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“What’s your job at the moment?” she asked.
“I’m an insurance agent.”
“Ah,” she said, nodding. “In that case, I suppose becoming a gangster is the next logical step.”
“Funny,” I said drily.
“Were you always an insurance agent?” she asked.
“No.”
“What were you before?”
“I…” My mind flew back and I found myself facing a wall I’d been trying not to confront, though it grew in size every day. It was a wall I’d first noticed when Adrian asked me about my past.
What had I done before coming to the city? I couldn’t remember. It sounded crazy but my past was a blank. I could recall every step since alighting from the train but not a single one before. I hadn’t mentioned this to anybody, barely even to myself. I’d been hoping the memories would return if I didn’t worry about them.
“Capac?” She tapped my shoulder. “Are you OK?”
“Fine.” I coughed. “Anyway, enough about me. What about Conchita Kubekik? What do you want to be when you grow up? A lawyer, actress, model?”
“I want to be a ballerina. They’re so beautiful and graceful. There are no ugly ballerinas, not like…” She didn’t finish. Didn’t have to. I felt my heart lurch with sympathy. “I used to go to the ballet a lot, maybe four nights a week, watching them spin and glide like angels. Yes, I’ll be a ballerina. I’ll dance all night, men will throw themselves at my feet and Ferdy will come and weep with joy. He’ll see that there’s more to life than…”
She stopped, blushed and looked to see what Judy was up to.
“You’d make a lovely ballerina,” I said softly.
“No,” she smiled flatly. “I can’t dance for shit.”
At one in the morning Conchita reluctantly said she had to return to her apartment. “They come looking for me if I stay away too long,” she said petulantly. “They like me to get out and about, but only if they’re there to look over my shoulder. Not that I blame them. Ferdy would punish them if they disobeyed his commands.”
“Who are they , Conchita?” I asked.
“Doctors and nurses. My guardians.” She smiled. “But I won’t need them now that I have you. And you’re so much better looking than those grumpy old men with their needles and stethoscopes.”
“Are you making this up?” I frowned.
“I’m a sick person, Capac.” She rolled up one of her sleeves and revealed the withered flesh again. “They help… they stop me from killing myself. I’ve tried a few times. Lots of times. I don’t want to die but I get so scared sometimes, I just can’t bear to live.” She smiled. “But that’ll change now that I have a friend like you.”
I didn’t like it when she talked like that. We’d only known each other a few hours, yet she’d made up her mind I was some kind of Prince Charming. I recalled the promise I’d rashly made. I had been honest when I said I wanted to protect her, but could I keep my word?
“Can I come and visit you again?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Every night? Can I come and sit on your bed, watch movies and play games, laugh and be happy and not have to worry about my looks? You can tell me what’s happening in the city. I’ve been in here so long, sometimes I believe the Earth was built with a pane of glass in front of it. I’ll go whenever you’re tired or want to be alone, because people get like that sometimes, I know.”
“You can come anytime,” I told her softly. “I’ll get an extra card for you and you can let yourself in whenever you like. How’s that?”
“Great!” She rushed out. Stopped and came back slowly. “You’re not a dream, are you, Capac? I’ve known dream people before. Here one day, gone the next. I knew dream people even before I got sick. You’re not one of those, are you?”
“I’m not a dream person,” I assured her. “I’m real.” She grinned, then her face lit up with a new idea. “Walk me home!” she begged.
“What?”
“Escort me to my room and drop me off at the door with a kiss, like they do in the movies. You can even come in and meet my doctors. They can see how nice you are and not nag me about coming to see you in the future.”
“Is that a good idea? They might be suspicious of my intentions. A grown man and a young girl, alone in a hotel room…”
She laughed. “I told you I’m fifty-eight. A woman that age can do as she likes.”
She led the way to the elevator and pressed the button for the top. A sign lit up over the panel, asking for a code. She pressed five buttons. I thought she was playing games but the light blinked and we rose. I’d never been to the top floor before. I expected Troops but it was the same as any other hall, unguarded, ordinary.
Conchita walked ahead of me. I hesitated, not sure we should be up here, then followed. There might be trouble when we were found, but I was sure we could wriggle out of it. I had contacts.
Conchita moved with confidence, not put off by the glass ceiling and the black sky above. I paused a few times to look down on the city. All I could see were tiny lights like stars reflecting in a dark pond.
We went down two long corridors. I was starting to feel itchy under the collar when she put her hand out, shoved open a door and entered a seemingly random room. I rushed forward to catch her, thinking the game had gone far enough, only to miss, stumble in after her and find myself in a huge room where all the furniture was covered with white sheets and robes. Long curtains obscured the walls and more had been draped across the glass roof to blot out the sky. The entire room was smothered in wraps, just like Conchita.
There were four people present, a man and three women, clad in white. The man stepped forward angrily. “Where have you been?” he snapped. “We were about to call security and you know how awkward we feel when we have to do that.” He eyed me suspiciously. “Who’s this?”
“My friend,” she said loftily, breezing past without a care in the world. His hands tightened and I guessed he would have loved to strangle her if he dared.
“Friend? ” he barked. “I wasn’t aware you had any friends. Where did—”
She snapped her fingers and he shut up. “That’s enough, Mervyn. I’m allowed to have friends, am I not? I thought you’d be delighted.”
“Miss Kubekik, of course I’m happy that you—”
“In that case, please apologize to Mr. Raimi.”
“Apologize for what?” he exploded.
“For being rude,�
� she growled. There was steel in her voice which I hadn’t heard earlier. It sobered the doctor immediately.
“I apologize profusely, Mr. Raimi,” he said, bowing to me, no sarcasm.
“In that case I’m off to bed,” she said. “I’ll see you again tomorrow, Capac?”
“Sure,” I smiled. “Good night, Conchita.”
“Good night… protector.”
Then she was gone.
“One minute,” the doctor said stiffly as I tried to sneak out. “You and I have a few things to discuss.” He gestured to one of the covered chairs. I sighed and sat. “What happened downstairs?”
“Nothing,” I told him honestly.
He snorted. “My charge spends hours away, comes back with a man I’ve never seen, calmly announces he’s her friend and waltzes off to bed as merrily as you please. This from a woman who’s hardly spoken for five years. Cut the bullshit and tell me everything.”
When I did, he couldn’t believe it. “She showed you her arm,” he sighed.
“Is that such a big deal?” I frowned.
He laughed curtly. “She hasn’t let anybody look at her skin as long as I’ve been here. When we want to examine her, we have to sedate her. You must be a fakir, Mr. Raimi. What’s your secret?”
“I don’t have one,” I said. “We just clicked. She was lonely, I felt sorry for her and we became friends.”
“Just like that!” He shook his head and chuckled wryly.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked. “She wants to visit me every night. I told her she could, but…”
“You don’t want her disrupting your life?”
“It’s not that. I don’t mind her coming. I’m just worried it may not be the best thing. She might be better off with friends her own age.”
His eyes narrowed. “Do you know what’s wrong with Conchita?” he asked.
“I’ve read about it. The body grows old before its time and—”
“No, Mr. Raimi,” he interrupted. “You are thinking of progeria. This is not the same. There’s nothing wrong with Conchita’s body. The fault is in her face.”
“I don’t understand. There’s nothing wrong with her face.”
“She looks like any other teenager,” he agreed, then paused dramatically. “But Miss Kubekik is fifty-eight years old.”
I did a double take, then grimaced. “She told me. I thought she was joking. But that means her body…”
“…Is that of a normal woman her age,” he finished.
“How?”
“We don’t know,” he said. “We’ve been studying her for a quarter of a century and still don’t know what’s wrong. She was a beautiful young woman. In her late twenties she found she wasn’t aging facially. For a while she was delighted, but as the years passed the implications seeped home. She wasn’t growing older. In fact she was actually getting younger. She was a woman in her thirties but with the face of a teenager. She was cursed to never look her age.
“She lost her mind. She cut her face, thinking to scar herself beyond recognition. It didn’t work. The skin healed in a matter of days. It has something to do with her unique DNA structure. I don’t know all the ins and outs—I tend to her mind, not her form. She had a breakdown, the first of many. Later she painted her face to look her age. But she couldn’t maintain the pretense. After several hard years, she left her face alone and went the other way. She looked like a teenager, so she became one. She bought youthful clothes, discarded her adult raiments, and began to act like a child. She convinced herself she was a girl, gave up her old life, her friends, her husband, her—”
“Husband? ” I stared at him. “She’s married?”
“Yes.”
“But you call her Miss Kubekik.”
“Part of the pretense. There could be no place in her fantasy for a husband. To become a teenager she had to discard and forget him. She blanked him out, denied his existence, refused to look at him when he tried to see her. She took her maiden name and acted like she’d never lost it.”
“Christ.” I was glad I was sitting down. “She mentioned him to me. Ferdy. That’s him, isn’t it?”
“Yes. She hasn’t been able to wipe him from her thoughts as completely as she wanted. The memories return, remind her of the truth and plunge her into fits of despair. She’s not exactly happy as a child but she’s content. But when the fantasy breaks down and she remembers…” He shrugged helplessly.
We were quiet for a while, reflecting. Then a thought struck me. “She wasn’t desperate tonight,” I said. “She talked about him, discussed him openly. She told me her age. She was sad but calm, in control of herself.”
“Yes.” He rubbed his chin slowly. “That would seem to suggest a new phase. Perhaps she is coming to terms with her disease at last. She didn’t actually tell you she was married, did she? Just mentioned his name. Still, it’s a step forward. And admitting her real age. We weren’t sure she still knew. We’ll have to examine this carefully. I’ll need to consult with my colleagues.”
“What do I do?” I asked. “Do I let her come to my room?”
“Hell, yes!” he grunted. “Turn her away now? You might destroy her. Let her come, Mr. Raimi. Treat her like you did tonight. Be her friend. God knows, it’s been long enough since she had one of those.”
aimuari
Conchita visited almost every night. She’d be there when I got home, curled up on the bed, glued to the TV. She watched only happy films. She’d had enough misery. She said movies should be for escaping the gloom and hardships of life. We played games but nothing too taxing. Conchita loved games of chance, where the toss of the dice decided all. She absolutely hated chess.
She talked freely about her illness and her past. She could remember everything but it hadn’t always been so. At times she’d forgotten who she was, believed she was really fourteen, her whole life ahead. When reality intruded—as it always did—she hated herself all over again. That’s when she tried to commit suicide.
She’d made attempts to accept her cursed condition a long time ago, but had failed and given herself willingly to illusions and lies. Now she was trying to be her real self again. She was scared and there were days when she felt she couldn’t bear it, but she hadn’t succumbed to fear as she had in the past. She said I gave her strength, that she wanted to stay sane for me. I never felt more honored or more worried than when she said stuff like that.
I urged her to meet Adrian. She was reluctant but I sweet-talked her persistently and finally she agreed. They got on great, as I had known they would. I didn’t tell Adrian about her disease. As far as he was concerned, she was just a strange little girl. Adrian didn’t come every night but popped by a couple of times a week, played games and watched old movies with us.
“There’s nothing underhand between you, is there?” he asked one day. “You aren’t doing her on the sly?”
“No!” I was shocked. “What do you think I am?”
He shrugged. “We move in dirty circles. You’ve kept yourself relatively clean so far, but we both know the day of reckoning isn’t far off, that sometime soon you’ll have to prove yourself to The Cardinal, show your ruthless streak. I hope never to hurt anybody as long as I live, but you’re going to have to kill people one day. A man who’d do that… well…”
“I haven’t touched her,” I said quietly. “There are some things I’d never do, lines I’ll always refuse to cross. I won’t hurt innocents. Conchita’s safe with me.”
“I hope you always feel that way,” he said softly.
We arranged a trip to the movie theater one afternoon. It was the first time in years that Conchita had ventured outside the Skylight. She walked the streets slowly, awkwardly, like Neil Armstrong on the moon. I suggested calling in to Shankar’s but she’d been there years before and feared people might recognize her.
Casablanca was playing. The best film ever. I looked around several times and almost everyone was mouthing along to the lines, like groupies at a concert.
But for Conchita the best bit wasn’t the classic movie—it was the simple walk in the open air.
The only part of her life Conchita wouldn’t discuss was her marriage. I tried broaching the subject a few times but she made it clear she didn’t want me prying. I asked her doctors and it turned out she’d been married to a mobster, Ferdinand Wain. I asked where he was but they didn’t know. He used to visit but had given up on Conchita long ago. The doctors hadn’t seen him in ages. But the checks kept coming, so he must be around somewhere, and not doing too badly if he could afford a suite on the top floor of the Skylight. I kept meaning to ask Leonora or Y Tse about him, whether he was in the city or not, and if he was any relation to Neil Wain, the man who’d killed Uncle Theo. But I kept forgetting. It wasn’t important. I was just curious.
Ford Tasso called one day, told me to go home and get ready—we were going out that night. He didn’t say any more. I rushed back to the Skylight, showered and changed clothes. I was nervous—I always got the jitters when Ford called—and spent the time surfing the TV, wondering what lay in store. The trademark green fog of the city began to creep across the skyline as I waited. I studied it anxiously, afraid it would mean a cancellation, but then the phone buzzed and a receptionist told me a car was waiting. I expected Adrian but the driver was a stranger. “What happened to Adrian?” I asked.
“Who, sir?”
“Adrian Arne. My regular driver.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know him, sir. I only started a couple of months ago.”
“Who sent you?”
“The company, sir. Mr. Tasso requested a driver. I was available. If you would rather another…”
“That’s OK. Drive on… what’s your name?”
“Thomas, sir.”
“Drive on then, Thomas.”
He negotiated the murky streets with great skill. The fog was growing heavier all the time but he took no notice. He drove to a building site where Ford and Vincent were waiting by their own car, shrouded in green vapors. Vincent wasn’t glad to see me. “You sure we should be taking him along?” he pouted. “He’s still a beginner. What if he—”
“He’s coming,” Ford snapped. “If you don’t like it, complain to The Cardinal.”