The Waning Age

by S. E. Grove

  “Come in—Natalia, right?” He smiled.

  Of course. Crystal Cleaners would have told them I was coming. “That’s right.”

  “I’m Ed,” he said, reaching out with one gloved hand. He looked at my bucket. “You don’t need that. We have all the cleaning supplies you might want, and Mrs. Philbrick is particular about how they smell.”

  “Okay, good. No problem.” I went back to the car, dumped the bucket, and rounded back to the house. Ed was still at the door, still smiling. I followed him into the house and over to the edge of a spacious, sunken room that entirely defied the exterior structure of the house. High ceilings, huge windows onto an inner courtyard, a spiral staircase at either end. There was a lap pool in the courtyard and someone with bronze shoulders was doing laps. Mrs. Philbrick was sitting on the white sofa: very slim, very blonde, very young. I knew who she was because her style matched the decor. She seemed to favor the 1960s, from the look of things. Blonde beehive, blond wood; gold jewelry, gold knickknacks; teal throw pillows, teal pumps. Personally, I don’t like the colors, but she seemed quite comfortable among them. Very comfortable indeed. The sounds that had surprised me from the doorway came from her—she was sitting with two other women of a similar brand, glittering away, drinking cocktails.

  The sight took my breath away.

  It’s not just anyone who can afford the quality and quantity of synaffs that make alcohol consumption worthwhile. Old-time drugs are plenty cheap, but on most of us they do absolutely nothing. Chugging a beer is about as enjoyable and mood-altering as chugging a bottle of olive oil. Mrs. Philbrick, on the other hand, was clearly very much enjoying the bubbly liquid in the crystal glass. “And to another fantastic dress on another fantastic opening day!” she said happily, offering one of many jubilant toasts. The ladies laughed and clinked.

  I tore my eyes away and looked at Ed. He was watching me with friendly amusement, as if it pleased him to introduce me to such a joyous spectacle. I raised my eyebrows at him. “This place looks pretty clean to me,” I said.

  He laughed indulgently. “I’ll show you where to get started.” He directed me away from the sunken room and down a corridor until we reached a spacious kitchen. Here the decor parted ways with the 1960s, since everyone back then chose to cook their meals in ill-lit closets lined with laminate. Glass cabinets, wood counters, wood floors, and only the barest hint of the room’s intended use in the form of an ornate espresso machine. “Just the kitchen and the bathrooms on weekends,” Ed said. He opened a door to a pantry stacked with neatly organized cleaning supplies. “You should be out of here in a couple hours. I’ll be serving drinks in the other room, so just wave me down when you’re done with the kitchen and I’ll point you to the bathrooms. Help yourself to water and snacks in the refrigerator.”

  “Thanks.”

  He gave me a wave and disappeared down the corridor.

  I was a little dazed. I was having trouble figuring out why this wasn’t every Crystal Cleaner’s favorite job. Snacks?

  Just for kicks, I opened the refrigerator, once I located it behind a wooden panel. I didn’t see a single familiar label. Every item in there looked like it had been made by hand at an artisanal kitchen in SoMa. This doesn’t happen to me often, but I couldn’t seem to get over the fact that I wasn’t supposed to be there. It wasn’t the small-batch cheeses or the espresso machine built like a Rolls-Royce. It wasn’t even the reality behind them, the fact that it was raining money on the Philbrick castle. And it wasn’t the fact that I’d lied my way into the job. I realized, as I stared emptily at the pantry of cleaning supplies, that it was the undercurrent of emotion swirling around the rooms. People here were feeling things, good things, all the time. Disorienting didn’t even begin to describe it. For the first time since I’d faded, I had that nagging sense that I was missing something. Something big.

  There was only one thing to do. I assembled my cleaning supplies and got started on the kitchen.

  It took me less than half an hour, since all the surfaces were already sparkling. I made them smell a little nicer with the coriander-and-honey-scented supplies that Mrs. Philbrick favored. Then I went back down the hallway to the sunken living room. The hostess had moved her party outside, and the three ladies were sitting poolside with more drinks. I waved to Ed and in due course he came in through the open doors. “Bathrooms?” he asked cheerily.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  I followed him to the opposite end of the corridor, where a narrow stairwell turned twice to reach the second floor. The rooms here were off a U-shaped corridor that encircled the patio. “Four bathrooms upstairs and two downstairs,” Ed said. He pointed them out one by one on the second floor, then led me back down and directed me to the ground-floor bathrooms. “Supplies are in the same pantry,” he concluded.

  I thanked him and put together what seemed most bathroom-worthy from the pantry. It was hard to tell. Most of the cleaning supplies were nicer than what I use on my hair. The bathrooms on the ground floor were respectively dainty and dignified: lavender and lace with cream tiles in the one, gray marble and silver-trimmed mirrors in the other. I cleaned the already-clean surfaces and futzed around. Then I went upstairs.

  There was still no sign of Mr. Philbrick, but I was hoping I would run into him as I made the rounds, maybe reading the paper or getting ready to go play golf, or doing whatever it is rich pharma CEOs do on the weekends. The first bathroom was off the corridor; there was a connecting door that presumably led to a bedroom. I didn’t open it. The theme here was nautical—navy and white and jute. Porcelain tub with a matelassé shower curtain, tiny blue anchors on the wallpaper. I was scrubbing the spotless tub when the bedroom door swung open and someone said, “Well, hello!”

  I knew before even turning around that I’d found the wolf. It was the tone of voice. Comfortable, confident, and rapacious. As a voice it was pretty nice—warm and low, with just the slightest hint of a growl.

  I turned around. The wolf wasn’t bad to look at, either. He was clearly the owner of the bronze shoulders I’d seen earlier in the lap pool. Said shoulders were still bare, as were the arms, the chest, the stomach, the legs, the knees—well, actually everything that didn’t fit under turquoise swim briefs the size of a folded handkerchief. He had dark wavy hair slicked back, a straight nose, expressive eyebrows, and a thin mustache. He was going for early Clark Gable and pretty much nailing it. Too young to be Philbrick Senior. I figured he was offspring and made my plan accordingly. “Hello,” I said.

  He took a step into the room and planted a hand on the edge of the sink. His eyebrows did the talking for a little while and I looked back at him, not letting my eyes travel at all.

  “You are gorgeous,” he said warmly. He smiled and it lit up his eyes. Those were some high-quality drops he was taking.

  I didn’t say anything. I watched to see how quickly he would move.

  Pretty quickly. Maybe he was mixing something else with those synaffs, just like the ladies downstairs. He stepped forward and put a hand on my waist. “Just on the other side of that door,” he said in a low voice, “is a room with a bed.” His eyebrows darted upward. “It’s unmade.”

  Clearly the wolf didn’t have to work too hard for his meals, because his lines would not have held up well in the wild.

  I looked up at him. His face was only about five inches away from mine, and the rest of him was plastered up against me. “Now I get it,” I said. I took a short step back, found the edge of the tub, and tapped my chin pensively. “Option one, which I’m guessing most of my predecessors have taken, is to enjoy the top-notch euphoria on the top shelf of the medicine chest. A drop or two, with maybe a promise of the bottle as a parting gift. And that’s a nice option, because even if you don’t want to be happy for the rest of the month, you can sell the remainder of the bottle and pay your rent off for the rest of the year. Not bad. And all you have to do for it is ro
ll around in that unmade bed.”

  The wolf’s smile was frozen in place. He couldn’t tell yet where I was going. “Option two is to run out of here as fast as my little legs will carry me and complain to the grown-ups downstairs. I can already see how that goes. Mom is so doped she doesn’t care, or maybe she cares just enough to select the right appetizers for you through Crystal Cleaners. I’m guessing that’s it,” I said, watching his eyes turn hostile, “since the obvious solution is to send a two-hundred-pound straight man to do the cleaning here and they haven’t done that. And option three is to say no, once or fifty times, and watch you not care. But I’m guessing again that your tastes are flexible and you might even prefer that option, since I see the scratch marks on your wrists, and the castle has no cats. Very classy,” I added.

  His eyes were hard now, and the smile had an edge to it. Yeah, he was flexible—no doubt about it. His fingers tightened around my waist.

  “The thing you don’t know,” I went on, leaning into him, “is that I have a fourth option, and it involves using the lipstick I have pressed against your groin.” He blinked and moved to look down, but I chopped the motion off with my other hand. I held his chin and pulled his face in toward me. “This is really special lipstick,” I said quietly. “Very high voltage. I don’t have man-parts, so I can’t tell you from personal experience, but I’m told that it doesn’t feel good. And here’s the thing.” I smiled. “You can’t threaten my job, because I don’t care if I lose it. You can’t buy me off with drops, because I don’t want them.” I pressed the lipstick into his shiny bathing suit. “A rich rapist is still just a rapist,” I said.

  We stood there staring at each other, him trying to figure out if I was bluffing and me trying not to laugh at the naked confusion in his eyes.

  Someone else did it for me. There was a chuckle from the doorway to the corridor.

  I didn’t turn, but the wolf did. He stepped away all at once, his energy drawn back and now hurled at the figure in the doorway. “Charlie’s bad day,” the person standing there said, his voice heavy with condescension. He made it sound like the title of a children’s book about a depressed clown.

  Now I turned to look at him. He was a younger version of the wolf, aka Charlie. Same wavy dark hair, but more tousled. Same warm eyes, but less vicious. Same easy smile, but less smug. No mustache and plenty of clothes, which were both significant improvements. I liked him already.

  Then I recognized him.

  It was Troy. Flowers and Homer Troy. Cloak and Dagger Troy. Without the wild, red, panicked eyes, he was a different person. I blinked.

  Troy was way ahead of me. He knew who I was, and he wasn’t going to walk away. His eyes were trained on his brother, waiting.

  For a few seconds, Charlie radiated rage like a party sparkler. Then it was gone. Someone had really fine-tuned his dosages—it was kind of amazing to watch. “Bitch doesn’t want to play.” He shrugged, heading back toward his bedroom.

  “Actually,” I said to his back, “bitch would have loved to play. You wimped out.”

  I saw his back muscles harden and he flung me an evil look over his shoulder. Then he shrugged again and laughed. “She’s all yours, Troy.”

  I turned to Troy and waited to see what he would do with that. He looked back at me for what felt like minutes. In that time I noticed some things that I’d missed the first time: he had long eyelashes, a not-unpleasant sheen of sweat on his neck, and very nice arms. “Charlie is an asshole,” he finally said.

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  Suddenly something changed in his face, and I saw that he was younger than I’d realized. Eighteen at most, probably a year less. His eyes softened, and I caught a glimpse of a child who spent a lot of time alone.

  “Thanks for the interruption,” I said.

  He smiled. It was a lovely smile, if a bit sad. “It was entirely selfish. I don’t usually get to see Charlie put in his place. I can’t remember the last time.”

  “Maybe when the queen of England visited?” I asked.

  He laughed. “She hasn’t been here in ages. I miss her.”

  I was going to make a joke about his parents having more money than the queen, but something stopped me. For some reason I didn’t feel like embarrassing him. We had an awkward pause as I didn’t make the joke. “Riding?” I asked, nodding at his boots.

  He looked down at them as if he’d just remembered where his feet were. He was wearing khaki riding pants and chestnut-colored boots along with a loose white shirt. All of it looked comfortably worn-in. “Yeah, over at Orli Fields.”

  “Right,” I said, like I knew where that was.

  “Is your lipstick really a stun gun?”

  I held up the cylindrical pink case. “Yup. Handy, huh?”

  “Very.” He looked at me, considering. “Would you have used it?” I liked the way he asked—not as a dare and not with ghoulish curiosity. Just wondering.

  “Definitely. You tell me if I’m wrong, but to me charming Charlie seemed totally serious about putting his cute plan into action. When they’re serious, you have to be serious right back.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, and something like sorrow moved across his face. “You’re not wrong.”

  As I watched his face shift from sorrow to pain—remembered pain, it looked like—I started wondering how many times he’d heard the wolf go through his routine. What did the little brother do? Listen? Step in? Call the police? It didn’t seem like there were many good options.

  I decided to change the topic. “You and me and bathrooms,” I commented.

  He smiled. “Yes. There’s no way this can be a coincidence, so I have to conclude you’ve been following me. I’m flattered.”

  “Nope. Totally a coincidence.” As I said it, something sparked in my brain. Wait, was it a coincidence?

  “Seriously?” Troy’s eyebrows shot up. “No way, someone put you up to it. I’m betting that sweet lady who works with you at the Landmark. Martha?”

  “Yeah, Marta. If she had her way I’d have shown up on your doorstep with a ball gown and one glass slipper.”

  Troy laughed. “I like her.”

  But Marta hadn’t put me up to it. Troy was right. How could this be a coincidence? Pieces of information clanked around in my mental engine. The blonde woman downstairs. Frances Peters at the Landmark. Insults traded over the roof of a cab. Cal’s letter from school. Dr. Baylor, employee of RealCorp. Tanner Philbrick, CEO of RealCorp. I could see all the parts, but I couldn’t see how they fit together.

  I hid the many confusions behind a single one. “I’m a bit baffled. Mrs. Philbrick downstairs isn’t the woman I remember from the Landmark.”

  Troy shook his head. “Monica’s my stepmom. She’s barely thirty.” He said this with faint pity.

  “Got it,” I said. Words failed me. I couldn’t figure out how to ask him if Frances Peters had mentioned me to Tanner Philbrick. Obviously she had. Had Cal been whisked away by RealCorp because I’d insulted Frances Peters? Wait. Had Troy mentioned me to Tanner Philbrick? The thought silenced me.

  I stared at the boy in front of me, trying to find a way out of the obvious. He smiled, still friendly and hopeful but a little embarrassed by the lull. While we both thought about what to say, a female voice, high and tinkly from champagne, called from somewhere on the ground floor. “Troy! Charles!”

  Troy looked over his shoulder. “I’ve gotta go,” he said to me. “Are we still on for the Cloak and Dagger sometime?” His eyes studied the floor, then glanced up at me with a flicker of shyness.

  It didn’t seem possible that he could have done anything to make Cal disappear. Not knowingly, anyway. Maybe unknowingly? I had to find out. “Sure,” I said. “How about tomorrow?”

  He smiled, a rush of happiness flushing his cheeks. I wondered what that felt like. “Want to say three?”

 
“Sounds good.”

  Turning away, he flashed me a grin. “Bye.”

  “Bye,” I said. I listened to the two future Philbrick billionaires, the belle and the beast, make their way downstairs to the company of their stepmother and her intoxicated friends.

  As I listened I tried to figure out where my wits were. There was a dotted line that connected me and Troy to RealCorp and Cal, but I couldn’t see it.

  “Stupid,” I muttered, turning back to the tub.

  I was still missing something. Something big. But what?

  21

  NATALIA

  OCTOBER 13—MIDDAY

  Finishing the nautical bathroom, I decided to focus on the elusive senior Philbrick. There had to be something in the house that would tell me a thing or two about him. I cleaned my way steadily through the other two bathrooms, each shinier and more resplendent than the last, until I reached the master suite. From the tuxedo on the clotheshorse, I gathered that the CEO had a formal engagement in the evening, but I gleaned nothing else from it. The tuxedo had the look of a suit of armor for an invisible man. His presence in the house seemed dim, dialed down to the lowest possible setting. Old-school shaving supplies, sandalwood soap, a toothbrush, and a regimen of synaffs that to my eye (trained secondhand by Joey, who trained firsthand at the pharmacy) seemed to favor ascetic productivity rather than pleasure or indulgence: these were the only hints of him in the bathroom. A furtive glance through the bedroom revealed a separate walk-in closet for him, filled almost entirely with suits and black shoes. He had very little casual clothing. I was getting the impression that Philbrick lived more at the steel and glass monolith by the pier than he did at the castle.

  By the end of my cleaning circuit I was beginning to feel a little dizzy from all the opulence, as if I’d been staring too long at the sun. I was used to the Landmark, where wealth was well in evidence but pretty monotonous. This was something else. It was hard to accept that it existed. Especially considering that only a few miles away across the Bay Bridge, people had trouble paying for heat, paying for groceries. The grandeur was so at ease with itself, so settled; it belonged to a different world. A fully cogent, fully functional world which I had no part of. It was like opening a dresser drawer and finding the household mice in the midst of a ball, waltzing in their tiaras and gowns. I can’t believe they live like this, I kept thinking.