“Good. There’s food waiting. I’d enjoy your company.”
The dining room was small, no larger than his bedroom at home, occupied by two chairs and an intimate round table covered in white linen. A gold eagle claw candelabrum cast a warm light over the table top. Miss Parkhurst preceded Oliver, her long dress rustling softly at her heels. Other things rustled in the room as well; the floor might have been ankle-deep in windblown leaves by the sound, but it was spotless, a rich round red and cream Oriental rug centered beneath the table; and beneath that, smooth old oak flooring. Oliver looked up from his sneaker-clad feet. Miss Parkhurst waited expectantly a step back from her chair.
“Your momma teach you no manners?” she asked softly.
He approached the table reluctantly. There were empty gold plates and tableware on the linen now that had not been there before. Napkins seemed to drop from thin fog and folded themselves on the plates. Oliver stopped, his nostrils flaring.
“Don’t you mind that,” Miss Parkhurst said. “I live alone here. Good help is hard to find.”
Oliver stepped behind the chair and lifted it by its maple headpiece, pulling it out for her. She sat and he helped her move closer to the table. Not once did he touch her; his skin crawled at the thought.
“The food here is very good,” Miss Parkhurst said as he sat across from her.
“I’m not hungry,” Oliver said.
She smiled warmly at him. It was a powerful thing, her smile. “I won’t bite,” she said. “Except supper. That I’ll bite.”
Oliver smelled wonderful spices and sweet vinegar. A napkin had been draped across his lap, and before him was a salad on a fine china plate. He was very hungry and he enjoyed salads, seeing fresh greens so seldom in Sleepside.
“That’s it,” Miss Parkhurst said soothingly, smiling as he ate. She lifted her fork in turn and speared a fold of olive-oiled butter lettuce, bringing it to her red lips.
The rest of the dinner proceeded in like fashion, but with no further conversation. She watched him frankly, appraising, and he avoided her eyes.
Down a corridor with tall windows set in an east wall, dawn gray and pink around their faint silhouettes on the west wall, Miss Parkhurst led Oliver to his room. “It’s the quietest place in the mansion,” she said.
“You’re keeping me here,” he said. “You’re never going to let me go?”
“Please allow me to indulge myself. I’m not just alone. I’m lonely. Here, you can have anything you want ... almost ...”
A door at the corridor’s far end opened by itself. Within, a fire burned brightly within a small fireplace, and a wide bed waited with covers turned down. Exquisitely detailed murals of forests and fields covered the walls; the ceiling was rich deep blue, flecked with gold and silver and jeweled stars. Books filled a case in one corner, and in another corner stood the most beautiful ebony grand piano he had ever seen. Miss Parkhurst did not approach the door too closely. There were no candles; within this room, all lamps were electric.
“This is your room. I won’t come in,” she said. “And after tonight, you don’t ever come out after dark. We’ll talk and see each other during the day, but never at night. The door isn’t locked. I’ll have to trust you.”
“I can go anytime I want?”
She smiled. Even though she meant her smile to be nothing more than enigmatic, it shook him. She was deadly beautiful, the kind of woman his brothers dreamed about. Her smile said she might eat him alive, all of him that counted. Oliver could imagine his mother’s reaction to Miss Belle Parkhurst.
He entered the room and swung the door shut, trembling. There were a dozen things he wanted to say; angry, frustrated, pleading things. He leaned against the door, swallowing them all back, keeping his hand from going to the gold and crystal knob.
Behind the door, her skirts rustled as she retired along the corridor. After a moment, he pushed off from the door and walked with an exaggerated swagger to the bookcase, mumbling. Miss Parkhurst would never have taken Oliver’s sister Yolanda; that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted young boy flesh, he thought. She wanted to burn him down to his sneakers, smiling like that.
The books on the shelves were books he had heard about but had never found in the Sleepside library, books he wanted to read, that the librarians said only people from Sunside and the suburbs cared to read. His fingers lingered on the tops of their spines, tugging gently.
He decided to sleep instead. If she was going to pester him during the day, he didn’t have much time. She’d be a late riser, he thought; a night person.
Then he realized: whatever she did at night, she had not done this night. This night had been set aside for him.
He shivered again, thinking of the food and napkins and the eagle claws. Was this room haunted, too? Would things keep watch over him?
Oliver lay back on the bed, still clothed. His mind clouded with thoughts of living sheets feeling up his bare skin. Tired, almost dead out.
The dreams that came were sweet and pleasant and she did not walk in them. This really was his time.
At eleven o’clock by the brass and gold and crystal clock on the bookcase, Oliver kicked his legs out, rubbed his face into the pillows and started up, back arched, smelling bacon and eggs and coffee. A covered tray waited on a polished brass cart beside the bed. A vase of roses on one corner of the cart scented the room. A folded piece of fine ivory paper leaned against the vase. Oliver sat on the edge of the bed and read the note, once again written in golden ink in a delicate hand.
I’m waiting for you in the gymnasium. Meet me after you’ve eaten. Got something to give to you.
He had no idea where the gymnasium was. When he had finished breakfast, he put on a plush robe, opened the heavy door to his room—both relieved and irritated that it did not open by itself—and looked down the corridor. A golden arc clung to the base of each tall window. It was at least noon, Sunside time. She had given him plenty of time to rest.
A pair of new black jeans and a white silk shirt waited for him on the bed, which had been carefully made in the time it had taken him to glance down the hall. Cautiously, but less frightened now, he removed the robe, put on these clothes and the deerskin moccasins by the foot of the bed, and stood in the doorway, leaning as casually as he could manage against the frame.
A silk handkerchief hung in the air several yards away. It fluttered like a pigeon’s ghost to attract his attention, then drifted slowly along the hall. He followed.
The house seemed to go on forever, empty and magnificent. Each public room had its own decor, filled with antique furniture, potted palms, plush couches and chairs, and love seats. Several times he thought he saw wisps of dinner jackets, top hats, eager, strained faces, in foyers, corridors, on staircases as he followed the handkerchief. The house smelled of perfume and dust, faint cigars, spilled wine, and old sweat.
He had climbed three flights of stairs before he stood at the tall ivory-white double door of the gymnasium. The handkerchief vanished with a flip. The doors opened.
Miss Parkhurst stood at the opposite end of a wide black tile dance floor, before a band riser covered with music stands and instruments. Oliver inspected the low half-circle stage with narrowed eyes. Would she demand he dance with her, while all the instruments played by themselves?
“Good morning,” she said. She wore a green dress the color of fresh wet grass, high at the neck and down to her calves. Beneath the dress she wore white boots and white gloves, and a white feather curled around her black hair.
“Good morning,” he replied softly, politely.
“Did you sleep well? Eat hearty?”
Oliver nodded, fear and shyness returning. What could she possibly want to give him? Herself? His face grew hot.
“It’s a shame this house is empty during the day,” she said. And at night? he thought. “I could fill this room with exercise equipment,” she continued. “Weight benches, even a track around the outside.” She smiled. The smile seemed less f
erocious now, even wistful; younger.
He rubbed a fold of his shirt between two fingers. “I enjoyed the food, and your house is real fine, but I’d like to go home,” he said.
She half turned and walked slowly from the stand. “You could have this house and all my wealth. I’d like you to have it.”
“Why? I haven’t done anything for you.”
“Or to me, either,” she said, facing him again. “You know how I’ve made all this money?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said after a moment’s pause. “I’m not a fool.”
“You’ve heard about me. That I’m a whore.”
“Yes, ma’am. Mrs. Diamond Freeland says you are.”
“And what is a whore?”
“You let men do it to you for money,” Oliver said, feeling bolder, but with his face hot all the same.
Miss Parkhurst nodded. “I’ve got part of them all here with me,” she said. “My bookkeeping. I know every name, every face. They keep me company now that business is slow.”
“All of them?” Oliver asked.
Miss Parkhurst’s faint smile was part pride, part sadness, her eyes distant and moist. “They gave me all the things I have here.”
“I don’t think it would be worth it,” Oliver said.
“I’d be dead if I wasn’t a whore,” Miss Parkhurst said, eyes suddenly sharp on him, flashing anger. “I’d have starved to death.” She relaxed her clenched hands. “We got plenty of time to talk about my life, so let’s hold it here for a while. I got something you need, if you’re going to inherit this place.”
“I don’t want it, ma’am,” Oliver said.
“If you don’t take it, somebody who doesn’t need it and deserves it a lot less will. I want you to have it. Please, be kind to me this once.”
“Why me?” Oliver asked. He simply wanted out; this was completely off the planned track of his life. He was less afraid of Miss Parkhurst now, though her anger raised hairs on his neck; he felt he could be bolder and perhaps even demanding. There was a weakness in her: he was her weakness, and he wasn’t above taking some advantage of that, considering how desperate his situation might be.
“You’re kind,” she said. “You care. And you’ve never had a woman, not all the way.”
Oliver’s face warmed again. “Please let me go,” he said quietly, hoping it didn’t sound as if he was pleading.
Miss Parkhurst folded her arms. “I can’t,” she said.
While Oliver spent his first day in Miss Parkhurst’s mansion, across the city, beyond the borders of Sunside, Denver and Reggie Jones had returned home to find the apartment blanketed in gloom. Reggie, tall and gangly, long of neck and short of head, with a prominent nose, stood with back slumped in the front hall, mouth open in surprise. “He just took off and left you all here?” Reggie asked. Denver returned from the kitchen, shorter and stockier than his brother, dressed in black vinyl jacket and pants.
Yolanda’s face was puffy from constant crying. She now enjoyed the tears she spilled, and had scheduled them at two-hour intervals, to her momma’s sorrowful irritation. She herded the two babies into their momma’s bedroom and closed a rickety gate behind them, then brushed her hands on the breast of her ragged blouse.
“You don’t get it,” she said, facing them and dropping her arms dramatically. “That whore took Momma, and Oliver traded himself for her.”
“That whore,” said Reggie, “is a rich old witch.”
“Rich old bitch witch,” Denver said, pleased with himself.
“That whore is opportunity knocking,” Reggie continued, chewing reflectively. “I hear she lives alone.”
“That’s why she took Oliver,” Yolanda said. The babies cooed and chirped behind the gate.
“Why him and not one of us?” Reggie asked.
Momma gently pushed the babies aside, swung open the gate, and marched down the hall, dressed in her best wool skirt and print blouse, wrapped in her overcoat against the gathering dark and cold outside. “Where you going?” Yolanda asked her as she brushed past.
“Time to talk to the police,” she said, glowering at Reggie. Denver backed into the bedroom he shared with his brother, out of her way. He shook his head condescendingly, grinning: Momma at it again.
“Them dogheads?” Reggie said. “They got no say in Sunside.”
Momma turned at the front door and glared at them. “How are you going to help your brother? He’s the best of you all, you know, and you just stand here, flatfooted and jawboning yourselves.”
“Momma’s upset,” Denver informed his brother solemnly.
“She should be,” Reggie said sympathetically. “She was held prisoner by that witch bitch whore. We should go get Oliver and bring him home. We could pretend we was customers.”
“She don’t have customers anymore,” Denver said. “She’s too old. She’s worn out.” He glanced at his crotch and leaned his head to one side, glaring for emphasis. His glare faded into an amiable grin.
“How do you know?” Reggie asked.
“That’s what I hear.”
Momma snorted and pulled back the bars and bolts on the front door. Reggie calmly walked up behind her and stopped her. “Police don’t do anybody any good, Momma,” he said. “We’ll go. We’ll bring Oliver back.”
Denver’s face slowly fell at the thought. “We got to plan it out,” he said. “We got to be careful.”
“We’ll be careful,” Reggie said. “For Momma’s sake.”
With his hand blocking her exit, Momma snorted again, then let her shoulders droop and her face sag. She looked more and more like an old woman now, though she was only in her late thirties.
Yolanda stood aside to let her pass into the living room. “Poor Momma,” she said, eyes welling up.
“What you going to do for your brother?” Reggie asked his sister pointedly as he in turn walked by her. She craned her neck and stuck out her chin resentfully. “Go trade places with him, work in her house?” he taunted.
“She’s rich,” Denver said to himself, cupping his chin in his hand. “We could make a whole lot of money, saving our brother.”
“We start thinking about it now,” Reggie mandated, falling into the chair that used to be their father’s, leaning his head back against the lace covers Momma had made.
Momma, face ashen, stood by the couch staring at a family portrait hung on the wall in a cheap wooden frame. “He did it for me. I was so stupid, getting off there, letting her help me. Should of known,” she murmured, clutching her wrist. Her face ashen, her ankle wobbled under her and she pirouetted, hands spread out like a dancer, and collapsed face down on the couch.
The gift, the thing that Oliver needed to inherit Miss Parkhurst’s mansion, was a small gold box with three buttons, like a garage door opener. She finally presented it to him in the dining room as they finished dinner.
Miss Parkhurst was nice to talk to, something Oliver had not expected, but which he should have. Whores did more than lie with a man to keep him coming back and spending his money; that should have been obvious. The day had not been the agony he expected. He had even stopped asking her to let him go. Oliver thought it would be best to bide his time, and when something distracted her, make his escape. Until then, she was not treating him badly or expecting anything he could not freely give.
“It’ll be dark soon,” she said as the plates cleared themselves away. He was even getting used to the ghostly service. “I have to go soon, and you got to be in your room. Take this with you, and keep it there.” She lifted a tray cover to reveal a white silk bag. Unstringing the bag, she removed the golden opener and shyly presented it to him. “This was given to me a long time ago. I don’t need it now. But if you want to run this place, you got to have it. You can’t lose it, or let anyone take it from you.”
Oliver’s hands went to the opener involuntarily. It seemed very desirable, as if there were something of Miss Parkhurst in it: warm, powerful, a little frightening. It fit his hand perfectly,
familiar to his skin; he might have owned it forever.
He tightened his lips and returned it to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not for me.”
“You remember what I told you,” she said. “If you don’t take it, somebody else will, and it won’t do anybody any good then. I want it to do some good now, when I’m done with it.”
“Who gave it to you?” Oliver asked.
“A pimp, a long time ago. When I was a girl.”
Oliver’s eyes betrayed no judgment or disgust. She took a deep breath.
“He made you do it... ?” Oliver asked.
“No. I was young, but already a whore. I had an old, kind pimp, at least he seemed old to me, I wasn’t much more than a baby. He died, he was killed, so this new pimp came, and he was powerful. He had the magic. But he couldn’t tame me. So he says...”
Miss Parkhurst raised her hands to her face. “He cut me up. I was almost dead. He says, ‘You shame me, whore. You do this to me, make me lose control, you’re the only one ever did this to me. So I curse you. You’ll be the greatest whore ever was.’ He gave me the opener then, and he put my face and body back together so I’d be pretty. Then he left town, and I was in charge. I’ve been here ever since, but all the girls have gone, it’s been so long, died or left or I told them to go. I wanted this place closed, but I couldn’t close it all at once.”
Oliver nodded slowly, eyes wide.
“He gave me most of his magic, too. I didn’t have any choice. One thing he didn’t give me was a way out. Except...” This time, she was the one with the pleading expression.
Oliver raised an eyebrow.
“What I need has to be freely given. Now take this.” She stood and thrust the opener into his hands. “Use it to find your way all around the house. But don’t leave your room after dark.”
She swept out of the dining room, leaving a scent of musk and flowers and something bittersweet. Oliver put the opener in his pocket and walked back to his room, finding his way without hesitation, without thought. He shut the door and went to the bookcase, sad and troubled and exultant all at once.