“Yeah.”
“She looked really good. Better than Hopewell, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“I wonder who did the surgery.”
“A clinic doctor?”
“No way. She’d look mangled.”
“Then a real doctor, I guess.”
Albert finished bandaging Hopewell’s elbow and was coming back up the aisle. Patience told him, “You’re really good at medical stuff, Albert. You should be a clinic doctor.”
Albert smiled. “Thank you, Miss Patience.”
“Would you like to do that?”
“No. I’m happy doing what I do.” He kept walking up to his seat.
Patience asked Daphne, “What do you have to do to be a clinic doctor?”
“I don’t think you have to do anything,” Daphne answered. “You rent a house or a storefront, put up a sign, and start calling yourself a doctor.”
Patience wrinkled her nose. “That’s it? Anyone who wants to call himself, or herself, a doctor can set up a clinic?”
“Pretty much.”
“You don’t need to go to medical school?”
“No. I suppose you could, but there’s nobody to check if you did or did not. You can print yourself a phony diploma, buy a pack of tongue depressors, and start telling people to say Ahh.”
Just then, Mickie and Kurt came down the aisle and set up in front of Mrs. Veck. Mickie explained, “We were looking at the tapes from before. I want to hear a little more about something that you said.”
The red light on Kurt’s camera came on. Mickie smiled into it. “Mrs. Veck, you used a phrase before that I had never heard, so I wrote it down: ‘rituals of social inversion.’ Can you tell me a little more about those?”
Mrs. Veck smiled. “Certainly. What would you like to know?”
“Well, you gave a very interesting example about the Three Kings bowing down to the baby Jesus. You’re saying that’s an ‘inversion’ because you’d expect the opposite to happen, right?”
“Right.”
“What are some more examples of inversions?”
“Shall we see if the students can think of any?”
Mickie shook her head. “No. Just give me a few yourself.”
“All right. Well, I remember one that had to do with boy chimney sweeps in London, back in Victorian times.”
“Excellent.”
“They worked at a dirty, dangerous job, and their faces were always black from it. But on one day of the year, they would paint their faces white and have a grand parade. The people would honor them on that one day; then the boys would go back to their black faces for the other three hundred sixty-four days.”
“Interesting. Any others?”
“Yes. There’s a very famous one that has survived over the years—April Fools’ Day. On that day, the most dishonored person in society, the fool, was honored by everyone else. Then he went back to being the fool.”
“That was a real inversion.”
“It was.”
“Now, why did the Victorians have these rituals?”
“I believe it was part of the social contract in Victorian times. The poor people had to be part of society; otherwise society wouldn’t work. The poor might decide to rise up and attack the rich! Through these rituals, the poor agreed to an exchange. They would be on top of society for one day, and then they would be on the bottom for the other three hundred sixty-four.”
Patience muttered to me the exact word that I was thinking: “Fools.”
Back at The Highlands, the security van dropped us all off at our respective houses. Patience got off with me, though, along with Victoria, Albert, Mickie, Lena, and Kurt.
My father was waiting there in the front yard, holding a controller in both hands. He was playing with the helicopter drone, making it rise and land by remote control. Without actually looking at me, he called out, “What are you up to?”
“We had a school field trip.”
“Oh? Where’d you go?”
“Mangrove. For Kid-to-Kid Day.”
“Uh-huh. Listen, honey, I have to talk to Albert for a minute. Okay?”
“Sure.”
He winked conspiratorially. “I’ve got the college bowl season coming up. Gotta get him to check out the weather alerts for me.”
“Okay.”
“Gotta get my flight plans squared away this time, too, or the FAA will get mad.”
I just shrugged and continued inside, but I muttered to Patience, “Gee, Dad, I did have a thing or two more to say. We did have some trouble down there, but we managed to escape with our lives. Thank you for asking.”
Patience and I then sat in my room for two hours. We spent most of that time analyzing the boys from the Amsterdam Academy satschool. We criticized some, assigning them names like Mr. I’m Too Cool to Look at the Camera and Mr. My Mother Dresses Me Funny. We drooled over others, and plotted how we might meet them in person. Or “in the flesh,” as Patience put it, which I told her was “a very hor-ish thing to say.”
At 17:00, Herbert, the Pattersons’ butler, arrived to drive Patience home for dinner. I walked her as far as the wrought-iron gate. Then I walked back inside and sat in the dining room. Victoria had prepared beef Wellington with Yorkshire pudding, a favorite dish of mine from The Manor House Book of Festive Recipes. My father, my ex-stepmother, and I consumed the food as unfestively as possible, just sitting there and chewing silently, like three strangers.
Dessalines
There was another type of syllogism that Patience and I used in our game. The Disjunctive Syllogism says that something either is or is not. I decided to try it by myself.
My first premise was: The dark boy is either evil or good. My second premise was: The dark boy is not evil (because he tried to get me out of that last bedpan thing). Therefore, my conclusion had to be: The dark boy is good. Or at least he has some good in him.
I believed that he did. I believed it enough to try to talk to him. First, as a show of good faith, I reached over, grabbed the bottle of Smart Water, and took a swig. I waited for a positive reaction, or any reaction at all, from him, but none came. I finally muttered, “Excuse me. Excuse me. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
He looked up from the two-way, but not really at me.
“I need a name for you. I need something to call you.”
He turned toward me slowly and answered, “What kind of fool do you think I am? I’m not telling you my name.”
“It doesn’t have to be your real name. It can be anything. Like you guys call each other names—Monnonk, and stuff.”
His eyes registered surprise, like he had been caught off guard. “We do?”
“Yeah. I hear you.”
“Okay. Well, don’t hear us. You might hear the wrong thing; then you’d be in danger.”
“Oh? Like I’m not now?”
He shook his head. “You’re safe enough, as long as you listen. So taissez-vous, et écoutez.”
“What’s that?”
“Be quiet and listen.”
“All right. But when I do need to…address you, what do I say? It’s disrespectful to just start talking to someone.”
He looked at me curiously, like he thought I might be mocking him. “Disrespectful?”
“Yes.”
“Alors. I’ll tell you what. You can call me a name. You can call me Dessi.”
“Dezi?”
He rolled his eyes. “No. Not ‘Dezi’ with a z. Not like some I Love Lucy Ricky Ricardo Seventy-fifth Anniversary Vidcelebration. No! It’s Dessi. With an s. It stands for Dessalines.”
He challenged me. “Do you know who that was?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes.”
“Jean Jacques Dessalines was a hero in Haiti. He drove the French out in 1803. He massacred the whites and made himself the emperor. He won a great victory for the slaves.”
“So Dessalines was a hero to the Haitian people
?”
“Yes. He still is.”
“Okay. So I’ll call you Dessi.”
He turned back to his two-way. I looked at the vidscreen clock: it was 15:17. I said, “Excuse me again. But how is the plan going? Does everybody know what to do…with the ransom and everything?”
“I don’t know.”
“Isn’t that the plan?”
“I guess so. I don’t really know.”
I felt a sudden chill. “Has something gone wrong?”
“No.”
I swallowed hard; then I asked him what I really wanted to know. “Did anybody get hurt?”
“Hurt? Who?”
“Albert. My butler.”
His skin seemed to redden. “Uh, I don’t know. You don’t need to know, either.”
I gritted my teeth. I balled up my fists and pressed them down into the stretcher. I wanted to shout at him, “I already know! You killed him! He was my armed guard, so you killed him!” But I didn’t. With a great effort, I forced thoughts of Albert out of my mind so I could ask, as calmly as I could, “And what about Victoria? What happened to her?”
Dessi replied, “Let’s focus on what’s going to happen to you.”
“If you hurt Victoria—”
“No one hurt Victoria.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“Because it was not necessary to hurt her. No one did anything that was not necessary.”
“Oh? And Albert? Was it necessary to kill him?”
“I did not kill anybody.”
“Then Dr. Reyes, or one of the others?”
He stood up. I could tell he was getting flustered. “I can’t talk about this.”
I pressed him, “Please. You have to understand: I am a human being. So is Albert. We are real people, just like you.”
He shook his head adamantly. “This conversation is over.”
I pushed myself forward on the stretcher, right to the edge, as if I might jump off. He raised his hands to stop me. I shouted, “Please, just tell me. Is my Albert dead?”
He glared at me for about fifteen seconds. Then, in an icy voice, he whispered, “Yes. He is. He is dead.”
I sat in stunned silence for a moment; then I leaned back on the stretcher, sick to my soul. I felt like I was in a night terror, but it was real. Way too real. How could this be? How could anything change so absolutely, so totally, just like that? How could Albert, so strong and alive, be dead just like that?
Suddenly I felt like I had to vomit. I felt my throat open up all the way down to my stomach. But there was nothing in there to come up, just stale air in a disgusting dry heave. I flipped over on the stretcher and buried my face in the sheet. With a great effort of will, I forced myself to block out all evil thoughts. I forced myself to travel somewhere else, to a safer place. Where? Anywhere. To The Highlands. To Christmas Eve. To a living memory of Albert.
I remembered Albert sitting in the kitchen. I was watching him through a crack in the door. He was at the breakfast counter, playing with his small leather chess set. Albert played with that chess set a lot. Patience told me that Herbert had told her that he was very good. I don’t know. I never played with him; that was against regulations.
Victoria was stringing a long garland made from many different kinds of nuts. I was eager to help with it, but I had to wait until Albert left the kitchen. He disapproved of me helping with any of the housework, or learning Spanish, or fraternizing in any way with Victoria.
That’s why I was standing at the door—waiting, peeking, eavesdropping. I didn’t often do that. RDS servants are so well trained that it’s usually not worth it. They never talk about anything interesting, or personal, or unprofessional. That’s why I was surprised to hear Albert saying, “So how do you feel about that? I mean, personally?”
The conversation had obviously been going on for a while, because Victoria’s voice sounded weary. “I already told you how I feel about it.”
“No, you didn’t. You said it didn’t affect you. That’s not true. How could it not affect you?”
“I meant…I don’t need to talk about it. It didn’t affect me like that, like I need to talk about it.”
After a pause, he continued: “But you should talk about it.”
Victoria had heard enough. “I want to talk about other things now. Like how we’re going to serve the dinner tonight. Like how we’re going to finish all these decorations in time. Like how the family will exchange gifts.”
After a loud sigh, Albert observed, “I didn’t see any gifts out there.”
“They’re going to put some gifts in the stockings.”
“If they are, it’ll just be currency. Or gift certificates.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Personally, I prefer real gifts.”
“People can buy whatever they want with currency. Currency is practical.”
“Have Mr. or Ms. Meyers been to the vault today to get currency?”
“I don’t know.” Victoria’s voice dropped as she added, “It’s really not my job to know.”
Their conversation died out after that, so I made some shuffling sounds with my feet and then opened the door.
Victoria smiled her dazzling smile. “Hello, Miss. Feliz Navidad.”
“Feliz Navidad.”
“Gracias. Are you ready for Christmas Eve?”
“Sure.”
Albert nodded. “Hello, Miss Charity.”
“Hello, Albert. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”
I played dumb. “Did either of you see where my parents hid my gifts?”
Albert shook his head. “You know we are sworn not to tell things like that.”
“I know. I was just wondering. I hope they’re not giving me anything stupid, like a Miami Hurricanes jersey.”
Victoria asked, “What do you want?”
“I don’t know. Something practical.”
Albert shot me a quick look, like he knew I had been listening. He put away his chess pieces, folded up the leather case, and stood up. “I’d better decorate that living room.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, Victoria said, “Why aren’t you out with a friend, having a great adventure?”
This was another of her not-so-casual questions. She was always on me about not going out, having fun, living my life. I answered, “Patience can’t come over. Her grandparents are visiting until fourteen-thirty.”
“Then what about someone else?”
“Who?”
“Someone on-screen, maybe? You could play a game. Someone from the Amsterdam Academy?”
“Who?”
Victoria gave up on that tack and tried, “Well, then, what about doing something on your own? Something adventurous, something thrilling.”
“What?”
“There are many activities for young people in The Highlands.”
“You sound like the real estate brochure.”
Victoria smiled and continued: “Many safe, supervised, yet still thrilling activities.”
“Right. Maybe I could go water-skiing with Albert and the guards, maybe out on the canal or on Killer Bass Lake. I could have four of them around me, with their Glocks, in a diamond formation. You know? Like in a water-skiing show?”
Victoria tried hard to keep a straight face, but she lost the struggle and burst out laughing.
I threw up my arms. “Oh, the thrill of it all!”
When she regained her composure, she finally stated the obvious: “You’ve come to help me make decorations, haven’t you?”
“Yes, please. What are you making?”
Victoria picked up a long sheet of paper. “Let’s see what I am making. Project one: a Victorian nut garland to drape across the mantel of the fireplace, composed of pinecones, Brazil nuts, walnuts, almonds, chicken wire, and moss. Project two: red-and blue-velvet stockings to be hung over the fireplace, one for each family member, decorated with tartan plaid trim. Project three: stri
ngs of Edwardian Christmas cards hanging from gold and green ribbons.”
She looked at me. “Pick your project.”
“I’ll help make the stockings.”
“All right.” Victoria rummaged in the pantry and pulled out a box. It contained scissors, thread, and different colors of velvet. “Here. We’re using last year’s stockings, but we’re adding new trim.” She reached down and pulled up three stockings. One said Charity; one said Hank; one said Mickie. I set to work cutting and adding trim to them while Victoria finished the nut garland.
I asked, “How do you say ‘stockings’?”
Victoria checked to see if Albert was near, then whispered, “Medias.”
“What about ‘Christmas stockings’?”
“Medias de Navidad.”
“That makes sense.”
After two minutes of silent work, Victoria commented, “Do you know who always gives practical gifts?”
“Who?”
“Ramiro Fortunato.”
“I remember.”
“Yes. He does not waste his money on silly, useless gifts that people don’t want. Instead, he buys his mother a new, more powerful vacuum for her housecleaning business. He buys his father a new set of socket wrenches for his auto-repair business.”
“What’s he doing in his latest adventure? Is he still mowing lawns?”
By way of reply, she reached into another box and pulled out a paperback book. “No more lawn business. He has joined the marines, for five years.” She handed the book to me to examine. “Then he is going to go to college, on a full scholarship.”
“Good for him.”
“Yes. He is brave, hardworking, and practical.”
“You really should marry him, Victoria.”
“I will. You wait and see.”
I laughed. “Maybe I will, too.”
She warned me playfully, “No, you stay away from my Ramiro.”
I studied the front and back covers and flipped through the pages. “What do you like best about these books?”
Victoria’s mouth dropped open, as if she couldn’t believe the question. “What do I like best? I like everything! For Ramiro, every day is a great adventure. And do you know why?”
“Why?”
She stretched her arms wide. “Simply because he is open to having adventures.”