“The man who died at the fundraiser didn’t die,” said Tuesday. “I don’t quite – know – he must have been an actor. Wearing a Vincent Pryce costume, hired to play his dramatic death scene. We thought we saw him die, but all we actually saw him do was collapse. The doctors who came forward, they were trying to save him still. And the paramedics got there so quickly, I bet they were actors too. You, Lyle – you were an actor. That night.”
“Get me in a room full of corporate wankers and I’m already acting anyway,” Lyle said. “But you’re correct that I had a script that night.”
“That’s how Vincent Pryce managed to die on cue, when all the dominoes were lined up – guaranteeing maximum publicity, maximum press, and public interest in his death.” Tuesday sat back in her seat. “He wanted as many people to know about his game and to play it as possible. I don’t know why, exactly. Other than the simplest explanation.”
Archie snorted. “Oh great. The simplest explanation.” He turned to Tuesday. “Which is?”
“He liked games.” Tuesday shrugged at Lyle.
“Vince loved games,” Lyle said. “And he thought too many people had forgotten how to play. They’d been brainwashed into thinking the entire point of playing a game – or working or living or doing anything – is to win.”
“Isn’t it?” Archie asked.
“Not the entire point,” said Lyle. “Otherwise, the only game humans would ever have invented would be the coin toss. Heads or tails. Win or lose. But instead we have chess and checkers. We have backgammon and craps and poker. We have Clue and Monopoly. We have Risk – we have Settlers of Catan, for Christ’s sake. We have Frogger. Myst. Halo. We have Jeopardy! and the freaking Match Game. You cannot convince me the point of Match Game is to win.” Lyle raised a beautiful dark eyebrow. “The point of a game is the experience of playing. The obstacles and the choices you make to get to the objective. The possibility of winning, the danger of loss, shapes the game. Risk and reward give the game suspense, a plot. But winning or losing is not the whole point.” She took another cookie from the plate and bent it into two pieces. “So yes, Vince loved games, and he wanted to make people play. What I wanted was the distraction. I’m a director. That’s how I first got to be friends with Rabbit – I directed the high school musical, he conducted the pit orchestra. Vince found out about the aneurysm last March. We both knew it was coming but we didn’t know when, and I knew I needed a project to get me through this year, this time after – this time without Vince.” She bit into one of the cookie halves and chewed. “Vince died five days before the fundraiser, at home in bed. With Roddy curled up over his feet, and me sleeping” – she closed her eyes – “beside him. Roddy and I woke up, but Vince kept dreaming.” She looked up at Archie. “The game is for his heirs; his heirs are anyone who wants to play. But it’s also for me. And you, Archie. A lot of it is for you. I mailed that letter the day after the auction. You’re the only one who got a personal invitation to play.”
Archie, shocked pale, grumbled, “I thought you said not everything in the world happens because of me.” He shook his head. “I saw,” he said. “I saw him look at me—”
“You saw an actor look at you,” said Tuesday, chewing thoughtfully, “from across a ballroom, wearing a costume that you recognized. Whatever you saw in his face was your projection.”
“How can you be so cool about all of this?” he snapped. And he was suddenly so present, jerked angrily out of his dreaminess, that Tuesday almost told him the truth. That she wasn’t cool at all. She was a walking exposed nerve. If she looked cool, it was because cool was the only costume she had in her closet.
Archie still hadn’t learned how to see through the way things appear to the way they might actually be.
Lyle coughed delicately into her fist. “I have a few questions,” she said.
“Being one of Vince’s chosen heirs isn’t enough to get us through?” Archie said. There was a bratty sourness in his voice that made Tuesday hate him a little. She didn’t regret their partnership, however fuzzily defined that partnership may be. But Archie was more like his brother than Tuesday suspected he’d care to admit; they both had a problem, sometimes, remembering how rich they were.
“It’s enough to get you through,” Lyle told him. “You’re guaranteed entrance. The only one.”
Tuesday’s pulse quickened, but she didn’t let her face so much as twitch. “So I brought an ace?” she said.
Lyle paused. She locked eyes with Tuesday as though Tuesday had said something cunning. And intentional.
Think about it, said Abby.
“Can I see your card?” asked Lyle. “Your playing card.”
Tuesday handed her the queen of diamonds from the pocket of her dress. Lyle pinched it between her first finger and thumb.
Then she flicked it into the fire behind her.
“Um,” said Archie, his voice rising, like this small act of violence was a warning of greater lunacy to come. “Okay.”
You brought an ace, said Abby.
“What did you do with the thirteen thousand dollars?” Lyle asked Tuesday.
Fifty-one, said Abby.
Tuesday watched the red pattern on the back of the card blacken. Rectangular border in red, a nested circle. A game, and a game inside a game.
Fifty-one, said Abby, is one card less than a full deck.
“And it’s not the fifty-one,” murmured Tuesday to herself. It was the one. The missing one. But which card was it – an ace, and was the ace Archie? Had she already found him?
“Tuesday?” said Lyle.
“I—” Tuesday stared at Lyle. She felt the cushion of the chair beneath her. The slight warmth of the fire.
“At first I thought I would keep it,” she said. “For myself. I was fired from my job this week—” Lyle softened but Tuesday held up a hand. “It’s okay,” Tuesday said. “I mean, it’s not okay. But it wasn’t unjustified. Anyway, I lost my job, so I thought, what a perfect time for a windfall, while I figure out what the hell else to do. Banked. Done. But.”
“But,” said Lyle.
“That wasn’t the game. That wasn’t Pryce’s design. To keep the money for myself felt like stealing. I’m not rich, relatively speaking.” She turned her head from Archie to Lyle and back again. “But I have savings, I have options. I have time. A strange stranger gave me – gave us – thirteen thousand dollars and told us to use our imaginations. To seek well: to be curious, to find what we can in the world, to be alive while we’re alive. I thought of that line in his obituary—”
Lyle’s eyes glittered.
“—about regretting arriving at death’s doormat with full pockets. I felt he was saying – don’t hoard what you’ve been given, because you think it’s all you’re going to get. Be generous. And be generous now, because the future isn’t a destination. It’s an extension of how we choose to live today. Archie offered to match the thirteen thousand, so we had twenty-six thousand to work with. And I found someone to give it to.”
“You found – someone?” Lyle asked. “Who? Where? How?”
“In an obituary.” Tuesday grinned. “Her name is Ruby Octavian. She’s forty-seven, widowed – it was her wife Lou’s obituary. Ruby and Lou Octavian owned a refurbished movie house in a town about this big” – she held her fingertips a hairbreadth apart – “in upstate New York. Lou had a heart attack one night closing the place up. Ruby works in the town’s public library. They cohosted movie marathons and classic film screenings and booked bands and dances, and they got married there, under the screen. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the theater. I know Lou and Ruby both loved it. I know I would’ve really liked Lou. But Ruby’s still here. And so is the library and so is the theater and so are the people in the town who come to both.”
“But how did you – did you know them?” Lyle said.
“No, not personally,” said Tuesday. “I read a bunch of online obituaries until I found someone I missed without ever having met them. The rest is easily disc
overable. Articles, wedding announcements in the local paper, real estate records, Facebook, Twitter. The movie theater has its own website. Ruby’s setting up a memorial prize in Lou’s name, small grants for kids who want to make their own movies.” Tuesday crossed her arms over her stomach. “I thought Vince would’ve appreciated that, too. Plus, the name of the theater itself – the Castle – felt like a sign. I gave Arch the cash, he drew up a check made out to Ruby, and FedEx will drop it on her doorstep Monday. Inside there’s a note saying it’s a no-strings-attached gift from a friend on the other side. Signed with a little black raven.” She paused.
Lyle was smiling at her.
“What?” Tuesday said.
“Vince would have loved that,” Lyle said. “He would have just.” She sighed. “Loved that.” She clapped her hands together. “You’re through. You made it. Your costumes are simply atrocious – like, what even are you, Tuesday? Other than yourself.”
She’s on to you, said Abby, and Tuesday laughed, and Archie laughed like he could hear the voice inside her head too.
Lyle continued. “But you used your imagination. You used all the money.” Lyle sliced her hand through the air. “You would not believe the number of bozos who came here tonight and tried to pay me thirteen thousand dollars to keep going. To buy their way forward. Like, no. Just – no. That might happen in the real world, but this is not the real world. This world is Vince’s design, but I’m casting and directing it.”
Tuesday raised both brows. “Did you take the money back?”
“Hell yes, I took the money. I’ll use it.” She settled back into her folds of luxurious black. “But the most important box you checked on the checklist—”
“I knew there was a checklist,” said Tuesday.
“You thought about someone or something outside of yourself.”
Lyle looked at Tuesday, and Tuesday looked back. She didn’t know Lyle, not really. Not from the details she’d found in her research, not from the brunch they’d shared, and not from this fifteen-minute interview. Lyle didn’t know her either. They were their own selves, separate humans living separate lives. But they were aligned nonetheless, linked inextricably, and not just by the death of Vincent Pryce but because all lives are linked, all the world is one tremendous story. And Tuesday felt, for the first time since she’d been fired – for the first time, probably, since – since she didn’t remember when—
Tuesday had the distinct sensation of knowing where she was going.
“Crucial point,” Lyle said to Archie. “The same isn’t true of you. You made it through not because you used your imagination – though you did use all the money Vince gave you plus additional money of your own, noted – but because of your name. You’re moving on because you’re Edgar Arches Junior.” Tuesday felt Archie’s mood darken beside her, a cloud skimming over the sun. “I don’t know everything,” said Lyle, “but I know enough. Remember who you are when you’re in that house. Remember who you are is why you’re in that house.”
Archie inhaled. Tuesday exhaled.
Let’s do this fucken thing, shouted Abby.
“Congratulations,” said the widow. “You’re dead.”
17
THIS HOUSE IS FALLING APART
Dorry pressed both hands flat to the rough pine underside of the coffin lid and pushed.
It didn’t budge.
“That’s okay,” she murmured to herself. “That’s fine. I can wait. She said it would open when it was time.”
“She” was Mrs. Pryce. Vincent Pryce’s widow, wearing a huge dress that rustled when she knelt next to Dorry, folds of fabric crowding around her so she looked like she was sitting on a little black cloud. After Dorry settled herself snugly into the coffin – really, it was a wooden box with a pillow for her head; it wasn’t even coffin-shaped – Mrs. Pryce asked if she was comfortable. And if she was sure she wanted to do this.
Dorry nodded. She wasn’t turning back, not now. Cass and Lisa Pinto passed the widow’s interview, based on all the questions Mrs. Pryce asked, because they started the Black Cats group on Facebook. Ned made it because Mrs. Pryce took a long look at his costume, then smiled broadly and said, Bravo. It took me a minute. Dorry honestly wasn’t sure why Mrs. Pryce let her through, partially because she hadn’t told the whole truth, and she was pretty sure Mrs. Pryce could tell. When she asked Dorry what she was looking for, Dorry thought, Mom. Always. All this time, she’d been looking for her mother. And though, back in Tuesday’s apartment, it had seemed so clear that looking for her mom was the right answer, the kind of answer Vincent Pryce would want to hear, she couldn’t—
She didn’t want to say it. Out loud. She didn’t want to admit she’d played this game, in front of Ned and Cass and Lisa Pinto, who were the coolest people she’d met (since Tuesday), all because she wanted some special goggles that would let her see the ghost of her mother. It would sound too silly. Too babyish. And it was just too true.
So instead she told Mrs. Pryce that she’d researched her husband’s stuff and thought it was amazing. A second after she said it, Dorry realized it might sound rude, like she didn’t care about the dead man as much as all his stuff, which wasn’t true at all. The widow squinted at her, and Dorry rambled for a bit about how she didn’t mean to sound greedy, she just – like, for example, the Earhart goggles, they were amazing. Ned jumped to her rescue and said, “So you’re looking to be amazed,” and Dorry was so grateful for the save that she almost cried. Real tears that she had to blink back. Which Mrs. Pryce definitely noticed.
At that point it would’ve been mean to hold Dorry back. To not let her go on with the rest of her friends into the next tent, all stacked with pine boxes.
Not that they were her friend friends, really. She’d only known Ned for, like, a week, and Cass and Lisa Pinto for … hours.
Mrs. Pryce, kneeling next to her coffin, looked worried. Like maybe she didn’t believe that Dorry was eighteen, or a freshman at MIT, or named Juliet Mai Huang, which was the name on the student ID Dorry showed when she signed the papers. (Lisa Pinto’s horse costume was a kangaroo pouch full of very useful things.) Dorry made up everything on the papers except for her address, because she’d heard somewhere that the best lies have a significant percentage of truth.
She pushed the lid again, and still it didn’t budge.
At least she wasn’t moving anymore. Or rather, being moved. Once the lid had been shut, and she’d heard the bolt on the side of the box sliding home, Dorry rose in a swoop. Then she floated horizontally, her head tipped lower than her feet, like she was being carried by two different people, one tall and one short. She felt the box thump against something solid and slide forward. She heard Ned. Ned was in the coffin next to hers. The boxes weren’t very sturdy. She could see light through the edges and feel cool air creeping in. Ned’s dampened voice wavered in and out, funny and high-pitched. Don’t have to be rich! – don’t have to be cool – then something that sounded like I yi yi yi yi yi yiiii—
“Ned!” she said. She knocked her knuckles against the side. “Ned, it’s Dorry. Next to you!”
The yelping stopped.
“Can’t get next to you, girl,” he sang again. “Can’t get next to you.”
The singing was because he was scared. The only thing he was afraid of, he’d whispered on their way to the funeral, was that they’d have to crawl through a tight little space; he hated little spaces, hated hated hated them. Dorry guessed the coffin counted as a tight little space. At least he didn’t have to crawl through it. He sang the whole time they waited in the coffins, which was, according to her phone, about half an hour, and then suddenly she felt a forward jerk, and motion again. She thought she heard the clop of a horse’s hooves. Cheering. The happy noise of a crowd, whistling and – honking? Ned stopped singing, or Dorry stopped being able to hear him over the sounds of the world outside her coffin. She curled on her side and double-folded the pillow under her head and let herself be ferried.
She
lost track of time. The ride wasn’t gentle, but it had a kind of rhythm, and she didn’t realize it was over until she felt herself being pulled back and hoisted again. Carried – up some stairs. The sounds of the night muffled. She was indoors. And she was set down again, she knew not where.
That felt like a long time ago now.
She sort of had to pee.
She had heard scraping, the thunk of coffins being set down, doors opening and closing, but not in a while. She couldn’t hear Ned singing anymore. Maybe he had fallen asleep. It defied logic that Dorry could be feeling sleepy – locked in a coffin in a haunted house – but she was. It was past her bedtime. By a lot. She felt cozy and warm and dreamy, and she didn’t know what was about to happen, but she wasn’t afraid. Maybe she should have been. She wrapped her hand around her mother’s silver ankh necklace and thought, No. How could she be afraid? How could she be anything but excited? She closed her eyes and pictured her mom’s face, and it was like a face from a photograph. It didn’t move. It was flat, pinned in time like a postcard tacked to a corkboard. The ankh had been cool when she first touched it, but now it was warming up in her hands.
She heard a soft click. It reminded her of the sound the door at her dad’s lab made when he swiped his badge.
She pushed the lid and it opened.
Dorry sat up.
She didn’t know where to look first. She was in an enormous room, bigger than the basement of the Steinert building but just as old, dusty, and crumbling, a great hall that reached up two stories to a ceiling covered with strange whorls and bumps of plaster. The hall was surrounded on the second floor by a balcony ringed with stately dark columns. An enormous stone staircase poured from the balcony to the floor of the hall, where Dorry’s coffin lay in a jumble with several others. She was the only one sitting up. Everything was gloomy. Light came from one side of the hall, from high arched windows on both the first and second floors. The world was blue light and shadow and—
Dorry kicked her stiff legs out of the coffin and scrambled to her feet.
Tuesday Mooney Wore Black Page 32
