by Robin Benway
Things may not have been perfect, but at least they were a little better when I left.
The anonymous black car took me uptown on the worst route ever, in the slowest traffic imaginable, made slower by the rain, but we finally made it to the Upper East Side. Roux’s apartment building seemed even more austere in the daytime than it did on Halloween night, which was saying something. For starters, it had gargoyles—full-on “I will eat your face, you urban heathen” gargoyles—that leered down at me as I waited for Harold the doorman to let me in to the marble lobby. (Did he ever not work?)
“Oh, it’s you,” he said when he saw me. “Delightful.” He seemed anything but delighted.
“Yeah, because it was a blast for me to carry my drunk friend home,” I retorted. “Thanks for helping, by the way. You’re a peach.”
He waved me away and I pressed the PH button to take me up to Roux’s apartment, where the scene was no less pretty. Every shade was still drawn and there had been some sort of smoothie accident in the kitchen that left the blender oozing onto the granite countertop. My mother would have had a coronary if she had seen the mess.
I, however, had no problem walking away from it and going upstairs to find Roux. I found her, all right, sprawled on her bed in a room so dark that I had to feel along the wall for a light switch.
“You went back to sleep?” I demanded.
“Go ‘way, Pollyanna.”
“You look ridiculous with that sleep mask on. C’mon, rise and shine.”
Roux sat up, her blond hair a huge tangle around her head, and raised her sleep mask to reveal one bleary eye. “Do you have provisions?”
“Pro-what-ins?”
“Bagels. Coffee.” When I admitted I forgot, she sighed and flopped back onto the bed. “As a New Yorker, you are useless.”
“As a friend, though, I’m pretty damn useful, especially the part where I made sure you got home safe last night.”
“Fair enough. We’ll order in.”
Ten minutes later, she had gotten out of bed, brushed her teeth, and sent a messenger to pick up breakfast from Absolute Bagels, while I scrolled through the channels on her massive flat-screen television. I stopped at a romantic comedy and muted it so I could talk to Roux at the same time. “Your doorman’s a jerk!” I called to her. “Seriously!”
“More talky, less yelly.” She winced as she came back into the room.
“Sorry. Your doorman’s a jerk.”
“I know. Don’t you just love him? I love him. He gets me.” Roux glanced down at the huge pile of clothes that were on her floor. “Clothes are hard.” She sighed. “It’s Sunday. Pajamas are allowed all day, right?”
“Sure. Hey, what happened downstairs?”
“Where?”
“In the kitchen. It looks like someone had a fight with the blender and there were no winners.”
“Huh. Not sure. Maybe I tried to make a smoothie last night.” She shrugged and flopped down beside me on the bed. “I love this movie,” she said. “It’s so unrealistic, but I love it. I’m such a sap. I’m a pine tree filled with sap.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I told her. “You need your own reality show.”
“Don’t think I haven’t tried!”
“Imagine my surprise,” I replied. We watched the movie in silence for a few minutes. It was the most calm I had ever seen Roux, her mouth moving along with the words. I wondered how many days she had spent in her room watching movies while her parents were halfway across the world. It seemed fun but not really, like being the only person in an amusement park. No one wants to go on rides all by herself.
After our coffee and bagels arrived (“Harold, you’re a curmudgeon and a beast!” Roux yelled into the intercom when the doorman rang. “Kisses!”), we sprawled on the couch in Roux’s living room. It reminded me of a museum where everything seemed expensive and sort of cold. I was sure that the furniture had been picked out by a designer who had probably never met Roux’s family.
“Oh my God, bagel, I love you! Get in my mouth.” Roux sighed happily as she devoured her cinnamon raisin bagel. I watched her, sipping my coffee and trying to get comfortable on the hard-backed sofa. “So. You were saying?” she asked finally.
“I was?”
“You needed to discuss something. Step into my office, we’re open for business.”
I picked up a bagel and twirled it around my finger. “I need to talk to you about Jesse.”
Roux froze. “Did you do it?”
“Do what?”
She gave me a look that, oddly enough, reminded me of Angelo’s “we are not amused” face.
“Oh my God, no!” I cried. “We didn’t have sex! We just kissed!”
“You kissed Jesse?” Roux screeched, then winced. “Ow, ow, my head.”
“We made out,” I clarified. “Like, multiple kisses. Plural.”
“I get it, yes, thank you.” Roux sat up so that she was on her knees. “Was it good?”
“It was …” How was I supposed to describe it? It felt like adequate words hadn’t been invented yet. “It was amazing.”
Roux shook her head. “It’s always you quiet girls, I swear. We think you’re hanging out in the library, but really, you’re just banging your way through the guys.”
“I only kissed him!” I told her, throwing a pillow in her direction and making her duck. “I don’t think that makes me the poster child for promiscuity!”
Roux just wiggled her eyebrows. “Okay, so tell me,” she said. “Everything. I like heavily detailed stories. Leave nothing out or I’ll know.”
So I gave her the entire saga: how he gave me his jacket, the front stoop, the Ring Pop, and the ice cream kisses. I even told her how soft his curly hair was and how he had told me some really intimate things. When Roux pressed for even more details, though, I shut her down. I had promised Jesse that I wouldn’t tell anyone his secrets, and I planned on keeping that promise for as long as I could.
“So,” I continued. “What do I do now?”
“That’s easy. Keep making out with him. Why are you here and not with him?”
“No, I mean, what do I do now? Like, do I call him? Do I text? Do I send flowers or a thank-you note?”
“Uh, Maggie? Jesse is not your grandmother, okay? Whatever you do, do not send him a thank-you note.”
“Okay, but then what do I do? The clock is ticking here. What if he’s already making out with someone else?” I was only kidding about that last part, but when I said it, the idea made my stomach drop. “Oh my God, do you think he’s making out with someone else right now?”
Roux waved the idea away. “Nah, Jesse’s not like that. He doesn’t dabble. He commits. In fact, I’ve heard he’s actually a little clingy, like moss. Or a monkey with attachment issues.”
“Roux. Please focus.”
“Okay. We need a plan.” She set her coffee down and folded her hands. “Has he texted you yet?”
“No. Is that bad?”
“He’s probably still sleeping.”
“Okay.” I reached for my phone, then paused. “Should I text him? What should I say?”
“What do you want to say?”
“That I …” I had no idea. “I’m terrible at this!” I cried, tossing my phone onto the couch. “I don’t even know what to say! Why can’t they teach this in high school? I’m good at so many things, why can’t I be good at this, too?”
“We all shine in our own special star way,” Roux assured me.
“No, I should know how to do this!” I protested. I got up off the couch and started to pace across the dark hardwood floors. “I mean, I’ve done some really difficult things before! Like, really difficult! And now all I have to do is text someone and it’s like my thumbs are broken.” I held up my hands in front of Roux and shook them. “Look, broken thumbs!”
Roux gave me the side eye. “Do you need something?” she asked. “Because my mom’s got a stash of pills in every color of the rainbow.”
“
No, I’m fine,” I said.
“Really? Because your eyes look like they’re spinning counterclockwise.”
“I’M FINE!” I took a deep breath. “I’m fine. I just feel like I’m screwing up a lot of things here.” Talk about understatement.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Roux announced. She looked much better than she had when I first arrived, and I realized with a start that she must have been really lonely before I arrived in town. This girl-talk thing was right up her alley. “You’re going to text him and say something about the ring or the ice cream. Visual cues, if you get what I’m saying.”
I held my phone in front of me. “Just like, Thanks for the ice cream?”
“No. That’s lame. Try something like—”
But she was interrupted when my phone started to ring. It was Jesse’s number.
“It’s him!” I screamed. “Oh my God, what do I do? Do I answer?”
Roux jumped up on the couch, screaming along with me. “Answer it! No wait, don’t, don’t!”
“Why not? It’s still ringing!”
“Voice mail! Voice mail!” Roux was so excited that she spilled her coffee all over the couch.
“WHY?”
“Trust me!”
“AAAHHH!”
Roux did a victory dance that looked a lot like the Funky Chicken that my dad sometimes did to embarrass me or cheer me up. “He called you first! He wants to talk to you!”
“And now he probably thinks I’m lost in Siberia or something because I didn’t answer it!”
“Lost in Siberia?”
“It’s a lot more possible than you might think,” I informed her.
“Whatever. You don’t want him to think that you’re just around whenever he calls.”
“But I’m totally around! I was even holding the phone!”
“No, let him wait. Let him think you’re busy with other things. Guys love the chase.”
“Okay, seriously? This is the twenty-first century. That’s ridiculous.”
Roux shrugged. “You came here for my advice and sweet company. Now you have both.”
I looked at my phone. No voice mail. “He didn’t leave a message. He hates me. He’s going to ask for his ring back.”
“Never return the ring. These are gems I’m giving you here!” Roux flopped back down on the couch next to the coffee stain, not even bothering to try and clean it up. “Call him back in two hours, after you run those errands for your mom.”
“The errands? Oh, right, right.” In all of the excitement, I had forgotten that I was supposed to be meeting with Angelo. “Are you sure?”
“Look, I realize that you met me after I achieved social martyr status, but trust me. I still have the touch. This kind of gift doesn’t just disappear.” She finally dabbed at the stain with a napkin, then gave up and tossed it on the hardwood floor.
“Do you not have a housekeeper?” I finally asked. “Or at least some stain remover under the sink?”
Roux just shrugged. “Inez doesn’t work on Sundays. She has a family.” She looked a little lonely when she said that, and I realized that if it weren’t for me coming over this morning, Roux probably wouldn’t have talked to anyone all day. I wished that I could invite her over to dinner, or at least maybe tea with Angelo, but there was no way. I had already mixed enough business with pleasure this weekend.
“—when you call him back,” Roux was saying, and I forced myself back into the conversation, “just act cool. Answer questions, don’t ask them.”
“I can do that,” I told her, and it was true. If there was one thing I could do, it was draw information out of people without giving up too much of myself. Finally, being a spy was paying off in at least one romantic area.
Roux looked unconvinced. “Really?” she asked through another mouthful of bagel. “I find this hard to believe.”
“Have faith,” I told her, then started to get up off the couch. “I gotta go meet—run those errands.”
“But you didn’t even finish your bagel.”
I felt terrible, but I couldn’t keep Angelo waiting, either. “Yeah, my parents are really pissed that I came home so late last night.” Roux’s face fell even further. “No, I mean, they’re not mad at you or anything.”
“No, it’s just cool, you know, that they’re worried.” Roux drew a small pattern with her toe on the coffee-dripped floor. “It’s cool, I get it.”
“I’ll call you immediately after I talk to Jesse,” I said. “Go shower and do homework or something.”
She rolled her eyes but followed me to the front door. “I’m staying in bed all day and eating french fries,” she told me. “I have to build up some strength so I can Cyrano you through this Jesse fling.”
“Thing,” I corrected her. “It’s a thing, not a fling.”
“Whatever. Go errand run.” She waved me away. “And tell Harold that I’m going to make his life miserable if he doesn’t smile at you every time you come over.”
I had no plans to tell Harold anything, but I just said, “Okay,” and let myself out the front door. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Roux yelled behind me and even after the door shut, I could hear her giggling.
Chapter 15
The car glided up to the front of the museum on Seventieth Street, and I climbed out before the driver could open the back door. No point in both of us getting soaked. There was hardly anyone in the front hallway, save for a tall, gray-haired man with his hands clasped behind his back, casually standing next to the admissions table like he had done it every day for his entire life.
Which, knowing Angelo, he probably had.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said when I was close to him.
He glanced down at me and smiled. “You look like a drowned rat.”
“Drowned rats have broken umbrellas,” I replied. “I read it in a fortune cookie once.”
“Ah, of course.” He took out his wallet, even though the sign said it was “pay what you can” Sunday, and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. “Will this cover the young lady and myself?” he asked the girl behind the admissions desk.
“Y-yes,” she stammered. “Um, yes, of course.”
“Lovely. It’s always nice to support the arts.” Angelo took our tickets and then led me through the front of the museum into the courtyard, where a large marble fountain gurgled and bubbled. It was a little humid in the room, and dozens of white orchids grew up from the ground. “Hothouse much?” I asked as I sank down on one of the marble benches.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Angelo asked. “The renovations were well worth it. It’s so important to stay up to date and modern.”
“So says the man with the Olivetti typewriter,” I teased him, grinning when he smiled down at me. “Here,” I added, and passed him the flash drive. “I found this in a safe at the Oliver house. I’m not sure what’s on it, but it was pretty well hidden.”
“Stay modern, but remember the classics,” he amended. I’ll remind you that I also have a laptop. And well done, you. The Collective and I will have a look as soon as possible.” Then he paused before saying, “So I hear there’s a bit of discord between you and your parents.”
I sighed and looked toward Angel, the bronze Angel statue on one side of the courtyard. It was pointing directly at me, almost accusing. You kissed a boy! it would probably say if it could talk. You’re supposed to be working. For shame!
“Here’s the thing about my parents,” I said. “They want me to do this job, right? They want me to do a great job. I want to do a great job. The entire free world wants me to do a great job. But when I actually do my job, they freak out. I can’t win.”
Angelo nodded a little and adjusted his cufflinks, both engraved with calligraphied As. “The thing is, my love, you are their daughter first and a spy second.”
“It usually feels like the opposite, though. Like, last night was the first time that I ever hung out with kids my own age. And it was fun. It was awesome. There was a Hall
oween party, but I was still doing my job and it was like—”
“Living in California three years ago ruined your grammar,” Angelo interrupted with a sigh.
“—so cool,” I continued. “But Angelo, that shouldn’t have been the first party I’ve ever gone to. There should have been a lot more. My parents can’t decide now that they want me to be normal when they’ve spent my entire life making sure I’m anything but.”
“Yes, I agree.” Angelo nodded. “You raise an excellent point.”
“Really?”
“Certainly.” He watched as two tourists made their way through the garden, pointing at the fountain along the way. “Do you see them?”
“Do you know them? Are they assassins?”
“No, they are most likely not assassins. I have never met them before. But they seem to be perfectly lovely and normal people, yes?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Some people, they have ordinary lives. They go to school, get married, raise children, whatever they wish. Nothing very exciting will happen, just the beautiful mundanity of life. But you, Maggie, you can have an extraordinary life because you have an extraordinary gift.” He looked down at me, his icy blue eyes still as warm as they have always been. “You have a talent that many people would love to possess. Would you give it all up to have a normal life?”
“Sometimes, maybe,” I murmured. “I don’t know. I just wish my parents would trust me to do my job.”
Angelo took a deep breath and looked up at the skylight. “Do you remember,” he said slowly, “when you came to my house dressed up for Halloween?”
“Of course,” I said. “You gave me a candy bar and a diary. Angelo, that was over ten years ago. Why—?”
“And what were you dressed as?”
“A ghost. I wanted to take off my costume, but they said I had to keep it on until we got to your apartment.”
“Yes. Because that was the night you were almost kidnapped.”
I stared at Angelo, my mouth open. “What are you talking about?”
“Word had gotten out about how talented you were with locks, that you were a prodigy. A new member of the Collective was so excited by this that he couldn’t keep it to himself, and, well, I suppose he thought that he could use your gifts for his own nefarious purposes.”
