by Lisa Rusczyk
CLEO
The several months that followed aren’t interesting in little details, but overall things began to change. I continued going to the Beacon, improv-ing every night with success. People loved me there, and asked if I could focus on writing about their loved ones who had died. I always tried to do this, but what came out of my pen was never what I expected, nor whom it was about. I started going on Wednesday nights, too, and sometimes I would write for an hour before I threw down my pen to the sound of, “Blue Pen! The Blue Pen!” from the audience. Barbie had certainly relaxed around me, and now she often talked about her work. There was still a little strain between us, which I imagine is always there with sisters, but overall she was very supportive of my improv abilities. Yet she seemed sad still sometimes, and I never knew why.
Nikki and I talked every time I went there and we were becoming very close. The attraction that I had for him had mellowed into a kind friendship, like the fine wine he so often served me. I opened up to him with details about Patrick, and he told me all about Diane, how much he had loved her and how he could never love another woman for the rest of his life. He had such vibrancy in his ways, but when he spoke of her, his black eyes watered and dulled, and sometimes the light from the candles in the reading room looked like dying stars dancing in those eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever had a better friend than Nikki, and told him as much. He took my hand and kissed my cheek, saying he felt the same way.
I often tried to improv and contact Diane for him, but she never came.
D.D. gave me those ambiguous looks more and more when Nikki would ask her to watch the bar while he sat for a chat with me. I could feel her dislike as strongly as I could smell the smoke in the little bar.
My social life was driving Cecil and me apart. He couldn’t understand, he said, why I had to drink so much, why I didn’t tell him more about what I did with Barbie when I went out, why I seemed so spaced out, as he put it. He especially didn’t like it when I drank during the day when he was at work. What had once been foreplay became something of a mostly unspoken strain between us, but I could feel his judging eye on me each day he came home and we rarely went to bed together at the same time at night.
I tried talking to Patrick in my head, but never heard his voice like I had at Barbie’s shop. This made me sad, because I wanted so much to hear him again. I dreamt of him almost every night, but the dreams were distorted and strange, such as chasing his shadow through a cornfield or trying to climb the ladder to the hayloft, but in slow motion so that I never reached the top. I needed to find a way to reach him, if it was possible, and everything that was happening to me at the Beacon was telling me it was.
Then came the day everything changed.
At home that week, on a Wednesday just into the new year, I decided to try a little experiment. Still confused by my experience with Barbie and baffled by my ability to improv by writing without knowing what I was writing, I kissed Cecil and Belle goodbye in the morning. Cecil was still acting strangely around me, and I knew he believed I was lying about the Beacon and about there being no other man in my life. He wasn’t talking as much as usual, avoiding too much eye contact. I let it go – he’d just have to deal with it, I figured.
I had eaten more than I usually do at breakfast so that I wouldn’t have an empty stomach, and around nine I began to drink Cecil’s whiskey. I put a tape in our new tape player, some jazz that Cecil liked, and put a notebook in my lap, hand with pen poised above the paper. Nothing came to me, so I drank more and read some magazines.
By noon, I’d had quite a few drinks and it was strange being altered so early in the day. Sure, I’d had drinks in the afternoon plenty of times, but not like this. I was dancing in the library and giggling at my own thoughts. I had the urge to call Barbie and invite her over, but since she didn’t like to drink, I decided not to.
Around one, I tried the notebook again. Cecil and Belle would be home in a few hours, so I had to give my experiment a try.
I gripped the pen like it was hope, itself. I suddenly felt self-conscious, despite the drink, but I wanted to talk to him so badly. Out loud, I said, “Are you there, Patrick?” My voice sounded weak and trembling. I felt adrenaline pump through me and my drunkenness ebbed a bit. I closed my eyes and listened to the music.
After a moment, I looked down at the notebook and the word, “Yes,” was written there. I didn’t remember writing it. I was stunned, like a piece of the sky had just fallen outside my window in a blue, jagged chunk. Was I doing this thing? Was he really here?
I took a deep sip of whiskey to calm my nerves, then closed my eyes, gripped the pen, and said, “I miss you.”
Some time passed and I opened my eyes and looked at the paper. The words, “I miss you, too,” were written there, in my handwriting. Again, I couldn’t remember writing at all.
Closing my eyes again, I asked, “Is this real?” I was shaking in this strangeness. When I looked down, the word, “Yes,” was there.
I said, “I don’t believe this. Tell me something to make me know this is true.”
I closed my eyes, and in a few minutes opened them to see, “My brother tried to save me. I was scared. Now I’m not scared.”
My vision blurred and I put down the notebook. I sprawled out on the couch and whispered, “Can we talk like this?”
I didn’t hear anything. I waited for a long time. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I heard was Cecil coming in the front door. I sat up fast, dizzy with a bitter taste in my mouth, and grabbed the notebook, intending to hide it. I gasped as I looked down at it and the words, “I like to listen,” had rounded out the last line. It was my handwriting, but I couldn’t recall even sitting up to do it.
I stashed the notebook under the couch as Belle ran in and jumped on my lap. “You smell bad,” she said, pinching her little nose.
Cecil came in after her and with one look at me and the half-full glass on the coffee table, his face tightened. He told Belle to go to her room.
She said, “I wanna see Mommy. Mommy, I wrote ‘cat’ today in cursive. Wanna see?”
Cecil’s said in his seldom-used serious voice with her, “Belle, now.”
Belle knew that tone and did as she was told.
Once she was gone, he sat next to me on the couch and gripped my face in both hands. “How much did you drink today?”
I heard my own words slurring as I said, “A couple, that’s all.”
“You look and smell like you had the whole bottle,” he said. I tried to squirm out of his hold on me, but he gripped harder. It didn’t hurt, but I felt interrogated. “What is going on with you, Cleo?” He sounded desperate. “Why are you acting like this?” He let go of my face. “What about our daughter? She shouldn’t see you like this. What the hell are you thinking in there?” He tapped my head. “Talk to me, please.”
I rubbed my face and stood up, facing him. “It’s nothing. I just went a little too far today.”
He stood, as well, taking my hands. “There is something going on. I don’t know what it is.” His voice was quiet. “But you can always talk to me. I hate seeing you like this.”
“Nothing, Cecil,” I told him. I wanted to leave the house, run down the street and hide in some bushes. I couldn’t talk to him about Patrick or the Beacon or any of it. It would be revealing that I was a totally different person than the one he knew.
His tenderness and worry turned sour and his voice grew stern, and he used the same tone he had used with Belle. He said, “I won’t stand for this drinking and whatever else it is you’re doing. You’re done.” He left the room and went to the kitchen. I heard him pouring something down the sink, so I followed to see what he was doing. He had emptied the rest of the whiskey bottle into the drain and was opening a bottle of brandy.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting rid of it. All of it. There won’t be any in the house for you to do this again,” he said, dumping the brandy into the sink. It made glub-glubbing sounds a
s it poured. “And no more going out.”
I was burning under my skin, a rage and desperation filling me. He was trying to control me, something he had never physically done before, but in that moment as the last of the brandy went down and he uncorked a bottle of red wine, I realized he’d always been doing it, controlling me. He was subtle about it, saying it was okay for me to stay home all the time, taking Belle to and from school, allowing me to spend time with Barbie only as a reward, not from some desire to see me happy. It was a way to act like he was not keeping me a prisoner from life, giving me that little bit of freedom. He was a keeper, nothing more. Patrick wouldn’t have done this. Neither Nikki nor Barbie or any of the people at the Beacon would do this. He wanted me tucked away in the house all by myself acting a certain way for the rest of my life, like a little toy wife, a possession.
I grabbed the wine bottle from him as he was pouring it out and took a deep swig, then spit wine in his face as he tried to get the bottle back from me.
He bent over and rubbed his eyes, saying, “Jesus, Cleo, that burns.”
I threw the bottle on the floor, but it didn’t break. Wine flowed out in all directions, a red lake in our kitchen. I screamed, “It’s my life!” then made a run for the front door.
He scrambled after me and slammed his body against the door, barring me from leaving. He held my shoulders and, face dripping with wine, said, “Calm down. You have to calm down.”
“I don’t have to do anything you say anymore. I am not your slave!” I yelled at him, shaking off his grip and hitting him lightly on the chest. “Let me out.”
“No,” he said, trying to get a hold of me again. I fought him as he said, “You can’t go out like this. It’s not safe. Please, listen to me. Be reasonable.”
“Not safe,” I echoed, ripping his hands off me every time he got a grip. “It’s just another one of your little tricks. Not safe. Next you’ll say that I should think of Belle. You have all these things you do. Not today, Cecil, now let me out of this house.” I started hitting his chest as hard as I could, and he held up his hands.
He said, “Fine, do what you want. If you are this violent, you shouldn’t be in here, anyway. Just go. Go wherever you want.” He backed off from the door and I opened it and dashed out into the late afternoon sun. Once in front of the house, I looked to see if he was following me. He had closed the door and was nowhere to be seen.
I straightened up and started walking to the bus stop. I always had a twenty in my pocket. I rode the bus to the Beacon’s stop and walked to the club, feeling both a burden of pain and a feeling of ultimate freedom. I stopped in front of the lighthouse-etched door and pulled on the handle. It was locked.
I didn’t know what time the place opened. After all those months, I’d only been there late at night, so I sat down on the ground next to the door and waited. Soon the sun set and nothing had happened, but I was freezing, since I had run out without a coat. As the drink wore off, the cold air had me in a huddle with my body. I waited some more. After what felt like an hour, I heard someone coming down the alley. I looked to see who it was – Swan carrying a piece of cardboard. Her face was sullen and she wasn’t wearing her ballet slippers. She watched the ground as she walked and didn’t notice me until she was right upon me.
“Blue Pen!” she said. “What are you doing out here?”
I stood up and shook my head, saying, “I don’t want to talk about it. I just had to get out of my house.”
She slumped her shoulders and her mouth drooped like I had told her what had happened in my house.
“What is it?” I asked.
A tear spilled out of her eye and she shook her head. “Oh, it’s just awful, Blue Pen. Just, just awful.” She held up the cardboard and I saw it was a sign. It read, “Closed until further notice.”
“What is this about?” I asked.
Both eyes were filled with tears as she pulled tape out of her purse and hung the sign on the door. “It’s Ice, it’s just terrible. I can’t believe it. He didn’t do it, I just know.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“They’ve arrested him,” she told me, rubbing her cheeks to rid them of moisture. “They said he killed her, Diane, but I know he didn’t. He would never have done that. He loved her.”
“What?” I said, unable to believe what I was hearing. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, you heard me right,” she said, shaking her head again. “I can’t believe it. His lawyer called me, you know? To let me know to close the Beacon, to tell me what happened. It’s all too much.”
I touched the sign and, it having been a few hours since I drank the whiskey, I was completely sober at this news. “Where is he?” I asked.
She said, “In jail, of course. In jail, behind bars. That nice, generous man who had a most horrible thing happen to him. His wife, murdered. Now he’s being blamed for it, after all these years. He didn’t do it, you know that, right?”
“Of course I do,” I said, still stunned. “How do I get to the jail?”
“You’re going to see him?” she asked.
“I have to. I have to hear what this is all about.” Like Swan, I knew he couldn’t have done it, but cops didn’t put people behind bars for no good reason, did they?
She gave me directions via the bus route and walked me to the bus stop, head still down, shoulders slumped like she had just turned ninety-five in the last few hours. She said, “You tell him we love him and that it will all work out, okay?”
I told her I would and I made my way through the bus system to the police station. After some finagling, I was led to his cell. He sat in a room with a few other men and he had his head down. His black roots spread across his head like a dark angel’s hand and he was as still as a marble statue.
“Nikki,” I called out to him. He slowly raised his haunted eyes to me, and I had never seen him looking so empty.
“Pen,” he said, and stood and walked to the bars. I held my hand out to him and he grasped it, squeezing tightly. “I didn’t do it, Pen. Cleo. You know I didn’t. I loved her.”
I touched his face and asked, “How did this happen? What do they have against you?”
Tears filled his eyes. “It was D.D. She told them I confessed to it.”
“They put you in jail for that? That’s not really evidence, is it?” I said.
“I had told her all about what happened. Only me and the police know it. And the killer, of course. But she gave them all the details when she told them this crazy lie, so they believe her. There were no other leads, you see, and they had interrogated me dozens of times after the murder. They’ve always thought I did it, just couldn’t prove it. Now they think they have their proof, and she told them about the Beacon. They’re closing it down, too. Said it was illegal, what we’re doing. I don’t know how it is. How did this happen to me, Cleo?”
I grasped the bar with my free hand. “Why would she do this?”
He shook his head, shaggy hair tossing about. “I don’t know. I have no idea. I thought we were good friends.”
“I never liked her,” I told him. “She gives me strange looks. What is your bail? Can’t you get out?”
“No bail at all,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Where does D.D. live?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What is her real name?” I said.
He said, “Her first name is Camilla. That’s all I know. I really don’t know anything about her private life.”
I rubbed his knuckles, and even they seemed broken like the man in front of me.
He said, “I can’t talk anymore. How could anyone think I would do this to her, to Diane? She was the most precious thing in my life, still is. I have to lie down, or I’ll be sick.” He stumbled across the room and practically fell into the corner and curled into a ball. Seeing him like that was killing me.
I had to find D.D., but how? I had no idea where she lived. I said to Nikki,
“I’ll find out what I can.”
He murmured so softly that I barely made it out, “Thank you, friend.”
I sat on a bench outside the jail, shivering, and watched people come and go, trying to figure out what to do. Camilla was an odd name, and since she did improv yoga, it could be assumed that she was a yoga instructor somewhere. I supposed I could call all the yoga studios in Philly and ask for a Camilla. I figured there could be dozens of yoga studios in the city. How could I narrow it down? Was her first name really Camilla?
I called Barbie from a pay phone and she answered on the third ring. “Cleo, what’s wrong? You sound upset.”
I filled her in on what was happening. “Do you know where D.D. can be found?”
Barbie was silent for a long time, and then said, “Oh, this is awful.”
I said, “Nikki said her first name was Camilla. Do you know where I can find her? I have to talk to her about this.”
Barbie sighed into the phone. She said, “She came for a reading once. We talked for a while. She said she was a yoga instructor, but I can’t remember the name of the place. It was her place, like she was the owner. Hmmm.”
“Think, Barbie,” I told her.
“It had yoga in the name,” she said. “The Yoga something. Something, something. What was it?”
I waited impatiently for her to recall and she finally said, “Yoga Zen, that’s what it was. Yoga Zen, I’m pretty sure.”
“Okay, thanks, Barbie,” I said.
She was quiet for a moment, then said, “I don’t think he did it.”
“Is it even a question?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, “It is odd how Diane never comes through in readings. But some pass on to a place where they can’t be reached. And some just never want to be reached.”
I told her, “I can’t believe you’re even considering that Nikki would do something like this.”
“You’re probably right,” Barbie said. “I just know there are secrets everywhere, you know? Good luck finding D.D. I’ll meditate on this.”
After I hung up the phone, I looked through the phone book for Yoga Zen. I found a listing in northeast Philly. I would need a car to get there if I had any chance of seeing D.D. that night.
I sat back down on the bench and tried to figure out how to get to D.D.’s studio. I could go home to get the car, but I didn’t want to see Cecil or explain to him what I was doing. I didn’t have enough cash with me to get a cab. What could I do?
I’d never stolen anything in my life, but just then I noticed someone pull up to a metered parking spot and get out of his car. He didn’t have anything in his hands, nor did I see him put anything in his pocket. I watched him rush up the stairs to the police station and go inside. I walked over to his car and peeked in the window. The keys were in the ignition. I figured it might be some sort of fate, at least I reasoned that at the time, and I hopped into the driver’s seat and took off down the dark, busy road. I cranked the car heater.
I made it to the right neighborhood in thirty minutes and began searching for the street. It was getting late and I wondered if Yoga Zen would even be open. Eventually I found the street and cruised down it looking for the studio, finding it pretty quickly. It was lit up, the windows covered in light blue curtains so that people couldn’t see in. I parked in front at the curb and went to the door. I read a sign that said it was open until nine. I figured it must be almost that time, and I went inside.
There was a young girl working at the desk just inside the door. She smiled at me and said, “Hi, how are you?” in a thick Philly accent, “you” sounding like “yew.”
“I’m here to see Camilla. Is she here?” I asked.
The girl said, “She’s in the middle of a session, but she’ll be done in about ten minutes.”
“I’ll wait,” I said, and I sat in a cozy chair and examined the yoga mats and incense on display for sale across from me. It was a long ten minutes, and it was like waiting in an airport.
A stream of women came out of the door to my right when the workout was over. They all looked happy and serene and I could smell a sweet scent coming from the workout room, like vanilla and spice. I waited as they perused the yoga goods and made their ways out the door. Once they were all gone, the girl behind the desk said to me, “I’ll go get her for you.”
I waited with shaking hands, worried about how this would all go down.
D.D. came through the door with a curious look on her face until she recognized me. Then she held up a graceful hand and said, “I have nothing to say to you.”
I felt anger but I suppressed it for the cause. I told her, “I just want to hear your side of things.”
“How did you find me?” she said, cheeks flaring as red as her hair. “Never mind,” she amended. “I just want you gone.” She pointed at the exit and went back through to the workout room. I followed her and pushed on the door so she couldn’t close it.
“D.D., I need to know. Talk to me,” I said, trying not to sound like I thought she was a lying snake.
She released her side of the door and I stumbled as I fell into it. The studio was clean and soft-looking, with burning incense and candles all around. The walls were ivory and the wood floor had a shine that rivaled a newborn’s eyes. She walked to the center of the room and turned to face me, then sat cross-legged on the floor. Her cheeks were still red, like she had eaten a chili pepper. “You won’t believe me if I tell you, Blue Pen, but if you want to listen to the truth, then have a seat.” She gestured at the floor across from her.
I did as she suggested and folded my hands in my lap. She put her palms on her knees and straightened her back, looking like she was still in session with her clients, but her dark eyes were full of fire. “What do you want to know?” she asked in a smooth voice.
“Everything. Why you did this to Nikki,” I answered.
“I didn’t do anything to him. I just couldn’t keep his dirty little secret anymore,” she said.
“You really believe he killed his wife?” I asked, trying to sound unbiased.
She blinked slowly and breathed deeply, then said, “I was tired of watching him be everyone’s hero, including yours, when he done such a terrible thing. And him playing with people, like you, like he did with me.”
“I don’t feel like Nikki was ever playing with me, as you say,” I told her.
“Of course you don’t. He’s good at what he does,” she said.
I shifted uncomfortably on the hard floor. My ankle hurt from being pressed on the wood. “Tell me what happened.”
“Why should I tell you?” she said. “You’re not going to believe me. He has you all fooled.”
I watched her silently, waiting her out. Her cheeks were back to their perfect pale hue and she slowly let her hair out of a bun, watching me all the while without blinking. Once her wavy hair fell around her face and tickled her shoulders, she smiled at me. “You poor thing. I’m doing you a favor. You just don’t know it.”
“Then enlighten me,” I said.
She put her palms back on her knees as I shifted again, and I sensed that she was glad that I was so uncomfortable sitting on the studio floor while she was right at home. “You didn’t used to be the star, you know,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She said, “I been at the Beacon for five years. I seen the good ones come and go. When I first started improv-ing, Ice was all over me. ‘Let’s be friends,’ he’d say. He’d hold my hand and kiss my cheek and treat me like I was a goddess. I was taken in by all of it. I was who you are now.” She puckered up her lips and blew a kiss at me, smiling afterwards. I felt the usual general weirdness that came with any contact with the woman. “After about a year,” she continued, “He came onto me, and I loved it. We were lovers, secretly. Nobody at the Beacon knew anything. We told each other everything about our lives. I thought I knew him better than anyone. And one night while we were tangled up in bed in the afterglow, he told me about how he
did it, how he killed her. He did it for the money, he said. Diane was a rich bitch. Those were his words, exactly. I didn’t care. I had him, and he would never hurt me, or so I thought.”
I changed legs and watched her, trying not to react until I had everything I wanted from her.
She said, “He stabbed her to death, and you know he didn’t even get himself an alibi. He was clean about it, made it look like a break-in. He said she was awful to him, that he could just kill her and get all her money and live good for the rest of his life.” She raised her eyebrows. “What do you think about that? Tell the truth.”
I said, “Why did you turn him in?”
“You have to answer my question first,” she said with a little smile.
“I don’t understand any of it,” I said, wanting to scream that she was a liar and I knew it.
She said, “He stopped fucking me around the time you showed up. I knew he was into you, he was going to do the same thing to you that he done to me. You’re the new star, and he made you one. He was just biding his time till he could fuck you, too, then leave you high and dry when the next sweet, unknowing star came onto the scene. You know,” she said, leaning toward me, fingertips twitching, “As soon as Joanie told him about you, and Astra said you and Joanie must be the most gifted readers because of that family thing you have, he was drooling about it. Kept talking about it in our pillow talks. He’d built you all up in his twisted little mind. That’s when he stopped coming to see me after the Beacon closed each night. Then, here comes Joanie with her innocent big sister, and wham. He changes your life, makes you feel all special and I know you know what I mean. I seen it all the time when you been at the Beacon. And he just stares at you with all this lust every time you improv. He used to look at me that way.”
She paused and looked me up and down. I said, “And?”
“I don’t know how he got off watching you scribble in a book,” she said.
By this time I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. “He’s just a friend to me. I’m married, D.D.”
“Yeah?” she said, cocking her head and grinning like we shared a joke. “How’s that marriage been going since you started coming to the Beacon?”
I thought of Cecil’s face dripping with the red wine that I had spit on him.
She said, “I can tell what your answer is. Listen, I’m not telling you all this to make you feel bad. I just know what you’re going through, believe me. After I seen him doing all the same things to you as he done to me, I had to come out before you really got hurt. I’m actually protecting you.” She leaned back and shook her head back and forth, making her hair tumble to life again, and I knew she knew the effect of beauty it had, but it was so odd that she would want to appear glamorous in the middle of this dark conversation. Typical, but ever-so-strange.
“Now,” she said, “You probably still don’t believe me. Even as the women came and went and he paid them special attention, he was still only fucking me. But then they were never as good at improv-ing as I was. But go figure Ice and his fascination with your mind. He just loves all your writings, and I seen him reading through them over and over every night. And he was done with me, you get it?”
I said, “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply in and out several times. I didn’t know what to do, feeling awkward and uncomfortable until she opened her eyes. She said, “Don’t worry, I did you a favor.” She patted my hands. “You better believe it, ‘cause it’s the truth.”
My brain worked fast. If what she was saying were true, then she would have no reaction to what I said next. “What if I told you we already slept together?”
At this, her eyes bulged and her nostrils flared, and her fair skin deepened again. She stood up and shouted down at me, “Liar, you little bitch.” She pointed at me. “I know you’re lying.”
I gratefully stood up too, but feared this beast-woman D.D. had instantly become. “I’m not lying. We’re lovers,” I said as calmly as I could.
She slapped me across the face, hard, and I fell back onto the floor. She stood over me with a hand balled into a fist, like she was about to jump on me and beat the demons out of me. Instead, much to my stinging cheek’s relief, she pointed at the door and screamed, “Out! Now!”
I scrambled to my feet and ran out the studio door, not looking back. The girl at the desk had wide eyes as I slammed out the front door. I ran to my stolen car and drove off as fast as I could.
I drove around, certain that D.D. was lying about all of it. Why, you might be asking? Because of her reaction that we were sleeping together, how she responded to my lie. I quickly figured out the truth out of what she had told me. She had obviously been in love with Nikki, but he didn’t return her affections. When I told her I’d been intimate with Nikki, something she’d never been able to achieve, she knew it had to be a lie because he’d never touched her. And if he had been with me, it would be the ultimate insult for her.
I had to be sure, so I headed back to the police station. I parked several blocks away and left the keys in the ignition, just as all had been when I’d stolen the thing.
It was late and I had to plead to get to see Nikki again, but the officer on duty let me in and I found Nikki still in the corner on the floor in a ball. His eyes were open seeing some things in his own mind, but what, I cannot imagine.
“Nikki,” I said, and one of his cellmates laughed.
His eyes rolled over to me.
I said, “Come here, I need to talk to you.”
He slowly stood like all his joints ached and he met me at the bars. “You’re back, Pen,” he said.
“I saw D.D. and she told me what I think is a pack of lies. How well did you know her, truthfully?”
His eyes were so dull, his body so limp of its usual vitality. “We used to be really good friends, but we grew apart. I even talked about Diane to her. She never talked about herself. I don’t know much about her at all, or why she’s doing this.”
I told him, “I believe you, you know that, right?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Tomorrow they’re taking me to a prison until my trial.”
I said, “It does matter that I believe you. Look at me.”
He reached out and touched my cheek. “You’re right. It does matter that you believe me. I’m sorry. It matters more than anything, but I’m screwed. She’ll testify, I have no alibi, and she knows all about it, the murder details. I’m screwed.”
I took his hand and asked, “What can I do?”
His eyes brightened a bit as he said, “I know they closed the Beacon, but you can keep it alive. I don’t know how, but you can find a way to keep the spirit of it alive, at least. You have the truest gift. You can do it, please, Cleo. Pen. That’s all I live for, and I want to know that what happens there will go on.”
I kissed his hand for once and told him I would do everything I could to keep the Beacon going.
When I left, I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t want to go home, though I hated to think what Belle would feel when Mommy didn’t come back. But Cecil would make me a prisoner again. I could go to Barbie’s, but instead I thought of all the people at the Beacon and how they no longer would have a place to go. I rode the bus to the Beacon and went to its door. I sat on the ground, and each time people came looking to go inside, I told them what was going on and that I was going to find a new place for us all. I said, “I’ll tell Joanie, and she’ll tell you,” using Barbie’s Beacon name so they would know who I was talking about. When the young woman who tried to improv singing came by, she gave me a flask of gin from her coat and thanked me, saying how awful she thought the whole thing was.
I drifted off to sleep in the alley after downing the gin and telling the last few late-nighters what was going on.
When I awoke, it was freezing, despite the coat and a dirty blanket I found over me. Then the greatest shock came when I saw the sun was already out. The sky was bright and lit, and
I had slept right through a sunrise. I stared up at the little bit of blue sky between the buildings of the alley and said, “Late.”
I heard rustling of clothes next to me and turned. The man with no name sat next to me and was staring at me with his intense attitude. He said, “You did well. I watched you and you did well. It’s your path. I’ve been waiting for this.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling sick to my stomach.
“You took all this and kept us going. Your aura is pulsing with white and violet. It is time to change. You are going to lead now, and leave all you know behind.” He handed me a bottle in a brown bag. “You need strength and perseverance.”
I sipped from the bottle, and it was a nice red wine. I smiled up at him, then said, “I want to help.”
“Course you do,” he said. “And you are helping. Once you’re feeling up to it, I’ll take you somewhere safe, somewhere you can keep things going. You’re safe with me.”
My mind was empty and I sipped the wine again, listening to the sounds of the city day going on outside the alley. I was cold, but as I drank, I warmed up. I watched the little snippets of people’s lives as they crossed the entrance of the alley, and I knew I was no longer a part of that world. I was in the shadows now. I was a shadow.
I drank more of the wine and the man with no name said, “You will be okay. I see how good it feels to you. We will go when you are all done.”
I finished the bottle and then stood on uneasy footing. The man with no name held my elbow and led me down the other side of the alley, where I’d never been before. We walked through many such alleys and I thought that there must be a more direct route to where he was taking me, but I didn’t care. He lit a cigar at one point and puffed as we walked. After a time we came upon a run-down building and he opened up a side door and gestured for me to go inside.
I walked over the threshold and into a dark hallway. He took my elbow again and led me down the hall to a door at the end. He opened it and I saw a courtyard between buildings in the middle of the city. And there they all were, waiting, sitting on the ground talking amongst themselves, and silence fell over them when they saw me. Swan, Rivers, 88 Fingers, Dream Weaver, Dynamite, the girl who’d given me her coat earlier, many others. But, of course, no D.D. They whispered, “There she is, the Blue Pen. The Blue Pen.”
Then I saw Barbie and Reed watching me with quiet eyes, seeing me for the first time. I was home, I felt, and we gathered in a circle and I told them what had happened the day before, after I left my house. I didn’t tell them about Cecil, just all that went down from when I saw Swan to when I last passed out at the door of the Beacon. Then I let all of it go as they discussed what could be done to help Nikki. As they talked, the man with no name told me, “Stay with me, if you care to. I will make sure you are safe, for you can clearly not go back to your life. I can see you think that.”
I said, “I need to talk to Barbie.”
“Of course you do,” he said.
I gestured to Barbie to come to me, and we went to a corner of the courtyard. I asked her, “What is happening?”
She said, “You’re realizing your potential. You need to go home and tell your family that everything is okay.”
I shook my head. “I can’t go back there.”
She was quiet, studying me. She said, “What about your daughter?”
“I can’t go back there,” I repeated.
Barbie embraced both my arms and stared deeply into my eyes with her blue ray gaze. “You have to go home to her. You can’t leave her. Cleo, don’t do what Mom did. Don’t let them control you.”
I rubbed my face all over. It was dirty and it felt good to be dirty and cold, for that is how I felt inside thinking of Nikki in a prison for a crime he didn’t commit, how I felt for all these people who had come here looking for a place to go, for someone to carry on the spirit of the Beacon, as Nikki had called it. I embraced her arms as well.
I said, “I can’t do both and I never want to go back home again.”
“Don’t do it like this,” she said. “It’s not the right way.”
“What is the right way?” I asked her. “Your way? You don’t know what my private life is like. I don’t even have one, except in my head. This is where I belong, making these people who accept me have a place to go. I’m not going home, ever again. And you never tell anyone where I’ve been. Barbie?”
She looked sad, like I’d disappointed her. “You want me to look your daughter in her beautiful eyes and say I don’t know where you are?”
“You won’t have to,” I said. “Only Cecil will seek you out. Lie to them all.”
“I can’t do that,” she said.
“Why not? You’ve been hiding yourself all your life. I’m asking you, as a sister. I can’t go back home. Here is where I belong,” I said.
“Why?” she asked, her face full of tension.
I whispered, “I woke up after dawn today. There is a reason for it.”
She said, “Now you’re seeing into things that aren’t there.”
“I’ve never woken after dawn, you know that,” I said. I let go of her arms and repeated, “You know that.”
She didn’t speak for a long time, and said, “I won’t tell, but I won’t be a part of watching you go the way Mom did, either.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean I won’t be a part of whatever you all decide. I’ll go my own way from you,” she said. Then she hugged me and our bodies were so close that I felt her warmth through her coat. “I love you, sister,” she said, and then she and Reed walked out of the courtyard and out of my life forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
