by Ron C. Nieto
Part of me wanted to leave, to cast the Lady aside and rush to him.
The other part was too scared of what I’d find and preferred the denial offered by the stage.
The play could last only so long, though. When it was over, the clapping still ringing in our ears, I grabbed Anna and pulled her aside. She must have noticed my look, because her smile evaporated.
“Alice? What is it?”
“Did the performance feel okay to you?”
She blinked, cocking her head to the side as if trying to make sense of my question, and then ventured saying, “Yes?”
I let her go, hunting Dave down in the chaotic backstage. “Dave! The mood today, didn’t you notice anything out of the ordinary?”
He paused, halfway out of his costume jacket, and shrugged. “You might have been a bit colder, but otherwise I’d say it was one damned fine performance. Why?”
“Never mind,” I said, wondering if perhaps there was some brand of craziness in the air. If perhaps it was contagious.
“Alice!” Anna came up behind me. “What the hell are you going on about?”
“Nothing,” I lied. “I was just worried that we’d disappoint after giving the public such great expectations.”
She smiled, immediately put at ease. I had voiced a fear she shared, a fear every actor shared at some point. She was willing to believe it. That was always the trick with the lies. Weave them with the truth, using what they want to hear.
I still disliked lying to her, but I shook it off. When I didn’t know the truth myself, what else could I do?
Smiling back and hoping that my face looked natural, I turned from the celebrations and headed for the pit. Some people looked at me, some of them with a blank expression and some of them with a smile. It was the first time I went to Keith without waiting for the auditorium to empty first, and I made a note in the back of my head of who sported what look even as I registered how useless and unimportant it was.
The fear had prepared me, but still, seeing Keith curled in the floor, guitar carelessly discarded as he shook and convulsed, sent me very nearly into hysterics. I was by his side in no time at all, my arms trying to hold him steady.
“Hold on,” I said, my voice coming out embarrassingly close to a croak. “I’m calling a doctor. You’re going to be okay.”
“No,” he forced out, the word strangled. His hand sought mine and held onto it like a lifeline. “No, please. Just hold me. I’ll be fine if you’re with me.”
I very much doubted his claim. He was cold, clammy, and his eyes were red and sunken. I could see a muscle in his jaw working as he swallowed repeatedly, trying to control his trembling.
“I can’t leave you like this,” I whispered, brushing the hair back from his brow.
“They can’t help me. You make it all better, Alice. You make me better.”
Swallowing back my own tears, I nodded and settled down by his side. I thought that perhaps the convulsions were getting weaker. I told myself that it was okay, that he just needed a few moments to be okay again.
I heard a snort behind me.
“Lena,” I said, turning around and staring up at her in numb horror.
“You do know what kind of trouble you can get in for hiding your junkie boyfriend, right?” Her words were mock concerned, but her expression was vicious.
“He’s not a junkie. Don’t you dare to call him that,” I replied, not even thinking.
“Oh, please. He’s got ‘withdrawal’ written all over him,” she tsked and pulled out her cell phone. “Don’t you agree that’s what it looks like?”
“Lena, please, he’s not feeling right. Couldn’t you bring some water from backstage?”
“And stop recording? No way.”
My mind couldn’t grasp how she stood barely three feet away, seeing how Keith fought against a seizure and just looking smug. I had known her to be cruel and petty, but I hadn’t imagined evil. The words tumbled out of my mouth before I thought to check them.
“You bitch.”
Her eyes blared. “Isn’t that you, Alice dearest? God, look at you! Playing around with the resident bad boy just because you can!”
“I’m not playing around.”
She snorted again, tossing her head.
“You love his pathetic adoration. That’s what gets you going.” Her face contorted in a grimace, and she looked ugly in the semi darkness of the pit. “You’ve the money and the brains, the friends, the leading roles. You have everything, even though you don’t deserve shit! And you change it all for this idiot.”
“I change it all for the guy I love,” I said, still holding onto Keith, my voice suddenly calm. “Then again, it’s not a feeling I’d expect you to understand.”
The words cut her to the bone and she looked stricken. The sneer she mustered was only half-hearted.
“Don’t you dare to talk about love,” she said, without as much conviction as before. “Don’t you dare, after hurting David like that, turning him down month after month!”
Dave? So, that’s what it was all about? She fancied Dave? He was my best friend. Perhaps he’d thought to be something else; perhaps I’d thought we’d end up together at some point too. But no longer. We were never meant to be. Love had happened to both of us, and I could see that it had ignored Lena.
For a split second, I saw her as she was. A girl who had minions and not friends, someone who was popular because everyone else was too scared to ignore her. A girl who got good grades because she copied the homework of the football team, who got it from the resident bookworm in turn. A girl who had fallen in love and seen her crush look everywhere but at her.
I should have felt pity.
But she was holding a cell phone, Keith was still shaking in my arms, and I was, after all, the Bitch Princess.
“Please, Lena,” I said, almost bored now. “After all these years of telling the school’s losers ‘do not aim above your station,’ and still you fall for it?”
She stared at me as if she couldn’t believe what I had said and I went on, undeterred.
“Dave wouldn’t bother to look anybody’s second plate in the eye, and what are you? Leftovers from the entire football team? Christ, you’re eternally second. Guys, theater… they even kicked you out of the cheerleading squad back in first year, didn’t they?”
Her cell fell from her limp grasp and she turned her heel and ran. I thought I heard her hiccupping as she rushed out of the already deserted auditorium, but I couldn’t care less.
“Callous,” Keith’s raspy voice said, muffled against my shoulder.
“She should have known better than to mess with you.”
“That makes me feel protected.” He smiled, straightening up with a wince, and I had to laugh to let out a bit of steam.
“She’s the least of our worries anyway. Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah. I told you, I just needed you.”
“Keith,” I said, licking my lips. “We can’t keep ignoring this.”
He looked guilty. “I know.”
“We have to figure out what’s going on. There has to be something we can do.”
“Yeah.” He stood up, resting his back against the wall, and motioned for me to come closer. I did, snuggling against his side as best as I could with my huge ball gown still in place. “Do you remember what I said—that the song was meant for Beatrice?”
There was no question about what song he referred to. I nodded.
“I saw her.” His fingers massaged the back of my neck, resting importance to the statement, as if it was meaningless. I took a deep breath.
“You saw… what?”
He took my hand and we climbed together on stage. It was dark, but the emergency lights were enough to cast the whole place in an eerie glow. He walked me to the small side table and the bouquet of roses. Except, it wasn’t the vase what worried him. It was the small portrait.
“I don’t know why or how, but when I saw it I knew it was her. She’s
the woman the song was written for. I think…” He sighed. “I don’t know what to think.”
I let go of his hand and picked up the framed picture. The woman in there was young, elegant, and her eyes shone with a strength that sent shivers up my spine.
“It can’t be, right?” he whispered into the silence.
I strengthened my grip on the picture, resolute.
“Only one way to find out. We’ll ask the Nightrays about this woman. She might not be Beatrice, if there even was a Beatrice to begin with.”
I didn’t say what it would mean if she were, indeed, Beatrice. If they knew anything about the mysterious minuet. I couldn’t afford to think of that, not yet.
CHAPTER 23
Sunday awoke overcast and grim, and the smell of rain lingered in the air. I wrapped the portrait I had shamelessly filched from the auditorium in a plastic bag and then stuffed it into my handbag.
Here’s to hoping it doesn’t get ruined if we end up facing the mother of all storms.
Staying put at home was out of the question, but I was still nervous about the task for the day.
The tone from my cell snapped me out of the moodiness. I raced down the stairs, shouted a hasty good-bye to my puzzled parents, and rushed to the driveway to meet Keith.
He smiled when he saw me and it made a knot form in my chest. He looked better than yesterday night, but definitely worse than he usually did. The papery-thin texture the skin over his cheekbones had acquired made me think of someone who had been a long time in a hospital, and the purplish marks under his eyes were all the more obvious in the light. I hugged him anyway.
“Hey,” he said quietly against the side of my neck.
“Hey, yourself.” It felt good to be buried in the crook of his neck, that infamous dyed hair of his softly caressing my cheeks and tickling my nose.
“Alice?” There was a note of horror in the befuddled tone of my father, right behind us, and I felt Keith tensing and letting me go at once.
I didn’t. It had taken me much too long to accept him, and I was past worrying about what others thought of us now, even if those others were my parents.
“Dad,” I said, stepping aside but keeping a comfortable proximity with him. “You remember Keith, don’t you?”
“Mr. Thorne. A pleasure to see you,” Keith said politely, reaching out a hand to my father.
He shook it and then opened his mouth and closed it a few times. The name was obviously familiar, but he failed to reconcile it with the face in front of him.
“So this is the, um, friend you’re going out with today?” he asked at length.
“Yes.” I eyed him, suspiciously. If he so much as complained, things were going to get ugly, fast.
“Oh. Yes, I see.”
“Did you want something, Dad?”
My mom chose that moment to appear behind him on the door and I swallowed a groan.
If things could get more awkward…
But to my surprise, she only did a very subtle double take when she saw Keith. In a flash, I remembered the conversation about chances we’d had what felt like a lifetime ago.
“Oh, hello,” she said, beaming her best smile. “You must be Keith Brannagh, right? It’s so good to see you again!”
Keith seemed taken aback by the full wattage of Mom’s smile, but he recovered quickly enough with a sincere smile of his own. “Mrs. Thorne. I’m glad to see you again too.”
The brief exchange must have reset my Dad’s flailing brain, because he shook himself and turned to me.
“You said you were going to have lunch together, and I thought that I should treat you to celebrate the play’s success,” he said, handing me a few bills, and I felt all my nerves melt away.
“Keith’s also part of the crew, so the both of you deserve it,” Mom added from the doorway.
“Thank you so much!” I grinned, hugged Dad and caught Mom’s conspiratorial wink over his shoulder. It was so rare for them to pay for my outings with my friends that it felt like a blessing over my relationship with Keith, even though I knew that it wasn’t like that.
“Thank you, sir.” Keith seemed a bit overwhelmed at not being run off by a fork-wielding mob as well. “It’s not…”
“Nonsense.” Dad cut his protest off even before it could have a go at life. “You’re just a kid. Let us working adults foot the bill from time to time.”
“Thanks.” Keith grinned and I took the chance to grab his arm.
“You’re both great,” I told my parents. “But we really need to go.”
“Don’t be back late, Alice. Tomorrow’s a school day,” Dad called out after our backs as I towed Keith away.
“Sure thing! I’ll be back soon… Soon-ish!”
Once we were out of earshot and sight, Keith chuckled and shook his head. “That went well.”
“Of course. I’m happy with you. Why are you surprised?”
He gave me a sideways look and smirked. “You were surprised.”
“Dad’s not one to pay for superficial stuff.” I shrugged.
“Food’s superficial?”
“Come on—you know what I mean,” I said, punching his upper arm.
He just smiled and we walked in silence for a bit longer, our breath leaving clouds of vapor in front of our faces.
“Since he liked you, I should have asked him to give us a ride,” I muttered when we arrived to the oversized neighborhood where the Nightrays lived.
“Like? I think you’re stretching it a little. He almost had a heart attack when he saw me.”
I shrugged. “He’s healthy. He’ll get used to it.”
“Will he?”
Stopping and turning to him, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“I guess I don’t want to drive a wedge between you and your parents,” he said, shrugging self-consciously.
“They can go to hell if they don’t accept you,” I said and immediately realized my mistake. Keith’s wince was almost imperceptible, but he averted his eyes and found an interesting spot near his left boot. “I…”
I had completely forgotten about his own wrecked family. But that was not an excuse.
“They’re there for you. Both of them, and they support you as best as they can, even if sometimes you don’t agree. They have every right to be worried if their daughter keeps bad company.” He laughed without meaning it. “Damn, I’d probably forbid you from seeing me, if I were them.”
“You’re not bad company.” I stood in front of him and framed his face with my icy hands, turning him to me. “I know I’m very lucky to have them, and I’m grateful. But you’re too important for me to give up, and they’ll understand and accept that.”
“I must not be a very good person, because I know I’d not give you up even if I started giving you trouble at home. You’ll have to tell me to let go.” His hand reached up, covering mine, and he intertwined our fingers.
“I won’t,” I said, willing him to see the determination in my eyes.
“I hope I won’t ever see you regret those words,” he whispered, and then he kissed me, soft and lingering, in the middle of the street. I couldn’t ever get enough of those kisses of his, so tender and passionate at the same time.
“We should probably get going,” he said after a moment.
I nodded. “It’s not very far.”
Of course, not very far in this neighborhood was a relative term. We had to trudge on for a little over fifteen minutes, and I started to worry, wondering if perhaps we had gotten lost along the way.
“Okay, I might have taken a wrong turn,” I admitted.
“Let me see the address.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course. Let the guy handle the map.” My tone wasn’t as acidic as the words might suggest, and I produced a folded, printed map of the area where I had marked with a big red “X” at the right address. Keith studied the map for a few minutes, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards.
“Have you seen Treasure Hunt lately?” he commented
at last, taking my hand and doubling back.
“No… I don’t think I’ve seen it at all. Wait, is it the Muppets movie? From ages ago?” He grinned and I narrowed my eyes. “Why do you ask?”
“Just lacking the pirate banner,” he laughed, waving around the piece of paper.
“At least I bothered to print it and mark where we were going.”
He squeezed my fingers and I decided that I didn’t want to huff around, after all.
“Okay,” I said, “How far did we stray?”
“Not much. We just missed that last intersection.” He pointed to the map, but even though it was high resolution and straight from Google, all the directions still looked the same to me. Not my fault, taking into account that there were huge mansions all around us and they were hard to tell apart from the main street.
A gust of wind picked up and I remembered the warning smell of rain that morning. I hoped it would hold out until we were secure and at home after lunch at the very least, but I wouldn’t have placed money on the bet.
Then, Keith stopped so violently that he pulled on my hand with a jerk, and I broke off my thoughts and stared at him.
“I think you got the wrong address,” he said.
“I didn’t.”
“Did, too.” He jerked his chin to the house to our right and I followed his gaze.
The driveway was long and the house hid behind a front lawn, but I recognized the mansion. Except that I didn’t.
The lawn was overgrown, weeds having sprouted in place of the impressive flowerbeds. The gravel driveway was irregular, covered in mud, and some shrubs had started to venture into the inhospitable soil. The rose bushes were gone. Dry, broken skeletons full of spines and twisted limbs were left in their place. Beyond the desolation, the house itself was even worse. The glass from some windows had cracked, the windowpanes torn down, and a thick layer of dust made it impossible to see within the rooms wherever the windows held. The main door had a thick, rust-covered chain holding it closed and the steps up to the porch had sunk, the wooden planks rotten to the core. I couldn’t see much of the second floor, but some spots in the proud gables had caved in. It was the image of dereliction and ruin.
