Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5)

by Dean C. Moore

  With one snapping motion, he unspooled the cook’s dress he’d had Susie stitch for Irene. “Why hide your chocolates around the kitchen, when you can hide them on you? Where you don’t have to worry about the rats, human or otherwise, getting to them before you do? And abracadabra, like magic, there they are!” He pulled a wrapped chocolate out of one of the sleeves. Then another. And another.

  Irene dropped the broom, peeled the wrapper off one of the chocolates and stuffed it into her mouth. With each subsequent chocolate, the idea of the dress grew on her, she stared at it wide-eyed, then ran her hands through its folds, felt its secret compartments for herself, quickly falling in love with it. By the third chocolate, she was modeling it before the reflection in the door of the stainless steel refrigerator. “But how will I keep the chocolates from melting? These wrappers won’t be enough.”

  Jaap slid a rosewood box with brass corner-edging and latch, roughly the dimensions of a backgammon game, out from under the bottom shelf of the kitchen table. Popping the lid, he said, “Might I introduce you to my complete line of refrigerated candy boxes, invented incidentally by a chocolate hound like yourself?”

  Irene handled the uniquely shaped candy cases, no two the same, like the fine jewelry boxes they were, tested the magnetic lips to make sure they weren’t too hard for her to snap open. “They’re little thermoses!” she said astonished, examining them closely. “But the chocolates would have to be chilled first, before insertion.”

  “Nope. Leastways, chilling optional. The boxes take NiCad batteries. One charge can keep a candy case chilled for a week, straight.”

  “Who is this inventor?” she asked, “who has crafted my magic boxes?”

  “Can I interest you in a line of diabetic chocolates to go with the cases?” he said, continuing to upsell. “Tastes just as sweet as the real thing, and you can eat four times as much without triggering a diabetic episode.” He held out the second box loaded with chocolates, retrieved from the same hiding place beneath the kitchen table. “These are chocolate coconut, my favorite.”

  “Mine too!” Irene gasped. She sampled the merchandise, pleased.

  “Of course, with a little doing, I can get you quite the variety, chocolate covered almonds, walnuts, cherries, ginger, papaya, you name it.”

  “Amazing!”

  She heard footsteps approaching, quickly slipped the magic boxes back into the oversized box, and slid the whole thing under the bottom shelf of the butcher block table. “How much for the whole shebang?” she shout-whispered across the table for Jaap’s ears only.

  “Five hundred dollars for the magic boxes and three hundred for the dress. Eight hundred total.”

  “I can add, you little thief! This isn’t a sales; it’s a robbery.”

  “Lucky for you, I accept monthly payments of eighty dollars a month. For another twenty, I can throw in a service contract. Replace the batteries for you, damaged or lost cases—within reason—even darn the undergarment if it rips, even replace the dress once a year.”

  “What about the diabetic chocolates?”

  “For a nice variety, I’m thinking another twenty a month.”

  “A hundred and twenty,” Irene said, rolling the number over in her mouth to see if she could possibly swallow it without choking.

  Her changing expressions indicated she was getting increasingly flustered by the footsteps of the intruder nearly upon them, pressuring her to make a decision before he got any closer. “Done,” she said, “service contract and all.”

  “Pleasure doing business with you.” He ducked out the kitchen before the intruder arrived, at Irene’s urging, gesturing hands.

  When she thought he was gone from the house, he pulled himself back into the shadows of the adjoining room. He noticed Rake enter on cue. That guy sure has a great sense of timing, Jaap thought. Best partner I’ve ever had.

  “Everything okay in here?” Rake asked. “I just had a little voice in my head tell me to check up on you.”

  “That’s very nice of you, Rake,” Irene said. “I’m fine, just fine. Never better.”

  “Very well, then,” Rake said. “I’ll check on you every hour from now on.”

  Irene started to complain, but clearly thought better of it, nodding. She had to agree it was damn fine of him, Jaap thought, what with her falling on the ground in one of her comas every five minutes; a medical miracle to have lasted this long. Jaap chuckled silently to himself, thinking, What a loon. He figured she was good for a $135 a month, which she’d happily agree to in order to get the dress enlarged to keep up with her gaining weight.

  Jaap patted himself on the back for working out all the angles in advance, before sneaking out of the house. For sure, this would earn him a place back in Ermies’ inner circle. But he was surprisingly unwilling to take it. He felt better than ever, health-wise, from eating the vegetables and fruits in the garden. And with a little judiciously applied blackmail—now that he alone knew her secret—he could count on Irene feeding him leftovers to boot.

  Besides, this place was magic, real magic, not the pretend kind Ermies and his lot were peddling. How else could you explain that vegetable garden with produce fit for giants?

  He left wondering if one of the Harding clan had indeed fallen under his spell, or if he’d fallen under theirs.

  ***

  Jaap waited on the terrace for the grand-matriarch, Harridan Harding as he called her, Lady Harding’s mother, to turn off the lights and retire to bed. Her real name was no less stuffy sounding, Ernestina Chadwick. Then he snuck in through the French doors with the two-gallon glass jar full of fireflies, set it on her vanity, and slipped off the cloth cover. He melted back into the shadows and waited for the bottled lightning to do its work.

  Ernestina Chadwick rolled over in bed, and gasped. Her joints creaked and cracked as she approached from the bed, like an old wooden ship taking on wind as it sailed into a storm, as she got up to investigate.

  Jaap lingered in the shadows until she’d taken her seat at her vanity, and was staring entranced, before he leaned into the bottle, letting the glow of the fireflies expose his face. “Do you like my fireflies?”

  “Yes!” The old fool was already too bewitched to be put off by the presence of a complete stranger in her room.

  “They’re magic fireflies. They do tricks,” Jaap said.

  “Tricks, you say?”

  He removed the lid from the bottle. The fireflies buzzed about her head, maintaining their tight formation. “They’re drawn to your breath.” He retreated back into the shadows to keep them from pursuing him.

  Ernestina took her hairbrush and groomed herself before the vanity in the glow produced by the fireflies. “Look at me, I’m an angel.”

  When she got carried away with the brush, the fireflies widened their circle about her. Jaap cued her. “They’re repelled by static electricity.”

  “They’re mechanical?”

  “Electro-mechanical,” he explained. “You must also take care to avoid strong magnetic fields, microwaves, pacemakers, things of that sort, and to stay out of the rain.”

  Jaap took her by the hand and gingerly led her back to bed. He put a novel in her hand, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, BOOK 1. Jaap had finished reading it.

  She marveled at her ability to read the book in the glow the fireflies emitted. “How wonderful!”

  “They will need tending and upkeep,” Jaap explained. “I can repair the ones that short out in the rain or that you spill liquid on accidentally or that just wear out, if the damage isn’t too great. I need to work with a magnifying glass and miniature tools, very grueling, time-consuming work. Occasionally, some will simply have to be replaced. They’re not cheap. Essentially miniature-robots, ahead of their time. Only one inventor, and it’s a patented process.”

  “How much?”

  Jaap had to admit, she was lucid where it counted. She had no trouble siphoning the essence out of his words. “I figure a hundred a month o
ught to do it. I work cheap thanks to there being no decent laws protecting against child labor.”

  “Done.” She waved her hand through the cloud of fireflies just to feel them tickle her the way the butterflies had in the yard.

  Jaap strung an amulet around her neck. It produced a light magnetic field, strong enough to attract the fireflies without encumbering their flight or shorting them out. “Wear this, and they will follow you anywhere, even into the shower.”

  “I thought you said they couldn’t get wet.”

  “If you forget to take off the amulet, I estimate ten percent casualties. So long as you don’t mind spending the extra coin to fix or replace them, no big loss.”

  “I’ll certainly take care of my darlings better than that, but I am getting a little soft in the head. Luckily, I can afford to.”

  It was an effort on Jaap’s part to stifle his scorn of the wealthy. “Yeah, I can see how pounds and pence are good for people who want to have the luxury to lose their minds.”

  She drifted off to sleep with a happy smile on her face, illuminated by the fireflies. Departing her bedside for the terrace, he crowed, “All too easy.” He whistled a couple bars before singing:

  I suppose that there are those

  Who’ll say he had it easy

  Had it made in fact

  Before he’d even begun

  But they don’t know the things I know

  Jaap stepped onto the terrace, closing the French doors behind him. It was getting cold and he didn’t want the crone to croak before he received his first payment.

  It’s hard to tell the truth

  When no one wants to listen

  When no one really cares

  What’s going on

  And it’s hard to stand alone

  He picked the cranberries from the vine growing over the terrace, continuing his song as he enjoyed the garden in the moonlight.

  When you need someone beside you

  Your spirit and your faith

  They must be strong

  What one man can do is dream

  What one man can do is love

  What one man can do is change the world

  And make it young again

  Here you see what one man can do

  He grabbed hold of the terrace’s bannister, swung himself over, crawled down to where he could jump to the vine creeping up the building on the trellis.

  As he jumped from the trellis onto the ground, he reprised the refrain:

  What one man can do is dream

  What one man can do is love

  What one man can do is change the world

  And make it young again

  Here you see what one man can do

  He melted into the night, following the trail of flower scents to his favorite garden. There, he could get drunk from the heady fragrances, and pass out underneath the full moon. He preferred the moonless sky thick with stars, honestly. He liked drawing constellations in his head that no one but he had ever identified.

  The balloon flowers along the garden edges herded him back to the path. The columbine, which attracted humming birds, alerted him he was near his roost for the night; he could hear the wings buzzing around him. The Dusty Miller flowers, looking silvery in the light of the full moon and like a bed of coral, told him he was home.

  FORTY-THREE

  Aaron waited for Toby to leave the garage, which was like anticipating the Second Coming, it could happen any day over the next three thousand years, making the odds a zillion to one it was going to happen today.

  He bided his time by playing checkers against himself, using the giant corn kernels for the pieces. When he felt stiff from lying on the ground, he picked up the bat and hit the walnuts—the size of softballs—into the forest. He figured he was doing his part to replace the pine trees with walnut trees, far more useful to his way of thinking.

  Scavenging for food, by chasing after the “balls” he’d hit, allowed him to salvage the walnuts which had shattered upon colliding with a tree, and get some exercise to boot. Walnut flesh was particularly good with the cranberries that grew wild in the forest.

  He watched the latest walnut he’d fielded fly long and hard. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Toby drive off with Lady Harding in the back seat of one of the lengthy limos. “At last, a home run.”

  He picked up his sleeved sales item and made for the garage, angling for the real catch of the day.

  The footman appeared, finally, like a stage actor forever missing his cue. What a racket this guy had going. Aaron felt it was only right to be impressed by anyone who could beat him at his own game.

  Aaron held on for the glorified waiter to get good and tired from supporting that tray, and to give up all hope he was going to get any before jumping out in front of him. He balanced a tray of his own at the end of one hand, as he straightened himself out, in a mock parody of the waiter’s perpetual preening. He was forever standing tall and firm, picking lint off himself as he waited for Toby to stick his head out from inside one of the cars.

  With his free hand, Aaron pointed to the item on the tray, held high. His chin tilted upward at the makeshift altar, as if a priest in awed reverence of the deity.

  Aart eyed the contraption, curious. “What is it?” he said, as if awe and anticipation already had a stranglehold on him.

  After making sure no one else was listening in, Aaron said conspiratorially, “It’s a prosthetic foot, you ninny. What’s more, it wriggles its toes and moans in response to stimulation. And best of all—

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it. How much?”

  “Don’t you want to hear the rest of the sales spiel?” Aaron said.

  “Not really.” Mr. Prim and Proper was back to standing tall as if Aaron was his drill sergeant.

  “But I’ve been rehearsing this pitch for days.”

  “Save it.”

  “You sure? It’s pretty good?”

  “Save it, I said.” The breeze gusting through the open garage door blew a crumb off the food tray which landed on his lapel. He dusted it off. “Perhaps I can hide it in the garage, for when Toby’s out and about,” Prim and Proper said, scoping out possible hideaways.

  “Easy,” Aaron said. He demonstrated, slipping it into an old work boot off to the side of the garage. The shoe resumed its original shape, prior to looking so worn. “No one will ever suspect its real use.”

  “Nice. But I’ll need the other foot to make a pair.”

  “When you’re done paying for this one, of course.”

  “Forget you.”

  “They each emit special, unique odors; never the same twice, always coordinated between feet.”

  Aart sighed. “Fine.”

  “I told you, you should have held out for the full sales spiel. Pity you’re such a wanker,” Aaron said, unable to keep his disappointment from turning to anger.

  The glorified waiter grabbed his new toy. “Go on, get out of here, I need some privacy.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  Aaron departed the garage.

  He returned to his hiding place amid the bushes, and waited for Lady Harding to return with Toby. She was next at bat for the pitch of the century.

  ***

  Two hours later, when the sun had moved into just the right position to nearly blind Aaron trying to catch a glimpse of the approaching car, Lady Harding drove up, looking as serene as a ghost freed from the pressures of time. “There’s a sucker born every minute. One day you’ll have to do the math to see how rich that makes you.”

  He leaped out in front of the path of the moving car. Toby braked, probably just to avoid having to clean the grill on the car.

  Aaron sauntered up to Lady Harding who was sitting in the backseat of the convertible, holding down her hat, her scarf flying behind her in the breeze. He hadn’t counted on a breeze. Even better.

  “The problem with scarves is they can get caught up in the wheels of the car, and snap the neck in two.” He acted the part of gettin
g his neck broken, tongue hanging out, to illustrate the point. Lady Harding, seeing the scarf flying behind her damn close to the rear wheel on her side, grabbed her neck suggestively, indicating she was moved by his rhetoric. The ones who wore their hearts on their sleeves were just too easy. “As to that hat… why spend half your energy holding it down?”

  “What salvation do you have in store for me, you prince of street urchins?” Lady Harding said, eying the boxes in the cart he was dragging behind him.

  Prince of Sea Urchins. Aaron liked the sound of it.

  “Behold!” he said, talking like a magician. He yanked the lid open on the topmost case in the pile of his cart. He pulled out the Columbian red-tailed boa constrictor and draped the seven-foot-long creature around his neck to demonstrate. “No need to worry about it blowing off. Better yet, it hugs you closely for warmth and, as it slithers, it massages your neck and shoulders.”

  “Wonderful!” Lady Harding said.

  “Really? You aren’t afraid? You don’t have to be convinced how safe it is?”

  “Pish-posh, I kept snakes as a child. It’s just as you say. How could I forget? Absolutely perfect for the evenings. Not to mention, it’s a genuine conversation starter, and one more chance to cause one of my dearly beloved friends to keel over from a heart-attack.”

  “You sure they’re your friends?” Aaron said.

  “I’ve been accused of passive-aggressiveness. A lot of psycho-babble will not come between me and my fun. What have you for my head?”

  Aaron reached for the next box down in the pile on his cart. “Behold!” He dramatically reached inside as if to yank out a rabbit for his next magic trick. Instead he showed her his peculiar fur hat. Lady Harding laughed.

  “I’m afraid that dreadful thing is suitable only to a Russian in winter. I’m sorry.”