II
The pool was a brilliant guide for Ariadne’s muddled mind. Whenever she felt bored or confused with her life, she would consult the warm water of the pool for a remedy. Water helped wash the long hard day off of her and whispered careless sweet nothings in her ears. Some days, when she really needed counseling, Ariadne would consult her pool with chocolate shake and marijuana joints. Life seemed like a better teacher when Ariadne was well fed and high. She could take it all at once and look into her past with objective honesty. She was one of the most beautiful women in Arizona. She was a mesmerizing goddess with hourglass curves and an intrepid spark in her glistening black eyes. Her dark hair complemented her eyes and the ivory of her skin. Ariadne Silver complemented her lavish mansion. She was one of the most desired women and most admired business tycoon yet she was all alone, isolated in a wrong Wonderland with creatures and characters living on unawares. She was Ariadne Silver, a woman whom everyone admired from a distance. She initially took it as a compliment till she grew tired of people’s fake smiles and meaningless appreciation. She wanted to live a complete life, with a person who would not lie to her and would never remind her of that vomit-choked corpse of her childhood. Since Ariadne turned her fate around, she had forgotten what it felt like to be her old self again. She wished she never had to go through that again. Ariadne worked hard because she didn’t want to be slapped by fat greasy men for a $10 blowjob. The purple haze of marijuana took her back to that day on the road, when Ariadne decided to break off from the orphanage and make a dash for the real world. She found herself all alone in a big bad world with nowhere to go. With the little money she had managed to steal from the foster house, she managed to buy food and a blanket. Ariadne slept on the hard pavements of the night streets, wrapped in a two dollar blanket. When food ran out, she took to begging. A young girl with a gentle face generally gets the grace of passersby. She begged for a week till she met a man who changed her life. Ariadne remembered him perfectly. He came from behind and wrapped his arms around Ariadne. She couldn’t believe it. She turned to face a man twice her age, with flaming red hair and a bushy red moustache. His eyes shone with fire and his lips curved in a smile that is hard to define. He made her heart skip a beat. She lost herself to him through the conversation of their individual silences. No, he wasn’t a prince charming befitting a fairy tale. He was the Mad Hatter. He was the first Hatter Ariadne went to a tea party with. There was no turning back. Ariadne had no “back” to turn to. She went with her savior in practiced silence and let herself be swallowed by the darkness of a lonesome alley. Once they were hidden from conscience and cops, life took charge of the situation. Bodies were exchanged for a price and a deal was struck. Ariadne had made love to her pimp and her lover. Her first attempt at making love got her a job and a relationship. He sold her body for a profit but he adored her. When she was not working, he took her out on roses and brought her bouquets of wild flowers. They were two halves of madness that could separate the real and the fantasy and yet blend into each other seamlessly. The romance appealed to Ariadne. She had imagined love to be nothing less than this. The Alice of the wrong Wonderland demanded a loyalty that was more complicated than your average physical loyalty. She demanded her lover’s soul and the red haired man surrendered it quite willingly. That was the closest Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver ever got to a normal healthy life.
III
The steam and smoke of languor devoured Ariadne’s soul and invaded the most private corners of her memory. Ariadne lay still in helpless warm water while her mind got unhinged and characters from the depth of her poverty stricken past surfaced to the consciousness. Ariadne’s first relationship with her pimp obviously ended on a sad note. She felt the jolts of renewed visitations of buried sadness. She felt the mind numbing pain of separation and the chain of coked up men Ariadne had to please in order to survive. She was a woman who saw everything. She got beaten up, molested and raped several times over. Life for Ariadne was hard in the civil society because no one, not even the society, took her seriously. That is why she couldn’t get her rape complaint registered. It would have been difficult for her to prove her allegations, doing what she did. Ariadne carried on with stiff jaws and stern eyes. She lacked lament and remorse. The only voice that soothed Ariadne was the voice of power and privilege. She was a woman who knew the world through and though. Ariadne remembered the days the crack dealer visited their house. The other sisters went crazy for a couple of lines. She had grown up enough to understand her mother’s cause of death and no, she did not want to die covered in vomit. That would be the end of her. Alice remembered saving her money while the rest of the ladies splurged on drugs and alcohol. Staying close to drugs helped Ariadne realize her limits. She moved on to a happy place when the rest of her sisters were claimed by bankruptcy and venereal diseases. With the money she had saved, Ariadne bought herself a comfortable space for a state-of-the-art spa and worked hard to make it the chosen spa of Arizona. Customers flocked to her spa with stress knots and ghost pains and left the place, completely healed and rejuvenated. Ariadne had found her calling. The joint was almost over and the chocolate shake was beginning to get warm. Ariadne Silver’s recreational stupor was ebbing away. She felt refreshed and sleepy.
“I almost forgot…”
Amidst the high and the epiphanies, Ariadne had almost forgotten about her big day. She would be a proud owner of a new spa the next morning. This would be the third spa added to her chain of services. She rushed to her bedroom, opened her closet and took out a hardbound colorful book from it. It was a hardbound limited edition of Alice in Wonderland, Ariadne’s favorite book as a child. Truth be told, that was the only book Ariadne had ever read as a child. She believed in the Cheshire cat and the mad hatter. But mostly, she believed in Alice. She always admired Alice’s blatant nonchalance in the face of absurdity. She identified with Alice and the characters that she met on her imaginary journey. Somehow, Ariadne was convinced that the characters she read about were all very intensely real. The book served as her personal Bible through the course of her growing up. Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver wanted to make a gift of Alice in Wonderland to herself on the eve of her big day. She had made it big in this wrong wonderland, all by herself. She wasn’t against the concept of a companion. It’s just that every guy Ariadne had the chance of knowing intimately disappointed her. They were passionate but were not mad enough. Ariadne couldn’t define this madness. She didn’t want a stark rebellious anarchist for her boyfriend. She just wanted a guy who would be genuinely genuine. That was the first symptom of madness. Ariadne didn’t like to keep a look out for her perfect match. If he had to come, he would.
“Congratulations on your big day. Don’t let the mean daddies slow you down.”
She read the note she wrote to herself several times before tucking the book away and switching the lights off. She had a big day to wake up to and newer challenges to face. Ariadne Silver slept to the whisky lullaby of the moon light.
IV
After a long dreamless sleep, Ariadne Silver woke up to a morning of freshness and commercial success. She remembered to wash and dress herself very carefully, wore the best perfume she had and spent most of her day matching diamonds with her shoes. After almost an hour’s indecision, Ariadne decided that she was ready to go sign the deeds of the new property she had bought for her third spa. The dry sun of Arizona couldn’t suck out the supple vivacity of her glistening eyes. Ariadne walked out of her apartment and into her car, in a tepid orange dress and black stilettos. Her dark eyes sighed revoltingly against the cacti-nourishing roughness of the Arizona sun. Her head swam in colors and sweat as the dusty expanse of the rugged terrain kissed the humid blue sky overhead. That was certainly not the place to be. Alice of the wrong Wonderland wanted to live in the right side of Paris, with French cheese and aromatic vineyards. She wanted to sit outside a sunny café and listen to the beautiful men and women discuss poetry and politics in their characteristic French candor. A
riadne, for some strange unknown reason had a great fascination for France. She had never been to France or read too much about it. There was something in the name; there was a ring to it. France suggested freedom and a break from inhibitions. She believed France would be as aromatic as her spa. The sound of the country’s name caused her to smell a peculiar cocktail of odors that could perhaps only be imagined, and not created. France was a symbol of her ultimate happy place. She imagined France would let her discover the madness that she craved for. She could feel a sense of peace and anarchy, a sense of order and chaos, every time France took over her brain. Ariadne wanted to shop in the best stores of Paris and get manicures fit for a diva. Her resentment of the Arizona sun got strangely mingled with an odd longing for the unseen France. This trance lasted long and was only broken by the tinkling of her cell phone.
“Hello? Yes, this is Ariadne Silver”
A brief telephonic intercourse turned Ariadne Silver’s life completely over. Her eyes lost their characteristic resentment for the Arizona sun and all was white before her eyes, like a virgin canvas. One phone call changed Ariadne Silver’s life and reconfigured her history.
“My … grandmother… dead?”
A brief telephonic conversation gave Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver a family and made her an orphan once again. She had The Love I Never Knew, who lived in Salers and had died, leaving her earthly possessions solely in the hands of her capable granddaughter. Ariadne didn’t have time to think. She liked to stick to a plan. No matter what, she had to go by the rules of the business. She couldn’t let this sudden phone call distract her from her itinerary. With stiff jaws and unfocused eyes, Ariadne drove on to her big inauguration. She could hardly hear what was being said at the inaugural ceremony about her life achievements. She kept turning the phone call over in her mind and tried to remember a lost granddaughter very hard. Growing up was a tough job for Ariadne. She hardly had time for herself with all the moving and shifting and the pitiful charity of community services. She grew up in adverse conditions. Her mother had died in a pool of drugs and vomit. She didn’t have a lot of happy memories with people she could call her family. No, she couldn’t remember anyone mention any grandmother to her. The man on the phone said that the legal documents would be sent over to her very shortly. Ariadne couldn’t wait. While a part of her felt guilty for wanting to celebrate the riches of a deceased old woman, she felt comforted by a constant reminder of her childhood and told herself that she deserved to have some fun and good time after all these years. This phone suggested three important things for Ariadne. First and foremost, she was rich. Secondly, she got to know of a family tie that she never knew existed and third of all, her newly discovered dead grandmother was all the way from France. This could only mean one thing; Ariadne would have to go to France. An unplanned trip to her favorite country is exactly what she needed to take a break from all the hard work she had got herself into recently. The day was indeed very slow at the inaugural ceremony. Ariadne only wished the “hatter” would show up soon now. She really thought it was time.
V
Several days passed by since Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver received that mysterious phone call with bittersweet tidings of windfall. She didn’t know how to curb her anxiety on restless days of waiting and speculations. Ariadne raked her brain and searched every nook and corner she could possibly manage for a faraway grandmother, a mention of a distant relative in France. Perhaps that explained her bemusing attachment to the country she had never seen in her life. Ariadne was sorry the old woman had to die for her to get rich. Sure, she didn’t know her and it would make no difference to her life, but it would be nice to get to know a grandmother and developing familial feelings for her. She could never fantasize about home-made meat loafs and Sunday roasts because she never had the chance to have a home in her life. What was her grandmother’s name? How old was she when she died? What did she do to end up living in France and get so much money? Ariadne was constantly haunted by these questions. She hated her mother’s corpse even more now. Every time Ariadne closed her eyes and saw her mother’s dead body, the memory grew more intense and darker. She saw her mother’s corpse as an insult to her daily living. Her mother’s dead body often came back to haunt her dreams and make a mockery of her childhood. She did nothing good for her daughter. She devoted herself to a lifetime of drugs, brought a daughter to this world and ended up killing herself, leaving her daughter to the care of this cruel, mercenary world. The more she thought about it, the less enthusiastic Ariadne felt to get to know about her past life. How would a grandmother whom she had never seen or saw know the existence of this self made young woman? And how were her alcoholic and dope head parents connected to such a resourceful individual anyway?
The absurdity of Alice’s wrong Wonderland had only begun hammering itself in. One fine morning, when Ariadne was taking a swim in her pool, the phone rang as it did on that fateful day in the car. With a new spa and added responsibilities, Ariadne had completely forgotten about the phone call that had given her a family for a few seconds only to take it way. It was a certain Mr. Cosby from Boston, calling on behalf of Mrs. Lucy Silver. Alice’s grandmother had not only left her money, she had also bequeathed all her material possessions on her. That included a car, a big house in the sleepy village of Salers and ten million dollars. All Ariadne had to do was visit her newly acquired property and understand her ownership privileges from the local probate officer. A few hours following the phone call, a big package arrived at her place with Ariadne’s name on it. She found all the requisite documents there and a flight ticket that had already been purchased in her name. All Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver had to do at this point of time was take the flight and go to France. Alice had no idea where the rabbit hole would take her.
Chapter 2
I
Two weeks had passed since the phone call and Ariadne was beginning to convince herself that it was all a hoax. Perhaps she was on the receiving end of a big practical joke. Ariadne didn’t want to be a victim of a big cruel prank. She didn’t want to get her hopes high only to be shattered by a phenomenal realization of her crude reality. She was all alone in this cruel world. The idea of France, the imagined intellectual superiority of the people, their assumed geniality had kept the innocence intact in Ariadne. France was more than just a place to her, it was an incorruptible idea of her childhood innocence. She was paranoid of someone playing on her vulnerability. She had to work hard to achieve everything she ever wanted. The idea of gaining a dream without effort aroused her suspicions. She was a cynic to not believe that a pumpkin could turn into a royal chariot. The whole affair had to be a hoax! There were no reasonable explanations for the occurrence of this strange event. The logistics made no sense at all. Ariadne’s skepticism of humanity helped her survive in this godless world. Perhaps that is what she needed to do. She was doing well without the offered sum of money and the big house in France. She could not simply accept this gift from the world of the dead. She had not even earned the gift. Life had taught her well that unearned gifts were usually the harbingers of trouble and there were seldom any exceptions to the rule. There would be many other big houses and several opportunities to walk freely on a shaded boulevard or laugh with casual mirth at a vineyard. All of it could wait. Ariadne needed to take care of her business and go on to become a self-made woman, a woman of substance. With these firm resolutions, the telephonic conversation was conveniently forgotten and no further attempts were made to revisit the fragmented pieces of a childhood for a grandmother who only recently died. Ariadne lived her life in circles and completed her daily chores effortlessly. She was a successful owner of a chain of spas and an accomplished woman of quality. She concluded two weeks of uneventful hard work with a joint and a hot bath.
The joint and the calming caresses of the lukewarm water took Ariadne back to the hall of scattered reminiscences of days gone by. She sifted through the complex layers of her past, gleaned every bit of disjointed memory she could
find to make a concrete whole grandmother live in the crevices of her memory. She tried her best only to draw a blank. She could not recollect any hint of a grandmother anywhere. Could it be because her mother never told her? Perhaps because her mother never got the chance to tell her about the rest of the family she had. Those smoke-riddled wet hours in the pool unhinged Ariadne. She wondered how different her life would have been had her mother been alive. She would not have been sent away to live in a tattered orphanage and life would be stable. She would not have met her hatters. Ariadne tried hard to think of an alternative lifestyle for herself. She tried hard to imagine a school life where she could hang around with a girl gang of her own. She arduously attempted to think about what course her life would take if she had not dropped out of school. Just a little less of drugs and alcohol, and her life would have been a different story. She drifted off to the tipsy tunes of maudlin blues playing beside the pool. The harsh monotony of the doorbell brought Ariadne back to consciousness. She dressed hastily and went for the door, muttering imprecations under her breath. She did not like to be disturbed during her time in the pool. She disliked meeting anyone beyond business hours. But what she simply could not tolerate was someone interrupting the buzz in her head when she was high. On the other side of the door stood a man in an official black suit, with an expression of perpetual pompousness on his face. His hair was greased and combed neatly. The man at the doorway meant business. Before Ariadne could say anything, the man introduced himself.
“I am Kenneth Myers from Cliff & Richardson. This meeting is in reference to the last will and testament of Mrs. Lucy Arabella Silver. May I come in?”
Ariadne could not believe what was happening in front of her. The next hour and half transpired without any conscious contribution from Ariadne Silver as the legal representative from Cliff & Richardson clarified to Ariadne, the extent of the privileges extended to her by her dead grandmother’s will. She had to visit her grandmother’s house and correspond with the probate officer to seal the final transfer of ownership. Her grandmother was indeed real. She lived in France and had left her a lot of money and property. These thoughts were nothing short of outrageous and Ariadne could not help but feel bemused by her condition. Ariadne did not hear half of the jargon the legal representative was hurling at her. In her head, she was falling down the rabbit hole, into the Wonderland. The Wonderland seemed alright but something about it felt very wrong. She was about to realize her biggest fantasy at the cost of death of what could have been a start to a new family. Ariadne’s deep rooted resentment of her mother started surfacing. She could never forgive her mother for not letting her know about a grandmother in France. Would not she have had a better life without the orphanage, prostitution and gradual descent into poverty-stricken madness?
The Love I Found: Contemporary Romance Mystery (Ariadne Silver Romance Mystery #3) Page 7
