Julie jumped away, his fingers grazing her arm.
She flinched, her eyes wild. ‘What’s going on? How are you doing that? What are you doing to me?’
Above them the house echoed with the slamming of the front door.
Julie began to shake. ‘Oh, my God, my mom’s home …’
Noel’s heart tightened like a fist and then opened with a sharp rush as she bolted for the door. ‘Wait, Julie, don’t do that!’
He threw himself across the room, trapping her just before she collided with him. She screamed and jumped back, twisting and wheeling her arms as if she were being swarmed by hornets.
‘Julie, stop! Stop!’
Julie screamed again.
Upstairs, muffled, her mother might have said, ‘Julie? Is that you? What’s wrong?’
‘Mommy!’ Julie ran toward the door.
Noel couldn’t help reaching for her. ‘Julie—’
But her screams cut him off, froze him. She spun away, colliding with the door, wrenched it open and slipped into the basement living room. He sought to minimize the damage before she ran crying into Lisa’s arms and they shut him in down here. If that happened, he would be trapped and his dad would know and his mom would be in trouble and they would send him away.
Noel caught her on the run at the foot of the stairs. He gripped her arm and with his free hand cupped her mouth, silencing her. Julie slipped and they fell together, back and hips banging onto stairs. She fought and he rolled off but did not let go. Above them Lisa called out, heels clicking across the main floor.
‘It’s okay!’ Noel hissed at Julie. ‘It’s just me, this is what I was trying to expla—’
Julie bit the fingers she felt but could not see, grinding his knuckles. Noel yelled and tore his hand away, opening the way for her screams. She wrestled from under him and up the stairs, stumbling to her feet. Now there was only escape. The basement contained no exits. There was no salvaging anything. His entire existence funneled down to a hot bolt of self-preservation.
Noel shoved himself off the floor and stormed the stairs, passing Julie on the landing, pulling himself up and dancing past her with the handrail.
Three steps from the top, the doorknob retreated from Noel’s falling hand. The door flew wide and the kitchen’s brightness hit him a moment before Lisa filled the doorway. He saw Lisa, a terrified mother, seeing through him the commotion of her daughter scrambling up the stairs, and she gasped in confusion.
‘Mommy! Help!’ Julie wailed, and Lisa lunged forward.
Noel dodged to her right and it would have been so much better if he had simply collided with her, knocking her to the kitchen floor, even giving her a concussion. But he slipped between her and the doorway and dove. Something heavy struck his ankle with a thud. Julie screamed again and breath was knocked from one of them as he hit the kitchen floor, tripping as he had tripped Lisa. A chaotic rumble shook the stairs, followed by a sickening silence, then a final slam into the wall. A strained moan issued from one of them, rising in pitch to a gulping, desperate choke. And died.
The house fell quiet but for Julie’s sobbing.
Noel got to his feet. He went toward the front door, but when no one chased after him he stopped. He turned and stared at the orange digits of the stove clock, the clean counters, the red leather purse Lisa had set next to the toaster. There was a mother and daughter here. Julie was her daughter and Lisa was her mother and they were a family with or without his dad. Happy John loved them and somehow the duo that they were, not even his family yet, made it all unbearable. He wanted again to burn the house down, not out of anger but to erase the whole stage where this had happened. And if they weren’t here, he could do that and sit inside, letting the flames turn his invisible bones to ash.
A minute passed. Julie didn’t come to the top of the stairs. Lisa didn’t come to the top of the stairs.
He was the only one who could help them. He walked to the top of the stairs.
Julie was crouched two steps above her mother, looking down, huddled in a ball, knees at her chin. She gave no indication she knew he was here.
Lisa lay on her back. One of her brown leather heels was standing on the third from bottom stair, upright as if on display. The other shoe hung by the toe of her left foot. Beside it, the right foot seemed more naked than naked in its brown stocking with the white toe pad. Her legs were extended in a straight slide down to the landing where the upper half of her body rested flat. Her chin was dug into her chest from the wall that stopped her descent at the back of her head. Blood threaded from one ear down to her chin where it was pushing a stain into her blouse. She could not see him because of who he was and what he had become. She could not see him because she was knocked unconscious or dead.
Her eyes saw him, though. The shiny black rings of them between strands of her messed black hair were watching him and seeing everything he had done, everything he had become.
He turned and ran.
The drivers in the cars on 88th, the people walking out of the bank and the kids at the bus stop could not see him because he did not exist to them. He was glass. He was air. He was a phantom with no place to rest. He had run from his father’s house until he could run no more. Now he was numb, walking aimlessly, beyond tired. He was hungry inside, but not for food. He needed something to make him feel the body he could not see, to take away this emptiness, to mark him in the nothingness of his own life.
Dusk settled over Westminster as he crossed the parking lot to the mall. There was another fall day not so long ago his mother had brought him here to pick out school clothes, but he did not remember that now. He stood in the corner of the lot and watched as a long black sedan parked in a vacant space far away from the rest of the cars. The door opened and a man stretched his way up and out of it, his black suit and stovepipe pant legs unfurling on a warm autumn breeze. The man’s back was to Noel as he faced the mall, but Noel knew who it was. The set of the shoulders and the glossy black shoes, maybe. The unhurried alley cat stride, for sure.
Noel followed.
On their way to the bank of doors, the stylish man paused and looked over his shoulder, offering a sad smile. He cocked his chin – this way, my little bloke, we have to go this way and make the best of it. Noel moved on instinct. This guy. This man. This confident dude would show him the way.
Noel felt no stress at all as he approached the doors and the other shoppers filed past him, unaware. He moved into the bright lights and food court smells, the shopping center warm and alive with the splashing of the coin fountain and the voices everywhere, the filtered music playing loud enough to mask his footsteps. The man from Julie’s poster, who Noel had come to think of simply as Smith, was only about a hundred feet ahead and disappearing around a corner.
Noel hurried, afraid of losing his guide, passing a hair salon, a toy store, racks of shoes, a record store, Orange Julius with its ferris wheel of oil-beaded hot dogs and whirring blenders. Voices like radio waves, garbled and pushing into his ears one moment, retreating in a wash of white noise the next. There he was. Smith was waiting at the base of the escalator. Seeing Noel, he stepped on and up.
Noel eased into the foot traffic and rode in a soothing glide until the steel stairs delivered him at the top. There was no sign of Smith, only a wooden oval booth with a security sign and two husky men standing together, badges and gold buttons on their white shirts. Noel caught a glimpse of a black jacket entering The Gap. He moved faster, crossing the mezzanine and flowing into the circle mazes of sweaters and dress shirts, veering away from the dressing-room cages with the legs below kicking into jeans, clacking plastic hangers, and, just as quickly out, back onto the polished wooden promenade. Smith wasn’t in The Gap. It was beneath him.
Where did he go? Noel scanned the promenade and walked on, searching. Cookie booth. Watch store. Stationery. Candles. He reached the far end of the mall and stopped outside the last department store, gazing up at the lifeless alabaster mannequins posed in purple
and green dresses, raincoats, rainbow leggings. A white glow snagged at the corner of his right eye, a twinkle slightly behind him. He turned.
Smith was leaning against an onyx pillar, smoking, even though smoking was not allowed in the mall. He nodded that way. ZALES JEWELERS, the sign announced, with a neon-tubed diamond beside it. Smith put the cigarette out on the back of his hand, flicked it away and ambled inside.
The terror and numbness vented from him in seconds. Noel’s mind thrummed with an electric buzz that spread in all directions like lightning, dimming him before the world, securing him in its blinding eye. A nearly sexual hunger welling up inside him, confident and demanding to be fed, Noel felt like a boy who has located the X on the treasure map and has just been handed the shovel.
11
The store was small and cut diagonally with the corners cut again, like the face of a gem, with rows of glass cabinets filled with bright light that bounced off the precious things. A tall woman with straight white-blonde hair falling to the waist of her red dress was standing behind a display. Between attempts to lure pedestrians with her promising eyes, she fussed with a T-stand looped with necklaces. She had a huge smile with horse teeth and her hands seemed large enough to grind the necklace stones to powder. She looked directly at Noel from less than six paces and her gaze passed through him like a warm wind.
There were only three customers in the entire store. Two employees. The tall blonde and a shorter, older woman, who reminded Noel of Weezy on The Jeffersons, if the matriarch of the titular family had been white instead of black. Her posture kept her leaning forward and her butt followed her like parade balloons. Weezy whispered something in the tall blonde’s ear, patted her shoulder and went into the back room.
Smith sat on one of the glass cases, his smile gone, his eyes darker, serious. Be patient, the nasal British voice came to him again, even though Smith didn’t so much as open his mouth. Observe. Be smart, but not afraid. They can’t touch us in here. Use the people, young chap. They, not the bubble, are your real camouflage.
Noel walked to the far end of the front counter, away from the others, and gazed into a cabinet filled with thick watches of gold and silver. Massive polished dials for men, slimmer ones for women. Then bracelets made of silver and gold, with gems of red and blue and green, displayed in clusters according to color. After the necklaces, rings. Everything from tiny bands with diamonds the size of sand grains to thick, zig-zagging bands that interlocked and held rectangular blocks of diamond thrust up in their metal teeth. Noel became dizzy, but it was not an unpleasant feeling.
He watched the tall blonde. She wore a lot of jewelry and he guessed she made a lot of money working here. She came forward to greet a young couple who had entered the store. They were dressed in jean jackets and cowboy boots and were laughing, holding hands, practically falling into each other as they pointed at different rings. Noel suspected they were drunk, but not too drunk, just enough to make a little party of their shopping. He was happy for them, and knew he could use them.
Smith yawned, tapped another cigarette against his wrist, stared at Noel expectantly.
The blonde saleswoman removed a green rubber spiral bracelet from her forearm. A number of keys were attached to it. She used one to open a door on her side of the displays and extracted a felt panel with at least twenty rings sunken into it. The young couple made pleasure sounds and caressed the rings, then the man pointed and said, ‘That one, darlin’. That’s the honey right there.’
The girl tried it on, held it up to the lights. The tall blonde put the panel back into the case and Noel knew it was because she wasn’t supposed to leave too many out on the table at one time.
While the three of them were talking, Weezy came out of the back room. She was heavily made up, with high curls of reddish brown hair that fairly screamed off her lemon yellow pantsuit. She leaned into the tall blonde again, and the blonde nodded before slipping the rubber bracelet of keys from her forearm and handed it to Weezy, who Noel knew was her boss.
His eyes followed the green rubber spiral as Weezy pushed between two small black saloon doors, into the back room. Noel walked to the end of the display cases at the far corner of the store where a waist-high kennel door stood. He pushed against it, but it was locked. He planted one hand on the top edge and the other on the glass counter, and hopped over, thinking of a cat as he landed. The tall blonde was still talking to the young couple, and he knew she would be stuck with them for at least another few minutes because they were having too much fun to decide quickly.
He passed Smith, who sighed with boredom as Noel ducked below the saloon doors, rising up inside a shallow space that extended about fifty feet in either direction, with rows of steel shelves and drawers filled with paper bags and folded gift boxes. He had expected rows and rows of jewelry but realized now that was stupid. Of course they wouldn’t keep piles of diamonds and gold and all those rings lying around like Aladdin’s cave on that one Bugs Bunny episode where Daffy unleashes the angry genie Hassan from the magic kettle. It was all probably in a safe, a huge safe he could not get into, so what was the point of this adventure?
Weezy’s voice came from Noel’s right, at the end of the shelves. He walked toward her, not understanding the terms she used. She was talking about weights and carrots and clarity. At the end of the row a black door stood halfway open, revealing a cramped office. Noel moved closer and saw her propped rigid in a leather chair on wheels, talking on the phone. Her back was turned. She sounded very serious, almost angry. Beside her elbow, lying on the desk’s smooth surface, was the rubber key ring.
Noel stepped forward, leaned in, and reached … but couldn’t get there.
Weezy sat forward and said, ‘That’s all really impressive, David, but I’m going to be out of stock before Christmas, so what are you going to do for me? South Africa I don’t want to hear about.’
Noel swallowed hard, took another half-step. His fingers touched the rubber spiral. He pinched and lifted it carefully so that the keys did not scrape or jingle against the desk. He backed away, walked calmly and ducked under the saloon doors, into the brightness of the store. Several more people had entered and the tall blonde in her red dress was hurrying back and forth to greet them without losing her conversation with the young cowboy couple, who were now kissing.
He crouched. Duck-walking to the other end of the employee lane, he tried the last lock first. The key didn’t fit. He tried another. It fit but wouldn’t turn. Another. Another. And on the sixth key, the lock clicked and the key twisted to the right. Noel slid the door open until the metal lock fell from its sawtooth tab and thunked at his feet. He looked down, then up quickly, peeking over the counter, but no one had heard it land on the carpet.
On the felt stump neck, a thick gold necklace with a large gold music symbol shone at up him. The music symbol was lined with at least thirty diamonds. He removed it and held it suspended in the air at his side where Red Dress would see it if she wanted to, and then he plucked six more necklaces from their beige felt stumps. His head swam and his entire body went loose.
Beside the necklaces stood a horizontal arm of black felt ringed with bracelets of varying thickness. Silver and platinum, some bare and clean, others dotted with blue gems. He dragged a dozen of them to the end of the arm, clutching them in a bundle at his waist, as if this might still hide them. The cluster was as thick and heavy as a handful of cooked spaghetti. Noel hurried to the end of the row and dropped his haul over the low door, onto the floor at the edge of the carpet.
He was trembling badly and sweating, and there was no sign of Smith. He had to force himself not to breathe loudly as he turned back and tried the keys in another lock. He did not even bother to look up this time. He couldn’t stand the sight of any of them, the customers or the employees. He was in a tunnel, as blind to them as they were to him. He fumbled the keys and almost dropped them, then managed to work through three before finding another that slid into the lock. It turned on the fi
rst try and Noel began plucking rings with green and blue stones shaped like hearts, circles, squares, something ugly brown-yellow, and then a dozen or more bare gold rings fat as caramels, into the basket he made of his shirt.
On the way back to the stash he glimpsed stacks of black plastic bags tucked into shelves built into the wall. He drew a medium-sized one out and quietly dumped his loot inside. Better. But the bag would still be a problem. He carried it to the end of the row and stepped over the waist-high door, scraping the inside of his thigh as his foot landed on the other side. His hair was tingling. His chest heaved and the air blew through his nose in a hard whistling rhythm that seemed louder than anything else in the store.
He bent, scooping the pile of necklaces and bracelets into the bag. The bag was nearly full, a black bulging square of reality hovering three feet in the air. He couldn’t hide it. He had to find a way out right now, before he lost his composure and started screaming.
Noel looked both ways down the mall. Dozens of people were walking toward him, away from him, talking and smiling and looking in all directions.
‘The eyes, Noel. Look at their eyes,’ the Englishman crooned inside his head. ‘Put it where their eyes don’t go.’
Noel studied the passers-by, eliminating his options. Up high? Level with the store windows? Lower? Maybe he could fling them behind a bench, then a trash can?
The floor.
Smith said, ‘Brilliant, lad. Now take your time and don’t go cocking it all up.’
Noel set the black plastic Zales bag on the floor. If anyone saw it, it would look like a bag, maybe a piece of trash, something any shopper might have set down for a moment. He nudged it with his foot, closer to the wall. If anyone came after it, he could simply walk away. Or scare them. But no one looked at it. They just walked along, lost in their browsing.
Sweating, terrified but more excited than he had ever been about anything in his entire life, Noel sidestepped along the wall, keeping his back against the storefronts. He edged away from Zales and passed another store, which through him and through the window display shoppers could see an assortment of novelty items and gag gifts, magic sets, rubber monster masks and lamps burbling blue and purple lava. The plastic hissed and twice he had to stop to bend over and repack some rings and a bracelet that spilled out, but no one saw the bag.
The Fading Page 8
