by L. A. Zoe
Worse, every detail of this visit would travel via cell phone to Rhinegold’s family before the Red Acura parked out front reached the first main street on her way home.
Burning floor supports to keep himself warm. Hanging out with a homeless man who really did need an industrial strength scrub shower. Eating carry-out beef cannelloni from The Pasta Store. Camping out on the living room floor in a sleeping bag.
Would Helena want to spend the night?
Hard to believe.
Her family joined the Cromwell Circle Country Club several years ago, when she was seventeen, the summer before her senior year of high school.
She acted a little too eager to join the social activities of other club teenagers, most of whom had known each other since their first preschool swimming, tennis, and horseback riding lessons together, but eventually became accepted.
Her musical talent helped. Most of the kids played instruments, but nobody except Helena took music seriously enough to speak of playing for the Cromwell Symphony Orchestra, so they respected her dedication even as they laughed about it.
Rhinegold’s father told him once her father had been a small-time accountant who owned rental property on the side. Somehow, he got hold of a piece of property needed for a big new shopping center, and made a small fortune.
Supposedly she was involved in some kind of scandal regarding her sexuality, but Facebook scrubbed all references to it. One of Rhinegold’s friends, Pete Sanders, took her out to learn for himself. According to his report, she acted totally feminine, which included giving him several hand and blow jobs. To Rhinegold’s knowledge, no guy had yet laid her.
Since Rhinegold’s banishment from the castle, Helena visited him at least once a week. Obviously she wanted more than friendship, and demonstrated persistence, for Rhinegold did nothing but show her courtesy. He enjoyed her music. He enjoyed the company for dinner.
Although a terrifically beautiful and talented woman, nothing about her drew him to her. Sometimes he wondered why not, given the beauty her fingertips pulled out of a violin.
Such a beautiful instrument. Top of the line Nagoya Suzuki. Light brown with a beautifully stained coat of varnish. To Rhinegold’s untrained ear, it sounded like an instrument blessed by the Gods.
Rhinegold sensed, although clearly an honorable lady at heart, something dark lurked within her. Some deep secret, perhaps. Some boundary she wouldn’t break through. Some task she hadn’t the strength to perform.
And that kept him from loving her as he had loved the princess.
When she finished the piece, Rhinegold clapped, and Helena took a sweeping bow.
“I’m going,” Georgie said in a curt voice. “I didn’t know you had other company, Rhinegold.”
“You can always drop by,” Rhinegold said. He sensed Georgie wanted to talk to him alone, so he said, “I’ll walk you out. I’ll be back in a few moments, Helena. I’d like to hear another piece, if you don’t mind.”
Once they both cleared board over the back door, Georgie clutched the front of Rhinegold’s jacket with a hand trembling with suppressed rage. “What’s she want from you? She don’t belong here.”
Breath as foul as ever, though without any alcohol, its mist visibly clouding around Rhinegold’s mouth and nose. After Georgie started drinking, he wouldn’t go anywhere. Maybe he wanted to drink with Rhinegold, but Helena ruined that plan.
Rhinegold never told anybody about his family. Certainly not Georgie. He liked the old alcoholic, but couldn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut.
“She’s an old friend. The only one who hasn’t forgotten me.”
“I like SeeJai. Stick with her.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s not even a friend. Just ask her.”
“You’re still protecting her.”
“She texted me. She got a job this morning, and her mother gets out tomorrow morning, sooner than they expected. I told her I’d help her move her mother’s things from her friend’s place to her mother’s new apartment.”
Next, an apartment, maybe a car, and a boyfriend with a real job, who didn’t make his living escorting welfare mothers to and from the supermarket or prostitutes to and from hotel rooms.
“You stick with her, Rhinegold. You hear me?”
“I like her, Georgie. But she doesn’t want me.”
“She does, she does. She just hasn’t figured that out yet.”
“Why don’t you explain it to her?”
Georgie put both hands on the handle of his shopping cart, hunched over, and pointed his eyes back at the door, head tilted backward over his shoulders. “That one there, she’s up to no good, I tell you, Rhinegold.”
“But she plays great violin.”
“Stick with SeeJai,” Georgie said, then set out through the alley, dragging his left foot, breaking the ice holding the garbage dumpster lids, looking for aluminum cans.
“He doesn’t like me, does he?” Helena said when Rhinegold returned inside to the living room.
Rhinegold threw a lot more small planks to the fire, then shrugged off his heavy parka. “He figures you’re after something, or a rich girl wouldn’t be here playing classical music on her violin for bums. It’s typical street thinking. Everybody’s after something.”
She stared into the flashing flames. “Do I have to be after something?”
He sat beside her, letting his flank touch her, wanting to put his arm around her, but afraid that would encourage her more than he meant. “Everybody on the street is after something, and that makes them suspicious of everybody else.”
“Maybe that kind of thinking is why they’re on the street.”
A sharp insight for a sheltered rich girl. It reminded Rhinegold Helena didn’t grow up rich.
He shrugged. “I think it’s because they’re after things too small. Enough change to buy a bottle of wine instead making a fortune. A hot shower instead of a mansion with five luxurious bathrooms. A drug to make them feel good for five minutes instead of happiness for the rest of their lives.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I spoke before I thought.”
He kept his voice low and warm. “It’s all right. I’m as guilty as all the other bums.”
“Do they know—?”
“My father’s a king? No, I don’t tell anybody who I am or why I’m here. Not many street thugs are organized enough to even think of a kidnapping, but they could try extortion, and I could wind up dead.”
“What are you after, Rhinegold? I know your family’s angry with you, but they aren’t talking. Everybody’s wondering what happened. Why you ran away.”
Rhinegold stood up and crossed his arms. “Helena, how about that second piece you promised me?”
Helena smiled despite a face wired with tension, stood, and grabbed her violin.
“I stole this one off YouTube,” Helena said. “It’s an original piece, and the composer uses the screen name of black sheep.”
“She’s like me then,” Rhinegold said.
“It’s Sound of an Angel,” she said.
“And she wrote it for you,” he said, half-smiling.
Serene and ethereal, each note seemed to merge with the other, vibrating in resonance like quiet ocean waves lapping against each other on a calm night, the moon shining silver above.
Much as Rhinegold tried to keep his attention on the woman playing the violin, the music turned his thought to SeeJai.
The music Helena played fit SeeJai as a person—strong yet mystically fey, like Mount Everest shrunk to human scale. A spirit from Shangri-La.
It seemed too otherworldly for Helena, the bright-faced young woman so anxious to make friends with the country club set. Like giving him a tie clasp for Christmas. He would never wear it.
When she finished, he clapped again.
She sat down beside him, on his rolled up sleeping bag.
“You must be dedicated to play so well,” Rhinegold said. “I admire that.”
“I should be back at
the college in a practice room right now,” she said. “But sometimes I need a break.”
“And I’m your break? I’m flattered.”
She moved close, putting her hand on his arm. “Rhinegold … since you don’t want to live with your family—if you need a place, we could always, I mean—I still live with my family, but they’d let you have our third bedroom. Or, if you wanted, an apartment. I’d be closer to campus, so I could even practice more, so it’d be good for lots of reasons.”
Of course she wanted something. Everybody did.
Rhinegold had to remember she didn’t know what happened. Didn’t know why he didn’t live with his family. At least, he bet Keara never told her. Not the truth.
“Thank you,” Rhinegold whispered, voice hoarse and thick. Why did it feel so hard to tell her the truth? He understood his princess would never again love him, not as a lover. Yet he didn’t feel free.
SeeJai.
Even thinking of sleeping with Helena felt like a betrayal of SeeJai.
Idiotic, considering she didn’t want him.
Not as he wanted her.
She thought him the kind of goon she could control by opening her legs.
He wanted more of SeeJai. Much more.
Chapter Nine
Mom Moves In
Sometimes I play tricks with my mind.
It’s an offshoot of the letters I write to JaeSea in my diary, which counselors at first encouraged me to do, then a few years later tried to discourage me, I wrote so many of them.
I talk to her too. Not out loud, like crazy folks do, but in my mind—my heart, maybe you say. Even in my soul¸ if you believe like that.
Like in school, every test had at least two or three hard multiple choice problems. Even after eliminating one or two obviously wrong answers, I couldn’t choose between two or three.
So I’d ask JaeSea, and she almost always told me right. I don’t know why I thought she was smarter than me, or a better student, but she was.
Maybe because when school teachers bored me, talking on and on, I’d pretend JaeSea sat there listening and taking notes while I, SeeJai, drifted around in outer space.
That’s how I used to picture her, floating around in outer space, like an astronaut on a spacewalk, only not tethered to a space station. Orbiting the Earth like a communications satellite.
I remember, when I was still little, lying alone in my bed, wondering why I felt so sad, almost forgetting her, hugging a big neon-green fluffy stuffed dog named Jolly, and I’d pretend I was JaeSea as well as SeeJai. And I lay there in bed like we used to, both of us hugging Jolly caught in the middle. I learned to close my eyes, feel calm inside thinking about JaeSea lying on the other side of Jolly, stop crying, and fall asleep.
Later, of course, I grew too old to sleep with stuffed animals or sisters, so I started the diary.
And, when I disappointed or hurt Mom or—even worse—made her angry, since it took a lot to excite her—in my mind I asked JaeSea to take over, to tell me what to do to make Mom feel better.
Because I, SeeJai, didn’t make Mom happy. I had to call in an outside expert for consultation.
Checking Mom out of Arkham proved a challenge to my own mental health, so I slacked off, letting JaeSea handle it. She also knew what to say to Mom to make her smile, while I sulked.
Paperwork. Disclaimers stacked high. Countless details. A quick run to Areetha’s apartment to dig Mom’s winter coat out of storage. When she went into Arkham, she wore only a thin jacket suitable for autumn weather.
Bottles of medicines. Wellbutrin. Effexor. Extensive instructions on when and how to take them.
Strict instructions to Mom not to drink, which of course she’ll ignore as soon as I leave her alone with enough pocket change to buy a six-pack.
For the past two years, since I left high school and so was with her most of the time, I prevented most of her drinking. With her living alone, and me working at the Sunshine Garden, I wouldn’t be able to watch her as much. Just once a day or so.
This worried me, but all I can do is wait and see what happens.
I mentioned it to Mrs. Heffley, who nodded, and said she stressed to Mom the dangers of alcohol. Because it could counteract the effect of the drugs. Increase her drowsiness (which I knew would attract Mom, who would gladly sleep twenty-four hours a day if she could). It could increase risk of heart failure and long-term brain damage. Wellbutrin and alcohol could cause seizures.
She convinced me, but—Mom? I doubted it. She just sat there, looking into the fifth dimension, nodding on cue.
Mrs. Heffley assigned Mom to report two times a week to group counseling for substance abusers.
Mom had to sign another stack of forms. The lease on her new apartment where, I hoped, Areetha and Rhinegold already dropped off the boxes of all her things. Food stamps. Medicaid. Energy Assistance. Outpatient Rules and Conditions. Resident Rules and Regulations for the apartment building.
When we finally left, and while I held her copies of that paperwork in a large manila envelope, we caught the North Town bus to the North Cromwell Social Security office to report her release from Arkham and her new apartment.
That took care of everything put on hold by her extended hospitalization. We ate lunch at a Subway near the Social Security office with the last of my first day’s tips, then took the bus to Englewood Garden Apartments.
I drilled the closest cross street into Mom’s brain. She wasn’t stupid, but sometimes when riding the bus by herself fell into a deep trance, not waking up until her stop lay five miles behind her.
Georgie chained his supermarket cart to the otherwise empty, heavy iron bicycle rack.
Cute. I might have smiled, except it meant he and Rhinegold must still be up in Mom’s new apartment.
The mixed-colored bricks of Englewood Garden Apartments put up a cheerful front against the pale, skim milk light of winter. Snow drifts covered the walls nearly to the first floor, iced-over windows. On the roof, twin aluminum stacks vented steam toward the sky.
Holding Mom’s arm, I got us inside the lobby. A heavy-set guard waved a handheld metal detector around us, and asked to see our I.D.s. As Mom’s guest, I had to sign in with Mom’s apartment number. After my name, two columns: Time In and Time Out.
And people completed the Time Out column.
Only not Rhinegold and Georgie.
A bulletin board held announcements for yoga lessons, karaoke sessions, chapel services, and last Saturday’s Vegas Night.
A thin, elderly woman with a handmade badge identifying her as Sylvie smiled and greeted us warmly. She welcomed Mom to the building.
Sylvie pulled her sweater tighter, hunching her shoulders, and said to Mom and I: “Your movers are done. I told them they could wait for you in your apartment. I hope that’s all right. I can have the guard search them before they leave the building.” She paused, and leaned her face closer. “I honestly didn’t want them down here in the lobby.”
Mom signed for the keys, handing an extra set over to me.
In the elevator, I took a deep breath and tried to work up the courage to tell Mom about Rhinegold and Georgie, but we reached the third floor before I could begin.
I tried to hang back, but Mom found her apartment door right away down the hall, and opened it.
She sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”
“Georgie,” I said. “He’s a friend. I guess he came to help my other friend Rhinegold. He’s nice, but he’s homeless.”
Mom nodded as if that all made perfect sense, and went inside.
The apartment was nicer than I expected. Small, but comfy for one person. One living room with the kitchen at one end, a bedroom, and bathroom. All furnished in Early Twenty-First Century American K-Mart, including jars of dried rose petal potpourri set on lace doilies.
I wondered whether the Cromwell Housing Authority included that as a standard furnishing for Section 8 apartments, or a prior resident left them behind, and where she went
from there.
The living room did include the one item more essential to Mom than a bed or even a toilet—a wide screen TV, over a hundred satellite channels included with the rent. Another three billion or so available for a small extra charge, which Mom would want me to pay for her as soon as her SSI check hit the bank account.
When she didn’t sleep through life, she watched movies nonstop.
For a minute, I envied her, and considered getting treatment for my depression, so the government would pay me to shut out the world until I died.
The cardboard boxes containing the things we could salvage from getting evicted at our old apartment, and stored temporarily with Areetha, sat on the living room and bedroom floors. I couldn’t live there, but I could keep my extra clothes in Mom’s closet.
Rhinegold and Georgie sat on wooden chairs in the kitchen, their coats draped over the backs. As Mom and I entered, they stood up.
Which surprised me. Georgie still remembered old-fashioned courtesy, but where did Rhinegold learn such manners?
I made brief introductions, stumbling over the word ’friend’ when I pointed Rhinegold out to Mom. He wasn’t my friend, but what other word applied? This guy I couldn’t get rid of even though he didn’t want to sleep with me?
And I didn’t complain too loudly because ice still covered the hard concrete streets, and I didn’t want to hook for Greco or Ami?
With a grim determination I hadn’t seen on her face since my junior year of high school, Mom marched right up to Georgie, stuck her finger in his face, and said, “Take a shower. Now. Scrub. Hard.”
Georgie’s Adam’s apple jerked up and down, and I figured he would just walk out. Instead, he stared at Mom, nodded, and headed for the bathroom.
Rhinegold and I stared at each other, in shock.
“Does your friend have clean clothes?” Mom asked Rhinegold.
Since Georgie wore the same old dirty rags he had on when I met him several days ago, I knew he hadn’t changed even after washing all the others in the laundromat.
