Cross My Heart

by Natalie Vivien

  Paranoia, really? Further proof of my need for sleep.

  I rake a hand through my hair—or try to; my fingers get caught in a snarl—and then I pull out my cell phone from my back pocket. There are three unread texts: two from Cordelia and one from Lucia. I decide to read Cordelia’s first.

  r u there yet? send me pictures alexandra! i want house porn! c u in 2 days!

  Then, in another text sent twenty-five minutes later:

  hey is it all right if I bring jack to nf with me? david just got a big job and will b out of town. love u!

  I bite my lip thoughtfully. Jack is Cordelia and David’s five-year-old son. I’ve never met him, only chatted with him on the phone and on Skype, but Cordelia likes to claim that he takes after me: he’s curious, unruly, and prone to getting himself into trouble. He also inherited my rat’s nest head of hair, poor kid.

  Jack ran away from home when he was three years old to “find treasure like Auntie Alex.” His three-year-old definition of treasure: an old soda can that he dug up from the side of a highway. Half an hour after he went missing, Cordelia and David found him wandering beside the road with his sand shovel, looking very serious as, crouching, he poked at the ground.

  It’s too dark for pictures. You’ll see the house for yourself soon enough. And I’d love to meet Alex, Jr. Bring him along, I text Cordelia, smiling softly to myself. My sister and I talk often, but we haven’t been face to face in years. She’s my best friend, the only person I’ve ever truly confided in. I’ve missed being in her warm, familiar—if mischievous—presence. Cordelia pretends that she’s the responsible sister, but the truth is that she’s just as unconventional as I am. She hides her quirks better than I do, though.

  I tuck the phone back into my pocket. I’ll save Lucia’s text for later…

  As I ascend the staircase, Elizabeth Patton’s glass eyes follow me—teasing me, or challenging me; it’s impossible to tell which. Who are you? I ask her silently, pausing before the window and resting a hand upon her cool, alabaster cheek. She doesn’t answer—of course she doesn’t answer—and, with a sigh, I turn my back to her and set off for the bathroom.

  The hallway is so dark now that I trip over a loose floorboard and nearly knock my head into a wall. Luckily, there’s a sconce in the way, so I scrape my cheek against cold metal, instead, nearly dropping Marie's package to the floor. A moment later, I feel a warm trickle of blood on my face.

  “You didn’t see that, did you?” I ask Elizabeth-in-the-window, as I press my fingers to my cheek. My nails come away stained with red. “Normally I’m as graceful as a swan, I swear.”

  Nice, Alex. Lying to the girl already…

  Sighing, I rip the package open and am pleased to find a new set of bed sheets—Egyptian cotton with a high thread count. The thought of sleeping on a naked Victorian mattress was, admittedly, kind of unappealing. So I spread the sheets on the bed and then stumble into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. There are two large windows, side by side, set into the back wall—impractical for privacy purposes, but useful now. These windows, maybe because they’re at the rear of the house, aren’t boarded up, so some rosy light illuminates the seashell-encrusted walls—and allows me to find the toilet without further injuring my body or my pride.

  I pee in the old-fashioned toilet gingerly. When it comes time to pull the cord, I hold my breath, hoping that the contraption will actually flush. It does, though the sounds it makes in the process are jarring, bone-rattling, actually frightening. If I were a little girl, I’d imagine, based on those sounds, that there was a monster in the pipes. But since I haven’t been a little girl in a very, very long time, I imagine a massive plumbing bill, instead, and feel the beginnings of a migraine behind my left temple.

  I wash my hands and inspect my face in the mirror. The cut from the sconce is small, an inch-long diagonal gash, but it’s still bleeding. I don’t have anything to clean it with or to press against it, except…

  I shrug out of my hideous t-shirt and use it to apply pressure to my face. As I stare at my half-naked reflection in the mirror, I realize that I’ve just bloodied my one and only wearable shirt; I haven’t even got on a bra. The top that I wore on the plane is in a plastic bag in my purse, but it’s encrusted with desert sand and hours’ worth of nausea-induced sweat. I’d opt for the bloody Niagara Falls t-shirt before I’d put that thing on again.

  I take stock of the situation. The airline promised they’d deliver my luggage tomorrow. I might have to answer the door topless, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done such a thing—or even the second time. Or, well, the third. I’m not really shy.

  Once my face has stopped oozing blood, I drop the t-shirt and remove the cell phone from my back pocket; then I kick off my jeans and panties and leave them in an untidy pile on the bathroom floor. I'm about to leave the bathroom when something trembles in my peripheral vision. Something—I realize, dry-mouthed—in the mirror.

  I'm no longer standing in front of the mirror, so I couldn't have seen my reflection. But when I stare into the aged silver glass, there's nothing there, only a backwards image of the bathroom wall. Am I so tired that I've begun to hallucinate?

  I shake my head, trying to shake loose my rationality.

  I step out into the hallway and stand in front of Elizabeth’s room, and that cold feeling envelops me again. This time, goosebumps rise up all over my body; I wrap my hands around my arms, chilled to the bone.

  It must be the roof, letting drafts into the house… Cordelia will know how to fix that, surely. She’s installed hundreds of roofs, thousands of roofs. Patience has never been my strong suit, but I’ve just got to put up with this hair-standing-on-end feeling for one more day. One day. No big deal.

  The enthusiasm I’d experienced just before Marie left to launch an exploratory expedition inside of the house has, with each moment’s passing, slowly dissolved. All that remains now is an overwhelming desire for sleep. I move into Elizabeth’s bedroom, past the vanity, and I lie down, full-length, upon the mattress that, I can only assume, Elizabeth once lied upon herself. She must have had a fabric canopy, but now there are only gray rags hanging from the posters. I had a canopy bed, too, growing up. It was the one “girly” concession that I made—but only because the fabric draping all around me made me feel as if I were in a secret clubhouse, or a cave, or in a cabin on a ship. Or cozy in a tent in a wide, vast sea of sand…

  Propping myself up on my elbow, I read Lucia’s text on my phone:

  I’m thinking of you, A, & touching myself for you. Touch yourself for me. Pretend my ghost is there beside you, watching you. God, we had some hot times, didn’t we? Jojo keeps teasing me about the shower. I’m heading off to Mexico City soon. If you’re around, lmk. Hate to think I’ll never taste you again. XOXO

  I groan and lick my lips, tossing my phone onto the floor with a clatter as I roll onto my back. The darkness is more or less complete now, but I close my eyes, anyway, summoning Lucia’s strong brown body, envisioning her hands…as my own fingers tease at my nipples, already hard from the cold. I pinch them, just like Lucia pinched them: until they hurt, until I cried out but never, ever asked her to stop. I never wanted her to stop… If she were here, her wet mouth would move from my mouth to trail hard, possessive kisses over my chest, my stomach, my upper thighs. Lucia was neither a gentle nor a hesitant lover. Now she would claim my stinging center, her breath like licks of fire against me; my fingers move to that ache now, imitating the rhythms of her tongue…

  It doesn’t take long—it never took long with Lucia—before the white-hot wave rushes through me from my head to my toes, and I sink into that blissful, time-stopped feeling, where all I know is this sensation, this invincibility and fragility and, finally, this soul-deep, natural calm…a calm I never feel in any other context. I’ve sought it out in every corner of the world—on islands where there was nothing but ocean for miles; in temples, where peace was palpable in the air—but I’m only truly easeful, rel
axed, after a violent crash of ecstasy.

  When I’ve caught my breath, I fetch my phone from the floor and send Lucia a quick text:

  I felt you here tonight. Hard to believe there’s an ocean between us. But, hey, we’ll always have Cairo. (Sorry, you hate that movie.) If I’m ever near Mexico City, you’ll be the first to know. XXX

  Sighing, I curl onto my side, feeling oddly lonely. Odd because I’m rarely lonely. That’s why fieldwork has been ideal: the isolated landscapes, the solitary work, being hundreds or thousands of miles apart from the people I love… I don’t mind it. I like the freedom. I like the hunt, just as my father did. Mom always said that he and I were born “searchers.” The truth is, though, that Cordelia is as addicted to mysteries as I am. She just indulges that longing by reading Agatha Christies and solving more practical quandaries, like The Case of the Leaky Pipes and The Mystery of the Creaking Front Door.

  Maybe the sadness of this house is getting to me. Godrick’s mother died here. According to Marie, Elizabeth died here, too. Who knows what other tragedies took place between these walls before it lay forgotten, before it sat vacant, save for some squatting insects and—judging by that skittering I just heard in the closet—mice?

  I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe that sadness leaves a mark. It’s certainly left its mark on me.

  Just before I drift off to sleep, I glance toward the mirror and see an impossible thing: an orb of light, about six inches wide, floating in front of the glass. Startled, I sit up, but the translucent ball vanishes just as quickly as it appeared, darting through the open door, out into the hallway. I shake my head, gripping my aching temples in my hands, too tired to wonder, to think.

  A bug. It was probably a bug. Or the headlights of a passing car.

  I fall back onto the mattress and dream of dunes, and Lucia, and the woman in the sketches by the bed, reaching her arms out to me… She says something, again and again, but I can’t hear her over the roar of Niagara Falls.

  Chapter Two

  “All right, Ms. Dark.” The young woman reaches across the large mahogany desk to hand me a laminated card. “Your paperwork checked out, so here’s your new library card. If you have any questions about our collection, just pay a visit to Trudy over there at the Reference Desk. And welcome to Niagara Falls! It’s a great place to live.”

  “Thanks,” I smile, tucking the card into my pants pocket.

  The airline was true to its word; my missing luggage arrived at the house at seven-thirty this morning, and I accepted the delivery without ever coming out from behind the front door. The deliveryman could clearly tell that I was naked—his pale, stubbled face flushed a deep red once he took in my bare arm and the not-so-hidden curve of my hip—but he was professional about it, averting his eyes and allowing me to sign his clipboard without ever compromising my—or, more likely, his—modesty.

  It feels glorious to be wearing my own clean clothes again. I’m far from prissy; I lost any prissiness I had when I was a little girl, accompanying my father on his down-and-dirty, one-shower-a-week-if-you’re-lucky digs. So this morning I gave myself an icy sponge bath using one of the hand towels in my suitcase, tied up my disastrous hair with a plaid bandanna, and strode out of the house in my favorite khakis and a soft white button-up shirt.

  In the daylight, my neighborhood looked shabby but hopeful. There’s a new apartment complex rising up one block over, and I took note of several promising prospects for pizza and Chinese food delivery. Signs affixed to the telephone poles advertised everything from Neighborhood Watch groups to yard sales, book club meetings and dog-walking services. Granted, there were a few too many police cars cruising Cascade for my comfort, but the street was quiet enough—and almost pretty, with its autumnal trees nearly at peak.

  It’s strange: my spirits are pretty high, despite the cold, pathetic night I passed, plagued by dreams rife with loss and longing. I can hardly remember the dreams now, only the feelings they left behind, but there is one image that still lingers: the woman from the sketches on Elizabeth’s wall, gesturing to me in front of the falls. Weird that I would dream of her and not Elizabeth herself, after all of my wonderings.

  To jump-start my sleep-addled brain, I braved the retro grooviness of Bean Power, and I have to admit, I’m growing fond of the mud-puddly Desert Siesta brew.

  Now, standing in the center of the high-ceilinged, spacious library, I turn around to search out the aforementioned Trudy, of Reference Desk infamy. For some reason, I expected her to look like a ‘60s-era school secretary, with a black beehive and thick glasses swinging on a long chain around her neck. But the reality of Trudy couldn’t be further removed. I trip on the leg of one of the study tables when she notices me and, brow arched, meets my deer-in-the-headlights gaze.

  “May I help you?” Her voice is husky, her red-lipsticked half-smile sly. She props up her head on her hand, blonde waves spilling down to the desk, as her blue-violet eyes brazenly scan my length, taking in my coffee-stained boots, my messy curls—and, lingeringly, everything in between.

  “Ah, new in town?” she asks, quirking her mouth up at one corner. “You must be. I’d have remembered seeing you before.”

  “Yeah, I just arrived yesterday,” I tell her, feeling absurdly tall; she’s still seated, so I have no choice but to loom. “Um, I was wondering if you could—”

  “—go out with you tonight? Sure, I’d love to.” She winks, twirling a black pen in her right hand as she swings her desk chair to the side, baring her short-skirted legs to me—along with her dangerously spiked sky-blue heels. “Where should I meet you?”

  “Wow. That was—”

  “Quick? I know. I’m not into wasting time with all of that is she or isn’t she stuff. I mean, you are, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yeah—”

  “And I am, too. And you’re hot, and I’m pretty sure you think I’m hot. Nice save with that table leg, by the way.”

  I chuckle and bow my head, surprised to realize that I’m blushing. I pride myself on making other women blush…and I’m kind of turned on by the role reversal here. Trudy looks as if she stepped out of a 1920s gangster movie. I’ve always had this thing for gun molls—sans the guns, of course. “Well… Why not? Okay, sure. There’s a coffee shop on Palmer Street—”

  “Bean Power? Tacky as hell. And awesome. Say, 7:00?”

  I smile, gazing into her kohl-lined purple eyes. “Seven’s my favorite number.”

  “Mine, too. See, this is fate.” Effortlessly, she swings beneath her desk again and lifts up a hardcover book, presenting it to me. “Speaking of fate… My current obsession.”

  The dust jacket design is alarmingly New Age, with an arcing rainbow superimposed over the photo of a woman gazing off into the middle distance, looking surprised or inspired or, I don’t know, Touched by an Angel. I read off the title: “Everything Happens for a Reason.” Funny… Marie had used that same phrase yesterday, when she was insinuating that I should stay in Niagara Falls for good. Frowning slightly, I hand the book down to Trudy. “Looks, um, uplifting.”

  “And you look faintly nauseated. Okay, okay, never mind.” She puts the book into a drawer in her desk. “It is kind of fluffy bunny, I guess. And you seem like”—she pauses, putting on a deep English accent—“a serious sort.” She leans forward, hands beneath her chin, framing her cleavage prettily; her extraordinary eyes latch onto mine. “Let me guess. You enjoy reading dry scientific journals about cutting-edge robotics and giant particle colliders.”

  My lips curve at her teasing. “Something like that. Actually, I was wondering if you had any biographies about a pair of amateur archaeologists who lived around here during the Victorian era.”

  “Whoa. Caught me off guard there, I have to admit. Are you a historian?”

  I smile. “I'm an archaeologist.”

  “Ah.” Her blue-violet eyes flash appreciatively. “Makes sense. I got an Indiana Jones sort of vibe from you. Okay, give me a sec.” Trudy turns to
ward her flatscreen monitor and starts clicking with the mouse. “Okay, names? Dates?”

  I feed her all of the information I have about Godrick and Elizabeth Patton, and after a few minutes of research, she makes quick notes on a slip of white paper. “Looks like we have three biographies about the father, which I would assume include mentions of the daughter. Pity no one’s written a biography about her yet, hmm? But isn’t that always the way? If you aren’t a princess or a movie star, good luck at ever getting your life story in print, ladies. That's why I'm going to write my own autobiography. Anyway, here you go, tiger.”

  “Alex.”

  “Hmm?”

  My mouth slides into an easy half-smile. “My name’s Alex. Alex Dark.”

  “Oh, my God, Alex Dark? You should be a comic book superhero. Are you? Is that how you got that cut on your cheek? Do you save damsels in distress—when you aren’t researching obscure historical figures?”

  I shake my head, lifting a regretful brow. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Trust me, Alex Dark.” Trudy gives me a long, slow once-over again, cat eyes narrowed, red mouth drawn into a wide, appreciative grin. “I’m not disappointed.”

  ---

  I find the Godrick Patton biographies easily enough—they’re positioned side by side, between a Louis Pasteur biography and a tell-all about a female pop star that I’ve never heard of before. Further proof that I’m wildly out of touch with modern American culture. After I peruse the archaeology books, choosing a couple that highlight Western New York-born archaeologists, I limp on my reinjured ankle up to the third floor of the library, where the special Niagara Falls collection is displayed.