I said, “If you think he’s a fake, why didn’t you take a DNA sample from his person instead of the navel string?”
My papa looked at me almost tenderly. “Because I want my daughter back.”
I was shocked into silence. Hot emotion filled my chest.
Papa came and sat beside me, taking one of my hands in his. “He’s not the first to steal your affections, but—may I hope?—he is the last. Your behavior follows a family pattern, to run away. Yet the true heir returns and serves the family. Vicomte Clarence’s father did this, though he was only a second son. He ran to New Orleans and hid from his duty with that wild Kreyol woman. But when he inherited the title, he returned to resume his responsibilities. That in part is how I know this man is a fraud, and the true black vicomte was unworthy. When he inherited the title, he stayed away.”
“But the family paid him to stay away,” I protested. “They hated him.”
Papa shrugged. “When your time comes, you too will return to the family.”
He’d treated me like a cull heifer with a genetic flaw, all my whole life. Now he wanted me back. I felt myself melting.
“Daughter, you’ve tried hard to prove your unfitness to manage our business, these six or seven years now. This too is the family way. But always there has been one, a man of sense at the helm. A wise curator for the family fortune. When he dies—pouf!—the rebel of yesterday becomes the curator today.”
My heart thumped, then swelled. “Papa, you’re only fifty.” He would make me curator of the family fortune someday! Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them back. He didn’t answer, but stared at me as if seeing through my face to the future.
I swallowed. I wanted a real father. I’d been so afraid to hope. He wouldn’t love me, not properly, but maybe he would trust me, if he thought he had no other choice. My chest burned.
He said heavily, “When I die, someone must take over.”
Here it came. It was time for him to admit that I had a right to the privileges and powers of adulthood, the right to command in his place. I held my breath.
“I have arranged a marriage for you with a very reliable young man. He can’t rule in your place. You will have the birthright. But he can guide you. Advise you. I have taught him as much as I can without admitting him to matters he should not yet know of. You’ll have to learn to trust him, ma fille. I know how hard that is. You’re my daughter.”
The heat in my chest turned icy. I puffed out my breath.
Just as well that I gave up hope.
He planned to marry me off as he had threatened to do since I was twelve.
Well, that would turn out to be harder than he expected.
My heart hardened.
I remembered that he hadn’t answered my question. “How is the navel string better than a sample of his blood or hair or saliva?”
Papa looked at me with surprise and disappointment. Yes, your emotional outburst has been wasted on your cold-hearted daughter, I thought with savage satisfaction.
“But you see. The impostor has charmed you. When his great proof of identity fails, you will know he is only a liar. You can’t respect that in any man,” my papa said with confidence.
The look I sent him made him drop his gaze. Damned right, Daddy Liar, I thought.
We didn’t speak to one another for hours. At some point, my papa called a restaurant to bring us food. When the receptionist complained, he ignored her.
After forever, the inner door opened from the lab. The same technician looked in. “You’re still here.”
My papa stood up. “Well?”
“You were right. The caul is human tissue. That other thing is a strip of dried beef liver. At least sixty years old.”
My jaw dropped.
Papa inflated as if drawing life back into himself with the air. His unspoken glee poked at me.
“Good. Take a little sample of the caul and keep working on it. I must have the rest back now. I will soon bring you a much newer sample, human tissue this time, to compare with it. You must make no mistake.”
I sat frozen with shock.
“I won’t,” the technician said, and shut the door in our faces.
I counted thoughts and emotions as they swung about in my sky. The navel string was false. But the caul was true . . . or might be. Papa believed it was. Why? Something had nailed Veek to the spot. Something had made me crawl across the floor to my father’s feet.
But why hadn’t Papa destroyed the navel string? He must be completely confident that Veek was a fraud. Unless he meant what he said—that he believed Jake had been the true vicomte, and Veek was the pretender, taking over his claim as the old man faded and died. Why had Veek obeyed the navel string, then? Was he truly a sex demon, but a false vicomte?
I was very exasperated with Veek for being such an uncooperative conspirator.
The technician returned with the caul in a clear plastic bag.
My father took the bag off and fondled the dreadful thing with trembling fingers, staring creepily into space.
Was that a true relic of my Veek? That veil thing?
The technician gave him a squint and went away.
“By now our prisoner has been arrested,” my father said. “In jail he will be given an opportunity to provide us with a DNA sample—if he wants to escape prosecution.” He bustled to the door. “Well, come along!”
I pulled myself together. “I have a tissue sample.” I paused. It was best if I were to make Papa think he had convinced me. “Of the pretender. I’ll give it to that man now.”
“What?” Papa scowled. “What is it?”
I pulled the bedraggled, used condom out of my pocket. “It’s his.” I thought fast. “I’ll wait until it is verified, one way or the other.” If I said it first, maybe he wouldn’t use that dreadful thing to command me.
Papa turned white. He reached out as if to pat me on the shoulder, but he drew his hand back. Instead he went to the door and summoned the technician. “I have that other tissue sample.”
The technician looked grumpy. My papa gestured to me.
I handed the condom to the technician.
“Call me when you have determined if it is a match,” Papa commanded, his left hand in his coat pocket. “Call me day or night.”
The technician said, “I go home at night.”
“Not on this job. You will work until you have certainty. And you will call me.” He handed over his card. “Here.”
The technician looked at the knotted condom, then at him, then at me.
“Bon. Do it.” My father strode out, his eartips turning crimson.
The technician seemed very glad that he had gone. He went back into the lab.
When I was alone, I called the botánica.
It was the only number I had.
BAZ
Yoni showed up at the Crown ten minutes after she’d called. Her eyes sparkled in a pissed-off way.
I said, “Wow. What did you do, fly?”
“That’s next,” she said. She looked around. I was in the middle of laying out electrical cable for inspection. “Am I taking you away from something?”
“Naw, it’s makework. I needed the hours.” I lied. I had bumped two guys to get the makework because I wanted to be close to her hotel and her studio, in case she might need me.
She looked at me as if she’d heard that thought. “Thanks.”
I told the head carpenter I was off. He didn’t stare at Yoni or anything, but he sure as hell knew I was leaving with her. She said nothing until we were in the parking ramp.
Then she touched my arm. “Hide me?”
“Shit.” I cast the glamour of anonymity around us. “Right.” I wouldn’t make that mistake again. “Where do you want to go?”
“Somewhere we can talk. But public. I’ve been cooped up for years.” She raised her eyebrows with a little pathetic look. “I’ve gotten pretty addicted to your anti-charisma.”
Something inside me jumped forward, but all I s
aid was, “I won’t let you get caught again. I promise.”
She smiled, and the parking ramp was the most beautiful parking ramp in the world.
In the car, I thought about the power of goddesses and the power of love.
Why had I taken a shower and dressed in borrowed clothes and sat in on that session with a borrowed bass, like a good little boy?
Was it because Aphrodite had left me with a taste for pussy-whipping? Or because Yoni was taking on some of her powers to command? Or was I so mellow in the pump over her that I wanted to make her happy?
Had to be that. I was sappy.
But she offered me a fourth option while I drove south.
“What happened to you this morning? Or should I say, last night, since you must have started drinking then.”
Ouch. This was exactly why my roommates and I were slackers. Not having this conversation, ever.
“Guilt,” I admitted. “I figured you’d be through with me after I fucked up.”
She didn’t fall for it. Instead of reassuring me that we weren’t through, she said, “But that wasn’t totally your fault. And you fucked up a lot worse by trying to blow off the session this morning. That’s not done,” she said in a firm voice.
Ouch! “Girl, don’t hold back. Say how you feel.”
She turned on the car seat so that she was settled against the passenger door, looking straight at me. I kept my profile to her. “I realize you’re not my employee or anything,” she said, “but you didn’t really think I’d drop it just because you don’t like the question. You used to control armies. Nations. Yet you can’t get out of bed for a little sit-down-and-noodle-around on the bass?”
It took me three tries to figure out how to answer her. She wasn’t accepting my corny romantic reason. It was the real reason, on one level. On another level, I hadn’t had any responsibility except showing up for work for decades. No one to answer to. Third, she’d shocked me with her power to summon me, shocked me into obeying and staying for the session.
Guess I didn’t think very fast anymore. Going soft.
None of those answers was defensible. I went for the attack instead.
“It wasn’t a little thing. You saw the press outside the studio. Those photos are all over the internet by now, and The National Enquirer will have a field day. It’s not only you now, it’s me. Lookit ol’ has-been bad-boy fuckup Ashurbanipal, wonder what he’s doing with her? I realize you get a thousand times the press attention I do, or would if anybody cared anymore and could find me, but in my small way I have privacy too. And I just lost it,” I said indignantly.
“You hadn’t lost it last night when you started drinking,” she pointed out.
“Yes, I had. My picture with you? Someone will recognize me. Probably already has. Today’s pix confirmed it. The point is, dammit, I got over being a big shot a long time ago. I didn’t really like it when I had the band. I lost it—okay, I lost my nerve.”
She stared at me a long time. Heat rose up past the collar of my shirt.
“So you’re embarrassed about losing your nerve,” she said.
I was flushing red hot. I rolled my eyes and bobbled my head. “Jesus! Yes. Thank you. Thank you for spelling it out for both of us now. We done yet?”
More silence. When she spoke again, she sounded less steely. “It’s important to me to know what goes on in your head about . . . about fame, success, all that.”
“And I care why? I’m a guy. I don’t do this slumber-party chat thing.”
“You were my idol, and you went smash. I’ve never stopped wondering how and why it happened. The more successful I get, the more I worry it might happen to me.” She gulped. “On top of—” She stopped.
“On top of the goddess shit.”
She heaved a huge sigh. “That.” Apparently she had no more to add.
I let all that rattle in my head a while. “We’re very different.”
“We’re not different at all,” she said. “Similar stories, really. I was raised to succeed from before I was ten. I’ve done nothing but succeed, not one false step for seventeen straight years. The pressure is enormous. I’ve had to take control of my business away from my family and make them subordinates for real, which they bitterly resent, but it’s because I can’t afford to fail for their sakes.”
“You’re a girl. You’re a musician. Nobody dies if you flub.” I was ashamed as soon as I said it, and made the mistake of looking at her.
“Not so far.” She looked me straight in the eye. “You were raised by your grandmother to inherit the throne of Assyria. She planned it all, and she educated you in a way no other king has ever been educated, before or since. I bet she even arranged the death of your predecessor. You conquered every country around. Persia, Aramea, Phoenicia, Israel, Judah, on and on. You succeeded and succeeded and succeeded. Everybody was watching you, and you had to be perfect at everything.”
The hair was standing up on the back of my neck. “Wait a minute. You read up on me?”
“Well, I thought that if you named yourself after an ancient king, I was certainly going to find out about him.”
This was way worse than the relationship conversation. “How do you—why would you—?”
“I told you. You were my idol. And my role model. And I wanted to know if I was fated to go down. Almost everybody does.”
“Bull,” I snarled. “I could name you a dozen musicians who have dodged that bullet. Girl musicians, too,” I added, knowing that was gonna come flying back at my head if I didn’t.
She leaned forward. “But I wasn’t obsessed with them. C’mon. How does a guy who once owned the civilized world screw up a little two-hit-song band in one year?”
I heard the roaring in my head. Thousands of voices shouting my name.
“Maybe I’ll tell you someday,” I said with finality.
o0o
We got a bonus: the Garfield Park Conservatory was hosting a Chihuly glass exhibit.
Yoni clung to my arm, people-watching with the whites of her eyes showing. A busload of tourists flooded into the lobby, bumping their strollers full of crying babies into our shins, ignoring my date.
“God. They really don’t see me. This is incredible.”
I squinted at her. “You sure you’re not ready for retirement?”
She batted that away. “After this album maybe. And the tour for the album. I’m looking at a couple of movie scripts, too. I think I’d like to tour Africa next year.”
“Wait,” I said, gripping her hand and pulling her to face me. “How about No? How about a vacation?”
“Are you kidding? This is a vacation. All I do with you is goof off. I love it.” She flushed. I should have paid attention to that. But for once I wasn’t focused on making a woman. I had a greater mission.
And I was screwing it up.
I blurted, “Has it occurred to you that your work may be done?”
“What?” I could see her pulling away, her flush dying, her pupils shrinking. “No. No.”
I put my hands up. “Okay, forget I said it.” She continued to stare at me, looking mistrustful. I didn’t feel good about that look. “Let’s look at the ferns.”
She was quiet while we moved slowly through the foyer into the fern room. I could see bright globes of glass scattered on the mossy floor. Yoni didn’t mention them. I let her sulk.
But in the palm house she took my arm again, and soon she squeezed it.
“Wow, look at that blue flower! It must be eight feet tall!”
We got closer. It looked like fifty blue squids skewered and stacked up on a pole, their tentacles frozen while writhing in the air.
She laughed. “It’s fake!”
“It’s glass.” I handed her the program for the exhibit.
She leafed through it, then turned where she stood, looking around the whole palm house. We found more tentacles in blue, orange, and yellow crawling out of another palm, and big orange and yellow penises Chihuly called “tiger lilies”
growing out of the ground, and chaste-looking blue cups in stages of bloom and decay.
“Wow.” Yoni laughed. “I was so busy looking at the babies, I didn’t notice these.”
Babies, huh? So Yoni wanted a baby!
We strolled on through the palm house into more rooms roofed in light, smelling of damp earth, glowing with real green plants and outlandish glass flowers.
“All this makes me think about the goddess of love,” Yoni said, taking in a tree trunk covered with squiggling real vines and studded with yellow, red, and clear glass “tree urchins” the size of a baby’s head. “Only I can’t decide if I feel more like these giant leaves, or these showy fake flowers.”
I eyed the jungle around us with a new perspective. “Do you think she’s in all this?” Do you already think of yourself as the goddess of love? I didn’t ask that.
“Well, duh.” Yoni closed her eyes and sniffed deeply. “Smell that? That’s nature doing her stuff. Billions of critters all trying to mate and grow and flower and fruit and live and then die so more of them can use the leftovers for compost. If I was headed for some kind of nature goddess job, I don’t think I’d mind.”
I shot her a squint. “But if it’s corny love between humans, you do mind?”
She heaved another sigh that was fun to watch. For a skinny girl, she had a lot going on in the mezzanine. “Let’s just say I’m not sold on humanity as nature’s last word.”
That gave me even more to think about.
I stopped needling her about quitting or taking a vacation, and she stopped needling me about blowing the session this morning, and we had fun. We did all the different glass houses and found all the Chihuly pieces listed in the catalog, which took some looking. Some took front-and-center attention, but some were sneaked into corners, hidden by giant leaves, or tucked into the tops of palms.
We were admiring some long-stemmed things like giant multicolored toadstools when a bunch of kids came into the room and hung around the door, looking like they wanted to smoke. Two of them, a girl and a boy around seventeen, stood within arm’s reach of us. She was on the phone, getting more and more upset in a quiet, heartbroken way, looking miserable. The boy looked over her head, as if he hoped he could turn invisible, and-slash-or he wished she would quit embarrassing him.
Walking on Sunshine Page 20
