Borderline

by Mishell Baker

  “Are you from the South?” I asked her.

  “Alabama,” she said with a faint smile. “Don’t tell me I ­haven’t lost the accent.”

  “No, it’s the house; it reminds me of the ones I saw grow­ing up.”

  “How long have you been out here?” she said, leading me into the small, sunlit kitchen. The window was full of potted herbs, some trailing from hanging baskets.

  “Eight years,” I said.

  “Please have a seat. I have Earl Grey, chamomile, or jasmine; I’m afraid we’re not coffee drinkers.”

  “I’d love some Earl Grey, thank you.” I took a seat and leaned my cane against the kitchen table; the chairs had cushions tied onto them with dainty fabric bows.

  Silence settled as she filled the teapot and set it on the burner. At last she spoke, her brows drawn together. “Why did you expect to find Johnny here?”

  Nice people are easy to read; she was reluctant to lie to someone her husband cared about. I suspected that Rivenholt was in the house somewhere at this very moment, and the thought made me tense with anticipation.

  “Vivian told me,” I said.

  Linda made a soft sound of dismay as she fumbled and dropped a tea bag on the floor. She bent to pick it up, then placed it in one of the cups. “Don’t worry, that one’s mine,” she said with a wry smile when she saw me watching.

  “You can afford to throw it away,” I teased.

  She laughed uncomfortably, running a hand through her hair. “You sound like David.”

  Fantastic, Millie. Wives love it when the Mysterious Younger Woman takes their husband’s side.

  “So Johnny isn’t here right now?” I said.

  “I’ll let David field that one,” said Linda. “He should be on his way back from work; I called him as soon as the lady at the gate announced you.”

  I sat up straight in my chair. “You didn’t need to do that. If I’m not welcome, I’ll just leave.”

  “I don’t want to treat you rudely,” she said. “But I’m not going to bail David out, either. This is his mess, and he can sort it out like a big boy.”

  “I really didn’t mean to interrupt David’s work,” I said, ­rising carefully. “I’ll go.”

  “Sit,” said Linda sharply. My butt was back in the chair before I even knew I’d sat. For someone with no children, she certainly had the tone right. Then again, she’d been married to David Berenbaum for twenty-five years.

  Awkward silence reigned as Linda poured steaming water into the two cups and brought them to the table on saucers. She sat down next to me and idly bobbed her tea bag up and down with her spoon, staring into the cup.

  “So, you’re with the Arcadia Project,” she said finally.

  “For now.”

  “Do you have an Echo?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  She was quiet and wouldn’t look at me.

  I studied her for a moment. “Having Johnny around, do you ever feel . . .” I tried to think of a word that wasn’t insulting or melodramatic, but before I could find one, she shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “Their relationship isn’t sexual, and it’s also not exactly practical. Johnny has done wonders for David, since before I met either of them, but he doesn’t maintain him. Do you know what I mean?” She lifted her eyes from her cup to meet mine. “A man like that needs an anchor,” she said. “Someone to tell him it’s time to get some sleep or take his vitamins.”

  “And what does David do for you?” I asked.

  Her eyes softened then, and she looked out the window with a comfortable sort of joy that made me feel more of an intruder than any direct challenge could have done. “If I’m the anchor,” she said, “he’s the sail.”

  “You’re lucky,” I said, trying not to sound bitter.

  “Just be careful,” she said in a disturbingly compassionate tone. I didn’t have time to ask what she meant before she changed the subject. “Have you ever been to Arcadia?”

  “No, have you?”

  “I’m not authorized. David goes sometimes.”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I probably can’t. I’ve got steel pins and screws and plates everywhere; I can suck the magic out of something just by touching it.”

  Linda looked at me with intense interest. “Really?”

  “It’s true. It’s happened twice already.”

  She stood up. “Will you do something for me, then, before David gets back?”

  “What is it?” I rose from my chair and grabbed my cane, eager for any chance to get on her good side.

  “Better to show you.”

  She grabbed a key from a hanging plant by the window and headed out of the kitchen. I followed her to a home office, where she unlocked a decorative box containing another key. She took the second key and led me upstairs, where she stopped in front of a door at the end of the hallway.

  “Would you like to see Arcadia?” she said coquettishly as she turned around.

  I was surprised into a laugh. “What?”

  “It’s not really Arcadia,” she said, smiling back at me. “It’s murals of Arcadia on four walls of a spare room, but Johnny’s done something to them. Honestly, they give me the creeps, and when David’s being reasonable, he admits that having magic things around will just make it harder for Johnny to—” She hesitated.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We’ve worked out that Johnny wants to stay here.”

  “David keeps saying it will hurt Johnny to undo the spell, but I think he’s just putting it off, trying to keep some last souvenir of Johnny’s magic. But now here you are, and I think David would appreciate the hand of destiny in that.”

  She turned the key in the door and then slowly pushed it open.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered.

  “I know,” she whispered back.

  I was looking into a rain forest, on the second floor of a house in the Hollywood Hills.

  Linda hung back, but I stepped inside. The air was thick and shadowy and warm, fragrant with nectar and rot. Frogs moaned a constant song, and somewhere a bird let out a shrill whoop that echoed through what sounded like miles of sky. I could hear the spatter of raindrops falling through the ­canopy of leaves over my head, even feel them strike my skin, but when I looked at my arms, they were still dry.

  A pale flower, struck by a fat drop of water, trembled on a vine near my elbow. Without thinking, I brushed the petals with my fingertips. Quickly I pulled back, but the flower was undamaged. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Are parts of this real?” I bent down, scooped up a handful of soggy loam, watched it fall through my fingers. I could feel its gritty richness in my hand, but no grains clung to my fingertips or lodged beneath my nails.

  “Your mind is telling you what you should feel,” she said, still lingering in the doorway behind me as though she couldn’t bear to enter. “All of this is just painted on the walls; Johnny glamoured it so you think you’re standing in it. If he were here, he’d hear Arcadian birds; it would smell different to him. You’re hearing and smelling and feeling what you expect from a place that looks like the painting.”

  “Walt Disney would be peeing right now,” I said. Of course, now that I thought of it, old Walt had almost certainly been to Arcadia himself.

  “I know you can’t see the wall,” she said, “but the glamour is on the actual painting, so you have to touch that. Just put your hand here next to mine.”

  I looked around and felt a little pang. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have the heart to spoil this. Let Johnny do it, if you think it’s the right thing to do.” I turned to look at her and saw something change in her face. Damn it, I’d taken David’s side again.

  “Well then,” she said. “Is there anything else you’d like to see while you’re here?” Meaning, before I kick you out on your ass and tell the wo
man at the gate never to let you back in?

  She stepped back from the doorway, turning away to look down the hall. She seemed to be disappearing into a corridor of light surrounded by endless miles of tangled twilit wilderness. If she shut the door, I might be lost in there forever. I hurried toward her, feet squelching and crunching in the illusory undergrowth, and impulsively I slapped my hand against the tree that stood closest to the door frame.

  Just as with the fey in the Seelie bar I felt nothing at all, no surge of power, no tingle on my skin. But the sounds stopped, and suddenly I was standing in an empty room. I looked around with an entirely different sort of amazement. Although the paintings were flat compared to the dream my mind had conjured from them, their colors were rich and bright, their detail spectacular. Even the ceiling had been painted to ­resemble a forest canopy with fading daylight streaming erratically through.

  Linda turned to me with a surprised smile.

  “Even without the magic,” I told her, “this is an amazing room. Johnny could make a living doing this kind of thing.”

  Her forehead creased for a moment, and then she shook her head. “No, Johnny just did the spell on it; the painting is David’s. He did another one in the garage. Here, come look.” She broke out in a sudden bright smile: still girlishly in love after twenty-five years.

  I followed her back down the stairs to the sitting room just off the foyer; at the side of the room was a door that led to a roomy two-car garage. The Valiant was parked on the far side, but my eye lingered on it only for a moment before sweeping over the murals. Berenbaum had painted the whole place to look like a drive-in burger joint, complete with busty waitress on roller skates waiting expectantly by the Valiant’s driver’s-­side door.

  Carefully I made my way around Linda’s silver BMW and the long, angular nose of the Valiant to get a closer look at the waitress. She had red hair and a very short skirt. I glanced back at Linda, noting the resemblance, and she gave an embarrassed laugh. “Yeah,” was all she said.

  “This stuff is great!”

  “He does it when he’s high, usually. You know, off of fairy dust or whatever. He’s impossible to live with when he’s under the influence, so we started these projects to keep him busy when he didn’t have a film to obsess over.” Leaving the door to the house open, she moved absently to the shelving on the wall nearest the door. Various props from David’s films were intermingled modestly there with ordinary garden gloves, bicycle pumps, and other garage trivia.

  “This is amazing,” I said. “Thank you for showing me.” I leaned against the wall by waitress-Linda, studying real Linda as she absently tidied things up and looked inside boxes. “I’d really like to see Johnny,” I said.

  Her shoulders stiffened. “Can we wait to talk about that until David gets here?”

  “I’m not here to send him back to Arcadia. I promise. I just need to talk to him. I need to know he’s okay. I’m kind of—fond of him, to be honest.”

  Linda frowned as she continued to open boxes as though looking for something. “I wasn’t aware that the two of you had met.”

  “We haven’t exactly. It’s complicated. Sort of a Sleepless in Seattle thing.”

  She raised a brow dubiously. “Johnny’s never shown any sign of being interested in humans that way.”

  “I’m not your average human.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you something personal?” she said, still rummaging gently through the objects on the shelves.

  My phone chose that moment to ring. It was an unknown number, but I hadn’t set up voice mail, and I didn’t want to lose someone important. “Hang on,” I said. “It could be David.” I answered the phone in my best casual, not-trespassing sort of voice.

  “Oh, hey,” said the voice on the other end of the line. Young, male, not Teo. “Is this Millie?”

  “It is,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I dunno. You left your number at my work. This is Jeff.”

  “Ah! From the sushi place!” The guy Claybriar had apparently interrogated about Rivenholt. I mouthed “Sorry” at Linda and held up a finger. Her frown deepened. I was aware that I was already walking on thin ice, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever catch this guy again, and I really wanted to know exactly what Claybriar thought Rivenholt had done.

  “So what’s up?” Jeff said.

  “You remember that cop who came in asking about John Riven?” I said, making no effort to keep Linda from hearing. Her irritation quickly turned to intense interest, and I met her eyes, giving her a slow nod.

  “Yeah,” said Jeff.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about him, about what he asked you or what he was accusing Mr. Riven of?”

  “Nah, sorry. I just remember he had a goatee, asked a bunch of questions about the guy, then ordered an orange soda and sat there taking notes in this big notepad thing for a while.”

  “Taking notes on what?” I said.

  “I dunno. The two guys making out in the corner, from the look of it.”

  The floor under me seemed to tilt a half degree to the left. “Drawing them?”

  “Could have been, I guess.”

  Claybriar was the artist. God damn.

  Johnny had never seen me. Johnny hadn’t painted the walls. Johnny was a nobleman, and noblemen didn’t go around making cheap paper charms.

  My hands went cold and sweaty. I remembered the napkin Claybriar had written on at the coffee shop, and the nagging sense of familiarity the COLD IRON drawing had given me. Was it the handwriting? Had he used the same pen?

  “Thank you, Jeff,” I said. “You’ve been . . . very helpful.” I ended the call and stuck the phone back in my pocket.

  “What’s the matter?” said Linda sharply.

  I just looked at her. What was I supposed to say? I came here expecting to meet my soul mate, but instead of the handsome movie star, it’s a surly, thieving, goat-legged agent of the Seelie Queen who got his head bashed to pieces on a railroad track and might be dead now.

  “Millie?” said Linda. “Is everything all right?”

  “It . . . it really isn’t,” I said. “I need to make another phone call.”

  “Don’t,” she said, reaching into the box nearest her to pull out a handgun. She pointed it at me. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  37

  I dropped my cane in shock and pressed my palms back against the wall where Linda’s younger self smiled brightly with her cleavage hanging out. “Linda,” I said breathlessly. “What the hell.”

  “If they kill Johnny,” she said, “I’ll be a widow within a week. And I swear to God I will hunt down every last person responsible and murder you with my own hands.”

  “I am not Johnny’s enemy,” I said in my most soothing tone. “Just tell me where he took Claybriar, the faun who was after him. If you do, I promise I will leave Johnny alone, and I’m almost positive I can get Claybriar to do the same. No one from the Project knows that Johnny’s staying here, and I won’t tell anyone, I swear on my life.”

  “Your life?” She gave a strange laugh. “Just how much does that mean to you, anyway?”

  “Here I am, panicking at the sight of a gun.”

  Linda shook her head. “I can’t tell you where he is.”

  “Why not?”

  She clamped her mouth shut.

  “Linda,” I pleaded, “I think Claybriar might be my Echo. If something happens to him, I’ll never know.”

  The gun in her hand dropped slightly, then steadied on me again. “Johnny and David have been together almost fifty years. You can’t know what that means.”

  “I want the chance to find out,” I said. “Please, Linda. If I have an Echo, I need him.” I felt tears start to my eyes. “I need him; I’m a mess.”

  Linda’s gun wavered again. “I know,” she said, and exhaled. “Christ,
David and his little projects.”

  We both jumped as, through the open door behind Linda, we heard someone slam through the house’s front entrance.

  “Linda?” came David’s voice from the same direction.

  “We’re in the garage,” Linda called over her shoulder.

  Berenbaum appeared in the doorway and hurried toward her, effortlessly taking the gun. “Linda, what the hell is going on here?” He added with a quick glance to me, “It’s a prop, not even loaded.”

  I felt like a first-class dolt. David turned back to Linda, hands gently closing on her shoulders. “What did she do?”

  “What did I do?” I said incredulously. “I answered the phone, and when I hung up she was pointing a gun at me!”

  “She knows about the prisoners,” Linda told him.

  The what now?

  Berenbaum cringed. “They’re not prisoners. Anyway, you thought pointing a fake gun at her was going to give her amnesia? What the hell, Linda.”

  They had to be talking about the missing commoners. Why did Linda think they were prisoners? Why did David disagree?

  “I don’t know anything, I swear,” I protested. “No one said anything to me about—”

  He kept grilling Linda as though I weren’t there. “What were you planning to do with her next? Hog-tie her and toss her in a closet and call Vivian here to wipe her memory?”

  “That’s actually not a half-bad idea.”

  “What?” I blurted.

  Berenbaum still didn’t look at me. “Forget it,” he said to Linda. “Her mind’s got enough problems without Vivian messing around in there.”

  Another slow shift in perspective. This time, I did not go gently, but held on fast. David couldn’t be dismissing me. He couldn’t have just reduced my mental illness to a punch line. I felt a need for support and bent to pick up my cane. The movement didn’t catch their eye; I probably could have walked past them and out of the house without their noticing. I wish I had.

  “You certainly can pick them,” Linda said bitterly.

  Give me two or three years, he had said to me, and I could have people willing to take a bullet for you. I would have taken a bullet for him after the first time he shook my hand. David, David, say it isn’t so.