Chapter Thirty-Three
THIRTY-THREE
Shortly before curfew begins, I leave the house to call Oscar. Inside, the phone box is stifling with the reek of warmed metal and urine. I’m forced to stand with the door propped open so that the air can circulate. It is almost unbearably hot. I feed the coins into the slot and the phone rings in my ear—I’m trying the laboratory again because given the choice Oscar would always opt to be there—and it is picked up on the fourth ring.
“Baldhu, eight-nine-four.”
It’s him. I swallow, suddenly unable to speak.
“Hello?” He’s impatient. I don’t have time for prank calls, I have to study the known universe.
“Oscar? It’s me. It’s Mina.”
“Mina?” There’s no softness to his voice. It digs under my skin. “This is a terrible line. Speak up.”
“I’m in a pay phone.”
“Why?”
His voice sounds dry and tinny and distant.
“Long story. How are you, Oscar?”
I want him to tell me I’m wrong. That he misses me, that Lucy is a figment of my imagination, I want him to make me feel weightless.
“I’m at work, Mina. Been busy. You know how it is.”
I stare at the heat haze rising off the green. The water in the pond is a silver mirror.
“I just want to— I just wanted to talk to you. I miss you. So much has happened, so much weird stuff. I’ve been feeling” —strange, like I’m falling into a void— “lonely.”
His response is curt. “When are you coming home?”
“Do you love me, Oscar?”
A beat. She’s there, of course. Lucy. I tighten my grip on the phone.
“Oscar?”
“Of course I do, Mina. Let’s talk when you get back.”
“Say it. Please.”
He sighs and I think—this is how it ends. I hear the rustle of movement at the end of the line. Perhaps he is switching the phone to his other ear, perhaps he is moving out of her embrace. I change the subject, voice croaky with the stifling heat.
“Can you translate something for me, Oscar? It’s Latin.”
“I’ll try.”
“ Daemonia eicere. I can spell it for you—”
“No need. It means ‘cast out devils.’ You mixed up in something you shouldn’t be?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“Because you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I did try.” He sighs again, and the edge of his voice blurs, just enough for me to know he is disappointed. “I knew this would happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just come home, Mina. Come home and rest. You’ve got a wedding to arrange.”
I trace a finger over a crack in the plastic window, warm to the touch. I wonder what Lucy’s thinking, hearing this. Has she left the room? Is he turning his back on her, still plowing ahead with a wedding I don’t think either of us wants anymore? His tone gives nothing away.
“Oscar, do we have a song?”
“A what?”
“A song. One that makes you think of me when you hear it?”
He pauses. His throat clicks. “I don’t know, Mina. Do we?”
“I’ve met an old couple here who’ve been married forty-three years. They had a song. ‘Blue Moon’ sung by Billie Holiday. In their wedding photo they’re dancing to it. They look so happy, Oscar. Mary, her name was. She died yesterday and it was me who found the body. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, I just—I wondered if we had a song.”
A beat.
“I don’t think we do, Mina, no.”
“Ah. Well, then.”
Silence. I let it expand. The timer tells me I have a minute of the call left. I scuff my feet against the concrete. Oscar’s voice then, amused sounding. A ripple of static on the line.
“Interestingly, it’s called a ‘blue moon’ because it comes from the Old English word ‘belewe.’ ‘Belewe,’ meaning ‘betrayal’ because the blue moon disrupts the lunar calendar.”
“Is that right?”
I’m thinking about Bert and Mary dancing to a song about a lunar rock so powerful it can induce madness. The same song that was playing the previous night on the record player after I’d discovered Mary’s prone, dead body. That eye, rich with blood. Blue moon. I straighten up. A belewe moon. Billie Holiday. Bill-ee.
“Oscar, I have to go.”
“When are you coming home? Mina?”
I hang up the phone with fingers I can barely feel. The handset slips from the cradle and swings on the end of the cord. There is an electrical arc in my head, spitting sparks. Mary was saying “Billy” but she’d meant “Billie.” Billie Holiday. She was talking about the record, not the boy. Sos. SOS. S-O-S. She was trying to get my attention.
I think of the envelope I discovered, the one that had been taped inside the record sleeve. Hidden there, right at the back. I run.