Chapter 11
When I awoke, or, more specifically, became lucid, three days later, I was in bed at my apartment on Avenue A, with my head bandaged.
There was a sizeable lump near my right ear, and everything hurt, including my elbow and my knee, from when I collapsed on the pavement.
I fumbled for a bottle of water I didn’t remember having placed on my bedside crate, as Reggie said, “Welcome back.”
Reggie’s face was furrowed with concern, a rare response from such a stoic crusader. “I’m sorry,” he continued. “I pushed you too hard. This was my fault.”
“But—how did I get here? What happened in Rome?”
“You got slammed by a rock from some asshole on a moped. From what we know he was probably aiming at Reata, but she’d already gotten into the SUV. So you took the hit. You were concussed but the encephalogram didn’t show any brain damage.”
I touched my head through the bandages, which wasn’t a good idea, and Reggie was already handing me painkillers.
“You were in an unfamiliar city and your vision had been affected from being underground. The Italian police are still looking for the guy and his accomplice, who was driving. We’re not sure who’re they’re working for, but they probably thought Reata had the diamond.
But I should’ve been watching out for you. ”
I slumped backward onto the pillows. “The doctors say you’ll be okay, but they’ve been keeping you sedated. We haven’t called your family, because that’s your decision. But you were great, you did whatever we asked, and you protected Reata.”
“Have they found Luc?”
“Not a trace. But whatever’s happened to him, it could be the same people who did this to you.”
“And the ruby and the emerald…”
“Are no longer your responsibility. We’re dealing with everything, and with keeping Reata safe—she sends her best. Look to your left.”
There was a huge stuffed panda in the corner, holding a satin heart on its chest, printed with the words “MY HERO.” The panda was wearing a ball cap from the White House gift shop. There was a note attached reading, “Fuck those guys.”
“But I had no right to subject you to so much danger under such intense conditions, right out of the gate. We got you on a plane, and Brock met us at the airport. He’s out picking up groceries. I told your roommates you need peace and quiet, with no loud noises or weaponized altar goblets.”
“Thank you. So am I still—a Tux?”
“Honorary. Your service was valiant, but is no longer required.”
I considered this. Had I been kicked out? Placed on leave? In Rome, why hadn’t I been more aware of my surroundings, and ducked?
Brock returned, bearing all the sugary crap I loved. Once Reggie had left, we indulged in a more down-and-dirty conversation.
“I shouldn’t have dragged you into all this,” Brock began.
“No, I agreed to it, and it was amazing and terrifying but—I let you down.”
“Honey, you did nothing of the sort. You went above and beyond, but the Tuxes aren’t for everybody. And I went through a pile of returned stuff at Ralph, which is all in mint condition, and I brought you these.”
He handed me a salmon-colored cotton crewneck with the embroidered logo and a pair of madras bermuda shorts, to start my new life, if I was going to become a day trader taking the jitney to Montauk.
“But Brock, are you still—active?”
“Yes. But you shouldn’t come back, that would be crazy.
I heard about Rome. You need to take some time, to literally get your head together.
I asked the neurologist if you’d have a scar and he said no, but possibly some memory loss.
I asked if they could make you forget that last revival of Follies. ”
“Except I remember it. With no set and everyone using hand puppets of their younger selves,” I said, as my head pounded, maybe from that particular recollection.
“And here are three Polo catalogues, including the homewares collection, with the latest wicker…”
I was grateful, both for Brock’s thoughtful offerings and for his nonchalant understanding, which was far better than pity or dutiful caregiving.
I spent the rest of the day in bed, and by the next week I felt well enough to bike to the candle shop, to resume my previous, blissfully mundane schedule.
I’d hated Smells of the Season, but it had become an oasis, a soothingly pretty, sparkling cube where nothing bad could ever happen.
That was the logic behind the mall’s mini-boutiques: to foster an alternative to a hostile outside landscape.
Scented candles in jars aren’t essential, but they can perk up a peeling Formica kitchen countertop or a cramped, farted-up bathroom. I almost wept, because I was home.
I spent the next few days wallowing in routine, in dusting the jars, arranging them by color and intention.
The Christmas varieties, the Bayberry Cider Medley and Santa’s Sugar Cookie Surprise, were always prominently displayed.
Especially pungent holiday candles, which make your whole house smell like Grandma’s in a bipolar baking surge, are a year-round staple.
I fetishized neatness, and when a candle was sold I replaced it within seconds, so there’d be no empty spaces in the parade grounds of little glass soldiers.
I’d greet customers with such good vibes that they’d either freak out and leave, or buy at least five candles, to thank that heartbreakingly helpful salesclerk, who most likely sleeps on an inflatable mattress near the oversized Backwoods First Snowfall pillar candles with three wicks.
A weight had been lifted: I was sheltered within a benign retail nowhere.
Gunmen have attacked malls, but everyone’s always surprised, because malls are so overlit and mechanically friendly, the opposite of derangement.
I viewed myself as a 1950s homemaker, running a bake sale for charity, to keep busy once my kids had left the nest and my husband had lost interest. This was refreshing, because no one was holding a bayonet to my throat or launching a chunk of granite at me. I was floating; I was fine.
The following Monday morning, as I toiled diligently at the computer balanced on a ledge behind my counter, calculating inventory and which bestselling items should be reordered, I heard the shop’s front door open, with the distinctively gentle, bell-like microchipped recording that any customer’s entrance would activate; this tinny melody was Christmas carol–y without being December-specific.
“I’ll be right with you,” I said, not looking up. “Feel free to browse. We’ve got an amazing new Autumnal Back-to-School Daydream fragrance, it smells like burning leaves and three-hole lined notebook paper…”
“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” said a strangely familiar, lightly continental voice, and I wouldn’t raise my eyes from my screen, afraid the aberration of my past weeks was recurring.
“Andrew?” said the voice, and there he was, standing a few feet away, removing his wraparound sunglasses, in a trenchcoat with the collar up: an unharmed Luc LeMote.
No. This was impossible, some fiendish hologram. The painkillers were making me hallucinate. Luc was severely injured or dead. I’d been soaked in his blood.
“I heard you were attacked in Rome. But you look well. Pale.”
“Thank you.”
My hallucination was talking to me. And smiling.
“Are you really here? How? I thought you were either murdered or being held captive. Did you escape?”
I touched the now-reduced lump on my head, as if this would snap me back to reality.
“I’m alive. I’d stockpiled my own blood, so the DNA from the crime scene would match. After I stole the diamond I had to vanish, or my father would’ve had me killed. That’s why the Tuxedo Society rushed you out of my house.”
This had a certain logic, but had Reggie known about the fakery?
And if he’d been in on it, why hadn’t he included me?
Or was Luc lying, and why had he returned?
He’d smuggled the diamond to Reata, but was that his true allegiance?
This was more brain-blasting Tuxedo Society madness and I had to shut it down.
“No. You’re not you. You’re not here. Or you’re a really nasty and expensive robot. Get out.”
“I understand why you’re upset, but there’s no time for that. I need you to bring a message to Reggie, something I can’t entrust to any device. Tell him the Lachesis Ruby is being held by Elki Jenstromm’s father.”
“What? Who? What are you talking about? Why should I believe a word you say, or that you even exist?”
“I can prove I exist.”
He was coming toward me, around the counter. He was about to rob me, to force me to open the register, or maybe he had a screwdriver or a gun or a substance he’d rub on my hand that would liquefy my internal organs and kill me within seconds. I backed away, into a glass wall.
Luc grabbed me by the waist and kissed me, with a toe-curling lust that didn’t feel fraudulent, but maybe that meant I was deep into my schizoid episode.
At least it was a really hot schizoid episode, and after a second of ambivalence, I kissed him back, as the scents of every candle in the store wafted like cartoon bluebirds encircling us with a silken ribbon.
“Hi there!” said a woman’s voice, as the front door’s prerecorded melody jingled. “I’m Marge Neerman, from Eau Claire, Wisconsin? I was here last August and I bought the Iced Vanilla Malibu Sunrise candle at fifteen percent off?”
Over Luc’s shoulder I saw a sweet-faced woman wearing a sweatshirt airbrushed with Elsa from Frozen hugging Martin Luther King. She was carrying shopping bags from every nearby store and waving a pink-angora-mittened hand.
“Remember me?” said Marge. “Is that discount still on?”
“I have to go,” said Luc. “Reggie can explain. But you have to tell him. Elki Jenstromm’s father.”
As Luc hurried out, Marge gawked at him and then turned back to me: “Hubba delish yowza. You got yourself a major cutie patootie there, Mister Lucky Duck!”