The Walled Garden #3
“Don’t think I’ll be dining at the student centre any time soon,” I said.
Mellon laughed so hard I thought he was going to pass out. “You’re good luck, all right,” he finally said. “But you’re also crazy, Mireya.”
“And you just figured this out? Tsk, tsk, Mr Mellon of the Philadelphia Mellons,” I murmured. “Only a crazy person . . .”
My voice trailed off, and I didn’t finish my thought – only a crazy person would still be at this school after what happened to me.
I was crazy enough to insist on staying.
But I had lost myself somewhere, and I wasn’t about to give up the fight of getting me back.
That meant sticking it out here, now, in this place.
Mellon got quiet. “If you’re crazy, then I don’t want to be sane.”
I kept clutching his hand, and he kept holding mine. And my focus slowly shifted from the swarm of rats to the fact that I was holding the hand of a gorgeous blond boy in springtime, under the light of a New York City moon.
We stood there for a while, Mellon’s hair all silvery in the shadowy night. “We better get out of here before we end up as rat chow.” My voice sounded raspy but coherent.
“Of course. Right as always.” Mellon led the way forwards.
The stars danced over our heads in a swirling foxtrot. “Where are we going, Mellon?” It occurred to me I was drunk or high, but no, my mind was as clear and sharp as the night.
When I looked at him, his eyes sparked silver, like his hair. “I want to show you something. Don’t be frightened.”
Of course a bolt of pure adrenalin shot through me after that, but I swallowed hard and held on to Mellon’s hand. “But should I be? Scared, I mean.”
He smiled then, a lonely and untamed smile, an expression I never imagined could look so at home on Jonathan Mellon’s patrician face. “Yes. You should be scared. But you’re crazy enough to come with me anyway. And, Mireya, no matter what happens, I want you to know that’s a good thing.”
I took a step closer to him, despite the fact his words freaked me out. “Why? If I only . . .”
“If you only nothing.” He pulled me along, under the shifting cotton of the clouds racing by on the wind over our heads. “Just come on.”
Our steps quickened as we broke into a run across the quad. No one else crossed our path, though a dense cloud of little birds wheeled wildly over our heads.
He pulled me up the stairs of Low Library, past the kneeling Rodin statue, The Thinker, to the entrance of the St Paul Chapel. Faint music rose from the depths of the crypt in the basement. The crypt housed a famous student-run club, the Postcrypt, which hosted musicians on Saturday nights.
I followed Mellon down the slippery, slightly damp stone stairs. As we got closer to the wooden door barring our way into the club, I was surprised to see him pass by the little room, nodding at the kilted guy half asleep on a barstool by the doorway.
“Where are you going?”
He lifted his fingers to his lips and shushed me in response, then pointed to a stairway I’d never noticed before, heading still deeper underneath the chapel.
“Down here,” he said.
These stairs were made of different stone than the grey granite of St Paul’s Chapel – something red and crumbly like brick, but with streaks of pearlescent white flaking into opalene brilliance under Mellon’s elegant feet.
I slipped a little – there was no handrail – and Mellon grabbed me by the elbow to steady me. We exchanged a glance in the low, flickering light, and as he leaned to me my heart started to pound so hard it was almost painful.
“Mireya?”
“What?” I whispered, half-tranced by the shadows on the stairs.
“Don’t forget to breathe. You’re turning blue.”
And he smiled, a kind, warm smile to show me he didn’t mean to belittle or tease. I smiled back, and for a moment, in a delicious flash of sensation, it was like I’d gone backwards to a Mireya who had never suffered.
And then that light, girlish Mireya vanished once again.
“Steady,” Mellon whispered. “The stairs get steeper.”
And so they did. The stairs became blocks of cold brass, slippery and worn through in the middle, strangely scarred and dented by something even colder and harder. The air got colder too, and damp.
But not mouldy. At first I took that apple blossom scent for cider, but when I saw the first flower petals on the stairs, I gasped.
That flower smell came from flowers. Flowers.
“How far down have we gone?” I asked.
Mellon shrugged, and I realized with a start that he had a lantern in his hand. A lantern, OK, not a flashlight or even a candle.
“I had this stashed at the top of the staircase,” he said, anticipating my outburst. “Thought it would be handy.”
For the first time, Mellon made me hesitate. I’d trusted him enough to see him alone for weeks now. His reserve and courtesy had reassured me, even as I had avoided all the people except Colleen in my usual circles.
And here we were, far enough away from the world that nobody could hear me scream for help. And Mellon was acting so strangely I hardly recognized him.
My heartbeat raced in my ears, and I felt my pulse pounding in my throat. I wiped my damp palms on the front of my pants, and waited for him to stop.
He did, and raised the lantern high to take a good look at me. “You are afraid.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I’m sorry, Mellon. Yes, I am.”
He nodded in reply, slowly. “Nobody can get at you here. You’re here with me.”
His eyes flashed with electricity, and I forced myself to breathe slowly until my heart could follow my mind and calm down.
I had, up until this point, found Mellon unthreatening, a safe male presence in a world of predators.
But now, in the weird dappled light of his lantern, Mellon looked fierce and powerful. And protective of me.
I was no old-time damsel in distress. But I was happy to place myself under Mellon’s protection in this strange, subterranean place.
“We’re almost there, Miss Mireya Rodriguez of the Brooklyn Rodriguezes.”
He reached for my hand, bent his head over, and reverently kissed my knuckles, his eyes all the while searching out my own.
And that strange flicker of freedom from the past enticed me again. Somewhere down below a different Mireya waited for me. I didn’t know her yet, but suddenly I wanted to meet her, very much.
Mellon held my hand, the one that he had kissed, and we picked our way down the last dozen or so stairs. The flowers dotting the surface of the stairs became a veritable snowdrift of white, and the last step was completely carpeted in their strange, fragrant petals.
It was unbelievable. I took a deep breath, rubbed my eyes as if I could rub the illusion of it all away like tears.
We stood together in a brick-walled garden, trellised with climbing roses and wisteria and the strange apple-scented white blossoms blowing over the stairs. It was broad daylight. A low, rhythmic chirp sounded from somewhere inside the boxwoods planted all along the perimeter of the garden’s walls.
“Nightingale frogs,” Mellon said, his voice low.
I had never heard of nightingale frogs. Have you? Has anyone heard a song like that, anyone who lives on the surface, ignorant of the world branching away from under their feet?
“It’s beautiful, so beautiful,” was all I dared to say. “Jonathan, thank you so much.”
“My father’s people are the Mellons of Philadelphia,” Mellon said. “My mother’s people, well. . .”
His voice trailed away, and I knew better than to ask. Instead, I tilted my head back and looked far overhead, saw diaphanous clouds racing across the sky, a tiny, perfect moon hanging upside down.
It felt like coming home.
I bumped into Colleen a week later at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, where I waited with my tea for Jonathan to appear. She almost passed me by, her chocolate croissant in hand, but then she did a double take and almost dropped her breakfast on the ground.
“Mireya?” Her voice was no more than an incredulous squeak.
I laughed, a deep belly laugh that felt almost as good as sex. “That’s me. At least the last time I checked.”
“Oh, girl, you look – beautiful.”
“Different, you were going to say.” Colleen didn’t pity me now, oh no. I think I frightened her a little bit, now.
“Where have you been? You don’t answer your phone, I knocked on your door only about eleventy billion times . . .” Her voice trembled, even though a smile stayed imperfectly pasted on her face.
I emerged from my bemused haze long enough to really see her. “Oh no, you were worried.” I reached up and hugged her around the neck, gave her a peck on the cheek. “You are a good friend to me, sweetie. And an old soul.”
She pulled back and her eyes narrowed. “You sound like you’re saying goodbye. Or like you are zoned out of your ever-loving mind. That Mellon guy isn’t some kind of dealer – is he?”
“No way. Just my boss, and he’ll be here in a minute if you want to meet him and make sure he’s OK.”
She took an absent-minded bite of croissant and backed away, looking thoroughly spooked.
“I have class in ten minutes. Sorry.” She ate the rest of the croissant in two or three bites, swallowed her meal, and evidently made up her mind to speak.
“I’m not sure what’s going on with you. All I can say is be careful. Remember your limitations.”
Her little speech made me laugh again, sadly this time. “Maybe I should be worrying about you. You always told me to trash my illusions and reach for the stars . . .”
“Maybe I’m just saying the same thing a different way.” And with a final wave of her fingers, Colleen left for class.
Mellon appeared not five minutes after Colleen’s parting words of wisdom. “OK, Mellon,” I said, glad to leave her worries behind and ready for business. “What have you got for me?”
His smile, as usual, hid a world of secrets. “A philosophy paper.”
I glanced down at the handwritten paper he held out for me. The paper’s title: “The Walled Garden”.
The words brought me up short and I looked up from the crabbed, scrabbly handwriting overflowing the crinkly lined paper. “I thought . . .”