Chapter 45 Vivian
Vivian
February
Vivian is meeting Peter at the Knox for dinner. He’s back from his alleged trip to Milan.
When she rings the bell, good ole Rose opens the door.
“Good evening,” Vivian says.
Rose, of course, says nothing. She simply nods and holds the door open.
Vivian hesitates before entering. She has a moment of unexplained apprehension. She’s never believed in spirits, but there’s something about the Knox that suddenly feels haunting. Maybe it’s due to those autopsies in the basement Rachel told her about.
Ahead in the foyer, awaiting her arrival, is Peter.
He looks handsome, and her unease washes away.
He is more casually dressed than usual, in a navy blazer and pair of dark jeans.
Is she overdressed? Beneath her camel coat she’s wearing a silk cream blouse and a brown leather tea-length skirt.
She supposes it’s better to be overdressed than under.
It’s so much easier to focus on the small things in life, she finds herself thinking, which begs the question: Is this how her mother operated all those years?
Vivian crosses the threshold, brushing past Rose. She’s looking at Peter and not down at the ground, so she doesn’t realize until too late that she’s stepped in something sticky. Gum, perhaps?
Frowning, she stops short and turns the bottom of her Louboutin heel up. She’s about to reach down and scrape it off, when Rose barks, “No, no, don’t touch it. Just keep moving forward, off the mat, please.”
Vivian obliges, and when she looks, Rose is bent over on the ground, tearing a large sheet of paper from the mat’s surface.
Rose gently cups her hands beneath the sheet, as if it’s sacred, not allowed to touch the ground, like an American flag, and offers it to Michael, who appears out of the shadows.
“Michael?” Vivian asks, tilting her head. “What is this?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. L—Vivian, you need to stand here for a minute and wait. Don’t go in any further. Knox policy,” Michael says apologetically. He disappears with the sheet down the hall.
Rose stands there, like a security guard.
Vivian resists the urge to roll her eyes.
She looks ahead again at Peter, who now leans against the old-fashioned mailbox system lining the foyer wall.
He holds up his index finger, meaning, Wait.
Then he encircles his hands around his mouth, and loudly shouts, in a joking manner, “Hello, beautiful!”
Vivian can’t help but laugh. “What on earth is going on? What are we waiting for?” She shrugs out of her coat, and, almost reluctantly, Rose takes it from her.
“Geomancy,” Peter answers, now in a normal tone. “All first-time guests have to pass the test.”
“Well, I’ve heard of a geometry test, but not a geomancy test,” Vivian jokes. “Also, I’m not exactly a first-time guest. I was already here. For tea and the party? And…” And our little sleepover, she wants to add but doesn’t. Not in front of Rose.
“Parties have a different protocol. As for the tea, that was my bad. And, well…” Peter winks at her. She knows he’s thinking of the third time she was there. “Sorry, darling, it’s just a formality and will take only a minute.”
She likes the way darling sounds. “What if I don’t pass?”
“You will.”
Rose makes a tsking noise, and Vivian refuses to look at her.
She’s in a locked gaze with Peter. She likes admiring him from this distance.
The heat between them is already building.
It feels surprisingly sexy, having this conversation across a foyer.
Like two teenagers sharing a moment from opposite ends of the school dance floor.
He’s so effortlessly good-looking, it’s as if he’s just stepped out of a Peter Millar catalog. Sometimes Vivian still can’t believe that he’s hers.
Or is he?
She hasn’t decided yet if she’s going to bring up seeing him in the street a couple of days earlier. If that was even him.
She was off her game that day. The more she thinks about it, she realizes she may have been mistaken.
She was clearly still reeling from the stress of seeing Xavier’s empty shop.
Not to mention everything she’s had going on with her mother and her spiraling finances.
It’s enough to make anyone a little out of sorts.
“Nice outfit.” His gaze travels up and down her, slowly.
“Thank you.” This time, she stashed an extra shirt in her handbag. “How was Milan?”
A shadow passes over his face. “Fine.” Then he adds, “Busy. The trip took a little bit of an unexpected detour.”
A waiter, the wrestler guy—Jerry, if she recalls correctly—walks by with a tray of drinks. She thought he was toast, given his scuffle with Oliver about his sister. Maybe Oliver’s not around.
As Jerry passes Peter, he accidentally drops a stack of cocktail napkins, one of which lands directly next to Peter’s foot.
Jerry bends down to place the tray on the ground while he quickly gathers them up.
Peter makes no move to help. Instead, he stands as still as a statue, his eyes trained on Vivian.
Like an invisible cord is connecting them.
“Sorry, sir,” Jerry mumbles.
“It’s quite all right, Jerry,” Peter says.
Michael reenters the foyer, sans the paper. He nods affirmatively at Peter and Rose. Then, in a soft voice, as if he’s embarrassed, he says, “I’m sorry again, Vivian. You’re welcome to enter now. Can I get you a drink?”
“I’ve got it, Michael,” Peter interrupts, striding over. The moment he takes her arm in his, her head spins. He leads her into what she thinks is the direction of the parlor, but given how he makes her feel, he could be leading her into a lion’s den right now, and she’d still follow.
“So, it was a good work trip?” Vivian asks.
They are indeed in the parlor, sitting on a love seat on the far side of the room, opposite from where they had tea.
A few people mingle around them, and more members are filtering in by the minute, drinks in hand.
Apparently, predinner cocktails are a Knox Saturday evening must.
She studies Peter carefully, waiting for his response.
“It was a fruitful few days, yes,” he replies, sidestepping her question. At least he’s not outwardly lying. Perhaps he’s waiting for a more discreet place to talk with her? She hopes.
“Do you know what geomancy is?” he suddenly asks.
“I’ve heard of it,” she says. She’s not about to admit that she googled it after the masquerade ball.
“Geomancy literally translates to ‘earth divination,’ but I think worldly divination makes more sense. It’s a practice based on the belief that there are divine messages one can interpret from the markings on the ground; it’s about harnessing the world’s energy.
But you don’t even need to make ground markings; some people use a coin flip, or a roll of dice.
Something to generate an even or odd number, which translates to one or two dots.
Those dots form the geomantic figures that are subsequently interpreted. ”
At the word “dots,” Vivian is reminded of what Rachel had said: Dr. Thurgood wanted to leave a trail so someone—like us—could connect the dots.
“Oh…That’s interesting,” Vivian replies, shaking off the memory. “And one performs a geomancy reading to answer a yes or no question?”
“Yes, but the answer is more nuanced. Nonbinary, sort of like a tarot card reading.”
“And a Magic 8 Ball,” she teases.
“It is decidedly so,” he quips back. “In all seriousness, though, here at the Knox, we’re old-school. We use the ground markings. It’s what William Knox, our founder, used to practice back in the day.”
“So he was the one who introduced it?”
“Yes. Some people believe William Knox became interested in it because of his dealings with the Chinese merchants, who practiced feng shui, which is different from geomancy but does share similar underlying principles. Others think he was exposed to it by European sea merchants during his travels. Geomancy was, after all, one of the most popular forms of divination during the Renaissance. At any rate, he became an ardent believer in geomancy and made it part of our Knox fabric.”
Vivian sips her martini. It tastes surprisingly good, given her hangover the last time she drank them. “So, when I walked through that sticky tape, you ‘read,’ or interpreted, the markings my shoes left?”
“Close. We used the debris from your footprint to…Well, I won’t bore you with the details.
Suffice to say we vetted you in a geomancy reading per proper Knox protocol.
And I wasn’t the one doing the reading or, as they say, casting the shield chart.
I’m not schooled in it. But others are, like Michael. ”
Jerry walks by and offers them sparkling water, which Vivian wisely takes but Peter declines with a dismissive wave.
“Geomancy has always been used with our decision-making here at the Knox,” Peter continues, and adds, somewhat slyly, as if showing off, “You might be surprised to learn about how it’s shaped not only the Knox but Boston as well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, perhaps the ‘unplanned’ pattern of Boston’s streets was not so unplanned after all.”
Boston is known for its windy, confusing streets that make no sense on a map.
“I thought the streets followed old cow paths,” she says, frowning.
“That is the rumor,” he says with a smile, not elaborating further.
Vivian suddenly feels uncomfortable. Does he mean the Knox, and geomancy, are responsible for the layout of Boston?
If true, the Knox’s reach—and mystery—is much deeper than she’d realized.
In her direct view is the glass display case with the cryptic scroll.
What is that thing? She thought she’d known what she was getting into when she started this quest, but she’s now realizing that she has no idea about the intricacies of this society.
Occult practices, basement autopsies, her ancestor’s missing body… What is this place really about?
And who, exactly, is Peter?