Walking on Sunshine Page 9

  “But it’s my payroll,” I said, putting the water bottle down. I raised my eyes to my uncle’s.

  He looked away and saw the roses on the counter and his eyes widened. He turned a step to the right and looked around the room.

  I turned to Baz. “Give me five minutes.”

  “You need a shower,” Uncle Chester said automatically. “Keep your hair dry. And wrap up. It’s warm out there but it ain’t that warm.” His tone softened. “Don’t want you to take a chill, baby.”

  “I know. I’ll shower at the theater.” I kissed him on the cheek. “Stay right here,” I told Baz.

  As I walked out of the room, I heard Uncle Chester telling Baz he could leave again, and Baz not saying a word.

  Panic-fast, I changed into clean sweats and came back out to the living room to find Uncle Chester grumbling about how bossy I was getting, taking over things I was too young to handle, blah blah blah. Baz still stood there, a slightly-leaning rock.

  I hooked my purse off the bar. “Ready?”

  Baz turned away from Uncle Chester as if he had vanished. Uncle Chester looked fit to be tied.

  I smiled, took Baz’s arm, and waltzed out.

  In the elevator I said, “Omigod, that was fun!”

  “You know I’m not quitting my job to rig for you,” Baz said in a let’s-be-fair voice when we stood companionably close, side by side in the elevator.

  “I know. But it was worth it. The look on his face. They piss me off and they boss me and I’m over it.”

  “Ah. Well, in that case I’ll see what I can do. For the next week.” Baz smiled down into my eyes.

  “Thanks. No, wait, I have a better idea,” I said on impulse. “I’m recording this month at a studio in the South Loop. How about—would you like—” I realized suddenly what I was asking and of whom. I stepped away from him so he wouldn’t think I was trying to take advantage. More formally, I said, “Could I impose on you to sit in for just one track? It’s got a good spot for a sour-apple bass lick.”

  He gave me one of those tilted looks. This time his gaze ran over me, up and down, but settled on my face, all serious. “For real?”

  “Let’s record something,” I said recklessly. “Worry later about if it makes the final cut.”

  “Um. Sure.”

  The elevator doors opened. “Great! Thank you!” I gushed.

  We got halfway across the lobby before I realized I hadn’t called down for the car. I hadn’t sent anybody on ahead of me to check for paparazzi.

  I wasn’t even wearing shades.

  But the people in the lobby ignored us.

  I mentioned this to Baz.

  He said solemnly, “I have anti-charisma. It rubs off.”

  “What?” I laughed. “Are you saying that as long as I’m with you, nobody recognizes me?”

  “That’s right.”

  I imagined this. “Wow. That could be really handy. I haven’t been to the grocery store on my own for ten years.”

  He squinted. “That’s your dream date? Thank goodness. I thought it would be something expensive.”

  I really thought he was kidding. But we stopped in at the drug store on the corner and I bought a pack of gum, which I handed to Baz outside. “Wow.” My heart pounded the whole time. “That was amazing. They even had one of my CDs on the counter at checkout and nobody—nobody pointed or screamed or said my name.”

  “Just the Mesopotamian service.”

  I looked at him sidelong and nearly collided with another pedestrian. People passed us in streams. Nobody recognized me. If we hadn’t been out in public I would have taken his arm.

  We crossed the street and walked all the way down Grant Park to the theater. Nobody recognized me. I couldn’t keep the stupid grin off my face.

  VEEK

  I had promised to meet Mme Vulcaine at the botánica, but my nerves had not recovered from our last ceremony for Jake.

  Instead I went to the Arie Crown Theater on Baz’s business: keeping Sophie away from Yoni.

  Yoni’s show went better this time. I watched from the back of the audience, where Baz had found me a seat. He’d said she didn’t like to fly, but her performance was flawless as before. As before, the audience was agitated—but when I thought they would start pairing off again, Yoni softened. Her energy dropped. The goddess attributes I had noted last time ebbed and flowed, but with intention. She had to be aware of her effect.

  She was aware—yes, and careful.

  I would have to tell Baz of this. He was here somewhere, probably standing behind the curtains, with his hands on the rope that controlled her flying. But he couldn’t see what I was seeing.

  I also did not see my little French stalker.

  What a bag of monkeys she was. That love potion had taken effect quickly. I sensed her like a small, unruly sun in my chest. Somewhere in this audience she was standing, her face upturned—ah, she must be near the stage—riveted by Yoni’s performance. It should be easy to find her.

  I was about to close my eyes and summon her to me as I had done before, but I hesitated. There was too much ambient power in the room. Too much power of love. Yoni’s voice brought out the heat in my chest worse than ever. My little French sun throbbed inside me like toothache, like a hard-on the size of a train.

  I gave up. I left the concert and retreated to the front gate. If Sophie were to exit the building there, I would have her. If by chance I lost her, there was only one place she would go, after a concert like this one.

  SOPHIE

  Yoni performed that night with more nuance, more sensitivity to the audience than ever before. She was glorious. I wondered if Veek were in the audience somewhere . . . but why should he be? I was the one obsessed with her, not he. I had not seen him since meeting that remarkable vodou woman and, omigod, Ashurbanipal! Veek’s roommate! Veek was a continuous explosion of surprises.

  I would have to seek him at the botánica, then.

  The thought of him enhanced Yoni’s show for me. My blood beat like the sea under my skin.

  I hoped that wherever he ended up, my Veek would find contentment. He seemed beset by persons who wanted to change the course of his life to suit themselves—that vodou woman, my father. Jake, who had died, had determined Veek’s life for him while he lived, and somehow he still exerted some influence from beyond the grave. I have given her your leash. What leash? And that spooky lwa who possessed Jake at the end—Baron Samedi? What was that about?

  Perhaps it was the thought of Veek’s uncertain future that drew my attention away from Yoni. The throbbing in my blood receded, as if I were losing both her and him at the same time. It made me sad.

  But I knew exactly where Yoni was. And I knew where she soon would be.

  I had a message for her.

  I slipped through the standees near the stage and made my way to a side exit.

  VEEK

  Thirty minutes later I stood in front of the Arie Crown Theater, buffeted by streams of exiting fans. No Sophie. At length I was forced to admit that she had slipped past me.

  Thanks to Baz, I knew where she would go next.

  Outside Yoni’s hotel, I paid off my cab and chose a park bench. Grant Park was hot and humid. Near midnight, tourists strolled along Michigan Avenue. Hobos lay on the grass in the park, sharing cigarettes. I was tempted to lie there like them, with my body on the good ground instead of on this dirty bench, but I sat where I was.

  Those days were behind me. No more sleeping in the open with Jake snoring beside me, no more blanket of stars. I had a home, a bed, clean clothes. Suddenly I was homesick for the road, though I had hated it all the years Jake dragged me behind him. I wanted to smell his foul cigars again. I wanted to hear him call me bad names in Kreyol.

  I mourned Jake the only way I knew how. Under my breath I sang a song he loved. “Hear the whistle blow five hundred miles…”

  I sensed a quickening in the night around me.

  I stopped singing.

  Someone had heard.


  Someone was listening.

  It wouldn’t do to attract a mugger. I sent my gaze around without moving, examining each person in sight, those tourists, those smoking hobos . . . and that man seated on a park bench half a block up the street.

  He was surely too far away to have heard me crooning under my breath.

  Nevertheless I got up and ambled away from him, eastward into the park, until I was well out of his sight line. Then I doubled back and stalked him from behind.

  He was looking everywhere, watching the night with none of my subtle woodcraft. Every taxi that stopped in front of Yoni’s hotel drew his close attention. He seemed tense, keyed up like a crack user, sitting still with difficulty.

  Somehow I knew he was here on my business. I could feel it.

  I drew closer with caution. If he had heard me singing from half a block away, he would feel me behind him.

  Sure enough, he stood suddenly and stared into the shadows of the promenade. He examined each bench and tree in turn.

  I ducked behind a tree. I waited. After a cautious interval I looked again.

  He had turned back to watch the hotel.

  I knew him now. Sophie’s papa. My heir.

  I backed away, then returned south a full block away from my heir, and took up a position behind another tree, keeping the trunk between us.

  I had one comfort. If her father thought Sophie would come here, then I was on the right track.

  In a few minutes I knew I was right. I could feel Sophie nearby. I sensed her hovering, light as a moth, cautious but drawn—attracted—obsessed with that singer.

  Some movement down the block made me look at her father. He was standing, his hands plunged into his pockets in a way that disarranged the hang of his fine coat. He stared at the hotel—up high. His body was taut. His face, even far away, looked strained.

  I followed his gaze.

  On the edge of the hotel roof, a human figure swung, monkeylike, at the end of a rope.

  While I watched, the figure stopped descending the building and stood on a window ledge. It bent, slid the window up, and slithered inside.

  I took off running across the street.

  Then I realized I might attract her father’s attention, if he could tear his eyes away from that twelfth-story window. I dropped to a walk and sauntered across Michigan Avenue against sparse midnight traffic. It wouldn’t do to climb the wall right in front of him. While I stood indecisive, something brushed my cheek. I looked up. Many somethings were fluttering down from above in a soft cascade, like dark snow. Another patted my face. I slapped at it.

  It was a red rose petal.

  SOPHIE

  As I slid open a window of Yoni’s suite, I smelled a gust of perfume like sweet fresh roses growing in the hot sun. I ducked my head inside and froze, perched on the windowsill.

  The room seemed swamped, like a cottage I’d once seen on the marais after flood.

  I turned on my flashlight and shone it at the floor—or where the floor should be.

  The room was full of rose petals. They were piled as high as the windowsill where I crouched. Light from the street far below fell weakly on the ceiling. I snapped off my flashlight and waited for my eyes to accustom themselves.

  I was in a lounge or sitting room. I saw sofas, easy chairs, a television screen hanging near me on the wall, and along the far wall, a bar.

  On the bar sat a vase full of red roses. They foamed to the bar surface, tumbled off it. The ceiling fan turned lazily, making the rose petals lift and fall like little butterflies that couldn’t quite fly. A faint breeze from the ceiling fan pushed at the roses that nodded out of the vase.

  The blooms were so heavy, they bent and touched the granite bar top. Petals fell off each rose in slow motion. One, two, three, four . . . endless rose petals. As I looked around the room, I saw that the ceiling fan made the petals float about, milling in gentle circles like fragrant dust devils. That was how they had filled the room.

  A few petals escaped past me through the open window.

  I became aware of the sound of traffic in the street below. If that kept up, soon people on the street would notice that this window was open.

  I had my note already written. Yoni’s name was scrawled on the envelope. I wanted to put it on the bar, but I had no hope of reaching it without leaving a trail . . . and I wanted to be mysterious. I looked down at the sea of rose petals drying delicately like waist-deep potpourri. It would be lovely to throw myself into that and roll and thrash like a kid making snow angels. Rose-petal angels.

  But better still would be a mysterious gesture.

  I pulled out my envelope and reviewed the note in my memory, gave it a tender smile, and then, with care, whirled it toward the suite door, near the bar.

  It landed, plop, on top of the petals, four feet away from the door. Perfect! There it would lie until the door opened—not long from now, I hoped—with the great drift of undisturbed rose petals under it. I would leave the window open. The faint breeze would draw more petals toward the window, and so they would not bury my envelope.

  Then I heard voices in the corridor outside.

  Yoni! And she was with a man.

  I swiftly ducked back through the window and scrambled up the outside wall toward the roof.

  YONI

  I apologized to Baz once more as I dug out my keycard. “Thank you for seeing me home. I’m sorry I chickened out on going for that drink. I’d love to go to a bar with you. I haven’t even been to a restaurant in years.”

  “Understood,” he said.

  The longer I hung around him, the fewer words he said. But he smiled.

  I smiled back and fumbled the card key into the lock.

  I smelled something weird before I even got my suite door open. It was nice. But weird nice. Like perfume. My grandmother used to have perfume like that. It smelled like—

  Baz flicked the light on.

  “Roses,” I said, stupefied. The room was full of roses. No, rose petals, loose and bright and fragrant. They were piled so high against the door that they spilled out into the corridor, covering our shoes. A gust of wind rushed past us—I heard street sounds, buses and taxis honking down below—why was my window open?

  I took a step into the room and found myself wading into a sea of rose petals.

  The hairs rose all over my body.

  “That’s fucking weird,” Baz said beside me. He pointed at the bar.

  But I was looking at the rose petals piled knee deep on the floor, right in front of me. Lying on the petals like a gift tag on the world’s biggest bouquet was a square white envelope. My name was written on it.

  Baz turned to look with me. “You gonna open it?”

  I gaped at the open window, speechless, then back at the envelope. As I reached for it, he put his hand on my arm.

  “Want me to open it for you? In case—?”

  I stared at him. “Oh. Oh, no, I don’t think she would hurt me.” I picked up the envelope and tore it open. Inside was a greeting card with the picture of a statue of the Buddha in gold leaf and enamel red, looking fat and serene and kind. I opened the card.

  Yoni, you are more incredible every day. I want you to have everything. -Sophie

  “But how in heaven’s name did she get all these rose petals in here?” I wondered aloud.

  Baz cleared his throat. I glanced at him and caught an embarrassed expression. That surprised me. He always seemed so calm.

  “She didn’t do that. We did.”

  “What—how—what do you mean?”

  He nodded toward the bar. The roses in their vase were leaning over. The bouquet was far too big for the vase. Why hadn’t they sent it with a proper vase? I started forward and my bare shins rustled through the fragrant rose petals.

  He said, “Watch.”

  I watched. Each rose stem bore multiple blooms. That was odd. I took another step closer. The rose nearest me appeared to crawl faintly, as if it were unfolding before my eyes
via stop-motion photography.

  Hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

  As I watched, new petals forced their way out of the center of the bloom, and the outermost petal curled and dropped away. It lay on the bar for a few seconds, flipping up whenever the ceiling fan blade circled by. Then I saw the lately-fallen petal blow off the bar onto the floor.

  “Oh, come on,” I said.

  All those petals off this one bunch of roses? I looked around the room. They drifted up against the sofa and the easy chairs, stuck to the fancy burlap on the front of the bar, and rolled lazily over the windowsill, three and four petals at a time.

  “I’m afraid there’s more,” Baz said. He pointed. I looked up.

  The cabinet behind the bar shone a dull gold. The wall under it was the same color. Fancy, I thought. I never noticed that before. Then I saw that a great section of the room was plated in soft, shining gold—walls, ceiling, furniture, even the pictures on the walls—with subtle gold streaks radiating out from—I looked back—from a spot in front of the bar.

  A spot where, many hours ago, I had awkwardly begged Baz for a kiss.

  “We didn’t,” I said. How on earth did this happen? A chill passed over me. I had realized a long time ago that—things—were getting worse. I never expected this.

  “The hotel’s gonna beef about the gilding,” Baz said with a hint of apology.

  “When they get over the sea of rose petals,” I murmured. I sniffed. It did smell awesome.

  “Very classy.”

  “But how?” I finally said.

  He took my hand in his big warm paw. “C’mon. Let’s go to my place. I’ll explain.”

  I looked at him with widening eyes. “How can you possibly explain? This—you don’t know—how long—” Fifty-seven explanations of my own crashed against my teeth.

  He looked at me sorrowfully. “I can explain.”

  I stuffed Sophie Stalker’s greeting card and envelope into my purse. “This should be good.”

  We shut the door and left, trailing rose petals into the elevator on our sneakers.