Because It Is My Blood

XIV I ENCOUNTER AN OLD FOE; ANOTHER PROPOSAL; WIN LOOKS UNDER THE WRAPPER

FOR WIN’S EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY, his parents hosted a party at their apartment. And by Win’s parents, I mean his mother. Win’s father was still “depressed,” and according to Win, hadn’t done anything to help plan the festivities.

Scarlet came over to my apartment so that we could all get dressed together. Natty and Daisy Gogol were also going.

Scarlet was about six months pregnant at this point and definitely showing. She wore an enormous black tulle skirt and a tiny pink velvet jacket she couldn’t button. Her blond hair had grown almost to her bottom and was glossy. I found her as comely as ever and I told her so.

She kissed me on the cheek. “Why can’t I marry you, Annie? You’d be the perfect husband to me.” After seven years in a Catholic school, Gable Arsley was hell-bent on marrying Scarlet and making an “honest woman” of her.

Scarlet had been too exhausted to procure outfits for us, as she might have done in years past. She did approve our choices. Natty wore that red dress of mine (and my mother’s), the one Win had always liked me in. I wore black pants—I was in a pants phase of my life—and a corset that Scarlet had worn to Little Egypt all those years ago. I was slutty on top and conservative on the bottom. But the thing was, I liked my arms and back after all that farming. As Daisy Gogol was coming with us, I resisted the urge to accessorize with my machete. Daisy was too large to borrow any of our clothes, but as it turned out, she had plenty of her own. She wore a crazy milkmaid dress and a helmet with horns. “Old opera costume,” she said. “This is going to be so much fun!” She clapped her hands.

We rode the bus to Win’s parents’ apartment. The funny thing was, I had only been there two other times as, for an obvious reason—i.e., Charles Delacroix—Win and I had avoided the place.

Jane Delacroix was one of those people who could make everything beautiful. For decorations, she’d strung fruit from the ceiling. And there were candles everywhere to provide illumination. And of course a bar and a band. The truth was, I doubted Win even noticed all the pains she’d taken for him. He was a boy, and he’d never been without a mother.

Nearly everyone from what should have been my graduating class was there, with the exception of Gable Arsley—thank you, Win’s mother. Most of these people I hadn’t seen since the night of my ill-fated welcome-back-to-Trinity party. Chai Pinter came right up to me and started babbling. “Oh, Anya, you look fantastic! I’m so happy to see you!” She hugged me like we were best friends. “I was so worried for you all these months. Where were you?”

Like I was really going to tell the class gossip where I’d been. “Here and there,” was my stock reply.

“Well, aren’t you the cagey one! So, what are you going to do next year?”

Possibly arrange hits on some relatives of mine, I thought. “Stay here,” I said.

“That’s cool. I’ve already gotten into NYU so I’ll be in the city, too! We should totally hang out.”

NYU? My mother had gone to NYU. And the thought of stupid Chai Pinter going to NYU filled me with an inexplicable disgust. I knew I should be happy for her. Why wasn’t I happy for her? Chai Pinter was a gossip, but she was a nice enough girl and a hard worker and …

“So, do you think you’ll even bother finishing high school?” Chai asked me.

“I’ve got a tutor. I’m studying for my GED right now.”

“Good for you! You’ll probably ace it. You were always so smart.”

I told Chai I needed to get a drink. I walked across the room and was immediately accosted by Alison Wheeler. “Annie,” she said. “So, I guess you know that I wasn’t the rebound girl after all.” Alison Wheeler was wearing a skintight black dress and yellow spike heels. It was a new look for her.

I laughed. “You two had me fooled.”

She leaned in to my ear. “I mean, I like Win, but he isn’t really my type. You’re much more my type.”

“Oh!”

“Generally, yes. But specifically, I like your friend Scarlet. But Trinity’s so boring and Catholic. I can’t wait to be in college. Anyway, I was just trying to help the Charles Delacroix campaign. That Bertha Sinclair is a monster.”

At least I wasn’t passing my days at Liberty.

“She is, Annie. She’s going to let the water run out, and she’s in the pocket of all the big companies and she lets them pollute and not pay taxes, and she’s totally corrupt. Charles Delacroix isn’t perfect, but … he’s good.” She pointed across the room to Win, who was talking to an elderly woman. “He raised that, didn’t he?”

“I suppose.”

Alison started talking about college because apparently there was nothing else in the world worth talking about. She had gotten into Yale early admission and was planning to study political science and environmental engineering. I felt the same seething jealousy as I had with Chai—yes, that’s what it was—rise up in me. I had to excuse myself again.

I was tired of hearing about all my classmates’ plans for next year. I thought about going up to Win’s room to lie down but when I got there I found it in use. The same with Win’s parents’ bedroom—gross. I went back downstairs. I knew that Win’s father’s office was supposedly off-limits. But I also knew that Charles Delacroix was out for the night, so that’s where I decided to go. I removed the gold cord that had been tied around the door handles and let myself in.

I sat down on one of the leather couches. And then I took off my shoes and lay down. I had just about dozed off when someone came in.

“Anya Balanchine,” Charles Delacroix said. “So we meet again.”

I struggled to sit up. “Sir.”

He was wearing a red plaid flannel bathrobe, and he had, indeed, grown a beard. The combination made him look a bit like a homeless person. I wondered if he was going to throw me out of his office, but he didn’t.

“My wife insisted on throwing this blasted party,” Charles Delacroix said. “Now that I am unemployed, my opinions carry less weight than I would like. It is my hope that this infernal affair doesn’t last long.”

“You’re being ridiculous. It’s a birthday party. It’s only one night.”

“True. Little things do seem to weigh more heavily on me these days,” Charles Delacroix admitted. “Look what a wonderful time you appear to be having.”

“I like having your son to myself.”

“That’s the reason you broke into my office?”

“Moving a cord is not breaking in!”

“You would think that. You’ve always had—how to put this?—a flexible attitude toward the law.” I was reasonably sure that Charles Delacroix was teasing me.

I told him the truth—that I was tired of hearing my peers talk about their plans for next year. “You see, I am plan-less, Mr. Delacroix. And you must admit that you had some part in my current situation.”

Charles Delacroix shrugged. “A resourceful girl like you? I bet you have a move or two up your sleeve. Avenging your brother’s death and such. Taking the reins of your chocolate empire from the incompetents who currently run it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Come now. Did I hit upon a sore subject?”

“You owe me an apology, Mr. Delacroix.”

“Yes, I suppose I do,” he said. “These months since we last saw each other have undoubtedly been worse for you than for me. But you are very young, and you’ll recover. I’m old, or at least middle-aged, and the scent of failure clings longer to people in my time of life. And despite my machinations—and mind you, it was never anything against you—you and Win are still together. You’ve won, Anya. I’ve lost. Congratulations.”

Charles Delacroix sounded bitter and hopeless, and I told him so.

“How can I be anything but? You met my successor. How did your release go down? Were you required to grease the wheels or did she just take her pleasure from humiliating me one last time?”

I admitted that wheels had been greased. “Do you know what she said about you?” I asked.

“Only awful things, I suppose.”

“No. She said that her campaign kept hitting the story of Win and me because of how much it bothered you. The voters, she thought, cared much less about the matter than you did.”

Charles Delacroix was silent for a while. He furrowed his brow and then he laughed. “Possibly. It’s a good lesson come too late. So, where were you all these months anyway? Somewhere that was good for you, I see.”

I told him I couldn’t tell him that. “Someday you might use it against me.”

“Anya Balanchine, we have always been candid with each other. Don’t you know that I am nothing but a declawed tiger now?”

“For now, you are. But even a declawed tiger still has teeth, and I’m not counting you out yet.”

“That’s very kind of you,” he said. “Aren’t you angry at me for throwing you back in Liberty? Or have you just buried your anger deep inside the caverns of that ludicrously girlish heart of yours and one night I’ll go to bed and there’ll be a horse’s head in it?”

“I like your wife and son too much for that,” I said. “I have a long list of enemies, Mr. Delacroix. You’re certainly on it, but you’re nowhere near the top.” I paused. “You know everything: What do you know about Sophia Bitter?”

Charles Delacroix furrowed his brow. “Your cousin Mickey’s newish wife.” He shook his head. “German, I think?”

“And Mexican.” I asked him if there was any chance she was on his list of suspects for the Fretoxin poisonings.

“No. We suspected it happened at the manufacturing level, that it was someone outside the United States, but I wasn’t able to allocate the resources to investigate beyond New York let alone outside the country. And then your cousin so conveniently confessed.” Charles Delacroix rolled his eyes.

“You knew it was a lie?”

“Of course, Anya. But, for a variety of reasons, it was worth it to me to be able to close the books on the poisoning. Also, it gave me an excellent excuse to put away Jakov for a long period of time. He did shoot my son, I’m sure you’ll recall.”

I did.

“I’m sentimental, what can I say?” Charles Delacroix poured himself a drink. He offered me one, but I declined. “So, Sophia Bitter. I take it you think she arranged the poisoning. Seems like a reasonable enough guess. Her foreign interests coupled with excellent access to your family’s business by way of her, at the time, fiancé.”

I paused. “I think she killed my brother and tried to kill my sister and me, too.”

Charles Delacroix took a good, long swig, and then poured himself another drink. He considered me for a moment. “When we’re young we think everything has to be wrapped up in a month. But you should take the long view on this one. Before you make a move, be sure, Anya. And even once you’re sure, tread carefully. And remember you don’t have to do what they expect you to do.”

But that was the problem. It was impossible to be sure. “How can I be sure? I’m surrounded by liars and criminals.”

“Ah, that is a dilemma. If I were you, I’d put the question to Sophia Bitter directly. See what she says.”

Seemed like good enough advice. “I like you better when you’re not plotting against me.”

At that moment, Win opened the door. “Dad.” He nodded toward his father. “Annie,” he complained, “I haven’t seen you the whole night!”

“Anya,” Charles Delacroix called as I was leaving, “come visit me again sometime.”

Win grabbed my hand, and we went back out to the party. “What was that about?” he asked.

I kissed him, and he seemed to forget the question. “Isn’t it nice that we can do that whenever we want in front of whoever?”

“You are a very strange girl,” Win said.

Not long after, Scarlet, Natty, Daisy Gogol, and I took our leave. We were halfway down Win’s street and a third of the way to the bus stop when a dark figure emerged from an alleyway.

“Scarlet! Scarlet!” A voice called.

Natty screamed, and Daisy Gogol got into a squatting position that I assumed had something to do with her Krav Maga training. Suddenly, she sprung up and had her arm around the figure’s neck.

“What the Hell is this?” the figure said. I’d know that entitled voice anywhere. Gable Arsley.

“Oh, Gable, honestly. Just go away!” Scarlet said. “Why are you even here?”

“The guy at the door wouldn’t let me into Win’s stupid party. Like I’m so awful. Win’s father did things a million times worse than anything I ever did, and he’s in there. Can’t bygones be bygones?” Arsley tried to free himself but Daisy Gogol was stronger. “Seriously, Anya, tell your beast to let me go.”

Daisy Gogol looked at me. I shook my head. It was fine to let Gable Arsley struggle a little longer.

“That’s rude, Arsley. Just because Daisy’s stronger than you doesn’t make her a beast,” Natty said.

“Shut up, mini-Anya,” Arsley said. “Seriously, Scarlet, I need to talk to you. Can’t we please go somewhere?”

Daisy Gogol released Arsley as it had become all too obvious that we knew him.

Scarlet shook her head. “We can talk at school, Gable.”

“Please! Give me one minute alone. One minute without your bloody entourage. I’m desperate here. I’m going to do something crazy!”

“Anything you have to say to me you can say in front of them,” Scarlet said.

Gable looked from me to Natty to Daisy Gogol. “Fine. If that’s the way it has to be. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything. You have no idea how sorry. I wish I’d never taken those stupid pictures. I wish I could go back in time and do everything over again because I’m such an idiot.”

“That’s true,” I added.

Gable ignored me. “But if I had to be poisoned and lose my foot just so I could meet you for real and fall in love with you, I’d do that again. You’re perfect, Scarlet. You’re freaking perfect. I’m awful. I do horrible things. I’m mean-spirited and vile.”

“Also, true,” I said. But no one was paying attention to me.

“Please, Scarlet, you have to forgive me. You have to let me in. You have to let me help raise our baby. You have to. I’ll die if you don’t let me.”

I could not believe that this was Gable Arsley. He sounded like a girl. (NB: By saying this, I meant no offense to girls—I counted myself among their number, after all.) I very much wanted to look away from this pas de deux but I couldn’t.

Gable was getting down on one knee. It was an awkward maneuver because of his prosthetic foot. Scarlet inhaled sharply. “Get off the ground, Gable,” Scarlet ordered.

He ignored her. He began to reach into his pocket, and I knew what was going to happen. “Scarlet Barber, will you marry me?” The ring was silver and looked like a piece of twine tied into a bow.

I wanted to say, She will not. Of course she will not. But I didn’t say anything.

“Last time, you said I couldn’t be serious because I didn’t bring a ring. This time, I came prepared,” Gable continued.

Scarlet exhaled loudly. “Gable, go away. This isn’t funny or romantic. It’s just”—she paused—“sad. I can’t love you ever again.”

“But why can’t you?” he whined.

“Because you really are awful. I thought you had changed but I was wrong. People like you can’t change. You were awful before the poisoning and you’re still awful. You sold pictures of my best friend—”

“But that wasn’t you!” Gable insisted. “That was her! I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

Scarlet shook her head. “Annie is me. Don’t you know that? Please, Gable, just go. It’s nearly eleven and I don’t want to be out past city curfew.”

Gable moved to take Scarlet’s hand, but Daisy Gogol wedged herself between them. “You heard the lady,” Daisy said, and then she growled at him like a bear.

On the bus, Scarlet and I were sharing a two-person row, and Daisy and Natty sat a couple of rows behind us. I had thought that Scarlet was sleeping as she had her head leaned against the window and hadn’t said anything the entire trip. Three stops from my apartment, I heard a series of sniffles.

“Scarlet, what is it?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “Hormones maybe. Ignore me.” I had a handkerchief in my bag so I gave it to her. She blew her nose for half a city block. She paused and then she did it again. “I am so gross,” she said. I told her she wasn’t but I could tell she wasn’t listening to me. “Oh Annie, what am I going to do?”

“About what?” I asked.

“I haven’t wanted to bother you with any of it, because obviously, you have problems of your own. But everything is a complete disaster!”

The disaster of my best friend’s life broke down in the following way:

1. Her parents were Catholic so there had been no question about her keeping the baby, but Scarlet wasn’t even sure she wanted a baby.

2. Her parents were saying they didn’t want to pay for college (“And certainly not drama school!”) now that Scarlet had tarnished herself so.

3. Her mother really wanted her to marry Arsley and was threatening to throw her out of the house if she didn’t.

4. Drama club wasn’t going to let her be in the photo. (“After everything I’ve done for them!” she said indignantly.)

5. If Scarlet didn’t give birth before graduation, Holy Trinity was saying they weren’t going to let her walk at commencement.

6. Arsley was harassing her constantly about getting back with him and she feared that he was wearing her down.

Here, Scarlet sighed.

I was trying not to be selfish, to think of things from Scarlet’s point of view. I suggested that maybe she should get back with Arsley, if she still liked him.

“Annie, I loathe him! I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.” She paused. “I’m starting to believe that I really am the stupidest girl in the world.”

“Scarlet, don’t say that!”

“It’s true. Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I’m so puffy and disgusting I have to turn away. I think, ‘Scarlet Barber, you have done nothing but make horrible mistakes for the past year.’”

I told her that I had had the same thought about myself not that long ago.

“But I’m a million times worse than you! Because you had all of this thrust upon you. And I did this to myself.” She paused. “I do hate Gable, but the thing is … The sad, awful, ridiculous truth is, I’m lonely. I’m so alone, Annie. And Gable sometimes feels like the only person in the world who is even a little pleased to see me.”

I put my arm around her. “For the record, I’m always happy to see you,” I said. “And if the worst happens with your parents, you can always come stay with Natty and me. You and the baby.”

Scarlet planted a kiss on my cheek. “Really, Annie? Do you mean it?”

“Of course. That’s the best part of having no parents or even a guardian. I make the decisions now. You do run the risk of being an innocent bystander in a violent crime. But we have more than enough bedrooms.”

“I hate it when you’re morbid,” Scarlet said. “And I suppose I’m just surprised to hear you say that. You’ve always been so private. Even from me.”

I had recently come to the realization that that wasn’t the best method for living. “Nana used to say that ‘family takes care of family.’ And you are my family, Scarlet. Much more so than that band of criminals I’m blood-related to. We have been best friends since the day we were made to sit alphabetized in Miss Pritchett’s class—”

“Balanchine, Anya. Barber, Scarlet.”

“Natty and I love you. Leo loved you, too—”

Scarlet put her hand over my mouth. “Oh, please, please, please stop! I don’t want to cry any more tonight. I’ve existed in a permanent state of tears for the last two years.”

The bus arrived at Scarlet’s stop. Between the combined volume of her skirt and belly and the height of her heels, Scarlet was having trouble getting up out of the seat. I stood and offered her my hand.

Late that night, after the party, Win came over to the apartment. We’d just seen each other but I suspect his main reason in coming over was because he could—he was now officially over eighteen, which meant that city curfew didn’t apply to him. We went into my room, so that we wouldn’t wake Natty, who had already gone to bed. We were both hungry but there wasn’t much to eat in the house. Win noticed the mongrel bar of chocolate on my dresser. “What’s this?”

I told him I had bought it in the park. “You can have it if you want but it might be terrible.”

I went into the kitchen to get water. For a second, the tap wouldn’t start running and an awful breathy banging sound came from the pipes. I wondered if this would be the day the water ran out. But, finally, the water started.

When I got back to my room, I found Win studying the chocolate. He had taken off the jacket, and he was holding out the gold foil–wrapped bar. “Look, it’s not Balanchine,” he said. “The paper looks like it is, but underneath it’s something else.”

“Yeah, I thought that might happen,” I said. “I bought it in front of Little Egypt. The jacket was off, so I thought it would probably be some generic brand underneath.”

“It’s not generic.” Win held out the foil-wrapped bar so I could read it: BITTER SCHOKOLADE, HERGESTELLT FÜR BITTER SCHOKOLADEN GMBH, MÜNCHEN.

“At the funeral, someone was saying that they were the perennial fourth-place chocolate family in Germany,” I said quietly. “Mickey’s wife’s family actually. You remember Sophia…” Sophia Bitter Balanchine. Sophia M. Bitter Balanchine. Sophia Marquez Bitter Balanchine. The former Sophia Marquez Bitter, who Theo’s oldest sister hadn’t liked. Sophia Marquez Bitter, who had once been engaged to Yuji Ono …

Everywhere I had been, she had been first.

Bitter Chocolate under a Balanchine wrapper.

Who would have had the ability to orchestrate supply-wide poisoning?

Who would have had the ability to execute a three-country hit?

Who would Yuji Ono have protected over me?

I dropped the bar on the floor. Because it was thin and stale and cheap, it broke into several pieces.

It was obvious. I had been so stupid.

Again.

I had to sit down.

“Annie, are you all right?” Win asked.

I was about to lie: to tell him I wasn’t feeling well and that I’d see him tomorrow; walk him to the elevator; then, I’d go back into my room, close the door, and puzzle this out alone. But the truth was I hadn’t done that well with this method—that is to say, solitude. Win knew plenty of appalling things about me, and he was still here.

I took a deep breath. “What if Sophia Bitter was the one who arranged the Fretoxin poisoning? That was about the time she came to New York to marry Mickey. And Theo’s sister says that Sophia was once engaged to Yuji Ono.”

Win nodded. “But Jacks confessed to it, didn’t he?”

“No one really believes he did it, though,” I said. “I think someone in the family convinced him to confess because he was going to jail for shooting the district attorney’s son.”

“Right, him,” Win said. “He who thought he was going to prom. Him.”

“Him—you.” I paused to kiss him on the mouth. “The point is, Jacks would have had to go to jail either way. So it could have just as well been someone else.”

Natty came into the kitchen. She was wearing her pajamas and rubbing the sleep out of the corners of her eyes. “If Bitter Chocolate is really the fourth-place chocolate company in Germany,” Natty said, “maybe Sophia thought she could improve their standing by expanding the business into America. Listen—she marries Mickey, just to get close enough to destroy the Balanchines. Or at least, to take over the business herself.”

“When did you wake up?” I asked her.

“Now. You two are loud. Hi, Win,” she said.

“Natty, my gal,” Win greeted her. “The question is, did Mickey help her, or will this be news to him, too?”

“And also, did she arrange to have Leo killed?” Natty added. “And did she try to kill Annie and me?”

“Aside from Yuji Ono, I think she was the only one who had the reach to arrange such a hit,” I said.

Natty sighed.

“What are we going to do?” Win asked.

We. It was presumptuous of him, but I felt better all the same. “I’m not sure yet,” I said. If she really was the one who had killed Leo, I might need to do some very hard things. But like Charles Delacroix had said, first I needed to make sure. And I needed to find out who her conspirators had been. Also, while it was pleasant to have Win and Natty to go over things with, I wasn’t ready to admit to them that I might need to kill someone. “I’m going to visit Jacks,” I said. “He might have some information and he’s been bothering me to come see him for months.”

I kneeled down and picked up the broken pieces of the Bitter Chocolate bar and threw them into the trash. I took the gold-foil wrapper. I was about to put it in my pocket when Natty took it from me. She folded it in half so that it was squarish and then she folded it several more times. When she handed it back to me, the paper had taken the form of a small, gold dragon.

“Hey, where’d you learn that?” Win wanted to know.

“Genius camp,” she told him.

So you see, I thought. It hadn’t all been for nothing.