Nevermore

27 The Green Man

They drove in silence.

Isobel stared out her window at the passing trees, the fall colors seemingly neon beneath the gray overcast, and wondered if the plot to deface Varen’s car had been what Stevie had overheard Brad and Mark talking about. She also wondered why they hadn’t done more—though from their inscribed message, not to mention Brad’s ominous pointing, she certainly got the impression that the worst was yet to come.

“Can it be fixed?” she said, finally breaking the silence.

He shrugged, watching the road. “Buff it out. Repaint.”

“Will it look the same?”

“Hopefully.” She thought he sounded doubtful.

Isobel looked forward again. She wanted to tell him that she was sorry about his car. She wanted to say that she was worried, that she didn’t know what Brad was capable of anymore.

But she knew Varen wouldn’t respond. He’d say nothing and she’d be left sitting there, feeling stupid for having opened her mouth. As much as he was different from other guys, he still had that stupid male pride thing.

“What did you see in him anyway?” he asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Isobel’s mouth popped open as though to supply some ready-made reply in her defense. Instead all she could do was utter, “I don’t know.”

He nodded in that way of his, like he had some sort of private understanding about the way the gears in her mind must work. Like he’d expected as much of her. It made her feel small again, and simple, like he was packing her back into that little box of prejudgments.

“I could just as easily ask you what you saw in that Lacy girl,” she said, and leveled a sharp glare at him.

He smiled like he couldn’t help it. She couldn’t believe it. He was actually smiling, teeth and all. Had she ever seen him smile before? No, she realized, because right now, it was such a jarring thing to witness that for a moment it felt as though she was sharing the car with a stranger.

“What?” she said.

“You really made her mad today, you know.”

“Well, does she have a right to be?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his expression sobering at once. “Does she?”

She hate-hate-hated it when he did that. When he turned her every question around and sent her own curveballs flying straight back at her. Folding her arms, she stared out her window again, refusing to play his game.

The car turned off the main road and into a small strip-mall parking lot. Isobel craned her neck to see where they were and was surprised when he parked in front of a storefront, the neon sign reading DOUBLE TROUBLE II.

“Wait here,” he said, unlatching his seat belt and getting out. He shut the door behind him, leaving the car idling. Isobel sat up in her seat and watched him step into the restaurant. She could see him partially through the sun-glared storefront glass as he stepped up to the counter and pulled out his wallet. He must have already called in an order, she thought, as the man behind the counter smiled and handed over a plastic bag. It made her wonder, because she didn’t think he owned a cell phone.

Varen came out a moment later carrying the bag, which contained several cartons of Chinese food. He opened the door and handed the bag in. She took it, the heavenly scent of egg rolls, moo goo gai pan, and beef with broccoli filling the car. Hunger awoke within her. A growl like that of a ravenous dog snarled through her stomach, and it came loud enough that she didn’t bother to humor herself with the hope that he hadn’t heard.

“Hope you like Chinese,” he said, and shifted the car into gear.

They pulled off a narrow street, past a sign that read ST. FRANCIS COURT. The purr of the Cougar echoed as they drove down one side of the enormous court, which was composed of two long one-way streets, a single row of cars parked along each. A large grass median separated the two lanes, while beyond a wide sidewalk, towering Victorian homes stood on either side, facing one another like dance partners preparing to waltz.

“You live here?”

A heavy wind rushed by, causing the leafy heads of enormous, ancient-looking trees to swish back and forth. The sun poked through the clouds, lighting the very center of the court where a huge fountain stood, much larger than the one outside her own neighborhood. Isobel cranked her window down. Crisp autumn air flooded in, chilling her face. She leaned out to get a better look at the fountain as they passed. Water poured from all sides of an enormous green basin, creating a curtain around an elevated base surrounded by graceful swans and solemn-faced cherubs. The rushing water of the fountain created a gentle hushing, the only other sound besides the hum of the Cougar’s engine.

At the very top of the fountain, a statue of a voluptuous nude woman looked down on them as they passed. She held a swath of fabric that clung to the lower half of her body and appeared to billow out behind her in a suspended arc.

The car rounded the fountain and headed down the other side of the court. Isobel turned her head, leaning forward to see through his window. A cast-iron lion grimaced at her from atop a stone pedestal. Two rows of ceremonial-looking gas lamps lined either side of the median, all lit with live flames that flickered within their glass holders. Another gentler brush of wind ran through the court, releasing a flurry of a thousand tiny yellow leaves. They fluttered downward, the light catching on their bellies, lighting them up like flecks of gold.

She knew they had to be in one of the oldest parts of town, somewhere in the historic district. It was a part of the city she’d always known existed, but one she’d never had reason to visit before now.

“It’s beautiful here,” she whispered, unable to decide which window of the car held the best view.

The houses themselves were incredible, each practically a castle in its own right, their facades done up in decorative brickwork and tiling, their fronts accented with small porches, porticos, and verandahs, the perimeters of which were set by carved stone pillars. Some of the homes had balconies, while others had rounded turrets with pointed rooftops. As they passed one gray-toned fortress of a home built completely of stone, Isobel thought she could make out tiny faces set into the facade, their mouths open in an O shape, their eyebrows angled down in fearsome scowls.

“What are those?” she asked, pointing.

“The faces? They’re called ‘green men,’” he said, slowing the car to a crawl so she could get a better look. “They’re a type of goblin or gargoyle. Protectors. They’re supposed to ward away evil.”

Isobel focused on one of the stone faces, which struck her as being different from the rest. While this green man shared the stern and foreboding expression of his comrades, his eyes, large and almond-shaped, seemed to convey more of a silent dare than a ward-away glower. And where the other faces had leafy beards, gaping mouths, and distorted features, this face bore a smooth and almost human look.

They picked up speed again, and Isobel looked away.

“I can’t believe you live here,” she said, shaking her head, unable and perhaps unwilling to mask the envy in her voice. He said nothing as they pulled up to an enormous redbrick home, simple only in comparison to the others that surrounded it. Varen shifted the car into reverse and backed into an open slot on the street.

Isobel stared up at the house. It had three levels, the topmost of which she thought might be an attic. The roof met in a peak there, with a little subroof sticking out from underneath the first, framing a rectangular, three-paneled window crosshatched by white Xs.

A small concrete porch led up to the front door, shaded by a simple verandah, which was itself supported by a row of painted white pillars. The front door, done in an opaque gold stained-glass design, shimmered a satiny dim yellow in the late afternoon sunlight.

Varen switched the car off and got out. Isobel got out too, careful not to tip the bag of food. She watched him over the hood of the car as he stepped back to survey the driver’s-side of the Cougar, frowning. Before she could say anything he looked away, walking to the rear of the car to open the trunk. They gathered their things and headed down the sidewalk, Varen picking through his keys.

“So where are your parents?” Isobel asked as he let them in.

“Out,” he said. “Who knows? They won’t be back until late. Some benefit auction event or something.” As they entered, their footsteps echoed against the polished wood floor. Isobel craned her head, awed at the incredible height of the ceiling. Someone must like old-fashioned boats, she thought, her eyes finding first the model of what she thought might be a schooner, perched on a long hallway table, and then a large painting depicting an old-time ship being tossed around on a stormy sea.

Their footsteps went mute as they sank into plush gold and black carpeting, which trailed all the way up a grand staircase tucked against the wall to her left.

To her right was an open living room area with tall, sliding wooden doors. Inside, a gas fireplace played the role of centerpiece. The walls were lined with shelves decorated with colorful glass knickknacks and more boats. Tall floor lamps with fancy Tiffany-like glass shades accented the space. The lamps especially, Isobel thought, gave the room a very “look but don’t touch” feel.

“You want a Coke?” he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he slipped from the foyer and disappeared down a narrow hallway.

“Uh, sure,” she said. She made to follow, not comfortable on her own, but stopped when she came to a second, larger room to her right. This one was another no-touchy, done in antique gold and soft pinks with hardwood inlay floors, heavy draperies, and fancy old chairs. In one corner, like a squat gentleman in a tuxedo, stood a polished black piano. As she stepped into the room, it felt almost as though she were crossing through a time portal, leaving one century behind for another. She strode toward the piano and set the bag of food down on a low coffee table with spindly legs. She moved to stand behind the instrument, where she let her fingers trail the keys. Picking one somewhere in the middle, she pressed it softly.

The note—out of tune—boomed around her.

Isobel jerked her arm back. Her elbow plowed into the shelf behind her, knocking over a picture frame. She swung around, picked up the photo—and froze when she found herself staring into the intense gaze of a green-eyed, blond-haired boy, ten years old at the most. The photograph, taken from the shoulders up, showed the boy dressed in a gray vest, white dress shirt, and dark blue tie. His gaze seemed to be fixed in an almost-scowl at the photographer, like he was indignant at the idea of having his photograph taken. Faint half circles underlined the boy’s eyes, giving him the look of being prematurely world-weary. Isobel brought the picture closer, searching that small face for traces of the boy she knew.

She started when a set of slender, ringed fingers curled around the frame. Isobel let go and spun, suddenly trapped within those same eyes. Her heart did a triple-step as he gently took the picture from her, reaching across her to place it back on the bookshelf with the others.

“You’re really a blond,” she said, her tone just short of accusatory.

“And if you tell anyone, I will come to you in the night and smote your everlasting soul.”

Promise? Isobel turned back to the piano quickly, shocked that she’d almost uttered this aloud. She distracted herself from the thought by allowing her fingers to ghost over the keys again. “So who plays?” she asked.

His eyes fell to her hand, then to the keys. “Nobody. Like everything else, it’s just for show. It’s not even tuned.”

Isobel pulled her fingers away. No, she thought, there was something more here. Something in the way his eyes had traveled over the piano’s polished surface before turning inward in thought.

“Nobody?” she pressed.

“My mom did,” he admitted, catching her off guard.

“You mean, she doesn’t anymore?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She might.” His eyes returned from their faraway moment, and he handed her a pair of silver forks he must have retrieved from the kitchen. “She left when I was eight,” he said.

She blinked. Was he joking? Sometimes it was so hard to tell. “Then who did I—?”

“You talked to my stepmom on the phone.” He was serious. Definitely no joke.

“Oh,” she said, taken aback. She wasn’t sure what to say. “I—uh, sorry,” she finally blurted.

“Don’t be,” he said. “It was a long time ago.” With that, he picked up the plastic bag of Chinese food and brushed past her to the hallway. “Grab the Cokes, would you?”

When he was out of the room, Isobel let herself breathe while silence descended anew.

She grabbed the Cokes from where he’d set them on the coffee table and left the room, looking back at the vacant piano seat. She found him waiting for her on the stairs, one hand poised on the banister. The Cokes cradled in one arm, the forks secure in her hand, Isobel mounted the stairs.

She climbed after him, the fingers of her free hand sliding along the mahogany banister. Her eyes focused on the upside-down bird on the back of his jacket, and she tried to resist the urge to say something else, to find words that would make up for the moment in the piano room. But there were none, and so Isobel kept her mouth closed.

It was odd, she thought, that this had been the first private thing he’d ever revealed to her. Watching the black wisps of his hair brush the jacket’s upturned collar, Isobel couldn’t help but wonder what had happened—what had caused his mother to leave? In one moment she thought it explained a lot about him, but then, in the next, she thought just the opposite.

“This place has a weird layout, I know,” he said, waiting for her on the landing above. “It’s gone through a lot of renovations. After the Victorian era, it got turned into a nursing home.

Then, in the seventies, it was converted into apartments.”

“It’s huge,” she breathed.

After another short, silent spurt of stairs, they reached the second-floor landing, which gave way to a cloister of rooms. When she saw him mount the stairs again, though, she knew this would not be their stop. They traipsed higher yet. Here the carpet ended, and they tromped on naked wood, the sound echoing through the house. They reached yet another tiny landing, a window stamped into the wall to her left. Isobel quirked an eyebrow at the view through this tiny portal, one that showed her little more than the details of the neighbor’s brickwork.

“How did you guys score a place like this?” she asked.

They rounded one final corner. With an internal groan, she saw that here, the next staircase, set slightly apart, seemed to slant more steeply and grow even more narrow, the individual steps themselves somehow thicker and taller. This staircase reached up toward a single narrow door. The burn in her thighs intensified as they climbed again. Even Quasimodo in his trek to the bell tower couldn’t have had this many steps to climb.

“My dad inherited it,” he said, then added, as an afterthought, “These were the original servants’ stairs.”

“Oh,” she puffed, “you don’t say.” No longer trailing her hand along the banister, Isobel gripped it with her free hand. “You do this every day?”

“Every day I come here,” he said, causing Isobel to pause. She looked up, squinting at his back again as he reached the door and twisted the knob. The door creaked as it opened, and without a backward glance, Varen slipped inside.

“As opposed to where?” she called after him.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Isobel stepped over the threshold into his room, an open space tinged with the scent of stale air and incense. Shadows gathered in pockets despite the room’s two windows, while above her, the ceiling pitched and slanted upward like the roof of a tent. A time-eaten mauve color wrapped the walls.

“As opposed to somewhere else,” he answered. He reached out to the wall beside her, flicking a switch. Light sprang forth from a small chandelier suspended over a narrow metal-framed bed, which had been shoved lengthwise against one wall.

“What, you mean you don’t come home?” she asked. She wanted to be sure she had it straight, that he’d meant the house itself and not just this summit peak of a bedroom.

“I said I don’t come here.”

Isobel shook her head, uncomprehending. “Then where?”

“Wherever,” he replied, adopting that biting tone that warned against any further inquiry.

Isobel pinched her lips together and swallowed her next question. She returned her gaze to his bed and the chandelier, reminding herself that he only ever said as much as he wanted, and never any more. He might have opened the door for her, but only a crack.

She distracted herself by studying his chandelier, thinking that he must have rigged it himself, because instead of normal lightbulbs, there were plastic candles topped with red-tinted flame-shaped bulbs. Also, the medieval-looking chain that suspended the fixture from a hook in the ceiling had been intertwined with black electric cords, which trailed down the wall before snaking out of sight behind the headboard.

There was a tiny gas fireplace in this room too, like the one in the living room downstairs, only this one was simpler, studded with plain white ceramic tiles. Isobel doubted if the fireplace was operational, though, because in the space where any fire might have gone, there were instead several small glass vials, each a different color and shape. They stood gathered together like bowling pins at the end of a lane or like potion bottles in a sorcerer’s forgotten cabinet. Instead of magical elixirs, though, each little vial held an assortment of dried flowers.

Isobel looked away from the fireplace, casting her gaze around at the walls, which were barren except for one black-and-white poster of Vincent Price. The floor beneath her was dull wood and creaky; a simple white throw rug had been laid out beside the bed. A TV-VCR-DVD unit sat on the floor in one corner, connected to what looked to her like two older-looking gaming consoles. The shelves behind the TV, she could see, were stocked with a handful of video games, some of which she thought she recognized from Danny’s endless collection.

There were also, she noticed, several DVDs tucked between the games, titles like Edward Scissorhands, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Donnie Darko. There were other shelves in the room too, all of which seemed to be inhabited by—big surprise—books.

As Isobel drew farther into the room, she passed a folding-door closet and let her fingers brush against the painted white slats. She watched as Varen deposited the food on a simple writing desk tucked beneath a window, one with three vertical panels crosshatched by white X s. Isobel immediately recognized the window as the one she’d seen from outside. The other window was smaller, lower to the floor, and on the side wall near the bed, allowing for yet another stellar view of the neighbor’s roof.

She stopped when she became aware of a pair of cool blue eyes following her. She turned her head to stare at the cat curled on top of his bed, a plump Siamese nestled on the gray comforter where she could have sworn it hadn’t been a moment before. The creature blinked at her slowly, squeezing its eyes shut, then opening them to piercing slivers.

“That’s Slipper,” she heard him say.

“Oh my gosh, he’s gorgeous,” Isobel murmured.

“She,” Varen corrected.

Isobel drew closer to the bed, then perched on the edge, setting the Cokes and forks aside. She offered a hand to be sniffed, per proper cat etiquette, which Slipper snubbed with a turn of her head.

“Don’t let the elegance act fool you,” Varen said, drawing out his notepad. “She farts.”