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  Mona took a deep breath of it. Yes, it made you feel a kind of craving. Like the time she was riding the bus downtown on one of her escapades, all alone and reckless and loaded with dough, and she’d smelled that delicious barbecue from the bus and actually gotten off to find the place from which it was coming, a little French Quarter restaurant in a ramshackle building on Esplanade. Hadn’t tasted half as good as it smelled.

  But we’re back to food again and this isn’t food.

  She looked into the living room, startled again, as she’d been earlier, to see how Michael had changed things after Rowan left. Of course the Chinese carpet had been taken out. It was all bloody. But he didn’t have to abolish the old scheme of double parlors, did he? Well, he had. Mayfair Blasphemy.

  It was one vast room now, with a giant soft sofa beneath the arch against the inside wall. A nice scattering of French chairs-all Oncle Julien’s to hear him tell it, now tricked out in new gold damask or a striped fabric, wickedly rich looking, and a glass table through which you could see the dark amber colors of the enormous old rug. It must have been twentyfive feet, that rug, to stretch through both rooms as it did, embracing the floor before both of the hearths. And how old it looked, like something out of the attic upstairs, most likely. Maybe Michael had brought it down with the gilded chairs.

  They’d said the only orders he’d given after he came home were to change that double parlor. Put Julien’s things down there. Make it look entirely different.

  Made sense. He’d obviously wanted to erase all traces of Rowan; he had wanted to obliterate the rooms in which they spent their happiest moments. Some of the chairs were faded, wood chipped here and there. And the carpet rested right on the heart-pine floor, thin and silky looking.

  Maybe there had been blood all over that other furniture. Nobody would tell Mona exactly what had gone on. No one would tell her anything much except Oncle Julien. And in her dreams, she seldom had the presence of dream-mind to ask a question. Oncle Julien just talked and talked or danced and danced.

  No Victrola in this room now. What a stroke of luck it would have been, if they’d brought it down too with all this other stuff. But they hadn’t. She hadn’t heard anybody say a thing about finding a Victrola.

  She’d checked out the first floor every time she’d come. Michael listened to a little tape machine in the library. This room lay in stillness, and its great Bösendorfer piano, at an angle before the second fireplace, seemed more a piece of furniture than a thing which could sing.

  The room was still beautiful. It had been nice earlier to flop on the big soft sofa, from which you could see all the mirrors, the two white marble fireplaces, one to your left, one to your right, across from you, and the two doors directly opposite to Deirdre’s old porch. Yes, Mona had thought, a good vantage point, and still an enchanting room. Sometimes she danced on the bare floors of the double parlor at Amelia, dreaming of mirrors, dreaming of making a killing in mutual funds with money she’d borrow from Mayfair and Mayfair.

  Just give me another year, she thought, I’ll crack the market, then if I can find but one gambler in that whole stodgy law firm-! It was no use asking them now to fix up Amelia Street. Ancient Evelyn had always sent carpenters and workmen away. She cherished her “quiet.” And then what good was it to fix up a house in which Patrick and Alicia were simply drunk all the time, and Ancient Evelyn like a fixture?

  Mona had her own space, as they say, the big bedroom upstairs on the Avenue. And there she kept her computer equipment, all her disks and files, and books. Her day would come. And until then she had plenty of time after school to study stocks, bonds, money instruments, and the like.

  Her dream really was the management of her own mutual fund, called Mona One. She’d invite Mayfairs only to buy in, and she’d handpick every company in which the fund invested, on the basis of its environmental worthiness.

  Mona knew from the Wall Street Journal and from the New York Times what was going on. Environmentally sensitive companies were making big bucks. Somebody had invented a microbe that ate oil spills and could even clean up your oven for you, if you turned it loose inside. This was the wave of the future. Mona One would be a legend among mutual funds, like Fidelity Magellan, or Nicholas II. Mona could have begun now, if anybody would take a chance on her. If only the Realm of Adults would open, just one tiny little bit, and let her in!

  Uncle Ryan was interested, yes, and amused and amazed and confused, but not about to take a chance. “Keep studying,” he’d said. “But I must say I’m impressed with your knowledge of the market. How do you know all this stuff?”

  “You kidding me? Same way you know it,” she had said. “From the Journal and from Barron’s, and from going online any time night or day for the latest statistics.” She’d been speaking of the modem in her computer, and of the many bulletin boards she could call. “You want to know something about stocks in the middle of the night? Don’t call the office. Call me.”

  How Pierce had laughed. “Just call Mona!”

  Uncle Ryan had been intrigued, Mardi Gras fatigue or no, but not enough not to back away with another lame comment: “Well, I’m pleased that you’re taking an interest in all this.”

  “An interest!” Mona had replied. “I’m ready to take over! What makes you such a wimp, Uncle Ryan, when it comes to aggressive growth funds? And what about Japan? Don’t you know the simple principle that if you balance your United States stock market investments abroad then you’ve got global-”

  “Hold it,” he’d said. “Who’s going to invest in a fund called Mona One?”

  Mona had been quick on the reply. “Everyone!”

  The best part was Uncle Ryan had finally laughed and promised again to buy her a black Porsche Carrera for her fifteenth birthday. She had never let him forget that from the moment she’d become obsessed with the car. She didn’t see why all the Mayfair money couldn’t buy her a fake driver’s license, too, so she could slam the pedal to the floor right now. She knew all about cars. The Porsche was her car, and every time she saw a parked Carrera she crawled all over it, hoping the owner would come. She’d hitched rides three times that way with perfect strangers. But never tell anyone that! They’ll die.

  As if a witch couldn’t protect herself.

  “Yes, yes,” he’d said this evening, “I haven’t forgotten the black Porsche, but you haven’t forgotten your promise to me, have you, that you’ll never drive it over fifty-five miles an hour?”

  “There you go kidding again,” she said. “Why the hell would I want to drive a Porsche over fifty-five miles an hour?”

  Pierce had nearly choked on his gin and tonic.

  “You’re not buying that child a coffin on wheels!” Aunt Bea had declared. Always interfering. No doubt she’d be calling Gifford about the whole idea.

  “What child? I don’t see any child around here, do you?” Pierce had said.

  Mona would have kept things going on the mutual funds, but it was Mardi Gras, people were tired, and Uncle Ryan had been drawn into a bottomless pit of polite conversation with Uncle Randall. Uncle Randall had turned his back to her, to shut her out. He’d been doing this sort of thing ever since Mona had gotten him into bed. She didn’t care. That had been an experiment, nothing more, to compare a man in his eighties with young boys.

  Now, Michael was her goal. To hell with Uncle Randall. Uncle Randall had been interesting because he was so old, and there is a way a really old man looks at a young girl which she found very exciting. But Uncle Randall wasn’t a kind man. And Michael was. And Mona liked kindness. She’d isolated that trait in herself a long time ago. Sometimes she divided the world between kind and unkind-fundamentally speaking.

  Well, tomorrow she would get to the stocks.

  Tomorrow, or the next day, maybe she’d work up the actual portfolio for Mona One, based on the top stock performers for the last five years. It was so easy for her to be carried away, with visions of Mona One becoming so large she had to clone it wit
h a second mutual fund called Mona Two and then Mona Three, and traveling all over the world in her own plane to meet the CEOs of the companies in which she invested.

  She’d check out factories in Mainland China, offices in Hong Kong, scientific research in Paris. She pictured herself wearing a cowboy hat when she did this. She didn’t actually have a cowboy hat right now. Her bow was her thing. But somehow or other she always had the hat on as she stepped off the imaginary plane. And all this was coming. She knew it.

  Maybe it was time she showed Uncle Ryan the printout of the stocks she’d tracked last year. If she’d really had money in them, she’d have her own fortune. Yes, got to boot that file and print that out.

  Ah, but she was wasting the moment.

  Tonight she was here, with her most important goal in mind. The conquest of the hunk known as Michael. And the finding of the mysterious Victrola.

  The gilt fauteuils gleamed in the shadows, graceful straight-backed chairs. Tapestried pillows lay higgledy-piggledy in the deep damask sofa. A veil of stillness lay over all, as if the world beyond had gone up in smoke. Dust on the piano. That poor old Eugenia, she wasn’t much good, was she? And Henri was probably too good to dust or mop or sweep. And in their midst was Michael, too sick and indifferent to care what they did.

  She left the double parlor, and moved to the foot of the stairs. Very dark up there, as it ought to be, like a ladder to a heaven of shadows. She touched the newel post, and then began her ascent. In the house, in it, wandering, free and in the dark alone! “Oncle Julien, I’m here,” she sang in a tiny whisper. When she reached the top she saw that Aunt Viv’s room stood empty, just as she had expected.

  “Poor Michael, you’re all mine,” she said softly. And when she turned she saw that the door of the master bedroom was open, and the weak illumination of a little night-lamp poured out into the high narrow hall.

  So you’re alone in there, big boy, she thought. Not scared to be in the very room where Deirdre died. And let’s not forget Great-aunt Mary Beth and all the people who saw the ghosts around her when she lay in that very same bed, and who knows what went on before that?

  Gifford had thought it a deplorable decision for Michael to move back into that accursed room. But Mona understood. Why would he want to stay in the bridal chamber after Rowan had left him? Besides, it was the prettiest and fanciest room in the house, the north master bedroom. He himself had restored the plaster ceiling and the medallion. He had polished the enormous half tester bed.

  Oh, she understood Michael. Michael liked darkness too, in his own way. Why else would anyone have married into this family? she thought. Something in him was seduced by darkness. He felt good in the twilight and good in the dark, just like she did. She knew that when she watched him walk in the nighttime garden. His thing. If he liked the early morning at all, which she doubted, it was only because it was dim and distorting.

  “He is simply too good.” Oncle Julien’s words came back to her. Well, we’ll see.

  She crept to the doorframe and saw the tiny night-light, plugged directly into the outlet over on the far wall. The light of the street lamps filtered softly through the lace curtains, and there lay Michael, his head turned away from her, in his immaculate white cotton pajamas, pressed so carefully by Henri that they had a perfect seam down the arm. Michael’s hand lay half open on the top of the comforter as though ready to accept a gift. She heard him take a long, raw and uneasy breath.

  But he hadn’t heard her. He was dreaming. He turned on his side away from her, and sank deeper into a murmuring sleep.

  She slipped into the room.

  His diary was on the bedside table.

  She knew it by the cover; she had seen him writing in it this very night. Oh, it was unconscionable to look into it. She couldn’t do it, but how she wanted just to glimpse a few words.

  What if she just took a little peek?

  Rowan, come back to me. I’m waiting. With a silent sigh she let it close.

  Look at all the bottles of pills. They were bombing him with this stuff. She knew most of the names because they were common and other old Mayfairs had taken them often enough. Blood pressure medicines mostly, and then Lasix, that evil diuretic which probably pulled all the potassium out of him the way it had out of Alicia, when she’d straightened up and tried to lose weight, and three other dangerous-sounding potions that were probably what made him look all the time like he was trying to wake up.

  Ought to do you a big favor and throw this junk in the garbage for you, she thought. What you need is Mayfair Witches’ Brew. When she got home, she’d look up all these drugs in one of the big pharmaceutical books she had in her library. Ah, look, Xanax. That could make anyone into a zombie. Why give him that four times a day? They’d taken Xanax away from her mother, because Alicia took it in handfuls with her wine and her beer.

  Hmmm, this did feel like a very unlucky room. She liked the fancy decorative work above the windows, and the chandelier, but it was an unlucky room. And that smell was in here too.

  Very faint, but it was here, the delicious smell, the smell that didn’t belong in the house, and had something to do with Christmas.

  She came close to the bed, which was very high like so many old-fashioned beds, and she looked at Uncle Michael lying there, his profile deep in the snow-white cotton cover of the down pillow, dark lashes and eyebrows surprisingly distinct. Very much a man, just a smidgen more testosterone and you would have had a barrel-chested ape with bushy eyebrows. But there had not been the smidgen. Perfection had been the result.

  “ ‘O brave new world,’ ” she whispered, “ ‘that has such people in’t!’ ”

  He was drugged, all right. Totally out of it.

  That was probably why he’d lost that gift with his hands. He’d worn gloves most of the time up till Christmas, telling people his hands were very sensitive. Oh, Mona had tried hard to get to talk to him about that! And tonight, he’d remarked several times he didn’t need the gloves anymore at all. Well, of course not if you were taking two milligrams of Xanax every four hours on top of all this other crap! That’s how they’d shut down Deirdre’s powers, drugging her. Oh, so many opportunities had passed by. Well, this opportunity wouldn’t.

  And what was this cute little bottle, Elavil? That had a sedative effect too, didn’t it? And wow, what a dose. It’s a wonder Michael had been able to come downstairs tonight. And to think he’d held her on his shoulders for Comus. Poor guy. This was damn near sadistic.

  She touched his cheek lightly. Very clean-shaven. He didn’t wake. Another long deep breath came out of him, almost a yawn, sounding very male.

  She knew she could wake him, however, he wasn’t in a coma after all, and then the most disturbing thought came to her! She’d been with David already tonight! Damn! It had been safe, sanitary but still messy. She couldn’t wake Michael, not till she’d sunk down into a nice warm bath.

  Hmmm. And she hadn’t even thought of that till now. Her clothes were still soiled. That was the whole trouble with being thirteen. Your brilliance was uneven. You forgot enormous things! Even Alicia had told her that.

  “One minute, dear, you are a little computer whiz, and the next moment, you’re screaming ’cause you can’t find your dolls. I told you your dolls are in the cabinet. Nobody took your damned dolls! Oh, I’m so glad I don’t ever have to be thirteen again! You know I was thirteen when you were born!”

  Tell me about it. And you were sixteen when I was three and you left me downtown in Maison Blanche and I was lost there for two hours! “I forgot, OK! Like I don’t take her downtown that much!” Who else but a sixteen-year-old mother would give an excuse like that? It wasn’t so bad. Mona had ridden the escalators up and down to her heart’s content.

  “Take me in your arms,” she prayed, looking down at Michael. “I’ve had a terrible childhood!” But on he slept as if he’d been touched by the witch’s wand.

  Maybe this wasn’t the night for getting him into bed. No,
she’d rather everything be perfect for the assault. And not only had she been with David, she was soiled from the ground in the cemetery. Why, there were even a few dead leaves snarled in her hair, very Ophelia, but probably not very sexy.

  Maybe it was the night for searching the attics. For finding the Victrola, and cranking it up. Maybe there were old records with it, that record that Ancient Evelyn used to play? Maybe it was time to meet Oncle Julien here in the shadows, and not time to be with Michael at all?

  But he was so luscious there, gorgeously imperfect, her high prole Endymion, with the slight bump to his nose, and the soft creases in his forehead, very Spencer Tracy, yes, the man of her dreams. And a man in the hand is worth two ghosts in a dream.

  And speaking of hands, look at it, his large, soft hand! Now that was a man’s hand. Nobody would say to him, “You have the fingers of a violinist.” And she used to find men like that sexy, the delicate kind, like Cousin David, with hairless chins, with eyes full of soul. Ah, her whole appreciation of masculinity was taking a turn for the rough and the deep and the better.

  She touched Michael’s jaw, and the edge of his ear, his neck. She felt his curly black hair. Oh, nothing softer and finer than curly black hair. Her mother and Gifford had such fine black hair. But Mona’s red hair would never be soft, and then she caught the fragrance of his skin, very subtle and nice and warm, and she bent down and kissed his cheek.

  His eyes opened, but it seemed he couldn’t see anything. She sank down beside him-just couldn’t stop herself, even though she knew this was an invasion of his privacy-and he turned over. What was her plan? Hmmm…She felt such a craving for him suddenly. It wasn’t even erotic. It was all a kind of swoony romance. She wanted to feel his arms around her; she wanted him to pick her up; she wanted him to kiss her; common things like that. A man’s arms, not a boy’s. They should dance. In fact, it was plain wonderful that there was no boy in him, that he was all wild beast in a way some men never would be, very jagged and roughened and overgrown, with skin-colored lips and slightly wild eyebrows.