Chapter Nine - Ixion
She creeps out of the powder room like a frightened mouse. Or a small child making her way through a haunted house, knowing someone is going to jump out at her, just not when.
I never liked haunted houses. I don’t see the point in knowingly scaring the fuck out of yourself, acting like a dumbass the entire time you’re in there, and then patting yourself on the back when you come out because… because what? You made it through fake shit, screaming like it’s real, and didn’t die when it was over?
Please. There’s enough real scary shit in the world to go around ten times, no one needs to make it up. Society is really on a downward spiral, if you ask me. Making it through a haunted house is the kind of stuff we’re calling courage these days.
Movement on the large screen in the middle of my semi-circular control panel brings my attention back to Evangeline.
She’s inching her way down the hall. Going so fucking slow, I just want to turn on the microphones and scream at her to hurry the fuck up. I mean, how slow can a person walk? How timid can one woman be?
A momentary flash of shame washes through me, because I know damn well how timid women can be. And why.
She glances up at one of the hallway cameras just as I think that thought. Eyes still covered by her ridiculous dark sunglasses. Cheeks blotchy red. Sweat pooled on her upper lip.
I place my hands on the console table and lean in to see her better.
Jesus Christ. She’s almost hyperventilating. Her chest is rising and falling so fast, she must be making herself dizzy.
She lowers her gaze and continues to inch down the hallway until she’s standing in the open double doors of the main ballroom, which has been turned into sort of a grand receiving area.
My family home has one of each. The ballroom is empty most of the time. Just a sad, open room with extravagant wood floors and tall rectangle windows with sheer curtains, much like these, that pool down onto the floor and always made me think of how much dust they must collect.
And our receiving area looks more like a men’s club than a living area. Large wing-back chairs upholstered in soft leather and seams held together by large brass nailheads.
This house is smaller than ours. And really, who needs a ballroom? So Jordan—or whoever the fuck owns this place—has turned it into a formal living area. A place to talk with guests and be served afternoon tea, and just generally be ostentatious.
She scans the room, looking for something, but then gets distracted by the ceiling.
I don’t blame her for that. It is a nice ceiling. But a few moments later she snaps out of her awe when she finds the cameras.
She mumbles something which I can’t understand and will have to replay later, and then moves on towards the kitchen.
Same shit in there. She looks around. Perhaps impressed, perhaps not. I mean, she is Evangeline Rolaine, right? I think this is a pretty cool mansion, but does it impress me? Are you fucking kidding? This might as well be the children’s playhouse compared to what I grew up in.
She was quite the little worldly globetrotter as a child. She played for Saudi princes and the Queen of England. I bet she’s seen her share of swank.
But she touches things in there. The red knobs of the stove. The smooth, cold countertops. The dark gray cabinet doors. Perhaps picturing herself living here. Or maybe comparing this place with hers, the way I’m doing with my own family dwelling.
She looks around, again, like she’s searching for something, then backs out into the hallway, like she’s reluctant to leave.
I wonder if she cooks?
It’s been a long time since I had a home-cooked meal. I literally cannot remember the last time I didn’t grab food from a restaurant.
Her steps are quicker now. Still tentative, but less so than before she entered the kitchen.
And that’s when she stops.
My smile is automatic. Because this will be the room she falls in love with.
She reaches for the double doors, pulls them both open at the same time, and then…
Stunned silence as she takes it all in and then… and then she sees what I’ve been wanting her to see since I first discovered it myself.
I grin wide. Because I was right. This room will…
She walks in, hand over her chest, that terrible fast breathing making her sound like a panting dog, and stops next to a yellow velvet couch, reaching for it, like she might fall over.
“Can it…” but that’s all I catch as she begins to mumble out a constant stream of words.
She rushes towards the violin in the corner. It’s a beautiful violin. Soft, subtle shades of red. Ebony-black knobs. The strings look silver in the dim light filtering through the long, sheer curtains.
She gets about a foot away and stops, her head shaking back and forth. No, that shake says. No. And then she backs away from the instrument. She trips over the rug, bumps into the arm of a couch, and falls to the floor.
No. That’s not what happens. She crumples to the floor.
I lean in again, trying to see more than the camera allows. “What the fuck are you doing?” I ask the screen.
It only takes me a second to realize she’s crying. This chick is seriously disturbed. Flat-out fucking crazy. I sit down in my chair to watch—because that’s my job—and grab a pen and piece of paper sitting off to the side for notes.
Jordan didn’t ask for notes, but it’s just part of my process. I’m not normally so… uninvolved in the surveillance process. I typically work with husbands—or wives—who think their wives—or husbands—are cheating on them. Occasionally I work for parents concerned about a teenager. Or some rural sheriff’s department that doesn’t have the right resources. Which was how I ended up in Wyoming last month and just… never left. And even the side jobs get notes. It’s the least I can do for those women.
“Why do you do it?” Jordan asked me that a couple years ago. He called me on Christmas. Why? I have no idea. We hadn’t talked in years. No one died. Nothing to report. Just a fucking out-of-the-blue phone call. “You’ve got more money than God. You could buy any house you want. Hell, dozens of them. Get a fucking yacht, private jet. And if there’s such a thing yet, a spot on the next space shuttle to the moon, or Mars, or wherever the fuck people book tickets for in space.”
My answer… “There’s no space shuttle anymore.”
To which Jordan responded with a grunt.
And that was the end of that.
He hung up and never called back.
No, he just showed up to bail me out of jail couple weeks ago.
Because he needed you, that nasty voice in my head says.
I rationalize that internal suspicion. Cameras and shit… I’m just kinda good at it. I don’t have to think about it. I know where to put them, how to set up a control room, how to keep busy as you watch so you don’t get bored. I have regular cameras too. With those long zoom lenses. Sometimes I just sit in a car, or a van, or a fucking U-Haul and take pictures.
And I like compiling data. My clients don’t ask for it, but I give them all a little report at the end. Assign motive to certain actions, put pictures in chronological order so they make sense, and bind it all up with brass brads and a plastic cover sheet with their case number on it. (Plus a coupon for ten percent off their next order. It’s got little dotted lines and a miniature pair of scissors around the words, letting them know they should cut it out and present it to me. They never do that. But I try.)
My phone buzzes on the console table next to me. I glance down at the screen, which says Number Unavailable, and answer out of sheer curiosity alone.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Ix,” the woman says on the other end of the line.
“Who’s this?” I ask back.
“Chella.” She laughs. “Remember? Saw you the other day and—”
“How’d you get my number?”
“Jordan. But that’s not why I’m calling. I’m having this thing next month.”
“Thing?” I ask.
“Yeah, I told you I own that tea room next to the place that used to be the Club?”
“Right.”
“Well, I’m having a thing and you’re coming. We should catch up.”
“Nah,” I say, my eyes darting back to Evangeline on the screen. She still hasn’t moved.
“Good,” she says. Like I just said yes instead of no. “It’s Saturday, February fourteenth at three o’clock.”
“Isn’t that Valentine’s Day?”
“Right! Bring your lady friend, OK? She’s so interesting and I’d really like to meet her.”
“Chella, I’m fucking working. I can’t go to your thing. And she’s not my lady friend, she’s my fucking… client.” Which isn’t really true. Jordan is my client. But I don’t have another word for her.
“I’d love to hear her play. Can she bring her violin?”
“She doesn’t like people watching her. She won’t even go outside, OK? There’s no way in hell she’s gonna show up at your tea party.”
“Perfect,” Chella says. “See you then.”
I just stare at the phone once the call ends. That chick is fucking weird.
I’m not going to her thing. Even if I wasn’t working, I wouldn’t go. Chella, and Jordan, and this city, and… fucking childhood bullshit. I mean, I haven’t seen Chella Walcott—Baldwin, whatever—since she was like nine years old. And now she’s suddenly calling me up like we’re old friends?
We weren’t old friends. She disappeared to… wherever the fuck her crazy parents took her, and I got left with Jordan. And…
Fuck!
Why the hell did I take this job?
Because Jordan bailed me out of jail, I rationalize.
But that’s not even true. I didn’t need bail money. I didn’t call him for help. And if I’m being totally honest here, I would’ve stayed in that cell until my court appearance, then pled guilty, and happily served my time.
It would’ve been like a vacation to me.
Because you’ve got nothing better to do, Ixion. That’s why.
Yes. That right there is the truth.
I have absolutely nothing better to do than sit in this stupid basement and watch some psycho fall apart because people might look at her.
Of all the stupid things I’ve heard in this life, this is right up there with I deeply apologize for my inappropriate actions and I’m seeking treatment for my sex addiction.
I stare at the screen. Willing her to get up and do something so I can stop thinking about my life and go back to feeling sorry for someone else.
The minutes tick off. She stays there, all crumpled up on the rug, playing with a string, or a piece of lint, or whatever the fuck she’s rolling between her fingers. And she’s chanting something. Like a poem, or a song, or something like that. I can’t really hear it, the microphones in that room aren’t the best. And I try to find a good angle to see her lips to try to read them as she mumbles. But it’s no use. Her long hair is mostly covering her face.
I’m a bird… in a song… and the wind…
Fuck, I don’t know what she’s saying. It’s a nursery rhyme, maybe?
Eventually she stops playing with the lint ball, and her lips stop moving, so the chant is over, and then one side of her stupid sunglasses falls away from her face and I see that she’s sleeping.
Guess I won that bet, right?
Too bad there wasn’t money riding on it.
Like I need the money.
Like the bet was with someone other than myself.
Like… I really need to get out more.
Sometime over the next several hours, she rolls over and grabs for a blanket draped over the arm of a couch, and tries to cover herself.
It’s one of those blankets that aren’t good for anything. They’re usually too thin, and too short, and too decorative to have any useful purpose whatsoever.
My mother used to have those things on all our couches when I was a kid. It annoyed me, even back when I was short, that they never covered enough to get me warm.
And then I start wondering if she’s cold.
Of course she’s cold. She’s sleeping in a giant mansion that can’t ever be warm enough because that’s the way of mansions. And she’s on the floor. And that blanket doesn’t even qualify as a blanket, so I press the button for the microphone in that room and I lean in, ready to tell her to get the fuck up and go sleep in a real bed because, you know, there’s like twenty-seven different things to sleep on in this place and none of them involve the floor and… I stop just in time.
Because I’m under strict orders not to talk to her. And if I do talk to her, she’ll know I’m a man, and she’ll freak the fuck out, and then she’ll walk out of here and call her therapist or whatever, and then… fucking jig is up, right?
Ixion and Jordan do what they do best. Fuck people up.
I don’t know where that just came from, so…
I glance over at the notebook, then notice I’m still fucking holding the pen in my right hand, and…
I’ll just write her a note. And quietly make my way up to the library, and place it next to her, and then kick her or something, so she wakes up and finds it.
Good plan, Ix.
So I turn the page in the notebook and think about how to put this.
You’re being dumb. Go to bed.
Probably not the best way to handle it. So I flip the page and try again.
Turn up the heat.
But there’s like six or seven thermostats in this house. That might just confuse her.
You haven’t seen the master bedroom yet. It’s very nice. Go sleep there.
That conjures up a lot of innuendo…
You’re cold. Go upstairs. Find the master bedroom. Get in the bed, cover up, and go to sleep.
There we go. That’s the winner.
I fold it in half, write her name on the front, get up, leave the control room, make my way upstairs, and walk down the hallway to the library.
It’s weird to see her in person after watching her all day. Her body is contorted into some semblance of a fetal position and the blanket is diagonal across her upper body—because that’s the only way it’s big enough to cover anything, and whoever the fuck came up with decorative blankets needs to spend the night in this cold-ass mansion on the floor trying to use one—and she’s… shivering.
I enter the room as quietly as I can, wishing I wasn’t wearing boots, acutely aware that the hardwood floors are ancient and most of the boards are creaking.
But I manage, because that’s how I roll, place the folded piece of paper right next to her softly breathing mouth, and back out the way I came.