Higher Mythology (27 page)

“You and I have got to talk,” Dorothy said. She planted her back against the door, blocking Diane’s attempts to pull it open.

Diane retreated a few feet, tossed her head back and stared down her nose in mock hauteur. “You’re extremely pretty. I can see why Keith’s attracted to you. Let me go. I’m leaving.” She made as if to force her way past, but retreated before actually laying hands on the other young woman.

Dorothy sighed and put hands on hips. “Listen, honey, I’ve got a man of my own. I don’t need yours, and believe me, that man is
all
yours. You know it, too, or you wouldn’t be here right now helping him. Why make life tougher for him than you need to?” The blond girl was staring at her as if Dorothy was speaking a language that she could just barely understand, but enlightenment was dawning. “You poor child,” Dorothy said with sincere sympathy, “I can tell you’re so much in love with him that you’d believe any stupid thing you heard about him, right?”

“Yes,” Diane said in a whimper. “You’re absolutely right.”

Dorothy shook her head. “Tch, tch, tch. Don’t you know he’s shown your picture to everybody in this building? He talks about you non-stop. I’ve known about you from Day One. You’ve got to consider the source, you know. You go ahead and tidy up, then come out again. That place is Crazyville out there. We need you. You’re being a big help.”

Kindness from one she thought was a rival was too much for Diane. Her eyes filled up with tears, and she fumbled in her pocket for a tissue. Dorothy walked over to the sink and yanked a couple of paper towels off the roll.

“You know, your boyfriend sat and listened to me cry in this very room not too long ago,” Dorothy said, handing them to her. “What goes around, comes around.” She slipped out of the room and left Diane alone.

Feeling as if she had misunderstood everyone horribly, Diane sat and snuffled miserably until the paper towels grew soggy in her hands. Poor Keith, with so much on his mind, and she had refused to listen to him when he was telling her the truth.

She felt her way blindly out of the lunchroom and found the nearest lavatory. Staring at her red-eyed reflection in the mirror, she resolved to go tell Keith she had been wrong. After dousing her face in cold water, she went out to find him.

Keith spotted Marcy standing on her tiptoes at the end of the hall. She waved at him, then lowered her hand. He nodded, to let her know he understood. The Little Folk were in the building. He glanced around to find Holl, and came face to face with Diane. He goggled at her.

“Diane, I …”

“I need to talk to you,” she said. Her eyes were red.

“This way,” he said, taking her by the hand. He led her toward the conference room, afraid to let go in case she changed her mind about talking to him.

On a Saturday, that part of the hallway was deserted. None of the children, eager to cooperate and act like professionals, had defied the arrow sign in the foyer and gone down to investigate the opposite corridor. Keith started to reach for the handle of the conference room. Diane suddenly pulled back against his grasp.

“I don’t want to go in there,” she said.

As suddenly, Keith felt he didn’t either. It took him a moment to recognize the force of an avoidance charm. The Master and the other Little Folk must be inside. Keith pushed at the substance of the charm. He braced himself against the curtain of repulsion, pushing through by main force of will.

“I don’t want to go in there,” Diane repeated, trying to pull away.

“Yes. You. Do,” Keith gritted out, and they were through. He shoved the door closed behind him, and the two of them were suddenly face to face with the four elves. Politely, the Little Folk drew back to the extreme end of the room, to give the couple privacy.

Keith reddened. “Excuse us,” he said. He dragged Diane across the conference chamber to the closet, pulled open the door, pushed her inside before him, and closed the door. The only light was a thread that peeked in past the doorjamb. It drew a glimmering line down one side of Diane’s face, illuminating a tear drifting onto her cheek from her lashes. Keith pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at it. She took the small cloth from him and clutched it between her hands.

“Everyone’s pushing me around today,” she said miserably.

Keith waited for her to blow her nose.

“Now,” he said in a low voice. “I’m sorry you misunderstood what was happening up here. I tried to explain, really. I’m sorry you were upset with me. It wasn’t my fault.”

“I know,” Diane said. She snuffled. “I hung up on you. I’m sorry, too, but I was so hurt thinking you could go off with anyone else. I’ve been under such a strain, worrying about the children, and then there was that poor air sprite getting killed, and I had a Chemistry exam I thought I blew, and then
he
said you were in bed with somebody else, and well,” she finished in a burst of woe, “I
missed
you down there and it hurt thinking you didn’t miss me as much.”

“But I love
you
,” Keith said, genuinely surprised, “and someday I want to marry you, when we’re both out of school and I can explain to your parents why it wouldn’t be a detriment to have me in the family.”

Abandoning the handkerchief, Diane laughed. She threw her arms around him and squeezed him in a rib-cracking hug. Keith took the opportunity to express the devotion that had been building up for the past weeks of separation, kissing her with increasing ardor.

“Oh, Keith, my parents already like you,” Diane said, managing to get a few syllables out between kisses. “And I love you, too.”

“Ah!” the Maven said, clear across the room from the closet. His sharp hearing had picked up every word of the whispered conversation. He settled back in his chair with his hands behind his head. “
Finally
.” The Master, Enoch, and Tay added their indulgent smiles.

“But Mommy!” a shrill voice announced from the hallway, “that girl butted right in front of me!”

The child’s voice was clearly audible in the closet. Keith and Diane broke apart and looked at each other, feeling guilty.

“Dola,” they said together. They fled out of the conference room and into the hall to separate the two ten year olds, who were circling each other like prizefighters. The parents, each behind their own child, clutched applications and portfolios like cut and patch kits. One girl, round-faced and freckled, confronted the other, smaller and slimmer, but with a long, hollow-cheeked face.

“She pushed in ahead of me first!”

“Ladies, please!” Keith said. “Hey, both of you look absolutely pixie-like, don’t you think so, Miss Landen?”

“Oh, yes!” Diane exclaimed, not knowing exactly where Keith was going, but following valiantly.

“There’s hardly any way to choose between you,” he said in a confidential whisper, hunkering down on his heels beside them and holding both girls’ hands, “so we’re going to turn you over to Mr. Martwick, who’s going to take you right inside for your interview. All right?”

The girls glared at one another, but both recognized the benefits of getting in ahead of the rest of the crowd, even in a joint audition, so they nodded. The horse faced child beamed determinedly, and turned back to her mother to have her rouge reapplied.

As soon as they were ready, Keith marched both children over to Brendan, who was just emerging from the office at the end of the hall. “Mr. Martwick, in the interest of fairness, both of these amazingly fairy-like youngsters have got to be taken in to see our media director
next
, don’t you agree?”

Brendan, uncertainly, grinned at the girls and yanked Keith aside. “What’s going on, Keith? Relatives of yours? One of them’s Gloria Swanson reincarnate and the other one’s the Pillsbury Dough Girl. They haven’t got a chance.”

“They were fighting,” Keith said under his breath. “If you want to keep it from becoming a mob in here, get them in and out as fast as you can. Picture it: five hundred little girls all screaming and crying.…”

“Say no more,” Brendan said, blanching at the mere idea. He took the girls’ hands and escorted them into the office. “Right this way, please.” The parents followed, bestowing smug glances on the other mothers who were still waiting. The door closed behind them.

“Whew!” Diane breathed. Dorothy came up behind them, and winked at Keith.

“Nice work. Nice work on Brendan, too.”

“Thanks for straightening things out for us, Dorothy,” Keith said.

“I’m so sorry for thinking there was something wrong,” Diane said, her cheeks reddening.

“Hey, no charge,” Dorothy said. She floated away from them to take on the next group arriving in the building.

Taking a moment for a breather, Keith went back to the conference room to check in with the Little Folk. They knew now to expect him, so the spell’s substance pushed back before him like a curtain.

The elves sitting around the boardroom table grinned up at him as he came in. He realized that they must have heard his whole conversation with Diane. Feeling foolish, he ignored their expressions. Business was business.

“I’m glad you got here,” he said. “Now we’re ready. You sure she said she’ll be here?”

“I am. I think she’ll be as glad of it as we are,” Holl said.

“The situation has passed beyond her management,” the Master said, regally upright at the head of the table. “She must resolf it, for she cannot continue to lif vith it for any measurable period of time.”

“Good,” Keith said. He retrieved his packet of papers from a spell-jammed file drawer where he’d placed it early that morning. “As soon as she turns Dola over to us, I’m giving this to Paul Meier.”

“What is it?” Enoch asked.

Keith grinned wickedly. “The rope to hang friend Brendan up by his ankles.”

“Oh, give it to me,” Enoch said, holding out a hand. His dark eyes glowed like embers. “I’d be pleased to help any of that woman’s collaborators to hang by any parts that would give them the most pain, after all she’s done to us. I’ll make sure Paul Meier does not read it until the correct moment.”

Keith was alarmed. “Don’t put any compulsions on him, okay? He’s a good guy.”

“I was not,” the elf said, slightly affronted. There was a flash of the old, sullen Enoch Blackhair of the days before he fell in love with Marcy. “It will be on the papers. Your friend will find them irresistible when the woman has passed in and out of the building once.”

Keith breathed relief. “That’ll be perfect.” Another wail erupted in the hallway. “Oops, gotta go!”

“I’m scared,” Diane told Keith on one of her increasingly frequent passes by. “What if they don’t come?”

“They’ll come,” Keith said, exuding a confidence he didn’t feel. He glanced around to see if any of the other interns were looking, leaned over and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. She smiled. Things were back to normal between them—or better. Keith was relieved.

“Hey, Keith,” Brendan called to him, coming out of the office. “They want coffee in there. You want to get some?”

“What’s the problem?” Keith asked, closing the distance. “Forget how to boil water?”

“Hey, they need me in there,” Brendan said. He decided not to argue with Keith. Looking around, he found another potential sucker. “Hey, Sean, you want to get some coffee for the media director? Two with one sugar, one with cream and no sugar. And maybe you could see if there’s some doughnuts.”

“Sure, Brendan,” Lopez said, always willing to help. He strode off toward the lunchroom.

Keith let Brendan go back into the inner sanctum. He didn’t dare leave the corridor again, out of concern that Mona Gilbreth would come while he was away, and he preferred that Brendan wasn’t in the way. He passed, and smiled at, a little blond girl wearing a belted tunic, soft shoes, and a Peter Pan hat. Her shining hair hung down over her knees in braids tied with big bows of ribbon at the ends, and she had huge rouge spots over her sharp, high cheekbones. Her elf ears looked pretty good, very realistic. He got three steps beyond her and did a full double take and turned around on his heel for a full stare. It was Candlepat. She came up and shyly tugged on his shirttail, and he stooped down to speak to her.

“I’ll never forgive you for not knowing me,” she said mischievously, “but look around you.”

Two benches away, her sister Catra sat, dressed in an oversized tent of gauze and crepe, looking very fairy-like but too sophisticated for this kind of thing. Rose’s granddaughter, Delana, with her massed tresses of red, drew eyes to the far end of the corridor from the media director’s office. With a little more careful scrutiny, Keith made out Pat Morgan, wearing a false mustache, pretending to be the girl’s father. Why not? he thought, realizing that he had asked Pat for advice on casting calls, but forgotten in his haste to ask for his help.

“Lee brought us,” Candlepat said, as if reading his mind. “All of us wanted to help bring Dola home, but the ones who look too old,” she preened, knowing she herself looked like an advertisement for the fountain of youth, “stay home and await our success.”

Keith, looking around him and realizing how much of the cavalry was behind him, laughed. The stage, as far as it was ever going to be set, was set.

One by one, the line snaked forward. Some emerged from the Media office with tears in their eyes, others hopeful but bemused. The parents were invariably indignant that they had to wait so long, and scornful that their precious infants were being rejected.

The child professionals, used to lengthy casting calls, were incredibly well-behaved during the ordeal. No one acted out by running up and down the hall, but a few took out their boredom and frustration on the other children, rivals for the single part to be had. Keith wasn’t quite in time to save the child who pulled Candlepat’s long, golden braids. The girl spent the next several minutes chasing an imaginary bee that buzzed around her head. No one but Keith and the other Little Folk could see the enhanced dust mote. The girl was near tears before Keith came up behind Candlepat and gave her a meaningful poke in the shoulder blade. Her response was to turn huge, innocent, blue eyes upward to him, but the bee vanished immediately.