Invisible Ellen (24 page)

“Then somehow you have to get the police there as it's happening, so they can witness it and stop it. But . . . do it from a distance. Stay away from these guys! Do you understand?”

Temerity picked up the fork, felt for a vegetable and speared it. She munched thoughtfully. “We'll have to wait until they start—”

“Okay, hold on!” Justice came to his feet and reached across the table. “You”—he tapped his sister's hand—“are not going to be there.
You don't work there, for one thing, and this is going to happen when the store is closed, as I understand it. For another thing, you're blind. You don't make the best lookout, or witness, no offense.”

“None taken,” Temerity told him. “Ellen, can you get me in?”

Several possibilities presented themselves. “Sure,” Ellen said. “It would be easier if you were already in the store before it closed, then I could hide you until after. No problem.”

Justice pushed his plate away and let his body fall forward until his forehead thunked on the wooden table. “Great,” he muttered into the grain. “You know that list I have? The one titled ‘stupid things I've done for my crazy sister'?”

With a cherubic smile, Temerity asked, “The one you blame me for?”

“Yes, that one. Add to it ‘trespassing' and ‘vigilantism'—put them right up at the top. That will really round it out nicely.”

“Excellent!” Temerity exclaimed, and Ellen realized that Temerity had been planning all along to get Justice to help them, and her friend had just pulled off what she had heard referred to as a “fast one.”

A glance at her watch told Ellen that she needed to get moving if she was going to get to work early. She thought with longing of the tub upstairs, but it would have to wait.

T
hat night at work Ellen kept an eye on a listless Irena who worked with mechanical dullness, twice stopping in midswipe to slump despondently as though stabbed with a shunt that drained her body of its life force. Ellen knew that posture; she'd seen it before in the second-floor apartment directly across from her. Before the blanket, there had been a man who sat listlessly, staring down at the morbid, vacuous courtyard for endless, almost unblinking hours. A man who, though Ellen watched for signs of animation, never laughed, never spoke, never raised his eyes to the charcoal outline of the city or the sky itself, only sat, his body slumped and abandoned. Then he had disappeared from his bleak perch, and a few days later, the firemen had come and cut the body down. The ensuing occupant had sealed off that melancholy view with the blanket.

When she arrived back at the loft around six a.m., Justice greeted her and asked if they should go and get her cat. They found a cardboard box and drove to her apartment. She told him to wait in the car, but he flatly refused.

She watched his face nervously when they went in. He glanced around, taking in the tiny room and its grubby contents in a single
pass. Though she couldn't imagine Justice being deliberately cruel, Ellen felt a twisting pain in her chest as she waited for the inevitable censure, raised eyebrows, a distasteful twisting of the nose and mouth. But Justice's eyes swept the room with nothing but interest, and then he smiled. “So this,” he said, “is where it all began.”

Mouse trotted up, mewing loudly. His stomach, swinging precariously from side to side, resembled a fuzzy hammock filled to bursting with mashed potatoes. He'd missed a meal and, though he could easily afford to, he was not happy about it. Justice crouched down and scratched Mouse's ears roughly; the mews turned to a raucous purr. Then he scooped him up and dropped him in the box, to which the fat cat objected soundly. Justice shushed him and scratched his head to calm him while Ellen grabbed her laundry bag and gathered up a few items of clothing, the cat food and an unused notebook.

When she was ready, she found Justice standing in front of her shelf of journals. “Is this the writing you were telling me about?” he asked.

Ellen nodded, blushing.

“May I?” He reached out and touched one of the spines.

She felt a frosty finger trail down the back of her neck, but she couldn't refuse him. “I guess, if you want. It's not really interesting to anyone else, probably.”

“Ah, but you forget that I am a student—soon to be a doctor—of human behavior. To me, this collection of recorded history is like the Rosetta stone.”

Ellen sighed, she had no idea what kind of stone that was, and she was too tired to ask right now. Justice pulled out a book, opened it at random and began to read. Ellen felt short of breath, and her scalp prickled with heat as she watched him. A light sort of came on in his
eyes, and his lips began to move as he followed from one entry to another. After a few moments, during which Ellen's face felt so hot she thought she might burst into flames, he looked up at her.

“You,” he said, “have an amazing sense of morality, meaning right and wrong. It's really very developed. Why do you think that is?”

She shrugged, inwardly pleased. “I guess because so many bad things happened to me, so many people were, you know, mean—worse than mean. Sometimes they were really, truly cruel.” She stared at the floor. “I mean, no biggie, it's all okay now, but I knew it wasn't right.” She hoped she was making sense. “I experienced a lot of things that I could feel were wrong, so now I know.” She had never had this confirmed, but it seemed logical.

Justice nodded. “And something else”—he smiled at her with what looked like pride—“you notice things the average person doesn't. You're very smart, Ellen. I don't suppose you know your IQ?”

Ellen rubbed at a stain on the floor with one toe. “I've heard of that, but I've never been sure what ‘IQ' stands for, I mean, exactly.”

He laughed. “It means ‘intelligence quotient.'”

She frowned and looked at her feet. Of course, she could have looked it up, but it had never come up, or seemed important, until now. “Oh. You mean, how smart I am? Not very. I didn't even finish tenth grade. I . . .” She hesitated, unable to find the words to say that the very act of attending school had been beyond her. “I just went to the library and got my GED online. I repeated a grade, so I was seventeen already, and . . . well, independent, you know.”

“IQ doesn't have anything to do with education. It has to do with learning potential and natural intelligence, and you have a great deal of both.” He closed the book with a snap and replaced it on the shelf. “But, of course, we knew that much already.” He ran a finger along
the neat row of spines almost longingly, and Ellen marveled that her simple comments would make him think she was smart. It was a mystery. She didn't know about anything. Then he turned. “All set?”

They went out and she locked the door behind her, as usual. But what wasn't usual was the feeling that went with it. Usually, she closed that door with a distinct reluctance, fighting the impulse to go back in and lock it from the inside. But today, she felt like she was putting the little room away for a while, up on the shelf with those notebooks. It would be here, she would return, but it could wait.

Back at the loft, Runt spotted the box and the hair along his spine, though too long and curly to actually stand on end, got all ruffled. He sniffed at the mystery container and Mouse growled a threatening, ragged tone from inside, a tune he'd sung in his past life on the streets.

“He won't hurt him, will he?” Ellen asked a little nervously.

“No. I'm not sure which animal you're referring to,” Justice said, “but either way, no. Just let them get used to the smell of each other, then we'll open the box.” He set it on the floor and Runt, after sniffing all around the base of it, planted himself on his haunches and stared at the mystery package with zealous interest, cocking one shaggy ear to listen to the sustained
rurr-ur
coming from within. “Besides, if there is an altercation, my money is on Mouse. Runt barks like a girl and runs away from squirrels.”

“But chases buses.” Ellen smiled.

“It's a wacky, ninja-squirrel, dog-eat-bus kind of world in his floppy puppy brain,” Justice agreed.

“Justice? Uh, thanks,” Ellen said.

Justice looked up from where he was pouring another cup of coffee. “For what?” he asked, looking surprised.

“For . . . you know, everything. Letting me stay here.”

“Glad to have you,” he said with a little bow. “And you know I owe you. Twice now. You want coffee?”

“No, thanks. I need to get some sleep.”

“Oh, that reminds me.” Justice opened one of the kitchen cabinets and took down a single key on a tiny violin keychain from a row of hooks. “Here. I'll probably be gone when you wake up. Tem is at rehearsal but she'll be home around five.”

Ellen took it, admiring the tiny instrument and the shiny silver object that meant “permission to enter” in her palm. She had to hide her crooked but wide smile.

She did need to sleep, but there was something else she was going to do first. Ellen went down the hall, up the hidden stairway and into the bathroom. She turned on the water for the tub, nice and hot, then poured in a generous dollop of pearly pink syrup that bubbled and filled the humid air with the scent of roses so strong that Ellen sneezed. When the tub was halfway filled, she hung a towel over the long mirror on the back of the door, took off her clothes and lowered herself into the silky bubbles.

She felt the joy of her muscles relaxing, the luxury of the cushioning water and the utter pleasure of being cocooned, sustained and supported by the cradle rock of the rose garden–scented bath. She closed her eyes and felt her body rise, float and sink with each full breath.

Two hours later, she was rudely woken to find that she'd fallen asleep in what still smelled powerfully like the stockroom of a florist. Her head, lolled to one side, had slowly slipped farther and farther down until her right nostril was an inch above the water, then a centimeter above the water, and finally, contact. She had sucked in a drop with a snort that distributed it liberally into her objecting sinuses, triggering a violent sneeze. The water was still
warm, but only just, and she climbed out, wrapping herself in a towel so thick and plush that she wanted to sleep with it.

So she did, climbing up into the bed and taking the towel with her.

The light was dimming when she woke again, and instead of her customary relief that another day had passed, Ellen had an unfamiliar rush of frustration that she had missed what must have been a beautiful day. She reminded herself that it was Friday and she didn't have to go to work tonight, and that consoled her somewhat.

Ellen climbed from the soft, sweet-smelling sheets and stood for a moment, stunned that she was naked. She could never remember sleeping naked before, and it pleased her to find it liberating. She dug out her clean clothes: a huge black T-shirt and drawstring pants, which, it seemed to her, she had to cinch in more than usual, and some socks, then reached for her shoes but stopped herself.

She remembered the first time she had come for dinner. It seemed like a year ago, and Temerity had worn the mismatched pink and green socks. Ellen rocked on her stocking feet and felt the pile of the carpet beneath her unbound toes. It was so tempting, but . . . no, it felt too exposed. She put on her shoes and went down.

When she opened the door to the main living space, Ellen heard hushed voices speaking. Across the great room, under the far windows next to the grand piano, Temerity sat holding her violin across her knees. Facing her in a second chair was the large man with the cello whom Ellen had seen at rehearsal. They were clearly in an intense discussion of their work and Ellen shied back, watching them through the partially open door.

And then they stopped talking and began to play. The music pulled at Ellen like a crooked finger beckoning her out. She moved slowly, almost against her will, fascinated not only by the melody and the graceful twisting and blending of tones, but by this person,
so ungainly in size and shape, who was yet able to produce such delicate and intricate sound.

Incapable of resisting, she crept out and sank down on the rug behind the high back of the sofa, which blocked the rest of the room from her view. The piece went on for several minutes, and when it finished, she heard someone clapping. And then Justice called out “Bravo!” from just inside the door.

He must have let himself in during the piece, Ellen realized now, and he had been standing there listening, as she had, for the last few minutes. Afraid that her presence would be interpreted as intruding, she started to pull herself up to beat a hasty retreat.

But as she rose, she found herself face-to-face with Runt, who had been napping on the couch. Spotting a familiar face a foot from his, he barked once and panted with enthusiasm at his clever discovery. On the other end of the sofa, to Ellen's amazement, sprawled an excessively languid Mouse. The tom raised his head and hissed briefly at Runt's disruption before laying the burden of his heavy head back on his front paws. Runt nosed at Mouse's backside and whined, earning a second lazy hiss and a lethargic raised paw. The feline's message was clearly
Don't make me come over there
.

“Runt, shush!” Temerity called out.

“That was splendiferous,” Justice said, crossing in now and laying his bag on the counter. “Hey, Rupert.”

The big man mumbled a hello but, Ellen noticed, didn't seem inclined toward social exchange. Encouraged by that, she stood up, smoothing her hair down over the left side of her face, and patted Runt awkwardly with a flat hand while she kept an eye trained on the other three humans.

Justice spotted Ellen and said softly so only she could hear, “You're up!” Ellen saw his eyes cut to Rupert and then back to her, but he
said nothing, thoughtfully shifting his attention back to the two musicians. “Are you guys about done? I was going to order Chinese for dinner. Who's in?”

Ellen nodded to him but made no sound. Rupert offered a clumsy excuse and began to wipe down his instrument, packing it into its formfitting case as gently as if it were a baby going down for a nap. Ellen liked that. She folded herself into the corner of the sofa behind Runt and waited for him to leave.

Temerity was putting her violin away now too. Justice poured a glass of wine and then pointed to the bottle in question to Ellen. She shook her head no. He smiled and raised his glass in a mock toast.

The extra-stout Rupert made his way hastily to the door, where he turned around and spoke without looking up. “I'll see you guys on Sunday night. You're coming, Justice?”

“Wouldn't miss it.”

Clearly a man of great talent but few words, Rupert looked at the floor and rocked his substantial weight back and forth in a nervous, antsy dance. “Well, good night.” He reached for the doorknob, then stopped and patted at his pockets with his free hand. “My keys,” he muttered. From across the room, Ellen could see his face go splotchy red with distress.