Vienna (4 page)

“You check for wayward shopping carts?” Justine asked. An old family joke.

“Of course,” her mother answered. “I take care of your father.”

Conversation danced around the trivial. Justine tried to emulate her mother's tranquility. The genes had to be there somewhere.

“What's wrong, Sassy?” Her mother's ability to sniff out sulking was known to exceed the speed of light.

“Nothing major.”

Off the phone and on to a radio promo—which was mental as she didn't speak French or Flemish. Then dinner with Grant at a place serving Lilliputian portions of perfect food. His cell rang three times. He kept each call short, but it annoyed her that he took them at all. Just another lesson from the biz:
show me the most beautiful girl in the world, and I'll show you the guy who's tired of doing her.

I'm getting old.
The thought was darkly funny.

Back at the Cosmopolitan, she watched the BBC for fifteen minutes and went to bed. Grant was on the phone again, talking to someone named Cecile. His fingers drumming on the table next to him. It was a disquieting mannerism from a man who made a conscious effort to eliminate offensive habits. Justine was asleep before the call was over.

She woke to timid knocking. A bleary glance at the bedside clock. Who would be here at freaking five on a Monday morning? Justine pulled herself from bed, careful not to wake Grant.

Too groggy to think, she pulled the chain without checking the peephole. And there was Vienna, direct from Planet Weird. Her face smothered by the ludicrous glasses; her hair at DEF-CON four, tangles flowing from a rat's nest over her right temple. She moved her lips silently, as if reading.

Justine wished for a replay button at the door chain. “How did you find me?”

“Ophiostoma novo-ulmi.”

“What?”

“Your boyfriend is a dobbing poser, yeah?”

“Vienna?”

“He deviseth mischief upon his bed.” Vienna's eyes scanned left to right over blank air. “He setteth himself in a way that is not good; he abhorreth not evil.” Tears falling on her white blouse. She spun on her heel and marched down the hall and around the corner without looking back.

Fine.

Close the door.

Double-check the chain is back in place.

I should call the police.
And tell them what? That a deranged female was threatening her with what sounded like Old Testament brimstone? It was not, as James would say, an actionable transgression. The only reasonable response was more sleep.

When Justine woke two hours later, the incident felt like a sour dream. Down to the gym for Pilates, then to the spa with Grant.

They made love as afternoon faded. Justine knew it was a mistake before they began. She was distracted, Grant's finely calculated moves leaving her anxious to be alone. He didn't notice. Justine let him finish then prepared to ditch him for the evening.

“I came to see you,” Grant protested. “Nothing will be happening on a Monday night.”

“I'll be back soon enough, silly.” She stepped to the bathroom for a final mirror check before takeoff.

“Okay.”

“Just like that?” She grabbed her BlackBerry from the vanity—might need a cab.

“You don't call anyone but me ‘silly.'”

“Oh?”

“I figure it's a sign of affection,” he said. “That's good enough for now.”

Into Brussels's molten copper twilight, lines of gray buildings retouched in sepia. The working girls, so pretty here; a pipe organ breathing diatonic scales; young lovers weaving fingers; blue neon signs over centuries'-old stonework. Seafood steam from street cafés.

She hit the clubs, surprised how they buzzed on a weeknight. Jeux d'Hiver, Fuse, Le Mirano Continental, with its irrationally revolving dance floor. On to Holler, still a hot spot a year after the death of Chadron Hite—whose inspiration for the place (so he claimed) came during a sexual encounter in Palermo. Maybe it was the one that killed him. It made a good story anyway.

By the time Justine reached Holler's stainless steel bar, she was tired of noise and smoke. She sat unfashionably close to the door, waving off advances from men and a few women. Thankfully the Brussels club scene was too self-absorbed to pay much attention to the celebrity behind the fashion. They just wanted the goods. Justine was left alone, nursing a glass of tonic water softened with a splash of gin.

Could I find her apartment?
Justine traced a line through the condensation on her glass. Drops gathered under the streak and trailed down. Why bother? Go to bed and spend tomorrow getting ready for London.

Back into the night. Two random turns left her at the glass-covered mall, its arches of iron straight out of Dickens. It drew her in and left her on a narrow street. A sculpture of a cat on a bicycle waited on the far side, the feline's eyes wide in shock at finding herself there.

I'm not that far away.

Justine crossed the street and put her hand on the cat's garish pink top.
You're like me.
Sui generis. An oddity to note in passing. Look behind you and see the swelling bell curve of normal people.

Dear God, stop whining.

Justine heard static from her grandfather's radio, trapped inside for sixteen years.
Two outs in the bottom of … fair ball … digging for home …

A final pat on the sculpture, then a call to Taxis Bleus de Bruxelles.

She entered her suite quietly, not wanting to disturb Grant. Black heels kicked off, hose removed in a high-stepping, heel-on-toes dance. She padded toward the bathroom. Across the tile floor, she stepped into something sticky and cold. Flashback to her family's Carolina beach house, back when they had cats. Stepping into a hocked-up fur ball during a nocturnal visit to the bathroom. She flipped on the lights over the vanity.

Grant lay sprawled across the floor by the sink. Most of what had been his head blown across the sauna tub. Justine looked down at the congealed blood on her bare feet.

She must have screamed, but afterward she no longer remembered.

 

4

The Monday shift ended at 7:00. Vienna fidgeted. Her coworkers were careless with portions and inventory was always off. She left before she could tell them to be more conscientious. Cecile had told her to stop doing that and she was the boss, having been hired three weeks before Vienna.

Diesel air trapped between buildings was still warm, but cross-street breezes held the coming winter. Justine's poster played to an enthralled crowd.
And upon her forehead was a name written, mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.
Vienna wanted to scratch it down, but couldn't afford to replace it.

She wandered through Lower Town, carried along the tourist stream, hoping the day's melancholy would ebb away because that was another thing her doctors warned her about. She found herself at the city's mascot, a small bronze of a boy peeing. The Manneken Pis stood peacock proud in the failing twilight, backdrop to countless photographs. Vienna wondered how many people knew it was a fake. The real one had been stolen by the French in the nineteenth century. Even that had been a copy of a fourteenth-century work.

Americans loved it, which Vienna figured went a long way toward explaining Justine Am. And there was the depression again.

She left the crowds on Rue de Bouchers, turning down Impasse de la Fidélité. Here was the female version of the Manneken. Jeanneken Pis was carved from a bluish-gray limestone that made her look sick. She squatted in a featureless cubby, locked behind iron bars. An angry scrawl of secessionist graffiti stained the wall to her left. Jenny's fountain was not working, for which Vienna was grateful. There was shame enough in her prison. Shame enough in being sick.

Vienna sighed. Her mind seethed in the alley's silence, thoughts jumping like sparks across frayed wires. Limestone. Calcium carbonate. Calcite, from the Greek word for pebble. Counting pebbles was called calculus. The first true calculus demonstrated the volume of a frustum. The frustum in the Great Seal of the United States of America was of Masonic origin. The earliest Masonic writing extant was the Regius Manuscript, dating from the thirteenth …

The world flowed beneath Vienna's skittering thoughts. Evening slipped into night. She didn't hear the rush of feet behind her. Wasn't aware she was no longer alone until two men grabbed her. She struggled until she caught a glimpse of blue police uniforms. She was hustled into a white and blue car. One of the policemen said something about what rights she had. The siren wailed to life.

Some mistake must have been made. Vienna worked a fingernail between her teeth. Unless … Maybe she had unknowingly witnessed an illicit activity, and the police were whisking her to safety. That happened in books all the time. Given the quality of her recent company, it wasn't even far-fetched. Maybe she would even be a hero and there would be posters of her. They would be better than Justine's posters. Vienna considered possible designs.

The car turned onto a ramp and descended to a subterranean garage.

All things come from the earth, and to the earth they return.

On foot through long hallways to a cube tucked within a glass tower. White walls and four pairs of fluorescents embedded in a tiled ceiling. Vienna sat in front of a desk, opposite a large man with blond hair. She thought he was handsome, but it was wrong to tell policemen things like that. He asked if she wanted to make a phone call, but she couldn't think of anyone to talk to. Then he asked questions in perfect English and made careful notes of her answers.

“Tell me everything you did today, from when you woke until you were picked up by the police.”

Vienna knew from her reading that it was important to get every detail right. Except for visiting Justine's room. There was no reason to embarrass herself with that. “I made breakfast at 6:12. I had two scrambled eggs with chives and eight pieces of cantaloupe from the farmer's market on Place Sainte-Catherine. I wanted to get juice but it was expensive and—”

The policeman rubbed his left temple.

“Do you have a headache?” Vienna asked. “I have aspirin in my purse. Though I don't know where it is now. I would like it back.”

“It will be returned after this incident is cleared up.”

“It's from willow trees.”

“What?”

“Aspirin. First synthesized in 1853 by—”

“Just tell me what you were doing every half hour.”

“Starting every hour? Or some other time?”

“On the hour will be fine.”

“I couldn't always see a clock, so I'll have to guess for some of it.”

“That's fine.”

So she told him what she had been doing every half hour. He didn't tell her what was going on, and she couldn't break his endless questions to ask. But this didn't fit her theory of being whisked away to safety. After an hour, the policeman leaned back. “You will be held until we verify your statement. If it is determined you constitute a flight risk you may be detained for up to seventy-two hours without specific charges. You should make your phone call now.”

“Who should I call?”

“Surely you have a guardian?”

“No.”
Unless maybe my old foster father in London.
There had been some paperwork about that on her sixteenth birthday. Now didn't seem the time to bring it up.

“A close friend?”

“I moved from London four months ago.”

“Then someone in London?”

“No.”

“That leaves the British consulate. I'll let you know their instructions as soon as possible.” He left. Minutes merged into hours. An overweight woman knocked every fifteen minutes to see if Vienna was hungry or if she needed to use the toilet or a bed to lie down. Vienna shook her head, too scared to talk.

Three hours. Vienna slouched in the hard chair and stared at the tiled ceiling. Twelve tiles by fourteen. She saw that a twelve-by-twelve set would hold a progression of differently sized squares up to twelve squared: 1
+
4
+
9
+
16 … It was an old sequence, safe in its familiarity. Then she realized the tiles were textured in six different patterns. Assuming the placement was random, it was possible to further sort the tiles by …

The ceiling unglued itself from the building, flowing to fit the numbers swimming in Vienna's head. The sensation made her want to throw up.

Stop it!

She screwed her eyes shut. Footsteps on the tiled floor outside the door. A sound from years ago. Vienna saw herself in the long, stone hallways of the Cart House. The telegraph click of her shoes as she ran past picture windows. Panes brushed with the rising sun; colored with kitchen gardens and calico cats and butterflies. Out into the Austrian woods with her arms curled around a heavy book. She never went far. She was too scared of ghosts by the lake and Uncle Anson always seemed to know where she was anyway. But she had her book; “CRC” written in gold across the cover. Pages of small print and charts and tables. Inside the book was the one hiding place no one could ever find.

Alone in the police station, she disappeared into it again, picking a page at random.

The preparation of bench solutions of sodium hydroxide as a reagent for analytical applications is a necessary skill for …
The meaningless words closed around her in a numbing fog.

Four hours and twenty-three minutes after she was taken to the room, the door was roughly opened. A man in a black suit and dark gray tie leaned in. He was older, with a taut face and a razor-straight scar in front of his left ear. His steel-colored hair was cut military short, and his eyes were dark as spilled ink. And it was sort of witchy because it was Uncle Anson, just when she had been thinking of him.

He wasn't her real uncle, of course, but Grayfield wanted Vienna to call him that. Uncle Anson was the first one who took her to the Cart House. Showed her a path through the forest to a lake where pagan girls drowned themselves for their goddess. Vienna wasn't sure that really happened, but if it had, the forest had to be filled with ghosts. Even if she really didn't believe in ghosts.