I grilled her the same way I’d gone at pretty-boy Josh; was she surprised about Jenny ending up at the bottom of those stairs? Did she have any idea why Jenny was in the dusty-tome section of the library that night? How long had it been since she’d seen her friend?
India just smiled. It was one of those grins that doesn’t quite make it to the eyes.
“You think she was murdered,” she said eventually. “So do I.”
“Any idea whodunit?”
“A guy,” she said. “I’m thinking it was one of her strays.”
“ ‘Strays’?”
“Jen was a collector, Book Boy,” she said, using her finger to stir whatever the sparkly liquid was in her glass. “But, you know that, right?”
That figured. Her life was a warehouse of boxes. She needed stuff to put in them. Stuff. People. Sure.
The songs on the list made even more and even less sense now. It was easy enough linking them up with the people in her life that I knew of but, if this day had told me anything, it was that there were acres more to Jenny Charles than you could see from the front gate.
“Any stray in particular?” I said as the bubbles in India’s glass finally got swallowed. She savored it for my benefit, letting her chest rise and fall in that way that tells anyone looking that the stuff you just drank had a nice kick.
“What do you actually know about Jenny?” she said. My face obviously gave away more than I wanted because she added, “Not as much as you thought, huh?”
No. Between the damned playlist and talking to Jenny’s mother — not to mention India — I realized I might be just as much in the dark about her as everyone else in her life.
“That’s how she wanted it,” said India. “It wasn’t just people she collected. It was clothes. Stories. Music. Puzzles (she was crazy for puzzles). She had at least one of everything, Book Boy. Trust me. She even collected other collectors like you and me.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to link what she was saying up with the thoughts that were swirling faster and faster in my head. Trouble in the Bubble was an understatement. “But what’s—?”
“I’m still talking,” said India, cutting me off. There wasn’t any seduction or mirth left in her voice. “We’ll get back to you in a minute.”
Her glass was empty and she had eaten enough of the little meat triangles. She got up and wafted through a break in the hanging drapes, disappearing into the darkness beyond. I heard some clinking of glass and something being poured and then she was back.
“It was how she kept it together,” she said, standing there halfway between the shadows beyond the curtains and the amber light of the sitting room. “There’re a lot of rules to this life, Book Boy. Where to live. How to talk. Who to sleep with. When. If. Jen kept us all in boxes so she could make the rules. So she could break them.”
“Hidden depths,” I said.
“Jenny was the Grand Canyon,” said India, still not moving from the space between the rooms. “And it wasn’t just the secrets and the control. She was looking for something.”
“Like what?”
“You’re slower than she said you were too,” she said, gliding over to the nest again. “Love, Book Boy. She was looking for love.”
It made sense in a way. If you think your life is a cage you’re going to do what you need to do to pick the lock.
“Stupid,” said India, not bothering to hide her bitterness. “That’s what she was. Just totally, massively poxy and stupid. Like there’s any such thing. Like there’s any point.”
“That the kind of friendly advice you gave Jenny?”
It was a shitty thing to say, but I was sick of her trying to wind me up and even sicker of her succeeding.
So Jenny wasn’t exactly who I thought she was. So what? Who is what they seem to be, really? Who doesn’t have a little Jack the Ripper inside them, right next to their personal Galileo?
So India Pierce thought the world was a pile of shit. Stop the presses. If I had a penny for every rich kid that felt like that, I’d be one.
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?” she said. “Did you give her anything better, Book Boy? Playing her stupid games with the lists and the quest for Music by Total Failures?”
“She seemed happy with it,” I said.
“Yeah,” said India. “You would say that. So sharp. So insightful. So quick.”
“Look,” I said, really heating up. This fencing game of hers stopped being fun in the first ten seconds. I had no idea how or why the guys in her set put up with this sort of shit but, “I’m not one of your party boys, okay, princess? I work for a living.”
“Call that living?” she said softly, still not turning my way. The egg timer in my head went off and I was halfway to the door. “Book Boy.”
“That’s enough of that,” I said. All of a sudden I was back on her side of the room, pushing toward her, toppling the towers of books in my way.
I was the monster now, tearing through Lit City. It wasn’t like I meant to do anything harsh. I didn’t even plan to touch her. I’d just had enough of the Blanche DuBois bullshit.
“My name’s John, okay?” I said, coming up on her. “Cut that Book Boy crap.” My hand was on her wrist before I knew it, pulling her towards me. When somebody’s trying to screw with my head I prefer they look at me. “I didn’t haul my ass all the way down to freaking Babylon so you could play Psycho Word-Association. I’m here for Jenny, okay? Jenny.”
Then, without remembering when I’d actually decided to do it, I was shaking her. India-effing-Pierce of the South Richeston Pierces. She was vibrating in my hands like a kite in a tornado.
I realized what I was doing about five seconds too late. Before I could stop on my own, India’s knee was slamming into my crotch, giving me other things to think about than rattling her fillings.
She sat beside me on the floor, watching me from behind her ropes of thick black hair the way leopards watch anything smaller and slower than themselves.
“Feel better?” she said when I finished unclenching.
“Great,” I said, slowly sitting up. “Thanks.”
“We mostly keep our hands to ourselves around here.”
She sat quiet again for a few long moments. A warm little breeze skipped briefly through the place, making the curtains flutter.
“So,” she said, watching them dance. “About that list.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s on yours?” she said. “Novelty shot glasses or handmade books or what?”
“Music,” I said and then, thinking of it for the first time, “dead music.”
India smiled. It was a pretty little thing, delicate; kind of like that string of pearls your grandmother only takes out on special occasions.
All the songs on the list were done by obscure bands that never went the distance. Even Michael Thomson’s try for a comeback was a dismal failure. Nobody remembered any of them anymore except nutjobs like me and Jenny.
“You get through them all yet?”
“One left,” I said.
“ ‘Epochsy’ by Canto,” said India. Again I must have had trouble hiding my shock. She was giving me the cat’s eyes.
“How do you know that?” I said.
India sort of unfurled to a standing position; everything she did was choreographed for effect. Then she went to one of the towers of books that I hadn’t knocked down and grabbed the one on top.
“Jenny only ever played that game with two people, Book Boy,” she said, returning with the giant hardcover of The Incomplete Lear. “You and me.”
Canto was a girl group. They were pretty good, actually, but they fell into that crack between the end of the rule of the Riot Grrls of the nineties and the rise of Lolita pop.