The point is: coffin nails, check. Coffin, check. Crazy one-eyed Imrich and his bar cronies ready to take hold of pretty boy here and introduce him to the satiny interior of a hexagonal box?
Check.
Me, able to participate? Not check.
Any other night. Any. Other. Night. But tonight is not for vengeance. I take a deep breath. It’s for a dazzling.
I do not look to the window. I so strenuously don’t look to the window that my neck feels turned to concrete. I’m dying to know what’s going on with Mik, but I don’t want Kaz to catch me looking. He could mess everything up. I’m on a carefully calibrated schedule here.
Has Imrich brought Mik’s tea yet? That’s the plan. Pestilence – Karou’s and my table, tucked under the giant equestrian Marcus Aurelius statue – was to be kept clear by a RESERVED sign, the angel puppet sitting there with its legs crossed on the velvet settee, and when – if – Imrich saw a guy come in and sit there, he was supposed to bring him a tea tray. Mik’s last clue will be tucked in the arsenic bowl. (The sugar bowl, that is. Tea at Poison is served in antique silver services, the cream and sugar dishes engraved arsenic and strychnine, hemlock, cyanide. Cute, right?)
So basically, if Imrich has brought the tray, and Mik has found the clue, he could come through this door at any moment and I’ll just be standing here, and Kazimir Andrasko will witness our very first words.
Nope. I’ve got to wrap up this snark-fight. ‘Actually,’ I tell Kaz, ‘I have other plans. But by all means, you go right ahead. And when you’re trapped in there, in the dark coffin, hungry, thirsty, hallucinating, and desperate to pee, when the cafe’s closed and there’s no one left to hear your screams, just know…that I’m not thinking of you at all.’ I gesture to the door, and as the coup de grâce, I give him…Excited Maniac eyes. These are the eyes that say, I have something fascinating to show you in the cellar. Come with me. It’s one of my favorite looks, and, incidentally, my brother’s least favorite, because it’s the one that invariably signals an escalation of hostilities to a level of dedicated vengeance that he could never match. He simply doesn’t have it in him. Tomas knows:
You cannot defeat the Excited Maniac. You can only provoke her.
Kaz might not know this experientially, but he intuits it. The eyes freak him out. I see it. He quails. Glances at the door. Gives me that curled-lip look that bullies get when they’re afraid of someone and trying to cover it up. He’s going to call me a freak next. Wait for it.
‘You’re a freak, Zuzana.’
‘Yeah,’ I confirm with relish, amping up the eyes. ‘I know.’
And that’s it. He makes the decision. He turns and leaves. It’s disappointing and satisfying at the same time. Disappointing because Kaz just came this close to getting coffined and I talked him out of it, and satisfying because I scared the big tool, and that’s pretty much my mission statement.
With Kaz finally gone, I swivel toward the window—
—and see Mik headed my way! He’s got the angel cradled in one arm, the devil in the other, and I have approximately three seconds to vanish into thin air before he opens that door.
That, or dive behind a tombstone.
Thank god for murdered monks.
9
Heart Hole
The door swings open, loosing the cafe din of voices and music into the courtyard, and then it shuts again, sucking back the noise like a cuckoo into a clock. Footsteps crunch across the snow. I can’t see, and I’m fairly sure I can’t be seen. I’m crouched behind a tombstone, just beyond the splash of light from the window, and as the sound of footsteps fades, I think two things:
• Hiding behind tombstones definitely constitutes stalker behavior.
and
• Mik is en route to Location Three, and Location Three is the final location, the place where I am supposed to manifest my actual self and commence human interaction.
Do I have to? a voice in me whimpers. Can’t the puppets act on my behalf? Puppet ambassadors? Yeah, because what’s creepier than a stalker? A stalker ventriloquist who speaks through angel and devil puppets. I imagine Mik introducing me to his family: ‘I’d like you to meet my girlfriend Zuzana and…her representatives.’
No no no. You can do this.
I can do this. I unfurl myself from behind the tombstone. I am the same person who just put fear in the heart of that best-friend-despoiler, Kaz. Rabid fairy, rabid fairy. Why should speaking to a boy I like be so much harder than speaking to one I despise? I know it’s all brain chemicals – everything is brain chemicals – but my excitement and dread feel like tiny wrestlers in my heart right now. I picture Excitement choking out Dread and gently, almost lovingly, lowering his inert body to the ground.
Go. Now. Leave Dread lying there. Go fast, before he gets up and sees which way you went. Breathe. Walk. Breathe. Walk. Look, Mik’s footsteps. Follow them.
Breathe.
Walk.
Okay. I’m good. I’m going. I set my feet in Mik’s footprints and feel a connection to him, like a total lunatic. Location Three isn’t far, and it’s a route I’ve walked hundreds of times, usually with Karou. Breathe. Walk. Mik’s probably there already.
Do I know what I’m going to say to him?
Oh hell.
Dread rallies, chases us up the block. High-kicks Excitement in the neck just before I round the corner to Location Three. It stops me in my tracks, and I find myself stuck to the side of the building by the centrifugal force of my anxiety.
What am I going to say?
I fumble out my phone and text Karou: URGENT ASSISTANCE REQUIRED. WORDS. FIRST LINE. JUST SOMETHING SIMPLE THAT WILL MAKE HIM FALL INSTANTLY IN LOVE WITH ME. GO.
And then I wait, phone in my hand. And wait. The snow’s coming down faster now, and my breath is a dragon’s plume. The cold stone of the building seeps through my coat to turn my back to ice, and no message comes back from Africa.
Fine. I shove my phone back into my pocket. I know what I have to do. The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, ‘First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.’ Good old Epictetus. I would be Confident Girl, and that means unplastering myself from the side of this building, for starters. It’s my personal theory that only 27 percent of perceived confidence is actual confidence, and the rest is sham. The key is: If you can’t tell the difference, there is no difference. Oh, the person shamming can feel the difference, in their clammy palms and pounding heart, but the outward effect – hopefully – is the same.
Words will come out of my mouth when the time comes and I’ll just have to hear what they are at the same time Mik does. There’s no way to script this. (Or is there? Maybe I could write a script, and be in total control of our first conversation – No. No you cannot. Walk.) I set my body in motion. I feel Excitement and Dread hanging on to my ankles, but after a few steps I stop noticing, because I pass the point of no return. I round the corner into Maltese Square. There’s the pink Baroque facade of the Lyceum. The courtyard gate, and beyond it only shadows. I can’t see Mik, but…Mik can see me. I walk.
Location Three is the courtyard of my school. It’s a pretty place, with a frozen fountain in the center and a marble bench carved to look like mermaids are holding it on their shoulders. The gate’s left unlocked at night so students can use the studios as late as they need, but on a Saturday night this early in the term desperation levels are low, and there won’t be anyone around. The courtyard’s private but only semi-enclosed, which seems right. Intimate but not too intimate.