“If he was intent on raiding Jim Morrison’s tomb, why change his plan and come here? The two have almost nothing in common, different sex, different dates of death, different gifts.”
“Both made music their lives.”
Hugo swept an arm at the tombs that surrounded them. “So did half these people. So why her?”
“You’re not thinking there are two intruders. Two grave robbers?”
Hugo shook his head. “No, I’m not. I’m thinking there’s a connection that we’re not seeing.”
Chapter Ten
Tentacles of dried liquid the color of wet sand spread down the bottom four steps that led up to the Scarab’s second-floor apartment, and he wrinkled his nose at the stench of urine and spilled beer, stepping carefully, desperate to get out of the world and into the sanctuary of his apartment.
He cursed as his canvas bag bounced off the front door as he reached for his keys, then winced at his own language and looked down, apologized.
Inside, he locked the door and moved in the dark to the windows, made sure the heavy curtains he’d installed were pulled tight. He passed the pullout couch where he slept and went into the only bedroom, devoid of furniture save for two items: a long, low table that sat against the right-hand wall, and an empty casket that sat in the middle of the room, made from oak with a white silk lining and brass handles. He put the bag on the table and flicked the light switch, coating the room in a red glow from the colored bulb that hung, bare, overhead.
He reached beside the bag, letting his fingertips drift over the tabletop to a pair of soft cotton gloves. He slipped them carefully onto his hands. The first time he’d done this he’d felt … embarrassed, less than a man almost. As if covering up the calluses and masking the thickness of his fingers with such gentle cloth in the privacy of his sanctuary was as bad as revealing the rest of his thick, bristly body in public.
But now they felt good. They were part of the process. The beginning of the process, like putting a napkin on your lap before ordering at a restaurant.
He picked up the canvas bag and moved to the coffin, kneeling beside it, lowering himself gently like a penitent in church. He put the bag down and placed both hands inside the coffin, felt the cool of the silk through his gloves.
Our coffin. And the last time it will be empty.
He opened the bag as wide as it would go and reached inside with both hands, drawing out a long, slim object wrapped in white bandage. Slowly, carefully, he unwrapped it.
He held it in his hands, outstretched over the coffin like an offering, feeling its lightness, his chest constricting with the excitement of the moment and the power running from his palms, up his arms, and straight into his heart.
He forced himself to concentrate, to control the adrenalin that flooded his body, because if he was going to do this, he had to do it right. His mother taught him that, as he sat by her side watching her sew those beautiful, sequined outfits, she’d look at him and smile, tell him, “If you sew it right the first time, you never have to do it again.” And he’d ask what was wrong with having to do it all again, looking up from where he sat, close to the only woman who’d ever looked at him with love. “There’s only so much of the right material in the world, mon petit scarabée. Only so much.”
He looked at the bandage that lay curled on the floor like shed snakeskin. He turned it over until he saw the writing on it, the words that told where to place this first precious artifact.
Right femur.
He placed it in the casket, the bone so light it made no impression on the silk, just casting the slightest of shadows. A shadow that meant something to the Scarab, an indication that already this piece of her was wanting to come alive, spreading its aura in search of a companion.
He laid out the other pieces one by one, checking the markings on the bandages to make sure that each went in the right place, using fingers for the larger bones, tweezers for the smallest ones, working like a surgeon to be precise and meticulous, and just like a surgeon he knew that a life depended on him getting it right.
It took him two hours and when he was finished the hypnotic state that had held him wonderfully captive deserted him in as much time as it took to put down his tweezers. His knees screamed with pain and his back tormented him with needles of fire that paralyzed and made him gasp. But when he stood over the coffin and looked down his heart leapt at the sight of a woman’s small body, partially complete, anatomically correct, lying in repose just waiting for him to get back to work, to bring the rest of her. To complete her.
“Maman,” he whispered. “J’arrive.” I’m coming.
He stooped and picked up his bag and the bandages, and backed out of the room, leaving the bloodred light glowing over the casket.
He put the bag and bandages on the coffee table in front of the couch then walked into the bathroom, stripped, and stood under the shower, chiding himself for not doing it before assembling the bones, washing the dirt of the outside world and Père Lachaise from his skin, watching the gray swirl of water slipping into the drain at his feet. Clean, he walked toward the bedroom and lay his cheek against the closed door, pictured the room glowing, the bones resting and regenerating in the quiet. Now they were here, now this was truly started, he didn’t like being away from them but he knew what was right, how it needed to be done.
Unwilling to feed off the nascent energy growing in the bedroom, he resisted the creeping numbness that sat heavy in his chest and spread, always, into the rest of his body. Always, that is, unless he made himself feel something, that raw connection to life and bone and blood that pulsed in the room next door, the room he dared not disturb. Today, even more than usual, he needed to feel something.
He turned and walked into the living room, sat on the couch, leaning forward to open a drawer in the coffee table in front of him. A scalpel lay wrapped in tissue, and in seconds it glinted in his hand. He piled the bandages, her bandages, on the seat beside him and looked down at his forearm, crisscrossed with ridges that were whiter than the surrounding skin, a network of tiny lines, a map to the deadness inside him, images of the suffering he’d inflicted on himself, just to feel.
He looked at the bandages next to him and focused his eyes on a small, clear patch of skin on the inside of his arm. He put the tip of the scalpel there, saw the skin dip before giving way, and he threw back his head with the anticipation of sensation.
Chapter Eleven
Hugo woke just after six the next morning, the sun starting to seep over the buildings into Rue Jacob. He pulled on shorts and pants and went straight to the kitchen to find coffee, but stopped in the doorway to the living room.
“Can I help you?” he said.
The woman was standing by the counter that separated the kitchen and living area, her back to him, straight dark hair touching her shoulders. She turned at the sound of his voice and put something on the counter. Tom’s wallet. Hugo stepped forward, slowed by the fact that the woman wore a black lace bra and pale blue shorts that, on anyone else, would barely have been underwear. The bra was also a couple of sizes too small, giving him the image of two basketballs in butterfly nets. She watched him approach, seemingly unconcerned, and Hugo felt like she was appraising a new customer.
“He owe you, or just getting your own tip?”
“The former.” She ran a hand through her hair and tilted her head. Definitely appraising, Hugo thought. Pretty, too.
“He probably doesn’t have enough in his wallet,” Hugo said.