Black as Night: A Fairy Tale Retold Read online

  He returned from his hurried search, telling himself to calm down, only to find his brother prowling through the rooms like a wary cat sniffing a strange dog.

  “Something is wrong, but I don’t know what,” Fish was saying to himself again.

  “Is something missing?” Bear asked, coming down the steps.

  “If so, I haven’t figured it out,” Fish said. He stared at the rose-brocade antique sofa and suddenly crossed the oriental carpet and pointed.

  “Someone’s been under that sofa cushion,” he said softly.

  Bear looked at the seat cushion. It was slightly askew. Feeling odd, he looked at the ivory chaise lounge. The seat cushion there was also slightly lifted, as though it hadn’t been put back correctly.

  “Maybe Blanche was looking under the cushions for something she dropped,” Bear suggested.

  “The pillows,” Fish pointed at the two dark velvet pillows thrown haphazardly on the floor next to the mosaic-inlaid coffee table. “What girl leaves sofa pillows like that?”

  “Blanche was the last person who had access to this place, right?” Bear asked. “You haven’t called in a housekeeper or anything?”

  “Not since I left, no,” Fish said. “No point in cleaning a house no one’s living in, is there?” He glared around the room. “Someone’s ransacked this place and put everything back,” he said. “But why?”

  “And how would they have gotten in?” Now on his guard, Bear stepped into the kitchen to see if anything was amiss. He looked at the herbs growing in the carved boxes arranged at the base of the kitchen’s floor-to-ceiling windows. The ones Blanche had been watering. They looked slightly askew, as though someone had dug them out of their pots and dropped them back in without much care. “Look at these.”

  Fish fingered the plants gently, and then got up. “Check out that cabinet door,” he pointed. The cabinet door over the refrigerator was slightly open. “Not shut right. And neither is that one over there,” he said, pointing to another cabinet over the sink.

  There was a knock on the door, and Fish and Bear instantly pivoted towards the door. Bear’s heart pounded as he walked to the door and opened it.

  “Arthur Denniston?” asked the tall, brown-haired man who stood there, pulling out a badge. There were two other men behind him, hands in their jackets, possibly covering their weapons.

  “Yes,” Bear nodded almost automatically.

  “I’m Morris Tang, special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.” He looked at Fish. “Are you Benedict Denniston?”

  “That’s correct,” Fish folded his arms. “Is there a problem?”

  The man gave a wry smile. “You are the owners of this apartment?”

  “Joint owners, yes,” Bear said. It’s either bad news, or trouble. At first he had thought it was bad news—had Blanche been found dead? —But the sight of plainclothes policemen gave him an entirely different feeling. He had been here before.

  “I’m here to advise you of the fact that federal agents found caches of controlled substances hidden in the cushions of your living room furniture this past Saturday, August the seventh,” the man said. He pulled out a photograph, and Bear saw a picture of a man standing in front of their apartment door, holding up a plastic bag containing dozens of blue and pink pills.

  “What the heck—” Bear said angrily. He glanced at his brother’s face, and saw Fish had gone pale.

  “Oh my God,” Fish said quietly. “I didn’t think it was this.”

  The agent looked at them carefully. “The pills in the photograph are metadylene-dioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, otherwise known as Adam, or Ecstasy. MDMA is an illegal substance on the federal schedule. As the owners of the apartment, the government is holding you liable for the contents. I have arrest warrants here for both of you.”

  Bear felt a rush of strong emotion, which he crushed quickly and forcefully. “The drugs aren’t ours,” he said. “I’d like to call our lawyer. Someone’s framed us.”

  Again.

  Chapter Four

  Having fled down the labyrinthine ways, breathing hard, knowing it was a risk to come here, she hurried up to the house and knocked on the door.

  A nurse came to the door, not—she noticed—the same nurse that had been there last time. His nurses had been changed again.

  “Is Ms. Fairston in?” she asked cautiously.

  “No ma’am,” said the nurse, looking at her suspiciously.

  “Can I see Mr. Fairston? Please? It’s very important.”

  “He’s not seeing anyone.”

  “Please. He told me to come and see him. Tell him Blanche is here.”

  “Just a moment.”

  Waiting, the girl unaccountably shivered in the summer’s heat, praying that her chance would succeed.

  In a few minutes, the nurse returned and said, “Come with me.”

  She followed the nurse across the black-and-white marble-tiled floor and up the steps.

  “How is he?” she whispered.

  “As well as can be expected for a man in his condition. I’m told he hasn’t been out of bed in a month.”

  Then she’s been told wrong, the girl said to herself. But as usual, she was silent.

  She walked over the thick carpet of the hallway, trying to stop her hands from trembling. If only she still had her purse to hold onto. She had been fortunate to find a few subway tokens in her pocket for the ride over.

  The nurse led her into the small bedroom at the back of the house where a television chattered, and left, shutting the door behind her. The girl noticed that she barely glanced at the frail figure on the bed. Not good help, the girl thought, leaning over to straighten the twisted pillows on the bed.

  “Blanche. It really is you,” Mr. Fairston said, blinking his left eye and twisting to sit up. Only one side of his face was active. The other side was frozen, motionless, a prefigurement of death. With his left hand, he turned off the television with his remote. “What happened to your hair?” He spoke with difficulty, but the girl was used to his accent by now, and had no trouble understanding him.

  The girl tucked a stray strand behind her ear and tried to figure out how to answer. But the reality of what she had to tell him appeared to her now in all its ugliness, and she didn’t know where to start. To put off the hard part, she checked the glass on his bed tray and found it was bone dry. She stepped to the small refrigerator in the corner to fill it from the pitcher she had suggested keeping there.

  “Thank you—how did you know I wanted that?” the man asked gratefully, taking it with his left hand. His right was shrunken and lay useless by his side. One side of his body was paralyzed. His gray hair, as usual, was bushy and unruly.

  She smiled as she gave him the water. “Those medications for your tumor make you thirsty. It says so on the labels.”

  He tilted his head to the left. “You’re such a caregiver. How do you remember these things?”

  She warmed at the compliment. “Perhaps it’s in the genes. Remember, my mother’s a nurse.”

  “That’s right—I keep forgetting that.”

  “Plus, whenever I come to read to you, you always ask for something to drink, even though I’m the one doing the reading. Hasn’t this nurse been making sure you’re hydrated?”

  Half the man’s face grimaced in an expression the girl found comical. “She says I’d be better off getting water intravenously, but I can’t stand IVs.” He paused. “This isn’t your usual day to come by, is it?”

  The girl shook her head, and swallowed. “Actually, I am in a bit of trouble. I thought I’d, well, find someone to talk to...” She started to pick up the books and magazines that had dropped from the bed to the floor.

  The concern that had been in the man’s eyes returned, and his voice became lower. “My wife told me you had been arrested.”

  “What do you mean?” She turned back to him, her mind reeling.

  Mr. Fairston convulsed in a cough. “She said you were caught with drugs at your
workplace, and with thousands of dollars of stolen money.”

  Fortunately her hands were busy, and she managed to keep her voice calm. “Well, she’s mistaken, isn’t she? I admit things have been difficult the last few days, but I haven’t been arrested. If I had, I wouldn’t be here with you, would I?”

  “Is that the truth, Blanche?”

  “Yes.” She sounded confident, but inside she was shaking.

  The man rubbed his head with his good hand, and stared at her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I should be so suspicious. I guess it’s just that…I suppose I can blame the medication. Or the condition. You’re going to think I’m paranoid.”

  “Well, sometimes it is hard to know what to believe these days.” The girl finished tidying up the magazines and put them in a stack on a nearby shelf, using the time to collect herself. Now even this friendship was in jeopardy.

  “But my wife seemed so sure,” the man said wonderingly. “How could there be a mistake?”

  “I don’t know,” the girl shrugged, glanced at the mirror on the wall, and saw that she was paler than ever. She quickly looked away. “How are you feeling?”

  “Terrible,” the man said with a half smile, trying to put aside the conversation, but she could see the doubt hovering in his eyes. “‘Not going gently into that good night…’” he quoted Dylan Thomas again and sighed. “I guess it gets closer every day. The realization that there’s not much time left for me. Before the tumor takes over and my brain goes blank. I—” he paused. “I was quite upset to hear this about you. But perhaps it was only a dream, after all. Some trick of my brain.”

  “Perhaps.” She forced a smile.

  “I don’t like it when that happens,” he said, his eyes looking up at the ceiling. “It’s been happening more and more often lately. I don’t like it when I can’t trust reality any more. It scares me. I wish I could stop it. But—”

  She was reminded of how it had been to lose her own father to cancer, realizing that the gentle giant of her childhood memory had shrunken into a weak, dying man—a man who had eventually become a corpse, and then a memory. Suddenly, being here was like losing her father all over again.

  And he couldn’t help her, after all. More alone than ever, she had to go beyond herself or risk cracking. “Would you mind if I prayed with you, Mr. Fairston?”

  “Still berating me for being an agnostic?” he smiled at her wryly.

  “Of course not. Just being myself.”

  He leaned back. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just listen. It’s—peaceful.”

  She prayed, on the edge of that darkness and confusion. She prayed an entire decade of the rosary, feeling dry and barren within, hearing the faint reverberation of her voice on the walls in that cheerless sickroom. This was how it had been, for a long time now—comforting others, responding, smiling, going through the motions of her life, but inside feeling nothing but the echo of emptiness. The fear began to come upon her, and she struggled to keep her composure.

  But as usual, the prayers seemed to soothe him. He stroked her hand as she finished. “You know, sometimes I think you’re like the daughter I should have had, if I had had a daughter. I’m glad you came by, Blanche.” His eyelids were growing heavy.

  “I am too,” she said, and this was sincere. She had always enjoyed visiting the elderly, but Mr. Fairston had become more than a work of mercy. He had become a friend.

  If I can stop one heart from breaking

  I shall not live in vain

  If I can ease one life the aching

  Or heal one pain

  …I shall not live in vain.

  “You left your book on Emily Dickinson here again,” he said, rousing himself and reaching shakily for the book on the bedside table. “I was looking at it while you were gone.”

  “Keep it,” she said. “It’s a gift.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am. Keep it, until—”

  There was a silence, the usual breaking-off of sentences. It was understood what the silence meant.

  “I’m sure my wife will get it back to you. She’s been saying I shouldn’t see people, that it hastens my decline. But if you want to come, even if I’m not responding—I think I would like to hear you reading, still.”

  “I’ll be back to read it to you,” she said. “I promise.”

  He took her hand and squeezed something into it. “I know you will. In case you need it—” His voice grew faint, and she saw he was falling asleep.

  Looking down at her hand briefly, she saw a door key.

  “Thank you. I’ll come back.” She put it in her pocket—later on she would put it on her neck chain—and got to her feet, still stiff from her bruises. Gently she laid her hand on his forehead. His lips moved, but he didn’t speak again. Her eyes traveled over the untidy and inexplicably dirty room, and she wished she felt safe enough to stay and clean it more thoroughly. How did the nurse stand it?

  She got down on her hands and knees again and picked up the used tissues, bits of plastic wrappers, and paper scraps that littered the carpet, and put them into the overflowing wastebasket. She packed it down to keep it neater, and while doing so found a medicine bottle, white with its label missing. It wasn’t empty—there were two ordinary looking white pills in it. At first she thought it had fallen from the cluttered bedside table, but as she looked at the medication and vitamins there, she could see this bottle was different from the others. Perhaps the white bottle was some sort of pain medication he had been taken off. After some hesitation, she thrust it into her pocket. When I see my mom again, I’ll ask her, she thought fleetingly. Then, Mom has no idea what’s going on with me now.

  Quietly she let herself out of the room. Alone, she glanced around the dim hallway uneasily. She didn’t like this house, as upscale as it was. At least she had managed to come during a time when Mr. Fairston was relatively alone. She didn’t want to meet—

  At the base of the staircase was a huge mirror, trimmed in stained glass flowers, and dragonflies. Its vast glassy surface had the smoky gray look of an antique. After coming down the steps, she couldn’t help stopping to look at her reflection, and saw a girl with a pale face and unevenly-cut soot-black hair. Whose eyes were still red. I look haunted, she thought. Not beautiful. Not any more. Surely no one would still think I was beautiful.

  “This has been a looking-glass summer,” her sister had said flippantly, referring to the play she was in. “I feel like it’s taken over my life.”

  Yes, that was how she felt—as though she had vanished through a looking-glass into a mirror-image world which seemed the same as normal life, but where everything was backwards. Where she wasn’t even sure who she was any longer. She didn’t even think she looked the same.

  Blanche has been replaced by a fugitive from justice, a girl who’s too scared to tell others her own name.

  She paused, as though she had heard something close to her, and stared into the depths of the mirror. Once again, she felt it—the sense of a malignant presence studying her. As though the mirror were alive, with a personality—a—

  Just another doorway into madness, she thought, and pulled her eyes away. Her imagination had become her enemy lately, and she hurried to the door and let herself out.

  II

  After the morning class was done, Leon had stopped by the vestibule to see Nora, but there was no sign of her.

  “Hey, where’s Nora?” he called to Brother Herman, who was busy planning the renovation and repairs on the church.

  Brother Herman held up a piece of sketch paper to the light and said, “Hm? Nora? She left some time ago. She said she had an errand to run and would be back soon.”

  “Oh,” Leon said, and shrugged aside his suspicions. Why shouldn’t she run an errand if she needs to? he scolded himself. Brother George was sweeping the aisles with a broom, and looked over his shoulder at Leon. But seeing Leon’s noncommittal expression, he turned away.

  Leon’s attention was distracted by
a knock on the friary door. He started towards it, but Brother Matt, who was on porter duty, emerged from the refectory and got to the door first.

  At the door was a tall, agitated black woman in a short denim skirt, holding a kid by each hand. Her scowl changed to relief when the friars opened the door, and she burst into a torrent of Jamaican patois mixed with English. Matt held up his hands with a confused smile.

  “Hold on—let me get someone who can help you—Le—! Oh! Here you are,” Matt started to bellow as Leon elbowed him aside.

  “Yeah, you need the expert here—Aay, Marisol! Wha a gwan?” Leon queried, hitching up his rope belt. “Aay Donovan! Aay Jacky!” The kids grinned and started reaching for the dangling knots and the rosary beads.

  Marisol yanked them back firmly with a sharp word. “Nu bodda di priest! Dress back! Mi granmadda a visit, an shi need fi catch one flight tomorrow, but di taxi-man too tief! —”

  Leon listened attentively. “Her mom needs a ride to the airport,” he relayed to Father Bernard, who had come out of the classroom. “They can’t afford the taxi.” The kids were reaching for his rosary again. “It’s all right,” he assured their mother, who barked, “Mi seh no touch it!”

  “What time does she need to go?” Father Bernard asked, and looked at the woman.

  “Wha times yuh need fi leave ya?” Brother Leon queried.

  “Tomorrow. Two o’clock,” she said.

  “I think someone can do it,” Father Bernard said, glancing at the novices. “How about you two take her tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” Brother Leon said, glancing at Matt, who hesitated.

  “Yes,” he said at last. Leon guessed Matt had something else planned, but as they were novices, they had to obey the novice master’s orders.

  Leon, who had his hands full with the kids, said to Marisol, “Nuh worry. And where do you live again?”

  While the woman talked and gestured, Leon found his eye caught by a white car driving slowly along the streets. Nice cars driving in this area usually were either lost or belonged to drug dealers. But the dealers he knew of didn’t drive white cars.