Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(10)

Gloria filled a cereal bowl, then appraised me, eyes quick and bright as fireflies. Her gaze stopped on my scars, and her nose wrinkled as though I were covered in gravy. Before I could even respond, her face brightened.

“You know,” she said, “you should try Pure Porcelain, by Fournier. That stuff could cover a pothole in the road. I hardly need foundation myself, so my bottle’s yours if you want it. I think we’ve got just about the same skin tone.”

I tried to make words. I really did.

“I just love Fournier,” she pressed on in the face of my silence, taking her bowl to the fridge. “They don’t sell it in this part of town; I have to order it special. But listen to me prattling on. You must have a ton of questions. After Caryl I’m the best one to ask, so go on, sugar, hit me.”

I imagined landing a crisp little smack to her dimpled cheek. (I could exaggerate the sound later in Foley—thwap!) Then we’d close in on her shocked expression before cutting back to me. Cover that with foundation, I’d say. Then I’d saunter out in the casual, distracted way I used to saunter.

“You all right, hon?”

“I, uh—don’t really know enough to have questions yet.”

“Do you know what Arcadia means?” she asked, pouring milk on her cereal.

“It’s . . . the name of the project?”

“Don’t get smart, now.”

“Um, it’s a Greek province,” I tried again, “but I imagine it’s being used here more in the sense of a pastoral utopia.”

“All right,” she said ambiguously. “Did Song go over the house rules at least?”

“Not yet.”

Gloria used a step stool to help herself sit at the kitchen counter with her cereal. “Most common rule broken is: don’t ask personal questions of anyone who lives here, not even their names. Anything Caryl doesn’t tell you, wait for them to bring it up. Everyone at the Residence gets to live their life how they want, and for some that means pretending the rest of us aren’t here.”

Gloria jabbed her spoon into her cereal and gave me a look that dared me to prove I wasn’t one of those people. Her eyes were unsettlingly blue.

“You can ask me whatever you want,” I heard myself say.

“Not by the house rules, I can’t,” she said, shaking a finger at me in a way that was just a bit too vehement to pass as playful.

“All right then,” I said. “What other rules should I know?”

“No drugs, alcohol, or tobacco allowed on the premises, prescribed or otherwise.”

My mind went to the Vicodin in my suitcase, and I wondered if the nice lady was about to ask me to pee in a cup. “What if I need antibiotics or something?”

“Then you talk to Caryl. Antibiotics are probably okay, but we can’t keep anything around that some addict could kill themselves with.” She said “addict” the way a hellfire preacher would say “sinner.”

I found myself wondering, but contractually obligated not to ask, what had gotten Miss Goody Two-Shoes tangled up with this crowd in the first place.

“The rest of the rules,” she said, “should wait till Caryl shows you the contract.”

“If no one’s told me a rule, can I still get fired for breaking it?”

“I don’t know, Minnie Mouse,” said Gloria with a sweet smile. “Guess it depends on whether we figure it’s worth it to keep you.”

I stared back at her. Was I hearing this right? Nice new job you’ve got here. Shame if something happened to it.

Gloria giggled at my expression. “Look at you!” she said. “You are too precious.”

I noticed she did not, however, say that she’d been joking.





6


I fled upstairs to put on a T-shirt and some baggy shorts, then feigned rapt interest in the dog-eared paperbacks in the living room to avoid further “chitchat” with Gloria. Reading was one of the slowest things to come back to me after my head injury; thirteen months later printed words still sometimes seemed to lose their moorings on the page. When Caryl arrived dressed smartly in a sage-green pantsuit, I was stretched out on a squishy couch, reading the fifth page of Prisoner of Azkaban for the third time. The decrepit cat lay curled up near my feet, despite my having displayed no signs of interest in the creature.

“Monty,” Caryl snapped as she seated herself on the other couch. “Shoo.” The cat leaped down from the couch and skittered off into the dining room. “Have you had breakfast?” Caryl asked me. I got a strange feeling on the back of my neck, as though a snake had draped itself across my shoulders.

“I had coffee and a bear claw,” I answered. “I figured if it didn’t have a name on it, it was up for grabs.”

When she didn’t reply, I turned my eyes to the book, flipping back to the last part I remembered clearly. Caryl sat there for what felt like hours with no apparent inclination to talk.

“Is that cat friendly?” I ventured. “I’m not sure if I should touch him.”

“Don’t.”

“Roger that. Is there something I’m supposed to sign today?”

Caryl shook her head, studying me. “Our employment contract contains proprietary information, so you will be staying here as our guest until such time as you are formally initiated into the Project.”