Security(14)

Jules opens the storage room door. Her bloodcurdling scream fills the ballroom.





CAMERA 34, 33, 31, 12, 59





Justin drops two clean plates. By the time they shatter, he’s almost out of the kitchen.

Brian beats Justin across the ballroom, to the storage room, holding a soapy glass.

Tessa beats them both to where Jules is gaping at the storage room floor.

“It’s cherries,” Tessa says, laughing, and puts her arms around Jules in an anomalous show of affection, before Justin arrives and takes over. “It’s canned cherries, Jules. A pallet must’ve leaked.”

There are rooms in Manderley Resort that do not have security cameras. Not many, but a few.

Jules is laughing now, too. “Cherries?” she says, her nails buried to the cuticles in her husband’s biceps.

“Cherries,” says Tessa, grinning at Brian, who seemed primed, in running toward Tessa, to leap between her and any danger. It was a giveaway in his posture—canted forward, reckless but with a goal. It was in his face—panic, thick and animal. He’s still trying to make it subside. He’s breathing hard, shoving shaking hands into his jacket pockets. He remembers the soapy glass when his right hand won’t fit. He looks at the glass like an embarrassment.

Brian grins back at Tessa but says, “Cherries? You sure?”

“What else would it be? Hey, Henri?”

Henri, also attracted by Jules’s scream but disinclined to run, is in the doorway of the kitchen.

Tessa asks him, “Could you spare a sous--chef to clean this up? There’s a mop spigot in here. It won’t take five minutes.”

Henri puffs up like a cranky bird. “We are all busy.”

Tessa doesn’t puff. She doesn’t need to. Her voice does all the work. “This room isn’t food storage. It’s speakers and extension cords for the stage. I count at least two--dozen pallets of cherries in here. I understand you have a system for the pantry, but you can’t put your overflow in with electrical equipment, and this is why.” Her eyes, too. Her eyes can be depthless when she wants them to be. “It’s your mess. Clean it up.”

Her eyes were depthless when she stared past a straining neck, palmed a contorting shoulder blade, ran another hand down perfect vertebrae to a strong ass, and cupped. Stared at the ceiling, where she was seeing someone she wished were with her instead.

She looks at Brian. Stares, really. Her hips move like a clock’s third hand. Brian looks back at her. He’s put the glass as low by his side as he can, humiliated to be holding it. He licks his lips. Tessa bites her lower lip.

This has lasted three seconds.

“What else would it be?” Tessa says again, turning to Justin and Jules. They shrug, disinterested in that particular question, but Jules’s mouth is an intrigued little moue and Justin pumps his eyebrows at Brian, as if to say, Well, well. Brian doesn’t notice. He’s making room as a sous--chef squeezes by. The sous--chefs all look alike, which is counterintuitive, as all four of them have dyed hair and elaborate tattoos and strange piercings. Their efforts to appear distinct from one another have accomplished the opposite: they are a mass. And an individual split off from the group—receding, now, into the storage room—is androgynous, anonymous, forgotten amidst his tribe’s collective desperation to be remembered. Running water is heard.

“Blood,” Brian says. Does he say it so Tessa will turn to him again? If so, it works. “She thought it was blood. Looks like it.”

Justin says, “And the cherries are clots and brains! Ehh--heh-heh--heh!”

Jules smacks his arm. She’s snorting. “Shut up, Cryptkeeper.”

“Nobody even remembers that show,” says Tessa in solidarity.

“You do,” Brian says. “You loved that show. You’d make me tape it and then watch it with you once the house was asleep.”

Jules and Justin are quiet. Tessa turns her head, slightly but conspicuously, to regard the sun over the ocean. Brian taps the soapy glass against his outer thigh. There’s the tink of glass against denim, the swsshk of a mop on sticky tile.

“Mademoiselle?”

Tessa says, “Yes. Henri, what’s up?” and takes long strides to where he stands in the kitchen doorway.

“The phone,” Henri says sullenly, “it calls for you.” He releases the door when Tessa props it open with her boot heel.

She pushes the intercom button on the wall--mounted phone; it’s right inside the kitchen, bright red. Tessa insisted on the kitchen phone being red, so as to cut through confusion in a real emergency. She said it would be a pity if Manderley burned down because the phone blended with the wall. “This is Tessa.”

“The floor’s clean down here, pumpkin. Thought I’d tell you.”

“Excellent. Thanks, Del.” Tessa checks her watch. “Where’s Vivica? The big ballroom cleaning’s tonight.”

“I had her do a walk--through when she got here, and she found a stain on fifteen.”

“Stain? Where on fifteen?”

“The carpet right inside 1516.”

Tessa’s brow darkens. “What kind of stain?”

“She said it looked like one of the electricians cut himself.”

“The electricians weren’t on fifteen today. Charles and I did room inspections yesterday, and there were no damn stains on the carpet.” Tessa didn’t approve of the white carpet. That was Charles Destin’s choice. He wanted white everything. He said it would look rich. Tessa said it would cease to look rich the minute a guest spilled a cup of coffee, a glass of liquor, or an entire room service meal in his or her rich white room. Destin exercised his power of veto and told Tessa that spills were her concern, not his. He told her he pays her very well to clean up spills. He does pay her extraordinarily well. Tessa says, “We need Vivica up here. You, too. The ballroom takes precedence over the guest quarters, even the luxury suites. I can handle 1516 being out of commission, but a dusty piano?”