Nothing to See Here (29)

“I’m not going to tell Jasper. Holy shit, do you think I would tell Jasper?”

Carl looked at me with some measure of sincerity. His posture changed, just the slightest slackening. “Lillian, honestly? I don’t know what you will or won’t do. But my livelihood is now connected to yours. So we work together. Agreed?”

“That’s great, Carl,” I said, kind of meaning it and kind of making fun of him. “I’d like that.”

“Now, the reason I came over here was to say that Mrs. Roberts thinks that perhaps having a family dinner might be too overwhelming for the children, not only Roland and Bessie but also Timothy.”

“Okay,” I said. So this was how it would work, a line demarcating us and them. I wondered if Jasper would ever see the kids again. I wondered if Madison and I would still hang out, and I figured that we still would, but in different ways.

“You’ll be okay making them dinner here?” Carl asked.

“Sure. No problem,” but I wasn’t quite sure of the mechanics of it. I was used to microwaving something and eating it over the trash can. And, over the last week or so, I’d gotten used to Mary making the most amazing meals that I couldn’t stop eating. I would miss Mary so much, now that I was fully banished to this guesthouse. I wanted the children to meet her.

“All right, then,” he said. He turned but then suddenly turned back. “Do you see that phone?” he asked, pointing to the wall-mounted handset next to the refrigerator. I nodded. “If you ever need me, no matter what time it is or what it’s about, pick up that phone and push one-one-one-one. Okay?”

“One-one-one-one,” I repeated. “And you’ll come to me?”

“I will,” he said. This seemed to pain him to admit.

“Good night, Carl,” I said.

“Good night, Lillian,” he replied, and then he turned into a shadow and was gone.

When I went to the stairs, I saw Bessie and Roland sitting on the top step, not one bit ashamed of eavesdropping, which I loved.

“How did I do?” I asked them.

“You got him to turn off the sprinklers,” Roland said. “That’s awesome.”

“I did it,” I said. “I told you I would, and then I did.”

“Okay,” Bessie said, as if she’d made a decision that she’d been considering ever since she first saw me.

“Do you want pizza?” I asked, and they both nodded enthusiastically, so we went down to the kitchen and I got the oven on and a frozen pizza shoved in there. I cut up some apples, their skin red and waxy like in a fairy tale, and the kids just destroyed the slices, so I cut up two more. I ate a banana. I looked again in the fridge and realized there was no beer, and I almost picked up the phone and dialed 1111, but decided to be responsible. I’d steal some from the mansion tomorrow, or maybe some of Jasper’s fancy bourbon, which I believed I’d earned with my work here today. My hand was kind of throbbing, which made me feel a little less proud of myself, and so I took some aspirin, and then the pizza was ready.

Before I let them eat, I said, “I’m happy to be with you.”

They just looked at me, dumbfounded. “Can we eat?” Bessie asked.

“I said,” I repeated, “that I am happy to be with you.”

“That’s real nice,” Roland said, and he picked up the pizza slice and ate it in three bites, even though it was still pretty damn hot.

After dinner, I washed the plates while the kids picked out a book for me to read to them.

“Can we skip bath time?” Roland asked.

“And do we need to brush our teeth?” Bessie asked.

“You kids were in that chlorinated water this afternoon,” I told them. “And, you know, you caught on fire, so it’s probably good to get a shower. And you have to brush your teeth.”

“Aw, man,” Roland said, but I stood firm and the kids seemed to respect me for this, or else they were biding their time before they ran me over.

I stood outside the bathroom while they took turns hopping in the shower. They were ten. I didn’t know what the boundaries were at ten, but they seemed too old for me to be dealing with their naked bodies, unless, of course, it was fire related. That was my plan, to let them control themselves until they couldn’t control themselves. It’s how I would have wanted to be treated if I were a demon child.

I sat on the floor in between the kids’ two beds, Bessie and Roland all fresh in their pajamas, their hair, what a horror show, wet and slicked down into something tame.

Bessie handed me the book, Penny Nichols and the Black Imp. “What is this?” I asked. The cover was red and faded, just a hardback book with the silhouette of a girl’s profile. I looked at the title again. What in the hell was a black imp? I checked the copyright, which was from the thirties. Was it racist?

“Maybe a different book, guys? There’s, like, a million down there. Maybe, like, Superfudge or something?”

“This is kind of like Nancy Drew, but weirder,” Bessie informed me.

“Have you read this already?” I asked.

Bessie nodded, but Roland said, “I haven’t.”

“What’s the black imp?” I asked.

“It’s part of the mystery,” she told me.

I scanned the opening page and the first line had a “slightly decrepit roadster” pulling up to a house. One of the characters used the word shan’t.