Serious Moonlight(69)

“Oh?” He clearly expected me to follow suit. I felt odd, taking my shoes off, but he gave me a thumbs-up sign and a smile that looked far too close to Daniel’s, so I stored the shoes, and we went inside the house.

Barefooted, I stepped onto cool tile in a large kitchen. Pots and pans hung from a rack on the ceiling over an island, where two whole roasted chickens sat, crispy and golden, their seductive perfume filling the air.

At the oven, two dark-haired women were arguing over what looked to be an enormous pan of green beans. One was short and wore red-rimmed glasses. The other was tall and thin, barefoot beneath black, stretchy pants and an off-the-shoulder baggy shirt. They were debating the saltiness of the dish in front of them.

“Too much miso, Mama,” the younger woman was saying.

“You can never have too much miso.”

“Tell that to my bloated face tomorrow.”

“Ladies, look who I found outside,” Jiji said gaily, as if I were a long-lost soldier, returned from war.

The women turned around. The shorter one looked me up and down over her glasses. The tall one’s brows rose up into her hairline. “Who is this?”

“Guess,” Jiji said, setting his bowl of greens down. “You’ll never guess. Look at the flower. Tell them who you are, dear.”

“I’m looking for Daniel.”

“Birdie?” the younger woman said. She was stunningly pretty and had attractive, splotchy freckles all over her face.

I nodded.

She looked me over quickly and then stretched her arm toward me. “I’m Cherry, Daniel’s mom.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” I told her, shaking her hand.

“This is my mother—Daniel’s grandmother.” Cherry gestured toward the other woman.

“You can call her Baba,” Jiji said.

“Everyone does,” the grandmother agreed. “You’re the girl from Bainbridge Island with the house on the beach? You live with your grandparents?”

“With my grandfather. My grandma passed away a few months ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. And your mother died too?”

Cherry made a face at her. “Don’t be a gossip, Mama. She works at the hotel with Danny.”

“I know that much,” her mother answered, pretending to be irritated. The two of them stuck their tongues out at each other, and Baba laughed. Then she asked me, “Are you here for dinner? Daniel didn’t let me know. But we’ve got plenty.”

“Daniel didn’t know,” Cherry said, studying me harder. “He’s . . . well, he’s been waiting to hear from you, I believe.”

He was? That made me uncomfortable. How much had Daniel told them about me? About us? Part of me was humbled that he’d mentioned me at all, but a deeper part of my brain was terrified. Did they know about what we did?

Why didn’t I think this through? I shouldn’t have come here.

“You’re not here to break it off with him, are you?” Baba asked in a low voice.

“She’s not breaking it off with him,” Jiji said, and then turned to me. “Are you?”

“That’s none of our business,” Cherry said. “Jesus, enough with the gossipy questions. You two are as bad as Old Man Jessen.”

Both of them grunted and said things under their breath.

“I didn’t mean to barge into your dinner,” I said.

“Pfft. We always have bargers,” Jiji said, dumping his greens into a colander in the sink. “No one wants to eat in the common house. Who puts tofu and salmon on pizza?”

“Waste of perfectly good fish,” Baba agreed as Blueberry wound around her legs.

“Besides, that’s why we have two chickens,” Jiji said. “One for me, and one for everyone else.”

His wife slapped his fingers, which were reaching for a stray bit of crispy chicken skin. “Are the salad greens clean? You’re holding us up.”

Cherry wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. “Never mind them, Birdie. I’ll take you to Daniel. He’s in here. Follow me.”

We walked through a living room with high ceilings and a second-story loft overlooking it. The walls were covered in framed magic posters and shelves lined with props—vintage decks of cards, top hats, wooden balls, stuffed rabbits . . . even an upright box with a painted sarcophagus. And so many photos . . .

“Oh, wow.” I stopped in front of one of the larger framed photographs, an image of a magician and his assistant standing by a large poster that read: THE GREAT ALBINI AND BLACK BUTTERFLY. Cherry pointed to the woman in the photo.

“That was you? Black Butterfly?”

“My stage name,” she said.

Wow, she was young. “I’m surprised you didn’t go with Cherry Bomb.”

She pointed at me, excited. “That was exactly the name I’d picked out originally, but Michael—my partner—was worried it didn’t sound mysterious enough. Honestly, I think he was concerned that Cherry Bomb sounded too splashy, which would take the spotlight off him.”

“How long did you perform?”

“Four years? I started right after I graduated from high school. We were getting booked at all these great clubs, and I was such a baby, I couldn’t even drink. This photo was taken at the Velvet Elvis, which used to be a club in Pioneer Square. One night it was Mudhoney or the Murder City Devils. Next night it was us. We did shows with the Jim Rose Circus after they were on The X-Files and The Simpsons.” She sighed. “But then I had Daniel, and you can’t take a baby on the road.”