The Ten Thousand Doors of January(25)

As soon as I was in range Locke’s arm descended and crushed me against him. “There she is! The picture of civility. A testament to the power of positive influences.” He gave my shoulders a bracing shake.

Did women actually faint, I wondered, or was that an invention of bad Victorian novels and Friday night picture shows? Or perhaps women simply contrived to collapse at convenient moments to delay the burden of hearing and seeing and feeling, just for a little while. I sympathized.

“—enough about all that. Thank you all for indulging an old man’s optimism and enthusiasm, but we’re here, I’m told, to enjoy ourselves.” He raised his glass in a final toast—his beloved carved jade cup, translucent green. Had my father brought it to him? Stolen it away from some tomb or temple, packed it in sawdust, and sent it across the world to be clutched by this square, white hand?

“To peace and prosperity. To the future we shall build!” I dared to look up at the pale, sweating faces that surrounded us, their glasses twinkling in the chandelier’s prisming light, their applause breaking around me like ocean waves.

Mr. Locke’s arm unclamped from my shoulders and he spoke in a much lower voice. “Good girl. Meet us in the east smoking room at half past ten, won’t you. I’d like to give you your birthday gift.” He made a lazy circle with his finger to indicate the “us” he meant, and I realized the Society members had gathered like suit-wearing moths around him. Mr. Havemeyer was among them, watching me with his gloved hands resting on his cane and a polite, well-bred species of disgust on his face. Bad’s hackles spiked beneath my palm and he growled so low it was like an undersea earthquake.

I spun and dove blindly away, Bad trailing stiff-legged at my heels. I aimed for our safe, invisible corner but couldn’t seem to arrive. The crowd eddied and swirled in dizzy patterns, their faces leering, their smiles too wide. Something had changed—Locke’s speech had dragged me to center stage, like a reluctant elephant prodded into the main ring at the circus. I felt gloved fingers stroke my skin as I passed, heard a trill of scintillated laughter. A tug on my pinned and burnt hair.

A male voice far too close to my ear: “Miss January, isn’t it?” A bluish-white face loomed above me, his blond hair slicked against his skull and gold cuff links flashing. “What kind of a name is that, January?”

“Mine,” I answered stiffly. I’d asked my father once what had possessed him to name me after a month, and particularly such a dead, frost-eaten month as January, and if there were any more normal-sounding names I could have instead. It is a good name, he’d said, rubbing his tattoos. And when I pressed him: Your mother liked it. The meaning of it.

(Don’t bother looking up the meaning. Webster’s says: The first month of the year, containing thirty-one days. L. Januarius, fr. Janus, an antiquated Latin deity. How enlightening.)

“Now, don’t be rude! Take a turn outside with me, won’t you?” The boy leered at me.

I hadn’t spent much time with people my own age, but I’d read enough school stories to know gentlemen weren’t supposed to take young ladies out alone into the dark heat of a summer night. But then, I wasn’t really a lady, was I?

“No, thank you,” I said. He blinked with the stunned expression of a man who knew the word no existed but had never actually met it in the flesh.

He leaned closer, one damp hand reaching toward my elbow. “Come, now—”

A silver tray of champagne materialized between us and a low, unfriendly voice said, “May I offer you a drink, sir?”

It was Samuel Zappia, dressed in the crisp black-and-white uniform of a hired server.

I’d barely seen him in the last two years, mostly because the red Zappia grocery cart had been replaced by a neat black truck with a closed cab and I could no longer wave to him from the study window. I’d driven past the store with Mr. Locke once or twice and caught blurred glimpses of Samuel out back, unloading flour sacks from a truck bed and staring out at the lake with a distant, dreaming expression. I’d wondered if he still subscribed to The Argosy, or if he’d abandoned such childish fancies.

Now he looked clear and sharp, as if he’d come fully into focus in a camera lens. His skin was still that golden-dark color mysteriously known as olive; his eyes were still black and bright as polished shale.

They were fixed now on the blond gentleman in a flat, unblinking stare, beneath eyebrows raised in faux-polite inquiry. There was something unsettling about that stare, something so blatantly unservile that the man took a half step backward. He stared at Samuel with an expression of upper-class offense that generally sent servants scurrying to make amends.

But Samuel didn’t move. A fey gleam lit in his eye, as if he were rather hoping the young man would attempt to chastise him. I couldn’t help noticing the way Samuel’s shoulders pressed against the seams of his starched suit coat, the wiry look of his wrist holding the heavy tray; beside him, the blond man looked as pale and squashy as unrisen dough.

He spun away, thin lips curled, and skittered back to the protection of his peers.

Samuel turned smoothly toward me, lifting a shimmery golden glass. “For the birthday girl, perhaps?” His expression was perfectly bland.

He remembered my birthday. My dress suddenly felt itchy and hot. “Thank you. For, uh, rescuing me.”

“Oh, I wasn’t rescuing you, Miss Scaller. I was saving that poor boy from a dangerous animal.” He ducked his head at Bad, who was still watching the retreating man with his hackles raised and his lips curling back over his teeth.