13 Little Blue Envelopes(18)

It was hard to figure out how a pineapple could end up in a situation like that.

She felt the whoosh of wind that she now knew accompanied the approach of the train. Any second now it would come

blasting through the tunnel and cross right over this spot.

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“If the pineapple makes it,” she said to herself, “he likes me.”

The white nose of the train appeared. She stepped away from the edge, let the train go, and waited for it to pass away.

She looked down. The pineapple wasn’t broken or whole. It was simply gone.

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The Not-so-Mysterious

Benefactor

Discovery: It was possible to take apart a fake palm tree and fit it in a car. In fact, it was possible to take apart a whole set and get it in a car. A little car. A little, white, very dirty Volkswagen.

This is how they were “unloading” Starbucks: The Musical.

“You may be asking yourself, ‘Why is Keith taking these?’ ”

Keith said as he shoved the fronds down into the trunk. “ ‘Why, he doesn’t even use these in the show.’ ”

“I kind of wondered,” Ginny said. (She’d wondered a lot as she’d been dragging one of them down the basement hallway, actually. They were heavy.)

“Well, I did for a while,” Keith said, looking at the underside of the car and how it was sinking low to the ground under the weight. “I wrote them out. But I have to make sure no one nicks them since the school paid for them. I mean, fake palm trees.

Come on. These beat orange traffic cones any day of the week.

These things are a prize.”

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He looked down at the pile of costumes that was still on the sidewalk.

“You get in and I’ll pack this stuff around you,” he said.

Ginny was duly stuffed in (on the wrong side), and Keith got in on her right. The car didn’t look so good from the outside, but apparently its insides were in perfect working order. As soon as Keith hit the gas, it sprang to life and rocketed to the corner of the street. It squealed slightly as he took the corner and plunged into the traffic on the main road, barely missing being knocked out of the way by a double-decker bus.

She could tell Keith was one of those guys who loved to

drive—he switched through the gears with great intensity and as often as humanly possible and zigzagged his way through the congestion. A black cab was suddenly within inches of them.

Ginny was face-to-face with a rather surprised-looking couple, who pointed at her fearfully.

“Aren’t we a little close?” she said as Keith angled the car even closer to the cab in an attempt to change lanes.

“He’ll move over,” Keith said lightly.

They drove through part of Essex Road that Ginny knew.

“I’m staying around here,” she said.

“In Islington? Who with?”

“A friend of my aunt’s.”

“I’m surprised,” he said. “Thought you were in a big hotel somewhere since you’re an heiress or something.”

Keith turned down an endless sequence of tiny, dark roads full of houses and anonymous apartment blocks, past brightly

fluorescent fish-and-chip shops. Posters and ads were glued to every surface, advertising reggae albums and Indian music. Ginny 82

found herself automatically marking the route in her mind, tracing a pattern of signs, posters, pubs, houses. Not that she would ever come here again, of course. It was just habit.

They finally stopped on an unlit street with a long row of gray stone houses. He swerved the car and parked at an angle to the curb. There were a lot of wrappers along the sidewalks and bottles in the little yards. A few of the houses were clearly unoccupied, with boards over the windows and signs pasted on the doors.

Keith came around and opened her door, then pulled out all of the things that wedged her in. He opened the front gate of one of the houses and walked up to a bright red door with a yellow plastic window panel. They unloaded the sloppily packed boxes and bags bit by bit. Once inside, they passed a kitchen and went right to a dark set of stairs, which Keith went up without switching on the light.

At the top of the stairs, there was a strong smell of old cigarette smoke. Many objects were stuffed onto the landing—a crammed bookcase with a skull on top, a hat stand draped with shoes, a pile of clothes. He kicked these aside and opened the door they sat in front of.

“My room,” Keith said with a grin.

Most of the room was red. The carpet was brick red. The

saggy sofa was red. The multiple bean bags on the floor were red and black. Flyers for who knew how many student plays covered the walls, along with posters for Japanese animation and comic books. The furniture consisted of plastic packing crates, with the occasional board laid across to make a shelf or table. Books and DVDs were piled everywhere.

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“It is her,” a voice said.

She turned to face the guy she had attempted to give a ticket to outside the uni—the one with the dreadlocks and the rimless glasses.

He was smiling knowingly. Behind him was a blond girl, rail thin, who didn’t look very happy. Her arms poked out of the stylishly shredded shoulders of her black T-shirt like two white pencils. Her eyes were round and deeply colored, and she had a pout. Her white-blond hair looked over-processed to the point of being straw-like and visibly fragile. Yet somehow this damage complemented the wild, sophisticated way she piled it on top of her head.