Later that night, Schuyler had received two different welcome presents: someone had short-sheeted her bed, and there was a book slipped under her door. A copy of The Plague by Albert Camus. Inside the book was an envelope, and inside the envelope, there was a key.
From then on, Jack never acknowledged her presence at the house or at school. But he had more than made up for it later.
“Where’d you get this?” Jack asked, tracing a cut on her forehead with a light finger. They were lying on the thick shag carpet, gazing at the remnants of the fire.
“Oh. It’s nothing. Banged my head,” Schuyler said. She didn’t want to tell him about Dylan just yet. “Were you followed?”
“Yes. But I made sure she left before I got here,” he said. His voice was sleepy, and she nestled in the crook of his arm. The streetlights were the only light in the room, but she could see him clearly in the dark. His perfect profile, as if sculpted in marble, glowed like a candle. “You?”
“No.”
In reality she had not checked. She had been too busy talking Oliver into leaving. Too busy and too excited.
Because she had known, hadn’t she? She had known Jack would be there, waiting for her, as she had waited for him earlier.
But yes, next time she would be more careful. They would both have to be.
FOURTEEN
Bliss arrived late to the Lexington Armory. The Rolf Morgan show was scheduled to start at nine in the evening, and she was supposed to be there by six for hair and makeup, but it was already half past eight. She hoped the designer wouldn’t kill her, although he’d probably already written her off, and she’d arrive to find some other model wearing the black-lace corset dress she was supposed to wear that evening. She hadn’t meant to be late, but her latest vision had left her disoriented. She’d been brushing her teeth, and when she looked up at the mirror, the same handsome man in the white suit from her dreams was looking back at her. “Jesus!” “Hardly.” The man laughed as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. His hair, Bliss realized, was the exact color of molten gold. His eyes were as blue as a clear morning sky. There was a smell in the room of lilies in the spring, but it was a cloying smell that masked something rotten. Like how her stepmother, BobiAnne, smelled when she put on too much perfume after leaving the gym instead of showering.
Bliss decided she would be brave. “Who are you?”
“I am you.”
“I’m going crazy, aren’t I? Why are you here?” Bliss turned off the faucet and tried to steady her breathing. “What do you want?”
The golden man in the white suit reached into his coat pocket and removed an old-fashioned pocket watch that hung from a gold chain. “Time.”
When Bliss looked up at the mirror again, he was gone. She’d spent the next hour staring at the glass, waiting for him to appear again. Only when she’d finally wrenched herself away did she realize she was running so late.
But when she checked her cell phone, there were no angry messages from her model booker, no anxious harangues about how the designer was having a fit because she wasn’t there. She was doubly confused to find the entrance to the show completely empty, save for a few miserable-looking fashion victims shrouded in black, being held behind police sawhorses. This was fashion week?
Where was the mad carnival of editors and photographers, celebrities and stylists, the fashionable and the fashionably distressed, crowded around, elbowing each other, pushing and shoving to get into the Rolf Morgan show? Rolf ’s show was the biggest ticket of the season and the hardest invitation to score. And yet, here it was, thirty minutes before showtime and there was hardly anyone around.
She found a lone minion, a production assistant wearing a black T-shirt with ROLF MORGAN emblazoned on the chest, and asked to be directed backstage.
The Armory housed the 69th Regiment of the National Guard, and several soldiers in dress uniform saluted her as she entered. The building was cavernous, and encased in glass cabinets lining the walls were hundreds of firearms and munitions. She followed the directions through a grand atrium, a space as large as an airplane hangar, which was set for a runway show. There were rows of bleachers leading up to the ceiling, and a stage had been set up at one end, where a band was tuning up.
During rehearsals, Rolf had explained that the models would walk on a giant runway suspended above the stage, and Bliss looked forward to the challenge.