But first you had to get by the Troll.
Instead, Louise lists all her favorite cleaning products—Borax for scouring, 409 for light degreasing. She talks about the strengths and weaknesses of push brooms. She even talks about her mother on the sofa, one shoe on, the other foot filthy, like she’d hobbled through some muddy field to get here.
“And what would you say her biggest problem was?” the therapist asks.
Louise chews her lips. She doesn’t want to talk about this, any of this. She wants to talk about how, all around campus, kids are disappearing, how the ambulances have taken to showing up without lights or sirens, sneaking in through the dark gates at night, and in the morning all that’s left is empty rooms and sage. Ten kids in the last month, the cafeteria lines getting shorter. But instead, she says nothing, because what would be the point? No one here ever gives you a straight answer.
“She was a drug addict,” says Louise.
“Is that what bothers you? The drug use? I know from our sessions that you’ve experimented quite heavily yourself.”
Louise sips her tea. “Fine. You wanna know what her biggest problem was? Me.”
Click-Click
*
The Troll’s name was Evan, but Louise didn’t learn that until the Wizard named him. Outside the ivy walls, the Troll pushed the button, talked into the box. Yeah, it’s me, he said. I got one. The gate opened. The Troll pulled into an enormous cobblestone circle in front of a mansion bigger than anything Louise had ever seen.
The Wizard was waiting, gate clicker in his hand, wearing jeans and a polo shirt. He was sixty going on forty-five, chiseled, polished, like a man who tans, who has a personal trainer and a personal shopper, a man who gets his slate-gray hair trimmed every week, who does yoga and eats only organic fruits and vegetables. Like a man who Gets What He Wants Always, who surrounds himself with acolytes and yes-men.
Like a billionaire. Which is what he was.
“Ice maker’s on the fritz, Evan-baby,” he said. “Be a doll and pick some up at the local you know.”
He handed the kid—Evan was what, nineteen, twenty?—a handful of hundred-dollar bills, like how much did he think ice cost? Ten pounds of frozen water? But Louise noticed. Shit must have been seven hundred dollars, as in keep the change. And given the size of the estate—fuck house, this was a palace with acreage, and in San Francisco—seven hundred dollars was monkey dick to this guy.
Evan said no problem-o, and jumped back in the Mercedes convertible.
“Be bad,” he told Louise, and pulled out of the circle and back down the long driveway.
Louise was wearing white shorts and a sleeveless button-down. It was late summer, but the first chill of fall was in the air. She had her backpack with her, because Evan said it was critical that Louise’s outfit scream schoolgirl. Inside was her Intro to Algebra book, her journal, and some colored pencils. Plus Purell in three different delivery vehicles (spray, lotion, and roll-on).
She looked over at the Wizard, who stood just outside the lamplight, like a vampire.
“Give us a spin, kitty-cat,” he said. “Let the Wizard take a lookie-loo.”
Louise turned self-consciously. She thought about her grandmother sorting mail at the post office, about her mother out there somewhere, lost in America, about the father she didn’t know. Maybe this was him. Crazier things had happened.
“Meow,” said the Wizard, his eye hidden behind a pair of two-thousand-dollar sunglasses. He invited her back to the pool to meet the others.
They walked up the grand stairs and through the foyer. Louise could feel the front door recede behind her, as if she were standing still and the exit were running. Ahead of her, the Wizard disappeared through a door. Louise hurried to keep up but stopped short in the doorway. The room was black with scripted white writing on the wall. Moloko Plus, she read. Moloko Synthemesc. Moloko Vellocet. Lining the rectangular wall were six life-size alabaster mannequins, all kneeling on pedestals, giant white bouffants on their heads. But they weren’t just women. They were fountains. A thin white liquid spouted from their nipples into a milky moat below.
The lighting was low, everything white glowing against the dark walls.
At the far end of the room, Louise saw, four men dressed all in white, wearing black bowler hats. They sat on a white bench and stared at her from under heavy eyelids, motionless.
She froze.
Where is the Wizard? What am I supposed to do?
The tinkle of six fountains filled the air. Behind it was a light classical score, uplifting, familiar. A little bit of the Ludwig V.
Tentatively, Louise entered the room and moved toward the men—why don’t they move? Is this a gauntlet? Am I the show? But when she got closer, Louise saw they weren’t men but silicon replicas. Statues. Which was somehow creepier. She stopped. Behind her, suddenly, she felt a man’s breath on her neck.
“You like milk, kitty-cat?” the Wizard whispered in her ear. “A little bit of the chocolate meow-meow.”
Louise turned and took a step back, her foot sinking into the floor’s channel moat with a splash.
“I’m—” she said. But the Wizard just smiled from behind his sunglassed eyes.
“Wanna see a trick?”
He raised his right hand and pointed at the four replicas.