“A spa resort,” Berenbaum said. “Winningham Grove or Regazo de Lujo maybe. Something inside the Project peri-meter, with orange trees. Somewhere we’ve been before. Maybe Elysienne. Check for him at places like that. Under all his old names, too.”
Teo nodded, scribbling on a memo pad, then glanced at me. “He can’t make up new aliases,” he said in a teachery voice, “because fey can’t lie. Not with words anyway. Our languages are foreign to them on a really deep arcane level, so they can’t use them to create anything. We have to invent their human names. Rivenholt’s been coming here so long the Project has to keep giving him new names and faces every decade or so to hide the fact that he doesn’t age.”
“Huh,” I said stupidly.
Teo turned back to Berenbaum. “Do you know any reason why Inaya West would be trying to get in touch with him?”
Berenbaum frowned. “They worked together on Accolade a few years back, but they don’t really socialize. I try to minimize Johnny’s contact with people who aren’t hip to the Arcadia thing.”
“We intercepted a couple of messages from her meant for him. She seemed to want to talk to him about something, and she said you weren’t returning her calls either.”
Berenbaum gave an odd little snort. “She hasn’t called me in days,” he said. “Or maybe Araceli has been aggressively screening my calls since I’m behind schedule.”
My eyes drifted over to the signed poster for Red Cotton. I wondered if seven-year-old Inaya’s scrawl was somewhere under the glass. She had never so much as been in a school Christmas pageant when Berenbaum found her chatting up a snow goose in New Orleans City Park and directed her straight to her first Oscar nomination.
“Don’t worry about ’Naya,” he said. “I’ll give her a call later on today and find out what’s going on from her end.”
“All right,” said Teo, rising. “Call us right away if you get any new information.”
“You do the same,” said Berenbaum, moving forward to give Teo’s hand a brisk shake. “I’ll tell Araceli to put you guys through no matter what.”
Teo was already halfway out the door by the time I -managed to get off the insidiously pliant couch and back to my feet. Berenbaum reached for my hand more gently than he had Teo’s, and his eyes did a quick circuit over my face that made me feel as though he had just scanned the deepest contents of my psyche. He spoke quietly, still holding my eyes.
“It gets better,” he said.
The words blew into me like I’d left a window open. My brain was a white noise of the thousand things I wanted to say, and then I realized I was still holding on to his hand. I blushed to the roots of my hair, managing only an awkward smile and a half bow before hurrying after Teo.
“Did he say something to you?” Teo asked after we got back into the car.
“To me, not to you.”
“As long as we’re partners, anything said to you on the job is to both of us.”
“It was personal.”
“How can it be personal? He just met you.” Suddenly he swiveled in his seat, looking aghast. “Did he hit on you?”
“No! It wasn’t like that! God, why do you have to spoil everything?”
“Oh man, don’t cry; that’s not fair.”
“I’m not!” But I was.
“Fine, you don’t have to tell me.” He started the car, looking irked, as though I had started crying on purpose. Men seem to think that women do this on a regular basis, which is bullshit. Just because you don’t feel something, it doesn’t mean the other person is faking it. You know who thinks like that? Sociopaths.
I sat in silence for most of the way back, trying to figure out what Berenbaum had meant by his parting words. Maybe it was a reference to working with the Project. Maybe he was referring to the physical healing process. But I had received the comment at a much deeper place.
I love people randomly and suddenly, and it’s a curse most of the time. When it isn’t, it’s a lifesaver. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work with Teo, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to live at Residence Four, and I wasn’t sure if I gave a crap about Viscount Rivenholt or expired visas or Arcadia. But I would have walked across the 405 for David Berenbaum right then, and that was enough.
Teo chose that moment to say, “If something bad happened to Rivenholt, I’ll bet Berenbaum’s behind it.”
“Don’t be a dick,” I countered. “You have no reason to believe that, other than to be contrary.”
“Don’t you watch TV? It’s always the husband, or the boyfriend, or the business partner. Someone close. And there’s no one closer to Rivenholt than Berenbaum.”
“Can you succinctly sum up the nature of their relationship?”
“As far as we can tell, all artists, inventors, people like that, they have a kind of soul mate in Arcadia. It’s like each has a radio tuned to the frequency of the other one. You can communicate a little without knowing it, across the border, but if you make physical contact, it’s like putting a puzzle together. You get these incredible leaps of genius.”