“You have a heart,” she reminds him, trying to smile. “You proved it to me.” She reaches out her hand. And OK, he takes it.
“Well.” Swanny stands up, a little unsteadily. “Duncan, I couldn’t have asked for a more enlightening premarital conference. You are the most despicable chauvinist I could ever hope to encounter; it is as though you looked into my secret heart and answered every fear with your Neanderthal’s ‘hell yeah.’ And while we’re on the subject of each other’s mothers, as we were a while ago, I’d like to express my admiration for the immigrant showgirl who gave you life. Digging for gold is exhausting work. I now know from experience. Thank you for the intoxicants. Also, I hate your dog.”
She sashays back to the French doors and disappears inside. Abby rests her head on his knee. He closes his eyes for a second, trying to lose himself in sensation, and when he opens them, Cuyahoga’s perched on the railing, right where Swanny stood before, watching. The vulture was circling this whole time.
* The Gone World by Ryden Marx vividly portrays the last violent days of the dinosaurs, mired in lava, scarred by meteor shrapnel, resorting to cannibalism, beneath an orange hell sun choked in volcanic ash. It was regarded by the CGC’s board as an allegory for the day when, like these lizards of history, the dragons too would become a thing of the past. But others saw it as a skeptical look at the future of global trade in a city no longer fit for human occupancy.
11
SOULMATES
Swanny is not certain whom she wants to kill: Duncan, her mother, or herself. Perhaps all three. But if she’s to kill anyone at all, it’s imperative that she stop sobbing first.
The curious thing about this drug, though, is that although one part of her is curled in the empty Swirlpool of a randomly selected fourth-floor guest bathroom, weeping inconsolably, another part of her is hovering over the scene, reporting her sensations back in the distant third person. It’s rather like being a character in a book. Even as Swanny hiccups and wipes at her eyes with hanks of quadruple-ply toilet paper, she is noticing the details of this moment—the almost pleasurable irritation of her newest tooth, still just below the gum, the pressure of her feverish skin against the frost-cold porcelain, the shiny knobs of the hot and cold faucets, like the steering wheels of miniature cruise ships. She can almost lose herself in these observations, can at least forget the cruel words she and Duncan exchanged on that terrace for a moment or two, before it all comes rushing back.
Really, she should smoke more: enough of this substance might erase her memory entirely, at least until morning, at which time…well. Perhaps morning will never come. The only problem with this plan is that the fateful bag went back into the pocket of Ripple’s pants, which are probably strewn by now amid the other garments on the floor of his room. The thought of finding him and the anorexic in flagrante delicto is more than she can bear. But suppose she went directly to the source? Ripple revealed his supplier: Osmond.
A journey through the labyrinth of the mansion sounds for a moment like an impossible task, and risky too. She sees again that endless corridor of tight-shut doors, the crass womanizer waiting at the end of it like a Minotaur. The story seems so very old. She thinks of this morning—only this morning!—when she was the baroness, a dizzy romantic with a hope chest so full that it took Corona and the dentist both to drag it down the stairs. She could not have been more eager to leave the house behind, with its cobwebs and its drafts, its swimming pool, even after all these years, like a newly filled grave. But now the grave she sees is an open one, stretching out before her: this mansion, in all its grandeur, is the sepulcher of her marriage. Swanny has read it is possible to die of heartache, and she imagines the slow drift into oblivion, her soul lapping back like a tide. The problem is, some larger part of her still wants to punch things. Specifically, Duncan Ripple’s face.
“I am too strong,” she murmurs. “Despite myself, I will endure.” She hefts herself out of the empty tub and toddles out into the hallway to score more drugs.
Swanny is not looking her best, it’s worth noting. Her eyeliner, applied this morning with a painterly hand, has turned to watercolor, and her ringlets, once glossy and segregated with mousse, are windblown (from the terrace) and snarled (from her writhing paroxysms of grief). Her chinchilla coat hangs open asymmetrically; she isn’t sure what’s become of her shoes; her crinolines protrude from beneath the hem of her skirt. Yet there’s a madwoman glamour about her now, and when she steps into the elevator, she regards the mirror with approval. So it should be, on a night like this.
Swanny has been studying maps of the Ripple house since the contracts were finalized, and even in her current condition, finding Osmond’s library should present no difficulty. But on the sixth floor, the elevators open on complete darkness—so complete that, as Swanny steps into it, she scarcely can glimpse the carpet under her feet before the sliding doors eclipse the gilded chamber’s light. She feels like a signature with ink spilled over it, like graffiti in an unlit tunnel. She reaches for the wall next to the elevator, but succeeds only in knocking over a large stack of…books?
“Who goes?” thunders a voice. All at once, the library is illuminated in synthetic candlelight, revealing Osmond Ripple, irate, wearing a dressing gown and an old-fashioned nightcap, wheeling toward the railing of the upper stacks. “Will the indignities never cease? Am I to be burgled too? Oh.” He puffs. “It’s you.”
“Good God,” gasps Swanny, “you nearly frightened me to death.”
“Rightfully so! If I’d had my hurlbat, you’d be lying dead where you stand.” Osmond adjusts the tassel of his pointed cap. “To what do I owe this pleasure, Baroness?”
Swanny has not prepared for this question. It might not be politic to demand he hand over his medication right away. Besides, if she’s honest with herself, that isn’t the only reason she’s come.
“I’ve wanted to see you again since dinner,” she hears herself say. “It was quite unfair that you were cast from the table for defending my honor. At least that’s what I assume you were trying to do when you were so vigorously urging me into prostitution.”
“No apology is in order. My brother—and his strumpet bride—are entirely to blame for my callous expulsion from this evening’s repast. Now, please, dry your eyes. You look like a besmirched Punchinello. I fear it will trouble my dreams.”
“But it isn’t just that”—she hesitates—“Uncle Osmond. There’s no one else here whom I can talk to, you see.” As she says it, she tries to ignore the nagging feeling that it’s true. “I feel you and I share the same affliction. Not physically, of course, but, well, spiritually.”
Osmond nods slowly. “You suffer too.”
“Yes, yes, terribly.”
“The braying of this brutish race threatens to loose you from your senses.”
“Quite nearly.”