Tuesday Mooney Wore Black. Kate Racculia

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СКАЧАТЬ one of the world’s largest amateur Edgar Allan Poe collections,” Lila said, as Pryce rolled his eyes at the word “amateur.” “First editions, letters, ephemera, assorted memorabilia. Movie stuff, posters, film prints of the Poe movies the other Vincent Price made with Hammer—”

      “Corman, my dear.” Pryce placed a hand, surprisingly large and steady, over his heart. “He made House of Usher in ’sixty, The Pit and the Pendulum in ’sixty-one, The Raven in ’sixty-three, The Masque of the Red Death in ’sixty-four” – Lila shot Dex a beautifully arched brow – “and all the others with Roger Corman, my dear. King of American independent cinema.” After he had composed himself, Pryce winked at Dex. “Master of cheap thrills.”

      “You should meet my friend Tuesday,” Dex said. “She lives for creepy stuff. And she’s right—” Dex waved across the ballroom. Tuesday, auction clipboard in hand, might have nodded in response. “She’s right there. If you bid and win, she’ll come over.”

      “I intend to,” said Vince. “What’s the point of bidding if you don’t intend to win?” He took a drink. “Dex. Dex Howard. I make it a point of putting a serious question to a man whenever I meet him. Would you permit me?”

      Dex, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, started. “Oh, me? You mean – of course.” He laughed. “Fire at will.”

      Vince cleared his throat.

      “Do you believe, Dex Howard,” Vince asked, “that you are real?”

      A beat of silence fell between them.

      Dex looked at Lila. Her expression was flat, with no hint as to how seriously he was supposed to take her husband.

      “Uh … yes?” Dex said.

      “Your hesitation speaks volumes.” Vince leaned into him. “How do you know you are real?”

      Dex cleared his throat. Swallowed. Decided on:

      “Because—?”

      He didn’t get a chance to say more before Vince charged ahead.

      “Precisely. Because. Simply because,” Vince said. “Because you have accepted the central, implicit thesis of existence – you exist as real because you know, as of yet, no other way of being. But that’s the rub, aye. There are so many ways of being, of being real, of living, right now. And the true prize, the jewel at the end of the journey, is the discovery of the self. The selves, whether they be wrought or revealed, recognized at long last.” Vince’s voice quieted. “Tell me, Dex Howard. Who are you? How were you made, and how much of your making was by your own hand?”

      Dex grinned at him. He could not help it. “I am a human,” Dex said. “I was made by Harry and Phyllis Howard in western Mass. in 1978, probably during a snowstorm. I made myself—” Dex swallowed. “Do you want a real answer?”

      Vince and Lila both nodded.

      Dex considered. There were many answers. All of them were more or less real. Had his making and unmaking taken place on his high school’s stage, when he was in the habit, yearly, of becoming fictional people? Or had his making been one great decisive action, when his father told him he could waste his own money on school and he agreed? Or—

      He remembered his armor.

      “On the day I went for an interview at a temp agency, I wore a suit, because a suit fit the part I was auditioning for,” he said. “And they looked at me like I had three well-groomed heads and immediately sent me to temp in finance. So I guess that’s when I made me, when I made this me that you see here before you.”

      “A fine distinction, this you.” Vince nodded gravely. “We are many. All of us.”

      “Yes,” said Lila under her breath. “I am aware I married a fortune cookie.”

      “In a cape,” said Dex. “Well done.”

      No one in Tuesday’s section of the ballroom was bidding. She’d expected as much – she was staked out way in the back, surrounded by corporate-sponsored tables filled with midlevel executives who had already made their own, more modest contributions to the night’s total. She pressed her clipboard to her stomach. She was still hungry. The illicit satay she’d snuck from Dex had only made her hungrier. She wasn’t allowed to hit the buffet until after the auction, technically, but if she didn’t get more to eat soon, she was at risk of passing out. Tuesday was a fainter. “Your blood has a long way to go,” her doctor had said after Tuesday passed out in tenth-grade band and hit her head on the xylophone, “to get from your heart all the way down to your feet and back up to that big brain of yours. Your blood cells have to be marathoners. Marathoners have to take care of themselves.”

      “So you’re saying I’m a giant with a big head.”

      “You know you’re a giant with a big head,” said her doctor. “Eat more salt.”

      The cream and gilt walls of the ballroom were broken up by enormous gold-draped windows. Tuesday nestled herself against one of the drapes, slipped out of her shoes, and closed her eyes. She always saw more with her eyes closed. Like the suit sitting at the table four feet to her right; he was angry about something. She could hear the fabric of his suit jacket sliding, pulling as he hunched his arms. He set his glass down hard. His voice – he was talking about nothing, really; work stuff – Dopplered in and out, which meant he was moving his head as he spoke, side to side, trying to catch an ear. He couldn’t sit still. The other people at the table weren’t listening to him. He was angry because to them, he was invisible. I see you, thought Tuesday, and opened her eyes.

      Nathaniel Arches was standing in front of her.

      He looked down at her bare feet, gripping the crimson carpet.

      “That the secret to surviving this thing?” he asked. “Making fists with your toes?”

      “Better than a shower and a hot cup of coffee,” she replied, and balled up her feet.

      A wave of noise crashed from the other side of the ballroom. Two bidders were going head-to-head for the New Kids tickets. The auctioneer pattered, Do I hear seventy-five hundred, seventy-five hundred – do I hear EIGHT, eight thousand, eight thousand for the meet-and-greet of a lifetime, the New Kids in their home city, in the great city of Boston – do I hear – I hear EIGHT—

      “You should try it,” she said.

      “Take off my shoes? But then I won’t be able to make a quick getaway.”

      “You’re telling me the Batmobile doesn’t have an extra pair of shoes in the trunk?”

      “It doesn’t have a trunk,” he said. “Or cup holders.” He looked down at the tumbler in his hand, half full, brown and neat. “I’ve been meaning to do something about the cup holder situation.”

      “But not the trunk.”

      “It’s not like I take it to Costco.”

      Tuesday laughed. She’d been trying not to, and it came out like СКАЧАТЬ