Fever. Lauren DeStefano

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ one day of freedom before a new hell emerged.

      The red tent is lit up by lanterns that hang from the low ceiling. One of the lanterns hits my head, and when the boys let go of me, I drop to the cold earth. “Don’t go anywhere,” one of the boys, who is about a foot shorter than me, says. He pulls back his moth-eaten coat to show me a gun holstered in the waist of his pants. The other boy laughs, and they leave. I can see their silhouettes taking shape outside the zippered doorway, hear their sneering laughter.

      I scan the tent for another opening I can wriggle through, but it’s rooted into the ground, and much of it is bordered by furniture. Polished, ancient-looking bureaus and trunks with things like hissing dragons painted across the drawers, cherry blossoms, gazebos, black-haired women staring sullenly into the water.

      Antiques from some Eastern country that’s long gone. Rose would like these things. She would have stories for what’s saddening the black-haired women, could chart a path among the cherry blossoms that would take her where she wanted to go. For a moment I think I see what she would—an infinite world.

      “Now, then,” the old woman says, appearing from nowhere and pulling me into one of two chairs on either side of a table. “Let’s take a look at you.”

      Smoke ribbons up from a long cigarette held in the old woman’s wrinkled fingers. She brings it to her lips for a breath, and smoke rolls through her mouth and nostrils when she speaks again. “You are not from this place. I would have noticed you.” Her eyes, made up to match her jewels, are on mine. I look away.

      “Those eyes,” she says, leaning closer. “Are you malformed?”

      “No,” I say, forcing myself not to sound angry, because there’s a boy with a gun outside, and Gabriel is still at this woman’s mercy. “And we’re not spies. I keep trying to tell you. We just took a wrong turn.”

      “This whole place is a wrong turn, Goldenrod,” she says. “But tonight’s your lucky night. If you’re looking for a fancier district to do business in”—she flits her fingers dramatically, letting ashes fly—“you won’t find any for miles. I’ll take good care of you.”

      My stomach turns. I don’t say a word, because if I open my mouth, I’m sure I’ll vomit all over this beautiful antique table.

      “I am Madame Soleski,” the woman says. “But you call me Madame. Let me see that hand.” She reaches across for my wrist and then slaps my bleeding left hand onto the table. The seaweed bandage is still holding on, though it’s bunched from my fist and dripping with blood.

      She raises my hand toward the lantern and gasps when she sees my wedding band. She’s probably never seen real jewelry before. She sets her cigarette on the edge of the table and takes my hand in both of hers, examining the vines etched into my wedding band, the blossoms that Linden often copied along his building designs when he was thinking of me. They were fictional, he said. No such flower blooms in this world.

      I clench my fist again, worried she’ll try to steal the ring. Even if that marriage was a sham, this small piece of it belongs to me.

      Madame Soleski admires it for a moment longer, then lets go of my hand. She rummages through one of her drawers and returns with gauze that looks like it’s been used, and a bottle of clear liquid. The liquid burns when she clears away the seaweed and pours it onto my wound. It bubbles and hisses angrily. She’s watching me for a reaction, but I won’t give her one. She dresses my palm with gauze expertly.

      “You’ve messed up one of my boys,” she says. “He’ll have a black eye tomorrow.”

      Not good enough. I still lost the fight.

      Madame Soleski fingers the sleeve of my sweater, and I resist, but she digs her fingers into my bandaged wound. I don’t want her touching me. Not my wedding band, and not this sweater. I think of Deirdre’s small, capable hands making it for me; they were etched with bright blue veins—her soft skin the only indication of her youth. Those hands could turn bathwater to magic, or thread diamonds into her knitting. Precision was in everything she created. I think of her wide hazel eyes, the soft melody of her voice. I think of how I will never see her again.

      “Leave the bandage put,” she says, picking up her cigarette and tapping away some ash. “Wouldn’t want to get an infection and lose that hand. You have such exquisite fingers.”

      I can no longer see the outlines of the boys standing guard outside, but I hear them talking. The gun was much smaller than the shotgun my brother and I kept in the basement, but if I could get my hands on it, I could figure it out. But how quick would I be? Some of the others might have weapons too. And I can’t leave without Gabriel. It’s my fault that he’s even here.

      “Don’t speak unless spoken to, huh, Goldenrod? I like that. This isn’t exactly a talking business.”

      “I’m not a part of your business,” I say.

      “No?” The old woman raises her penciled eyebrows. “You look as though you have been running from some other kind of business. I can offer you protection. This is my territory.”

      Protection? I could laugh. I have sore ribs and a throbbing forehead that suggest otherwise right now. What I say is, “We got a little lost, but we’ll be on our way if you’d let us go. We have family waiting for us in North Carolina.”

      The woman laughs and takes a languid breath through her cigarette, her bloodshot eyes never leaving mine.

      “Nobody with a family finds their way here. Come, let me show you the pièce de résistance.” She says those last words with a practiced accent. Her cigarette has run out, and she stomps it with her high-heeled shoe, which appears to be a size too small.

      She leads me outside, and the boys standing guard immediately stop their laughing as she passes. One of them tries to trip me with his foot, and I step around it.

      “This is my kingdom, Goldenrod,” Madame says. “My carnival of amour. You wouldn’t know what ‘amour’ is, of course.”

      “It’s ‘love,’” I answer, gratified when her eyebrows raise in surprise. Foreign languages are something of a lost art, but my brother and I had the rare advantage of parents who valued education. Even if we could never use it, even if we could never grow to be linguists or explorers, the knowledge filled our minds, brightened our daydreams. Sometimes we ran through the house, pretending we were parasailing high over the Aleutians, that later we’d sip green tea under the plum blossoms in Kyoto, and at night we squinted at the starry darkness and pretended we could see our neighboring planets. “Do you see Venus?” my brother said. “It’s a woman’s face, and her hair is on fire.” We were crammed in the open window, and I answered, “Yes, yes, I see it! And Mars is crawling with worms.”

      Madame wraps her arm around my shoulders and squeezes. She smells like decay and smoke. “Ah, love. That’s what the world has lost. There’s no more love, only the illusion of it. And that’s what draws the men to my girls. That’s what it’s all about.”

      “Which?” I say. “Love, or illusion?”

      Madame chuckles, squeezes me again. I am reminded of the long walk I took with Vaughn through the golf course that one chilly afternoon, how his presence seemed to erase all the good in the world, how it felt like an anaconda was coiling around my chest. And all the while, Madame brings me to her spinning circle of light. What is it with first generations and their collection of breathtaking things? I hate СКАЧАТЬ