Black as Night: A Fairy Tale Retold (31 page)

“Who?”

“Bonnie. She was here again. It was my fault—I let her in. She asked me to smell some perfume, and…”

“…And that’s the last thing you remember,” Father Francis said, shaking his head. She could see the other friars standing in the door to her room. Charley, Matt, Father Bernard, and the cross one, Brother George. Brother Herman was sitting at the foot of her bed.

“Where’s the perfume?” George asked with some skepticism, looking around. But it seemed to have vanished.

“I think she took it with her,” the girl said, feeling a bit fuzzy, as though she had imagined the whole thing.

“What color was it? Did it smell sweet?”

“Clear, and I think it was sweet, at first.”

“Chloroform,” George muttered.

“Nora,” Father Francis said quietly. “Was this another random attack, do you think?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know why Bonnie would be targeting you?”

Aside from the fact that everyone malicious seems to be after me, no
, she almost said. “Please,” she said faintly. “Please let me think about it a little more before I tell you anything.”

Father Francis kept his keen gaze upon her. “You need some rest,” he said at last and got to his feet. He looked around the room. “Did she take anything?”

“Seems to me like she was looking for something,” Brother Herman said, looking at the crate of the girl’s clothing, whose contents were scattered and disheveled.

The girl put her hand to her hair, but the antique star comb was gone. Of course. Fingerprints. Her gaze traveled around the ransacked room. “I can’t imagine what she would have taken,” she managed to say. “I’ll look over everything later.”

“Fair enough.” Father Francis put a hand on her head. “Thank God you’re all right.” He prayed a short prayer for healing and all the friars joined in the Hail Mary at the end. She prayed with them.

“Thank you,” she said, grateful for the prayer and grateful that they were letting her be.

After they had gone, she lay on the bed, staring at the white wall, but everything she saw before her was blackness. Once more, she felt utterly, completely alone, and her doom, which she felt she had escaped, was hanging over her again…

* * *

“What’s wrong?” Mr. Fairston asked when she paused in reading to rub her hands.

“Oh, I have a slight heart ailment and I get tired easily under stress, that’s all,” she said, feeling scraped thin. Bear was still gone. Her mother and Rose had left on vacation. Fish had gone to Europe. All day she went from one place to another, where no one really knew her, and where she was alone, even when she was in a crowd.

“You should be more careful of yourself,” Mr. Fairston chided her, turning his head restlessly on his pillow. “I have a brain tumor, and even I don’t look as pale as you do.”

“Well, I’m always pretty white, even in the summer.” But when she glanced in the mirror beside the bed, she saw she did look more pale than usual.

“You’ve got to start taking better care of yourself,” he said, his left eye creasing in worry. “Is something wrong?”

“I felt a funeral,” she murmured. “Like in the poem.”

“Your own funeral?” he asked. “Or mine?”

“I’m not sure. Do you know what I mean?”

“Of course I do,” he stared at the wall with one eye. “I’m living with that every day. But why should you be feeling it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” Mr. Fairston tried to make a joke in the silence. “Don’t you go and die before I do. That’s not fair.”

Not exactly a comforting thought,
she thought as she went outside into the heavy evening heat to the night shift at work. In the crowds near the subway, she caught a glimpse of broad shoulders and a large chin beneath a flat nose, and sunglasses. Quickly she turned her head forward again.
He’s here. He’s here.

She had been sensing him at the back of her mind for some time: the large ominous figure. And now he was right behind her. But what could she do but go on?

When she stopped to cross the street and looked around again under the pretense of watching for cars, there was no sign of him. His absence mocked her.

She crossed crack after numerous crack on the endless sidewalk, drawing closer and closer to the train that would take her to work, and sensed at the same time she was heading into danger, not out of it.
But there’s nothing
, she told herself again in frustration.
Just my paranoid intuition
—her intuition that was so strong and so severe she wished she could ignore it. It seemed at times that every possible danger in the world presented itself to her in her mind. Why? Was it truly God, trying to warn her, or the devil trying to torment her? Most of the time she had to assume the latter, just to find an excuse to ignore it and go on.

The sense of foreboding was persistent. On the train, she looked over her shoulder a few times. But the man in black was gone, and no one else around her seemed a likely candidate. She tried to concentrate on the novel she had brought along—Jane Austen’s
Northanger Abbey
. Not exactly the most comforting thing to read when you were nervous…

“Hey, you’re not wearing black and white!” Rita exclaimed when the girl walked into the workroom, which was crowded by a flock of black and white balloons netted in bags.

The girl, startled, looked down at her dress and realized her mistake. Tonight’s ball was a black-and-white masquerade, and all the servers had been asked to come in black-and-white dress. She had been so preoccupied with protecting herself that she had completely forgotten and worn her yellow summer dress.

“Well, it’s almost white,” she said, half an excuse.

 “At least you look nice and that long braid is plenty black.” Rita admitted. The waitress was wearing a white sequined top and shiny black pants, with a black-and-white polka-dot seventies-style jacket. “I thought I’d come as a disco dancer.”

 “Looks good,” the girl said, and tried to get business-like. “What do we have to do with these balloons?”

“Put ribbons on them and bring them out to the hall. Mirror wants them all over the ceiling. Mr. Carnazzo is having a hissy fit about it, because he hates having stray balloons hanging up there for days on end. But it’s for our biggest client. They always get their way.”

“If we put really long ribbons on them, that might help,” the girl said, picking up the scissors.

Being around other people doing her usual job had dispelled her fear, but she was still haunted by the lingering feeling of being under surveillance, the steady beat of another’s heart walking in sync with hers.

“You seeing things again?” Rita asked her when she looked over her shoulder for the fifth time as they set out napkins. “You’re worse than usual today.”

“Sorry,” she said. But she knew, somehow, that her feeling was more than imagination.

As the event began, she tried to distract herself by enjoying the costumes people came in—everything from panda bears to playing cards—and ignore the sense of unreality that was growing around her.

Then it happened—the first scent of real fear passed by her. She went rigid, and didn’t quite know why. She had just handed a program to a man in an executioner’s mask, and he had taken it without even glancing at her. Now she realized that the large broad shoulders disappearing into the crowd were too familiar.

Her heart began beating fast and her palms began to sweat as she passed out more programs and tried to work her way back to normality. Somehow.

II

Leon was still riding the train, praying that his guardian angel would alert him when Bonnie got off, as he kept talking with the teenagers and looking out the windows when the train stopped. So far no one.

The teenagers finally got off at the Grand Concourse, and Leon recollected himself and wondered if he had broken his vow of obedience by coming out this far, and furthermore, was Bonnie even still on this train? By now the el train had dived underground, and had crossed the river to Manhattan Island.

Praying a general rosary for Nora, for Bonnie, and the teenagers he had just talked to, he stood poised by the door as the train grudgingly slowed its speed to stop at 96
^th
Street. Again, he watched the leaving passengers, more anxiously, because the crowds were larger downtown. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a bright blue something bobbing through the crowds exiting from the very first car.

He dodged after it. But just as he was closing in, he realized his mistake. This hat was worn by a twelve-year-old boy. He halted, deflated, scanned the crowds and saw, unambiguously this time, the fluorescent blue stocking hat and black trench coat quickly hurrying up the steps aboveground.

Now he pushed through the turnstiles, sprinted to the steps and hurried up, apologizing to the people he pushed ahead of. But by the time he reached the street, the crowds were massive, even on a hot Saturday afternoon. For a while he turned one way and then the other, but there was no sign of the old lady.

It took him some time to beg for another token and get on the subway back home to the friary. All the way home, he felt slightly foolish. He was somewhat gratified to find the two dogs sitting by the el train station waiting for him.

“Sorry, I couldn’t find her,” he said, rubbing their heads. “Come on, better get back to our home.”

By the time he got back, it was past lunch, but apparently no one had eaten. He was told that Nora was fine, but resting. The rest of the community was gathered in the library of the friary. Brother George was fixing one of the bookshelves, which had suddenly cracked in two under the weight of an ancient copy of
The Encyclopedia of Franciscan History.
Matt was holding up one end for him. Brother Herman and Father Bernard sat on the battered couch, and Father Francis pontificated from a creaking rocking chair.

Leon went straight to Father Bernard, knelt down, and asked forgiveness for leaving the friary without permission. Then he explained why, as the rest of the community listened.

“Well, this is a puzzle now,” Father Bernard said, after forgiving Leon. “Apparently one of our volunteers is being stalked by a homeless lady.”

“If she is a homeless lady,” Matt said. “I’m having my doubts.”

“Well, she can move quick enough when she wants to,” Leon said. “And apparently she has enough money to take the train too.”

“Nora herself is a mystery,” Father Bernard said, stroking his beard. “Has she told any of you anything about herself? About her family?”

“A bit of a mystery? She’s a complete unknown!” Brother George snorted, banging irritably on the end of the bookshelf. “Even if she does dress nice, she landed on our doorstep with about as much background as any one of our homeless guests!”

“But she is a hard worker,” Brother Herman said. “She’s been a tremendous help this past week.”

“What do you think, Father Francis?” Matt asked.

“I think,” Father Francis raised his bushy eyebrows as he looked at his little community, “that we should invite her up to join us for a late lunch. Since we happen to all be here today.”

All the others stared at him.

“She’ll tell us when she’s ready,” Father Francis said calmly. “Right now, I think she needs to get her mind off of things. And I think we should expend some energy towards helping her do that.”

One by one, the others nodded.

Father Bernard went down to Nora with the invitation, and Brother Herman served up the pea soup that he had been cooking that morning, while the others set the table and got things ready.

Nora came up to join them a bit uneasily, wearing her yellow dress again. But the company quickly put her at ease as they shared the meal together.

“So all the work we’ve been piling on you hasn’t driven you away yet, eh?” Father Francis said to her.

“No, not at all. It’s refreshing. I feel like a farm girl again,” she confessed.

“What, did you grow up on a farm?” Brother Matt asked with interest. He alone among the friars had grown up in the country, in the Midwest.

“Well, a small one. My mom and dad had one in upstate New Jersey, a small town called Warwick. We had chickens and a garden. I guess we liked to think of it as a farm.”

There! Background information
. Brother Leon nodded at Brother George, who nevertheless was still eating his soup with a dismal frown.

“And now here you are, in the big city,” Father Bernard shook his head. “Quite different!”

“Yes. Oh, we’d always had connections with the City—my mom grew up here, and when my dad died, we moved back. But I’m glad I didn’t have my childhood here.”

Brother Leon considered this, glancing around at the others. “Ah, it’s not so bad. I grew up in Harlem myself.”

“Wasn’t that rough?”

“I guess you kind of get used to it,” Brother Leon admitted. “You got to play in wide open fields. My cousins and I played on trash heaps. We never knew what we were missing.”