Authors: Mae McCall
28
In August, Cleo didn’t receive her usual birthday phone call
from Helen and Darwin. There was no package with miscellaneous carvings and
rocks. September and October rolled by, and there was still not a word from her
parents. On November 3
rd
, a dirty, wrinkled envelope arrived with a
letter:
Regret to inform you that Mr. and Mrs. St. James are no
longer with us. Please advise in the matter of sending remains….
There was a forwarding address and a telephone number, so
Vera called to get more information. Apparently, Darwin and Helen had each
taken a pinch of brown powder and hallucinated that they were Antony and
Cleopatra in the flickering light of the bonfire. The Eastern brown snake was
one of Australia’s deadliest reptiles. Still, the tribesmen said it was the
best performance they had ever seen, right up to the end. True to custom, their
bodies had been placed on platforms and covered with leaves while the flesh
rotted away. The attorney who spoke with Vera expressed his sincerest
condolences, and carefully broached the subject of payment for shipping the
remains to California. Two months later, a box was delivered to the house,
containing a jumbled pile of chalky, orange-painted bones. They were buried together,
right beside Achillea.
Cleo and Vera, solemn in black coats and heels, attended the
brief ceremony and then went home to sort through the massive piles of sympathy
letters from Helen and Darwin’s colleagues and friends. Until that day, Cleo
had no idea how large her parents’ social network was. She sat on the soft
carpet of her parents’ bedroom and sorted hundreds of letters, choosing to
respond to a very few, mostly people that she remembered from her childhood who
had been nice, or at the very least, interesting. In the weeks that followed,
she spent a lot of time in an attorney’s office handling estate matters. She
was the sole heir, and upon her eighteenth birthday, would receive ownership of
the St. James estate, four other properties in California (that she had never
even known about), and approximately forty million dollars (Grandpa had been
very
successful with those mines, apparently).
It was strange to have life change so much, and yet stay
exactly the same. Her parents were dead. She was an orphan millionaire. But,
she still lived in the same house, with the same housekeeper, the same dog
(although Juniper could barely get around these days), and the absence of her
parents, just like she had for years. She was rich, but she had never had to
worry about money anyway. She had no friends, but she had always been alone
(for the most part), and she was already used to it.
A part of her grieved for her parents, and those brief
moments of her childhood when they felt like a family, but there was no urge to
tear her hair and beat her chest. It was easier to just pretend that Helen and
Darwin were still dancing around a bonfire somewhere. But, for some reason, her
habit of breaking and entering intensified. It became even more of an
obsession, to be in someone’s home. Except now, after her time with John and
Rachel, she sometimes hid in the house and waited for the occupants to return.
She would listen to them laugh, and argue, and eat together, and then slip
outside when nobody was paying attention. It was risky, and she got an
adrenaline rush each time she tiptoed down the hall and quietly opened the door
to leave, but somehow, it made her feel a little more complete. Each experience
was different from the last, and Cleo was a dedicated collector of experiences.
29
When she turned eighteen, she solemnly signed the papers
that the attorney slid toward her, and suddenly, she was independently wealthy.
Vera submitted her resignation later that afternoon, stating that it was time
for her to retire. Cleo, surprisingly, was saddened by the news, and numbly
hugged her companion and went upstairs to her room. She shrugged out of her
fitted seersucker jacket and kicked off her red shoes before wandering to her
closet and opening the door. There, in the very back of the highest shelf, was
a dented blue toolbox that she had liberated from one of the gardening sheds
many years before. She quickly unlocked the box and lifted out the shallow top
tray, where she kept the stones and shells from her parents, and then reached
into the shadowy depths for a green and black houndstooth fedora. Smiling
slightly, she slowly ran her fingertips along the edge of the wool brim before
smoothing the shiny black feather that was stuck in the band. Then she turned
the hat upside down and ran her fingers along the interior leather band and around
the rectangular embroidered label that was stitched to one side—
T. Knight
& Sons; Custom Hatters, San Fran. CA
.
It was time for a change. Cleo was restless, and certainly
had no desire to maintain this giant house by herself now that Vera was moving
on. So, she decided to close up the house, instruct her attorney to see that
the grounds were maintained and the gardeners got paid, and look for a place in
San Francisco.
She could have bought a painted lady, or anything she wanted
on Nob Hill, but Cleo opted instead to purchase an apartment in a 1940s
building with Art Deco details. She chose the top floor, where four smaller
units had been combined into a penthouse that offered panoramic views of the
city and the bay. She wore Jackson’s hat the day she signed the deed.
***
Of the entire contents of the St. James household, she only
took with her: Waldorf, her father’s book about bog mummies, one of Helen’s
hybrid orchids, a framed family portrait from when she and Achillea were four
years old, her clothes, all of her notebooks, and the $502,000 in cash that she
had been storing in the toolbox with Jackson’s fedora. Vera had agreed to take
care of Juniper and Gally when she moved to Santa Barbara.
One benefit to her B&E hobby was that it basically served
as an extended test drive of different styles of sofas, chairs, tables, floor
coverings, and beds, so even though she had never bought furniture before, she
had a good idea of what she liked. She furnished the apartment from scratch,
scouring antique stores, junk shops, and upscale boutiques to amass an eclectic
blend worthy of a St. James abode. The first things she bought were a
butter-soft navy leather sofa with metal nailhead trim, both for looks and
comfort, and a wide flokati rug that she knew would be like a cloud under bare
feet. She slept on the sofa for two months while she continued shopping,
carefully curating her new home. Eventually, mismatched end tables, matte gray 1940s
lamps, and a crackled, red Asian coffee table joined the family. The walls were
painted variations of teal and blue, and she paired original pop art with
vintage advertisements and interesting objects suspended from giant nails by
wire.
The bedroom was saved for last, because she wanted to find
the perfect bed. She found it in a cluttered junk shop in Chinatown, covered in
dust, cobwebs, and fourteen other dirty pieces of furniture. But before she had
even finished excavating it, she saw its potential and knew that it would be
hers. It was Egyptian Revival, dark brass with inset lapis scarab beetles
across the headboard and enameled wings folding around posts with blue painted
finials. She didn’t even ask the price—just wrote the ancient Chinese man a
check for $8,000, pointed to the bed, and handed him a piece of paper with her
address. “You deliver Monday,” was all that she said before rushing out to find
a mattress store.
She didn’t polish it because she loved the dark patina, but
she did wipe off the webs and dust, scrub the beetles with a toothbrush until
their backs gleamed, and rub the enamel with a soft cloth lightly sprayed with
glass cleaner. When she put on the sheets and duvet, she took a flying leap
onto the impossibly soft mattress and thought,
Finally, the apartment is
complete.
Which was a problem, she soon realized, because now she had
nothing to do.
So, she got to know her new city. Two months of shopping had
taught her a lot of the geography, but not much about the experiences that San Francisco could offer. Cleo rode the trolley, and did the Alcatraz tour (although she
asked so many questions that the tour guide started ignoring her), and ate ice
cream at Ghirardelli Square, and watched the sea lions chatter on the shore.
She visited every art museum, and watched street performers in Union
Square, and listened to stoned poets in Haight-Ashbury coffee shops. Once the
touristy stuff had been crossed off her list, Cleo took sailing lessons and
worked her way through the menu of an authentic restaurant in Chinatown, where
nobody spoke English and the food sometimes still moved on her plate.
Sometimes, she would wander behind groups of gawking tourists, picking their
pockets to keep in practice and eavesdropping on their conversations. Once, she
followed a Portuguese family for two hours, not caring that she couldn’t
understand a word that they said. She liked trying to figure it out by their
body language and tone.
Soon, though, even these things lost some of their appeal.
Except for the eavesdropping—it was one of her favorite ways to relax, sitting
at a table, drinking cappuccino and scribbling someone else’s conversation into
a notebook. But, the restlessness that she had managed to hide away now came
back, rearing its head and vibrating through her entire body. By the time spring
crept back to San Francisco, Cleo felt lost. So, she systematically broke into
every apartment in her building, getting to know the neighbors, so to speak.
But rather than soothe the beast within, this only amplified her edginess. As
she was poking through the Cranford family’s medicine cabinet, only half of her
brain was with her. The other half was already planning the next break-in, and
her fingers would start to tingle with anticipation. It was a “grass is
greener” kind of moment. From the moment that the tumblers clicked and the door
swung open, Cleo would immediately think, “Meh—the next apartment’s probably
more interesting.” She had always loved B&E, but now it seemed so essential
that she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She never took anything, and still
occasionally left money in pockets or in the dryer. It was as though she was
searching for something very particular, some specific feeling or sensation,
but she didn’t know what it was or how to find it. Every day, she would come
home and sit in the dark, watching the lights twinkle over the bay, and try to
identify this thing in her chest that seemed desperate to claw its way out.
Using the hypothesis that maybe she needed personal human contact,
she started going out at night, often dancing until 3am under the anonymity of
strobe lights and fog machines. Or, she would listen to jazz musicians in dark,
moody nightclubs and flirt with men in pinstripe suits and fedoras until they
sent a drink her way (nobody ever carded Cleo). Occasionally, she allowed a
cheesy pick-up artist to take her back to his place, thinking that sex would
take the edge off of her unrest. She tried speed dating, but the impulse to lie
was so overwhelming that it made the exercise useless.
Speed Dater #3: “Hi, I’m Todd. I’m an electrical engineer, a
Virgo, and I love to cook. Tell me about yourself.”
Cleo: “My name is Kiki, I sell makeup door-to-door, and I
only eat uncooked spaghetti noodles and organic peanut butter.”
Speed Dater #15: “Hi, I’m Chris. I work at the Museum
of Modern Art and love to dance. I’d love to know more about you.”
Cleo: “I’m Rainflower. How would you feel about being bathed
in lamb’s blood under the light of the full moon?”
Speed Dater #27: “My name is Sam, and I’m a stockbroker. I
just got out of a really crazy relationshi—“
Cleo: “Don’t look now, but I think she just came in the
door. Beautiful, well-dressed, heading your way…Oh my God! She’s got a knife!
Hahaha. Just kidding. You can come out from under the table, Steve.”
Speed Dater #27: “My name is Sam.”
Cleo: “Well, Sam, I’m just looking for a one-night stand,
but only if the sex is going to be good. I fully intend to crawl out of your
bed after you fall asleep, rifle through your medicine cabinet, raid your
refrigerator, and walk out of your life forever. Are you game?”
Speed Dater #27: “Let me go get the car.”
Later, she left Sam softly snoring on his stomach, the
sheets tangled around his hips, and quietly plundered his apartment, sniffing
his shampoo and lightly running her fingers down the sleeves of his suit
jackets in the closet. Figuring that the poor guy didn’t need any more
reminders of his ex, Cleo also helped herself to a small assortment of jewelry
from a porcelain dish on the bathroom counter. She sat in the living room,
naked but for a black and red striped blanket loosely wrapped around her body,
and listened to the muffled sounds of the city filtering through the windows,
the ticking clock on the bookshelf, the slow drip of the kitchen faucet,
wondering what it would be like to feel attached to somebody. It wasn’t that
she was incapable of bonding—she had felt a mild affection for Nick when they
were dating, and of course there had been Achillea, all those years ago—it was
that she wasn’t sure if she would ever have a real connection, that true
understanding when two people just click. Since she had never had it, she
wasn’t really sure that she was missing out on something. All she knew was the
restlessness that had plagued her for months (or, if she was honest, years). A
memory nudged her with its fingertips, a vague flash of dark laughter riding a
wave of peppermint. She finished off the beer that she had pilfered from Sam’s
refrigerator and got dressed in the darkness of the bedroom, replacing the
blanket exactly as it had been before silently letting herself out.
***
She should have called a taxi, but Cleo had never known
fear, only curiosity. And right now, she wanted to walk the steep hills of her
city before night gave way to dawn. She inhaled the fishy air and put her hands
in her pockets, leisurely strolling past sleeping derelicts and stray dogs,
listening to the mournful sound of a distant barge and the whispers of San Francisco shadows. She was halfway to her apartment before she realized that she was
being followed.
The footsteps matched her own so closely that it could have
been an echo. But she felt it at the nape of her neck, and in the pit of her
belly, and once, when she stopped suddenly, her echo took an extra step. Most
women, alone at five in the morning, another fifteen minutes away from home,
would have been terrified. Cleo was intrigued. As far as she knew, she had
never been followed before. After a brief pause, she walked on, maintaining the
same leisurely pace. Her echo did the same, all the way to Cleo’s street. And
then it stopped, a polite distance behind her, and she went into her building
alone, rushing up the stairs to look out the window. No one was there. Cleo’s
heart was racing, but she wasn’t afraid. She felt—happy.
Cleo went for a late night walk the next night. And the
night after that. She walked by the waterfront, past Telegraph Hill, through Chinatown. She breathed in the bay air, and listened to her echo, about fifty yards behind
her. She never turned around.