Vienna (27 page)

“It's okay,” she repeated.

What were they doing right now? Kissing? Were his hands already on her?

“It's okay.” Because this had been predictable.
How many times did I tell Grayfield that moving out was a bad idea?
Of course Justine was the same as the men who had come to Vienna's door. Bleak satisfaction in being right.

“She already left me once.” And that was true, too.

Tears everywhere.

I want to go home.

There had to be some way to Keflavík, and then London, and somehow to Brussels. Doubtless it could all be arranged with money, which Vienna didn't have because she didn't have a job thanks to Justine.

Lord Davy!

If the Cart House really was a hideaway for rich people, then Lord Davy had to be wealthy. He'd even said he wanted her back in London, and he never liked Justine, so it worked perfectly. He could call her a taxi and pay for it with a credit card number. Or maybe he had his own plane—one of those ones from the military that didn't need a tarmac. It could land close by and then fly right to London. That would be best, especially if Justine saw it. Vienna imagined herself waving out the window as the plane took off.

She pulled out her cell phone, relieved to find she had coverage. Davy answered on the first ring.

“Hello, Vienna. How are you?”

She spoke through her crying. “Justine left and I want to go home.”

There was more of a pause than distance could account for. “Tell me what happened.”

“She wanted to come to this man's house to look at this stupid manikin from her pictures and she said she wanted me to take it apart and see what was inside and she doesn't even remember that I can't watch TV and I am tired of her being mean and I want to go home.”

Another long pause. When Davy spoke, he used that calm voice airline pilots used when they told passengers to fasten their seat belts. “I want ‘yes' or ‘no' answers. She said you liked television?”

“She told him I liked watching it, and she knows—”

“You are alone with a manikin from one of Justine Am's Clay to Flesh projects?”

“In this puke yellow geodesic dome in Iceland with nowhere—”

“Vienna. I'm trying to think, and I'm not sure how much time you have.”

“Time?”

“Justine wanted you to take the statue apart? I didn't know they could be disassembled.”

“It's a simple—”

“How long for you to do it?”

“One hour to take it apart and one to put it back.”

“And she wanted you to find something inside?”

“Yes, but she doesn't know—”

“What did she suspect?”

“She didn't say. Maybe something about the Star of Memphis. I don't care anymore. I hate her. I want—”

“Vienna. Take the statue apart and see what is inside. You must start now.”

“Why?”

“You have to trust me. Please, I need you to do this. Promise me.”

“I don't—”

“Vienna. Promise me now.”

“No.”

“Vienna.” He used that voice that meant he had lost the argument but he was going to get his way anyhow.

The back of Vienna's throat hurt, like it did just before she threw up. Everyone hated her. “I promise.”

“Do it now and don't tell Justine you called me. It can be your way of getting back at her.”

Vienna closed the phone without saying good-bye and went to the statue. Everyone asking her to do things and no one ever giving anything in return and it had always been that way. She thought about breaking her promise, but it was clear Uncle Anson wouldn't help because in the end he was just like everyone else. And now Vienna had to take the statue apart because he bullied her and people who broke promises went to hell forever. Where they could meet Justine Am when she ended up there.

Vienna was able to tip the manikin to the floor without letting it drop too hard. A plate, star, and unicorn horn tattooed in the left foot. The wooden holding pin in the big toe was almost invisible. She pulled it with an anticlockwise twist, and the toe popped loose. The fourth toe slid forward. That was enough to release the big toe. Vienna yanked it out and threw it across the room. The ankle dropped revealing a grooved track of wood, and now the foot was loose. She rotated the knee joint clockwise until the foot loosened further. Push the outside ankle in. Rotate the heel. Pull the small toe all the way out and the foot dropped free. Vienna threw it across the room as well.

Didn't you ever play with dolls?

Vienna worked her way up to the chest, throwing each piece as it came free. Behind the left breast there was a small box of red wood. It was not on the diagram. How had Justine guessed its existence?

Were all women like this? Things hidden away? Could the Star of Memphis be inside? Justine hadn't believed it, but she had to be wrong sooner or later.

Vienna slid the rounded lid off. Inside were two small cylinders of metal. One golden and the other dull gray.

Not golden. Real gold. It had to be—the weight of it and the way it caught the light. Maybe ten grams. Enough for a plane ticket. Vienna sat still for several minutes after cylinders found their way into her skirt pocket.
They belong on Julian Dardonelle's list
. The slip of paper he'd shown her back in Brussels. Gold and silver, gold and copper, gold and iron, gold and lead. He must have pulled each pair from the shattered remains of manikins in Rome, Paris, Budapest, and Prague. And somehow Sinoro had the weights of gold and mercury from the Brussels manikin. It didn't make any sense, and anyway if Justine thought Haldor was so much better than she was, let him figure it out.

I'm going home.

She scampered across the floor, collecting the manikin's scattered anatomy. She lined the pieces up and slid them into place as quickly as she could. It went together faster than she'd predicted. One hundred and fifty-three minutes since Justine left. If Justine stayed out for the three hours she promised, she would not be back for another twenty-seven minutes.

Vienna spent several frantic minutes trying to set the statue back upright, but her arms shook under the weight. She gave up and ran out the door. Across a mosaic of moss-painted lava.

The rain had retreated to the clouds. A strip of blue stretched in a broken ring around the horizon. It seemed like a good sign.

She kept running until she could no longer see the house.

 

21

Vienna was gone when they got back.

Should have expected it.

The manikin was tipped over, glass eyes contemplating the tragedy of faux-Viking interior design. Justine sighed. “I'll pay for any damage.”

Haldor easily righted the statue. “It looks fine. Will the girl come back? She seems a nuisance.”

No wonder she hides away.
“She likely panicked after pushing the manikin over. I better fetch her. Thank you for a wonderful time.” If nothing else, Haldor had behaved the true gentleman, overriding an obvious desire not to.

“It was enjoyable, even taking into account your antiquarian ideas of courtship.”

“Our national hang-up.”

“Nonsense. Americans are fine people when you stop trying to convince everyone you are.” He favored her with a condescending smile. “I shall attend your photo session and hope for more luck on a second date.”

Justine forced a tight grin. “Fair enough. For now, I better get the girl.”

“How will you find her?”

“Never sell me short.”

Zoomed out, Justine's GPS showed a loose web of roads around Haldor's dome. Vienna wouldn't be on any of them. She'd take the shortest route to Reykjavík, calculated along a straight edge of tears and anger. No time to consider lava escarpments or glacial runoff. Justine called up the GPS's topographic overlay and saw a nightmarish maze of contour lines. The closest town was Hveragerdi, a collection of geothermal greenhouses that may as well have been on Mars for all the chance Vienna had of reaching it before dark.

Justine chose the first road intercepting Vienna's path, a washboard of dirt that nullified her rental car agreement inside ten yards. She found a high point near Vienna's projected crossing and stepped from the car.

The evening grew temporarily brighter as the sun raked the bottom of tarnished clouds. Sitting in the warm light, Justine felt lost in a Van Gogh landscape. Rocks and waterfalls rendered in uneven layers of brilliant color. Even the smallest tundra flowers seemed to vibrate with life. The only thing missing was Vienna—her unassuming beauty captured in fretful brushstrokes.

The sun dipped and the landscape dimmed to muddy watercolors. “Come on, Vienna.”

A lone figure topped a serpentine gravel bank south of Justine's vantage point. The only person Justine had seen since stopping. “There we go.”

Exhaustion and the mousetrap terrain exposed Vienna's abridged motor skills. Every other step required stop-motion overbalancing to prevent a fall. Justine backed up fifty yards to intercept Vienna's asymmetrical march.

The dust-streaked trails left by tears were expected, but the smears across Vienna's glasses were somehow more painful. The girl's hair had achieved new levels of anarchy. She had a cut on the underside of her right forearm as a firsthand lesson on the sharpness of basalt. Her skirt was wet along the bottom, evidence of a stream crossing. Goose bumps on her forearms.

Vienna glanced at Justine then looked away, set on walking.

She tries so hard to keep everything together and it blows up anyway.
It wasn't a condition you could diagnose or dissect. It was the sunny lawns of Stanford.

I've got this one.

She spoke just above a whisper. “Stop.”

“Bog off,” Vienna said. She stopped all the same.

“Not going to happen.”

“I hate you.”

“Then why walk all this way to get my attention?”

“I don't care what you think.”

“I think I don't hate you at all. Tough luck for us both, huh?”

The girl had no end of ability to make tears. Justine quashed a sudden image of her shriveling like a mummy to supply her waterworks.

“You left me.”

“I warned you.”

“You said you would…” The girl's face drained of expression. “You didn't even remember I don't like the telly.”

“I remembered perfectly. I suggested it to let you know I was lying. It was something Haldor wouldn't know, but you would.”

“I don't care.”

Justine saw the girl fitting pieces together, reaching the obvious conclusion hours late.
It happened too fast, even though she knew what was coming.
No time to find emotional equilibrium. “Vienna, you instantly recognize geometrical relationships that I might never see.”

“So what?”

“Sometimes I'm quick to see patterns, too. I see what will move people in a direction I want. I saw what would move Haldor and I used it.”

“Do you do that to me?”

“Yes.”

“You have no right,” Vienna sniffled.

“I have every right. This is my life. I'll take what I can. If I want you, I'll use every trick to get you.”

“Like David Bell wanting Lina Zahler.”

“Except he failed.”

“What trick do you use to move me?”

“Honesty.”

Vienna looked down at her feet. “Why haven't you asked me what was in the statue? You know I took it apart.”

Back in Montana all those years ago. Once in a long while, Granddad's old radio came in crystal clear.
There's a hanging slider in the wheelhouse
 … “You first, everything else second. Isn't that how your books say it should be?” …
and she's gone yard!

Without looking up, Vienna ran the short distance to Justine and stood before her. Justine understood the oddly incomplete motion and enfolded Vienna in her arms.

“Do you hate me?” Vienna asked.

“No.”

“It's not fair that no matter what you say, I end up going along with it.”

“You're better off than I am. You don't say anything at all, and here I am waiting.”

Justine was startled to hear muffled laughter. “I'm not going to cry anymore.”

“It's okay, Vienna.”

“And you lied back in London.”

“I did?”

“You said you wouldn't come back if I left you, and here you are.”

The Hollywood rejoinder would be a slow-motion kiss. An inexcusable mistake with Vienna.
My feet are muddy! There's blood on my arm and dirt everywhere! Don't kiss me! You'll leave again!

Justine released her hold. “I came back because I want you with me.”

Vienna smiled, caught herself, then let the smile through anyway. A short sniffle. “There were two cylinders of metal in the manikin. I think one is gold.”

“You took them?”

“I know it was stealing. We can take them back.”

“With this mess, all bets are off. I'll make amends later.”

Vienna hesitated. “Then you don't like him?”

“The man lives in Iceland and drives a ragtop 911.”

“Ragtop?”

“Convertible.”

Vienna stood motionless as the seconds passed. “The average annual temperature of inland Iceland varies between zero and five degrees centigrade.” She nodded, as if satisfied with a long chain of deductions.

Justine removed the girl's glasses and carefully brushed the lenses on her sleeve. “Didn't I tell you smart is sexy?”

“A smart person would have understood why you left with him.”

“A smart person would have figured out how to get inside the manikin without seducing him in the first place.” Justine led Vienna to the car. “I act within my limitations no less than you.”

Vienna fell asleep within minutes of sitting in the car. The difference between the real world and the Euclidian landscape that filled her head must have come as a shock.