Lullaby

Chapter 37

The Gartoller Estate in the moonlight, an eight-bedroom Georgian-style house with seven bathrooms, four fireplaces, all of it's empty and white. All of it's echoing with each step across the polished floors. The house is dark without lights. It's cold without furniture or rugs.

«Here,» Helen says. «We can do it here, where no one will see us.» She flicks a light switch inside a doorway.

The ceiling goes up so high it could be the sky. Light from a looming chandelier, the size of a crystal weather balloon, the light turns the tall windows into mirrors. The light throws our shadows out behind us on the wood floor. This is the fifteen-hundred-square-foot ballroom.

Me, I'm out of a job. The police are after me. My apartment stinks. My picture's full-page in the paper. I spent my day hiding in the shrubs around the front door, waiting for dark. For Helen Hoover Boyle to tell me what she has in mind.

She has the grimoire under one arm. The pages stained pink and purple. She opens it in her hands, and shows me a spell, the English words written in black pen below the foreign gibberish of the original.

«Say it,» she says.

The spell?

«Read it out loud,» she says.

And I ask, what's this do?

And Helen says, «Just watch out for the chandelier.»

She starts reading, the words dull and even, as if she were counting, as if they were numbers. She starts reading, and her purse starts to float up from where it hangs near her waist. Her purse floats higher until it's tethered to her by the shoulder strap, floating above her head as if it were a yellow balloon.

Helen keeps reading, and my tie floats out in front of me. Rising like a blue snake out of a basket, it brushes my nose. Helen's skirt, the hem starts to rise, and she grabs it and holds it down, between her legs with one hand. She keeps reading, and my shoelaces dance in the air. Her dangle earrings, pearls and emeralds, float up alongside her ears. Her pearl necklace, it floats up around her face. It floats over her head, a hovering pearl halo.

Helen looks up at me and keeps reading.

My sport coat floats up under my arms. Helen's getting taller. She's eye level with me. Then I'm looking up at her. Her feet hang, toes pointed down, they're hanging above the floor. One yellow shoe then the other drops off and clatters on the wood.

Her voice still flat and even, Helen looks down at me and smiles.

And then one of my feet isn't touching the ground. My other foot goes limp, and I kick the way you do in deep water, trying to find the bottom of the swimming pool. I throw my hands out for purchase. I kick, and my feet pitch up behind me until I'm looking facedown at the ballroom floor four, six, eight feet below me. Me and my shadow getting farther and farther apart. My shadow getting smaller and smaller.

Helen says, «Carl, watch out.»

And something cold and brittle wraps around me. Sharp bits of something loose drape around my neck and snag in my hair.

«It's the chandelier, Carl,» Helen says. «Be careful.»

My ass buried in the middle of the crystal beads and shards, I'm wrapped in a shivering, tinkling octopus. The cold glass arms and fake candles. My arms and legs tangle in the hanging strands of crystal chains. The dusty crystal bobs. The cobwebs and dead spiders. A hot lightbulb burns through my sleeve. This high above the floor, I panic and grab hold of a swooping glass arm, and the whole sparkling mess rocks and shakes, ringing wind chimes. Flashing bits clatter on the floor below. All of it with me inside pitches back and forth.

And Helen says, «Stop. You're going to ruin it.»

Then she's next to me, floating just behind a shimmering beaded curtain of crystal. Her lips move with quiet words. Helen's pink fingernails part the beads, and she smiles in at me, saying, «Let's get you right side up, first.»

The book's gone, and she holds the crystals to one side and swims closer.

I'm gripping a glass chandelier arm in both hands. The million flickering bits of it shake with my every heartbeat.

«Pretend you're underwater,» she says, and unties my shoe. She slips the shoe off my foot and drops it. With her stained hands, she unties my other shoe, and the first shoe clatters on the floor. «Here,» she says, and slips her arms under mine. «Take off your jacket.»

She drops my jacket out of the chandelier. Then my tie. She slips out of her own jacket and lets it fall. Around us, the chandelier is a shimmering million rainbows of lead crystal. Warm with a hundred tiny lightbulbs. The burning smell of dust on all those hot lightbulbs. All of it dazzling and shivering, we're floating here in the hollow center.

We're floating in nothing but light and heat.

Helen mouths her silent words, and my heart feels full of warm water.

Helen's earrings, all her jewelry is blazing bright. All you can hear is the tinkling chimes around us. We sway less and less, and I start to let go. A million tinkling bright stars around us, this is how it must feel to be God.

And this, too, is my life.

I say, I need a place to stay. From the police. I don't know what to do next.

Holding out her hand, Helen says, «Here.»

And I take it. And she doesn't let go. And we kiss. And it's nice.

And Helen says, «For now, you can stay here.» She flicks a pink fingernail against a gleaming glass ball, cut and faceted to throw light in a thousand directions. She says, «From now on, we can do anything.» She says, «Anything.»

We kiss, and her toes peel off my socks. We kiss, and I open the buttons down the back of her blouse. My socks, her blouse, my shirt, her panty hose. Some things drop to the floor far below, some things snag and hang from the bottom of the chandelier.

My swollen infected foot, Helen's crusted, scabby knees from Oyster's attack, there's no way to hide these from each other.

It's been twenty years, but here I am, somewhere I never dreamed I'd ever be again, and I say, I'm falling in love.

And Helen, blazing smooth and hot in this center of light, she smiles and rolls her head back, saying, «That's the idea.»

I'm in love with her. In love. With Helen Hoover Boyle.

My pants and her skirt flutter down into the heap, the fallen crystals, our shoes, all on the floor with the grimoire.