After a pause for wine, Mac said, “I saw Mickey Dime today in Butterworth’s.”
“That’s never going to sound like a men’s clothing store to me.”
“They were having a necktie sale.”
“Sounds like a waffle syrup.”
“Racks and racks of ties. I saw Dime, but he didn’t see me.”
Shelly said, “Baby, it’s uncanny how still you are when you’re pretending to be a mannequin.”
“He’s interested in the silk ties. But first he takes a moist towelette from a foil packet and washes his hands.”
With the snap of a forefinger, she pinged her wineglass for emphasis: “Just like
“Nearly inhaled it. Made me wonder if it was a cocaine-infused moist towelette.”
“The man
“Once his hands are clean, he starts fingering the silk ties.”
“Fingering?”
Mac gave her a demonstration with his cloth napkin.
Fanning herself with the wine list as if just watching this performance inflamed her libido, Shelly said, “He’s a spooky dude.”
“He smelled some of them.”
“Smelled the ties? Tell me he didn’t lick them, too.”
“He didn’t. Maybe he wanted to. He was
“How long did this go on?”
“I watched maybe five minutes. But then I left. I didn’t want to be there for the climax.”
After the waitress stopped by to tell them the chef’s specials, Shelly said, “With a mother like his, poor Dime didn’t stand a chance of turning out normal.”
“Well, to be fair, we only met her once.” Speaking ill of the dead always made Mac uncomfortable. “She might’ve been having an off day.”
“Renata Dime told me she was immortal.”
“She died just the same.”
“I’ll bet it came as a surprise to her.”
“She meant immortal through her books,” Mac said.
“We both tried to read one, remember?”
He sighed. “It made my eyes bleed.”
Outside, a siren rose, and drivers curbed their vehicles where they could to facilitate the passage of a police patrol with its roof rack of emergency beacons swiveling blue-red-blue-red. As the cop car raced down Shadow Street, Mac Reeves looked past it, to the Pendleton at the summit. Although the police cruiser was neither coming from nor going to that grand old mansion, the place did not look the same to Mac, not as stately as it usually appeared, not as welcoming, and in fact inexplicably ominous. A sense of foreboding overcame him, and he shivered.
As observant as ever, Shelly said, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. Maybe talking about Renata Dime put me off my mood.”
“Then we won’t talk about her anymore.”
He didn’t know what had happened to the bodies. He didn’t know why the HVAC vault had changed. He didn’t know what to do next.
Finally he decided that he should go back to his apartment. The photographs of his mother, her furnishings, the things that she loved would bring him as close as he could get to her. Her belongings, her memory, would inspire him. Then he would know what to do.
And if that didn’t work, maybe the time had come for Sparkle and Iris. He felt rejected, after all, as he’d felt when the cocktail waitress humiliated him fifteen years earlier. Now the
When he stepped out of the vault, the basement corridor proved to be as changed as the room behind him. Filthy, littered. Half the ceiling lights dark and broken. Spongy-looking growths on the walls and ceiling, some black, others glowing yellow. The air smelled bad, nothing like the essence of lime or silk lingerie.
Disoriented, he turned right, away from the north elevator that he needed. Fragments of fluorescent lightbulbs crunched underfoot. His footsteps seemed to stir a foul, astringent odor from the litter on the floor.
