White Cat Page 17

Page 17

 

  “I can—,” Sam starts.

  Daneca interrupts him. “No, I need Cassel to take me. And to agree to come in the house for a minute. ”

  I sigh. I know her mother wants to talk to me, probably because she thinks that I’m a worker refusing to join the cause. “I don’t have time. I have to get to my brother’s place. ”

  “You have time,” Daneca says. “I said just a minute. ”

  I sigh again. “Okay, fine. ”

  Daneca’s house is just off the main street in Princeton, an elegant old brick Colonial with green and amber hydrangeas framing the front walk. It stinks of old money, of the kind of education that allows the elite to stay that way, and of intimidating privilege. I have never even broken into a house like that.

  Daneca, of course, goes inside like it’s nothing. She drops her book bag in the entryway, sets down the cat carrier on the polished wood floor, and heads down a hallway filled with old etchings of the human brain.

  The cat cries softly from her cage.

  “Mom,” Daneca calls. “Mom. ”

  I stop in the dining room, where a blue and white vase filled with only slightly wilted flowers rests on a polished table, between silver candlesticks.

  My fingers itch to shove those candlesticks in my bag.

  I look back toward the hall, instinctively, and see a blond boy—he looks like he’s around twelve—standing on the stairs. He’s watching me like he knows I’m a thief.

  “Uh, hi,” I say. “You must be Daneca’s brother. ”

  “Screw you,” the kid says, and walks back up the stairs.

  “In here,” Daneca’s mom calls, and I head in that direction. Daneca’s waiting for me near a half-open door to a room filled to its high ceilings with books. Mrs. Wasserman sits on a small sofa near a desk.

  “Get lost?” Daneca asks me.

  “It’s a big house,” I say.

  “Well, bring him in,” Mrs. Wasserman says, and Daneca ushers me inside. She flops down onto her mother’s wooden desk chair and spins it a little with one of her toes.

  I am left to perch on the edge of a brown leather ottoman.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” I say.

  “Really?” Mrs. Wasserman has a whole mess of light brown curly hair that she doesn’t seem to bother corralling. Her bare feet are tucked up under a soft-looking oatmeal throw. “I’m glad. I heard that you were a little bit wary of us. ”

  “I don’t want to disappoint you, but I’m not a worker,” I tell her. “I thought maybe there was some misunderstanding. ”

  “Do you know where the term ‘worker’ comes from?” she asks, leaning forward, ignoring my floundering.

  “Working magic?” I ask.

  “It’s much more modern than that,” she says. “Long, long ago, we were called theurgists. But from about the seventeenth century until the 1930s, we were called dab hands. The term ‘worker’ comes from the work camps. When the ban was passed, no one knew how to actually enforce it, so people waited for prosecution in labor camps. It took the government a long time to figure out how to conduct a trial. Some people waited years. That’s where the crime families started—in those camps. They started recruiting. The ban created organized crime as we know it.

  “In Australia, for instance, where working has never been illegal, there is no real syndicate with the kind of power our crime families have. And in Europe the families are so entrenched that they are practically a second royalty. ”

  “Some people think workers are royalty,” I say, thinking of my mother. “And Australia never made curse work illegal because it was founded by curse workers—or dab hands or whatever—who’d been sent to a penal colony. ”

  “You do know your history, but I want you to look at something. ” Mrs. Wasserman places a stack of large black-and-white photos in front of me. Men and women with their hands cut off, balancing bowls on their heads. “This is what used to happen to workers all over the world—and still does in some places. People talk about how workers abused their power, about how they were the real power behind thrones, kingmakers, but you have to understand that most workers were in small villages. Many still are. And violence against them isn’t taken seriously. ”

  She’s right about that. Hard to take violence seriously when workers are the ones with all the advantages. I look at the pictures again. My eyes keep stopping on the brutal, jagged flesh, healed dark and probably burned.

  She sees me staring.

  “The surprising thing,” she says, “is that some of them have learned to work with their feet. ”

  “Really?” I look up at her.

  She smiles. “If more people knew that, I don’t know if gloves would be as popular. Wearing gloves goes back as far as the Byzantine Empire. Back then people wore them to protect themselves from what they called the touch. They believed that demons walked among people and their touch brought chaos and terror. Back then workers were thought to be demons who could be bargained with for great rewards. If you had a worker baby, it was because a demon had gotten inside of it. Justinian the first—the emperor—took all those babies and raised them in an enormous tower to be an unstoppable demon army. ”

  “Why are you telling me this? I know workers have been thought of lots of different idiotic ways. ”

  “Because Zacharov and those other heads of crime families are doing the same thing. Their people hang around bus stations in the big cities waiting for the runaways. They give them a place to stay and a few little jobs, and before they know it, they’re like the Byzantine child-demons, in so much debt that they might as well be prisoners or prostitutes. ”

  “We have a boy staying with us,” Daneca says. “Chris. His parents threw him out. ”

  I think of the blond boy on the stairs.

  Mrs. Wasserman gives Daneca a stern look. “That’s Chris’s story to tell. ”

  “I have to get going,” I say, standing. I’m uncomfortable; I feel like my skin is too tight. I have to get out of this conversation.

  “I want you to know that when you’re ready, I can help you,” she says. “You could save a lot of boys from towers. ”

  “I’m not who you think I am,” I say. “I’m not a worker. ”

  “You don’t have to be,” Mrs. Wasserman says. “You know things, Cassel. Things that could help people like Chris. ”

  “I’ll walk you out,” says Daneca.

  I head toward the door quickly. I have to get away. I feel like I can’t breathe. “That’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I mumble.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE RICH ODOR OF garlicky lamb hits me when I open the door to Philip and Maura’s apartment. Despite giving me all that crap about getting right over, Grandad is asleep in a recliner with a glass of red wine resting on his stomach, cradled in the loose grip of his left hand and tipping slightly toward his chest. On the television in front of him some fundie preacher is talking about workers coming forward and volunteering to get tested, so people can touch hands in friendship, ungloved. He says that all people are sinners and power is too tempting. Workers will give in eventually if they’re not kept in check.

  I’m not sure he’s wrong, except about all that hand touching with strangers, which sounds gross.

  I hear the clink of plates as Philip walks out of the kitchen. I flinch at the sight of him. It’s like having some kind of surreal double vision. Philip my brother. Philip who’s probably stealing Barron’s and my memories.

  “You’re late,” he says.

  “What’s the occasion?” I ask. “Maura’s going all out. ”

  Barron comes out behind Philip, holding two more glasses of wine. He looks thinner than the last time I saw him. His eyes are bloodshot and his lawyer-short hair looks grown out, shaggy, curling. “She’s freaking. Keeps saying she’s never thrown a dinner party before. You better get back in there, Philip. ”

  I want t
o feel sorry for him, thinking of all those crazy notes to himself, but all I can see is the small steel cage on a floor made sticky with layers of piss. All I can imagine is him turning up his music to drown out Lila’s crying.

  Philip throws up his hands. “Maura always makes a big deal out of nothing. ” He heads back toward the kitchen.

  “So why are we doing this?” I ask Barron.

  He smiles. “Mom’s appeal is almost over. We’re just waiting for a verdict. It’s happening. ”

  “Mom’s getting out?” I take the glass from his hand and drink the wine in a gulp. It’s wrong that the first feeling I have is panic. Mom getting out of jail means her back in our lives, meddling. It means chaos.

  Then I remember I’m not going to be here. On the drive over I gave up on the idea of getting a car. Tomorrow I’m going to use one of the school computers to book a train headed south.

  Barron looks over at Grandad and then back at me. “Depends on the verdict, but I’m pretty optimistic. I asked a couple of my professors, and they thought there was no way she wouldn’t win. They said she had one of the best cases they’d ever seen. I’ve been doing work on the case as an independent study, so my professors have been involved too. ”

  “Great,” I say, half-listening. I’m wondering if I can afford a sleeper car.

  Grandad opens his eyes, and I realize he wasn’t passed out after all. “Stop with all that crap, Barron. Cassel’s too smart to believe you. Anyway, your mother’s getting out and—God willing—should be happy to come home to someplace clean. Kid’s been doing nice work. ”

  Maura ducks her head out from the other room. “Oh, you’re here,” she says. She’s got on a pink tracksuit. I can see her collarbones jutting out just above the zipper on her hoodie. “Good. Sit down. I think we’re ready to eat. ”

  Barron heads into the kitchen, and when I start to follow, Grandad grabs my arm. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “I know something’s going on with you boys, and I want to know what it is. ” I can smell the wine on his breath, but he looks perfectly lucid.

  I want to tell him, but I can’t. He’s a loyal guy, and it’s hard for me to picture him having a hand in the kidnapping of his boss’s daughter, but my lack of imagination isn’t a good enough reason for trust.

  “Nothing,” I say, roll my eyes, and go sit down for dinner.

  Maura spread a white tablecloth over the kitchen table and added a couple of folding chairs. On it are the silver candlesticks that a guy that goes by Uncle Monopoly gave Philip at his wedding, ones I’m pretty sure were stolen. The lit tapers make everything look better, mostly by throwing the rest of the kitchen into shadows. A lamb roast with slivers of garlic sticking out from the meat like bits of bone rests on a platter beside a bowl of roasted carrots and parsnips. Grandad drinks most of the wine out of a glass that Barron keeps refilling, but there’s enough for me to feel pleasantly tipsy. Even the baby seems happy to bang a silver rattle against his tray and smear his face with mashed potatoes.

  I recognize the plates we’re eating off too. I helped Mom steal those.

  Looking at the mirror in the hall, it’s like I’m watching us all in a fun house glass, a parody of a family gathering. Look at us celebrating our criminal enterprises. Look at us laugh. Look at us lie.

  Maura is just bringing out coffee when the phone rings. Philip gets up and comes back a few minutes later, holding it out to me.

  “Mom,” he says.

  I take it from him and walk back into the living room. “Congratulations,” I say into the receiver.

  “You’ve been avoiding my calls. ” Mom sounds amused rather than annoyed. “Your grandfather said you were feeling better. He says that boys who feel better don’t call their mothers. That true?”

  “I’m tip top,” I tell her. “The peak of health. ”

  “Mmm-hmm. And you’ve been sleeping well?”

  “In my own bed, even,” I say cheerfully.

  “Funny,” she says. I can hear the long exhalation that tells me she’s smoking. “That’s good, I suppose, that you can still be funny. ”

  “Sorry,” I say again. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. ”

  “Your grandfather said that, too. He said you were thinking a lot about a certain someone. Thinking leads to talking, Cassel. Other people were there for you back then. Be there for them and forget about her. ”

  “What if I can’t?” I ask. I don’t know what she knows or whose side she’s on, but some childish part of me wants to believe she’d help me if she could.

  There is a moment’s hesitation. “She’s gone, baby. You’ve got to stop letting her have power over—”

  “Mom,” I say, interrupting her. I’m walking farther from the kitchen, until I stand near the picture window in the living room, close to the front door. “What kind of worker is Anton?”

  Her voice drops low. “Anton is Zacharov’s nephew, his heir. You stay away from him and let your brothers look out for you. ”

  “Is he a memory worker? Just tell me that. Say yes or no. ”

  “Put Philip back on the phone. ”

  “Mom,” I say again, “please. Tell me. I might not be a worker, but I’m still your son. Please. ”

  “Put your brother back on the phone, Cassel. Right now. ”

  For a moment I consider hanging up. Then I consider chucking the phone against the floor until it breaks. Neither option will give me anything but satisfaction.