Another Faust (14 page)

At breakfast she scooped wedges of grapefruit. She no longer noticed that her breath fermented the bitter juice into rotten wine, or that in the morning, her milk curdled in her cereal bowl. She listened to the chatter, hoping not to catch Bicé looking at her. Then Valentin had laughed about something he had done. Every part of her felt afraid of it. Then Christian overturned the table and for some reason she felt safe afterward.

She walked to her room with her stomach churning — like after every meal. In the center of the house, she could look in any direction and see down a hall, branching to separate rooms. From above, the house might look like the sun, rays thrusting in every direction. Belle turned toward her hall and saw Madame Vileroy coming down the one next to it — from Christian’s room. Belle said, “Where’s my part of the deal?”

“Did you do what I asked?”

“Almost. The guy’s coming, and I’ve got the snack ready.”

“I know,” said Madame Vileroy.

Madame Vileroy led Belle down a different hall, one she’d never been down before. Vileroy opened the door to a bathroom that looked more like a fiery lagoon. Its walls were white, but Belle could hardly tell through the eerie red light of the flames. The only light in the room came from the candles sticking out in all directions from the walls — fingers reaching out and on fire. The sharp edges of the cobblestone floor pricked Belle’s feet. In the corner stood an ancient tub on strange legs. Everything here seemed wet, as if the room itself were sweating.

On the left was a wooden vanity and mirror. Behind it, the wood from the vanity had melded with the walls and seemed to have grown there. It stretched all the way up to the ceiling, making the entire wall behind the vanity look like mahogany. A thousand square cubbies were dug into the wood, and in them were all kinds of glass bottles and jars filled with different-colored powders, elixirs, and stones. She recognized them, all the tonics and pomades that she used every day. Vileroy had added more ingredients. Some of them seemed to be moving in their jars.

“So you put my stuff in here? That’s it?” said Belle.

She took a step inside. The air was warm and dewy, like a rain forest.

“If you stand in the steam,” said Vileroy, touching her face, “it’ll make your skin as soft as mine.”

“Will it put on my makeup too?” asked Belle.

“Would you like that?”

“Not enough to ask.” Belle eyed the tepid water.

Madame Vileroy walked over to the vanity. She took a glass bottle from a cubby high up on the wall. Belle looked at the label.

Gray chalk.

Dried lemons.

Iridescent scales from a black asp.

Shards of stained glass from a fallen temple.

“This isn’t what you promised,” said Belle. “You said I could control it.”

Vileroy mused, “The unfortunate disconnect of how very pretty you are on the outside . . .”

“Yes, now give it.”

“Look behind you.”

Belle turned around. She eyed the bathtub standing on the ossified legs of four different creatures — a leopard’s paw, a goat’s hoof, a monkey’s hand, and a claw she couldn’t recognize.

“A bath? That’s not funny.”

“How else?”

Vileroy walked to the tub. Belle thought she saw the legs shrink away from her. Vileroy held the bottle over the water and poured out the contents. The glass plopped to the bottom while the scales, chalk, and lemons floated up. Belle stepped closer. She noticed that the bottle in Madame Vileroy’s hand had irresistible written on the side.

“Bathe in here.”

“The smell will go away?”

“Go away? That smell is you, darling. No, it’ll change how people smell it. Their mood, you might say.”

“So that bottle will make me irresistible to Thomas?”

“To anyone. There’s a bottle for everything —
fascinated, jealous, angry.
”

“Why would I want someone mad at me?”

“Not
at
you,
around
you. You’ll still have to direct their emotions to whatever you want.”

“I want to be attractive,” said Belle, dabbing a moss-covered stone with her toe.

“Then get in,” said Madame Vileroy.

Belle put one foot in. As soon as she put her weight on the foot to lift the other leg over, she felt a shard of glass pierce her skin. Belle jumped out. The ball of her foot was beginning to bleed. She winced, suddenly realizing that the pain was growing to a screech. The water infused with sour chalk, lemon juice, and snake oil wet the cut, shooting pincers through her leg. Belle almost collapsed but caught herself on Madame Vileroy’s shoulder. “It’s horrible,” she said.

“It has to get inside, dear, where your ugliness is.”

Belle remembered clearly that only a few years ago she had been identical to Bicé. She knew that her best features weren’t really hers. They were Madame Vileroy’s, modeled after her own youth centuries ago. But with these changes Madame Vileroy had given Belle the thing she wanted most desperately: a beautiful outside.

Belle gathered herself. She knew this was the deal she had made. She couldn’t do anything but take it. Vileroy began to walk out to let her bathe in the horrible cauldron alone. She turned at the door. “If you didn’t like that one,” said Madame Vileroy, “be careful of
hope.
It’ll boil you alive.”

A few hallways down, Valentin read over the newest poem that he was sure would top all others. “Wow,” he said to himself as he stared at the parchment. “It’s perfect.” He lifted his pen to put the initials
VF
at the bottom of the page, as he did with all the poems. Before he got up to leave, he stuffed a few notes and random papers into a drawer and folded the finished poem in half. He put it into his pocket and set off to find Christian. Reading his poems to Christian was a guilty pleasure for Valentin. He knew how much it hurt Christian to listen, and the awe on Christian’s face did wonders for Valentin’s ego.

“How did you get in here?” said Christian. He was sitting up in his coffin, holding the lid with one strong arm.

“Door was open,” said Bicé, shrugging. “Just checking to see if you’re OK. What’s wrong with the little man over there?”

“He’s not real.”

“What were you doing?”

“Golfing.”

“Funny.”

Christian had just been lying there, in his coffin, losing track of the hours. He closed his eyes, opened them — there was no difference in the blackness. The gelatinous liquid rose slowly, burying him, forcing itself through his nose with every breath. At first he would always be panic-stricken for fear of drowning. He clawed at the lid, but it wouldn’t move. Finally, he gagged and swallowed the same gulp over and over again, in and out of his throat. He gasped for air, got only water, vomited the water only to gasp again, and again only water. At the end, his reflexes surrendered. Every time he did this, he thought he was about to die, but then the liquid would suddenly start flowing in and out of his mouth like air. His lungs inflated and deflated, heavy in his chest like water balloons. He thought his eyes were floating in his head, the tiny charged stones in the water scraping them from behind. Christian would lie there, becoming super, thinking about how lucky Valentin was.

More than anything, Christian wanted to write. But Christian knew he wasn’t good enough to make any money as a writer. Valentin was. His heartbreaking prose was already getting him attention from publishers. In his journal, Christian described listening to Val’s readings like a cripple watching the Olympics. He’d be so jealous, he’d feel like his heart was gripping the bars of his rib cage, clutching so hard, wanting to get out and be in somebody else, almost tearing his chest apart. It was an Olympic amount of pain. So Christian wrote in secret and won every sport he tried, because actually there
was
one thing more important than writing — Christian could never be poor. He’d never sleep in a shanty or wear cast-off clothes. He’d never eat old stolen food. He didn’t know why these things seemed so scary. He had no memory of living that way. But somehow, the fear was inside him. He was born with it. He’d rather be bored to death while smacking homers in the World Series if he had to. But he wouldn’t ever worry about money. He didn’t want to buy generic cereal. He didn’t want to say no just because he couldn’t afford it. Christian didn’t want to be poor so bad that he had to be rich. That’s what he’d been brooding over — and how much he wished he could write a single poem as good as Val’s — when Bicé had walked in.

“What’s wrong, Christian?”

“Nothing.”

“I’ve got maple syrup on my shoe that says there is.”

“I’m just tired of Vic’s attitude, and Val — that idiot.”

“That’s it?” said Bicé, coming over and sitting down on the lip of the tank. Christian’s hair was still soaked with the liquid. Gobs of it stuck to his temples like hair gel.

“You ever wonder why a woman like Vileroy would adopt all five of us?” asked Christian. He was playing with the drawstrings of his trunks.

“That’s a pretty random question.”

“I’ve been thinking about it. I mean, why us five?”

“I know it’s hard to think about, Christian. Our real parents probably had some reason —”

“They didn’t want us.”

“Maybe they couldn’t keep a baby.”

“To hell with ’em if they couldn’t.”

“Christian.”

“But why would Vileroy want us?”

Bicé sighed. She was concerned for Christian, but didn’t have any answers to offer.

“Do you ever even think about how screwed up this is?” said Christian. “The things she does?”

“To be honest,” said Bicé, “all I ever think about is being alone.”

“You mean alone with your books,” said Christian.

“I just meant I don’t think about her all that much.”

“If I won the lottery, I’d buy a ton of land and never worry about anything again.”

“You’d get tired. You need goals, like that athletic award at Marlowe and then a Division One college.”

“
You
don’t have any goals,” said Christian.

“And I’m dead tired.”

Christian laughed at her dark humor. He lifted himself out of the tank and walked over to the sink. The thick liquid dropped on the floor and looked like beached jellyfish. Christian grabbed a towel and held it under the faucet. “Thanks, B. I’m sorry about breakfast.”

Bicé was about to say something, but she stopped when she saw Christian wipe his wet towel over his bare chest. A faint black mark blotted the skin over his heart. It was just dark enough to be visible. She wasn’t even sure it was there. Christian caught her stare.

“What?” he said.

“That spot,” she said, “on your chest.”

“It’s a birthmark,” he said.

“Yeah, I know. Belle has the same one, only much darker than that.”

Christian stopped wiping. He looked at Bicé, not knowing quite what this meant. “She has the same mark?”

“And it only shows up when she gets wet.”

“But we’re not — I mean, she’s not
really
my sister . . . you know, by blood.”

“That doesn’t matter. Birthmarks aren’t genetic.”

Just then the door to Christian’s room swung open and Valentin stepped in holding a sheet of paper. “Hey, Christian, I finished my poem. Wanna hear?”

“No,” said Christian, annoyed that his conversation with Bicé had been interrupted.

Valentin’s face made a sudden twitch; his hand reached in his pocket. His smile looked like it had been jerked by a fishing hook. “Thanks,” he said, “I’m really excited about this one.” He unfolded the piece of paper to begin.

“Wait, I didn’t say I wanted to hear it,” said Christian.

“Yeah, you did,” said Valentin. He was always confusing real memories with events that he had never allowed to happen. Memories only he would have. Sometimes, he got confused even when something had
just
happened or when he hadn’t yet changed something and it was only an imagined future.

“No, I didn’t,” said Christian.

“Oh,” said Valentin, and began to search for something that would interest Christian.

“But it’s about chi —” Valentin’s face twitched again. “Monst —” It twitched again. “Trains on a track, very poetic.”