The Empress Chronicles (18 page)

Cory wears a big overcoat with pockets, where he’s stuffed screwdrivers and a pry bar and other things he uses to pick locks. In one of the pockets, I placed my ingestion log, my iPod, my phone. He looks a little like
Oliver Twist
’s Artful Dodger, but not that different than the hipsters from AHA! who prowl thrift shops for yesterday’s castoffs. I like the idea that the people around us most likely think Cory and I are a couple. That I’m just another teenage girl going to the parade with my boyfriend.

“I lived there—” I point to a building as we squeal by “—and there—” I point to another.

Cory wags his face at all the lofts I point out. He says, “It’s a little like Berlin.”

When we get off the streetcar, I realize that this tiny rehabbed section of Portland must seem stupid and provincial to someone who’s lived in Europe. “Did you like it?” I ask. “Living in Germany?”

“Some aspects.”

And then, because I’m an idiot, I blurt, “Did you have a girlfriend there?”

He looks at me and his dimple broadens. He chuckles but doesn’t answer, because the light to cross Burnside has just turned green and we need to work our way through the throngs of people before the light turns again. Dusk has settled; the parade will start up soon. We have work to do.

Jitters are jumping my stomach around. It’s a mixture of Cory being there right beside me, the big, solid boy of him, and what we are about to do, which is illegal. I don’t like breaking laws and rules; I’m not very good at it. And here I am, doing two things I’m not very good at—having a crush and breaking the law all at the same time.

The last crush I had was at Providence. One of the dual-diagnosis boys. Boys like him can sniff out girls who’ll do things they want, and that’s how this boy was. He caught me spitting food into a napkin, and he cornered me during rec time, when the nurse was called out to deal with a seizure someone was having. He asked me if I’d ever felt a boner, and I said, yeah, at school, during the S.T.A.R.S. program. He laughed and told me if I didn’t touch his, he’d tell the nurse about me hurling my mashed potatoes. Luckily, just as I reached over toward his lap, my eyes squeezed shut, the male attendant burst through the door to write down the portions still left on our plates. Saved by the clipboard.

When we get to the place on 10th where the lion statues sit on either side of the staircase, it’s swarmed with people there on the steps. No chance will that building be unlocked. The Portland police are stationed every few families, looking for potential looters or pickpockets. Cory looking how he looks, and me in my French heroin-addict outfit, we stick out big time.

“There’s a fire escape on the side of the building,” I tell Cory. “But we’ll probably have to wait to go over there until the parade’s in full force.”

“You brought your cell, right?”

I point to the pocket of his coat where it’s nestled next to my iPod. That’s our agreement. I’m going to hook him up. Even though I don’t break rules, I know kids who do. Finding weed in Portland, Oregon, if you’re a teenager—even a nerdy one like me—isn’t much tougher than finding a coffee shop.

“Why don’t you make some calls while we wait?” Cory says.

This distractedness annoys me. I want him to be as into finding this diary as I am. After all, he’s the one who’s been piquing my interest with all his anecdotes about Bavaria and the Habsburg dynasty.

Plus, I love that Cory and I are going to be sleuths together. When we hatched our plan, he taught me a German swear phrase he said we could use if we were caught:
Gefickt
werden
, he said, meant we’re in deep doo-doo. It would be our code if trouble was coming.

But now he seems less interested in finding out more about Sisi and more enthusiastic about getting a supply of smoke.

“Fine,” I say as I wiggle my cell from his pocket.

I leave a bunch of voicemails while faint marching-band sounds grow closer and louder. Hucksters selling glowing plastic tubes that kids fasten around their necks are barking their wares. Some guy strides by selling sponge dogs on wire leashes. A drunk is pretending to be in the parade; bare chested, he walks down the center of the street, thrusting a small branch into the air. He trips and the branch hits him in the face, and his lip leaks blood. The police gather him up and haul him away.

“A couple more of those incidents and we’ll be cop-free,” says Cory hopefully.

Parades make me nervous—crowds, people, entropy. I feel on edge with the prospect of someone rubbing up against me. Dr. Greta’s office building is a prime view spot near the end of the parade, and in the twenty minutes we stand here more and more people flood in. I take an extra half a Xanax, but the crowd is still making me nervous, so I inch closer to Cory and slip my phone back into the pocket of his coat.

It’s dark now. A marching band that includes an ensemble of lit-up umbrellas announces the true start of the parade. A little mist of rain rewards the umbrella act, and in the crowd some people begin to hoist their own rain shields. This, of course, causes a lot of shuffling. Some arguments break out about umbrellas blocking views. A large soccer-mom type in a maroon velvet tracksuit actually reaches out and snatches an umbrella that snapped up in front of her brood. A scuffle. Swearing. More scuffling, and soon some cops are engaged in breaking up the squabble.

“What’d I tell ya?” Cory says, grabbing my hand and leading me to the back of the building.

Like most buildings on the parade route, this one has its share of observers. If you have access to view from inside during the rainy Rose Festival parade season, you take it. When Cory and I look up at the bottom of the fire escape, we see windows full of onlookers. But of course, Dr. Greta’s window is dark.

“Too public,” Cory says, ruling out the fire-escape plan. “We’ll just have to go in the front like we own the place.”

We make our way back to the front steps, hopscotching over and around families, and creep our way up to the front door just behind an elderly gentleman and his much younger female companion. “He’s got something else on his mind,” Cory whispers. “He won’t notice us sneaking in behind him.”

Cory holds the door ajar with the rubber edge of his big old skater shoe, and I practice acting casual, standing in front of him, watching a casino-themed float filled with Native Americans rumble past. The banner on the float reads
The Spirit of the Great West Is Alive and Well.

We wait a couple more floats before slipping inside and, lucky for us, the lobby is completely empty. “Third floor,” I tell Cory once we step in the elevator. Unlike the Pearl, where elevator buttons can’t be activated without a magnetic key, Dr. Greta’s ancient office building has open access to any floor.

When we get to the end of the hall of the third floor, the big red HELLO, Cory says, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if someone pried off the O?”

Nothing is original, I guess. “Hilarious,” I say. “Now do your magic.”

Cory looks around the hall. Nobody there. But his eyes linger on the ceiling.

I ask, “What?”

“Checking for cameras.”

“There are none. This is the building time forgot. Like way back in the twentieth century. They still use fax machines in these offices.”

“Point taken,” he says.

He unsheathes a long, thin screwdriver-looking tool and wiggles it in the lock and in less time than it takes to put up an umbrella, we’re inside the crazy person’s green room, the vacant space where the fish tank used to be still looking sad, empty and wrong.

“There’s lots of magazines with scantily clad middle-aged women in here,” Cory marvels, picking up a
More
.

“Put that down! C’mon, Cory, get us in the office.”

It turns out that Cory doesn’t need to take out his screwdriver again, because the door to Dr. Greta’s office is unlocked. We walk into the dark space, and I immediately trip over the small table where I usually set down my coffee, if I have one.

“Nice job, Nancy Drew,” Cory whispers, sort of half-laughing.

We stand still for a bit to let our eyes adjust, while trumpets blow fight songs and kettledrums pound enough to rattle the plaster. There is just enough light from outside, and slowly, dark, hulking shapes appear in the room. I point to the glass cabinet, and Cory rattles the front panel that serves as its entry.

“Locked up tight,” he says. He brings out an ever increasingly smaller series of widgets and tools, but nothing budges the little lock.

Cory folds his arms and cocks his head. If I were brave and not freaked out and prettier and not riddled with memories of Jeremy and how idiotic I was, now is when I would move up to in front of Cory’s face, close enough for our noses to almost touch. I would bat my Maybelline eyelashes under my knitted beret and wait for him to lean in and kiss me. But I’m not brave or pretty. I’m freaked out and anxious. And Sisi’s diary is so close. Just behind a thin pane of glass. I’m almost desperate enough to suggest we break the glass when Cory reaches over to me and takes off my beret and sets it down on Dr. Greta’s desk.

Really?
I freeze, close my eyes, and in four seconds that seems like an hour, a whole infomercial plays in my head:

Pucker up, close your eyes, not that way, this way! Now, for a limited time, you have the attention of a boy. Not just any boy, but the cutest boy ever. And he speaks German to boot!

And just when I’m about to turn off the infomercial and raise my arms up to put them around Cory’s neck, a la Jeremy, he reaches into my tufted hair and yanks out a bobby pin.

“Best tool in the whole damn world,” Cory says, right before adding “Ta-da!” when the curio cabinet glass squeaks the sound of success.

I open my eyes. Instead of Cory’s face in front of mine, my gaze tracks immediately to the diary, lying there, just waiting for me to grab it. The touch of Cory’s hand in my hair lingers, and combined with the treasure in front of me, a tingle snakes through my entire body. But I can’t even bring myself to reach inside the cabinet, so I point at the worn little book, its bald velvet cover and yellow-brown pages so fragile. Cory, with his large, gentle paws, plucks it like a rose amid a thorny bush and places it in my waiting hands.

I just stand there in one place, my breath and heartbeat all I can hear, even with the parade outside.

“You’re welcome.” Cory smirks.

“S-s-sorry,” I stammer. “I’m really sort of dizzy.”

Cory reaches back into one of his large coat pockets and pulls out my ingestion log. I already scored the sides of the binding from the front and back covers in preparation for the switch. Cory hands me the food diary, along with his pocketknife. It’s up to me to perform the second surgery, the one where I cut Sisi’s pages from the worn cover. Silently, I call on help from the patron saints of the utterly spastic.

I run the blade behind the ancient, stiff pages at the spine and slice down. Cory talks me through it like a surgeon might an intern. The pages severing from the binding make a tearing sound, like cardboard but more brittle. I can see the faint markings of black writing on brownish-yellow paper, my heart like the snare drums beneath us.

“Push just a little more; you almost have it,” Cory whispers, his mouth so close to my ear.

And then, one final slice, it’s loose! I take the empress chronicles, the bundle of thoughts and feelings and secrets, and insert them into the cover of my food diary, where they join the two pages I’d ripped from the diary earlier. Next, I take the empty pages from my food diary and cram them into the velvet binding of the empress book, but there’s something lumpy where I cut the pages loose.

Cory sees me struggling and pushes my hand away. “Wait,” he says, “There’s a hunk of metal or a blade inside.”

I run my finger along the inside of the spine, and, sure enough, there’s a sharp point poking through.

Cory puts his hand over mine. “Be careful there. It could be some rusty jagged thing, and I know you have trouble with sharp objects.”

His hand touching my hand sends a fiery missile from his touch to my brain. He knows me.

He takes the old binding from me and walks it over to the light in the window. He turns his pocketknife into tweezers with one quick flick of his boy ability and, as though extracting a splinter, pulls out a tarnished piece of metal on a long chain. “What the …”

But we don’t have time for further examination because just then we hear the sound of the outer door to the waiting room opening. And at that very moment, my cell phone jangles in my pocket. Just like that, Cory drops the metal relic into his coat pocket, shoves the empty pages into the old binding and crams the decoy diary back into the cabinet. He hops over to the window, thrusts it open, then grabs my free hand, while my other hand holds tight to my treasure. Out to the fire escape we crawl, and then Cory closes the window behind us.

“Oh, no,” I remember. “The hat. It’s still on her desk!” A sick feeling washes over me, replacing the electric jolt of Cory touching my hand.

Cory whispers, “
Gefickt werden!
” Then, “Luckily, nobody would connect you with that lame hat.”

We scramble down the escape, while beneath us the Portland General Electric float lights up the sky with its alternative-energy message. I hear my phone ring, but I’m not about to reach into Cory’s pocket and risk dropping the book, and once we hit solid ground again, I realize that it’s raining more seriously. “It’ll get ruined!” I cry.

Cory takes off his overcoat and drapes it around me, and the two of us zigzag our way through the crowd, back to Powell’s Books. We’re under the protected awning of Powell’s for less than a minute when Cory, with his big, dimple-scoring grin says, “Part one, mission accomplished. Now, for part two.”

Sure enough, my phone is full of texts and voice messages from the people who know people who know people, and soon we have a meeting spot and a time worked out and I don’t like it one bit. But even having managed my expectations, as the mental health professionals tell you to do, I’m not prepared for what happens next.

Nothing felt normal. Nothing felt right. All day and into my time abed, thoughts of Count Sebastian intruded. It was a curious and not altogether inviting intrusion, this cannonball of desire and helplessness. The way Mummi’s yappers licked their lips in anticipation of the tidbits of rabbit from her plate—this was how I saw myself as my heart leapt into my throat at the sound of his voice in the hall. An animal with no ability to reason.

In my journal, I pledged myself to him. I wrote secret poems to him. At night, as I wrestled with the blankets, sleepless as a full moon, I often brought the keepsake to my lips, unclasped the locket, and offered a kiss to the image of the man I could not untether from my mind.

I began to worry over my yellow teeth, to brush my hair for an hour before bed. I asked the baroness to tie my corset tighter. I puffed powder onto the bit of flesh that showed between bodice and throat. Oh, but love could add hours to one’s grooming.

As the days grew warmer and longer, and the time of Nené’s engagement trip drew nearer, a brief period of joy enveloped the Herzog. Papa departed for one of his trips to Egypt, and this time his privy, the count, did not accompany him. This time, Count Sebastian stayed with us. For protection, Papa said.

Protection, indeed.

In the great hall now, Nené’s portrait was being painted. It was custom in an arranged betrothal that a portrait be given to the intended groom, and so Stieler, the court painter, had been summoned. He was stern man, Stieler, and demanded his subjects sit for hours as he fussed over an arch of a brow, a fold in a collar. It was Stieler who’d painted most of the beauties in the
Schönheitengalerie.
He’d also painted Beethoven, the composer, and when Uncle Ludwig had gifted his painter to Mummi for this occasion, one might think Mummi had just been presented with a mountain of gold. “He will bring out your inner beauty, Helene,” Mummi prattled. “No one can paint like him.”

Nené sat stiffly in the hall, and as I tiptoed past I could hear the frustrations of the master. “I cannot paint a lady so dour and glum! Think of happinesses, think of your most revered moments. Wilhelmine! Please make this child smile.”

Baroness Wilhelmine, dour and stifled herself, could be heard to reply, “Herr Stieler, this is our Helene. She is of serious countenance, and it should please the emperor, one would think. This is not a tart like your Lola!”

And then, a curious response from the painter. He said, “Ha! Wilhelmine, what happened to that beautiful girl I set to canvas so long ago? What led to her transformation into a sour crone?”

My governess growled. “Why, you imprudent man. You work for the king, and, might I remind you, this is a royal household. You might be the court painter, but here, you are but a servant.”

Mummi, hovering as she did, tried to calm the two, and then her spaniels set to yapping.

I could not resist; I had to peek inside the room. It was pure chaos. The odor of turpentine stung my nose. The poor painter strutted in a mixture of fury and frustration. All at once he bellowed, “Out! Out! I will not paint with a gaggle of hens at my feet. And as for you, young lady, give me a damn smile!”

I scurried off before Mummi and the baroness could catch me and demand I attend to my studies or practice the wretched piano. Count Sebastian would be finishing his morning rounds in short order, and I intended on striking a lovely pose at the edge of the nursery, upstairs, where he might find me engaged in some writing or other feminine pursuit.

Journal in hand (for I dare not leave the evidence lying about), up the staircase I fled, tripping slightly over my skirts. I barely had time to smooth my dress when, indeed, my dear count appeared at the door to the far anteroom of the nursery.

“What has your governess so riled this morning?” he inquired.

I fanned the back of my hand at him, as I’d seen many a lady do. “My sister the sourpuss. The painter thinks her too glum.”

The count found this amusing, and smiled.

“Imagine,” I said, “the famous
Schönheitengalerie
painter here, in our very Herzog. I wish I might enquire as to the ladies of his acquaintance, but I fear I would get rebuffed.”

He stepped closer. My heartbeat commenced to approximate the fervor of hummingbirds’ wings. He peered at the open journal, which I promptly slapped shut. “Secrets?”

“You have already trespassed upon these pages. Leave a lady some dignity.”

Now he fully chuckled, “Oh, you are a lady now, are you?” This barb sent a cold pick to my already squeezed and corseted ribs. “I might remind you, Count, that I have passed my fifteenth birthday. Many of my betters were betrothed at my age.”

Count Sebastian brought a teasing gleam to his eye.

“And were with child, I might add,” I continued.

He stepped closer.

My heart thumped wildly.

“Sisi,” he said in low tones. “If only I were not a commoner and a friend to your father. If only this distance between us—age, rank—were not so, I would envelop you right here. Right now. I would fold you in my embrace. But alas, it would mean my dismissal. Or worse.”

It occurred to me then, as I watched him make his excuses as if he were behind a glass, that his rejection might be of a more immediate sort. “Is it … is it because I am not beautiful enough for you?”

The count was a whisper from me. His hands moved from his side and came to rest upon my shoulders. His eyes, those piercing brown eyes, like pools of still water deeper than the Tegernsee, widened under his questioning brow, and then his lips parted ever so close to mine and he said, “Sisi, your beauty is not the deterrent. In fact, it’s a curse, and many a night I’ve lain awake in contemplation of your features. Your many, many graces. Oh, but if you could only be less appealing. More like your sis—”

At that moment, in marched Mummi and Baroness Wilhelmine. We’d been too involved, too quietly into ourselves, to hear their approach. “This is most improper, Count. Release my daughter at once!”

Count Sebastian stepped back and pivoted round. “I beg your pardon, my lady. It, it is not what it appears—”

Baroness Wilhelmine rushed to my side, her arm on mine, wrenching me from my writing desk where, to my utmost terror, my secrets lay between two thin covers. I attempted to pull myself from the grip of my governess, but alas, she yanked in the opposite direction, hauling me like a goat from the room back to my quarters.

From behind me, to my horror, I heard Mummi utter, “What is that book? Give it to me now, you rogue, and then be gone with you.”