Borderline (6 page)

Berenbaum stood very straight, looking at Teo with a face so blank I suspected he was starting to panic. “Teo,” he said carefully, “what does that mean?”

“If we knew, sir, we wouldn't be bothering you in the middle of your workday. Do you know if he was in any kind of trouble? Did he do or say anything to make you think he might be trying to hide, or get away from someone?”

Berenbaum let out a frustrated puff of breath, raking a hand through his hair. “No, everything was just the same as—Wait.” He stopped then, giving Teo a penetrating look. Then, just as suddenly, the iconic man seemed to wilt, covering his eyes with his hand. “I'm an idiot.”

“What's wrong?” I said despite myself.

Berenbaum didn't look up. “This is my fault,” he said.

10

My heart went out to the old man, but Teo seemed unmoved. “How is Rivenholt's disappearance your fault?” he asked.

Berenbaum straightened slowly, meeting Teo's eyes. “At the wrap party, he was acting a little off. I was all caught up in my own stuff and didn't really register what he was saying.”

“Which was?”

“He kept going on about how we should just get out of L.A., take Linda and go somewhere, just the three of us—­forget about everything and have fun together like we did when we were young. I figured he was just being fey, you know? Forgetting I had all this work to do in post. So I was kind of short with him.”

“And this is a big deal?”

“Johnny isn't other fey. He doesn't just take off on a whim. I should have realized something was wrong. If I'd listened to him, he would have trusted me enough to tell me what was going on.”

“I hardly think that makes it your fault,” I cut in, earning myself a sharp look from Teo. I leaned back into the couch with a sigh.

“So you think he went on some sort of a . . . vacation?” said Teo dubiously. “On his own?”

“It sounded like he needed an escape,” said Berenbaum. “But I didn't bother to stop and ask myself what someone like Johnny would want to escape from.”

“That's not our business,” said Teo. “Our business is getting him back to Arcadia. You know him better than anyone; where would he go?”

Berenbaum steepled his hands in front of his mouth, tapping his fingertips together as his eyes took on a distant expression. The silence stretched out long enough that I shot Teo a nervous look. Teo gave a staccato shrug, seeming generally impatient with the whole business.

“A spa resort,” Berenbaum said. “Winningham Grove or Regazo de Lujo maybe. Something inside the Project peri­meter, with orange trees. Somewhere we've been before. Maybe Elysienne. Check for him at places like that. Under all his old names, too.”

Teo nodded, scribbling on a memo pad, then glanced at me. “He can't make up new aliases,” he said in a teachery voice, “because fey can't lie. Not with words anyway. Our languages are foreign to them on a really deep arcane level, so they can't use them to create anything. We have to invent their human names. Rivenholt's been coming here so long the Project has to keep giving him new names and faces every decade or so to hide the fact that he doesn't age.”

“Huh,” I said stupidly.

Teo turned back to Berenbaum. “Do you know any reason why Inaya West would be trying to get in touch with him?”

Berenbaum frowned. “They worked together on
Accolade
a
few years back, but they don't really socialize. I try to minimize Johnny's contact with people who aren't hip to the Arcadia thing.”

“We intercepted a couple of messages from her meant for him. She seemed to want to talk to him about something, and she said you weren't returning her calls either.”

Berenbaum gave an odd little snort. “She hasn't called me in days,” he said. “Or maybe Araceli has been aggressively screening my calls since I'm behind schedule.”

My eyes drifted over to the signed poster for
Red Cotton
. I wondered if seven-year-old Inaya's scrawl was somewhere under the glass. She had never so much as been in a school Christmas pageant when Berenbaum found her chatting up a snow goose in New Orleans City Park and directed her straight to her first Oscar nomination.

“Don't worry about 'Naya,” he said. “I'll give her a call later on today and find out what's going on from her end.”

“All right,” said Teo, rising. “Call us right away if you get any new information.”

“You do the same,” said Berenbaum, moving forward to give Teo's hand a brisk shake. “I'll tell Araceli to put you guys through no matter what.”

Teo was already halfway out the door by the time I ­managed to get off the insidiously pliant couch and back to my feet. Berenbaum reached for my hand more gently than he had Teo's, and his eyes did a quick circuit over my face that made me feel as though he had just scanned the deepest contents of my psyche. He spoke quietly, still holding my eyes.

“It gets better,” he said.

The words blew into me like I'd left a window open. My
brain was a white noise of the thousand things I wanted to say, and then I realized I was still holding on to his hand. I blushed to the roots of my hair, managing only an awkward smile and a half bow before hurrying after Teo.

“Did he say something to you?” Teo asked after we got back into the car.

“To me, not to you.”

“As long as we're partners, anything said to you on the job is to both of us.”

“It was personal.”

“How can it be personal? He just met you.” Suddenly he swiveled in his seat, looking aghast. “Did he
hit
on you?”

“No! It wasn't like that! God, why do you have to spoil
everything
?”

“Oh man, don't cry; that's not fair.”

“I'm not!” But I was.

“Fine, you don't have to tell me.” He started the car, looking irked, as though I had started crying on purpose. Men seem to think that women do this on a regular basis, which is bullshit. Just because you don't feel something, it doesn't mean the other person is faking it. You know who thinks like that? Sociopaths.

I sat in silence for most of the way back, trying to figure out what Berenbaum had meant by his parting words. Maybe it was a reference to working with the Project. Maybe he was referring to the physical healing process. But I had received the comment at a much deeper place.

I love people randomly and suddenly, and it's a curse most of the time. When it isn't, it's a lifesaver. I wasn't sure if I wanted to work with Teo, and I wasn't sure I wanted to
live at Residence Four, and I wasn't sure if I gave a crap about Viscount Rivenholt or expired visas or Arcadia. But I would have walked across the 405 for David Berenbaum right then, and that was enough.

Teo chose that moment to say, “If something bad happened to Rivenholt, I'll bet Berenbaum's behind it.”

“Don't be a dick,” I countered. “You have no reason to believe that, other than to be contrary.”

“Don't you watch TV? It's always the husband, or the boyfriend, or the business partner. Someone close. And there's no one closer to Rivenholt than Berenbaum.”

“Can you succinctly sum up the nature of their relationship?”

“As far as we can tell, all artists, inventors, people like that, they have a kind of soul mate in Arcadia. It's like each has a radio tuned to the frequency of the other one. You can communicate a little without knowing it, across the border, but if you make physical contact, it's like putting a puzzle together. You get these incredible leaps of genius.”

“So why would Berenbaum want to harm his own muse?”

“I dunno. Maybe he's ready to retire and Rivenholt's making a thing of it. Berenbaum is the Project's biggest donor; maybe that ties in somehow. Or maybe it has something to do with Rivenholt fading.”

“Fading?”

“When you spend too much time in the wrong world, your body starts to change. The stuff in fey blood that makes them fey—norium, London calls it—it gets replaced with iron and their magic quits working, or humans who spend too long over there get norium in their blood and either go insane or turn into wizards or both. Either way we call it fading.”

“So what happens when Rivenholt can't do magic anymore?”

“It's already starting,” said Teo. “Did you see
Accolade
?”

I didn't like to admit it, but I knew what he meant. Berenbaum's recent work was all right, but “all right” was pretty disappointing from Berenbaum.
Black Powder
was supposed to be an unofficial fourth part of the Cotton trilogy, but people in the business were already doubtful that it was going to be worthy of comparison.

I shook my head, unconvinced. “Let's not slap a black hat on Berenbaum until we know for sure that Rivenholt's not shacking up somewhere with a supermodel or getting a seaweed wrap at Elysienne. Or both.”

It wasn't time for dinner yet when we got back to the resi­dence, so Teo excused himself to make some phone calls. At my request he directed me to Song's room, which was off to the east of the living room, around a corner on the first floor. The door, marked with an
A
, was partly open, but I knocked anyway.

“You can come in,” said Song.

The room had no window, but was well lit and decorated in a homey fashion with undyed fabrics and natural woods. Song had her eyes closed, bending her knees and waving her arms in what I could only assume was some sort of hippie ritual, baby seated comfortably in the wrap that was crisscrossed over her chest. Her serene expression and the freckles across her nose made her look too young to have a child.

“Abbada,” said the baby when it saw me, and peed. I could tell, because a wet stain appeared at the bottom of the wrap.

Song, smiling, made a gentle
sssssssssss
sound at the baby as she opened her small, dark eyes and began to lift it out of the wrap. I said a prayer to whoever was listening that I would
never become the kind of person who was happy being peed on.

“Hi, Millie,” she said as she moved to hold the undiapered baby over a small bowl to catch the last of his dribbles. I could now add the fact that the baby was uncircumcised to the list of things I didn't need to know.

“Hey,” I said, trying to unwrinkle my nose. “Is everything okay with Gloria and um . . . the guy with the beard?”

“Phil?” she said with a smile. “Oh, everything's fine now. Sorry if you caught their little lovers' quarrel.”

“Lovers'—okay. Uh, also, I was wondering, where is the house phone?”

“There is no house phone,” Song said, dabbing the baby's doodad dry with a towel and then setting him on the changing pad as she began to unwind her wet wrap. And here I'd thought I would make it an entire day without seeing my landlord's breasts.

“No phone?” I echoed stupidly.

“Once Caryl gives the go-ahead, you'll get added to our mobile plan. But this house doesn't have a landline.”

“Because of the wards?” I still had no idea what “wards” meant, but sometimes you can get people to tell you a lot if you pretend you know most of it already.

Song just gave me an odd look. “No,” she said. “A landline just makes it harder to keep track of who's calling who. This way it's all nice and separate, and if anyone starts abusing phone privileges, it's easier to deal with.”

“Phone . . . privileges.” I could feel myself climbing the rungs of anger. “I've just spent six months in a psychiatric hospital, and I was really looking forward to being done with that kind of crap.”

Song smiled gently, tickling her son's feet as he tried to
stuff them in his mouth. “I know it's hard. But sometimes the Project works with people who are very ill, and it seems cruel to treat them a certain way based on a diagnosis. So Caryl doesn't tell me the diagnosis. I just start everyone at nothing and then give privileges based on behavior.”

It sounded fair, to what Dr. Davis would call my Reason Mind, but my Emotion Mind was digging my nails into my palms. Borderlines are not good at patiently earning things; we tend to take any “no” as a personal insult and feel driven to turn it into a “yes” on the spot.

“Was there someone you needed to call?” she asked me.

I thought of Dr. Davis—I was allowed to use her for phone coaching any day other than Sunday—but I shook my head. “Not really.”

Song's baby made a weird face, and she quickly held him over the bowl again as he ejected an alarming quantity of yellowish-­brown goo from his bowels. This was clearly my punish­ment for staying to argue about the phone.

“Do you need anything else for your room?” Song asked.

I considered asking for a bowl to poop in, but restrained myself. “I'm all right for now,” I said, already backing out of the room, “but phone coaching is part of my therapy. If you could at least let Caryl know next time you talk to her, I'd appreciate it.”

Out in the living room, Gloria's alleged lover was sitting at the grand piano. Not playing, just sitting, staring at the keys. I pretended not to see him and hurried up the stairs toward Teo's room.

When I knocked, I heard Teo saying, “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” to somebody as he approached the door. He opened it and
stepped away to allow me inside without even looking at me. From downstairs I heard the gentle opening chords of something familiar—Chopin?

The one-eared cat was perched alertly on Teo's loft bed, watching him pace. I noticed Rivenholt's drawing on Teo's desk and eyed the cat warily as I picked up the paper. It was still a spare, skillful piece of work, but this time it didn't give me the same rush of feeling.

“The magic's gone from the drawing,” I told Teo once he had hung up and stuffed his phone back in his pocket. Even that slight weight seemed to endanger his jeans' purchase on his skinny hips.

“Nuh-uh,” he said. “Charms last for months, years even.” He snatched the paper from me and stared at it. “Huh. I guess he really sucks at it.” Carelessly he set it back on the desk.

“Isn't that a clue or something?”

“Why would a faded charm be a clue?”

“Well
I
don't know. It could mean he died or something.”

“That's not how charms work,” Teo said. “They're like paintings. They don't care about the painter once he walks away, they just . . . are. Until they're not. Anyway, Regazo de Lujo put me through to a room when I asked for Forrest Cloven, which was Rivenholt's first alias with us. I hung up as soon as they transferred; I'd rather he not know we're coming.”