Cloaked (9 page)

Chapter 18

I’m surrounded by shoes. Ugly shoes. Someone puts something clammy on my head.

“Are you okay?” the coffee lady says. “I’ll call the paramedics.”

“No, don’t,” I say, because in that second, I understand. It’s the magic. Something, or someone, is keeping me from leaving the inn, maybe to stop me from following the fox’s orders about spending the night in the dive motel. Did they lure me here in the first place? Was the frog a mirage?

I know if I step out that door, the pain will come back.

“I don’t need the paramedics.” The clammy thing on my head is a washcloth. It drips down my face. “But I think I need a place to stay.”

“Oh no.” The toes clench again. “This is a hotel, not a shelter.”

I get it. I’ve reached the limits of Key Largo casualness. “I have money.” I grope for my backpack. Someone’s put it in a corner, and I gesture toward it. Finally, a lady in orange-and-white Mephisto Allrounders hands it to me.

“Thanks,” I say. “Nice shoes.”

She looks down. “Thank you. They’re very comfortable.”

“Well, you know what George Bernard Shaw said, don’t you?” When she shakes her head, I say, “‘If a woman rebels against high-heeled shoes, she should take care to do it in a very smart hat.’” I gesture at her visor, which is covered in pom-poms. “You did.”

The woman laughs. “I didn’t know young people knew about Shaw.”

I riffle through my backpack until I find money. Even though it kills me to do it, I show the coffee lady three hundred dollars. “Will this be enough to stay tonight?”

It must be more than enough, because she says, “You have clean clothes?”

“Yeah.” I must really stink.

“Good. Then once you feel up to walking, go to the bathroom and change. Your room will be ready soon. You can have a muffin while you wait . . . after you change.”

“Of course.” I look from Birkenstock to Mephisto. “Actually, I think I’m ready to change now.” I need to make another attempt to leave. I just thought of something.

“Wonderful.” She gestures me toward the bathroom.

Once there, I wrap the cloak around my shoulders. “I wish I was outside. Right outside. No tricks.”

Nothing.

“I wish I was at the other inn, where I belong.”

Nothing.

“Everything all right in there?” Someone taps on the door.

“Fine.”

Is the coffee lady a witch? Did she trap me here? One memory of her disapproving face says no. She didn’t want me to stay. But someone does. Someone cast a spell on me. And on the cloak, so it won’t work.

I change, wash as well as I can, and shake the food and garbage off the cloak. Then I head outside and devour three muffins.

An hour later, I’m in a third-floor room, looking down on the fox and the motel I’m supposed to be at. The fox meets my eyes, then looks away. The frog is nowhere in sight, and I haven’t heard screams from the lobby to indicate he’s there either. Every hour or so, I go downstairs and try to walk outside. Every time, I’m seized with staggering pain. I even try to climb out the window, but I can’t.

Finally, I wash my dirty clothes in the bathroom sink, then settle into the four-poster bed and go to sleep. I hope I’ll be able to leave tomorrow.

I sleep all day, not even bothering with meals. It’s a bed-and-breakfast, so I don’t expect lunch. I’m not hungry anyway, only tired, so tired I barely dream.

When I wake, it’s dark and the digital clock says eight. I stumble downstairs and try the door. No dice. I go back to bed, but now, I wake hourly. I’m trapped. God, I’m trapped. Am I ever getting out of here? I don’t try the door again until midnight. It’s the next day. Maybe I can still go to the motel. But no. I can’t pass.

I’m too frightened to go back to bed. What if I’m stuck in this alternative universe forever and never see my family. Sooner or later, I won’t be able to pay the bill, and they’ll get the police to evict me.

At sunrise, I shower, dress, then head downstairs.

“You look refreshed.” The coffee lady is setting out trays of Danish. “Ready for breakfast? We have fresh clotted cream.”

My stomach aches, a cold, raw hunger that rises from my gut like a bad smell.

I nod. “Definitely. But first, I need to check the . . . ah . . . weather.”

She smiles. “It’s a hot one, all right.”

“I’ll bet.” I walk to the door. As I suspected, it opens easily now, and when I step out, I feel only hunger pangs, not the stabbing pain I felt yesterday. I take a second, then a third step, then feel a familiar feeling, the same one I used to get at work. Someone’s watching me. I look across the street. It’s the fox. He’s glaring at me. His eyes meet mine. Then, he scurries into the bushes.

I climb the steps. The coffee lady’s still there, and I say, “Actually, I lost some time, what with being sick and all. Could I maybe get some muffins to go?”

“Certainly.” The coffee lady looks relieved to get rid of me. It’s probably the cloak in my backpack. Even though I washed my clothes, I only spot-cleaned the cloak so as not to affect its magic—if it even has any magic left. So it smells. “Let me get you a bag.”

When she leaves, I head for the buffet table, grab three muffins, stuff two into my backpack for the fox. For bribes. When the coffee lady returns with a bag, I grab as much food as I reasonably can, thank her, and leave.

Now, to find the fox.

Chapter 19

Do not take the golden cage. If you do, great misfortune will follow.

—“The Firebird and the Grey Wolf”

I don’t have to look very hard. As soon as I cross the street, the fox comes out from behind the Dumpster. He’s been waiting for me.

“Hey,” I say.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” he says.

“Look, I messed up.”

“You think?” The fox turns tail and walks away.

“But I saw the frog.”

He turns back, sneering with his little black fox lips. “The frog? Oh yeah, I’m sure it was the frog. Stupid! It was a mirage. I can’t work with someone who falls for tricks like that.” He draws back on his haunches, ready to spring into the Dumpster. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find breakfast.”

“Wait!” I remember the muffins. “Would you like something that isn’t garbage?”

The fox has already jumped, but he turns in midair and manages to land on his feet. Once straightened out, he slits his eyes at me. “What are we talking about?”

I step close, then open the bag in front of him. “Muffins. Scones. Danish. All home baked by the nice lady at the bed-and-breakfast where I’ve been captive all night.”

“Captive!” The fox laughs but reaches a tentative black paw toward a currant scone.

“Not so fast!” I pull the bag away. “Yes, I was trapped, trapped like a prisoner in a jail full of old people. And if you want a scone or a croissant with something called clotted cream, you need to listen to me, or . . .” I shut the bag and make to stuff it into my backpack.

“Or what?” The fox eyes the closed bag.

“Or you can have some leftover bar food that’s probably covered in puke.” I open the bag and use my hand to waft the scent toward the fox. Even though he’s a used-to-be human, he obviously got his new species’ keen sense of smell because he sniffs deeply.

“Please,” I beg. “I need to find this frog. It’s not for me. It’s for my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“She worries so much.” I hold the bag farther open. “Didn’t you have a mother?”

“Oh, all right!” The fox almost sobs. “But only since it’s been years since I’ve had anything sweet. The old lady in the bed-and-breakfast never throws anything away.”

“Is that why you didn’t want me to stay there, because you hate her?”

“No. The reason I didn’t want you to stay there is . . .” He stops and looks around, then jumps on the side of the Dumpster and looks there too.

“What?”

“Shh. I have to make sure no one can hear.” The fox jumps down, then runs to the corner of the building and looks around it.

“No one could understand you even if they heard.”

“Correction: No people could understand me. But there may be animals. Think about it. When you were on your way over there, did you see anything, a dog, perhaps, or a cat? The innkeeper has some really nosy cats.”

I think about it, then shake my head.

“Take one more look. But give me a cran-orange muffin first.”

“Okay, but only one.” I hand it to him, then take the bag with me. I walk around, as much to reassure myself that no one’s watching as to satisfy the fox. I haven’t let myself think about it, but now that I’m out, I wonder who trapped me there, who was watching. Will they do it again?

When I’ve looked under every bush and into every tree, I return to the fox, who has polished off the muffin and is licking his whiskers. “Enjoy it?”

“Yes! More! More!”

“After you help me.”

“Well, I shouldn’t. You haven’t proven yourself very trustworthy.”

“But . . .” I take a scone. It’s still warm from the oven, and I blow on it.

“Oh, okay.” The fox sits back on his haunches, eyes never leaving the scone. “But since you failed the first test, I need you to do something else. Now, instead of just staying in the motel, I want you to steal something for me.”

“Steal?”

The fox nods. “In the bar lives a golden bird, the bartender’s pride and joy. It sleeps by night in a golden cage, by day in one of wood. The bar is closed for three hours, from four in the morning until seven o’clock. The bar is locked, but the door is unsupervised, so a guest in the hotel could get in—particularly if he had a magic cloak.”

“But I don’t steal.” I think of the swans at the hotel, how Farnesworth loves them. Maybe this bird is like that for the bartender. I also think of the guys who could beat me up or worse. “I can’t.”

“Fine.” The fox turns away.

“Wait! There’s nothing else I could do?”

“Nothing. You already failed once. If you want the information to find the frog, I need that bird. I’m trying to help you, you and your poor mother. But no one ever said winning a princess was easy.”

The scone in my hand is cold now, and hard. “Are you going to kill the bird?”

“What if I was? Is a bird’s life worth a prince’s? But no. I won’t kill it. I just want to look at it.”

I think about that. It must really stink to be turned into a fox and have to eat garbage. Maybe the bird is a used-to-be too. “Is the bird a friend of yours?”

“What difference does it make? Do you want the information?”

I do. It doesn’t matter. If that’s the only way to get the frog, I’ll steal the bird. Sometimes you have to be a little less picky about things to get what you need.

“Okay,” I say.

“Atta boy. There’s only one thing you have to remember. The bird sleeps in a golden cage. His regular, wooden cage waits beside him for morning. Before you take him, you have to transfer him from one cage to another. If you don’t, the bird won’t go with you.”

“Wooden cage. Got it. But why?”

“It’s part of the test.”

I nod. I’m trying not to think about the part where I actually have to steal something from those scary bar guys.

“And give me that scone now.”

I do. I keep some muffins for myself and give him the rest of the bag. I start to walk away, leaving him feasting on a croissant, when his voice stops me. “Johnny?”

I turn back.

“What is your mother’s name?”

The question takes me by surprise, but I say, “Marie.”

The fox nods. “Pretty name.” He goes back to his scones.

I start toward the motel. It’s a long time before nightfall, a very long time. But I don’t want anything to mess me up today. The fox might not give me another chance. As I walk up the path to the motel, I see a frog. The frog! It looks right at me before hopping toward the bed-and-breakfast. I start to take a step toward it. It lingers there, staring at me.

No. It’s not real, and I need to ignore it. I turn my back and go to the door of the motel. To my relief, it opens. When I look out the door, the frog has vanished.

Chapter 20

I enter through the side door, a different door than the one that leads to the bar. Hopefully, a safer door. No one’s at the desk, so I wait. Nothing. After a few minutes, I ring the bell. I do it softly, so as not to enrage whatever disturbed individual might work in a place like this. Still nothing.

I sit on the floor (because there’s no chair) and wait. An hour later, I realize no one’s coming. I also realize I’m hungry. I’ve had nothing but muffins in the past day, and I gave the fox most of those. I hear rough laughter from the bar. My watch says ten a.m. Those guys get an early start. I smell something like food, and I need it bad. I’ll ask where the desk clerk is too.

I stand and walk to the bar entrance. It’s dark enough to look like night. I linger in the doorway, not wanting to go in. But what are they going to do? Beat me up? I’m a nice, polite person who never gets beat up.

The guys at the bar are the same ones from yesterday, and they’re wearing the same clothes. The golden bird, which looks like a canary, hangs over the bar, asleep in his wooden cage. I wait (politely) for the men to finish their conversation before I approach the bartender.

“Excuse me? I wondered if you had any food? I want to check in for the night too.”

“I got leftovers from yesterday I could warm up for you.” The bartender squints at me. “Hey, didn’t I see you out by my Dumpster before?”

“Leftovers will be fine,” I say, ignoring the other question, and also ignoring any nagging concern about what leftovers would be like in a place like this.

“Yeah, you was out there, talking to yourself.”

“Can you please get me that food?” I hand him a twenty. “Keep the change.”

“Ooh, big spender.” The bartender laughs but takes the money and turns to look at the refrigerator. “We just got a couple burgers.”

“Burgers are fine. Anything.”

I hear a noise outside, a motorcycle. It sounds familiar. Too familiar.

No, that’s just paranoid. I know nothing about motorcycles. Probably they all sound alike. Still, I look out the window.

A pair of broad, black-clad shoulders come into view. I turn real quick and duck behind the bar.

“Hey, what the . . .” The bartender stumbles over me.

“Please. I need you to hide me,” I whisper. “That guy wants to kill me.”

“What guy? What are you talking about? Get outta here.”

I hear a door slam, then hard footsteps. I’m a dead man.

I could use the cloak, but then the bartender would be on to me. I reach into my backpack and withdraw one of Victoriana’s hundreds. These are going faster than I’d like. I flip it up and show it to the bartender. He reaches for it. I pull it away, mouthing, “Later.”

The footsteps come closer, and then a voice says, “Have you seen dis boy?”

He sounds like the robot in the
Terminator
movies. I’m squirming, about to pee my pants.

“He is a stranger here,” the accented voice continues. “Skinny. Tall.”

“Nah, haven’t seen him.” That’s the bartender.

“Wait a second,” another voice says. “Lemme see that.”

“You’re drunk, Lefty.”

I’m flattened against the floor. But still, I can hear my knees rattling. I don’t breathe.

“But he looks like that guy—”

“You mean the guy that was here yesterday? That was my cousin, Frank, and he’s gone now.”

“Your cousin? You treated him like crap and charged him twenty bucks for day-old burgers.”

“Didn’t say he was my
favorite
cousin. Can we drop it now?” He steps over me and tells the terrorist guy, “I ain’t seen him.”

“If you do, you vill let me know?” The guy sounds more like Dracula than Schwarzenegger now. “Dere is a reward.”

“Reward? What kind of reward?”

A pause. Finally, a voice says, “Five hundred dollars.”

I glance up and see the bartender looking at me. I nod. Yes. Yes, I have that.

“I’d tell you if I’d seen him, but I haven’t.”

A pause. I hear heavy footsteps, pacing. Everything else is silent, even the two drunks. Finally, the guy says, “Very gut. But if he comes here, you vill contact me, day or night?”

And then he leaves. I stay there, not sure what to do, not even breathing. The two guys at the bar could betray me at any second. What’s stopping them?

I hear a loud thump, then something rolling, a barstool.

“Lefty’s passed out,” says the other drunk. “Now would you mind telling me why you lied about the kid behind the bar when the guy offered you five hundred dollars?”

“Code of the bartender, my friend. I protect my customers. Like how I didn’t tell your wife about you making time with Lefty’s sister last year. Get it?”

“Got it.”

I hear a motor, the motor I now know is the motor of the guy who shot at me. I shudder, but I breathe. He’s gone now, but he knows I’m in the Keys. I can’t let my guard down.

I stand, and the bartender shoves a damp-looking microwaved burger at me. “That’ll be five hundred dollars, please.”

What about the code of the bartender?
“I’ll give you six. Three now, three when I check out tomorrow morning, unharmed. Deal?”

The bartender nods. He breaks off a crumb of the bun before handing the burger to me. The crumb, he holds up to the cage over the bar. The bird! “The nice man wants to share with you, baby.”

“What kind of bird is that?” I ask. Now that I can look at the bird, and my teeth aren’t chattering, I see it’s not a canary, like I thought. Rather, it’s this freaky-looking thing, sort of a miniature phoenix, more gold than yellow, with long tail feathers and a plume on its head.

“It’s my bird. That’s what kind.”

I take a bite of burger and chew it for a long time while the bartender glares at me. “It’s good,” I say, though it isn’t. “Do you know where the desk clerk is? I want to check in.”

“I happen to also be the desk clerk.” The bartender turns to his one conscious customer. “Keep an eye on my bird.”

He takes me to the front, where I check in using Ryan’s name and no I.D. I pay cash for the room, another two hundred, which it’s totally not worth. The bartender hands me the key to room 203. “If you go out, leave the key at the desk.”

So the motorcycle guy can get in my room and kill me? But I say, “I’m not going out. And can you send up some food when you start making fresh stuff?” At the look on his face, I add, “Or six o’clock, whichever comes first.”

“Will do. Pleasure doing business with you.”

I’ll bet. He’s already gotten $520 from me, with the promise of more, for the simple act of keeping his trap shut. But I head up the creaky, dusty stairs to a room where my key sticks in the rusty lock. I have to wiggle it several times, but finally, it opens. I relock it from the inside, then add the chain. It still doesn’t feel safe, so I shove the bed against the door too. Then, sit on it. The room is dim gray, and I am alone with nothing to do. I slept most of the day yesterday. Now I’m wide-awake. I don’t dare turn on the television or radio. I want to hear whoever might approach. I take out a notebook and start to sketch a new shoe design, but all I can see is the leather-clad biker, the bartender, the fox, and the bird I’m supposed to steal.

By three, my eyelids start to collapse under their own weight. Three hours before dinner. Guess it won’t hurt to sleep, prepare for tonight. I sprawl on the bed, my feet touching the locked door.

I wake to knocking.

“I’ve got your dinner.” It’s a woman’s voice, Southern accent.

“Can you just leave it there?” I ask.

“Sorry, no. Sam says you have to pay.”

Pay. Like the money I’ve given him isn’t enough to cover another bar burger. But my stomach says I need to pay it. “Hold on. I have to get dressed.”

“I can vait,” she says.

“What?”

“I said I’ll wait.” Southern accent. I’m cracking up and hearing things.

I take out a Yankees cap someone once left at Meg’s shop and cover my hair. Between that and the three-day growth on my cheeks, I look different from usual. “What’d he send me to eat?”

“Uh, I think it’s chicken. Chicken, fries, and slaw.” Nothing to worry about. I pull the bed away from the door so I can open it.

I take a step back. The girl on the other side could be Victoriana’s American sister, a beautiful, slender blonde with startling blue eyes. “Hi,” she says in the same soft accent as before. “Can I put this down somewhere?”

I want to grab it from her hand. But now, that seems paranoid, cowardly, ungentlemanly. Besides, I didn’t get the money out. I’m going to have to get it, and I can’t very well slam the door in her face. I have to let her in.

Something nags me that she totally doesn’t look like she belongs here. But then, I don’t belong here either, and here I am.

“Sure.” I gesture toward the table. “I’ll get my wallet. What do I owe?”

“Twenty bucks.” When I glance at the plate, which holds four dry-looking chicken wings, congealed coleslaw, and a pile of fries smaller than my hand, she says, “Sorry. My uncle Sam said I had to charge a room service fee.”

“That makes sense.” I fumble for my wallet as she walks the plate to the table.

When she gets there, she gasps. “Shoes? You’re into shoes?”

That sounds sort of weird, so I say, “Well, not exactly, ‘into.’”

“But you were drawin’ this one, right?” When I nod, she says, “Sorry, but my folks were in the shoe repair business in South Carolina, and sometimes I just . . .” She turns away, and I hear her throat catch as she says, “I sorta miss it.”

A hot girl who knows shoe repair? What are the odds? “Why’d you leave?”

“My family fell on hard times, so they sent me to live with my rich uncle Sam.”

Rich Uncle Sam? This guy?

“But I miss my family so much,” she says. “Specially my big sister. She’s expectin’ a baby soon. I wish I could at least visit, but there’s no money for bus fare, and I’ve got no car.”

“I’m sorry. I’m away from home too. I know it’s tough.”

She wipes a tear. “I shouldn’t be bothering you with all my stupid problems.” Her arm brushes mine. “But would you mind if I look at your drawing? It reminds me of home.”

“Sure. It’s nothing special. Someday, I want to design really expensive shoes like Ferragamo.”

“Oh, we don’t have anything like that back home. I come from a small town. I never heard of anyone having shoes that cost more than forty dollars before I got here.”

“‘Mama always said you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes,’” I say, quoting the movie
Forrest Gump.
“‘Where they’re going. Where they’ve been.’”

She laughs. “Where you from?”

I look down at her shoes, flip-flops with no arch support at all. Something tells me to lie, even though she’s so beautiful and sweet looking. “Ah, New York. I go to NYU.” I think I’m old enough to pass for a college student.

“Woo! College boy! That’s why you got on that Yankees cap.” She starts to take it off. I shouldn’t let her, but I do. She’s beautiful. “You’re pretty cute.”

“You too.” It’s dawning on me that this girl, this incredibly hot girl, is interested in me. Not like Victoriana, who just wanted me for what I could do for her, but really interested.

“My name’s Norina. What’s yours?”

“John.”

“John, you want to take me out tonight?”

I start to nod, then remember I have to stay the night. The whole night. And I need to steal the bird. Maybe I can go out with her, then come back. No. Last night, I fell into a trap. I can’t chance it again. “Sorry. I really can’t leave tonight.”

She pouts at me, and I add, “It’s not that I don’t want to. I just need to get up super-early in the morning.”

She shrugs. “It’s okay. You don’t owe me an explanation. I just . . .” She looks at my drawing again. “I felt lonely, and I thought it might be fun to be with someone.”

An inspiration strikes me. “How about tomorrow? I can see you then.”

With any luck, I’ll be gone tomorrow, off in pursuit of the frog. But if I’m still around, it wouldn’t be bad to have a good-looking girl to hang out with.

“Sure,” she says. “I should get going now.”

And then she leaves.

I finish the chicken and fries, leaving the gross-looking slaw. At first, I think I’ll wait for Norina to come back for the plate, so I can see her again. But then I realize that would be a terrible idea. I can’t resist temptation a second time. So I leave the dish outside the door. Still, I look down the hall to see if she’s there. She’s not. No one is.

After I eat, I turn out the lights, pull my chair up to the window, and look out. It’s barely dark out, but there’s not much going on. A few cars in the parking lot, and a motorcycle, but not
the
motorcycle. I see Norina bringing a bag of trash to the Dumpster. She takes out something and leaves it on a paper plate. So she’s been the one feeding Todd.

She glances up toward my window, and I think she sees me despite the darkness. I pull the curtain closed over my face. When I look a second later, she’s gone. I must’ve nodded off then, because when I look next, the cars and motorcycles are, except for one that might be Sam’s or a lone guest’s, all gone. Out of the window is nothing but stars. I glance at the digital clock on the table where I put the shoe drawings. Four a.m. Time to get going.