The Ruby Notebook (32 page)

Vincent shakes his head. “Celtic priestesses could be ruthless at times. In battle camps, they’d ceremoniously slice the necks of the war prisoners and collect their blood in a bucket. They used the blood for prophecy.”

Madame Chevalier nods. “My dear, you do not want to be a war prisoner of Salluvii, no matter how friendly they appear.”

I barely suppress a laugh, imagining sweet Sirona wielding a bloody sword. I glance at Wendell out of the corner of my eye.

There’s not a trace of laughter on his face. His eyebrows are furrowed together in concern. Then I remember his vision of danger. The man with the beard, threatening me.
Even though I’m certain Sirona would never hurt me, I suppose it’s possible someone else might. Of course, ceremoniously slicing necks for prophecy seems utterly ridiculous. It’s only Wendell’s grave expression that makes my laughter inside fade, and a kernel of fear replace it.

I
keep glancing at Sirona, next to me on the sofa, trying to imagine her as a ruthless, two-thousand-year-old Celtic priestess, slitting throats and saving the blood. I stifle a laugh. Completely absurd. Sirona and Layla and I have just finished a dinner of leftover ratatouille, and now we’re looking at pictures from Ecuador, which Sirona finds enchanting. “Oh, I like this one!” she says, pointing to a photo of me at the market, arm in arm with Gaby in front of her alpaca scarves. Gaby’s kissing my cheek and I’m leaning into her.

Layla agrees. “You and Gaby simply exude happiness in this one,” she declares.

Most of our pictures are from the album Wendell made for
me in Ecuador, which has photos of all our friends: the Quichua girls running through a horde of chickens, Mamita Luz kneading bread, Silvio in his candlelit curing room. And then there are pages of photos of me—in a cornfield, on a mountaintop, in a garden.

“Wendell’s a great photographer,” Sirona says. “When do I get to meet him?”

I shrug.

Layla nudges me gently with her elbow. “So you two have been spending lots of time together lately. Anything happening?”

I give another shrug. “We’re friends again, I think.” I swallow hard. “But he spends a lot of time with this girl, Amandine. I wish I hadn’t—I want to be—close to him again. And now he’s moved on. There’s nothing I can do.”

Sirona pats my shoulder sympathetically and then stands up, stretching. “I’ll make more tea.”

I keep flipping through the album. It’s painful to look at these pictures, but I do it anyway. I love the way I looked at him through his camera lens. My eyes were naked and happy. I knew he saw me, really saw me. Knew he loved what he saw. If only I hadn’t broken up with him, screwed it all up. If only I hadn’t been so scared and stupid.

While Sirona’s in the kitchen, Layla smooths my hair, gets on her Rumi-quoting face, and whispers,

I roll my eyes. “Layla. First of all, prisoners don’t have axes. Only flimsy fingernails. Second, the walls of the Castle of If are at least two meters thick. Impervious to the sharpest axes. Prisoners, by definition, are helpless. No chance of escape. You can go tell Rumi his advice is unrealistic.”

Layla closes her eyes for a moment, then says, “There are easier ways.” And she recites,

I should have learned by now. You can’t win when you’re up against thirteenth-century mystics. They always have the last word.

“Just look for the door, love,” Layla says. “The wide-open door.”

“If it were that easy,” I snap, “then we’d all be happy, Layla.”

“But it
can
be that easy!” she insists.

I slam the photo album shut. “I wish you’d given this pep talk to J.C. on the beach that night. Because it sure isn’t easy for him to find the door.”

She sighs. If she quotes Rumi again, I’ll scream. Thankfully, she only says, “But you’re different, Z. You’re a seeker. Always have been. You, of all people, can find it.”

Wendell and I have changed our strategy. No more fruitless knocking on the doors beneath the impish devil and the gagging man. Now we’re spying, which consists of loitering down the street, just around the corner, and waiting for someone to come in or out. When they do, we’ll leap into action. I’ve refused to wear the red dress this time, since it’s a pain to hand wash. Today, I’m wearing jeans and a tank top, with my hair in a sensible ponytail. Wendell’s leaning against a stone wall on Rue Littera, sketching something, while I keep an eye on the door below the gagging man’s face.

“Still nothing,” I say, peeking at Wendell’s sketch. It’s of a window with a skirt drying over the edge. Suddenly, I realize that he hasn’t drawn me all summer. Or photographed me. He used to do it all the time in Ecuador. He must have thousands of pictures of me. But he hasn’t taken a single one of me in France. I’m not aware I’m staring at him until he looks up. His expression is unguarded, and softens in response to my gaze.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

A breeze sweeps through the canyon street, whipping through my hair. I smooth it and say, “Do you think I’m a terrible person?”

Wendell looks at the sky. “I think you’re made of light and shadow, like everyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you were all light, you’d be flat. Boring. If everything always went happily, as planned, our lives wouldn’t have textures or curves or hollows.”

He’s sort of evaded my question. “I really hurt you, didn’t I, Wendell?”

He starts sketching again. “If I were happy all the time, I’d be flat too. It’s the shadows that make you notice the light. Remember what Maurice said about finding treasures in prison.”

I open my notebook and take out my pen. This is the first time I’ve asked Wendell a question for the ruby notebook. “If you took a hundred pictures of yourself, what essential thing would be the same in each one?”

He smiles. “You could answer that better than me.”

“Really?”

“Z, you know more about me than anyone else. Last summer I showed you pieces of myself I’d never shown anyone. So you tell me. What am I at my core?”

“A crystal cave,” I say softly. “At the center of a mountain.”

Our eyes meet for a moment, then I look down at my notebook. We sit, and he sketches, and I write, peeking around the corner every minute or so. From time to time I ask him more questions, mundane questions now, like what
he used to eat for lunch in elementary school. After I’ve filled up five pages of pure Wendell, I notice a man stopping in front of the spiral door, taking a key from his pocket. He’s bulky and big, and carrying two shopping bags.

I slam my notebook shut and stuff it in my bag. “Come on, Wendell!”

We run down the street just in time to reach out our hands and catch the door before it locks shut.

“
Bonjour!
” I say, slipping inside the doorframe, into the dim hallway.

The man’s thick eyebrows rise in astonishment, then press together in suspicion. A huge, coarse beard hides half of his face. His cheeks and nose are ruddy and slightly bulbous. His eyes are nearly lost in all the flesh. “
Bonjour,
” he grunts.

After I give him the story about Wendell’s art project, he shakes his head and says in a gruff voice, “Our fountain is dry.” He’s blocking the corridor with his massive body.

Wendell hangs back, reaching for the door. “Zeeta. Let’s forget it. Come on.”

I hesitate. We’ve waited so long, and finally the man is here, and true, he doesn’t seem too friendly, but I don’t want to miss this opportunity. I plant a big smile on my face. “Doesn’t matter if it’s dry. He gets credit for that, too.”

“I don’t have time for this now.” The words come out in a growl. He’s more or less how I’d imagine an ogre to be.

“Oh, you can just leave us here by ourselves,” I say breezily. “We’ll make sure to lock the door on our way out.” As I talk, I notice in the corner of my eye that Wendell looks scared. I meet his gaze. He shakes his head, slowly, almost imperceptibly at me. Something’s wrong. I take one last stab. “So, do you mind if we look at your fountain?”

The man holds a fleshy hand out to Wendell. “Let me see your book.”

Without a word, Wendell passes him the sketchbook.

The man flips through it. Our cover story must satisfy him, because he shoots both of us a stern look and says, “Ten minutes.”

“Sure,” Wendell creaks. “I’m fast.”

As the man leads us down the dark hall toward the courtyard, Wendell grabs my arm and says through his teeth, “It’s the man from my vision.”

My heart starts thudding, but it’s too late to turn around. We’re in the courtyard now. Wendell crouches by the fountain, sketching quickly. Meanwhile, the man stands by the entrance and folds his muscled arms, leaning back and glaring. To cover my nervousness, I decide to continue my friendly act.

“Nice courtyard,” I say, even though it’s neglected, overrun with weeds and wildflowers and untrimmed bushes. In its center is a fountain starring a fat cherub, his chubby cheeks puffed out, and a spout emerging from his mouth. Dirt and dried leaves and dead insects coat the bottom of the basin.

The man grunts in response, still leaning against the stone wall like a bouncer at a rough bar.

“So, what do you do?” I ask casually.

He grunts again. In fact, he grunts in response to every question or comment I make. After five minutes of onesided conversation, I still don’t know whether he’s from Aix, has a wife or kids, or works. He apparently cannot be cajoled into small talk.

Wendell finishes the sketch in record time and shows it to the man. Grunting, he walks us to the door. Once we’re outside in the street, I reach out my hand and say, “Thank you,
monsieur.
” Reluctantly, he offers his giant hand, covered in hair, and that’s when I see his ring, silver, with a triple spiral.

I push it. “To thank you, we could come back later. Wendell could do your portrait for free.”

Wendell yanks on my arm, pulling me out into the street as the man slams the door behind us. Abruptly, Wendell drops my arm. “Um, Z. Need I remind you about these people’s propensity for slicing enemy’s throats? And the fact that this giant man was threatening you in my vision?”

I smile. He’s called me Z again. And he’s touched me. Sure, it was out of exasperation, but that doesn’t change the fact that he did. It’s reassuring, just having him here with me.

“Hey, did you see his ring?” I ask.

“The spirals.” He looks at me. “Does he play in Sirona’s band?”

“No.” I hesitate, thinking. “I’ve never seen him before.”

“Doesn’t seem like a very social guy,” Wendell comments.

Two houses down, one to go. The one with the impish devil laughing above the door. On the way I chat about Sirona and the ancient Salluvii. After a few blocks, Wendell stops, pulls out his camera, and takes a couple of pictures of a pigeon in an alcove, then some shots of the red geraniums spilling over a window box. And then, when I’m least expecting it, he turns to me and snaps a photo.

He lowers the camera, keeping his gaze on my eyes. “Zeeta, please. Be careful. In my vision—that man—he was terrifying.”

“Okay, Wendell.” I want him to keep looking at me this way, as though he cares about me more than anything.

He stuffs his camera into his backpack, his head down. “If anything happened to you, Z—” His voice cracks.

“I’ll be careful,” I say. “I promise.”