The Woman in the Wall (13 page)

"You're right," she said, delighted. "I'll bet that's what it does look like. And you're about to emerge from the cocoon. It's perfect!"

That thought was less comforting, though true. I made a quick trip to the bathroom to freshen up and reapply some lipstick. Then we began to descend the great mahogany staircase. As we came around the bend, we paused on the landing to survey the crowded front hall.

"Most people are here already," Kirsty said. "I thought you'd rather wait till the place was full before you made an appearance. That way people won't wonder where you came from."

"Is—is F here?" I asked, beginning to feel my heart thumping softly under my ribs. I looked out over the throng, dying to find a familiar face. It was true that there were lots more cobwebs downstairs. It was difficult to make out any details of the room at all; everything was draped and masked in white spun plastic. It gave an odd and appropriately eerie effect. Costumed revelers seemed suspended in the strange, muffled light, like brightly colored fish swimming in nests of cotton wool.

"I don't—wait! There he is, that ghost over there in the flowered sheet. Wave to him. He's not gonna believe it when he sees you. Wave, Anna, wave. He doesn't see me."

Hesitantly I raised my hand waist-high and essayed a tiny flutter of the wrist.

"C'mon, Anna, get your arm
up
there. Oh, forget it. He's seen Andrea."

Both arms shot up into the air and I waved vigorously.

He saw me. So did everyone else in the room. I had forgotten that we were standing alone on an elevation above a crowd, and that I was wearing a very striking costume. The tails of my shimmering green wings fluttered as I waved and I looked, no doubt, as though I was about to launch myself into the air and swoop down over them.

My worst nightmare had come true: eighty eyes at least were upon me. People pointed at me and said things; I could not hear what. I froze, motionless, still in my dramatic pose.

Kirsty realized the mistake and gave me a sharp push. I lowered my arms and abruptly began to descend the stairs, hanging on to the railing to keep from falling. A buzz of commentary rose to meet me as I dropped in altitude. My natural inclination was to stare at the floor to avoid the eyes of the multitude, but if I lowered my chin I was absolutely certain that my crown would slip forward. And, in my opinion, a tipsy moth with her crown falling off would look even more foolish than a haughty moth with her nose in the air, so I concentrated on gazing just above people's heads. This made it difficult to find F when I finally reached the bottom of the stair, but Kirsty grabbed me firmly by the arm and guided me.

"Is that you, A?" F gasped when I was steered up to him. "I don't believe it."

"Can we leave? Just for a moment," I begged, half fainting. I held my mask up before my face like a shield. "Into the kitchen or the butler's pantry. While I catch my breath."

"Great costume," someone said into my ear. "Incredible entrance. Do I know you? Are you in Drama Club or something?"

I turned. Kirsty and F were entirely blocked by this person, a medieval executioner, to judge by his attire. A black hood completely covered his head and he carried a plastic axe. The whole costume was mass-produced, I decided; the hood was made out of the cheapest cotton broadcloth, and I spotted obviously faulty seam construction in the vest. He was tall, taller than F, with large muscular arms and legs. I didn't see how I could escape if he wanted to talk to me.

Then it occurred to me that he fit the requirements for my grand gesture: he was a strange boy. I could accomplish my goal within minutes of arriving at the party. I took a deep breath.

"Do you want to dance?" I asked.

He seemed slightly taken aback, although it was hard to tell when all I could see of his face were his eyes through the slits in his black hood. What did I care? I had fulfilled my promise. It didn't matter if he said no. In fact, I very much hoped that he would say no. I wanted to dance with F, not with this tacky hired assassin. I only had to endure the moment of humiliation when he turned me down flat and the worst of my ordeal was over. I closed my eyes, waiting.

"Sure. How about a little later, seeing as how there's no music playing at the moment?"

True. I hadn't thought about it, but no one else seemed to be dancing. Perhaps that was why. I opened my eyes.

"Never mind," I said quickly. "That's okay." I looked over the executioner's shoulder for F. Had he heard? Did he know how courageous I was? Would this conversation never be over?

Apparently not.

"Hey, don't get all huffy. I'll dance without music, since you insist. Come on." He gripped me by the wrist and I was dragged, protesting feebly, away from the small circle of protection around Kirsty and F.

"Over here where there's more room." To my horror I realized that he meant to do what Kirsty called "slow dancing," which meant simply rocking back and forth in an intimate embrace. In public. His arm encircled my waist, and he placed my hand on his chest and held it there firmly with his own.

Then he began to sing.

Softly, I'm glad to say. Actually, he had quite a nice tenor voice, I must admit. I don't follow contemporary music, so I don't know the name of the song he sang, but I remember it was about love, which was rather alarming, to say the least. Slowly he began to move around the floor, his body swaying gently against mine. I shuffled along as gracefully as I could. I found that the combination of the high-heeled slippers that Kirsty had forced me to wear and my long sweeping wings made it necessary to lower my mask and use that hand to cling to him. Otherwise I was very much afraid that I would trip and fall at his feet.

He went on singing, looking deep into my eyes. I stared back like a bird hypnotized by a snake. Slowly I slipped into a sort of trance state, fitting the rhythmic movements of my body to his. This alien boy seemed to envelop me entirely, his arms, his scent, his voice, and yet, amazingly, I lived. It occurred to me that I would survive this. Perhaps when I was an old, old woman, I might even enjoy remembering it.

Finally his song drew to an end. We stopped, and I was conscious of a fleeting sensation of regret. Dancing wasn't so bad.

He released my hand but not my gaze and slowly pulled off his mask. He stood there smiling down at me, revealed as a classically handsome adult male. He had brown, crisply curling hair, a broad, mobile mouth, and brilliant violet eyes. His left arm was still around my waist, I realized.

"There," he said. "I danced with you. Now will you tell me who you are?"

My mind went blank. Who was I? Kirsty had come up with a name and life history I was supposed to produce if anyone asked me. To be honest, I really hadn't paid any attention since I'd planned on fainting if anyone actually spoke to me. In the event, unconsciousness seemed no more than a golden, unattainable dream.

"I—" I stammered. "I'm no one. I'm nobody," I clarified.

"So you're a mystery woman, is that what you're telling me? Come on," he said coaxingly, bending that overpowering masculine beauty over me. "Who are you? I'll swear I've never seen you before. Did you just move to Bitter Creek?"

"Let's dance some more," I suggested.

He smiled, a slow, lazy smile. "You're really something, you know it?"

I groped for some way to
force
him to dance again. In order to dance he had to sing and he couldn't sing and ask questions at the same time. "You have a wonderful voice," I offered, looking nervously up at him from under my lashes.

"Yeah? You think so?" This was obviously the right thing to say. "I want to be a singer in a rock band, but my parents are making me go to college. We've got this great group together—maybe you've heard of us? The Flying Pits? Anyway, we
would
be good if we had a decent drummer." He scowled at the thought of the drummer.

Well, at least he wasn't quizzing me about my name and antecedents. "What's wrong with the drummer?" I asked cunningly.

He opened his mouth to answer and then stopped, grinning at me.

"You're trying to get me to stop asking about your name, aren't you? Who
are
you? Come on, now I've
got
to know."

"You—I don't know who you are either." Actually, I thought I did. The voice, the name of the band, the classic good looks, all suggested the same name.

"If I tell you who I am, will you tell me who you are?"

At that moment, music began to play. In desperation I flung myself at him, like flinging a bone to a dog to stop his barking. I reached out and grabbed his hand and curled my body in to fit his.

"Dance with me," I pleaded, "this is my favorite song." Actually, I have no recollection of the song; it could have been a funeral march for all I knew or cared.

He laughed. "Okay, okay. Whatever this lady wants, she gets, apparently." He grasped my chin between finger and thumb and tilted my face up to his. "But I'll tell you something: I'm going to find out before the night is over. So," he said as we began to dance again, "you don't know who I am either, huh?" He was holding me closer this time. "Just to show you how generous I am, I'll tell you my name."

"That would be nice," I mumbled into his chest. My nose was mashed up against his pectoral muscles; I could barely breathe.

"My name is—"

"Foster Addams," a cold voice concluded for him. "Hello, Foster. Who's your friend?"

I writhed around in Foster Addams's arms, trying to get a view of the newcomer. I knew that voice.

Treading heavily on his foot, I persuaded him to loosen his grip. I peered out of his embrace like some wild animal peering out of the underbrush.

It was Andrea.

"Hi, Andrea." Foster Addams released me and bestowed his sleepy smile on Andrea. "Don't you know who this is, either? Pretty cool outfit, huh? Look." He grabbed my hand, raised it over my head, and twirled me around for Andrea's inspection. Caught off guard, I fell back at the end of the twirl against Foster, with my other arm spread out against his chest for balance.

"Very impressive," Andrea said in the same icy tones.

He seemed unconcerned by her lack of enthusiasm. "You're pretty good on your feet," he said admiringly to me. "You ought to be a dancer. You vant to do de tango viz me?" He put his arm around me, shot our joined hands out shoulder-high and lurched sideways, dragging me with him.

"That was, without question, the worst Spanish accent I've ever heard," Andrea said.

"But you gotta admit, Babe, I can tango like the devil himself." Foster abandoned me and clutched Andrea to his chest, staggering bent-kneed and stiff-armed into a corner with her and then back again. This maneuver seemed to improve Andrea's mood only marginally.

She was dressed as a mermaid. My eyes widened as I took in the shoddy handiwork.
Where
had Andrea picked up such trash? Surely she of all people ought to be able to recognize quality when she saw it. Suddenly I realized that she had noted and correctly interpreted my incredulous stare at her costume. This, I could not help but feel, was unfortunate.

"Who are you?" she asked bluntly. "This is my party and I have the right to know."

"I'm a friend of Kirsty's," I said. I looked around for Kirsty. With any luck, she would materialize and tell me who I was. There she was, half the room away, pulling her whiskers and making her eyes blink and her jaw open and close for an admiring group of people.

Andrea's gaze travelled over me. Uncomfortable, I held up the green jewelled mask to my eyes in a vain attempt to hide from her scrutiny.

"
Kirsty's
friend," she said, sounding not much friendlier. "Remarkably mature for your age, aren't you?"

"Yes, yes, I am," I said eagerly, pleased to be on familiar ground. I only hoped she wouldn't find this as laughable as F had. "Everyone has always said so, anyway," I amended.

I needn't have been afraid that she would laugh. An almost murderous look passed over her features. I cowered backward, bumping into Foster.

"Hey, Andrea, geez," he said, placing a protective arm around me. "You're scaring the poor kid."

"The poor
kid
is right," Andrea retorted. "Doing a little cradle robbing, Foster? How old do you think she is?"

He turned and looked at me. "I dunno, sixteen, seventeen."

"
Twelve!
The
poor kid
is twelve years old."

Foster dropped his arm from my shoulder.

"I am not!" I said indignantly. "I was fourteen last August nineteenth."

"Oh, well." Foster seemed unsure that fourteen was a big improvement on twelve.

"August nineteenth?" Andrea looked startled. I thought I knew why, but I had to ask.

"Why are you surprised?" I asked.

"Because—because I don't see why somebody like you should be friends with Kirsty," she answered, looking mulish.

"Kirsty has other friends my age," I said confidently. Hadn't Kirsty said a ninth-grade girlfriend once invited her to a dance? "But that's not what surprised you," I pursued, with freshening courage. "You were surprised by the day I was born."

Andrea shrugged dismissively. "I used to know somebody with that birthday, that's all."

I smiled. She didn't say she was surprised because it was the same as her own birthday, which would be reasonable. No, she said that she used to know somebody
else
with that birthday.

Foster frowned. "Weren't you born in August?" he asked.

"Y-es," Andrea admitted reluctantly. "That day. The nineteenth."

"Do I look like her?" I asked boldly, removing the mask from my eyes.

Andrea became very still. Then she turned her head and stared at me for a long, time-without-end moment. Her eyes searched mine. She examined my face, my hair, my waving antennae, my dress. Her eyes swept back up to mine.

"Excuse me," she said and, gathering up her mermaid's tail, she fled out of the room.

"Wuh-ho!" exclaimed Foster. His handsome face went stupid with amazement. He looked at me. "Huh?" he inquired. He seemed to be groping for the power of human speech and failing.