The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

A Wife Has Her Ways

Previously: "The Persecution of Cindy Vredenburg" 

Frank looks startled when you walk into the garage just as he's pulling in, and he looks still more startled when you get directly into the SUV with him. "Well, I'm ready," you brightly tell him as you buckle yourself in.

"Don't I get a chance to clean up and change first?" he asks.

"Oh, you always look fresh when you get home!" You lean over to kiss his cheek. "Besides, I'm starved! Where are you taking me?"

Frank blinks dubiously. Then with a shrug he restarts the car and backs up.

Probably he should get a fast shower and change into a nicer suit before taking you out. Certainly you are overdressed compared to him, in the baggy suit he wears to the office. But you don't want to give Cindy a chance to intercept him and weep about your cruel behavior to her. In the first place, she and her sister have always been little daddy's girls, and been pampered by him in return. In the second, you need a chance to work him into the idea that Cindy needs a tutor to polish her grades. You told her that's what you and he had been discussing, and he'd look bewildered if she dropped that on him.

But you don't tell him any of this ahead of time, and just hold and squeeze his hand and get him to tell you about his day as you drive out to the restaurant.

* * * * *

He lets you choose, and you choose Le Metropolitain, a chic little restaurant in the northeast corner of town. There aren't any really great restaurants in town—Outback is most people's idea of fancy cooking—but it is a place where you can order glazed duck with sweet potato fries. It's one of the "Shoppes at Fell's Lake", a cluster of little shops that house a tea room, a pastry shop, and the best clothiers and jewelers in town. Betty does all of her shopping there.

It's early, so you and Frank have the place mostly to yourselves, a fact he remarks on. "More intimate this way," you remark as you are seated at a small table draped with a heavy, emerald-green cloth. There are three kinds of drinking crystals at each setting, and seven kinds of utensils wrapped in each napkin. You smile at the waitress as she takes your drink orders—you ask for a glass of Cabernet, while Frank orders a Long Island Ice Tea—and wince a little at the wish that it was a handsome waiter instead.

You let Frank settle in and relax before gradually introducing the topic of Cindy and her grades. You slide into it by remarking that Cindy is doing so much better at school than Lucy had done. "I really do think there's a chance of getting her— Well, if not into an Ivy League," you tell him, "then into a really good school somewhere."

"I wasn't holding out for an Ivy League," Frank replies.

"Yes, but— Well, someplace better than a state college. Or Keyserling."

"Keyserling's a good school."

"I thought you've always said that Keyserling is an engineering college."

"Well, yeah—"

"Cindy's not cut out for engineering. Her best grades are in English." Cindy has, in fact, been taking AP English classes her entire high school career.

"Uh-huh."

"So what about trying to get her into a small liberal arts college? Someplace like ... Oh, I don't know. I'd have to look some up."

Frank looks dubious. "Cindy isn't going to want to go to someplace small. She's going to want to go someplace where there's—" He shifts uncomfortably. "Someplace where there's a lot boys."

"There would be boys at a place like—"

"Boys like Seth."

"Hmph. Well, now that you mention Seth, may I say that I don't much like him, and I'd rather see Cindy with someone else? And at a college where there aren't a lot of boys like him?"

Frank reacts like you've slapped him, for Seth has always been a great favorite of Frank's, who despite his nerdish, number-crunching background has always liked sports, and sometimes acts like he has a crush on Cindy's boyfriend. "When did you decide this?" he asks, incredulous at your confession.

"Oh, I've thought it for a long time. I just held my tongue. But I don't want to talk about Seth. I want to talk about Cindy's grades, and about how we can give her that extra edge that can get her into a good school."

* * * * *

So that's your segue, and with that preparation the talk that follows goes quickly and smoothly. Frank agrees that it would be worth investing a few hundred dollars in a tutor for Cindy, and further agrees to leave the hiring in your hands when you tell him that you've already got a recommendation from the school. You also prepare him for a sob story from Cindy—and why her seething distaste for the tutor ("A nice boy, but a little scruffy around the edges; reminds me of you when we met") goaded you into confessing your dislike of Seth—so that he won't buckle to her complaints when you get home. Dinner is delicious, and it puts Frank in a very mellow mood, so that when you leave (it is not yet eight o'clock) you are able to wheedle him into taking you to the movies. It's ten-thirty before you get home. The lights upstairs are out, so you figure that Cindy must have cried herself to sleep. But so as to nail Frank down in place, you lead him into the bedroom and let him slowly undress and caress you, warming you so that you will react appreciatively when he slides himself into you.

* * * * *

The next morning, after you've washed and refreshed and dressed for the morning chores in loose slacks and a sweatshirt, you text your replacement with the news that he is now set to be Cindy's tutor, and that he should report to the Vredenburg residence at seven o'clock that evening for an interview and a first session with Cindy. You also warn him not to let Cindy intimidate him. The girl was mulish and uncommunicative at breakfast, hardly talking to her father and not talking to you at all, and she went out fifteen minutes early to wait for Seth to pick her up.

You have just finished vacuuming the downstairs when your phone chimes. You are disquieted, but not completely surprised, to see that it is Kelly Cooper calling. "It's the professor," she tells you. "He wants me up at his place in fifteen minutes. What do I do?"

There's no way you can make over to the Coopers' to change masks, and then make it out to Blackwell's villa, in that amount of time. So you tell her to tell him you can't make it on account of appointments.

"He told me to cancel everything."

"Well, tell him you can't."

"I already told him I'd be there!" she whines. "He called me, he didn't text me!"

You pinch the bridge of your nose and try to think.

"Text him that you have to change first, and put gas in the car," you finally tell the pedisequos. "I'll be out to your place as fast as I can." You don't even stop to change shoes, but grab your keys and purse and hustle for the garage.

* * * * *

It takes you fifteen minutes to get to the Coopers', and another fifteen minutes once you're there to get switched over into Kelly Cooper's mask. That puts you nearly thirty minutes late getting out to the professor's villa, and you expect to find him in a temper, particularly as it is the middle of the day and he is himself probably on a tight schedule and needing to get back to the university.

But he is pale and mute when you arrive, and he only gives you a pained look when you start to apologize profusely for being late.

"It only matters that you are here, Mr. Prescott," he tells you, apparently not noticing or caring that you are wearing the face and body and clothes of Kelly Cooper. "The fact is, this meeting is much more embarrassing for me." He gestures you to follow him into the dark and oppressive living room, where he invites you to sit while he paces the floor anxiously.

"I am," he says after clearing his throat, "under the circumstances, forced to make certain highly awkward confessions to you. The first is that, erm, you and I are not the only, ah, 'magic users' in this city. Saratoga Falls, I perhaps should make plain to you, is rather a, um, 'hotbed' of activities of the sort that some people might call 'occult'."

You raise your eyebrows, less at this revelation than at the highly circumlocutory way he's going about making it.

"I am, that is to say, the occupant of this house is," he continues with a sweaty nervousness, "loosely associated with a company of other, um, adepts of these arts. I shouldn't say 'associated'," he hastens to add, "in the sense that I am an associate member, but in the sense that I—that is to say, the occupant of this house—is forced to, erm, associate with them."

The awfully precise way that he keeps correcting himself to say "occupant of this house" sets off a kind of alarm bell in your head. "Aren't you the occupant of this house?" you ask.

"Well, yes, certainly," he says, "which is why I must make this association. But any occupant of this house would be, ah, obliged to make the association. There are certain, um, properties associated with this, er, property, that would enforce it.

"But the fact is," he continues after a heaving sigh, "that there is another reason I am emphasizing the, er, 'third-party quality' of the identification of the, um, house's occupant. I am not, in actuality—" He swallows. "I am not actually Aubrey Blackwell. I am a pedisequos who is occupying his position at the moment." He looks at you with worried, watering eyes.

You can't say you're surprised. Instead, you ask, "Why are you telling me this? Where's the professor?"

His mouth curls up into a sick and pained smile.

"When I tell you where he is, you will understand why I am telling you all this. My original, you see, Mr. Prescott, is being held, erm ... against his will ... by those 'associates' I was telling you about."

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"