2 Landscape in Scarlet (3 page)

“It’s magnificent.” Juliet could say this without the slightest t
w
inge of envy. Along with eschewing worry and caffeine, she wasted no time or energy on jealousy. She was happy that Elizabeth was talented and that Raphael had the money to buy her quilt.

This was one of the many things that the reserved Raphael liked about her, though he never mentioned it
to her
after the first time
. Juliet was not at ease with praise.

“Have you tried the deep
-
fried Twinkies yet?” she asked.

“I have not.” Raphael sounded so revolted that she had to laugh. “I was considering a visit to the Soup Kitchen
for lunch
. They have curry-pumpkin soup
that may be edible
.”

“That sounds nice.
I noticed that m
ost of the restaurants are offering special dishes this weekend.”

“Then let’s leave. We can be the first customers.”

“You’re done here?” she asked.

“Esteban did an excellent job
of arranging things
. I showed up
to approve
as a matter of form only.”

Juliet grinned.

“Me too. I didn’t have the heart to tell Rose that sweatshirts sell best when arranged by size and color and that I didn’t need a whole day to prepare
them
.
I’ve been helping her hang stuff so she doesn’t fall off her chair
but we finished that an hour ago
.
”

“You’re too nice for your own good.”

“You know, Raphael,” she said as they started for the door. “I don’t know that that’s true.
I
do the right things,
always have,
but I
may not be a nice person at all.
”

“You are still discovering yourself,” he answered
matter-of-factly
. “It takes a while to adjust to the outside world
when you’ve been inside for as long as you were
. You have to learn to make choice
s
again, to
realize
that you can afford compassion and friendship and hope.
At least with certain people.
”

He spoke from experience. He had also done something clandestine for the government and it had put him in a wheelchair.
If he was bitter about this, it never showed.

“Yes.”

And, as usual, he was right.
She needed
more
time.
Her old job had slowly lifted choice out of her hands, ostensibly so she could be free of
outside
distractions and get on with her work.
Eventually t
hey controlled her hours, her friends, her environment. And it was always the
ir
way or the highway. They pulled the strings and the obedient puppets reacted
or got their strings cut
.

At first, lonely and adrift after her parents’ deaths, she had been glad to find what looked like a new family
with
the
rules and order
she craved
. Her boss had been kind and once he was aware of her talents he had shielded her from much of the pressure and unpleasant infighting. She had coasted
along for decades
, living in limbo
, because it was easiest and because there was nothing else she wanted more
than to sift through words, looking for evidence of terrorists at work, or play, or even being created. Mostly what she found were the stupid, unscrupulous
,
and terrified who were anything but criminal masterminds
or even criminally minded
.
But sometimes she tracked down the real bad guys. She had thought that
these occasional victories
made everything else worthwhile.

It took someone
close to her
dying
pointlessly
for her to start seeing all the flaws, the systemic troubles and corruption by
those higher up the food chain.
A
nd after she began really looking around, the good features of her work were outweighed
by
the system’s bad qualities. In fact
,
she soon had more entries in the minus side of her ledger than the
L
ibrary of
C
ongress. And the reward for doing her work well? She got to
do
the same thing over and over again
—
world without end, amen. And without her boss to watch her back and protect her from the infighting.

She discovered then that there was no
work
protocol for losing faith
in one’s profession
. Lose an arm, a leg, an eye, there were fixes on the books. Lose a job, a marriage, a house
—
bad, but they could be worked around. But faith? There was no substitute, no replacement for that. And without it, duty
to a governmental god
became impossible. Because she no longer felt she had an obligation to a three-letter agency
that did a lot of harm along with the good
.

When she left, she discarded everything she could to lighten her psyche. But just because she tossed out the uniform of bland business
suits
and the security card to the fourth floor, it didn’t mean that she could forget all the memories and training. Or
emotional
scars
from incidents that had taught her to be wary
.

It was
probably a
good thing the
incident
had happened. She preferred her life choices to be her own, that it was her fingers pulling the strings
even if it meant surviving out in the cold, cruel world
.

“I love the autumn, even if it is the dying time of the year
,
”
Juliet said, partly changing the subject
and partly to redirect her mind
.
“I’m glad we get color here.
I can’t imagine autumn without all the fire.
”

Raphael nodded.

“Summer’s last, lov
e
liest smile,” he
agree
d,
slightly mis
quoting
William Cullen Bryant
.

The rain came hard around sunset and flung spatters of fiery leaves against her windows. Juliet hoped the plastic at the tent kept everything dry and thieves would be as reluctant to be out in the weather as the rent-a-cop would be
, otherwise her merchandise was there for the taking
.

She wasn’t going to worry about it though.
Her
sweatshirts
w
ere
washable
and she was insured
.
Creatures were prowling around in the dark
outside her cabin
, but they wouldn’t bother her.
She had a fire
in the stove
, some ginger tea
,
and Marley for company.
And bed was waiting.
She would huddle gladly with her cat, made small
and unnoticeable
by the storm.

Sleep was hard to come by though
once the lights were out
. She kept thinking of the gaunt figure with the balloons
and
felt
uneasy
though she couldn’t guess why
.

Carrie had left her a stack of fashion magazines
the month before,
only one of which she had read. From it she had learned that a) she didn’t care for the new style of low
-
cut jeans, and b) that you could pay an indecent amount of money for a mascara that still looked fake and clumped just like the cheaper brands at the drug store
, and c) that Carrie Simmons would go completely nuts if she kept trying to emulate the teenage
stick
insects the magazines held up as the highest standards of beauty
.

Grumbling, she
turned on the light and
picked up the next magazine in the stack. And abandoned it only minutes later.

At midnight
, with sleep
f
u
r
ther away than ever,
she began to consider the bottle of brandy in the cupboard, but rejected the idea immediately. Sleeping pills, alcohol, sex
—
any of them would stroke your brow and tell you everything would be fine. But they lied.
None of those things could make anything
“
fine.
”
Juliet had developed a ritualized relationship with them
from her years on the job
. She had rules about when, where
,
and why to indulge. Being awake at midnight wasn’t one of
the
okay reasons
to use them
.

With that decided, she
turned off the lamp and
fell instantly asleep
.
She
didn’t waken until dawn.

Juliet didn’t usually care for company before her brain was operational, but her cat was the exception, which was fortunate because Marley was not
to
be denied. He knew there
were
special cans in the cupboard meant only for his pleasure and wished her to be up and opening the
m
once there was any sign of the sky lightening.

“Okay, you pushy beast,” she muttered, feeling for her slippers.

The cat
’s breakfast
came first and then some
black
tea
for herself
. She stood at her windows admiring the fallen leaves
as she sipped
from her mug
and
gradually reached full
wake
fulness
. Her yard was a landscape in s
carlet and gold.
The last of the clouds, hanging around like ghosts on the top of the ridge
,
were slowly burning off in the light of full day.
Encouraged by Raphael’s quote, s
he thought of that poem by Tennyson, the one about
looking over the happy autumn fields and thinking of the days that are no more
, then decided it was too sad
.
Bryant had said it better.
Let summer have her last smile.

Juliet
allowed herself two minutes
more
of meditation
over her tea
and then went to dress.
She had made a special haunted house sweatshirt for the occasion
, a gray silhouette on a black shirt
.
It was time to start trawling for the tourists’ dollars which were less plentiful these days. Most of their visitors worked for computer firms who encouraged their employees to
take their spare dollars and
invest
them
in stock programs
to keep the company
“
strong
”
and to protect their jobs.
But then when the CEOs
fold
ed
up shop the employees were left with worthless e-bonds and securities
. It wasn’t a fair exchange, but it was the norm. And people kept investing because sometimes it paid off in a big way. They were nervous though and not as reckless at spending as they had been the decade before.

The fair officially opened at ten, but there was bound to be a little cleanup needed at the booths, which were hopefully still standing after the night
wind had done its work.
She needed to get moving.

*  *  *

Juliet kept her sigh to herself.
Rose looked like Hollywood’s 1950 version of a maiden librarian, but she was dressed like a teenage hippie on the way to Woodstock
who had gotten tangled up with a mummy
. It
often
seemed
to Juliet
like Rose had gone off somewhere to smoke a joint
around 1965
and just stayed there
, huddled in her beads and paranoia
. Juliet feared her
strange
style
was
so engrained that the tidy bun and batwing caftans had actually impregnated her identity. The past inhabited her, mind and body
,
and left her ill-prepared to face the modern age.
Juliet found this distressing and it made her protective
—
something she did not care for.