Chapter 6

6

When Dr. Henson left me standing on the balcony, I made my way back alone, retracing our path to the second floor. I stared up at the dome for a long time, until my neck hurt and I got dizzy. There was something about the colors, the faces . Identical faces of some woman with oversized blue eyes and a tumble of gently curling brown hair, all rendered from shards of glass. Only rich people would put a ring of light-beaming faces with wide, staring eyes on their ceiling. It was like an overcaffeinated audience of clones was watching everything from the sky. But it was the sun at the center that got me the most—the hard power of it, the way it was so orange that it was brown, like it had burned itself up. The overall effect was not soothing if you really looked at it, but the light was nice.

I walked down the hallway where the Ralston kids slept—six rooms, identical in size. The rooms were large and airy, full of ornately carved furniture, painted porcelain lamps, and funny little things. One had a massive armoire with pictures of cats carved into it, another a lamp shaped like a parrot, another a strange little clock shaped like a bear. One had an ornate desk, another a massive gilt mirror that took up a third of the wall. The girls all had those dressing screens that I've never understood. Why do you need a screen to change in your own room? Plus, these had a fine, transparent lace stretched over the frame, so there was no point to them at all. There was more lace on the bedside tables and the bureaus. Lace curtains on the windows and the glass door that led out to a balcony. Big Lace had gotten its dainty paws on this house.

I drifted around the rooms on the first floor, walking through the sunbeams that flooded in through the windows and illuminated the dust motes. There was the smell of a recent cleaning, a bit of must, and a current of summer air. There were sofas that faced sofas, arranged for a time where there was nothing else to do but face other people and talk to them. No television. No computers or phones or anything to filter out the relentless presence of other people you saw every day. There were cushions for days, all delicately embroidered in flowers and plants and patterns. More lace, of course, dripping over everything like sleeping ghosts. I'd call the style cozy castle.

I found myself in a bit of hallway where there were several cabinets that displayed photos of the Ralston family. They were a tall bunch, and very similar-looking in that way that people from the past all look alike. The girls had bobbed hair and the boys had the same cut, with a sweep across the forehead. They stood in a line wearing identical white shirts and shorts with the letter R over where a breast pocket would be. Only one stood out—a girl. While the others stood straight, she had a slight cock to her hip and she looked at the camera from under the fringe of her bangs. She didn't seem impressed. A man figured in several of the photos, usually in a pinstripe suit, extremely from The Past, with a pencil-thin mustache. That had to be Phillip Ralston. And the studio portrait of a woman in a tight evening dress, looking over her shoulder at the camera, her long blond hair floating down in a perfect wave—that was Faye, his actress wife. In a few photos, there was a severe-looking woman with dark hair, pulled back and tight to her head. She had an intelligent face. She looked like someone who didn't miss much. The plaque indicated that this was Dagmar.

There was one photo of a little boy with a wild tangle of curly blond hair and wearing a jacket with a massive bow around his neck, like he was a present. Max. The boy who died. I was looking at him when I realized I was covered in tiny rainbows that were coming from a doorway I hadn't noticed on the walk-through. I moved closer, following the rainbows. I could see a rack of sweatshirts inside.

The dancing rainbows were flying off the twenty or so prisms that were stuck to the large window, full of late afternoon sun. I had to shield my eyes against the onslaught, even as it appeared I was being refueled with pure, nuclear-grade queer power. Off to the side was a large display of Thousand Island dressing. There was a person in this room, partially concealed by the tower of dressing. They had their back to me and were refolding and piling some T-shirts on a table. Their socks were dark blue with the outline of a creepy tree in black, and the words I LOVE CREEPY SHIT in yellow.

"Why are you staring at my knees?" they said, without turning around or removing their headphones.

I involuntarily backed up a step. The person had dark hair just past the shoulders, choppy, dark blue streaks that almost blended in. They wore loose black shorts and a draping, slightly faded black T-shirt over it.

"The only use for this thing," they said, pointing at a suncatcher made of tiny mirror disks. "It catches knee creepers."

"Not your knees," I said. "Your socks."

They looked down at their socks, as if it was news that they were wearing any.

"This is the gift shop?" I said.

"What tipped you off?"

I'd just been trying to make conversation, and sometimes conversations demand that you say obvious things. Part of me wanted to back slowly out of the room, but this person was regarding me with interest, and I wanted this person to maintain their interest.

"I'm Marlowe," I said. "I'm the new..."

"I know who you are."

"You don't have a name tag," I pointed out.

"I'm Riki. She, her. I don't do name tags. I don't need one. I don't do tours. I just do this, and no one needs to know my name when they're buying their dressing. No one works the gift shop but me. I'm an independent contractor ....

"Oh."

"You burned a house down," she went on. "Was it fun? It seems like it would be fun to burn a house down. Cathartic."

I needed to change the topic. There was a book on the counter. It was open, face down to hold her page. The title was The Daughter of Time .

"You like fantasy?" I asked, tipping my head at it.

"Yes," she said. "I do. But that's not fantasy. It's a mystery. This is the twelfth time I've read it."

"It must be good."

"No," she said. "I've read it twelve times because it's terrible."

I got the sense that Riki wasn't entirely against talking to me—more like she was waiting for me to say something worth listening to. On that front, I was really going to let her down, because all I could think to do was point at the tower of Thousand Island dressing bottles and ask, "Do people buy a lot of dressing?"

This, it seemed, was a topic she was prepared to engage with.

"More than you will ever know," she said. "A depressing amount. Welcome to Morning House. Come for the excesses of capitalism, stay for the deaths. Get yourself some thick orange dressing at the gift shop. Here."

She unstuck a flat magnet from a display next to the tablet that served as a checkout.

"The recipe for Thousand Island dressing. On a magnet. Here you go."

It looked like she was giving it to me, though I didn't know why, so I reached out for it.

"Eight bucks," she said.

"Oh. I..."

I didn't want a salad dressing recipe magnet, but it seemed by reaching out for it I had entered some kind of contract. At that moment, April appeared in the doorway and looked between me and Riki, toying with her monogram necklace, sliding the A back and forth on the chain.

"Marlowe, are you..." April didn't finish that question.

Riki retracted the magnet and slapped it back on the display.

"Hi, April," she said.

"Hey, Riki. Um, Marlowe? Did you need help unpacking or with your stuff? Because we're going to have dinner in the main dining room here in the house tonight, as a special thing, for you."

"A special dinner in the house," Riki said. "You're getting the celebrity treatment."

April's freckly face flushed pink and she compressed her lips, as if physically holding in a remark. Something was going on here, some issue that I was not privy to. It was like watching two cats quietly regarding each other, paws on the ground but the claws silently sliding from under the fur.

"I'm fine," I said. "I'll go unpack. I'm good."

"Oh." April nodded. I seem to have said the right thing. "Okay. Great. Dinner's at seven."

I got the impression I was supposed to go now, so I shuffled toward the door, where I was again splattered with rainbows. Riki smirked and returned to the pile of sweatshirts she had been folding when I interrupted.

I often think back to this first meeting with Riki. Things at Morning House, I could already tell, were going to be complicated. I was so innocent then to think that complicated would cover the situation I had gotten myself into. I tell myself that the dominos were already set up before I got there—they only needed that little push to set them all going on their terrible track. But there I was, the unknowing, necessary finger, flicking the first one into motion.