“Are you gonna come back to bed?” he asks.
She sputters on her drink. “What?”
Just then, Rose enters the room, having donned a new pair of khakis. She instantly straightens when she spots Oliver. “Oh, Oliver. I didn’t realize you were up. Can I get you something?”
Wait—this isOliver?The guy in charge around here? The one who got involved with Jerry’s sister?
“No, we’re all set, thanks, Rose.” He smiles at Rose with a lazy easiness.
We’reall set?
Rose looks back and forth between the two of them. “I see you’ve met our newest hire,Taylor.Is she helping you with everything you need?”
Oliver’s jaw hardens as he realizes his mistake. He takes a long, slow sip of his coffee, and Taylor looks down at her shoes like they are the most interesting thing in the world. “Yes, she sure is,” he says.
The door slowly creaks open as an unfamiliar young girl now pads her way into the kitchen. She’s scraggly haired and barefoot, with just a bedsheet wrapped around her. “Babe? I didn’t know where you went.”
Rose quickly escapes to the opposite end of the kitchen, busying herself with putting away the dishes on the drying rack, and Taylor follows suit, her cheeks aflame with embarrassment.
“I didn’t think I’d have to tell you this, but you shouldn’t fraternize with the members, Taylor,” Rose later chides her, after they’ve finished an organizational sweep of the downstairs kitchen. They are making their way through the foyer, heading toward Canton’s Restaurant.
Taylor spies a few men gathering in the parlor, but Rose zooms past so swiftly that Taylor can’t get much more than a quick look. There was a handsome man who might have been Peter, but his hair looked shorter than she’d remembered from her interview.
“I wasn’t fraternizing with a member,” Taylor says. “He came in and asked for coffee. So, I got it for him.”
“Especiallyhim. That’s Oliver. The soon-to-be head of the Knox.” Rose puffs up as she says this last bit, as if she’s proud.
“Okay.” Meanwhile, Taylor’s thinking to herself,How canthat guy be in charge of anything? He looks more like the type who used to roll into my ER at three o’clock in the morning.
As they climb the stairs, Rose adds, with a steely-eyed look, “You should maintain a respectful distance.”
Taylor resists the urge to roll her eyes. Rose reminds her a little of an old-school nurse she used to work with who would rise from her chair whenever a doctor came into the room. “Oliver thought I was someone else,” she mutters.
They are about to enter Canton’s when Rose stops suddenly, putting an ice-cold hand on Taylor’s arm. She leans down to whisper in Taylor’s ear, “It’s just that too many girls have gotten lost here through the years. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
The Knox
Do I recall the girls to whom Rose is referring? Yes—and no. There was nothing particularly distinguishing about them, other than the depths of their faux pas. So many passed through me with fairy-tale eyes and pedestrian clothes. They wanted to mingle with the members as if they belonged, sip high-end champagne whose names they couldn’t pronounce. One once lapped up the beurre blanc—meant to accompany the poached salmon—as if it were a bowl of soup. They aspired to marry rich so they could take up residence in my bedrooms—and they engaged in varying degrees of depravities.
They were foolish, the whole lot of them. You don’tbecomeold money—that’s why it’sold money.
It was rather considerate of Rose to warn Taylor—and unlike Rose, really—but we shall see if Taylor heeds her advice. She does strike me as slightly different: quieter, more reserved. And far more curious than she ought to be.
I caught Taylor lurking the other day outside my windows. When Jerry departed with the items he procured from my basement, she followed him.
They both haven’t the faintest clue about what’s among the items.
I can still recall with utter delight, like it was yesterday, the sheath of the knife slicing through the woman’s body with admirable surgical precision. The skin pulling apart like a piece of cheap rubber. The crackling of the bones as they were extracted. The blood that pooled generously, freely, like the Charles River.
Jerry and Taylor are in for a treat.Mybones creak just thinking about it.
Vivian
February
Vivian is meeting Peter at the Knox for dinner. He’s back from his alleged trip to Milan.
When she rings the bell, good ole Rose opens the door.
