It's full night when we step outside the hotel room, and even in San Francisco, it feels cold from the breeze. Mr. Schiller takes off his suit jacket and drapes it around me. It's about ten sizes too big for me, and it hangs almost down to my knees. It's only then that I realize how tall he is. It's hard to look him in the face when we're standing side by side.
"Thank you," I say.
He gives a curt little nod.
"Bring the car," he says to the other guy.
"It's okay. I can walk to it," I say.
"It's just across the lot," Mr. Schiller says.
I nod. "It feels good to walk. I've been sitting down a long time," I say.
Mr. Schiller nods and places his hand on my back to guide me. While we walk, he seems to fidget without moving. It's like he doesn't know what to do with his hands now that we're walking.
"Where is my mother?" I ask. I glance up at him and brush a strand of hair out of my eyes.
"She took a boat out of the marina. She should be past the bay by now," Mr. Schiller says.
"What is she doing out there?" I ask.
Mr. Schiller gives a half shrug and gestures to the other guy to unlock the car doors. It's a black Lincoln, and Mr. Schiller holds the door open for me. The two of us get into the backseat, and it makes me feel like we're taking a limousine. "She's preparing to do some business for an important client of ours."
"Ours?" I ask. I look up at Mr. Schiller. He sits on the far edge of the backseat, the way people sit in the corner of a wrap-around couch. His one arm is draped across the top of the seat, but it's bent at the elbow so that it doesn't cross into my half. "Yes, ours – mine and your mother's."
"I know what 'ours' means," I say. I think he'll be mad, but I catch the barest shadow of a smile cross his face.
"I beg your pardon then," he says, and his eyes glint at me.
I wonder why he's being so nice to me. Aren't criminals supposed to be mean? "What I meant was," I say. I toy with a loose thread on the sleeve of my sweater. "How can the client be both of yours?" I look up and give my head a little shake to get a strand of hair out of my eyes.
"Because – we work together – your mother and I," Mr. Schiller says. He looks at me for a long moment.
"But you're a criminal," I say. I didn't actually mean to say it, but once it's out, I'm sort of glad.
Mr. Schiller gives another half shrug. "I prefer entrepreneur," he says.
I almost laugh when he says it. I settle back into my seat and look out my window. We're driving along the beach, and I can see the lights reflecting off the water as the tide comes in. "Mr. Schiller," I say. I don't turn to look at him when I say it. I watch my own reflection – the reflection of my eyes. I can see him looking at me in the mirror the window makes, but he doesn't say anything. "If I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth?"
"I will," Mr. Schiller says.
I take a breath. "Did you kill my father?" I turn around and look him full in the face.
"I did not," Mr. Schiller says. He raises his eyebrows and lets me look into his eyes.
"But what else would you say? I mean, you wouldn't tell me even if you did it," I say.
"I would," Mr. Schiller says.
"Why?" I ask.
"Because," Mr. Schiller says. "What's the point in killing someone if you're not sending a message to everyone else?"
I expect her to be shocked. I expect fear, disgust, anger even. What I don't expect is what she does. She closes her eyes slowly and then opens them – a concession clear on her face.
"Thank you," she says. And she tips her head, as if she's deigning to thank me. "Thank you for telling me the truth." And there's the fleeting of something, something crossing her face, something she wants to share with me but doesn't.
It isn't cold inside the house, but I hug Mr. Schiller's jacket closer around me. I left all my stuff behind when I was tagging, and I feel naked now without a backpack or a coat or even my cell phone to put down when we walk through the door.
"Would you," Mr. Schiller says. He glances around the entryway we're standing in. "Would you like a tour?"
He fidgets without moving again, and I think that if he is a kidnapper, he must be the worst kidnapper ever.
"Okay," I say.
"After you," Mr. Schiller says. He gestures for me to walk into the house.
I lead the way, and Mr. Schiller doesn't say anything as he follows me from room to room. He must be the worst tour guide ever too, I think, and the thought of that makes me smile. Mr. Schiller sees it, and he must think that I'm smiling at him because he looks relieved. His shoulders relax a little, and he smiles back at me.
He takes me upstairs, up a long flight of stone steps that look cut right out of the rock. They aren't smooth and I imagine that they would feel cool and damp like river rock if I were to walk down them in bare feet. He shows me a room at the end of a hallway. It's dark-colored, and everything in it is made out of that same sedimentary rock and dark-grained woods.
"This is the guest room, for when I have visitors," Mr. Schiller says, even though the room looks as if it has never been used. Even the hangers in the closet are still wrapped in plastic, and the bedspread is so stiff when I run my fingers across it that I can't imagine anyone has ever slept under it.
Mr. Schiller has stopped walking, and I realize that he is standing just watching me. I lift my fingers from the raised diamond-pattern of the bedspread and realize that I've been touching it for a while now. Mr. Schiller smiles at me.
"And there's a washroom right through here," he says.
I follow him to a door at the back of the room. He opens it and turns on the light. Everything inside it is black marble, not rose granite like in our house.
"Is there anything you need?" he asks. He gives me another small smile.
I look back at the marble vanity. It'd be faster to list what I didn't need. The countertops are completely empty. Even the soap dish stands bare. But I don't really know how to ask for it, so I just shake my head.
"Make yourself at home," Mr. Schiller says, and I get the feeling he's glad to be rid of me. "Are you hungry? Come downstairs when you're ready."
I nod and then just stand there until he closes the door and leaves me alone.
I mean to stay upstairs, but as soon as Mr. Schiller is gone, I start to feel shaky. I look at myself in the mirror. I've just been kidnapped – or, I'm still being kidnapped – I'm not really sure. I look the same, but I don't. If I stare at myself long enough in the mirror, my image starts to come apart. It's as if I'm coming undone, and the sight of it scares me so much I can't look anymore.
My face is streaked with tear tracks so I start hunting around for a bar of soap and a washcloth. When I pull open the cabinets beneath the sink, I find bottles of shampoo and hand lotion. Inside the drawers are white toothbrushes wrapped in plastic, hair brushes still in their paper boxes and glycerin soap shaped like a leaf. I laugh. I guess Mr. Schiller isn't such a bad host after all.
When I come out of the bedroom, I stop in the darkened hallway. I think about looking around. Boris and I used to love snooping around our parents' friends' houses during parties. I wonder if Mr. Schiller has real clothes in his closet, jeans and sweatshirts and tennis shoes, or if he only has those gray suits. But I feel paralyzed standing there alone. I want to go downstairs, I realize, or I want Mr. Schiller to come back upstairs. I don't want to be alone in the dark anymore. I really want to go home.
I go back to the top of the stairs and sit down on the top step. I can hear Mr. Schiller moving around in the kitchen, or maybe it's that goofy guy, Vincent. I run my fingers across the cool stone of the step, and just like I thought, it feels damp and soft like river rock. I wonder what it would be like to be a child in this house. Would it seem dark and scary like it does to me or would it just be home, as comfortable and familiar as my house? Would it be like the scary basement in our old house that I was afraid to go into alone or the cold storage locker in the back of dedushka's café? Or would it not be scary if Mr. Schiller were there or somebody that felt like a mom?
Something sizzles as it hits a pan, and I can smell something cooking. I pull myself up using the smooth, wooden banister and slowly walk down the steps. I find Mr. Schiller in the kitchen, making something in a heavy, black skillet. I hover near the doorway. He smiles at me and beckons at me to come in. I step just inside the kitchen and stop again.
"Are you hungry?" Mr. Schiller asks. He has a stripy blue and white apron on over his dress shirt and tie, and it makes me want to laugh. I crack a small smile and shrug one of my shoulders. "Why don't you come inside and sit down?"
I give a grudging smile and walk across the kitchen, pulling myself up to sit in a tall kitchen chair beside the island. It's marble, like the counter upstairs.
"I'm not sure if you'll like it," Mr. Schiller says. He takes a glass plate out of a cabinet over his head and slides something hot and toasty onto it. "It's cu brânzӑ la grӑtar," he says, and he looks at me to see my reaction.
I start laughing so suddenly I have to cover my mouth. It smells so good – so familiar – I feel tears pricking my eyes. He's made me a grilled cheese sandwich.
She sits at the island, the bread crunching each time she bites. Her legs swing just a touch from the chair. I can't think of the last time someone sat there. It must have been me, but I can't remember. I always eat in the dining room. I might suggest she do the same but she seems happy here, so I let her stay. I stand on the other side of the island watching her.
She is like a different child now, like I've unlocked some door within her, and she talks. She talks freely, sprinkling in the heavy things among the light. She likes the river stones I've used to make my stairs, she believes artists are happier than people with normal jobs, she hasn't slept through the night since her father died and she wants to drive the Corina more than she wants to drive a car. I listen to her without interrupting. The quiet animation of her features is hypnotic.