Starling House(9)

“Ah.” Arthur considers and rejects several terrible ideas before saying, coolly, “. . . Housekeeping.” He wonders briefly about the etymology of the word—has there ever been a house that required such rigorous keeping as this one?—and shivers. “Cleaning, I mean.” He makes a disdainful gesture at the floor, nearly invisible beneath geological layers of grit and dust.

The filth doesn’t particularly bother him—it’s one of his many weapons in the long and petty war between himself and the House—but removing it might serve several purposes: the House might be soothed by the attention, lulled by the false promise of a more satisfactory Warden;



the girl might be driven away by the drudgery; and he might pay some small part of the hideous debt he has incurred against her.

Arthur hadn’t recognized her the night before, with her hair tucked under the hood of her sweatshirt, but now he remembers that hair straggling down her neck, clinging to her pale cheeks, soaking the front of his shirt. He couldn’t tell the color of it until the first ambulance rounded the corner. In the sudden glare of the headlights her hair became a bed of coals in his arms, or a field of poppies blooming out of season.

It occurs to him that her presence on his doorstep this morning might be part of some long and involved revenge plot, that inviting her into his home might have been a grave miscalculation, but her expression is still cool, mistrustful. “That’s nice,” she says carefully, “but I already have a job?”

Arthur flicks his fingers at her. “I’ll pay you, of course.”

A cold flash in her eyes, like light on a fresh-minted dime. “How much?”

“However much you want.” The Starling fortune has diminished substantially over the years, but Arthur won’t need it for much longer, and the debt he owes her has no dollar value. She would be within her rights if she asked him to leap into the Mud River with stones in his pockets, whether she knows it or not.

Opal says a number and tilts her chin up in some obscure challenge. “That’s per week.”

“Fine.”

He expects another smile, maybe even a real one—judging by the state of her shoes and the sharp bones of her wrists she could use the money—but she takes an almost-imperceptible step away from him instead. Her voice goes low and edged in a way that makes him wish she’d taken several more steps back. “Is this a joke?”

“No?”

Opal doesn’t seem relieved. Her eyes roam across his face as if looking for the lie. “Just cleaning. Nothing else.”

Arthur feels like an actor whose partner has departed from the script. “Well, it might need some extra work here and there. The House has been somewhat neglected.” The wind whistles forlornly through a missing windowpane. He grinds his heel into the floor. The wind dies.

She wants to say yes. He can see it in the tilt of her body and the hunger in her face, but she says very clearly, “I mean nothing else.” He stares. She licks her lower lip. “Nothing for you.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

She looks away from him, squinting instead into the empty space above his left ear. “See, when a rich man offers a young woman a lot of money out of the blue, and doesn’t ask for her housekeeping résumé—I’ve been cleaning rooms at the motel for years, not that you care—that young woman might have cause to wonder if he expects her to do more than clean. If maybe he has a weird thing for redheads.” She tucks her hair self-consciously back under her hood. “If, in fact, he expects her to f—”

“Oh God, no.” Arthur wishes very much that his voice hadn’t cracked on the last syllable. “This isn’t—I’m not—” He closes his eyes in brief, mortal humiliation.

When he opens them Opal is smiling. He thinks it’s probably the only genuine smile he’s seen from her: a sly twist of her lips, wry and sharp. “Then sure. I accept.” A wave of warmth rolls down the hall and sighs out the door, smelling of woodsmoke and wisteria. Her smile widens, revealing three crooked teeth. “When do I start?”

Arthur exhales. “Tomorrow. If you like.”

“You got cleaning supplies?”

“Yes.” He’s pretty sure there are some bluish spray bottles beneath a sink somewhere, and a mop in the third-floor bathtub, although he’s never used either. He isn’t sure his parents did either; the House simply had a shine to it, back then.

“What are my hours?”

“You may arrive any time after dawn and leave before sunset.”

Wariness slides like a fox across her face, there and gone again. “What a super normal way of putting it. See you tomorrow, then.”

She’s turning away when he says, “Wait.”

Arthur draws a jangling metal ring from his pocket. There are three keys on the ring, although there should be four, each fashioned with long black teeth and a stylized, snakelike S. He removes a single key and extends his hand to Opal. She flinches, and he thinks sourly that she is much more frightened by him than she’s pretending to be, and much less than she should be.

He dangles the key. “For the front gate. Don’t lose it.”

She takes it from him without touching his skin; he wonders if her hands are still cold, and why she can’t be bothered to wear a proper coat.