Secrets of the Morning (Cutler 2)

"Oh." Embarrassed, I opened my purse and fumbled through the change. How much was I supposed to give him?

"A buck will be enough," he said.

I plucked one out and handed it to him.

"Thanks. Good luck," he said. "I gotta get back to the grind," he added and hurried around the cab just as quickly as he had at the airport. In moments, he drove off, his horn groaning as he cut in front of another car and spun around a corner.

I turned and looked up the small cement stairway. Suddenly it looked so high and forbidding. I took hold of the handles of my luggage and began my slow ascent. When I reached the landing, I put the bags down and pushed the buzzer. I wondered if it worked or anyone heard it inside because nothing happened. After a long moment, I pushed the buzzer again. Seconds later, the doors were pulled open dramatically by a tall, stately looking woman. I thought she was at least in her late fifties. She stood straight with her shoulders back like the women in the textbook pictures demonstrating perfect posture, the ones who parade about with a book balanced on their heads, and her brown hair had streaks of gray throughout it.

She wore an ankle-length, navy blue skirt, and pink ballerina slippers. Her ivory blouse had billowing sleeves and a wide collar with the two top buttons undone so her necklace filled with large, colorful stones was clearly visible. She wore a heavy-looking earring with smaller versions of the same imitation or precious stones on her left earlobe, but none on her right. I wondered if she knew one was missing.

Her face was heavily made up, her cheeks streaked with rouge as if she had put it on in the dark. She wore dark eye liner and had such long eyelashes, I knew they just had to be false. Her lipstick was a bright crimson.

She stared at me, drinking me in from head to toe. Then she nodded to herself as if to confirm a thought. "I suppose you're Dawn," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," I replied.

"I am Agnes, Agnes Morris," she declared.

I nodded. That was the name on my instruction sheet, but she looked like she expected a bigger reaction from me.

"Well, pick up your luggage and come on in," she said. "We have no servants for that sort of thing here. This isn't a hotel."

"Yes, ma'am," I repeated. She stood back to let me pass, and as I did so, I got a whiff of her strong, almost overpowering cologne. It smelled like a combination of jasmine and roses, as if she had sprayed one scent on, forgot, and then sprayed another.

I paused in the entryway. It had a cherry wood floor and a long, rather worn looking oval rug. The Oriental pattern was almost faded. As soon as we stepped in and I had closed the second set of doors behind me, a grandfather clock on my right chimed.

"Mr. Fairbanks is introducing himself," she said, turning to the tall clock encased in a rich mahogany wood. It had Roman numerals for numbers and thick, black hands with ends that looked more like tiny fingers pointing to the hour.

"Mr. Fairbanks?" I asked, confused.

"The grandfather clock," she said as if I should have known. "I have given most of my possessions names, the names of famous actors with whom I once worked. It makes the house more . . . more . . ." She looked about as if the words were somewhere in the air to be plucked. "More personal. Why?" she asked quickly, "do you disapprove?" Her eyes grew small and she pulled her lips so tight the corners became white.

"Oh, no," I replied.

"I hate people who disapprove of something just because they didn't think of it first." She ran the palm of her hand up the side of the grandfather clock cabinet and smiled as if it were indeed a person standing there. "Oh Romeo, Romeo," she whispered. I shifted my feet. The suitcases were heavy and I was standing with them in my hands. It was as if she had forgotten I was there.

"Ma'am?" I said. She snapped her head around and glared at me as if to say "Who was I to interrupt?"

"Continue," she said, waving toward the hallway.

Directly ahead of us was a stairway with a thick, hand-carved brown balustrade. The gray carpet on the steps looked as worn as the entryway carpet. The walls were covered with old pictures of actors and actresses, singers and dancers, framed clippings of theater reviews and pictures of performers with accompanying articles. The house itself had a pleasant musty scent to it. It looked clean and neat and a great deal nicer than most of the places Daddy and Momma Longchamp had taken Jimmy and me and Fern to live in. But that seemed ages and ages ago now, as though it all happened in another life.

Agnes stopped at the entrance to a room on our right.

"This is our sitting room," she said, "where we entertain our guests. Go in and sit down," she directed. "We'll have our first talk immediately so there are no misunderstandings." She paused and pursed her lips. "I suppose you're hungry."

"Yes," I said. "I came right from the airport and I didn't have anything on the plane."

"It's past the lunch hour and I don't like Mrs. Liddy having to work around the students' whims, eating and not eating when they feel like it. She's nobody's slave," she added.

"I'm sorry. I really don't mean to put anyone out." I didn't know what to say. She had been the one to suggest eating and now she was making me feel terrible for confessing I was hungry.

"Go on in," she commanded.

"Thank you," I said and turned to enter. She seized my shoulder and stopped me.

"No, no. Always hold your head high, like this, when you enter a room," she said, demonstrating. "That way everyone will notice you and sense your stage presence. You might as well learn the correct things right away," she said and sauntered off down the corridor.