Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz
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when he took a new and special woman to his loft. This time, her name was Elizabeth Lavenza.
As odd as it might seem on a first date – or a tenth, for that matter – to suggest a manicure, he had charmed Elizabeth into it. He knew well that the modern woman responded to sensitivity in men.
First, at the kitchen table, he placed her fingers in a shallow bowl of warm oil to soften both the nails and the cuticles.
Most women also liked men who enjoyed pampering them, and young Elizabeth was no different in this regard.
In addition to sensitivity and a desire to pamper, Roy had a trove of amusing stories and could keep a girl laughing. Elizabeth had a lovely laugh. Poor thing, she had no chance of resisting him.
When her fingertips had soaked long enough, he wiped them with a soft towel.
Using a natural, nonacetone polish remover, he stripped the red color from her nails. Then with gentle strokes of an emery board, he sculpted the tip of each nail into a perfect curve.
He had only begun to trim the cuticles when an embarrassing thing happened: His special cell phone rang, and he knew that the caller had to be Candace. Here he was romancing Elizabeth, and the other woman in his life was calling.
He excused himself and hurried into the dining area, where he had left the phone on a table. “Hello?”
“Mr. Darnell?”
“I know that lovely voice,” he said softly, moving into the living room, away from Elizabeth. “Is this Candace?”
The cotton-candy vendor laughed nervously. “We talked so little, how could you recognize my voice?”
Standing at one of the tall windows, his back to the kitchen, he said, “Don’t you recognize mine?”
He could almost feel the heat of her blush coming down the line when she admitted, “Yes, I do.”
“I’m so glad you called,” he said in a discreet murmur.
Shyly, she said, “Well, I thought … maybe coffee?”
“A get-acquainted coffee. Just say where and when.”
He hoped she didn’t mean right now. Elizabeth was waiting, and he was enjoying giving her the manicure.
“Tomorrow evening?” Candace suggested. “Usually business on the boardwalk dies down after eight o’clock.”
“Meet you at the red wagon. I’ll be the guy with the big smile.”
Unskilled at romance, she said awkwardly, “And … I guess I’ll be the one with the eyes.”
“You sure will,” he said. “Such eyes.”
Roy pressed END. The disposable phone wasn’t registered to him. Out of habit, he wiped it clean of prints, tossed it on the sofa.
His modern, austere apartment didn’t contain much furniture. His exercise machines were his pride. On the walls were reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical sketches, the great man’s studies of the perfect human form.
Returning to Elizabeth at the kitchen table, Roy said, “My sister. We talk all the time. We’re very close.”
When the manicure was complete, he exfoliated the skin of her perfect hands with an aromatic mixture of almond oil, sea salt, and essence of lavender (his own concoction), which he massaged onto her palms, the backs of the hands, the knuckles, the fingers.
Finally, he rinsed each hand, wrapped it in clean white butcher paper, and sealed it in a plastic bag. As he placed the hands in the freezer, he said, “I’m so happy you’ve come to stay, Elizabeth.”
He didn’t find it peculiar to be talking to her severed hands. Her hands had been the essence of her. Nothing else of Elizabeth Lavenza had been worth talking about or to. The hands were her.
THE LUXE WAS an ornate Deco palace, glamorous in its day, a fit showcase for the movies of William Powell and Myrna Loy, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman. Like many a Hollywood face, this glamour had peeled and sagged.
Deucalion accompanied Jelly Biggs down the center aisle, past rows of musty, patched seats.
“Damn DVDs screwed the revival business,” Jelly said. “Ben’s retirement didn’t turn out like he expected.”
“Marquee says you’re still open Thursday through Sunday.”
“Not since Ben died. There’s almost enough thirty-five-millimeter fanatics to make it worthwhile. But some weekends we run up more expenses than receipts. I didn’t want to take responsibility for that since it’s become your property.”
Deucalion looked up at the screen. The gold and crimson velvet curtains drooped, heavy with dust and creeping mildew. “So … you left the carnival when Ben did?”
“When freak shows took a fade, Ben made me theater manager. I got my own apartment here. I hope that won’t change … assuming you want to keep the place running.”
Deucalion pointed to a quarter on the floor. “Finding money is always a sign.”
“A sign of what?”
Stooping to pick up the quarter, Deucalion said, “Heads, you’re out of a job. Tails, you’re out of a job.”
“Don’t like them odds.”
Deucalion snapped the coin into the air, snatched it in midflight. When he opened his fist, the coin had disappeared.
“Neither heads nor tails. A sign for sure, don’t you think?”
Instead of relief at having kept his job and home, Jelly’s expression was troubled. “I been having a dream about a magician. He’s strangely gifted.”
“Just a simple trick.”
Jelly said, “I’m maybe a little psychic. My dreams sometimes come sorta true.”
Deucalion had much he could have said to that, but he remained silent, waiting.
Jelly looked at the moldering drapes, at the threadbare carpet, at the elaborate ceiling, everywhere but at Deucalion. At last he said, “Ben told me some about you, things that don’t seem they could be real.” He finally met Deucalion’s eyes. “Do you have two hearts?”
Deucalion chose not to reply.
“In the dream,” Jelly said, “the magician had two hearts … and he was stabbed in both.”
A flutter of wings overhead drew Deucalion’s attention.
“Bird got in yesterday,” Jelly said. “A dove, by the look of it. Haven’t been able to chase it out.”
Deucalion tracked the trapped bird’s flight. He knew how it felt.
CARSON LIVED ON A tree-lined street in a house nondescript except for a gingerbread veranda that wrapped three sides.
She parked at the curb because the garage was packed with her parents’ belongings, which she never found time to sort through.
On her way to the kitchen door, she paused under an oak draped with Spanish moss. Her work hardened her, wound her tight. Arnie, her brother, needed a gentle sister. Sometimes she couldn’t decompress during the walk from car to house; she required a moment to herself.
Here in the humid night and the fragrance of jasmine, she found that she couldn’t shift into domestic gear. Her nerves were twisted