China Blues by Longfellow Ki

Author:Longfellow, Ki [Longfellow, Ki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eio Books
Published: 2012-03-04T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Lizzie had been soaking so long in her scented bath the skin on her fingers and toes had puckered. The sunken black Roman tub with its gold taps was long enough and deep enough to float in. If you were careless enough to fall asleep, you could easily slip under the perfumed water and drown.

But Lizzie wasn’t going to fall asleep. Her mind was too active for that. It wasn’t organized, but it was busy. The full-color images crowding her head—she called them thoughts—shifted and changed faster than an old-fashioned magic lantern. Li in Chinatown, Chinatown itself, James and Esmé Baker, Kit at McGinty’s Bar and Grill, Charles Mortimer’s huge, fat, loving face, and—larger than life—Rose St. Lorraine. Then, of course, Appetite Ike, smaller, but life itself. Where was Lizzie in all this?

Like any human child ever born, Elizabeth Sian Stafford was the center of the universe. She was beginning to realize that although this common childhood conceit might be true after all, it was her universe, personal and singular. Lizzie was its only occupant. It spun, like the Milky Way, in a black void, flinging out its lonely arms to catch at dust.

There were other personal universes—dozens of them, tens of dozens, thousands—and each one as true, if any were true at all, as hers. Lizzie shuddered under the warm oiled water. Why, there were millions! More! Billions of universes that she was not the center of, not connected to in any way. It was a daunting vision. If she gave a Stafford dollar to every human being on the surface of the earth, all the center of their own worlds, spinning breathless on a solo flight through life, she’d be broke before she got halfway round the globe. And that was assuming she went west first. A whole lot of people would be better off by a buck. It wasn’t much; it wouldn’t change anything. Except make Lizzie poor.

Another daunting thought. Who was Lizzie Stafford without money?

Dido had her voice, Kit could write, James lived on ambition, Rose St. Lorraine was unique, Addy had Rose, and Li’s people needed him. Even Keiko could make things grow. Left in Lizzie’s care, the languid green plants with their useless floppy hands would wave a sad goodbye.

Lizzie, for all her money, had nothing. Now she was really daunted. Two hours in a hot bath and she wasn’t relaxed; she was as high-strung as Rose’s little pie-faced dog. Lizzie’s skin wasn’t the only thing that was shrinking.

She reached for the big white bath towel on a rack over her wet head, pulling her steaming body out of the cloudy water. From her slippery shoulders down, she was an angry pink.

“Elizabeth!”

“What!” Lizzie twisted her head around rapidly, the water flipping off the flat matted ends of her slick black hair.

James’s voice was loud; it had echoed around her mirrored bathroom like a foghorn. Where was the bastard? He sounded like Charles Mortimer had when he’d shouted at a clumsy delivery boy one winter’s day, long long ago.

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