24.
I look into the hall and listen carefully. There’s nothing to be seen or heard and I don’t see cameras hanging. Still I don’t totally trust it; it can still be a trap.
The hall is so white it hurts my eyes. The only things that break through this sea of white are two paintings. Of course, the paintings Jabar wanted to buy on the auction. That really doesn’t surprise me. They’re somewhat bad style here and I suspect Noël put them up here just in case I would spot them. Showing off his power a bit and nastily poking in the wound. Little child!
The ground in the hall is luckily covered with white cork so my footsteps are almost silent. With every step, I look backward, expecting Selena or someone else to stand behind me. But I get through the hall without busybodies and descend a marble stair.
In the distance I hear music. I look through the banister downstairs and see a spacious living room. Also here everything is white and tightly modern. I can’t notice someone in the leather couches so I descend the stair cautiously.
The living room borders on an open kitchen and on both sides are windows from the floor to the ceiling. It feels like an enormous aquarium. Outside are only grassy plains and trees to be seen.
I need to be careful here, because the floor consists of marble that makes the sound of my footsteps reverberate loudly. I can’t detect any smell, except some disinfectant. So there isn’t much cooking going on in that ultramodern, spacious kitchen.
The entire interior actually looks as if there isn’t much living going on. It rather looks like a showroom of a living store. No personal objects like photos or artworks. Ugh, cozy is not what I’d call it.
The music I heard a few minutes ago sounds harder now, but I still can’t discover the origin. I also don’t see a front door anywhere. Extremely bizarre. I walk to the windows and look detailed and quickly at them. Then I see a rectangular joint. Aha! But where is the doorknob? I do see a pole standing close with a kind of eye in it. Maybe a card reader? I put my hands on the glass and feel and push at different places. The window doesn’t budge. I start to feel really nervous right now. My heart is raging like crazy when I realize that an escape is not that simple. And because of that fucking injection of Selena I feel that my powers are almost zero.
There’s nothing else to do but to leave the living room and search for another escape possibility. At least, if there is any.
Next to the kitchen, where still isn’t any sign of cooking industry, I see stairs going to the cellar. I hesitate. A cellar seldom has an exit, maybe a shutter to the garden, but I strongly doubt it. Still, I don’t have another choice. Keep standing here or returning to my room is even more useless.
It’s a wooden stair and I descend on the tips of my boots. The music gets louder and sounds Jazzy. The smell of disinfectant becomes more intense and some other smells also push forward. It makes me think of a pharmacist or a hospital.
The stair ends in an endless white-painted hall with glazed doors on both sides and a concrete ground. The first door on the right is open. Now I recognize the music that comes out of the room: John Coltrane. I pull a face: I don’t like the fact they’re playing one of my favorite Jazz musicians. It doesn’t fit that my enemy has such a good taste in music.
I need to be careful now, because probably someone is present in one of the rooms. I put my head just for a second in the door opening for a review of the inside. With bated breath I hold myself tight to the wall and go through the things I saw in my mind.
A big desk and bookcases in Mahoney wood, brown leather chairs, an antique globe on a standard and an office chair that was turned with its back towards the door opening. Grey hair sticking out above the chair and I suspect it’s Noël sitting there. I also saw built-in screens. Probably he’s watching them and so now is the moment to sneak past him.
I quickly take a look in the room again. He’s still sitting unmoved in his chair.
Okay, now, Manon. I take a deep breath and let the air escape slowly from my longs. At the moment I rush past the door opening, I hear his voice.
‘Manon, come and join me.’
Did he see me? Did he smell me or what?
As being petrified I keep standing. My look flashes from left to right, not knowing what to do.
‘Manon, you can’t go anywhere. Enter.’
The office chair turns and Noël looks at me with a sardonic smile, his manicured hands folded before his stomach.
I furiously walk into the room and keep standing in front of the desk. On the desktop are piles of bumph and in between the trash I can see the ‘Lexicon of Species’!
‘Take a seat.’
He points at a leather chair, but I refuse to sit down.
‘Very well. Just keep standing then.’
We stare at each other for a while, as if we’re playing the game of who looks away first. Ah yes, of course, Noël is a player on all fronts. But this time he’ll lose. At least I want this little victory to be mine. Eventually he smiles in a lame attempt to come across as being polite.
‘I’m not the bogeyman, Manon,’ he says softly.
‘Well, you aren’t my choice for ‘man of the year’ either.’
He chuckles hoarsely. ‘But you are for woman of the year.’
‘Glad you like me,’ I say sharply.
‘Have you been naughty? Your cheek is kind of red and you’ve got a bruise on the side of your face.’
‘It’s the new trend. Came right after the torn jeans and purple hair.’
He sighs deeply. ‘You know, you’ve been informed totally wrong.’
‘Hm, let me guess. You’ve got nothing to do with that angel that ruined his life, you didn’t scare Diedie, you didn’t burn Oded’s house, you…’
‘Indeed,’ he interrupts me. ‘All those things are Jabar’s fault.’
‘Yeah right, you can tell that to your mommy, but not to me. Although I doubt whether a creep like you has a mother. Got tired of you in hell?’
‘You should know hell doesn’t exist.’
‘I know more than that, Cerberus.’
‘Aha, you know your mythologies.’
‘Why do you keep me captured here? If you want Jabar’s money then the book was already sufficient.’
I point at the Lexicon. He bursts out laughing and waves his hands in the air.
‘Does it look like I’m in need of money?’
My look now spots the television screens. About twenty in total. Five screens are turned off, but the other ones show the rooms in the house. Also my room. That bastard is keeping an eye on me for the entire time and has stuck closely to my feeble attempt to escape.
He follows my look and a slanting smile curls about the corners of his mouth. ‘This house is completely computer-controlled. The house of the future, you’ve probably heard about that already.’
I don’t answer, so he continues: ‘The house consists largely of windows through which you can look outside, but not inside. Although I can change that with a simple button.’
‘Where’s the front door?’
Again he bursts out laughing. I will hear that sound re-echo for a long time in my mind, I already know that.
‘Do you really think I’m going to blazon that abroad?’
I shrug.
‘Please, take a seat, Manon. I saw you still haven’t eaten.’
I completely forgot because of the excitement to escape, but now my stomach starts to rumble as if it’s an answer to Noël. Eventually I take a seat because I’m not that steady on my legs anymore. He opens the door at the side of the desk, which sounds heavy as if it’s of a fridge, and gets out a filled sandwich. I should be strong and refuse, but the hunger is too big to ignore so I snatch the sandwich out of his hands and put my teeth in it. I get grouchy when I’m hungry and I need to replenish my energy. I can’t do much when I’m feeble and with an empty stomach.
He looks at my gorging with a neutral look in his eyes and patiently waits until I’ve tucked away the sandwich completely.
‘Enjoyed your meal?’ he then asks.
‘It tasted a bit like betrayal and madness, but further on it wasn’t bad.’
I recognize the number ‘While my lady sleeps’ of John Coltrane, because I used to play it a lot.
‘I’m not mad, however, Jabar is,’ he says.
He looks relaxed, leaning back in his chair like that, but I notice a subdued tension with him.
‘So you don’t think it’s mad to keep me here against my own will?’
‘Captivity is always against the will of the captivated individual.’
‘Are we taking it the semantic way?’
‘If you want it to,’ he answers calmly.
‘What I want is to go home. That’s what I want.’
‘That’s not possible. But if you need something else. New clothes?’
I throw a devastating look in his direction as an answer.
‘That’s what you want, isn’t it? New clothes. How long are you wearing these? Two, three days?’
‘I’d rather stink than accept something from you.’
He grins, clearly being pleased as Punch. Yes, of course, I’m such a stupid cow. I’ll join in his game, according to his rules. That’s why he looks so pleased.
‘You know,’ I then say and smile really sweet. ‘You can just give me those clothes.’
‘They’re already on your bed.’
Damn it. In the time I came downstairs and landed up in his office, he thus took care of that? I didn’t see him call and no one else entered.
He sees my surprise and smiles. I really need to hide my facial expressions better. Sometimes I’m really an open book. Jabar pointed that out so many times before, but it’s not easy to unlearn it.
‘Why did you steal the Lexicon?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t steal it.’
‘Let it steal then. Just, shit, act normal.’
‘Watch your language, young lady,’ he reprimands in a strict tone.
‘Go fuck yourself.’
‘One more term of abuse and I’ll send you back to your room.’
He’s giving me the fucking feeling as if I’m a little child! Cunt! But I control myself, bite my lower lip and take a big breath.
‘Well, the Lexicon?’ I insist.
‘It’s, next to you and his friends, Jabar’s most loved possession. Comparable to a diary. As long as he doesn’t know where it is, he’ll keep quiet.’ Noël gently taps the leather cover. ‘Besides it lists useful information. Kill a lot of birds with one stone. My favorite way of working.’
‘Jabar knows you’re behind all of this,’ I say triumphantly.
He doesn’t even blink his eyes. ‘It became time he did. For a smart elf that lives for one hundred and fifty years already, he took a long time.’
‘We’ll get you after all,’ I hiss. My self-control starts to disappear.
‘Maybe, but it doesn’t seem likely to me,’ he says in such a self-assured tone I feel an urge to puke.
‘And is Ed still alive?’
‘Ed?’
‘Oh, what’s his name again?’
‘You mean the devil?’
‘Yes, his name eludes me…’
‘Except for my name, you won’t find out the other ones, Manon.’
‘What about Selena?’
‘Who told you that was her real name? But Ed is doing fine. I’ve employed some excellent doctors here.’ He nods at the hall, as if they’re standing in a row over there.
‘What are you?’
He acts as if he doesn’t understand me by raising his eyebrows interrogatively. ‘A man of almost eighty years old and you?’
‘You don’t look eighty.’ Yuck! I said it before I realized it. A compliment is really the least I want to grant him. Almost at the same level as him being alive.
‘I have enough money to keep me intact and that still for a very long time.’
‘Freak.’
‘Well well, what did I just say about terms of abuse. To your room.’
He points at the door. I look astonished at him. What is he thinking? That he’s my father or something!
‘I’ll go when I want to!’ I yell.
‘Of course, child, of course.’
That’s just too much. I jump up with stretched arms and glide over the desk towards him. As if I’m on a rubber, I get pulled back right before I can touch him. Selena of course!
Before I can punch her, she chains my hands on my back.
‘Is she being naughty?’ Selena asks Noël.
‘A little.’
‘No dessert this evening?’
Noël pretends he needs to think about it and then shakes his head. ‘No dessert.’
Selena drags me out of the room on my handcuffs and up the stairs.
‘Filthy bitch!’ I yell. ‘Let go off me! I can walk myself!’
She lets me go, but keeps walking next to me through the living room. Unfortunately she keeps a distance on the stair; otherwise I could have let her crash it down with a backward kick. Looks wonderful to me.
I’m thrown into the room and can just keep myself standing.
‘Hey, my cuffs.’
‘In an hour or so you can probably transform your hands,’ she says with a scornful smile and throws the door shut behind me.
Dejected I plop down on the bed. What a marvelous escape attempt, wasn’t it! Three cheers for Manon, just take a seat on the front row. I look angrily at the dress that’s lying on the bed, as if it’s all its fault. The dress doesn’t look bad, but absolutely isn’t practical. It’s long and clinging in broken white with and low-cut both in the front and the back. Nylons and pumps with small heels are in an open box next to it. There’s also a lingerie set that doesn’t leave much to the imagination and looks extremely expensive. What does that Noël think of me? That I’m going to a ball or what?
The tray with the sandwiches Ed brought earlier is taken away. But luckily the can of water is still there. I now see that the can is made of plastic instead of glass. They’re probably scared I would smash it in their faces? Well, they’re right.