Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

“We’re here to see our friend Lionel Stander,” Jay Jay said.

“This is the wrong entrance,” the woman said. “You have to go around the block.”

They went around the block to another reception room. This one had no lounge, and no residents were to be seen. The receptionist was much younger. “I’ll have to get someone to find out,” she said.

They waited. Finally a young woman came out of a locked door and looked at them noncommittally. “I don’t know if he’s here,” she said. “Who should I tell him wants to see him?”

“Kate, Daniel, and Jay Jay,” Kate said. “He’s expecting us.”

“Wait here, please,” the woman said, and went away.

They waited for what seemed forever, but it was only about twenty minutes. The woman returned. “He’s not here,” she said.

“He might have said his name was Robbie Wheeling,” Kate said. Jay Jay glared at her warningly and she glared back. She did not think this woman was going to turn Robbie in to anybody like the cops.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. She really did seem sorry. “He did come in … Lionel, that is … and he said his friends were coming for him. But he must have left. Maybe he’ll come back.”

Kate felt the fear begin again. “Did he say anything when he went away?” she asked. Don’t let him be Pardieu again … please!

“The last time I saw him he’d had a big meal and taken a shower,” the woman said kindly. “We gave him some clothes, and he asked for a toothbrush and we gave it to him. He was tired and he didn’t want to talk, so then he went to bed. I guess he got up very early.”

Holy Men get up very early, Kate thought. They have to say their morning prayers. Robbie would have been tired; Robbie would have slept. Pardieu would have gotten up.

“How could he just go?” Kate asked desperately.

“The kids go and come all the time,” the woman said. “Maybe he forgot you were coming.”

“He would never forget,” Kate said.

He’s Pardieu, she thought. He’s Pardieu again and he’s gone. She knew Daniel and Jay Jay were thinking the same thing.

“We’ll come back later,” Daniel said. “Please tell him we were here and we’ll come again this afternoon.”

Jay Jay wrote down his home number. “Please give him this,” he said, and handed it to the woman.

“I’m sorry you missed your friend,” she said kindly, as if she thought Robbie was perfectly normal, just like anybody else, or at least as normal as an unreliable street kid could be. She hadn’t even been fazed by the presence of Merlin. Kate thought nothing could surprise this woman anymore, and she wondered if even Pardieu could have — but she was not about to ask.

Exhausted and miserable, they went to Jay Jay’s apartment. His mother had already gone to work, but the maid seemed pleased to see them and showed Kate and Daniel to the guest room. Kate had never seen such a beautiful apartment, except in magazines. Everything, even the personal objects like a book and some unfinished needlepoint, seemed placed where they were by design, not because anyone actually lived there. If you put people in this apartment, with their everyday mess, it would destroy the whole effect. It was luxurious and glamorous, but entirely without a heart. Jay Jay’s room looked like a movie set, but he seemed to like it.

They sat in the kitchen while the cook made French toast and freshly squeezed orange juice for them. They were all too tired to talk, even to think.

“We’ll sleep awhile and then we’ll go back,” Daniel said.

Kate and Jay Jay nodded. They didn’t know what they would do if Robbie wasn’t there.

Robbie wasn’t there when the three of them went back to Covenant House that afternoon, and although they waited until dinner they realized he might not be coming back for a long time. They would have to take matters into their own hands. Jay Jay automatically took charge of the search. New York was his city — he had lived here all his life — and it belonged to him in much the same limited way the caverns had been his. Daniel and Kate had been here before as tourists, but they didn’t know the special places.

He and Kate and Daniel knew now that Robbie was definitely Pardieu again. Jay Jay called the apartment and told the help that if Robbie phoned they should invite him over immediately, not be put off if he looked crummy, and be nice to him. Now it was a question of logic.

They walked down the street, thinking what a big city this was. If someone was wandering aimlessly in New York you couldn’t ever find him. He would have to have a pattern, and who knew what Pardieu’s mind would choose? Jay Jay stopped at a men’s store and bought a Sherlock Holmes hat. Wearing it made him feel a little better.

“If The Great Hall is a person,” Jay Jay said, “then The Two Towers is a place. Unless they’re two people.”

“Robbie only had one brother,” Kate said.

“I bet it’s the World Trade Center,” Jay Jay said. They ran down the street and darted into a cab, leaving two furious shoppers standing on the curb cursing them.

The rush-hour traffic was slow and noisy. The meter kept ticking at an alarming rate. “We should have taken the subway,” Daniel said.

“We’d get lost,” Jay Jay said. “I never take the subway. I hate the subway.”

“We have to get into Pardieu’s head,” Kate said. “Where would he go when he got to the World Trade Center?”

“Hang around in front and wait for The Great Hall to meet him?” Jay Jay said.

“Let’s hope so,” Daniel said morosely.

The two towers rose up ahead of them, dwarfing everything else by comparison. They were so enormous the three of them didn’t know where to begin to look. They walked around outside and then went in and scrutinized the lobby and restaurants. The hundreds and hundreds of office workers were hurrying home, away, except for people who were meeting for drinks after work. Robbie was nowhere to be seen.

“No one would let him into an office,” Daniel said. “Not acting like Pardieu. He has to be in the street somewhere.”

They wandered around the nearly empty streets. The sun had set and the arc lights were on. The caverns between the buildings in the downtown business area, now deserted, made Jay Jay feel as if they were sailing between icebergs. What must it seem like to Robbie? They kept turning corners hoping to find him; the tall, lean, familiar figure with blond hair.

“Let’s go back to the World Trade Center and go up to the top and have a drink,” Jay Jay said finally.

The bar at the top, Windows on the World, was so high up that they might have been in an airplane. It was a large room with windows that reached from floor to ceiling, affording a view of the entire city and the nearby boroughs. Millions of lights twinkled below them — from buildings, on bridges, from streetlights — a veritable maze. How could you even begin to find somebody? They sat at a small table in front of one of the huge windows, and Jay Jay ordered Bellinis for all of them. He had his fake identification at the ready, as always, so he would be served.

“This is champagne and fresh peach juice,” he told his guests. “It was invented in Venice, where I plan to go some day before it sinks into the sea.”

Kate took a sip. “It’s to die,” she said rapturously. “And look at that view!” Then she looked sad again. “I shouldn’t be sitting here enjoying this while he’s out there.”

“It’s a pit stop,” Jay Jay said. “We have to eat and drink, don’t we? I, personally, am starving.” An Oriental chef was performing flamboyantly at the hors d’oeuvres bar in the corner. Jay Jay ordered sushi for all three of them. He hadn’t had sushi in ages.