Chapter 2
Damned mission. Whatever That Means…
With the first days of September, real fall suddenly arrived in New Orleans. The cozy warmth of the departing summer was filled with restless gusts of still warm but already crisp wind, lazily wrecking the gilded foliage of the summer-sick trees.
Jack parked his car near the administrative building of the University of New Orleans, lit a cigarette and got out. The young man’s green eyes expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the weather.
“Well, well,” he thought, and squinted at the sky, veiled with heavy gray clouds, hoping to glimpse at least a tiny ray of sunshine in it. Never before in his memory had September in New Orleans been so gloomy.
“Well, such things happen sometimes too.” Jack leisurely finished his cigarette and headed towards the university office. A huge sign adorned the freshly painted door, on which in giant scarlet letters was written “Welcome!” Jack smirked and, pushing the hefty door, walked in…
Inside, madness reigned. Everywhere, with wild eyes full of despair, new students wandered – “Fresh blood…” Jack thought sarcastically, immediately brushing the ugly thought off. He somehow managed to squeeze through the crowd of freshmen , who were arguing eagerly about which section of building ‘A’ they should search for the biology lab. And most importantly, how to find this building
‘A’ (since there were seventeen of them, and classes were starting in just thirty minutes, which meant very, very little in the minds of the newly minted students); their cries and shouts grew louder and louder. And this, in turn, irritated Jack more and more. With an air of importance, he elbowed his way to the administrator’s desk and leaned over it. The girl at the desk, who had been humming along to a cheerful tune coming from an old MP3 player, received the fright of her life.
Picking up one of the campus maps lying on the desk, he silently, with a meaningful gesture, handed it to who he thought was the most panic-stricken of the students. The poor kid turned pale and grabbed the lifesaving map with trembling hands, barely restraining a happy smile, before plopping down on a nearby bench apparently intended for the purpose.
“Well, actually, it’s my job, young man,” the administrator girl said in an angry, squeaky voice, her gray eyes boring into on Jack’s smug face.
Jack looked around, wrinkling his nose theatrically.
“Oh, Betty, it’s you. Well, of course it’s you,” Jack smiled. “You’re doing a great job, Betty! Don’t forget to deduct my percentage from the paycheck.”
“No wonder everyone hates you,” the admin girl retorted coldly.
Jack winked cunningly and smiled even wider, trying to suppress more acidic remark that kept coming to his mind.
“Ah, Betty, let’s not argue, okay? This might last until old age. And now, try to actually do at least part of your job, okay? Tell me, where can I find Mrs. Renton?”
The girl shot a malicious glance towards the young man, whose cheerful mood had evaporated without a trace. Her whole demeanor indicated how much she wanted to yank his earring or stick a pencil into his hand. In short, to do anything to get back at him for the snide remarks he constantly showered her with. Poor Betty couldn’t recall a week in the past three years that she had worked at the university office in New Orleans without handsome Jack Cornell, or someone from his small circle, coming in and saying something nasty.
“You know you have yourself to blame, Betty,” Jack said as if reading her thoughts, his voice tinged with reproach. “So just tell me where to find Mrs.
Renton, and I promise you won’t see me again today.”
“She’s filling in for Mr. Zigon today. So, I suppose she’s giving an introductory chemistry lecture in…”
“Well, it turns out thinking isn’t such a difficult task after all, and in some cases, quite useful!” Jack interrupted and headed for the exit. Glancing back he saw that the freshmen were still trying to locate building ‘A’ on the map. “Well, sooner or later, they’ll find it and rush to their classes. I need to catch their teacher before they drive her crazy with their endless quest for knowledge in chemistry,” Jack thought, wasting no time as he hurried off in search of the coveted instructor.
The laboratory in Building ‘A’ is a specially equipped space for conducting so-called practical classes in biology and chemistry. There’s everything you could imagine here! A great variety of all sorts of plants, intricately intertwined into a cohesive whole, the mysterious hybrids of which evoke rather ambiguous, and sometimes quite contradictory emotions. An abundance of low glass shelves with various chemicals, flasks, and instruments for conducting experiments, all provided by the Department of Education of the United States of America.
Jack approached the classroom, stealthily cracked the door open and entered the room. A woman stood on a low wooden stool, leaning over and completely focused on something that Jack couldn't quite make out what it was. She was quietly humming a melody coming from a mobile phone lying on the teacher's desk.
“Mrs. Renton,” Jack called softly.
Mrs. Renton didn’t react, continuing to hum the tune.
“Mrs. Renton,” another attempt to get the teacher’s attention. The reaction remained the same. Which is to say – none.
“Mom!” Jack almost shouted and couldn’t help but smile when Mrs. Renton, startled, jumped up on the stool, nearly falling off the makeshift podium, and briskly turned towards her son. The woman was genuinely scared. Her glasses were askew and slid to the tip of her nose, her green eyes sparkling brightly, betraying the poorly and clumsily concealed joy, as well as new wrinkles. She pressed her right hand to her chest, trying to calm down her racing heartbeat. Jack grinned and bit his lip.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, barely holding back laughter.
“Goodness! Child, did you decide to give me a heart attack?” the woman exclaimed with feigned horror in her voice and, adjusting the thin sweater on her slender shoulders, gracefully hopped off the small stool, revealing to Jack’s eyes a small round aquarium. The woman smiled at her son and danced her way to the teacher’s desk.
“Mom, are you experimenting on goldfish?” Jack asked curiously, observing the tiny fish swimming briskly in the transparent water. “We’re running low on frogs now. By the way, there’s a rumor going around about high mortality rates among rats. Poor things…”
“Back off, Jack,” Mrs. Renton replied, waving her hand while calmly arranging the measuring flasks on the table.
“I won’t. You called me twelve times today,” Jack persisted.
“Yeah.”
“At six in the morning, Mom!” Jack exclaimed indignantly, offended by his mother’s calmness.
“Oh, come on!” the woman murmured melodiously.
“And you didn’t even call back, by the way!” Mrs. Renton delicately adjusted her glasses and looked attentively at her son, scrutinizing him from head to toe.
“Well, I thought we haven’t seen each other in a while, so I decided to drop by.”
“That’s true,” Mrs. Renton replied thoughtfully. “Your father sent his regards,”
she added casually and turned her attention to the leaves of a fuchsia plant that happened to be nearby. “And when was the last time you got a haircut?”
“Mom, is something wrong?” Since Dad sent his regards, something must be up.
Maybe this even explains the sudden change in weather or in Beth’s behavior, who seemed much friendlier today than usual.
“Yes, we were just sitting here and… Just look at these leaves!” Mrs. Renton exclaimed.
“Mom, we’ve been through this already. And if you don’t tell me what happened right now, your marble ficus plant will turn into a stripped version of it!
Trust me on that!” Jack grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at the woman who seemed shocked by her son’s words.
“I always knew you were rather cruel,” Mrs. Renton half-whispered before adding almost inaudibly , “We talked a bit and made a decision.”
Reluctantly taking his eyes off the plant leaves, Jack stared at his teacher mother.
Something about that last phrase, thrown in seemingly casually, didn’t sit well with him.
“What decision?” He asked with growing irritation, showing no enthusiasm for continuing the conversation. His mother’s habit of speaking in riddles occasionally got on his nerves, and apparently, today’s conversation wasn’t going to be an exception.
“Lately, Eric’s been behaving, to put it mildly, poorly,” Mrs. Renton began quietly. The way she pronounced his best friend’s name made Jack once again look into his mother’s eyes. This time, her gaze was very sharp and attentive.
“What we embarked on twenty-three years ago was a deviation from the rules of the order. A very serious deviation, as you well know. Every month, sometimes even every week, Alex would send us detailed reports,” she continued.
“People need something to do in retirement,” Jack muttered sarcastically.
“Don’t interrupt me, Jack! As his illness progressed, he sent them less and less frequently, and you know that very well too. In one of his last letters, he promised that Eric would take over from him now.”
Jack lowered his gaze and started studying a piece of old gum dropped by some past student and treaded on a thousand times since by more student feet. He knew where his mother was heading with this, and he didn’t like it. More precisely, he didn't like it at all.
“After Alex’s death, we received only a few incomprehensible scribbles from Eric. Written in completely different handwriting, with all sorts of emoji is and other nonsense,” Mrs. Renton stared intently at her son. “Can you explain that?
And get off the table! What a bad habit!” she scolded her son, clutching her heart meaningfully once again.
“Explain what? The few or the incomprehensible?” Jack asked, still not looking up from the floor, struggling contain his emotions.
“Stop it, Jack, you know what I mean.”
“I think it’s not as bad as you, madam, think. He’s just… finding it difficult to keep an eye on someone who lives under the same roof as him, and that someone happens to be his sister,” Jack whispered the last word almost to himself, thinking,
“I could even bet on who’s keeping an eye on whom there.”
“It’s like me starting to monitor every step of my cat! Sooner or later, he’ll notice and retaliate by ruining all my plantings or peeing everywhere! And if you’re concerned, you could go check it out yourselves. They’re friends, after all,”
Jack looked at his mother again with reproach and once again struggled to suppress a smile. The woman clearly didn’t expect such a retort from her son and froze, her mouth slightly open in confusion. “And don’t blame Eric. He’s depressed… he’s going through a lot."
“Plantings, you say, he’ll ruin? Mess up everything around?” Jack, I’m not arguing, Eric’s a good guy, but this… what’s her name…” Mrs. Renton paused, trying to recall.
“Sarah.”
“Yes, Sarah. He’s become irresponsible! We can’t rely on him anymore,” Mrs.
Renton exclaimed with concern and unmistakable worry in her voice.
Jack swallowed loudly, looking away from the floor where he was now inspecting a curious dark spot, and met his mother’s gaze, as green as his own.
“And what do you want me to do about it? Should I personally check all his scribbles before sending them to you? Make corrections?”
Mrs. Renton turned to the teacher’s desk and casually remarked, “Now you’ll keep an eye on Sabrina.”
“How do you imagine that ?” Jack growled, slamming his hand on the table, where he still sat, despite his mother’s accusatory and meaningful glances. “Have you lost your mind or what?”
“Starting today,” Mrs. Renton said calmly, ignoring her son’s wave of anger.
“No way! That girl has been aching to tear my throat out! Since childhood!”
“So there’s a reason for that. Since childhood till now,” Mrs. Renton retorted, rising on her tiptoes to water the flowers spaced unevenly on the windowsill and hanging shelves.
Jack nervously ran his hand through his hair, took a deep breath, and put on his most pleading expression.
“Mom…”
“Jack.”
“She hates me!”
“So, make her change her mind about you.”
“Mom…”
“Not up for discussion. And get Eric out of his binge, or he’ll mess things up again and won’t even remember. Report back in a week.”
“About Eric?” Jack asked, resigned.
“About both!” Mrs. Renton replied dismissively, and gracefully spun around on her heels to prepare reagents and concentrates for the upcoming lesson.
There was a timid knock on the door, making Jack jump off the table and briskly walk out of the classroom, slamming the door right in a bewildered student’s face.
Outside, after a few deep breaths, he reached into his jacket pocket for a pack of cigarettes and lit up. All around him, the students were scampering like rats, trying to dodge the falling raindrops. A moment later, he tossed the untouched cigarette away and trudged towards building ‘B’ .
“Well, what mess have you gotten yourself into now, buddy? I guess I should thank my grandpa for adopting a one-year-old son of one of the guardians of the
‘Guardian’ Order, who had died tragically on a mission twenty-three years ago, and then adopting a newborn girl and naming her Sabrina and giving her his own surname – Venters. Oh, I forgot to mention that this girl, by an accidental turn of events, turned out to be a descendant of one of the oldest French families, whose women have been known for centuries as witches and some of whom have been living in New York since the nineteenth century. Apart from their good looks, these generational witches are known to be endowed with peculiar and inexplicable talents, inexplicable in the eyes of an ordinary person, that is.
For many centuries, the ‘Guardian’ Order has been monitoring the De Manshand lineage, collecting bits and pieces of the history of this unusual family, and often intervening in their affairs to avoid various troubles and tragedies. So it had been until Michelle, Sabrina’s mother, ran away with her newborn girl upon learning what fate Marie had had in store for the baby. This Marie was that very girl’s grandmother. And that’s when grandpa just couldn’t help himself. That’s when he outdid everyone in the order. I mean those who had ever meddled in the history of this ill-fated family and made their so-called ‘corrections’. He had offered Michelle his help. And she had gladly accepted it. They had first smuggled the newborn girl to the order’s secret hideout in New York City, and then grandpa had secretly taken her to Liverpool…
As for Michelle herself, she had returned home. She had wanted to put an end to the complicated De Manshand story. No one has seen her since.
Meanwhile, the girl grew up beautifully in the Venters family, which consisted of my grandfather and, as she believed, her twin brother Eric. I’ve played the role
of Eric’s best friend, who, aged ten, had moved with his parents from Liverpool to the beautiful city of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. That’s where my relentless mother and passively-active father had followed their “old friend,” and incidentally, my biological grandfather, Alex Venters, and his newly acquired relatives.They had settled in a small but respectable-looking house near the Garden District, where they had lived until… Until Grandpa passed away. That was a year and a half ago now and was a devastating blow to our entire family. Especially to Sabrina. But Eric didn’t disappoint either! He began drinking so much that it was hard to tell whether his blue eyes were naturally blue or just from what he was drinking. And then he got involved with a quirky girl named Sarah. She was a
“free-spirited artist” or something like that. What kind of paintings did she make?
No one knew. The situation worsened with each passing day. They started drinking together, while Sabrina, once tall and sun-kissed, began to resemble a hunched coat hanger draped with a worn-out t-shirt.
Sabrina persistently called me, berating me for ignoring my friend and letting him ruin his life. I felt powerless because Eric never listened to me, it was hard watching Sabrina cry, huddled in a kitchen corner. Eventually, when my patience ran out, I grabbed Eric by the collar and literally dragged him into our family therapist’s office; the therapist also happened to be my father. After a long and, in my opinion, overly intellectual talk, Eric’s common sense returned, but he didn't change his habits. He did substantially reduce his drinking though. But cutting back on alcohol led to a side effect. Eric’s mood soured and he started arguing with Sabrina more, resulting in her calling me more often to vent. I should remind you that Sabrina and I had never particularly liked each other. I had snapped at Eric a couple of times, and at his girlfriend, as she was going through yet another
“creative crisis”, thus becoming his worst enemy for a whole five days until…On Saturday, August 28th, at eleven o’clock in the evening, my cellphone rang, and in response to my “Hello” I heard drunken, incomprehensible muttering. All I could get from that strange monologue was that Eric had been in some bar on Bourbon Street feeling very, very bad and sad. He had quarreled with Sarah and decided to drown his sorrows in some old-fashioned “Blackened Voodoo.” Business as usual.
I envisioned Sabrina’s furious face on seeing her brother arrive home, accompanied by the usual noise he couldn’t do without. And… I had no choice but to rush to the rescue of my degrading friend. I found him in one of the bars on Bourbon Street. I was incredibly lucky because Eric was practically conscious.
Drunk as a skunk, but conscious. Some hippie chick hung Mardi Gras beads around his neck and adorned his left ear with a hot pink artificial flower. Eric struggled to lift his head when I approached him and even managed a feeble smile.
“Life sucks,” he declared, breathing out eyes-burning boozy fumes. I dragged him towards the exit amidst the fitting, mournful sounds of the music playing from the speakers.
All the way to his house, I prayed to God for only two things. First, that he wouldn't puke in my car. Second, that Sabrina would be at work. She worked as a bartender in the French Quarter, and I vaguely remembered her complaints about having twice as much work during tourist rushes. As a last resort, I wished for her to be fast asleep, so we wouldn't have to engage in another endless verbal battle, the end of which was neither seen nor foreseen. This beautiful girl didn’t dislike me. She hated me! But why? Since I couldn’t find an answer to that question, I tried to reciprocate her feelings, but it didn’t work well. In fact, it didn’t work at all. According to her, I was something of a Satan’s aide sent down to earth to poison her brother’s life, and hers too. The problem was doubled by the fact that her brother held a completely opposite view and saw me as his savior.
As we approached the Garden District, I noticed Eric suddenly open his eyes wide in horror and press his fingers to his lips. It was a sure sign that he urgently needed fresh air. I dropped him off near the house to avoid ruining the interior of my beloved and still brand-new car and drove off to make a u-turn. While I was parking, that idiot not only entered the house, but also did it with such a racket that it could be heard even outside. I instantly froze. Silence. No screams, no shouts, no preaching. A promising start! So, our little fairy hadn’t returned from work yet. I needed to get this drunken creature as far away from her as possible, into his bedroom, and retreat before her return.
Meanwhile, the events that followed, I believe, you can recall well. She was at home… ”
Jack pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes and lit up again.
Only now did it begin to dawn on him that there was something strange about her behavior back in the kitchen. She didn’t lash out at him as usual, didn’t hurl insults, and almost silently took the keys when he was helping Eric “make it” to his room. He recalled how she just stood there, staring wearily out the window with empty eyes. So fragile and petite, so pale and pensive, and… so vulnerable.
