Page 50 of If Looks Could Kill
A petite Negro woman in ordinary clothes had emerged from the door where Giselle had been. She was perhaps thirty years old. She spoke softly, with a French accent.
“Bonsoir,”she said. “You mentioned something about a Medusa needing help?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Do you know anything that might help me?”
“Ah, so it’s you?” Her brow creased with concern for me, as if I were a wounded puppy.
“No,” I said quickly. “A friend.”
“A performer?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“I thought not.” She watched me thoughtfully. “Is she prone to flights of fancy? To… how do you say… hallucinatory, hallucin—”
“No,” I said quickly. “It’s not that.”
She offered me her hand. “I’m Veronique.”
“Tabitha.” I shook her hand.
“I help manage and train the performers,” she said conversationally.
I couldn’t see what that had to do with me. The perverse thought hit me that if Pearl were here, the real Pearl, she would try to sell this woman aWar Cry.
“One of the things I manage,” she said, “for our top performers, is their mail. Not all of them can read, and some of the more popular ones, like Giselle, can’t keep up with the volume of their letters. So I go through them.”
I wanted desperately to leave, but something held me back. “I’m sure they’re grateful.”
She gave me a funny look. “Most of those who write to Gigi,” she said, “are admirers.” She shrugged. “It’s mostly men who see her show.”
I nodded, screaming only inside my head.
“And there is the occasional quack,” she went on. “Someone claiming to be, oh, say, Perseus. Athena. Hermes. Or Poseidon, even. Can you imagine?”
I pretended to be as amused and surprised as I was apparently supposed to be. These names—forgive me—were all Greek to me.
“She does receive angry letters at times,” she went on, as if correcting a grave misconception on my part, “from women who are members of moral reform societies. They think her, how do you say, pagan persona is a wicked influence.”
Here she glanced pointedly at my infernal uniform. Ah. Now this detail made sense.
“I can see how that might happen,” I said. “But that’s not my position.”
She seemed satisfied, as though I’d passed a test. If it was a test of patience, however, I was failing.
“I called to you,” Veronique said after a pause, “because—oh, perhaps I’m not quite sure why. You seemed… what is the word… singular? Yes. And sincere.”
I tried to speak, and found I couldn’t.
“Of all the people who write to Giselle,” she continued, “one was unusual. She claimed to be a Medusa like Giselle and asked repeatedly for Giselle to come visit her home.” She smiled. “She was persistent, that one. She wrote several times.”
Hope sprang up inside of me. “You wouldn’t know her name, would you?”
Veronique’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, we don’t keep such letters.”
Then why tell me about them at all?
“But I do recall…,” she began.
