Brain Child Part 2

"There's loads left," Carolyn told him in the slightly mocking voice Alex knew she always used when she was trying to seem more sophisticated than the rest of the kids. "Hardly anybody's drinking it except you and Lisa. Come on out to my car-I've got some beer."

Alex shook his head.

"Oh, come on," Carolyn urged. "What's one beer gonna do to you? I've had four, and I'm not drunk."

"I'm driving. If I'm driving, I don't drink."

Carolyn's head tipped back, and a throaty laugh that Alex was sure she practiced for hours emerged from her glistening lips. "You're just too good to be true, aren't you? Not even one little tiny beer? Come on, Alex-get human."

"It's not that," Alex replied, forcing a grin. "It's just that my dad'll take my car away from me if I come home with beer on my breath."

"Too bad for you," Carolyn purred. "Then I guess you can't come to my party." When she saw a slight flicker of interest in Alex's eyes, she decided to press her advantage. "Everybody's going to be there-sort of a housewarming."

Alex stared at Carolyn in disbelief. Was she really talking about the hacienda? But his mother told him the Evanses weren't letting anyone see it for another month, until it was completely refurbished.

And everyone in La Paloma, no matter what he thought of the Evanses, wanted to see what Cynthia Evans had done with Bill Evans's money.

At first, when the rumors began circulating that the Evanses had bought the enormous old mansion on top of Hacienda Drive, the a.s.sumption had been that they would tear it down. It had stood vacant for too many years, was far too big for a family to keep up without servants, and was far too decayed for anyone to seriously consider restoring it.

But then the project had begun.

First to be repaired was the outer wall. Much of it had long since collapsed; only a few yards of its southern expanse were still standing. But it had been rebuilt, its old wooden gates replaced by new ones whose designs had been copied from faded sketches of the hacienda as it had looked a hundred and fifty years earlier. Except that the new gates were wired with alarms and swung smoothly open on electrically controlled rollers. And then, after the wall was complete, Cynthia had begun the restoration of the mansion and the outbuildings.

Almost everybody in La Paloma had gone up to the top of Hacienda Drive once or twice, but the gates were always closed, and no one had succeeded in getting inside the walls. Alex, along with some of his friends, had climbed the hills a few times to peer down into the courtyard, but all they'd been able to see was the exterior work-the new plaster and the whitewashing, and the replacement of the red tiles on the roof.

What everyone was truly waiting for was a glimpse of the interior, and now Carolyn was saying her friends could see it that very night.

Alex eyed her skeptically. "I thought your mother wasn't letting anyone in until next month."

"Mom and Dad are in San Francisco for the weekend," Carolyn said.

"I don't know-" Alex began, remembering his promise not to go to any parties after the dance.

"Don't know about what?" Lisa asked, slipping her arm through his.

"He doesn't want to come to my party," Carolyn replied before Alex could say anything.

Lisa's eyes widened. "There's a party? At the hacienda?"

Carolyn nodded with elaborate casualness. "Bob and Kate are coming, and Jenny Lang, and everybody."

Lisa turned to Alex. "Well, let's go!" Alex flushed and looked uncomfortable, but said nothing. The band struck up the last dance and Lisa led Alex onto the floor. "What's wrong?" she asked a moment later. "Why can't we go to Carolyn's party?"

"'Cause I don't want to."

"You just don't like Carolyn," Lisa argued. "But you won't even have to talk to her. Everybody else will be there too."

"It isn't that."

"Then what is it?"

"I promised my folks we wouldn't go to any parties. Dad gave me some money to take some of the kids out for a hamburger, and I promised we'd come home right after that."

Lisa fell silent for a few seconds; then: "We don't have to tell them where we were."

"They'd find out."

"But don't you even want to see the place?"

"Sure, but-"

"Then let's go. Besides, it's not where we go that your mom and dad are worried about-they're afraid you'll drink. So we'll go to the party, but we won't even have a beer. And we won't stay very long."

"Come on, Lisa. I promised them I wouldn't-"

But Lisa suddenly broke away from him and started pulling him off the dance floor. "Let's find Kate and Bob. Maybe we can convince them to go up to Carolyn's with us for just a few minutes, then the four of us can go out for hamburgers. That way we can see the place, and you won't have to lie to your folks."

As Lisa led him out of the gym, Alex knew he'd give in, even though he shouldn't. With Lisa, it was hard not to give in-she always managed to make everything sound perfectly logical, even when Alex was sure it wasn't.

The headlights of Alex's Mustang picked up the open gates of the hacienda, and he braked the car to a stop. "Are we supposed to park out here, or go inside?"

Lisa shrugged. "Search me. Carolyn didn't say." Suddenly a horn sounded, and Bob Carey's Porsche pulled up beside them, its window rolled down.

"Over there," Bob called. He was pointing off to the left, where a small group of cars already stood parked in the shadow of the wall. Following Bob, Alex maneuvered the Mustang into a spot next to a Camaro, shut off the engine, then turned to Lisa.

"Maybe we oughta just go on home," he suggested, but Lisa grinned and shook her head.

"I want to see it. Come on-just for a little while." She got out of the car, and after a second's hesitation, Alex joined her. A moment later Kate and Bob appeared out of the darkness, and the four of them started toward the lights flooding from the gateway.

"I don't believe this," Kate said a moment later. They were standing just inside the gate, trying to absorb the transformation that had come over what had been, only a year earlier, a crumbling ruin.

To the left, the old stables had been rebuilt into garages, and in the bright whiteness of the floodlights, the new plaster was indistinguishable from the old. The only change was that the stable roofs, originally thatched, were now of the same red tile as the house and the servants' quarters.

"It's weird," Alex said. "It looks like it's a couple of hundred years old."

"Except for that," Lisa breathed. "Have you ever seen anything like it?"

Dominating the courtyard, which until recently had been nothing more than an overgrown weed patch, was a glistening swimming pool fed by a cascade of tumbling water that made its way down five intricately tiled tiers before finally splashing into the immense oval of the pool.

Bob Carey whistled softly. "How big do you s'pose it is?"

"Big enough," Alex replied. Then his eyes wandered to what had once been the servants' quarters. "Wanta bet that's a pool house now?"

Before anyone could venture an answer, Carolyn Evans's voice rang out over the rock music that was throbbing from the huge main house. "Hey! Come on in!"

Glancing at each other uneasily, the four of them slowly crossed the courtyard, then stepped up onto the broad loggia that ran the entire length of the house. Carolyn, grinning happily, waited for them at the elaborately carved oaken front door. "Isn't it neat? Come on in-everybody's already here."

They went through the front door into a ma.s.sive tile-floored entry hall that was dominated by a staircase curving up to the second floor. To the right there was a large dining room, and beyond it they could see through another room into the kitchen. "That's a butler's pantry between the dining room and kitchen," Carolyn explained, then raised her voice as someone turned up the volume on the stereo. "Mom wasn't really sure it was supposed to be there, but she put it in anyway."

"You going to have a butler?" Kate Lewis asked.

Carolyn shrugged with elaborate unconcern. "I don't know. I guess so. Mom says the house is too big for Maria to take care of by herself."

"Maria Torres?" Torres?" Bob Carey groaned. "That old witch can't even take care of her own house. My mom fired her after the first day!" Bob Carey groaned. "That old witch can't even take care of her own house. My mom fired her after the first day!"

"She's okay-" Alex began, but was immediately drowned out by the others' laughter. Even Lisa joined in.

"Come on, Alex, she's a loony-bin case. Everybody knows that." Then she glanced guiltily toward Carolyn. "She isn't here, is she?"

Carolyn giggled maliciously. "If she is, she just got an earful."

At the top of the stairs, Maria Torres faded back into the darkness of the second-floor hallway, her black dress making her nearly invisible.

She had been sitting quietly in the large bedroom at the end of the corridor-the bedroom that, by rights, should have been hers-when the first of the cars had arrived.

No one, she knew, should have come back to the hacienda for hours, and she should have had the house to herself and her ghosts from the past. But now her reverie was shattered, and the pounding din of the gringo gringo music, and the children of the music, and the children of the gringos gringos she had spent her life hating, filled the ancient rooms. she had spent her life hating, filled the ancient rooms.

She had been in the house since seven o'clock, having let herself in with her own key as soon as Carolyn had left. She had spent the last four hours drifting through the house, imagining that it was hers, that she was not the cleaning woman-no more than a peon- peon-but the mistress of the hacienda: Dona Maria Ruiz de Torres. And one day it would happen; one day, sometime in the vague future, it would happen. The gringos gringos would be driven away, and finally the hacienda would be hers. would be driven away, and finally the hacienda would be hers.

But for now she could only pretend, and be careful. The gringos gringos were strict and never wanted her to be alone in their homes. She must leave the hacienda without being seen, and make her way back down the canyon to her little house behind the mission, and when she came back tomorrow, she must give no hint that she had been here at all tonight. were strict and never wanted her to be alone in their homes. She must leave the hacienda without being seen, and make her way back down the canyon to her little house behind the mission, and when she came back tomorrow, she must give no hint that she had been here at all tonight.

She glanced once more around the gloom of the bedroom that should have been hers, then slipped away, down the back stairs, the stairs that her ancestors never would have used, and out into the night. Then, as the gringo gringo revelry went on-a desecration!-she kept watch, her ancient anger burning inside her.... revelry went on-a desecration!-she kept watch, her ancient anger burning inside her....

"Jeez," Bob whispered. "Last time I saw this, it looked like the place had burned. Now look at it."

The living room, across the entry hall from the dining room, was sixty feet long, and was dominated by an immense fireplace on the far wall.

The oak floor gleamed a polished brown that was nearly black, but the white walls picked up the light from sconces that had been wired into them at regular intervals to fill the room with an even brightness that made it seem even larger than it was. Twenty feet above, huge peeled logs supported a cathedral ceiling.

"This is incredible," Lisa breathed.

"This is just the beginning," Carolyn replied. "Just wander around anywhere, and make sure you don't miss the bas.e.m.e.nt. That's Daddy's part of the house, and Mom just hates it." Then she was gone, disappearing into the ma.s.s of teenagers who were dancing to the rhythms of a reggae alb.u.m.

It took them nearly an hour to go through the house, and even then they weren't sure they'd seen it all. Upstairs there was a maze of rooms, and they'd counted seven bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, in addition to a library and a couple of small sitting rooms. All of it looked as if it had been built and furnished nearly two hundred years ago, then somehow frozen in time.

"Can you imagine living here?" Lisa asked as they finally started down toward the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"It's not like a house at all," Alex replied. "It feels more like a museum. Hey," he added, suddenly stopping halfway down the stairs. "I don't remember this place ever having a bas.e.m.e.nt."

"It didn't," Kate told him. "Carolyn says her dad wanted his own s.p.a.ce, but her mom wouldn't let him have any of the old rooms. So he dug out a bas.e.m.e.nt. Do you believe it?"

"Holy s.h.i.t," Bob Carey muttered. "Didn't he think the house was big enough already?"

At the bottom of the stairs they found a laundry room to the left, and beyond that a big empty s.p.a.ce that looked as though it was intended for storage.

Under the living room, occupying nearly the same amount of s.p.a.ce as the room above, they found Mr. Evans's private s.p.a.ce. For a long time they stared at it in silence.

"Well, I think it's tacky," Lisa said when she'd taken it all in.

Bob Carey shrugged. "And I think you're just jealous. I bet you wouldn't think it was tacky if it was your house."

Kate Lewis raked Bob with what she hoped was a scathing glare. "My mother always says the Evanses have more money than taste, and she's right. I mean, just look at it, Bob. It's gross!"

It was a media room. The far wall was nearly covered by an immense screen, which could be used either for movies or projection television. Along one wall was a complex of electronic components that none of them could completely identify. They were, however, apparently the source of the rock music, and they could barely hear Carolyn demanding that it be turned down for fear the neighbors would call the police. n.o.body, however, was paying any attention to her, and much of the party seemed to have gravitated downstairs.

What had elicited Lisa Cochran's criticism, though, was not the electronics, but the bar opposite them. Not a typical home bar, with three stools and a rack for gla.s.ses, the Evanses' bar ran the entire length of the wall. Behind the counter itself, the wall was covered with shelves of liquor and gla.s.ses, and each shelf was edged with a neon tube, which provided a rainbow effect that was reflected throughout the room by the mirrors that covered the wall behind the shelves and the bar itself. The bar, by now, was covered with bottles, and several of the kids were happily filling gla.s.ses with various kinds of liquor.

"Want something?" Bob asked, eyeing the array.

Kate hesitated, then shrugged. "Why not? Is there any gin?"

Bob poured them each a tumbler, added a little ginger ale, and handed one of the gla.s.ses to Kate, then turned to ask Alex and Lisa what they wanted. But while he'd been mixing the drinks, Alex and Lisa had disappeared. "Hey-where'd they go?"

Kate shrugged. "I don't know. Come on, let's dance." She finished her drink and pulled Bob out onto the floor, but when the record ended, both she and Bob scanned the crowd, looking for Alex and Lisa.

"You think they got mad 'cause we had a drink?" Kate finally asked.

"Who cares? It's not as if we need a ride home or anything. Forget about them."

"No! Come on."

They found Alex and Lisa in the courtyard, staring up at the stars. "Hey," Bob yelled, holding up his gla.s.s, "aren't you two gonna join the party?"

"We weren't going to drink, remember?" Alex asked, staring at the gla.s.s. "We were going out for hamburgers."

"Who wants hamburgers when you can drink?" Bob replied. He reached down and pulled a bottle of beer out of a tub of ice and thrust it into Alex's hands. Alex looked at it for a moment, then glanced at Lisa, who frowned and shook her head. Alex hesitated, then defiantly twisted the cap loose and took a swig.

Lisa glared accusingly at him. "Alex!"

"I didn't even want to come to this party," Alex told her, his voice taking on a defensive edge. "But since we're here, we might as well enjoy it."

"But we said-"

"I know what we said. And I said I wasn't going to any parties, either. But I'm here. Why shouldn't I do what everybody else is doing?" Deliberately he tipped the beer bottle up and chugalugged it, then reached for another. Lisa's eyes narrowed angrily, but before she could say anything else, Carolyn Evans's voice suddenly rose over the din of the party as she came out of the front door with her arms full of towels.

"Who wants to go in the pool?"

There was a momentary silence, then someone replied that no one had suits. "Who needs suits?" Carolyn squealed. "Let's go skinny-dipping!" Suddenly she reached behind her, pulled down the zipper of her dress, and let it drop to the patio. Stripping off her panties and strapless bra, she dived into the pool, swam underwater for a few strokes, then broke the surface. "Come on," she yelled. "It's great!"

There was a moment of hesitation, then two more kids stripped and plunged into the water. Three more followed, and suddenly the patio was filling up with discarded clothes and the pool with naked teenagers. Once more, Alex glanced at Lisa.

"No!" she said, reading his eyes. "We were only coming for a few minutes, and we weren't going to drink. And we're certainly not going into the pool."

"Chicken," Alex teased, shrugging out of his dinner jacket. Then he drained the second beer, put the bottle down, and began untying his shoelaces.

"Alex, don't," Lisa begged. "Please?"

"Aw, come on. What's the big deal? Haven't you ever skinny-dipped before?"