Uncle Ryan was interested, yes, and amused and amazed and confused, but not about to 
take a chance. "Keep studying," he'd said. "But I must say I'm impressed with your 
knowledge of the market. How do you know all this stuff?"
  
  "You kidding me? Same way you know it," she had said. "From the Journal and from Barron 
's, and from going online any time night or day for the latest statistics." She'd been 
speaking of the modem in her computer, and of the many bulletin boards she could call. 
"You want to know something about stocks in the middle of the night? Don't call the 
office. Call me."
  
  How Pierce had laughed. "Just call Mona!"
  
  Uncle Ryan had been intrigued, Mardi Gras fatigue or no, but not enough not to back 
away with another lame comment: "Well, I'm pleased that you're taking an interest in all 
this."
  
  "An interest!" Mona had replied. "I'm ready to take over! What makes you such a wimp, 
Uncle Ryan, when it comes to aggressive growth funds? And what about Japan? Don't you 
know the simple principle that if you balance your United States stock market investments 
abroad then you've got global"
  
  "Hold it," he'd said. "Who's going to invest in a fund called Mona One?"
  
  Mona had been quick on the reply. "Everyone!"
  
  The best part was Uncle Ryan had finally laughed and promised again to buy her a black 
Porsche Carrera for her fifteenth birthday. She had never let him forget that from the 
moment she'd become obsessed with the car. She didn't see why all the Mayfair money 
couldn't buy her a fake driver's license, too, so she could slam the pedal to the floor 
right now. She knew all about cars. The Porsche was her car, and every time she saw a 
parked Carrera she crawled all over it, hoping the owner would come. She'd hitched rides 
three times that way with perfect strangers. But never tell anyone that! They'll die.
  
  As if a witch couldn't protect herself.
  
  "Yes, yes," he'd said this evening, "I haven't forgotten the black Porsche, but you 
haven't forgotten your promise to me, have you, that you'll never drive it over 
fifty-five miles an hour?"
  
  "There you go kidding again," she said. "Why the hell would I want to drive a Porsche 
over fifty-five miles an hour?"
  
  Pierce had nearly choked on his gin and tonic.
  
  "You're not buying that child a coffin on wheels!" Aunt Bea had declared. Always 
interfering. No doubt she'd be calling Gifford about the whole idea.
  
  "What child? I don't see any child around here, do you?" Pierce had said.
  
  Mona would have kept things going on the mutual funds, but it was Mardi Gras, people 
were tired, and Uncle Ryah had been drawn into a bottomless pit of polite conversation 
with Uncle Randall. Uncle Randall had turned his back to her, to shut her out. He'd been 
doing this sort of thing ever since Mona had gotten him into bed. She didn't care. That 
had been an experiment, nothing more, to compare a man in his eighties with young boys.
  
  Now, Michael was her goal. To hell with Uncle Randall. Uncle Randall had been 
interesting because he was so old, and there is a way a really old man looks at a young 
girl which she found very exciting.  But Uncle Randall wasn't a kind man. And Michael 
was. And Mona liked kindness. She'd isolated that trait in herself a long time ago.  
Sometimes she divided the world between kind and unkindfundamentally speaking.
  
  Well, tomorrow she would get to the stocks.
  
  Tomorrow, or the next day, maybe she'd work up the actual portfolio for Mona One, based 
on the top stock performers for the last five years. It was so easy for her to be carried 
away, with visions of Mona One becoming so large she had to clone it with a second mutual 
fund called Mona Two and then Mona Three, and traveling all over the world in her own 
plane to meet the CEOs of the companies in which she invested.
  
  She'd check out factories in Mainland China, offices in Hong Kong, scientific research 
in Paris. She pictured herself wearing a cowboy hat when she did this. She didn't 
actually have a cowboy hat right now.  Her bow was her thing. But somehow or other she 
always had the hat on as she stepped off" the imaginary plane. And all this was coming. 
She knew it.
  
  Maybe it was time she showed Uncle Ryan the printout of the stocks she'd tracked last 
year. If she'd really had money in them, she'd have her own fortune. Yes, got to boot 
that file and print that out.
  
  Ah, but she was wasting the moment.
  
  Tonight she was here, with her most important goal in mind. The conquest of the hunk 
known as Michael. And the finding of the mysterious Victrola.
  
  The gilt fauteuils gleamed in the shadows, graceful straight-backed chairs. Tapestried 
pillows lay higgledy-piggledy in the deep damask sofa. A veil of stillness lay over all, 
as if the world beyond had gone up in smoke. Dust on the piano. That poor old Eugenia, 
she wasn't much good, was she? And Henri was probably too good to dust or mop or sweep. 
And in their midst was Michael, too sick and indifferent to care what they did.
  
  She left the double parlor, and moved to the foot of the stairs. Very dark up there, as 
it ought to be, like a ladder to a heaven of shadows.  She touched the newel post, and 
then began her ascent. In the house, in it, wandering, free and in the dark alone! "Oncle 
Julien, I'm here," she sang in a tiny whisper. When she reached the top she saw that Aunt 
Viv's room stood empty, just as she had expected.
  
  "Poor Michael, you're all mine," she said softly. And when she turned she saw that the 
door of the master bedroom was open, and the weak illumination of a little nightlamp 
poured out into the high narrow hall.