Pretty Scars

by CD Reiss

  Carrie would have loved me anyway. I wished I’d known that sooner.

  At a red light, I leaned over the back of the front seat. “I don’t really need to go to Fifty-Second and Third.” I eyed the clipboard and little pencil in the passenger seat. A trip log. “If you charge me for that on the meter, and take me to Teterboro Airport, that would be better.”

  He turned to face me, one eye half closed by scar tissue. “That’s in New Jersey.”

  “I have cash.” I rooted around my pockets for my wallet and flicked through the bills. “Two hundred cover it?”

  “Two-fifty.”

  “How about three and you say you lost that pencil when you had to log it?”

  His good eyebrow went up a quarter inch. “You a spy or something?”

  He was going to do it. I could tell. And it wasn’t for the money.

  It was because we were both ugly.

  “I have to get there for a woman,” I said. “The love of my life.”

  Now what? I asked myself that between the glass-walled terminal and the rock piles of the construction site for the new runway.

  I’d spent the trip to Teterboro hardening my resolve to catch Peter and pound him into unconsciousness. Or hold him down until the cops came. Or by some alchemy I didn’t understand, turn my cold, quiet anger into justice. But when Omar drove away and I was in the parking lot three hundred dollars poorer, I wasn’t quite sure what my plan was.

  Except to not think about Carrie being dead.

  Not at all.

  I had to be furious about it without being sad about it. The fury was more comfortable. It had a direction.

  That way.

  Toward the terminal for private jets, where I could see Peter through the glass walls and doors, talking on a pay phone.

  A security guard stood between the side door of the terminal and plane parking. A couple of passengers flipped through magazines, and agents stood behind the counter to check flight plans, call the porters to move luggage over the tarmac, and route people as necessary. Easy job. Most of the planning was done between pilots and the tower.

  But still. Too many people. Too many eyes, and I was easy to identify.

  I stood in the parking lot, under a shuttle bus overhang, hands clasped behind my back, and waited. The wind went around me and the cold was comfortable against the hard ice of my heart.

  When Peter hung up the phone, he saw me. But I didn’t move.

  He’d come for me. I’d lure him someplace we could be alone. He’d offer me a bribe or a deal for my silence. I’d refuse. He’d kill me. I’d join Carrie in death. But maybe Peter wouldn’t walk away the way people like him always did.

  In the end, even if I was dead, he’d miss his plane.

  He left the terminal and came toward me.

  Predictable.

  “Hey!” he called as I turned and walked away.

  I guessed he’d run to catch up, and he did.

  “What do you want?” he asked from beside me as I paced to the edge of the parking lot, toward the construction site.

  I said nothing, walking fast as if I knew where I was going—besides away from eyes and cameras.

  “Nothing we do is going to bring her back,” he said. “What’s the point of going to prison? Look at me. Is this the face of a murderer?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Look,” he said, our feet crunching on salt, then the scree of scattered pebbles. “If it’s money—”

  “I have money.”

  “Not like I do.”

  The construction site was farther away than it looked. I had to keep him close.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “A million. Cash.”

  “I have that in my couch cushions.”

  “Three million then.” He looked at his watch. A private plane wouldn’t take off without him, but it would have to change its flight plan, and that meant delay. I ducked under the yellow-and-black-striped construction zone barrier. “Four. I have an account with Credit Suisse I can sign over to you.”

  I walked and he followed, catching up at the edge of the reservoir I’d seen on my way into the airport a million years ago. It was frozen over, the size of an auditorium, with a dark gray splotch in the center.

  “When?” I said. “You’re getting on a plane. When do I get it?”

  “I can call my lawyer. He can—”

  “Tell the police? They have to, you know.”

  “I’ll be gone. They won’t find me.”

  “But the money’s not going to come.”

  “It’s Switzerland.”

  Maybe he was right. Swiss banks were so neutral they did what they wanted in defiance of international law.

  “Listen,” he said, coming in front of me. His feet were on the edge of the frozen lake. It would be slippery. Any move he made could lead to a fall. Good.

  “Listening.”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “Didn’t know her.”

  “She was impossible. So frustrating. I did everything I could for her, but she got in these moods, okay? Nothing was good enough for her, and I was trapped. Her father? That guy’s the devil. Never make a deal with him. But you? You’re sensible. I’d rather—”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “I work for him.”

  “That’s a job. You said deal.”

  “Just come back with me. Get my lawyer on the phone and we can settle this like men.”

  He thought he was getting the upper hand.

  “Talk fast and you’ll make your flight.” I stepped forward, and he stepped back.

  “Look,” he said, palms out as if showing me he had nothing in his hands but the truth. “I had some stuff on him and I was going to use it for a plea bargain. So he came to me and said, ‘I have this daughter.’”

  Propelled by a story too insane to be false, I took another step into him. “He gave her to you?”

  “It wasn’t a gift. Gifts are free.”

  I took him by the collar, and softened by the prospect of a deal, he didn’t have enough adrenaline to react.

  “She’s not property.” I spit the words so close to his face, my saliva froze on his chin. “She was too good for you.”

  I threw him down, and he rolled away, then jumped into a crouch, ready to fight.

  Fine. I would rip his throat open. Gouge his eyes out. Rip him to shreds for what he’d done to her life and what he was doing to her memory.

  I’d been ready to die to delay him, but I didn’t think about death when he lunged for me. We grappled, past gentlemanly punches and kicks, dropping to the ice as if we were lovers in a violent embrace. He bit my ear and I kneed him in the groin.

  We separated, circling around each other.

  “The deal’s off,” he growled, sidestepping to get to the terminal side. He was going to make a run for it.

  “Sure it is.” I reversed the rotation, getting him close to the center where the dark patch spread along the reservoir’s surface.

  “You were never going to marry her. You were a waste of time.”

  Before he finished the last word, he ran for the terminal, slipping on his second step. He landed on his hip and broke the ice, falling into a growing hole of black water with a splash.

  I stood at the edge, watching the black water gurgle. Shards of ice bobbed outward when he came up, gasping for air.

  He gripped the edge and started to pull himself out. Without thinking—just knowing—I slammed my heel into the ice in front of him.

  He sank and came up again with blue lips and skin as white and translucent as a paper screen.

  When he reached for the edge again, I cracked it away.

  He gasped, reaching. “He was talking about killing you. Declan.”

  “Killing me?”

  I let him grab the edge.

  “The thing,” he said, getting his elbows on the ice. “The guys in Italy. It was—”

  “A setup.”

  “You lived
because I told him no.”

  I had to slap my heel on the ice twice to crack it, but it didn’t break off completely. “I didn’t live.” I slammed my heel down a third time. “I died.” Still, the ice wouldn’t break away, and he was getting his balance. “I died.”

  I kicked him in the face so hard, I slipped and dropped on my ass. Peter fell back into the water. Getting my feet under me, I crouched by the edge, waiting for him to return.

  But he didn’t.

  The ripples settled and the bobbing ice went still.

  Behind me, the sound of gloved hands slowly clapping.

  I spun to find Declan Drazen standing on solid ground between my escape and me.

  Chapter 38

  NEW JERSEY - 1995

  It was over.

  Carrie was dead and I was going to prison.

  Fair enough, if fair was for other people. Which, when you’re Declan Drazen, is the exact meaning of fair.

  “You have me,” I said with my hands raised. “You win. Again.”

  “You weren’t going to beat me, Mister Marlowe. That’s…” He scoffed. “That’s funny.”

  “He killed Carrie. Your daughter.”

  He walked away, toward the glowing lights of the terminal.

  I ran after him and walked astride. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s dead.”

  He bent his frame under the barrier as if it was nothing and kept walking. I kept up with him, resigned to my fate and yet stunned by his reaction.

  “Despite your dramatic imaginings,” he said, turning right, deeper into plane parking—the same mistake Peter made with me, “you aren’t dead.”

  He approached a golf cart. A driver got behind the wheel when Declan sat in the back.

  “Where are you going?”

  “We’re going over there.”

  “We?”

  “Do you want to stay here and wait to be found?” He patted the seat next to him.

  I didn’t trust him. I’d have to be crazy to do so. But I had nothing to lose, so I sat, and the golf cart sped onto the tarmac.

  “You don’t seem too upset she’s dead,” I said.

  “There’s time for that.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  “There was a time, not as long ago as you think, when marriage was always a business deal. If it was a bad deal, either party took on a lover and the family stayed together. But now? We prioritize love and break families into smaller and smaller parts. Why? What’s the point exactly?”

  “So you would have let him hurt her?”

  “If I’d known?” He shrugged as the cart zipped by parked planes and we entered a small runway. “Probably not. I gave him a Drazen and he abused the privilege. But it’s too late for that now and I have a choice. I can kill you—and I would—but it’s risky. Better for me to put you on my dead son-in-law’s plane.”

  The cart stopped by a small jet with the airstairs lowered. Declan slid off the seat, but I didn’t.

  “Why?”

  “My oldest daughter is very convincing. She knows I don’t like gambling or rushing. And it’s better if you run away.”

  “Two minutes, sir,” the cart driver said.

  “I’ll tell her you said thank you. But you cannot. Ever. If you show your face again, I’ll suddenly remember the events of this traumatic night. Behind a mask. Anonymous. Whatever you think you can get away with, don’t do it. Not unless you want to die in prison.”

  “Where is it going?” I asked, indicating the plane.

  “The flight plan says Costa Rica, but it doesn’t matter. They’ll take you as far as the fuel goes. Your choice.”

  Did I have a choice? Could I stay in the country, shame my mother, end my life in exchange for the life of a man who had killed the only person worth living for?

  Did I have a choice to say no to this offer? This trap? This deal with an unforseen endpoint that could be worse than prison and shame?

  I didn’t.

  I was going to grieve for the rest of my life, and Carrie deserved every minute of it.

  Declan got into the front seat of the golf cart, and the driver took his foot off the brake.

  “Fuck yourself, Declan Drazen. Really. Fuck you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he replied as the cart took off.

  Taking one last look around a world without hope of happiness, I climbed the stairs. The doors closed behind me.

  Chapter 39

  VENICE, ITALY - ONE YEAR LATER

  Every day, I brought my cello to the pillar under the lion in the square of St. Mark’s Basilica. Every day, I played something for her. At first, it was Ballad of Blades, but that started to seem self-indulgent and a new piece grew inside me.

  It had no name, and it never would. It was as anonymous as I was.

  Children stopped and pointed at me. Toddlers cried and clutched their mothers’ legs. Tourists and natives alike made room for me as if I had a disease they could catch.

  Then as the song evolved, so did the response. They stayed and listened to Carrie’s song. It wasn’t a dirge, though it had notes of loss in the uplifting chords. I didn’t give voice to the loss of my name and my choices, but to the death of a perfect beauty in the world. A beauty flawed to perfection with impulsivity, curiosity, and self-doubt.

  Sometimes putting the patch on my eye but always leaving the rest of my damage uncovered, I played.

  I played for her near St. Mark’s Basilica every day it didn’t rain. I didn’t leave out a jug or case for money. I had plenty of that squirreled away from years of protecting my anonymity. But people found a way to leave lire by slipping it in my closed case or finding a container in the trash.

  The pigeons gathered in a cooing gray mass under the winter clouds. The tourists flocked, staring at the grotesque man and staying for his music. The church behind me would stand long after my cello was silent, but I would not be silent as long as I lived.

  At least she was free of him. Even if I was an old, ugly man playing on those stones every day as the pigeons pecked at my shoes, she was free.

  “Buon giorno,” I said to Calogero. Every third dry morning, he showed up in a beard and long coat to chalk a picture of the pieta in the stones.

  “Ciao,” he replied, laying out sticks of blue in the same order as always.

  I sat on the folding chair I brought every day.

  “How are you today?” he asked in thick English. He liked to practice with me.

  “Fine. I think the sun’s going to come out.”

  “Maybe the pigeons will fly instead of shitting on the Virgin.”

  “Hope so.” I got out my cello and left the case open with a sign that said NO DONATIONS in three languages. After a year of playing this square, I’d learned that worked best.

  It was almost high noon. I knew from the way the shadows traveled across the bottom of my open case, where a few disobedient tourists always threw loose coins that I’d donate to a children’s charity.

  I kept playing. When the shade of the pillar behind me moved off the case, it would be time for lunch.

  A bill fell into the case and flicked in the breeze. Green American money against the bright red velvet. It flipped when the draft picked up, revealing Benjamin Franklin’s half-smile.

  It wasn’t the first time someone had unwittingly donated a large sum to the Medici Children’s Music Fund. But it was folded and dropped in a way I remembered.

  The bow froze in my hand.

  “Ciao,” a woman said.

  The husky, atonal voice flipped a switch of memory that I’d tucked away.

  But I didn’t look up. I sat there with my bow still on the strings, imagining it was possible my memory and reality matched.

  Looking up meant ending that moment with inevitable disappointment.

  I wanted it to be true.

  “Ciao, Adam. Is it still Adam?”

  Had I been recognized? The moment of fantasy was cloaked with the potentia
l for a nightmare.

  That, I understood. I looked up.

  The breeze whipped her long, red hair to one side, and her eyes shone like the Virgin Mary’s blue robes. She was wearing my coat.

  “Carrie?” My voice cracked.

  She looked at me as if I was handsome and strong, undamaged and whole. Worthy of her love and alive to receive it.

  Was she a miracle?

  An apparition?

  Some strange twin I’d never met?

  “Are you Carrie?”

  She wasn’t, of course. Carrie was dead, and this woman was as real as the stones under my feet.

  “I was. My name is Marie now.”

  Marie.

  Now.

  The name meant absolutely nothing to me. It held no connection to a shared past, but now it was the most important word in the world. It was the name of a shared future.

  Carrie was Marie now. I bit my lips to hold back the wet sobs threatening to explode from me, but no amount of willpower could keep my cheek dry.

  “Nice to meet you, Marie.” Her new name was the shape of a shared future, and I said it with measured appreciation. “My name is Gabriel. Gabriel Jefferson.”

  When she smiled, the sun hit its highest point in the sky.

  She was radiant. People looked at her. Men, women, children. They looked at me too. Walking with the crowds on Larga S. Marco, hand in hand, we were opposite poles of the same magnet.

  We stopped for espresso and sat in a dark corner, leaning over the small table.

  No one would bother us for hours.

  “Margie asked me what I’d do if I could do anything, and I said I wanted to disappear. Change my name. Do what you did.”

  “I feel aspirational.”

  “You were. When Margie got home and found me, I was fucked up and crying. I didn’t know where Peter had gone. I didn’t know he went for you. How did he know where you were?”

  “I told him.”

  “What?”

  “I thought he was an old friend. It’s a long story. But please. You were the one who was dead. I can’t…” I touched her face gingerly, as if she’d disappear. “I can’t even believe you’re here.”