‘In what context?’
‘You know very well.’
‘I genuinely don’t.’
‘I genuinely think you do.’
She bit down on her lip. She shook the chicken dry and dabbed at it with a paper towel. She really didn’t need this now. The inference was that she had led him on and then slammed the door in his face. She could see how he might think that, but it was an immature conclusion, unreasonable considering the matter had been discussed and agreed amicably between them. Hadn’t it?
Max levered his way off the counter he was leaning on and walked out of her apartment without saying another word.
Minutes later, he was watching her. She was still in the kitchen. She was preparing a meal in exactly the way he had taught her to do when they had enjoyed their romantic dinner together about a million years ago.
He moved silently along the passage to the peephole that gave him a view of the living room. He saw that the table was set for two. It was the table that had belonged to his grandfather; she had chosen it and he had carried it into her apartment for her, to her warm show of, what had seemed at the time, sincere gratitude.
Max was beginning to understand. He was first incredulous and then furious but there was no mistaking what she was doing. She was preparing to wine and dine another man.
In the refuge of the wall, hurt and angry, Max stole through the gloom to look upon Juliet again in the kitchen. Her cell phone was on the counter, ringing, shifting slightly with the vibration. She picked it up and when she saw who was calling, smiled broadly and shook her hair the way women did when they were pleased and playful.
‘Hi,’ she said. In the one word, her voice already sounded flirtatious. It was a new tone to Max’s ears. It was one she had never used with him.
‘Ten minutes sounds good,’ she said. She walked out of the kitchen and out of sight.
Max scampered through the passageways, trying to keep her in view as he passed the hidden peepholes peppering her walls.
He found her in the bathroom. She was brushing her teeth again. Knowing that the brush had shared the interior of both their mouths sent a visceral thrill jolting through him, just as it had earlier when the sensation had been so strong he’d knocked the groceries off the counter. But the feeling was nothing like so strong or pleasurable now. She had brushed her teeth on returning from her shift out of habit, just to remove the canteen food and machine coffee staleness inflicted by a shift at the hospital.
This was different. She was brushing her teeth now to freshen her breath in anticipation of a kiss. She had put wine and candles on the table. Her dinner guest was clearly not her pregnant friend and her sloppy mess of a husband. Max had never romanced anyone, prior to Juliet, in his life. But he had seen the movies that had taught him how to behave on his one dinner date with Juliet and he was sure he could read the signs very clearly.
He had to decide what to do. He felt the hopeless devastation of rejection and the pain was too great for him to endure without doing something that might deliver him relief from it. These walls were his womb as well as his kingdom; he had always felt safe here. But the time might have come for him to do something he had never really considered doing before. His pain compelled him to do it. He had to act, or he thought the agony consuming him might drive him mad.
He entered her apartment through the panel from the passages to the wine closet and walked into her kitchen; he knew she wasn’t there because he could hear the whine of the electric toothbrush still in use in the bathroom. He stole into her living room and looked around quickly for her bag.
He spotted it. He still had time. He was cool and unafraid, impressed by his own nerve and initiative. No one had called her since that man, a few minutes ago. If he were punctual, he would be here in a little over five. He took Juliet’s cell and looked for the most recently dialled call. There was no name next to the number when Max brought it up on the display, but it was definitely him.
Max was writing down the number quickly on his palm with the biro from his pocket when the door buzzer sounded, loud and abrupt from the hallway.
He had no time to escape. He still had Juliet’s cell phone in his hand. He stood as rigid as stone and watched her walk right past him to the front door.
Twenty-nine
JULIET TOOK A quick look through her spyhole before opening the door. Max, in his new mood of gloomy, awkward persistence, had made her slightly wary. But all she saw through the lens was Jack, familiar and gorgeous, reassuring in all his glorious, joyful contradictions.
‘Hey,’ he said, into the spyhole. ‘I brought a friend.’
She flung open the door and immediately heard a yap and a bark. She looked down as Amelie, their pet terrier, jumped in excitement around her knees. She bent and picked the dog up and it lapped her face. ‘Amelie!’ Juliet said. ‘I missed you so much.’
She glanced from the dog to Jack. He was beautifully dressed, and was bearing a bottle of tequila and a bag of limes. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Look at you.’ She bent and put Amelie back down on the floor.
Jack smiled at her uncertainly. There was a formality to him, as though he did not know quite how to behave or quite what to expect. ‘Didn’t really know what to wear to a dinner like this. I’m nervous,’ he said, confirming the impression. ‘Here.’ He handed Juliet the bottle.
She said, ‘Let’s sit in the living room.’ They walked there, Jack sat down and Juliet sank to her haunches and removed Amelie’s lead, allowing the little terrier to scamper happily, exploring the apartment. She knew that Jack had brought the dog to break the ice. He really was nervous and there was something endearing about that. And the thought of ice made her remember the tequila bottle she had just put down on the table with the bag of limes.
‘I’ll fix us both a drink,’ she said. In the kitchen, she reached for two glasses from a shelf and started to prepare two margaritas; coaxing ice cubes from a tray, slicing the limes, rimming the glasses with salt, trying in the unthinkingly familiar ritual to steady her own nerves. Things were looking good. The fact that Jack was nervous reassured her, but a lot depended upon the outcome of this evening and yet there was so much over which she had no control. For a start she had no idea what Jack was going to say, so she could not even predict her own reaction to his words.
They sat on the sofa and sipped their drinks. They were together and still a chasm apart and the silence grew more uncomfortable between them the longer it stretched out. Juliet did not think it her responsibility in the circumstances to fill the space between them with congenial chat. In the end though, because she could hear the little dog skittering unsettled from room to room, she said, ‘What’s up with Amelie?’
Jack said, ‘She picked a fight with a German shepherd at Doggie Day Care.’
‘Why are you taking her there?’
‘I’ve been out of town a lot the last few weeks,’ he said.
Juliet nodded. With a woman, she thought, gloomily. Out of town romancing someone appreciative of his writing as well as his looks; someone literate and cultured and beautiful and probably very rich.
‘No,’ Jack said, reading her mind. ‘It was professional rather than personal. It’s promotional stuff; publicity. It’s fulfilling a contractual obligation. I wasn’t doing what you might think.’
‘I wasn’t thinking that at all,’ Juliet said. She said the words emphatically but to her own ears, they sounded hollow. There was another awkward silence and she wondered how long they would be able to delay confronting the subject of Jack’s affair. They would have to address it at some point that evening. He must have come there prepared to be honest, even if he wasn’t really contrite.
‘This place is huge,’ Jack said, changing the subject.
‘And cheap,’ Juliet said.
‘How much?’
‘Thirty-eight hundred.’ She could not disguise the pride in her voice. She did not even try.
‘Are there other apartments available?’
&nb
sp; ‘For who?’
‘For me.’
‘You? I don’t think we’re quite ready for that.’
Jack said, ‘We could be like Mia and Woody.’
‘He cheated on her too,’ Juliet pointed out.
‘Right,’ Jack said. ‘Right …’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Juliet said. She got up. She looked at the now empty glass in her hand. She reached for the glass Jack was cradling but it was still almost full and he shook his head. She sighed and turned and walked into the kitchen.
‘I can tell you everything that happened,’ Jack called after her.
‘I don’t want to know,’ Juliet said.
‘You were never home. I almost literally never saw you.’
‘That isn’t true.’
‘Even when you were there, you were preoccupied by your work to the point where you might as well not have been.’
Juliet tossed fresh ice into her margarita glass. She added tequila. She sliced another lime. She said, ‘Please don’t tell me you slept with someone else because I was working too hard.’ At her feet, agitated, Amelie had appeared and started to bark. When Jack replied, she could hardly hear what he was saying for the barking. She picked the terrier up. She turned back for the living room with her drink in one hand and Amelie cradled in the other arm.
‘I’m not saying that at all,’ Jack said. ‘I was sick of being alone every night. I honestly thought you didn’t care any more. We weren’t connecting. I wanted—’
‘A housewife.’
‘I wanted you and you weren’t there,’ Jack said. ‘You were all I ever wanted. Just you.’
There was a hesitation between them. Juliet would not let it become a silence. There had been enough of those. She said, ‘I’ve been with someone else.’
Jack took a deep breath. He closed his eyes and then opened them again and she saw that his fists were clenched and he had grown suddenly pale. It was obvious to her that he did not want to hear this and equally obvious that he needed to. She could embellish the story and thought that maybe he would deserve it if she did.
She remembered the words Mike had used in this very room to describe what Jack had done to her. He devastated you. She remembered the rainbow shimmer on their lawn and the empty dismay in her belly as she fought the concussion and shame on that August afternoon.
It was a lot to forgive, wasn’t it? She probably deserved her pound of flesh in revenge. More than a pound she thought. She could give Jack the graphic blow by blow of a fictional passion and he would believe every syllable and squirm accordingly. And part of her was tempted to. But she decided she would not do that. She was not playing games. She had not invited him here merely to score points off him.
‘It was a flirtation. For a moment, it felt amazing. He was attractive, intriguing. He was nice.’
Jack did not say anything. His head was bowed, listening to her. He was looking at the floor.
Juliet cleared her throat. She said, ‘I want to be clear about something. I want you to be clear about it too. He was nice, my flirtation. But he was never you.’
‘Was he the guy with the glasses?’
Juliet said, ‘How would you know that?’
‘I followed you one night. I was going to ring your bell, but …’
‘… you followed me?’
‘I know, I’m sorry, it sounds wrong, even a little creepy. But I had to do it. I was beginning to understand what I stood to lose, what I’d maybe lost, for ever. I had to do it, just like I had to call you when you refused to take the calls. It wasn’t good any more.’
‘What wasn’t?’
‘Anything, Juliet. Life.’
She looked at him. He was looking back at her now. He shrugged. ‘Life without you,’ he said.
He looked away again, down at the floor, thinking, she supposed, that he had said too much, like a gambler who displays too early a hand that isn’t strong enough to win the game. And now he had no more cards to play.
It did not matter to her. It was neither game nor competition and either they both won, or neither of them did. She reached for his hand and held and then kissed it. He touched her face, stroking and caressing the skin around her eyes and mouth, touching her the way a potter might, shaping his most precious clay. They kissed, then. And to Juliet the kiss was perfect. Their mouths melded. The kiss eventually broke and when it did, Juliet took Jack by the hand and led him into her bedroom.
Thirty
CROUCHED ON A shelf in the kitchen, Max watched almost all of this drama unfold. The little he did not see of it, he clearly heard. He had not left the apartment after taking Jack’s phone number. His urge to stay had been too strong. He had hidden in the kitchen, where the dog had almost alerted Juliet to his presence as he crouched in the shadows above a cupboard beside the cooking range.
They had been oblivious, too wrapped up in the charged moment of their reconciliation to sense him. Desperate to get closer, Max had managed to creep into the living room where he hid behind the sofa. He was so close that he could feel the body heat emanating off them as they embraced. He could smell their mingled scents, and his indignation and fury almost choked him. It wasn’t fair. This man had betrayed her; when Max had met her, she’d been at her lowest point. He had sensed the despair and desperation coming off her; she exuded it. And he had been the one to rescue her.
She’d still be trudging the streets of New York trying to get her life back together if it wasn’t for him. And how did she repay him? Was this gratitude? Was this justice? Was this how he was going to be rewarded for his kindness and chivalry, with a coquettish shrug of rejection in favour of someone who had broken her heart?
The little terrier was barking again. They barked at intruders and he wasn’t one. He had been crouching atop a kitchen shelf when the dog had cocked its head and sniffed his presence in the shadows there and taken exception to him. Maybe it was just loyal to the interloper who’d brought it here on the leash. Maybe it thought three was a crowd.
He would have to leave before the animal alerted them to him. The barking would raise their suspicions eventually.
They were in the bedroom. Their voices low. He could hear them, but it was a strain to do so because their shared tone was confidential and intimate.
The guy said, ‘You ever get the feeling you are being watched here?’
‘Jesus. Not you too.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I invited Mike and Syd for dinner. Mike thought someone was in the bathroom, watching him pee.’
The guy laughed. There was not much humour in the laugh.
‘An old man owned the building when I first moved in. He was probably very nice but he was creepy too in that way old men can become when they don’t see enough daylight or have many friends. He died.’
‘You think he’s haunting the place?’
‘The idea occurred to me. But the odd noises, the feeling of being awoken sometimes and then seeing nobody there. Those sensations preceded his death.’
‘Maybe that’s why the rent is so reasonable. You share the apartment with ghosts.’
It was Juliet’s turn to laugh. She did not sound terribly amused either.
‘I’m going to see what’s bugging Amelie,’ Jack said.
‘And then?’
‘And then, my darling, we are going to get properly reacquainted.’
Life had always been unfair, Max thought, creeping off towards the kitchen and his access to the passages. He had been dealt a terrible hand in the parents who had deserted him and the grandfather who had bullied and beaten him mercilessly after their deaths. Even when his physical strength had left him, August had still taunted his grandson cruelly, humiliating him at every opportunity, always reminding him that he and not Max owned the building.
Before Juliet, Max had merely existed, but with her came the promise of a real, vibrant life. That’s why he’d manipulated her into moving here, that’s why he had planned to own the building.
And now he did own it; every brick and inch of plaster and floorboard and ceiling joist and frame of window glass. It had all been going so well. Until he realised that he owned no part of her. His plan for her had gone awry and he deserved better.
August had disconcerted Juliet. Max had picked up on that. He had wanted her to be comfortable. He had wanted the apartment she had just rented to be her dream home. So he had injected August with an increased dose of the sedative he had been prescribed.
The dosage had only been fractionally greater than what he was ordinarily administered with. But practice had made Max an expert in the potency of his grandfather’s medication and he knew it was enough to stop his faltering heart from beating altogether.
August had known. He must have felt the extra volume of the liquid pumping into his vein or noticed that the chamber of the syringe took fractionally longer to empty as the lethal dose was discharged from it.
‘You’ve killed me,’ he whimpered.
‘You were cruel in life, Grandfather. Try not to be pitiful in death,’ Max replied coldly.
‘Why have you done this to me?’
‘For everything you have done to me. If I thought I could have done it without raising suspicion, the moment would have come much sooner.’
‘So now you are a murderer.’
‘I am what you made me.’
August shuddered and closed his eyes. They opened again. The pupils were pinpricks and he was sweating and his skin had grown translucent. ‘Hold me, Max,’ he said.
‘Hold you? Why?’
‘So I don’t die alone.’ With the last effort of which his body was capable, he held out his arms for a dying embrace.
Max rose from beside him, shaking his head. ‘Go to hell,’ he said, before leaving the room, closing and locking the door behind him.
And he’d gone through all that for Juliet. He had extinguished the life of his only living relative in a warm and selfless gesture of welcome to the woman whose life he dreamed of sharing. And it had gained him precisely nothing.
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