by S. M. Lynch
“When it’s safe?” he asked, kissing my neck and almost making me roll over and throw myself at him.
“Yes,” I sighed, and he almost, almost put his hand inside my pants, but I turned and gave him the tempestuous Maddon stare I’d inherited off my mother.
“Okay, okay, until they’ve gone,” he agreed, “although, if you could just stay quiet, then why not, hmm?”
I jabbed his gut with my elbow and he struggled to stay quiet.
“Bad boy.”
“Okay, okay, I get it.”
I laughed a little, he held me tighter, and we fell asleep like that. Both of us always slept much sounder when we were together.
Chapter Eighteen
ON CHRISTMAS EVE, WE ALL left the house, together. It was okay, though because it was still snowing, so my father was head to toe in black fleece and thermals, and Camille hid her face and body beneath a hooded fur onesie that looked like it came right off the back of a husky (though I was reliably informed it was fake). Kyle and I toddled along behind them as we waded through three feet of snow around the streets of Paris. Some Parisians were getting about on skis, some were pulling their children around on sleds. It was so cold, it was too dangerous for any vehicles to be on the road. Kyle had dressed the best he could in snow boots, his jeans tucked into two pairs of socks and a heavy, duck-feather lined winter jacket covering his top half. I was wearing a ski suit from Camille’s wardrobe that was short in the leg. However, I had a pair of black boots that came to mid-calf so it didn’t matter so much, and I was also wearing my floor-length duffel coat over the top, plus a fur deerstalker, too.
We headed to the market in Montmartre and Camille handed out bits of jewelry between the four of us. Some gold, some silver. It was all probably worth a lot more than we’d get in exchange for it that day, but none of us could risk our U-cards at the moment. If my father and Camille were revealed to be in the same city together, Roche would wonder what was going on.
“See what you can get with any of this. Whatever you can get your hands on, doesn’t matter. Sweets, vegetables, meat, cookies, bottles of ale or wine, just split up. Meet back here in fifteen. Or scream if there’s trouble. I’ll be right with you.”
The pop-up market area was much more sparse than usual, but it was obvious some people couldn’t afford not to try and sell some of their produce or wares at such a difficult time of year.
Kyle and I huddled together beneath the eerie, gray sky and were thankful the flakes had abated, though more snow was promised later that day. We arrived at a stall selling German products, from sweets and sausage to strudel and ale.
“Would you accept this payment?” I asked the man, showing him the white gold and pearl earrings I was holding, but he shook his head.
It was a flat-out no.
“I have money,” said Kyle, whispering in my ear. “Let me use the U-card I arrived with. It’s loaded with money.”
“Then people will know where you are,” I mumbled.
“Chances are whoever sent me knows exactly where I am at all times. It’s Christmas, Ari. Let me get the stuff.”
I was torn for a few minutes, before I told the man what we wanted and he started bagging it up. Then Kyle handed over his U-card and the payment went through smoothly. We walked away with lots of goodies, so why did I feel so bad?
At the next place, a fruit and vegetable stall, I was amazed to find some Caribbean fruit had gotten through (though the price was ridiculous). That time, the seller accepted my offering of the earrings, though all we got in exchange was a couple of mangos, a handful of kiwis and a papaya. However, we were told the gentleman now had something to give his mother for Christmas.
Time had got away from us and we made our way back to the meeting point to catch up with Dad and Camille. As soon as she saw me, she said, “Why do you look guilty, Ariadne?”
I blushed furiously and looked to Kyle, who said, “I used my U-card. The one I arrived with. It’s my fault.”
My father cursed under his breath, and him being obnoxious made me feel argumentative.
“Who else would know about it, besides the people who sent him and haven’t harmed us yet? Come on!” I exclaimed. “Besides, it’s not our fault. I really wanted this stuff and the man wouldn’t accept our currency.”
“Hell, let’s go home,” said Camille, “and hope no damage was done.”
Small flakes floated down towards us as we made our way back to Camille’s place. The unfortunate thing was, that on the way home, our quickest route was past our old mansion—the now-empty and domineering white building on Rue Norvins that held so many memories inside. In fact, I was born in there.
Residents in the area knew of the building and its significance. People had tried to break into it before, but hadn’t been able to. It stood there, a monolith of times gone by, and it made no sense to most people why a grand building like that should remain empty—except us.
I saw my father shudder as we shuffled on by, and he even looked up at the roof, craning his neck and receiving numerous flakes in his eyes, temporarily blinded. I glanced up myself and it sure did look as if the roof might cave in if the snow up there got any deeper or the cold any colder.
Camille was up front leading our pack and picked up the pace once the snow was coming down thick and fast again. Before I knew it, we were back home. The inside of the house was so warm in comparison to the -15 outside that we all started to immediately sweat in our outdoor clothes and the bags we were all holding ended up being thrown towards the living room while we stripped off in the high-ceilinged but narrow hallway. I’d never been so glad in my life to remove a pair of boots.
In the kitchen, Kyle and myself emptied our brown paper bags to reveal our purchases. Camille studied our fruit and grinned.
“It’s been so long since I had papaya,” she said, thrilled.
“Good, huh? The guy accepted the earrings and was going to give them to his mom for Christmas.”
Camille thought that was cute; evidently my father had no feeling on the matter.
Our haul from the German stall was also commended by Camille, but my father merely grunted when he saw we’d bought two bottles of ale, a meat pie and a brace of sausage. All the other things like strudel and toffee and caramel sauce… didn’t interest Dad.
Then Camille lifted her heavy bag and a huge lump of cow fell onto the table. It was wrapped in paper and string and blood went everywhere.
“It’s been a while since I butchered anything,” she laughed, and the gleam in her eyes didn’t just make me feel uncomfortable—Dad and Kyle also thought she looked freaky.
“How the hell did you manage that?” Dad laughed.
“We’re obviously not going to eat all of this today or tomorrow, and Ariadne needs to keep her strength up. We’ll freeze lots of cuts, okay?”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” he reiterated.
She looked at him with a stroppy expression and mumbled, “It fell off the back of a truck. It’s fine, it’s not going to kill us, if that’s what you’re worried about. Besides, if this is all the meat we all eat all year, so what?”
My father groaned and was the last to reveal what he’d bought from the market. Being that we’d already eaten everything from the vegetable patch outside and nothing else would be ready until next year, I was hoping he’d got vegetables.
In fact, he’d got as many vegetables as he could find. Roots, leafy greens and sprouts. He’d also managed to get his hands on herbs, salt and spices. There was also cream, milk, bacon… and even more rare… eggs. Plus, white flour… and candy.
CANDY!
“How the hell did you do this?” Camille asked, picking through it all like it was dynamite waiting to go off. “Did they recognize you?”
“I have my sources, too, Camille,” he said, his voice sounding rougher. “Oh, and these… are for you.”
He took two glass bottles out of the pockets of his coat which he’d hung on the back of the kitc
hen chair in front of him. There was bubble bath in one, salts in the other. They were both rose scented. Mom always used to buy this stuff and I would steal it when she wasn’t looking. When I was a pre-teen thinking I was so grown up…
“Oh my god,” I screamed. “My favorite!”
I threw myself at him and he hugged me back. Before I even realized what I’d just done, I decided what the heck, and I let myself enjoy a big bear hug.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Well, seeing as though we’re all doomed… let’s get on with it, shall we?” Camille said, initiating the festivities. “Although, maybe first, you should leave me with my beef and I’ll clean up, then we can get started.”
She retrieved her katana from above the cupboard and withdrew it from its sheath. Kyle jumped when he saw it and moved back towards me.
“I wouldn’t touch it, that thing can slice through metal, wood… anything but diamond, probably,” I warned, whispering in his ear.
“And especially bone,” she said, sounding bloodthirsty. “It’s beautiful through bone.”
We all left the room before it got messy.
“Well done, by the way, Ari… beer will go great in our stew,” she shouted after me.
“Good to know!” I giggled.
THAT EVENING, WE all sat around the kitchen table, the room lit only by candlelight. The stew was bubbling over in the corner, slow cooking overnight, ready for tomorrow. The smell was driving me crazy let alone my father and Kyle, who kept lifting their noses to the air. The night before, we’d eaten beans on toast for dinner with a few sprinkles of some rubbery cheese, and tonight we were feasting somewhat a little more lavishly on tomato pasta paired with the German sausage I’d picked up earlier (which was in fact not real sausage, much to my father and Kyle’s dismay). What was there to say? They were men born in different times.
Even though the lights in Camille’s house were all super eco-friendly and hardly used any energy, apparently it was a family tradition of hers to eat by candlelight on Christmas Eve. So that’s what we were doing.
Camille was drinking a small glass of red wine, and I had water, while my father and Kyle were fighting over the root beer we’d found in a corner of the pantry earlier. I couldn’t find it in me to say it, but this was already the best Christmas I’d had since Mom died, and the actual feast day hadn’t even arrived yet. Christmas had never been my dad’s thing, it’d been Mom’s, and he gave up on it after she passed. He also gave up on Arthur, though he’d never have admitted it. My aunts had even given up on him, too… and they were some tough bitches. You only had to look at my brother to realize why my mother had got into so many scrapes when she was younger. He was her son, through and through, if you were to compare their temperaments. Arthur wasn’t dark like me or Dad, however, and wasn’t redhaired like Mom, either; he apparently resembled my mother’s uncle, who was lighter haired and had piercing green eyes like Grandma Eve. Me and Mom both had Pascal’s aquamarine eyes. Funny how the traits filtered down the generations.
Dad had cooked Christmas Eve dinner all by himself, combining various herbs, spices and tomato to make the sauce.
“This is really good, Dad,” I enthused.
“Thanks, Ari. Just threw it together, really.”
“It’s really good,” Kyle agreed.
“It’s very lucky I managed to drag him along, right? Nobody else in this room can cook!” Camille said, in her deadpan way.
“I don’t know, Ari can when she puts her mind to it,” said Dad.
“I can attest to that,” said Kyle. “Although, this is quite special tonight. Homecooked food… somewhere… deep in the subconscious… this is familiar, if you know what I mean.”
I touched his thigh beneath the table. “I’m glad we’re able to comfort each other like this, because who knows what comes next, right?”
Camille and my father were sitting opposite us and looked at one another, not sure if they should barf or be heartened by the scene in front of them. Kyle couldn’t help himself and reached over to plant a kiss on my forehead. Then, we all carried on eating in silence. My father didn’t even have a cross word for any of us for the rest of the meal.
After we’d all finished eating dinner, I took away the plates and produced the strudel and cream. Even my father’s eyes lit up, which was definitely a good sign.
Nobody around that table wasn’t grinning from ear to ear as we indulged in something sweet for the first time in weeks for some of us, or in my father’s case, probably months or years.
And while Kyle did the washing up and I made tea afterwards, Camille left the room to go and fetch a little surprise, having told us she had something else up her sleeve in keeping with Christmas Eve tradition.
She returned to the room bearing three gifts, all wrapped with brown paper and twine. The largest parcel was for Dad, the next for Kyle, the smallest for me.
Once tea was in the pot and Kyle had finished washing up (which he did unprompted nearly every evening, even when my dad wasn’t here, though my father had definitely noticed that Kyle was no shirker), we all sat around the table and unwrapped our Christmas Eve gifts.
When I was growing up and we’d all gather for Christmas, Camille would always be in charge of the Christmas Eve presents. Often, it was something handmade, and I knew this would be no different.
Mine was a reindeer onesie. Dad’s was a Santa onesie. Kyle’s an elf. She’d made them all herself, you could tell—because nothing in the shops ever came with so much detail.
“If we’re to be subjected to these, you’d better have made yourself one,” Dad said, in a growl.
She didn’t laugh but she wore the biggest smile as she untied her oversized cardigan to reveal a snowy onesie beneath, and when she lifted the hood, she was a full-on snowwoman.
“Very cute,” I said. “Very, very cute.”
“We must all change, and then watch my favorite Christmas movie. I’ll pour the tea.”
Kyle started pulling off his sweater and t-shirt in the room. I was used to it, but my father frowned and Camille gawped.
“Now I understand why you like men, Ari,” Camille muttered.
Kyle had quite the body, and wasn’t ashamed of it. He went right on ahead and changed in the kitchen.
“Good golly, the lining is like lamb’s wool,” he said, as he zipped it up.
I covered my mouth and laughed, my chest shaking hard.
“I, um… you like?” asked Camille, tilting her head and staring at him.
“It’s great. Why aren’t you changing, Ari?”
“I, um… it’s too cold in the kitchen,” I said, and my dad threw me a filthy look, aware I’d likely changed in front of Kyle before that day.
“Let’s all change in the kitchen, shall we?” Dad said, rather angrily.
He stood up, peeled off his clothes and revealed his body in just boxer shorts. I covered my eyes and shook my head. So did Camille. She could appreciate the male form, but not my father’s litany of scars and war wounds.
“Wow, you’ve been through some bad times,” Kyle said, staring at my father’s warrior-type body.
I didn’t need to look at him to know what he would look like to Kyle. He wasn’t leanly built like Kyle, whose young body was unmarked and untainted. My father was built like a rhinoceros and as big then as he’d ever been. His body was covered in thick black fur. His shoulders were like boulders. His thighs enormous. And yes, he was covered in purple scars and white lines where he’d been stitched up. This was a show of masculinity.
“This was the first serious attempt on my life,” he said, pointing to the gunshot wound he’d sustained when he’d first become World President. “This, the second.” This next one was the one he’d got in the gut, which had nearly killed him. “Ten thousand emissaries have come at me. Just take a look.” He did a twirl and showed off all the scars on his back and arms. “None of them succeeded. So just remember that, eh? Kyle.”
The venom in my father’s voice was understood by me and Camille, even though we both dearly wanted to wet ourselves laughing, too. When he angrily got into his Santa onesie, that’s when I just died and ended up on the floor, rolling around. Camille joined me on her hands and knees, smacking the floor with her fist, nearly dying of laughter.
We both crawled out of the room and up the stairs, unable to help ourselves. Once or twice, Kyle wondered if we were both hysterical and needed cold water throwing over us. But we batted him off.
Then, locked in my bedroom together, Camille helped me into my onesie and we looked at one another through the mirror. She had her arm around my waist and muttered, “I haven’t laughed that hard since before your mother died.”
“What does he expect? That I’ll never have a boyfriend.”
“Probably, yes.”
“Well… I think I love Kyle. There, I said it.”
She turned me to face her and pursed her lips in that exquisite, Camille-type way of hers.
“Maybe, ma cherie. But you’re young.”
“You saw his body…”
“Uh-huh,” she said dramatically, reminding me so much of my mother.
“And he’s so sweet, and gentle. And protective, and kind. Sometimes when we pass the homeless on the street, he’ll give them the clothes off his back. Or the food from our bags. He’s wonderful, Camile… he’s… just… Kyle, you know?”
She stroked my cheek and nodded. “Been there, done that, got several t-shirts. Just as long as you’re safe.”
“Oh, my… frickin’…” I cursed her.
“Well, if your mother were here, she’d say the same thing. Lord knows she had a good appetite herself.”
“TMI, Camille, TMI! We’d better get back before they lock horns.”
“True.”
We arrived back downstairs and got comfy on the sofa between the men. Camille squeezed my dad’s thigh and said softly, “Oh, you remembered.”
On the screen, my father had already found It’s a Wonderful Life and got it ready to watch. I picked up a bag of chocolate raisins and Kyle and I started snacking on them as the film got underway.