“Careful, Casanova.” Pressley was dusting off from the shove. “It’s not my fault you spent more time wining and dining the ladies than you did planning this thing better.”
“You’re the one trying to make a love connection up here with Alice. How did you even find us?”
“After Ophelia Le Fur started showing up everywhere uninvited, I decided to start tracking her,” Pressley said. “I figured with moves like she has, I was better off letting her hunt the dynamite stick and then snagging it from her once she had it than I was hunting it myself. But following her wasn’t as exciting as I thought. She barely left her hotel for two months. Pretty unspectacular dirt on her too. The only thing I could pull up was a restraining order filed two years ago by the head of the Olympic committee. I was doing surveillance on her tonight. I saw you guys shove Alice in the car and I followed you here.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you’ve been stalking my wife for months? Oh I bet you liked that a whole lot, didn’t you, Romeo?” Ben looked like he was going to punch Pressley again. This was taking too long for my taste. I slid in between them, dragging Ophelia on the other end of my cuff.
“Calm down, boys,” I shouted. “It’s real cozy up here on this tower and all, but this bomb is mighty heavy and I’m ready to be done.”
“Fine. Let’s end this,” Pressley said. “How about this? I cut the girls loose and I grab Alice and the dynamite stick. Ben, you and your wife kick dirt all the way back to whatever Parisian sewer you crawled up from.”
“No deal,” Ben stagnated. “That dynamite stick doesn’t make it past tonight in one piece.” Pressley opened his mouth to give a rebuttal, but he was drowned out by the high-pitched squeal of sirens breaking in the distance. “Did you call the police?” Ben asked.
“French police, U.S. agents, Interpol. I phoned them all in,” Pressley smugly replied.
“Good grief. You might as well have called in Sherlock Holmes and Scotland Yard, you thorough bastard.” Ben was looking over the rail in astonished horror at the impending parade of police lights.
Pressley opportunistically freed my end of the cuffs and snapped it to the rail.
“Hey!” Ophelia growled. When she realized she was stuck, she jerked her arm against the rail like a caged beast. “You stupid vermin!”
Pressley reached for my hand, instigating a tug to make me start running. “We need to hurry,” he whispered into my hair. Following him seemed like my best bet. We sprinted down the descending steps along the tower. A crowd of police cars was now packing the roadway that cut between the Eiffel Tower and Champ de Mars. Pressley slipped off his trench coat and tied it over my shoulders so that the bomb was concealed from view.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you in a minute, just follow me.” We slithered through the maze of headlights. A squad of French police uniforms rushed past us. Pressley flashed his badge in order to get past them. I searched among the strobing police lights for a sign of a bomb squad.
“No, Alice.” He was pulling me away. “This way.” He led me across the road, towards the stretch of plush, celestially-bathed greenery that was Champ de Mars.
“What the hell are you doing, Pres?”
“Just follow me, Alice.”
“But we are going in the opposite direction of the police.”
“I know.”
The gritty voice of a police officer crackled in the background. “Get down on the ground.” My heart skipped a beat and when I turned back to respond to him, I saw that he was several meters away standing over Ben, who had submitted down to his knees with his hands behind his back. The officer didn’t seem to notice Pressley and I running up ahead in the distance.
“You better have a very good reason for this,” I said to Pressley. We were cutting across the lawn, which was growing increasingly lathered in snow.
“Is love a good enough reason?” he asked.
I came to a standstill. I was trying to catch my breath. Trying to understand what he meant. The shouts of the officers, far away enough now to be mere echoes, rang in the distance. “Love?”
“Alice, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and…”
“And?”
“And, I love you.”
“Pressley, there is a bomb strapped to my chest. The police can help me get this thing off. Why are we running from them?”
“I love you and I can’t make you go back. I can’t force you to be who you used to be.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Alice, I don’t want you to be with me just because you think that’s all there is. If I turn in that dynamite stick and we all go back to who we used to be, I will never know if you really loved me at all. Or if you just love me because you think there’s nothing out there for you in the world.”
“This is ridiculous. Absurd. Totally absurd.”
“Is it, Alice?”
“Pressley, the reason I ran away from home wasn’t because I wanted to escape a monotonous future with you. I wasn’t seeking adventure like some bored, desperate housewife. There was a darker reason.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Maybe we need to start trusting each other.”
“Alice, you’ll forgive me if I find you a little hard to trust.”
“We can worry about love later. Let’s go turn this stupid dynamite stick over to the police and I can stop lying forever.”
“But that’s the thing, Alice. What if a liar is who you really are? I mean, after you became a liar the world was at your fingertips. You went places, you did things, and you didn’t seem to miss me one bit until our world’s collided up there on the Eiffel Tower. If we go back home and back to our old lives and you are with me again, I will always wonder if it’s because you don’t think you have a place out there in the world as plain old Margaux instead of Alice Fix. I don’t want you to settle.”
I was urgently scanning his eyes for some indication of sanity. “What is your plan? Why are we running?”
He reached for the bomb and stroked the edges of the locked-in dynamite stick. “I’m going to destroy the dynamite stick. It’s the only way I’ll ever know if you really love me.” His eyes were smoldering with an excitement that bordered on mania.
“Pressley, you cannot destroy the dynamite stick in the name of love. You’ll cause an international incident.”
“But it’s the only way I will know for sure if you love me.”
I breathed out a gargantuan sigh. “I love you, Pressley.”
“Yeah,” he said, his sparkling brown eyes encroaching onto mine, “but you’re a liar.”
A burst of light ruptured the black sky above us. It was a helicopter flying overhead with its searchlight roving the grid surrounding the Eiffel Tower. “Geez, Pressley, did you see that? They’re looking for us. Ben probably already told the officers all about me and the dynamite stick and the bomb. Turn yourself in now. Take the dynamite stick to them. Just pin it all on me. Tell them I ran you on a wild chase.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Pressley, don’t do this to yourself. Your career will be over. Your life will be over. You will always be running. You will always miss home.”
“You are my home,” he said. “I already know what the worst that can happen feels like because I already lost you once.” The helicopter was circling again. Its spotlight was spraying over everything that surrounded us. Missing us, the helicopter took a topsy-turvy dive and headed in another direction.
“Did you just say that I was your home?” I asked.
“Yes, Alice, you are home to me.”
“Damn it, why did you have to say that?”
“Because it’s true.”
“You need to realize that picking me over your future in some screwball scheme to test true love has mega consequences. Pressley, us being together has mega consequences. Can’t you see how you’re throwing your life away?”
“You won’t make me change my mind. I
lost you once and it was terrible, but if I lose you again I want to do it fair and square. So, are you in or are you out? I can’t make you do this with me, but I am going to do it.”
“Okay, I’m in.” I balanced on my toes to reach up for a kiss.
His lips brushed over mine. “We can count the stars in each other’s eyes later. Right now we’ve got to strategize. Can you unstrap the bomb?”
“Negative,” I reported. “Ophelia put this locked chain around my neck and she tossed the key out the car window on the way. I can probably cut the lock if I have enough time and a sharp enough tool.”
“Okay, first thing we have to do is find something to cut the bomb away from you and then dump it somewhere.”
“Well, we aren’t going to find it here.”
We trekked to the perimeter of Champ de Mars and came out on a street that had the entrance to the Erole Militaire metro station. The sidewalk was bare beneath stringent lamp lights. Pressley appeared momentarily disoriented and I noticed him balance his head to one side, as if cocking his ear to the sound of imagined noise.
I perked an ear and suddenly I heard it too. “Where is that beeping sound coming from?” I asked.
“You hear it too?” Pressley asked.
“It sounds like a microwave or something.” I was doing my best deer-in-the-headlights intimation. “Do you think that beeping is coming from me?”
Chapter Fifty: Don’t Tell Pierre
“ALICE, PLEASE DON’T freak out over what I’m about to tell you.” I knew something was horribly wrong by the look on his face when he said it. “The beeping is definitely coming from you.”
“It’s the bomb, isn’t it? Do you think there’s some kind of default timer on the bomb? Do you see lights blinking on me or anything?”
Pressley pushed his nose into the face of the bomb and I heard him mumble, “This isn’t good.”
“What isn’t good? What? Tell me!”
“I think you’re right, some kind of timer has kicked in.”
“What makes you think that?”
“There’s a sixty-minute countdown in red numbers on the face of the bomb.”
“I’m dead.” My insides seemed to melt and loosen up like an inward storm and I doubled over into the freshly fallen snow. My hunger-afflicted stomach could only deliver a spout of black bile.
“Alice,” Pressley was trying so hard to console me, “don’t worry. I can fix this.”
I was stumbling around. My eyes were pressing out hot, stinging tears. “It’s too late, Pressley. I never should have let you lead me here. I should have just run to the police when I had the chance. Just get away quickly before I blow you up with me.”
“Alice, just listen to me, I’m going to get this bomb off of you. We have to get to the river. I know a spot on the Seine with nothing more than abandoned barges. Once I get you free, I’ll toss the bomb there.”
“How exactly are you planning to get this thing off me?”
“I need something sharp to unjam the lock. A knife or something.”
“Like a chef’s knife?”
“A chef’s knife would be perfect. I doubt we are going to just happen upon a chef’s knife in the middle of the street in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve.”
“Probably not. But that restaurant over there might have one.”
“Restaurant?” He was spinning on his heels now. It was a scant-sized bistro and its glass windows were black as pitch.
“Take off your socks.”
“This is hardly the time for you to be trying to disrobe me.”
“I’m going to punch the glass out of that window and I need something to protect my hands.”
“Oh.” I kicked off my shoes and peeled down each of my socks and handed them to Pressley. I balanced my bare feet over the frozen pavement.
He was rolling the socks over his hands. “Wish me luck.”
Pressley pummeled the large glass window and was suddenly left standing inside a circle of shattered glass. There was a black abyss behind a gaping hole where the plate-glass window had been. “Let’s hurry, shall we?”
Over the jigsaw pattern of smashed glass we went. The glimmer from the streetlamps disappeared once we got on the other side. Pitch blackness and silence escorted us along. I was doing all I could not to lose sight of Pressley walking in front of me. I could hear a faint set of footsteps beneath the patter of my bare feet on the linoleum floor. The dark can do that to you.
“We just have to find a knife,” Pressley called out.
That’s when I felt a pair of hands seize each of my arms. Each hand was lined with sharp fingernails like a row of spiked ammunition. I was stopped dead in my tracks. The hot breath of my perpetrator was wheezing onto my neck. Something cold and hard was being pressed to my throat. I swallowed hard, but the swallow was trapped by the pressure of a knife blade’s teeth being clipped against my skin. “You mean like the knife that’s pointed to my throat right now?” I eked out. There was a very distinct stench coming off my assailant. My nostrils were expanding, desperately trying to identify the smell.
I realized that I knew that stench.
It was the stink of cigarette smoke mixed with Sara Cinnamon’s cheap drugstore perfume.
“Sara?” I called out.
“Alice?” a scratchy, but feminine, voice called back.
“What the heck are you doing?”
I heard Pressley press the action on his Glock. “You know this person, Alice?”
I was spinning free now, facing Sara’s shadowed outline. “This is my friend, Sara Cinnamon. She’s one my girls from Pigalle.”
“Explain why one of your girls just tried to sever your pulmonary.”
I tore into my pocket for my Zippo and flicked the flame to illuminate the space between Sara and myself. “What’s with the knife?”
Sara was looking rough, even for Sara. Her eyes were speckled with bloodshot vines and her skin tone was suppressed under a grayish color. “Sorry, Alice. I never would have cut you. I panicked when the glass shattered. I got spooked and I grabbed the carver.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “It’s Christmas Eve? Don’t you have anyone to be with?”
“That’s the thing. I’m here meeting someone. Pierre. He owns the bistro. We sort of have a thing going on. But he’s married so our engagements are, shall we say, limited. We can only meet here after hours.”
“You’re dating another married creep? I thought we burned our bras over this already. You don’t need some loser with a ball and chain at home using you as a backup. You are an independent woman, Sara.”
Sara was chewing her lips. “I know, Alice. I was all pumped about that pep talk at first. But then I got to feeling lonely, and Pierre is so sweet and he lets me take the dinner rolls home after the restaurant closes. Besides, you stopped coming around here once you got a boyfriend. I figured all that stuff before was just you being bitter over being lonely.”
“You know that boyfriend I told you about? Turns out he was all wrong for me. Everything he ever told me was a lie. He was married.”
Sara let a tisk escape her lips. “You think you know a person but you never really do. Too many darn liars out there. Prince Charming always turns out to be Duke Divorcée.”
“Exactly. That’s why you can’t just sit around and wait for some guy to rescue you, Sara.”
She shot a look to Pressley. “What about him? It sort of looks like you’re letting him rescue you.”
“He isn’t. I’m rescuing myself.”
“Does it have something to do with the thing beeping on your chest?” she asked. “You counting down to the new year or something?”
“That’s a bomb. If I don’t get it off me fast, the three of us are dead. Early Christmas gift from the ex-boyfriend.”
“What the heck are you doing coming into Pierre’s place with a bomb strapped to yourself?”
“I’m searching for a tool to cut the bomb off. Can I please use the knife
in your hand?” Sara let the knife drop to our feet. I handed it to Pressley.
“We’ll use the counter.” He pressed my cheek against the cold, sticky counter. “Stand still.” I was tense, forgetting to breath. Pressley gingerly positioned the knife over the lock and began working the blade into the mechanism.
Sara was hovering, craning her neck to watch the action. “Pierre is going to be so pissed if I blow up his restaurant.”
Pressley was grunting, sweating, hyper-focused. The lock crashed onto the floor and he caught the bomb in his hands.
“We did it.” I didn’t dare smile when I said it. The bomb was still live, after all, and the battle was only half-over.
Pressley was reading the digital face. “We only have forty-five minutes to make sure nothing in this city blows up.”
“We’ve gotta roll,” I told Sara. “I know I was a crappy friend for disappearing like I did last time, so I’m giving you a heads-up now before I go underground. Don’t worry, we’ll see each other again someday and when I come back I don’t want you dating some pig in Pigalle, you got it?”
“I got it, Alice. I’m going to tell Pierre tonight that it’s over. Unless he has a Christmas gift for me and its diamonds. Or any semi-precious stones. Or I can accept drugstore rubies and wait until after New Years to dump him.”
“Some things never change.”
“Wait, Alice, speaking of Christmas gifts, I have something for you.”
“You do?”
“This.” She was twisting a snowflake pendant on a thin silver chain that was around her neck. “I got it from one of those fancy jewel shops in Pigalle, it was in the front window, on top of one of those puffy fake snow displays with lights that made it sparkle. Anyways, I probably paid too much for it. But you always did tell me a girl should take care of herself. Well, anyways, I want you to have it because a girl should take care of her friends too.” She slipped it off from around her neck. “For all you’ve done for me.” She clasped it around my neck.
“Thanks, Sara.” I gave her a squeeze goodbye, inhaling one last gust of the stench of her perfume and lingering cigarette smoke.
Generation of Liars Page 36