Chapter Fifty-one: Descending
WE WERE BACK on the street. My foot was stalled on the curb. I kept thinking about Sara Cinnamon. I had always looked down on her for crushing on married men and the whole doormat-meets-heavy-boot dynamic that she applied to her love life. But I had fallen head over heels into the same trap. I had fallen for Ben, and he was every bit as married as Cinnamon’s men. I wasn’t so different from Sara, after all. I just hoped I smelled better.
“Are you okay?” Pressley finally asked me.
“Pres, we’re not Christmas caroling here. The payload on this Santa’s sleigh is a bomb. Freaking out is to be expected.”
“I realize that. But you’ve gotten really quiet all of the sudden.”
“Maybe there is something on my mind. Maybe I’m a little curious on your marital status.”
“Marital status?”
“It’s a reasonable question, given recent developments. Sara keeps getting played by married men. I just found out Ben is married after dating him for two months. A lot can happen in three years, so I’m wondering if you did the white routine already.”
“I’m not married. I wouldn’t have kissed you if I was married.”
“What about a girlfriend? Fiancé? Been out for coffee with anyone lately?”
“Are you trying to ask if I ever dated anyone after you?”
“Yes.”
“Of course I did.”
“Like who?”
“There was one girl. Abigail Swindell. She asked me to the Sadie Hawkins dance that February after you left. We dated on and off after that. She got a job offer in San Francisco after graduation and we broke things off. By then I was already onboard with the CIA so I couldn’t follow her.”
“You dated a girl named Abigail Swindell?”
“Yeah. Is there something wrong with that?”
“Swindell? Really? Did you have any background on the girl? Because that is a liar’s name if I ever heard one! It’s a cry for help, really, I mean, advertising the swindling right in the name.”
“Abigail was a perfectly nice girl. You just want to be critical of any girl I dated after you. But you’re one to talk. Doctor Zhivago over there tried to blow you up.”
“Are you sensing the same theme I am? Bad taste in men.” I was letting my eyes linger on him. “I can’t believe you dated some bimbo called Swindell.”
“What can I say? You were gone. Life went on. Did you expect me to say that I sat around crying over you?”
“No –.”
“Because I did. At first, that was all I did.”
“You did?”
“But then I moved on. I met other people. I dated other girls. But none like you.”
I was nervously twisting the snowflake pendant around my neck. “I just don’t want to settle for drugstore rubies the way Sara seems to be content doing. I need our love to be the real thing. Speaking of drugstore rubies, this necklace weights a ton for its size. I think these are real diamonds. Sara must have spent a fortune.”
“Alice, I promise what I have to offer is not drugstore rubies. But for the past three years, you’ve been living on fool’s gold and we need to just get to the riverbank and end this all. Then our love can be strong as diamonds. “
“You’re right. Let’s just hurry up and get this done.”
A helicopter was crossing overhead in the sky. “Crap,” Pressley bemoaned, “we need to hide somewhere.” His eyes were scanning the area. They stalled on the entrance to the Ecole Militaire metro station. “In there.”
I was wishing away the menacing black copter with my eyes. “Good idea.”
We scooped down under the entrance. I surveyed the barren platform and it was gray and bygone for the overnight. “I think I know a shortcut.”
“Alice, time is limited right now and I really don’t want to get lost and have your shortcut take forever and risk losing even a minute.”
“What’s taking forever is scuffing through the streets.”
“What shortcut are you proposing?”
“The trains, of course.”
“The trains aren’t even running right now. It’s four A.M. on Christmas Eve.”
“Not riding the trains. Just the rails. We can walk along the tracks. It will keep us out of view of the helicopter.”
“It’s like a human spider web down there, and there could be dangerous spots. Don’t homeless people sleep down there? How well do you even know your way around?”
“I know them well enough. What do you say?”
“I say,” Pressley’s fingers were dancing along the cold railing, his eyes peering into the rail tunnel like it was an unknown world, “that I guess I will trust you.”
“Let’s go.” We embarked into the station. The abandoned tracks had a hollow and empty augury about them. Shadows housed the concrete. Rat claws echoed. A color-coded map of the metro routes hung from limestone.
“How about we follow Line 10?” Pressley suggested.
“That should get us to the left bank of the river.”
But when I opened my mouth to reply, a voice other than mine made its presence known inside the tunnel. The unknown voice was rippling through the hollows of the tunnel with laughter. Yes, this mystery voice had laughed.
“It’s just a homeless person,” said Pressley. “I can see him napping over there. Probably just having a wacky dream.”
My joints un-tensed. “Phew. Now where were we?”
But then the voice called my name. Called out Alice. I heard it. Goose pimples erupted on my skin.
“That was not a random homeless person,” I said shakily. When I looked at Pressley he was stiff as driftwood.
I tensely and languidly turned my body towards the voice. A pair of eyes were staring back. The irises were wide and stupefied, as though perceiving me as an enigma formed from the steam of an invisible train gone by. I followed the outline of the stranger’s face, ensconced by gray nebulous shadows, to a slender chin and a halo of green hair formed around the edge of the hairline.
“Hello, Alice,” said the voice in the shadows, eerily delighted, as though my name tasted like wine on his tongue.
Chapter Fifty-two: Second Chances
“SKIP?” IT WAS him alright, hair as green as mint, bone-thin frame. It had to be him.
Skip Hask shifted from the shadows. My eyes were surveying the caravansary blanket at his feet and a jangly typewriter strewn asunder. “Merry Christmas,” he said ironically.
“Are you sleeping in the railway?” I asked him.
He drowsily stretched his arms out over his head. I noticed that he was wearing one of those tattered consignment T-shirts with the face of the blue-eyed baby and the slogan, Never Trust Anyone Over the Age of Zero. “Just taking a little nap,” he replied facetiously. “Waiting for Santa to show up.”
I was treading toward him, and that’s when Pressley interrupted. “You actually know this person?”
“This is my friend, Skip. He’s a reporter.”
Presley was scratching the poppy seed stubble at his chin. “Exactly how many vagrants do you know in this city?”
“I’m popular, sue me.” I kept on towards Skip. “It’s easier to make friends in Paris when you’re not shooting everyone you meet off the Eiffel Tower.” I was leaning into Skip now. “Skip, what are you doing here? Do you live here in the rails?”
“Not exactly. You see, hotels in Paris are nasty expensive, and I’m a man of limited means since I’m living on a reporter’s salary, well, a phony reporter’s salary, so I settled for somewhat less than five-star accommodations.”
“So then you have been living down here?”
He reached down for a can of pork and beans and peeled open the lid. “The accommodations leave a little to be desired, but mostly I can’t complain.” His tongue lapped up the brown globular juice dripping off the lid. A degree of alarm suddenly registered in his eyes. “Alice, what’s that beeping sound?”
“Oh, that, right.” I
squeezed my lips. “We have a bomb.”
Skip backed up a few steps. “Damn, Alice, I knew you were a little bit psycho, but I didn’t think you were crazy enough to go and blow up the metro system!”
“I’m not blowing anything up. We’re going to dump the bomb in the Seine precisely so that it doesn’t blow people up.”
“If we ever get there,” Pressley called across the tracks. “Otherwise, I guess chateau de Skip is fine enough to go kaboom in.”
I faced Skip again. “I have exciting news.”
Skip offered me a spoonful from his can of cold pork and beans. “Exciting news?”
I politely declined the beans and told him, “I have it Skip, I have the dynamite stick, and I’m about to turn it into confetti over Paris.”
“You have it?”
Pressley was thumbing the trigger on his Glock. “Easy boy,” he said. “It is not up for grabs.”
Skip was looking flushed. “The dynamite stick is real, after all. That’s amazing. But it was my only hope and now you’re sort of destroying it.”
I felt kind of bad for Skip, sleeping in the gutter with a bad dye job and typing an article that probably only a dozen people, tops, would read. Then I remembered something Andy Warhol once said. Don’t pay attention to what they write about you, just measure it in inches.
It was right then and there I realized I wanted a few inches from Skip. “Skip, what if the dynamite stick isn’t your only hope? What if there is something I can do, only there’s something I need in return for it.”
“What is it you want from me? Don’t be greedy about it. I mean, you’ve seen where I sleep.”
“What I want won’t cost you a penny.”
“I like it so far.”
“I need you to write an article.”
“An article?”
“Yes, but not a real one. A fake one. I need one with phony eyewitness testimony of one male and one female subject who blew themselves up, along with the legendary dynamite stick, over the Seine River on Christmas Eve.”
“Yikes, Alice. I didn’t realize you were suicidal. There are hotlines for that.”
“I am not suicidal. We aren’t really going to blow ourselves up. But after we do what we do with the dynamite stick, it’s better for the world to think we got ashed.”
“I think I follow.” Skip’s fingers were hovering above his typewriter keys, awaiting my dictation.
“How about you go ahead and produce a meaty little piece based on eyewitnesses who saw, wait, let me think.” I put my finger to my chin as I devised the story in my mind. “Write that the eyewitnesses saw the death of a Russian physicist named Nadine Blye and a rogue government agent named Pressley Connard, as they blew themselves up in the water following a romantic entanglement and espionage.”
“Ah, star-crossed lovers. The old standby. This makes a great story, sure, and it helps you clear your tracks and start a new life. But how does it help me?”
“What if I told you that you could publish it as a non-disgraced journalist?”
“Impossible, Alice. The government knows my real name. It’s in a database. The only reason they haven’t busted me for the nuke article is because they couldn’t find me after I changed my name. It’s impossible to clear my name. I have to publish as Skip Hask.”
“Government, as they say, is standing across the tracks from us.”
Skip pivoted his head. “The boy toy?”
“Hey, Pres, you got a way to wipe someone off the fed’s track list?”
He was reluctantly pulling out his government-issued Blackberry. He tapped a few keys. “Give me his real name and I can probably get into the system and blank it out.”
Skip’s eyes were nervously dancing side to side. His fingers ran through his hair, destroying the carefully architected spikes that had been frozen in place by hairspray. “This is incredible. Do you really think you can erase my name?”
“If we don’t hurry up, it won’t matter,” Pressley said with his eyes on the numbers subtracting from the face of the bomb. “Now just give me your real name. Hurry.”
“Elliot Risk.”
The name rung like a bell in my head. “Wait a minute, your name is Elliot Risk? As in, Elliot Risk, the writer for TIME? The guy who invented the term Generation of Liars? You’re like, famous.”
His arms were spreading out, as though to present himself to an excited audience. “That’s me. I coined the term.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said, surveying the scrunched blanket at his feet and various canned food items stacked beside his typewriter.
“You know, Alice, when I wrote that article I never thought I would be part of it someday. Part of the Generation of Liars. That was for scumbags, charlatans, frauds. Not distinguished journalists like me.”
“You told me the night we met that the feds drained your bank account. They took all the money you made off those cheesy T-shirts, didn’t they?”
“Yup.”
“That sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
Pressley was finishing tapping the information on his keypad. “All set. Elliot Risk is officially off any government watch list.”
Skip was hugging me, suffocating me, really. “This is the best, Alice. Thank you. I just hope after disappearing for three years from their radar, nobody over there remembers why they were looking for me.”
“A lot has happened in the past three years. I’m sure with the developments since the November Hit, nosey journalists got placed on the backburner. After the incident Pressley and I are about to cause, even more so.”
“I hope you’re right. I may stay in Paris and publish my work from here, just to be safe. It’s pretty comfy down here.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “I gotta blow this joint, before I literally, well, blow this joint. I’ll keep an eye out for that article from wherever I am. Someday we are going to toast to your Pulitzer.”
Skip gave me a hug and pressed his mouth into my hair to whisper at me, “Maybe we can invite Heather Gilmore out for a toast too.”
I have a dry smile and flashed a look at Pressley to make sure he hadn’t heard what Skip said. “Let’s not get carried away,” I told Skip.
I was at Pressley’s side now. “Thirty minutes,” he said. He was reading the numbers on my chest.
Chapter Fifty-three: The Blow Up
WE MADE GOOD time cutting through the tracks. We ducked into a service port and scuttled through a labyrinth of dusty gray tunnels as narrow as ductwork.
We busted through a door that led to an abandoned metro station with a steel gray interior and turnstiles that had been tagged with graffiti. The sign was for the Eglise Auteule station. “I don’t think I’ve ever used this station,” I told Pressley.
“Don’t worry, knowing you, I’m sure there’s a long-lost friend living in this metro station too, just waiting to pop out and surprise us at the worst moment.”
“I can’t help it if I have colorful friends. A life lived in Paris is a life less ordinary.”
“Well, after tonight, there will be no more Paris for you. But hopefully lots of ordinary.”
“Ordinary? In my life? I’m not counting on it.”
We emerged on avenue de Versailles and ran up the stairway at Place de Barcelone. In the moonlit distance, I could see a thin bridge crossing over the Seine, it was bright like the color of forsythia flowers. “It’s that way to the left bank,” Pressley said.
We were trudging towards the bride, using it as a guidepost towards the river. We cut into the entrance of Parc Andre Citroën. I had been there once, right after I had first moved to Paris and wanted to explore the bounds of the city, so I knew that it spread out over dozens of acres and had greenhouse gardens, futuristic fountains, and spiny art sculptures. In the dense night air, I smelled the perfume of flowers all around me wafting from the greenhouses. As we ran, our reflections shattered like shaking glass bulbs over the surface of reflecting pools.
We rea
ched the bank of the Seine and my eyes scanned the dock, abandoned and forlorn. The buildings on the other side of the river looked light sparse galaxies seen through a blue, intergalactic haze. The water near the barges was gray and it smelled of rotting fish.
“This is going to have to be the spot,” Pressley informed me. I looked down at the bomb clenched so tightly into his fist. The countdown on the timer down to just under twenty minutes. I turned around and looked back at Paris. The horizon was growing lighter, teasing the city with daybreak, but I could still see the distant twinkle of the Eiffel Tower peeking up above the buildings like the North Star. “You ready to do this, Alice?” Pressley asked. The waters surrounding the dock were serenely still. The answer was on my lips, but it got stuck. I was distracted by an ominous ripple that was forming over the surface of the water. Next came the noise that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
A loud motor.
“What is it, Alice? Why do you have that look on your face?” Pressley begged me to tell him.
My eyes were fighting the darkness, training towards the origin of the ripples. The pale shadow of a motorboat was glimmering in the haze. When I strained my eyes to glimpse the details, I saw the curvaceous silhouette of woman. She had a comet tail of unmistakable red wavy hair streaking behind her. “Oh, crap, Pressley. I think we’ve got company.”
Chapter Fifty-four: Uninvited
“WHAT DO YOU mean, Alice?” asked Pressley. “How can we have company?”
“Do you see that motorboat speeding towards us, the one making all those ripples?”
His eyes were straining. “Yes.”
“I’m pretty sure it belongs to Motley’s sidekick, Cleopatra.” I was squinting against the curtain of blackness that gated the waters and my eyes managed to assemble an outline of Motley sitting beside her. “She’s got Motley with her too.”
“How did they find us?”
“I don’t understand how this is happening. I locked them both inside the chamber beneath the wine cellar at Motley’s house so that the authorities could pick them up.”
Generation of Liars Page 37