“I’m—I’m the same,” I say, the absurdity of it plain as the knife itself. “Look. I’m taking it off.”
I claw at the tape holding the sheath, then when fingernails aren’t enough, bite the edge with my teeth. Eventually I tear an end loose and rip the tape off my skin. It leaves fiery red stripes on my forearm, sticky and black along the sides where the adhesive glued my skin to the grime of the city.
But Terrance has pulled away and stands against the water-stained wall, eyes turned to something else, as if he’s embarrassed for me.
I move to the couch, humiliated at having intruded in his world. “I appreciate it,” I say finally, my voice stiff, official. “You took a big risk, seeing me. And I appreciate it.”
“Not much left to risk,” he says. “Whoever it is you pissed off. They took it out on my dad and me.”
“Took it out how?”
“You think they didn’t know about us? You called me, sent texts, from Prague, remember?”
“It was a fresh SIM, I didn’t…”
“Fresh SIM? So what? Me, who never got a call from Prague in my life, suddenly gets one. That’s all they needed.” He closes his eyes, breathes in and out slowly.
“It’s—that’s not proof. It’s just circumstantial.”
His face tightens, lips stretched, anger being tamped down. “It was enough,” he says sharply. “For them, it was enough. They came three months after—whatever you did over there. Is it true, by the way? What they said?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe they exaggerated. Terrance, what did they do to you?”
“They accused my dad of laundering money for terrorists in Syria and Sudan.” He drains his glass, then sets it down and takes a drink straight from the bottle.
“I’m sorry, Terrance.”
“The whole thing was very—obtuse. Some court no one had ever heard of. Evidence he wasn’t even allowed to see. In the end, they dropped the most serious charges, so only five years in a cushy prison in Nevada. Lost his license, though. And between the lawyers and the fines for the lesser charges, there’s not much left.”
I can’t help but look around the room, however worn down it is, and think of all his traveling. For him, not much left still leaves him with far more than my dad and I have ever seen. A flash of anger goes off inside me, but I decide to take his point. It sucks to be a millionaire when you used to be a billionaire. I can see that. I guess.
“But you never gave it to them,” I say. “The book. The codes.”
He looks at me, shrugs. “Of course not.”
“You did that—for me.”
“I did it on general principle. Fuck them. Fuck their fake court.”
I blink, look down. “Thank you. Terrance, thank you.”
“Yeah, well. You’re welcome.” A little laugh sneaks out, then he lifts the bottle to his mouth again. “Harvard double legacy, endowments. So you’d think I’d be a shoo-in, right?”
“I suppose.”
“Denied. No reason given.” Terrance waves his glass in the air dismissively. “Princeton, same thing. Yale. University of fucking Minnesota.”
“What do you do instead? Do you have a job?”
“Freelance, sometimes. Here and there. Network security. But legit companies won’t touch me. Maybe they get a phone call from Washington. Who knows.” He wanders to the window and pushes the curtain aside with a finger. “Mostly I travel. I was in Australia for a few months. China.”
“I know. I saw your pictures.” I swallow, look down. “You’re really good.”
“Thanks.” A smile flickers on his face. “Those are just—what I take with my phone. I bought an old film camera for the important stuff. I think it’s what I want to do.”
“Be a photographer?”
“Kind of,” he says. “Printmaker.”
Nice to have options.
“Printmaker,” I say. “That sounds—kind of cool.”
He hears me, the thing underlying my words. Something in his face melts away and he comes around to the couch, hovering next to me. Then he touches my shoulder. “Sorry. It must seem like, just whining. I know it’s been worse for you. You’ve been through—I can’t even imagine it.”
“No, I—I’m just sorry. About what I did to you.”
He sinks into the cushion next to me. “Will you tell me about it?”
“About what?”
“Prague. What you did.”
I finish off the champagne in my glass; he pours me more. “Such bad things, Terrance.”
Ten
Tell him nothing or tell him everything. That’s the decision I have to make, and, without thinking too long about it, I decide on everything. The confession of all of it, the deceit, the murders—the words feel every bit as dangerous as the deeds themselves. Let the rich kid shoulder it for a little while, I think. He won’t rat me out. And if he does, all the easier for me. It’s a game of hide-and-seek that’s gone on too long. I’ve hidden myself too well, so it’s time to dangle a foot out from under the bed, find me already.
He takes it better than I would have thought, keeping whatever private judgment he renders about me to himself, behind a face of calm and cool. Another bottle—red wine this time—is ordered from room service, along with two BLTs and a chocolate mousse to share. I eat all the mousse, and Terrance doesn’t mind.
It must be noted that Terrance says almost nothing throughout my confession, absorbing the facts as a journalist might. Dispassionately and quietly, except for small, barely audible acknowledgments that he’s heard me. When I’m done, when I’ve told him everything, we’re sitting together in silence, Terrance sideways on the couch, me nestled against him, my back resting on his chest, my arm lying on his leg. He takes my hand, intertwines his fingers with mine, and finally speaks:
“How did it make you feel?”
“How did what make me feel?”
“The things you did,” he answers.
“Things?” I say.
“You know.”
“You want to know about the killing,” I say.
“Yes,” he says.
I shrug, but then think that’s the coward’s way out, to suggest that I don’t know. Because I know exactly how it made me feel. Since I’ve put Terrance in danger by bringing him here, and will put him in more danger in the weeks to come, I owe him the truth.
“The first one—it was a guy on a train,” I say. “I didn’t mean to do it. I felt guilty. I guess. For a while.”
“How about the second?”
“The second one was some random bigot. A bully. He didn’t really do anything to me directly,” I say. “That one—the second one—surprised me.”
“How so?”
“How easy it was.”
Silence from both of us, in honor of what it means for killing to become easier the second time. He pulls his arms tight around me and the embrace feels like nothing so much as the safety bars on a roller coaster. I let my head tilt back against his shoulder and then fall asleep.
I don’t know how long he lets me stay this way, but at some point we move to the bed and retake our positions. I fall asleep once more with him holding me, pressed up to me from behind, his lovely body warm as a beach. Even through his clothes and mine, I feel his heartbeat tapping against my back, steady, untroubled.
And there I sleep for half a day, or maybe just less than that.
When I wake, it’s bright in the room, daytime, and Terrance, dressed and shaved, is sitting in a chair he’s pulled to the bedside as if this were a hospital and I were a patient.
“Need anything?” he asks. “Water? Tylenol?”
I shake my head, then notice something in his hands—an old-school mechanical camera, slim and black. “What are you doing?”
He shrugs. “Looking at you,” he says.
“No, with that,” I say. “Did you take my picture?”
“Yeah. You looked so—beautiful.” He raises the camera to his right eye, adjusts something on the
lens.
“Stop,” I say, turning away, knowing my hair is a mess, wondering if there’s drool caked on my cheek.
His hand turns my chin back so that I’m looking directly at him. “You are. You’re beautiful,” he says.
But I’m not. I can’t be. A killer isn’t beautiful. An alcoholic fugitive isn’t beautiful. Everybody knows this. “Liar,” I say.
“Gwendolyn, you’re beautiful,” he repeats.
“Stop calling me that,” I say, pulling the pillow over my head so he can’t look at me. “And I’m not.”
The pillow rips away from my face and he tosses it off the bed. He’s standing beside the bed, then he swings a leg over my waist so he’s kneeling over me. “It’s your name,” he says, raising the camera. “And you are.”
Before I can protest, I hear the click of the shutter and the polite ratchet of the film advancing with a motion of his thumb. I swat his stomach, too hard for it to be playful, but he laughs and fires the camera again.
“Look that way,” he says. “Toward the light from the window.”
“My hair looks like shit,” I say.
“I’m not taking pictures of your hair. I’m taking pictures of you. Now turn.”
I scowl at him but do it anyway. Another click, and I wonder what it was he saw in that millisecond that he liked. Is it possible he’s being sincere? Is it possible that after everything I’ve told him, he still thinks I’m beautiful? Worthy of him, worth remembering forever?
At that moment, some bureaucrat inside me fires off a panicked message to my more rational self: He’s taking pictures of you! But this is film, and the images are trapped inside the camera, at least for now. And if these photos become the last record of my existence here, let the record show that for at least a little while, I was happy. Because the truth is, in this second, I am. That I’m here with Terrance is a victory. That I’m happy is a victory. Let the record show that for a little while, I won.
“If you’re caught with those,” I say, “it’s proof we were together.”
“I’m not ashamed.”
“It’s not about shame. It’s about consequences,” I say.
“Some people are worth it,” Terrance says.
I turn my head to the side, the way models do in magazines, and look at him from the corners of my eyes. “Like this?”
“Yes,” Terrance says. “But stop smiling.”
“I can’t help it.” I curl an arm over my head, doing my best to look languorous and bored like a bedded aristocrat. “This?”
“Good.” Another click.
I push back the sheets and lower the shoulders of my tank top. “This?”
Another click.
I lower the tank top farther. “This?”
* * *
It is not as it was with Marco. It is not fun, or rather, it is not that kind of fun. The notion that fun can be divorced from pleasure—and in making love to Terrance, there is much pleasure—comes as a surprise to me. This is pleasure as serious business. Pleasure as completing a task too long postponed. And, if I am to be truthful, it didn’t work the first time.
It’s only later, the second time, after yet more confessions and talk, after—imagine this, a little laughter—that it actually happens. It isn’t the playful advancing and retreating, the strumming of fingers over skin, the that now this, skillful Marco employed. Rather it is a little rough, a little dry, and at one point I bite his lip too hard and he yelps. Afterward, I pull the condom off him and put it on the nightstand.
We are—or at least I am—glad when it’s over; the tension of something inevitable having come to pass. Now we can see that the pieces do, in fact, fit; that we are both still human beings that way.
He lifts my hand from where it lies on his stomach and seems to study it, peering at the dents and small scars I’ve picked up from broken glass and hot pans and sharp knives.
“A tacky question,” he says.
“Anything,” I say.
“Did you have a boyfriend, where you came from?”
“I did.”
“Not anymore.”
“He—cheated on me. In a way.”
He nods, then laces his fingers through mine. “Asshole.”
For only a second I consider asking him about girlfriends, but I really don’t care about the answer. Whether I’m one of a thousand others, there’s no room in my head for little jealousies. My eyes fall to the nightstand, where his camera sits next to the condom. I pull my hand free from his and reach across him to pick it up. It’s heavier than it looks, and its black metal body is rubbed to a well-used, brassy finish at the edges. It’s a weighty, important-feeling device and reminds me of the first time someone handed me a pistol. Leica, it says inside the little red dot on the front.
“Thank you,” I say. “For taking my picture.”
He rolls over on his side, facing me, and spirals a lock of my hair around a finger. “You didn’t mind?”
“I felt for once like—like I wasn’t hiding.” I roll the camera over. “So this is your thing now? Taking pictures?”
He watches me, follows my movements with his eyes. “The taking is just part of it. I want to put them on paper. Something beautiful. That can be touched.”
“Something beautiful you can touch. I like that idea.”
“There’s this guy, Miksa Jò. He’s a printmaker.” He presses his lips to my shoulder. “My dream is to study with him. Be an apprentice, then start my own shop.”
“Miksa. What is that, Japanese?”
“Hungarian. He’s in Budapest.”
On the bottom of the camera is a recessed turnkey. I flip it out. “What does this do?”
“It opens it up. If you turn it, you’ll expose the film and destroy the pictures.”
I look at him, his eyes only a few centimeters from mine. “I really should, shouldn’t I?”
He closes his eyes, then nods. “You have to,” he says.
I twist the key, then twist it back. “Fuck it. Keep them.”
“Bad idea,” Terrance says.
“I’m full of bad ideas.” I set the camera back on the nightstand, then turn to him and cup the side of his face. The words come out spontaneously: “I love—I love that you’re here.”
Caught myself just in time.
He runs his thumb over my hand. “And why am I here?” he whispers. “To deliver your book?”
I kiss him to shut him up. Let the question be asked in another hour or another day.
He pushes me away gently. “Why am I here, Gwen?”
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. I’m sore from making love and use the corner of the sheet to clean myself. His eyes are on me; I feel them on my back, my ass, my neck. “Are you angry, Terrance?”
“With you? No. Not anymore.”
“No, with them.”
“Them?”
I turn to him. He’s lying on the bed, head propped in one hand. “The people who did this to me. And to you and your dad.”
Terrance closes his eyes. “Sure. But so what?”
“Because it matters,” I say. “It matters that someone pays.”
He rolls over onto his back. “No one ever pays. Or, the wrong people pay. That’s the world.”
I take his hand and kiss each slender finger one by one. “And that’s okay with you?” I say between kisses. “Isn’t there something we can do?”
He scrunches up his face and does his best white-guy voice. “Maybe write a strongly worded letter to the editor.”
I smile. Pretend to smile. “No, really, what’s your plan? Think they’ll ever let you get a real job? Think they’ll ever let you, I don’t know, live normally?”
Quiet except for the rustling of sheets as he turns and looks at me. Something there, in that look. “Yes. I thought about it. A lot. And I have a plan.”
“Which is?”
“There’s a trust fund—irrevocable. It’s in Switzerland; the government can’t touch it. I get it when I’m twenty-f
ive. My plan is to start an online publication.”
“A blog?”
“No. A real publication. Something big. To fight injustice, government abuses.”
“So, a blog.”
“No. With reporters. On the ground. Making people aware.” He squeezes my hand. “I have a business plan. The whole thing is entirely self-supporting, no advertising. I’ve been working on it for a year.”
I close my eyes and nod along. “And in the meantime?”
“Living well is the best revenge. Isn’t that what they say?”
“Living well,” I repeat. I stand and move away from him, to the curtains covering the window, and push them open. Below me, the streets of BA are thick with midday traffic, cabs and honking horns. I lean forward for a better view, the window glass cold against my breasts. “I thought you wanted to start your shop, making prints?”
“A dream, I said. What I want to do. This, the publication, it’s what I have to do.”
I reach over to the cart room service left behind and tilt the wine bottle, hoping there’s something left, but it’s empty. “How does money work, Terrance?”
“What?”
“Tell me how money works. I want you to teach me.”
I hear him crawl across the bed and I look at him. He’s sitting on the edge, covering his waist with the sheet as if a gust of modesty had suddenly blown into the room.
“I have no idea,” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “You do. You’re smart that way. About rich-people things. Your dad’s a billionaire. Or was.”
“Then what do you want to know?”
“Swiss bank accounts.”
Terrance’s shoulders slump and he closes his eyes. He knows what I’m talking about without my having to say it. I’d gone to him for help when I’d first discovered the account numbers hidden in a mini–storage unit in Queens. He’d decoded them, and together he and I learned—learned the hardest way possible—that the hunger for other people’s money is what moves the world.
“The Zoric accounts,” he says.
“Yes.”
“It’s not like in the old days,” he says. “Thirty years ago, twenty, you were just a number. Total secrecy. But now it’s different.”
“Different how?”
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