by Camilla Monk
I stepped closer to Dominik and poked his chest. “Meanwhile, maybe you could do something about your grandma. She deserves better than KTC. Is that how Lions—”
“Island.”
The latent warning in March’s voice stopped me. Even after all this time, after all he had lost, they remained his brothers, right?
Dominik treated me to a level glare. “I respect your father, but you, you’re no one to tell me what to do with her. You think I didn’t give her money? She won’t go. She’s been stuck in there her whole life; she knows nothing else and . . .”—his voice faltered—“it fried her brain. What do you know about that? About being so poor for so long that even money makes no difference in the end?”
My cheeks flushed with guilt and some degree of shame as I saw myself through Dominik’s eyes: a spoiled little girl prone to rash judgments. March’s quiet gaze met mine. He didn’t say anything, but I recognized the sorrow clouding the blue in his eyes. He didn’t pity Dominik, but unlike me, he understood.
He tilted his head at Isiporho, who tried to ease the atmosphere with one of his infectious grins—sincere or not. “Eish . . . time to go. We don’t want to miss our flight and neither do you.”
March dipped his head. “Thank you, Isiporho. I wish you good luck.”
He snapped his fingers. “Don’t need any. I am luck.”
March turned to leave. I stood in place. “Dominik, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” I murmured.
He acknowledged my mea culpa with a quick duck of his head. I waved a stilted good-bye to him and Isiporho before I ran to catch up with March. What was it that March had said to Isiporho? “I’ve flown in worse”? Indeed. I knew that glass nose, with its characteristic lower deck. A synonym for extreme endurance, sketchy maintenance, shady cargo, and rare but grisly crashes: the glorious Ilyushin Il-76.
It was so weird to step into the hold; I’d never been in a plane like that, and I felt like Indiana Jones, even though all there was to explore were steel walls covered with worn tarpaulin. It wasn’t full, but most of the shipment was constituted by pallets of cardboard boxes that didn’t look very comfortable. I spotted one though whose load was secured by nets and looked somewhat softer. March watched with a tired smile as I poked and tested the supple plastic bags stacked under the net. I checked the labels to make sure I wouldn’t be resting on stink bombs, whoopee cushions, or whatever.
It was nothing like that; but for the sake of full disclosure, if you live in London and purchased a crocheted springbok plushie imported from South Africa over the past eighteen months, know that my butt may have been near it. I climbed onto this improvised mattress and patted it for March to do the same. He seemed to hesitate.
I grinned at him. “Plush toys. It’s pretty nice; you don’t feel the nets so much. and”—I lowered my voice to a confidential whisper—“no one will ever know you did something wild!”
He gave in and, in a rare moment of pure playfulness, climbed on the pallet to lie by my side. He closed his eyes; I scooted closer to caress his cheek. His features relaxed as the hull started to vibrate. We were taking off.
I kissed his chin. “You need a shave, Mr. November, but I like you with those whiskers too.”
March ran a hand across his face. “I’ll pick the first option if you don’t mind.”
He stared at the ceiling for a while, before his gaze set on me. “Island.”
“It’s me.”
His lips grazed my forehead. “I’m truly sorry . . . for all this.”
“Don’t be,” I said, molding my body to his. “But when we find Dries, I say you hold him while I kick him.”
A chuckle breezed atop my head. “With great pleasure.”
7
Staatssicherheit
He would watch her closely . . . very closely.
—Carla Danger, Secret Police: Forbidden Files
We made a stop in Cameroon a little before sunset. It had been raining, and everything was gray: the wet tarmac of Nsimalen Airport, the sky, all shrouded in muggy, foggy weather. One of the pilots helped us out of the hold, and March guided me away from the plane and toward the jet terminal.
Once we were close enough for me to assess the aircraft that would take us the rest of the way to Venice, I addressed a silent prayer of thanks to both Raptor Jesus and Phyllis. This flight was her work, and it showed—because it was a Gulfstream, with one of those impossibly clean and comfy cabins. I inspected the cream leather seats with renewed energy before checking the contents of the minifridge. Did I want a grenadine soda and a slice of banana bread? Absolutely.
March too seemed to appreciate this change of air. A long sigh of satisfaction escaped him as he flopped into a seat, watching me binge on banana bread with a moan of delight. He motioned to a black suitcase sitting in a corner of the cabin. “Phyllis took care of your luggage.”
As soon I opened it, my knees grew weak. Oh God, yes. Yes to clean clothes and underwear—how the hell did she know I preferred hipsters? My eyes darted to March, who lounged in his seat, eyes half closed in a catlike expression, following my movements. I preferred not to imagine what conversation had taken place between him and his assistant. Would it qualify as yet another control issue if it turned out that he’d briefed Phyllis on what kind of panties I should wear? Definitively. But I would allow myself to be controlled until we landed in Venice. For the sake of clean undies.
There was a tiny shower stall in the lavatory, equipped with a shower head capable of spouting a dribble of lukewarm water. Pure bliss, in our circumstances. We waited until after takeoff to take turns showering and changing. An hour later, I wore a brand-new T-shirt and a pair of denim shorts; March had returned to his default wrinkle-free state, and the rebellious stubble of the past twenty-four hours had been cleanly shaved off his jaw.
Don’t think for a second, however, that this abundance of comfort was enough to distract me from my goals. It had not escaped my notice that while Phyllis had done wonders to equip me, one item was conspicuously missing from my trousseau . . . I shot a sideways glance at the culprit, whose body appeared to have liquefied in a large seat.
If I wasn’t allowed to have a phone, his would have to do.
“March?”
One of his eyes cracked open in lazy watchfulness. “Yes, biscuit?”
“Can I borrow your phone?”
What for? I could practically hear the question sizzling on the tip of his tongue, ready to spill from his lips, but he victoriously held it back. The tiny Stasi officer who lived in his ear and whispered bad relationship advice to him would probably recommend that he check the phone’s logs right afterward anyway. I watched his inner struggle play out, the hesitation in his eyes as he unlocked the device and he handed it to me. “There you go.”
I welcomed it with a little bow and a smile. A graceful blue-eyed ostrich stared at me disapprovingly on the phone’s wallpaper while I sent a brief message to Joy and my dad to make sure they wouldn’t worry. I was still in South Africa; everything was awesome except for the tragic news of the plane crash, love you, Kthxbai.
Joy had left work and was hurrying to the launch party of a painting exhibit in Tribeca with Vince-the-cutest-photographer-in-the-world. I had never really told her what the deal was with March’s job, so all she knew about him was that he was an older guy with a dubious source of income, who had popped up in my life, handcuffed me in my bed, taken me to Paris, only to ruthlessly dump me . . . and pick me up again afterward. From her point of view, March thus belonged to the wide subspecies of sketchy and manipulative studs. She couldn’t, in all conscience, recommend that I indulge in any sort of congress with him, but a stud was a stud, and a girl’s gotta do what she gotta do. She sent me a link to a Cosmo article discussing the best positions for first-timers.
I stopped myself before I hit Read More—I did want specific drawn instructions on how to best achieve the “coital alignment technique”, but not on March’s phone. Besides, I noticed a seri
es of new e-mails in my inbox: my dad had no articles to share with me, but rather repeated demands that I call him. To check on me, to know where I was, with whom? For how long? And, “Island, this is the second phone you’ve lost in six months!”
I considered his e-mails with a wince. Yeah, maybe that phone call could wait another half hour. I turned to March, who had been observing me with carefully feigned indifference. “Can you unlock those folders where you stored the data Colin sent you, please? I’d like to go through them.”
My request was welcomed by the faintest twitch of his brow. “Do you need it urgently?”
I took a calming breath. I would not give up, and certainly not get angry, but I was going to win this. “No, nothing urgent. It can easily wait a few minutes if you have something else to do.”
March straightened in his seat. “You seem exhausted; wouldn’t you rather get some rest?”
“No, I’m good.”
Facing unexpected resistance, he stood up and towered over me. “Can I offer you another drink?”
“I’m not thirsty. Can I see those files now?”
After thirty seconds of silence, he swiped a few times across the screen and handed me the phone with a sigh. “Island, this is external consulting. Nothing more.”
I gave a firm nod. “Nothing more.”
He settled in the seat across from mine and watched me go through the various documents Colin had sent him. Besides the early crash simulations, I found a copy of the passenger list and early reports from the National Transportation Safety Board. For almost two hours, I scrolled through the names, scoured the web for dozens of search engine results, feeling an odd sense of intrusion upon reading the place and date of birth, professional occupation, and personal ties of so many dead people. I was halfway through the list when I paused on a particular entry.
After Google confirmed my hunch was correct, I handed the phone back to March. “Do you believe in coincidences?”
He frowned at the screen. “Sabina Falchi, thirty-six, Italian. Her file is almost empty. Apparently she had a ticket but never boarded. Do you know her?”
“No,” I said. “But it says she’s a materials chemistry engineer. So I checked her résumé. Right after university, she spent four years doing R&D for a company called . . . Novensia.”
“The manufacturer of the plane’s roof? With the terrible commercial?”
“Yeah. Technically, they only provided that Ceraglass compound, and AirBW assembled the roof. They don’t communicate much, but they’re actually the second-largest industrial group in Italy. They specialize in construction materials, and they also branch in telecommunications and even dog food.”
March’s forefinger swiped down a couple of times as he skimmed through the search results. “Mr. Jeon did say he believed the roof could have been faulty.”
I drew an excited breath. “I know. Of course, it could be a lot of other things, like another plane taking them out, and for the record I refuse to rule out an alien intervention. But honestly, if we take Dries’s suitcase out of the equation . . . I think the first thing we need to know why she didn’t board.”
As March’s forefinger tapped the screen repeatedly, for the first time in twenty-four hours, the mints he always kept in his pocket in case of an emergency reappeared. He dropped a couple in his mouth and chewed them thoughtfully. “Sabina Falchi hasn’t been seen since the plane took off; the Italian police are looking for her.”
I leaned forward to check the data on his phone. “So they’re tying her to the attack?”
“No. The file mentions an ‘incident’ shortly before boarding. No further details.”
“Then we need to find her before they do.”
“We?”
I got up from my seat to peck his cheek. “I mean you and Dries. I’ll just be consulting around.”
Outside the jet, the sun was setting. March watched me trot away with his phone to settle on a long couch at the other end of the cabin. He cocked an eyebrow in question.
I held up the phone with an apologetic grin. “I need it for a little longer. I gotta call my dad.”
8
Her
Her voluptuous breasts rose with each feverish breath she took. “What are you going to do to me?” she asked.
He eyed the mat at their feet. “How supple are you?”
Tawny Fawn, Bent Over by The Yoga Teacher
Twenty minutes had gone by already, and the Gulfstream now glided above a blanket of ink-black clouds. I sat very straight, holding March’s phone at a safe distance from my ear while a storm of general displeasure and specific trap questions hailed upon me. I dodged and lied my tongue off, of course. My father and I did comment on the news of the plane crash with the appropriate amount of dispassionate concern, but Dries’s name wasn’t uttered a single time during our conversation. Yet I could feel his stifling presence enveloping each silence, each evasive reply, like a cloud of acrid smoke neither of us would acknowledge.
Inevitably, once my dad had ascertained that I was safe, and having exhausted our stock of mundane observations on terrorism and the state of the world these days, the topic shifted back to the most pressing issue: the no-doubt sordid intentions of the “shady forty-year-old dom” whose claws I had once again fallen prey to.
“Honey, listen to me—”
“Dad, please . . . I’m a little too old for you to screen my dates or anything.”
“Island. I love you, honey, but do you honestly think I’m stupid?”
I was taken aback as much by the question itself as by the sudden gravity in his voice. “I . . . no. I’d never think that. Dad—”
“So you listen to me. I know you. If you could give me his name, you would. If you could tell me what he does for a living, or even where you met him, you would. Believe me, I know that tune already. If he was”—my throat knotted when I heard him take a gulp of air on the other end of the line—“if he was a good man, you wouldn’t hide anything from me.”
Touché. Business acumen wasn’t his only gift—my father was much more insightful than I gave him credit for. But he was also wrong. “He is a good man, and I know you heard things through Joy. She was kidding; he’s not, um . . . ”—God. How do you tell your sixty-three-year-old dad that your boyfriend isn’t actually into BDSM?—“He’s not . . . kinky.”
A heavy sigh rewarded my efforts before my father at last detonated. “Island, I wouldn’t give a damn about that even if he was Dr. Frank N. Furter! You know what I’m talking about!”
The words had been shouted loud enough for March to hear them. He sent me a questioning look. I shook my head; involving him would only make the ordeal worse.
“No, I don’t know, and I really wish you’d trust me,” I hissed.
“Honey, it’s not you, it’s your choices I don’t always trust.”
His words slapped me in the face, the sting almost physical. “I understand,” I managed. “I think we’re done for now.”
“Island—”
“Look, it’s late. I’m going to bed soon. I’ll call you tomorrow if I can . . . I love you.”
I hung up before he could say more, guilt weighing heavy in my chest. The ostrich on March’s wallpaper wouldn’t stop giving that judgmental stare; I turned the screen off. I didn’t notice he had moved until the sofa sank under his weight, and his arms wrapped around me from behind, pulling me in a comforting embrace. “I’m sorry it didn’t go well.”
I let out a shaky sigh. “It’s not your fault. I just can’t tell him. I can’t tell anyone, so I try to dodge. I make up stuff . . . but there’s no end to it, and now he says he doesn’t trust my decisions.”
March maneuvered us on the sofa until I found myself lying down, my head resting on his lap. One of his hands combed bangs away from my forehead. “Do you?”
I looked up at his heavy-lidded eyes, their blue depths clouded with doubt. “Do I what?”
“Do you trust your decision to follow me?”
; “Haven’t we been over that already?” I grimaced. “Please don’t dump me for my own good again.”
His mouth twitched. “I’d make sure to give you a parachute.”
“See? That’s why my dad thinks you’re bad news,” I said with a chuckle.
I regretted my words instantly when the smile left his face. “Island. He’s right. If the hunt for Dries’s disciples goes on, I won’t be able to return to New York”—he paused and laced his fingers with mine—“at least, not officially.”
“Mr. November and Struthio Security will have to vanish?”
“Yes.”
I squeezed his hand. “We’ll go into hiding then, with sunglasses and all.” The beat of silence that followed was sadly eloquent. I trudged on. “I’ll go with you. I mean, if you want me around.” Relief welled in my chest when I felt him gather me closer in response. “I’ll drive you crazy, but at least I’m more fun than Gerald,” I said with a tentative smile.
“Biscuit, you have a family, friends . . . an entire life. And, after all, you barely know me.”
March wasn’t trying to convince me. He was trying to rationalize our situation so he’d find the strength to “parachute” me if need be—possibly literally so. Well, no. As far as girlfriends went, I intended to be the enduring type. Think of a strip of Velcro stuck to the back of an Angora sweater.
“It’s sort of true,” I admitted. “The other guys I dated, I’d know their birthday, where they went to school, this whole narrative about them, but in the end, I never really knew any of them. Not even Alex. You”—I raised a hand to caress his jaw—“you don’t fit in any of the boxes people define themselves with, and it’s true that I have no idea what to tell my father when he asks.
“But I know you always dress the same because it stresses you out to buy clothes of a different color. I know you like strawberries, and you make that little sound at the back of your throat in your sleep—I think you’ll be a snorer when you get old. Also, I now know”—I stretched, intentionally giving him a peek at my navel—“that you love it when I do this.”