by Solace Ames
I’d die for you, kill for you, go back down to hell for you. Paul was so used to playing a carefully defined character in other people’s stories, he’d assumed an inoculation of long standing against such fantasies, but this one raced through his veins, inescapable, eating him up and ruining him for anything else.
“What can I do?” he asked Jay. “I’m here for you.”
Jay still didn’t look at him. “I was going to ask you to take them to the consulate, but they have a ride. Marielena left a video statement on a laptop here. I emailed it to you. She says you helped her out, basically. It’s time for you to go...back to your place. I’ve got a cab coming to pick me up.”
“I can take you home.”
“I’m not going home.”
“Jay—” Something was wrong. Jay wasn’t even angry anymore. He seemed beaten, wounded, his gorgeous trickster-angel’s face drawn tighter on one side, as if he’d lost the power of symmetry along with all his happiness. “What’s wrong? You did everything—”
“I did everything right? Sure. So did you. I can’t talk to you anymore—something came up. Look, it’s really personal, and you’re—we’ve only been dating for a few months. You being involved is making things way too fucking complicated. Just go. I’ll talk to you later.”
“I’d like to stay and argue with you—”
“—but you’re not going to.” Jay finally looked in his eyes. Paul couldn’t read him at all. “Go.”
No more choices left.
* * *
Adriana stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, at her face dripping wet with cold water, mouth twisted. Despite the splash of water, her head still itched and burned. She ripped off her toque and clenched her fist around it.
There was too much adrenaline in her blood. She thought about running.
“I need to go to the bathroom first,” she said. “Otherwise...”
“Hurry up.” He gestured with the little black gun.
She gave him a grateful, appeasing, simian smile. Turned her back to him, went in, closed the door, stepped up onto the toilet, kicked out the air-conditioning unit and followed it down through the window frame, holding onto the ledge to minimize the second-story drop. Her legs hurt when she dragged herself up from the ground. The pain was distant, highly controllable.
And then she ran.
She’d thought she was a badass. No, she’d believed it, invulnerable teenager syndrome combined with being her father’s daughter. She couldn’t remember that night without being sick that she hadn’t figured out some way to fight him. Taken care of business herself. Jay always told her she did the best she could, she was his heroine, and she’d always nod, but deep down, a stubborn guilt still crawled in the scars.
Jay wasn’t answering his phone. Neither was Paul. She’d hovered her finger over Wallace’s name for a while, then decided against it. He was getting over a heart attack, he didn’t deserve this shit—she’d call once she calmed down and figured things out.
The chef meeting was in ten minutes.
Hurry up.
She wasn’t going to run, not this time. The situation was a hell of a lot more manageable, right?
Except it wasn’t. The stakes were lower, but the enemy was smarter and more insidious. He’d already fucked her reputation. Her eyes were open, and she knew she had to work twice as hard as a man, everywhere, for half the recognition, but apparently that wasn’t enough, nothing was ever enough...
Oh God, she was crying now, hot tears coursing under the cold water she kept splashing on her face.
My face. It’s all on my face. Not his.
“Throw it in his fucking face,” she whispered to her reflection.
She slammed the door open. Stalked out.
Words didn’t come easily for her. Anyway, what could she call him that would hurt? Pussy, no dick motherfucker—pointless, spitting in the wind.
She pushed out of the dark hallway into the savage gleaming kitchen, everything white and metal and hard. Graciela was probably hiding in a corner somewhere. There was Steve by the grill station, talking with two of the grill cooks and the saucier. She homed in on him like a missile, went straight down the aisle for him.
“You made up a story about me.” Even shouting, her voice sounded high as a little girl’s, and her hand trembled pointing at him—she couldn’t even see straight, the world vibrating around her, shaking with rage and helpless self-loathing. He was close. Close enough to hit. Not that that would do any good, either.
He leaned back and grinned. “Adriana. Whoa, Adriana.” Stop saying my name. “This isn’t the time or the place.” The three other chefs backed away down the aisle.
“You told Vito I slept with Wallace for this job. You lying piece of shit. You’re trying to get me fired, you’re stabbing Wallace in the back—”
The saucier darted forward, snatched his knife from the cutting board, then beat a quick retreat. “This is me backing right the fuck up,” he yelled to the rest of the kitchen.
Steve kept on grinning. “Hey, the decision came through above my pay grade, baby.”
She spat in Steve’s face.
A predator suddenly snarled at her. A second later, Steve wiped the spit off his cheek with the back of his sleeve, calm and grinning again.
He’d rocked backward in that second. Now he raised his open palms to either side, a dramatic gesture for their audience. “She’s fucking hysterical,” he yelled out.
His knife was alone on the board. Steve’s Hattori gyuto, instantly recognizable with its stunning Damascus-patterned blade.
She grabbed it. The ebony handle felt human-warm and alive in her palm.
Steve took another step back, raised his palms higher, then lower, hunched his shoulders, and...stopped smiling. Finally. Now that she had his dick in her hand.
He dropped his voice so that no one else would hear over the kitchen clatter, the agitated shouts. “Put down the knife. You cut me, you’re in big trouble, you little fucking bitch, so put it down and walk away and don’t—”
She whipped it up and swung it down, cleaver style.
He screamed and lunged at her.
The knife struck sparks against the heavy steel oven. Beautiful. Like fireworks. Broke my name? I’ll break your knife. Her hand was numb from the impact. She swung again.
Steve knocked her down and fell onto her.
She wouldn’t let go of the ebony handle, even when he punched her forearm, hammering it hard against the floor. Hold on. She jackknifed her body, trying to headbutt him, succeeded on the second try, not much force against his face but enough to growl—her sound, his, she wasn’t sure anymore, enough to make him let go of her arm now break it bend it make him pay and she swung the wounded knife, but he bent her wrist back, her numb fingers slipped, and the world spun as the white kitchen spotted red—and oh God there was so much pain—her pain?
Steve scrambled away on his hands and knees, vomiting.
A severed finger lay on the floor. It would be nice if it wasn’t hers, but it definitely was.
Shouts echoed around her, calling out numbers, like always in the kitchen. Nine one one. Nine one one.
She turned around and told them to bring her a bucket of ice, right away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Took you enough time to get here,” Adriana’s mother told Jay.
“I had some phone problems,” he said. He’d taken a pain pill in the cab, and it was doing its work—his feet and spine felt fine now, and the pounding headache had vanished into a cloud of woozy wellbeing, even toward this cast-iron bitch in a blue-silk blouse who’d once told Jay he’d ruined his own wedding pictures by being too dark. Rosa really was awful, but at least she cared about Adriana, in her own way. “Have you talked to Adriana yet?”
“Yes. I think she’s in shock. Totally delusional.” Rosa crossed her legs on the waiting room bench and shook her head. “They showed us a picture of an index finger ray amputation—that’s where they take all the bone all the way out and close the gap—and I told her the advantages had to be worth it. I mean, you can barely even tell by looking at it, and—”
“Amputation? What the—they’re not going to sew it back on?” That sliced right through the painkiller fog and hit him where it hurt. He’d missed so much. He should have been by her side.
“Apparently it’s not worth it. Hand function is better without it. I told them, look, my husband is a lawyer who eats people like you for breakfast. But it’s not an insurance or payment thing, it’s medically correct. They could sew it back on and it would never be a hundred percent—it would just be in the way of the other good fingers.” She took a deep breath and looked down at her own whole hands tipped by ten shiny-as-a-gumdrop nails. “Anyway, I started talking about the cosmetic advantages of the ray amputation procedure—and she started screaming at me to get out!” She snapped her head up, glared at Jay. “I’ll forgive her, of course, although an apology at a later date would be something you might want to remind her about.”
“Sure, whatever. I’ll go see if they let me in.”
“Give her these, then. And remind them she’s allergic to penicillin.” Rosa handed him Adriana’s car keys and a parking ticket stub, then turned her face away imperiously.
He nodded to Rosa, the only politeness he could stomach, and walked through the door and down a gleaming white corridor.
Someone told him he wasn’t supposed to be here but, yes, he could have a few minutes with his wife.
Behind a green curtain, Adriana was propped up on an examining table, reading a magazine. The regret and heartsickness and grief were too much to bear, so he pushed them aside and walked the three paces to her side as clean as he could make himself. She reached out to him, eased over so that he could sit by her side and cradle her shoulders.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” he choked out, his voice so low it sounded like a stranger’s. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she whispered, and rested her forehead against his cheek. “Please, baby, don’t be mad at yourself.”
“Yeah. I know. I just—” His throat kept closing around the words, but he had a feeling she knew what he meant, anyway. Their histories corresponded, interchanged, spoke skin to skin. “I love you,” he got out, and then was silent for a long time.
She petted his arm with her good left hand. Her right was wrapped in gauze. “I love you too,” she said in a blessedly normal voice. “And I’m really glad you’re here now. Ugh, I had to kick out my mom.”
“She kind of filled me in at the same time as horrifying me.” He relaxed into a fairly comfortable position that still let him keep his arms around her. More than anything, he wanted to take her home and rock her to sleep. “Told me they’re not going to sew it back on.”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“You’re so strong, Adriana. But you don’t have to be strong all the time, you—”
“I know.” History, again. “So there was some kind of emergency with Paul, right? Is he okay?”
The panicked feeling of too much too heavy came crashing back, but he gritted his teeth and told himself not to be a coward. “He’s all right. One of his sessions...well, it never got started. There was a woman who needed a lot of help there, and he took her to the hospital and I met him there, and things were rough for a while, but it’s working out. She’s probably already on a plane back to her mother. I don’t think the police are going to be involved, which is good for Paul, you know.” Paul hunted down—damn, that was a horrifying thought. He and Adriana would fall away from Paul, they had to, but he still wanted to know that Paul would be safe. That was natural, wasn’t it? Please be safe. He wanted to tell her more, but the reminder of police brought up an urgent question. “Did they arrest Steve?”
“I don’t know. He left before the ambulance came. I think I have to press assault charges, anyway. The problem is, he could press charges against me, too. It’s bad all around. I spit on him, I broke his knife. We might end up having each other arrested. And there’s no fucking way worker’s comp is going to pay for this.” She waved her gauze-covered hand. “It’s not ‘accidental dismemberment’ if you pick the fight. My mom was right about one thing: I need a lawyer.” She must have seen the panicked look on his face, because she quickly put on a tight smile, widened her eyes, and spoke in a soft voice. “I mean, the money, the job, sure, it’s all bad. But I’m ready to deal with the consequences. I’ll get another job. I’ll work it out.”
She was beautiful, her eyes dark and radiant and almost peaceful.
Almost.
She was keeping herself together for him.
You don’t have to be strong all the time, he repeated silently, but he didn’t speak it out loud.
She leaned into him again, letting him support her. Gratefulness for finally being at her side, finally being here for her, filled him close to bursting. “We’ll be fine,” he whispered.
He’d stay strong for Adriana, in return.
As a kind of fucked-up test of that strength, Jay tried to recall Steve’s face from the Sapore photos he’d seen online. The visualizing didn’t work. He imagined stabbing the guy in the chest, and that image came through crystal clear. You hurt her, take the hurt back.
Jay didn’t want to hurt her, too, but he had to tell her the truth about Paul.
So he did.
“This is a lot at once,” Adriana said once she’d heard it all, and sighed, and went to rub her tired eyes, but she only rubbed the left, and then she held up her right hand and stared at it.
A nurse walked by, checked something on a chart, and told Jay to wrap it up soon.
Jay turned back to Adriana and gently combed the hair from her face with his fingers. “Yeah. I was thinking maybe we should cool things off with him. Get some breathing space.” Paul was too many things at once. Too much. A force of nature, a lover, a flawed human being, a student, a trader of secret desires. And now a con artist. The worst kind of con artist. Jay saw Paul’s starkly handsome face reflected between angled mirrors, duplicated into an infinite regression. Jay still loved the man somewhere down that line, but he wasn’t sure that mattered anymore.
He just had to do whatever was right for Adriana.
“It’s also a lot to lose at once,” she said, and her mouth had turned down at the corners and oh God, he was hurting her. “But I need to leave this—Paul—up to you. I can’t think it through anymore. My heart can’t take it.”
The last thing he wanted to hear. I started this for you, you, always you. But if she didn’t want the burden of decision...well, taking it was the least he could do.
“We’re ready for the operation now,” the nurse said. “You really have to go.”
“Operation?” Jesus fucking Christ. He squeezed Adriana’s shoulders, took her sweet, warm kiss, felt her quiet tears burning against his cheek, slipped down and staggered away. “She’s allergic to—”
“They know. They’re going to grind down the bone and soften it,” Adriana said. “Just take care of yourself and come back in a few hours, okay, baby?”
He nodded miserably as they wheeled her away.
* * *
Paul could never fly in his dreams. But sometimes the rule of gravity would alter, and he could take huge bounds, floating over buildings and looking down on them from above, knowing the flesh and bones of the city. And then he would drift downward, slowly, inexorably, fighting for the mental trick that would keep him in the air and never quite finding it.
He was falling, now.
He’d lost.
Even worse. He’d won, and then he’d thrown away the
miraculous gift Jay and Adriana had offered him. He could pay his restitution, get his passport back, be truly free, but he didn’t want to be free anymore. Not like this. It hurt worse than burning. He’d trade places with anyone. Even Joanna’s bitter course in life seemed more appealing.
Remembering made him sick, how he’d pitied her from above.
When he got back to his studio a little after sunrise, it turned out he still had farther to fall.
A mass email from Eduardo waited in his inbox: HOW TO SUPPORT ADRIANA. The link went to a fundraiser site where Eduardo broke down the events at Sapore into a neat, bulleted list. There was a picture of Jay and Adriana with their arms around each other, and another of Adriana in Washington with her father and stepmother and little sister. All donations will go to legal and medical bills.
After the incoherent rage flared up and died down, Paul spent a long time staring at the window blinds, even counting them at one point. Two ideas came to him. Two ideas that would make Jay and Adriana’s life measurably better.
He withdrew from his courses using Saylor University’s online system. Withdrawing from the program itself was more complicated. He printed out a letter, signed it, addressed it to his advisor, and emailed another copy. I am unable to continue in this program due to a personal emergency situation. I greatly appreciate your guidance during my years at Saylor.
The tuition money went to Eduardo’s fund, in a form as anonymous as he could manage in the short amount of time.
He could breathe a little easier, after that. Withdrawing from the program...God, he should have done it a year ago. He’d held on because he wanted to be the kind of man who finished what he started, but all the love had long drained out. He didn’t give a damn about being an architect. If he tried to imagine himself as one, either a ludicrous Howard Roark figure came to mind—the strong man dominating concrete and steel and space itself, romantic in the most juvenile way—or else the reality of sitting at a desk analyzing cost overruns from nine to five slapped him in the face. Like Adriana, he wasn’t built for that kind of job.