The Last of August

by Brittany Cavallaro

  Not this time. I bought a hat and a pair of shit-kickers at a thrift store. Then I found a barbershop and asked them for a haircut I kept seeing on the street, shaved on the sides and long on top. My hair was wavy, but whatever he styled it with made it lay slick and straight. When he finished, I put on my glasses and looked in the mirror.

  I’d always had something that made grandmothers want to talk to me in waiting rooms. I looked friendly, I guess. I’d never been able to see it myself, but I saw its absence now. Grinning, I stuck the fedora on the back of my head, tipped the barber, and went out to find some dinner.

  Simon, I thought. I’m going to call myself Simon.

  I walked to Old Metropolitan with a gyro that I’d gotten from a sketchy-looking food truck up the street. Whenever I was in a new place by myself, I was always aware of how I was walking, what I was looking at, worried that I’d seem like a tourist and be slighted somehow for it. Tonight, I was wandering along like a local, licking the tzatziki sauce off my fingers, looking at the street art with disinterested eyes. Simon didn’t care about the giant neon dragon painted over the Old Metropolitan’s doorway, teeth bared like a warning. Simon had seen it a million times before. His uncle lived just down the block.

  Simon was used to the crush of people inside, too, and so I kept my face bored as I pushed my way up to the bar. But I almost lost my composure when I looked over the crowd. Despite my new clothes and haircut, I was the least avant-garde person in sight. The girl next to me had pink hair that faded out to electric gold. She was gesturing with a giant glass of something, and it sloshed at me while she spoke to her friends in German. The only word I recognized was “Heidegger,” who was a philosopher. Who I thought was a philosopher. Did I know that from The Simpsons? I tried to avoid eye contact.

  Instead, I ended up staring down the bartender. “What’ll it be?” he asked, clearly pegging me for English. I reminded myself that that was fine. Simon was English.

  Jamie was panicking.

  “A Pimm’s cup,” I said, with fancy posh-boy vowels, because I’d decided that Simon was rich, and because people drank Pimm’s cups at the races I’d seen on television, and yes, it was becoming abundantly clear that Holmes was right, I was an awful spy, because if tonight was any indication, my entire knowledge of the world came from Thursday-night TV.

  But the bartender didn’t shrug, or raise an eyebrow. He just turned his back to make the drink. I made myself relax, one muscle at a time, and willed my brain to stop racing. I put my hat more firmly on the back of my head.

  My plan had been to nurse my drink and eavesdrop until I heard the Kunstschule Sieben come up in conversation. Then I’d sidle over and introduce myself as a prospective student visiting my uncle over the holiday. Maybe you’d know him—tall, slicked-back hair, English like me? Can I buy you a drink? Do you know a girl named Gretchen? I met her here last week—et cetera, ad nauseam, until someone mentioned the last place they’d seen either of them, or Leander’s mysterious professor, and I’d be off on a new lead before Holmes showed up on her blond Gaston’s arm.

  It had seemed fairly foolproof when I’d thought it up. Like all foolproof plans, it turned out to be ridiculous. First off, it was loud in the Old Metropolitan. I could barely make out what languages were being spoken around me, much less the actual words. Second, I hadn’t counted on the intimidation factor. I’d never had problems in the past striking up a conversation with strangers, and I couldn’t pin down why it was proving so difficult now.

  Maybe because I’d spent the last three months talking exclusively to someone whose idea of small talk involved blood spatter.

  She’s ruined me, I thought, and sank down a little over my drink. The last bits of Simon scattered. What did I think I was playing at, anyway? I wasn’t any good at this. I didn’t even want to be here, in this bar, wincing against the Krautwerk turned up to eleven while the dude next to me played with his labret piercing. I leaned out to ask the bartender for my bill, but I couldn’t get his attention.

  When I sat back down, I noticed a girl across the bar drawing me.

  She was being pretty obvious about it. Her sketchpad was braced against her knee, and she kept sneaking glances at me over the top. She had long glossy black curls and a cute upturned nose, the kind of girl I used to like, when I liked other girls. Before I knew what I was doing, I picked up my drink and headed her way.

  Her eyes widened. Then she bit her lip. I was feeling pretty confident.

  Well, Simon was feeling pretty confident.

  “Hi,” I heard him say. “Are you using charcoals?”

  “I am. What do you use?”

  “My dashing good looks.” Where was this crap coming from? “What’s your name?”

  “Why?” She spoke with an American accent.

  “Are you from the States?”

  “No,” she laughed. “But my English teacher was.”

  Simon sat down next to her. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me the truth, okay, love?” Jesus Christ. “Were you drawing me just then?”

  She angled her sketchpad toward her body. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe yes or maybe no?” Simon lifted a finger to the bartender, who came right over. “One of whatever she’s having—”

  “A vodka soda—”

  “A vodka soda.” She hadn’t instantly shot Simon down. He grinned at her. If there was a part of Jamie somewhere in that smile, both he and I decided not to notice. “Is it a maybe yes now?”

  Her name was Marie-Helene. She was born in Lyon, in France, but the rest of her family lived in Kyoto. She loved visiting, she said, but really she wanted to live in Hong Kong someday. “It’s like it’s a present place that’s in the future,” she said. She was studying at the Kunstschule Sieben because, when she was a little girl, she’d gotten lost in the Louvre during a family trip to Paris and instead of getting scared, she’d found herself wandering entranced through the Impressionist wing. “I drew water lilies for years after that,” she said. “I made my parents call me Claude, like Claude Monet.”

  Simon liked her. More than that, I liked her. She had an impish quality to her, like she was keeping a secret. But a small one, nothing Holmes-sized. She was nothing like Holmes, in fact, and it made me want to cry from relief.

  “I was drawing you.”

  I snapped back to focus. “What?”

  “That look you just had. You had it before, too. Like your grandmother died, but you’re angry about it. It’s—interesting. And a little disturbing.” Marie-Helene turned her sketchbook around to show me. A boy in a stupid hat, staring down at his hands like he could find some answers there.

  It was a good drawing. I hated that it was of me.

  I forced myself back into my Simon-shaped cage. “I’m more handsome than that, aren’t I?” he asked her.

  “Yes.” She toyed with her drink, looking up at me. “You are.”

  I didn’t know what to do next, because usually, in this situation, I’d lean in to kiss her. Correction: what I used to do next was lean in, but that was at parties in people’s basements, not bars—would that even work here? It was what Simon would probably do. I wanted to, I did, and still I didn’t want to at all. Should I change the subject? Ask about Gretchen, the art forger Leander had made contact with? About her professors? Should I just kiss her and pretend it didn’t make me nauseous?

  The moment passed. She took a sip, then brightened. “Hey!” she said, waving a hand to someone over my head. “Over here!”

  In an instant, we were surrounded by chattering girls. One was wearing a paint-splattered backpack, so I figured they were her friends from school. “Everyone,” she said, “everyone, this is Simon, he’s British,” and in the flurry of introductions that followed, I thought I heard the name Gretchen. My pulse quickened.

  “I was thinking about going to the Kunstschule Sieben next year,” I yelled over the music. It was disco now, and louder. “I do video installations! Do any of you do
video installations!”

  “Yes!” the girl next to me yelled back.

  “Can I ask you more about it!”

  “Friday mornings!”

  I wasn’t sure if she’d heard my question, or if her English wasn’t that good, but the crowd of girls was moving now, and Marie-Helene grabbed my hand in hers. An invitation to follow. I threw some money down on the bar, feeling thoroughly triumphant. We’d go to a party. There’d be other students there. Surely someone would know something about Leander, and I could go back to Holmes with information, something that she and August wouldn’t have—

  Or would. Because like a nightmare, she and August were standing between us and the door.

  five

  I HADN’T SEEN THEM COME IN. I’D SAY IT WAS A TESTAMENT to how good their disguises were, but they weren’t dressed to fit in with this crowd. They’d taken the opposite tack from me. August was done up in full douchebag tourist mode, from his gelled hair down to his white sneakers and calf-high socks. Holmes stood beside him, fishing something out of her fanny pack. Her wig, mouse-brown, hung lankly around her face.

  She glanced up. Her eyes traveled down to my hand, clasped with Marie-Helene’s, and I thought I saw her blanch.

  Either way, she recovered quickly.

  “There you are,” Holmes cried. I thought she was about to blow my cover when she turned to August and said, “I told you he couldn’t ditch us for long.”

  Marie-Helene gave me a questioning look.

  “They’re my cousins, visiting from London,” I told her, trying to reclaim the narrative. “And I didn’t ditch them. They said they wanted a night to do touristy things by themselves.”

  “Well, tell them to come along.” Her friends were already on the street. She disentangled her hand from mine and pushed the door open into the night air.

  August and Holmes were on my heels. “What’s your name?” she hissed.

  “Simon. Yours?”

  “Tabitha and Michael.”

  “Are you supposed to be siblings?” I asked August. The both of them were wearing brown color contacts.

  “We are, but it’s not believable. I’m much prettier than she is.”

  I grinned, then reminded myself that I hated him. “She drag you into this?”

  “I am standing right here,” Holmes said, stamping her feet a little in the cold. “Where are we headed, Watson? What have you found out?”

  Nothing yet, but I didn’t want to tell her that. I was still smarting about her and August ignoring me before. We were having lunch with Phillipa tomorrow? We weren’t at all dealing with the fact that her mother had been poisoned? “I found out that French girls like Simon a lot,” I said instead, and trotted to catch up with Marie-Helene and her friends.

  The air had gotten colder since earlier this evening. I reclaimed Marie-Helene’s hand under the pretense of warming it up. Was I aware that Holmes was behind me, watching? Obviously. Was I above doing things to make her jealous? Well . . . no.

  It wasn’t hard to like Marie-Helene and her friends, though. They chatted about the new Damien Hirst show going up the next week, and when, tired of maintaining my know-it-all pose, I confessed I didn’t know who that was, they were kind about filling me in. Apparently he put cows in formaldehyde. This was art? Yes, they told me, it was. In a world where information was currency, I was usually bankrupt. It was nice, for once, not to be mocked for it.

  “Where are we going, exactly?” I asked the girl with the paint-splattered backpack.

  “Some of our friends rent from this super-rich art dealer. He has a house up ahead.” With her chin, she pointed to a tall brick building on the corner. “The only catch to living there is that he can use it to throw parties on the weekends, when he’s in town. You’ll see why, it’s a pretty cool space. We all usually go.”

  “But?” I asked, because her tone was darker than her words.

  “But he’s a creep,” she said, shrugging. “He’s like fifty, and his new girlfriend is always some baby Sieben student. A lot of these girls have dated him. It’s like making a deal with the devil for a little while. You meet some people, you get bought some nice things, you sleep with a gross old man, and by the time he ditches you you’ve gained something from it. You’ll be fine, though. He doesn’t like boys.”

  My skin crawled. “You’re Gretchen, right?” I asked, hoping she’d point toward who was.

  “Gretchen?” She shook her head. “I’m Hanna. Marie-Helene was calling us her mädchen—her girls. Is that what you were thinking of?”

  I was stumbling into some sleazy party based on something I didn’t actually hear in a bar.

  Marie-Helene pulled me up the steps to the brick building’s door. “Our destination awaits,” she said, ushering us in.

  The main floor was surprisingly dark and quiet, but it wasn’t our “destination.” Without turning on a light, Hanna felt around to her right until she found a doorframe. “Down these stairs,” she whispered. “Turn on your phone if you need light.”

  At the bottom of the stairs was a door, and beyond that door was a cavern.

  Marie-Helene and her friends made a beeline for the bar in the corner. I was left standing with one hand on my hat, taking it all in.

  The cavern didn’t feel natural. The walls were lined with tile, and the ceiling had a perfect arch that meant it was man-made. A damp, sharp smell hung in the air. It took me a moment to place it as chlorine. I pushed past a knot of people and saw its source—a massive pool in the center of the room. One girl kicked her legs on an inflatable swan, holding her martini glass safely above her head. A pair of boys were dangling their feet in the water as they made out. Everywhere, a dim, fractured sort of light speckled people’s faces, speckled the walls.

  Without thinking, I turned to clock Holmes’s reaction. It was what I always did in these down-the-rabbit-hole situations. It took me a minute to find her, still standing up on the now-deserted staircase, and I caught the end of a transformation—a subtle one, this time. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost the fanny pack. One hand was hastily unbuttoning her cardigan, and the other was tapping some kind of lip gloss on her mouth. The whole process took less than a minute, and when she stepped down into the party, she was wearing a little black dress and a haughty expression. In this light, her mouse-brown hair looked soft and warm. She was recognizably the same girl as she was in the Old Metropolitan, and she wasn’t at all.

  On her tottering heels, she padded up between me and August. “Boys?” she asked, and on her cue, we took her elbows and led her into the party.

  I leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Is this the part where we share information? Because I know how you came up with the Old Metropolitan. It’s just something you’ve overheard back in Sussex. No magic there.”

  She glanced up at me. “It’s all magic, Simon,” she said, “if I’m to believe what you write about me.”

  “He’s your biographer?” August asked. “Like Dr. Watson? Jesus, that’s ador—”

  “It is not adorable.” I pulled us to a stop at the pool’s edge. Beside me, Holmes squinted across the room. The light from the water was freckling her cheeks, and I resisted the urge to touch her face, to see if I could make them scatter. “Of course I know it isn’t magic. I’ll prove it. Do you want me to tell you what you’ll do next?”

  She smiled, almost imperceptibly. “Go on, then.”

  I gave myself a second to look around the party. Hanna had been right. Here and there someone broke the mold, but really there were two kinds of people here: college-age girls and men who gleamed with that particular sheen of money. The girls were mostly in tiny dresses, but the men were all dressed differently, some in suits and some more like artists, some in rumpled black and some neatly pressed. Some had a dancer’s build, or the anxious stare of a writer.

  Next to us, a girl was flicking through what looked like slides of her work on her iPhone. “As you can see,” she was saying, “I’m an excellent candidate for y
our opening.”

  Immediately, Holmes turned her head to listen.

  Focus, I told myself, and looked around the room again. I was not going to make a fool out of myself, not with Blond Gaston over her other shoulder.

  “There’s a man in the corner,” I said finally. “The one with the scarf and the round glasses. He’s the best candidate for Leander’s professor contact. What was his name? Nathaniel?”

  Beside me, Holmes made a humming sound. She wasn’t looking at him; her attention was fixed on the conversation behind us. “Explain your reasoning.”

  It suddenly seemed so important for me to be right. To get her to look at me, really look at me, the way I needed her to. Squinting, I considered the man in question, who was telling a story with his hands. “His body language. He seems much more relaxed than the other men here. He’s not jockeying for status or trying to get laid; he looks like he’s catching up with friends. And the people around him are at ease, too. Look at the guy next to him—he’s what, eighteen, and he just whacked Nathaniel on the arm while he was talking. Now he looks shocked, probably at his own gumption, and everyone’s laughing. They’re all comfortable with each other. He’s their authority figure, but they like him.”

  With the calm electricity of a hunting dog in a field, Holmes stared down the man in the suit. The only problem was that it was a different man in a different suit.

  “Plus he’s handsome,” I said desperately, trying to refocus her, “and people meet at the Old Metropolitan to walk down here on Saturday nights, and you said your uncle was involved with someone here, someone in this scene. Does Leander like redheads?”

  Holmes grimaced at the mention of her uncle’s sex life. “Yes, yes, fine, except we’re not in a position to approach him, so it doesn’t matter. None of us are done up like art dealers and you’re a little too spot-on to play a prospective art student. You look like you just came from central casting. A disconnected undercut, Watson? Really?”