by Helena Maeve
* * * *
Melanie was already waiting for me in Place Pigalle by the time I got off the train. Her text messages ran the gamut from the humorous—Just saw a pigeon do battle with a Pomeranian. The pigeon won—to the philosophical—Drunk man accosted me, said the world will end if I don’t sleep with him. I declined. I saw her across the street long before she saw me.
She’d ditched her tailored suits and crisp shirts for a blue form-fitting dress worn under a gray sweater with a fur collar. She looked amazing, even with the baby bump. I felt a kernel of self-conscious envy take seed in my chest. How did she do it? How did she not fall apart at every hurdle, like me?
Melanie herself did a double-take when she caught sight of me.
“You got laid.”
I blinked. “How can you tell?”
Melanie twirled a lock of burgundy-red hair around her finger. “It’s my superpower.” She held up a hand when I made to scoff. “Food first. Details. Possibly diagrams. But details, for sure.” She bumped her shoulder against mine as we stepped through the doors of the bistro.
I’d called ahead, so we had no trouble getting a table by the window. Melanie doffed her coat and fixed me with her big brown eyes. “Either I’m having an episode or you actually left the house without putting on mascara.”
“You’re not having an episode.” I could have stopped by the apartment, but I’d run out of time. It was either foundation and mascara or brunch with Mel.
A display of jams and butter and chocolate spread appeared before us, then a basket of fresh bread. Mel and I shared a weakness for fried eggs on toast and the assortment of Spanish sausage that came with it momentarily robbed me of the ability to speak.
We always pigged out in lavish fashion when we got together, so I didn’t feel the least bit penitent for the noises that tore out of my throat as I savored my breakfast—at least not until Melanie noted that I sounded hoarse.
I blushed, swallowing around a piece of toast. “Yeah, well… I had a great morning.”
“With Javier?”
The arched eyebrow told me that Melanie suspected, if she didn’t already know.
“Ah, no. Haven’t seen him for a couple of days. We decided to call it quits.”
Melanie thinned her lips. “What happened?”
“We had a minor disagreement about my job being, you know, meaningful. And also he was a jerk about my parents.”
The Incident should have been off limits even for an emotional break-up. I couldn’t forgive him for that one.
“That explains the message he left about his glasses…”
My jaw nearly hit the floor. “He called you, too?” What did he expect Melanie to do, don her Robin Hood tights and retrieve his lost property for him? “That’s crazy.”
“I think he was trying to ask me to run interference.” Melanie hitched up her shoulders, indifferent. “I didn’t reply.” But she must have figured something was up if Javier was trying to turn her into his go-between.
I resented him a little more just for that. “I know you liked him.”
“I thought he was cute,” Melanie scoffed, rolling her eyes. She had a doll-like face, but behind her good looks was a whip-smart mind that put me completely to shame. Even back in high school I’d been able to tell that Mel would go far. She’d studied mathematics at university and had been recruited before graduation to work for a prestigious financial institution.
She alternated between complaining about her co-workers and plotting to unseat her boss, but every time she tried to explain to me exactly what her job involved, my brain shut down.
We had little in common these days, but we got on like a house on fire. I guess with her father embezzling millions before leaving his wife and kid for a younger woman and fleeing to the Caribbean, and mine convicted on five counts of murder in the first degree, we made quite the pair.
“He was cute,” I agreed, because I was too vain to date a man I wasn’t attracted to. “But he was a jerk in the end.”
“And the new guy?”
“Isn’t.” I sucked my cheeks in to conceal a smile. It didn’t work. My body was still vibrating with Ashley’s touch as I sat across from Melanie, warming my hands on a cup of coffee.
Melanie chuckled. “You’ve got it bad.”
“I like him.” It was a subtle distinction. “The sex is amazing,” I added.
A man at the next table perked up at the sound of that, his eyes seeking mine behind wireless glasses. I felt my cheeks heat. Melanie cleared her throat. Our eavesdropping neighbor flicked a glance her way and, noticing the sneer, guiltily glanced back down at his menu.
Mel turned to me, resting both elbows on the table. “You were saying?”
I envied her confidence. Somehow she had taken the torment of her youth and turned it into a carapace. I was still learning how not to give in to panic attacks whenever someone so much as mentioned my mother.
“He’s great. We’re… I feel good around him, you know?”
Melanie nodded, but I could see interest in the curl of her smile. “How did you two meet? It’s pretty rare to hear you gushing about a guy like this, much less sleeping with him already.”
That wasn’t quite true and she knew it. We’d both had our fair share of one-night stands since high school—some more ill-advised than others—but it so rarely happened that I got hung up on men I only depended on to scratch an itch. Ashley was turning out to be the exception to my every rule. I liked that about him.
I told Melanie about running into him in the hall, about breaking up with Javier and winding up in Ashley’s arms. I glossed over the sex, because we were in public and I could swear that our neighbor was still eavesdropping. By the time I told her he had a daughter, Melanie’s smile had already become a scowl.
“How old is this guy?”
“Forty-something?” He had a daughter in college and he’d been covering political news for the New York Times when I was nine. He couldn’t be any younger.
Melanie sighed.
“He’s not that old,” I protested. “Honestly, he’s not.”
I was suddenly aware of how little I knew about Ashley. We’d talked about his work last night and I had his phone number now, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to know where he grew up, what his mother’s maiden name was. If he liked dogs or cats more.
If he’d ever been scared of drowning.
I wanted to know if he could name five species of monkey at the drop of a hat.
I knew, rationally, that I was putting the cart before the horse, but I didn’t care. There were butterflies flapping their paper-thin wings in my belly. The last time I’d felt that I was still in school.
“I get that you like him,” Melanie began, and I knew I wasn’t going to like what she had to say, but I let her finish anyway. “But you honestly believe his story?”
She wanted me to say no. I didn’t oblige.
“All I’m saying is that it sounds suspicious. Here you are getting calls from some guy who’s been visiting your dad and, bam, your next-door neighbor turns out to be a reporter who’s familiar with the case…”
“I said he has friends in the industry stateside,” I corrected. “I didn’t say he was familiar with the case.”
Melanie folded her arms across her chest and cocked her head. I remembered that look from high school, when she did her utmost to help me through the baccalaureate—efforts that should have seen her canonized. “It’s fishy. Either he has very good timing or you’re being played, Laure. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
I didn’t want that either, but the flip side meant giving Ashley up. I wasn’t willing to do that.
“Promise me you won’t do anything rash?” Mel asked, backing down when she saw me digging my heels in. “Give it some time. I could be completely wrong.”
“I think you are. You’ve seen too many movies.”
Melanie scoffed and I knew I’d struck a nerve when she switched to English. “Please. Our lives ar
e what Hollywood writes off as implausible.”
I couldn’t contradict her there, so I did my best to steer conversation to other topics—Javier first, then Melanie and her job. She talked a bit about the pregnancy, but I knew that was a touchy subject so I didn’t prod too deeply. I didn’t want to repay what I felt was unfair judgment with invasive questions about her on-off relationship with the baby’s father.
We parted on friendly terms, but I couldn’t help feeling let down.
I wanted Melanie to be excited for me. I needed someone to be in my corner for a change and Mel, I thought, understood me best. But she was wary of middle-aged men who took up with younger women—for reasons to do with her own experiences, not me—and I was barking up the wrong tree trying to seek validation from her.
On my way home on the train, I texted Javier to say I couldn’t find his glasses, but that if he insisted on looking for them, he could come by tonight. I felt so magnanimous that I even checked the departures at Charles de Gaulle to see when I could grab a flight to the States.
I waited until I was out in the exhaust-thick air before I checked my voicemail. A crisp breeze swept down the sidewalk, rolling between Haussmanian façades and garish billboards, and rippling the pleats of my trench coat. I slowed my steps, one hand anchored in the strap of my handbag and the other clutching the cell phone to my ear.
It took two rings for the call to connect.
The voice that answered was thick with sleep and the tinny crackle of static. I didn’t know what time it was on the east coast of the United States. I guessed the middle of the night.
“Hello, Mr. Barnes?”
“Is—is this…?”
“Laure Reynaud,” I said. “I believe you’ve been trying to get in touch.”
Chapter Five
“The off the shoulder Donna Karan is very nice, too, if you’d like to try it…” I held up the coat hanger to show off the satin gown.
The client drew her shades down to scrutinize my offering and, much like a jealous goddess, dismissed it with a wave of the hand. “I prefer Dolce,” she drawled in perfectly articulated French.
“It suits you,” I agreed, sycophantic to the last. Pushing products was part of my job, but so was blowing smoke up my clients’ asses. I couldn’t very well say that the Dolce that my client had selected was an unfortunate design, or that it made her torso seem twice as long.
I accompanied the client and her two friends to the register, making small talk about the collection, what we were expecting for the summer—leaking tidbits of so-called privileged information to whet her appetite. I did it with every client. Sometimes it panned out.
Yvonne caught up with me as I was making my way back to restore the cocktail dresses to their appropriate racks. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure…”
She brushed past me toward the back of the shop, where no clients were currently browsing. I suppressed a shudder of apprehension and followed her.
Yvonne didn’t waste time beating around the bush. “You want to go on holiday? Now?” She kept her voice relatively low, but there was no disguising the flash of fury in her gaze. The lines around her mouth pulled taut. “We’re changing the whole collection this week and you’re leaving to sun yourself on some Spanish beach! I can’t believe you’d be so selfish.”
The fist squeezing at my heart released. For a moment there, I’d thought that Yvonne wouldn’t treat me as her underling. I’d gone over her head when I’d filed the request, hoping that she wouldn’t block it once she found out. Someone in HR must have called to get her approval. I knew I should have warned her, at the very least. I smothered all sense of remorse.
“I need a few days to clear my head,” I breathed. “After Javier…”
Yvonne had always fancied herself my champion, my wingwoman. I was counting on her to have my back on this one.
“Football didn’t help?” Her tone of voice dripped with I told you so’s.
I shammed a rueful smile. “Not so much, no.” I wouldn’t plead with her. Bad enough that I was lying through my teeth. “I know this is a bad time. I’ll make it up to you when I get back, I swear.”
“You can’t leave this week,” Yvonne relented.
“Okay.”
“Next week. Perhaps Friday.”
I nodded, albeit reluctantly. Next Friday put me right on the cusp of the anniversary. I’d been hoping to avoid a potential media frenzy. The last thing I needed was Yvonne finding out my real motives—or my grandparents discovering that I’d broken their trust to seek out my dad.
Yvonne squeezed my arm. “Next time, come to me.”
It might have been friendly advice if she hadn’t dug her fingernails in for emphasis. I withdrew as quickly as I could. Providentially, we had enough clients to keep us busy enough that staying away didn’t take too much effort.
I made a beeline for the Métro as soon as my shift was over. Didn’t even say goodbye.
* * * *
His fingers plucking lightly at the back of my neck, Ashley turned another page. Mitterrand’s latest biography was a heavy brick and going through it would’ve taken time even without Ashley’s anecdotes to pad the retrospective. Still, there were worse ways to spend an evening. My belly was full—homemade sushi rather than burgers tonight—my body lax against his.
Ashley thumbed over another page, voice rumbling pleasantly above me as he stroked my hair.
I had no memory of falling asleep, but I came to alone on the couch, a blanket covering my body. The lamps were off in the living room, nothing but a thin, bluish gleam of moonlight to guide my steps. I padded into the bedroom in silk stockings, leaving a trail of clothes in my wake. Here fell my shirt, there my bra, so that by the time I crawled under the covers with Ashley, my flesh was bare against his.
He mumbled something in his sleep and rolled over to throw an arm around my waist. I let him slot our bodies together and closed my eyes.
Sleep found me quickly.
My dreams were feverish and confused. I jolted awake with the dead-eyed stares of mannequins haunting me, the closed-in smell of the department store back room teasing my memory. My pulse throbbed in my throat as I recalled fleeing through the hallways of my apartment building and losing count of the floors only to realize—with the kind of clarity only possible in dreams—that there was no end to the spiral, that I would always be running and running.
I scrubbed the mirage from my eyes.
The lights were still off in the bedroom, shadows blanketing the covers. Through the window, I saw the distant summit of the Eiffel Tower spear the night sky like a shard of glass.
Ashley had rolled away from me during the night. I lay on my back for a while, watching him breathe. Then I kicked off the covers.
Nightmares weren’t unusual for me. I’d grown up with some sleep affliction or another since I was a girl. What was unusual was the idea that I could do something about them.
I made my way into the living room and retrieved my cell. I had enough battery left to look at flights from Paris to—wherever would get me closest to Kansas City. There were possibilities connecting in Chicago, Philadelphia or Atlanta, all of which would set me back a pretty penny.
I hovered my finger over the Select Flight button a couple of times.
“What’re you doing?” Ashley mumbled from the bedroom doorway.
The sound of his voice startled me.
“Nothing.” My first instinct was to lie. I grimaced. “I’m looking at booking a flight.”
Ashley rubbed at his eyes. “Oh.” The biggest advantage of laying our cards on the table was that I didn’t have to explain myself. I didn’t know how long that would last, but for now it was nice to feel understood on a basic human level. “Boss signed off on an impromptu vacation?”
“Yeah.” Ten days away was still better than nothing.
The blue-white glow of the cell phone shone between us as Ashley lumbered to the couch and sat down beside me. “Go through Chi
cago. Customs at Hartsfield is brutal.”
“Don’t tell me they pull you out of the line for an up close and personal pat-down…”
He took my teasing on the chin. “This can’t wait until tomorrow morning?”
“It is tomorrow morning,” I shot back, never too tired to split hairs. The clock on my phone read 4:32 a.m. Still, I shut off the display, plunging us both in darkness. “Give me a good reason to come back to bed and I will.”
I don’t know where my sudden pluck was coming from, but it was easy not to second-guess my every move when I was with Ashley. His capacity for forgiveness seemed endless. I knew that if he took me to bed, I wouldn’t be disappointed.
“You should have said that sooner,” Ashley murmured as he covered my hand with his and plucked out the phone. I was in his arms before I knew what I was doing, drawn in by his soft, silken voice and the scent of his skin.
I’d taken to showering at his place in the mornings, which meant that more often than not I’d go to work with the cedar and bergamot perfume of his body wash on my skin. It was subtle enough that the fragrant notes faded by lunchtime, but more than once I’d strolled over an air vent and sucked in a big gulp of Ashley on my way to work.
I caressed his neck with my lips as he pulled me to him, my body pliant beneath his hands. I turned when he bid me to, somehow winding up with one leg hooked over his and my naked back against his chest. I squirmed a little, eager to feel his cock against my tail bone, but Ashley wrapped an arm around my waist, holding me still. I capitulated quickly, the fight leaving my being as he brushed his fingers along the underside of my breast.
“Here I was, being a gentleman and letting you sleep,” he whispered darkly in my ear, “and you complain that I don’t pay enough attention to you.” He clucked his tongue. “I’ll have to do something about that, won’t I?”
I opened my mouth to protest—I wasn’t complaining, I was teasing him, there was a world of difference between the two—but Ashley silenced me with a fingertip over my lips.
“Quiet. I don’t want to hear you unless you’re begging me to let you come.”