by E. Lockhart
Imogen’s friend Brooke. What did Paolo have to do with Brooke?
Jule made her voice light. “Yeah, from Vassar. How come?”
“Brooke—she passed away about a week ago.” Paolo looked at the ground.
“What? Oh no.”
“I didn’t mean to be the one to tell you. I didn’t put it together that you’d know her till now,” said Paolo. “And then it popped out.”
“How do you know Brooke?”
“I don’t, really. She was friends with my sister from summer camp.”
“What happened?” Jule wanted to hear his answer, desperately, but she calmed her voice.
“It was an accident. She was up in a park north of San Francisco. She was there visiting some friends who went to college in the city, but they were busy or something, and Brooke went hiking. It was a day hike, but late, when it was getting dark. She was on a nature preserve by herself. And she just—she fell off this walkway. A walkway over a ravine.”
“She fell?”
“They think she’d been drinking. She hit her head and nobody found her till this morning. Except some animals. The body was pretty messed up.”
Jule shivered. She thought of Brooke Lannon, with her loud, show-off laugh. Brooke, who drank too much. Brooke, with that perverse streak of humor, the sleek yellow hair and seal-like body. The entitled set of her jaw. Silly, petty, harsh Brooke. “How do they know what happened?”
“She tipped herself over the railing. Maybe climbing up to see something. They found her car in the lot with an empty vodka bottle in it.”
“Was it suicide?”
“No, no. Just an accident. It was in the news today, like a cautionary tale. You know, always take a buddy when you go out in nature. Don’t drink vodka and then hike across a ravine. Her family got worried when she didn’t come home for Christmas Eve, but the police assumed she’d just gone deliberately missing.”
Jule felt cold and strange. She hadn’t thought of Brooke since she’d gotten to London. She could have looked her up online, but she hadn’t. She had cut Brooke out completely. “You’re sure it was an accident?”
“A terrible accident,” said Paolo. “I’m so sorry.”
They walked for a ways in awkward silence.
Paolo pulled his hat down over his ears.
After a minute, Jule reached over and took his hand again. She wanted to touch him. Admitting that and doing it felt more like an act of bravery than any fight she had ever been in. “Let’s not think about it,” she said. “Let’s be on the other side of the ocean and feel lucky.”
She let him walk her home, and he kissed her again in front of her building. They huddled together on the steps to keep warm as merry snowflakes drifted through the air.
Early the next day, Paolo showed up at the flat carrying a tote bag. Jule was wearing pajama pants and a camisole when he rang the buzzer. She made him wait in the hall until she put clothes on.
“I’m borrowing my friend’s house in Dorset,” he said, following her to the kitchen. “And I rented a car. Everything else anyone could possibly need for a weekend away is in this bag.”
Jule peered into the sack he held out: four Crunchie bars, Hula Hoops, Swedish Fish, two bottles of seltzer, and a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. “You don’t have any clothes in there. Or even a toothbrush.”
“Those are for amateurs.”
She laughed. “Ew.”
“Okay, fine, I have my backpack in the car. But these are the important items,” Paolo said. “We can see Stonehenge on the way. Have you seen it?”
“No.” Jule was indeed particularly curious to see Stonehenge, which she’d read about in a Thomas Hardy novel she’d bought in a San Francisco bookshop, but she wanted to see all the things—that was how she felt. All of London she hadn’t yet seen, all of England, all of the great wide world—and to feel free, powerful, and yes, entitled, to witness and understand what was out there.
“It’ll have ancient mystery, so that’ll be good,” said Paolo. “Then when we get to the house, we can hike around and look at sheep in meadows. Or take pictures of sheep. Maybe pat them. Whatever people do in the countryside.”
“Are you inviting me?”
“Yes! There will be separate bedrooms. Available.”
He perched himself on the edge of her kitchen chair, as if unsure of his welcome. As if maybe he’d been too forward.
“You’re nervous right now,” she said, stalling for time.
She wanted to say yes. She knew she shouldn’t.
“Yeah, I’m very nervous.”
“Why?”
Paolo thought for a moment. “The stakes are higher now. It matters to me what your answer is.” He stood up slowly and kissed the side of her neck. She leaned into him, and he was shaking a little. She kissed his soft earlobe and then his lips, standing on tiptoe there in the kitchen.
“Is that a yes?” he whispered.
Jule knew she shouldn’t go.
It was the worst idea. She had left this possibility behind long ago. Love was what you gave up when you became—whatever she was now. Larger than life. Dangerous. She had taken risks and reinvented herself.
Now this boy was in her kitchen, trembling when he kissed her, holding a bag of junk food and fizzy water. Talking nonsense about sheep.
Jule crossed to the other side of the room and washed her hands in the sink. She felt as if the universe was offering her something beautiful and special. It wouldn’t come around again with another such offer.
Paolo walked over and put his hand on her shoulder, very, very gently, as if asking permission. As if in awe that he was allowed to touch her.
And Jule turned around and told him yes.
Stonehenge was closed.
And it was raining.
You couldn’t get close to the actual stones unless you’d bought tickets ahead of time. Jule and Paolo could see some big rocks in the distance as they drove up, but from the visitors’ center, nothing.
“I promised you ancient mystery, and now it’s nothing but a parking lot,” said Paolo, half sad and half joking, as they got back in the car. “I should have looked it up.”
“That’s all right.”
“I do know how to work the Internet.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m more excited about the sheep anyway.”
He smiled. “Are you really?”
“Sure. Can you guarantee sheep?”
“Are you serious? Because I don’t think I can actually guarantee sheep, and I don’t want to let you down again.”
“No. I don’t care about sheep at all.”
Paolo shook his head. “I should have known. Sheep are not Stonehenge. We have to face that. Even the very best sheep are never going to be Stonehenge.”
“Let’s eat the Swedish Fish,” she said, to cheer him up.
“Perfect,” said Paolo. “That is a perfect plan.”
The house wasn’t a house at all. It was a mansion. A great house, built in the nineteenth century. It had grounds and a gated entryway. Paolo had a code for the gate. He punched it in and drove along a curving driveway.
The walls were brick and covered with ivy. On one side, there was a sloping garden of rosebushes and stone benches, ending at a round gazebo by the edge of a stream.
Paolo fumbled in his pockets. “I have the keys in here somewhere.”
It was raining hard now. They stood in the doorway, holding their bags.
“Damn, where are they?” Paolo patted his jacket, his pants, his jacket again. “Keys, keys.” He looked in the tote bag. Looked in his backpack. Ran out and looked in the car.
He sat down in the doorway, under cover from the rain, and pulled everything out of all his pockets. Then everything out of the tote bag. And everything out of the backpack.
“You don’t have the keys,” Jule said.
“I don’t have the keys.”
He was a con artist, a hustler. He wasn’t Paolo Vallarta-Bellstone at all. What proof
had Jule seen? No ID, no online photos. Just what he told her, his manner, his knowledge of Imogen’s family. “Are you really friends with these people?” she asked, making her voice light.
“It’s my friend Nigel’s family’s country house. He had me here in the summer as a guest, and no one is using it, and—I knew the gate code, didn’t I?”
“I’m not actually doubting you,” she lied.
“We can go around the back and see if the kitchen door is open. There’s a kitchen garden, from—from whenever in history they had kitchen gardens,” said Paolo. “I think the technical term is ye olden days.”
They pulled their jackets over their heads and ran through the rain, stepping in puddles and laughing.
Paolo jiggled the kitchen door. It was locked. He wandered around, looking under rocks for a spare key, while Jule huddled under the umbrella.
She pulled out her phone and searched his name, looking for images.
Phew. He was definitely Paolo Vallarta-Bellstone. There were photographs of him at charity fund-raisers, standing next to his parents, wearing no tie at an event where clearly men were supposed to wear ties. Pictures of him with other guys on a soccer field. A high school graduation photo that showed a mouth full of braces and a bad haircut, posted by a grandmother who had blogged a total of three times.
Jule was glad he was Paolo and not some hustler. She liked what a good person he was. It was better that he was genuine because she could believe in him. But there was so much of Paolo that Jule would never know. So much history he’d never get to tell her.
Paolo gave up hunting for the key. His hair was soaked. “The windows are alarmed,” he said. “I think it’s hopeless.”
“What should we do?”
“We better go in the gazebo and kiss for a while,” said Paolo.
The rain didn’t let up.
They drove in damp clothes toward London and stopped at a pub to eat fried food.
Paolo pulled the car up to Jule’s building. He didn’t kiss her but reached his hand out to hold hers. “I like you,” he said. “I thought—I guess I made that clear already? But I thought I should say it.”
Jule liked him back. She liked herself with him.
But she wasn’t herself with him. She didn’t know what it was, or even who it was, that Paolo liked.
Could be Immie. Could be Jule.
She wasn’t sure where to draw the line between them anymore. Jule smelled of jasmine like Imogen, Jule spoke like Imogen, Jule loved the books Immie loved. Those things were true. Jule was an orphan like Immie, a self-created person, a person with a mysterious past. So much of Imogen was in Jule, she felt, and so much of Jule was in Imogen.
But Paolo thought Patti and Gil were her parents. He thought she’d been to college with poor dead Brooke Lannon. He thought she was Jewish and rich and owned a London flat. Those lies were part of what he liked. It was impossible to tell him the truth, and even if she did, he’d hate her for the lie.
“I can’t see you,” she told him.
“What?”
“I can’t see you. Like this. At all.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
“Is there someone else? That you’re going out with? I could take a number or get in line or something.”
“No. Yes. No.”
“Which is it? Can I change your mind?”
“I’m not available.” She could tell him she had someone else, but she didn’t want to lie to him anymore.
“Why not?”
She opened the car door. “I have no heart.”
“Wait.”
“No.”
“Please wait.”
“I have to go.”
“Did you have a bad time? I mean, aside from the rain, no Stonehenge, no country house, no sheep? Aside from the fact that it was a day of disaster upon disaster?”
Jule wanted to stay in the car. To touch his lips with her fingertips and to relax into being Immie and to let the lies build up on each other.
But it would not do.
“Leave me the fuck alone, Paolo,” she snapped. She pushed open the car door and stepped into the downpour.
A couple of weeks went by. Jule kept her eyebrows plucked thin. She bought clothes and more clothes, lovely things with fat price tags. She bought cookbooks for the flat’s kitchen, though she never used them. She went to the ballet, to the opera, to the theater. She saw all the things, historic sites and museums and famous buildings. She bought antiques on Portobello Road.
Late one night, Forrest showed up at the flat. He was supposed to be in America.
Jule forced down panic as she looked through the peephole. She wanted to open the window and climb the drainpipe to the roof, leap onto the next building, and, frankly, just not be home. She wanted to change her eyebrows and her hair and her makeup and—
He rang the buzzer a second time. Jule settled on taking off her rings and putting on joggers and a T-shirt instead of the maxi dress she’d been wearing. She stood before the door and reminded herself that she had always known Forrest might show up. It was Immie’s flat. She had a strategy. She could handle him. She unlocked the door.
“Forrest. What a great surprise.”
“Jule.”
“You look tired. Are you okay? Come in.”
He was holding a weekender bag. She took it from him and brought it into the flat.
“I just got off a plane,” said Forrest, rubbing his jaw and squinting through his glasses.
“Did you take a cab from Heathrow?”
“Yes.” He eyed her coldly. “Why are you here? In Imogen’s apartment?”
“I’m staying here for a bit. She gave me her keys.”
“Where is she? I want to see her.”
“She didn’t come back last night. How did you find the flat?”
“Mrs. Sokoloff gave me the address.” Forrest looked down at the floor, awkward. “It was a long flight. Could I have a glass of water?”
Jule led the way into the kitchen. She gave him water from the tap with no ice. She had lemons in a bowl on the counter, because they fit her idea of how the flat should look, but inside the cupboards and the fridge, there was nothing Imogen would have stocked. Jule ate saltines and sugary peanut butter, packets of salami and chocolate bars. She hoped Forrest wouldn’t ask for food.
“Where is Immie, again?” he asked.
“I told you, she isn’t here.”
“But, Jule.” He grabbed her arm, and for a moment she was afraid of him, afraid of his hard hands pressing the fabric of her shirt, thin and weak as he was. “Where is she instead of here?” He spoke very slowly. She hated the feel of his body close to hers.
“Don’t you ever fucking touch me,” she told him. “Ever. You understand?”
He let her arm drop and walked into the living room, where he draped himself on the couch without being invited. “I think you know where she is. That’s all.”
“She probably went to Paris for the weekend. You can go really quickly from here through the Chunnel.”
“Paris?”
“I’m guessing.”
“Did she tell you not to tell me where she went?”
“No. We didn’t even know you were coming.”
Forrest sank back in his seat. “I need to see her. I texted her, but she might have blocked me.”
“She got a UK phone, with a different number.”
“She doesn’t answer my emails, either. That’s why I came all the way here. I was hoping to talk to her.”
Jule made them some tea while Forrest phoned hotels. He had to make twelve calls before he found one with a room he could book for a few nights.
He’d been arrogant enough to think Imogen would let him stay.
MID-DECEMBER, 2016
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
Two days before she would arrive in London, Jule was on foot, trudging up a San Francisco hill with a heavy statue of a lion in her backpack.
She ador
ed San Francisco. It looked like Immie had said it would, hilly and quaint, yet expansive and elegant. Today Jule had been to see the Asian Art Museum’s ceramics exhibit. Her apartment’s owner had recommended it.
Maddie Chung, the owner, was spare, fiftyish, and gay. She wore jeans and smoked on the porch and owned a small bookstore. Jule paid in cash by the week for the apartment, which was the top floor of a Victorian house. Maddie and her wife lived in the bottom two stories. She was always talking to Jule about art history and gallery exhibits. She was very kind and seemed to view Jule as in need of goodwill.
Today, when Jule got home, Brooke Lannon was sitting on the steps. Immie’s friend from Vassar. “I got here early,” said Brooke. “Whatever.”
Brooke’s convertible had been parked in front of the building overnight. She needed to come pick it up, but Jule had texted her to please stay and talk.
Brooke had thick thighs, a square jaw, and sleek blond hair that always looked the same. White skin and nude lipstick. A jock style. She’d grown up in La Jolla. She drank too much, played field hockey in high school, and had had a series of boyfriends and one girlfriend, but never love. These were all things Jule knew about her from Martha’s Vineyard.
Now Brooke stood up and nearly lost her balance.
“You okay?” Jule asked.
“Not really.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Yes,” said Brooke. “What of it?”
Night was falling.
“Let’s go for a drive,” said Jule. “We can talk.”
“A drive?”
“It’ll be nice. You have such a cute car. Let me have the keys.” The car was the type of thing older men buy to convince themselves they’re still sexy. The two seats were camel-colored, the body curved and bright green. Jule wondered if it belonged to Brooke’s dad. “I can’t have you drive if you’ve been drinking.”
“What are you, the police?”
“Hardly.”
“A spy?”
“Brooke.”
“Seriously, are you?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Ha. That’s what a spy would say.”