by Camilla Monk
Worst-case scenario: Nothing is real after all. I show up, and it turns out I hallucinated most of what happened so far. I’m not Island, the US embassy can’t help me because I have no ID, I’m not a US citizen anyway, and when I look down at my arms, I see purple fur and realize I’ve been a Muppet all along. I can’t help but check my hands on the wheel, just in case . . .
Also I’m hungry.
A bright-red sign that looks like a giant daisy flashes by, indicating a gas station a few miles away. Maybe I could stop and buy something to eat—I found a money clip with a couple hundred euros in March’s inner pocket. I do feel some amount of misplaced guilt at the idea that I stole his car, his gun, and now I’m going to help myself to his cash too. I guess desperate times call for . . . well, larceny.
I pull right into the gas station and do a decent parking job, by my standards—I don’t know if March would agree, but at least here on the median strip, I’m not blocking anyone. Stepping out barefoot on the wet, icy ground is the hardest part; the rest of me is kept fairly warm by the coat, although you could fit two of me in here. Once I’m steady on my legs, I trot toward the shop, drawn to the lights like a mosquito.
People stare at me when I enter, and some leering gazes make me all too aware of how vulnerable I am, almost naked under March’s coat and alone in the middle of nowhere. I wonder if they’d look at my legs the same if they knew I’m hiding a gun in my pocket. I have no idea what a “tactical supergrade” is, but that’s what’s written on the barrel, and it makes me feel very powerful, even as I drop a pair of red Christmas-themed slipper boots, a soda can, and a chicken sandwich on the counter before a befuddled clerk.
I notice a row of flashy-orange Rompetrol sweatshirts lined near the register and grab one too before handing the young guy a hundred-euro bill with a regal gesture.
There’s a beat of silence before he proceeds to scan my items and eventually gives me my change. I put on the slipper boots immediately in the middle of the shop. As I turn around to leave, I catch sight of my reflection in the window of a fridge. Staring back at me is a zombie whose face pops out of an oversize coat. The mess of tangled curls falling on her shoulders looks like she went through a wind tunnel, and that old guy with the grubby parka and the Heineken beanie keeps side-eyeing her insistently. I have a frightening epiphany: I’m 134 euros and one half-full tank away from becoming a crazy homeless lady who’ll drag around a ton of plastic bags and talk to pigeons in the streets of Bucharest. I definitely should have thought this through.
When the Heineken guy attempts direct eye contact, I hurry out of the shop and run back to the Mercedes. Once inside, I feel safe, shielded from prying eyes by the tinted windows. I curl into the driver’s seat and remove March’s coat to shrug on my brand-new sweatshirt over the paper gown. Crazy homeless lady, indeed. Especially once I’ve snuggled back into the coat and I start an improvised picnic.
Soon the smooth black leather of March’s seats is covered in bread crumbs. I shush my conscience, filing the pang in my chest as some twisted variant of Stockholm syndrome. I need something to silence the noise in my head, to numb my thoughts: I turn on the radio and browse through the stations until a familiar tune fills the car. Apparently, in Romania too, radio stations are legally obligated to air George Michael during the holidays. My throat feels tight, and the chicken doesn’t taste so great as Michael croons that he’ll give his heart to someone special for Christmas.
I drop the half-eaten sandwich back in the plastic box it came from. My eyes burn as if I’m about to cry, but the tears won’t come. I hope this is it, that I’ve hit rock bottom, because I’m not sure I want to sink any lower. I’m about to drown my sorrows in a can of Fanta when I register footsteps and rustling outside the car. Someone is rapping on the rear window. Startled, I drop my soda on the floor mat. A sweet smell permeates the air as I watch the Heineken guy circle the Mercedes.
He slurs in a gravelly voice, “Esti înăuntru? Ieși afară! Vreau doar să vorbim.” Are you inside? Come out! I just want to talk.
Add Romanian to the growing list of languages my former self learned in another life. I don’t understand everything, but my brain manages to piece together the general meaning of his—visibly drunken—exhortations. And no, I don’t want to chat. I fumble for the keys in March’s pocket with a shaky hand. If he keeps trying to look inside like that, I’m running him over!
Okay, maybe not. But if he had seen me drive, he’d move away. He doesn’t; he keeps rapping, calls me dragă—whatever that means. I’m fastening my seat belt to get the hell away from here when the unthinkable happens. Heineken guy looks left and right and unzips his pants with a chuckle. From the corner of my eye, I see something dangle in his hands before a steady stream of liquid hits my window. I don’t even want to know; I turn the key in the ignition.
Just as I’m about to hit the gas pedal, a shadow glides behind the Heineken Pis. I distinctly hear a deep voice say, “Good evening, sir,” before the guy’s face slams against the very window he just pissed on. My hands drop from the wheel, and I recoil with a yelp of panic at the sight of his bloody jowl grotesquely squished against the glass. It stays like that for half a second before sliding down, leaving a sickening red trail in its wake. A black-gloved hand hauls him away from the car, and he collapses a few feet away with a groan.
I don’t need to look up to know who goes around beating up hobos at gas stations in the middle of the night. The doors are locked. I could wait. But he won’t leave, right? I take a shivering breath, switch off the engine, and press the door’s unlock button. The first thing I see when the door opens is a pair of spit-shined boots, as if I needed further confirmation that March never opened the cage. He merely toyed with me a little.
I step out, my eyes never meeting his.
“Island,” he begins. “I meant to give you space . . . but Erwin’s men followed you, and I was worried.”
I look around instinctively, expecting some guy in a black trench coat hiding behind a gas pump, but all I see is a bald Santa in a red tracksuit waving at me. Viktor is leaning against a beige SUV I never realized had been tailing me. He shrugs. “I told him we should let them catch you when you leave the station, to teach you a lesson, but no one ever listens to me.”
Meanwhile, the Heineken Pis is slowly sitting up, one hand clutching his bloody nose. The guy’s noodle is still out of his pants, and for a second, I see pure hate in March’s gaze. Fortunately for all parties involved, the offending appendage is soon tucked back where it belongs, and the guy staggers away until he disappears inside the cabin of a massive truck parked at the other end of the lot.
My attention returns to March.
“I’m not going back there,” I say defiantly. “If you try to force me—”
“I won’t. The choice is yours”—his voices catches—“if you don’t want to try Viktor’s treatment, I won’t force you.”
“But you can’t give me my life back,” I snap, more harshly than I intended.
His jaw tightens. “If you return to New York, you’ll be at Erwin’s mercy . . . provided Anies doesn’t find you first. I need to keep you safe until I’ve solved this.”
“Until Anies is dead or behind bars,” I clarify. “But Erwin captured Dries, and he’ll kill him if you don’t take me back tomorrow.”
“He’ll never do that. Dries is far too valuable an asset, besides . . .”
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Never mind. No use in speculating at this point.”
“March, if they manage to get rid of Anies? Will you let me go? For real?”
His voice sounds flat, remote, as he replies, “Once Anies is dead, if you want me gone, you will never hear about me again.”
Isn’t that what I wanted? Then why does my chest hurt so much I can barely breathe? Silence stretches between us until the revving of an engine alerts us to the fact that Viktor . . . just left.
I blink at the departing SUV. “He, um . .
. he ditched you.”
March seems equally dumbfounded. It’s the first time I see him look like this, lips slightly parted in astonishment, like a little boy. I avert my eyes to conceal an involuntary smile.
“Indeed,” he confirms before checking his watch. “All right. I’ve made good note that you don’t want to return to the casino, but it’s getting late. Let’s find a place to spend the night, and I’ll contact Erwin to sort out our options in the morning.”
I shrug. “Okay, I guess . . .”
Honestly, I’ve stopped trying to think of the future, immediate or otherwise. At this point, I’m too tired and lost to do anything other than tag along. I walk to the passenger door like a robot, certain that March won’t let me drive anyway.
He moves to climb in the driver’s seat . . . and freezes.
My first impulse is panic. I’m thinking that he saw something; gunshots are about to erupt. In my legs, the muscles coil in anticipation, until I realize that what he saw are crumbs all over the front seats, and Fanta too.
I feel my ears grow hot. “I just . . . I used your money to buy dinner, but it’s because of that guy, uh—”
“It’s all right.” The tremor in his voice tells me it’s anything but. “Can I ask you to sit in the back for a few minutes? I’ll turn on the seat heating; it won’t be long.”
“Sure.” I settle in the back seat and watch him produce a mini wet wipe from his jacket’s pocket. First, he wipes all crumbs from the driver’s seat before he takes the wheel. We don’t make it far: across the lot and straight to the car wash. What follows is a ten-minute ballet during which the front of the Mercedes is meticulously vacuumed, the dashboard wiped clean, the floor mat shampooed and thoroughly rinsed, then dried and put back in place. There’s nothing to be done for the scratch on the side, but soap and water get rid of the last traces of the Heineken guy’s bodily fluids, and at last I’m allowed back in the front seat. March returns behind the wheel and lets out a long sigh. “I’m sorry. I think it’s . . . more comfortable this way.”
Buried in his coat, I peer at him. I don’t really mind that part of him, the cleaning. It’s all so familiar . . . and yet I still can’t summon any clear memories of this man before the ice-cream truck attack. Even in my dreams—my cheeks flush at the thought—he was only a shadow. Skin, kisses, whispers . . . pieces of a puzzle I couldn’t solve.
“Do you have any mints left?” I ask.
“Yes.” He searches his inner pockets for his precious tube.
“Take one,” I say quietly. “You need it.”
March’s hand pauses before he can drop the candy in his palm. He tilts his head to study me, his eyes suddenly alight with curiosity. “You’re right. I do.”
TWENTY-ONE
STORY OF MY LIFE
He likes country. I was a little surprised when March synced his phone to the car radio, and Johnny Cash started crooning to a girl that he’s been flushed from the bathroom of her heart. At first, I wondered if he had chosen that particular song on purpose, to convey some sort of . . . message. But the next track was some guy howling about his tractor being sexy, and I concluded that my shady ex is quite simply a country enthusiast.
So far he’s kept his word: he didn’t take me back to Constanta and Viktor’s dreadful dental casino. There’s a small town called Fetești-Gară not far from the gas station: that’s where he takes me. We park in front of an austere concrete building that turns out to be a hotel, the aged sign proudly flaunting its only star. The inside could best be described as a sixties convent: clean and warm but sparsely furnished with the kind of stuff you’d expect to see in a flea market. March takes care of check-in while I tour the lobby and examine the lace doilies decorating threadbare velvet armchairs, the brown melamine sideboard above which a portrait of Jesus hangs on the wall.
“Island?”
I whirl around at the sound of my name. March is standing at the bottom of a staircase, waiting for me. The old lady sitting behind the reception desk is staring at me too. When her gaze slowly drags back and forth between the two of us, it hits me: we’re going to spend the night together in this hotel, under the strict surveillance of our lord and savior. Which feels kind of weird. Shaking off my discomfort, I hurry past a dismal Christmas tree, whose branches seem to sag under the weight of a handful of golden balls, and follow March upstairs.
There’re only a few rooms, and I have a feeling that we’re the only guests tonight. When the door creaks open to reveal two beds, I address a silent prayer of thanks to a Virgin Mary icon hanging on the wall. March walks to the one closest to the window and lays a black suitcase and travel bag on the bed that he retrieved from the Mercedes’s trunk.
He presses his thumb to a fingerprint lock on the suitcase, and I watch with no small amount of curiosity as a neat-freak-assassin’s survival kit comes into view. There’s a change of clean and perfectly ironed clothes on one side and a vast assortment of weapons on the other. Goose bumps bloom on my forearms when I’m reminded that this man has proven to be my most reliable ally so far, and he carries around hand grenades in his suitcase.
I don’t know what to do with myself, so I pick the easiest way to avoid prolonged interaction. “I’m going to take a shower.”
March gestures to the sports bag. “I retrieved it from the casino for you. It’s fresh clothes and . . . other feminine products.”
I secretly relish in his obvious embarrassment, like it’s the thirties and tampons are still the harbinger of scandal and depravation. I take the bag with a small “Thanks.”
“Will you need anything else?”
“No, I’m good.”
The shower is too hot, but I don’t try to adjust the temperature. I’m thinking that maybe my skin is going to peel off, and there’ll be someone new underneath, someone whole. I step out eventually, and when the steam clears up, I’m dismayed to see that same girl in the mirror, only a little redder. She’s not me. She wasn’t Anies’s daughter, might never be Dries’s . . . she’s not the girlfriend March lost. She’s nothing but a stranger to the friends and family she once had. I massage my temples forcefully, fighting off the first signs of a migraine.
After a few minutes, I feel clear enough to wrap myself in a large towel and search the sports bag. It contains little more than the bare essentials, but clean underwear and deodorant have never felt so good. I slip on a pair of gray yoga pants and shrug on my Rompetrol sweatshirt. In the bedroom, March is checking something on his phone and types a quick message. He puts the device back in his pocket as soon as he sees me standing in the doorway. “How do you feel?”
“More or less okay.” My gaze falls on his suitcase. “Hey, do you have maybe a pair of scissors in there?”
His brow twitches in suspicion. “Yes, why?”
I shrug. “Just . . . I need scissors.”
He studies me, with those eyes that look like dark oceans.
“I won’t do anything weird. I’m not gonna kill myself if that’s what you’re worried about.”
His jaw tics. “The idea never crossed my mind.”
I fidget in the bathroom’s doorway while he retrieves a toiletry bag from his suitcase, from which he produces a tiny pair of scissors. “Will these do?”
With an eager nod, I walk to the bed to take them from him. As I’m about to close the bathroom door again, March’s voice stops me. “Island?”
“What?”
“Can I ask you to leave the door unlocked?”
I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer. I glare at him and slam the door behind myself. Without locking it.
•••
“What do you think?”
March won’t stop blinking, and he hasn’t said anything since I came out of the bathroom. I fear my hair looks worse than I thought, probably like the result of a freak accident rather than a chin-length bob like the one I wore on EM Group’s blog post.
“It’s”—his mouth works in vain, until an unexpected smile li
ghts up his entire face, creasing two dimples. It’s the first time I see him smile like that, and he looks younger, just . . . different—“It’s more like you. You look lovely.”
I can’t stop the blush that warms my cheeks at his compliment.
March gestures to the scissors in my hand. “I think one side is longer than the other. May I?”
“Yeah . . .”
He joins me in front of the bathroom’s mirror. In the sink, eight months’ worth of auburn tresses now rest in a damp heap. I feel better, lighter. I gaze at our reflection as March wets my hair and starts working on the right side of my bob with a frown of intense concentration. We stand in comfortable silence, the rhythmical snip of the scissors the only sound between us. Once he’s put the final touch to his chef d’oeuvre, March straightens with an air of smug satisfaction.
I now sport an ear-length bob, and the sides are admittedly even, but on my forehead, the bangs are one-inch long, and I look . . . stupid. I think he was going for Amélie’s style, but the result is more reminiscent of Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, and the orange sweatshirt doesn’t help. My lips quiver, until I can’t hold it anymore and let out a chortle. “Thank you. Please don’t ever cut my hair again.”
“You don’t like it?”
I ruffle my hair with both hands. “It’ll do, and hair grows back anyway.”
“I’m terribly sorry . . .” He looks genuinely beaten, and I’m amazed that all it took was a bad haircut to bring down a man who seems otherwise capable of enduring anything.
“Don’t worry. Like I said, it’s gonna grow back. Besides”—I crane my neck to better examine the sides—“I like it. It’s almost a pixie cut. Do you think it’d look good if I dyed it blue?”