Kiss Kill Vanish

by Martinez,Jessica

  A visit to the ladies’ room confirms what I suspected: Nanette’s updo has been ravaged by the wind. It’s unsalvageable. Channeling my inner Lola, I pull the clips and bobby pins out, then do my best to finger-comb for a windblown curls effect.

  I stare at myself in the mirror. Nanette painted my lips rose pink and dusted me with something shimmery, which makes me twinkle unnaturally in this light. I don’t like it. It’s like I’m staring at a painting of myself. I turn away.

  From the ladies’ room, I let the flow of traffic carry me to the main gallery, too entranced by the colors and scents of the lavish flower arrangements perched on pillars to notice what I should be noticing: I stick out.

  Once I reach the entrance, though, I feel it. The women are dressed in obsidian and silver. A few sharp-colored accents cry out—a peacock feather sash, a poppy tucked into a smooth bun, a jade necklace, electric blue stilettos—but it’s mostly black, and the harsh lines of ebony gowns against bare skin, the diamonds and sapphires choking tall necks, all pulse shrilly around me.

  Nobody is wearing pink. Nobody is wearing simple pearl earrings. Nobody has their hair loose. I’d been so relieved Nanette had something to borrow, I didn’t realize I’d be all wrong here. But it’s winter—real winter, dark and cold and foreign. And I look like a little girl.

  I spot Lucien by the bar, chatting with a bearded man and a tightly bunned Amazon in a charcoal gown. Lucien looks lost without his artist garb. The tuxedo is perfectly cut, his jaw is clean shaven, and I can see the comb lines in his hair from across the room. I’d have thought this would be his natural habitat, but he seems even less genuine than usual.

  I let my eyes take in the paintings while I wait for Lucien to see me.

  Naked women. They’re everywhere. Twisted, lounged, splayed, and butterflied with oil paints on life-size canvases. I’ve spent too much time looking at art to be shy about nudes, but I’m inexplicably shocked. I was expecting more jars. Or something equally nonsensical, something I would be forced to spend the evening staring at, wondering what on earth Hugo LaFleur possibly meant by a bicycle covered in noses or kneecaps.

  I feel the pressure of Lucien’s hand against the small of my back before I see him.

  “You’re late,” he says. “I was worried you got lost.”

  I turn, but he keeps his hand in place, so we stay too close, the arm of his tuxedo sliding over my arm. So this is how it’s going to be. I glance around for Marcel, but I don’t see him at the bar, which means he’s probably off in a corner trying to get too friendly with a server, or on one of the balconies smoking something more calming than a cigarette. It’s possible that my hopes for using him to distract Lucien were overly optimistic.

  “You look like Aphrodite in that dress.” He takes a sip from the champagne flute in his hand. I’d love one too. “I don’t know why a goddess portrait never occurred to me,” he says, touching the fabric draped over my hip. “Maybe after we’re finished in the cemetery.”

  I take an oyster from a passing tray. It’s cold and briny, and I let it slip down my throat before I can gag.

  “So what do you think?” he asks with a nod to the nearest wall.

  “I think your friend paints beautifully.”

  “He’s not my friend.” Lucien scowls, irked by the compliment as I’d hoped he’d be. “And nobody calls his paintings beautiful. You’re not even looking at them.”

  So I look at them. Lucien’s hand on my back, we push through the crowd to the nearest painting, then the next, and the next, and the next. We move at his pace, which is too fast and not fast enough; it’s a blur, but I want it to end.

  “See?” he says.

  He’s right. They aren’t beautiful, and the artist didn’t want them to be. They’re angry, not just the models’ faces but the emotion vibrating from each canvas. There’s something garish and hateful about these women—not beloved. Certainly not beautiful.

  “They make you uncomfortable,” Lucien says.

  “No.” But I am uncomfortable. It’s not the paintings, or not quite. It’s that niggling feeling that I’ve been ignoring something big. All the incongruities I’ve been chalking up to Lucien’s weirdness are being brought into focus by LaFleur’s nudes. Everything seems sharper now. This is art—the bare human form in all its strength and vulnerability, musculature, rolls, bulges, and dips, every angle and shade on display. I’ve grown up knowing this.

  But Lucien hasn’t asked to paint me nude. Not once. I’d say no, but he doesn’t know that. He thinks I’ll do anything if he just increases the price.

  The price is all wrong too, though. Three hundred dollars an hour is ten times the amount art school models are paid in Montreal. I checked. It was less disturbing when we started, when it was a hundred dollars, but I let the price surge, no, forced it to, without wondering why he’d pay so much. My excuses—he’s rich, he thinks I’m interesting to paint, paying too much makes him feel powerful—smoothed over enough of the bumps for me to proceed, and I’ve been greedy enough to make believing worthwhile. But now, it’s so obviously all wrong. Why doesn’t this heightened focus point to something specific?

  My stomach feels stirred, the back of my throat thickens, and my eyes burn.

  “I can’t imagine she’s enjoying this,” Marcel says, his voice so close to my ear I startle. He’s behind us, between us, above us, all at the same time. I don’t know whether it’s relief or revulsion that pulses through me.

  Lucien cringes and takes a step forward, pulling me with him. “I thought you left.”

  “Changed my mind,” Marcel says, and inches behind us, not seeming to care that we don’t turn around. His breath tickles my bare shoulder. There’s no reason for him to be standing this close, but the annoyance on Lucien’s face makes it bearable.

  Marcel reaches over his brother’s arm and holds out a champagne flute for me. “You must be thirsty. Lucien’s stingy with the drinks. Wait.” He stops, pulling the glass just out of my reach. “I can’t remember—are you legal?”

  I glare over my shoulder at him. Legal is eighteen here, but in practice, the Quebecois serve liquor to anyone with a pulse. “I’ve told you several times. I’m nineteen.” I pull the champagne from his hand and take a sip. Clearly, Marcel doesn’t care whether it’s my buttons or Lucien’s being pushed, just as long as he’s pissing someone off.

  “Oh, right,” Marcel says. “Nineteen. So aren’t you a little uncomfortable with all this?” He twirls his finger around at the paintings.

  “Why would I be?”

  “It’s a bit provocative, don’t you think?”

  “Go away,” Lucien interrupts. “You’re the only thing making Jane uncomfortable.”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I bet she finds having you speak for her far more annoying.”

  “Why are you even here?” Lucien asks.

  Marcel snorts. “Because Hugo invited me.”

  I’m silent, listening but not listening, staring at a lounging woman frozen in paint with her hands over her breasts, wondering what she was thinking, wondering if she felt hated by Hugo, or if she pitied Hugo. Something in her expression reminds me a little of Ana. What an odd moment for homesickness to hit.

  “I think the better question,” Marcel continues, “is why did you come? Didn’t you just tell Dad you were done with all this?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, I do,” Marcel says. “He said you’d be back in the office doing his bidding Monday morning.”

  Lucien’s hand drops from my back as he spins around. “I don’t do his bidding.”

  Marcel raises an eyebrow and smirks.

  I see Lucien’s hand curl into a fist at his side, and for one glorious moment, I think he’s going to punch Marcel. I can’t think of a better path for this evening to take. I’d rather be at the emergency room, or even jail, than spend another minute in this room.

  But Lucien stops short of hitting him. He grabs Marcel�
��s lapel and drags him toward the entrance, muttering something I can’t hear through bared teeth. Ah, brotherly love. I watch them leave. Their faces are turned away, but something in Marcel’s scuffling swagger tells me he’s smiling.

  This is my chance. I’m alone, and if I conveniently lose myself in the thickening crowd, it could be a good hour before Lucien tracks me down. But that painting calls to me, and I have to look back at it. Yes. It does look a little like Ana.

  It’s more than homesickness this time. It’s a flood of grief that sweeps over me, threatening to knock me over. I used to have a life and a family and friends and a home. I wonder what Ana’s doing now. It takes everything to stay upright. I finish my champagne and slip into the crowd. I need to get as far away from that painting as I can.

  Off the main gallery, I find a hallway with openings to smaller rooms. Pieces by artists I don’t recognize fill the first, with only a few people milling around: a red-faced man chuckling into his cell phone; a couple huddled with their heads together, her satin-gloved hand tucked snugly under his arm. I wander around them and into the next room, my heels stinging from the forming blisters. I end up in front of a sculpture of hands—old hands, wrinkled and puckered like Papi’s. The memory only feeds the sadness that’s inflating in my chest, climbing up my throat. I leave without another glance.

  The next room is smaller and blessedly empty. Glare shields the contents of a single glass case in the center of the room, so I step closer to see what’s beneath. Music. Browning, tattered sheets of parchment, the notes minuscule and oddly square. Art or artifact? I lean over to examine the scores when I hear the shush of a door closing behind me, followed by an impossible sound. A whispered name.

  “Valentina.”

  My heart is in my throat as I twist around, because I already know. Emilio is rushing toward me with long strides, his hands up in surrender even as he’s charging into me and gripping my arms with that terrifying clutch I’ve felt as many times as I’ve relived that memory, pushing me back and back and back and against the wall.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  TEN

  I can’t breathe.

  His face is one inch from mine. His breath is hot on my cheeks. His skin is the same sun-golden brown I remember, his cheekbones high and strong, his eyes so intense I would gasp if I could open my mouth. I swear I smell the ocean.

  “Shhhh!” he says, but I haven’t made a sound. “We only have a minute. You don’t know me. Okay?”

  I nod.

  “Where are you staying?” he asks.

  I feel my bones weakening under his grip.

  “Where?”

  I shake my head.

  “You’re scared of me,” he whispers.

  “I’m not.” I shake my head again, but he knows I’m lying. His grip on me loosens. He slides his hands down my arms and wraps his fingers around mine.

  “You have to let me explain. It’s been killing me, knowing you—”

  Laughter rings from beyond the door. Emilio drops my hands and turns away, pretending to examine the sheet music beneath the glass. We don’t know each other. I’m shaking and my heart is thundering as I try to brace for whatever may come charging through the door. Lucien. Or my father.

  The laughter passes. But Emilio’s body doesn’t relax, and he doesn’t come any closer again. He looks at me hard.

  I feel like I might fall.

  “Where are you staying?” he repeats.

  “An apartment in Old Montreal,” I stammer. “How did you find me? Are you here alone?”

  He shakes his head. I can see the urgency in his hands, the way his fingers tighten around the edges of the glass case. “I don’t have time to explain now. Just, please, where are you staying?”

  “46B Montaigne and Fifth.” The words are out before I realize what I’m doing, how fast I’ve given in. But he came for me.

  It’s a mess, too twisted to untangle here and now. Who he really is, why he’s really here—those are infinitely less important than the physical truth in front of me. He is here. I can see him and touch him, because he came for me.

  I’d forgotten how his hair curls just enough to resist tucking behind his ears. I stare at his knuckles as they turn white from gripping the glass case. It looks like he could crush it. But he came for me.

  Without warning, the door swings open and my heart lurches. In the doorway, with a fresh drink in his hand, stands Marcel. He grins sloppily at me. “So, I’m not the only one trying to hide from Lucien.”

  I can’t speak. My mind is racing to keep worlds separate.

  “He got a phone call mid-rant and sort of wandered off,” Marcel explains, not noticing Emilio’s figure hunched over the glass case. “Or maybe I was the one who wandered off. Hard to tell.”

  Emilio pulls himself up straight and turns, not once looking in my direction. “Marcel.”

  “Emilio.”

  I don’t understand. I can’t think. They don’t know each other.

  Marcel’s grin has become something else without actually changing. Something strained. “I didn’t know you were in town.”

  My stomach turns over, and I taste oyster. They do know each other.

  “Just for the weekend.”

  “On business?”

  “Of course.”

  Marcel looks from Emilio to me, then back to Emilio, frowning in confusion. He gestures to both of us, and the liquid in his glass sloshes over, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Wait, you two know each other?”

  “We just met,” Emilio says, perfectly casually.

  Don’t say my name. Forcing a brittle smile, I try to make eye contact with Emilio, but he won’t look at me.

  “Well, aren’t you the social butterfly tonight,” Marcel says to me with a raised eyebrow.

  “Actually,” I say, hoping he doesn’t hear the quiver in my voice, “I was trying to get away from the crowd, and I thought the room was empty. Emilio was just telling me about these old music scores.”

  “Fascinating,” Marcel says drily, glancing into the case. “So you’re here to buy a LaFleur, I assume?” For reasons unknown, he tries to do air quotes around “LaFleur” and spills a little more of his drink.

  Emilio shrugs. He looks so relaxed I’d believe he really was that calm if I couldn’t see his knuckles still white from clenching. “Depends. My boss wants me to look at a few while he feels out buyers. You’re a friend of LaFleur’s, aren’t you?”

  Marcel grimaces, his distaste for Emilio becoming more and more obvious. “I think we both know I’m mostly here just to piss off Lucien.”

  “How do you two know each other?” I interrupt. Emilio gives me the quickest glance. A warning? Am I not supposed to speak?

  “Through Lucien,” Marcel mutters, which only ignites another line of questions in my head. Emilio and Lucien know each other too?

  “He’s here, I’m assuming,” Emilio says.

  “Of course,” Marcel says, and turns to the frosted window. “You know how he loves his art.”

  With Marcel’s back to us, Emilio looks into my eyes. There’s a message I’m supposed to understand. A question. I can’t tell.

  “I’ve yet to see any of Lucien’s paintings,” Emilio says, pulling his eyes away from me just as Marcel turns back around.

  “You’re not missing much. Jane’s beauty notwithstanding, of course.”

  Emilio’s confusion only lasts a second, but it’s long enough for Marcel to notice.

  “She didn’t tell you?” he says with a chuckle.

  “I just met him,” I say through gritted teeth. “I had no clue he knew Lucien.”

  Emilio waits, looking expectantly from me to Marcel.

  “Jane here is Lucien’s muse,” Marcel explains.

  “You’re his girlfriend,” Emilio says, not a question, eyes betraying nothing.

  Marcel
laughs loudly, and the sound fills the small room. “That would make it less weird. She’s just his subject. Or has your status changed tonight?” His lip curls with the suggestion.

  Emilio’s knuckles go even whiter.

  “I’m his model.” I force myself to look at Marcel while I speak. I don’t trust my acting. I can’t look at Emilio like I don’t know him, like I don’t care what he’s thinking. “That’s all.”

  “Except for this evening,” Marcel says.

  I narrow my eyes.

  “That’s why you’re hiding from him, right?” Marcel says. “That’s typical behavior for one of Lucien’s dates, but a little odd if he’s paying you to be here with him. Is he paying you?”

  Blood burns my cheeks, humiliation and hatred pulsing because I don’t know the answer to that question.

  “I see you’re still as charming as ever with the ladies,” Emilio says, with a wry smile. “Last time I ran into you, you were hiding from some socialite with claws. In Amsterdam, I think.”

  Drunk enough to be easily distracted, Marcel gives a lazy cheers motion with the empty glass. “Ah, Ingrid. She was psychotic.”

  “And unprovoked, I’m sure,” Emilio says.

  I don’t listen as Marcel reminisces about Ingrid the psychotic socialite. I’m wondering why Emilio was in Amsterdam, wondering why Marcel was in Amsterdam, wondering why they’re both here, wondering why these two worlds have overlapped, not just once, but over and over.

  “Well, I should go,” Emilio says. “I’ve got an early flight tomorrow.”

  Panic seizes me, and I search for something to make him stay, something that won’t make Marcel suspicious.

  “Nice meeting you, Jane.” He nods coolly in my direction, then to Marcel, and is one foot out the door before I manage to find words.

  “You aren’t going to stay to say hi to Lucien?” I ask, desperation making me talk too loud.

  Emilio glances back, and I catch a flash of accusation in his eyes, there and gone before I’m even sure I’ve seen it. “You’ll have to do it for me.”