“What are you so worried about?” he asks, catching me staring.
I look away, out the window to where the storefronts and signs and faces have become Chinese. I have to do a better job at steering this conversation. His questions are too focused, and it’s getting harder to believe he doesn’t know what he’s aiming at. “Getting a job.”
“How can that be hard? Walk into a Club Monaco or Anthropologie. You have retail sexpot written all over you.”
I glare at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Chill out. It’s a compliment.”
“That’s how you compliment people?”
“I meant you look like you’d wear their clothes well, okay? If you think you’re too good for retail, sorry. I misunderstood.”
“I’m not too good for retail. I don’t have a visa to work here.”
“Oh.”
There’s nothing to say now. Our tenuous dynamic can’t support him being a jerk and me being defensive. We settle back into silence.
I stare out the window and watch the signs turn from what I thought was Chinese to what I think is Vietnamese to what I think is Korean to what I just can’t tell. Then we’re back to the familiar mix of skyscrapers and fairy tale. I’ve nearly grown used to it, the way this city meshes Camelot and Metropolis. It’s a fabric of old-world punctured by modern structures. I won’t miss Montreal—when Emilio comes for me, I’ll leave without looking back, without tears—but eventually I might be able to work up some sort of nostalgia for it.
Except then I’d have to remember the terror I’ve felt here. Maybe I’ll leave nostalgia be.
The drive goes on and on, and by the time Marcel parks, I’m certain that the finest sushi in the world isn’t worth another hour of this torture.
“It’s right there,” he says, pointing to a sign up ahead. KRU. The font is stretched and angled like a blade, the color of steel.
He roots around for something in the backseat while I get out of the car and walk ahead, pulled by my stomach and the promise of ambient noise.
“Wait up,” he calls.
I have to force myself to slow down. Being civil shouldn’t be so hard. Marcel opens the door for me and leans close as I pass through. “It’s traditional Japanese,” he says softly, like he needs to demonstrate how loud I should talk.
I whisper back, “In that case I’ll order California rolls and a Diet Coke.”
If he smiles, I don’t catch it.
Inside, Kru is sparse and light. Lotus blossoms float in cups on tables, and crisply shaven bonsai accent ledges. I breathe. The air is delicate. It’s ginger and soy and sake braided together, a fishtail of scents. Kimono-wrapped women glide from table to table, the fish on their trays glistening like bars of ruby and pearl.
“Omakase?” Marcel asks. He’s watching me, so I don’t let on that I know exactly what omakase is, that I’ve sat and watched expert sushi chefs make delicacy after delicacy of their own choosing plenty of times.
But then his face softens, and it’s not so much patronizing as nice. I get it. He doesn’t want me to be embarrassed about my own ignorance. That’s worse, enough to make me abandon the dumb routine.
“How many courses?” I ask.
“Depends how hungry you are.”
“Ten.”
“You mean on a scale of one to ten?”
“No, I mean ten-course omakase sounds perfect,” I say.
The hostess welcomes us in French, and after a brief exchange with Marcel, seats us at the sushi bar. Side by side again. The movie theater, the car, now Kru—with any luck at all we’ll never have to make eye contact.
The sushi chef nods at both of us, then speaks to Marcel in French too. He looks like a surgeon with his tight cap, solemn eyes, and gleaming cleaver. I watch his hands while he talks. Palm down, the left presses flat on the inky scales of a headless fish, and the right grips the knife. He slices the flesh in one fluid motion, as if it were butter and not meat. He does it again and again, discarding the skin and carving the meat into perfect blocks. It’s violent and beautiful. I’m holding my breath. Why am I holding my breath?
“Are you okay?” Marcel asks.
“What? Oh. I’m fine.” I fix my face into something less half-starved, more sane, and try to think of small talk. “So, it’s not too busy. We didn’t even have to wait.”
“No.”
Now the chef is slicing something red with white threads running through the fiber. It looks good. It looks expensive. I look around me for a menu, but of course there are none. We’re eating omakase, so there’s no need, except it’d be nice to see a price or two.
Of course, he’s paying.
A mild jolt, just a hiccup of panic jerks me. No, he’s paying. He knows I’m broke, and he paid for everything at the movies the other night. Plus, he asked me. Under different circumstances I’d worry he was thinking this was a date, but it’s clear neither of us is feeling that. Definitely not that.
We watch the chef slice eel and octopus, delicate operations of dismemberment and amputation. For some reason it makes me think of poetry. It’s the way his fingers dance nimbly around the meat.
“You think this is weird,” Marcel says.
“Eel butchering?” I ask.
“No. Being here with me.”
“Oh.” I lift my chopsticks from their holder. They’re obsidian black and smooth. “No.”
“It’s fine. It is weird.”
I click them together a few times. “Okay, it’s weird.”
The chef hands us our first plates, tiny strips of barbecued eel wrapped around shaved cucumber, and we stare at our food. The silence is less brittle now. He said it. I admitted it. There isn’t much else to do besides eat the eel, because I need the food and he needs the company of someone who doesn’t matter or care.
I take a bite and it melts in my mouth. Sinful, sinful meat. I can’t remember the last time I tasted something so rich.
“My mom is demanding I start seeing her shrink.”
I take another bite to save me from commenting.
“She thinks I’m not grieving.”
I picture his hunched figure beside me in the theater, flickering with the movie on his back, shuddering beneath the barrage of sound. “And you don’t think you need to go.”
He shrugs. “I guess there’s a certain way you’re supposed to act in front of certain people at a certain time when your brother kills himself.”
“As in cry at the funeral.”
“As in that.”
“Which you didn’t do.”
“I don’t like an audience.”
I’m not sure what this means. I’m not an audience?
“I could feel them all watching me,” he says. “Would you have sobbed for the crowd?”
I picture my sisters. The idea of either of them dying is so sickening I can’t keep imagining it. “I don’t know.”
“Do you have siblings?”
“Yes,” I say before I remember that I’m not Valentina. Jane isn’t supposed to have siblings, but I guess she does now. “Two sisters.”
He stares at the curled, sticky flesh between his chopsticks. “So, maybe I seem crazy.”
“Lots of people don’t cry at funerals.”
“Not that. I mean calling you, trying to hang out with you like we’re friends.”
I chew and swallow, but the sticky rice doesn’t go down, just clings to my throat in a glob. I don’t have to answer because we’re both distracted as our plates are removed and the next course delivered: rectangles of seared white tuna, a breath of avocado draped over each like a wilting leaf.
“Maybe I don’t know you,” he says, “but I saw the way you looked at Lucien when he was staring at his canvas. I know you hated him.”
“I didn’t hate—”
“Stop. It’s okay. I hated him too.”
Everything I could say is a lie. I didn’t exactly hate him, but I couldn’t stand him either.
We stare a
t our plates, white clouds covered in green velvet. I shouldn’t have an appetite anymore, but I do, and the food is too beautiful to waste.
He takes the first bite. I follow. It’s rich and fills my whole mouth with creaminess, practically a dessert.
“He wasn’t always such an egomaniac,” Marcel says, laying his chopsticks on his plate. “Before he came back to Montreal, he was different.”
I think of the second photo from the Gazette. Even in grainy black-and-white, the difference was there. They were friends back then. “How?”
“He was smarter.”
“Art school made him stupid?”
Marcel laughs bitterly. “No. Art school wasn’t the problem. When he came back, he was all set to prove himself to the world, show my dad he was his own man so he wouldn’t have to work for him. Art school was just failed attempt number one. The artist act was annoying, but it wasn’t fatal.”
Fatal. I pretend I didn’t hear it.
Marcel leans back as bowls of shiitake soup are placed in front of us, mushrooms bobbing among scallions in a murky broth. The steam fills me with earthiness and salt. I breathe it in, take one sip, then drink it spoonful after spoonful until I give up on the spoon and drink from the bowl. I think I’ve dribbled a little on my sweater and I don’t care.
“Hungry?” Marcel asks.
I lick the salt from my lips and eye his half-finished bowl. “What? It’s perfectly acceptable to drink soup from the bowl in Japan.”
“So you’ve spent time in Japan.”
“I really like the soup.”
“I’m sure Shinji here is flattered,” Marcel says, gesturing to the chef.
The chef smiles at me from across the wooden board, where he’s snapping the claws off a snow crab. Stringy pink flesh hangs from his fingers.
“I’ve just never seen a girl eat so fast,” Marcel says.
“I’m hungry.”
“Most girls I know don’t eat. Most girls I know would rather talk nonstop.”
“I’m nothing like most girls you know. And it sounds like you need to start hanging out with girls who are less annoying.”
“I’m trying.”
We sit in our first comfortable silence ever. But it’s not entirely quiet. Traditional Japanese music plays softly, and chimes tinkle every few minutes or so when the door opens, but mostly I don’t hear them. I’m considering the magical healing powers of food. I’m warming up. I may still be freezing to death for want of people and love and home, but for the moment food does a decent job of filling me. I almost feel like myself.
Marcel stirs a chunk of wasabi into his soy sauce. “This one time I dared Lucien to eat an entire spoonful of wasabi,” he says.
“Tell me he didn’t.”
“I have the video of it somewhere. He was actually on the floor crying, and then he whined about not being able to taste anything for weeks. During the boarding-school days, I could get him to do anything.”
“What was boarding school like?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Good.”
“That’s descriptive.”
He pulls his hair between his fingers, testing the length again. “You know when things seem normal, good, fine, whatever, but then something changes and you realize that life was perfect, but only because it’s not anymore and never will be again?”
His words ring like the door chimes, not loud but brightly. He said it exactly.
“It was that,” he says.
I nod. Life before—that was perfect.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Marcel says. “Poor little rich boy.”
“Not what I was thinking.”
The chef slides two wooden tablets filled with tuna tartare in front of us. It’s the color and texture of the inside of my cheek, but it tastes like heaven and the ocean. I try it with each accompaniment—crème fraîche, rice cracker crumbs, wasabi, avocado—before I notice Marcel is watching me.
“So, this isn’t your first rodeo,” he says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re better than me with chopsticks.”
I shrug. “So you’re not dexterous.”
“Trust me, I’m good with my hands.”
“What’s your point?”
“You didn’t learn to eat Japanese food from the sushi counter at a grocery store.”
“Maybe I was just following your lead.”
“You haven’t looked at me once.”
I look at him now. His eyes are icy clear.
“Fine. I’ve been to Japan a few times.”
“You’re well-traveled,” he says. “And you grew up with money.”
I say nothing.
“It’s obvious.”
“Yeah? Was it my fancy apartment that gave me away?”
“It certainly wasn’t your clothes.”
“Shut up.” I tug at the synthetic sweater that seems to be shrink-wrapping around my body under Kru’s lights. I’m not sure whether to defend myself. I am committing fashion crimes. Many.
Marcel takes a sip of his green tea. “I’ve always been able to tell. You have this unguarded look that reeks of a spoiled upbringing.”
“Excuse me?”
“You do. It screams ‘I’m too good for this.’ It came out every time Lucien turned his back.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
I roll my eyes.
“So you have money,” he says. “What’s the big deal? It’s not like—”
“I don’t have money. Maybe I used to, but I don’t anymore.”
“Whatever. Oh, and by the way, your holier-than-thou thing about me and my trust fund was great. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. And thanks for insulting my clothes just now.”
“Anytime. Since we’re getting it all out in the open, your apartment really is disgusting.”
I can’t defend it. “You haven’t even seen the inside.”
He nudges my arm with his elbow, the first time he’s touched me—ever, I think—and the shock of it makes me want to pull away, not in revulsion, but fear. I don’t want to feel anyone’s touch but Emilio’s.
“Is that an invitation? If so, I’ll pass. I’d rather not risk being exposed to asbestos and lead paint. You should be worried about that.”
“It wasn’t an invitation. And I’m moving soon, so I don’t have to worry about toxins for much longer.”
“Where are you moving to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why are you moving soon if you don’t have a place lined up?”
It’s too late to backpedal. “I stopped paying rent.”
Our next plate is served—neat stacks of shaved radish and mountain vegetables drizzled with sweet-hot ginger vinaigrette—but I can’t remember which course it is. Fourth? Fifth? They’re running together now, and I’m having the niggling ache you get when you start to worry that something wonderful is going to end. Like summer vacation on the yacht, or a few hours alone to play the mandolin. Or being with Emilio.
Plates of salmon sashimi are placed in front of us.
“So how does a world-traveling little rich girl not have enough money to pay rent on a dive?”
I cringe. “I take back what I said before. It’s not that I don’t like to talk. It’s that I don’t like to talk about things I’m trying not to think about.”
Marcel lifts the salmon to his lips. He doesn’t ask me anything. He is redeemed.
I stare at my plate, at the meat that’s the color of an orange hibiscus blossom and marbled with thin threads of fat, like it’s been tied up with fine white string. Now would be the time to ask for money. It would be easy. I could tell him Lucien owed me, or about how Lucien promised me all that work at an increased sitting fee.
“So admit it,” he says. “You’re running from the law.”
I laugh. “What crime did I commit?”
He leans away from me and
squints at my face. “Arson. I can see it in your eyes.”
“If I was a fugitive, which I’m not, it wouldn’t be for arson. I’ve been afraid of fire since I was eight and I burned myself playing with matches.” I hold out my arm to show him the band of scarred skin on the inside of my elbow. “My sister’s idea. She, however, escaped unscathed.”
“Okay, so not arson. Statutory rape. Your boyfriend is seventeen and his parents are pressing charges.”
I roll my eyes.
“Unless you’re not actually a legal adult,” he continues, “which would be a real shocker.”
“I’m ni—”
“I know, I know. You’re nineteen.” He chews thoughtfully. “I’ve got it: accomplice to murder.”
The closet. The gunshot in my ears. The blood flower blooming on the wall. Emilio’s rigid arm and dead eyes. Cold fingers of that memory wrap around my pounding heart, but I keep my eyes on my plate, my hands in my lap so they don’t shake. “Why accomplice?” I ask.
“That’s as good as a confession,” he says. “So who’d you kill?”
I need a jokey answer, something stupid and light so he’ll leave me alone. “My seventeen-year-old boyfriend. The one whose parents wanted me in jail for statutory rape. I set the whole house on fire.”
“I knew it,” he says.
A fan of seared Kobe beef is placed before me, each rectangular piece with a purple-raw center. I take a bite. It’s deliciously salty and metallic, but I can’t enjoy it. I feel like I’m eating my own heart. I wish I knew if Emilio was okay.
“So how do you know Emilio?” Marcel asks, and for one sickening moment I know he knows. He’s eating his bloody beef calmly, but he knows what I’m thinking, who I am, and who really killed his brother.
“I met him at Les Fontaines. You were there, remember?”
“But when I called this morning, you thought I was him.”
“He asked for my number,” I say casually. “Not many people have my number. I just didn’t look at it before I picked up.”
“You sure sounded . . . I don’t know. Excited.”
“What do you care?” I fire back. “And how is that any of your business?”
Marcel abandons his beef, stares at his tea like he wishes it were something else. “It’s not. You just don’t know who he is.”
Kiss Kill Vanish Page 13