“Really? Then enlighten me,” I say before my brain can catch up with my temper.
“He’s involved in some bad business. Lucien was too.”
I hold my breath. I do and I don’t want to hear Marcel’s take on the bad business.
“After Lucien dropped out of art school, he was sort of desperate to do something big to prove himself. My dad was insisting he come work for him, but Lucien wouldn’t. I don’t blame him. My dad’s a jerk. But then Lucien started working for this guy down in Miami. I think he met Emilio first, and then Emilio introduced him to this Cruz guy.”
Time stops. It’s only for a second, but it’s long enough for Marcel to take a breath and my stomach to squeeze everything I’ve just eaten and my pulse to pound so loudly in my ears that I’m wondering if I’m having a stroke or an aneurism or some kind of neuro-vascular explosion. Cruz guy. I have to ask, “What was he doing?”
“Smuggling art.”
“What?” I twist my whole body to look at Marcel’s face. Papi is dealing art, not smuggling it. And art is the cover. Drugs are the dirt and the blood.
“Don’t look so shocked.”
“But . . .” Papi wouldn’t steal art. He lives for it, practically breathes it. Marcel doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
“There’s a lot of money in it,” Marcel explains, like the economics of art theft are the unbelievable part.
“I know, but since when did Lucien need money?”
“Never. But he needed respect, which is the other thing working for this guy offered. I don’t think Lucien even knew who Cruz really was until he’d been at it for a while.”
Who Cruz really was. Did the whole world know but me? “What do you mean?” I ask, needing to hear it again, but dreading it too.
“He’s the head of some Colombian drug cartel. The art fetish is more than a cover, though. According to Lucien, he was pulling in almost as much from stolen masterpieces as cocaine.”
I picture the paintings I grew up staring at: the Klimt, the O’Keeffe, the Warhol, the Rodin. He’s wrong. My father loves art, taught us to love it, travels all over the world to buy the finest. He wouldn’t be stealing it. “So Lucien . . .”
“Lucien was one of his scouts. At first it was all legitimate, but eventually he got sucked into the smuggling side too. He had the right contacts from art school, so he’d go around pretending to be looking to buy. Plus, he was rich enough for people to take him seriously.”
“And Emilio.” I hear myself say his name and know I should stop. “He does the same thing?”
“No. Cruz runs his businesses in layers—the legal art dealing, then smuggling, then drugs. Emilio’s pretty deep, does it all. He manages things, takes care of people, threatens people. Probably more than threatens people.” Marcel stares at his plate. It’s empty except for the small puddle of blood. “And of course, he always brings coke with him to grease wheels and make friends.”
“Do you work for him too?” I can’t hide the tremor in my voice, but I have to ask. I have to know.
“No. But I partied with Emilio. At first I did it just to make Lucien mad. I told him he was an idiot, and that he was going to get sent to jail or this Cruz guy was going to start asking him to do way worse stuff, but he ignored me. He had things under control. Suddenly he was important, not just some art school dropout, or Daddy’s little pawn. So I screwed around more, stopped going to school, hooked up with Emilio’s party-favor girls. I thought I could be wild enough to scare Lucien.”
My stomach hurts. I’ve eaten too quickly. I stare at the plate in front of me, half-eaten seared shark, shiny with brine and oil. I can’t remember when the beef was taken away, or when this arrived, and I can’t remember taking those bites.
Emilio can’t be who Marcel thinks he is.
The door chimes ring, a reminder that people are still eating and talking and living all around me. It seems impossible, though why would the whole world stop just because my world has? How long have we been here?
“Maybe you and Emilio aren’t any of my business,” Marcel says.
“We aren’t.”
“I’m just telling you he’s dangerous.”
“I believe you.”
Marcel finishes his shark. I keep staring at mine; it keeps staring at me. Leaving unfinished food is omakase taboo, but the richness is finally too much. One more bite could be fatal.
When the chef turns his back, I nudge Marcel with my elbow and point to my plate. “Please?”
“You owe me,” he says, and reaches for it.
Ominous words. They slice through me. My shark is being carried away, but I dive in, my chopsticks proving stronger and faster than his as they snatch it midair. It’s in my mouth before he even understands that it’s gone. “Changed my mind,” I say between chews.
Our last course is roasted peaches and pistachio ice cream. It’s good, I think, but my taste buds are spent. Our bellies and brains are already too full, and I don’t even make eye contact as he pays the bill. My cheeks burn, but I don’t know if it’s gratitude or shame that does it, or if there’s much of a difference at this point.
The drive home takes longer. We hit light after light, get caught behind a bus making regular and long stops, and finally sit sandwiched between cars waiting for an accident to be cleared up ahead.
Still no music.
“Did Lucien seem different to you that night?” Marcel asks abruptly.
“I don’t know.” I say it without thinking. I don’t want to think about it ever again.
He swallows. “I don’t remember most of it. I was wasted when I showed up, and after that . . . well . . . Maybe if I hadn’t been, things would have been different.”
The compassionate thing to say is of course not or don’t blame yourself, but if Marcel wants to take some blame, maybe less of it will be pressing down on me.
“I think I was a jerk to you,” he says.
“You were.”
“And I think Lucien and I fought,” he says.
“You did.”
He cringes.
“But that wasn’t it,” I say, not just because it’s the nice thing to say but because it’s true. “He didn’t kill himself because of anything that happened between you two.”
“Maybe not. But if I hadn’t been so busy getting high that night, or this entire year, I’d have known something was wrong.”
I can’t make him feel better about that. Trying seems dishonest—dishonest in a way I don’t have to be, and I have to be a liar in so many other ways right now.
“You have a way of saying the right thing,” he says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Exactly.”
I swallow. I look at him. The misery is intense, and yet it’s only his eyes that show it, clear and sharp as pain. I want to tell him about Lucien kissing me, to turn it into something that it wasn’t—a lover’s quarrel or a rejection or something that could inspire a suicide—but that feels like a betrayal to Lucien. I don’t know why.
I let Lucien kiss me because something about those last few hours had felt final. That night was an ending point for us. Emilio had come. I was finished being Lucien’s doll. I don’t want to lie about it and turn it into something it wasn’t.
Traffic unclogs itself. We inch past the accident, and I have to stare. It looks like a sculpture—crushed metal and broken glass artfully arranged on a sheet of ice. The ambulances have already left it behind. We do too.
Marcel pulls to the curb, and I look out, shamed by the decrepit apartment towering down. I reach for the door.
“Wait,” he says. “Before you go, I have to tell you something.”
I brace myself for the worst: a declaration of feelings, or maybe an angry tirade. I think I’d prefer the tirade.
“This isn’t because Lucien was obsessed with you.”
“What’s not?”
“The reason I called you.”
“Okay.”
“It’s just
you knew him. At the end, I was too busy hating him, and I don’t know why, but being around you makes me feel better. Less guilty.”
He runs his fingers through the cropped hair again, and this time I see they’re long and white and trembling. Of course. I see it now, what I haven’t seen all day because I’ve been too hungry and worried and self-obsessed. He’s detoxing.
“Can I call you again?” he asks.
I nod.
“Good.” He doesn’t smile. I have a feeling Marcel’s smile is gone forever.
My stomach is meat-heavy and the stairs are endless. I trudge upward. I’m three steps shy of the fifth floor when my phone rings. Trembling, scrambling, my fingers grope their way through everything in my purse, but can’t find it. Panicked, I tip the purse upside down and shake violently, watching the contents clatter and flutter halfway back to the fourth floor. There. I see it. I lunge and grab it. I’m so close to hearing his voice, I can’t think straight enough to realize it’s stopped ringing.
But it’s stopped ringing. It only rang once. A text. It was just a text. I pick up the phone and see it was from Emilio.
I need longer. More info when I have it. Miss you. Be careful.
I have to be quick. I sink to the cold concrete and text back, tears blurring my eyes as my thumbs fly over the keys.
How much longer? Why? Miss you too, but don’t tell me to be careful. I’m not the one in danger.
I send it and wait. I suck the tears back up. I stare at the screen. I will the phone to ring, but it doesn’t. I reread my response and realize I forgot to say I love you, but he didn’t say it either, no, he didn’t say it first. I type in P.S. I love you, then delete it. I don’t need him thinking I’m juvenile and needy.
After ten minutes of nothing, I abandon hope. I get up, pick up my mess, and trudge back up to hell.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
NINETEEN
“Are you going to the café tonight?”
Nanette’s voice jerks me to life. I was sprawled across my cot nearly comatose; now I’m perched on its edge, heart racing. She probably knocked. I’m not sure why this feels like an attack.
Nanette raises her eyebrows and says, “Hm?”
That French Canadian hm is so endearing and aggravating at the same time. It’s both Are you? and Don’t you think you should? in less than a word.
But am I? I did plan to meet Jacques tonight. The last time I even intended to practice was the night I ended up going for sushi with Marcel, which was five days ago. And I want to play Emilio’s mandolin—no, I want to want to—but right now, just thinking about the instrument makes me feel abandoned.
I can only feel abandoned for so long before it becomes anger, and I don’t want to be angry at Emilio. It seems safer not to go to Soupe au Chocolat at all, to sit here in this shrinking closet like I have been for the last several days until it’s so small I don’t have room to roll over or even breathe.
“I don’t think so,” I say, picking up my phone to check for messages. Nothing.
Nanette’s perfect little eyebrows furrow, but she doesn’t frown. I’m worrying her.
“I don’t feel well,” I say.
“Are you okay?” she asks gently. She pulls on one of her pigtails. Her thick hay-colored hair is too short for a single ponytail, so she wears it in two tufts poking out below each ear. She looks like a baby deer. “You look a little pale.”
“I think I’m getting the flu. You probably don’t want to come too close.”
She nods and backs away, saying, “Come get me if you need anything.”
“Thanks.” I don’t know why she’s so nice to me.
I close the door and sink back down into the cot. I don’t look at the clock. I don’t want to know when I would need to leave if I was going, because I’m not going.
I’ve given up on trying to do anything but sit here and worry. Emilio owes me a call, or at the very least, a text. I’ve spent every second of the last five days imagining the possible meanings behind his last text. He said he’d let me know when he knew more, so he must not know more yet. Unless something is very wrong.
Maybe it’s time to call one of my sisters. Lola. No, not Lola. Ana. No, neither. I love them both, but Lola is a little mean and Ana is a little incompetent, and all it would take is one nasty or stupid moment from either and Emilio could end up dead. There has to be a better way of finding out if he’s okay.
This time I hear Nanette’s knock on the door. Three short, hard taps. “Jane?”
“Yes.”
She pokes her little deer head in again. “I forgot to tell you. Yesterday when you were sleeping, Monsieur Cabot called about the rent.”
Rent. Rent. Rent. It’s over a week late. But I don’t have the money, so it doesn’t even matter because I’m screwed.
“He said to tell you he’ll forgive the late fee this one time only.”
“What?”
Nanette tilts her head to the left and studies my face. “He said he got your payment for the next two months. No late fee.”
My payment. Oh, no.
“Thanks,” I mumble.
I wait until the door is closed and Nanette’s footsteps retreat before I grab my phone. I’m so angry I almost forget to check messages. But then I do, and there are none, and the self-loathing for checking again when I just checked less than two minutes ago makes me even angrier. Blood pounds at my temples as I search for Marcel’s number, pulses in my throat as I press call. He had no right.
But then Pierre sneezes—he sneezes from three rooms away and it sounds like he’s sitting beside me on this bed, reminding me that these walls are as sound resistant as wet tissue.
Fine. I slide my feet into my boots, grab my coat, and set off to meet Jacques. I grab the mandolin as an afterthought.
“You again,” Jacques says as I come to a stop in front of him. “I thought maybe you weren’t coming anymore.”
I’m panting. It takes a moment before I can wheeze out words. “I’ve been really busy.” My lungs are achy and tight from sprinting in the cold. I was sure I’d missed him, but when I rounded the final corner, there he was, lumbering up the street and away from the café.
He frowns. He’s big and craggy, like barnacles could grow on him and he wouldn’t feel it. His bulk reminds me of my father, and so does the way he’s examining my face like he’s forming opinions in stone. “You don’t look good.”
“I’ve been sick,” I say, not entirely dishonestly. I’ve been sick of waiting, sick of loving someone more than he loves me back, sick of running away, sick of being rescued. That’s a lot of sick. “So am I allowed in?”
He takes his time unlocking the door. “Nanette says you need a job.”
“I need money.”
“You need a job,” he repeats.
I stifle my frustration. I don’t want to explain. I want him to leave so I can call Marcel and yell at him for trying to buy me.
“I can give you a job,” he says, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “Not a lot of hours, but a few.”
“I can’t work here. No visa.”
That should do it, but instead Jacques mutters, “Stupid English,” as he flips on the lights, followed by something I don’t quite catch, possibly in French.
“Sorry?”
“They can’t tell me who I can hire in my own café,” he says.
Canadian politics are about as interesting as competitive knitting, but I nod like I understand his pain and oppression, the possibility of money suddenly warming me. I hadn’t taken Jacques for a rule-breaker. “What would you need me to do? I don’t exactly have restaurant experience. Or baking experience.” Or any experience, but I decide not to mention that the only jobs I’ve ever had were portrait modeling and busking.
He motions for me to follow him into the back. “Just some light cleaning.”
Four hours later my hands are raw from scalding water and bleach. I started with the cheap gloves Jacques pulled from under a sink, but after three hours of scrubbing never-been-cleaned blinds, the latex ripped. Was I supposed to dilute the bleach more? I don’t even know. And I certainly didn’t know latex could tear like that—prophylactic companies everywhere should be notified.
I mentally multiply minimum wage by four as I peel off the holey latex. The number. I shudder. I should be grateful—I am, sort of—but I didn’t know the work would be so unpleasant and the compensation so small.
When I was running here and my rage was still white-hot, the plan was to call Marcel and cut him down, but now my shoulder burns and I can’t bend my fingers and my energy is gone. I’m still mad. He paid my rent without asking me or telling me, like he could expect something in return. Like Lucien, but not like Lucien.
Except if I had to earn that rent cleaning Soupe au Chocolat, it’d take me a full month, at least.
Too tired to drag myself over to a chair, I sit on the just-mopped floor and pull my knees to my chest. I was never supposed to be here in Montreal this long. It was my accidental destination, just a stopover, a waiting cell for money and Emilio and more money.
Now I’m stuck.
I take out my phone. It’s four a.m.—too late and too early to call Marcel—so I text him instead.
Thanks.
I can’t think of anything else to add. Yelling at him for his generosity is no longer an option. As demeaning as the gesture felt, my initial rage can’t be rekindled, since I’m either too tired or too enlightened by hard labor.
With my last half hour, I try to play the mandolin, but my hands are so burned from the bleach and weak I can barely get through one song. It doesn’t matter. It’s getting harder to remember what it felt like on the yacht. All the benefit of all that doubt I’ve been giving to Emilio is fading. It doesn’t feel like he belongs to me anymore, if he ever did. He belongs to my father.
On the table beside the mandolin case, my phone buzzes. I don’t jump. I reach for it slowly, expecting Emilio and filling with dread from my toes up.
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