“So why didn’t you say that?”
“Because we were escaping the police. I thought even you could work that one out. I had a plan. My plan would have worked. You changed my plan. Not my fault.”
“God, no,” Keith said. “None of this is your fault.”
“What I’m saying . . .”
“Boys!” Ellis yelled. “Tired now! Bed! Sleep!”
“I did look up some places just now,” Oliver went on. “I’ve looked up a few hostels and small hotels. There’s a student area that should be loaded with them. We should try there first. I suggest we park and try it on foot. It might be easier to go door to door than try to drive around endlessly.”
Keith stopped the car along one of the back streets, in something that may or may not have been a parking space. Again, Ginny and Oliver were extracted from their storage place. They stepped into the lightly falling snow—heavy, ornate flakes that already dusted the bridges and the sidewalks. The cold had permeated Ginny now—it was deep in her bones. But at least she was upright. She could move.
Ghent was pretty, and Ghent was also closed. In the center of town, every ivy-decked door looked locked, and every window wound with Christmas lights was dark. They walked through an empty central market full of small green stalls, all shuttered. They walked past a small castle with a spiderweb statue next to it. They found the street of hotels, which were all shut or full. They passed a hostel, but it had closed in October. They tried the surrounding streets, but found much of the same. After a while, they had clearly wandered off the tourist path into a residential area. Inside of the cozy houses and apartments, Ginny could see televisions and computers and people reclining on sofas. All she wanted now was somewhere to sleep. Anywhere.
“I feel like we’re reenacting the Nativity story,” Keith said, pulling his hat down over his ears. “No room at the inn, nowhere to lay our tabletop.”
“What about this?” Oliver pointed at a sign in a window, which was written in several languages. In English it read: “Rooms for students or travelers, inexpensive and clean, ring bell.” The building looked like a normal house—one of the more modern ones on the street. The windows upstairs were all dark, but there were lights on the ground floor, and a light on by the door.
“Is this actually a bed-and-breakfast?” Ellis asked. “It’s not really marked or anything.”
“It has this sign,” Oliver said.
“Nothing to lose.” Keith stepped forward and rung the bell. A minute later, an older man in a cardigan opened the door. Once their general purpose there was explained to him, and he adjusted to English, there was a lot of nodding.
“Are you . . . allergic . . . to cats?”
A quick poll was taken. None of them were allergic to cats. The door was opened wider.
“Come in,” he said, “come in, but be quick.”
They were ushered into a warm and cluttered living room. This was not a hostel. It was a house. A house that smelled like cat.
“I run a cat shelter,” the man explained. “And with the cold, I have many more than normal. Today, I have . . . twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six cats?” Keith repeated.
“Mostly it is a cat shelter,” the man went on. “But sometimes I rent the rooms. Sometimes. How many do you need? I have two. They are forty Euros each.”
It seemed fairly obvious that they would need at least that many, since there were four of them.
“We’ll take both of them,” Ginny said.
“Oh, good.” The man nodded and picked one of the cats off the counter, where it was enjoying a nibble of a plant on the windowsill. “Please wait a moment. I will get them ready. If I had known you were coming, I would have had breakfast for you. Still . . .”
He gestured for them to wait and went upstairs.
“We’re going to die,” Keith said, the moment he was gone. “This man is a serial killer. We’re going to die, and he’s going to bury us in his garden and build a shed on us.”
The place was weird, and yes, it smelled like cat—like so much cat—but they all seemed to be nice cats. And they were better off in here than out in the snow. Ginny reached down and picked up a little cat who had come over to rub her ankles. The cat was barely out of kittenhood, long and lean and wide-eyed, happily batting at her hair as he cuddled on her shoulder. Oliver didn’t look happy about this at all. Two cats sat at his feet and just stared up at him. He looked at them warily.
“Who runs a combination cat shelter and hostel?” Keith asked. “With the cat shelter being the primary function? Only people who want to kill you with an axe and then put you in the garden and build a shed on you, that’s who.”
“They are ready!” the man called, a moment later.
“That was fast,” Ellis said quietly.
The bedrooms looked like normal bedrooms. They didn’t have that anonymity that you found in hostels or hotels. And they had cats in them. Little golden eyes peered at them through the dark.
“Now,” the man said, opening the doors, “I have one with two beds, and one with one large bed.”
“We’ll take this one,” Oliver said, going into the two-bed room.
“I see how this works,” Keith said grimly. “I drew the short straw.”
“It’s fine,” Ellis said, nodding to Ginny. “We’ll share the one bed. That all right, Gin?”
Ginny caught some little snatch of nonverbal communication that rippled between Ellis and Keith. It took her a second to decode it, and it came out a little garbled, but the essence was, “That could have been our room. We could have shared the one bed. But we have these two with us.” They were sparing her having to share with Oliver.
They stepped into their respective rooms and set their things down. The rooms were just a few feet apart. She could see Oliver setting his things up on one of the beds, while Keith flopped on another. Their host lingered in the hall, in the patch of light between their rooms. Cats swarmed the general area, poking their heads inside to see who had come to visit. One large orange cat immediately hopped onto Ginny’s bag when she set it down. Another scurried under the bed.
Ginny got out her phone to send Richard a text, letting him know they were safely in for the night. She glanced between their host, the cats, and her phone.
Here and safe for the night. Everything is fine! she wrote.
That was a relief. The only thing still on her mind was the tabletop. It was out there somewhere, on the snowy streets of Ghent.
“Would it be all right if I went and got the tabletop from the car?” she called over to Keith. “I’d feel better if it wasn’t out there.”
“Car?” This instantly interested their host. “You have a car? You must bring it here. You may put it behind the house. Go get your car, put it behind the house.”
“It’s fine,” Keith said, getting up and coming to their door. “We just need the tabletop. . . .”
“You must get your car and move it here now. You do not want to leave it on the street when you can put it here. Go and get it and put it here.”
“Right,” Keith said. “Gin and I will go get the car and the tabletop. We’ll be right back.”
For the second time that night, Ginny and Keith set out on their own, this time in a different city. Their footsteps crunched gently in the snow as they walked to the car.
“Didn’t blink an eye,” he said, when they were a street away. “Did not blink an eye. You would think that most people would ask, ‘What do you mean, tabletop? Why do you have a tabletop?’ But no.”
“Maybe he didn’t understand the English?”
“What he wants,” Keith said, “is for us to move the car behind his house so no one will see it sitting vacant after he murders us. In fact, he will probably build the shed on the spot where the car was. Plus, he’ll need the car, for his murdering.”
“Stop talking about murder,” Ginny said. “And sheds.”
“I can’t help it. This place fills me with . . . shed.”
> It was incredibly stupid, but Ginny couldn’t help but laugh. He looked over and smiled, pleased.
They’d wandered fairly far in search of lodgings, and it took them a good twenty minutes to find their way back to where they had parked. It was a gorgeous walk, though. There was such a fairyland quality to the city. Brick buildings grew directly out of cobbled streets. The snow had gotten stuck in every crevice of the buildings, had dusted the ground. In the distance, there appeared to be a castle with a great square turret, topped by four flags at the corners. In short, pretty romantic.
Worse yet, Keith had never looked so good—the snow settling on his coat, his face flushed from the cold. He pulled off his hat, and his hair stuck up a bit. At that moment, Ginny loved him so much, she felt like her ribs were going to crack from the pressure.
“Keith Dobson,” he said, skidding along in the snow, “a promising actor and playwright, considered by many to be one of the best of his generation, cut off in his prime, murdered by Belgians. It’s just not how I wanted to go. I foresaw something else—drowned in pudding, eaten by werewolf, smothered by adoring fans. Not this. Not this. Ah, the auto. Did you miss me, girl?”
He unlocked the passenger’s door and held it open for her, then got in next to her. He put the key in the ignition and put his hand on the gear, but nothing happened. It made a horrible screech, then died. He tried again and got the same result. He gave up trying and turned in his seat to face her.
“She doesn’t like the cold,” he said. “Or the snow. Or rain. Or damp. She doesn’t like moisture. Or . . . temperature.” He stroked the dashboard lovingly.
“So what do we do?”
“Give her a few minutes. Do you have Monopoly in your pocket, by any chance?”
“I forgot it,” she said.
“Too bad. Guess we’ll just wait it out.”
The snow dusting the windows made the car into a little cocoon. He rubbed his hands together for warmth.
“This trip certainly hasn’t been boring,” he said. “But then, it never is with you. That’s twice we’ve had to run from the law in Paris, you realize that? The last time we almost got busted the circumstances were different, still . . .”
This was the first time he’d made any direct reference to what had happened before, and it didn’t feel accidental. In fact, the way he had positioned himself so that he was straight on, facing her.
“I didn’t think I’d come back,” she said. “It’s weird.”
“You’re weird. It’s only to be expected.”
“You weren’t expecting me.”
“No,” he replied, after a beat. “I can honestly say I wasn’t.”
He did what he always did when he was uncertain—he started wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, as if trying to wipe the words away or keep something in.
“I should try again,” he said, “shouldn’t I?”
This could mean a lot of things, but in this particular case, it probably meant the ignition. Probably.
“I guess,” she said.
He scratched his head thoughtfully, shifted back and straightened himself in the seat, and turned the key. This time, the car started.
“Look at that,” he said. “She always comes through.”
He flicked on the wipers and cleared the snow from the windshield, flooding the car with street and moonlight. It skidded a bit as he first got it into the road, but within minutes, they were safely back at the House of Cats.
Inside, Ellis had already gotten into her pajamas and was tucked into bed, reading some kind of life-affirming book called Villages.
“There you are!” she said, as Keith and Ginny came into the room with the tabletop. “I was worried that you really had been killed.”
“Car wouldn’t start,” Keith said, as they set the tabletop down. “I don’t think she likes the snow.”
Keith took a final look at the bed Ellis and Ginny would be sharing and sighed.
“Guess I’ll go,” he said. “My roommate is waiting.”
“Have a good night!” Ellis said, giving him a wiggle-fingered wave and a laugh.
“I hate you both,” he said, smiling back and shutting the door.
Even though she had done nothing wrong, Ginny felt guilty. She quietly sorted through her bag, pulling out sweatpants and T-shirt. You had to be fully dressed when sharing a bed with the girlfriend of the guy you loved.
“I got the cats out,” Ellis said. “We had about ten of them in here. I wasn’t sure how you felt about sleeping with them. I like them, but . . .”
“I like them too,” Ginny said. “But it’s okay. I guess that’s better.”
Ellis slipped out of bed and squatted down in front of the tabletop to have a better look.
“So, this is it,” she said. “Does it look like art to you? I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. You’re the expert.”
That was an incredibly generous assessment. She had picked a tabletop in a dark restaurant and stolen it. She was able to detect small swirls in the paint, the markings of a tiny brush. And though it appeared to be one solid yellow, it was darker in some places and lighter in others. The wineglasses marks generally were in the center, with little drips and shadows at the edges.
“I think it’s the right one,” Ginny said.
Ellis traced her finger along one of the wineglass rings, the strange orbs that floated all over the surface. Shivering, she hopped back up into the bed and pulled the blanket over herself. Ginny deliberated for a moment whether to go down the hall to change, before deciding that was stupid. She was about to get to know Ellis one way or another. She unhooked her bra under her shirt and pulled it through her sleeve, then took off her clothes and pulled the sweats on as quickly as she could.
“Do you want me to turn out the light?” she asked.
“Sure. I’m knacked.”
Ginny switched off the bureau lamp and climbed into the other side of the bed. Even though the light was off, their bed was right up against the long, multipaned window, which had no curtain or shade. The sky was light and pink and cast a long pattern of elongated rectangles over them. When she put her head back, she looked directly up at the falling snow. The view was nice, even if it did make her dizzy to watch the path the snow was taking, sometimes driving down, sometimes weaving unevenly, coming and coming from an impossible distance and sailing past them to the ground.
Just she and Ellis. Together at last. Both staring up at the snow.
“I love the snow,” Ellis said. “I’m glad we’re doing this. Christmas week can be so boring sometimes. Nothing open for days. And I was so jealous that Keith got to go on your last adventure. Thanks for letting me come. Now I feel like I’m in the club. “
Ginny had no idea what to say to this, so she made a noncommittal sound. Kind of an ohurggghhhh. It was, perhaps, a little too noncommittal and perhaps a bit on the sometimes-I-am-Frankenstein side. She had to do better.
“It’s nice of you guys to drive me,” she said. “Otherwise I would have been stuck with Oliver.”
“He’s so strange,” Ellis said, propping herself up. “You would think that considering what he’s doing to you, he would be more appalling. More irritating. He seems like a normal person. He’s good looking. Quiet. I don’t know . . . he just makes no sense.”
A cat yowled forlornly outside the door. There was a tiny scratching on the wood and a paw poked under the door.
“Poor thing,” Ellis said. “I feel bad about kicking it out. Do you mind if I let it in to sleep with us?”
“It’s fine,” Ginny said.
As soon as Ellis opened the door, a white cat skittered inside, followed by several other cat-shaped shadows. Ginny couldn’t tell how many, but there had to be at least four cats in the room now. The white cat hopped right up on the bed and explored for a moment, finally settling in the middle of the bed. Another one, the massive orange cat, jumped up on the end of the bed and stretched out on Ginny’s feet, locking her in place. Ellis too
k her place in the bed and again, and they resumed their snow staring, this time, with furry company.
“So,” Ellis said. “Keith told me you’re applying to uni?”
“Yeah,” Ginny said. She didn’t mean to sound as unenthusiastic as it came out.
“Where are you applying?” Ellis asked. “I don’t know many American schools. I don’t even know how it works. I know you have to pay a lot.”
“I’m applying to a few places,” Ginny said. “Mostly close to home.”
“What are you going to study?” Ellis asked.
“I don’t know. I figured I would just do the core classes for a year and then decide.”
“I think it’s great you can do that. It’s a lot more specific here. My school is very rigid. There isn’t a lot of choice.”
“Are you an actress?” Ginny asked. “Goldsmiths is arts, right?”
“Me? God no!” Ellis shuffled around on the pillow a bit. “I don’t go to Keith’s school. I go to LSE.”
“LSE?”
“London School of Economics. I study Social Policy. I am a big, boring policy nerd. I wanted a degree that would allow me to be helpful, but I don’t know if that’s going to work out. I’ll probably end up working for the NHS making charts or counting the numbers of beds in hospitals. A friend of mine from school goes to Goldsmiths. I went to a party at her flat back in November. That’s how I met Keith.”
November. Ginny did the mental math. That was around the time Keith changed some of his online habits, when he hadn’t been in touch every day. Even though she already knew the outcome—she was in a bed in Ghent next to the outcome—it still stung.
“I suppose we should get some sleep. If I steal the blankets, just give me a slap, yeah?”
On that note, Ellis flipped over on her side. The cats reorganized themselves around the girls, and the bed thrummed with their purring. Ginny soon heard soft, even breaths. Ellis had fallen asleep easily and peacefully. Ginny was still wide awake, her brain breaking down every second of what had happened in the car with Keith. If anything at all had happened. Okay, nothing had actually happened. But still, it felt . . . it felt like something. If he had moved in to kiss her, would she have accepted it?
The Last Little Blue Envelope Page 10