Figment (6 page)

The vendor handed over our drinks and the croissant in wax paper. “Thanks,” I called as we walked away, and he nodded and waved.

“So tell me,” I said as we perched on the back of a bench looking out at the water. “What happened—you know, afterward?” I couldn’t bring myself to say “the accident.” It made it seem real all over again.

Davis took a sip of his coffee. His eyes looked moody now. He stared out at the river, where two sculls of rowers were gliding by rapidly. “They wouldn’t let me see you, wouldn’t tell me what happened to you. I practically broke down the hospital door trying to get in. Did they tell you that?”

My heart twisted, thinking of myself inside at the same time, screaming for him. “No, they didn’t,” I whispered. I set my coffee down, suddenly unable to swallow.

I watched a young mother feeding her little boy sips from a juice box. “Davis, there’s something I’ve got to ask you,” I said slowly.

“What?” He took my hand and massaged the back.

“My father.” I didn’t want to hear the answer, but I made myself go on. “Did he threaten you at all? You know, like saying he’d press charges about the hacking thing if you called me? Or
. . .” I hesitated. “Did he offer you money if you stayed away?” My voice dropped until Davis had to lean forward to catch my words. “Is that why you didn’t come to my house after the accident?”

“Are you serious?” He jumped up from the bench, his face flushing. “Do you actually think I’d give you up for some kind of bribe? Who do you think I am, Zo?”

“I don’t!” I reached for his hands, which were balled into fists, and held them tightly in mine. “Sit down, please.”

He ignored me and started pacing up and down in front of the bench.

“I knew you wouldn’t go through with it. I just had to ask, to know what my father was capable of. Don’t be mad,” I pleaded.

He stopped and nodded. “It’s okay. Sorry I flew off the handle. I’m just under some pressure right now, that’s all.”

“What do you mean?”

A scrim of hardness dropped over his face. He balled up his croissant wrapper and aimed it at a nearby trash can. “Nothing.” The hardness was gone. He stood up and took my hand. “Come on.”

We wandered away from the river and found ourselves at the foot of a steep, narrow street made of uneven cobblestones.
victoria lane
, read the street sign. Old stone and brick buildings were squashed together, lining the sidewalks, wooden signs hung out front.

“This looks cool. Let’s check it out.” We started up the hill, hand in hand.

The shops we passed were small, dimly lit, and stuffed with treasures, I imagined. At the top of the hill, I stopped at one shop with a giant stuffed owl in the display window.
margrave’s apothecary
was painted in peeling gold letters on the glass.

“Ooh, let’s go in here.” I pulled open the carved wooden door.

A bell tinkled overhead as we stepped in. The place was a dim, musty fantasyland of shelves crowded with oddly shaped bottles, huge cabinets full of tiny drawers, and glass-fronted cases crowded with strange little figurines and boxes of buttons. A brass-and-wood ceiling fan lazily stirred the thick air. At the back, a wizened, white-haired man sat very still on a stool with his arms folded and his chin resting on his chest. It took me a minute to realize he was asleep.

“It’s like something out of Dickens,” I whispered.

“Or a horror movie.” Davis pinched my butt, and I squeaked. The man at the front woke up with a start.

“Oh, excuse me, welcome.” He straightened up. “May I help you with anything?”

I smiled at him. “Just looking around.” I opened a random drawer in the cabinet nearest me. It was filled entirely with old political buttons. The next drawer held coins with holes in the middle.

“I’m getting you this.” Davis held up a small gold powder compact.

“Davis, seriously?” I examined it more closely. It was beautiful—surprisingly heavy, with engraved violets on the lid. I flipped the minute catch, and the compact sprang open to reveal a mirror and a silk powder puff.

“To remember me by.” He grinned at me.

“Stop—don’t talk like that.” His words sent a shiver through me.

“We’ll take this.” I handed the compact to the proprietor, who wrapped it in white tissue paper. Davis moved to pull out his wallet, but I beat him to it by taking out my credit card—the only thing my parents hadn’t taken away. Davis had spent enough just getting here; it felt like the least I could do.

“Enjoy,” the old man rasped.

The sunshine seemed brighter after the dim shop. On the sidewalk, I paused and unwrapped the compact. I held it up, admiring the rich gold, then pretended to powder my nose. “What do you think?” I lifted my face up for him to admire.

“As pretty as the first moment I saw you.” He leaned forward and kissed me.

“Do you remember when that was, even?” I teased as we started strolling again along the sidewalk.

“Of course I do. It was the first day of freshman year.”

“Really?
I don’t remember that.” I squeezed his hand.

“I remember it perfectly. Patrick and I were coming out of the cafeteria, and you were coming in. Do you not remember this at all?” We passed under some scaffolding. Overhead, workmen were hammering busily. The old-fashioned buildings were disappearing, and the street was widening out. I could see a crowded traffic circle ahead of us.

“No.” I shook my head. “We met at that New Year’s party at Mark’s house.”

We stopped to wait for the light at the traffic circle. Ahead of us, across a wide green lawn, Buckingham Palace loomed.

“That was the first time we talked.” Davis helped me down the curb. He broke off from his story suddenly. “Here, let’s go see the Beefeaters. They crack me up.” He steered me toward the palace gates. “But the first time I saw you was when I was going into the cafeteria, and you were coming out. And I thought something like, Hey, cute girl. You had your hair in a bun. I said hi, and you just looked right through me like I wasn’t even there. Total rejection.” His eyes twinkled.

“How can it be a rejection when I don’t even remember it?” I rolled my eyes at him. We crossed the brilliantly green grass and the wide pavilion in front of the palace. The massive black and gold gates were closed. “I was probably worried about failing my algebra test and didn’t even notice.”

“See? Great impression I made.” Davis wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in close. We pressed our faces to the cold iron bars of the gates and stared at the soldiers marching slowly up and down in their perfect red and black uniforms.

“Their hats always make me think of something you’d take to bed with you,” I said.

“Hey, what’s up?” Davis called through the gates to the Beefeaters. They didn’t respond, of course.

“Davis!” I giggled and dragged him away. “The queen’s probably watching from inside right now.”

The rest of the day was like a happy fantasy. We wandered the streets, getting lost, finding ourselves again. We stared, open-mouthed, at the massive spires of Parliament and the towering grace of Westminster Abbey. We asked a pair of Italian tourists to take a picture of us under Big Ben. We tried a slice of steak-and-kidney pie from a shop with a window that opened onto the street. We both agreed that the kidneys tasted unsettlingly like urine.

At the end of the day, we found ourselves wandering down a labyrinth of narrow alleyways near the site of the original Globe Theatre. The gray stone around us was tinted pink from the sunset streaking the sky overhead. I was holding Davis’s hand, gazing at the crumbling stone archways that led into even more tiny alleys, thinking incredulously that Shakespeare himself might have walked right here on these very stones, just like we were. Suddenly, in front of us, a woman in an old-fashioned beaded dress darted from one of the alleys. She glanced over her shoulder as if someone was following her and then slipped into a nearby doorway. We stopped.

“What . . . ?” Davis said. Then a man in a tuxedo with slicked-back hair ran out of the alley, too. He had something small and black in his hand, and before I realized what it was, two sharp reports echoed against the building walls around us.

“Oh my God,” I gasped, my blood turning to ice water. I clutched at Davis.

“Wait, look.” He pointed at a crowd of people, some in 1930s dress, streaming from the same alley the man and woman had come from. A few of them had cameras, but none looked particularly alarmed. They tramped across the cobblestones and filed into the doorway. Davis caught the sleeve of a girl wearing a sparkly flapper dress at the end of the line.

“Hey, what’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s a Secret Cinema performance.” She gestured at the doorway where the last of the crowd was going in. “They pick an old movie, and the actors actually perform it live in a secret location around London. They play parts of the movie on a huge screen, too. It’s so amazing.” She smiled at us and turned to follow the others.

“Definitely not something that happens in Stanton.” Davis grabbed my hand. “Let’s check it out.”

We ran into the building and up a narrow flight of stairs. The building appeared to be abandoned, but we found the audience clustered in a large room at the top. The woman actor in the beaded dress was now standing over the man in the tuxedo, who lay on the floor. She had the gun in her hand. Eerie music played from some hidden sound system.

Davis wrapped his arms around me from behind and rested his chin on my shoulder as we watched the “movie” unfold in front of us. Here I was, in one of the most amazing cities on Earth, with my boyfriend, my leg finally feeling better, seeing something so different from anything in Connecticut. I twisted around to tell Davis how happy I was, when a man standing at the edge of the crowd caught my eye. He was small and slim, wearing a narrow gray suit, and he was staring at us with what looked like unusual intensity.

“Davis,” I murmured.

“Hmm?”

“That guy there . . .”

But when I looked back, the man was gone.

“What guy?” Davis asked.

“
Shh,” whispered the person in front of us.

I stared at the spot where the gray-suited man had been standing, then shook my head, turning back to the action. He must have been one of the actors. “Nothing,” I said.

Every day, Davis and I were out in London. He’d wait for me in our spot by our building, and we’d get our coffee and pastry from Harold, the gap-toothed vendor with the green awning. We ambled every street we could find, sometimes strolling randomly, sometimes studying the Tube map and picking some neighborhood with an interesting name, like Bromley, and riding there on the train. I didn’t dare sneak out at night again, but when I lay in my bed and pictured Davis one floor above me, I was comforted.

If it wasn’t for the nightmares, I’d have been perfectly happy. But each night when I closed my eyes, they claimed me, sending me back to that slick black road over and over again. Each time, I watched Davis with one hand on the wheel, and the curve of the road looming ahead. He would talk to me emphatically, gesturing, but I could never understand his words—just an infuriating gibberish. Then the crash, the impact, tumbling down the hill again and again. Always, I woke up as the car hit the dirt with a thud.

Davis had been in London for four days when I kissed him good-bye in his empty flat upstairs one evening. Behind us, a gray blanket I’d snuck up was mussed, evidence of our long, sensuous afternoon. I tried to comb my hair with my fingers and rubbed at my chafed lips. “How do I look?” I asked.

He leaned over to kiss me one last time. “Like a girl who’s spent the whole afternoon alone with her boyfriend.”

“My parents will love that.” I made a face at him and wrapped my hair in a bun. “I hate leaving you, but I swore I’d have dinner with them. They miss me since I’ve been hanging out with ‘Oliver.’”

“Should I be jealous?” he teased. He held my hand firmly as I stood up.

“Probably. My parents know his parents. I’m sure my mother’s practically got me married off.” I laughed at his mock puppy-dog face and extracted my hand from his grasp. “See you tomorrow.” I bent to kiss his forehead.

I limped down the service stairs and, humming to myself, opened the door of the flat. “I’m home!” I called in. I could smell roast chicken.

“Zoe, please come in here,” my father said from the kitchen. His voice sounded stony, and with my palms suddenly sweaty, I walked slowly toward the back of the flat.

In the doorway of the kitchen, my heart dropped with a thud. Sitting at the table beside my parents was Oliver. No one was smiling.

“Hi,” I said carefully. “Um, Oliver
. . .”

“Sit down,” my mother cut in. “I believe you owe us an explanation.”

I perched at the edge of my chair. A chicken thigh and a pile of green beans were growing cold on my plate. “Mom, listen . . .”

“Since Dad and I have to be at that embassy meeting tomorrow, I wanted us to have a nice dinner together tonight. Imagine my surprise when I dropped a note at Oliver’s flat, inviting him also, only to have Oliver himself open the door.” My mother’s nose was white around the nostrils. “I thought he was with you today.”