Generation of Liars (47 page)

“Flights to Tahiti were booked
until after Christmas, so Vivienne and I stuck around Paris. I thought it would
be romantic to propose to her on the Eiffel Tower on Christmas Eve. She said
yes, by the way.”

Vivienne stroked the hair from my
eyes. “Then we saw those two manhandling you and we knew something was up.”

“Man, Alice” Rabbit said, “you got
shot by one boyfriend and the next one attempted to blow you up. You sure know
how to piss people off, huh?”

“Now is not the time to antagonize
me, Rabbit.” I looked at the shiny diamond on Vivienne’s finger. “You proposed
to Vivienne on the tower? So that’s why I saw her heel marks up there in the
snow.” My eyes went back up to the Eiffel Tower.  Pressley was traversing
the steps. “He is so stupid,” I growled.

“Why?” Rabbit asked. “I thought
shooting you down off the tower was pretty smart.”

“Rabbit, there is a bomb on my
chest and Ophelia is up there holding the detonator.”

“How does she always manage to get
the vantage point on you, Alice?”

“Now is not the time to antagonize
me,” I reminded him. “I have got to get back up there.”

“Alice, don’t go up there. It’s not
safe,” Rabbit said. “Stay down here until the police arrive. Connard phoned
this in to the authorities. I heard him do it.”

“It’s not safe down here.  I’m
wearing a bomb. Ophelia is holding the detonator and I need to be close enough
to her that she won’t press the button and blow herself up too.” I slung myself
free from the tendrils of the shrubbery and bolted up the clanging steps of the
tower. Everything was so cold, the snow stung my eyes, and there was a vine of
pain blossoming from my shoulder down the side of my arm where the bullet had
hotly breezed by my skin. When I got there, Pressley, Ben, and Ophelia were all
shouting over each other. “Pressley,” I called out over their voices. It was
enough to shut them up. “If you showed up looking for the dynamite stick, they
don’t have it.” I pointed to the bomb strapped to my chest. “But I do.”  

His face fell. “Geez, Alice, what
they hell are you doing wearing a bomb? Are you crazy?”

“This pair was planning to blow me
up, along with the dynamite stick, on top of the Eiffel Tower.” Ophelia gave me
a loathsome look as my lips revealed their gruesome plot. “The detonator is in
the blonde’s hand.”

Ophelia scrambled to run but
Pressley grabbed her and yanked the detonator from her. Ben wailed his fist at
Pressley’s cheek. Pressley quickly recovered and staggered towards Ben, fists
flailing, and decked him in the center of his face.

“You got handcuffs, Mr. CIA?” I was
addressing Pressley over the raucous. He nodded yes. “Okay, grab the blonde and
cuff her”

“What?” he asked. His alertness
lagged just enough for Ben to slug him in the jaw another time.

“Just do it, Pressley!”

He grabbed Ophelia by the waist and
held her steady like a flailing hog as he clumsily tried to snap the cuff over
one of her wrists. Ben railroaded into him and planted several knuckle-rich
punches to his nose, but Pressley didn’t lose his grip. Ophelia’s wide,
clownish mouth was biting into Pressley’s forearm trying to get free. The moon
shined off the silver cuffs. He managed to lock her wrist.   

I ran over and held my arm out to
Pressley. “Cuff the other end of to my wrist.”

“Are you sure?” husked Pressley.

“Trust me.”

Pressley snapped it into place and
Ophelia and I were cuffed together. I had a smug grin cascading over my lips.

“What the hell was the point of
that?” Ben asked. He was looking at Ophelia and I yoked together.

 “Pressley,” I said, “go ahead
and give Ben the detonator if you want. He won’t activate the bomb on my chest
as long as Ophelia is strapped to me. She’s home to him. You don’t blow up
home.”

Ben kicked the rail. “You stupid
little bitch. You never just freaking stop. You’re always scheming. Can’t you
ever just shut up and die like a normal person wearing a bomb would do?”

“Looks like you broke the wrong
girl’s heart, Ben,” I scowled.

Pressley smirked. He was enjoying
this. “This guy broke your heart, Alice? That’s crazy.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it implies you have a
heart. Which we both know isn’t true.”

“They teach you how to be a smart
mouth at your CIA training?” I asked.   

“Careful, Alice.” Pressley’s calm,
nearly callous, demeanor was making me uneasy. “You’re handcuffed and there’s a
bomb strapped to your chest. The blonde here might be
home
to your
heartbreaker boy toy here, but she’s dirt to me, and there’s nothing stopping
me from pressing the detonator and blowing up both of you.”

Ben threw a shove at Pressley.
“Like hell you are.” He sounded every bit the protective husband. “I’m sorry if
your ego is a little busted because that little Miss Huss-in-boots here doesn’t
want you, and that she more than enjoyed her romantic stay at my apartment, but
that doesn’t give you an excuse to go blowing up other people’s wives.”

“Careful, Casanova.” Pressley was
dusting off from the shove. “It’s not my fault you spent more time wining and
dining the ladies than you did planning this thing better.”

“You’re the one trying to make a
love connection up here with Alice. How did you even find us?”

“After Ophelia Le Fur started
showing up everywhere uninvited, I decided to start tracking her,” Pressley
said. “I figured with moves like she has, I was better off letting her hunt the
dynamite stick and then snagging it from her once she had it than I was hunting
it myself. But following her wasn’t as exciting as I thought. She barely left
her hotel for two months. Pretty unspectacular dirt on her too. The only thing
I could pull up was a restraining order filed two years ago by the head of the
Olympic committee. I was doing surveillance on her tonight. I saw you guys
shove Alice in the car and I followed you here.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you’ve
been stalking my wife for months? Oh I bet you liked that a whole lot, didn’t
you, Romeo?” Ben looked like he was going to punch Pressley again. This was
taking too long for my taste. I slid in between them, dragging Ophelia on the
other end of my cuff.

“Calm down, boys,” I shouted. “It’s
real cozy up here on this tower and all, but this bomb is mighty heavy and I’m
ready to be done.”

“Fine. Let’s end this,” Pressley
said. “How about this? I cut the girls loose and I grab Alice and the dynamite
stick. Ben, you and your wife kick dirt all the way back to whatever Parisian
sewer you crawled up from.”  

“No deal,” Ben stagnated. “That
dynamite stick doesn’t make it past tonight in one piece.” Pressley opened his
mouth to give a rebuttal, but he was drowned out by the high-pitched squeal of
sirens breaking in the distance. “Did you call the police?” Ben asked.

“French police, U.S. agents,
Interpol. I phoned them all in,” Pressley smugly replied.

“Good grief. You might as well have
called in Sherlock Holmes and Scotland Yard, you thorough bastard.” Ben was
looking over the rail in astonished horror at the impending parade of police
lights.

Pressley opportunistically freed my
end of the cuffs and snapped it to the rail.

“Hey!” Ophelia growled. When she
realized she was stuck, she jerked her arm against the rail like a caged beast.
“You stupid vermin!”

Pressley reached for my hand,
instigating a tug to make me start running. “We need to hurry,” he whispered
into my hair. Following him seemed like my best bet. We sprinted down the
descending steps along the tower. A crowd of police cars was now packing the
roadway that cut between the Eiffel Tower and Champ de Mars. Pressley slipped
off his trench coat and tied it over my shoulders so that the bomb was
concealed from view.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you in a minute, just
follow me.” We slithered through the maze of headlights. A squad of French
police uniforms rushed past us. Pressley flashed his badge in order to get past
them. I searched among the strobing police lights for a sign of a bomb squad.

“No, Alice.” He was pulling me
away. “This way.” He led me across the road, towards the stretch of plush,
celestially-bathed greenery that was Champ de Mars.

“What the hell are you doing,
Pres?”

“Just follow me, Alice.”

“But we are going in the opposite
direction of the police.”

“I know.”

The gritty voice of a police
officer crackled in the background. “Get down on the ground.” My heart skipped
a beat and when I turned back to respond to him, I saw that he was several
meters away standing over Ben, who had submitted down to his knees with his
hands behind his back. The officer didn’t seem to notice Pressley and I running
up ahead in the distance.

“You better have a very good reason
for this,” I said to Pressley. We were cutting across the lawn, which was
growing increasingly lathered in snow.

“Is love a good enough reason?” he
asked.

I came to a standstill. I was
trying to catch my breath. Trying to understand what he meant. The shouts of
the officers, far away enough now to be mere echoes, rang in the distance. “Love?”

“Alice, I’ve been doing a lot of
thinking, and…”

“And?”

“And, I love you.”

“Pressley, there is a bomb strapped
to my chest. The police can help me get this thing off. Why are we running from
them?”

“I love you and I can’t make you go
back. I can’t force you to be who you used to be.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Alice, I don’t want you to be with
me just because you think that’s all there is. If I turn in that dynamite stick
and we all go back to who we used to be, I will never know if you really loved
me at all. Or if you just love me because you think there’s nothing out there
for you in the world.”

“This is ridiculous. Absurd.
Totally absurd.”

“Is it, Alice?”

“Pressley, the reason I ran away
from home wasn’t because I wanted to escape a monotonous future with you. I
wasn’t seeking adventure like some bored, desperate housewife. There was a
darker reason.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Maybe we need to start trusting
each other.”

“Alice, you’ll forgive me if I find
you a little hard to trust.”

“We can worry about love later.
Let’s go turn this stupid dynamite stick over to the police and I can stop
lying forever.”

“But that’s the thing, Alice. What
if a liar is who you really are? I mean, after you became a liar the world was
at your fingertips. You went places, you did things, and you didn’t seem to
miss me one bit until our world’s collided up there on the Eiffel Tower. If we
go back home and back to our old lives and you are with me again, I will always
wonder if it’s because you don’t think you have a place out there in the world
as plain old Margaux instead of Alice Fix. I don’t want you to settle.”

I was urgently scanning his eyes
for some indication of sanity. “What is your plan? Why are we running?”

He reached for the bomb and stroked
the edges of the locked-in dynamite stick. “I’m going to destroy the dynamite
stick. It’s the only way I’ll ever know if you really love me.” His eyes were
smoldering with an excitement that bordered on mania.

“Pressley, you cannot destroy the
dynamite stick in the name of love. You’ll cause an international incident.”

“But it’s the only way I will know
for sure if you love me.”

I breathed out a gargantuan sigh.
“I love you, Pressley.”

“Yeah,” he said, his sparkling
brown eyes encroaching onto mine, “but you’re a liar.”

A burst of light ruptured the black
sky above us. It was a helicopter flying overhead with its searchlight roving
the grid surrounding the Eiffel Tower. “Geez, Pressley, did you see that?
They’re looking for us. Ben probably already told the officers all about me and
the dynamite stick and the bomb. Turn yourself in now. Take the dynamite stick
to them. Just pin it all on me. Tell them I ran you on a wild chase.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Pressley, don’t do this to
yourself. Your career will be over. Your life will be over. You will always be
running. You will always miss home.”

“You are my home,” he said. “I
already know what the worst that can happen feels like because I already lost
you once.” The helicopter was circling again. Its spotlight was spraying over
everything that surrounded us. Missing us, the helicopter took a topsy-turvy
dive and headed in another direction.

“Did you just say that I was your
home?” I asked.

“Yes, Alice, you are home to me.”

“Damn it, why did you have to say
that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“You need to realize that picking
me over your future in some screwball scheme to test true love has mega
consequences. Pressley, us being together has mega consequences. Can’t you see
how you’re throwing your life away?”

“You won’t make me change my mind.
I lost you once and it was terrible, but if I lose you again I want to do it
fair and square. So, are you in or are you out? I can’t make you do this with
me, but I am going to do it.”

 “Okay, I’m in.” I balanced on
my toes to reach up for a kiss.

His lips brushed over mine. “We can
count the stars in each other’s eyes later. Right now we’ve got to strategize.
Can you unstrap the bomb?”

“Negative,” I reported. “Ophelia
put this locked chain around my neck and she tossed the key out the car window
on the way. I can probably cut the lock if I have enough time and a sharp
enough tool.”

“Okay, first thing we have to do is
find something to cut the bomb away from you and then dump it somewhere.”

 “Well, we aren’t going to
find it here.”

We trekked to the perimeter of
Champ de Mars and came out on a street that had the entrance to the Erole
Militaire metro station. The sidewalk was bare beneath stringent lamp lights.
Pressley appeared momentarily disoriented and I noticed him balance his head to
one side, as if cocking his ear to the sound of imagined noise.