Kiss Kill Vanish (19 page)

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.

It's from Marcel:
You're welcome.

I wait for more, cringing in anticipation, but it doesn't come. No flirting, no suggestion to watch the sunrise together, or any other thinly veiled booty call invite.

I text back:
Why are you awake?

His response is fast:
I'm a vampire. Why are you awake?

Me:
Just because.

Him:
Ask me what I'm wearing.

Me:
No.

Him:
Ask me.

Me:
Absolutely not.

Him:
Do you swim?

Swim. The sound of the word makes me weightless, sends my brain into a free float, and for a second my body feels the pulse of the ocean. I'm swaying against the pull and push. My arms want to slice through waves. I want to fly.

Me:
I don't have a suit.

Him:
No worries.

I sigh. The booty call was not even thinly veiled.

Me:
I don't skinny-dip with strangers.

Him:
Ouch. I'm a stranger? Borrow a suit.

Me:
Where are you?

Him:
My place.

It takes me a moment to realize that he doesn't mean Lucien's apartment, but his parents' house. Of course. Lucien said that Marcel would be going back home once his parents returned, and why would Marcel ever go back to that apartment now?

Me:
You have a pool?

Him:
Yeah. I'll pick you up in an hour.

When Estelle arrives minutes later, I'm ready to go. She mutters at me in French as I slip my phone into my pocket, grab the mandolin, and leave.

“Why all smelling like bleach?” she barks after me, but I pretend I don't understand.

I don't analyze what I'm doing as I hurry home, or as I'm rifling through Nanette's drawers looking for a swimsuit, or as I'm standing at the curb waiting for Marcel. Scrutinizing why I'm looking forward to this is unnecessary. It's been too long time since I've swum.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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I
n a thousand ways Marcel's house is cold. Every detail is acute, every space is stark, but the absolute coldest thing about it is the light. It's so white it's blue. The pool house—connected to the main house by a thin corridor—is the bluest of all.

It's nothing like my home in Miami. The decor there is white as well, but sunlight streams in and paints everything warm and yellowy except where the stained-glass windows bleed rainbows.

“This pool is hard-core,” I say, sliding into the freezing water. Nanette had two suits to choose from: a crocheted purple bikini and a navy one-piece with a plunging back. I went navy for coverage.

Marcel is floating on his back, staring at the roof, his swim trunks ballooning around him. “What did you say?” he asks, pulling his head up. There is no shallow end, no place to stand, so he treads in place. His chest and shoulders glow like marble.

“This pool.” I stroke cautiously, gliding across four lanes to the other side. “It's huge.”

My legs feel strange, the muscles both wobbly and stiff at the same time. I don't think I've ever swum in water this cold. He's watching me, so I don't let on how my body is shrieking in shock and pain.

“Twenty-five meters,” he says. “My dad used to swim competitively.”

“Really?”

“He almost made the Olympics one year.”

“Impressive.”

“He's been pissed off ever since,” Marcel says. “That's what my mom says, at least. I have a hard time imagining him not pissed off before, but whatever.”

“You swim a lot then?”

“Used to. He tried to coach us, but he stopped fighting that battle when he realized we were both average.”

“I swam in high school,” I say, amazed at how easy it is to tell him something that is true. There's no danger in that. Just one true thing.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You can swim here anytime you want,” he says. “Nobody uses it. I don't know why they even bother heating it.”

“Wait, this is heated?”

“It's not an ice rink, is it?”

I survey the entire pool. It's a thin rectangle, carved into lanes by sharp black lines. There's no slide. There's no diving board. I can't even imagine a crowd in here, and I'm sure nobody has dunked anyone or done a cannonball. The sterility is eerie, but there's some comfort in knowing girls probably aren't routinely felt up in here. Bodily fluids are not exchanged. Thanks to Lola's world-famous parties, the same can't be said of the Cruz family pool.

“So you must come out here and do laps all the time,” I say.

“No. Not until this last week.” He swims to the opposite side and rubs his hand over his face. He's not what he looks like in clothes, not emaciated at all.

I look away.

“I've been out here every day since the funeral,” he says.

I stare at the huge digital clock on the wall and search for something to say as the seconds and tenths of seconds and hundredths of seconds whir by. “And your parents?”

“What about them?”

“I don't know. How are they taking everything?”

“My dad is in New York on business, and my mom has spent the last week sleeping. So they're taking things exactly how I'd expect them to take things.”

Picturing Marcel alone in this echoing, blue-lit palace makes me shudder. “Swimming must be a good release, then,” I say.

“I'm out of shape, but yeah. It's something to focus on.”

I dip the back of my head into the water and let the cold envelop me. Floating feels nice, even if I am bracing against a shiver. I get it. He's alone, and he's trying to stay clean, and I'm strangely proud of him. “Are you sure your mom doesn't mind that I'm here right now?”

“She won't be coming out of her room,” he says. “And she wouldn't care even if she were lucid enough to care.”

Above me, a grid of black beams holds up the ceiling and frames the skylight. It's still pitch black and starless out there. The cold isn't biting anymore, and I'm starting to think I could float here forever when Marcel's hand touches my arm.

I flinch and jerk upright.

“Holy startle reflex,” he says.

“You snuck up on me.”

“You were going to hit your head.” He points to the concrete ledge I was drifting toward.

We're nose to nose now. Water drips down his face, and his skin shines satiny under the cold lights. He's like a Renaissance sculpture I swear I've seen before, but I can't quite remember the name or the artist or the museum.

He's looking at me uneasily, undoubtedly wondering why I'm examining his face like we've just met.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing. Want to race?”

He smiles. “For real?”

I barely know what I just said. I was only trying to cut the awkward. “Let's race,” I try again, more convincingly this time. Maybe I do want to race. Maybe I want to beat somebody at something.

“How about I only use my arms,” he suggests.

“A little cocky, don't you think?”

“It's called chivalry.”

I swim away from him, positioning myself at the head of the second lane. He swims to lane three. Facing the pool, he spreads both arms out behind him on the ledge, stretching his shoulders and chest. The way his arms are bent makes him look like a bird of prey. Soaring. Ready to kill.

“Chivalry is boring,” I say. “Besides, you said you were out of shape.”

“I am. Goggles?”

“Please.”

He turns and pulls himself out of the pool. I hoist myself onto the edge and watch him walk to an equipment cupboard and pull out two pairs.

I'm going to lose. I'm a pretty good swimmer for my size, but unless his form is terrible, this race is already over. The laws of mathematics and aerodynamics say so—the muscles in his back and the length of his limbs are undeniably superior.

He comes back and sits beside me, handing me the silver pair. His are black.

“What stroke?” he asks.

“Whatever you want.”