The American Girl (21 page)

AUGUST 7, 2015

T
he car was silent except for the radio and the squeal of the wipers waltzing back and forth over the rain. The painkillers were starting to wear off and my whole body felt clenched, though not as clenched as Valentin looked. His face in profile was gray and tight, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. Ever since the hospital, something felt off, and I couldn't help wondering exactly what “inquiries” Quinn was helping Valentin's colleagues with.

Valentin's overly tidy hotel room was no better. We drank whiskey and chain-smoked, watching the rain again, but this time the tremor in the air around us wasn't unspoken temptation. It was bad news that Valentin hadn't worked up the nerve to tell me. The longer he stayed silent, the surer I was of that.

I reached out the window and throttled my cigarette on a roof tile. Cold drops of rain lashed my skin, bracing me. I stood, brushing my hair out of my face and into a knot. My clothes were
stiff with blood and dirt. I wanted nothing more than to take a long hot shower and sleep for a million years. I headed slowly towards the door, hoping he'd understand without me having to say anything.

He grabbed my wrist. His eyes were dark, his face fearful. “What?”

I spun around. “Look, I can't sit here waiting for the ax to fall. I know you know something you're not telling me. What I don't understand is why you're here babysitting me when you should be back with the others having some meeting or searching for the Blavettes or something.”

“Please sit. We will talk. I just can't tell you all of it. I promised not to.”

I sat down on the chair with a thump of my bruised butt. “Promised who?”

“My superior officer. I was forced to tell him of our . . . relationship. And so, for the moment, I am off the case. Before I spoke to him, there were things . . . coming to light about your niece that I—”

“What things?” I was surprised by the fear in my gut. Maybe I'd pretended to be her aunt so hard I'd begun to believe my own lies.

Valentin let his head fall in his hands. “Molly, I know how much you love her. Every time I see you together . . .” He looked up, his eyes shining. “It was lovely to see that. For me it has been like being in a family again. But family is complicated. And your niece, well, she will still seem like a little girl to you, I am sure. And perhaps you will hide things to protect her, but—”

“Hide what?” My heart drummed. “What are you talking about?”

“Things are coming to light in the information you handed to us, the blog and the things the Blavette girl has said. Someone anonymously has given a CCTV video to the media. It shows Quinn with an unidentified man in a swimming pool and it seems she is taking drugs perhaps, and, well . . .” He paused for a moment, seemingly embarrassed, before continuing in a hurried tone. “We have sent scrapings from underneath her fingernails to the laboratory . . . well, we will have to see, but it may be that Quinn has not told us the whole truth.”

“Well, how could she?” I said indignantly. “She doesn't remember anything.”

He looked away. “Believe me, Molly, I have done what I can. We are helping her to obtain some kind of representation.”

“She needs a lawyer?”

He nodded. “I know we should have told you. I even told them that you should have been present inside the interview. But they replied that it might be dangerous if . . .”

“If?”

“If she had attacked you, too. The first responders reported that you were all victims of an attack. It was only after you had been examined that we began to piece together a picture.”

“Yeah, well, Noémie attacked Quinn. I had to separate them.”

He frowned. “It may be that before Noémie attacked Quinn, before we found her, that Quinn has caused some of her injuries. We are waiting for tests to return.”

“And until they come back you won't really know for sure?”

“Indeed,” he said, brightening. “And believe me, I wish her to be cleared. I have every faith. I have demanded that this not be released in the press, but the rescue of the girl will, and the rest I cannot control.”

He pulled me to him and I let him sit me on his lap like a doll. I felt weak. The last few hours had caught up to me. “I hope you didn't lose your job because of me.”

He kissed my neck. “Unlucky for them, they need me to work there.”

I swallowed guiltily. “And Quinn . . . was it the iPhone that made her . . .”

“A suspect?”

The word jarred. I remembered her in that cave, her lost eyes staring, the terrified way she ran ahead of me.

“Not yet. I swear to you, I have done my best to protect both of you.”

“I know.” I let my forehead touch his. For all his bluster and grumpiness, he had a big heart. When he carried me to the bed, murmuring sweet things in French, I let him do it, all of it, anything he wanted, because there was nothing else I could do.

AUGUST 7, 2015

I
watched Valentin sleep awhile, not because it's the sort of thing I ever do, but because it was oddly soothing, like CDs of white noise or whale song. As he fell asleep, he'd murmured that he loved me, which explained the weird vibe between us in part at least. I started to stutter something, but I wasn't sure what I felt, so in the end I said nothing. When the text noise went on his phone a little while later, I saw the message pop up and what it said: Quinn was being held under suspicion of murder.

When I read those words and mentally Google Translated them, it was like that horrible moment when you realize you have a stomach flu but you just haven't committed to vomiting yet. I couldn't help but wonder whether if I hadn't told all those lies and stirred shit up, Quinn would be in trouble.

I crept into my clothes, feeling as much like a dirty rat as I'd ever felt and trying not to let my attention wander to the glint of golden stubble on Valentin's face, the way his lips were
full and curved as a girl's. It was surely the last time I'd see him that way.

Back in my room, I scrolled to the top of my speed dial. Mom was away from her phone, up to mischief, no doubt. Bill, as always, was in. The sound of Nina in the background busting his balls was curiously reassuring.

“You get the video?” I asked.

“Sure did.” As soon as I heard his voice, I thought,
Bill sounds . . . different.

“Watch it yet?”

“Uh-huh. And I'm not the only one.” I realized what it was. He was pleased with himself.

“Okay. You sound chipper.”

“Well, that was one hell of a video. I mean, it was long, but after a shrewd edit, it was good stuff.”

“Thanks, I guess.” Despite my general sense of disaster, I allowed myself a little smile. Praise from Bill used to be my whole goal in life.

“Seriously, though,” he continued in his new, smug voice, “you went way above and beyond to get the truth and I think that's half of what people are responding to.”

“Responding to?” My stomach dropped. “I sent that for your eyes only, Bill. Who else has seen it?”

“Try . . . the whole world.” He sounded so full of glee I wished I could reach through the phone and throttle him.

“What?”

“I streamed it on the
American Confessional
channel.”

“You streamed it? But who even edited it all together?”

“‘Get with the times, Bill.' Isn't that what you're always telling me? And don't worry, I took out the bits with your boyfriend clucking over you.”

“My what? You mean Valentin? Is that what this is about, Bill? You're jealous? You're taking revenge? You've fucked me, now. Everyone will know how I lied.”

“Comes with the territory, Molly. Besides, you have the small recompense of journalistic celebrity.”

“But I don't want—”

“To be famous? Every conversation we've ever had, that's just what you did want, more than anything. Now I've given you it.”

“Yeah, I get it. Goodbye, Bill. Thanks for blowing my cover and everything . . .”

“So when's the next installment? The video's gone viral. The world's waiting.”

I hung up the phone.

JULY 24, 2015

Draft Blog Entry

I wasn't imagining things: it was the police coming to arrest us, question us, whatever. Stella called them when she found out that Raphael had taken the stuff from her medicine cabinet and a few little trinkets. It seems harsh for a family friend, “like a son to her” by his own account. There was no time to quibble with her, though, or even to get dressed. We had to slip out the back naked, through some secret gap in the fence Raphael knows about, which was pretty hard for me with OxyContin or Midol or whatever mixed with my meds and making my head weird. I remember shivering so badly I couldn't get my jeans fastened. Raphael said it didn't matter, to climb on the bike. Was it luck that made him park in those woods near the hole in Stella's fence?

He says we need to keep a low profile and that we need cash. Finding a place to stay will be even harder now, especially since,
overnight, he's grown as paranoid as me. My mind's shut down for now. Today, I've just done everything as he's said, which isn't much except driving from one shitty apartment to the next, picking up twenty euros here, a promise note there, dodging into an alleyway every time we see blue and white stripes go by.

On this bumpy back road, the sea follows us, a blue dog speed-blurred. Every time a car passes, the bike tilts and I think we will fall. My thighs clutch hot metal. My knees press into the backs of Raphael's thighs. We get to St. Roch and carefully avoid the main drag. Not sure we should be here at all. When I catch a glimpse of the gendarmerie in one of the mirrors, I think my heart will burst. Flat, pale-faced shop buildings and soothing shutters over antiques and curios as the Sunday market winds down. The bike swerves, bumps over cobbles. Medieval buildings grow tall around us, leering down. Red awnings are cocked at irregular angles. Eccentric shopkeepers lean in doorways tutting at the bike. Or am I still being paranoid?
Slow down, Raphael,
I think. Our thoughts can't be that in tune 'cause he speeds up. We bump through a quaint square by the church, knocking over an empty café chair. Angry shouts swell and fade behind us.

In a dark side street, the bike stops. Raphael signals me to stay put. I do, afraid of following him through the flaking powder blue door. It looks shadier even than the others. Eyes glint from the darkness. Hungry. Suspicious. I hunch over the humming bike, shivering. In the shadowy street, it's suddenly cold. Raphael's gone a long time. I stare at the blue door and it stares back.

I already know what he's doing in there. Collecting money
from some friend or other who owes him—what he's been doing all day, so we can “go somewhere nice, somewhere away from here.” The trouble is, I'm not sure I want to go anymore.

The door creaks open and Raphael's back emerges, his head still talking in hushed tones to the person inside, who I now see is a young woman with dark hair, a bundle of cloth or rags tucked under one arm. She steps forward, leaning on the pale blue door, watches me with heavy lidded eyes. She smiles a knowing smile as if she knows something I don't know. Suddenly Raphael grabs the cloth bundle. Bolts from the door. The woman's mouth drops open, an agonized O of shock. She shouts something in French I don't catch.

“
Vite! Vite!
Come on!” Raphael elbows me back from the handles, jumps onto the bike.

The engine revs. The woman is screaming now. I want to get off, to run from this. But it's too late. The bike lurches forward, knocking me back. I cling on to Raphael to stop myself falling. The bike lurches over the cobbles. My head whips back in time to see the woman pull off one of her pink flip-flops. She screams in French, so loud I think her lungs might burst. Windows above fly open. Curious heads poke out. Her arm winds back and the flip-flop flies through the air. Falls pathetically to the ground. The bike speeds. I turn my head back, not wanting to see the woman or the street or the many pairs of eyes staring out in judgment.

We escape St. Roch. We are out on the road again, winding up where the fields give way to crops of rock and the road is steep. And then we are on a dirt track, juddering along so hard I think my teeth will smash. Maybe they should. That was way worse
than what happened last night. Raphael wasn't just “borrowing” from an old family friend. He committed a crime. Or maybe that woman was mixed up in shady stuff herself and they're both thieves. Whichever way, I'm an accomplice to something much worse now.

The bike swerves to a halt, kicking up dust. It settles. I try to calm myself by looking around. It's hard when every tooth and bone in me is trembling. God, where are we now? In a nightmare. Or the set of a death metal video. Hard to know which. Rising all around us, ragged and blackened, staring down with gaping glassless windows of eyes, is an abandoned building.

“What the hell . . . ?” The words tumble out, then stop. I don't want to look at Raphael, speak to him. Not yet.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him rub his hands over his face. Anxiety is eating away his charm and he does not smile. His curls are sweat slick. He shakes his head and a shower of salt beads spray me. I flinch back, eyes stinging where the salt hits.

“Don't you recognize it?” he says curtly. “It is the art block of the school, the part that was vandalized.”

“What was that back there?” I say. I can't help it. I have to know what he's got me into.

“Nothing,” he snaps. “Anyway, I must get something from here.” In a few quick steps, he's climbed the broken steps where the Victorian children once lined up for their photograph. Then the door's toothless gape swallows him whole.

I hug my arms around myself. I unhug my arms. Should I run, call someone? I glance in dismay at the eight percent battery on my phone, the No Signal notification endemic to the St.
Roch area. I straddle the bike and wonder if I could drive it out of here. To where? The police?

A car drives up, kicking up clouds of dust, actually not just a car, but a cherry red Chevy Impala. The low-slung door opens and a tall guy unfolds himself from behind the wheel. His policeman's uniform hangs loosely from his skinny frame.
Shit shit shit
. They're onto us, just as I feared. The police, come to arrest us, to question us.

“Good day to you,” he says in heavily accented French.

It goes through my head that I should confess, come clean, turn Raphael in. Instead, I hear myself say, “Uh, my friend is in there, but he only went to get a photo or something. So he'll be out in a sec . . .” The words sound like the weak excuses they are. I stare at my dusty feet.

“Don't you know this is private property, that you are trespassing here?” He sounds mad, like he means business.

It's hard to keep my face calm, stop my hands shaking. And yet, there goes my mouth again, the easy explanations spilling out. “His family lives here, pretty much. Anyway, he'll be right out, and we'll be on our way, Officer.” And then I smile. All that time I spend making up stories, rewriting my life to make it sound better, sure has made me good at this . . . at what? Covering my ass? Covering Raphael's?

The cop takes off his sunglasses slowly and I fully expect to get shouted at. His eyes are wide spaced and very blue. He looks me up and down coolly and then he breaks into a broad grin, showing crooked teeth.

“It's a joke! I am Raphael's friend. I meet him here.”

An electric shock goes through me. Raphael has a friend in the police. Is he part of this, some “well-disposed” cop keeping Raphael from getting arrested?

He grins wider, takes my hand, kisses it. “
Je m
'appelle Léon
. And you, you are Quinn?”

“Um, yeah. He told you about me?”

“Yes, of course, the American girl. Ever since he left Paris, I hear of nothing else.” When he leans down, his face is level with mine. He's not handsome like Raphael, but there is something nice about his smile that makes me feel a bit easier.

“Let's go,” says Léon, starting towards the broken building.

I hang back a moment. This feels weird. Not just weird—bad. First the robbery, then some cop I don't know showing up at this rendezvous, a broken building. For what? To hang out? But I don't want to stay out here all by myself. So I follow him, picking my way through the rubble of the Old Schoolhouse, stepping over freaky curios: the mangled wire skeleton of a tailor's dummy, a shattered wooden desk, an old valise, a wooden crate with a dozen Kewpie dolls cheerily grinning through the frame of the burned-out past.

At the doorway to the school, my demon lover reappears, looking for a moment like an angry spirit, his skin pale, his beautiful lips downturned. Do I know him at all?

Léon stops, hand cupped over his eyes as if he's straining to see this ghost-Raphael, the dead him like a prophetic vision. Raphael steps into the light and smiles charmingly, as if all of
this is perfectly natural. He hugs Léon and does a complicated fist-bump thing. He pulls me close and I find it hard to resist, despite my misgivings. He stands with his arm draped over my neck, nuzzling me so that Léon fidgets with his watch. I wonder if he feels how tense I am, how much I don't want to be here.

“Come on, man,” says Raphael, letting his arm drop away. “We better hurry.”

“Ouais, on y va.”
Léon nods.

I follow them into the darkness of the crumbling building. We weave our way through corridors with doors hanging off their hinges and the roofs caving in, until we get to a small room with no windows and no roof. Looks like maybe it was a darkroom once. There are vats of chemicals, developing trays, and camera lenses. In one corner is a pile of blankets covered with leaves and plaster. In another is a plastic tub full of half-dead electronic gear, a tripod, a broken clock radio. Raphael gestures to the blankets. I hunch down, so pliant now I wonder if I'm getting Stockholm syndrome. He breaks out some beers, uncapping mine for me before passing it. Thirsty and headachy, I sip mine slowly while the other two sit on chairs talking in French. I hope this isn't going to be our hideout.

We sit for a long time. My head feels more and more vague, spinning, the room spinning, the sky above a twirling disk of blue. The sun starts burning my bare arms, chapping my lips. My blood pressure keeps on rising with the sense of anticipation, anxiety, unease—what are we doing here?

A lizard skitters over my foot and pauses to look at me, gold eye swiveling manically. My head pounds harder and harder and a metallic taste pools in my mouth. I don't understand why this one beer has made me so wasted. My eyes droop sleepily.

It's not long before I have cause to wake, sharply. Raphael and Léon are passing silver blister packs back and forth, sorting, counting. They have white boxes, like from a pharmacy, stacks and stacks of them. Dealing drugs. I want to be sick.

They stand and start fitting a video camera onto a tripod. All the while, they are smoking and laughing and speaking in French in low voices I can't quite hear. Neither of them looks at me. Then Raphael falls on the bed next to me, grinning his broad, easy pretty-boy grin. Léon gives us a sideways look and shucks his tab end into the dusty scrub grass growing through the broken floor. Raphael holds out his hand to Léon, beckoning with his fingers:
Gimme gimme
. Léon rolls his eyes and then, with a little sigh, reaches into the breast pocket of his immaculate shirt and pulls out a little Baggie. Raphael opens it, takes a little on his finger, and rubs it on his gums.

“Danke schön, broheim.”
He dabs his finger in more powder and offers me some.

“No,” I say, turning my head away.

“She liked it last night,” he says, winking at Léon, “and this morning. You were high as a kite, girl. Don't you remember?”

“Last night? But I—” I begin angrily. “I don't remember.” Fuck. I really don't.

Léon shoots me an odd look, like I'm crazy or something.
“
De rien.
Anyway, I go now.” He hugs Raphael tight, clapping his back. “Be safe, man—” flinging his car keys on the bed “—take the keys for the Impala. I'll go home with your bike.”

When Léon has gone, Raphael whispers in my ear, “Okay, baby?”

“Not really.”

“What's up?”

“All of this.” I gesture to the wreck of a room. “What happened earlier, the drugs. I didn't know you were mixed up in this kind of thing.” My voice sounds high and tight and hysterical.

“Don't forget, you are, too.” He winks at me, his easy charm having returned. “Hey, it wasn't so bad today. Fun times, no? Exciting?” He turns back to rolling his joint.

I start shaking and can't stop. The worst thing is, he's not wrong. I could have run, told someone, called someone. But I didn't. I'm part of it now. When he passes me the joint, I don't say no. I want to take the edge off this, to not think. We stay till the stars come out, till we are so high we're almost up in them. Leaving this blog here in case stuff gets any worse. Glad the world can't see it, though. Glad . . . God . . . I'm in way over my head.