Cold Kill

by Rennie Airth

  Which left Brad, Bradford Carlyle, a truly beautiful human being – Addy’s heart still did a little tap dance to the memory of him. Benedick to her Beatrice. They’d had a week together, onstage and off, Addy hardly marked the difference – ‘Speak low, if you speak love’ – and while it totally blew her mind, what it did to her body was even more spectacular.

  She was still trying to put it all together – the wonderful winging feeling when they were onstage tossing the lines at each other, just waiting for the curtain to fall so they could tear off their clothes and really get it on – when it all fell apart. Brad – her beautiful Brad – she still couldn’t believe it. She’d come bursting into his room one afternoon, hot and happy, and caught them at it. Actually doing it: one on top of the other.

  ‘Think of it this way, Adds,’ one of her friends in the company told her later. ‘You’re the first girl Brad’s looked at since the eighth grade, and probably the last.’

  And so … so let’s kick the subject, Addy thought. What do I care right now? The hunk had paused three rows away, looked like he’d found his seat. I’m leaving, I’m actually leaving. It’s a miracle!

  No, really, because earlier, when they’d announced the third delay in their departure, Addy had known she was never going to make it. They’d be stuck at Kennedy for days, probably wind up spending Christmas in the terminal, cook a turkey, hand out presents. There was this depression. (She’d seen it on the TV newscast in the bar over her second Perrier-with-a-twist – booze played hell with her complexion and she wanted to look her best, her very best, when she got to London, if she ever did.) A depression sitting over most of Europe. Blizzards, the man had said, with a little smile – New York was bathed in winter sunshine, what did he care – blizzards and icy roads, winds from Siberia, all kinds of shit, and it seemed England was not excluded from this Europe-wide fuck-up. Judging by the map, it was slap-bang in the middle of it.

  Addy had never been to London. Never seen Big Ben or the Tower of London or Buckingham Palace or the Queen, and the truth was she didn’t give a rat’s ass for any of them. (Sorry about that, Your Majesty.)

  Just Rose.

  And now that the time was approaching when she’d see her again …

  ‘Hi,’ said a voice, and Addy looked up. He was stashing his bag in the overhead compartment. ‘Good morning.’ Not Cary Grant, not at all; tougher looking, but the smile was a winner. He sat down on the seat beside hers. ‘Buongiorno?’ Eyebrows raised in a query. ‘Bonjour? Buenos dias? Guten morgen?’ He shook his head. ‘Look, you don’t have to explain – I understand – first rule of air travel. Never speak to your fellow passengers. I went to Mexico City last month and there was this guy – he had a McDonald’s franchise in Paramus – told me all about hamburgers. Everything. I couldn’t stop him, he just kept plugging away. What really and truly went into a Big Mac, and how the quarter-pounder had seen its best days, and finally I said to him, “Look, you don’t understand, it’s not that I don’t care – it’s that I truly do not want to know. This is knowledge I can live without, this is excess baggage,” and the guy couldn’t believe it. He said, “Do you feel that way about Chicken McNuggets?” So what I’m saying is I understand, and I promise, from here on in – not another word.’

  And Addy, who’d been waiting her chance, said, ‘Do you mind if I say something?’ and they both broke up, Addy laughing so hard she got a pain. The man held his hand out.

  ‘Mike Ryker. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  He had brown eyes and a small scar on his left temple. She’d already taken note of his thickly muscled shoulders as well as the three-piece suit he had on, which looked like the sort of thing a banker might wear.

  ‘Addy Banks.’ She smiled.

  ‘Addy?’

  ‘Adelaide.’

  ‘After the city?’

  ‘No, after my grandmother. It’s kind of a family name.’

  His hands, as he fixed his safety belt, were quick and sure. Addy made a habit of studying people closely. It was part of learning to be an actor.

  ‘What do you do, Addy?’

  She took a deep breath – here we go … because usually when you told people you were an actor, the first thing they asked was, ‘What have you done?’, and when the answer, like in her case, was approximately zero, they’d give you this look. An actor … sure … and there were times when small, dark-browed Addy Banks felt an overwhelming urge to … but what the hell?

  ‘I’m an actor,’ she said.

  ‘Great.’ His face lit up. ‘That’s a real break. Now we won’t have to talk about my job which is commodity broking, and if you ask me what that is exactly, I’ll tell you, but I promise you’ll regret it.’

  Addy opened her eyes wide. She was starting to enjoy this. ‘But that’s something I’ve always wanted to know about.’ Addy the actor – for a moment she had him going, he just stared at her in disbelief. But she couldn’t hold it, she started laughing and he nodded as though to say, OK, point to you, and Addy felt a warm glow start to spread all over her body, top to toe.

  The day had fallen on its feet. She felt great.

  Great, grown-up, in control of her destiny – and flying to London to see Rose.

  THREE

  Picture a mountain, snow-tipped, the lower slopes carpeted with pine trees.

  Picture a lake. White, green, glittering blue.

  Picture a fishing boat, just one. See the fisherman cast his net. Look how it hangs in the air printing its criss-cross pattern on the calm, reflecting surface.

  See the crane standing motionless at the water’s edge.

  Picture them all: the mountain, the lake, the man, the bird …

  Kimura stirred. The image he sought to capture and hold in his mind was only a dream, but it was one they had shared and he clung to it still.

  Night, and once again

  While I wait for you, cold

  Wind turns into rain

  Although he knew she would never come to him now, not in this life, he murmured the words of the haiku they had both loved, and in the calm that followed he found the strength to drag himself back to the present.

  He was cold and hungry, but what of it? Let his body suffer while his mind stayed clear. What troubled him more was the air he breathed. Unusually sensitive to smells, Kimura found the sharp, pungent odour of unwashed human bodies a torment, and now he had worse to contend with.

  Sometime during the night, one of them had been sick.

  He had heard nothing – not surprising given the constant throb of the engine, the drumming of the tires, the rattle and creak of the metal shell that encased them – but as the first light of dawn threaded its way through the air vents, his twitching nostrils had detected the sour reek of regurgitated food.

  Presently he was able to see them – four dim figures huddled at the end of the narrow compartment: a family of dark-skinned North Africans. (Libyans? Tunisians? Whatever they were, it meant nothing to Kimura.) They were jammed together, the parents sitting propped against the side walls while the two children lay curled at their feet. Inches away a puddle of vomit spread in a widening circle over the metal flooring.

  Crowded though the compartment was, there was room to spare. Between the two ends lay several feet of empty space where any one of the party might have stretched out at greater ease. But they had kept their distance from Kimura. It was as if they were reluctant to draw too close to him, though there was little in his appearance to alarm. A slight figure, he had sat throughout the journey cross-legged and composed, all but motionless. Once, the previous afternoon, the father had crawled the length of the compartment and humbly offered him a piece of bread. But whatever it was he saw in the other man’s eyes had sent him scuttling back, and since then there had been no intercourse between them.

  Two hours after dawn the steady pulse of the engine diminished and the vehicle they were in drew to a halt. Voices could be heard outside, the banging of doors. A strong wind beat against
the metal sides and there was a tang of salt in the air: a rich, reviving fragrance.

  Soon they moved forward again, but slowly, and only for a short distance. The faint light from the air vents dimmed and they came to rest.

  Time passed.

  Then movement again, but a different kind of motion – slow and smooth at first, then increasingly bumpy. Soon they were pitching up and down and tossing from side to side, and Kimura had to brace himself against the metal backrest to preserve his balance.

  The woman began to moan. Her husband leaned over to comfort her, but then, as though jerked by an invisible cord, he twisted away from her abruptly and retched into the pool of vomit beside them.

  Kimura shut his eyes.

  One day he would build a house by a lake in the shadow of a snow-tipped mountain. He would cast his net into the blue reflecting water and the air would be filled with the scent of pine trees.

  Where he would build such a house was uncertain. It seemed unlikely, no impossible now, that he would ever return to his own country. But there were other lands, other mountains, and he would seek them out.

  But first he must find the woman. Wherever she was, the man he sought would not be far away.

  FOUR

  Addy looked over.

  Mike was asleep, or seemed to be, eyes shut, chair tilted back. Asleep or faking.

  Poor guy, he probably needed a break. They had shared a bottle of wine over dinner – so what if her complexion didn’t like it, let it suffer for once – and Addy had hardly drawn breath; the life and times of Adelaide Banks. Orphaned at four (her parents had been killed in an automobile crash, and yes, it was sad, but in reality she barely remembered them), she’d been raised by her grandparents. They were also dead now, a year ago, within a month of each other, and of course she missed them, missed them like hell, but the truth was right from her earliest childhood, mixed in with all her memories, easing every pain, sweetening every pleasure, there had always been Rose.

  ‘That’s some aunt you have there,’ Mike had said, when he managed to get a word in.

  If he only knew.

  Addy took out the typewritten letter she’d received a week before. It was so like Rose not to send her invitation by email; old-fashioned Rose who loved nineteenth-century novels and wrote letters – typewritten and also handwritten letters on actual paper – to the people she cared for; who kept an old copy of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury on her bedside table and told Addy that social media was for the brain dead, a dictum Addy had adopted for herself to the wonder of her friends and peers who believed quite seriously that you couldn’t live without it.

  My darling Addy,

  United is holding a ticket for you. All you need do is check in, and I’m not going to call you because I know exactly what you’ll say. ‘Oh, but you mustn’t, Rose …’

  And don’t bother to try calling me. I’ve just lost my phone again. Yes, I know, I’m always doing that but I’m off to Paris for a few days and I’m darned if I’ll buy another one until I get back and have a chance to look for the one I lost. Anyway, I’ll be busy in Paris – tell you all about that when we meet – and I’ll be back by the 18th December at the latest, the day you arrive.

  Honey bear, we must be crazy. You there, me here. For goodness’ sake, it’s Christmas. Just get your sweet self over here. Please.

  Addy, I need you.

  The letter took up half the page. The rest was filled with Rose’s signature, a sprawling R which Addy loved because it was just like Rose herself: warm and open and embracing.

  But the letter bothered her.

  Addy, I need you.

  It wasn’t like Rose to say that. Oh, not that it wasn’t true: of course Rose needed her, needed someone. Ever since Uncle Matt had died she’d been one of the walking wounded. It had broken Addy’s heart to see her the last time she came over to New York – when was it, six months ago? – with her friend Lady Molly Kingsmill, who was some kind of grand English dame, a blonde looker (Addy had to admit it) but still no better than numero due in the loveliness stakes when compared with Rose: dark-haired, dark-eyed Rose.

  The trip had been a mistake. Addy had sensed it from the first. New York held too many memories for Rose. It was the city where she’d fallen in love, and even though it was more than a year since Uncle Matt’s plane had gone down, the pain was still there.

  Addy had wanted to help so badly. If she could just have Rose to herself for a while, if they could talk – if Rose could talk, get it all out. But somehow the chance never came – Molly had seen to that: Molly and her plans for Rose.

  ‘I’m going to be blunt.’ She had taken Addy out to lunch the day after they got in, just the two of them. ‘We’ve got to find Rose a man.’ And it was all Addy could do not to haul her off and bust her one right there in the restaurant. Who did this English bimbo think she was, talking that way about Rose – her Rose?

  ‘I’m counting on you to help.’

  Big deal. It turned out Molly didn’t need any help. She knew everyone. They’d hardly touched down before she was on the phone, setting things up: dinners, parties, weekends out of town. It seemed there were any number of people just dying to see her, and oh, by the way, do you mind if I bring my friend Rose, you’ll love her?

  Addy had to laugh. It was the men, a whole string of them, popping up like rabbits plucked from a hat – Molly working the phone like a pro – and most of them were single, and all of them were available and some of them might even have been straight (New York! New York!), only nobody got around to checking them out.

  Least of all Rose.

  Addy had watched them fall for her. They’d sit across the table or wherever, staring at this unbelievably beautiful woman (that was how Addy saw her, anyway), trying to figure out a way to pierce – well, it wasn’t her reserve, because Rose wasn’t like that, not now, not ever; she was warm and friendly, and if she didn’t talk much about herself, she was always ready to listen. So what was it – this thing around her, this invisible shield?

  Addy knew. The answer was simple. Rose wasn’t there, not the part of her that mattered. She could look at them, the men Molly produced, look through them, and see another face … another time.

  And it was wrong, it was wrong, Addy knew it. You had to move on. Molly was right (and fuck her for being right). What Rose needed was a man. Never mind the feminists, Rose had lived her life, the best part of it, through Uncle Matt, and now he was dead. But she was trapped back there in the past, and somehow they had to get her unstuck so she could open her eyes, take a fresh look at life, see there were all kinds of wild and wonderful things that could happen to a person. Hey, a person could even fall in love. Again.

  The last night, Addy had finally got her aunt to herself. Molly was off at some ‘do’ – it was one of Molly Kingsmill’s words, one of quite a number that set Addy’s teeth on edge – and Rose had taken her out to dinner at The Tavern on the Green.

  ‘I know – strictly for tourists, but I’ve always loved it.’

  Spoken with a wry smile, or was it bitter? Addy knew the story well. They had met in the Metropolitan Museum, Rose and Uncle Matt. It was a chance encounter, she browsing, he filling in time between business appointments, when they just happened to meet in front of Renoir’s Young Girl Bathing, and just happened to fall into conversation, and just who did they think they were kidding? Addy knew very well what had happened. Uncle Matt had taken one look at Rose and made pretty damn sure they fell into conversation. And as for his so-called appointments, they couldn’t have been that important since before you could say ‘Abstract Impressionism’ he’d asked her to join him for lunch.

  Guess where?

  Still, the choice of restaurant was fine with Addy since it would give her a chance to get Rose talking about Uncle Matt, and even now, six months later, she still wasn’t sure how she’d managed to blow it.

  They had talked all right. Correction. Addy had talked – about herself. It just seemed to happen, or ma
ybe Rose made it happen, because they had hardly sat down when she started in on Addy. Money. That was Rose’s problem, or rather it was Addy’s, anyone could see that, and why did she have such a hang-up about it?

  ‘Why won’t you let me help?’

  ‘Rose, we’ve been through this before.’

  ‘Waiting tables – now that’s what I call mind-expanding.’

  ‘Not to mention soul-destroying. Poor me.’

  ‘Bear, I’m talking about a small allowance.’

  Which was bullshit, because Rose was already paying for her acting classes. That was their deal. Rose would meet the fees, and one day Addy would pay her back – one day when she was rich and famous and the toast of Broadway.

  ‘Working all day at class, waiting tables at night – it’s crazy. What kind of life do you have?’

  And so Addy had told her. In brief, to begin with, since there wasn’t that much to say about acting school, then in more detail because it turned out there was really quite a lot once Rose got started with her third-degree stuff. Soon Addy was telling her about the production of Macbeth the group was working on, and how they’d given her the lead, and how tough it was to get inside the head of someone like Lady Macbeth.

  ‘I mean she’s evil, Rose, really evil, at least that’s the way it reads, and you have to try and figure out why.’

  ‘Maybe she had a lousy upbringing.’

  ‘Or maybe she’s just bad through and through. I guess there are people like that.’ Addy paused, and then, ‘Did I say something?’

  Because Rose had given her the strangest look, it really threw Addy.

  ‘I mean … I mean, she doesn’t give a shit. Anyone gets in the way, off with his head.’

  Rose smiled. The look, whatever it was, had gone. ‘I bet she didn’t take handouts either.’

  ‘Aw, Rose. Give me a break.’