TAINTED: THE COMPLETE DUET

by Jenner, Carmen

  Brielle Kagawa.

  Cellist.

  I run my thumb over the lettering and flip it over. There’s a number listed. Nothing else is written on it. Flashbacks of a splintered cello and a hot brunette beating me with her bow slam into me, and I sigh. Shit. Seems my car and my reputation weren’t the only things I totalled that night. I set the card on the nightstand. The second I find my phone. I’ll call.

  “My phone? Have you seen it?”

  “We have a phone, sir.”

  “No, my mobile phone. Cell phone. You know? Handheld.” I gesture to my pocket. Then I remember I’m not wearing pants and I glance down at the sheet. My dick’s hard, but when is it not? The woman gulps and then her sharp intake of breath and the horrified expression lets me know I’ve insulted her. “No, not my dick. My phone.” Like an idiot, I gesture again to my pocket and pretend I’m dialling my hand.

  “Phone.” I point to my chest. “My phone.”

  She shakes her head. “No phone, only dog.”

  I frown. “What?”

  “Only dog in car. Dog and monsieur.”

  “Christ,” I mutter. “I don’t own a dog, lady. I’m from Australia. I don’t live in France, so I couldn’t possibly own this dog.” The mangy mutt in question gives a sharp bark as if he’s tattling on me. “He isn’t my dog. I don’t have time for a dog. I’m a rock star.”

  “Oui. Monsieur very famous. Buy big house to escape paparazzi.”

  “No, I just lost the only girl I ever loved to another man and crashed my car into your front gate the night of her wedding.”

  She nods. “Your front gate now.”

  “No, lady ... what’s your name?”

  “Je m'appelle Margaux.”

  “Margaux?”

  “Oui.”

  “ Je m'appelle Levi.”

  “Ah, Levi.” Her smile is huge, and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m attempting to speak French, or if she’s just some psychotic creeper who smiles a lot. Then again, maybe she’s a fan.

  “Look, I don’t know what I told you, but I was drunk ... and possibly concussed. I can’t buy this house.”

  “But monsieur, papers already drawn up. Where will Levi, Margaux, and dog go?”

  Jesus Christ, it’s like talking to a toddler. “Margaux, that’s not my dog, and I can’t buy a house in the South of France. I can’t have you come work for me.”

  “Why ever not, monsieur?”

  “Because I’m in a rock band. I live on the road.”

  “What road?”

  I shake my head. Growing more and more frustrated with every word that leaves Margaux’s lips. “I live on a bus, a tour bus.” I mimic strumming my guitar. “I play an instrument.”

  “Now monsieur lives here, plays instrument here, oui?”

  “No, not oui. Definitely not oui.” I sigh. “You know what ... can you just ... can you bring me a phone?” I make the symbol for call me and plead with my eyes.

  “Oui, téléphone.” She hurries away, and I have no idea if she’s going to get me a phone or not. I glare at the dog on the end of my bed. He barks. Punk. The dog whines and crawls closer on his belly, paws outstretched, tail wagging.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t know how the fuck I got here, but I’m out of this shithole the second I find my pants, and no, you cannot come with me. Absolutely fucking not.”

  I climb from the bed and stretch my arms above my head. I ache all over and I’m covered in bruises, and completely fucking naked. It’s as if I woke up inside Dude, Where’s My Car. Only when I think about what I’m missing, it’s a lot more than a fucking car.

  Ali in her wedding dress begging me not to leave, not to drive drunk. I ruined her wedding, essentially called her a slut in front of seventy of their closest friends and family, and I broke their cellist’s instrument. Ali’s gonna fucking kill me when I see her, but then I realise I won’t see her. Not for several months, maybe more. She’s off on her honeymoon with Coop, and then she’ll return to Australia, to her job managing the record store, and fuck knows when I’ll see her.

  When they throw a housewarming party? A baby shower?

  Jesus. My blood turns cold and my stomach knots up. I don’t want to think about that shit, but this is my reality now. This is what I get for wanting to be selfless, for wanting Ali to be happy with him ...without me. I roam around the room. My clothes are folded over a nearby chair. I pick up the suit pants and dress shirt. I’m pretty sure it was stained with blood, which reminds me. I walk over to the mirror and inspect my face. Still pretty at least. Though there’s a large gash over my brow and a little swelling, a couple of grazes. The wound looks like it’s been sutured, and not hurriedly either, the sutures are neat and clean. Either Margaux called a doctor who makes house calls or she used to be a nurse before she became a maid to a dead man and an unwilling rock star.

  Why the fuck didn’t she call the cops? I should be rotting in some cell right now in a French prison answering to a very large hairy man called Boris. I mean, I crashed my fucking car into her gate and walked inside like I owned the place, and passed out. Any sane woman would have called the cops, which begs the question—who the fuck did this woman work for?

  The responding gasp alerts me to her presence. “Mon Dieu!”

  Oh shit. I forgot I’m buck naked. “Shit, sorry.” I cover my junk—never any easy feat when your cock is the size of a footlong—and side scuttle to my folded-up clothes on the armchair. Margaux turns and gives me her back, but she waits patiently as I pull on my clothes. Only once my legs are in the pants, I realise these are not my clothes at all. The tags are still on them, so is the hefty price tag of several thousand dollars and a nice black little Armani label. “Margaux, where did you get these?”

  “I purchased with monsieur’s card.”

  Oh fuck.

  “Huh, and where exactly did you get my card?”

  “From monsieur’s wallet.” She smiles as if I’m simple. “I also paid for medical supplies, more clothing, toiletries and monsieur’s dog’s vet check.”

  I take a long slow breath in through my nose and release it slowly, but all that comes out is, “That’s not my dog.”

  “It is now,” she counters, and I guess that’s that. Grown impatient—it seems—with my unhurriedness, Margaux enters the room and lifts the shirt from the armchair. She shakes it out and holds it open for me to slip my arms through the holes. Then she moves around to my front and buttons me up, yanks the tie off the chair, and whips it around my neck so fast I get whiplash.

  I shake my head. “No tie.”

  “Si,” she gives me a no-nonsense face, “la cravate.”

  “No, I don’t do ties. I hate the fucking tie.”

  “Hate the tie after your meeting. For now monsieur wears the tie.”

  “Margaux. I’m not attending a meeting. I can’t buy this house. I need to get back to my life.”

  “Your house on the road?”

  “Yes.” I nod. Only, I don’t have to get back to that house because we’re not on the road right now. We’re having another month off, so Coop can fuck his new bride, and then we head into the studio to write for the next album.

  What if I didn’t go back to Australia just yet? I mean, I can’t very well buy this house. I don’t even know what the hell it’s worth. Taint has done extremely well, and the dong deal just saw me making more than any of my bandmates, but I’m pretty sure not even I can afford a house in the French ... “Where are we? Like on a map, where is this place exactly?”

  She shakes her head as if she doesn’t understand.

  “Where in France?”

  “Ah, La Colle-sur-Loup.”

  “Yes, but where is La Colle-sur-Loup?”

  “Oui. Here.”

  Jesus. I need Google Translate just to have a conversation with this woman. I glance at the phone she brought in. It’s handheld, but it’s a landline, not a mobile. Christ. What century did I step into? “Do you have the Internet?”<
br />
  “Non, Monsieur Durand forbade it. Said it was the devil’s work.”

  “Shit.”

  The doorbell rings and Margaux’s face lights up. She steps away and runs for the door, but she turns and points to my tie. “Tie stays. Don’t hate the tie.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She nods and leaves. Sweat prickles down my spine. I tug at my collar and swallow hard. What the fuck am I still doing here? I should slip out the back while I have the chance. I glance at the dog, who looks like he knows exactly what I’m thinking and guilts me with those weird heterochromatic puppy eyes. “I told you not to look at me like that.”

  I head across the room, drink the cold coffee and put on my new shoes—that Margaux also picked out. I console myself with the fact that there’s no price tag attached, so I can’t tell how much they cost. I pack the pipe again and light it up, and then I leave the room and walk the hall with its imposing portraits. I don’t have a big family like this. I don’t have any family at all save for my bandmates. My mum was kind of a shit parent. She was more interested in drinking and whoring herself out to our local biker club than she was in the child that came from her loins. Once I turned eighteen, I was out of there. I moved to the city and let the government pay for half my school tuition to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

  The rest, I worked my arse off for. And now? Now I’d give anything to walk away clean. I don’t want to give up my music, it’s all I have, but I don’t want to resort to a life of porn either because I can’t stand the sight of my lead vocalist.

  I push into the room at the end of the hall. It’s huge and empty save for the piano and the ratty looking stool beneath it. I enter and stare up at the ceiling. It’s a ballroom, with parquetry floors, gilt ceilings and paintings on the walls and roof. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of beauty in my short career. I cross the vast room and sit at the stool. I press my fingers to the ivory, play a dissonant, teeth-achingly uncomfortable chord, the kind that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

  The kind that makes my dick hard.

  I tinkle my fingers over the keys, and then I play. I haven’t done this, created something from nothing like this, in far too long. Sure, I wrote that song for Ali on her wedding day, but it was fuelled by love. This music is created from misery. It’s gut-wrenching, poetic, and fucking torturous all at once. I play so hard my fingers ache, and I stop only to loosen my tie. My hair is wet with sweat and falls in my face, but I ignore it and just play. When I’m done, I feel someone else in the room. I turn and glance at Margaux, and a man in a sharp suit claps, slowly. Arsehole.

  “Very nice, Mr Quinn.” His accent is thick, his pomade too, but his smile is thin and watery. See-through.

  “It’s Levi.”

  He nods. “Levi. I am Monsieur Rousseau. I’ve drawn up your paperwork, however, Mademoiselle Arnaud here tells me you’re having second thoughts.”

  I glance from Margaux to Rousseau, and finally to that stupid mutt—who are all apparently unfazed that I’m having a moment and bleeding all over the keys. “No second thoughts. I’ll take it.”

  “You will?” he says, surprised.

  “Yeah.”

  Margaux shrieks and runs towards me, pulling me up by my hands and drawing me into her ample bust. I’m surprised by her strength. “Monsieur, monsieur. You and dog will be very happy here, you will see.”

  I don’t know about that. This woman is off her rocker, but at least I made an old lady happy. Which, I can honestly say, is a first for me. Rousseau thrusts the paperwork up under my nose. I glance it over; it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than what I expected. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Wrong, monsieur?” He looks down his nose at me.

  “The price? What the hell is wrong with it?”

  His brow furrows. “There’s some structural damage.”

  “Where?”

  “The west wing of the house.” Rousseau glances at Margaux, and then back at me. “You have not seen it yet?”

  “Show me.”

  I let him lead me out through the hall and down a flight of stairs at the opposite end from where I slept. There are cracks in the stone staircase and more damage to the murals painted on the walls, but when he opens the door on a musty, crumbling old room, I brush past so I can be the first to step inside.

  “Do be careful, please monsieur.”

  I edge my way around the furniture and wonder what’s so structurally unsound about it. Sure, the floor feels as if it’s sinking in parts, and there are fissures in the wall, but the ceiling just like the ballroom upstairs is hand painted with another masterpiece. Venus. Obviously not painted by Botticelli, but still beautiful. She’s red-haired and small, with curves in all the right places, curves you could grab hold of as you fuck, just like Ali. And just like her, I love everything about this room. New melodies flirt with my mind and beg to be written as I stare at her.

  I throw the sheet back off the bed and flop down on the mattress.

  “I’ll take it.”

  “You’re sure?” Rousseau looks dubious. “There’s a full report of the structural damage, and the costs to fix it included in your paperwork there.”

  “I’m not fixing it.”

  “But, monsieur—”

  “It’s perfect as it is.”

  He raises a brow and then thrusts his pen at me. I take it and pocket it. “You don’t mind if I have my lawyer look over this, do you?”

  “But of course.”

  “I don’t speak French, so it would be kind of stupid of me just to sign without another pair of eyes.”

  “Understood.”

  “Great, well then. Why don’t you leave me your card, and I’ll have these couriered to your office?”

  “Very well.” He clears his throat, probably allergic to the dust. Pussy. “And where does monsieur plan on staying in the meantime?”

  I spread my arms wide. “Here. Gotta get a feel for the place before I buy, you know how it is?”

  “But—”

  “Okay, I show you out,” Margaux says, ushering the agent to the door, and up the stairs. I chuckle. I could kiss that woman.

  Dog bounces up onto the bed beside me. I scratch his ears and look into those crazy eyes. “Where the hell did you come from, huh?”

  He tilts his head to the side as if trying to understand what the fuck I’m saying, and I slide down on the bed and stare at the woman above me. Cooper Ryan might have the real thing, but hey, at least my version is naked all of the time.

  Yeah, I’m sure he’s real fucking jealous. Right now, they’re probably drunk on French wine, rolling around in the bed together. Him buried balls deep inside her. And she’d be giving him that look, that thoroughly fucked and helplessly happy look that never belonged to me, even though I convinced myself it did.

  “Word to the fucking wise, Dog. Don’t ever fall in love with your best friend’s girl. In fact, don’t fall in love, period. Because it hurts like a mother fucking bitch.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HERE, PUSSY, PUSSY

  LEVI

  Two days later, the paperwork for the house has been signed sealed and delivered, and I’m the proud owner of a shitty run-down chateau just outside the tiny village of La Colle-sur-Loup—which Rousseau informed me is in the French Riviera.

  I’m also now the owner of a mangy mutt who answers to the original and incredibly well-thought-out name of Dog. I walk the halls of my new house half drunk and all heartbroken. I venture into every room, to listen to its secrets, but they have none. They’re as empty as I am inside. The only furniture remains in the room I slept in the first night, the master in the crumbling west wing, the ballroom upstairs, and the living and dining areas.

  I walk into the room I first occupied. The pale blue silk reminds me of fairy tales. Despite the dust, it’s fit for a motherfucking princess. I flop down on the bed and stare at the ceiling. It’s not as ornate as mine, which makes me wonder why
I left my room at all. Oh yeah, I ran out of booze. I climb to my feet and prepare to stagger downstairs in search of more wine, but the moonlight from the window bounces off a small white card on the nightstand and I reach for it.

  I squint in the half-light, trying to read the golden text written there. Brielle Kagawa. What the fuck kind of name is that? Fucking Angry French Girl. I trace my fingers over the welts on my forearm left by her bow. Goddam could she play. Cellists had never been my thing. They’d just always seemed pompous and arrogant, as if they were looking down their noses at the rest of us. They played opera houses, and music halls, and afterward sipped their French champagne as they talked about Debussy and Straus.

  But this woman, this woman had struck every nerve in my body with a single slide of her bow across the strings. It was her notes, and the pure poetry of her music that flayed open my heart at the wedding, and I needed more.

  I love music. I live and breathe it, but I’m only connected to it on a molecular level when I’m the one playing the instrument. When I’m simply a spectator, I don’t feel it. Not like I do when I play, not like when she played. And I broke it. Such beautiful music, and I fucked it all up. I need to fix it. I need to send her another instrument.

  “I need another drink,” I declare to the empty room, and tuck the card into my hand because I’m not wearing any clothing. I walk down the spiralling staircase in the dark, but I’m not worried about tripping over anything. There isn’t any furniture to trip over. The house is as empty as my fucking soul.

  Heading to the kitchen, I stumble around until I locate the refrigerator. I’m looking for booze, but I find some of that French cheese that Margaux’s been feeding me since I arrived, instead. It’s creamy and melts in your mouth, so different from the brie we get back home in Australia. I pull out a wheel and take a huge bite. Its bitter rind rolls around my tongue, the creamy centre glues up my mouth, and pastes itself to my teeth and gums like wet cement. It takes a fuckload of time to chew, and even longer to swallow.

  Afterward, I’m left with a waxy coating, so I grab the open bottle of wine off the bench and pull out the cork, guzzling it down. It’s fucking delicious. Thank you, France. I swish it all around my mouth and swallow hard. Then I take several bigger gulps and set the bottle down on the counter. I stare at the card that I somehow haven’t lost in the hall between here and the upstairs bedroom. The fine gold typeface glints in the moonlight. I turn it over in my hands and take another bite out of the brie. Huh. I’m eating brie while holding Brie’s card. Maybe if I call her up, I can really be eating Brie. That’s exactly what I need. Some mindless, dirty fucking. Something to erase the sting of these bullshit feelings I have for my bandmate’s new wife.