by Aitana Moore
Grether, perhaps briefed by his colleague, asked Bryce, "You've been through a lot in the past year, James. How do you feel?"
“I feel a pain in my knee,” Bryce said, and there was some defiance in his expression.
He likes to dominate situations, Lee thought, through silence or irony.
“Is that all? Do you think that it’s a mistake that you’re here?”
“In anger class?”
“It’s an anger management group.”
Bryce thought about it. “I honestly don’t know.”
“All right, would you say that you have a history of anger?”
“Don’t most people?”
“You have a history of actual brawls,” she pointed out.
“Ah, Doctor, but you see,” Bryce said, and his smile was charming as well as ironic, “I think that in those instances you mention, I was right to get into fights.”
Some people laughed again, but Grether insisted, “Why do you get that angry, James?”
Bryce switched the cane back and forth between his palms for a moment, then said, "I come from a privileged family. I was never hungry; I always had clothes and I went to good schools. I don’t like to complain.”
“Still, that’s not all that people need. Did you feel loved?”
“I couldn’t say that, no,” Bryce said after another moment. “But I didn’t get to feel unloved either. Love would have been something vulgar and absurd in my family. Toffs, you know. We don’t love, and we don’t fight.”
“But you do fight,” Grether pointed out.
“I was taught not to, but I’m a slow learner.”
“Did you take pleasure in being different than your parents expected?”
“I am a little vindictive,” Bryce admitted. “But I did have enough presence of mind not to stick around them just to be the negative of their film, with the black and white switched.”
"And what did you mean when you said you honestly didn’t know if you belonged in anger management?”
"Because there is a part of my anger that I don’t want to manage.”
Cocking his head, Grether frowned. He probably didn’t hear that too often. "Can you give me a specific example?"
Bryce looked around the group. “I believe some of us here have wondered, at one point or another, how our parents were allowed to have us.”
There were renewed nods around the circle.
“You can imagine how I felt at finding out my mother was pregnant again when I was thirteen,” Bryce continued. “I was beyond furious. I told her that a crocodile laying an egg would make a better mother.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. I’ve told you, my parents didn’t get into arguments.” He took a deep breath. “But you see, then my sister was born. And as soon as I saw her, I understood that she was what had been missing all my life.”
Lee’s throat tightened. It was as if Bryce were speaking for her, describing how she had felt when she had first seen Cora. It had felt like salvation.
“I took her everywhere with me, even before she could walk,” Bryce continued. “When she began to speak, she had this tiny voice with a lisp. I never got tired of listening to her, no matter what she went on about. I told myself that little girl who was so perfect would be truly loved.”
Grether nodded. “That means you do recognize the importance of love in your life, of human relations—”
Bryce interrupted him, but not unkindly. “I’ll never be the poster boy for kumbaya, Doctor. I recognize the importance of some human relations.”
Grether nodded again. “Go on.”
“Later, I got married. A few months after our wedding, my wife fell from a cliff in our estate and got smashed against the rocks.”
"Whoa!" Kevin, the black Olympian athlete, raised a hand to his face, his fingers spread as he waited for the rest of the story.
Bryce’s half smile turned sad as he continued, "One of the theories I had to hear was that I had killed my wife so that I could sleep with my sister."
A murmur went up in the room, led by Kevin. "That's not right, man!”
“No, it isn’t right," Bryce agreed, and he sounded tired. "But I had trained to deal with the eternal error in human exchanges. I was meant to ignore it, knowing that people who say such things are in a hell of their own and that it has very little to do with me. Instead, I chose to get angry. It was a choice.”
“Why do you think you made that choice?”
“Because if you go way back before the noblemen in my family, what you'll find is an ape,” Bryce said. “And I don't want to let go of that ape. My father cared about the noblemen; I care about the ape, because despite anything you may say here, sometimes anger is the only thing to feel."
Bryce’s eyes turned savage again. "Sometimes it's righteous."
SIX
Bryce was not in the dining room at lunch, and Lee knew from Quinn’s hacking that he had physical rehab for his knee in the afternoon.
At art therapy, she let her thoughts drift as she painted. She liked to use abstract brush strokes of black ink on paper to give the impression of a subject. When she stepped back, she realized that she had made a likeness of Bryce. The ink had captured the darkness of his hair and the sharp line of his cheekbones and lower lip. She had also captured something she hadn’t seen when looking at him: the pain in his eyes. Others might recognize him, and she quickly used the ink to cover the image.
“Didn’t like what you did?” the woman next to her asked, peering at her easel.
Lee wondered if Bryce’s face was still visible under the coat of fresh ink, but the woman only smiled and returned to her painting.
You’re imagining things, Lee.
On her way back to the main building, she was startled to spot Bryce leaning against the stone wall of a shed in animated conversation with the gardener. He was wearing riding clothes and boots, which probably meant he was on his way to equine therapy. Lee hadn’t signed up; she was afraid of horses. They were beautiful but unpredictable animals.
Bryce was smoking a cigarette, speaking in Italian to the gardener and laughing heartily.
He's not all that grim, then.
Slowly expelling the smoke from his lips, Bryce stared at her through narrowed eyes as she passed, but she pretended not to see him.
She was nevertheless surprised to see him having dinner on the terracotta terrace with everyone else. Patients could sit anywhere they chose, and the two female sex addicts slammed their behinds onto chairs at Bryce's table, almost as if rushing to claim him. His eyes widened very slightly in comical alarm, and he invited Kevin to the table through an expansive gesture.
Lee’s view of his table was blocked by the male sex addict, Bob, who had chosen to join her. The rock star also ended up at her table, as did Claire, the British actress. When the two women were left alone at the end of the meal, Lee took advantage of the fact that Claire kept staring at Bryce to ask, “How is he a nobleman?”
“There was a title in his family once,” Claire explained as Lee pretended not to know. “Earls of Somerville, until the first Queen Elizabeth started chopping off their heads. She was a paranoid old thing. Loved beautiful men and turned on them when they didn’t love her back. And this one” —she jerked her chin toward Bryce— “wouldn’t have done as he was ordered. He’s a rebel. Do you know, he told his father to stuff the inheritance and just left the country as soon as he was of age? I don’t think he ever saw his parents again. Returned after they died in a car crash.”
“You know a lot about him,” Lee remarked idly. “Is he that famous?”
“I sort of knew his wife. Mia Archer. She was a model, and we were in a cover shoot together once. They were madly in love.” The actress waited a moment before lowering her voice dramatically to add, “Until she was found all broken and dead.”
Raising her eyebrows, Lee said, “That must have been terrible for him.”
Claire nodded. “And for a while they tho
ught he might have done it.”
“Really? But the husband is always a prime suspect, isn’t he, if there’s an accident like that?”
“Yes, they decided it was an accident. He wasn’t around and couldn’t have arrived in time to push her.” Claire took a deep breath, considering Bryce. “But people wondered if he lost his head over something. I don’t know why that just makes him seem even more attractive.”
Lee scoffed. “Does it?”
“Not the murder part. The wildness. Killed things with his hands for years in the jungle.” Claire gave a high, brittle laugh. “He’s from the type of family that should have spewed a white and doughy boy. Instead, he came out as if he was switched at the hospital.”
“Well, he’s not white and doughy, that’s for sure,” Lee said, but she couldn’t bring herself to glance at Bryce.
“No, he ain’t. And those eyes … He’s just—sex is what he is. Good heavens, if I ever got hold of him …” Claire covered her mouth to hide a greedy smile but shook her head. “You’d think a man like him would be a favorite with the gods, but we all know what happens when the gods love you too much.”
“No, I actually don’t know,” Lee said wryly.
Claire widened her eyes. “They destroy you.”
SEVEN
"Anyone sitting here?"
Bryce didn't wait for Lee’s answer. He picked up the towel that was neatly folded on the sun bed next to hers and dried his face.
It was Sunday, the one day without group meetings. People were free to relax, get a massage, talk to each other or take elective classes.
The pool was large, rectangular and surrounded by trees in bloom. Lee had managed to get a place in a quiet corner and sat reading until she heard excited squeals: Shirley, the American sex addict, had spotted Bryce. She wanted to giggle when the petite brunette stuck out her ample bosom, barely contained by a one-piece swimsuit. It was especially funny to see Bryce looking anywhere but at her. Stepping to the edge of the pool, he dived in and began to swim laps.
After a quarter of an hour, Shirley descended the steps to the water and sat coyly moving her legs, waiting for him to get tired.
But when he did, he climbed out at the deep end and limped to the sun bed next to Lee’s.
"It's free," she said in answer to his question.
He shook the water from his hair. Some drops fell on Lee's thigh and she looked at them for a second, before wiping them with her hand.
"Sorry," he said. “Force of habit."
Throwing himself down on his bed, he narrowed his eyes against the sun. His body was taut, but not in a way that Lee disliked. He had wide shoulders, strong arms and a tight belly, but he wasn’t bulky; his neck was elegant and his muscles long. On his upper back he had a tattoo that didn’t seem to come from a parlor. It depicted triangles and uneven crosses that looked Orthodox or Ethiopian, and that had faded to blue.
Bryce was casual and friendly, but there was an intensity to him. Lee could feel it from where she lay, and it made her unable to turn on the somewhat cheap seductiveness she employed with most marks. Bryce was used to admiration, although he seemed to ignore it, but he was also highly intelligent. He wouldn’t like any obvious attempts to lure him and would probably mock her if she tried. Or at the very least he would lose interest in her, when by doing nothing she had drawn him to her side. There were to be no shortcuts with this man, although Lee feared that by not pretending hard to be someone else, she might sink into her own real reserve. That wouldn’t do either. Or would it?
Who would he like me to be?
"I think the pool might not be a great idea for the sex addicts," he observed.
Shirley was gaping at him as if she were a child and he candy, while Bob threw hungry, furtive glances at all the women.
“Don’t make me laugh,” Lee begged.
“I don't mind if they laugh at me."
"That's not what they're doing."
"I'm not going to look. I got my thigh squeezed at the dinner table yesterday."
"That's forbidden!"
"Forbiddenissimo," he said. "And the worst part is that as the hand started to ascend elsewhere, I had a knee-jerk reaction."
"You hit your knee?"
"On the table, and it's massive wood."
She was supposed to stop laughing, but she couldn't.
"Thanks for your concern," he said dryly.
"We should still not make fun."
"Don’t worry, by the end of this we'll all have spilled our guts on the floor to a room full of strangers. As you said, that's the good thing about being in rehab, everyone admits to being screwed up."
"You admitted to not wanting to be cured the other day. You’ll get in trouble for that.”
“And you sound like you behaved well in school.” He considered her for a quiet moment before continuing, "Since I wasn't going to be allowed to be silent for twenty-eight days — now twenty-one, thank heaven — I had to say something. What are you reading?"
She showed him the cover of her book: A History of Umbria.
"Is that exciting?”
"It's not meant to be. If they had fun books here, we might not talk to each other."
"Now I feel obliged to be more fun than the history of Umbria. What does it say?"
"Well, there were Umbrians here at one point."
"That sounds reasonable.”
"Then Etruscans."
"Cheeky bastards."
"Then Saint Francis.”
“I think he threw everything in his father's house out of a window. I can only imagine doing that to my parents.”
"It's probably easier to be the parents of a sinner."
“Depends how much you sin,” he said a little grimly. Bells started ringing. “Already noon?”
“Lunchtime, almost,” she said.
He faced up, and she had a moment to study his face. There was a slight deviation on the bridge of his nose which saved him from being too perfect and made him more interesting. His eyes were almond-shaped and a deep shade of blue. Fancy vivid blue, like his diamond. Sometimes they looked dark, but at the moment they reflected the sky.
“Have you explored the place at all?” he finally asked her.
"Not really, there's always something going on."
"Isn't that too true?" he drawled. "I've made friends with the staff and I’ve been running away at night, so I can show you. Come on."
He got up and she followed, stepping into flat sandals and wrapping a black dress over her white bikini. He picked up the clothes he had left at the end of the pool and put on light khaki pants and a white shirt, which clung to the wet spots of his body as he buttoned it. They walked through the garden, and soon they were in the cloister, a sunny rectangle surrounded by stone arches.
"They told me this part dates from the fourteenth century," he said.
"I like that period.”
He took her hand, and she started as if she had stepped on a live wire. He didn’t notice; he pulled her through a side door into a church. The walls were made of stripes of black and white marble, and shiny wooden pews had been neatly placed around an altar. Bryce pointed to a cerulean blue ceiling with silver stars.
"For the congregation to dream of heaven," he said.
Lee slipped her hand out of his. She hadn’t expected him to touch her yet, and it was hard to control a wild beating of her artery that felt like terror. She moved away to study the faded frescoes on the walls. Bryce was close behind her as she entered a separate space, which must have been the sacristy. She turned inside, looking at the stories depicted on the walls, till she was face to face with him. He had put an arm over the threshold as he watched her. The top of her head barely reached his eyes, although she was a tall woman. There was that heat from him again, that something.
She managed to give a vacant smile, and he looked at her strangely, as if trying to pierce through her empty friendliness. And then there was a decision showing on his face — like a truce; as if he were
accepting what she had offered him for that moment without believing it for a second. He was cool and too intense all at once, and she was glad when he moved to let her pass.
On the way back to the pool, they went by the house where art therapy took place. Their work for the week was on display, and Bryce strolled in.
"Is something here yours?" he asked as he looked around.
"Yes."
"I'll guess."
"All right."
Lee waited as he looked at the different artworks. He stopped at a couple, then stood before the ink painting she had made: it was a vertical brush stroke with small details that represented a woman seen from the back.
"This is yours," he pronounced. “It’s very good.”
She was slightly annoyed that he had guessed. "It's not all that.”
He turned from the drawing to look at her, as if she were worth studying as well. Lee didn't budge, but she could again feel a pulse on her throat jumping. She wondered if he could see it.
“We’re almost fraternizing," he said slowly. "It's forbidden."
Lee managed to smile. "Forbiddenissimo."
He stepped back, as he had done before. "After you."
They returned to the main villa, and Lee told herself that she need not feel the sharp pain high in her stomach. The fright was over. She found herself wishing that he wouldn’t touch her for a long time, because she needed to prepare herself better.
Bryce was not like the others.
EIGHT
It was difficult to accept the lights-out rule when she couldn’t sleep. Lee had always escaped rules, especially when there was no reason for them.
She was in no need of discipline, really. Not of the kind Balbina could provide. And for someone who made her living by stealing, it was only too easy to slip out of the villa at night. She knew, for one — because Quinn had told her —that the cameras in the corridors were false, and not really filming anything. For another, she could slip by the night guard at the reception unnoticed; the man was always reading a book, looking at a small TV, or sleeping.
