“So, are we headed back to Paris or is the airport just a transfer station to some remote penal colony Motley plans to stash me away?”
Rabbit pulled out two tickets for a nonstop flight from Galeão International Airport to Charles de Gaul Airport and waved them in front of my nose. “Purely Paris,” he said.
“I get the window seat,” I told him.
* * *
I snapped my seatbelt as the plane bounced around for takeoff. "It’s a good sign that Motley is letting me come back to Paris, right?"
"That’s assuming I didn't ignore his orders to kill you and dump your body somewhere in the jungles of South America.”
"Ha. Ha." I laid my legs out over the length of two seats. "I'm serious. The little mental exercise with David was a point well taken, but I'm glad to go back. I just hope I don’t run into Pressley Connard in Paris. I still can’t fathom how he’s involved with hunting the dynamite stick. If I know anything about him, he would have been at the front of the line for re-registering after the attack. He’d probably submit to a colonoscopy for the sake authenticity. He always had that patriotic do-gooder thing going on. I can’t believe I ever found that type attractive."
"There are twelve million people in Paris, it’s doubtful you will run into him. Besides, you changed your hair so he might not recognize you even if he did see you." Rabbit had his laptop open and was running some type of computer model for Motely based on what he had lifted from Benny Nebraska’s hard drive.
When we landed in Paris, Motley had a black car with tinted windows waiting outside the airport to pick us up. The scruffy Russian driver told us he had orders to drop us off at the dock at Porta de la Tournelle, which was where our next point of contact would pick us up.
I turned to Rabbit. “Do you know anything about this?”
Rabbit shrugged his shoulders. “I haven’t heard a peep from Motley since before I landed in Rio.”
“I hate being shuffled around like cargo. Why does he always have to be so mysterious like this?”
Chapter Four: The Mannequin
AFTER THE DRIVER dropped us off, Rabbit and I stood hemming by the water as the shrill cries of seagulls and clanking anchors inundated our jet-lagged senses on the barren dock. I threw my cigarette stub into the Seine like a wishing stone and perked up when I saw a motorboat skidding to a stop alongside the riverbank.
Rabbit straightened to his feet. “That must be our point of contact approaching,” he said.
The watercraft came to a stop and I got a look at the person behind the wheel. It was a woman, impossibly thin, impossibly tall, and with a fiery mane of red hair. Her nimble figure leaned over the side of the boat to wave us onboard and I noticed that she had a key tied around her neck by a black velvet string.
“This must be a joke,” I announced. “Who the hell is she?”
"Are you our point of contact?" Rabbit called out to the woman, but I wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or directly to her slithery black wetsuit.
"My name is Cleopatra,” the mystery woman announced in a breathy Australian accent. “Motley sent me to pick you up. Come aboard.”
Rabbit was clearly captivated by the sensuous red-headed creature. “Looks like this is it. Come on, Alice.” He clambered onto the boat and waved his arm to beckon me to follow him.
“No way, Rabbit,” I protested. “I am not about to get kidnapped by some broad who looks like a prop from a James Bond flick.”
“I can assure you,” Cleopatra cut in, “that Motley sent me. If you don’t believe me go ahead and call him yourself and ask him.” Aside from the long, untamable red hair, her other standout features were her ivory skin and eyes that were drawn out in black eyeliner like an Egyptian goddess’. I had never seen her before, and I found myself hoping she wasn’t brought in as my replacement since I messed up the Eiffel Tower job.
“Fine,” I told Rabbit as I reluctantly hopped onboard, “but you’re taking the fall for this if it turns out she’s an Interpol agent.”
Cleopatra chugged the motor and we took off. As the boat cruised along the Seine, I looked at the banks of the city, colonized by verandas and skyscraper hotels. It was just before sundown and the waterway was aligned with the hazy twinkling lights of Paris, as concise as stars. The ride smoothed along for what felt like a short time until Cleopatra abruptly cut the engine. We were stopped on the waterside of an aerial and stately building with little balconies at every window. She let go of the wheel and started coming towards me. She had a spray of salty water on her skin and her eyes were a fawn color that made them nearly impossible to glance away from. “Alice,” she said, “that building over there is your new apartment building.”
“I’m getting a new flat?” I asked through screwed-up lips. “I wasn’t aware that new digs were a stop on this little scenic adventure.”
“Motley decided he doesn’t want you going back to your old apartment after what happened on the Eiffel Tower. He’s afraid that ex-boyfriend of yours will be looking for you there.”
“I can’t just up and move. I love my apartment. It’s a studio in a crumbling building with a rat infestation and my neighbors are all dancers. Plus, I can see the glow from the Moulin Rouge out my bathroom window.”
“Alice, this is serious.” The voice coming from her lips, which were darkened by brandy wine lipstick, left no room for negotiation. The mix of beauty and sternness that she exuded intimidated me.
I crossed my arms resentfully. “What about all the stuff at my old place?”
“You will just have to live with what you have on you.” I gave her a sour look, knowing that the only possessions I had on me were the tattered, blood-stained clothes on my back and the note I always kept hidden inside my shoe.
“Motley said not to worry,” Cleopatra answered. My eyes followed the three moles on her neck, up the path to her ears, where a set of burnished diamonds were aglow in the rising moonlight. The diamonds looked seriously pricey. “You can go shopping in the morning.”
“Thanks for the concern about my safety, but ditching my apartment is overreacting. Pressley has no way of finding out where I live.”
“We need to play it safe, Alice. Motley did some digging around while you guys were in Rio and he thinks this Pressley Connard character may be an agent from the United States Government.”
“Government? Impossible. Pressley majored in history and he planned on becoming a high school history teacher.”
Rabbit finally untied his tongue from the choking feminine allure of Cleopatra long enough to add, “Alice, you haven’t seen him in three years. You need to realize that a lot could have changed since then. I’m sure he would never guess that you would end up in your line of work, either.”
“You have a point,” I responded.
“Let me give you the key,” Cleopatra told me. “So that you can go inside and get situated.”
“Is that what’s around your neck?” My eyes were affixed to the key tied around her neck by a velvet string. I had noticed it the moment she pulled up to the dock.
She bared her speckless teeth in a sly smile and reached her hand around to her back pocket. “No, dear, that is my own special key.” She produced a different key in her fingers. “This one is for your apartment.”
“Can I keep my name?” I asked, closing my fingers around the key.
Cleopatra struck a finger to her chin. “I almost forgot.” She dipped two fingers into her back pocket again, this time pulling out a laminated photo ID which displayed my face with the name Alice Fix printed next to it. “Here is a new CNIS card with your new address printed on it.”
I snatched the card from her hand and turned to Rabbit. “Well, are you coming?”
“Me?” Rabbit asked.
“Forget it,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to pry you away from the scenic view.” My eyes glowered at Cleopatra, well more precisely at her wetsuit, which fit against her body like reptile skin. I hopped off the boat and paced towards the building
. My new apartment was on rue de Seine in the 6th arrondissement. The building’s white stone facing made it stand radiantly against the dusk sky, and its height created an elegant distinction from the surrounding buildings. I counted the humongous windows up at least a dozen stories skyward, noting the entire bottom stratum was made up of a clothing boutique and a boulangerie; the windows of both were already blackened for the night.
I walked to the storefront and ran my fingers along the front Plexiglas window, leaving a streak of glistening fingerprints. From behind the glass, a mannequin stared back with painted eyes. The mannequin had alabaster skin and she was crowned with a wig, soft like spun silk, and stylishly posed in a tan trench coat and a pair of ultra-pink kitten heels. It all looked about my size.
I reached for my snub-nose revolver and shot the lock on the shop door. I slithered inside the boutique and stripped the mannequin naked. I slid the shoes off her feet and tiptoed away from the scene with everything tucked in the nook of my arm.
* * *
I balanced the stolen goods in my arm as I twisted the keyhole of my new flat. The inside opened up to a gleaming kitchen with white marble floors and expansive rows of scrolling cabinets. The entire back wall of the apartment was enfaced with a two-story hyaline window, which caused moonlight to spray into the living space and bathe over the furniture and walls. I shut the door behind me and let the items in my hand drop to the floor. I approached the foot of the metal spiral staircase, turning my legs into the curve of each step, which led to the loft that hosted the sleeping area. The space was bare but for a four-poster bed, its spindles as white as tusks, with sheets of lacey ivory draped from each corner. I approached the bed and climbed on top of it, rolling onto my back and allowing my hair to fall glamorously down over the edge. I felt the edge of my phone run over my hip bone from inside my pocket and I pulled it out and laid it on the bed. I wondered what was taking Motley so long to check in with me.
I hopped off the bed and descended the stairs into the kitchen. The space was so airy that I could hear the echo of my own footsteps and it made me uncomfortable, like I was my own phantom. You make a lot of enemies working for a guy like Motley, and creepy echoes were just about the last sound I was comfortable with. I opened the refrigerator and saw that Motley had thought to stock it with a gallon of milk and a bag of French press coffee beans, and the best part was that the freezer contained a pint of chocolate ice cream. I smiled because it meant that he probably wasn’t that mad at me, after all. I headed to the bathroom and flicked on the lights to check myself out in the mirror. The bandage on my arm had transposed to a bloody rust color. I eyed the bathtub, a white porcelain basin suspended by a set of four porcelain claws over a pristine marble floor. I swiveled the brass lever to start the water and shook myself out of my clothes. I pulled off my stocking and let the note that held my confession fall onto the glassine marble.
The water felt like hot knives over my sore muscles and I closed my eyes and let the misty steam envelope me. After toweling off, I searched my bag and pulled out all the makeup I could find. I applied a set of feathery false lashes, red-brick blush, and ruby red lipstick. I stepped into the stolen pink kitten heels and wrapped myself inside the tan trench coat, securing it onto my body by cinching the belt at my waist. The last thing I did before walking out of the bathroom was tuck my confession into one of my shoes.
I stepped out of my apartment and pulled the door shut behind me. There was a hot breath behind my back.
I turned around and saw that the neighbor across the hall, dressed as though arriving home from an opera house, fur and peacock feathers, was fussing with her keys in the lock. She turned to give me a confounded look, placing her hand to her chest, over the lump of ermine trim on her coat. When she saw I was harmless, the tension drained from her expression. “Oh, you gave me a spook,” she said in English with a trebling French accent. “I was under the impression that apartment was vacant.”
“I just moved in tonight.”
She was a woman in her late sixties, with cheekbones stiffened from a surgeon’s scalpel and ears that had been battered in vain glory by the heft of diamonds. Her eyes canvassed the length of my body all the way down to my pink kitten heels. “There is only one place a woman is headed dressed up like that,” she reported to me.
“Oh?” I asked, tugging the handle of my door to test that it was shut.
“Boulevard de Clichy,” she said. “I’ve lived in Paris for five decades, I can sense these things.”
“Impressive,” I told her.
“If you know anything about Paris, you know that no respectable girl would powder her nose south of Pigalle. So, tell me, what’s a girl like you doing headed there?”
“My old apartment was on the boulevard and I just need to retrieve a few belongings.”
“You’ll have to come in for a cup of tea once you’re settled. I always like to meet my neighbors.” She opened her door, allowing me to peak into her apartment and see a tapestry of lush red velvet couches. The walls of her apartment were bathed in the hot, red strobe of police lights flickering outside her windows. “There was a break-in downstairs tonight at the clothing boutique. So, do be careful out there.” The woman disappeared into her apartment, to leave me lingering in the drench of her perfume.
* * *
I got off at the Blanch metro station beneath Boulevard de Clichy in Montmartre. Fog rose from the sewers like ethereal smoke. The buildings were all Technicolor jewel boxes. The fins on the red windmill glowed like fire. I plucked the cigarette from between my lips and laid eyes on the red, pulsating flare emanating from the famous Moulin Rouge. The landmark so perfectly embodied the glitzy, grimy vibe of the neighborhood. Like the revolving spokes on the windmill that made it famous, the Pigalle quarter spun on the dual axes of money and desire. A life lived in Pigalle is a life less ordinary.
The apartment building I lived in up until my sudden relocation was a tall, chalky factory building the color of chimney soot. It had once been a place where dresses were sewn during a more romantic era. Now it was a low-rent apartment building that had the neon-red glare from the Moulin Rouge staining its front windows. A healthy clientele of girls in lace and leather were roaming the sidewalk, their every movement bathed in red from the scintillating lights of the windmill.
I extinguished my cigarette and threw open the doors to the building, but I froze when I heard someone taunting my name, soft and methodical like a lullaby, from up above my head.
“Alice, Alice, a girl so full of malice,” the voice purred.
I looked up and saw a girl, the top half of her body was tipping out the window two stories above my head. All around her face was an ash blond upside down crown of hair, and through her fluted crimson lips, wet like jelly, she crooned the name, “Alice.”
There was only one girl so cheeky in all of Pigalle. Her name is Sara Cinnamon. What you need to know about Sara Cinnamon is a New Jersey accent and a push-up bra. “Alice, where have you been?” Sara called out. She climbed out the window and ambled, knees over elbows, down the fire escape. When she got to the bottom she squeezed a hug around me, and I couldn’t help but behold that she smelled like knock-off perfume and whatever greasy food the stage show she danced for had served the night before.
“Sara!” I exclaimed. “I haven’t seen you in a few days. How have you been?” I dug inside my bag for a cigarette and pitched it to her.
Sara Cinnamon was my age, but her smile was picked clean into black coal from whatever drugs she took, and her eyebrows were drawn on with marker. In that good, dim lighting they use at her shows, she was probably hot stuff. Out in natural moonlight, her skin was like pancake batter and her blond hair extensions looked like they could crawl away. She was drunk and high when she arrived in Paris after a bad breakup, and, well, some people don’t thrive on change I guess, so Sara stayed that way. The way we met was that I used some of my moves from David Xad on a boyfriend of hers after he put bruises on her during a
night of drinking. We’ve been friends ever since.
“I’m okay, Alice,” Sara replied, fishing inside her gold lamé bra for a lighter. “But you’ve got some abracadabra junk happening. You straight up disappeared on us. Your apartment was empty yesterday, and then today some old lady in a pink bath robe moved in with her little mangy housecat parade trailing behind. Nobody knew what happened to you. I figured either you pissed off the wrong guy and went belly up in the Seine or you hit pay dirt and cashed off to Versailles.”
“I had an unexpected relocation.” I leaned against the side of the building and grazed a lighter over the cigarette at my lips.
“Oh, yeah?” Sara questioned. “Where are you staying? Somewhere that’s all class, I bet. Suddenly you don’t invite friends over?”
“I didn’t mean to run off without saying goodbye. I had to move out of the neighborhood. There was some heat on me and I needed to play it safe. I came back to see if any of my clothes were still at my old apartment.”
“Does this have anything to do with the cute guy who came around looking for you earlier?”
The cigarette tumbled from my open lips and I hissed out, “What cute guy?”
Sara swatted the smoldering cigarette butt off my shoulder, digging embers from my hair with her plastic fingernails. “He was tall. Dark hair, dreamy eyes, real cute. He said he needed to find you, but I told him nobody had seen you for a few days.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
Sara took a long puff of her cigarette and blinked her lashes skyward, as though trying to recall an important detail. “Yeah, I think he said his name was Elvis or something.”
“Elvis?” I smacked my forehead. “Sara, could he have said that his name was Pressley?”
“Oh, yeah, you know what, that might have been it. Like I said, Alice, he was real cute. A girl can get distracted.”
“Listen, Sara, I’m sorry for not saying goodbye before I moved out. I promise I will invite you over to my new place once my life settles down.”
Generation of Liars Page 6
