Generation of Liars

by Marks, Camilla

  Rabbit wasn’t in the office like I expected.

  There was a steady and urgent rapping at the door. “Who’s there?” I called out.

  “Alice, let me in.” It was hard to tell through the muffle of the thick oak door, but it sounded like Rabbit.

  I undid the lock and Rabbit rushed past me, huffing to catch his breath. “Look in the desk!”

  We rushed over to the large mahogany desk, its legs like antiquated pillars holding up a herculean slab of wood and drawers. I coiled my hand around the drawer’s knob and noticed some of Motley’s blood underneath my fingernails. “Motley might dead, Rabbit,” I said as I shivered. “There was so much blood in that pool.” I pulled the drawer open, but the only things inside were some papers and a gun. Vigorously, I pulled out the rest of the drawers, each containing items just as useless. “It’s not in here,” I cried out.

  Rabbit’s bony fingers raked his scalp. “It has to be in here someplace.”

  I collapsed into the chair behind the desk. “What if it’s not? What are we going to do?” My toes knocked something under the desk and I peeked and saw a black briefcase tucked away.

  “This must be the briefcase he is planning to take on his trip.” Rabbit crawled under my legs and dragged the black briefcase out onto the carpet. “It’s locked,” he said, spanking his hand against it.

  “Do you know how to unlock it?” The chlorine in my throat made every word feel like a sword I was spitting up.

  Rabbit vigorously rolled his fingers over the locks, trying any combination he could think of. “Come on, come on,” he lullabied to the briefcase in the smooth, romantic way he always talked to gadgets.

  “Crap. I knew something was going to go wrong.”

  “It’s okay, don’t panic, I do the algorithms for Motley’s lock combo choices. It’s got to be one I know, one I invented.”

  I looked over at him, his teensy brown eyes focused on the lock, heavy breaths entering through his hooked nose and blowing out past his arched lips. It was then that I noticed the red lipstick smeared at the corner of his lips.

  “Where were you?” I asked, backing away from him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Just now, when I was busy with Motley in the pool room, where were you? Why weren’t you in Motley’s office when I got here? I mean, you said you would be waiting here.” I took a few more steps backwards away from him. “How could I have beaten you back to Motley’s office?”

  “I was upstairs. Cleopatra started looking around for Motley so I had to distract her.”

  “Did you distract her with your big dork lips?”

  He had a look of sudden self-consciousness, and then, feeling my stare on the red spot on his lips, he swatted away the rouge lipstick tracks. “Listen, Alice, I had to think of something quick. The sexual tension between she and I had been building since the moment I stepped on that motorboat and saw her the first time.”

  “Where is Cleopatra now?”

  “I restrained her hands behind her back with her silk bath robe and left her on the floor of the master bedroom.”

  “But you made out with her first?”

  “Yes.”

  “If it keeps her out of our hair while we do this, I guess it was smart.”

  “Silk ties won’t last forever,” he said. Another of his hurried attempts at the lock failed. “Damn it.”

  “Let’s just take the whole briefcase,” I said. But just when I finished saying it, Rabbit finished twisting out one more combination and the briefcase popped open.

  “Bingo!” He carefully slid the dynamite stick from the interior pocket. He tossed it on the desk, letting it spin like the spindle on a game show wheel until it sputtered stiff. We crossed glances across the desk.

  “Which one of us should take it?” I asked.

  As soon as the words left my lips, the door to the office flew open with a force strong enough to create a wind gust that scuttled loose papers off the desk.

  My eyes flashed to the door.

  Motley was standing there and I could see the laceration on his forehead, a trench above his brow that foamed with red-jelly blood. Water and blood were dripping from his body onto the carpet. His eyes contained a piercing mania that paralyzed me in their crosshairs.

  “That was very stupid, Alice,” Motley growled. His eyes zeroed in on the dynamite stick. “Don’t make it worse by doing something funny with the dynamite stick.”

  “Piss off, old man,” I growled, tracking backwards on my heels.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Rabbit pull open the desk’s top drawer and retrieve something. I couldn’t make out what it was, but it was small enough to hide inside his palm, and it was black.

  “Back off, Motley,” Rabbit said. It was clearly meant to sound confident, but it came out wobbly. I realized now that he was holding a gun, pointed straight out from the end of his quivering wrist. “Let Alice get by.”

  Motley shook his head. “You’re making a mistake, Rabbit. Don’t help her. She’s worthless. She will only get you killed.”

  “Take the dynamite stick, Alice,” Rabbit instructed me. His Adam’s apple throbbed like a hardboiled egg stuck in his throat.

  I grabbed the dynamite stick off the desk and shoved it into the waistband of my bikini. I crossed the length of the room towards the door, the burgundy Persian carpet against my bare feet felt like hot, crushed rubies. I gave Motley a lingering look of satisfaction as I sauntered past him while Rabbit held the gun steadily trained on him.

  I stopped when I got to the other side of the door. I didn’t know where I was supposed to run with the dynamite stick, or if I should wait for Rabbit. I took a minute to catch my breath. I leaned back against the ornately-crested wall, bent at the ribs, and panting for air. The drops of blood mixed with chlorinated water scattered across the marble hallway looked like Impressionist water color artwork.

  I heard a thunderclap blast from inside the office that reverberated through the walls of the house. The gun had gone off.

  “Rabbit?” I called out. “Is Motley dead?”

  But there was no reply.

  I called out again, “Rabbit?”

  I twisted my neck into the doorway, my eyes flashed to the floor beside the desk, where I saw Motley standing with the gun Rabbit had been holding, now dangling from his fingers. He was standing over Rabbit. Rabbit was lying on the floor next to a branch of blood spreading out over the carpet.

  I turned to run and skidded over the blood-water concoction slicking the floor. I grappled at the walls to keep my footing. I started running down the long hallway, desperate to reach the front foyer so that I could escape out the main door. My moist feet shrieked against the glassy marble floors.

  “Oh, Alice?” Motley was taunting me from somewhere behind me. The inflection in his voice was so eerily sinister that it triggered a boost within every cell of my DNA to run faster. “Alice, darling, you can’t hide from me.”

  I skidded through another corroder as the once familiar layout of the house became a jumbled labyrinth. Somehow, I arrived at the front door, and my numb fingers managed to twist the handle open. I ran outside. The soft pads of my bare feet slid onto the grass and I buckled my knees to avoid crashing down on my ass.

  I heard the sound of the overhead garage door grinding open and when I turned back to see what was happening, a pair of headlights popped on and I witnessed Motley’s Bentley speed down the driveway towards me. It was Cleopatra’s face behind the windshield; her eyes were hard and callous. Her hands were firmly planted at ten and two on the wheel and I was certain she had a stiletto heel pressed violently on the gas. She rolled the car up onto the lawn and barreled straight towards me.

  I crossed into the yard of the house adjacent to Motley’s so that it would be difficult for her to maneuver the car after me through the tree line. I didn’t know where Motley was. Cleopatra thumped the car over the curb and clumsily navigated towards the entrance to the neighbor’s driveway, using the
wrong-side lane to get there.

  Another car popped onto the horizon, speeding down the street in the same lane. The car’s headlights intersected with Cleopatra’s headlights so that a blinding spray of luminance covered the black asphalt road in blue radiance. I had to shield my eyes against the blinding lights. My ears were suddenly inundated by a hard screech of tires screaming over pavement as the second driver slammed their breaks to avoid hitting the Bentley. The car twisted, spinning into a circle and violently crashing into the twin gates in front of the neighbor’s driveway. Then came an eerie silence.

  The driver’s side door of the Bentley flew open and Cleopatra emerged. She had on red stilettos and a slinky silk robe that had come undone in the front.

  Her face got very ugly. She was screaming. “No! No!” Smoke from the car’s engine billowed all around her like ghastly fog. I strained my eyes to see what she was looking at, what was causing her to scream so hauntingly.

  Then I saw it.

  Veiled by a plume of engine smoke, was Motley, pinned to the driveway gates by the hood of the second car. The dusty headlights of the car were pointed on him like a hot spotlight.

  The distraught driver of the second car got out of his vehicle and began screaming something, curses or apologies, in French. I couldn’t understand him.

  Cleopatra’s eyes slid from side to side. She wanted to find me. “Alice!” she screamed into the night. “You did this! You bitch, you’re going to pay for this!”

  I looked back at Motley, at his ghastly and contorted body. His neck, which had been pressed flat to one side against the gate, made a sudden jerk and I saw the gate’s crisscross pattern smeared in blood along the side of his cheek. His head twisted towards me with a mechanical motion. His glossy eyes fixed on me and I saw his lips mouth the name, Margaux Fix.

  A spark of electric nerves, as hot as a cattle prod, erupted on my spine and surged through my entire body. I turned on my heels, running so that the soles of my feet throbbed over the heavy pavement.

  He knew my real name.

  Chapter Thirty-one: The Address

  THE FLORESCENT RAYS coming off the streetlights seemed to stretch into thin swords, raining down onto the sidewalk as I passed under them. They could stab me with the pressure point of a thousand needles, it didn’t matter. I felt nothing. I was as stiff and cold as ice.

  I ducked into the Abbesses metro station, which serviced Montmartre. I stood awkwardly on the platform with my arms folded over myself in an attempt to obscure my midriff and reduce the embarrassment of wearing a bikini in the middle of a Parisian metro stop on a frigid October night.

  I sat down inside the train car, resting my feet to roast over the radiant heat coming up from the vent in the floor. My high heels were resting on the empty seat next to me; my confession note was tucked into one of the soles. I attempted to figure out my next move. Going back to my flat was out of the question since Motley, if he was still breathing, probably already had Moonboots McCafferty and Xerxes O’Brien on their way there to retrieve me and drag me back to his house.

  I closed my eyes and tried to conjure from memory the address Ben had scribbled on the prescription pad earlier that day at the hospital.

  Chapter Thirty-two: Comfort

  A KNOCKING SOUND, obtrusive and loud, like a log falling in a pristine forest, was echoing throughout the corridor. The sound of a door creaking startled me. Just a nosy neighbor taking a peek into the hallway. I take a relieved breath.

  At this moment, I am standing with my back up against Ben’s door and my goose-pimpled chest is heaving up and down to catch my breath. I give the door another knock. This time I hear the rattle of Ben undoing the locks. When he opens the door, he is looking at me sideways, and his eyes are small like he had been asleep.

  “Alice. You changed your hair again.”

  I smiled.

  Ben didn’t return the smile. Instead, he leaned his elbow on the doorknob and inspected me from head to toe. “Just so we’re both on the same page, you realize it’s, oh, a hair shy of three in the morning, and you just knocked on my door in nothing but a soaking wet black bikini.” Not true, I thought to myself. It was actually a black bikini accessorized with the dynamite stick. But I had tucked the disk into my bikini bottoms so that it was hidden. I wasn’t going to burden Ben with the trouble I was in.

  “Can I sleep here tonight?” I asked.

  “Alice.” His eyes went up the ceiling and he blew out a trail of air, as though trying to avoid combusting. “Of course you can. But first, can you explain why you’re traipsing around Paris in a bikini?”

  “Midnight swim. I’m impulsive, what can I say?” I stretched the balls of my feet to reach up and plant a kiss on his nose.

  “Alice, it’s freezing outside. Your lips are blue, and if you don’t want to experience hypothermia, I suggest you go dry off in the bathroom. There are fresh towels inside the linen closet. Then go in my bedroom and grab one of my clean shirts to throw on.”

  I padded to the bathroom, peeled off my bikini, and patted myself down with a towel. I buried the dynamite stick in the back of the linen closet, making sure to tuck it inside a half-empty box of bandages. I grabbed a big fluffy white towel while I was in there. I sunk my face into the towel, and from the smell I could tell that Ben used the fabric softener with the little bear on the bottle. I went into his bedroom and pulled an oversized University of Illinois sweatshirt over my head. It had the cozy fabric softener bear smell on it, too. I tossed my high heels into the closet.

  Ben had a hot mug of chocolate waiting for me in his hand when I got back to the kitchen. “Alice?”

  I grabbed my mug and spread out the front page of the Parisian newspaper called Le Monde that was on the counter. “Yes, darling?”

  “This is weird. You know that, right? I know you like doing the whole spontaneous free spirit thing. But this is beyond that.”

  “Just go with it, Ben. It’s easier that way.” I sipped the chocolate and feigned engrossment in the newspaper.

  He walked over and sweetly kissed my forehead. He felt my hands. “You’re positively freezing.” I hadn’t even felt the chill. Must have been all the adrenaline. I had nearly been murdered. The thought of me almost dying made me think of Rabbit. I thought of him lying injured, possibly dead, in Motley’s office. I knew that I should anonymously call an ambulance for him. I instinctively reached for my phone, but then I remembered that I had left it with my clothes in Motley’s bedroom after I slipped into his robe.

  “Can I use your phone?” I asked Ben.

  “Sure, Alice, it’s on the wall over there.” He pointed to a cordless phone mounted to the kitchen wall. I walked over and unhooked it from the receiver and gave him the look a dog gives its owner when they don’t want to be watched while pooping on the curb.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Alice, are you going back to being secretive again?”

  “I am not being secretive. I just want a millisecond of privacy. Is that forbidden?”

  I rounded into the bathroom and locked the door. I ran the faucet and stepped into the shower to block the sound of my voice from seeping out of the room. I entered the digits to block Ben’s number and dialed the French emergency number.

  “Bonjour?’”

  “Yes, I would like to report a gunshot.” I gave the dispatcher Motley’s address and promptly hung up. I sipped my cocoa when I got back to the kitchen.

  Ben massaged the spot above his brow. “Am I ever going to get to bed tonight?”

  “Please don’t be mad at me,” I begged. “I need you tonight, I really do. So please don’t look at me like I just showed up and ruined your night or like I’m some kind of nuisance.”

  A smile I wasn’t expecting formed on Ben’s lips. “Alice, I want nothing more than to scoop you up in my arms right now.” His eyes fell and his voice soured. “It’s just so hard when you act mysterious like this.”

  I walked over to him and kissed him. I pulled away, but he gripped m
y shoulders to steady himself to me as he looked into my eyes. I felt hot tears pooling at the brim and I couldn’t control them.

  “You’re crying. Why?”

  “A friend of mine may have died tonight.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Is it okay if I stay with you for a few days?”

  “Yes, it’s fine for you to stay here. You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?”

  “No. My friend, he was involved in an accident, and I just got so shaken up by the news I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

  He squeezed me at the ribs. “You can stay here as long as you need. I’ll be on shift at the hospital most of the time, but you’re welcome to entertain yourself here while I’m gone.”

  I did a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Ben.” I coiled my waif-like arms around his shoulders, hugging him with everything I had, and then the words just sort of spilled from my mouth like shaken marbles. “I love you.”

  “I love you too, Alice,” Ben replied, with his arms wringing my shoulders in the warmest embrace. He broke away and bent into kiss me and his lips were like velvet brushing up against mine. He pulled away, a streak of self-consciousness seeming to surge within him that caused his eyes to drop to the floor. “You look like you’ve been through a lot, let’s get you to sleep and we can work the rest out later.”

  Chapter Thirty-three: The Money

  DAYLIGHT BURNED RAW and punishing over the skin on my eyelids.

  I heard Ben leave for work in the morning and I lay in his bed for a while wondering what had happened to Rabbit and to Motley.

  Both could be dead.

  Both could be alive. Looking for me and really ticked off. My eyes flew open and I realized how hard my heart had been thumping. I had mistaken the noise for the radiator. If Motley was, in fact, alive, he wasn’t going to simply let me walk away with the dynamite stick. He would hunt me down, take the dynamite stick from me, and kill me. The thought of the dynamite stick haunted me from the linen closet where I had hidden it the night before. I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to destroy it just yet in case I needed it as collateral against Motley. If it was gone, he really had no reason to keep me alive.