Generation of Liars

by Marks, Camilla

  Another moment of dead air passed before his next reply. “Sure, Alice, Tai sounds fine.”

  “What is the name of that stuff I like? Is it chili pepper pork? I always forget.”

  I heard the thrashing of the toilet flushing. “I think it’s curry chicken.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t beef?”

  “I’m positive it wasn’t beef,” he answered, and I heard the bathroom door swing open.

  I flicked through the menus. “Do you remember the name of the restaurant we ordered from last time?” I could feel the warm shadow of Ben’s body standing behind me, but he didn’t say a word. “Ben?”

  “Oh, Alice, can I ask you something?” His voice was endearing, but something was off.

  “Of course you can.” I spun around to face him.

  I was shocked by what I saw. He was dangling a thumb drive by the pinch of his fingers.

  “What is this, darling?” he asked.

  “Oh, that?” I shut the menu drawer behind me. “That’s nothing.”

  “Are you sure, Alice? I found it sitting on the edge of the bathroom sink.”

  “It’s nothing, Ben.” I wondered if my nerves were showing. I was kicking myself for being so careless about leaving it out in the open. “It’s just a disk I’ve saved some of my job searches on. My résumé and such. I know how eager you’ve been for me to get a job and leave the apartment once in a while.” Our eyes were in a stalemate. “Why don’t you give it back and I can put it away somewhere safe?”

  “A disk with your résumé, is it?” He was rotating it on the balls of his fingers. “Are you sure that’s all it is? You seem kind of nervous.”

  “That’s all it is. So just give it back.” I did all I could to sound relaxed. I reached out to grab it, but Ben clamped his fist shut around it.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  His eyes blinked, as though clearing away room for a new identity. Without warning, he lunged forward at me and pushed me down over the hard corner of the kitchen counter. He was on top of me, twisting my hair at the crook of my neck and his voice was roaring into my ear. “It wouldn’t by any chance be the dynamite stick, would it, Alice?”

  “What are you talking about?” I had already begun crying.

  He jerked my head up by my hair and dragged me to the couch, where he threw me down, face first, into the cushions. He was heading for the kitchen again. I lifted my head and croaked out, “Ben! What the hell are you doing?”

  “You’ll see.” There was a smirk on his face. His hands were busily rummaging through the drawers in the kitchen. He found what he was looking for. A roll of silver duct tape and the knife we had used to carve our Thanksgiving turkey. He was coming back towards me.

  I slid off the couch and tried to circumvent him, but he caught me by the hair and pulled me to one of the chairs at the kitchen table. I tried to fight, but the utter shock of what was happening left me like an amnesiac for all my fighting skills. I thrashed the air with my hands and my nails sliced a trail of blood across his cheek. He pressed the icy knife to my throat and throttled my hair at the crook of my neck. I was stiff. He twisted my arms behind the chair and dragged the tape across the circumference of my body. I wouldn’t be moving any time soon.

  He went back to the couch. A mobile phone was in his hands. I had never seen him use it before. “Honey.” He was grinning into the phone as he spoke. “I have it, yes, I have the dynamite stick. The stupid girl brought it right to my apartment. I’ll wait for you here.”

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.” His hands were inside his pocket. He whipped out his fancy cigarette case. The one he showed me in the park on our second date.

  “You told me during our stroll in the park that you only smoke on special occasions.”

  “That was true.”

  “What are you celebrating?” I was searching his eyes, once so sweet, now appearing like a pair of polluted lakes, so black and wretched.

  “Success.”

  “What success?”

  “Getting the dynamite stick back into my hands.”

  “Back into your hands? You’ve had it before?”

  “I had it in the beginning.”

  “Enoch had it in the beginning.”

  “I am Enoch.”

  My tongue was dry as velvet inside my open mouth. “That can’t be.”

  “Of course it can, Alice. Every legend needs an origin story. The dynamite stick is no different; it is a legend like every other. I wish it weren’t so, trust me, but like all cursed treasures, it has had a sorted journey of falling in and out of the hands of its creator. It’s almost like a fairytale, if you really think about it.”

  “So does that mean you targeted me because I was involved with the dynamite stick? Is that how I fit into your sick, fairytale fantasy?”

  “None of this is fantasy. Except maybe the part about your prince turning out to be a frog.”

  “More like a snake.” I glowered at him.

  “It all started out quite reasonably. Creating the dynamite stick derived from a need of utmost practicality. The only practical choice I had at the time. Reality is what got in the way, so don’t pin this mess on fantasy. Besides, I didn’t target you. You landed in my lap that night after you fell out of the Eiffel Tower. I merely pursued you.”

  “Has our entire relationship been a lie?” There was a hollow sinking in the pit of my stomach. “What about all those sweet things you told me, what about worrying about me being a dancer?”

  “I know you weren’t a dancer. I’ve known exactly what you are this entire time. I was lying. Fancy that. I was merely doing everything I could to keep you close to me, hoping that one day you would bring the dynamite stick straight to me.”

  I could hear keys jostling on the other side of the door. I looked up at Ben. “Who is that?”

  “It sounds like my wife is home. She can explain it all to you.”

  “You have a wife?”

  Chapter Forty-seven: Sparks

  THE DOOR SWUNG open and there was a woman standing there wearing a full-length coat in a distinct shade of cardinal red, with the hem stylishly split to reveal an enduring pair of legs. She trained her eyes on me with a look of callous satisfaction. “Hello again, Alice,” she said.

  “You?” I disbelievingly panted. The wild blond hair and three-foot long legs made it clear that it was none other than my nemesis, Ophelia Le Fur, standing in the doorway.

  She sauntered over to Ben and planted her plump, heart-shaped lips over his. He kissed back like he was accustomed to it. When they pulled away from one another, the look on his face was overcome with triumph. “You’ve already met my wife, so there is no need to introduce her,” Ben told me.

  “You’re married to this psycho?” I asked.

  “Alice, please don’t insult my wife. It’s rude.”

  “That was her at the hospital. She was the woman I saw hugging you, wasn’t she?” The realization almost knocked me over as I said it.

  “You almost caught us,” Ben said. He was smiling. So proud of himself. “But your jealousy blinded you from realizing what you were even seeing. You know, you should really stop being so hasty, Alice.”

  Ophelia had a briefcase at her hip. She set it down on the kitchen table and opened it. Inside was a jumble of spare red wires mingled like vines, and a pile of shiny plated electrical pieces.

  “How long have you been married?” I asked.

  “Seven years. Ophelia was a patient of mine. I was helping her with a prescription and our relationship blossomed into something more. I’m not really Enoch Sprites. My real name is Dr. Elijah Coke. Sprites was just a fake name I used when working with Motley.”

  “You were her drug pusher for the steroids? That’s how she got in trouble with the Olympic committee for being a junkie, right?”

  “Watch it, bimbo,” Ophelia barked. Her cold eyes were primed on me and I
could tell she had nothing good planned. “You’re in no position to pass judgment.”

  “And you pushed drugs on me too, didn’t you, Ben? The painkillers you gave me that night we met at the hospital, you said they were to help my shoulder. But really they loosened my tonsils, made me loopy enough to prattle on about the dynamite stick.”

  “A little truth serum never hurt anyone.” Ben sat at the table and rotated the dynamite stick in his fingers, like a spinning orb, to admire it. The smile digging his lips transposed into a disbelieving head shake. “This thing has caused me so much trouble. Three years of chasing it down.” His eyes shot to me. “Until a stupid girl fell out of the Eiffel Tower and landed in my lap. Ha. Imagine the absurdness of it.” He got up from the table and tapped the knife to the side of my cheek. “Funny coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “You jerk,” I screamed.

  “Simmer down, Alice,” he said. “It’s all almost over now.”

  “What’s almost over?”

  Ophelia interjected this time. “I’m blowing up the dynamite stick, once and for all.” A sharp-toothed smile was on her face. “And I’m blowing you up along with it.”

  “Is that a figure of speech?” I asked, my eyes nervously floating down to the bastion of red wires on the table.

  “No, Alice, I meant it quite literally.”

  “How does blowing me up benefit you?”

  “You know who I am,” Ben said. “The stakes are too high in keeping you alive. I’m a wanted man, as you already know.”

  “You broke out of prison with Motley, right?”

  “Yeah, the one and only, your boss. You were stupid to ever get involved with him, you know. He’s a reptile.”

  “I was desperate,” I told him. “And I trusted an offer that I realize now was too good to be true.”

  “You can’t trust anybody over the age of zero, didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”

  “I think I’ve heard it before.”

  “And didn’t anyone ever tell you, Alice, that the human brain is part reptile and part monkey? That we’re all lying psychopaths. Every last one of us.”

  “Someone did once, yes. Motley, actually.”

  “He turned in that kid from Yale, you know. The one you brought to my apartment with the gunshot wound. Lenny Rabitz. That’s why I was so angry with you when you took him to my apartment. I was afraid it would lead Motley to my apartment and once he saw me again and saw how I had infiltrated your life, my gig would be up, you would find out I was the infamous Enoch Sprites.”

  “Wait, you’re saying it was Motley who turned Rabbit in to the dean at Yale and ruined his perfect life?”

  “Motley set Rabbit up with that poker racket at Yale. Motley is the heir to the Fool’s Luck playing card fortune. His great grandfather founded the company and his dad built up a chain of hotels and casinos in Vegas. The initial reason why Motley got interested in Rabbit happened long before the November Hit. Long before he realized he could use him to help find the dynamic stick. It was Rabbit’s reputation as a math whiz kid that he was after. He wanted to recruit him to help him do algorithms for a new casino he was opening, you know, help him fix the numbers in their favor. But you know how Motley operates. He only brings someone onboard knowing he has the upper hand with them. He sent a goon to pose as a student and get in Rabbit’s ear, inspire him to start that racket at Yale so that he could tip him off to the dean and make him a job offer once he was academically ruined. Motley knew he could scoop him up that way. After the November Hit happened, he found a better use for Rabbit’s genius than cooking casino books.”

  “Motley was overseeing the opening of a new casino from inside prison?”

  “These mobster types, they don’t let prison stop them.”

  “What was he in prison for?”

  The corners of Ben’s mouth widened. He was highly amused by my question. “Something terrible,” he said. “But far be it from me to shatter your little world by telling you.”

  “What were you in prison for?”

  “Something far less terrible than Motley.”

  “But you’re a murder, aren’t you? Both you and Ophelia are. You killed that college kid in Brussels, Jamie. He was found hanged inside his dorm room.”

  “I had to let Ophelia do it, Alice. Surely you of all people understand the sacrifices we make for the sake of keeping a secret.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “I read that note you always kept hidden in your shoe. I know all about the dead girl. I know about Heather Gilmore.”

  “You read it?”

  “For goodness’ sake, Alice, it wasn’t exactly hard. You left your dirty socks floating about the floor all the time. I took a peek at the note one night while you were asleep.”

  “She isn’t really dead. Heather Gilmore is alive.”

  “But you thought you killed her, and you ran away from the scene of the crime. That makes you disgusting.”

  “What’s your excuse?” I asked dryly. “What secret is so worthy of protecting that Jamie had to die for it?”

  “I never meant for it to get so out of hand, you must believe that part. It begins as a simple tale, really. I hated my job.” He was pacing the table now. “It’s a simple American phenomenon. So I cooked up a scheme, using my position as a doctor at a veteran’s hospital with ample access to Social Security databases, to scam senior citizens. The elderly were a natural target. Plus, after working with them for a few years, I found them to be an utterly intolerable subcategory of humans. But I couldn’t scam my own patients because that would be too obvious after a while. The pool only goes so deep. I used my work computer to hack the entire Social Security agency database. I aggregated every single Social Security number of all United States citizens onto a thumb drive. The plan was to use the Social Security numbers of elderly Americans in various geographical locations, people with no tie other than being of a certain age, and then dip into their savings. It was supposed to be easy.”

  “The thumb drive you created, its sitting right there on the table?” I nudged my chin towards it. “The dynamite stick.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was so excited about my plan and all the frills of my impending early retirement. I planned a getaway to Turks and Caicos or Tahiti, where Ophelia could finally be free of all the disgrace that followed her Olympic fall. The excitement caused me to start slipping at my medical practice.”

  “Slipping?”

  “I accidentally wrote one of my patients the wrong dosage on a blood pressure prescription and she died. The family sued. I was probably going to jail for manslaughter. I knew I had to get out of the country, even though there was a court order preventing me from traveling with the impending charges. But I didn’t care. Ophelia and I were at the airport on our way to Tahiti when I got stopped by security. Long story short, I ended up in a cell with Motley. I had the dynamite stick on me while I was trying to board the plane. They confiscated it and I never saw it again.”

  “And then the November Hit happened.”

  “Yes, it happened while I was in jail. I was ecstatic. If only I could escape from the prison walls, I could take on a new identity and start fresh without any trace of my old name or the manslaughter charges. But as long as the dynamite stick was floating out there, I was never completely in the clear; there was always a chance of our real identities being restored. I shared the fact that I had created the dynamite stick with Motley. He was so damned charismatic. I spilled everything.” I could see little sprigs of veins popping in his forehead now. I had never seen them before. I was watching everything I thought I knew about Ben unravel in front of me.

  “So, how did the dynamite stick become so famous after you lost it at the airport?”

  “My guess is some airport rent-a-cop popped in the disk, saw what was on it, and then after the November Hit, he realized he could sell the information contained on it and be the one on the airplane to Tahiti.”

  “We
ll, whoever ended up with it, it didn’t stay in his hands for long.”

  “This thing is like the Hope Diamond, bad luck befalls on whoever touches it.”

  “Is that why you’re blowing it up?”

  “It needs to be destroyed, once and for all.”

  “I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid, dating the man who created the dynamite stick. I need a cigarette.”

  Ophelia, who had been intently threading the red wires on the bomb, looked up. “Oh don’t worry darling, you’ll be smoking soon enough,” she said.

  “That’s what you’re working on, right? A bomb to blow me up, along with the dynamite stick.”

  I studied her, intimidated by her husky sensuality, which I knew was what Ben truly preferred and not my scrawny frame. She had a coat of red lipstick over her rough, pouty lips. “You’re probably wondering why I want to blow you up,” she asked.

  “I’m a tad curious.”

  “No good reason. But after enduring watching you suck face with my husband and play house in my apartment for months while I slummed it in a Parisian hotel, I’m kind of pissy. I mean have you ever stayed in a French hotel? Blech!”

  “Ophelia,” I said, “if you missed your apartment so bad, why would you want to go and blow it up now? You’ll be at the mercy of the French hospitality industry all over again.”

  Ophelia laughed. I feared those flat, white teeth that seemed to cut the air like pliers. She was looking at Ben as though they were sharing an inside joke. “Gosh, this one is even dumber than you told me.” She turned her attention back to me. “No, Alice, I am not blowing you up inside the apartment. I am going to blow you up on top of the Eiffel Tower.”

  Chapter Forty-eight: It Happened On the Eiffel Tower

  THE FLICKER OF the dying light casting a gyrating glow over the stairwell was making me dizzy enough to puke.

  The nose of a gun was crammed at the base of my neck. Ben and Ophelia pushed me down each step. I could hear the ghost sounds of Christmas songs coming from the apartments of other tenants, seeping through the economical doors.