by Avery Scott
Mr. Saint was a low-level miscreant that Grand-mère knew from her days at the Art Colony. Rumors circulated that he had been involved in a money-laundering scheme in his younger years. As an old man, he had settled on low-level loan sharking. Perhaps in remembrance of their youthful exploits, the interest that he charged Grand-mère to finance taxes and repairs to their home was only double what a real bank would charge (rather than the triple that most of his customers paid), but it was still a shock when he showed up on the porch two weeks after the funeral in search of payment.
It was difficult, but Abby had always managed to scrounge together the two thousand dollars per month that they owed, although not always in a timely manner. Thus far, Mr. Saint had demonstrated a patience befitting his name, but she didn’t know how much longer she could continue if she didn’t find a job.
Tears pricked at the back of Abby’s eyes as she imagined leaving. This was her home. The memories that she shared with her Grand-mère and sister were everywhere she looked. The thought of leaving was unbearable. What would it feel like to never make tea on the battered stove or to never take a bath in the clawfoot tub again? It hurt to imagine a new family inhabiting the rooms, filling the space with cheap, modern furniture from big box stores and plastering soulless prints of cows and beach scenes on the walls.
No, she couldn’t let that happen. Abby paused at a table in the hallway, fished around in the vase of a silk flower arrangement for the money that she had managed to pull together and then met Mr. Saint at the door.
“Morning, Miss Levesque,” he said, removing his jaunty, windowpane-checked fedora as a sign of old-fashioned chivalry.
“Good morning,” she said nervously. Despite Mr. Saint’s calm demeanor and harmless appearance, his presence always made her feel anxious. “Would you like to step inside? It looks like it’s going to rain.”
“I’ll dry,” he responded. His tone was all business. He replaced his hat on his head. “I was in the area, so I thought I’d check and see if you have something for me…Save you the trouble of putting it in the mail.”
“Yes sir, thank you.” Abby handed over a crumpled stack of $100 bills and watched as he counted to ensure that it was all there. Thank Goodness Gabrielle really had a job. Abby didn’t know what she would have done if her sister hadn’t forked over the money that morning.
Apparently satisfied with the amount, Mr. Saint nodded his head and slipped the wad of cash into his jacket pocket. “Pleasure doing business with you, Ms. Levesque. I’ll come back next week for the rest.”
“The rest?”
The old man nodded calmly. “You aren’t forgetting our arrangement, are you? We agreed to a brief delay in the last installment?”
Abby’s heart sank when she remembered. She was already a full payment behind when Mr. Saint showed up the Monday after she lost her job and she begged him for a bit of extra time to scrape some funding together.
He noticed the look of terror on her face. “That’s not going to be a problem is it? You know, if this is too much house for you girls now, I can-”
“No! Well yes, but no! I haven’t found a job yet, but I’ve been calling everywhere. It’s just that no one is hiring and I don’t know what to do.”
The outburst was answered with a heavy sigh. “You know, my Missus doesn’t like it when I come home without my money,” he muttered and then jammed his hands in his pockets. “But I worry about you girls. Ol’ Bette was quite a woman, but she left you in a bit of a pickle…Maybe I’m just going soft in my old age.”
“Just one more month,” Abby begged. “You’ll have it all, I promise.”
Mr. Saint hesitated but finally nodded his head in agreement. “One month, but you’re going to have to pay a little extra.”
“Fifty dollars?”
“A hundred.”
Abby stuck out her hand to strike the deal. She had no idea where she was going to come up with the original amount, much less an extra hundred dollars, but something had to work out. There weren’t any other options. At least she had a little more time to devise a plan.
“You know, I can’t keep letting things slide,” Mr. Saint said, his voice taking on a note of concern. “I’m doing this out of respect for Bette, but I’m a businessman, you know. An old businessman. Maybe too old. My wife has been talking to some big shots from across the bridge. They like to buy up old debts like these. I don’t think they’ll be as flexible on the payment terms and I don’t know how much longer I can keep telling her ‘no’. Maybe you should think about cashing out?”
“Cashing out?” Abby’s delicate features contorted in horror. She would never consider it.
“Sure. It’s just a house, but there’s always demand here in Brooklyn. Even with the loan, you’ve probably got half a million dollars worth of equity in this place. Think about it. You girls could use that money. You could go back to college if you wanted. Start over.”
“We’re not interested,” Abby said automatically. Yes, half a million dollars was a nearly unbelievable amount of money. And yes, it was also true that she could certainly use it. There was no way that she would ever surrender the house though. It was almost like a living thing to her. The thought of allowing it to be torn down by developers was unacceptable.
“You owe it to yourself to think about it, at least.” Mr. Saint persisted. “I’m not saying I’m definitely going to sell the loan, but if I do, you need to watch out. They’ll pile fees and assessments on you until all the money is gone. You’ll still lose the house in the end, but you won’t have anything to show for it. Talk to your sister.”
“No!” Abby barked, panicked at the thought of Gabrielle finding out that they might be able to sell the house for a profit. She didn’t have to wonder what her twin would say. She would take the money and run- and probably have nothing to show for it in less than a year. “I mean…that isn’t necessary. She feels the same way about it that I do.”
The pronouncement was met with a shrug. “Suit yourself, then. One month, Ms. Levesque. Not a day more, and don’t forget the extra hundred. I’m expecting $4100 in cash the next time I come around.”
“One month. You’ve got it,” Abby responded with more enthusiasm than she felt. Mostly she was just relieved when he turned to walk away.
She closed the door a little harder than necessary and then leaned back against the broad wooden plane, sinking down to a ball in the floor. She clasped her arms around her knees, finally releasing the tears that had been threatening to fall all day.
Was she making a mistake? Should she consider Mr. Saint’s offer? She’d never allowed herself to even entertain the idea, but maybe he was right? Maybe she was a fool not to take the money and run. Right now, the only chance she had at making her next payment was another contribution from Gabrielle, but she had to face the fact that her sister hadn’t even been working for a full month. She was bound to screw up soon- and where did that leave them? Besides, rent wasn’t their only problem. They still had utility bills, phone bills and food bills. Abby had been living on little more than tea and crackers for the past several weeks, but the cost still added up.
Abby dabbed her eyes with the back of her hands and rose to her feet. Tears weren’t going to help anybody. Instead of proceeding to the kitchen for her interrupted tea, she went to the back of the house. There, in an airy room filled with windows, she had taken over her grand-mère’s painting studio. Canvases in various stages of completion were scattered about the room. The older works were lined up along the floorboards: bright impressionistic renderings of children in the park and her grand-mère’s old snapshots of France. Newer works were more abstract and significantly darker. The current canvas reminded Abby of the sky outside: various gradations of gray, drawing the eye to a nearly pitch-black shadow in the corner. A tiny slash of red, mysterious and menacing, crossed the darkness.
Abby stared at the painting for a moment and then picked up her palette and brush. She dabbed at the canvas tentatively at f
irst, but it wasn’t long before inspiration found her. She had tried to describe the feeling to a non-artist before: she started out with no idea of where to place her brushstrokes or what color to use. Sometimes she stared at the blank space in front of her for what felt like hours. Then, out of nowhere, there was a point where she stopped thinking about what she was going to paint and started feeling it. Her hands moved of their own accord, coaxing raw emotion out of the swirls of oil. She painted in an almost fugue-like state, so absorbed that she lost track of time. When an unexpected knock at the door, the second of the day, broke her concentration, she was astonished to discover that dusk had fallen.
“Coming,” she called out, wiping her paint-splattered hands on the legs of her jeans as she hurried toward the door.
Abby barely reached the front hallway before the pounding repeated. It was harder the second time. It sounded almost angry. She hesitated a moment before continuing to the front of the house. She always expected the regular visits from Mr. Saint, but she couldn’t think of anyone who would stop by at night, unless it was a friend of Gabrielle’s. As badly as Abby wanted to think well of her sister, she wasn’t confident that everyone in her twin’s crowd was an upstanding citizen.
Abby crept forward carefully and pushed back the lace curtains of the front window. A limousine was parked outside. She blinked in surprise when she realized that she had seen the car before. It belonged to Gabrielle’s boss. The passenger door was open. From her line of sight, she could only make out that the person on her porch was a man wearing a dark business suit.
Gabrielle’s boss?
Abby felt a twinge of curiosity, followed almost immediately by a spike of fear. Oh God, did something happen to her sister? Was that why the man had come here? Gabrielle had never returned the night before, but that wasn’t necessarily unusual. Her sister had mentioned that travel might be involved in her new job, but she was never one to talk about work. She always said it was too boring. Now Gabrielle’s boss stood on the front porch, pounding furiously. Abby didn’t even remember the man’s name.
She scrambled to unlock the door before it splintered under his assault.
Abby had glimpsed her sister’s employer through an open car door several weeks before, but that brief glance was insufficient to do him justice.
It all made sense now. No wonder Gabrielle had set a personal record for remaining gainfully employed. The man was gorgeous: a bit over six feet tall with broad shoulders, and a lean, athletic body. His dark hair was closely cropped on the sides and slightly longer on top, tousled in a way that could have been intentional, but was more likely the result of dragging his fingers through his hair. His skin was tanned a golden color that spoke of sun-soaked vacations on the Aegean sea, but his most striking feature was his shocking blue eyes. They stared at her with such intensity that she briefly forgot how to speak.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” the man blurted after a beat of silence.
“Excuse me?” Abby asked, surprised by the outburst. She stepped to the side, vaguely shocked as he wedged himself inside the doorway.
“I’ve been sitting outside in front of this house honking the horn for twenty minutes and you’re not answering your phone.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you. I was in the back of the house painting and I-!”
“Where are your suitcases?” he interrupted, clearly disinterested in the explanation.
“My suitcases?”
“Yes, Gabrielle. Your suitcases. You are planning to wear clothes in Paris, aren’t you? Or did you just expect me to buy you a whole new wardrobe?” He scanned the room again and threw up his hands in disgust when he was unable to find whatever he was looking for. “You know what, I don’t even fucking care. We’re late. Let’s go.”
Abby squeaked in surprise as his hand closed around the top of her arm and he started hustling her out the door.
“Wait!” she yelped as his words sank in. Gabrielle. The man had used her sister’s name. He must have taken Abby for her twin. “I think there’s been some kind of a mistake!”
Abby wilted as his eyes focused on her face with such laser-sharp intensity that she could practically feel them burning into her skin. “Yes, there has been a mistake,” he said, his voice thick with controlled fury. “A mistake made by you when you decided to test me with…whatever this bullshit is. Gabrielle, you’re a fun girl and it’s been a great few weeks, but I have more than just money riding on this deal. If you don’t get in that car and come with me to the airport right now, you’re fired. You can forget about the bonus. You can forget about severance pay, and you can expect a letter from my lawyer about the tab you ran up on my Amex card at Retox last Saturday night when you went out drinking with your friends. Do you understand?”
Abby took a step backward, her mind spinning. She could barely make sense of what this strange man was saying, but the parts that she could piece together were terrifying. This mysterious, handsome, furious man expected her sister to get on a plane with him tonight. If Gabrielle didn’t comply, she was fired. If she got fired, they had no money at all. If they had no money, they would lose the house. Abby absolutely refused to let that happen, she would do anything to save Grand-mère’s house. There was just one tiny problem. Gabrielle was nowhere to be found.
Chapter Four
“Five minutes! Just give me five minutes!” Abby blurted, praying under her breath that Gabrielle’s boss would indulge her request. “I…er…lost track of time. Just let me change clothes and throw some things in a bag, okay?” Surely, he was bluffing about the thirty-minute deadline? She didn’t know anything about billionaires, but she couldn’t imagine that they flew commercial.
Someone must have been listening to Abby’s prayer, or else she got lucky. Hudson rolled his eyes and inclined his chin. It was a subtle movement, but enough to let her know that she was free to go. She raced into the kitchen to fetch her phone and then crept up the back staircase to her room. She pulled up Gabrielle’s name in her contacts, pushed “dial” and swore under her breath when it immediately went to voicemail. She tried a text next.
* * *
CALL ME! PLEASE! THIS IS A TRUE EMERGENCY!
* * *
Ten seconds passed.
* * *
GABRIELLE PLEASE!
* * *
Ten more seconds.
* * *
911 I’M NOT KIDDING!
* * *
She was about to throw her phone across the room in despair when the receiver buzzed. Abby stabbed the talk button. “Hello?”
“What’s the matter?” Gabrielle’s carefree voice fluttered down the line. A radio was playing country music in the background, and it sounded like she was in a car. “You’d better be dying. That’s the only reason I picked up the phone.”
“Where are you?” Abby ignored her sister’s question.
“I dunno. Babe, where are we?”
There was a shuffling noise, and then a male voice answered the question. The sound was muffled as if Gabrielle had placed her hand over the phone. “I’m in Tennessee, apparently. Can you believe that?”
Abby’s hands clenched in panic. “Tennessee? How is that possible? What are you doing in Tennessee?”
“Road trip,” came the nonchalant reply. “Tyler was serving Margaritas out on the patio of La Plancha last night and he asked me if I had ever had a real margarita in Cozumel and I told him no. Neither had he and so we decided we would check it out-“
“Check it out…? Wait! You’re on your way to Cozumel?”
“Yeah. He has this friend who says that-!”
“Oh, my God, Gabrielle!” Abby interrupted. “I don’t care! You need to get back here, right now. Your boss is standing downstairs in the hallway. You’re supposed to be on a plane leaving for Paris in half an hour!”
“Oh…That was tonight?”
Was she fucking kidding right now? “Yes, that was tonight!” Abby started to raise her voice and then realize
d that her visitor might be listening.
“Well, I’m obviously not going to make it. Just tell him something came up. Family emergency or some bullshit excuse so I still have my job when I get back.”
“I can’t tell him that! He said that if you don’t get on the plane tonight, you’re fired. Gabrielle, we need the money. Mr. Saint is going to sell the loan on the house if we don’t. He said that some big deal investor has been chatting up his wife and she’s pressuring him.”
“He’s been saying that since Grand-mère died,” Gabrielle said, dismissively. “He’s just trying to scare you. He doesn’t have anything on paper. He couldn’t kick us out if he wanted to.”
“He sounded pretty serious to me,” Abby fired back, “and we can’t afford to take any chances. I have a dozen resumes out, but I’m still coming up empty. You need to keep this job!”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I’m in Tennessee. Unless you have a teleportation device hidden somewhere, I’m a ten-hour drive away.”
“What am I going to do about your boss?”
“Beg for mercy. Throw me under the bus. Offer him a blow job.”
“Gabrielle!”
“I’m just doing some brainstorming…calm down, Abby. It will all work out. Hudson is a reasonable guy. He’s under a lot of pressure from his dad. He’s just worked up about this big business deal.”
“What business deal?”
“Some boring finance thing. He’s headed over to France to buy out some mom and pop grocery store. I was supposed to be a translator for him and carry papers around. A monkey could do it. Well, a monkey that’s fluent in French anyway.”
The conversation was interrupted by an angry male voice shouting up the staircase. “I’m serious Gabrielle! I’m leaving without you!”
