by Kim Fay
Taking a pipe from the top desk drawer, Roger asked, “This is your offer?”
Irene laughed lightly, intent on hiding how intimidated she was. “No, this is my prelude.”
“It’s interesting, I must admit.”
“I want this to be worthwhile for you. I can give you fifty thousand dollars.”
“That’s quite a sum—a good starting point. Come in. Have a seat.”
Irene started forward, but Simone grabbed her wrist. “No.”
Roger tamped a plug of tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. “That is all you have to say? No?” He stepped around his desk. “This generous lady is offering to buy you from me, and you have nothing to say about it?”
Irene remained silent. She did not want to antagonize Roger. She wanted to know what Simone would say, but Simone said nothing.
Roger asked Irene, “Do you really think she is worth fifty thousand dollars?”
Simone whispered, “Stop it.”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to give me orders. Tell me, Irene. That is your name, yes? Irene Blum of the Brooke Museum in Seattle? Are you willing to include a pig in the deal?” The edge of his voice grew sharp, cutting through the stupefying heat of the room. “That’s how we barter out here in the Chinese countryside.”
Irene retrieved a cigarette from her pocket. Steeling herself, she walked up to Roger until she was no more than a few feet away. She forced herself to stand close to him and keep her hands steady as she held out the cigarette, giving him no choice but to light it. “So,” she said, as an idea began to take shape, “it’s true what they are saying about you.”
Roger was leaning against the desk. He could not move away without pushing past her. “What do you mean?”
“You’re becoming a liability.”
“What are you talking about?” He glanced at Simone.
Irene’s hand started to shake, and she lowered the cigarette to her side. She studied Simone, whose reaction she could not read. She took a few steps back, enough to claim a space of her own, hoping he could not tell from the heat in her face how much she feared him. “I’ve been asking about you around the city.”
Roger said, “Do you think I am concerned with what the government has to say about me?”
Irene’s mind was a machine, shuffling through every scrap she had acquired since coming to Shanghai. “I’m not talking about the government. I’m talking about people like Voitinsky.”
Grigori Voitinsky was the Comintern adviser responsible for the formation of the Communist party in China. The hush that followed Irene’s mention of his name was impenetrable. She was not sure who was more startled, Roger or Simone. Firmly she held Roger’s gaze. She refused to break the silence.
“I’m curious,” he said, finally. “How would you know what Voitinsky is saying about me?”
It was as if she had reached a clearing within the dense forest of her thoughts, an uncluttered expanse in which the lies simply waited for their turn to be told. “A good friend of mine, Marc Rafferty. Do you know him? An information man.”
Roger’s expression was taut. “The best. Works for Henry Simms. Of course, yes, of course. The Brooke Museum. Simms. You would know Rafferty.”
Irene said, “Your stunt on the ship to Shanghai was noted, and not favorably. Trying to throw your wife overboard. You’re irrational. Everyone knows you killed the baby.”
Roger glared at Simone.
“Irene,” Simone said, faltering, “what are you—?”
“She didn’t tell me,” Irene said. “She didn’t have to.”
“So Voitinsky is talking about me.”
“He’s worried about you, about both of you. Worried about what you might drive Simone to do. What revenge she might take. She could do quite a bit of harm, considering her involvement with Borodin’s arms shipments.” Irene drew on her cigarette. Her hand was no longer trembling. Roger appeared to be mulling what she was telling him. Perhaps these were not lies. Perhaps—inadvertently, instinctively—she had homed in on the truth. “But what if you send her away?”
“Why would I do that?”
“You could send her home to rest for a while. To recuperate. In the company of bodyguards, whom you will choose and I will pay for. It would be seen as more than a gesture of kindness on your part. It will mean that you put the cause above your personal feelings. This is what concerns Voitinsky the most.”
Roger looked Irene over with disdain. “She won’t come back.”
“I wouldn’t if I were her.”
“You’re smarter than I expected you to be.” Roger began walking toward Irene. “But you’re ignorant at the same time. Do you know how easy it will be for me to check on your story?”
“Be my guest.”
“I do admire your audacity.”
“The thing is,” Irene said, “we are going whether you like it or not. You can benefit—or not. But if you kill her, you will take the blame. You won’t have any choice.”
He came closer still. “How is that?”
“I can’t give away all of my secrets.”
Roger was at Irene’s side, standing so near that she could smell the oily pomade that slicked his hair. Only now did she see the leather holster wrapped around his belt. He was holding the walnut grip of a Colt single-action revolver. An American cavalry gun. A gun Irene had come across in more than one collection of firearms over the years. “Courtesy of Borodin, with my wife’s assistance,” Roger said. He slid the cold steel barrel down the length of Irene’s cheek. “And if I kill you? I can do it right now, bury you here, and no one will ever know. Do you understand me?”
Winter entered the room. Frost coated her throat. She could not speak.
He shifted the revolver, pressing its tip into her cheekbone. “Do you still want me to let my wife go to Cambodia with you?”
The air was phosphorescent. Irene saw darts of light, nothing more. “Yes.” Her voice was almost nonexistent.
“This is what is called point-blank range. At least you will feel no pain.”
“Let her go,” Simone whispered. “Please, Roger.” She had made her way to the desk and was propped against it, using it for support. “I will beg you if that’s what you want.”
“How does it feel?” Roger asked Irene. “To have your life in my wife’s hands? If I were you, I would be uncomfortable with such a situation.”
Simone’s weakness was evident in her every aspect, from her pale skin to her scrawny arms crossed tightly over her chest. But when she spoke, her words were as hard as iron. Holding her gaze steady on the gun in her husband’s hand, she said, “Irene, move away from him. Slowly. Take the car and go.”
“I can’t leave—”
“You can. Please, do what I ask.”
Irene took one step backward, certain that Roger would grab her, but for reasons she could not begin to fathom, he did not move. Slowly, slowly, her face slipped away from the gun. She took another step, and another, until she bumped against the door. Then she was outside on the porch, and the door was kicked shut behind her. The kerosene lamp had expired, and she shook as she felt her way down the steps, inching toward the car.
Cicadas seethed in the night. Her head dropped between her knees, and her breath came in rolling heaves, choking her until she was vomiting in the grass. With one hand she pulled her hair away from her face, and with the other she gripped the side of the car, as if it could keep the world from spinning. Finally, she stood up. She went back to the house, because she had no choice. She paused at the window beside the door. The curtain was loose, and through the gap she could see that Roger had shoved Simone against the wall. His hand cupped her chin, his fingers digging deep into the bruise. They were arguing, both of them talking fast and furiously at the same time. Irene could not make out what they were saying. The gun was on the desk. Could she get to it fast enough? And even if she could, she had never shot a gun before. She stepped away from the window, and as she pushed at the door, Simone screa
med. Irene saw Roger fall backward, his hand clutching his throat. “You bitch!” he shouted, the words gargled.
“Run! Run, Irene, run!” Simone tripped over Roger, who was up on his hands and knees. He grabbed for the hem of her skirt, but the lace was delicate, and as she kicked out at him, it tore away.
Irene was already in the car with the motor running when she looked back and saw Simone’s silhouette fastened into the brightness of the doorway. Then it pulled away, dissolving as she stumbled down the steps. She ran to the passenger side and climbed in, shouting, “Go!”
Soft earth spun from the tires, and Irene cursed the rain-soaked ground, her entire body tense as she put the car into reverse, rocking it backward, then pitching it forward, and then back and forth again until it lurched past the porch. She saw Roger in front of the car at the same instant she felt the collision. She stomped on the brake pedal. The clutch shuddered. The car jerked, and she was thrown against the steering wheel. The engine sputtered out.
“You hit him.” Simone gasped. The shoulder of her blouse was dark with blood. She jumped out of the car and hurried around the hood, kneeling, disappearing from view.
Irene caught a flash on the floorboard in front of the passenger seat. She reached for the brass letter opener from Roger’s desk. It was smeared with blood. She climbed out of the car.
In front of her, Roger lay on his side, with one arm flung out, as if he had attempted to stop the car from smashing into him. The headlights picked out the wire of his eyeglasses, curving down behind his ear. His face was the color of tallow. She could not see where Simone had stabbed him, there was so much blood running down his neck.
Irene looked until she found Simone on her haunches, balanced in the blurred space that separated the headlights from the darkness beyond. The grasses parted as Simone leaned forward, moving toward Roger on her hands and knees. She crawled cautiously around him as if she had been taken in by his tricks one too many times. She reached out for his face, but her hand dropped and she stroked the ground inches beyond where his cheek pressed against the damp earth.
“Is he alive?” Irene asked.
Simone held her fingers over his open mouth. They hovered there, splayed, searching for the suggestion of life. “There’s a hospital near the railway station,” she whispered. “It’s run by Swiss nuns. They’re discreet. It’s where I stayed after I lost the baby.”
The weary ghost of a far-off breeze crept around the car. It might have foreshadowed relief, but Irene had been in Shanghai long enough to know that the subtle shift in temperature was a promise that would not be kept. “What will we tell them?”
“He was already wounded,” Simone said, sounding uncertain. “We didn’t see him on the ground when you hit him with the car. It was an accident. We need to hurry. The hospital is half an hour away.” She stood. Dew left dark stains on her skirt. “I keep a blanket in the trunk. We can use it to carry him.” Focused on her plan, she ran behind the car.
Crouching beside Roger, Irene lifted his wrist. She pressed her fingers into his skin, seeking a rhythm in the limp tendons, clinging to him as if he had thrown his arm out to save her from drowning in a cold, dark sea. Did she want Roger Merlin to live? No, she did not. But that was entirely different from wanting him to die.
She could not find a pulse.
Chapter 7
The Other Side
The night was still dark. It felt as if it had been dark for years, as if the sun was never going to rise again. Using a candle, Irene found an aluminum pail and the pump outside the back door. She heated water on the stove in the small kitchen area, then dipped her dirty hands into the water and scrubbed them with a rag as hard as she could. When she finished, she gave the cloth to Simone, but Simone let it drop to the floor and held out her hands like a child. Irene took one in her own. It was cold and unyielding. She thought of Roger lying in the grass. Retrieving the letter opener from her pocket, she used it to scrape the blood from beneath Simone’s fingernails, while Simone’s tears dropped silently into the cooling water.
——
Irene was lying on a cot at the back of the bungalow. She was not awake, nor was she asleep, but somehow she had managed to detach herself from consciousness. She did not know how long she had been drifting or where she had gone, but she wanted to stay there, as far away as she could get from the events of the night. She tried to remain in this suspended place but was drawn out by the smell of coffee, her body betraying her as her stomach growled with craving. She stood. Her neck and back were sore from tension. Stretching, she walked to the coal stove, where a percolator simmered. She poured a cup of coffee and looked around the curtained room, at Roger’s desk, at the loose pages of his memoir. His life’s story interrupted, brought to an end in a way he could not have conceived. The coffee was gritty and too strong, but she relished it.
She found Simone sitting on the top step of the porch. The bungalow faced an unkempt field that was flanked by tall, leafy trees. The sky was hazy with morning mist, as the muffled rim of sunrise emerged over the horizon. Although Simone was gazing toward the front of the car, where Roger still lay, his body was not visible in the tall, sodden grass.
Irene wanted to offer solace, but she could think of nothing to say that would be of comfort. She could not imagine how Simone must feel, terrorized by her husband for so many years, and now faced with this. Finally, she asked, “Were you able to sleep?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
Irene sat down. “I understand.”
“What do we do now?”
“We have to leave Shanghai.”
“It will be too suspicious if I go away the day after he dies.” Simone sounded so defeated. Was it because Roger was dead, or because she was afraid that now she would never get back to Cambodia?
“Not if no one knows,” Irene said.
Simone fingered the torn hem of her skirt. “We’re going to have to leave him out here, aren’t we?”
The mist was dissolving, and the morning began to brighten. Irene appraised Simone’s haggard expression and was sure that her own face was equally revealing. Even if they changed out of their muddy clothes and made themselves presentable, it did not seem that they could disguise their role in Roger’s death. She said, “If we go to the police, there will be questioning. You have every reason to want him dead. Good reasons, but that won’t matter. You’ll be one of the top suspects. There could be a trial, and you know what Shanghai is like. The government will take great pleasure in tormenting you. Roger’s put you through enough already. Besides, we don’t have time for all that. If we leave him here, it could take days, even weeks for him to be found.”
“Still, to buy a ticket to Cambodia on the day after he disappears.”
Irene was surprised by how logical Simone was being. Just as she was surprised by how clearheaded she felt. “I already bought two tickets for the Lumière. It’s leaving tomorrow.”
“How could you have known?”
“I didn’t. I bought them right when I arrived here. The Lumière was the first ship to Saigon I could book passage on.” Finishing off the thick, bracing remains of her coffee, Irene said, “We’re going to need an alibi for where we’ve been all night. For why I’m with you and why we’re going to Saigon. Anne will help us. Come on, we have to get out of here.”
Simone rose to her feet. She had aged a decade overnight. “Start the car,” she said. “I just need a minute.” When she emerged from the bungalow a few moments later, she was carrying a folder. Irene did not have to ask what it contained. She only hoped Simone would be smart enough to burn Roger’s memoir before they left Shanghai.
“She’s sleeping,” Anne said, returning a syringe to a leather medical case.
“What did you give her?” Irene asked.
“Morphine.”
“Isn’t that excessive?”
“She’s built up a tolerance to most everything else. Would you like something, darling? Song Yi brought back th
e loveliest hashish from Peshawar.” Anne glanced at her jade opium kit set out on the bookshelf among her collection of Qingbai porcelains. “Or I can make you a pipe?”
Irene was too afraid of where a drug might take her right now. Closer, rather than far enough away. “No, thank you.”
“How about some tea then?” Anne asked.
“Please.” Despite the bristling heat of the day, Irene was freezing. She had been cold from the moment, standing in Anne’s doorway, that she’d said the words aloud: “Roger is dead.” Anne had simply nodded, as if this was to be expected, and Simone had started crying again. Now, having cleaned up in Anne’s bathroom and put on a pair of her pajamas, Irene was suddenly aware of the chill crystallizing in her limbs, as it had when Roger pressed the gun to her cheek. She needed air. Sweltering, thawing air. She walked out to the balcony, followed by the green scent of boiling tea. Anne brought a steaming cup, wound in a napkin, and set the warm bundle on the railing.
“I’m having the hardest time walking back through this,” Irene said, keeping her voice low so as not to wake Simone, even though she was asleep in the bedroom with the door closed. “Not just last night but these past days in Shanghai, the last months in Seattle, I’m trying to get back, do you understand, before I lost my job, before my father died. There’s a path, there must be a path from here to there, but I can’t find it. I can’t make the connections.” She covered her face with her hands, as if doing so could block out the vision of what had happened. “He held a gun to my head.”
“I know you want to make sense of this,” Anne said, “but you can’t.”
The city was achingly quiet, with the soup and noodle vendors in the lanes below idle between the busy breakfast and lunch hours. Overhead, the damp sky hung low and unpolished. “I should feel awful about what we did to him,” Irene said, “but I don’t. What kind of person does that make me?”
