by Alix Nichols
“Men,” Amar says, “love to manipulate other men for power.”
“Some do.” Sparrow waggles his eyebrows at me. “Others love to manipulate women for pleasure.”
I do as Manon did, only in reverse order. My first response is to roll my eyes, and then I give him a saucy smile to camouflage my distaste.
Note to self: When Sparrow and I get down to business, nip any conversation he might attempt in the bud.
“The bottom line is that all men are manipulators,” Amar says, his expression suddenly tired. “And the men of the cloth are the worst of them.”
Manon swaps out his empty beer bottle for a full one. “Enough politics! You’re gonna ruin my party.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, touching her arm. “I promise to keep my mouth shut for the rest of the evening and open it only to consume alcohol.”
“That’s my boy.” She points toward the center of the room. “Dance, people.”
Good idea.
Albeit not my favorite activity, dancing is a great way of telling a man what I’m after without having to say a word.
Twenty minutes later, Jack Sparrow and I have migrated to the farthest end of the hallway, away from the crowd. We’re exchanging meaningful glances and smiles while undulating in approximate synchrony.
Soon enough, Sparrow’s hand lands on my backside and gives it an eager squeeze. I begin to scan the space around us to make sure no one familiar is close enough to witness our antics. Before I turn to check behind me, someone’s huge fist connects with Sparrow’s face. He flies backward and hits the wall. Slowly, he slides down to the floor, blood oozing from his nose.
“What the fuck!” He wipes his nose with the back of his hand and stares at his aggressor.
So do I.
It’s Hugo, looking at me with something wild in his eyes. Something I haven’t seen there before or even suspected he was capable of.
Something I cannot bear to watch.
I avert my gaze to the rest of him. He’s dressed in regular clothes, his “costume” composed of a striped scarf and a long aquiline nose mask.
I begin to smile as I figure out he’s Gru from Despicable Me.
Sparrow mutters another curse. He snuffles, whimpers, and rubs his reddened cheek. But instead of standing up to confront Hugo, he maintains his reclining position like a puppy signaling its submission to a bigger dog.
“Why the hell did you hit me, man?” he asks, wiping his hand on his pants.
“You’ll live.” Hugo lets out a deep sigh then turns back to me. “Chloe, are you OK?”
“Yeah. Totally.” I point at Sparrow. “What was that all about?”
“I saw him… He pawed you.”
Yes, he did.
And I let him.
But I doubt he would dare do it again.
“Tell you what, boys,” I shift my gaze from Hugo to Sparrow, trying to sound light. “Why don’t I give you some space so you can… um… sort yourselves out?”
Both men raise their eyebrows, but I don’t wait around to hear their objections. Lifting my chin, I march back to the living room and insinuate myself into the thickest group of dancers.
A few minutes later, Sparrow stumbles into the room, followed by his assailant.
Hugo glances at the discomfited pirate with a mix of pity and residual anger in his eyes.
I still can’t believe he just punched a man for as little as a risqué hand placement. The damsel wasn’t screaming for help or even complaining. But her knight in shining armor didn’t take the time to ascertain that minor detail. He acted on impulse.
And here I was thinking I knew Hugo Bonnet like the back of my hand…
At school, his being bigger than other boys—even the ones older than him—certainly helped keep him out of brawls since nobody dared attack him physically. As to the taunts, he just smiled and waved them off like an annoying fly.
I’ve never seen him hit anyone. Perhaps what just happened was a blip. It means nothing and it certainly changes nothing… aside from foiling my convenient tryst tonight.
I stay away from Hugo for the rest of the evening and sneak out early without saying good-bye to anyone except the hostess. As I stride down rue des Abbesses, I talk to Claire in my mind as I often do when I’m baffled.
It’s a long conversation, like so many real-life ones we’ve had in my teens. Only in my imaginary versions, I do all of the talking and Claire just shakes her head. She doesn’t get a speaking part because I’m really good at anticipating her arguments and preempting her objections. Not that I’ve ever discussed my little curse with her, but we’ve talked about enough things for me to know exactly what Claire would say on this particular matter.
I hail a taxi on the Boulevard de Clichy and climb in while exposing to Claire all the excellent reasons why sleeping with Hugo would be a terrible idea.
Before she opens her mouth to point out there’s no policy or law that prevents an architect from dating a foreman, I remind her of the other reason.
She shakes her head.
Oh, come on, I say, you know my history.
You know what I’ve brought upon those who care for me. There’s no way you’d want this for Hugo. You always liked him and were so vocal about it that Diane turned your opinion of him into a moniker. When he’d call and she’d pick up the phone, you’d shout from the kitchen, “Is it Dad?” and she’d shout back, “No, it’s Chloe’s-friend-Hugo-is-such-a-good-kid.”
Well, that kid doesn’t deserve to die.
You cannot want the lovely Yvette and Hervé Bonnet to lose a child like you and Charles did. You cannot possibly want that.
Claire sighs and shakes her head again. She doesn’t believe me. Her pragmatic mind refuses to come to terms with the truth that I’m bad news. And not just your regular bed-hopping and parent-neglecting nuisance, but a devil-powered, inexorable, and inescapable disaster.
OK, that was a little over the top.
My track record is impressive but not enough to qualify me as the Antichrist.
How bad am I exactly?
Could I admit for a second, just for the sake of the argument, that Claire is right? That there’s a chance I’m no Terminator, but only a young woman who’s had more than her fair share of loss in her childhood and teens? I wish someone could help me figure this out! I wish someone could ascertain if my abandonment, my adoptive parents’ death, Lionel’s passing, and Charles’s stroke were the result of my Midas touch or just a random “series of unfortunate events.”
Is it possible that there’s no curse?
The cab turns into Boulevard de Magenta, and I watch the elegant Haussmannien facades, with their first-floor mezzanines, second-floor balconies, and mansard roofs. Most of the windows are lit with parties still in full swing in some.
We stop at the traffic light on the Boulevard des Italiens. The last movie show of the day must have just ended because crowds of laughing youngsters pour out of the theaters. A black four-wheel drive pulls up next to us. The window is half open, and the big, middle-aged man inside is wailing Brit’s “Baby One More Time” in a shrill falsetto, alternating energetic lateral slides of his head with vigorous back and forth moves. He accompanies this performance with an intricate hand wave while his other hand is picking his teeth.
The man is clearly under the illusion nobody can see or hear him in his cocoon.
Is my Midas touch an illusion, too? Have I invented it to fill a fault line deep inside my soul? Have I been living under a self-deception all these years?
No way.
It’s Claire who lives in denial.
The cab crosses the Pont Royal to the left bank. It’s a dry night, and people—tourists and locals—stroll along the Seine. I try to distract myself by watching them, but Claire won’t let me. She’s stuck in my mind, arms crossed over her chest and expression skeptical.
Damn it, if only I had the guts to have this conversation with her in real life, and not just in my head! I’d make her
see me for who I am, for the evil genius that I am, and she’d stop complaining about my infrequent phone calls and rare visits.
She’d send Diane to live with her uncle in Montreal, forbidding her from setting foot in Paris.
And she’d advise Hugo to stay away from me.
Chapter 11
“You’re sure you’re going to be OK?” Diane asks for the third time.
She stops in the doorway, one foot still inside, and turns around to give me a sympathetic look.
“Of course I will.” I shrug. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know… because you had nightmares all night?”
Crap. “How did you know?”
“You screamed.”
Of course I did. I dreamed of Hugo dying in my arms.
“I dreamed of you taking root in my apartment.” I sigh theatrically. “And I don’t mean this as a metaphor. Your toes morphed into tentaclelike branches, squeezed through the cracks in the floorboards, and wrapped themselves around the concrete structure underneath.”
Diane cocks her head. “Really?”
Double crap. What if she interprets my clowning as a hint that I want her to move out?
“Oh, yeah.” I say, bugging my eyes out at her. “Wouldn’t you scream in my place?”
Diane beams at me. “I love you, too, Chloe.”
Right.
I’m not sure if I’m relieved or alarmed by her incongruous response. Or both. But above all, it’s just so Diane.
“I’ll sleep over at Elorie’s,” she adds in the same breath, as if this was somehow related to her previous remark.
“Wow,” I say. “I didn’t realize you two had grown so close in just a few weeks.”
“She’s fun.” Diane blows me a kiss. “Call me if you’d rather not be alone tonight, all right?”
“Yes, Mommy,” I say in a squeaky nasal voice before she pulls the door shut behind her.
OK, I better get cracking.
I look around my apartment, drawing a mental list of everything that needs to be taken care of on this sunny Sunday afternoon. Diane did the laundry and scrubbed the bathroom yesterday. This leaves me with the dishes, cleaning the floor, balcony gardening, grocery shopping, bills, and three sets of drawings and specifications for potential clients.
Now that we’re done with La Bohème and ready to begin our new project tomorrow, it would be good to line up a few more for next year. Doing this when I started out two years ago would’ve been pointless. No matter how thoroughly I tried to plan things, my inexperience sabotaged my good intentions, and every job I took on ended up needing additional funding and time.
As the dishwasher begins to rumble, I shudder at the embarrassing memories from that first year. And it wasn’t just me who botched things up—everyone I hired sucked just as much as I did. Or more.
The first electrician I worked with liked to disappear “for family reasons” at the most critical time in the project and reappear a week or two later looking suspiciously tanned. The plumber must have faked his license because I knew more about pipe slopes than he did. Neither of them had any inclination toward learning new skills, so I always had to look for additional hands for tasks such as painting and carpentry.
I open the French windows and step out on to my tiny balcony. This is my number one favorite spot in the whole apartment. Because of the population density and height limits, most Parisian balconies look into their neighbors’ interiors. Mine is at the top of the tallest building on the block, and even though I can’t see any landmark monuments from here, I can watch the roofs of the buildings around me.
And, boy, do I love watching the roofs of Paris!
It’s a real shame that the weather makes my urban paradise unfit for use half of the year. But today is blissfully mild, what with the Greenlandic cold wave finally gone. This means I’m going to take a break from Game of Thrones and do some cozy reading outside tonight. It would do me a world of good to wrap a wool throw around my shoulders, sink into a floor cushion, eyeball the roofs, and then lose myself in a book.
My balcony being too small, I had to choose between plants and a table with chairs. I went for plants, figuring I could use floor cushions in lieu of chairs and a tray for a table. The best of both worlds. Come to think of it, that’s what architecture is all about—reconciling function and beauty within a given space.
I kneel down and tend to a sturdy rosemary bush, then to a sprawling jasmine, and finally to a sickly little olive tree. I bought them in spring, and so far they have resisted a balcony garden’s killer duet of heat and wind.
Be strong, my darlings. Winter is coming.
And I should definitely stop watching Game of Thrones for a while.
OK, next up—vacuum cleaning.
As I maneuver the humming implement around my bed, I realize it was exactly a year ago that a fellow architect referred René to me. Oh, the joy of finally working with a real professional! A few weeks later, Hugo reentered my life, and the three of us soon became a well-oiled machine. We’re so efficient at what we do that I’ve begun to dream about the next step—evolving from a design-build firm into a “fix and flip” developer a few years down the road.
Which brings me face to face with the question I’ve been dodging since Thursday night.
Can Hugo and I continue as before?
After the first incident and Hugo’s relaxed attitude the following morning, I thought we could. I really thought we’d just sweep it all under the carpet and keep pretending it hadn’t happened for as long as it would take us to believe our own lie.
But then Hugo slipped within twenty-four hours of the initial transgression. We slipped. I may not have been the mastermind, but I sure did more than freeze up when he touched me. What was my role, exactly? Hmm… You could say I was an accomplice. You could even say I was an accessory, all too happy to take part in the crime.
But let’s stick to the facts. They’re pretty straightforward, underneath the fluff. He wants me. I want him. It can’t happen. I can’t have an affair with Hugo and then end it as I’ve done with other men.
And why’s that, Chloe?
I turn off the vacuum cleaner and sit down, letting the answer float into my conscious mind and drape itself in words and sentences.
If we have sex, he might fall in love with me and suffer the wrath of the merciless gods. And I can’t let it happen for a very simple, very selfish reason.
I love him.
I’ve loved him for a year now, since he showed up in Paris. No, that’s not true. I loved him before—in high school or perhaps even since the day I plonked myself on the chair next to his in sixth grade.
It’s always been him, only him.
So there, the secret I’ve kept so well from my classmates, friends, family, Hugo, and even myself, is finally out. The Devil’s spawn Chloe Germain has an incurable crush on all-around good guy Hugo Bonnet.
This is bad.
And there’s nothing I can do to fix it.
My head drops to my chest, and I struggle with the temptation to bang it on the coffee table. Team Loki, my foot.
So where do I go from here?
With a ragged sigh that leaves me drained, I grab my backpack and head out to shop for groceries. But more than milk and eggs, my mind needs a distraction—a reprieve from its fruitless efforts. As I trudge back home, my backpack full and my head empty, I spot a familiar shape behind a tree across from the entrance to my building. It’s Fabien. When I backtrack to take a better look, there’s no one.
I step into the foyer and close the door behind me.
The next ten minutes are dedicated to pondering which alternative is worse—Fabien stalking me or me going nuts and imagining things like Alcinda’s husband. It’s not just the apparitions. I’ve been finding unsealed envelopes in my mail and getting obscene phone calls from an unknown number. A couple of days ago, I freaked out because someone left a wilted red rose on my doorstep.
I wonder if it was Fabie
n’s doing or my wacky neighbor’s idea of a Halloween joke.
These thoughts are far from pleasant, but I prefer mulling over my sanity to thinking about the situation with Hugo.
My door buzzer rings.
I freeze for a moment, before telling myself that at least this solves one of my dilemmas. Fabien is stalking me; I’m not being paranoid. And instead of standing here, I should answer the call and tell the idiot to stop what he’s doing or else I’ll report him to the police.
I rush to the door and pick up the receiver.
A deep, velvety bonjorn hits the pit of my stomach before my brain gets a chance to process the Provençal greeting.
The man at the other end of the intercom isn’t Fabien.
It’s Hugo.
Chapter 12
“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” Hugo says.
I summon all the cool I’m capable of. “That depends.”
“I need to talk to you about something.” He pauses before adding, “Something important.”
I buzz him in.
This conversation needs to happen. It may ruin our friendship and, eventually, our professional relationship, too, but there’s no avoiding it. After the events in the basement of La Bohème and at Manon’s party, the cat is out of the bag, meowing its head off, and showing no intention of stopping.
I need to deal with this.
As soon as he steps in, Hugo hands me a glossy white box tied up with a red ribbon.
“You’re trying to bribe me,” I say, taking the box.
I know what’s inside without having to open it—my favorite macarons.
“This isn’t a bribe,” he says. “It’s an apology.”
I cock my head. “For groping me or for maiming my dance partner?”
“I didn’t maim him,” he protests.
“But you could have, potentially.” I head to the kitchen, waving to him to follow me. “Well, at least you aren’t denying the first accusation.”
“I am.”
I spin around. “Ah bon?”
He nods.
“OK.” I narrow my eyes. “Then what are you apologizing for?”
