OUR SECRET BABY

by Paula Cox

  “Anthony!” Maya cries, all smiles. She manages just by saying his name to make Anthony seem like the most unexpected and wonderful surprise she could have ever imagined. But that’s her talent— putting on voices and faces just like a trained actress. But she’s had a lifetime of practice and deceiving other people. Like with Theo, when she wanted her way but knew she wouldn’t get it unless she could apply herself—the tone of her voice and the smiles or frowns of her lips. Like a bribe, the curve of the lips or the blink of mascaraed eyelid would add extra value, like another ten or twenty-dollar-bill handed over to the traffic cop. “How are you?”

  “Maya Butler?” Anthony matches her tone to the pitch. “It’s been ages!”

  “Way too long—I know.” She smiles and begins bit by bit to explain the situation. Not the real situation. Never the real situation, but the situation as designated by her needs. There’s been a fight. She improvises on the spot: a nasty fight.

  “Yes, with Quinn… And Daddy too,” she says a little quieter.

  The quiet becomes a prolonged silence. While she scrubs her bare feet up and down the cheap sheets of her motel bed, she lets Anthony color in the silence like a toddler with a new box of crayons. The enormity of the argument, her hurt feelings, and the devastation left by the exchange of words. She doesn’t have to make up any of it. By the silence itself, Anthony assumes the worst. Assuming the worst, he becomes immediately sympathetic. Does she need a place to stay? Something to eat? A listening ear? Someone just to share the silence? He’s already making up the room. Of course, he and his boyfriend will sleep on the couch; she doesn’t need to say anything (and she doesn’t). And does she need a ride? If she just says the word he’ll be there as soon as he can.

  “No, no.” Maya tries to convey a blush through the phone. “I can call a cab.”

  Anthony tries to insist, but she insists harder. She tells him she’s still unpacked in a motel and needs time to collect herself, which is partially true, at least. She knows that the most convincing lies have, as their nucleus, a very simple truth around which is constructed all the other details of the lie.

  She thanks Anthony as graciously as she can, careful not to make him think he’s done too much for her in case she needs to worm something else out of him later and hangs up. With a place to go and the first part of her plan complete, she needs to begin working on the second: moving far, far away.

  It’s here that she runs into her first pitfall: she’s never traveled before. Around town, sure. A few times to Italy with her father and his team, but she felt weird calling that traveling. She’d gotten into the car when they told her to, then gotten onto the plane, then, seven hours later, gotten into another car three thousand miles away from the first car. And then let herself be driven around for the next ten days to drink different regional wines and take Snapchats of the predictably stunning and repetitive scenery.

  She’s never done any of it by herself. The very idea of calling all those people and organizing her way frightens and excites her. Maybe Anthony could help her when she went to his apartment? No—she throws the idea away quickly. She doesn’t want anyone to know she was planning on going away, not even her closest friends. It’s not that she doesn’t trust them. She’s just called a guy begging for a room, and she certainly wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t think it was a good idea. Rather, she’s realizing how things would be from now on. Even if she’s slow to grasp everything, she knows the basic rundown of things. After Anthony’s house, in three days, five days, a week or two—there’d be nothing else. Just herself: her skills and her wits.

  She’s already determined that she won’t be around when the lawyers read off her father’s will. Even if by some miracle they manage to find her she decides that she will grandly reject the money, the estates, the workforce: all of it. There’s no way she’s going to let herself be controlled by her father beyond his grave. What’s the point in living if you’ve got to do it under a thumb? Worse, a dead thumb.

  But they won’t find her. She’s going to dye her hair. Apple red, she thinks and quickly rejects it. Too conspicuous. Maybe a darker blonde. Maybe dark brown. Could she pass as a brunette? It’ll take some practice, like learning another language. She’s been blonde her entire life.

  She’ll need a job, too. Anthony will lend her some money: how much will depend on how good of a show she can put on for him, though she’s confident her situation by itself will guarantee her at least a few thousand. It’s not like it’s anything to him. He’s a successful designer, and his boyfriend is an accountant. They’ve got more money than they know how to spend.

  What kinds of jobs? Nothing manual. Maybe a waitress at a fancy restaurant. Did she need experience for that? Or a barista, if worse came to worse. She shudders thinking about the worst and quickly decides that her worst was still better than grinding coffee beans. Maybe Anthony could help her find something? But that certainly wouldn’t work if she were going to get out of the city. No. Definitely not. She needs to pick a place and work on getting there, and only after she’s gotten there, find out what she will do. New York. But it’s so big. And dirty.

  She throws the idea out: New York is too obvious, anyway, and she needs to find some place where she can escape to, not where she can get totally lost. Maybe Vermont. It’s beautiful in the winter. She could hole up in a tiny cabin and learn to cook and make cider. She might even work at a cider press. Come spring she could go south and find something else. She might even find a designer she could help make designs for, if only he shows her how it’s done. They’ll see how good she is. How quick a learner. And with no prior experience!

  “Where did you say you were from again?” she imagines them asking. She’ll throw her hand aside, say the first thing that pops into her head. You wouldn’t know it. It’s tiny-tiny. Not on any map I’ve ever seen.

  “Well, this is one of the finest first designs I’ve ever seen. Perhaps the finest. Reminds me of my own work, when I was your age.”

  A whole new life of possibilities spreads itself out on the ceiling of Maya’s hotel room. Her heart begins to beat quicker and quicker with all the excitement of the promise of a new life, soon to be lived. Freedom, soon to be had. It’s all so near to her, so much within her grasp that she can barely control herself. She doesn’t know what to do and forgets all about the fact that she’s left the Maserati out in the parking lot or that she has a father, still very much alive, that she hasn’t eliminated yet.

  Her feet have shuffled the bedspread into a knot. She needs to stand up and walk around a bit. Maybe take a walk outside in the cold to cool herself down. She doesn’t mind if it’s freezing or if the wind is howling like a train. She can decide on what job she’ll take when she’s in Vermont after she’s gone to Anthony’s house. For now, it’s best to clear her mind of all distractions and focus on what she has to do. She imagines Sunrise Apartments and all the hours she’s dreamt of having a place of her own. A life of her own.

  All the twisting on the bed has roughed up her hair. She digs out a comb and some essentials from her wash bag and goes into the bathroom to retouch her makeup. If it were summer, she’d dye her hair a darker shade of blonde, but a winter in Vermont called for darker colors. Besides, her dark skin would pair well with brunette. And she’ll wear a lot of smoky eyeliner. And put nothing in her ears. And do absurd things, like wear plaid shirts and tight jeans so that no one will suspect anything. And she’ll—

  She stops and turns towards the door. She waits, counting off the seconds in her head.

  Six. Seven.

  Then she hears it—another knock. It’s not a polite, inviting rap on the door, but a whole fist going thump thump thump.

  The manager? she thinks, unsure of exactly what kinds of late-night protocol there is at a Motel Six.

  She waits for the next series of knocks to come thumping in, and then decides it’s better safe than sorry. Maybe it’s Quinn. She begins planning the words she’s going to use to shut him do
wn even while she’s putting down her comb and putting on her look of disgust. Then and only then does she open the door for her late-night visitors.

  Chapter 25

  It’s not the manager. It’s not the lobby boy or the maid or the guy in charge of bringing up roll-aways to people who call the front desk.

  Three large, unsmiling men in black coats shove their way into the room and immediately begin tearing through the suitcase she’s left on her bed. Toiletries, panties, shirts, coats, socks and more socks are all methodically ripped out and thrown to side with no pattern or reason.

  Maya stands there not in shock or horror but in blank, unquestioning confusion. The men seem so sure of what they’re doing and what they’re looking for it doesn’t even occur to her to say anything. Part of her even thinks she must have made a mistake. Were these men answering a call she’d put in earlier and then forgotten about? Were they her father’s men? But how had he found out where she was?

  With the contents of her bag scattered all over the room, one of the men picks the bag up and turns it upside-down, shaking out anything else, like the way kids picked on by bullies in animated shows are shaken for their lunch money.

  The bag is hurled across the room, narrowly missing the bulky, pre-DVD era TV but upsetting a vase of plastic flowers.

  “No weapons,” one of them says.

  Is he talking to the other two who just performed the search? she wonders. That doesn’t make any sense. They’ve already seen everything.

  “Then we won’t have any problems,” a fourth man says, entering the room. “Good thing you didn’t break that TV. What would we have done then?”

  The man is tall and extremely wiry. His gray t-shirt, so thin Maya swears it’s a girl’s cut, shows off his small, toned muscles beneath his peacoat. The buckles of his boots clank as he walks into the room, trailing dirty parking lot snow. He dusts off the white brush from the lapels of his coat and turns his pretty, lightly bearded face to Maya. Her heart, racing from the excitement of the last twenty minutes, bursting with the appearance of the three large men, now stops utterly when she sees who her caller is.

  “Sorry about the rug.” The man smiles. He has a trace of an Irish accent, worn down by years of living in a foreign country.

  Maya says the first thing that pops into her head, which is, “fucking hell.” She recognized the guy the moment he entered her room, but awareness only came later, and response later still. She recognizes him because the guy who’s just waltzed in on a snow midnight is Oren Kroll, Mattias Kroll’s son. Her ex-boyfriend, and bona fide psychopath.

  “Do you need some water?” Oren asks. “Water? Coke? Fanta? Something stronger, maybe?”

  “What the fuck,” Maya says, still not over the shock of seeing this man, of all men, in her room. “What do you think you’re doing? What—why the fuck are you here?”

  Oren ignores her. He walks slowly and with a pronounced limp over to the TV set where he opens one of the bottom cupboards and locates the VHS player. He fishes a battered tape from his coat pocket and slips it inside.

  “We’ve got vodka, just a little bit. That’s all for the stronger stuff. I’m going to warn you right now, you really might want it in a second, and this is the only time I’m offering, so—” He turns away from the TV and spreads his hands, giving his arms and coat the look of bat wings. “I am at your disposal, my angel.”

  His handsome face is tired and ragged, his eyes rimmed by a lack of sleep or late-night reading. It’s still a beautiful face, she finds herself thinking. Beautiful, not handsome. Airy and graceful, like his movements. Passionate, a little melancholy like what she’d imagine a poet’s to look like. Flawless, maybe even a little tortured, like some great, passionate exclamation was beating against the walls of his expression trying to soak through. In a second, she remembers all the reasons she gave her teenage heart to this beautiful man.

  And no sooner than this does she also remember why she claimed her heart back, years later. Because like the bright rings on a poisonous snake, everything about his appearance was meant to entrap, mystify, and conceal the danger that lurked underneath. Because she’d learned that the way he moved and held himself, like he was suspended in air, like he was flying, was not graceful and balletic, but pointed and cruel. Because she’d learned that the soft lilt of the accent she’d adored when she first heard it was the pied piper’s notes luring her to where she knew she shouldn’t go. Because the smart, melancholy expression on his face was meant to ensnare her - body and soul. Because Oren Kroll was a psychopath.

  “Kirill’t you dare call me that.” Maya finds the strength to make her voice sound suitably threatening. “I’m not your angel.”

  Oren looks at her and parts his lips gently like there was something there he was begging to tell her. Some revelation—a fifth gospel, a truth to equal the wisest deductions of Socrates; the sincerest maxims of Marcus Aurelius—and he could share it with her and only her.

  “My bodyguard is outside,” she went on, ignoring the trap of his mouth. “Get the fuck out, or in five minutes you’ll have a bullet in your brain.”

  “Your bodyguard isn’t here with you,” Oren replies calmly. “Kirill’t think I don’t know because, my angel, I know all about that. I put a tail on you, case you were wondering. My little kitty-cat.” He smiles, boyishly, and plops down on the bed. The three men go to the bathroom door, window, and front door and stand guard like statues. Oren ignores them, patting the side of the bed and motioning for Maya to come and join him.

  “You think this is funny?” she says, a little uncomfortable. None of her words or her threats has had any power, and she has to make herself sound more strong and confident than she’s really feeling. Truth be told: she’s afraid of this man and his boyish, angelic charm. “You know what I can have done to you?”

  “Have my eyes pulled out? String me up by my guts? Burn my liver and smash my testicles?” Oren laughs good-naturedly. It’s not at all nervous. It’s not even creepy, which is exactly what makes it so creepy. “Grab a seat before the house fills up. There’s something I want to show you.”

  Maya tries to think up another protest but the man standing at the bathroom door gives her back a shove, and she tumbles/lunges for the bed. Oren smiles and winks. He looks, she thinks, scooting herself as far away from him as she can, a little like Titanic-age Leonardo DiCaprio.

  “Am I a bat, or a tiger?” Oren grins. His white teeth glisten.

  “What?”

  “I don’t bite, you know. And I don’t have the plague. And I don’t have cooties. You can sit next to me.”

  “Like hell I will.”

  He laughs again. “Suit yourself. Sure you don’t want that vodka? Last offer.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Oren shrugs, picks up the remote control and presses the big red button that turns the TV on. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t care about you,” he’s still talking. “God knows I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care about you.”

  Maya’s forehead shines with beading sweat. Her hands tremble. Her breathing, although she tries to keep herself calm, she’s afraid will permanently expand her ribcage.

  Oren presses a few more buttons. The TV flashes to a VHS loading screen: the kind of screen Maya hasn’t seen since she was a kid watching Disney movies. The screen is a paste of white and gray static. Then, suddenly, all goes dark and quiet: the screen shows a black room, and in the center, a shining yellow light illuminating a figure, old and stooped. He’s bent unnaturally in a wooden chair, and his head hangs low, his chin buried in his upper chest.

  It takes her another moment to work out all the details through the grimy tape and through its dense, blurred yellow light. When she does, she lets out a little gasp. The figure is Mattias Kroll.

  “We took this a few hours ago,” Oren explains. He takes out a Snickers bar from his coat pocket and, after unwrapping it, begins to munch slowly. “There was a bit of an altercation. Regrettable, but unavoidable.
”

  The camera zooms in closer, revealing Mattias Kroll, offering a better view of the damage. His white shirt is covered with dirt and sweat. A thin trail of blood runs from his nose down the front of his chest. His gray hair is tangled, matted, and dirty. Someone off-camera says his name and Mattias’s head turns up slowly like it was being lifted by a crane. The cheeks are mottled with bruises. His lips and eyes are rimmed with black and red from punches.

  “What have you done?” Maya asks softly.

  “Given the old man what he deserved is what,” Oren says, taking another bite. “For some reason, he and your father and everyone else who’s been working with them must have thought I wasn’t around to know what’s been going on. What they’ve been planning. Strange that the men who have all their little birdies twittering about don’t recognize it when a birdie from another nest swoops in to take a look at things.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Am I being vague?” Oren frowns. “Forgive me, my angel. Father always told me to speak clearer. The basic fact of the matter is that ever since we talked all those months ago and even before that, I’ve been worrying myself sick about you. I hate being just cut out of someone’s life like that, like a tumor. It’s unfair and cruel. You broke my heart. And I couldn’t just let you go, so I put a few of my men on the case just to keep tabs. Maybe you’ve seen them around the house?”