Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1)

by Ani Keating

  “No.”

  I think back through my experiences with him and suddenly, it all clicks. “You have photographic memory, don’t you?”

  He tilts his head side to side. “Not exactly.”

  For a moment, it looks like he is not going to say more but then he frowns as he makes a decision. He runs his hand over the span of a shelf, looking at me.

  “I have a version of eidetic memory, Elisa.”

  What? “Are you serious? I thought eidetic memory was a myth,” I manage, remembering my cognitive psychology professor griping that people overuse the term total recall.

  “True eidetic memory may well be a myth. Memory is not fully understood. That’s why I say I have a version of it.” He smiles kindly. He has obviously met skepticism before.

  “Will you explain it to me? How does it work?” I marvel, wondering if he will let me scan his skull with Reed’s MRI machine so I can look inside.

  “Well, it’s broader than photographic memory. I don’t remember only what I read and see, but also what I hear, taste, experience, feel—the full gamut of perception. Once I perceive something, every time I think of it, I will re-experience the same feelings and reactions with perfect clarity. It doesn’t apply just to emotional experiences, but also to mundane ones.” He chuckles, no doubt because my jaw has left and is running to the neuroscience section.

  “This is how you knew I was the woman in the painting and Javier was the painter! You remembered even my throat and his paint stains, didn’t you?”

  He smiles. “Yes. Those are the obvious parts. Sight. Sound. Centifolia’s smell. It’s why I can play the piano without looking. Why I can sound just like you or even Fleming.” He switches to perfect Mancunian accent. “Why I take no pictures or notes.”

  “What about the nonobvious parts? Will you show me some more, please?” I beg shamelessly with a spawning terror that I just lost any hope of ever wanting another man.

  He chuckles and takes my hand, heading back to the Purple Room. Fleming is nowhere in sight. “Here’s an example you may know. You said you arrived here on August 24, 2011.”

  “Yes,” I breathe, expecting everything from the sound of a Boeing triple-seven coming from his mouth to more accents from British Airways.

  “Well, I remember vividly what I did that day.” He winds deeper into the maze. “It was seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit. I had an omelet and four slices of bacon for breakfast, grilled wild salmon for lunch at Ringside, which cost twenty-eight dollars, and spaghetti with meatballs for dinner. I made fourteen business calls, sent one hundred and seventeen emails and read the paper where I learned that the summer Olympics ended in China and Judge Kaplan of Oregon District Court ruled against a local company on logging violations.” He turns on Aisle 422 and reaches on shelf sixteen for a law textbook.

  “Page one twenty-seven, paragraph three from the bottom.” He hands it to me.

  I skim the book and there it is! Judge Kaplan’s opinion, verbatim. I think I just had an orgasm. With my brain.

  “Bloody hell! You’re absolutely right! That day I bought the paper when I landed, and I’ve read it so many times over the years. I remember the news about the summer Olympics except you probably only read it once.” I resolve to dig the paper out of my closet later and read it again.

  “That’s why I picked that date. I thought it would stick out for you. And of course, you already know that’s the day I bought my house. I must have known you were coming.”

  He is not trying to be romantic. He reports this in his usual factual way. But it’s the most intimate confession of his feelings he has made. I can’t resist. I throw my arms around his neck, reaching for his lips like they might soothe this cerebral fire. But they only fuel it further.

  He laughs. “Does my place turn you on?”

  “No, you turn me on.”

  “Elisa, I think you have a fetish for men with strange brains.”

  “Yes, I really think I do.”

  “By all means, be my guest.” He brings my lips back to his but now I’m alert again. I want to know more. There is something about what he said that is hinting at the curse behind the blessing.

  “You said you also remember every emotion?”

  I’ve hit something because the tectonic plates shift in his eyes. Now I realize the secret behind those eyes. They zoom and absorb and shift because he is living in many places and times all at once.

  “Yes, I remember emotion.” His words are guarded, his voice harder. I know I have minutes, maybe seconds, before his sudden disclosure ends.

  I sort through thousands of questions for the most relevant. “Can you ever forget?”

  He smiles without his dimple and brushes his fingers against my cheek. He takes the book from my hand and tucks it back in its spot without looking.

  “No, Elisa. I cannot.”

  “Never?”

  “Some doctors theorize it will wane with age. But since age seven when we first discovered it, I have noticed zero difference.”

  His voice is slower, heavier, as though the memories of his thirty-five years are weighing it down. No matter how astonishing I find his brain, it just occurred to me what a fearsome sentence this must be.

  “Do you wish you could forget?”

  He smiles. “Some things, yes. Others—like the way you look right now—no.”

  I walk into his arms and caress his stubble. “And the things you wish you could forget? Are those what make you tense this way?” I risk the thesis question.

  On cue, his shoulders petrify. He has shut down. My time is up.

  “Come,” he says. “We have a million books, one eidetic memory and one eager scientist who wants to read them all. Put me to work.” He kisses my lips lightly.

  I kiss him back, feeling a surging emptiness. I thought once I knew something about him—something real—the craving would be satisfied. But it’s not. It’s beastly. Because I know that the eidetic memory, like his success and his looks, is superficial. The inner Aiden is still hiding.

  We leave the Purple Room, winding through the maze hand in hand, my brain exploding with information.

  “Aiden, can I please ask one more question?”

  He narrows his eyes. “One.”

  “If you remember everything, why have a painting of me to begin with?”

  He stops walking. “Because I want the fantasy.” He shrugs.

  “And what is that fantasy?”

  His jaw flexes. “By definition, it’s something that will not come true.”

  My stomach twists sharply again, as the voice inside starts wailing. The fantasy. Not the real girl. And the real girl, I cannot give for more than twenty-nine days. Run, you fool. Run now and secure some strong medication for the plane ride.

  I swallow. “You’re probably right.”

  The deep V cracks between his eyebrows. That same flicker of helplessness that gleamed in his eyes when he looked at my paintings this morning, flashes now. It’s enough to lock my feet. Madly, I miss the man who is hiding even though I’ve never met him.

  “Let’s live the fantasy a little longer, then,” I say.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Secrets

  After dinner at Aiden’s home—it was that or renting out Andina’s private rooms—I stare at the towers of books leaning against the glass wall. To my horror, Aiden bought every book we touched. All 178 of them. How am I going to bring them all to England? How can I leave a single one behind? The sun dips behind Mount Hood. The stabbing in my stomach returns so I take his feather quill and a stack of books.

  “What are you doing?” Aiden asks, still sitting at the enormous salvaged wood dinner table. He traces the lip of his wine glass with his thumb.

  I perch next to him, setting my treasures on the table. “Signing my new books.”

  He smiles
and reaches for a lock of my hair. “More rituals?”

  I nod. “I always sign my books so if they get lost, maybe I’ll be able to find them someday.” I dip the quill in the indigo inkwell and start with Pride and Prejudice. Aiden leans in to watch, twisting my hair. His warm breath tickles my cheek.

  “Want to do it with me?” I ask, wanting his handwriting on these pages for when this all ends.

  He must hear the desperation in my voice because he smiles. “Sure,” he says and picks up Byron’s Poems from the stack. “So how do we do this? You seem to have a system here.”

  “Just sign your name on pages eight, twenty-four and eleven.”

  He frowns once, then smiles. “Ah! For the date you came here.”

  “Yes. And for the first date we have in common.” I dip the quill and sign The Brothers Karamazov. When I look up, something has changed in his eyes. A shadow over the turquoise depths. He controls it in seconds but it’s enough to trigger a strange itching on the soles of my feet. Like they want to run. I curl them under me.

  “Sign another?” I ask, holding out the quill for him.

  The shadow disappears. He picks up Fifty Shades of Grey and winks. “You can keep the quill, I’ll use my pen.”

  We sign side by side, our thighs touching. He picks up his barrage of questions about me. Since Powell’s, he has bombarded me with everything from trivia to Rorschach analysis. As I answer his questions, I’m really wondering how I can wheedle information out of him. Despite my valiant efforts at Powell’s (“I’ve already read these books, Elisa, this is for you.”), on our drive back (“Benson needs silence in the car, Elisa.”) and during dinner (“It’s not advisable for one to talk while chewing, Elisa.”), Aiden remains more elusive than Element 115.

  “Favorite vacation?” The interrogation continues as he signs A Tale of Two Cities.

  “I plead the fifth.”

  “You what?” he smiles.

  “I plead the fifth. I’m not answering one more question about myself until you tell me something about you. And what’s more, I will quit my painting,” I threaten, using what little leverage I have.

  “We can’t have that.” He signs The Secret Garden and sets his pen down. He takes a sip of wine. His eyes tighten but he smiles. “Fine, what would you like to know?”

  I’m so stunned by the invitation that the quill drips on The Arabian Nights and the question fires unfiltered. “Why is there nothing personal about you anywhere?”

  “Because by definition, such a thing would no longer be personal.”

  “Where do you go when you want to get away?”

  “I can’t really get away, as we’ve already established.” He taps his temple. His voice hardens so I move on to safer territory before he shuts down again.

  “Who is your best friend?”

  The smile remains unaffected. He picks up his pen and signs A Farewell to Arms.

  “Marshall.”

  I grin as I get the first real answer from him. Something as normal as a best friend. “Does Marshall live around here?” I have a strong desire for the answer to be yes. Not necessarily for me to meet him but because it means someone can break through Aiden’s walls and be by his side.

  He takes another sip of wine and signs Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “No.”

  Oh! “Do you see him often?”

  “Not like I wish.” He signs The Birth of Venus and stands. “Would you like your dessert? I’m sure you’ll find it more enriching than my friendships.” Without waiting for my answer, he strides to the kitchen.

  “I doubt that,” I say, following him. He has moved so fast that he is already at the cabinets. I take a seat at the breakfast bar. I’m about to ask how long he has known Marshall when he turns with a smile.

  “Not even Baci?” he says, holding a dome of silver chocolates, stacked neatly on a silver platter, framed by apple slices.

  A gasp leaves my lips. How many Baci are there? One, two, three, four—

  Aiden’s laugh drowns my arithmetic. He sets the platter in front of me.

  “Thirty,” he says.

  My stomach twists and burns, as though an ulcer erupted there. “What did you say?” I whisper.

  He frowns. “Thirty? Er—I have more if you want? What are you thinking here? Sixty? One hundred?” For the first time since I’ve heard it, his voice is confused. The timbre is so endearing that I tear my eyes from the silver chocolate tower and glue them on him.

  He is still frowning. “I can see if the company that makes them is for sale?” he offers, perfectly serious. It’s enough to make me laugh. Aiden Hale may have a genius brain but a girl’s obsession with him is clearly beyond his deductive powers.

  I grip his shirt collar and kiss him.

  “Let’s start with thirty,” I say even though “starting” has nothing to do with it.

  He cups my face, his lips and tongue surpassing mine. His heartbeat is thumping under my hand. Suddenly, he pulls back and watches me. His eyes are utterly still. It’s not until I see them free of movement that I wonder whether for once he is not remembering.

  “What are you thinking about?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “An errant thought. Would you like more wine?”

  “Actually, some warm milk, if you don’t mind,” I mumble because my brain is fully occupied with deciphering the look on his face.

  “Milk?” He smiles.

  I nod. I have an ulterior motive for this. Milk helps me with nightmares and I am not having another one tonight.

  “Okay, milk it is.”

  He opens the fridge, pours milk out of the carton in two crystal tumblers and warms it in the microwave. I snap a picture with my camera.

  He narrows his eyes. “Why do you take so many pictures, Elisa?”

  “End of an era,” I answer truthfully.

  He takes the glasses out of the microwave, eyes on me. It’s disconcerting that he never has to look at what he is doing. He sits next to me, hands me my glass and clicks his to mine.

  “To new eras,” he says.

  “And to the old ones.” I smile, unable to toast to the new epoch ahead of me. I reach for the Baci tower, picking the top chocolate and resolving to save the rest for each of my remaining days.

  “Share one with me?” I ask him.

  “Can you spare it?”

  “Barely.”

  He chuckles and takes a Baci. I watch his long fingers peel the silver wrapping and find the quote.

  “What does it say?”

  “‘All is fair in love and war.’” He reads the wax note quietly.

  “Well, that’s not so fatal.” I’m secretly glad that the bewitched Baci didn’t say something like “a woman in a painting will fall in love with you” and terrify him for life.

  “Isn’t it?” He looks at the quote again and sets it on the marble bar. “What does yours say?”

  I peel mine, fishing the note first. “‘A kiss is a secret told to the mouth.’” Thank you, Rostand! That same surging emptiness ghosts in my chest as I wonder whether this is the only type of secret Aiden will share with me. Maybe I should stop reading these bloody notes altogether.

  I swallow and look up. “Tell me a secret, Aiden.”

  He leans in slowly until our lips meet. He tastes like milk and Baci. His lips move lightly, like he is whispering. Then his kiss changes. He stands up so abruptly that his bar stool topples behind him on the floor. He fists his hand in my hair and yanks my head back, his mouth inches from mine.

  “You want to know a secret, Elisa?”

  I nod, breathless.

  “I never kiss on the mouth,” he whispers. “Too much taste, too much essence of a woman to remember. But I like kissing you.”

  I’m so stunned by this revelation that I pull back but he pinches my chin, shaking his head. He
picks me up from my waist, wraps my legs around him and saunters to the long marble kitchen counter. He sets me on it, reaches for my milk glass and takes a sip.

  “There are better ways to drink milk.” He winks.

  He looks wicked. There is a streak of purpose in his eyes, as though he is on a quest. I fist my hands in his hair and pull him closer. I caress his cheek, stopping at his scar. The compulsion to kiss it is so strong that I lean in, asking for permission with my eyes. He smiles and nods.

  I blow on it gently. It’s shaped like an L. For love, I think wildly, high on Haleum. I press my lips to it. It’s a ridge, toughened by time. Its contours imprint the letter on my lips. I kiss it again.

  He moans and starts kissing the familiar paths he blazed earlier. My jaw, my throat, my collarbone. “You want to know another secret?” he whispers against my skin.

  I moan a “yes”.

  He brings his mouth to my ear. “I like you in this dress because you look like you belong to a happy time.”

  He unties the bow at the back. I’m too lost to decipher his words so I simply absorb them. Slowly, he undoes the zipper and peels the dress from my shoulder, raining kisses there. He takes it off and sets it on the counter. Then he steps back, gazing at me. I’m fully aware that the lights are on but his words from yesterday ring in my ear. Don’t hide from me. I fight my shyness until he smiles.

  “More secrets, Elisa?”

  I nod without any power of speech.

  “No one looks like you in my memory. Not even you.”

  With one of his magical moves, my bra comes off. I wish I could say something but the only sound I’m able to form is a sigh. His lips press on my throat and trail lower, and finally his mouth is on my right nipple. His tongue draws circles, and he weaves kisses and bites in a pattern that makes me shiver. I try to wrap my legs around his waist for contact but he spreads them apart, as far as they will go, spanning the length of the counter. I feel exposed, but my blood is boiling so I don’t quite care. Slowly, two of his fingers slide inside me. The effect on me is violent. My hips lurch forward, craving depth. He growls against my breasts.