by Camilla Monk
We stepped out, and I noticed that there was only one set of black doors at the end of the hallway—someone seemed to own the entire floor. Ilan pushed them open to reveal a huge living room furnished with tasteful pearl-gray-and-white designer stuff—the sort that makes you wonder how much crime pays—and there, standing on the dark wooden floor, was an apparition.
A woman, perched on high pink platform heels, with skin as dark and silky as the coat of a Bombay cat and indecent curves hugged by a beige bandage dress. It might have been a bit rude, but I stared. Almond-shaped eyes, long wavy hair, full lips, and impeccable makeup. She was a fricking goddess, and judging by the way she smiled seductively and poised herself, she knew it all too well.
My eyes traveled down to focus on her generous breasts. How could girls like me be expected to feel good about themselves when such creatures roamed the earth? It was almost unfair. Finishing my inspection, I noted she wore a series of large golden bracelets on her right arm. They clinked softly as she approached March.
I watched, aghast, as the sublime creature draped her arms around him and caressed his hair, greeting him with a suave voice. “T’es toujours aussi beau.” You’re as good-looking as ever.
A thousand questions whirled inside my head. Who was she? Ilan looked super mad. Was he going to hit March immediately, or would he wait another minute? Could March escape her hug without an embarrassing boner?
I inhaled her powdery perfume as she moved away from him. March seemed okay, not stiff in any way, not even moved. He looked . . . content. He had welcomed her attention with a gentle smile, and his hand lingered on hers in what looked more like a friendly gesture than a genuine attempt to score.
Clear disapproval burning in his green eyes, Ilan broke the spell, looking at me as he introduced her. “Meet my wife, Kalahari.”
I gaped. March’s voice as he taunted Ilan about ringing twice resounded in my head. Please don’t tell me he’s banged Ilan’s wife. Please. I wanna live.
She locked her hypnotic brown eyes on mine. “March, aren’t you going to tell me more about your friend?”
There was a lovely accent in her French. She was probably an African native who had settled in France at some point in her life, something common, especially in Paris.
He placed a controlling hand on my back and complied. “Kalahari, this person is here to fulfill a small business agreement with me.”
She gave March a strange look. “Oh? And this person doesn’t have a name?”
“Clients don’t have names.”
Kalahari’s warm expression morphed into an icy one. Her nostrils flared ever so slightly, and a fascinating chemical reaction occurred that turned the honey in her voice into the kind of hydrosulfuric acid that can melt spaceships, like in Alien.
“March, j’espère que tu te fous de ma gueule . . .” March, you’d better be fucking kidding me . . .
My mouth fell open for the second time in five minutes. Her refined manners had vanished, and she was now voicing her discontent in one of the harshest ways the French language permitted.
Both men furrowed their brows at the same time, apparently aware that Kalahari was to be handled with extreme caution from this point on.
March’s features hardened. “Kalahari, stay out of this. Please.”
“You’re unbelievable . . . fucking hopeless! How can you do this to—”
“Kalahari!” March roared, cutting her off.
Against all odds, it was me who jumped, not her. March had never raised his voice since we had met. Not even once. It didn’t work, though. I would have cowered in fear and begged not to be shot, but she seemed to be immune to his wide range of intimidation tricks. Fearing she would claw at his face soon, and aware that Ilan seemed unwilling to step into their quarrel, I chimed in to give March what little credit he deserved in an effort to appease her. “It’s okay . . . I’m getting special treatment. I don’t go in the trunk.” My chest burst with pride as I said this. I was no ordinary client, and I thought the world ought to know so.
March nodded his appreciation of my short and positive input on the current situation, and I felt his hand push me forward. “Well, I’m happy I was able to see you, Kalahari. We’ll be on our way now. Ilan, can you give me the car key and the additional equipment, please?”
Well, that had been one helluva short visit . . . except not.
Before Ilan had the time to comply with March’s request, she pointed an accusing finger in my direction. “You stay here!”
I felt his hand steer me toward the door while the anger in her voice nailed my feet to the floor, and I thought of King Solomon’s judgment. Were they going to split me in two to solve their dispute?
Kalahari glared at him. “For the love of God, look at her! She’s dirty, her pants are torn, and I swear I’ve been listening to this annoying gurgle coming from her stomach ever since she passed that door!”
I bowed my head in shame. It was true. I was in used condition, and my belly had been growling nonstop for the past hour.
March seemed embarrassed by her accusations, but he resisted bravely, fighting for his constitutional right to treat me like crap. “Island will have plenty of time to eat and take a shower later, and she’s doing fine. She told you so herself.”
I managed a crisp smile meant to confirm his bullshit and soothe her, but she would have none of it.
“How can you look at yourself in the mirror? I’m so disappointed in you!”
March recoiled, at a loss for new excuses, and Ilan finally stepped in, attempting to calm his wife. “Chérie, it’s the job. He can’t . . . you need to understand—”
“Like hell it is! Would you do that, Ilan? Would you dare to treat me like this?” I noticed she was trying to ball her fists in anger, but she couldn’t because of her long nails. Her fingers were trembling, though.
He caved. “It’s different!”
“A true gentleman keeps his girl well-fed, well-dressed, and well-fucked. That’s final!” she yelled, emphasizing each part of this primitive triptych with a resounding slam of her high heel against the apartment’s wooden floor.
I tried to assess the situation. Ilan no longer controlled his dark Aphrodite, March was staring at me as if all of this was somehow my fault, and Kalahari was adamantly advising him to screw me. I was scared shitless, but I realized I could make something of the chaos unfolding before my eyes.
“I-I think we can cut March some slack regarding that last point. I’m sure he has other things on his mind right now, but I could do with a meal and a shower.” I held out my hands to protect myself as I said this, fearing swift retribution from the so-called gentleman.
The sound of my pleading succeeded in appeasing her wrath, and she turned to March, planting her hands on her hips.
I gulped and looked up at him. “Would that be okay with you, March? I know your time is precious, but it’s been a rough two days. Please—”
I made sure to make my tone weak and begging like the plaintive mewl of a fuzzy kitten that got hit by a Hummer, to ensure that he would have no choice but to indulge Kalahari. She obviously held some sort of superpower over him, and I intended to use it to my advantage.
His soft, calculating smile returned, and the hand that had been resting on my back for the past five minutes receded slowly. “Kalahari is right. Island, I’m terribly sorry for denying you the comfort you so much deserve.”
Ouch. Here came the fake apology . . .
“Please sustain yourself and take the time to bathe. Then we can leave, and before we part, I’ll make sure that I’ve thoroughly abided to all of Kalahari’s prescriptions.”
And there was the threat. Double ouch.
I won’t lie, I was a little miffed. I had earned some momentary relief, but March was now implying that he would make sure to “thoroughly” rape me before he let me go, so the results of my little strategy were mixed at best.
ELEVEN
The Cake
“She licked h
er lips slowly as she swallowed the last bite of her banana cake. ‘I love creamy desserts,’ she whispered huskily, her eyes devouring him whole.”
—Terry Robs, Glazed by the Cook
Ilan and Kalahari’s kitchen was even nicer than their living room. (For the record, I liked their shiny chrome toilet-roll holder a lot too. And they had black toilet paper, something I had never seen in my entire life. I stole some and stuffed it in my back pocket.) Examining the furniture, my eyes lingered on the long dark lava stone countertops and the coordinated black lacquered appliances. They almost made me wish my place had looked like an issue of Metropolitan Home too.
The meal itself was simple—fried eggs and a yummy little fruit and vegetable salad—but I had to admit that Kalahari was a remarkable cook. The joyful blend of fresh mesclun, grapes, pomegranate, and tart balsamic vinegar was absolute bliss. Plus I had skipped breakfast and was literally starving. I wolfed down my plate faster than a raccoon raiding the trash at McDonald’s, went for seconds, and when I looked up to see that the dish was now empty, turned my attention to March’s plate. He seemed disturbed by my keen interest in his remaining egg, perhaps because I was practically drooling.
“Are you gonna eat that?” Let’s be real, he wasn’t going to. It was mine for the taking.
March didn’t see it that way, though, and proceeded to drag his plate away from me and closer to himself, staring at me intently as he did so. “Yes.”
Narrowing my eyes, I raised my fork in an offensive position. I knew what I needed to do in order to get that egg. Before he had the time to dig in, I gathered a pinch of breadcrumbs from the table, where Kalahari had cut some slices of baguette, and threw them onto his plate. They landed on his egg yolk like shrapnel, irremediably tainting it. I saw his throat constrict, and his fork stopped midair. I had won.
Kalahari burst out laughing at this, and even Ilan couldn’t suppress a chortle. March gave me a look of pure contempt and pushed his plate in my direction. “There will be consequences,” he stated coolly.
Ignoring his warning, I helped myself to the rest of his food while Kalahari went to fetch a well-garnished cheese platter. There were five different sorts of cheese, and a couple of them smelled like a pile of dirty diapers abandoned in a stable: I couldn’t wait to dig in. I cut a large slice of runny Muenster and spread it on a piece of bread with a regal gesture. Next to me, March was very still, and he politely declined when Ilan handed him the knife. Needless to say, curdled milk that’s been left to rot in a cave for years probably didn’t rank very high on Mr. Clean’s list of approved delicacies.
I, on the other hand, closed my eyes and moaned in delight. That Muenster tasted like it was older than me. “It’s been years since I had cheese that good!”
Ilan served me a slice of Reblochon as well. “How long has it been since you last came to France?”
“Four years. But we stayed in a hotel back then, and they don’t serve the same kind of cheese.”
He swallowed a large bite of graying, moldy goat cheese and nodded. “Yeah, food safety freaks . . . They don’t know what’s good.”
“My mother was like you, she always insisted that mold is good for your immune system and only pussies cut it out.”
“Spartan parenting?” Kalahari smiled.
“Pretty much. She’d be gone for days at time, and she really took advantage of how independent I was. She’d just plop me in a new apartment, say, ‘Computer’s here; microwave’s here. Be good,’ and . . . whoosh,” I explained, flinging my arms in the air.
Whoosh . . . My eyes met March’s, who had been listening to the conversation silently in front of an empty plate, and something tightened in my chest. Would I have been able to learn the truth by myself if I had tried to? Had my mother been that good an actress, or had I turned a blind eye on all those times when she’d seemed a little too tired, a little too lost?
“Ah, tu sais dans la vie, on court, on court!” You know, life is all about running, running all the time. How many times had I heard her say this when she came home late at night and let herself fall on our couch, exhausted? I had always thought she was one of those overworked career women—a diplomat, a woman of the world, speaking a dozen different languages without the slightest hint of an accent, and sirening her way through glamorous parties. Except she hadn’t been there to binge on petits fours; she had been risking her life, night after night.
For me? To make money to support us?
No. As much as my mother had loved me, the new portrait that was progressively sketching itself in my mind suggested that she had been addicted to this life. She could have made just as much money by marrying my dad—no doubt he would have agreed, if the spark in his eyes whenever he mentioned her was any indication.
Across the table, Kalahari seemed in deep thought. “But didn’t you go to school?”
I stared down at the gooey cheese on my plate as I recalled those first fifteen years of my life. “No. We moved all the time, so my mom would sign me up for all kinds of distance-learning programs. Some relevant, some not so much. I ended up following a course on slaughterhouse management once, when I was ten.”
March’s eyes widened in an expression of scandal, Ilan’s mouth twitched, and tears of laughter built up at the corners of Kalahari’s catlike eyes.
“Yeah . . .” I sighed. “I’m not sure she read those leaflets before signing the application papers.”
“What about your father?” she prodded. “Didn’t he live with you?”
I shook my head. “You know that old song from Jean-Jacques Goldman? Elle a fait un bébé toute seeeule . . .” She made a baby on her ooown . . .
She answered my singing attempt with a bright smile. “C’était dans ces années un peu folles ou les papas n’était plus à la mooode!” It was in those crazy years, when daddies had gone out of style! “I love that song!”
“Well, it was sort of like that. I think they had a two-week fling in London, nothing more. And then, nine months later, there I was. I suppose he was a little disoriented, but he tried his best. He’d give me toys for Christmas, my birthdays, and my mom sometimes sent me to spend a couple weeks with him in New York,” I recounted.
“You went to live with him after her death?” Kalahari asked.
“Yes . . . I was fifteen at the time, and it was a pretty drastic change of environment.”
“But it was better for you,” March stated, breaking his self-imposed silence.
My head shot up and I frowned at him. “It’s hardly your place to judge that.”
I expected him to back out and dismiss the topic, but to my surprise he insisted. “Children need a stable home, parents who’ll send them to school. Your mother—”
“You’ll never guess what’s for dessert!”
Kalahari had suddenly shot up from her chair, cutting through March’s judgmental little tirade before he could give me enough reason to throw my plate in his face. From the corner of my eye, I caught Ilan shaking his head at March. Kalahari looked at him as well, but there was no blame in her eyes, rather tenderness and sadness laced together. I thought of what March had told me the day prior in his car, about how he had dropped out before even reaching high school. What kind of family had he grown up in?
I pondered this over while Kalahari took a plate from a large side-by-side fridge. When I got a good view of the treat, I quivered on my chair. She was carrying a sexy, yummy fraisier cake. She laid the pastry on the table, its pink icing glimmering under the ceiling’s lighting.
“Your favorite!” She winked at March as she said so.
I peeked at him. He didn’t seem the type to like fraisier. Those luscious layers of sponge cake, vanilla butter cream, and strawberries seemed way too indulgent for a guy like him. I would have sworn he was into more manly stuff, like oatcakes.
I was wrong. Kalahari served him nearly a quarter of that hottie, and it started disappearing from his plate at a surprising speed. He kept a deadpan face while he ate, tho
ugh, as if he didn’t want us to know he was enjoying it. I was so engrossed in watching him that I forgot about my own plate, and what a tactical error it was.
“Seconds?” Kalahari’s hands were already moving to cut him another slice.
He shot me a dark look as he answered her. “Please don’t bother. Island won’t eat hers.”
My eyes widening in alarm, I reached to grab some breadcrumbs again, but he had been ready for my trick and outsped me. By the time my fingertips started gathering ammo on the tablecloth, my plate was gone and March’s spoon was covered in the blood of my strawberries.
Kalahari burst out laughing, and Ilan’s lips pressed together in apparent consternation. Gesturing to the remaining cake, she offered to replace my serving, which now rested in the depths of March’s stomach.
His lips quirked in a smug smile. “I don’t think Island has time for more cake. She needs to get cleaned up, and we’re on a tight schedule.”
I glared at him before leaving the table to follow a still giggling Kalahari. She led me down a long hallway and into a large bedroom decorated with white furniture. In its center stood a massive four-poster bed covered with a swarm of colorful Indian cushions. There was a fruity fragrance in the air, which I soon associated with a couple of scented candles resting on one of the nightstands. I inhaled deeply and reveled in the warm, cozy atmosphere surrounding me.
Crossing the room to open the doors leading to a white-tiled bathroom, Kalahari pointed at my clothes and made an elegant circular gesture with her wrist. “Get rid of all this. You’re in desperate need of a bath!”
It was true. I couldn’t ignore the mud stains on my jeans or the faint smell of sweat floating around me, and I was a little ashamed of my state of disarray. She walked to a large polished concrete tub and turned the hot water tap on before squeezing some bubble bath in the rising water. Once she was satisfied with the water’s temperature, she returned to the room where I was still standing.
