Generation of Liars (24 page)

“I mean it, Alice. I don’t think me
finding you here in Paris, on top of the Eiffel Tower of all places, was a
coincidence.”

“What do you think it was?”

“Fate.”

The way he said it, his eyes
populating with desire, was so raw it gave me goose pimples. I forced my eyes
to roll sideways. “There’s no such thing as meant to be,” I contested.

Seemingly unimpressed with my
attempt at stoicism, he pulled me in by the waist and let his lips hover above
mine, magically syncing his nerve endings to mine with a pulsating ripple. He
kissed me so hard my toes tingled. The kiss seemed endless and immune from
time, until some of my common sense kicked in and I pulled away. “I am not
playing house with you inside my boss’ house. It is disrespectful.”

“Let me get you out of here, Alice.
Let me be with you.”

I scooted my butt up onto the poker
table to sit and cool off from the kiss. “Pressley, this is crazy. What you’re
asking me to do is crazy. I can’t just walk away from all this.”
That kiss
had been good
, I told myself. I took a long sip of red wine. I could feel
the strawberry blush staining my lips.

“All of
what
? This life
isn’t the real you, and that boss of yours is just going to drop you back in
the gutter he found you in once he’s done with you.”

“But I don’t know how to do anything
else in life. I mean, Motley pays all my bills. He takes care of me.”

“I can take care of you.”

“No, that just sounds horrible.
That makes me sound like some poor, defenseless wimp. I don’t need you to
rescue me.” I took another rough sip from the bottle, having lost count of how
many sips had passed my lips already.

“I love you, Alice. Please.” He
balanced himself on one knee and cupped my chin inside his hands. “I loved you
back then, and I love you now.”

“We were just kids back then,” I
told him.

“And what are we now? Grown-ups?
You’re playing with swords and raiding the liquor cabinet while
daddy’s
away. You’re still a kid. Come back home and finish growing up with me.”

My quaking lips were sealed over
the bottle, taking another sip. “I think it’s too late for us to be together
again. You don’t know who I really am. If you did, you wouldn’t want to be with
me.”

“I do want to be with you, no
matter what. You want this as much as I do. Let’s go someplace together. Far,
far away from all this.”

I popped my lip off the rim of the
bottle and it made a puckered squeak. “Where?”

“London, for now, then we can take
it from there. As long as we’re together, it doesn’t matter where we end up.” I
asked myself if his eyes had always been that dreamily prismatic. It was hard
to remember, everything was getting blurry.

I shoved my hair behind my ears and
bit my lip as a coping mechanism. “I need to think. I need some air.”

“We need each other, Alice.”

I did need him. Damn it, I did.
Everything about him was like home. I had lost my mind, I told myself. I was
senseless. It was like I was drunk. A person would have to be drunk to say what
I said next. “Yes.”

It was a whirlwind after that. I
ran upstairs and gathered my stuff. I was tripping over myself to get dressed
and out of the house, afraid that I would come back to my senses and lose the
gumption to go through with it, or worse, Pressley would somehow evaporate back
into the dark recesses of my memory, where it had existed for three years, and
cease being part of reality. I still had so many secrets I was keeping from
him. A part of me knew I was only fooling myself by thinking this could ever
work out. I unplugged the drain on the tub in the master suite and left
Motley’s white guest bathrobe in a crumpled heap on the floor next to my cell
phone. Pressley searched Motley’s house for the black trench coat he had been
wearing when Moonboots and Xerxes found him. It had been thrown haphazardly in
a guest bedroom and forgotten about.

Chapter Twenty: Escape to London

W
E
CLIMBED THE spiraling seven stories at the
Abbesses
metro
station, the vivid murals on the walls surrounding us like
rainbows and hail. We were carried away from the 18
^th
arrondissement
, away from Paris, and crossed the
English Channel into London. London was cold and dewy and Pressley held my
hand. The raw weather felt like prickers against my cheeks, and my hand was
clammy as it nested inside Pressley’s. The piece of paper I always carried was
tucked inside my shoe, haunting me even across distant borders.

From the backseat of a taxi, I saw
the London Eye pop up over the city skyline. I tapped Pressley’s shoulder.
“Look!” He smiled and let his neck ease against the firmness of the headrest.
Something about it reminded me of the spokes of the red windmill. I started
thinking of Pigalle, of my life in Paris, and my thoughts drifted to Ben. I had
forgotten about him during the romantic whirlwind that had encased the past few
hours. My feelings for him had been real. But I couldn’t compare my attraction
to him to what I felt for Pressley.

We were in traffic, pressed against
double-decker busses, bike messengers, and pricey imported sport cars. Pressley
had the taxi driver drop us off a grainy hotel too far from Wembley for anyone
to care about visiting. We checked in and went upstairs to check out the room
and drop off our bags. The room was unimpressive, and when I looked out the
window, it had a view of a graffiti-tagged fruit stand with its protective
metal grate pulled down for the evening.

“I’m starving.” I hugged my arms
around my slim waist.

“I’m sure there are plenty of
places to eat in this neighborhood,” Pressley said, tucking his trench coat
away in the room’s forlorn closet, empty for all but scattered metal hangers.

Pressley locked up the room and we
headed out into the city. As we walked the streets, I felt cursed, as though
the marksmen of cruel fates were concealed behind every window we passed, ready
to strike. Ready to separate us love-blind fools. I had a creeping feeling that
this whole thing had been a mistake. But then there was Pressley, his hand
inside mine making me feel so safe and secure. We chose a pub with television
screens blaring a soccer game. After we were seated at a booth with a green and
white Tiffany glass lamp overhead, we glanced at the menu briefly and ordered
fish and chips and a pint of beer each.

We glanced absently at the game,
while stealing shy, romantic glances at each other. When my plate arrived, I
didn’t waste a minute before chowing down. I had a moment of self-consciousness
amidst the ravenous chewing when I noticed that Pressley was staring at me
funny. Probably I looked like a pig. I had been missing grease from my diet.

“What?” I asked.

“Regret me yet?”

“Nah, I don’t regret anything. You
feed me okay.”

It was weird to be sitting across a
table from Pressley, doing something as simple as eating meal. I thought of all
the time that had passed between us. How he had lingered like a romantic legend
in my mind for three years. I wondered if he could ever really love me again.
Or if the look I was confusing for passion was really him just searching my
eyes for signs of that innocent teenage girl he used to love.

“I’m glad you said yes to me,
Alice.”

“Me too. This feels like old
times.”

He sipped from his pint. “If this
was a date like old times, we would have arrived here barreling down the road
in your giant red Buick. Remember that thing”

“Of course I remember it. That
thing was legendary. I got it for my sixteenth birthday and it already had two-hundred
thousand miles on it.”

“I don’t know about legendary, so
much as infamous,” Pressley argued. “If I remember, the seats were that nasty
ketchup color and the steering wheel was so high you looked like just a set of
eyebrows driving by.”

“Yeah, but the backseat was roomy.”

“Roomy as hell. You could carry a
body in that thing.”

I coughed and had to spit back the
extract of beer I had just sipped.

Pressley asked, “Are you okay? Did
I say something wrong?”

“I’m fine.” I wiggled my foot under
the table. The note inside my shoe suddenly felt as heavy and hot as lava.

Pressley swirled the froth in his
glass. “Hey,” he said, as his fingers brushed the underside of my chin and
tilted my head so that we were looking into each other’s eyes, “remember the last
time we saw each other? When we were lying in the grass outside your dorm
room?”

Of course I remembered. It had
played in my head like an elegant, black and white movie reel on repeat for
three years. The feel of the tender ridges of his fingers running through my
hair. The way the fresh-cut autumn grass and crisp remnants of fallen leaves
made my bare legs itch. It was all so vivid. “Sort of,” I replied.

“You said you had something to tell
me that day, and you warned me that it was something big. Something that might
make me think differently of you.” I casted my eyes down to the napkin ball on
my empty plate, but I could still feel the heat of his eyes on me. “What were
you going to tell me that day, Alice? I haven’t stopped wondering about it for
three years.”

I brushed my chin from out under
the cradle of his hand. “It’s late, Pressley, and I’m tired. Screwing your boss
and fleeing for the Brits can tucker a girl out. Please don’t make me have this
conversation tonight.”

“I’m sorry, Alice, this must be a
lot for you to handle. Motley was like a boss and a father figure to you,
wasn’t he?”

“I’m not sure what he was to me.
But he gave me an opportunity at a time when I really needed it. He is a very
scary person though, especially if you cross him. It makes me a little worried
about what might happen next.”

“I’ve been investigating him for a
while. The thing is, his record is clean, well his fake record, so I really
don’t have anything to bring him in on.”

“What about imprisoning a CIA
agent?”

“The United States Government has
it in their interest to make the world think the dynamite stick isn’t real.
They don’t want competition in the search for it, and announcing that they are
hunting it would only set off a race to find it. Therefore, any person of
interest to the government in regards to finding the dynamite stick pretty much
has a pass. The CIA would rather not cloud things up by making arrests that
would draw attention towards the search. ”

“So Motley is free to do whatever
he wants?”

“Basically, yes. Until the dynamite
stick is recovered. Then it’s all over for him.”

“And what if you never find it? He
gets to rule for as long as he pleases?”

“I am going to find that disk,
Alice. Mark my words.”

I put my hand over his. “I think I
would prefer if you didn’t. I rather like living in this shadow world. In the
heritage of the Generation of Liars.”

“I prefer living in the sunlight.”
Pressley slid up from the booth. “I’ll take care of the check so you can get
back and get some sleep tonight. You look exhausted.”

I lifted my napkin from the table
and blotted the drops of sweat from my face and neck.

Chapter Twenty-one: London Broil

I
N
THE MORNING, Pressley spread open the window shades and I stretched my neck to
see the view of the dreary London fog, dark like mink, draping the skyline.

The night before had seemed to last
in a long twilight. Kisses and promises had spilled from both our lips, the
word
forever
had been whispered more than once. 

I looked over at Pressley. He was
already dressed and sitting on the chair by the door, lacing his boots.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I have a quick errand to run.
There’s somebody in the city I promised to see if I was ever in town again, but
I shouldn’t be long.” His arms were sliding into his black trench coat. “We can
see Big Ben when I get back.”

I shook the tangles from my hair
and dangled my legs over the recliner I had fallen asleep stretched over.
“Okay,” I said, lifting my arms as I yawned, “but after that there’s a ton of
stuff I want to see. I want to visit Buckingham Palace and go to Abbey Road and
buy a T-shirt with Paul McCartney’s face on it.”

“That all sounds good. We can
figure it out when I get back.” He shut the door and the room got quiet.

I still couldn’t shake the
impending feeling of hopelessness that had seeped into my core when my feet hit
the pavement in London. I hated to be alone with the feeling. I got up and
looked out the window and noticed that the fruit stand across the street, which
had been shuttered the previous night, was open now. I got showered, and
dressed in my stale clothes, and I walked outside to cross the street towards
the fruit stand. I could see pyramids of stacked fruit; bright oranges and
apples and crates of melons.

“Can I get you something?” the man
behind the register asked me. I noticed that he had the same accent as my
friend, Wally, the resident identity broker of my old neighborhood in Pigalle.
I pronged the base of an apple in my fingers and pretended to be inspecting it
while my eyes discreetly scanned the accordion folder propped under his arm.

“I wonder if you can,” I replied.

He cleared his throat and his eyes
seemed to shift from side to side to make note of anyone standing close enough
to listen. “I think I know what you’re looking for.”

“Oh?”

He tottered off the wooden crate he
was sitting on and walked around to the front of the stand. He reached for the
handle and pulled down the metal shutters and closed us inside the tight space.
“I know exactly what you want.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“You have an American accent,
girl.” He smiled so that his lips crawled up his face to reveal his slippery
gums. “You’re you looking to buy yourself a new identity?”