Last Call For Caviar (17 page)

As soon as I stepped into my house, I felt something was off, though all the doors and windows were barred. It was more like an impression lingering behind, a ghostly presence seen in the morning light; someone had been here. But the alarm was armed when I arrived.

I went in the bathroom and washed my face, wanting only to crawl into bed. I could see the slight indentation where a head had rested on one of the pillows, and lying in the center of the bed was the gold pendant, the Kiss of Venus I’d worn the previous afternoon, though I could have sworn I locked it away before going out.

I checked where I kept my valuables. I checked my stash of guns. Nothing had been stolen. The shutters on the doors were barred from the inside; everything was locked up tight. Only the pendant gleaming in the middle of the bed was out of place. That, and the slight indentation on the pillow as though someone had lain there.

When I laid down, my head resting on the other pillow, I smelled the faint scent of an exotic spice; my mysterious other. Julian haunted me.

I thought about midsummer’s night and the dream that I’d spent the night in his arms. I still wasn’t sure what I had experienced. But one thing was sure. Hot sex with a sexy sheik, be damned. Julian was under my skin

Nothing about this made any sense. Unless, of course, I was losing my mind.

.

CHAPTER 20

J
ULIAN

The dog days of summer were definitely upon us. Sweat beaded my brow as I sighted and squeezed off the rounds in quick succession. At least my aim wasn’t off when I checked the circular patterns spread tightly around the sweet spot of the target.

“Relax and squeeze the trigger more gently. You have to empty your mind of everything else and only see the target in your mind’s eye. Do you understand? Try again.” Bilal handed me the next rounds to reload.

I did as he instructed, trying to empty my mind, but first Abdul’s face wavered before my eyes, then Julian’s flashed for a second, before Victoria’s finally settled into focus and covered the bull’s-eye on the target twenty-five meters away. Life had been so much easier when it had just been Blue and me.

I didn’t think Bilal really approved of me; at the very least, I confounded him. Women were gentle creatures to be protected, but since I insisted on taking care of myself, he had appointed himself my drill sergeant. Three mornings this week, he’d driven me to the shooting range to work on my marksmanship. And it appeared he wouldn’t be satisfied with my skills until they were up to the Emirati Army sniper’s standards.

I was thankful for the distraction, as my life these days was embarking on strange paths. The rhythm of load, shoot, reload was hypnotic and oddly soothing. I’d been coiled tight this morning when we started, but now, I felt the tension starting to ease. Nevertheless, I was no closer to coming to a decision on where to go. It was almost as though I was waiting for events to decide for me.

I couldn’t take a flight from Nice to Heathrow and connect on British Airways to Vancouver. United Kingdom Immigrations restricted non-residents’ entry into the U.K. The only way to transit through Heathrow was with a valid ticket. But a validly issued ticket no longer assured passage, as so many commercial flights were canceled at the last minute due to the arbitrary closing of borders and airspace.

Besides that, for most of the summer, smoke from the constantly erupting Eyajafjallajakull volcano in Iceland smothered the British Isles in a steaming fog of sulphurous ash, blackening its cities and turning day into night. There were tens of thousands of stranded passengers already camped out at the airports, trying desperately to board another flight, and the British Aviation Authority had closed their airports to any new arrivals.

No one knew when they would reopen; the mountain spewing fire and lava in Iceland didn’t have an off-on switch and might bloody well spew for decades.

Although Anjuli-Lucy had said she would try and arrange safe passage to Vancouver as the price for my silence, I didn’t think I should place my faith in her good intentions. I know people change, but she’d run with the cartels for too many years; some of their methods had to have rubbed off. I half-expected her to send an assassin to my home, as if my neighborhood were no different from Tijuana or Cartagena.

Still, the memory of the pendant on my bed gave me pause. I was sure I’d hidden it before going out. My first reaction had been to think of Julian, since the pendant was a present from him. Had he sent me a sign? But on the heels of my midsummer’s night fantasy, I had reason to think my longing for Julian and my general disquiet were conspiring to delude me.

On the other hand, if Anjuli noticed the Kiss of Venus the day we met, its inexplicable movement may have been a subtle warning that I wasn’t safe in my own bed. The timing and symbolism were just too much of a coincidence. It almost felt as though someone was trying to gaslight me. I would have to be even more careful in the days ahead.

I’d already made the decision to divide up my supplies and cache some at the Astrarama. I would borrow Arnaud’s Land Rover to ferry them there late at night. If someone could penetrate the security at home without my knowledge, I needed to be prepared to bolt at a moment’s notice.

I tried to avoid thinking about Abdul. What started in my own mind as a diversion—the perfect summer fling to help break my obsession with Julian—had taken a turn I hadn’t foreseen, or sought. I had at least a month before Abdul would be back. He was one dilemma I didn’t mind putting on the back burner. Although I might, in the end, be safer living with Abdul in Abu Dhabi if the situation on the Cote d’Azur disintegrated, it was a world away, and if, or rather when, I wanted to leave, I just couldn’t see how I would find my way back. As sexy and intriguing as Abdul was, I couldn’t imagine what life would hold for me as a mistress in such a proscribed society. To me, it seemed more like a dead end than a solution.

I almost called Victoria back in June. But unfairly or not, a part of me blamed Victoria’s prediction about destiny and soul mates for seeping into my subconscious and setting in motion this whole chain of events. I could hear her retort that my yearning itself made Julian manifest, just as finding the pendant gleaming on my bed was an indisputable sign that he was coming back.

It made more sense to follow the parsimonious principles set forth in Occam’s razor, that among competing hypotheses, the simplest explanation is preferable—because most plausible—in the absence of evidence to prove it false. It was easier to believe in being drunk on vodka than moonlight. It made more sense to think that I was in such a rush to get ready to go out with Abdul that I carelessly left the pendant lying on the bed. Surely a ghost lover who could invade my perception of reality and my bed at whim was a much more complicated proposition. If I listened to Victoria, I’d have to believe reality and time could actually bend.

With respect to Julian, I didn’t need fairy tales. I needed hard data. Or as Nancy Drew might have said, a clue. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know how to go about finding someone who might not want to be found.

As I confessed to Victoria, things between us had ended badly. They have a tendency to do so when you add stubborn pride and dramatic gestures to the mix. Like so many couples, the fight wasn’t really about anything worth breaking up over. But the momentum of a fight, coupled with wounded pride, becomes a force nearly impossible to stop.

I’ve replayed it over so many times in my head—the moment when we both went too far…

Julian slammed out of the house, leaving these words hanging in the air, “Je m’en fous… when you’re like this, Maya… c’est impossible de discuiter avec toi. It’s Fred’s birthday. I’m going to have a drink with him and cool down. I gotta get out of here now… or else. I don’t know if I even want a relationship like this anymore!”

And he was gone. I could have run after him and apologized; the fight had gone out of me. At that moment, I would have taken back every angry and ugly thing I’d ever said, if I’d only known how. At first, I thought, “He’ll calm down. We’ll get over this. It was just a silly spat, is all.” But as the hours lengthened and it was midnight without a word, the anger and resentment started to simmer once more over the unfairness of it all.

Yet when the phone rang at 2 a.m. and I saw it was his number, all I wanted to do was tell him how sorry I was.

“Cheri… I’m so sorry for the stupid fight. Just please come home, my darling.”

There was only silence on the line. “Hello? Are you there? Hello?” I could hear Julian laughing and music pounding in the background. “Cheri?”

Then, I heard a woman’s voice, a seductive purr down the line. “Tu es trop beau…Why don’t you smile? Let me dance for you, baby. I can make you forget all your troubles, baby. I know what you need. We can have some fun tonight, if you like. A private party—just you and me—and champagne in the V.I.P. room.”

The bastard was at a strip club, while I was home consumed with remorse about the fight. From the sound of it, he wasn’t regretting much of anything. Instead, he was getting propositioned for a V.I.P. room lap dance. Somehow, while his companion had been giving the sales-pitch and preview of her moves on his lap, all the bumping and grinding jostled the phone and punched up my number on speed dial. It was so fucking ludicrous, I almost laughed. Almost. But by then, all I could think of was how I was going to get my revenge.

I hung up, turned my phone off, popped a knockout tab, chased it with straight vodka and went to bed. So I didn’t hear what time Julian finally dragged in, though the warmth of his body curling around me woke me at 9 a.m.

I’ve replayed that moment a thousand times. Wished that I’d stayed in bed and woken him up with a kiss and some hanky-panky instead. But jealousy devours you in the instant and leaves you the luxury of time to mourn the destructiveness it has wrought. I don’t know where the jealousy came from. I blame it on a fiery great-grandmother on Mama’s side whose passionate Latina blood coursed through my own veins.

It was a sunny day, but there was a late fall nip to the air. I was on the terrace, bundled up against the chill, eating lunch, when he finally appeared, clad only in his Dolce and Gabbana boxer briefs. Even though I hadn’t forgiven him, I couldn’t help but admire how they hugged his lean belly and moulded the muscles in his thighs.

That summer, he’d let his sable brown hair grow out, and it was just staring to curl. When we’d first met, it was shaved smooth to his skull, accentuating the beauty and symmetry of his features, the strong line of his nose and high cheekbones, the slant of green eyes that could pierce my heart from across a room. He flashed me a sheepish smile, startling white against his dark golden skin. He lifted his arms overhead in a long, slow stretch.

“Bonjour, ma petite beaute… je suis K.O. Is there any coffee left?” He leaned down, his eyes still hooded with sleep, and kissed me thoroughly like nothing was amiss. I stared into those sea-green eyes, half-hidden behind a screen of thick black lashes, for long seconds. That was the moment when everything could have come right between us, if I’d only turned into his arms. Instead, I gave him the cold shoulder, because by then I’d gone too far.

He saw I was going to stretch out the silent treatment, and with an infuriating nonchalance, he sauntered across the terrace and went inside in search of coffee. The way he moved, graceful and at the same time with an awareness of everything around him, always made me think of a large, dangerous cat on the prowl. The same coiled power ready to spring forth from absolute stillness, like a panther feigning sleep on a tree branch overhead, the instant before it leaps.

Like Lucy Brown, he had also played basketball in his youth and been good enough to play for a couple of seasons for Paris Levallois, though unlike her, he hadn’t been injured, or gone to work for the cartels at the end of his career. It hadn’t been a hardship to hang up his jersey, since all along, his plan had been to attend medical school.

After his residency at L’Hopital Americain in Paris, where he specialized in general surgery, he joined Medicins sans Frontiere, working mainly in clinics and refugee camps throughout Africa, though he’d done one tour in Afghanistan during France’s participation in that disastrous war. When we met three years ago, he was on the verge of quitting Medicins sans Frontiere, and setting up in private practice, affiliated with a hospital in Aix en Provence, less than two hours from here.

At the time of our breakup, Julian had been interviewing with hospitals in Cannes, Nice and Monaco, with the intention of settling down in the area, so we could finally live together.

I’m not sure how long Julian was inside, but when he came out with a coffee mug in hand, I could see he looked distracted.

“Have you seen the clothes I was wearing last night? I’ve looked everywhere, but I can’t find anything. And why are all the doors open? It’s freezing inside.”

“Oh, just airing out the house, is all. What were you wearing?”

“Jeans, my blue shirt and that navy Gucci jacket I just bought. I can’t find my Nikes, either.”

“Oh, those clothes? Yes, I’ve seen them. While you were still sleeping this morning… I did your laundry for you, Cheri. The ashes are in the fireplace.”

“Quoi? What are you talking about? The fireplace? I don’t understand.”

“Yes, darling, they’re in the fireplace.”

He shot me a look but went back inside, and I had to wait less than ten seconds before I heard, “Putain. Tu est folle ou quoi? What the fuck did you do?”

He reappeared on the terrace, the charred remains of his new jacket and one tennis shoe in hand. They still dripped water from the dousing I’d given them as the smell of smoke and burning rubber began spreading through the house. I hadn’t wanted my surprise to be spoiled.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Burning his clothes would be pouring more oil on the already smoldering coals of our dispute. I don’t know whether it was the smell of the mystery stripper’s perfume permeating Julian’s clothes, or if I was so hurt from the words he’d flung at me before storming off: “I don’t know if I want a relationship like this anymore!” Regardless, I know now it had been an extremely bad move.

“Why would you do such a crazy thing?”

“Your phone called me last night by mistake, while you were getting a lap dance.”

“I didn’t get a lap dance. I don’t know what you are talking about.” Something in his eyes looked shifty; his glance kept sliding towards the left as he continued. “But even if I did, that doesn’t give you the right to burn my things because you’re jealous.”

“You don’t think I should be upset about that? We have a disagreement, you storm off… and I get a call from you, only to hear a stripper saying she’ll make all your troubles go away if you have a private party with her in the V.I.P. room? Yeah, right. I shouldn’t be upset? I don’t think so. Dream on.”

He stood there looking at my handiwork in disgust. Then dropped the remains of his clothes on the terrace and turned away with a shake of his head. I heard the shower running and thought I’d better let him cool off.

An hour later, he came out of the bedroom, and the first thing I noticed was that he’d shaved all his hair off once again. He looked like the stranger he’d been the night I first met him, when he’d walked into that party in Cannes.

I’d seen him arrive, and something about his height and the easy way he moved made me sure he played ball. When our eyes met from across the room, I raised my right hand and pantomimed a slow motion shot at the hoop, cocked my head as though to ask if I was right that he was a ballplayer.