Lovers and Liars Trilogy (137 page)

“It was Pascal, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It was.” Rowland hesitated. “Did he know you were coming here?”

“No.” She had begun to tremble. “He must have called the hotel in Amsterdam. He might have called Max. Once he knew I was in Paris, he’d probably guess I’d be in Lindsay’s hotel. He—I couldn’t reach him from Amsterdam. He isn’t in Sarajevo. He’s gone back to Mostar—”

“Gini, don’t.” She was now shivering uncontrollably. Rowland put his arms around her. “Gini, listen. It’s all right. You heard what I said? I had to lie…”

“I know you did. I could hear some of it. It’s just—you lied so well. Oh, Christ…”

“Gini,
listen
to me. He accepted what I said. He’s going to call back around three or four. I’ll have you in another room within the hour, I promise you. It’s all right—we have time. Let me call the desk. I’ll ask about rooms. I’ll get some coffee sent up.”

Rowland reached for the telephone. Gini watched him, her eyes wide with anxiety and pain. She was shivering violently and seemed unable to move or speak.

“There,” Rowland said, turning back from the telephone. “The coffee’s on its way. They think they may be able to find a single room somewhere, there’s some guest who may be checking out a day early. They’ll call back. Gini, listen. Get up. Take a shower. Get dressed. By the next time he calls, we—”

Rowland stopped. She could not meet his eyes; she crossed her arms over her breasts. Gently, Rowland took her hand.

“Gini, don’t,” he said in a quiet voice. “You’re making it very hard for me. If you cry—you can see how that affects me. If we can just—if we get on with our work. That is still what you want?”

“It has to be. It has to be…” She gave a low cry and then wrenched her hand away. “I don’t
know
what I want anymore. I don’t know who I am. I can’t think…”

She buried her face in her hands. Rowland hesitated, fighting the temptation to speak, then he finally said what he had been wanting to say for hours. Within the words a resentment was contained, he realized, an anger at Lamartine that had been building for days and which he could no longer suppress.

“Gini,” he said, “I don’t sleep with married women. For better or worse, I make that a rule. You’re
not
married. You have a choice.”

“You’re wrong.” She jerked her face up to meet his gaze. “I
am
married. I feel married. You don’t have to wear a ring to feel that. You don’t need a piece of paper, witnesses, any of those things.”

“I know that.”

“I know you thought it was over. I know Max thought that, and Lindsay and Charlotte—but you’re all wrong. It
wasn’t
over. It couldn’t be. Pascal is my whole life…”

Rowland drew back sharply, as if she had just struck him across the face. He rose, and stood looking down at her for a few moments in silence. There was a rap at the door to the suite. Rowland ignored it. His green eyes rested on her face.

“You’re certain of that?”

“Yes. No. I’m not certain of anything. If it was true—I couldn’t do this.”

“I would imagine not.” The green eyes had become cold. He suddenly shrugged. “That will be the coffee. I’ll get it. You get up, get dressed. Then—”

“Then,
what
? We do what we said? Rowland, the lies have
already
started. You’ve already lied. I’ll have to lie this afternoon. I
hate
this.”

“We brought this upon ourselves. Now we have to extricate ourselves.” He was already turning away. “It’s damage control.”

He left the room, pulling on a bathrobe. As he reached the door to the corridor, he was asking himself just how deep that damage was.

“I’ll take that,” he began as the door opened, then stopped.

Standing outside was a tall, dark-haired man dressed in black jeans and a black leather jacket. Rowland knew instantly from his expression who he was.

“Can I help you?” Rowland said, placing one hand on the doorjamb.

The man gave him a hard, cold, gray-eyed stare.

“I would like to see Gini,” he said in a tight voice. “Is she asleep? Perhaps you’d tell her I’m here.”

Rowland, thinking fast, gave him a blank look. He was weighing the fact that he had been taken in, that Lamartine was, if need be, as determined a deceiver as himself.

“Gini? What, you mean Genevieve? I’m sorry—didn’t we just speak on the phone? I recognize your accent.”

“Yes. We did.”

“I assumed—hell, never mind. I can’t be awake yet. Didn’t I explain? There’s been chaos over rooms. They shunted me in here last night. They shunted Genevieve somewhere else. The
Correspondent
has most of the sixth floor. Have you tried that?”

“Can we stop this, and stop it now?” The man’s eyes glinted. “I haven’t spent two days traveling to end up in some Feydeau farce. Would you move aside, please?”

Despite the politeness of his tone, Rowland could feel the anger; he knew a physical fight was very near.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said pleasantly, “but you’re making a mistake. This is my room. Take it out on the front desk. I’m about to take a shower.”

“I heard the shower come on,” Lamartine replied less pleasantly. “I was wondering how you managed to turn it on from here.”

“Did I claim I was taking a shower alone?” Rowland hesitated, gave him a rueful smile, then lowered his voice. “Look, this is a little embarrassing. I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t mention it to Genevieve. Office gossip, you know. It’s just—well, this is Paris, and my secretary’s with me. I’m a married man. I’m sure you understand…”

For a moment he thought it had worked. He saw doubt register on Lamartine’s tense face, then hope, then scorn. Rowland, watching these reactions, felt a sense of dislocation. Another spin of the wheel, and this man could be himself. Lamartine was almost as tall as he was; he had a similar build, had the same color hair, was approximately the same age: the emotions he saw in Lamartine’s face now would have been his own under these circumstances. Rowland felt rivalry but also kinship: we are
alike,
he thought, then tensed: Lamartine was about to hit him. He saw the preparatory move, braced himself to make the counterblow, then, as the blow never came, he saw one last facial change. Upon Lamartine’s features came an expression of love and pain that only one person could have evoked. In acknowledgment of that expression and its claim, Rowland dropped his arm and quietly stepped aside.

Gini had put on a bathrobe, he saw, but her feet were bare. She was standing about fifteen feet back from the door, her eyes fixed on Lamartine’s face.

“Don’t lie anymore, Rowland,” she said in a low voice. “I can’t let you do that. It’s wrong.”

There was a silence like glass, then Lamartine walked into the room, passing Rowland without a glance. He came to a halt in front of Gini. He neither touched her nor raised his voice. Speaking in French, he suggested that Gini get dressed and leave at once. He would wait five minutes, and no longer than five minutes, by the elevator, in the corridor, and he would be grateful if she would hurry, since it was evident—and here he glanced at Rowland—that they had matters to discuss.

Under extreme stress, he was quick-witted, Rowland thought. At the door he paused, and their eyes met.

“Are you married?” Lamartine said sharply.

“No,” Rowland replied, and before the door closed, he watched Lamartine take in the implications of this.

“D
ON’T SPEAK TO ME
—wait,” Pascal said, pulling Gini into the elevator after him. They descended eight floors in silence, not touching, polite as strangers. Even so, the other passengers could sense their emotions, Gini knew; she caught their stares, their quickly averted glances. She stumbled blindly through the press of journalists already assembling in the lobby, and into the cold, damp air. She began speaking then, some incoherent plea, but Pascal would not listen. He grasped her arm and began pulling her across the street, then across the first bridge they came to, making for the Left Bank, beyond the wide, sluggish gray expanse of the Seine.

He looked almost concussed, Gini thought, her own vision blinded with tears. He seemed scarcely to see or to hear the traffic bearing down on them. Once on the Left Bank, he drew her along the quay, then into a tiny narrow street, the rue St. Julien le Pauvre. She realized then where he was taking her, where he must have spent the previous night; a small hotel in which they had stayed together twice the year before. She hung back with a low cry of pain, but his grip on her arm tightened. He led her inside the old building, up the narrow stairs, and into a room with an oblique view of the river and Notre Dame.

This was the same room they had been given on their two visits, prior to Bosnia, when they had come to Paris to see Marianne. They had made love in this bed, leaned together out of that window, back in the spring last year, that time when they had both been so joyful, when the world made such sense. Entering the room, she could feel their own ghosts. She turned away, covering her face.

Pascal slammed the door. “Now. You tell me…” He could scarcely speak. “How long has this been going on?
Tell
me—Gini, in God’s name—how long have you been lying to me? Since you left Bosnia? Before?”

“No. No—I promise you.” She swung around to him with a look of pleading. “Pascal—it was last night.
Only
last night. Never before.”

“You expect me to believe that?” He jerked away from her. “Your face. Your eyes. I can’t look at you. You’ve cut your hair. You smell of him—I don’t
know
you. Dear God—just keep away from me. I’d have sworn on my life you could not do this—not you.”

“Pascal—”

“Just don’t say anything. Wait. For God’s sake, don’t touch me. I could kill you. I could kill him. Just wait. I must think. I can’t breathe…”

He turned away from her, clenching his fists, and began to pace the room. With a low, muttered exclamation he swung the window open and leaned out toward the soft air and the soft rain. The curtains fluttered in the wind; a piece of paper on the table drifted to the floor. On it, in Pascal’s handwriting, were the names of ten large Paris hotels and their telephone numbers. The St. Vincent was the last on that list. Looking at his handwriting, Gini began to cry.

“Is this how you found me? I thought you must have spoken to Max.”

“Max? No.” He turned around and gave her a blind look. “I can’t—I’ve been traveling for two nights and a day. I haven’t slept. I went to Amsterdam. I was going to meet you in Amsterdam. I thought—I meant it to be a surprise. Then, when I found you’d left, I came here. I got in about two this morning. I realized it was the collections—I thought you must be at Lindsay’s hotel. When I found where you were—it was so late, your room wasn’t answering, I decided to wait until morning…” He could not go on. She saw pain and incomprehension darken his face; he turned, closed the window.

“None of that matters. It’s irrelevant. I—I can’t think. I can’t see. All I can see is that man, blocking the door. I knew he was lying. I could tell from his face. Then I saw your coat on a chair. But even then, even then—I was still thinking, no, it can’t be true, I must be wrong. Except I did know. I knew immediately. I knew this morning, almost as soon as he answered the telephone. Something in his voice—” He broke off; she watched him fight to regain control. “I’ll never forget it. Standing in a hotel corridor. Dying inside…”

“Pascal, please.” She made a quick impulsive move toward him. “I can’t bear to see you like this. Please. If you would just listen to me—let me try to explain…”

She halted; the expression on his face halted her; she let her outstretched hand fall.

“Explain?” He moved farther away. “I should have known—in this situation—anything one says, it’s going to sound like a cliché, as if we’re both trapped in a bad play. And yet I feel—I love you so much, Gini. And I thought you loved me.”

“I do love you—”

“Please—don’t.” He lifted his hand. “I don’t think I can bear it if you tell me that kind of lie. You’ve been in bed with someone else—
How
could you do that?
Why
would you do that? What in God’s name made you do that? I spoke to you Sunday night, at Max’s—that’s less than forty-eight hours ago. You said nothing then—you never gave me the least indication—”

“There was nothing to say then, Pascal. I wasn’t lying to you then. I wasn’t hiding anything.”

“Your letters…” He couldn’t hear her, she thought. Every interjection she made seemed to pass him by. He was reaching into his jacket pocket now, pulling out a bundle of letters. He tossed them away from him onto the bed.

“Everything you said—I know those letters by
heart.
You know how often I’ve read them, and reread them? You said—
always
was one of your words. I didn’t ask you to use that. You were free, and you
chose.
Gini—how could you do that? Why? I trusted you so completely. I thought—You think I could have gone off, anytime these last two months, and gone to bed with some other woman? I couldn’t have done that, I couldn’t have
wanted
to do that. The only woman I wanted was the woman I loved.”

Gini turned away from him with a low cry of despair. She looked unseeingly around this room, this very French room, with its blue toile-de-Jouy-covered walls; nymphs and shepherdesses disported themselves among romanticized ruins; small heraldic animals punctuated these pastoral scenes. The patterns blurred before her eyes and clamored in her mind. She couldn’t look at Pascal; she was afraid to look at a face she loved so much.

“It wasn’t planned,” she burst out. “Pascal—it may make no difference, but I want you to believe me. There was no lead-up to this, no flirtation. I wasn’t persuaded or seduced—it wasn’t like that at all. I can’t let you think that—it isn’t fair to Rowland. He didn’t foresee this any more than I did. I’ve only just met him, I scarcely know him. We’re working together, I told you that—and when I arrived last night—we were quarreling, and then—I can’t remember. I think he touched my arm. Or took my hand. And then—it just happened. I weakened. It was my fault. I don’t know why I did it. I’ve—missed you, and I’ve been unhappy, and lonely too. None of that is any excuse, I know that—”