Million Dollar Road (39 page)

Lireinne's lovely face was the picture of bored, youthful dismissal.

“That's so not going to happen to me,” she announced. “I can look after myself, in case you hadn't bothered to notice. Besides, don't you get it? I'm gonna get to live in freaking
Paris
. Luigi's giving me an advance so I can get an apartment, so back the hell off. You don't know everything.” She shook her head. “But this is stupid. It's going nowhere. I'm going now.”

Lireinne rose from the table, collecting her purse and her coat. The Americans over at the bar pricked their ears, watchful as a hunting wolf pack spotting a lone, graceful deer poised for flight.

“Lireinne, wait,” Con said helplessly, regretting his outburst and trying to salvage what he could, if he could. “Please, sit down. Let's go to dinner and try to talk this out.”

“But I don't want to talk anymore,” Lireinne said with exaggerated patience. It was galling: she sounded as though she were talking to a child. “Anyhow, it's not like I'm hungry. I had a late lunch with Luigi and Luciana this afternoon, celebrating, and now I'm going to her place to sleep on her couch. I'll come and get my stuff sometime tomorrow.”

“That's
it
then?” He still couldn't believe it.

“That's it.” Lireinne slung her purse over her shoulder. “'Bye, Con. Maybe I'll see you around sometime.”

Scrambling to draw the shreds of his tattered pride around himself, Con could find absolutely nothing to say to her before she turned away from him.

Without a backward glance, Lireinne swayed on her brand-new Prada stilettos through the doors to Le Bar and turned the corner. She was gone. The wolves bayed their disappointment, but soon resumed their salivating speculation about the girls at the Crazy Horse.

From the other end of the bar, the waiter was approaching, carrying the tray of drinks Con had ordered. “
Mademoiselle
will return, yes?” he asked, placing fresh napkins, the crystal glass of scotch, and the rose-colored
kir
on the table.

Wait
.

“No,” Con said heavily. “I don't think she will.” Fumbling for the bottle of pills in his jacket pocket, the fingers of his right hand brushed a small object: the box from Chopard. Con flushed. Popping the cap off the vial in a desperate hurry, he shook two Vicodin onto the table and, holding up one finger to indicate that the waiter shouldn't go yet, he picked up the pills and washed them down with the scotch in front of him, finishing it in a long, single swallow.

“Bring me another drink, please.”

And another after that. Con raised his shaking, bandaged left hand to look at his watch and discovered that the whole scene, start to finish, had taken place in a fast ten minutes. Obi-Wan hadn't stood a chance, he thought. He had a stunned sense of having taken a slug to the head from his blind side. Even now he didn't dare admit how efficiently the girl had decimated his private understanding of himself, the easy, arrogant space he'd always inhabited.

Obi-Wan had failed: the lovely Lireinne had cut the old Jedi mind-controller off at the knees with a single, heartless stroke. He could have hated her for that.

But his anger with her, while it shielded him for a few minutes more, couldn't hold out for long. Even in the depths of injury, it had never been like him to hold fast to resentment. True also, this love wasn't so easily dead; he found he couldn't expel Lireinne from his heart. He couldn't seem to bring himself even to try. Con Costello had never had any experience with a love like this one, but he suspected it would be a long time, a very long time, before he could live with the way it had changed him.

So it was that Con set out to get thoroughly, soddenly drunk, alone at Le Bar with his humiliation, his spurned affections, and his ruined hand. From a wide world of love to a world of... nothing, all in ten minutes flat.

Wait
.

 

Con had lost track of the time but the noisy American wolf pack had moved on, giving way to another, equally loud party. Down by the fireplace, five rotund, red-faced German burghers were enjoying round after round of beer and guffawing in high good humor. They offered up hymns to beer from the fatherland in beery baritones, happy and jolly and deafening. Con wished all of them would get the fuck out, go in search of wursts, Fräuleins, and accordion music and leave him alone.

At some point he'd lost track of how much he'd had to drink, too, although the drinks hadn't achieved the effect he'd hoped for. Sometime after the fourth scotch, counting had become pointless since Con couldn't seem to find oblivion no matter how many glasses of Glenmorangie the waiter brought. The Vicodin was having no discernible effect on his misery either, for there could be no rosy imaginings, no sweet warmth enfolding him into a dream of Lireinne. There'd be no repairing this, Con thought. Christ, apparently there had never been anything to repair in the first place and he'd been a goddamned idiot for ever believing otherwise. In a nod to small mercies, though, the hand didn't hurt at all now. Too bad the pills couldn't do their job on what was left of his torn-up heart.

Was she in bed? Had she turned out the lights and gone to sleep?

“Kill me now,” Con muttered. He reflected blearily that far from his previous high opinion of himself, now it could be argued that he was, in fact, a loser. Proof? Oh, there was plenty of proof.

Lizzie was gone. She didn't even want his baby.

Lireinne didn't love him. She'd made that more than plain.

And then . . . Emma.

His thoughts turning to his first wife, Con had to admit her memory might be the most painful of all. If she knew of his current misery, he was sure Emma would shake her head in sorrowful incomprehension, wondering at his headlong, ultimately fatuous pursuit of a girl who was less than half his age. It hurt to think of Emma, but in that moment Con couldn't escape a keen longing for his old, unremarkable, now-suddenly precious life with her. Emma had loved him, he knew it, he'd always known it, but that hadn't stopped him from walking away from something that had once been very, very good. Tonight he wasn't sure he could remember why he'd left her for Liz if he tried.

Oh, yeah—the fun. That was it. Lizzie had turned out to be some barrel of laughs.

Ah, Em. What had he done? Had he ever been that stupid? Con raised his glass to his ridiculous self and admitted he had been. Hard as it was to face, he'd badly misread them all. First Emma, then Lizzie. Now Lireinne. For a guy who always seemed to get the girl, Con Costello obviously didn't have a clue as to how to keep one.

All of his women. What a joke that was. After all she'd been through, Emma had to be too hurt ever to care about him again. Lizzie would find a soft landing in Binnings—if he'd read the signs correctly—and Lireinne was asleep on some Parisian couch somewhere. What was she dreaming of now? There could be no doubt: Lireinne was dreaming of her new life as a supermodel. How could she know what a perilous path that was, how so many young girls who flocked to Paris came to grief following the same dream? Exploited, underpaid, discarded after a few seasons when the next season's crop of adolescent Brazilians came to town? Though he tried to tell himself Lireinne wouldn't just survive, but would likely thrive, Con was troubled for her well-being even as he knew she'd want no part of his concern. Go on, say it, you fool, he thought. You love her still. You'll always love her.

Hell, you love them all. They just don't love you.

And in this way his thoughts circled the drain, deeper and deeper into the bottle of Glenmorangie.

 

It was well after midnight before the Germans finally paid their bill and departed in a back-slapping, hiccupping group. Con was alone at last, except for the bartender.

Alone, that is, until the woman entered the lounge from the lobby and sat down at the long glass bar.

“Martini,
s'il vous plaît
.” Her voice was low and pleasingly cultured. The accent, the fitted, caramel-colored business suit, the graceful sophistication—it was unmistakable: she was a Frenchwoman. Moreover, that slightly simian, subtly made-up face and the blond-streaked mane falling in expert disarray to her shoulders proclaimed it like a French flag. Better than half drunk and sick of his own company as he was, Con wasn't so far gone as to miss the high, sharp breasts under her sheer white blouse, the slim waist flowing into sturdy hips. Her skirt slid up her thigh as she crossed her legs, and they were as good as the rest of her.

Nice
. Unbidden, Con's predatory instincts hailed him through the fog of scotch. The woman was exactly what he needed, they said. That wailing, swept-out-to-sea part of him said to forget it. After Lireinne's utter rejection tonight, he was done with all that, maybe forever. Con was torn, but wondered what his future would be like if he were to listen to his loser-self now.

Ought to grab your lightsaber, Obi-Wan, he thought, if you ever want to look at yourself in the mirror again without shame. Get back in the game before it's too late. Just like always, a woman had crossed his horizon, a damned fine one by the looks of her. Con was on familiar ground when she lifted her eyes and gave him a frank, cool gaze of assessment.

But what if . . . he couldn't? What if this woman shot him down tonight, too? Con knew his ego wasn't just bruised and broken, it was in the ICU on life support. Another woman's rejection could pull the plug. Based on his recently proven capacity for self-delusion, he thought perhaps the safest course of action would be to sign his bar bill, go upstairs, and pass out.

Con sneaked another quick glance at the woman, met her eyes, and looked away. He hunkered over his scotch again, bereft of any confidence in his usual, unfailing ability to approach a potential pickup. Even considering it felt threatening.

But she
seemed
interested, didn't she?

“Jesus, go on. She can't hurt you,” Con muttered under his breath.

You sure about that? the cast-away voice warned, querulous. Don't forget, it said, you've already been called creepy tonight. Why ask for more of that?

But deep in the broken heart of him, appetite opened its eyes and shook itself awake. Why not? appetite argued. Agreed: this woman might slap your face if you approach her, verbally if not literally, but you've never gotten anywhere in life by being a goddamned coward. Go on, appetite demanded. Don't just accept being a . . .
loser
. Not without making a last stand.

Having bullied himself in this way, with a resigned sigh Con opted for action. He slid out of his chair, lurched to his feet, and with a precariously attained, self-conscious balance crossed the room full of empty chairs to the bar.

She'd just finished her drink when he put his right hand on the tall stool beside her.

“May I join you?” Con's tone was careful, only a bit slurred. The woman's eyes, an unusual yellow-green the color of Pernod, met his in inquiry. Encouraged that she hadn't dismissed him yet, “Please don't leave,” Con said, chancing the possibility that she spoke English. “I, uh, find myself at loose ends tonight.”

“If you wish.” Her tone was measured almost to the point of indifference.

“I do.”

“Then by all means—sit,
m'sieur
. I make it a habit to avoid coming between men and their wishes. Yours is a simple one.” She looked down at her empty glass with a small, polite smile.

Nonplussed, Con sat heavily on the stool and signaled the bartender for another round for the two of them. Okay, he thought in weary discouragement, maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all, but . . . what the hell, right? He'd give it his best shot if only to prove to himself that Lireinne hadn't killed him outright. Con keenly felt the absence of his old accomplice, Obi-Wan, though. The last time he'd done without Obi-Wan was years ago, with Emma. With a renewed sense of loss, Con realized that during their years together he'd never felt the need.

But the drinks came then, another scotch for Con and the woman's vermouth. They each took a sip, while the woman looked away, perhaps bored.

This was pointless, Con decided, and a deserved end for a resounding disaster of a night. He was about to make his excuses and go when, with a sideways glance, the woman said, “American, yes?” With that mundane question, she arched a groomed, dark eyebrow.

Con nodded in cautious relief. She was talking to him, at least. “Good guess. How can you tell?”

The woman made an amused noise that wasn't quite a snort. “It is not difficult. Rare, though—an American on his own. They seem to travel in pairs. Why are you alone tonight?” she asked.

Unsettled by her directness, Con wrapped his right hand around his drink staring with morose intensity at the sculpted glass surface of the bar. He tried vainly to think of a witty answer. He couldn't. Witty had fled the building hours ago with his old friend, Obi-Wan.

“Dunno, but I am,” he said at last. “Alone, I mean. Maybe I made an asshole of myself.” Con looked up to find her laughing at him.

“There, you see? Only an American would say ‘asshole' like that.”

Con's mouth twisted wryly. “Oh, yeah?” While it wasn't much fun being laughed at, she was still talking to him. “And so how do
you
say it?” he asked, feeling defensive and not liking the unaccustomed sensation very much.

The woman laughed, a delicious gurgle from deep in her throat. “I don't, but Americans say it all the time.” She took a sip of her drink. “You see, in France we say ‘shithead.' It's a custom.”

Somehow Con found a weak chuckle. “Okay, then. I'll be a shithead.”