Nine Perfect Strangers (17 page)

The path was too narrow for them to pass each other, so Tony stood to one side, which hopefully would not offend her feminist principles, like that time when he'd held open a door for a woman and she'd hissed, “I can open it myself, thanks.” He'd thought about letting it slam in her face, but he didn't, of course, he just smiled like a gormless goon, because not every man was capable of violence toward women even if they did have the occasional violent thought.

This woman didn't make eye contact, but lifted her hand in thanks as if she were lifting it from the steering wheel of a car to thank him for letting her into his lane, and it was only after she'd gone past him that he realized she was weeping quietly. He sighed. He couldn't stand to see a woman cry.

He watched her go—not a bad figure—then walked on toward the pool, tugging at his shorts to make sure they didn't fall at his feet.

He opened the gate.

For fuck's sake.

Loony Woman was in the pool, bobbing about like a cork.

19

 

Frances

For heaven's sake,
thought Frances. The serial killer.

The mechanisms of the pool gate had bamboozled her for about five minutes but naturally he had no problem at all. He lifted the little black knobby thing with one meaty hand and kicked the gate hard with the ball of his foot.

Frances had already had to endure Flustered Glasses powering up and down the pool creating a wake like a speedboat. Now
him
.

The serial killer dropped his bath towel on a deck chair (you were meant to use the stripy blue-and-white towels from reception, but rules didn't apply to him), walked straight to the edge of the pool and, without even bothering to put in his toe to check the temperature, dived straight in. Frances did a sedate breaststroke in the other direction.

Now she was stuck in the pool because she didn't want to get out in front of him. She would have thought she was too old to worry about her body being observed and judged in a swimsuit, but apparently this neurosis began at twelve years old and
never ended
.

The problem was that she wanted to convey strength in all her future interactions with this man, and her soft white body, especially when compared to Masha's Amazonian example, damn her, didn't convey anything much except fifty-two years of good living and a weakness for Lindt chocolate balls. The serial killer would no doubt be the type to rank every woman based on his own personal “Would I fuck her?” score.

She remembered her first-ever boyfriend of over thirty years ago, who told her he preferred smaller breasts than hers, while his hands were
on
her breasts, as if she'd find this interesting, as if
women's body parts were dishes on a menu and men were the goddamned diners.

This is what she said to that first boyfriend: “Sorry.”

This was her first boyfriend's benevolent reply: “That's okay.”

She couldn't blame her upbringing for her pathetic behavior. When Frances was eight years old, a man patted her mother's bottom as he walked past them on a suburban street. “Nice arse,” he said in a friendly tone. Frances remembered thinking,
Oh, that's kind of him
. And then she'd watched in shock as her five-foot-nothing mother chased the man to the corner and swung a heavy handbag full of hardback library books at the back of his head.

Right. Enough was enough. She would get out of the pool, at her own pace. She would not rush to grab up her towel to throw over her body.

Wait.

She didn't
want
to get out of the pool! She was here first. Why should she get out just because he was here? She would enjoy her swim and
then
she would get out.

She dived down and swam along the pebbly bottom of the pool, enjoying the dappled light and relishing the ache in her legs from the hike that morning. Yes, this was so lovely and relaxing and she was fine. Her back felt quite good—after her second massage with Jan—and she was definitely a little transformed already. Then, apropos of absolutely nothing, the words of the review slithered snakelike into her mind:
Misogynistic airport trash that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Frances thought of how Zoe had said she would read
Nathaniel's Kiss
just to be nice. The last thing that sad beautiful child needed to read was misogynistic trash. Had Frances accidentally been writing misogynistic trash for the last thirty years? She came to the surface with an undignified gasp for air that sounded like a sob.

The serial killer stood at the opposite side of the pool, breathing hard, his back against the tiles, his arms resting on the paving. He stared straight at her with something like …
fear
.

For God's sake
, she thought.
I may not be twenty years old, but is my body really so unattractive it actually scares you?

“Um,” he said out loud. He grimaced. He actually
grimaced
. That's how disgusting he found her.

“What?” said Frances. She squared her shoulders and thought of her mother swinging her handbag like a discus thrower. “We're not meant to be talking.”

“Um … you're …” He touched under his nose.

Did he mean, “You smell”?

She did not smell!

Frances put her fingers to her nose. “Oh!”

Her nose was bleeding. She'd never had a bloody nose in her life. That review had
given her an actual bloody nose
.

“Thank you,” she said coldly. Both times she'd interacted with this man she had been at a terrible and most mortifying disadvantage.

She tipped her head back and dog-paddled toward the steps.

“Head forward,” said the serial killer.

“You're meant to put your head back,” snapped Frances. She waded up the stairs, trying to stop her swimsuit from riding up with one hand while attempting to stem the flow of blood with the other. Great clots of blood slid from her nose into her cupped hand. It was disgusting. Unbelievable. Like she'd been
shot
. She was not good with blood. Not really very good with anything remotely medical. It was one of the reasons why having babies had never appealed to her. She looked up at the blue sky and a wave of nausea hit her.

“I think I'm going to faint,” she said.

“No, you're not,” he said.

“I have low blood pressure,” she said. “I faint a lot. I could
easily
faint.”

“I've got you,” he said.

She clutched his arm as he helped her out of the pool. He wasn't rough exactly, but there was a detachment to his touch, and a kind of concentrated grunting effort, like he was moving an ungainly piece of furniture through a narrow doorway. A refrigerator, perhaps. It was depressing to be treated like a refrigerator.

The blood continued to gush from her nose. He led her to the deck chair, sat her down, put one towel around her shoulders and the other in front of her nose.

“Firmly pinch the bridge of your nose,” he said. “Like this.” He pinched her nose and then directed her hand into the same spot. “That's it. You'll be all right. It'll stop.”

“I'm sure you're meant to put your head
back
,” protested Frances.

“It's forward,” he said. “Otherwise the blood runs down the back of your throat. I'm not wrong on this.”

She gave up. Maybe he was right. He was one of those definite people. Definite people were often annoyingly right about things.

The nausea and dizziness began to ease. She kept pinching her nose and chanced an upward glance. He stood solidly in front of her so she was at eye level with his belly button.

“You okay?” he said. He coughed his phlegmy plague-ridden cough.

“Yes, thank you,” she said. “I'm Frances.” She kept one hand on her nose and held out her other hand. He shook it. Her hand disappeared into his.

“Tony,” he said.

“Thanks so much for your help,” she said. He was probably a nice man, even if he had treated her like a refrigerator. “And you know—for stopping on the road when I was …”

He looked pained by the memory.

“I've never had a bloody nose before,” she told him. “I don't know what brought it on, although I guess I have had a bad cold. Actually,
you
sound like you've had quite a bad—”

“I might get going,” Tony interrupted her impatiently, aggressively, as if she were an old lady who had accosted him at a bus stop and wouldn't let him get a word in edgewise.

“Places to go, people to see?” said Frances, deeply offended. She'd just been through a
medical crisis.

Tony met her gaze. His eyes were light brown, almost gold. They brought to mind a small endangered native animal. A bilby, for example.

“No,” he said. “I just thought I should … get dressed for dinner.”

Frances grunted. They had plenty of time before dinner.

There was an awkward moment of silence. He didn't leave.

He cleared his throat. “I don't know if I'm going to survive this … experience.” He touched his stomach. “It's not really my kind of thing. I didn't expect quite so much hippy-dippy stuff.”

Frances softened, smiled. “You'll be fine. It's only ten days. Nine to go now.”

“Yeah,” said Tony. He sighed and squinted off at the blue-hazed horizon. “It
is
beautiful here.”

“It is,” said Frances. “Peaceful.”

Tony said, “So you're okay? Keep pinching your nose until it stops.”

“Yup,” said Frances.

She looked down at the scarlet droplets on her towel and found another, cleaner section of fabric to plug her nose.

When she looked up Tony was already walking toward the pool gate. As he lifted his arm to open it, his shorts suddenly slid down to his knees to reveal the entirety of his buttocks.

“Fuck!” he said with deep feeling.

Frances stared. What in the world? The man had tattoos of
bright yellow smiley faces
on both his butt cheeks. It was extraordinary. It was like discovering he was wearing a secret clown suit beneath his clothes.

She ducked her head. A second later she heard the pool gate slam. She looked up and he was gone.

Smiley-face tattoos
.
How drunk must he have been? It kind of changed her entire view of the man. No longer the arrogant sneering man. He was
Tony
. Tony with smiley-face tattoos on his butt.

Tony, the smiley-face-tattoo-butted serial killer?

She chuckled, sniffed, and tasted quite a lot of blood.

20

 

Masha

Another email from him. In just a matter of days. Masha stared at her ex-husband's name on her computer screen. The subject heading of this one read:
POZHALUYSTA PROCHTI MASHA
.

Please read, Masha
.

It was as if he were speaking directly to her. There was an attachment to the email. She heard herself make a noise, a silly pathetic little squeak, like the sound of someone standing on a child's toy.

She remembered the weight and warmth of his arm across her shoulders as they sat on an awful Soviet-made couch, in a flat that looked identical to their own, except that this one had something extraordinary: a VCR.

If not for that wonderful, terrible VCR, where would she be right now?
Who
would she be? Not here. Not this person. Maybe they would still be together.

She deleted the email then went straight to her deleted items folder and deleted it there too.

This was a crucial moment in her professional life. Focus was essential. People were depending on her: her guests, her staff. She did not have time for so-called … what was that rhyming phrase Delilah used? Blasts from the past. She did not have time for blasts from the past.

And yet her stomach continued to lurch about like the sea. She needed to practice detachment. First, she needed to identify the emotion she was experiencing, observe it, label it, let it go. She looked for a word that could describe how she felt and could only find one from her native language:
toska
. There was no adequate English word to describe the kind of anguished longing she felt for something she could not have and did not even want. Maybe because English-speaking people did not experience that feeling.

What was going on? This was not like her! She stood and went to the exercise mat on the floor of her office and did push-ups until her forehead was covered in sweat.

She returned to her desk, breathing hard, and opened the security program on her computer to check on the location and activities of her guests, her mind focused once again. She had installed CCTV cameras around the property for security reasons, and right now she could see most of her guests.

The young couple walked down the back footpath toward the hot springs. Jessica was in front, her head bowed, Ben a few steps behind, studying the horizon.

The Marconi family appeared to have split up. Napoleon was in the rose garden. He was down on his knees, sniffing a rose. Masha smiled. He was literally stopping to smell the roses.

Meanwhile, his wife was out running. Heather was nearly at the top of Tranquillity Hill. Masha watched for a moment, impressed by her pace on the steep section. Not as fast as Masha, but fast.

Where was the daughter? Masha clicked through grainy black-and-white images and found her in the gym, lifting weights.

Tony Hogburn was leaving the pool area, where Frances Welty sat on a deck chair, dabbing at her face with a towel.

Lars Lee lay in a hammock in the pergola with some sort of drink he'd obviously persuaded the kitchen staff to give him. He would have used sign language and his good looks. Masha had his number.

No one else? She clicked through the upstairs corridors and came across a woman wearing a sarong, walking briskly. Carmel Schneider. The other single woman.

Carmel took off her glasses and rubbed her face. Possibly crying?

“Deep breaths,” murmured Masha as Carmel struggled with her room key and banged her fist with frustration against the door.

Eventually, Carmel opened the door and almost fell inside. If only Masha could see what she did once she was in her room. People were so prudish. Yao and Delilah got worked up about legalities. Masha had no interest in seeing the naked bodies of her guests! She simply wanted to gain
knowledge
in order to do her job to the best of her ability.

She would have to rely on audio only. She turned a dial on her screen and keyed in Carmel's room number.

A woman's tear-choked voice emerged loud and clear from Masha's monitor.

“Get a grip. Get a grip. Get a grip.”