Kiss Kill Vanish Read online

  “She was gorgeous, though, whatever her name was,” he mutters before I slam the door shut behind me.

  I’m waiting for the elevator, trembling with anger, when I hear Marcel’s voice calling from the far end of the hall. “What do you play, anyway?”

  I pass my bag to the other shoulder again, considering how deep today’s humiliation really needs to go. I’ve never told Marcel I play anything. That means Lucien’s sitting around talking about me, which makes my armpits sticky and the skin on my stomach itch. “Music,” I say, and step into the elevator.

  The skinny corridor separating us is too long to see his expression. The elevator doors close between us.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  TWO

  Eight minutes.

  I shut my closet door behind me and sink to the floor. It’s the small pockets of time that kill me. Eight minutes isn’t long enough for a nap, but it’s long enough to remember things that make me want to rip my eyes out, so I’m careful. I stay in the here and now.

  Closet is a misnomer. It’s the size of your average walk-in, but if you define a space by what you do in it, this is my bedroom. I sleep here. On this cot, under this synthetic blanket, I read and have nightmares and stare at the backs of my eyelids. I undress here, in the tiny space that I’m sitting in now, between the foot of the cot and the door. It’s dim and drab, only big enough for the cot, a suitcase, a mandolin, and my body. But it’s mine. I pay for it, and the money is clean.

  Seven minutes.

  The clock glows at me from the upturned crate beside my bed. I’m only on the floor because I’m too tired to move the suitcase off my bed. Maybe it’s ridiculous—being here three months and still living out of a suitcase—but buying a dresser would be settling in. I don’t want to be settling into this closet, this apartment with five roommates packed like pickles in a jar, in this run-down building in the most decrepit neighborhood in all of Montreal. I want to be passing through. Quickly.

  I should be eating before I have to leave again, but Xiang is in the kitchen frying more garlic than has ever been fried at one time and in one place, and the unholy stench will permeate my skin and I will smell like garlic forever if I walk in there again. And I used to like garlic. Or garlic in Cuban food—black beans and ropa vieja and ceviche—where garlic belongs, swirled with cilantro and salt and lime. I don’t know if this stench is worse or better than when Françoise and Nanette let those potatoes turn to mush in the cupboard last week. Worse, I think.

  How Xiang’s garlic escapades are deemed less offensive than the delicate plunks of a mandolin, I don’t know. And yet, I can’t practice here. Too loud. The vote was five to one, and I voted. Reasons stated: apartment is too small, walls are too thin, we said no to Pierre’s trombone, and Françoise and Nanette have occasional night shifts at the hospital, so they have to sleep during the day.

  Six minutes.

  I lean my body into the side of the bed and close my eyes to shield myself from the glare of the clock numbers. My blanket smells like Nanette’s detergent. Which reminds me, I need to buy myself the same detergent and sneak a few scoops back into her box. I doubt she noticed any was gone, but still. She might be the closest thing I have to a friend here. As in, I think she would do CPR on me if I needed it, and not just to practice her nursing-school skills.

  Real friends are another luxury I’ve left behind. Drea. Cameron. Kim. Tony. I miss them but not like they deserve to be missed, not as whole people, but as pieces, fragments sewn together into a patchwork of mindlessness and recklessness and fun. I miss Drea’s fearless purple streaks. (When Lola told her they looked ridiculous, she laughed in Lola’s face. Nobody laughs in Lola’s face.) I miss Cameron’s inexhaustible devotion to cutting class. And Kim’s flask of mostly Dr Pepper. And Tony’s horoscope obsession. The sadness of losing them all is easier to take like that, in one sewn-together clump of memories. Even still, it’s lodged in my chest, and it hurts. To think of them as entire and separate people that I’ll never see again, that would be unbearable. I can’t.

  They must hate me for disappearing. I wonder what they think happened.

  Five minutes.

  The real reason I’m not moving the suitcase: if I lie down, I will fall asleep, and if I fall asleep, I won’t wake up, not even when the alarm on my cell rings in four and a half minutes to tell me that it’s time to go.

  Nanette’s uncle locks up his café, Soupe au Chocolat, at exactly midnight. If I miss him, I lose my only chance to practice, and if I don’t practice, I lose the music Emilio taught me. It’s our only link. I know it’s irrational, but when I’m not playing I feel like the notes are fading from my memory and that the next time I get to play my fingers will stumble around the melodies but never actually find them. That can’t happen. I’ll never see Emilio again, but the music gives us a heartbeat.

  It’s his mandolin. I stole it, and I don’t feel bad about it. When I cradle and pluck it like he showed me, the notes sound like raindrops, and I see his eyes. It’s worth the exhaustion of staying up all night.

  I should’ve come straight home after leaving Lucien’s. At least I could’ve slept for a few hours then, but getting onto the Metro I could still feel them, the rich boys, like a film on my skin. They’d both been so unnerving in their own way—Lucien with his adoration and Marcel with his insults and innuendo. Creepiness to expunge, I got off at Station Place-des-Arts for the cleansing power of back-to-back Japanese samurai films at Cinéma du Parc. That did the trick, burned off the grime of both sets of slimy blue eyes on me.

  Four minutes.

  I didn’t buy the clock. It and the cot were the only things in the room when I moved in. I hate them both. Every time the numbers on that clock change I’m a whole minute closer to outside.

  I shiver again. Last month, a wet chill pushed its way up the Saint Lawrence River. It howled up the streets of Old Montreal, through the cracks of this decaying apartment tower, and into my bones. It lives there now, probably forever.

  My stomach grumbles.

  The palmeras! How did I forget? I root around in my purse until I find the white paper bakery bag miraculously uncrushed, the two coiled pastries still intact. They’re perfect: golden and glossy with the sugar glaze. I bought them on the way to Lucien’s as a reward for afterward, then forgot they were there. The first bite is almost too much. Butter and honey melt together into sunshine. The sign said PALMIERS, but I know better. They aren’t French. The French can claim every other pastry in the world, but I grew up on these. When I close my eyes and chew, I could be in Little Havana, at Versailles Bakery with Papi and my sisters picking out freshly baked pastelitos.

  The palmera is so sweet I want to cry.

  Three minutes.

  I didn’t choose Montreal so much as it chose me. My pawned jewelry hadn’t been enough for a last-minute ticket to Spain, and standing at the airport ticket counter trying to digest that information, I was too crushed and drained to form a new plan. I asked the lady how much tickets to France were, thinking I could make my way west by train, but they were even more.

  “A ticket to Montreal is only half that,” she said with one of those effervescent airline smiles. “You get the foreign experience without the overseas airfare.”

  Tear-soaked and swollen, I stared at her. Did I look like I was trying to book an impromptu foreign vacation? On a one-way ticket?

  “It’s lovely this time of year,” she added.

  Montreal. I’d never been. I didn’t know anything about it, but in my mind it suddenly appeared as a glittering ice castle, a fortress to hide myself in. Maybe it was even better this way. My father would be looking for me under every rock in Spain—in Madrid, where my mother’s cousin lives, or in Barcelona, where I always said I wanted to go after graduation. A few months in Montreal might be smart. I’d get to Spain eventually.

/>   Two minutes.

  And I remembered what Emilio had told me.

  It was one of those Key West nights on the yacht, but we weren’t on the deck anymore. We were in his cabin, tangled in sheets and talking about places we wished we could go. Alone. Together.

  “Someday I’ll take you to Montreal,” he murmured in my ear. “It’s beautiful. You’ll love it.”

  “When did you go to Montreal?”

  “I’ve been lots of times,” he said. “For your father. He hates it, so he sends me.”

  “I didn’t know he had business in Montreal.”

  “He has business everywhere.”

  Montreal. Of all the random places.

  I bought the ticket.

  One minute.

  I forgot to ask why Papi hated it. Now I know.

  It’s only November, and I can’t remember the last time I was warm. If someone had a gun to my head and was forcing me to choose between braving the five-minute walk to Soupe au Chocolat and murdering a kitten, I’d have to think long and hard. I’d probably end up under the frozen café awning, but only because I want to play Emilio’s mandolin more than anything else in the world right now, and I don’t even know where to find a kitten. In Miami they’re everywhere, but here, I think they’ve all been murdered by the cold already.

  I pull myself to my feet and gather the things I need for the next four hours: mandolin, hat, scarf, coat, fingerless gloves, mittens to go over the gloves. And then I turn off the alarm on my phone before it can go off and force me to leave. I’d much rather it be my idea.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  THREE

  “You’re late.” Nanette’s formidable uncle Jacques is standing under the awning with his arms crossed over his barrel chest. My eyes are drawn to the flaming orange sideburns glinting in the lamplight below the brim of his cap. He’s bull-like, short and thick, all meat and muscles. Like my father.

  I hate muscles.

  But not Emilio’s muscles, because Emilio is lean—not skinny, but taut and long and powerful, practically humming with energy.

  I give Jacques a hopeful smile.

  He shakes his head. “I already locked up.”

  “I’m only two minutes late. You’d leave me to freeze to death for being two minutes late?” I let my teeth chatter loudly enough for him to hear the rattle.

  He huffs.

  Raw, red knuckles appear at the cuff of his jacket, and he pulls the key from his pocket. “Only if you’re stupid enough to freeze to death instead of going home.” He pushes the heavy door open for me. “You smell like garlic.”

  I don’t deny it.

  Jacques’s English is technically perfect, but it lacks the easy lilt of most Montreal natives who came out of the womb bilingual. It’s nasal and gurgling. It swallows entire syllables. It makes me constantly question if he’s slipped into his native French, and right now it’s making me annoyed that I still smell like grr-lique.

  As for Jacques’s lack of subtlety, I don’t mind. There’s never a malicious undertone, and it feels good to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t give me the creeps. His occasional rudeness is counterbalanced by the fact that he’s my father’s age (old men are allowed to be cranky, aren’t they?), and he’s doing me a favor, and he has a slight limp. According to Nanette, he grew up on a farm north of Quebec City, and the limp has something to do with a combine.

  Jacques flips on the lights, and I place the mandolin case on the closest of the tables. There are too many of them for a space this small—massive pearly white circles crammed in like soap bubbles. Every other color in the café is a glossy variation of chocolate. The floors are bittersweet, the walls are milk, and the countertops are deepest dark.

  “Garlic,” he says again with a sniff. “Terrible.”

  I unwind my scarf. “All I can smell is chocolate. That’s worse.”

  He gives me a nasty look, all scrunched and incensed. “You don’t like chocolate? What’s the matter with you? Everybody likes chocolate.”

  “Of course I like chocolate. But just smelling it is torture.” Reflexively, I sniff. Molten chocolate with roasted coffee bean undertones. I’ll be practically delirious from it in a few hours.

  He motions for me to hand him my coat and my scarf. I do. He hangs them on the elaborate iron coatrack by the door with branches that curl like an unruly tree, then stands at the window, lifting the edge of the blind to peer out. “Don’t open the door for anyone.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And why did you walk here alone? That’s not safe to do at night.”

  He said the same thing last time. And the time before. I fiddle with the zipper on the case and bite my tongue, because the parental concern doesn’t feel bad. But I don’t need someone to walk me here, and I don’t need someone to walk me home. Montreal in the dead of night is ten times safer than Miami at noon.

  “Do you have someone you can call to walk you home?” he asks.

  “Sure.”

  He looks at me doubtfully. “Nanette said you have no friends.”

  “I’ll be fine.” So much for thinking Nanette is my friend.

  “I’ll go turn on the lights in the back for you,” he says, and inches past me.

  I rub my nose. It’s still cold and rubbery feeling, like I’m touching someone else’s face. “I have friends,” I call after him.

  “Maybe I heard her wrong. Maybe she said you’re not friendly.”

  I watch him limp his way through tables and disappear into the back. A light goes on, followed by the scrapes and thuds of drawers and cupboards opening and closing. He reappears with a box under each arm. “Estelle will be here at four thirty to start the baking.”

  “Just like last time.”

  He puts one of his boxes beside the mandolin case. It’s plain brown, the size of a small shoe box. “So I’ll lock you in. If you leave, you won’t be able to relock it, though.”

  “Right. Just like last time,” I repeat.

  “I guess I’ll go then,” he says. “No smoking. Or any sort of fire. Don’t use the stove.”

  “I got it. Thanks.”

  He nods. “Good night.”

  He’s one foot into the cold when I notice the brown box still sitting beside my case. “Are you forgetting this?”

  “No, it’s for you,” he answers over his shoulder, the other box still tucked between his arm and his body. He closes the door behind him, and I listen to it lock from the outside, a metallic scrape followed by a clunk.

  I run my hand over the box, warmed by the anticipation of a gift. It’s been a while. Papi used to give me gifts, extravagant gifts, gifts that make me squirm with guilt when I think of them now. And sometimes Lucien gives me things—weird things like a book about pointillism, and old-fashioned opera binoculars, and a CD of cello music even though I told him I don’t have a CD player—but none of these has felt like a real present. They’ve felt like wages.

  The lid slips off easily, and I peer inside to see three perfect stacks of foil-wrapped bars. Chocolate. Quick inventory reveals two milk, four white, four dark, four hazelnut, two almond.

  I’m shaking.

  I slide onto the table, pull my legs up so I’m sitting cross-legged, and inhale half a bar of dark chocolate with my eyes closed, sucking on each precious square until I’m cocoa drunk and feeling too nostalgic to think about anything but what I shouldn’t think about.

  Last summer. Key West. That first night on the yacht, when the stars were like scattered diamond chips and Emilio showed me how to hold his mandolin.

  Papi had gone to bed first. Then Lola. Then Ana. But I wasn’t tired, because Emilio kept playing song after song and I couldn’t stop watching his fingers tug and slide over the strings. Wistful. That’s what he seemed, and I remember thinking it was so odd. How had I never noticed that possibility in him before?
But I’d barely noticed him at all. Not because he wasn’t good-looking—he was—but because he’d always seemed so stiff, just another of Papi’s eager protégés with slicked hair and designer suits.

  That night he was different, though, and it was more than just his wind-mussed hair and T-shirt. Everything felt fated. Him. Me. It was supposed to be a family vacation, just Papi and us three girls and the yacht, but then some business crisis—an authenticity issue with an auction piece, a sculpture—meant Emilio had to drive documents down from Miami.

  Authenticity issue. Ha.

  But when you’ve known something forever, you don’t see the evidence against it, not even when it’s sprouting all around you, blooming and strangling like noxious weeds. Really. You don’t. It’s only after, looking back, that you see the choking innocents, and then you hate yourself.

  Here’s what I’d known forever: My father bought and sold priceless art. His clients were the wealthiest of the wealthy from all over the world. He worked miracles for them, procuring the rarest masterpieces for their eccentric collections, so there were always emergencies to be handled. Emilio was simply his latest lackey in a string of rotating men who handled them.

  When Emilio showed up with whatever documents he was supposed to be bringing, the earnest assistant or minion or whatever you call a twenty-four-year-old slave, Papi insisted he stay for the weekend. It was a reward for his diligence, this invitation into our lives. And then everything changed.

  It was the first of a whole summer of weekends, Emilio driving back and forth from Miami doing Papi’s bidding, then, at Papi’s insistence, staying in the guest cabin. Some nights he’d play his mandolin for everyone. And some nights just me. I’d pretend to go to bed, because I was only seventeen and Ana and Lola were nineteen and twenty, which gave them first dibs on Emilio and on life in general.

  But it was my door he’d knock on. Valentina, come look at the stars. They’re so much brighter down here than in Miami. Not Lola and her relentless supply of push-up bras. Not Ana with her fawning. He came to me. I was the one he taught to play his mandolin, with his arms draped around me, still smelling just a little like cigar. You have to pull the bowl of it against your body, no, like this, so your fingers are free to play. Emilio with his light-brown eyes and loose brown hair and long brown limbs. Here, feel my hand. See how relaxed it is? Yours is too tight. You’ll strangle the music. Emilio who, after Papi went to bed, actually smiled and melted into a real person. Valentina, you have the most beautiful neck I have ever tasted. What? Why is that funny?