Kiss Kill Vanish Read online

  It’s been three months. Remembering shouldn’t still sting so much.

  I leave the box of chocolate, take the mandolin to a chair in the corner by the radiator, sit, and cradle the rounded back against my belly. Those simple Spanish folk songs aren’t hard like they used to be. When I first arrived in Montreal and it was still warm enough to play outside, I spent hours by the Metro station, practicing over and over the few things he’d taught me. The wandering melodies. The tremolo. The finger patterns. If we’d had more time, he could have taught me more.

  My fingers are stronger and more agile now, better able to control the tiny movements, and the patterns have sunk into my hands so the right notes sound at the right times. But still, I don’t sound like him. I play too deliberately, which makes the music plod when it’s supposed to trickle and flow. I play with too much guilt.

  But if I play with guilt, why doesn’t he?

  I discovered there were two Emilios. There was the serious one for my father, and the real Emilio who emerged slowly after everyone else went to sleep and we were two lone bodies on the deck, curled around the mandolin, night fog curling around us. It was the music that coaxed him out. After a few songs he would start to laugh at my jokes. He’d look out across the black waves all full of nostalgia and tell me the things you tell someone to make them yours: about when he was nine and his father left; about the soccer scholarship he gave up in Colombia to come work for Papi.

  “Why would you do that?” I asked.

  He only shrugged and said, “Money. My mother and sisters don’t have much.”

  At the time, I thought sending his paychecks home to Colombia was gallant. But his gallantry is just as bloodstained as my luxury-filled childhood. We’re both guilty.

  Time vanishes like it has during the other nights I’ve spent at Soupe au Chocolat. I don’t know how long I practice for—hours? days? years?—but there’s sweetness in losing time. My fingers ache, and my eyes burn, and I’m so tired I hurt, but right now I can remember the Emilio I want to remember. The one who played melodies for me and the stars.

  Not the Emilio with dead eyes.

  “Encore? N’avez-vous pas un appartement?”

  I’m startled. I’m awake. It’s a woman’s voice. I’m still curled around the mandolin, my fingers half gripping the strings. I taste bitter cocoa, and I don’t know where I am, or what the voice is saying, or why my brain is stretching tentacles into the Spanish places and finding nothing.

  “Mademoiselle, pourquoi dormez-vous ici encore?”

  Estelle. French. Soupe au Chocolat. I pull myself out of my slump and twist around to see her kicking the snow off her boots. The clock says four thirty.

  “Sorry. I guess I dozed off,” I mumble as I stand, hoping my English convinces her to switch over. The room tilts until I blink it back to normal.

  “You should go home and sleep in a bed,” she says, bustling past me to the kitchen, her cheeks red and splotchy from the cold. “You have a bed, no?”

  “I have a bed.” I fit the mandolin back into the case, take my coat and scarf from the iron tree where Jacques hung them.

  Estelle reappears. She’s short like me, but with extra chins, and sausage arms beneath the sleeves she’s trying to roll up. The sleeves are resisting.

  “I’m going now,” I say.

  She ignores me and wrestles with the second sleeve without breaking her bulldog scowl to say good-bye.

  Two steps out and the night wraps cold claws around my throat. I’m not nervous. I shouldn’t be nervous. Still, I walk quickly, quicker than I should on the icy cobblestone, the mist of predawn tickling the back of my neck. This is Jacques’s fault, this jumpiness. Old Montreal is not unsafe.

  But it’s not quite night and it’s not quite morning, and the city feels like a sleeping beast that could wake at any moment and eat me.

  I force myself to slow down just a little so I can check my phone. I missed a two thirty a.m. text from Lucien.

  Tonight at 9. Saint Joseph’s Oratory. Idea to run by you.

  An idea. Great. As long as he pays me, Lucien can run all sorts of ideas by me. I consider texting back to say that if his idea involves posing as the Virgin Mary I’m not doing it, but it would only fall into the black hole where his sense of humor should be. Besides, there’s a slight and horrific possibility that he’s already thinking along those lines.

  I shove the phone back into my pocket and quicken my pace. Old Montreal is all corners and crevices between uneven buildings, staircases, craggy stone alleys. My imagination takes over, and one crooked shadow falls into the next. Anything could be lurking.

  But nobody is looking for me here. Emilio can’t possibly remember talking about coming to Montreal together, and even if he did, he wouldn’t try to find me. He knows he’d be safer if I disappeared forever. If I was dead.

  I shouldn’t, but I let myself remember that last night and his dead eyes, and that’s enough to remind myself that I don’t ever want to see him again. It should be that easy. But it’s one thing to say it—I don’t ever want to see Emilio again—and it’s another thing to be sure that if I looked into one of those alleys and saw his long silhouette leaning against the stone, a glowing cigar between his lips, I could run away. I’m not sure.

  That night. He knows I saw everything from his closet. He was the one who pushed me into it, his eyes wide with fear and his grip too tight. Shhh! Your father will kill me if he finds you in my room. He knows I stood trembling between suit coats, frantically buttoning up my blouse, still feeling his fingers around my arms where they had squeezed too hard. He knows I saw everything.

  A bird squawks from a covered doorway, and I jump, nearly slipping into the gutter. My heart is racing too fast to keep walking so I run, back to my decrepit building, past the perpetually out-of-service elevator, up the filthy stairwell, through the communal space and kitchen, and into my closet. I heft my suitcase off the cot, chuck the mandolin and the chocolate on top of the suitcase, and collapse into bed.

  Safe. Alone. The relief is sweeter than chocolate or palmeras or even memories of the beach. This is home, or at least until I get myself to Spain. This is a cold, disgusting hellhole, but it’s mine. I pay for it with money that nobody was murdered for.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  FOUR

  “I’m not dressing up like a nun,” I say, sitting down beside Lucien. We’re in the last pew of the near-empty cathedral.

  Lucien laughs like I’m kidding. The sound is offensively loud, bouncing off the stone columns and blooming over the entire cathedral, and an old woman turns and glares from up near the altar. He doesn’t notice. “I wouldn’t dream of making you.”

  Asking me. The correction goes unsaid, of course, but I’m starting to wonder if he can’t hear my thoughts, the way his eyes narrow just a little.

  “Hiding you under a habit would be such a waste,” he says. “And I don’t think they’ll let me paint in here anyway.” He stands and edges by me, motioning for me to follow him.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The cemetery.”

  I don’t stand. I don’t follow. “But that’s outside.”

  “Correct.”

  “Outside and covered in snow.”

  “More or less.”

  “Less?” I ask. “Tell me how it’s less covered in snow. I saw it coming in. It’s entirely covered in snow.”

  He stops and squints. I can feel his eyes searching my face for his sweet, docile Jane, but his sweet, docile Jane is tired.

  After spending most of the night at Soupe au Chocolat, I should’ve spent the day sleeping. Instead, I trolled thrift stores for a better pair of boots—a maddening and humiliating waste of time. Even used boots cost too much, so I’ll continue stuffing my freezing toes into the scuffed, tight, ugly ones I have.

  I swallow and look up at th
e stained-glass panels. The Virgin Mary stands stoically, surrounded by three adoring magi, the Christ child in her arms. I’ve been here once before, but it was during the day when sunlight pushes through the glass and bathes the cathedral in color. The scene is barely visible now with just the moon glowing behind it.

  I turn back to Lucien. I need the money, but sitting for a portrait in the cemetery sounds like hell. No, worse. Hell would be hot.

  “I’ll double your sitting fee,” he says.

  Instantly, my heart is pumping twice as fast. Two hundred an hour, that’s—that’s ridiculous. In a month I could be in Spain with a cushion big enough to buy time, enough time to find a decent place to live and a decent job. And in the meantime, I could buy a pair of boots that fit, and dozens and dozens of palmeras.

  He holds out his hand, palm up, just waiting for me to slide my fingers into it.

  My stomach lurches, and the colors from the stained glass melt together.

  I take it.

  Lucien leads me outside, down the steps, under the black sky stamped with a full yellow moon. Once we hit snow, I drop his hand and follow him down the path to the graves, ice crunching like eggshells under my boots. Headstones rise from the snow like spikes and bolts, angry granite reminders that we’re all going to die. Me. Emilio. My father.

  All of us, like the man from the docks.

  I wonder if he has a headstone somewhere, if the people who love him have realized that he’s never coming back. It’s only been three months. Whoever they are. Whoever he was.

  “Hurry up,” Lucien calls. He’s already reached the top of the crest. I join him and see we’re only at the first hill, that the graves and headstones and mausoleums stretch on and on and on. We’re the only mourners.

  “Aren’t you curious?” Lucien asks.

  I don’t want to pose out here. Not as an angel. Not as a grieving widow. My bones are ringing with something worse than chill. I sniff, the cold already making my nose run. “Just tell me.”

  “I think you’d make a stunning grim reaper.”

  I nearly laugh, but his satisfied smirk stops me. “You’re serious.”

  “Of course I’m serious. I’m thinking under that tree.” He points to the left, the sleeve of his coat brushing my face. “The one beside that grayish mausoleum.”

  “But . . .” Rebellion. I feel it bubbling—volcanic rebellion, with cruel words like scalding lava flowing out of me and eating him alive. If only I could afford it. I exhale and watch the cloud of ice crystals escape from my mouth, rise up, and dissipate. Releasing the anger is easy, but I can still taste bitterness.

  “But what?”

  “But it’s so stupid,” I mutter.

  “Excuse me?”

  “They’re all so stupid,” I say again, louder, a glorious recklessness taking over. “Your paintings. The grim reaper, the flapper girl, the Southern belle, the Marilyn Monroe thing, that ridiculous Marie Antoinette getup—all of them. Your entire portrait collection is one tacky cliché after another.”

  He’s perfectly still. His lips are parted, but not even a trickle of frost floats up from them. I close my eyes, wincing under the cold pressing in on me, wishing I could slice time and reconnect it to when this is all over. There will be carnage—a tantrum, insults, a firing (him), mouthing off (me). My stupid temper. Speaking my mind is a luxury I left in Miami.

  The silence stretches and thickens between us, and eventually I have to open my eyes. I’m met with the impossible. He’s wounded. I’d thought Lucien was too arrogant for hurt feelings, but his face is stricken with them now. The bloated ego, the wealth, the artiste charade, all gone. Of course they were a cover for insecurity—I suppose I knew that but forgot? Our eyes meet, and his embarrassment infects me, burning my cheeks. It’s painfully clear, but I can’t look away. He wants to be special in a way money can’t buy, wants to show Daddy he can do something remarkable and separate, be his own man.

  “Lucien. I’m . . . I didn’t mea—”

  “I know what you meant,” he says.

  “But I don’t actually—”

  “Yes, you do.” He breaks away from my eyes and stares out over the field of icy graves. I look too. Some of them shimmer, frost crystals and moonlight playing tricks with the dead. When he turns back to me the hurt is gone, like the moment never happened. And when he speaks, his voice is oily. “You’re not exactly qualified to judge art, though, are you? I’m creating a series of parodies. All those clichés you find so ridiculous are intentional. I didn’t explain it earlier, because honestly I didn’t think you’d get it, but in order to mock stereotypes I have to reproduce them.”

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

  “Don’t worry about it. Art is complex. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  My pity is gone. Over. Like it never happened. My hand tingles, and the thought of slapping him flies through my mind. I close my mouth and swallow, then ball my hand into a fist before I do something stupid.

  Lucien will never know that I’ve been to more galleries than he can name. He won’t know that I’ve sat at auctions beside my father for hours and hours because I was the only daughter who cared, the only one who understood Papi’s passion and who loved the art too.

  Lucien will never know that I’m haunted by the art now.

  “So we’ll start tomorrow?” he asks.

  It takes me a moment to remember that he’s talking about the cemetery painting. Double the money. “We’ll freeze.”

  “We’ll take lots of breaks.”

  “I don’t want to sit in the snow.”

  “You have to.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  He lifts his eyebrow. “What’s the matter with you tonight? Are you sick?”

  “No.”

  “Then stop being so difficult. You’re in eleven portraits. You have to be in the last three.”

  The last three. I draw a slow breath of frozen air and feel it flow down to my toes, fill my fingers. Now who has the power? Tactical error, Lucien. You need me. “What about the one we’re in the middle of? The piano one.”

  He shrugs. “It’s not going where I want it to go. I need to let it breathe for a week or two.”

  “And what if I have something better to do?”

  “You don’t.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Do you?”

  I ignore the question. “You don’t actually know me at all.”

  “Jane,” he says, grinning. “Come on.”

  The irony of him not even knowing my real name hangs between us, unappreciated.

  “I’ve spent dozens of hours examining you,” he says. “You don’t have an expression I haven’t seen. I know every curve of your body. I know the exact difference between the color of the skin on the backs of your legs and the skin at your throat.” He reaches out and pets my cheek with the back of his finger.

  I swallow my shudder.

  “I’m leaving Montreal,” I say.

  He pulls his hand back and drops it by his side. “Going where?”

  “Spain.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.” He can’t know that it’s not possible yet, that I need more money, that I need more from him.

  “Why Spain?”

  “I have family there.” There’s truth to this lie.

  “I’ll triple your fee.”

  A crow caws, and a wave of dizziness rolls through me. Three hundred dollars an hour. It’s too much to turn down.

  “Not just for the grim reaper,” I say, and hold my breath while the numbers multiply in my brain. Three more portraits, around six hours apiece, three hundred an hour, plus a few more hours for the flapper girl. That’s . . . thousands. “I’m going to need that much for all the portraits still left to do.”

  He grins. He knows he has me. I’m greedy, and it makes me his. “Three hundred an hour for the grim reaper and the last three portraits.”

  “Deal,” I say, and hold my han
d out for him to shake. He takes it, pulls it to his mouth, presses wet lips against my frozen skin.

  That seals it. My feet are weighted, cemented to the eggshell snow and ice while the sea of headstones reels around me. The impulse to get away is overwhelming, to get away from Lucien, go back into the cathedral, and find a confession box to pour my guilt into. I need absolution. Absolution for making deals with a devil. Absolution for being the daughter of somebody evil. Absolution for falling in love with a murderer.

  Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  FIVE

  Seven minutes.

  I’m under my synthetic blanket, fully clothed, still shivering even though I’ve been back from the cemetery for over an hour.

  I could show up at Soupe au Chocolate late. Jacques will wait, pretending to be just locking up whether I’m there right at midnight or twenty minutes after. He gave himself away with the box of chocolate; he doesn’t hate me. He might even be nice.

  Lola says niceness is a liability, which explains why she rarely attempts it. She’s catty with friends and cruel to guys, who are revoltingly eager to lick up whatever garbage she tosses their way. She treats them like scum and they love her for it, until she’s done with them, and then they love Ana, who thinks she’s won because she ends up with the prize, until even the nice guys get tired of her neediness and slink away. Poor Ana.