Generation of Liars Page 18

  “Harmless? Does any of this look harmless to you?” He pointed to his swollen eye.

  “It comes with the territory. I told you to stay out of this dark world, Pressley. I warned you.”

  “You sure got yourself involved with some sketchy people, Alice.”

  “Judging by that shiner over your eye, I’d say you’re the one who got involved with them, not me.”

  “Not my choice. They brought me here and dumped me in a little hole on the other side of the wine cellar. No actually, dungeon, is a better word. Freaky as hell. Definite Cask of Amantiado vibe going on.” He gave me a pitying look. “Oh, that’s right, I forgot, you nearly flunked your first semester of English, so you wouldn’t catch that reference.”

  “You know, it really sucks having someone who knows all your secrets pop back into your life.”

  Pressley smiled. “Doesn’t it?”

  I tucked my hair behind my ears nervously, an act of deflection against the powerlessness Pressley stirred up inside me. “You broke out of this cell you’re talking about?”

  “I managed to climb up. Be careful with your footing, the entrance point is a hole in the floor right over there.” He pointed to a spot somewhere in the blackness of the cellar.

  I tapped my foot. “Hmm.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “I’m wondering what to do about your status as a rogue prisoner,” I answered. A laugh flew out of his mouth and he doubled over, as if to illustrate the fact that my gesture of authoritarianism was humorous enough to cause him physical pain. “Well,” I spoke over his noises, “as you know, Motley is in Amsterdam.”

  “Oh, I know,” he said, edging on his toes to look over my shoulder at the door. “I sent him there. But what about that goofy loser, Bunny or whatever, is he around?”

  “Rabbit. He went to Amsterdam too.”

  He smiled so that his eyes look like two blood-crusted slits. “By default that puts you in charge, doesn’t it?

  “I guess you could say that.” I folded my arms confrontationally over my chest.

  Pressley dribbled his fingers over the side of my cheek. “That’s good for me, since I’m pretty sure I can persuade you to let me go free. And if not, I’m pretty sure I can find a way to slip by you. Plus, you owe me one. I’ve been so good about keeping up your little pretend game and calling you Alice. I haven’t slipped and called you Margaux once.”

  “Don’t touch me,” I said, pushing him away. “And don’t call me by that name.”

  “Quit playing games and let’s just get out of here.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You just ambushed me in a dark cellar. I should really just call Moonboots and Xerxes to take care of you. Or run upstairs and get my revolver so I can shoot you myself.”

  “You would never shoot me.”

  “Don’t be so sure. Remember, you already shot me once, I’m entitled to a turn too.”

  “Alice, I told you once already. I only shot you to prevent my partner from shooting you first. I was saving you. Because I care about you. I would have taken that bullet for you if it was an option.”

  “Doesn’t matter. A shot is a shot.”

  “Hold up for a minute. Before you fix me inside your crosshairs, I have to ask what you’re doing here, left behind in Paris? Shouldn’t you be with Motley and Rabbit in Amsterdam? Aren’t you guys a team?”

  “I decided to stay behind,” I said. I looked down at the bottle of Strawberry Blush in my hands.

  “Decided to stay behind, or got left behind?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I really need to open this bottle of wine, excuse me.” I twisted on the heels of my bare feet and paraded towards the door.

  Pressley followed me through the hallway into the poker room. “I told you this Motley guy was bad news, Alice. I told you that he would just use you for his own purpose and then toss you out.”

  The room’s carpeting was turf-colored and the walls were covered with expensively framed promotional posters of Fool’s Luck brand playing cards with sexy, smiling women on display. “Shut up,” I said. I set my hands on my hips and looked up at the wall-mounted Samurai sword. “Will you give me a hand with this?”

  “A hand with what?” Pressley asked.

  “With getting the sword down. I need to open this bottle of wine.”

  “Alice, there has to be a better way to open a wine bottle than with a Samurai sword. Besides, it looks like it might be an antique or something.”

  “Just shut up and help me.”

  Pressley passed a look between me and the sword and shook his head. “Isn’t your boss going to be pissed if he finds out you were playing with his sword while he was away in Amsterdam? Or is this your passive-aggressive way of giving him payback for leaving you behind?”

  I cocked my head at him. “What about you? What are you doing chasing me around Paris and New York when you already knew the dynamite stick was in Amsterdam?”

  He bounced his eyebrows. “Why do you think?”

  “Oh, geez, Pressley, you lied about the dynamite stick being in Amsterdam, didn’t you?”

  “I had to buy myself some time. Besides, it worked like a charm.”

  “How the heck did you convince Motley that the dynamite stick was actually in Amsterdam?” I grabbed one of the chairs from the poker table and dragged it across the green carpet and positioned it beneath the mounted sword.

  Pressley gripped my hips and helped me steady myself on top of it. “I had enough facts about the dynamite stick, and assorted tidbits from hackers I’ve investigated in Amsterdam, to contrive a believable story. I knew if I told him it was in another country, he wouldn’t risk crossing international borders smuggling a CIA agent against his will and I would get left behind with a chance at escape. I’m sure Motley knows Interpol would be on alert by now since I haven’t checked in back at base since he dragged me to Paris.”

  “He is going to kill you, you know that, right? Now that you’ve lied to him and wasted his time, he won’t rest until all that’s left of you is meat for the Parisian rats.” I wobbled, swiftly reclaiming my balance, and raised myself onto my tiptoes to pry the handle of the sword from the hooks fastening it to the wall.

  “I will worry about that later,” he replied. The sword came loose and dropped into my hands. The weight of it caught me by surprise, so that it flew out of my hands, skimming Pressley’s head before clamoring to the floor. Pressley ducked just in time to avoid a swift beheading. “Geez, Alice, be careful, will you?”

  I climbed down from the chair and cradled the sword to my waiting wine bottle. “How long do you estimate before he figures it out and gets back here looking for your head?” I asked, jimmying the blade into the slit of the cork. “Or before he puts in a call to Xerxes and Moonboots to check up on you and they come busting in here.”

  “It won’t matter because I will be long gone, and you will be gone along with me.”

  The cork flew off the bottle and ricocheted off the ceiling with a huge pop. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not leaving here without you, Alice. I can see that you’re in a bad situation with bad company and I am going to save you.”

  “Oh, Pressley,” I grumbled, wiping my lips after swigging from the bottle, “don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I mean it, Alice. I don’t think me finding you here in Paris, on top of the Eiffel Tower of all places, was a coincidence.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  “Fate.”

  The way he said it, his eyes populating with desire, was so raw it gave me goose pimples. I forced my eyes to roll sideways. “There’s no such thing as meant to be,” I contested.

  Seemingly unimpressed with my attempt at stoicism, he pulled me in by the waist and let his lips hover above mine, magically syncing his nerve endings to mine with a pulsating ripple. He kissed me so hard my toes tingled. The kiss seemed endless and immune from time, until some of my common sense kicked in an
d I pulled away. “I am not playing house with you inside my boss’ house. It is disrespectful.”

  “Let me get you out of here, Alice. Let me be with you.”

  I scooted my butt up onto the poker table to sit and cool off from the kiss. “Pressley, this is crazy. What you’re asking me to do is crazy. I can’t just walk away from all this.” That kiss had been good, I told myself. I took a long sip of red wine. I could feel the strawberry blush staining my lips.

  “All of what? This life isn’t the real you, and that boss of yours is just going to drop you back in the gutter he found you in once he’s done with you.”

  “But I don’t know how to do anything else in life. I mean, Motley pays all my bills. He takes care of me.”

  “I can take care of you.”

  “No, that just sounds horrible. That makes me sound like some poor, defenseless wimp. I don’t need you to rescue me.” I took another rough sip from the bottle, having lost count of how many sips had passed my lips already.

  “I love you, Alice. Please.” He balanced himself on one knee and cupped my chin inside his hands. “I loved you back then, and I love you now.”

  “We were just kids back then,” I told him.

  “And what are we now? Grown-ups? You’re playing with swords and raiding the liquor cabinet while daddy’s away. You’re still a kid. Come back home and finish growing up with me.”

  My quaking lips were sealed over the bottle, taking another sip. “I think it’s too late for us to be together again. You don’t know who I really am. If you did, you wouldn’t want to be with me.”

  “I do want to be with you, no matter what. You want this as much as I do. Let’s go someplace together. Far, far away from all this.”

  I popped my lip off the rim of the bottle and it made a puckered squeak. “Where?”

  “London, for now, then we can take it from there. As long as we’re together, it doesn’t matter where we end up.” I asked myself if his eyes had always been that dreamily prismatic. It was hard to remember, everything was getting blurry.

  I shoved my hair behind my ears and bit my lip as a coping mechanism. “I need to think. I need some air.”

  “We need each other, Alice.”

  I did need him. Damn it, I did. Everything about him was like home. I had lost my mind, I told myself. I was senseless. It was like I was drunk. A person would have to be drunk to say what I said next. “Yes.”

  It was a whirlwind after that. I ran upstairs and gathered my stuff. I was tripping over myself to get dressed and out of the house, afraid that I would come back to my senses and lose the gumption to go through with it, or worse, Pressley would somehow evaporate back into the dark recesses of my memory, where it had existed for three years, and cease being part of reality. I still had so many secrets I was keeping from him. A part of me knew I was only fooling myself by thinking this could ever work out. I unplugged the drain on the tub in the master suite and left Motley’s white guest bathrobe in a crumpled heap on the floor next to my cell phone. Pressley searched Motley’s house for the black trench coat he had been wearing when Moonboots and Xerxes found him. It had been thrown haphazardly in a guest bedroom and forgotten about.

  Chapter Twenty: Escape to London

  WE CLIMBED THE spiraling seven stories at the Abbesses metro station, the vivid murals on the walls surrounding us like rainbows and hail. We were carried away from the 18th arrondissement, away from Paris, and crossed the English Channel into London. London was cold and dewy and Pressley held my hand. The raw weather felt like prickers against my cheeks, and my hand was clammy as it nested inside Pressley’s. The piece of paper I always carried was tucked inside my shoe, haunting me even across distant borders.

  From the backseat of a taxi, I saw the London Eye pop up over the city skyline. I tapped Pressley’s shoulder. “Look!” He smiled and let his neck ease against the firmness of the headrest. Something about it reminded me of the spokes of the red windmill. I started thinking of Pigalle, of my life in Paris, and my thoughts drifted to Ben. I had forgotten about him during the romantic whirlwind that had encased the past few hours. My feelings for him had been real. But I couldn’t compare my attraction to him to what I felt for Pressley.

  We were in traffic, pressed against double-decker busses, bike messengers, and pricey imported sport cars. Pressley had the taxi driver drop us off a grainy hotel too far from Wembley for anyone to care about visiting. We checked in and went upstairs to check out the room and drop off our bags. The room was unimpressive, and when I looked out the window, it had a view of a graffiti-tagged fruit stand with its protective metal grate pulled down for the evening.

  “I’m starving.” I hugged my arms around my slim waist.

  “I’m sure there are plenty of places to eat in this neighborhood,” Pressley said, tucking his trench coat away in the room’s forlorn closet, empty for all but scattered metal hangers.

  Pressley locked up the room and we headed out into the city. As we walked the streets, I felt cursed, as though the marksmen of cruel fates were concealed behind every window we passed, ready to strike. Ready to separate us love-blind fools. I had a creeping feeling that this whole thing had been a mistake. But then there was Pressley, his hand inside mine making me feel so safe and secure. We chose a pub with television screens blaring a soccer game. After we were seated at a booth with a green and white Tiffany glass lamp overhead, we glanced at the menu briefly and ordered fish and chips and a pint of beer each.

  We glanced absently at the game, while stealing shy, romantic glances at each other. When my plate arrived, I didn’t waste a minute before chowing down. I had a moment of self-consciousness amidst the ravenous chewing when I noticed that Pressley was staring at me funny. Probably I looked like a pig. I had been missing grease from my diet.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Regret me yet?”

  “Nah, I don’t regret anything. You feed me okay.”

  It was weird to be sitting across a table from Pressley, doing something as simple as eating meal. I thought of all the time that had passed between us. How he had lingered like a romantic legend in my mind for three years. I wondered if he could ever really love me again. Or if the look I was confusing for passion was really him just searching my eyes for signs of that innocent teenage girl he used to love.

  “I’m glad you said yes to me, Alice.”

  “Me too. This feels like old times.”

  He sipped from his pint. “If this was a date like old times, we would have arrived here barreling down the road in your giant red Buick. Remember that thing”

  “Of course I remember it. That thing was legendary. I got it for my sixteenth birthday and it already had two-hundred thousand miles on it.”

  “I don’t know about legendary, so much as infamous,” Pressley argued. “If I remember, the seats were that nasty ketchup color and the steering wheel was so high you looked like just a set of eyebrows driving by.”

  “Yeah, but the backseat was roomy.”

  “Roomy as hell. You could carry a body in that thing.”

  I coughed and had to spit back the extract of beer I had just sipped.

  Pressley asked, “Are you okay? Did I say something wrong?”

  “I’m fine.” I wiggled my foot under the table. The note inside my shoe suddenly felt as heavy and hot as lava.

  Pressley swirled the froth in his glass. “Hey,” he said, as his fingers brushed the underside of my chin and tilted my head so that we were looking into each other’s eyes, “remember the last time we saw each other? When we were lying in the grass outside your dorm room?”

  Of course I remembered. It had played in my head like an elegant, black and white movie reel on repeat for three years. The feel of the tender ridges of his fingers running through my hair. The way the fresh-cut autumn grass and crisp remnants of fallen leaves made my bare legs itch. It was all so vivid. “Sort of,” I replied.

  “You said you had something to tell me that day, and yo
u warned me that it was something big. Something that might make me think differently of you.” I casted my eyes down to the napkin ball on my empty plate, but I could still feel the heat of his eyes on me. “What were you going to tell me that day, Alice? I haven’t stopped wondering about it for three years.”

  I brushed my chin from out under the cradle of his hand. “It’s late, Pressley, and I’m tired. Screwing your boss and fleeing for the Brits can tucker a girl out. Please don’t make me have this conversation tonight.”

  “I’m sorry, Alice, this must be a lot for you to handle. Motley was like a boss and a father figure to you, wasn’t he?”

  “I’m not sure what he was to me. But he gave me an opportunity at a time when I really needed it. He is a very scary person though, especially if you cross him. It makes me a little worried about what might happen next.”

  “I’ve been investigating him for a while. The thing is, his record is clean, well his fake record, so I really don’t have anything to bring him in on.”

  “What about imprisoning a CIA agent?”

  “The United States Government has it in their interest to make the world think the dynamite stick isn’t real. They don’t want competition in the search for it, and announcing that they are hunting it would only set off a race to find it. Therefore, any person of interest to the government in regards to finding the dynamite stick pretty much has a pass. The CIA would rather not cloud things up by making arrests that would draw attention towards the search. ”

  “So Motley is free to do whatever he wants?”

  “Basically, yes. Until the dynamite stick is recovered. Then it’s all over for him.”

  “And what if you never find it? He gets to rule for as long as he pleases?”

  “I am going to find that disk, Alice. Mark my words.”

  I put my hand over his. “I think I would prefer if you didn’t. I rather like living in this shadow world. In the heritage of the Generation of Liars.”

  “I prefer living in the sunlight.” Pressley slid up from the booth. “I’ll take care of the check so you can get back and get some sleep tonight. You look exhausted.”