Chapter Twenty-Seven Holden
Twenty-Seven
Holden
I lounged back in my chair at the head of the table in the private room at the Epicure restaurant in Le Bristol Hotel—my current residence—and took in the scene.
The long, oval table was littered with the residue of a three-star Michelin dinner.
All that remained were plates of half-eaten tarte tatin and crème br?lée, cups of coffee, and empty bottles of champagne.
“Wait, wait, silencieux!”
Alexandre Caron, the ringleader of tonight’s party, motioned for silence.
Fifteen of my closest friends—a few of whom I met that day—slowly quieted their laughing, drunk conversations in a handful of different languages.
Tonight’s party was comprised of French, Germans, Italians, Britons, my Lebanese shopping BFF, one Russian, an American man I didn’t recognize, and a beautiful Swiss man.
Tonight’s target.
If the artist Basquiat and the actor Michael B. Jordan had had a love child, it would be this guy—perfectly smooth brown skin and a sprig of dreadlocks tied at the top of his head. I’d been making eyes at him all night, but he hadn’t taken me up on my unspoken offer.
Yet.
“Let us raise a toast to our patron saint of the endless party and author extraordinaire,” Alexandre was saying, lifting a glass of champagne.
He was sharp like an arrow—slender, with an angular face and a harsh beaked nose.
Fortunately, he was straight and unadventurous.
Otherwise, he’d be relegated to the long list of our mutual acquaintances whom I’d slept with and never spoken to again.
Alexandre grabbed two magazines and lifted them in his other hand. “To Holden—oh, pardonnez-moi, to Gordon Charles. The first writer to have stories published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review at the same time!”
Cheers went up, glasses were raised, and the room toasted to my success. The American—a pale, wiry guy with strawberry-blond hair and glasses—met my eye with a look that said he had an agenda.
Too late, my friend. Basquiat B. Jordan is tonight’s dessert.
Or so I hoped. I glanced at the Swiss man and was pleased to finally see a flirty smile dance over his lips. Tonight, I’d get lost in those lips, that mouth, and every other part of him in my continued quest to erase River Whitmore from my body’s memory.
If only.
None of my old tricks—alcohol and meaningless sex—were working when it came to River.
Each night spent in a desperate clutch with someone that wasn’t him only embedded him deeper into my sense memories.
Despite fleeting moments of pleasure, my skin and cells and sinews cried out for him.
My fucking heart screamed for him, a never-ending howl that refused to be silenced by alcohol or the sweaty, writhing bodies of strangers.
But I’m no quitter. I reached for more champagne and shot the Swiss man a wink.
Alexandre slammed the magazines down on the table, knocking over a water glass that soaked them both.
“Putain de merde,” he cursed with a grin. “I have ruined your stories, Holden, and now you cannot do your reading.”
“Cheers to that,” I said and gulped down another swallow of champagne.
I’d had zero intention of reading my own work aloud anyway.
Like Ms. Watkins had taught us to do in another lifetime, I wrote fictional stories with heavily autobiographical elements and then slapped them with the pen name Gordon Charles.
Once a story was on paper, it was out of my consciousness.
Purged. Revisiting it wasn’t on the agenda.
More champagne was ordered, the guests mingled in small groups, and the party showed no signs of stopping though the restaurant had closed hours ago.
“May I join you?”
“If you must.”
The American moved gracefully into the chair beside me. He wore a brown houndstooth suit and an antique Rolex strapped to his wrist. He looked like the world’s wealthiest librarian.
“Elliot Lash,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m an agent for Amanda Boyle Literary. You’ve heard of us?”
He was being cute. Anyone halfway paying attention in the literary world knew that agency. They handled some of the biggest names in fiction, most of whom were currently riding bestseller lists or being nominated for Bookers and Pulitzers.
I smiled sweetly. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Elliot glanced down with a small chuckle. “I’ll get straight to the point. I’d like to represent you.”
“In court? I have no pending lawsuits. That I’m aware of.”
“Mr. Parish—”
I waved a hand. “No, I’ll get straight to your point. You read my stories that I—a no-name nothing—sent unsolicited and yet managed to have published in the biggest literary magazines in the world, and now you want to take 15 percent of my piddling profits. Sound about right?”
Elliot leaned over his thighs, a glass of beer in his hand. “Speaking of nothing names, why Gordon Charles?”
I frowned at his sudden change of topic. “Ever read Flowers for Algernon? My pen name is a play on the main character, Charlie Gordon.”
Elliot’s eyes went a little vacant as he sought to remember and then lit up with recognition.
“Oh yes. The story about a man with extremely low intelligence who undergoes an experiment of some sort. It turns him into a genius, but the experiment fails, doesn’t it?
He slips back, losing everything he’d gained. Very sad.”
“He falls in love,” I muttered.
“Sorry?”
“When he’s smart, Charlie falls in love with a teacher but has to leave her when he becomes stupid again.” My finger ran along the lip of the glass. “I gave that book to someone once. He thought I was implying that he was Charlie, the stupid one. Turns out it was me all along.”
My eyes fell shut under a barrage of memories. River at his shop, pinning me to the wall with his body, his eyes dark and hooded, his lips parted…
I brushed the memory away and nodded at the Swiss man.
“Do you know who that is? The Basquiat-looking gent with the perfect…everything?”
“That’s Jean-Baptiste Moreau,” Elliot said. “He does remind one of Basquiat, doesn’t he? Fitting. He’s an artist too.”
“You know him well?”
“We run in a few of the same circles.”
“I’d like to get to know him too. In the biblical sense, if you catch my drift.”
Elliot’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “Are you asking me to be your pimp?”
I frowned. “Isn’t that what an agent is?”
“Mr. Parish—”
“Forget it. I haven’t needed assistance in that department. Yet.”
Elliot pressed his lips in a thin line and pulled his card from his alligator-skin wallet. “I’ll be frank with you, Holden. I think your writing is astonishing. And I know every editor at every major publishing house agrees. If you could produce a full-length novel—a memoir, perhaps—”
“I’m not writing a memoir. I write fiction.”
“Autobiographical fiction?” Elliot suggested and pushed his glasses farther up his nose. “Truthfully, you could write a grocery list and I’d have ten houses lined up to buy it. You’re a hot commodity right now.”
“Gordon Charles is a hot commodity. I’m nobody.”
As far as most of the world knew, Holden Parish didn’t exist. And I wanted to keep it that way. But that Elliot was a persistent little fucker.
“Do you know how rare it is to be published in both the Review and The New Yorker at the same time with two different stories? At twenty years old?”
“Nineteen.” I smirked and took a pull from my champagne. “Do you like my work, Mr. Lash, or do you like that little novelty? Because I’m drowning in my own bullshit already. I don’t need you to shovel more in my lap.”
“Sometimes a writer is the next ‘hottest thing,’ and sometimes he or she is truly something special,” Elliot said. “You happen to be both. And I wouldn’t be a good agent if I didn’t do everything in my power to make sure the world knew it.”
I toyed with my glass, swirling the golden liquid around and around. “I’ll think about it.”
“Please do. I think you’re ready for the next step. And it will be a big one.”
He finished his glass of beer and reluctantly left as if afraid he’d never see me again once he walked out the door.
Given my track record, he was probably right.
Stay…
I banished River’s pained voice from my memory for a solid ten seconds as I pondered Elliot Lash’s offer. But ugh, a whole book? A book took long hours of plotting and research and rewrites and editing. A book was a lot of fucking work.
“I hate work,” I muttered.
But instead of tossing Elliot’s card in the candle centerpiece and watching it burn, I shoved it in my pocket, downed the rest of my drink, and strode across the room to Jean-Baptiste Moreau.
“Well?” I demanded.
He smirked, amused, but his dark eyes raked me up and down. “Can I help you?” His voice was low and smoky and tinged with a thick accent.
“I hope so.” Help me, JB. Help me forget him. “I’m Holden Parish.”
“I know who you are,” he said. “I’m Jean-Baptiste Moreau.”
His hand closed around mine, and the deal was sealed right then and there.
“I have a question for you, JB.”
“No one calls me that.”
“But you make an exception for me.”
“I suppose I do.” His gaze roamed my face, lingering on my mouth and then my hair. “Silver. I like it.”
My one cheat against anonymity. River could find me in a crowd.
“My question is,” I said, “we’ve been in the same room for the last hundred hours. Why are we just now meeting?”
JB laughed, showing beautiful white teeth in a face of perfect dark skin. “Perhaps I’m shy?”
“God, I hope not.”
His smile turned seductive, his dark eyes locking on mine. “Why don’t you take me upstairs and find out?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
***
Hours later, JB lay sleeping in the tangled sheets in my bed while I sat in the suite’s next room, writing furiously in a journal by the light of a small desk lamp. A bottle of Ducasse sat beside me, half-empty.
For the last three months, Suite 1925 had been my home. It wasn’t the biggest suite the hotel had to offer but it had a view of the Eiffel Tower, and Josephine Baker had lived here for a while, which made it feel appropriately artsy.
With JB’s scent still all over me, my body still humming from our tumble in the sheets, I wrote about River until my hand cramped. I wrote to River, crying out for him, my pen crawling over the paper, falling down the page until it was just his name, over and over, blotted with my tears.
“Goddammit…” I whispered brokenly. “I can’t do this.”
I could write, drink, or fuck my way through Europe—and had been doing that exact thing for the better part of a year—and River couldn’t hear me. Somewhere beneath the cold whispers, I knew I couldn’t keep going like this much longer.
My alcohol-soaked brain concocted a plan to rescue my broken heart. Like a puppet guided by someone else’s strings, I staggered out of the chair and made my way to the phone on the small table under Josephine’s smiling face. My fingers fumbled over the receiver.
“Can we help you, Monsieur Parish?” the operator answered in her French accent.
“Concierge,” I said, glancing at my trunk of journals under the window. Years’ worth of my story. Everything that was me was in that trunk, raw and unfiltered.
The concierge came on the line. “How can I assist you, Monsieur Parish?”
“I need to have something sent to America. Immediately.”
We spoke for a few minutes, and then I staggered back into the bedroom. JB slept peacefully, his strong body spread out, claiming ownership of my bed, just as he’d claimed my body that night.
Too late, I thought, wandering back to the living area. I belong to someone else. I will always belong to him.
At the striped couch in the living room, the puppeteer cut the strings. I collapsed and pulled a thin throw blanket over me. Shivering, I curled in a ball and fell into oblivion.