Chapter 4 #2
“I’m only telling you because you introduced us, and she may send a hitman after you as a ‘thank you’ for ruining her life by bringing me into it,” I say, knowing that Benny is enough of an idiot that he won’t take cover on his own. “You might want to disappear for a while.”
“No, no,” Benny answers, and I imagine him shaking his head on the other end of the line. “Por favor, wait a minute cousin, now is not a good time. I am scheduled for a job this week, driving for the Twin Ledger. Let me cash out and finish the one big fish before you anger La Diabla?—”
“There’s always a new fish for you, Benny?—”
“Come now,” Benny sighs at me. “I can’t be the only reason you stayed with her this long, no? I know you love your only cousin, but surely there is more than my safety.”
I pause, letting the silence rest for a second. Benny may be an idiot, but he can be surprisingly perceptive.
“I kept thinking— I kept telling myself it would get better, or that I was misreading things, or that she wasn’t—.
” I stop. Exhale. “She was great the first few months, Benny. She was bright, and alive, and fascinating. Or…” I pause, letting the truth settle.
“I think maybe I projected all of that onto her because I want that woman in my head to be real so badly…”
“You’re a romantic, primo,” Benny offers.
“But then I got to know the real her, and Benny— she’s a monster.”
Benny is quiet for a moment, which is rare. When Benny is quiet, you pay attention.
“I want what is best for you, cousin,” he says, and his careful tone tells me he is about to ask for something very difficult. “But you can't break up with her yet.”
“What—”
“I’m still in Barcelona.” His voice goes slightly higher. “I’m still here, primo. I have not yet left. When this job is done I will have enough money to live off of for two years, at least.”
“That’s a big job, Benny,” I say darkly. Benny is just a driver, but he’s well-compensated for transporting the most dangerous cargo.
“We will leave Spain and go to the family country house in Italy,” he continues.
“And you will meet me there. We will disappear together, lay low for awhile. Drink wine and meet women. But La Diabla always gets her revenge. She will not let go of this quietly. Do not think I’m the only one in danger.
She will command a price for your head as well. ”
He’s not wrong. It’s occured to me that Alana will be so angry when I break up with her that she’ll hire someone to kill me— and that’s assuming she doesn’t do it herself.
I rub my face with my free hand. I look at the console table. The flowers are white, very elegant, completely useless. I have never once been comforted by a flower.
“How many days?” I ask.
“Four. Five at most. I have a few things to— there are some logistics I need to?—”
“Benny.”
“Four days,” he says quickly. “Four days, I am on a train to Tuscany, I am sitting in the old house, I am unreachable and invisible and you will meet me there, and we will be free men, together. I will owe you for this forever, primo. Forever. I will name my firstborn after you.”
“Let’s be honest with each other, Benny. You’re never having kids.”
“A dog. I will get a dog and name it Rodrigo. Perhaps pawdrigo?—”
“Four days,” I say. “Not a week. Not five. You have four days to get yourself out of Barcelona and into the countryside, and then I am ending this relationship.”
“Understood,” Benny says, with a genuine solemnity that tells me he understands he has just been granted a small but significant mercy. “I love you. You’re my favorite cousin.”
“I’m your only cousin.”
“Still true.”
I hang up. I stand in the hallway for a moment longer, letting the silence settle.
The flowers smell faintly of something I can’t identify, something clean and expensive, the way everything in Alana’s orbit smells.
I tuck the phone into my back pocket. I tell myself four days is nothing.
I am a man. I can handle anything life demands of me.
Four days is the length of a bad week, stretched out just slightly. I’ve survived worse. Probably.
I turn around.
Alana is standing in the hallway.
She’s wearing a painting tarp she’s stolen from my supplies— the kind that comes in a roll, heavy canvas-cloth, slightly translucent where it folds— wrapped around her body in a way that suggests there is absolutely nothing underneath it.
She is barefoot on the marble floor. She has a paintbrush in one hand, held loosely, the bristles just barely touching her hip.
Her nails are still coral. Her eyelashes are still approximately three times the length of any naturally occurring eyelash.
Her hair is down, slightly tousled, falling over one shoulder.
I freeze. Is it possible she heard me?
Then, she tilts her head toward the apartment door.
That’s it. That’s the whole communication. The tilt of a head, the faint suggestion of a smile, the paintbrush swinging gently at her side like it’s perfectly casual to be standing in a luxury apartment hallway wrapped in a canvas tarp at four in the afternoon.
She didn’t hear me. She’s inviting me to bed.
There’s nothing to say. Alana still leaves me speechless.
She turns and walks back toward the door, which is standing open the way she left it, the apartment warm and golden behind her, the vision-board wall visible from here— all those dreams, all that ambition, Reginald Ashcroft smiling from the paper in his tasteful drawing-room setting.
I follow her.
This is the part I can never fully explain to myself afterward— not the wanting to leave, which is clear and reasonable and present.
Not even the staying, exactly. But the ease of the following.
I think it is because I imagine Alana as someone she is not– as the woman who only exists in my dreams. Someone kind, and deep, who has eyes like caverns and can make a man feel understood.
But Alana is not a dream– she is a nightmare. I can’t wait to get away from her, but I might as well make the most of the moment, no?
She is a monster.
But she does look extraordinary in a painting tarp.