TWENTY-ONE
STORY OF MY LIFE
He likes country. I was a little surprised when March synced his phone to the car radio, and Johnny Cash started crooning to a girl that he’s been flushed from the bathroom of her heart. At first, I wondered if he had chosen that particular song on purpose, to convey some sort of . . . message. But the next track was some guy howling about his tractor being sexy, and I concluded that my shady ex is quite simply a country enthusiast.
So far he’s kept his word: he didn’t take me back to Constanta and Viktor’s dreadful dental casino. There’s a small town called Fetești-Gară not far from the gas station: that’s where he takes me. We park in front of an austere concrete building that turns out to be a hotel, the aged sign proudly flaunting its only star. The inside could best be described as a sixties convent: clean and warm but sparsely furnished with the kind of stuff you’d expect to see in a flea market. March takes care of check-in while I tour the lobby and examine the lace doilies decorating threadbare velvet armchairs, the brown melamine sideboard above which a portrait of Jesus hangs on the wall.
“Island?”
I whirl around at the sound of my name. March is standing at the bottom of a staircase, waiting for me. The old lady sitting behind the reception desk is staring at me too. When her gaze slowly drags back and forth between the two of us, it hits me: we’re going to spend the night together in this hotel, under the strict surveillance of our lord and savior. Which feels kind of weird. Shaking off my discomfort, I hurry past a dismal Christmas tree, whose branches seem to sag under the weight of a handful of golden balls, and follow March upstairs.
There’re only a few rooms, and I have a feeling that we’re the only guests tonight. When the door creaks open to reveal two beds, I address a silent prayer of thanks to a Virgin Mary icon hanging on the wall. March walks to the one closest to the window and lays a black suitcase and travel bag on the bed that he retrieved from the Mercedes’s trunk.
He presses his thumb to a fingerprint lock on the suitcase, and I watch with no small amount of curiosity as a neat-freak-assassin’s survival kit comes into view. There’s a change of clean and perfectly ironed clothes on one side and a vast assortment of weapons on the other. Goose bumps bloom on my forearms when I’m reminded that this man has proven to be my most reliable ally so far, and he carries around hand grenades in his suitcase.
I don’t know what to do with myself, so I pick the easiest way to avoid prolonged interaction. “I’m going to take a shower.”
March gestures to the sports bag. “I retrieved it from the casino for you. It’s fresh clothes and . . . other feminine products.”
I secretly relish in his obvious embarrassment, like it’s the thirties and tampons are still the harbinger of scandal and depravation. I take the bag with a small “Thanks.”
“Will you need anything else?”
“No, I’m good.”
The shower is too hot, but I don’t try to adjust the temperature. I’m thinking that maybe my skin is going to peel off, and there’ll be someone new underneath, someone whole. I step out eventually, and when the steam clears up, I’m dismayed to see that same girl in the mirror, only a little redder. She’s not me. She wasn’t Anies’s daughter, might never be Dries’s . . . she’s not the girlfriend March lost. She’s nothing but a stranger to the friends and family she once had. I massage my temples forcefully, fighting off the first signs of a migraine.
After a few minutes, I feel clear enough to wrap myself in a large towel and search the sports bag. It contains little more than the bare essentials, but clean underwear and deodorant have never felt so good. I slip on a pair of gray yoga pants and shrug on my Rompetrol sweatshirt. In the bedroom, March is checking something on his phone and types a quick message. He puts the device back in his pocket as soon as he sees me standing in the doorway. “How do you feel?”
“More or less okay.” My gaze falls on his suitcase. “Hey, do you have maybe a pair of scissors in there?”
His brow twitches in suspicion. “Yes, why?”
I shrug. “Just . . . I need scissors.”
He studies me, with those eyes that look like dark oceans.
“I won’t do anything weird. I’m not gonna kill myself if that’s what you’re worried about.”
His jaw tics. “The idea never crossed my mind.”
I fidget in the bathroom’s doorway while he retrieves a toiletry bag from his suitcase, from which he produces a tiny pair of scissors. “Will these do?”
With an eager nod, I walk to the bed to take them from him. As I’m about to close the bathroom door again, March’s voice stops me. “Island?”
“What?”
“Can I ask you to leave the door unlocked?”
I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer. I glare at him and slam the door behind myself. Without locking it.
•••
“What do you think?”
March won’t stop blinking, and he hasn’t said anything since I came out of the bathroom. I fear my hair looks worse than I thought, probably like the result of a freak accident rather than a chin-length bob like the one I wore on EM Group’s blog post.
“It’s”—his mouth works in vain, until an unexpected smile lights up his entire face, creasing two dimples. It’s the first time I see him smile like that, and he looks younger, just . . . different—“It’s more like you. You look lovely.”
I can’t stop the blush that warms my cheeks at his compliment.
March gestures to the scissors in my hand. “I think one side is longer than the other. May I?”
“Yeah . . .”
He joins me in front of the bathroom’s mirror. In the sink, eight months’ worth of auburn tresses now rest in a damp heap. I feel better, lighter. I gaze at our reflection as March wets my hair and starts working on the right side of my bob with a frown of intense concentration. We stand in comfortable silence, the rhythmical snip of the scissors the only sound between us. Once he’s put the final touch to his chef d’oeuvre, March straightens with an air of smug satisfaction.
I now sport an ear-length bob, and the sides are admittedly even, but on my forehead, the bangs are one-inch long, and I look . . . stupid. I think he was going for Amélie’s style, but the result is more reminiscent of Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, and the orange sweatshirt doesn’t help. My lips quiver, until I can’t hold it anymore and let out a chortle. “Thank you. Please don’t ever cut my hair again.”
“You don’t like it?”
I ruffle my hair with both hands. “It’ll do, and hair grows back anyway.”
“I’m terribly sorry . . .” He looks genuinely beaten, and I’m amazed that all it took was a bad haircut to bring down a man who seems otherwise capable of enduring anything.
“Don’t worry. Like I said, it’s gonna grow back. Besides”—I crane my neck to better examine the sides—“I like it. It’s almost a pixie cut. Do you think it’d look good if I dyed it blue?”
A self-explanatory grimace wrinkles his brow. “I prefer your natural color.”
“Okay then.”
Once we’re finished cleaning the bathroom, and we’re back in the bedroom, sitting on our respective beds, the silence returns. This time though, there’s nothing comfortable about it. March won’t stop looking at me, so I cross my legs and stare back to unsettle him. It’s not fair that he looks so calm, and I’m jittering, my fingers drumming on the bed’s scratchy brown covers. I almost wish he’d speak first, but he just sighs and looks down at his hands.
With a deep breath, I risk a toe out of my shell. “March.”
“Yes?”
“What was I like?”
Confusion registers in his gaze, and when he doesn’t answer immediately, I clarify. “I mean, before, when you knew me. Was I very different?”
My question seems to disturb him. When he moves to get up from his bed, I recoil instinctively. I’m not sure what I’m afraid of, but he takes the hint and sits back. “Island, you’re not a different person, and I . . . I still know you.”
“How can you be so sure of that?” I ask, my voice brittle. “I don’t even remember where I first met you.”
“In Tokyo. The day your mother died.”
He might just as well have punched me. “You were there?”
“Dries wanted to capture her, to recover a diamond they’d stolen together.”
I jump to my feet. “He killed her?”
“No. Anies had one of his men shoot your mother before Dries could capture her . . . I believe that’s what started everything between the two of them.”
Everything . . .
The throbbing pain I’m so used to is back, pulsing inside my skull. I cradle my head in my hands, and March is at my side in an instant.
“Let me give you—”
I push him away. “No! No meds . . . I don’t want to take anything.”
His chest heaves. “I understand.”
“Just tell me about my mother, about Dries . . . Anies. Tell me what you know, please.”
I return to my bed and curl under the covers. March sits back too, and I listen as he speaks. He’s factual, concise; I like that. I have no idea how long we stay like this. I remember none of the things he tells me about—well, not consciously anyway—but some details make my chest tighten. He tells me about my childhood, the fifteen years I spent with my mother. He chooses his words carefully when describing her, but I read between the lines that she was part of the same world he and Dries are. A thief, a spy, traveling around the world wherever her next misdeed took her . . . with me in her suitcase.
Apparently I was homeschooled until the age of fifteen, probably because the longest we ever stayed in the same country was six months in Paris when I was eight. I’m surprised at how easily those new truths take root in my mind. Every word, every detail feels like evidence, and I come to realize that Anies skillfully blended real life and fiction to forge the lies he told me. I did spend my childhood globe-trotting, and I did learn several languages—including a bit of Romanian, obviously—just not with him. He was never part of the lives he stole. Already, his polished narrative about my perfect childhood with him seems to be fading away, like fog on a window . . .
March tells me about Simon, the man my mother chose to raise me, the other father who’s waiting for me in New York. Simon works in investment banking, he’s a curmudgeon, and he doesn’t like tapioca because it constipates him. He’s married to a woman named Janice, my stepmother, a retired economics teacher who’s into yoga and veganism. Once again, it’s a strange sensation to feel each new piece of information settle in my mind, click like a Lego brick, even when I can’t picture any of these people, their faces, their voices . . .
“Do you have pictures?” I ask March when he marks a pause. “Of them, I mean.”
“I can show you public ones; I don’t possess any personal ones. I was never . . . formally introduced.”
And I have a fine guess why . . . I give an awkward nod as he reaches for his phone in his jeans pocket.
When he hands me the phone, he’s launched an image search that returned dozens of similar corporate pictures. Always wearing a suit, the man must be in his midsixties, with gray hair that’s threatening to turn white and anxious, attentive blue eyes. There’s this tension in the lines on his face, in every pic, even the ones where he shakes another businessman’s hands or awards another some obscure M&A trophy. Simon worries too much, about everything, all the time. March didn’t say anything about that: I just know it, or rather feel it. There’s a stinging in my eyes: I wipe them with the back of my hand.
“He’s kept all your things,” March says softly. “He hasn’t given up on you.”
My things . . . Biting one of my nails, I let the full meaning of the words set in. My clothes, my books, my life. I focus again on Simon’s stern face, transfixed. “In my place, in New York?”
“Yes,” March confirms. “Joy’s boyfriend moved in so she could keep the apartment on West 81st Street.”
I almost let go of the phone. “She’s . . . alive?” Surprise flashes in March’s gaze, but I put the dots together before he can even confirm. “She wasn’t at the Poseidon with us. She didn’t die there!”
“No, Island.” March places his hand on mine. The sudden heat of his palm feels a little strange, but I allow him nonetheless. “She didn’t die. She’s well . . . and she misses you.”
I free my fingers to look her up in Google images, like I wanted but never could at Ingolvinlinna. The pics Anies showed me were real, and she does work in a law firm like he said. The simple ability to recognize her fills me with so much happiness, so much hope! She must have made me laugh all the time: her grin is infectious, and it’s hard not to fall in love at first sight with her heap of blond curls and mischievous cornflower eyes.
Dammit, I’m gonna cry again. I fight it, blink back the first tears obstinately. Seeing this, March goes to the bathroom to pour me a glass of water. I sip it slowly while he sits back. “Do you want to stop here for tonight?” he asks.
“No, no . . . I want to know everything,” I reply, gulping the last of my water. Mentally going through the list of my priorities, I remember our conversation with Erwin, back at the airport. “Erwin said Stiles and Pirate Morgan used to be CIA, and I”—a vision of a Roomba cat whirring around a nondescript living room flashes in my mind—“I think I knew Stiles . . . even before all this.”
The blue in March’s eyes darkens at the mention of his name. “You did. He used his position in Mr. Erwin’s department to earn your trust.”
He goes on to tell me about the way Erwin skillfully drew me into his net when he figured I was not only both March’s and Dries’s Achilles’ heel but also potentially the warden of my mother’s many secrets. According to March, Erwin didn’t squeeze out much from me. Stiles, on the other hand, who diligently served Anies while pretending to defend the free world . . . that piece of shit became my Facebook friend and betrayed us all—I’m blocking and reporting him as soon as I can access my account.
My stomach lurches with a sense of impending doom as I ask the one question I can already feel I’m going to regret. “And . . . Morgan?”
March marks an unusually long pause: his lips pinch, and pinch, until I fear they’re going to disappear entirely. “He used you to get closer to Dries. You were in a relationship with him,” he says at last, his tone clinical.
My head spins, and nausea wells inside me. Did I call him Alexander? No, March says I called him Alex . . . back when I dated him, unaware that he was manipulating me to get revenge. Because Dries killed his entire family in a plane bombing. Morgan’s father was a double agent who worked for both the CIA and the Lions, a frumentarius, March calls it. Dries hates those frumentarii guys since the man who shot my mother was one of them, and Morgan’s family paid the price for Dries’s grief, like countless others.
This time I just can’t. Salty tears roll down my cheeks, and a violent bout of nausea has me running to the bathroom. I lock myself in, collapse in front of the toilet bowl, and the chicken sandwich I had earlier travels back up along with the Fanta in a revolting mess. March knocks to ask if I’m all right. I say yes because I don’t want him to see me like that.
When I come out after having thoroughly rinsed my mouth, my legs are still shaking. “I can’t believe”—I wrench my hands nervously—“I mean, he always creeped me out, but I never imagined . . .”
Maybe we can start over. It wasn’t so bad, you and me, right?
Hearing his voice again, picturing the scarred flesh sealing an empty eye socket, I rub my forearms instinctively, overwhelmed by the urge to take a shower. “I feel . . . dirty. I can’t believe I slept with that asshole!”
“You didn’t.”
“Oh? Okay . . .”
March’s lips curve in a gentle, almost apologetic smile. I have a bad feeling about this.
“Are you sure? I mean, you can give it to me straight.” I mentally brace myself. Please, please let it not be anything horrible like, “You didn’t sleep with him; he raped you.”
March clears his throat. “No, to the best of my knowledge, nothing happened when you two were together.”
I give a trembling nod. “And he didn’t touch me back at Ingolvinlinna . . .” I return to my bed and hug my pillow. Anies’s innuendos about me building the future with that piece of shit Stiles ring back in my ears. “I don’t think Anies would have allowed that.”
Even so, March still looks uncomfortable, and that scares me.
“Is there something else?” I’ve been drugged for so long and my body was no longer mine. They could have done anything. I wish I could shrug out of my skin right now. “Was I”—my voice falters—“was I pregnant?”
March’s eyes widen. “No, absolutely not.”
“Then what’s your fricking problem?” I mutter.
“You . . . well . . . unless someone—no, that’s not what I meant . . . ” He draws in sharp breath. “I believe you’re still a virgin.”
“I-I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re a virgin,” he repeats, his voice a little unsteady.
I sit up. Surely there’s a misunderstanding. “But, um . . . you said you were my boyfriend.”
“Hopefully I still am.”
An excellent question, which I’d rather sort out later. No, what I need to hear is how? “Were we, like, really religious or something?” Even as I say this, I realize it makes no sense. March has killed at least ten people over the past forty-eight hours and admitted to having tortured a guy in Rio. Unless he pledged allegiance to ISIS, I’m pretty sure religion isn’t his cup of tea.
His mouth purses. “How do I put this . . . our spirits were willing, but our flesh encountered . . . a number of obstacles.”
“Like what?”
I listen, in a state of stupefaction as March goes over the many setbacks we’ve faced since the beginning of our journey. From that time he tried to kiss me in a car in Paris but a drunk bum threw himself onto our windshield—at least that one didn’t pee on it—to a long series of ill-timed or otherwise interrupted attempts. People kept calling at the worst times, then he didn’t have condoms, then his house exploded, then Dries barged into our room, then we were in an elevator and it wasn’t the best time, especially since dolphins attacked us right afterward . . .
And I’m twenty-six. Still a virgin.
After I’ve processed this news, I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. “So you’ve been trying to bang me for fourteen months?”
He strokes his chin pensively. “In a way, I suppose.”
My jaw goes slack.
“I’ve been told I’m very persistent.”
“That you are. But did you never want to just . . . give up and find someone else?”
All trace of humor vanishes from his eyes. “Never.”
There’s something hanging in the air between us after he’s said this, and I don’t know if I should ask, if I’m strong enough to hear his answer.
March tilts his head, his eyes searching mine. Yearning. “Island . . . can I see your left wrist?” he asks softly.
I chew on my lower lip and eventually murmur a hesitant, “Okay.”
With slow, careful movements, he sits next to me on the bed. When the mattress sinks under his weight, I need to make a conscious effort to fight the instinct to curl, huddle, and keep my damn wrist to myself. I unfold my arm and extend it toward him, ready to snatch it back. His fingers wrap around my mine, warm and tentative. I’m starting to understand now where that deep-rooted fear comes from: I have no walls for this man. He knows my body, my mind. I can try to shut him out all I want: he’s already in.
March remains silent for a while, staring down at our joined hands before his thumb moves to stroke the pale scar on the underside of my wrist.
“It was badly broken,” I say, to break that unbearable silence. “They had to put in a plate.”
He nods. “Do you remember what happened?”
“No . . . it was during the fall of the dome, right?”
“No. We went after the Crystal Whisperer in Croatia, but Anies sent Mr. Morgan to kidnap you.”
I feel the blood drain from my face in a prickling sensation. Him . . . I think of the gianduiotti he offered me, and I’m going to be sick again. I actually ate them. “What happened?”
“You managed to escape him, but you broke your wrist when you ran away. You had a cast by the time we arrived at the dome, but”—he pauses and swallows hard—“your arm took several hits while we tried to escape the dome. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t”—he draws a trembling breath, and when he looks at me, I see the way the blue in his irises shines. He’s better than I am at holding back tears. His voice breaks though, and I can barely hear him as he says—“Island . . . I couldn’t protect you and I’m . . . so sorry.”
It’s not fair. It’s his eyes glistening; it shouldn’t be me crying. The room and March’s face turn to blurry sequins as hot tears rolls down my cheeks. I can’t do this . . . I snatch my hand back and get up from the bed. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I need time to figure this out.”
His voice is low, laced with tenderness and regret as he replies, “I know. Let’s get some sleep. We both need it.”