GINI RACED FOR THE airport. She caught her plane with five minutes to spare, and it was not until it was airborne that she had time to think. Pixie had known no further details, not how Cazarès died, or where, just that she was dead, had died earlier that day and that it was natural causes—or that seemed to be the case.
“I’ll do my best about the room,” she had finished, “but you can imagine, Gini, right?”
Gini could imagine only too well. She could imagine what might or might not have caused this sudden death; she could imagine the immediate consequences. A second circus would be coming to town. From America, from Britain, from all over Europe: when legends die, the jackals move in.
Her flight left on time; every ten minutes Gini checked her watch. Half an hour to landing, twenty minutes to landing. She had only hand luggage. With luck, she could be in a taxi and at the St. Vincent within thirty minutes of clearing customs.
Then the problems began. They were stacked over Charles de Gaulle airport. When she finally reached the taxi stand, there was a long line. The trip from the airport was slow, the center of Paris gridlocked with traffic. She ran up the steps of the St. Vincent, into its huge marble-floored lobby. There she stopped dead.
Rowland McGuire had been luckier, it seemed. He rose to his feet as she entered. As she attempted to walk straight past him, he blocked her path. He then took her arm.
“What kept you?” he said.
Gini gave him a furious look; she struggled to free herself.
“Don’t you touch me,” she began. “Just get out of my way.”
“Let’s not waste time,” he said, tightening his grip and propelling her toward the elevator. “I suggest we go straight up to our room.”
“What did you just say?”
“Our room. It has three phone lines and two faxes. It’s a suite. One bed and one couch. Since I’m a gentleman, I’ll take the couch.”
“Let go of my arm, damn you.”
“—Besides, neither of us will be getting much sleep. The French press has a head start, and I intend to catch up. Press eight.”
“Go to hell.”
“Along the corridor. First door on the right. That’s it. You like it? It’s the last available room of its kind in Paris. It’s cost the Correspondent six thousand francs above rates. When in doubt, bribe. Now…” He closed the door. “I would like you to listen to me.”
“Let me out of this room.” Gini rounded on him, her face white with anger and distress. “You think I’d work with you now? After what you said to me? Just get out of my way. I don’t want to work with you, I don’t want to be in the same room with you.”
“Maybe. But you’re going to hear me out.”
“The hell I am. I remember what you said. You damn near accused me of being a whore.”
“I never used that word.”
“Don’t lie. It’s what you meant.”
“Possibly. My phrasing was more tactful, I think.”
Gini smacked him hard across the face. She had to reach up to do it, but she hit him with her full strength. The blow left a mark across his cheek. Tears had sprung to her eyes. She drew back, shaking, fighting to control her voice.
“You think I work like that? You think I operate that way? Well, I don’t. I never have—never. I despise women who do that. I fought for years to get an assignment like that. I care about the stories I work on. I tried to cure myself of that in Bosnia because I thought I couldn’t do my work and care—but I’m not cured. And now I don’t want to be. I’m going to find Mina Landis—and I don’t need your help. I’m going to find her because—”
She broke off with an angry gesture of the hands. “… because I talked to Anneke’s mother, and… she wept. You wouldn’t understand. But I care, Rowland, I care very much about that.”
Her voice had risen, and the emotion she felt was so strong, she could scarcely speak. Furious that Rowland McGuire, of all people, should see her like this, she began to push past him.
“Just get out of my way, Rowland. I have nothing else to say to you. Let me out of this room.”
“No,” he said in a perfectly level voice. “I won’t do that. I’m not even sure I could do that.”
“What?” Gini said, and then she stopped. Suddenly she began to see Rowland McGuire, really see him. It was as if a camera changed focus, from long shot to close-up. One minute he was faceless, blurred, just a tall shape between her and the door; the next, she could see the man himself. He was wearing an overcoat, one of his usual old tweed suits, a white shirt with the top button undone, and a green tie with the knot loose. Earlier, manhandling her into the elevator, he had seemed dourly amused; he did not seem amused now, or angry, or resentful of the fact that she had just slapped his face.
She could see the mark her palm had left across his cheekbone, a red weal that emphasized his pallor and the set determination in his face. He was regarding her with absolute seriousness, his green eyes resting unwaveringly on her face. His hands were by his sides; he appeared simultaneously relaxed and intent. She glanced down, weighing her chances of pushing past him, then looked up, met that intent green stare—and sensed the danger at once.
They were standing very close to each other, their eyes locked. At that moment, when she was least expecting it, out of antagonism, haste, and furious anger, she felt something arc between them that was none of these things, a sexual message so sharp she gave an involuntary intake of breath.
She felt it pulse through her own mind, she saw it reflect the same instant in his face. She saw a deeper concentration come into his eyes, and then a surprise—as if he had expected this, foreseen this, as little as she had. In the same moment, again with unspoken accord, they each stepped back.
Gini looked at the door, which was shut but unlocked. Rowland McGuire had moved to one side, so to leave would have been simple. She took a step toward the door, then hesitated. Rowland put a hand on her arm, then instantly withdrew it. Gini realized her anger had gone. There was still noise, turmoil, in her head, but it was of a different kind.
“How did you know I was coming here?” she asked in a quieter voice.
“I called your hotel in Amsterdam. They told me you’d left for Paris. I called about fifteen minutes after you left.” His eyes never left her face. “I called from my car, on the way to the airport. I was already on my way here. Someone had to cover this. I had fired you. I was the only other person with the necessary background. I was going to apologize. Ask you to join me here. I wanted—” He hesitated. “The hotel told me you’d had difficulty obtaining a room in Paris. I guessed you’d have tried to contact Lindsay, so I called here. It wasn’t difficult to track you down. I knew which flight you’d taken. So, I got here. Found the room. Made some calls. Waited.”
“When did you hear about Maria Cazarès?”
“For certain? About five minutes after we spoke. I first heard the rumor about an hour before from a journalist friend here. He phoned back to confirm just after I hung up on you. Confirmation came through on the wires about five minutes after that.”
“So you’d heard a rumor she might be dead before we spoke?”
“Yes. I had. Plus I’d had two very difficult conversations with my source in Amsterdam. That was the timing. It isn’t an excuse.”
There was a silence. Gini could sense an emotion that was at variance with the calm precision of his speech. She hesitated.
“What made you want to apologize?”
“I realized how badly I’d behaved.”
He paused, his face suddenly troubled. Gini, who had known the instant she asked the question that it would have been safer unvoiced, prayed he would not answer it more fully. She was about to interrupt him, when he spoke.
“I want you to know,” he went on in a deliberate way, “I am ashamed of what I said. Not only because I was wrong—on two counts. Also, because I lost my temper and I said things there’s no reason you should forgive.” He hesitated, and she could sense his struggle. “Despite what people say about me, I very rarely lose control to that degree. I now see, of course, why I did.”
Gini admired him then. His gaze did not waver as he made this admission—and no woman could have misunderstood what he meant. His meaning was absolutely clear in his expression and tone. It might be an understated declaration, but a declaration it was. It was characteristic of him, she suspected, to phrase it in such a way, so she could ignore this revelation, or, with equal directness to his, respond.
She stared at him, unable to break his gaze. She knew that if he spoke again, if he tried to make his statement more explicit, she would be free. She could walk past him then, go out that door. She waited; he did not speak—but the silence in the room did.
She could feel the danger acutely now, the threat of the next, the threat of the unforeseen, the possibility just around the corner of her as-yet-unmade response. She could feel time picking up speed. The second or two it took her to make her reply was freight-train fast, freight-train loud. She had a brief and confused sensation that she, and he, were passengers here. One wrong word, one wrong gesture, and they’d both be getting on a train there was no getting off.
“It wasn’t true, what you said,” she said. “About the Antica. About Pascal…”
And she thought, for an instant, she was safe. She had bypassed his declaration, and she saw his mouth tighten as he registered that. She had used Pascal’s name, which should, under these circumstances, have made her entirely secure; instead, the use of his name had a very opposite effect. Rather than carrying a charmed strength, it was suddenly weak: with it came a tide of uncertainties and unhappiness, all those months of loneliness and misery, of waking alone, and sleeping alone, and walking alone through London streets. It was no protection at all from this acute and unexpected sexual awareness, an awareness that sent a charge through every nerve in her body so she could scarcely think for a need to be touched.
“Don’t,” she began, and she was still telling herself, as he moved, that she would be safe if he did not touch her. “Don’t. It’s all right. It’s my pride that’s hurt, that’s all.”
He did not argue with that lie; he said nothing at all. He took her hand and drew her against him gently. He looked down at the tears on her face, then held her still against him in a gentle embrace. After so many weeks of abstinence, the shock of a man’s body, and a man’s embrace, was intense. She let her face rest against the muscles of his chest; she listened to the beating of his heart. She felt a sense of protection, and then of need. The body could be starved of affection as much as the mind, and for a short while just to be held, and be held by a man, gave her relief. She felt as if she had been struggling so long, fighting herself for so long, and now—suddenly—she was released.
Then it began to steal upon her, the realization that this was not just any man, and not a neutral embrace. It was a particular man, strong, a little taller than Pascal, a man whose body, touch, manner of holding, were new to her. She realized that her breasts were pressed against his chest, that he was becoming aroused, that one of his hands rested in the small of her back, exerting no pressure as yet.
Behind her in this room which she had scarcely looked at when she entered it less than ten minutes before, a telephone had begun ringing. She had a confused sense that it might be for either of them, and that if it was for her, someone was trying to reach another woman, leading some previous life. She let it ring, and Rowland let it ring, five times, six.
He rested his hand against her throat, then lifted her face to his. She met his steady, green, intelligent gaze: a man who could indeed be impetuous, a man who was more than prepared, when he judged it necessary, to take risks. She felt him stir against her, and a tremor of response ran through her own body. Even then, when she knew they could both sense consequences, repercussions, when the noise of them was so loud in her head that she could scarcely think, even then he was scrupulous, and he gave her a choice.
“This story is breaking,” he said, “and that call might be urgent. Do you want to answer it?”
Gini looked up at this semi-stranger. Want for him surged up through her body with an astonishing force.
“No, I don’t,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he replied, and with that acknowledgment past, he did not hesitate. With the noise of the ringing telephone blindingly loud, and his composure suddenly gone, he pulled her against him. He kissed her hair, then her eyes, then her mouth. It was urgent, and very swift: Gini opened her mouth to his; she cried out as his hands touched her breasts. At some point the telephone stopped ringing; at some point Rowland locked the door, but afterward neither of them could have said when, or at which point.
A while later Gini rose from the bed and went into the bathroom. She felt blind; blinded by its darkness, still blind when she switched on the light. It had the predictable luxury of such hotels. It was lined with marble. Rowland’s belongings—a brush, a comb, a shaving kit—had been thrown down carelessly on a shelf. Above the basin was one mirror, behind her on the opposite wall was another. Gini looked at a room that would not stay still, in which reflections doubled back and the veins of the marble seemed to pulse. She made herself focus; she looked into the mirror; she looked at herself.
Sex was like pain, she thought. If you were without it for a time, you forgot how all-powerful it was. It was sex she could see in this mirror now: its imprint could be seen on her mouth, which was swollen; on her skin, which was flushed; and on her body, where his hands had touched and gripped. She ached with the pleasure of being fucked; her thighs were wet; she smelled of sex, leaked sex, and she could still feel the little aftershocks of sex, the residual tremors of sexual delight that came to her as she remembered how he had done first this, and then that.
This, then, was what she was. These specifics measured out her betrayal. For all her certainties, all her past vows, she had still arrived here, in a situation she had never envisaged, and would have claimed was beyond the bounds of possibility. She had made the choice, and to compound her own faithlessness, the sexual pleasure had been intense.
Why had she had that fixed, stupid, adolescent certainty that only Pascal could give her this? Why had she convinced herself that love altered the very nature of this act and gave it a resonance and intensity it otherwise lacked? What a very female mistake, she thought: what a woman’s error; how many men would claim that? That belief was unfounded; she could read its untruth in her reflected face, and feel its untruth in her womb. In betraying her lover, she had learned a most bitter and unwelcome truth about herself.
She ran some water in the basin and washed herself. She returned to the bedroom. Faint light came through the closed curtains. Rowland McGuire was lying on his back, his head cradled in his hands. He turned as she entered; Gini crossed, and knelt down beside him. Naked, he was very beautiful. The hard lines of his body still gleamed with sweat. She rested her face against his shoulder and pressed her mouth against his skin, which tasted of salt. He placed his arm around her quietly and drew her closer, his hand resting against the jut of her hip.
The intimacy and peace were also unexpected. Neither spoke for a while. Gini felt the remembrance of his kisses and embraces wash through her body. She was the first to speak.
“Once, Rowland,” she said. “It has to be that way. It was just this one time. Nothing happened before it, and nothing must happen after it. It was accident, chance.”
“A mistake?”
“No.” She met his eyes steadily. “No, I would never say that. But it’s something neither of us meant to happen, or even wanted to happen. And then it did happen. If we never think of it again, never speak of it…”
“Treat it as a momentary aberration?” He was watching her intently.
“No. I’m not sure…” Gini flinched. “Maybe. How would you define that word—exactly define it?”
“I can give you a dictionary definition. It’s a straying from the path, a deviation from type.”
“That, then,” she said, grasping at the word. “A straying. Something neither of us would have thought of, or allowed, or planned in normal circumstances.”
“Were these circumstances so abnormal?” He removed his hand and sat up.
“Yes. I think they were.”
“A room. A man and a woman? An unexpected choice? Is that so abnormal?”
“It felt that way.” She turned away from his gaze. “I love Pascal. Rowland, none of this alters that.”
He gave her a sharp, questioning look but said nothing. He rose, reached for his clothes, and began to dress.
Gini sat up, watching him, pleating the sheets in her hand. She wondered if he thought her naïve, or disingenuous; he judged her as a self-deceiver, perhaps. And at that, a memory came back to her, an incident from her past she disliked to recall.
“I was warned of this once,” she began in an agitated way. Rowland turned to look at her, in the act of fastening his belt.
“A man warned me. His name doesn’t matter, and he’s dead now, in any case. He told me—these things happen, and they get under every guard. Duty, ethics, vows—even love. He said nothing was an adequate defense against—”
“Against what?”
“All of this.” Gini gestured sadly to the bed. “Sexual desire. Sexual attraction. Suddenly wanting someone so badly, you can’t think. He warned me how powerful that could be. I was angry. I told him he was wrong.” She rose. “That was a year ago. He was killed a few days afterward. I now see he was right.”
“Was this man your lover?”
“No. Absolutely not. I was working on a story about him, that’s all. I was with Pascal. I don’t sleep around, Rowland, all right?”
“I didn’t think that. I wasn’t suggesting that…” He hesitated, then buckled the belt, reached for his tie and jacket.
“We’ll do as you suggest,” he went on, his manner becoming brusque. “This never happened. It was a dream. A hallucination. A departure from the prescribed plot.”
“I’ll describe it to Pascal that way, shall I?” Gini said, averting her face.
“Do you tell Pascal all your dreams, all your imaginings?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then I wouldn’t mention this one.”
“Lie, you mean?”
“Lie by omission. Yes.”
Gini hesitated, looking at him. He had turned away from her so she could not see his face.
“Do you lie, Rowland? Do you lie well?”
“Very well. When necessary. Yes.”
“Would you lie to me?”
“Of course. Without hesitation. And you’d never suspect.” He turned back to look at her, and then, to her surprise, he crossed back to her, took the blouse she was still holding out of her hand, and drew her into his arms.
“I’ll say this just once,” he began quietly, resting his hand against her hair and drawing her face against his chest. “I give you my word—I’ll never tell anyone what happened tonight. I’ll never discuss it, under any circumstances—not with any other woman, not with a man. And if this is something you want erased from the record—it’s erased. It’s without consequences. From now on I’ll treat you exactly as I did before this happened, and you will treat me the same way. And no one will ever suspect.”
“Can you do that?”
“Yes. I’m good at disguising my feelings. I learned as a child. I’ve had plenty of practice since.”
“Feelings aren’t involved.” Gini broke away from him. “This has nothing to do with emotion. It’s sex—”
“Even simpler, then. I’ve always found sex very easy to forget.”
He moved away from her and began to pick up objects that had been scattered about the room earlier: a wallet, keys. His composure hurt Gini, as did the tone of his replies, and she despised herself for this. It was a very female perversity, she thought, to start objecting when a man granted her her wish, and she had no intention of giving in to that impulse. Without further comment she began slowly to dress.
Rowland had moved across to one of the fax machines and was reading various messages. Gini was unsure when those messages had come through: before, during, after? She could not have said.
“The Cazarès offices have closed down for the night. Apparently.”
He looked up from the page. “I doubt that. They may not be taking calls, but they’ll be working. Preparing the authorized version of Maria Cazarès’s death. Lazare is holding a press conference at eleven o’clock.”
Gini hesitated, then tried to match her tone to his. “Nothing more on the circumstances of her death?”
“No. Heart failure—cardiac arrest was the first rumor. There’s been no advance on that. And there’s still evasiveness as to exactly when she died, and where. Not at one of her own properties—that was the initial rumor. I have some inquiries out about that. She was taken by ambulance to a private Catholic hospital, the St. Étienne. She’s been treated there before, apparently. It would be useful to know from where, and when, the ambulance picked her up.”
“If our suppositions were correct, she’d been taking White Doves for—what? Two days? Three?”
“Probably three. But they’re still suppositions. And likely to remain that way, I suspect, as far as the doctors and clinic are concerned anyway.”
“Won’t there be a post mortem?”
“I don’t know. I imagine it depends on Lazare, and the degree of his influence. The security shutters came down very quickly on this.”
“And the collections? She was due to appear Wednesday. Her show is on Wednesday. Will they cancel that?”
“Presumably. Either way, they’ll announce it tomorrow, at the press conference… We can see if Lindsay knows anything later. I’ve left word. She must still be out with Markov. They were supposed to be at the Grand Vefour, but they must have changed the reservation. It’s conceivable Lindsay hasn’t even heard yet. Anyway”—he turned back as Gini picked up her coat—“shall we try your Chantal? It’s possible Star could be there, I suppose. Mina too. The rue St. Séverin, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s close to the St. Séverin church. In the Latin Quarter. About fifteen minutes from here.” Gini glanced at her watch. “It’s eleven-fifteen now, Rowland.”
“I know. Late to be making a call.” He shrugged. “It gives us the advantage of surprise anyway.”
“It’ll probably be another false lead. This man Star seems to have a gift for disappearing.”
Gini stopped. She had reached Rowland’s side; they were both now standing in the doorway; she watched him undo the bolt, and she had a sudden hopeless sense that she could not keep up this pretense.
She wondered if Rowland also felt this; he gave no sign of it. He was about to open the door, but turned to look at her. She could see strain in his face then; she saw his eyes rest on her mouth. He hesitated. “I want to kiss you again,” he said. “I suppose you realize that?”
“Rowland—don’t. We have to stop this. We have to stop it now. You said—”
“I know what I said.” He hesitated again, then slowly lifted his hand, rested it against the nape of her neck. “Just tell me one thing—before we go.” He frowned. “Your hair—you cut it yourself? When? Why did you do that?”
“It was when I came back from Sarajevo. I don’t know why exactly.” Gini paused; he did not prompt her, but waited for an answer just as he had that afternoon in the drive outside Max’s house. “I was unhappy. I wanted to change myself. So I took the easy way out, the woman’s way out. I changed my appearance instead. I just hacked it off with some nail scissors. My hair was long before. Why?” She raised her eyes to his. “Does it look horrible?”
“No. It does not. It makes you look—I like it. I noticed it when we were in England, driving back from meeting Mitchell, and… it’s not important. We should go.”
It was important, of course. Gini knew that, and she knew Rowland knew too.
“I like you, Rowland,” she said as he was about to open the door. “I want you to know that.”
“Why?”
“You’re astute. Very quick. I like you for the things you don’t say.”
“And your silence was the first thing I liked about you…” There was a pause, then he took her arm, and his tone altered. “We should hurry. The rue St. Séverin. We should have been there two hours ago. What happened to those two hours?”
“There was a hitch in the story. A kink in the plot line. We neglected our work,” she replied as they stepped into the elevator. “Press ground, Rowland.”
The lobby was full of journalists. Seeing some Englishmen he knew, Rowland disappeared into their group. He listened attentively, then spoke, his voice quiet, his manner confidential.
“What were you doing back there?” Gini asked as he joined her in the cab outside.
“Obtaining information. Spreading misinformation. Reverting to type.” He smiled. “What’s the first rule of journalism, Gini?”
“Oh, I know that. My father told me often enough. It’s the one you forgot earlier. Check—then double-check.”
“That’s the second rule.” Rowland gave her a sharp glance. “We both forgot the first rule.”
“Which is?”
“Always be ahead of the pack.”
The rue St. Séverin was tiny and very narrow. It was dominated by its church. The church’s gargoyles reared up across the sidewalk, almost touching the buildings opposite. Facing the church was a stretch of Algerian and Moroccan restaurants, advertising couscous and kebabs. As the clock in the tower above them struck, Star drew Mina into the dark doorway of the church.
“It’s eleven-thirty,” he said. “Wait here, and don’t move. I’ll be ten minutes, fifteen at most.”
“Can’t I come in with you, Star?”
“No. You can’t. Keep your scarf on. Stand out of the light.” He grasped her hands and fixed her with his beautiful eyes. “I need you, Mina. You promise me you’ll wait?”
He crossed the narrow street and disappeared into a doorway between the restaurants opposite. Mina stared at the building he had entered. It looked as if there might be small apartments above the restaurants; the windows were less than fifteen feet from where she stood. They were lit but not curtained; she could see the flickers of a television set, the shadow of a moving figure, nothing else.
Cautiously, she looked along the street. The restaurants would have phone booths, she thought. If she were quick, if Star was really away fifteen minutes, she could try to call England. She had no money, but she could call collect, though she wasn’t sure how to do that from France. She took a step forward, then her nerve failed her. No. Star was sure to come back, sure to catch her; better wait.
She looked at her watch. He had been gone only a couple of minutes. He had been promising her, all day yesterday, all day today, that he would let her make the call, and then, when it came to the point, something else would intervene. He would say no, he had to wait for a friend, or they had to go out and meet someone, but he would never explain whom they were seeing or why. Whom was he seeing now, for instance? Whom had he been seeing this afternoon? Some horrible, shuffling, muttering old woman dressed in black who lived in this huge, horrible, musty apartment, full of knickknacks and crucifixes, and horrible gaudy pictures of Christ.
Mina had had to sit in a corner while Star and this old woman muttered to each other in French, and while the old woman kept stroking Star’s hand and fawning over him as if he were some kind of god. The old woman kept talking about Maria: it was the only word Mina understood—Maria this, Maria that. Star had given Mina some grass to smoke before they left for the old woman’s apartment, and it had been powerful, but it hadn’t given her a lift. It had made her feel sick, and trapped, going round and round like some squirrel in a cage, so her thoughts wouldn’t fix. When they got to the old woman’s apartment, it was airless and hot, and Star had sat her down right next to a radiator, which made her feel worse.
In the end, right in the middle of one of the old woman’s endless weird crooning speeches, Mina had known she was about to pass out, or be sick. Star showed her through to a bathroom in an irritable way, and she could sense that whatever the old woman was telling him was making him angry.
“Stupid fucking old bitch,” he said when they were back in the air, back in the street. “She doesn’t know if it’s tomorrow or last week. She’s fucking up my timing. Now I’ll have to drag all the way over here tomorrow.”
“Why, Star?” she asked before she could stop herself, but for once he answered.
“Because I was supposed to meet someone there,” he said. “A friend. She should have been there, and she wasn’t, because that fucking old bitch can’t tell Monday from Tuesday. Never mind. I have time.” He stopped. “You see that pharmacy there? Go in and get the hair dye. Here…” He pressed some money into her palm. “Hurry up. I can’t do it. A man buying hair dye, they’d remember that. You do it. Hurry up.”
Mina took the money. She wondered if there might be a telephone in there, but of course there was not. She found the package of dye and paid for it. She wondered if the friend Star was supposed to have been meeting was that woman she’d seen at the airport, the one he’d said was Maria Cazarès. When she’d been coming back from the bathroom in the old woman’s apartment, she’d seen into a bedroom, a bedroom like a shrine, with a big bed with a pink silk eiderdown and photographs of Maria Cazarès everywhere, hundreds of them, on tables, on chests, on the walls. Except no, she thought now: Maria Cazarès wasn’t Star’s friend, she was his enemy, he had said.
She was getting cold now. Star had been gone more than five minutes. She edged out of the doorway and crossed the narrow street, ready to dart back if need be. Smells of food grilling assaulted her, and she pressed closer to a restaurant window, realizing how hungry she was. Star never seemed to want to eat. It was hours since they had eaten. In a mirror to the side of the restaurant doors, she suddenly saw a girl, very close; the girl startled her and then she realized the girl was herself. She stared at her reflection. With a glance over her shoulder she eased back her blue scarf and then grimaced. Tears came to her eyes: Star had cut her hair himself. Then she had applied the dye. He’d let her look at herself in a hand mirror, just very quickly, when it was dry, and he had seemed so pleased, he’d kept saying how pretty she looked.
She didn’t look pretty, Mina thought. She looked ugly. The dye had not taken well, so her hair was now a crude rusty black. It stuck out in jagged tufts all around her face. She looked like a refugee, an outcast… She shrank away from the glass and darted back across the street. She replaced the scarf and tied it tight. What if she’d been seen? They’d been seen this afternoon, a few minutes after leaving that old woman’s house. Not by a policier—Star never walked near uniformed police, but cut away the second he spotted them. No, they had been seen by a man in an ordinary suit, in an ordinary unmarked Citroën. He stopped, picked up a mobile telephone, started speaking, then got out.
But they were already running by then. Around corners, into shops, out again, through a whole maze of narrow streets. When they finally stopped, Mina could scarcely breathe, and Star was white to the lips.
“You saw him?” He caught hold of her arm. “Christ, they’re everywhere. Police, plainclothes police. In cars. On the street. He saw your hair—I saw him look at your hair. We have to get back. We have to change the way you look.”
He put his arms around her and hugged her tight. “Mina. If they catch us here, you know what they’ll do to me? They’ll put me in prison. They’ll lock me up.”
Mina tried to tell him that she wouldn’t let them do that; she’d explain that she’d chosen to come with him. But Star wasn’t listening. He raced her back to their attic room and then he made her dye her hair. He sat there in the corner of the room while she did it, he wouldn’t even let her use the bathroom, in case the dye left traces, and one of the other lodgers saw it and suspected. So she had to apply the dye with a basin while Star sat surrounded by all the red curls and tresses he’d cut off. They were on the table, on the floor, but he didn’t seem to see them. He was reading the tarot, slapping down the cards: the tower, the lovers, the hanged man, the queen of diamonds, the king of cups. His beautiful face darkened. Mina could tell he didn’t like what the cards told him, and the next thing she knew, he’d swept them all on the floor, then picked up the chair and thrown it across the room. It hit the wall, and smashed.
“Hurry up.” He threw himself down on the bed and lay back, staring up at the ceiling. His fists clenched and unclenched. “Dry your hair, Mina. Come here. Talk to me. Stroke my forehead.”
Mina did as she was bid. She crept up close to him and stroked his hair, then his face.
“Can’t you tell me what’s wrong, Star?” she said timidly.
“The cards were bad.” He reached up and grasped her hand. “I didn’t like the cards. Go on, Mina. You make me feel better. You’re the only one who can. You have the soothing gift. Stroke me very gently. Like that.”
Mina continued to do so. She felt proud, but also a little afraid of what Star might do next. She felt cold, with her still-damp hair, and she could see little rivulets of black dye dripping down onto her arms and her shirt.
After a while, a long while, she felt him tense, and she knew what was coming next. He gripped her wrist and opened his eyes, and stared at her, one long, unblinking stare. He looked into her and through her, his beautiful face set like a mask, not one muscle moving. Then he pulled her hand down, away from his forehead. He rested it on his chest, then moved it lower and pressed it against his crotch.
Mina knew what he wanted her to do now, because he’d shown her the previous day. She had to stroke his thighs and his groin while she murmured his name over and over. When he closed his eyes, that was the signal: then she had to unzip his jeans and free his penis, which Star called his cock. The word embarrassed her and made her blush, because apart from Star and Cassandra, no one else she knew ever used that word. Fortunately, she did not have to use it herself; she just had to stroke him, holding his penis in her hand. She was to continue saying his name while she did so; she had to breathe quietly, and lie very still; he would tell her when to stop.
When he first asked, pleaded with her to do this, Mina had thought that perhaps this was how sex could begin sometimes. She had always expected it to begin with kisses, but perhaps this was a prelude to making love which some men liked. She told herself that she knew what would happen next. It would be the way Cassandra whispered, the way it had so clearly been explained in biology class. Star would become aroused, then blood would engorge his penis, then he would have what her teacher called an erection and Cassandra called a hard-on—and then he would certainly kiss her, and then they would make love.
Behind all this mist of confusion and words, Mina thought she was prepared for this. She did not want to go on being a virgin, but she wanted the loss of her virginity to be special—not some rushed fumbling of the kind Cassandra had described, but a glorious occurrence she would never forget: she wanted it to be her gift to a man she loved—and she loved Star. As soon as he first began talking to her, she had known that at once.
No diagrams or descriptions, however, had prepared her for this. She knew she was flurried and nervous, and was perhaps making some technical mistake, but when she unzipped his jeans and took Star in her hand, even when she began to stroke him, nothing happened at all. Star’s eyes remained closed, but he did not protest, or correct her, so gradually she lost her fear. She stroked his beautiful, taut flat stomach, then laced her fingers in his dark pubic hair. Timidly, she ran her index finger along the length of his penis: its large size surprised her, and so did the extreme tenderness of this skin. She traced a vein, then held this lovely thing in her hand. She might have liked to bend forward and kiss it, because she felt overwhelmed with love for Star, and with these secrets of his body, but she did not quite dare. She continued to stroke, and once she felt a tiny quiver of life pass through this soft flesh, but then it lay inert once more, cupped in her hand, and she began to feel desperate.
“They spring up,” Cassandra had said. “They spring up and stick out—like a shelf. I like it when that happens. It makes you feel so powerful, Mina. It’s great.”
What was she doing wrong? Mina tried to blink back the tears. She knew what was wrong. Star did not love her; he was not even attracted to her; she was stupid and plain and clumsy; she did not inspire want.
“Star,” she whispered when she could bear it no longer. “Star, is something wrong? Isn’t this what you want?”
He rose up in the bed in one fast, fluid movement. He drew back his arm and hit her hard across the face. He hit her with the flat of his hand and his full strength. The blow was so powerful, it knocked her back against the wall and off the bed.
She crouched on the floor, too afraid to cry, and then Star caught hold of her and dragged her up. He was shaking with rage and his eyes had that glittery look she was coming to dread.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, shaking her. “Nothing—you’ve got that? You think I want sex?” He shook her again. “You think I want to fuck? Well, I don’t. I don’t want any of that—that’s what ordinary men want.”
Mina began crying then. The tears choked her, and her head hurt, and she was desperate to make him understand.
“But I love you, Star,” she whispered. “I love you so much. I thought you might want to make love to me. If you wanted to, I would…”
“Have you? Ever?” He shook her a third time, and when she said no, he suddenly embraced her very tight, locked her in his arms and rocked her back and forth.
“That’s good,” he said. “That’s good, Mina. You have to understand—we’re special. This is special. We’re not like everyone else. We commune, Mina. We fuck with our eyes, with our minds, with our souls, Mina. That’s what we do. That’s what I want.”
Mina stopped crying and stared at him. She looked at his face, which was extraordinary, burning with conviction, and she thought what he said was extraordinary, the most strange and wonderful thing any man could say—and then a horrible little doubt crept in at the back of her mind: had he ever said that before, to anyone else?
Almost at once, though, that doubt slipped away. Star was so kind and so tender to her after that. He took her in his arms and kissed her face, and told her she was the best and the sweetest thing that had ever happened to him in his life; he told her she was his salvation, and Mina believed the blaze in his eyes and his voice. Since then there had been no outbursts of rage, just the occasional hints, like the rumblings of a volcano, the suggestion that even when controlled, some terrible fury she did not understand seethed beneath.
He has been hurt, she thought now, edging back into the darkness of the church doorway, so badly hurt that nothing could soothe him for long, not the strokings and whisperings of his name, not even the game he liked to play with that gun catalogue, though his expertise there could always restore his humor for an hour at least.
She lifted her watch to her face and stared at the hands. Star had been gone almost twenty minutes. She felt suddenly afraid that he wouldn’t come back, that he’d tired of her, decided just to abandon her there. She looked up at the lighted window opposite but could see no one. A taxi was just pulling in at the end of the street. She shrank back into the shadows, imprisoned there by fear and love, by an anguish of uncertainty—by the most potent combination of weapons any man can use against a woman, of course, but Mina did not understand that. Less than a minute later she gave a low cry of relief: the door opposite had opened, and Star was across the narrow street in an instant.
Mina began to move forward, into the light spilling from the restaurants, and then she stopped. Two people had climbed out of the taxi, a man and a woman. They were now moving along the street. They were checking the numbers of doors, and they were speaking English: Mina caught the man’s deeper tones, then the woman’s low voice.
Star, usually so cautious, seemed unaware of this. He had come to a halt just in front of her, and was staring at her as if she were invisible, as if he looked at a wall. Tears were streaming down his face.
“Star, quickly. These people are English,” she whispered, catching hold of him. “Come out of the light.”
He still did not move; he seemed not to hear her. The man and the woman were closer now, about thirty feet away. Frightened, Mina backed into the shadows of the church doorway, pulling Star after her. He had begun to make a noise, a terrible noise, a low, moaning noise. Mina fumbled with the handle of the door behind her and opened it.
“Don’t, Star, don’t,” she whispered, and tried to cover his mouth with her hand. Shaking, she half pushed, half pulled him into the church and swung the door shut. It was dimly lit and empty. Candles flickered in some distant recess. Star slumped back against the closed door, then slumped to the ground. He crouched there, silent now, then buried his face in his arms. Mina stood absolutely still, listening, torn between Star and the footsteps outside, which had been coming closer but had now stopped.
“It’s the house over there,” the man said. Mina could hear him clearly. “The one with the lace curtains. Someone’s in—there’s lights, there’s a television on…”
Mina froze, pressing her ear to the door panels.
“Shall we both try?” It was the woman’s voice. “It’s late. We don’t want to alarm them.”
“You try first. A woman is less intimidating. Be careful what you say. If she’s there, I’ll come over—let’s play it like that. I’ll wait here in the doorway, out of sight.”
The woman seemed to hesitate. “Is something wrong, Rowland?”
“No. Nothing. Go on…”
Mina heard the woman’s footsteps cross the street. Her male companion moved back so he was just on the other side of the church door. Mina held her breath. Then, to her astonishment, she heard the man give way to some unexplained emotion. He made some quick violent movement; Mina thought he struck the wall beside the door with his fist; she heard him say Christ once, in a low voice, then again, even more quietly, then she heard the sound of knocking from across the street. Then silence. Then voices, the woman’s and a girl’s, speaking rapidly in French.
The conversation was brief; a door slammed. The woman’s footsteps approached.
“No Chantal?”
“She claims not. Hasn’t lived there in months. Doesn’t know where she does live now. And doesn’t take kindly to a stranger turning up on her doorstep at this time of night.”
“Was she lying?”
“Maybe. I couldn’t tell. She slammed the door in my face.”
“Damn. Now what do we do? Maybe we should go back to the hotel. I need to think.”
“You need to sleep. You look exhausted.”
“I’m fine.” He cut the woman off in a curt way. “Come on. This is hopeless. We can’t force our way in there. We’ll have to give this information to the police. You realize Chantal could be there despite what she said. So could Star. So could Mina Landis, come to that.”
“Rowland, I know. Damn, we’ve done the wrong thing. We shouldn’t have come here like this. If they were there, or if that woman knows them, we’ve just alerted them. That was stupid. Stupid. We’re not thinking clearly.”
“I’m aware of that. Let’s get back to the St. Vincent…”
The footsteps moved off. Slowly Mina began to breathe again, began to move again. She looked down at Star. She thought he had heard none of this. He was still crouching at her feet, his hands still covered his face.
Mina knelt down beside him and put her arms around him. His face was wet. Gently she began to coax him and whisper to him; she tried to persuade him to lift his head.
“Star,” she said, “please don’t. What’s happened? What’s wrong? Don’t cry—I can’t bear to see you cry. Look at me, Star. We can’t stay here. Someone’s looking for me. They mentioned the police. We have to leave.”
“She’s dead.” He raised his face. “Maria Cazarès is dead. She died this afternoon. This evening. I just saw it on the television. She died hours ago, and I didn’t know. I didn’t sense.” He made a horrible choking sound in his throat. “The cards lied. They should have warned me. I wanted her to die. I think I did. But not like this. Not like this!”
His sudden violent gesture knocked Mina aside. He stood up.
“This is your fault. Your fault. That stupid fucking old bitch’s fault. If you hadn’t been sick, I’d have stayed, I’d have waited. I knew it was the right day. I knew she was coming—and she did. One hour, two hours after we left. After you made us leave, with your fucking dumb whinings and complainings, you’re too fucking hot, you feel sick…”
He pulled Mina up to her feet and shook her, then grasped her so her face was just inches from his own, and his blue-black eyes glared at her with that awful glittery look.
“I’d have seen her die—you realize that? I could have stood there, just the way I planned, and watched her die at my feet. With that dumb fucking Mathilde weeping and screaming and calling for a priest. Trying to find her rosary, trying to find some little sacred picture, as if a picture would save her—I could have seen all that. And I would have rejoiced. Rejoiced. Twenty-five years I’ve waited for this—and you, you—”
He stopped. His face worked. Mina was so afraid, she could not move. He lifted his hands and clasped them tight around her neck. “Shall I kill you, Mina?” he said, his voice steadier now, and the blue-black eyes looking directly into hers. “I could. I could snap your spine, just like that. Break your neck—then I could leave you here in the church. I could put your body on the altar. Lay you out, Mina, with candles at your head and candles at your feet…” He paused and drew in one long, slow breath. “So, shall I kill you? Maybe I’ll kiss you, Mina? What do you think?”
Mina could not speak. She tried to move her lips, and he increased the pressure on her neck, just for an instant, then he moved, bent, kissed her very hard on her closed lips.
“You’re safe,” he said. “I’m merciful. Anyway, I need you. I need you more than ever now. I’ll have to change my plans. Adjust. I can do that. I’m resourceful. I’m quick.”
He took her by the arm as if nothing had happened, led her out into the street, and took her back to the attic room. All the way there, Mina could sense his mood was changing yet again. She could feel a new electricity in the pace with which he walked, in the light in his eyes; he looked—bright, she thought, as if he gave off rays of invincibility.
“Sweet,” he said. He had been laying out the tarot as soon as they entered; he was still in his long overcoat, and Mina was crouching on the bed.
“The cards are sweet. I knew they would be. It’s okay—I can do it now. I have the means—look.”
Then he took out the gun. Mina knew very little about guns except what she had learned from his catalogue games. This was small, a nickel color; he tossed it down onto the patchwork quilt between her legs.
“It’s not loaded. Don’t be afraid. Pick it up. Isn’t it beautiful? That’s what I had to collect tonight.”
Mina touched the gun, then withdrew her hand. Star picked it up. He caressed it. He held its muzzle against his temple. “Bang,” he said, smiling now. “One bullet in the heart. Another in the head. Au revoir, Jean Lazare. Simple. This fires fifteen rounds a second. Nasty ammunition. It rotates, after impact, inside the body, inside the brain. You don’t survive. You get lacerated—and that’s not nice, Mina, I know all about that. My life’s been one long laceration, they took my heart and they tore it into little, little strips. One day, I’ll tell you about that…”
He talked on, and Mina watched him and the gun. She was afraid, but she was thinking hard. Star needed help, she could really see that now; he needed help from doctors, but he’d never agree to see one, she knew that.
“Wednesday morning. Two more days—less,” he was saying, and Mina lay beside him, as still as a mouse. She was trying to work out how and when she could escape from this room, this house. The door was not locked, but there was a problem she could not see around. As far as she knew, as far as she had been able to judge in the three days they had been together, Star never slept.