Generation of Liars (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-three: Blackout

I
HAD RABBIT drop me off outside my apartment building. When I got into my flat
it was completely dark and the air inside was freezing. I unpacked my bag and
pulled out the passport I had purchased in London, taking a bored glance at my
picture next to the alias of Patricia C Leor. I shoved it in my dresser drawer,
knowing that I wouldn’t be needing it any time soon. I drew my bedroom blinds
for the first time since I had moved in and did a scan of my devastatingly bare
fridge, which contained only a single yogurt. I knew it was past expiration,
but I was desperately hungry. I reasoned to myself that French people ate
things that looked spoiled all the time. They called them delicacies and
charged a bank robbery for them.

I plunged a spoon into the yogurt
and looked out my window over Paris. Maybe it wasn’t London. Maybe it didn’t
have a giant white wheel on its horizon, and maybe it didn’t spring the Beatles
from its cobblestone loins, but damn it, Paris was where I belonged. I did not
need Pressley Connard, that much I was sure of. I wondered how long it would be
before he was stalking around my apartment.

I finished my yogurt and drew a hot
bath and climbed into the water with a cigarette dangling from my lips. I
tilted my head back in the water, letting my hair splay all around my face like
a pink web. I got dizzy for a moment. The overhead lights were beginning to
flicker. It was subtle at first, easily confused for the flicker of a sleepy
iris. Then I was totally in the dark, with only the sound of rippling water and
the glowing ember on the end of my cigarette to fulfill my senses.

The power had switched off.

I wouldn’t panic. It happened a lot
with these old European power lines. In my last flat, I had spent many black
nights in Pigalle when the lights on the red windmill had gone dark.

I dropped my cigarette butt into
the water and erected up out of the tub and toweled off. Once in the kitchen, I
reached into the cupboard beneath the sink and pulled out three thick candles
and a handful of tea lights. I pulled out a matchbook advertising some dank,
unmemorable club in Pigalle and I lit them all. The flames made tall shadows. I
stood there for a second, hand on hip, watching the smoke play against the
darkness. I pulled out my phone. 

I dialed the hospital and asked for
Dr. Ben Robinson. I told the receptionist to tell him it was a cardiac
emergency, which, I reasoned to myself, was technically true since it involved
broken hearts.

Ben’s voice was urgent when he got
on the line. “Hello?”

“It’s Alice.”

“Alice?” The urgency was gone now,
replaced by annoyance. I heard a frustrated sigh leap from his lips. “Let me
guess? The Eiffel Tower got old hat, so you skateboarded off the Arc de Triumph
while evading the poison arrows shot from a suitor’s bow straight into your
heart.”

“Not exactly. But you get an A for
creativity.”

“You told the receptionist this was
a cardiac emergency.”

“It is, sort of, I mean it’s a
heart emergency,” my eyes went up to the ceiling for guidance, “double bypass,
actually, my heart and your heart.”

Ben didn’t say anything for nearly
a full minute, during which I could hear the buzz of the hospital in the
background; a conversation about discharges, and a page ringing over the
intercom. “Alice, I’m a doctor, not a miracle worker. I’m not sure I can have
any effect on a heart like yours.”

“What kind of heart is that?”

“One that’s been sitting on ice for
so long.”

“Ouch. That really stings.”

“You hurt me. It’s like you’re
torturing me, calling me after what happened. I felt like such a fool showing
up at your place with flowers, only to be shown how little interest you
actually have in me. What am I supposed to say, Alice?”

My fingers nervously twisted a strand
of my hair into a pink spindle. “Say that you will give me another chance. I
mean, you worked a miracle on my arm. It’s healed up already with nary a trace
of that metal venom they call a bullet. Maybe the same gentle touch can work on
my heart.”

“Okay, Alice. I can give you
another chance. I mean, I think you know that I am a bit crazy for you.”

“How about if the second chance
starts tonight?” I asked, crossing the fingers that balanced my glowing
cigarette. “How free is your schedule?”

“My shift here ends in an hour.
After that, I’m wide open.”                                                         

“Okay, then I will see you in an
hour. You know where I live.”

I hung up and stripped my towel off
on the way to the bedroom. I got dressed in my best-fitting pair of jeans and a
crisp white T-shirt. It was hell to put on makeup in the dark, so I dragged a
candle in front of the bathroom mirror. I drew my eyes out very large with
brown liner and black mascara while balancing a cigarette with my other hand.
The warm radiance of the candle gave my skin a soft glow, hiding the exhaustion
I had come to wear around my eyes. As I glided the pencil along the corners of
my eyes, a sensation of calm washed over me. For three years of travelling and
hiding, it was only my femininity, the routine of beauty, which had been
constant. It was a comfort and a therapy to dress my face in the mirror, to
wear the masks outside that I wore within. My spidery lashes blinked at my
reflection and I wondered if what I was doing to Ben was cruel. Sure, I liked
him. Who could resist him? But I knew this thing between us could never really
go anywhere. Meanwhile, I was pretty sure Ben had fallen in love. 

I heard a knock and ran to the
front door.

“Alice, you changed your hair
again.” It was Ben’s reaction when I opened the door. I was unsure if it was a
compliment. He kissed my cheek and handed me a brown paper bag, which was
stained from the grease of Tai takeout. His other arm was hefting a bag
containing wine and beer.

We sat on my couch in the dark,
surrounded by the ambience of flickering candles, as Ben carefully arranged the
piping hot little white boxes of food over the coffee table. We didn’t waste
any time in digging in.

After we had both had our fill, Ben
clasped the stem of his wine glass and his eyes seemed intent on studying my
face. “Alice, I’m glad you called me tonight.”

“I’m just happy you would even see
me after the way I’ve acted. I don’t know why I do it. It’s just that whenever
I feel myself getting close to someone, I shut them out. I acted like a jerk,
Ben, and I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I was coming on too
strong. I was moving entirely too fast. I see it now. I had no right showing up
at your apartment unannounced, or always asking you questions about your
ex-boyfriend or badgering you about the identity of the mysterious Heather
Gilmore.”

 “I’m going to try and open up
to you more,” I told him. “But I will admit, none of those topics are things I
especially care to discuss.”

Ben pushed away the empty takeout
containers, as if to clear open the spaces of my heart. “I’m willing to go as
slow as you need, Alice. Take our time. Really get to know each other. I want
to know all about you.” His eyes studied me in the dark. ”Tell me about your
work. That’s a mundane enough topic, right?”

I choked a little on my beer. “My
work? Oh, it’s boring mostly.” I reclined my legs up onto the couch and let my
eyes fall to the ruins of takeout boxes.

Ben began rubbing my
ankles. “But you get to travel around seeing the world. That must be so
exciting.”

“It’s just a blur. The airplane
lands, I get out, buy a postcard to send to my mom from the airport gift shop,
then we take off again.” I wasn’t sure what a flight attendant did, really. I
wiggled my toes as Ben’s fingers dug in and smoothed out the cramps. Ben lifted
my foot up and pressed it to his lips and kissed my toes, one by one.

“What about you?” I asked, melting
into the surge of tingles crackling up from my toes. “I mean, you’re a doctor.
You get to help people, heal lepers, stitch up clumsy girls who fall out of
national landmarks, all that good stuff.”

“It’s usually not that exciting.
I’m just working as an ER doctor right now because there’s a shortage. Really
my specialty is geriatric diseases.”

“Old people?” By this point the
ankle rub had been promoted to a back rub. I took a breath and sunk into the
digging of Ben’s gentle, yet thorough, finger work.

“Yeah, old people.”

“Why old people?” I was rolling my
shoulders along to his massage. “Do they have a penchant for falling out of the
Eiffel Tower, too? That seems to be irresistible to you.”

“If anyone over the age of fifty
showed up on my ER cot wearing a shredded mini skirt with Technicolor
stockings, I’m not sure I would find that irresistible.”

“I suppose those are the people
they build the psych wards for.”

“The truth is, I worked in a
nursing home facility in college, pre-residency, and I sort of fell in love.” I
let my eyes roll back into my head in utter relaxation and told myself, of
course Ben would fall in love with old people. He was Ben. Sweet, show-up-with -flowers-and-takeout,
Ben. Sweet, ankle-rubbing Ben. Killer back-rub-giver Ben. Probably he was a
teddy bear or Mother Teresa in a previous life. It made me wonder, what did he
see in me? How could someone so pure like anything about double-crossing, lying
Alice? Ben was honest, trustworthy, a pillar of society. Me? You couldn’t trust
me as far as you could throw me. And the farthest I had ever been thrown was
fourteen feet, when I pissed off the wrong martial artist moonlighting as a
stolen software runner in the basement of a gentleman’s club in Bali. I felt
terribly guilty about letting Ben fall in love with me.

Ben pulled me in with both arms.
“Alice, I know I said I would take things slow at first but - .”

I touched my finger to his lips.

“I like you, Ben. A lot. Tonight is
perfect. Let’s not get all hypothetical, let’s just enjoy this for what it is.”
I buried my lips inside the crook of his neck.

He lifted my chin with a finger and
brought my eyes up to meet his. “I know,” he said, “it’s perfect for me, too.
But how long before you just take off again? And I don’t hear from you for days
at a time?”

“I told you, it’s just my line of
work.” I wiggled my shoulders free from him and pounded back the rest of my
beer.

“I know traveling is part of your
job, and I can deal with that. But I hate never knowing where you are. I
worry.” He intertwined his fingers inside mine and searched my eyes. “If we are
going to be together, can you please at least tell me when you leave Paris? I
don’t like the idea of not knowing what strange country you’ve landed in. It’s
like dating Carmen Sandiego. Plus, how do I know you aren’t off having a romp
with that jealous ex-boyfriend of yours, the one who shot you on the Eiffel
Tower?”

“I thought the ex-boyfriend was on
our list of restricted topics. Besides,” I said brightly, “my travel routes are
going to be a whole lot less international soon. My job description has
changed.”

“A promotion, Alice? That sounds
wonderful. Tell me all about it.”

At that moment, a surging sound of
wires being pumped full of buzzing currents resonated all around us and the
lights blinked back on.

“Hey, it looks like the power is
back on.” I stretched my arms over my head and squeaked out a yawn. “I’ll tell
you about the promotion another time. I’m dead tired.”  

Ben helped me clear the takeout
boxes from the coffee table and blow out all the candles. “Tonight was really
special,” he told me. The way he was leaning into the doorway made it clear he
hated to leave.

“I agree.” I scooted onto the balls
of my feet to kiss his lips.

“Goodnight, Alice.”

After I shut the door behind him, I
leaned back against it and my legs felt like they were floating above the
floorboards. I sauntered to the bedroom and collapsed into bed. I closed my
eyes and felt my heart fluttering inside the cage of my chest. Thoughts that
were vibrant and dreamlike were whisking my mind off to sleep, when, suddenly,
I was startled by something like a crash of thunder on the other side of my
tightly-shut eyes.

I startled awake. My eyes trailed
across the dark room.

It was just my phone buzzing on the
table beside my bed. My hand emerged from the sheets and dragged the phone back
under with it. “Hello?”

Chapter Twenty-four: The Reporter

“T
HERE’S
A JOB tonight.” It was Rabbit’s voice on the line. He sounded excited.

“Tonight? Can’t it wait? I finally
just crawled into bed. My flat didn’t even have power most of the evening.”

 “Yeah, how did you like
that
?”

“How did I like what?” I asked,
sobering awake and losing my grip on the magical, twilight feeling of falling
asleep.

“The blackout. That was all me. I
had to tinker with the city’s electrical grid to disrupt some routers to
wireless connections.”

“You caused the power outage? Whose
internet did you make go kaput?”

“The answer ties into the job you
have tonight.”

“How is it possible for me to have
a job tonight? We’ve already got the dynamite stick, remember?”

“This is a smaller job, Alice.
There’s a small nerd convention happening in Paris tonight, an informal coming
together, if you will, of hackers who have been searching for the dynamite
stick. I hacked their connections to get a list of the players involved and
their meeting place.”

I tossed the covers asunder and planted
my feet on the cold floor. “Cut to the chase. Why am I getting out of my warm
bed in the middle of the night for this?”

“Well, one notable guest at the
convention is a reporter. His name is Skip Hask. He’s from one those techie
magazines called
Zipped
, and he’s been doing a decent job at chronicling
the possible whereabouts of the dynamite stick. His articles don’t get loads of
attention, since the existence of a master disk with all the Social Security
numbers is pretty fringe theory in media circles.”