Illuminate (27 page)

I couldn’t bear to wait. I grabbed my bag, burst up from the bed and out the door in one smooth motion.

I had gotten only as far as the gallery entrance when I spotted Lucian—in a sharply tailored black suit—on his way to me. A smile lit his face, like the sun breaking on the horizon.

We walked toward each other, through the lobby, not noticing the people milling around us. Watching him, I worried I couldn’t even keep traveling along a straight trajectory. I had to pay attention to each step or I might topple over, swoon the way girls were always doing in those eighteenth-century novels I liked so much. But they all blamed the suffocating corsets—what was my excuse?

The lobby felt endless, our walk in slow motion, until finally we met halfway, in what seemed to be the exact mathematical center of the lobby—a fact Lance would have known. I would have to ask him.

“Hi.” He spoke first, his eyes spearing mine as everything around us faded.

“Hi.”

“I would’ve come down to get you. You’re too punctual.”

“Punctuality, it can be my worst trait, I guess.”

“Then you’re lucky.”

I remembered my manners. “This is amazing, thank you so much.” I smoothed out the skirt of the dress and tried to read his expression.

“You’re very welcome.” This was all he said, nothing of how I looked. I thought that’s how dates were supposed to go: no matter what, the guy says
You look great
as soon as he sees you. Apparently I had been ruined by too many romantic comedies. After a pause, he went on: “So, we’re gonna play a game. I hope you like games.”

“Only if I win,” I blurted out playfully before even thinking.

Lucian seemed entertained by this. “You’ll win,” he assured me.

“Then in that case . . .”

He led us toward the entrance to Capone and said, “It goes like this: Everyone is going to look at you as we walk by. Pay attention.” His lips curled into a smile, like we were in on this wonderful joke together. Except I didn’t quite get it.

“I’m sorry?”

“Just watch.”

He burst into the packed dining room, slicing through the throngs of people buzzing around the bar. Every table was taken and many patient hopefuls lingered on the periphery staring down the lucky seated diners, willing a new spot to open up. He cut a diagonal trail right through and I followed. A few steps in, he reached his hand back and seized mine in his and we walked, like that, his grip so warm I felt the heat rise to the top of my head and down to the soles of my feet.

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it happen, but he was right: people paused mid-conversation and watched us pass. They turned their heads. One woman pointed. I imagined the gesture was for Lucian, who had that effect in every room he entered, but then I saw the woman, well-dressed in her evening gown and pearls, nod at me in approval. Yes, when I dared to look right in these faces, I saw their eyes were on me. I wondered if they could read my shock. Through a cutout in the back wall offering a glimpse of the kitchen, I caught sight of Dante, shaking something around in a flaming skillet. He looked up, the blaze lighting his face with its fiery glow, and flashed me a look that said,
Not bad, Haven, and I want to hear about it later.
We turned a corner and Lucian and I were alone, side by side now. He linked my arm into his, making a place for my hand in the crook of his elbow.

“What did I tell you?” he asked.

“They were looking at
you.
” It came out shyly, or maybe coquettish. He shook his head. “Or else, I must just have something on my face that no one’s telling me about.” He studied me for a moment.

“I think you’re right.” He pushed my hair behind one ear and kissed my cheek, soft and warm. “Got it.”

I had to consciously lock my knees to keep them from buckling. And now we were walking again.

“So where are we going?” I managed without sounding too breathless.

“Alcatraz, of course.”

“Of course.” I said it like I had some idea what he was talking about even though I didn’t.

“You haven’t seen it yet because it wasn’t finished, but it is now, and you’ll be the first there.”

“Should I be wearing black and white stripes?”

“No, you’re stunning as you are.”

We reached the end of the shadow-shrouded hallway, stopping before a tucked-away elevator. He hit the down button and the doors opened. Inside it was entirely made of glass. He held out his hand to usher me in and then followed me.

“So, Alcatraz then?” I started as the doors closed. Outside the glass, the dark walls of the elevator shaft closed in as we shot down.

“Alcatraz.” He let it hang there in the air, just to let the mystery sink in as the cables of the elevator creaked.

Nervous, I babbled, “Capone did some time there. Four and a half years, I think. The devil’s island, right?”

“Indeed, they did used to call it that. Here, Alcatraz is a lot more pleasant than what Capone encountered. Ours is a private dining room,” he explained. “He was there four years, but here people can stick around as long as it takes them to eat four courses. A meal in here costs more than you can believe, more than it should be legal to charge, but it’s already booked solid for the next two months. We, however, get to be the first to try it tonight. Consider this a final quality-control test run before the un- veiling.”

The doors opened and we were met by a narrow metal gangplank, fenced in by ropes. From where we stood, it stretched out to a small caged-in island in the center surrounded by water. The whole expansive room, if you could call it that, didn’t seem like a place that could be contained within the four walls of the hotel at all. A moat flowed on all sides of the island, and along its banks sweeping, lush nature flourished. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn we had been transported outside to some sort of hidden pond, lined as it was with mossy trees and bulbous tropical plants in deep reds that looked akin to the one Dante had given me.

“Welcome to Alcatraz.” Lucian stepped onto the walkway.

I took it all in, the visuals overloading my eyes, too much to process. “No one would ever try to escape this Alcatraz.” As we walked, the panels beneath us lit up.

“That’s the idea.”

We made our way to that island in the center, a beacon at the confluence of romance and danger beckoning to us. My pulse raced at the idea of being suspended above this water, amid this strange indoor wildlife, alone with Lucian. The area we were headed toward was caged in by bars—a more literal interpretation of Alcatraz than I had expected. Inside that encasement, however, a perfect scene awaited us: a floating dining room and lounge. A table had been set for dinner with lavish damask linens and gleaming china, all glowing in candlelight, and two velvet chairs that resembled thrones. In the area behind the table, a matching cushy chaise longue and chair and a mirrored side table made for a cozy sitting room. Certainly the most beautiful jail cell anyone could hope for. The encircling metal bars ran a good twelve feet up but didn’t come anywhere close to reaching the top. High above us, the ceiling sparkled like a night sky.

As we reached the lock in the bars, Lucian fished from his jacket pocket an old-fashioned key ring the size of a bracelet with one comically long key dangling from it, and twirled it around one finger. He rattled the key into the lock and swung open the cage-like door for me.

“Thank you.”

He pulled it shut behind us and reached his arm through one of the slats to lock us in, then looped it back around and returned the key to his pocket.

“Now we’ve officially locked away the rest of the world.”

I liked the sound of that. The scar at my heart fluttered and burned. I touched the satin of my dress just above it.

“But what happens if you drop the key in the water or something?”

“Then we’re in trouble. We’ll be down here forever,” he said matter-of-factly. I looked at him, just a flash of nerves. He grinned, lightening. “Don’t worry. It’s all for show. This is actually open. There’s a switch so you can get locked out but never locked in.” He brushed past me to the sitting area. “Come ’ere.” He took a seat on the chair and opened a panel on the cylindrical side table, punching a few buttons. I sat down on the chaise, smoothing the dress over my lap. He flipped the panel down. “Watch this.”

A low whoosh and rattle shook from inside the table. Within seconds, a glass dome shot up from the surface of the tabletop and split down the middle, opening like a jaw and then disappearing, leaving two wineglasses and a dark blue bottle.

“Wow!”

“Yeah, not bad, huh?” He poured from the label-less bottle and handed me the glass, now full with something effervescent and clear.

“You’re not going to set fire to this or anything?” I wanted to find a nice way to ask what was in here.

“It’s sparkling water.” He poured a glass for himself.

“Oh.” I felt like an idiot now. “Exotic.”

“Thought you’d like it.” He smirked and clinked my glass with his, then went on. “So generally people can order whatever they want in here. That’s the idea at least.” He stood from his chair and pulled me up, his hot hand gently tugging at mine, then slid back one of the chairs at the table for me to sit down. He pushed me in, scooting that huge chair and me effortlessly, then took his place across from me. “But I took the liberty of preparing a tasting menu of all the best dishes, because you shouldn’t have to choose among the best—you should just have all of the best. And I mean that, not just in terms of what nourishes a body but a soul too. It’s a way of life. But I’m getting away from my point. I hope you don’t mind that I ordered dinner.”

“Not at all. I suppose I’m okay with that,” I said.
What nourishes a soul,
my mind turned that over.

“I thought so.” He leaned down, clicking at something on his side of the table, and snapping something shut. Another
whoosh
swirled, this time from inside our dinner table. The silverware chimed together softly. Another dome shot up, erupting from the tabletop, encompassing the entire thing, save for an outer rim that included our place settings. The dome split away and retracted out of sight, and at least a dozen small plates the circumference of baseball caps now dotted the surface.

“Whoa.”

“That’s nothing. Check this out.” He hit another button on the panel on his side of the table and the lights in the moat around us lit up brighter and bluer, a rippling glow encasing us as it spouted from beneath the water. The star-like pinpricks speckling the ceiling intensified so it looked like a replica of something you might see at the Adler Planetarium downtown. I gazed above, finding Orion’s belt and Cassiopeia and Ursa Major. I noticed Lucian fiddling once more with that panel and music came on, something jaunty and swinging. “Are standards okay? Right now we only have Capone-era music.”

“I guess that’ll have to do.” I smiled, dazzled by it all.

“So that’s it for my tricks,” he said finally, slouching back in his chair.

“That’s pretty good.”

“Hopefully you’ll like this just as much . . .”

He took me on a culinary tour of our table, pointing out what each dish was—mini ostrich cheeseburgers, rattlesnake ravioli, alligator soup—so many things I’d never even dreamed of trying. I was overwhelmed by the array of odd delicacies. In an effort to appear adventurous, I planned to try everything, even if, in some cases, it would require blocking out what animal it was.

“This is like a trip to the zoo,” I said when he had finished describing it all. “I mean, in a tragic sort of way.”

“A very quiet and still zoo, I suppose.” He laughed. “So, I guess, bon appétit?”

“Bon appétit,” I confirmed.

He sliced a bit of the dish nearest him—the venison—and I speared a pair of the rattlesnake ravioli right in front of me, but as I did, the table jerked and began rotating away from me. “Omigod,” I blurted out, as my ravioli and fork got whisked away clockwise toward Lucian. I looked over to see him suppressing a laugh.

“Okay, that’s my last trick.” He raised his hands up in surrender.

Hey!” The ravioli and fork had stopped in front of him. “Do I have any controls over here? You know, like a driver’s ed car with the two sets of brakes and steering wheels and everything?” I lifted the tablecloth on my side but found only a solid cube that was some sort of elevator shooting the food up and out to us.

“No, I’m afraid I’m doing the driving.” He smiled. “I suppose you’ll be needing this back?” He waved my fork but instead of handing it over, he reached across the table for me to take a bite. “What’s the verdict?” he asked.

“It’s good,” I said at last, as soon as I stopped chewing the tough meat. “Just like chicken.”

“I think so too.” He chuckled. “So tell me, Haven,” he started, his eyes on me. “What do you most want?”

I paused for a moment. “Um, well, I guess maybe it would be a good experiment for me to try the escargot next?”

He smiled, a true, wide smile, rotating the table so the escargot landed in front of me, and continued: “Actually, I meant more in terms of, what do you want from life?”

“Wow.” I set down my fork and looked at him and then away. “I definitely got that question wrong, didn’t I?”

We both laughed in matching tones. I was still formulating an intelligent answer to redeem myself, when he jumped in.

“Remember when I told you to make a wish on your birthday?”

“Sure.”

“So, what did you wish for?”

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to incriminate myself—that was, after all, the day I met him, and I had been pretty preoccupied calculating the odds of him ever being interested in me. So I answered simply, “I didn’t get around to formally wishing for anything. I kind of got distracted. And, I guess, sorta sick.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It’s okay. It was worth it, you know?” I felt myself easing into that warm wooziness that I’d experienced that night, after that fiery drink. I had no idea why since I’d only had water. Maybe this was just my natural state around Lucian. It would take no prying at all and I’d be confessing that I was madly in love with him, going anywhere he wanted to take me. I felt addicted to him.