Bonbons and Betrayal: Book 3 in The Chocolate Cafe Series (3 page)

“Paul Creed, professor of the NYU Computer Science Department?”

“Oh you mean, Paul Creed, my friend’s boyfriend?” Mac had had enough. “Her current flavor of the day, you mean? Yes, then…that Paul Creed.” She immediately regretted her cutting remark. The woman’s eyes filled with tears and her lower lip, rimmed with wine stained skin began to tremble at an alarming rate.

“Deena Shelat!”

Louis, who had been rubbing his new beardy friend for the entire exchange, suddenly burst forth with typical enthusiasm. “My word, Deena Shelat. What an honor.” Mac stepped aside, shocked, as Louis moved between the two of them and offered his hand. “I’m Louis. I’m a huge fan of yours. I’ve read all your papers and if I may say, your lecture at TED Talks last year was inspiring. You really make computer science interesting, which is no mean feat.”

Deena shook his hand numbly; her eyes still big and wet, like a beaten puppy.

Ms. Shelat let go of Louis’ hand and immediately grabbed Mac by the wrist. Mac gasped a bit and resisted as Deena dragged her in to whispering distance. She was strong despite her fragile appearance.

“Your friend is better off without him,” she said, her voice trembling as much as her lips. “The man has no morals. He is a hurricane of misery. Tell her to get out early. Tell her… Tell her if he can ruin a woman like me, he’ll devastate a pretty young thing in glitter and lace.” Her voice was deteriorating with emotion the more she spoke and she practically spat her last sentence out. She released Mac and turned away, bumping into happier folk that blocked her way to the exit.

“Holy…” Mac said, taking a comforting sip of her drink. “Did you hear that?” she asked Louis. Louis watched Deena make an awkward exit, his hand up at his beard again.

“I can’t believe it’s the same woman. You know she’s considered a genius…”

Mac was about to turn to Louis and swear him to silence until she had deciphered Ms. Shelat’s distressing little drama, when the music died down and the front of the gallery was illuminated.

A large man, who looked like he’d be much more comfortable in a pair of sweatpants than a suit, stepped up to a podium placed on what was once a pulpit.

“At this point, we’d like to ask our guests to have a seat and we’ll get tonight’s proceedings under way. Mr. Creed has arrived and is ready to give his acceptance speech.”

It was as if someone had announced the arrival of Barack Obama. The crowd fell into excited murmurs and they rapidly made their way to the round tables at the base of the pulpit. Those sitting began to fiddle with their phones to find the right recording apps for the occasion.

“Who
is
this Paul Creed guy?” Mac mumbled with rising concern.

Paul nervously adjusted his tie for what seemed like the hundredth time. It was perfect, of course. It had been perfect every time he checked but he had to do something with his hands. God knows he couldn’t eat. Even though there was a buffet of snacks laid out for him in what stood for a green room, he wasn’t about to go off the rails now. The man who looked back at him in the mirror was a monster of his own meticulous creation. He had worked too hard to get here.

Time magazine was there. He had seen the slovenly journalist and his photographer seated at the front. Discover Magazine, The New York Times and a herd of sweaty looking Internet reporters and bloggers… all waiting to usher him into the kind of fame he deserved. The kind of fame he had practically walked over bodies to get to.

He practiced his smile. Lately he had been working on getting his eyes to match the sincerity of the lower half of his face. Sometimes, when he wasn’t expecting it, he’d catch a glimpse of himself and what he saw behind his eyes was simply not acceptable. He saw nothing. Blank. Like he was sedated or in a coma…He needed to learn how to make them sparkle like Sabrina’s did. Her eyes practically glittered when she was delighted and there was something so pure about it. He had almost forgotten she was coming tonight but had just texted her to join him. He needed to see that glitter again, to perfect his version of it for the cameras that were about to be on him all night.

The door behind him suddenly opened, allowing a rush of excited voices to slip into his silent chamber. With the sound of laughter and music came someone less welcome. One of the last people, actually, that Paul wanted to see.

“Sayeed Mehyar. What can I do for you?” Before turning to face his rival, he tried again to perfect that human sparkle he was missing.

Sayeed looked far less humane. Barely recognizable out of the short sleeve dress shirts and chinos he tended to prefer, Sayeed walked toward him with all the intimidation that his small frame in an oversized evening suit could muster.

“You must be pleased with yourself.” He said, “All ready to walk up and stand on the shoulders of better men to get your reward?”

“Can we not? Can we not do this right now?” Paul said, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. Sayeed Mehyar had been his roommate for a few crucial years when the two of them were in graduate school. He had always considered the tiny, nervous little man to be nothing more than a rung on his way up the ladder. He had come in handy, certainly. His parents had a great deal of money and Paul discovered early on that with a little manipulation, Sayeed was willing to pay for anything Paul wanted.
In actuality, Paul was able to save a substantial amount of money in those years. Unlike his peers, he graduated with a bank account fat enough to fund a richly deserved trip to Bali.

He didn’t feel guilty about it either. In fact, he didn’t feel guilty about much of anything.

“Of course,” Sayeed said, raising his tiny hands in a gesture of deference, “This is your special night, isn’t it? This is that moment of glory you’ve been working on all these years.”

Paul adjusted his suit jacket sleeves.

“Absolutely. What’s your point, exactly? I haven’t had more than a passing conversation with you in a few years at most, and you choose now to drop in. What is it you want? I’m expecting someone.”

“I want you to know,” Sayeed
began, moving in closer. Paul supposed he was trying to puff himself up – to seem frightening on some level – but failing miserably. His weaselly little personage was just annoying, like an insect that Paul had to fight to stop himself from swatting away. “I want you to know that he’s here.”

Paul sighed.

‘Who? Who’s here? This is very dull, Sayeed.”

“Randall Eisenhower. He made it in. Despite your best efforts, I’m sure.” Sayeed searched Paul’s face for some sort of emotional response. Nothing. He simply stared at him; his eerily symmetrical face, which didn’t seem to have aged at all over the years, was completely placid.

“That poor fellow. It'd do him good to get out of the house, I suppose.”

It was Sayeed who was suddenly unable to control his emotions. A burst of anger seemed to race through his body, causing him to clench his hands into fists at his side. Oh how he had wanted to hit this man… Perhaps now was the time.

“Poor fellow? I know what you did to him. The exact same thing you did to me, only this time… It was much worse wasn’t it? Convincing him to stop his medication, forcing him to work all hours of the day and night, emotionally torturing him. He’s not capable of handling that kind of pressure.”

Paul shrugged.

“What is your point again? I’ve got an award to accept.”

Sayeed found himself yelling.

“It should be Eisenhower standing up there accepting that award. You stole his idea, just like you stole mine. You are a thief, Paul. You are a corrupt shell of a man. A fraud.”

For the second time in as many days, Paul skirted on the brink of losing control. The edges of his vision seemed to blur. The next thing he knew he was standing inches from the pathetic little man, staring down his nose at him. There was sweat on Sayeed’s upper lip and if Paul wasn’t mistaken he seemed to be trembling. Perfect.

“I am a fraud about to become the next Steve Jobs. I am a fraud who is about to make enough money to buy your entire family. I am joining the ranks of the hundreds of celebrated frauds to be on the cover of Time magazine. You are a sad, aging professor defending the rights of a mentally unstable kid who should probably be locked up.”

Sayeed blustered beneath him, his eyes tiny dots of emotion in his pale little face.

“How can you live with yourself? With what you’ve done to Deena, to Randall…to me and god knows how many other people along the way. Why do you get to flourish while the rest of us have to suffer? How do you sleep at night?”

There was a soft knock at the door and Sabrina entered. Paul flushed a deep shade of embarrassed plum when he turned to see her. She was a vision, her lovely figure wrapped in ivory, her shoulders bare and practically glimmering in the dim light of the room. She smiled at him with what was unmistakably pure adoration.

“There you are.” she breathed. She barely looked at Sayeed – she saw nothing but Paul. “I was looking for you. Are you ready? I think they’re all waiting.”

Paul began to push past Sayeed, but stopped. He bent low enough to whisper in the overwrought man’s ear.

“How do I sleep at night? I sleep like a newborn baby.”

Sayeed opened and shut his mouth like a fish gasping for air, trying to think of something, anything to say to make Paul aware of the extent of the damage he was causing, but could think of nothing. He simply watched, his chest heavy with rage as Paul made his way into the arms of the beautiful young woman at the door and then out to meet the world.

Ted Talks it was certainly not.

Louis leaned against the cold brick of the building, enjoying the feel of the damp as it seeped into his shirt. He’d left his suit jacket on the back of his chair, abandoned right alongside of his interest in this entire evening.

He had been enthused of course. Lately all it took was one of Mac’s lopsided smiles to get him excited about the smallest of things, but when the evening ended up being an extended bore… well, he could only take so much. The call of nicotine was too powerful to ignore.

He lit his cigarette and threw the match into one of the many puddles that glimmered in the back alley. He watched the rainbows of oil scramble and waver as the tiny match landed. He missed it. There was never oil in the puddles in Mackenzie Bay. There were no dim alleyways, harnessed together with a net of wires above. The constant hum of messy, frustrated, beautiful human beings was consistently drowned out by the roar of the waves. He was a city boy, born and bred in the middle of London like all of his family before him. Silence was deafening. Peace, to Louis, was the space between conflict and not some kind of unattainable nirvana.

On the subject of conflict…Miss Mackenzie had given him quite the look when he had ducked out for his smoke break. He had no idea how she found the stamina to listen to scientists, colleagues and media magnates salivate over a little app and a man that was literally a stranger to her.

Sabrina, that’s what gave her the stamina.

He took another drag, exhaling a plume of smoke up to the starless sky. He was just about to snub it out and head back inside, when the door he had exited by swung open.

A young man, almost half Louis’ height but just as skinny, rattled down the stairs and into the alleyway. He was busy lighting his own furtive cigarette, and judging by the trouble he was having with the whole process, he was more than a little intoxicated.

When he couldn’t get the lighter to work, the man cursed loudly, raising his face to the sky and howling the word like a wolf.

“You alright?” Louis asked, unable to suppress the amusement in his voice. The man turned, startled. He was much younger than Louis had initially thought. His face was long and shockingly angular, like someone who was either severely malnourished or running at such a high level of stress that their body simply couldn’t cope.

He was hunched, his shoulders up around his ears. His clothes were not only far too casual for the event, but they hung off of him like he hadn’t washed them in weeks. All in all, he was either at the wrong event entirely or almost ready to be kicked out of the right one.

His glassy eyes locked onto Louis’ cigarette.

“I need a l-l-light.” he said, a rapid stutter completing his neurotic appearance. “Can I have a l-l-light.”

Louis crossed the distance between them in a few steps. He tried to hand his lighter to him, but when the boy went to take it, his hands were shaking too much to be of any use.