The Blue Bath (15 page)

When Jorie spoke again her voice was impatient. “What is it that you want from him?”

“I don’t want anything. Certainly not money.”

“Brilliant. Sign the papers and it’s over.” Jorie tilted her head back and drained the remainder of the wine from her glass, replacing it firmly on the table as if to signal that it was sorted. There was something in her eyes that Kat did not recognize. Not quite anger, but its close kin.

“It was over a long time ago,” Kat mumbled, leaning back into the banquette, away from the light.

*   *   *

T
HERE WERE SURPRISINGLY
few questions about her early return from Paris that spring. People seemed all too willing to make their own assumptions. Homesickness, trouble with the academic program, a simple change of heart. Any one of the fickle reasons of youth.

Her time there had always hovered noiselessly over her history. A gap defined only as her year in Paris. Eliciting wistful smiles and nods of understanding, it seldom called for any additional explanation. People were happy to fill it in with their own memories, their own fantasies. Talking of the food and the wine and the cafés, all the things that had existed in the background of her time there.

Although no one ever admitted it, she was fairly certain that she had some help getting into business school. After all, while her grades were good, she doubted that as a French-literature major she was at the top of their wish list. To this day, she couldn’t fully answer why she had chosen business school, but it probably had something to do with the fact that it was the furthest thing from what she had thought she wanted.

She had been more surprised than most to find that she excelled at it. Once she realized that the quantitative aspect was in fact only a small part of it, it had come quite easily to her. But the real key, she knew, was that she had let go of fear. On some basic level, she understood that it couldn’t hurt her. That none of it was real.

After Paris, New York provided the chaos that she needed to hide herself in. It seemed at first to be peopled not by individuals, but by archetypes. Were one to vanish, she felt certain that another would simply take its place. In the beginning, she found it nearly impossible to do things that required stillness or reflection. Listening to music, reading, going to the theater. The nights were the most difficult. There was only the sound of the cars moving unseen in the streets below her window. In her second year of school she took on an internship with a large bank and threw herself into it. She was looking for something to fill her up. To fill up the hole that she could feel inside of her.

She had several offers on graduation. She took the riskiest and most demanding one with a precocious, precarious start-up. Things moved quickly. There was ample room for creativity and little time for fear. It ate up her days and her nights and she became hooked. Addicted to the adrenaline and to the constant future focus. There was no today and there had certainly not been a yesterday. What mattered was only tomorrow and tomorrow.

*   *   *

S
HE HAD SEEN
Elizabeth at a party in New York about a year after she came back from Paris. Someone’s birthday at the Plaza. Elizabeth had just returned, having stayed on to complete the second year of the program. Kat had almost not recognized the slender, elegant blonde who had greeted her. There was considerably less of her than there had been in Paris. The two had made small talk, discussing their summer plans and sharing information about people they knew in common, politely skirting around the edges of her early departure. Kat noticed that almost all traces of her Southern accent were gone. She seemed to be, Kat thought with a smile, the epitome of New York style. Later on, as Kat was leaving the party, Elizabeth intercepted her by the door.

“I don’t know if telling you this is the right thing to do.” Elizabeth spoke quickly. “I saw Daniel.”

Kat didn’t respond immediately. It had been so long since she had heard his name spoken out loud. Elizabeth hesitated, her hands clasped in front of her. She seemed to be looking for an indication of whether she should go on. Kat wasn’t sure whether she should give it to her, but the lure of hearing something—anything—about him proved too strong to resist.

“It didn’t end well.”

Kat surprised herself. A very tidy dismissal.

Elizabeth nodded sympathetically. After all, she had warned her of as much. “It was a few weeks after you left. He came to the flat. At first I wasn’t sure it was him. He looked so … different.”

She glanced at Kat and gave a small nervous laugh before looking away again. “Anyway, like I said, he came to the flat. It was late. He asked for you and I told him you weren’t there—that you had gone back home. I didn’t tell him where you were, just like you asked. And he left.”

Here she paused again, eyes still downcast, the color rising in her cheeks. “And then about an hour later he came back, asking for you again. I assumed he was drunk or something. Obviously. And that maybe he had forgotten that he had been there before and so I told him again. That you were not there. That you had gone home. And he left.” Elizabeth’s voice was increasing in pitch, but her words were slowing down, as if they somehow weighed more now than when she had begun the story and she was having trouble getting them out.

“And then there was another knock on the door, just seconds after I had closed it. And there he was, just standing there, like it was the first time.” She was no longer looking at Kat, but instead looking down as she clasped and unclasped her hands. “He just kept coming back.…”

Kat shivered, but said nothing, thinking of Daniel at the door, playing out the scene over and over again. Elizabeth looked up at her, finally meeting her eyes. And in the small silence between them, two things happened at once. Elizabeth decided not to finish her story and Kat guessed its ending. That Daniel would have continued to come back until he found a different conclusion.

“Oh Kat, I didn’t mean for it to happen. Really, I didn’t. I honestly don’t know what got into me.” Her face furrowed with desperation. “You won’t … you won’t say anything, will you? I mean, you wouldn’t, would you?”

After a moment, the music started up again in the ballroom and Elizabeth looked toward it, regaining her composure. “I never saw him after that.” She shrugged, in a small, quick way that looked like a twitch. “I thought you should know…” Her voice trailed off as she stood, sad and triumphant, uncharacteristically still inside the warm embrace of the Plaza’s gilded grand ballroom, under the soft glow of its glittering chandeliers. After a moment, a small smile returned to Elizabeth’s face and she turned back to Kat.

“Anyway. I guess you made the right choice.”

Kat nodded. She should say something. It was her turn to do so. But she couldn’t think what. A man in a dark suit hovered near them for a moment, slightly agitated, and then approached, placing a hand proprietarily on Elizabeth’s shoulder. Kat looked up into a familiar face.

“There you are,” Elizabeth said delightedly, reaching up to squeeze his hand. “Christopher, you remember Kat?”

“I do. Kat Lind. How are you? Haven’t seen you since Paris.” Kat leaned in for the obligatory double-kiss greeting of the recently repatriated. “Sorry to interrupt. Darling, would you come say hello to the Fiskes before they leave?”

Elizabeth startled at the name and hurried to excuse herself. Kat watched the pair dissolve into the crowded ballroom and turned to leave, letting go of the back of the delicate gilt cane chair she had been clutching.

It was at about this time that she had come upon her old camera in the back of her closet in her mother’s house. There was unprocessed film in it. Standing in the darkroom, she watched as the curtain of rain appeared under the bath of chemicals. The last photos she had taken. She hadn’t used her camera again after that day in the Tuileries. There were several shots like that, followed by a number that she had taken at high speed with the wider aperture. These were completely different, showing the shape of the individual raindrops. Elongated on the way down and fat and round as they bounced off the ground. All that had not been apparent in the moment.

The last photo on the roll showed the clear lines of trees against a fence as ghostlike figures moved in the foreground. She studied it closely. The focal point of the photo was beyond the figures, rendering them oddly distant despite their relative proximity. She knew that one of the blurred figures was Daniel, leaving the Tuileries after their brief shelter under the tree. But she couldn’t tell which one.

chapter ten

Kat noticed the silver sports car, parked at an angle and too far from the curb, before she noticed him. He leaned back on the car easily, arms folded across his chest, eyes on the house in front of him. It was partially hidden under a cobweb of scaffolding, while being repainted in the approved shade of eggshell white. He hadn’t seen her yet, but it was too late for her to turn around. She glanced down the street. No sign of the neighbor or of the neighbor’s driver. No sign of the security guard at the Greek embassy. The road was empty of traffic. He was still staring at the house when she stopped in front of him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Kat.” His eyes came upon her slowly. Despite where he was, he seemed surprised to see her. “I came to see you. You live here?” He said the last word with emphasis.

“Yes.”

He smiled.

“What?”

“It just seems like we are both a lot more than two hours away from Paris.”

Kat regarded him silently, not moving from her spot on the pavement. He squinted at her for a moment with an expression that seemed equal parts contrite and amused. “I came to say I am sorry.”

“Yes. I imagine you are.”

He shook his head and smiled ruefully at her. “Listen, do you think we could lay down our weapons for just a moment? Or do you need to take a few more shots at me for yesterday?”

Kat was unbalanced by his breeziness. Where was the rage she had seen in his eyes yesterday? She could not figure out exactly what circumstances had rendered her the angry one and him the rational one. She remembered it being the other way around.

Across the street, the security guard at the Greek embassy eyed them lazily as he emerged from the side of the building, a paper cup clutched in his hand. His blue jacket, emboldened by its official crest, was pulled taut across his middle, secured by a single, brave button. She had trouble imagining him springing into action to fend off an invasion by Troy or some other crisis.

Turning back to Daniel, she cocked her head and regarded him. “Where’s Martin? I’m surprised he let you out by yourself.”

“Funny girl.” He said it as if he were discovering, in that moment, that she was, in fact, a funny girl. That in remembering other things about her, he had forgotten that detail.

Kat shifted the flowers in her arms. She should really put them in water. A car drove down the road and she noted with alarm that it slowed as it passed by. Had the driver recognized her? Or him? She watched the next car nervously as it passed and noticed that as it slowed, it swerved slightly toward the center of the road. She realized with relief that it had slowed simply in order to avoid Daniel’s car, the side of which was sticking out into the road.

She turned her attention back to Daniel. Of course she could not invite him in, but she was beginning to realize that the pavement in front of her house was not the place for this conversation either.

“What do you want, Daniel?”

“There is something that I want to show you. Will you come with me?”

Kat intended to refuse. Daniel pushed himself off the car and bent down toward that door. There was no reason that she should go with him. His shirt pulled taut across his shoulders as he turned sideways and bent slightly to catch the handle. His other hand reached for her, palm up, fingers slightly curled. She wondered what it was that he could want her to see.

She stole a glance across the street at the security guard, who had settled into his chair by the embassy’s front door and was sipping from the paper cup while perusing what was likely today’s Page Three girl. Wouldn’t he, a trained professional, spring into action if there was anything untoward in the invitation? Wrestle Daniel to the ground if his highly honed senses detected anything amiss? And anyway, she would just be getting in the car with him. Going to see … something. Where was the harm in that?

Stealthy and feline, the neighbor’s black Bentley poured itself into the driveway. The surface was so shiny it seemed liquid, as if the car would simply melt into a slick puddle when it stopped. It was only upon seeing her reflection in the car’s surface that she realized that she had, in fact, already taken Daniel’s hand and was allowing herself to be guided into the small, low red leather seat. His fingers intertwined with hers in a way that was so familiar that she wasn’t aware of it until he let go. The driver met her eyes and nodded briefly at her, as if in approval.

They drove in silence. She could not remember the last time she had ridden in a car without any idea of where she was going. She could not remember ever having been in a car with Daniel. She didn’t even know he could drive. There were so many normal, daily things that she had never done with him.

As he guided the car through Notting Hill Gate and along the northern edge of Kensington Gardens and then Hyde Park, silence settled into the spaces between them. He took them up Portland Place, under the imposing facades and past the Georgian terraced houses on Park Crescent where Regent’s Park dips its toe into Marylebone.

She wondered what would happen if there was an accident and they were both killed. How would anyone make sense of their being in the car together? The most logical conclusion would be that she was considering buying one of his paintings. She had been at his opening, after all. That would be easily discovered. And she had both money and bare walls.

Would it be assumed that that was the extent of their connection? Would they examine CCTV footage of her last days or hours the way they did when there had been a crime? Looking for clues or souvenirs in the last moments of a life. With all the embassies and large homes in her neighborhood, there were myriad security cameras. She thought of their conversation outside the house. What would that look like on camera? They would likely interview both the security guard and the neighbor’s driver, as they would have been the last people to have seen them alive. Of course, she reminded herself, there would have been no crime in this instance.