The Clasp (31 page)

A
s promised, this room had the exact layout of the one below it. There was a small, vintage-looking bed in the corner, custom-built to fit against the curve of the wall. Translucent curtains floated in and out of the open window. And just his luck—the entire circumference of the room was covered in exposed brick.

He gingerly shut the door behind him, releasing the knob into the doorframe, and placed his duffel on the ground.

“So this is where the magic happened,” he said, testing the sound of his own voice.

He scratched the back of his head. Unless he had tripped a silent alarm—and he somehow doubted that people who raised billy goats also installed silent alarms—he had made it into the château undetected. Now it was time to hunt. He ran his fingers along the walls, hunting for a shift in brick texture. He was gonna have to feel up every brick in this room, hoping that the Nazi soldier wasn't taller than him. None of the bricks were loose. He
tried to keep track of the ones he had already checked, counting by touch like a blind man. He looked up at the ceiling, at the decorative plaster wreath that once had a chandelier hanging from the middle of it. Where was his necklace? That plaster wreath knew but it wasn't telling. He had been raised by people who hid all their valuables in empty Ajax containers (his birth certificate had a permanent bend in it). None of this
trick chest of drawers
and
pick a brick, any brick
crap.

Finally, he came to the side of the room with the bed. Victor got down on his hands and knees, inhaling dust. The legs of the bed had pinned the edge of an area rug up against the wall, blocking a row of bricks. Victor attempted to lift one of the legs and squeeze his body farther in. He pawed at the wall. He was running out of bricks. Then what? He would have to check again. He didn't get this far to perform a half-assed brick-frisking. His fingers pushed against a clay corner.

It made a sound like a mortar and pestle.

He moved it back and forth like a loose tooth. Now he was flat on his stomach, reaching forward as he strained to remove the brick. He rested it on the carpet and plunged his hand into the space behind it. His hand searched, afraid, somehow, of being bitten. Nothing.

Nothing.

“Jewelry is as alive as whomever it touches.” He could hear Johanna say that, sitting in her windowsill, tropical breeze moving the ruffles on her shirt. He should have asked her while he had the chance:
But what if no one ever gets to touch it? What then?

He pulled his hand back to take a break and regroup. As he did, he grazed something. He looked in, squinting, and spied a small, flat object. He reached in as far as he could and held it between his fingers, bringing it closer to his face. It felt glossy, like a photograph. A clue, perhaps? His eyes came into focus. He couldn't
quite believe what he was seeing: A school photo of some kid in a Lacoste shirt, bowl cut, and braces, smiling like a schmuck.

Then the door swung open and hit him right in his ass, knocking him flat.

It took both Victor and the Ardurat girl a moment to process what was happening, for her to determine that Victor was a person and not a piece of furniture.

She was wearing pajama pants and a tank top. She looked even younger to him now than she had spouting history. She had a terry-cloth headband wrapped around her face and her skin was shiny. She had gotten up to go to the bathroom and had come back to a man crawling under her bed, ass up.

He saw himself perfectly through her eyes. Not just an intruder but the creepily gangly intruder with a battered face who had tagged on to her tour group. She covered her mouth with both hands and then dropped them immediately, flicking on the light.

And then the screaming started.

Victor had never experienced auditory slow motion before. It sounded like falling. He held his hand up in disagreement. He felt like he was blocking a bullet.

Finally, she let out a sharp, short “Ah!” and slammed the door, shutting Victor inside. Now, with the lights on, certain teenage elements revealed themselves. The curtains were violet. There were pictures everywhere, clusters of friends at the beach, pieces of one-dimensional memorabilia, cards with inspirational quotes on them, dried roses that wouldn't quite get flat. A gold chain hanging from a hook that read,
ALEXIA
.

Victor brushed the curtains aside and looked out the window. The trellis had provided him with a ladder up to the hallway but even if he could reach it from here, he would break his neck trying to get back down the way he came up.

Two sets of footsteps came thundering down the hallway.

“
Allô?
” screamed Mr. Ardurat.
“On appelle la police! Vous êtes
armé? Vous m'entendez? Vous m'entendez!”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry!” Victor shouted.

He heard Mrs. Ardurat fumble with the desk drawer in the hallway. Victor watched the knob rattle, thinking he was about to receive his second beating in twenty-four hours. Instead, they locked him in.

In the distance, the dogs were going berserk.

“I'm not armed,” he offered. “I . . .
je n'ais pas une
gun. No gun.
Pas de
gun.”

No one responded. Two sets of footsteps had moved away but one remained. Mr. Ardurat was manning Victor's cell in the interim. It had been established that Victor didn't have a gun but what about Mr. Ardurat?

“I'll wait here,” Victor said.

Mr. Ardurat pounded the door once, hard, which Victor took as his cue to shut up. He sat on Alexia's bed, holding the picture of some kid with a newly acquired Adam's apple. The windowsill was covered with bottles of bright nail polish and plastic snow globes. He shook his head and almost laughed. All of this risk for a picture of some teenage girl's crush. Though, looking at the photo, a thin retainer wire across the kid's top teeth, he knew it was not only the necklace he had risked everything for. It was also
his
crush, so ancient that he had stopped considering if Kezia was ever really right for him. He was just so accustomed to the steady hum of wanting her. Her picture had hung in his heart for so long, he both couldn't see it and couldn't imagine the walls without it.

The echo of Alexia's voice came from downstairs, carrying with it a sustained panic. Frightened as he was, Victor felt awful. She probably thought he was rifling through her underwear drawer right this second. If he thought there was a chance the necklace
was hiding in there, he probably would be. He put his head between his knees and exhaled.

“I'm not a burglar,” he sputtered, “or a rapist.
Pas de violate
votre femme.
I promise.”

“Ferme la bouche.”
Mr. Ardurat pounded on the door again. “Do not move, asshole.”

It sounded like
oh
,
soul
.

“Okay. But I can explain . . .”

This was a lie. Ever since Florida, he'd felt himself on a path. Maybe not the right path, but, for once, a path. A single string of events so that getting his apartment keys copied for Matejo and getting the shit beaten out of him in Rouen felt like the same thing. They were all part of the necklace, as if the ghost of Guy de Maupassant and Johanna Castillo and Johanna's aunt and Johanna's aunt's Nazi lover were all waiting for him somewhere, all counting on Victor to replace what they had lost, all promising to connect him with the world again.

He had an explanation, but that was different from being able to explain.

T
he menu at the hotel restaurant was wrapped in leather straps with a sprig of lavender tucked into the central knot. It wouldn't loosen, so he pushed the entire thing against his abdomen and tried to pull the straps down from the side. Kezia held her fist to her face, snickering, fingers resting beneath her nostrils.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head.

“Where's the wine list?” He took stock of the table. “It'll be the one with the padlock on it.”

She tugged at one of the straps on her own menu and it obediently unfurled. Then she leaned over and did his, too. After days of car food, a Michelin-star menu was almost too extensive to absorb. Black salmon with crisp vegetable shoots. Rabbit stuffed with artichokes and olives. Fois gras with diced figs. Pig's foot with spicy mustard and mussels. Roasted duck fillet with sautéed carrots and turnips. Prawns in a chutney mousse garnished with
monkfish puree, Coco de Paimpol beans, and lemon-fried oysters. There was a separate page with a cheeseboard. He had consumed more dairy in four days in France than he had in one year in Los Angeles. The last page featured only two desserts: a Grand Marnier soufflé and something having the audacity to call itself a “blue plum ball.”

Kezia looked at the menu as if deciding where to make the first incision. When a waiter came to alleviate her confusion, she was prepared with so many questions, Nathaniel thought she might ask what “sautéed” meant.

He sat back in his chair. “I like that you eat meat.”

“I'm glad.” She unfolded her napkin into an unwieldy tent.

By the time their food arrived, they had each downed two martinis and were working on their wine, constantly replenished and impossible to tell how much was being consumed. Their dishes came with sauce smeared in quotation marks on the plate.

“You know what we should play?” He tossed a mussel shell into an empty bowl.

“I'm afraid I'm about to find out.”

“All my ideas are brilliant tonight.”

“True.” She put her palms up. “I cede the floor.”

“Fuck, marry, or kill.”

“I ceded too much. I de-cede.”

“Come on. You love riddles.”

“Fuck, marry, or kill is not a riddle. This is a riddle: A man is found dead in a room with fifty-three bicycles. Who is he and how did he die?”

“The man is a gambler who got caught cheating. There are fifty-two cards in a deck of Bicycle playing cards, so his opponent figured he had an extra up his sleeve and murdered him.”

She pulled a pin from her hair and twisted a tendril of it.

“Fine.” She squinted. “You go first.”

He wondered if he was squinting, too. He was buzzed and he was twice her size.

“Caroline, Paul, Victor.”

“I hate this game. Let the record show that I hate it. Okay. Well, I can't kill Caroline or else who's going to pay for dinner?”

“The literal approach.” He clinked her glass. “I like it.”

“So it's obviously fuck Caroline, marry Paul, and kill Victor.”

“You are so bad at this. It is
obviously
marry Caroline, fuck Victor, and kill Paul.”

“Explain,” she said, her voice muffled by a wineglass as wide as her face.

“Caroline for the money. You'd be set for life. Paul because I love Paul—we all love Paul—”

“A couple of months ago, you called him a dilettante.”

“What? I did not. I don't think he's a dilettante. I just think you would have a boring marriage to Paul. And Victor is . . . Victor is very tall. If you get my meaning.”

“Oh, stop it.”

“I lived with the man. That wavy shower glass only covers so much.”

“Please stop.”

“You think he'd be a more confident dude is all.”

“No,
you'd
think that because guys care about one another's penis size more than women do.”

“Your turn.”

“Fine.” She popped a little carrot into her mouth. “Bean—”

“Done. No matter who else you say, I'm gonna fuck Bean.”

She snorted deeply. He signaled for another bottle of wine.

“Okay.” She reached her hand across the table, readying herself for coherence. “Okay. You, Emily Cooper, Percy.”

“You can't put me in a position to fuck myself.”

“Such ego! How do you know I'm not putting you in a position to kill yourself ? Fine: Percy, Emily, and me.”

She raised an eyebrow and made a shooing gesture.

“Kill Emily. That's a given. Over the cliff she goes. The thing is, I already live with Percy, so there's a common-law marriage vibe to our relationship. But then what? You don't want to get fucked by default, do you?”

“I don't want to get married by default either.”

Her lips were stained with wine. Her teeth looked huge against them.

“I wish we had some tequila.” She kicked off her shoes, one of them just missing the possible Cézanne.

“Wrong country.”

She flopped down in one of the chairs on the far side of their room, got back up, and flopped down in a different one. She tested her weight on the canvas straps of a luggage rack. He unbuttoned the cuffs on his shirt while she skipped to the liquor cabinet, a wooden chest with an inlaid star medallion.

“They must have tequila in France.” She crouched down and spun the bottles to face her. “Especially at a place like this. But I won't eat the sea horse if I find it.”

The dirty soles of her feet seesawed back and forth, struggling for balance.

“Is that code for something?”

“The sea horse.” She hiccupped. “In the tequila.”

“The worm?”

“That's what I said, the sea worm.”

Eventually, Kezia gave up the search. She opened one of the windows and leaned into the salty breeze. He crossed the room, trying to straighten out. He leaned with her, inhaling and
stretching his arm back to put his hand around her waist. She looked at the hand as if it belonged to a third party.

“God,” she said, thumping on the sill to make her point. “God!”

“What?”

“Look where we are. How did we get here?”

“I want to say ‘by car.'”

“Okay, I'm gonna ask you a serious question. Do you think . . . do you think we're all hanging on to a past that isn't hanging on to us back? Not to be dramatic but, like, maybe all our friendships from college should have a big DNR bracelet on them. Do Not Resuscitate.”

“I know what DNR means. But I can't answer that for you.”

Actually, he could. It was the same sense of remove she had tried to express last night. But why give shape to her shifting perceptions about him by talking about them? He was Dorian Gray and she was the painting: If she stopped remembering him the way he used to be, he feared that version of himself would cease to exist.

“Hmmm.” She looked up at the sky.

Sober Kezia might have attacked him for not having an answer. Drunk Kezia put such questions to bed shortly after she posed them.

“I wonder what sound sea horses make.” She smashed her chin against her palm.

“Kezia?” Nathaniel pressed his nose against hers.

“Oui?”
She hiccupped.

He pressed her closer. Her breath smelled of sauces and wine. Her lips were relaxed. She opened her eyes. From this close, she looked like a sexy Cyclops. He pressed gently on the cartilage in her nose. Her mouth opened in a way that he found so irresistible, he thought he might fall on top of her.

“Hi,” he said, and kissed her, really kissed her.

She seemed surprised but then she kissed him back, tannic tongue and all, grabbing the back of his head.

They backed away from the window and sidestepped the maze of furniture that stood between them and the bed. She pulled away from his face and looked at his eyes, one eye and then the other, as if trying to separate a doctored photograph from the original. He brushed both straps of her dress off her shoulders but the dress stayed up.

“Huh.” He frowned.

She pulled down a hidden zipper at her side. It made a noise like a tiny engine starting. Then the underwear came off, twisting down her legs.

She seemed alternately proud of and embarrassed at being naked. She apologized for “the state of her feet” as she pushed him gently onto his back, seemingly determined that he take her in from specific angles. But he wanted all of the angles. He turned off one of the bedside lamps but purposely left one on. By now they were both out of clothing and Nathaniel could sense part of his brain split from him. It hadn't gone very far—it was sitting on an overstuffed tuffet, watching this all happen.

She was soft, even the feet, and he moved up, kissing her neck before moving back down over her breasts until his head was at her pelvis.

“Oh,” she said, flinging her forearm over her face.

He didn't want her overthinking this. He shifted her legs harder against his shoulders in an attempt to make her forget. Then he climbed up the length of her body, wiping his mouth against her shoulder. He pressed his face into her neck, glancing down to confirm that everything was aligned. She pulled him close.

They fit perfectly together. Better than Bean, somehow, though he couldn't say how. Maybe it was psychological, the intoxicating
blend of the familiar and the unknown. All that casual curiosity answered. Or maybe Kezia had a magical vagina that squeezed him in exactly the right way. She did feel hot inside, temperature-wise. And she got wet the second he touched her. Or maybe it was just the way they looked at each other—pleasantly dazed.

Afterward, she slung a leg over his and lay there with her hair stretched up over the pillow. Normally, in these moments, he felt the pressure to say something. Not a lie, exactly, but a nicety to mollify the resentments that would invariably accrue when he disappointed the woman next to him. But feeling no pressure, he just lived in the silence until a space opened up of its own accord. Into that space flooded unfamiliar emotions—emotions that behaved as if they had been standing for years and only now allowed to sit. He could feel his heart beat in his temples. The words came with such uncluttered force, he practically shouted them:

“I love everything about you.”

She kissed him and wrapped her arm around him. He was waiting for a response, brushing his fingers in circles on her shoulder, watching the moment when she could reasonably say something in return get farther away. He began preparing his defenses. Maybe it was better for her not to say it back. Maybe it wasn't real and he just wanted to hear what it sounded like to be that passionate about something. Maybe this was like missing the last train to a destination you weren't so sure you wanted to go to anyway.

She lifted her face toward his.

“Well, that's definitely not true,” she whispered, her smile pushing against his chest.