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Authors: Chris Pavone

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BOOK: The Expats
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Kate had to keep reminding herself that she hadn’t discovered anything definitively
wrong
in Dexter’s office. All the material there could be a legitimate part of his job. She didn’t understand his job, and never had. She had no idea what it entailed.

But Jesus, that video camera. How was she going to explain to him why she’d broken into his office? And how?

Luckily—or not; who knew?—it didn’t appear that Dexter had been alerted yet to her break-in. Or if he had, then he was certainly not the man she thought she’d married.

Kate passed a familiar-looking woman on the sidewalk, tall and dark-haired and heavy-eyelashed. Kate couldn’t place her, then she did: a flight attendant on this morning’s hop. The LuxAir stewardesses in their sprightly blue scarves practically threw the ham sandwiches at passengers as soon as the plane was airborne, eager to get the snack under way on the short flight. They were all short flights, on LuxAir.

Kate headed up the hill on the rue Verdaine, the architecture now looming chunks of medieval stone, tight cobblestoned streets, a promenade along a park, fortifications, arches, terraced sidewalks. This part of Geneva reminded her of Luxembourg, of Arlon, of everywhere.

Snowflakes began to flutter, drifting softly to the street lined with eighteenth-century
hôtels particuliers
, massive arched doors leading to courtyards, a matching suite of three imposing buildings leaning against one another, like fashion models posing for a homoerotic shot, skin-on-skin-on-skin.

It was certainly possible that Dexter and Julia were having an affair. They could be meeting at Julia’s apartment, weekday mornings, while Bill was in his strange office lifting weights or masterfully fucking Jane—possibly both, at the same time—and Kate was at some coffee morning, sitting around with a bunch of women bitching about the absence of their husbands, while her own was around the corner, in bed with her best friend.

Or had they simply dipped into the kitchen, buzzed, and kissed for five minutes?

Or was it a harmless flirtation, a diversion, staying alive, un-old, un-dead?

On the rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, nearly all the antiques shops were closed, neatly handwritten signs announcing the vacation,
fermé
until early January. No presents to be purchased. Unimaginable, in the States, that any store would be closed two days before Christmas.

If it were really an affair? What would Kate do? Could she understand this, ignore this, forgive this? Did Dexter still love her? Was he bored, or curious, or horny, or selfish, or terrified of mortality? Was he having a midlife crisis? Had he done this before? Was he an inveterate philanderer? Had he been cheating all these years? Was it turning out
that he was an utter bastard, and she hadn’t been aware of it? For nearly a decade?

Or was his infidelity a crime of opportunity? Had he been seduced, unfairly? Plied with liquor and teased and eventually propositioned, an offer he couldn’t refuse?

At the apex of the hill, the street opened out onto the Place du Bourg-de-Four, cafés and a fountain in the middle of a wide, irregularly shaped expanse of cobblestones. Kate checked her watch—2:58—and took a seat on a caned chair, next to a propane-powered heater throwing warmth into the air, spitting into the ocean. She ordered a café au lait from a handsome, self-satisfied waiter.

Or was it something more sinister than sex?

Across the
terrasse
a mother and daughter in matching fur hats smoked matching cigarettes, long skinny tobacco toothpicks. The mother caressed a miniature dog in her lap, some type of white fluffiness. The daughter said something, but Kate couldn’t hear; they were too far away. Good.

Her coffee arrived with a foil-wrapped cookie in the saucer, as always, everywhere.

The waiter continued on to the mother and daughter. They laughed at something he said as he leaned on the back of a chair, flexing, flirting. Kate heard footsteps behind her, a man’s hard soles falling on stones. She didn’t turn. The man took a seat at the next table, separated from Kate by the heater and its glowing cap, a flying saucer.

The waiter returned. The man ordered hot chocolate. He opened his newspaper, carefully folding
Le Monde
into a prim packet. He wore a gray overcoat, red scarf, skinny jeans, pointy black shoes with green laces. His skin scrubbed and shiny, face shaved extremely closely, more hairless than Dexter was ever able to shave. The same look as the boys in Dupont Circle, something about their entire faces that broadcast their orientation.

Kate put her tote on the table. She removed a guidebook to Switzerland, and a messily folded map of Geneva, and a pen and small notepad.

The waiter delivered the man’s hot chocolate.

She took the camera out of her pocket, held it aloft, and leaned toward this man.
“Excusez-moi,”
she said.
“Parlez-vous anglais?”

“Yes, I speak English.”

“Would you mind taking a picture of me?”

“Not at all.” He scooted his chair over, and took her camera.

Kate looked around for the right backdrop—a fountain, attractive
buildings, snow in the grass. She moved her chair a few degrees. She pushed aside the guidebook, out of the frame of the upcoming picture. There was a photo shoved between the pages of her guidebook.

“Are you visiting Geneva on your way to a ski trip?”

“Yes. We leave tomorrow. To Avoriaz, for a week.”

The man directed her to move to the right, and snapped again. The waiter reemerged, asked Kate and the man if everything was okay, then returned to the mother and daughter. He was probably the reason the women were here.

The man rose into a crouch. He leaned forward, extending the camera, and put it on Kate’s guidebook. As his hand retreated, he pulled the photo out of the pages, slipped it into his coat pocket. Then he picked up his cup, and took a long drink of chocolate.

“Three days,” he said. “Maybe four.” He placed a giant coin onto the table; some of these Swiss franc pieces were practically sporting goods. Why did they need a different currency? Goddamned Swiss.

“Then I will find you.”

IT STARTED SNOWING when they were halfway up the mountain, the snow noticeably heavier as the car climbed, traffic slowing, the shoulder littered with pulled-over station wagons whose drivers were kneeling in the gravelly slush, installing chains. Switchbacks one after another, straightaways of barely a few hundred yards, the downhill side of the road falling away steeply past jagged outcroppings and tenacious pines and precariously perched timber-framed chalets.

By Monday morning three fresh feet had fallen and the clouds had fled in the night, dawn breaking pink-gray out the bedroom window that faced the center of the resort, the Village des Enfants and the cafés and shops. When Kate padded into the living room, she gasped at the view, which had remained completely cloaked in cloud and mist and swirling snow for their first thirty-six hours on this mountain, but now was crystal clear, picture-perfect Alps, Alp after Alp after Alp, all cloaked in white, spray-painted snow.

JULIA SKIED OVER from the edge of the trail, gliding effortlessly. “My God,” she said. “How great is this?” She kissed Kate on the cheek. Bill also skated over, shook hands with Dexter, slapped him on the upper arm.

The snow was blindingly white, the visibility seemingly infinite in every direction, as if the entire world had been placed under a microscope, the lens freshly wiped. The view to the north encompassed four folds of mountain range, then a sliver of the lake, then the mountains on the far side, tiny notches under an immensity of clear sky.

“Shall we?” Bill asked, pushing off with his poles.

“Let’s roll!” said Dexter, more enthusiastic than before. Gung-ho, now. He’d been unconfident, terrified, in the difficult skiing of the heavy storm, the summit lift depositing skiers into a total whiteout nine thousand feet up, above the tree line, no forests to mitigate the elements, nowhere to hide, no way to see the boundaries of the pistes, visibility at thirty yards, one second away from the farthest you could see. After a single trip to the top, Dexter had refused to ski the summits, and instead retreated down the mountain, to the quiet trails that snaked among the trees.

“I want to see where the hell I’m going,” he’d said. Cruising down that easy trail, Kate had lost herself in his unintentional bit of philosophy. She too wanted to see where the hell she was going. Wondered whether that was ever again going to be possible.

Now they were back at the summit, a completely different experience in this blazing sunshine. Kate pulled her goggles off the top of her helmet, fitted them around her eyes, the soft foam pressing gently into her cheekbones, her forehead, sealing her eyes inside this pink-tinged cocoon.
La vie en rose
. A flash in her mind of the blood in the carpet radiating from Torres’s head, his lifeless unstaring eyes, the sound of the baby crying.

Kate shuddered the thought away. She skied to the lip of the piste, a quick drop-off onto a wind-whipped face, swirls of snow slithering across the surface.

“I’ll go first,” Bill said, and launched himself over the ledge. Dexter looked none too sanguine about this trail, but he dutifully followed. Then Julia.

Kate remained at the top, looking down on these three people, all waiting for her to throw herself off a cliff.

KATE PAUSED AT a wide turn on a broad trail. It had been three days since her meeting with Kyle in Geneva, and it was time for him to come skiing out of nowhere, pull to a stop, and tell her … tell her what?

Tell her that these FBI agents were investigating something that had
nothing to do with Kate or Dexter. This was what Kate wanted most in the world, now: that improbable news.

Kate waited a few more seconds, a half-minute, staring at the fluffy white landscape, the marshmallow fields. No one arrived.

She gave up, set off down the hill, her turns silent in the soft powder, the poles at the sides of the trail counting down to the bottom, where a half-dozen trails converged at three lifts and a handful of cafés, hundreds of canvas chairs arrayed in the sunshine, people lying around with jackets off, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, eleven in the morning. Dexter and Julia were at one of these cafés, boots unbuckled, resting.

Kate joined Bill. They skated through the milling crowd, pushed through the gates, planted their poles. They turned to face the oncoming chair clanging around the bend, the steel bar at the front of the seat attacking the crooks of their knees, slamming into them, forcing them to sit quicker and harder than expected, butts stinging.

No one else joined them on the lift. It sped away, at first along a level area, then up a steep angle to cross an exposed rock face lined with a spiderweb of dark mineral veins. A varicose rock.

“It’s exhilarating, isn’t it?” Bill asked.

The lift leveled out to cross a shallow valley, a dale cut into the side of the mountain, a rushing brook surrounded by pines half-buried in snow, high steep banks and frigid-looking water, stones in the bed, thousands upon thousands of stones, pink and gray, white and black, brown and tan, large and small and medium.

BOOK: The Expats
5.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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