Weird Girl (28 page)

***

About the time Jackson was finally nodding off, Cleo woke up
feeling restless. Oddly enough, her first instinct was to talk to Jackson, but she figured that 5am was probably a bad time for that. If she was in San Francisco, she would have gone out for a walk, watching her city wake up, listening for
the footsteps behind her. Unfortunately, she was in the middle of a Colombian
rainforest, and there were very few options of things to do that early in the
morning. She decided to go for a walk anyway, so she pulled on some shorts
under her black night shirt, stuck her feet in tennis shoes (sans socks),
grabbed her lock picks and switchblade (just in case), and tiptoed out of the
house.

Even the jungle was quiet this morning. She missed the
sounds of the city as she wandered up one path and down another, until there
was just enough light from the impending sunrise to illuminate a tiny little
path that she hadn’t noticed before. Knowing that she could end up lost in the
forest, or get eaten by monkeys, or whatever, didn’t make a dent in her
curiosity. Whatever might happen beyond those large green leaves would still be
more interesting than any of her other options, so she veered left and into the
shadows and greenery.

It wasn’t paved, but it was clear that the path was used
frequently because all of the plant life had been worn away down to smooth
soil. It curved slightly, and as Cleo climbed over a vine-covered log, she saw
what it led to: a pool. The pool was man-made out of stones and blue tiles,
with steps leading down into the water. There was a long stone bench to one
side, but other than that, nothing to indicate that people were ever meant to
be here. The only sounds she could hear were the wake-up calls of monkeys,
birds, and tree frogs. She walked closer, until she could see her reflection in
the still surface of the water. It looked like somebody took care of it,
because there weren’t any blobs of algae, or sticks, or dead things floating in
it. She hadn’t walked far, so she figured it had to be Marco’s. Kicking off her
shoes, she dipped her big toe in, jerking it back in surprise. The water was
warm. She contemplated the potential of being alone in a heated pool in a
rainforest. Cleo had never been in a pool in her life. She had no idea how to
swim. But…today seemed like a good day to try.

She undressed and approached the steps cautiously because
she had no idea how deep the water was. At first, she stood ankle deep. Then,
she descended until the water was even with her thighs. The bottom step had her
in waist-deep water. It felt so good, and the stones beneath her feet were
deliciously warm. She decided to try to float first.

After coughing up a couple of gallons of water, she finally
got the gist of it (as long as she gripped the edge of the pool with one hand).
It was nice to bob on her back, gazing up through the canopy of trees at the
pinks and oranges of sunrise. Once the sun was fully up, and the monkeys were
fighting over breakfast, she decided to get dressed and go back to the house.
Nobody seemed to notice her as she went upstairs to shower and change clothes.

As she was eating breakfast, Marco dropped into a chair
beside her. Cleo gave him a dirty look and began viciously ripping her bread
into tiny pieces. “Good morning, dear,” he said cheerfully. “Are you ready for
another test?”

“Do not ever ask me to steal from Jackson again,” she said
coldly as she picked up her juice glass. “That is not a request.”

His eyes widened slightly. “Well, well,” he said, leaning
back in his chair to light a cigarette. “That is interesting, isn’t it?” He
contemplated her through the smoke as she continued to eat. Finally, he said,
“But, there is no need for that anyway. You did well last night, although I was
surprised by the method you chose. I could teach you others, but I think your
best asset is your…womanliness. There is a great deal of distraction to be had
from what you can offer.” Marco took another drag and smiled. Cleo spent thirty
seconds contemplating killing him.

***

That afternoon, Cleo and Marco spent hours tinkering with
circuit boards and alarm panels. Jackson, who still seemed tired and restless,
joined them for dinner, and then escorted Cleo to her room, where they chatted
companionably about nothing important until she was ready to go to bed. From
these components, Cleo created a new routine for herself. Every morning just
before dawn, she would sneak down to her secret pool to perfect the art of
floating. (She tried to dog paddle once, but very quickly decided to save that
sort of acrobatics for later.) Then, she would tiptoe back to the house, get
dressed, and wield a screwdriver and wire cutters under Marco’s watchful eye,
and then there would be dinner, and Jackson, and bedtime.

One morning, after a solid week of this standard day-to-day,
Cleo was experimenting with what she called “navigational floating,” where she
would lie on her back and then shove against the stone wall with one hand,
forcing herself to drift to the other side of the pool. When she bumped up
against that wall, she would shove again and drift back the way she had come.
It was the closest she had come to actual swimming since discovering the little
grotto. She gazed up through the trees and listened to the bird calls,
relishing the tiny waves of heated water that rippled across her belly. As had
started happening more and more frequently, her thoughts soon drifted to
Jackson—nothing particular, just little moments like the time he had put her
earring back in, or the way he looked lounging in a doorway, or the way he
sometimes looked at her. This is why she didn’t hear the footsteps until a man
came crashing into the clearing, tripping over a rock and cursing as he struggled
not to upend the coffee service that he carried on a silver tray. Cleo gasped
and splashed her way to a standing position. “Damn it, Larry! What the hell are
you doing?” she yelled as she stood up in the waist-deep water and flipped her
wet hair back behind her shoulders.

The man moved his mouth several times before, “My name is
Diego, miss,” squeaked out. Cleo put her hands on her hips and glared at him,
forgetting for the moment that she was completely naked. Ten seconds later,
Marco and Jackson, who were chatting in low voices, deftly maneuvered over the
fallen log and entered the clearing, stopping their conversation mid-sentence
as soon as they saw Cleo. It was a Mexican standoff (or Colombian, rather).
Cleo scowled at the three men. All three men stared at Cleo with their mouths
open.

“Well, thanks for ruining a perfectly good day,” she growled
as she started walking toward the steps. Diego squeaked once more, which caused
her to finally think about the complete absence of sound coming from the other
two men. She looked at Marco, and then at the expression on Jackson’s face…and
then remembered that she was wearing no clothes. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t care.
But for some reason, today, standing in front of Jackson naked was the most
mortifying thought that she could conjure. She halted her progress just as she
put her foot on the bottom step. One more step was all it would take to be only
thigh-deep in the water.

The men still made no sound. No movement. Even the monkeys
stopped what they were doing. It was as if the entire rainforest held its
breath to see what Cleo would do. This annoyed her enough to propel her up the
stone stairs, although she didn’t look any of them in the eye as she walked
(with far more confidence than she actually felt) over to the bench to pull on
her shirt and shorts. Hooking her shoes over two fingers, she held her spine
straight and imperiously walked past them all to the path that led back to the
house. As soon as she had turned the curve where they could no longer see her,
she started jogging so that she could return to her room and die a dignified
death in private.

After Cleo’s departure, the three men cleared their throats
a few times and looked everywhere but at each other. Finally, Diego broke the
silence. “Coffee, sirs?” he asked. Jackson and Marco nodded and each took a cup
of straight black brew. After a few tentative sips, Marco said, “Well, I
wouldn’t exactly call this perfectly good day ruined,” and smiled slightly. Jackson looked like he wanted to throttle him. Diego stood a polite distance away and gave
silent thanks that so far, nobody was holding a gun to his head for seeing the
girl naked. Whatever business they had gone there to discuss was postponed to a
later time by mutual agreement, and the three men returned to the house in
silence.  

35

Cleo managed to pretend that it hadn’t happened. She showed
up for her lesson on time, did her work, ate dinner…but claimed to have a
headache and rushed back to her room before Jackson had a chance to tag along.
She didn’t go to the pool the next morning, and once again began feeling cranky
and restless—even more so when Jackson stopped talking to her unless there were
other people around. After a few more days, as she was triumphantly beating yet
another dummy security panel, Cleo slammed her screwdriver down on the table.
“I’m sick of this shit!” she said venomously. “When are you going to actually
challenge me again?”

Marco looked pensive for several moments before responding.
“I could do that,” he said softly, leaning toward her and taking the wire
cutters from her other hand. He slouched back in his chair and began toying
with the clippers while he looked at her. Then he smiled. Carefully putting the
tool down on the worktable, he said, “How about a little game? You and me, eh?
First one to a thousand points wins.”

“Wins what?” she snapped. “A Winnebago and new carpet?”

This made him laugh. “Sometimes we win just to win, you
know? Don’t you feel the tug, here…” he touched her abdomen with the tip of his
finger. “Don’t you want to just win?”

She was intrigued. It was the most interesting proposition
that she’d had in a while, and he was right, she did want to beat him
(literally and figuratively, but she had decided that Jackson didn’t deserve to
clean up another crime scene on her behalf, so she was trying very hard to be
good right now). “What’s the game?” she asked.

“We do what we do best—we steal things,” he said. “You must
take something that is important, something precious or something personal. Not
a fork from the breakfast table, you understand?” She nodded, and he continued.
“For each object that you remove from my house, one hundred points. An object
removed from my person, five hundred points.”

“So, I pick your pocket twice, and I win?” she said
skeptically.

He smiled. “Yes. Or, if you prefer, you can liberate ten
items from the rooms of my home. Remember, I know what you are doing. I have
seen your methods, and I know your weaknesses, and I, unlike Jackson, will be
paying attention. It doesn’t count if I catch you in the act.”

She considered his words carefully. “And how do you get your
points?” she asked.

He leaned back in his chair. “The same way, of course. I
take ten of your things, or pick your pockets twice without you noticing. If
you recall, I did well with your earring that first night.” He smiled.
“Christmas is in three days. Shall we set that as our time frame? Three days
for this challenge, for the thousand points. Of course, if you need more
motivation, how about we say that the winner keeps whatever he has taken? Look
around you, Cleo. My home has many things you would like.”

Thinking of the Marilyn painting, Cleo shrugged. “Sure. Let’s
do this. It’s not like you get cable out here anyway. What else am I supposed
to do with my time?” She started to stand, but his hand on her arm stopped her.

“Of course, there is a way to get one thousand points in one
shot,” he said silkily. She raised a questioning eyebrow, and he continued. “If
you were to seduce me for an item, it would be an immediate win. And of course,
the same terms would apply to me. A thousand points if I seduce an item away
from you.”

In half a second, Cleo imagined a thousand ways to kill him.
Unfortunately, three of his staff entered the room at that moment to clear away
the bits of wire and circuit boards from her lesson. As if he knew exactly what
she was thinking, Marco laughed, his eyes twinkling, and stood up from his
chair. “Until Christmas, end of day,” he said, winking at her as he turned to
leave the room. “Fuck you,” she spat. “Oh, I do hope so,” he replied over his
shoulder as he walked out the door.

Fuming, Cleo stormed out of the house. She couldn’t believe
that Marco had the balls to even make such a proposition. On the other hand,
she was itching to beat him at his own game. He honestly didn’t think that she
had the skills to do it.  She desperately wanted to rant to somebody, but
unfortunately, the somebody that she had in mind had been avoiding her for
days. The ass.

Pacing the gardens calmed her somewhat. Forget the ten
things, although there were generous pickings in this particular household. She
wanted to grab something off of Marco, just to prove to both of them that she
could. That evening at dinner, she decided to make her first move.

***

The problem with Marco was that he carried very few items
around with him. With a staff as large as his, anything that he required could
be brought to him within seconds, so why waste energy carrying it around? This
severely limited Cleo’s options when it came to pickpocketing him. The reading
glasses he would notice. He didn’t always carry a wallet. That left three
things: his keys, his watch, and the long gold chain that he always wore
underneath his shirt. She had caught flashes of it a time or two when he leaned
forward in his chair.

Jackson, who had spent the last few days in a paradoxical
cycle of picturing Cleo naked in the grotto pool, followed by self-loathing and
vowing not to think about naked Cleo (which violated itself because every time
he vowed
not
to think about her, he was actually, by default, thinking
about her), was in a better mood today. After several sleepless nights, he had
come to certain conclusions about what he wanted from his relationship with
Cleo. He had also determined that naked Cleo wasn’t a bad thing to have on the
brain. Cheerfully accepting his guilt, and the pleasant visions that it
brought, Jackson actually regained his ability to look Cleo in the eye and have
a real conversation with her.

She was simultaneously delighted and annoyed. It was so good
to have the old Jackson back, but he was making it much harder to focus on
Marco. She was paranoid that the man would score the first points while she was
busy bantering. As it happened, she got her opportunity when they all stood to
peruse the desserts. A random breeze blew Jackson’s hat off his head, causing
him to turn suddenly in an attempt to catch it. He bumped into Marco, who
stumbled into Cleo, who slipped her fingers into his pocket and lifted his
keychain while they tried not to fall on the stone terrace. She clutched the
keys tightly in her hand to keep them from jangling, and then trotted down the
path to retrieve Jackson’s hat. As she handed it to him, she simultaneously
dropped Marco’s keys into his hand and winked. Jackson covered his surprise
well and thanked her for his hat.

That night, Jackson came to her room. He tossed Marco’s keys
at her, smiling when she caught them one handed. “Should I even ask?” he said.

Cleo dropped the keys in a potted plant. “Just another
test,” she said.

***

When she got undressed an hour later to take a bath, she
realized that her switchblade was missing from her jeans pocket. “You FUCKING
SON OF A BITCH!” she hissed, angrily putting on her satin robe and charging
downstairs to Marco’s room. He was smoking a cigarette in a chair by the
window, a book in his lap. He smiled when she stormed in.

“Ah, welcome,” he said charmingly, putting down his book and
taking a slow drag on his cigarette. “Have you come to return my keys?” He
looked her up and down before adding, “Or, perhaps you are here to claim the
thousand points?”

“I want my knife back,” she spat. “Now.”

“Oh, but that isn’t how the game works. Don’t you remember?
The winner keeps what he—or she—has taken. You have temporary custody of my
keys. I have temporary custody of your charming little knife. When I win, it
will then be my charming little knife, unless of course that is the item you
wish to seduce me for. In that case, it would be fair game,” he said with a
wink.

Cleo picked up a vase and reared back to throw it at him,
but he held up a hand to stop her. “I would encourage you not to throw that
one,” he said. “It is the last of its kind. If you must make a scene, as well
as a mess, I would suggest the green one over there.” He pointed across the
room. “However, this behavior is childish. You understood the rules. We are
currently tied with one another at five hundred points each. Two more days,
Cleo. You demand your property back as though you don’t believe that you can
win it back fairly. I thought you had more confidence than that. How about we
sweeten the pot, as they say, and throw some money on the table. One hundred
thousand dollars to the winner. If you’re good for it.”

She put the vase back on the table and flipped him the bird
on her way out. His laughter followed her upstairs to her room.