Perfect Strangers

PART I

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.

Ernest Hemingway

The blonde is naked on her back on the mattress with her knees drawn up and her pale thighs parted, her hands clenched to fists in the sheets. Fully dressed and unmoving at the side of the bed, the man stands gazing down at her. At her nude body, young and lithe, taut with anticipation, offered for his inspection like a display of ripe fruit.

The man leans over and plants one hand on the bed beside the blonde’s head.

The other hand he wraps around her throat.

“…getting along so far? How do you like the apartment?”

The gravelly voice in my ear is my literary agent, Estelle, whom I’ve known for years. She smokes two packs of Virginia Slims a day and has the same towering beehive hairdo she’s worn since the sixties, though it’s gunmetal gray now instead of shoe polish black. Not five feet tall in heels, all mouth and moxie, she’s a tiny spitfire in vintage Chanel who’ll bite off your head just as easily as she’ll grant you a smile.

Most people find her terrifying, but I’ve got a soft spot for abrasive women.

I know only too well the kind of hits you have to take from life before you grow hard.

“The city is just as beautiful as you promised it would be, Estelle. And your apartment is”—The blonde arches as the man kisses her hard, hungrily, his hand sliding down from her throat to a full, pink-tipped breast—“amazing. The location is perfect.”

How perfect? Top floor of an elegant ten-story building in a swanky residential area, one floor above and directly across a shaded courtyard from an attractive couple about to have sex.

They haven’t bothered to close the curtains to their bedroom. Which means that from where I’m standing in Estelle’s living room, I’ve got an unobstructed view.

Maybe that’s part of it? The wicked thrill that they could be being watched by any of the neighbors?

Or maybe that’s the whole point.

Estelle says, “That’s great, doll! I’m so happy you like it.” There’s a loaded pause, then: “Hopefully the change of scenery will be inspiring.”

Oh, it’s inspiring all right, just not in the way she means.

The man pins the blonde’s wrists in his hands and moves his hungry mouth from her breast to her belly, then between her legs. Tipping her head back on her pillow and closing her eyes, she moans.

It gives me chills, that moan, floating across the courtyard on the balmy afternoon air. I can’t recall the last time I might have made a sound so guttural with pleasure. If ever.

Evidently her partner has quite the talented tongue.

I haven’t been able to see his face, not clearly, only a glimpse in profile, and now not at all as it’s buried between a pair of nubile thighs, and I’m seized by curiosity. What does this exhibitionist look like? Is he handsome? Homely? Plain as a slice of white bread? What kind of man could convince a woman to writhe around so wantonly in clear view of several dozen potential witnesses?

Or was this her idea? I mean, she’s young and beautiful. That’s a combination that can make a person do tremendously stupid things.

I should know. The list of dumb shit I did under the influence of my misspent youth is depressingly long.

But this. Well. Let’s just say this particular behavior wasn’t in my repertoire at that age.

I shouldn’t judge. They’re not harming anyone. I’m probably just jealous.

No—I’m definitely jealous. God, listen to her! That scream could wake the dead!

I turn from the window as the blonde climaxes at the top of her lungs and head into the kitchen in search of booze.

A fondness for bourbon is one of many things Estelle and I have in common, and I’m grateful to find one side of the pantry in her kitchen fully stocked with liquor. There’s a wine fridge, too, but the sugar gives me headaches, so I bypass the collection of fine Burgundies and crack open a bottle of Kentucky’s finest. I take a swig straight from the bottle, not bothering with a glass.

If I’m going to be spending the next three months listening to the orgasmic shrieks of my neighbors, I’ll need serious backup.

Estelle says, “The number for the property manager is on the refrigerator, doll. Don’t you dare hesitate to call him if the air conditioner goes out. I know you hate to be a bother to anyone, but that unit is unreliable. And it’s bound to be about a thousand degrees there this summer. Global warming, you know.”

I take another swig as I listen to her chatter on.

“Are you jetlagged? I’ve got some herbal stuff for that in the medicine cabinet in the master. Of course you know you’re welcome to anything in the liquor cabinets. The little market on the corner has a divine selection of cheeses, and there’s a farmers’ market every Tuesday and Thursday through September on rue Desnouettes, one block over from the flat.”

She already told me all this before I left New York, but Estelle is nothing if not thorough. Another orgasmic wail from beyond the living room windows has me chugging more bourbon and wondering if I’ll have to check into a hotel to avoid all the noise.

“Now, listen,” says Estelle, turning serious. “I meant it when I told you to take it easy and just relax. Get some rest, eat some good food, take a lot of long walks. Try not to think.”

What she really means is Try not to remember.

Try to stop blaming yourself.

Try to let the past go.

As if.

If letting the past go were as easy as simply deciding to do it, I wouldn’t be here in the first place, thousands of miles from home. But the thing people don’t realize is that the past is a living, breathing entity that exists apart from our wishes or best intentions. It’s not gone, and it’s certainly not invisible. Its fingerprints are smeared all over every moment of the present, its weight drags on every second of the future, its consequences echo down every hallway of our lives.

We can no more rid ourselves of the past than we could stop the earth from spinning.

But I have to seem like I’m making an effort because nobody likes a nihilist. You can only stay depressed for so long before people lose patience and start rolling their eyes behind your back.

“Definitely,” I say with fake cheer. “No thinking will be attempted.”

Estelle sounds satisfied. “Good. And if you happen to get struck by the muse—”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

As another delirious scream bounces off the living room walls, I close my eyes and bang my head gently against the pantry door.

Two hours later, I’ve showered off the travel grime, installed myself at a table in a charming sidewalk café near the apartment, and am drinking an overpriced espresso as I curse every decision that brought me here.

The trees are alive with birdsong. The sweet scent of cherry blossoms perfumes the air. The sky above is an endless fairy-tale blue, dotted with cottony clouds so perfect they look painted on a movie set.

It’s June in Paris and romantic to the point of ridiculousness.

I feel ridiculous, anyway, a woman accompanied only by ghosts while throngs of young lovers holding hands stroll past on the shaded avenue and make tender eyes at each other over crisp white linen tablecloths to my left and right.

City of Love. What had I been thinking, coming here?

I feel attacked by all the love around me. Personally victimized, as if love itself were mocking my pain, stabbing gleefully at me with poison-tipped knives.

The perils of an overactive imagination. If I hadn’t become a writer, I’d be in a padded cell somewhere, clawing at the walls.

When my mobile rings, I answer quickly, grateful for the distraction. “Hello?”

“Hey, kiddo! How’s it hangin’?”

It’s my girlfriend, Kelly, her tone a touch overbright. I have the sneaking suspicion I’ll be getting a lot of these cheerful calls from people I know over the next few days as I settle in. They’re all so anxious for me to move on it makes me anxious.

But I suppose two years has passed at a different speed for them than it has for me. The laws of time and physics are disfigured by grief, warping around it so a single moment can be lived over and over, forever.

I tell Kelly, “If by ‘it’ you mean my boobs as one unit, the answer is, sadly, low.”

“Psh. You’ve got the best tits of anyone I know.”

“Thank you for that vote of confidence, but you work at an assisted living facility. Most of the boobs you’ve seen lost their elasticity during the Carter administration.”

“Everything’s relative, babe. Look on the bright side: if you were naked and had to bend over to sign something, you wouldn’t have to tuck your boob into your armpit to keep it out of the way.”

I think of the nubile blonde, whose breasts were so firm there was no visible effect by gravity, even while lying on her back, and say drily, “Something to celebrate, for sure.”

“What time is it in Paris? Are you ahead of me or behind?”

“I’m ahead by six hours. How do you not remember that? You’ve been here a dozen times!”

Kelly sighs. “I can’t remember anything anymore. Mike keeps telling me I’ve got a brain like a sieve.”

“You don’t have a brain like a sieve, Kell. You’ve got four kids and you work full time and your husband thinks housework is something only someone with a pair of ovaries is qualified to do. Quit beating yourself up.”

In response, Kelly says something that I don’t catch.

“What? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you were saying.”

I’m too preoccupied staring at the Adonis who just took the table across from mine.

A quick rundown for posterity. Or skip the list and form a mental picture of a stallion in his prime galloping in slow motion across a beach as his silky mane streams out like a flag and his glossy coat glistens under the sun, and you’ll get the general idea.

He’s got tousled brown hair that brushes broad shoulders, a cleft chin that would impress Superman, and a graceful way of moving his limbs, despite his formidable size. Dressed in an untucked white button-down shirt and a pair of faded jeans, he sports a week-old growth of beard on his angular jaw, a leather cuff around one wrist, and exudes an air of animal magnetism so strong I can feel it from where I’m sitting.Property belongs to Nôvel(D)r/ama.Org.

Evidently so can everyone else, judging by the ripple of awareness his presence sends through the diners. Heads turn in his direction as if pulled by strings.

But the stunning stranger is oblivious to all the attention he’s drawing. All the furtive glances, both male and female.

No doubt he’s used to it. He’s prime rib, as Kelly would say. Check out all the sizzle on that steak.

Truly, he’s devastating.

If you knew me, you’d know that’s not a word I use lightly.

And my, oh my, what incredible eyes. Bluer than the cloudless heavens above and ringed by a thicket of black lashes, they’re potent. Piercing. Penetrating. And some other sexually suggestive words I can’t recall at the moment because the horrible realization that I’ve been caught staring at him has stalled my brain.

He’s staring right back.

“I was asking if you’ve been over to Café Blanc yet,” hollers Kelly, as if I’ve developed a hearing problem since we said hello. “Be sure you tell Henri I sent you or he’ll charge you double—he’s a friggin’ cheat!”

She says that last part with affection. There’s nothing she enjoys more than the enduring friendships she forms when someone unsuccessfully tries to swindle her.

Thinking her a hapless American tourist on her first visit to Paris during college, the café owner inflated the price of her meal. The ensuing argument has become something of a local legend. When I introduced myself to the hostess as a friend of Kelly’s, she asked if Kelly still keeps Henri’s left testicle in a jar on her kitchen counter.

I replied with a straight face that she keeps it in her fridge.

“I’m actually at Café Blanc as we speak,” I tell her, holding the stranger’s gaze.

“Awesome! It’s fantastic, right?”

The stranger’s blistering gaze drops to my mouth. A muscle in his jaw flexes. He moistens his full lips.

Holy…was that a hot flash or did someone just light a fire under my chair?

Whatever it was, it’s new. For years my body has felt nothing but a boneyard chill. Flustered, I say faintly, “It’s…gorgeous.”

“What?” Kelly thunders. “Babe, I can hardly hear you! Speak up!”

“I said it’s gorgeous!”

A waiter with no chin and a nose like a toucan’s bill materializes at my tableside, frowning at the phone in my hand. He speaks in French, gesturing sharply at the phone.

I don’t understand the language, but I get his gist: You’re being rude. How American of you. Perhaps next you’d like to shit on the Eiffel Tower?

I frown at him, wishing there really was a testicle jar because I’d be adding a few more to it. “Gotta go, Kell. I’ll call you back later, okay?”

She’s still shouting on the other end when I hang up.

The waiter drops the check on the table then looks at me pointedly. He wants me to clear out so he can give my table to one of the lovely couples waiting in line at the door.

I was about to leave, but jerks bring out the stubborn Sicilian in my blood. I offer him a smile so sharp it could cut steel. “Another espresso, please. And a dessert menu.”

“Dessert? You haven’t ordered a main course yet.”

His English is heavily accented. His brow is cocked. His lip is curled.

Before now, I’ve never met a person who could sneer with his entire body.

I say, “Are you always so observant or is this a special occasion?”

With a huff and a flare of his enormous nostrils, he spins off.

That’s when I hear the chuckle.

What annoys me is that I know exactly from whom it’s coming. I don’t even have to glance over to know that the blue-eyed stallion witnessed my little drama with the waiter and found it amusing.

So I don’t look over. I’m not interested in being a comedy show for the hottie who’s got half the restaurant in thrall.

I know it’s a strange sort of prejudice, but I’ve always secretly thought that a man’s ethics exist in reverse proportion to his good looks. You just can’t trust a guy who can have his choice of any woman within shouting distance. That kind of power will corrupt even the saintliest soul.

Ignoring everything but the warmth of the sun on my face, I tilt my head back and close my eyes.

A moment later, a deep voice says, “May I?”

Startled, I look up. The blue-eyed stranger stands beside my table looking down at me, his hand resting on the back of the chair opposite mine. I can tell from his confident stance that he assumes my consent is forthcoming, which won’t do.

I refuse to be a foregone conclusion.

“No. I’m waiting for someone.”

Ignoring my answer, he sits.

Entitled jerk.

We recommence staring at each other, this time up close.

Despite my discrimination against his pretty face and his bad manners, I have to admit he’s incredibly attractive. Whatever DNA produces a jaw that square, he should clone it and gift it to my chinless waiter.

Gazing at me intently, he says, “I’d love to draw you.”

Don’t you just hate it when a man opens his mouth and ruins everything?

I suppose it shouldn’t be a shock that this guy hasn’t had to develop better opening lines than that cheeser he just laid on me. He’s probably had women throwing themselves at his feet since birth. Plus, beauty like his is rarely paired with equivalent intellect. But still, I have to force myself not to roll my eyes.

“Just out of curiosity, does that work?”

His dark brows draw down over his blue gaze. “Does what work?”

His English is perfect. He doesn’t have an accent, French or otherwise. He must be here on vacation from the Land of the Beautiful People Who Don’t Understand the Word No Because They’ve Never Heard It.

“That line. ‘I’d love to draw you.’ Do women really fall for that?”

Blue Eyes cocks his head, examining me. “You think I’m propositioning you.”

He says it as a statement, not a question. A statement underscored by a hint of laughter.

Cue my instant, scorching humiliation.

This guy isn’t trying to pick me up. His stares weren’t those of a man sexually attracted to a woman. He was merely curious, looking at me so alone and etched with grief as I am, sticking out like an unruly and unwanted weed in this garden of roses.

Aiming for nonchalant, I wave my hand dismissively. “My mistake. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I am propositioning you.”

I start to blink and can’t stop. Now the humiliation is gone, but I’m confused and blinking like a crazed owl.

As I direct my attention to the tablecloth and my hand resting there, trembling slightly, Blue Eyes continues in a conversational tone, as if he hasn’t completely crossed my wires.

“To sit for a portrait, I mean. You’ve got an incredible face. And your eyes, they’re…”

He trails off, searching for a word, then says quietly, “Haunted.”

My invisible shields slam down and envelop me, protecting my heart from the anguish welling up inside my chest. I’ve spent a long time developing my shields, and until I look up again they’ve never failed me.

But when our gazes meet this time, I’m unprepared for the force of it.

I stepped on a live wire once. I was eight years old. A utility pole had been damaged in a storm and came down in our backyard. I ran outside to investigate before my father’s warning shout could stop me, and the power of the voltage that surged through my body when my bare foot touched the wire threw me halfway across the yard.

Looking into this stranger’s beautiful blue eyes feels exactly like that.

“I’m James.”

His voice has turned husky. There’s a new tension in his body, as if he’s restraining himself from reaching out and touching me.

Or maybe that’s my imagination, which excels in running wild.

“Olivia,” I manage.

In the silence that follows, the sounds of the café seem unbearably loud. Silverware clatters against plates. Chattering voices become nerve-scraping shrieks. The flush on my cheeks spreads down my neck, and my pulse goes haywire.

I’ve never been looked at like this by a man, with such raw, unapologetic intensity.

I feel naked.

I feel seen.

When the waiter appears beside me, I nearly jump out of my skin.

“Madame.” Dripping condescension, he holds out the dessert menu and offers me a mocking bow.

“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll just take care of the check and be on my way, thanks.” I yank my handbag off the arm of my chair and dig through it for my wallet.

“You said you were waiting for someone,” James reminds me.

“I lied.”

James leans back in his chair and considers me, his intense gaze unwavering. The waiter looks back and forth between us, arching an eyebrow, then says something in French to James, who shakes his head.

I get the feeling they know each other, that James is a regular, and decide I’m never coming back.

I toss a few bills onto the small black plastic tray that holds my check and stand, bumping the table and knocking over a glass in my haste, trying unsuccessfully not to notice how the three young women at a nearby table are looking me up and down and whispering to each other behind their hands.

Those catty giggles. Those snide, mocking smiles.

One day they’ll be like me, hurtling toward forty with stretch marks and wrinkles and a new compassion for others that only the decay of your own body and the weight of all your crushed dreams will bring, but for now they’re beautiful and smug, certain of their superiority to the awkward tourist lurching away in terror from the first real feeling she’s felt in ages.

I don’t look back on my way out, but I feel James’s burning gaze follow me all the way to the door.

Somehow, this time I know it isn’t my imagination.