"Most"
certainly
... The words acted as a
memory-trigger. It was the accent that had done it. I remembered
when we'd met at
Cringe
, then our first coffee, me trying to guess where he was from
—
Australia? Ireland?
"If you absolutely must drink alcohol, then
it will be wine. Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc?"
"Huh?" I said. It was me who'd phased out
now.
"Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc?"
Wow, I actually knew what those were! It
helped that I'd been working at a pub for the last three months...
Although I had no friggin clue what they tasted like. "Um, I really
don't know."
Conall chuckled, shook his head. "I
recommend the Sauvignon Blanc. But I see — " He looked in a
cupboard above his head, then ruffled in one below. "Hmmm, I'll
need to get one from the cellar. You'll be OK?"
"Sure."
He walked out.
I was still in a light
reverie from his accent, like an old song earworming through my
mind... I watched him leave, not fully appreciating what had just
transpired: Wine? Sauvignon Blanc? Oh, right, and a
cellar
! Wow. So he had
one of those, too.
I went to the sound system
while I waited. There was an iPod plugged into it. I scrolled
though his albums. I saw the
Soundgarden
album. That had been
Alexandra's favorite. I felt a cold chill, kept scrolling. I saw
the
Twilight Soundtrack — Breaking Dawn,
Part I
. I remembered that. He'd snooped my
own music and then bought it. Then we'd gotten hot and sweaty to
Christina Perri's
A Thousand
Years
.
I smiled, a smile filled with sadness at our
situation. He'd gotten more Twilight albums... The first, the
second... Heck, he'd bought them all!
And he also had
Paramore
. That was
strange.
I also owned
Paramore
... I had
everything they ever wrote.
Like a sledgehammer, I was back at the
Marriott, just about to be pushed up against the table as Conall
moved in behind me:
Conall: "Sorry, I was snooping your iPhone
while waiting for Kayla. I bought a few of the songs you had on
there. It's time to try something new."
Me: "You bought the
fucking
Twilight
soundtrack to try something new?"
Conall: "Could you shut up now? I'm trying
to create a mood here..."
So, he'd clearly bought
more than only
Twilight
that night when he'd snooped my iPhone.
I saw
Iron & Wine
...
Even Taylor Swift was on
there! I laughed at that. Had he been watching
Teen Choice Awards
or something?
Selena Gomez wasn't on there, so, no, he hadn't just blindly bought
anything from anyone who'd won a surfboard this year.
I also didn't own any Selena Gomez. But I
owned Taylor Swift albums...
I looked for
One Direction
and
Emblem3
. Nothing. (I
owned none of that shit.)
I looked for Justin
Timberlake, found
The 20/20
Experience
. My breath caught. I pulled out
my iPhone, looked at my albums. Yes, I'd bought that once, even
though I didn't listen to it much. I'd even forgotten about it.
Conall didn't seem like the Justin Timberlake kind either. Not at
all. He had that
Metallica
,
Alice in Chains
feel to him... (Prior
to meeting Conall, I had no clue who
Alice
in Chains
was, but I came to know them
after searching for "Similar to Soundgarden" and landing on a
last.fm page with them on it. Their tunes seemed to me like the
kind of stuff Conall's turbulent mind would be into.)
I switched from album mode
to playlists mode, looked at his
Top 25
Most Played
. That didn't exist as a
playlist. But he'd created another:
Top 50
Most Played
.
By now I was fully into
what I was doing, a sleuth on a hot trail. The room around me had
disappeared. I hadn't even noticed that Conall had been gone for
any amount of time, or even if he'd returned. There was now only
me, my index on the touch screen, clicking, looking, scrolling. I
clicked the
Top 50 Most Played
list.
The first song was
Never Think
, by Rob
Pattinson...
My finger froze. My eyes froze. My lips
trembled. My eyes went warm with water.
I knew that song. Knew it well. Knew it to
my core. I clicked it. The guitar came on. I fell to the bean bag
behind me, my knees as high as my shoulders. The acoustic guitar
continued. And then he sang, wailed, cried, and told Bella that she
was better off without him, that she had it all without him, that
she should leave before she was too far gone...
I cried. Just like that. No control.
Sobbing.
I buried my head in my
hands and the tears fountained out of me. Conall walked in. He
probably said my name. If so, I didn't hear it. He yanked me off
that bean bag, lifted me up like a rag-doll. And then I screamed at
him. I hit him. I hit him on his chest with the bottoms of my
fists. I hit him again. He inched back from the force. That
monstrous, titanic, giant of a man
moved
back with the force that I had
hit him with! But he still held onto me.
He said nothing. His arms
were behind me, just holding me as I pummeled him. I heard the
thumps on his chest.
Thump, bang,
thump
! I
fought
him! Then I kicked him, kneed
him.
"I hate you!" I screamed.
My tears raged. My face was soaking. "I
hate
you," I yowled again. Not
meaning it. Not meaning a word. Hate meaning love. Love meaning
sadness and pain.
Conall stepped back, letting me go. He just
stood there, taking it. I punched him some more. I let him have it
with my knuckles until my right wrist bruised so badly that all I
had now was my left and then I weakly hit him with that.
Conall stayed silent, occasionally made a
grimace.
The last few punches weren't punches at all.
They were feathers in a volcano, but I kept on going at him. In the
end, I grabbed his shirt, yanked it from his belt. And I wept. I
wept all I had. I wept for all the times I'd failed to weep in the
three months before, and for all the times I had. His shirt, by his
chest, looked like it had been dumped in a river.
Robert Pattinson stopped singing. And
Conall's second-most-listened-to song only brought more tears to my
eyes. Tears of death. Tears of losing. Tears of love that had been
ripped away like life-preserving stitches from a bullet wound,
leaving only black, bloodied needle holes...
Because the next song was
our song. It would forever be our song: Christina Perri,
A Thousand Years
.
I wrapped my arms around him. And, faintly,
weakly, sounding as convincing as a child lying to her mother about
having taken a bath but being filled with mud on her shoes, I said,
"I hate you. I. Fucking. Hate. You."
And then I held him, because I didn't hate
him. I didn't hate him at all.
"I think no more Twilight soundtrack for
you, eh?" he said, holding me.
"I'd punch you again," I said. "But I think
I broke my wrists on your chest."
"Come here, let me look at them." Conall
looked at my wrists and, yes, they were stinging. The sensation was
not unfamiliar to me. Dad had taught me to box a long time ago, and
hitting Conall straight-on with my knuckles, so that the hand
pushed against all the little wrist-bones, had been a bad a
idea.
"I'll survive," I said.
We stood there, awkwardly. "It's over,
Leora. The nightmare is over."
"Only I don't understand the nightmare. I
don't understand why you couldn't just tell me — "
"I'll tell you. I promise. But first I'll
make a fire."
"And I'll drink some wine." I took the
Sauvignon Blanc from his hand. He'd manage to keep it from breaking
despite all my attacks on him. So much for Miss Macho Woman...
I tried to open it up with the corkscrew but
failed miserably. So Conall opened it, and poured us a glass. I sat
at the bar while he went into the next room — the one with the huge
fireplace and red couches — and started a fire. Twenty minutes
later he returned, bringing with him the smell of crackling pine
cones.
I'd downed three glasses of wine by now.
"Started drinking, I see," he said.
"You don't know the half of it..."
"Actually..." He scratched by his nose. "I
do. And, um, yes, I know you don't drink more than a glass or two,
and that's when you do drink. Most of the time you don't."
"Would this be the same way you know that
Kayla is here or that...?" I didn't want to finish that sentence. I
didn't want to think or talk about Dorian. The thought of him
repulsed me now. That had been a dark place, rock-bottom for
me.
"Yes, that's how I know."
I thought of that Peeping Tom by the
window... Had it been him? Was that Conall's P.I.? "Damn, Mister
Williams, you have a lot of fucking explaining to do." I reached
for the bottle but Conall snatched it away from me. "Hey!" I said,
angry! No jovial, friendly, flirty "hey." I wanted to get fucking
trashed on that stuff...
"That's enough. You're on mineral water now.
You and I need to talk, and I need you to understand what is
said."
I glared at him. "Fine." Then I added,
"Creep! Were you really spying on me?"
"Spying? No, but when you came to England I
had to keep my eye on you."
"So, what, you bugged my room? Hired more
Private Investigators — ?"
"Yes."
My eyes widened. "You did?"
"Yes, I did. I mean, the latter. I never
bugged your room. That would be 'creepy,' as you like to call
it."
My hand went to the wine that wasn't
there... "Can I get another drink?"
Conall went behind the bar and pulled out a
bottle of Perrier. Man...did that bring back memories... He poured
me a glass.
I drank a bit, then continued. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"The P.I., damn it! Why did
you have me tailed? It
is
fucking creepy!"
Conall sighed forcefully, pulled up a bar
stool and sat next to me. I still felt distant from him, and yet
felt like I needed him. Oh, damn it, I had no fucking idea what I
felt! Confused, that's it.
"Alex — "
"Conall, I know this is
childish, but, just humor me and, well, I dunno... Could you call
her Alex
andra
? It
would just make the transition from 'old-flame is dead' to
'old-flame is alive and kicking and still looking fucking hot or at
least fuckable' a whole lot easier."
"Sure,
Alex
andra
was
taken by...some, well, 'bad people' and stored at a house over in
Budapest."
Stored?
"We were lucky, if you can call it that.
People who are trafficked these days, well, they end up as
prostitutes, or dead with their organs sold on the black
market."
I stopped drinking.
"Some get used for slave labor over in China
or India, Jamaica. It's a whole machine. Big trade. Thirty-two
billion pounds a year industry. You can Google that if you
want...
"Well, when I found out Alexandra was alive
— and, understand me, that was pure luck. That was... I had one of
my guys digging dirt, following the trail, you know, my hobby."
Yeah, some
hobby
.
"So, of course, Alex had —
sorry, Alex
andra
—
had been the cause of that. She'd been the one who'd made me want
to take all these fuckers down. Christ, the naïveté of youth...
Anyway." He sighed, grabbed some wine and poured himself a
glass.
"You know, you're also not allowed to drink
if I'm not!"
"Ah, fuck it, here." He
poured me another. "So, anyway, this guy I had — I have several of
them — obviously had a photo of Alex
andra
. He knew the sensitivity of the
issue, so he waited for me to return from New York. I'd barely
touched ground when he was here — right in that room there with the
fire, and showed me fresh photos...
"I was out of sorts for a
while... I was... Well, it was too much to bear. Imagine, Leora, if
you saw someone you knew, in tattered clothes, drugged,
clearly
being used for
sex, lying in a back garden which is surrounded by barbed wire and
armed men, beaten, bruised...
"This guy, this mogul in
Budapest, had guards outside his house. Real mafioso shit. Fucking
crazy. You'd think this stuff existed only in the blooming movies.
Anyway, he was an 'ethical' slimeball. He only ever kept
one
girl at a time.
Because he's catholic or orthodox or whatever the fuck. Oh, the
irony. Anyway, in that sense, we were 'lucky.' Alexandra was his
only slave, and so he was the only one who...you know...did things
with her. Luckily the fucking slime-ball seems to have been
disease-free...
"But she
was
a slave. Believe me.
And she was an easy target. Because of all the drugs — "