Kayla, of course, was most
unpleased about me going alone. I never told her about Conall's
message. I was sure he had his reasons. She was tough to
convince.
Real
tough! So we made a deal. She'd go with me to London, but get
off at Victoria Station which was a few stops earlier, and where
I'd get on the subway (or the "tube" as they call it here.) That
way she'd be nearby. I really couldn't expect any more from her. I
would've done the same.
I got out at Green Park
Station and, heart thumping and mind spinning, I walked out onto
the main road. A double-decker red bus advertising the a new
Freddie Stroma movie (
Damn, when had he
grown such amazing abs?
) rolled on past me.
I turned right, just as Dani had told me. It was cold, and raining.
It always fucking rained in England.
Always
. Seaford was one of the few
places where it didn't rain all the time, only
most
of the time.
There it was: The Ritz, covered by an
archway across its entire front, over the sidewalk. It reminded me
of The Marriot, Conall's Executive Suite, my endless adoration and
admiration for the sturdiness of a Marriott dining table...
Six months, ready to disappear in a
snap.
I got to the entrance, just outside the
lobby, and I waited.
A man in dreads hung about to my right,
looking like he'd been smoking pot all morning (outside The Ritz?)
Small black taxis jockeyed for position in the wide road ahead of
me. Waves of people pushed past me, half of them carrying
umbrellas, many not.
I looked at my watch: one-fifty P.M. Ten
minutes to go. I tapped my foot, hugged myself, looked down, sank
into my head, my thoughts, memories of Conall. And fear.
A fear so strong hit me
that it all suddenly made sense again, only more so, more
emotionally
so, why I
hadn't seen him. And why I hadn't wanted to let go. I was thinking
all this, buried in a tumultuous whirlpool, not really looking at
my black booties but at the same time staring straight at them,
when I felt the hands...
Warm, firm hands that made my heart stop,
embraced me by the shoulders, a figure shadowing me as I stood
there in a swirling wind of people, and then they rubbed down my
arms.
"Leora," said Conall from behind me,
steadying me as I felt my body twirl, "you can't imagine how much
I've missed you. Being apart from you has all but torn my life
apart."
Now,
damn it
. Why did he have to go and
say a thing like that?
I was supposed to stay angry!
I turned to face him, my
body shivering both internally and externally. He donned a long
black trench coat, the kind that looked like it had just been
featured on the cover of
Esquire
, modeled by Ryan Gosling or
something...
Conall always had style.
A light-blue dress shirt. It was the first
time I saw him in a tie, dark blue, silk. All the blue hues
contrasted with the ocean of his eyes.
Damn it...
I blinked a few times,
swallowed. It was different now, seeing him. I felt my mouth agape,
as it had been when I'd first met him at
Cringe Nightclub
in New York. But
back then I was innocent. Now, looking at him, my mouth only
fractionally open, I was stunned for a different reason. Yes, his
beauty was one of those reasons. But only one. Because the other
reason was that...I just couldn't hate him. No matter how hard I
tried.
And I hated myself for it.
"Conall." That's all I said. All I could
manage.
His eyes flickered above my head, to his
left. A storm raged behind those eyes, aqua and clear-blue but,
inside them, dark and thundering, rumbling and black.
What was going on with him?
His skin had darkened — tanned — since I'd
last seen him.
"We need to get away from here," he said,
putting his arm to my shoulder. I didn't question him... Not at
all. And I followed him, Conall being my anchor, the mooring to
which my oar-less rowboat at sea was now tied.
I missed seeing anything of The Ritz lobby
as we walked through it, didn't see much of the elevator as I got
into it, Conall always by my side, guiding me by the small of my
back with a steady hand. I did notice the people that crowded into
that elevator after a second or two, pushing the two of us into the
back. They spoke in pompous British accents, greeted each other,
said "Good Morning" and "How do you do?"
Conall held my hand.
I squeezed it back.
Dorian had never held my hand. He'd put his
fingers inside me, yes. He'd been kind and sweet...but he hadn't
held my hand.
He would never hold it like Conall was
holding it now either.
I was in that ocean, that boat. I felt the
undulating waves below me, swaying, back and forth, up and down,
dizzying, confusing.
And Conall, still, squeezed my hand.
Without willing it, my head dropped to his
triceps and I grabbed his upper arm with my other hand. Before the
final ding of the elevator, a tear broke from my eye. And when we
were alone, everyone else now having left, I mumbled into his
sleeve: "Conall, I hate you. I hate you so much."
"You should, Leora. But, hopefully, after
this, you will at least understand."
That final ding came. And then we were at
his suite. Only it wasn't empty when he opened the door.
I didn't recognize the girl
who was sitting on the couch, in one of his shirts, without any
pants on. But there
was
a girl there.
An attractive girl.
And now I hated her, too.
She stood up, didn't smile. Her eyes
surveyed me, up, then down, evaluating me. She was dirty-blonde,
tall, muscular. Her legs were well defined, tanned.
Had they been tanning together?
It was hard to place her age, because her
body looked fit, but the skin on her face looked leathery, beaten.
As I eyed her more closely, something didn't seem right. I saw the
gashing scar on the left side of her cheek. It wasn't particularly
unsightly, but it was noticeable. But that wasn't what wasn't
right. It was something else...
And then I saw it: Her eyes were a little
squint, unnaturally so, as if she'd been beaten there and they'd
never returned to shape. Her lip, on the same side of the gash, was
a little looser. She was not ugly at all. In fact, the slight
deformities added a kind of appeal to her, as if her beauty had
been so much at one stage, so ravishing, that even these scars of
life — a clearly horrible life — could not take that beauty
away.
Yet, still, she didn't smile. Not at me at
least.
She looked at Conall (now all but ignoring
me), then finally back at me (more like scowled.) Finally, I guess
in some type of greeting, she said, "So you must be...Leora."
There'd been a pause before "Leora" as if
she'd wanted to say "the notorious" or "the gold-digging" or some
other unpleasant adjective before my name.
But the biggest insult came after, not as an
insult, not even as a slur. But as a name, and what she said
straight after telling me that name...
Because the name she told
me, meant something, something to Conall. Once, at
Teardrop Park
, in New
York — when he'd shown me the poetry inscribed across his back,
from his shoulders all the way down, the poetry stating
"
She
is dead,"
"
She
was my North"
— on that day, he'd told me this same name. And how he'd felt about
its owner:
So, to call her a 'friend' is a gross
misnomer, an injustice. A crime against humanity.
She was my closest friend, my sister, my
lover, my soul.
The woman in front of me extended her
hand.
"I'm Alexandra," she said. "I know you've
heard of me."
Crashing glass doesn't
explain it. An avalanche doesn't explain it. The chalk cliffs of
Seaford, down which people jump to commit suicide, does not come
even
near
to
explaining it. A tsunami does
not
explain it...
"Uhm, s — sorry... W — what?"
The floor disappeared. The Ritz had suddenly
been demolished. A bomb exploded in front of me.
And I waited for an answer.
You're supposed to
be...dead
, was what I was thinking. But
this fact was surely obvious as the first thing to answer. I mean,
I at least expected that much from Conall and his Lazarus friend
here...
"I will explain it all,
Leora," said Conall, but not here, at my home.
If
, of course, you'll accompany me
there."
What would
you
have done? Asked if
the bitch had screwed him?
"Um, actually, Conall..." I swallowed. "I'd
kind of like an explanation now. Something, at least."
Alexandra — this tall,
hurt, and unbelievably attractive woman in front of me — huffed
quietly and turned, walked over to a decanter with brown liquid in
it, poured herself a glass. She downed it. "Go ahead," she said to
Conall. And it was there — right at
that
moment — when she'd pointed the
glass at him as she'd said "Go ahead," half-swaying back, that I
saw the darkness that surrounded her. And that I understood, at
least partly, what might have happened to her...
"Alexandra," said Conall, then he paused.
"Um, Alexandra was — "
"I was kidnapped," she snapped. "Drugged,
and kidnapped, and then..." She poured herself another glass,
downed it, sat on the couch, her arms dropping to the side. She put
a hand to her brow and looked upward at the ceiling. I could see
her thoughts, not as such, but as heavy clouds, raging, roiling
above her.
I began to understand more...
"We, well... Here, sit down, Leora," Conall
said.
I did.
"The P.I.'s I had, you know, the ones
gathering up dirt on different drug cartels. The ones who pulled up
all the dirt we had on that Raphael guy..."
Raphael, that slime-ball
who'd just about date-raped my best friend Kayla the night I'd met
Conall. (Although he
had
raped her, technically, before that, with his
drugs and his persuasions and his lies...) The guy Conall pummeled
so hard and then threatened to break his kneecaps. Yip, I recalled
the day after, when Conall had told me about his years of
searching, digging, trying to find some way to stop the trade which
had taken the life (or not!) of "his lover, his soul" —
Alexandra.
This
Alexandra in front of me!
"Yes, I remember that," I said.
"Well, when I got back to England, I
discovered that they'd found...Alex. In Hungary."
Alex.
Alexandra shuffled in her seat. "I think
I'll go to the other room." She got up abruptly, headed to the
bedroom, closed the door.
Conall opened his mouth to
continue, but he didn't need to. I'd filled in the pieces. Conall
was that type of guy. The one who'd put himself at risk, who'd put
his own
life
at
risk, for those he loved. Just like he'd done for Kayla, and his
brother, when he beat the crap out of Mr. Raphael Drug Dealing
Scumbag.
"I get it," I said to him.
"I guess you found her, alive, somehow, I don't get how, and you,
being you, got her out, and, I guess, well... That part I get. It's
the rest that is a bit fuzzy to me."
Like,
why did you leave me behind? Why didn't you tell me? And, more
importantly, how many times have you screwed your "lover, your
soul"?
"Leora," he said, his voice a gentle
whisper. "I've been faithful to you, all these months. I can
promise you that. Please, come with me to my home. It's more
comfortable there. I asked you to come here because, well, you
needed to see her, her face, how she looks... You needed to
understand that she is a soul in trouble, still trying to survive
the ordeal she went through. And that is why I've helped her all
these months."
"At
my
expense," I said. And as I said
it, I felt its callousness, its cruelty. It's...selfishness. I
shook my head. "Conall, I'm sorry." I put my head to my hand,
rested my elbow on my knee. I felt myself shivering, but the room
was warm, So warm I needed to take my coat off. Still, I
shivered.
"Leora, there's more. Just
know this: I did what I did for
you
, not for Alex." Again with the
"Alex" instead of "Alexandra"... Damn it, I was being so
cold-blooded about her! I hated myself for it. And I couldn't stop
thinking those thoughts.
"I need some air," I said, getting up.
"Wait!" said Conall, suddenly to his feet,
his hand out to me. "Leora..." He stopped. Moments of booming
silence passed between us as I waited for him to say what he
clearly wanted to say, but was avoiding.
He bit his lip, sighed, looked at
Alexandra's closed bedroom door. This was a very big suite, I
noticed. He'd really "taken care of her" well... (And there I was
doing it again!)
"Leora..." He clutched his
fist, shook his head, looked down. "They took her..." He ruffled a
trembling hand across his wavy hair, looked up. "They —
those
bastards!
—
took her..." His eyes quivered. Fountains — tumultuous fountains —
jackhammered behind his eyes, yet zero tears came out. Then he said
it, his voice lower: "They took her because of
me
, Leora. I brought upon her the
horrible things they did to her. And if they'd known how I felt
about you, they would've — " He sucked in air, gathering himself,
his words escaping through clenched teeth now.