Chapter 22 :
Fists pounded at the door. Someone called out in Chinese.
Nathan had been brushing his teeth, the last step of his pre-sleep routine, when he heard loud, hammering footfalls in the stairwell. Then, a bark to open the door. The pounding grew louder. Nathan shrunk back against the plaster wall of the Genevan apartment, wishing there was another way out. Helene lived on the fourth floor with no balcony or fire escape.
Just when he thought the paramilitary would succeed in pounding through the one barrier between him and them, Helene came from the bedroom, dressed in the same clothes she’d been wearing when he’d first met her in Beijing–dark pants and a silky peach colored top that draped softly over her curves.
“You’re late!” she said, not noticing his petrified stance. She walked past him, tying her dark hair up in a messy bun as she went, completely unfazed by the pounding and shouting on the other side of the splintering door. She moved through her routine, oblivious to the noise, as if the two of them weren’t even in the same flat. Nathan stepped away from the wall, toothbrush still hanging in his mouth, and watched her approach the front door. He wanted to shout to her to stop. He knew how this ended. The People’s Liberation Army boys on the other side, in their civilian clothing, wanted him. Perhaps they wouldn’t use a Falun Gong girl this time. Perhaps they would use him. Or worse, Nathan realized with dread, Helene.
“Stop!” he tried to shout, but his words came out as a burble of tooth-paste-y baby sounds. He was choking on the toothbrush and couldn’t speak. She was already undoing the deadbolt, her right hand on its handle. She continued the methodic work of unlocking the door, deaf to his calls, with no sense of the malevolence that waited on the other side of that thin piece of wood. Was she brave, or an idiot? Hadn’t she seen enough danger in her work to recognize when it came to her threshold?
She opened the door. It wasn’t the PLA soldiers, but the monster he’d seen at Plainpalais. Nathan’s pulse started to race, but his throat was frozen closed. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t move. His feet were nailed to the floor.
The monster spoke in Chinese with the voice of the foot soldier who had ordered him out of his apartment in Beijing. But this time, it spoke to Helene. “Get your shoes on,” it told her. She obeyed, somehow understanding without speaking the language. She took her coat and scarf as well, her movements relaxed. Her hand didn’t tremble and her head wasn’t cowed. She dressed as coolly as if she were going to fetch groceries for dinner.
“Go,” the beast ordered in Chinese. Helene left with it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to confront a beast at her door and follow its commands. She didn’t even glance back to wave to Nathan. When she had disappeared from the doorway, the monster reached an arm toward the doorknob, the hand lost in the sleeve of its oversized black shirt, and slammed the door shut with the force of a bomb.
Nathan’s eyes snapped open with the urgency of a person bursting from beneath the surface of the ocean after wresting himself free from a sinking boat. The back of his neck was squeezed in the iron grip of the monster. Every nerve from the base of his skull, past his shoulder blades and down his spine, was taut. His nose was full of the sour rankness of stress, the sheets of the bed stuck to his torso like the soggy seaweed of a day-old sushi roll.
The American rolled over to lay flat on his back in a dry section of the bed and stared at the ceiling, trying not to move, as if the stiff pose of a body in rigor mortis would make the migraine go away.
He closed his eyes and tried to visualize Helene’s face, the first time he had kissed her. He conjured up the light wind that blew a strand of her hair over her face. A small smile broke on her lips, and he leaned toward her.
But the grip on the back of his neck clamped harder, squeezing a groan out of him, and the image disappeared, and he was back in his cold bed.
Chapter 23 : Dethorned roses
Victor planned the evening, down to the last rose petal. He’d had Marie, his receptionist, buy a new dress for Lize. Marie had perfect taste and enjoyed the excuse to take an extended lunch break with his credit card to purchase a dress she’d never be able to fit into nor have the occasion for. She chose a dusty rose, knee-length piece made in a heavy silk that she promised would look magical on Liza.
He also had Marie make reservations at a restaurant which he chose, not for its luxurious exclusivity—though it certainly was luxurious and exclusive—but because it was their restaurant, where many of their relationship milestones had already been celebrated. It was the locale of their first date. Then he had taken her there when her gallery had signed one of Europe’s most elite artists, and again when she’d been featured in the “Young & Influential Movers of Geneva” column of the city’s gossip magazine. When he told her they had a reservation at Chez Louis for that evening, it would mean something to her.
When the maître d’ had seated them, he ordered two glasses of the red Cornivin. The same as always. If the sommelier ever took that wine off the wine card, he would bring his own bottle and pay the uncorking fee. It had been this wine that the old Victor, nerves aflutter, had flung over the entire front of Liza’s dress on their first date. “I’ll buy you a new one!” he had promised, embarrassment smeared red across his face, rivaling the stain on her dress. From that day forward, whenever the occasion necessitated their restaurant, he saw to it that she had a new dress to risk with their good-omen wine.
“Are you quite sure?” the waiter asked, knowing their customary beverage like a mother knows her child’s favorite dinner.
“Definitely,” he confirmed, like every other time. The waiter always asked, and Victor always insisted.
Liza was in a good mood. She’d been anxious since finding the article with the sketch of the mask. Distracted. Distant. But the anticipation of dinner with the surprise she could only guess at had put her in a better mood. Or perhaps it was the new silk she was wearing, which did, as Marie had promised, make her look like a 1950’s Hollywood starlet. Lize had styled it with the teardrop pearl necklace he’d bought her for their first anniversary, and the coordinating pearl earrings from their 5th glimmered on her earlobes.
“How is Mr. Button?” He asked, beginning their usual checklist of conversation topics. Liza launched into a detailed recount of her boss’s girlfriend-of-the-moment, a blonde Russian half his age, stories that fed into the rest of the socialite news of the city.
He continued to probe about Geneva’s going-on’s to keep her engaged, rather than for his own amusement, but he was incapable of focusing on the drivel, his mind on much more complicated problems.
She started with a cup of tomato soup. He, the steak tartare. She took an endive and goat cheese salad as her main, he, the veal. She finished with a lemmon sorbet for dessert, he, an espresso.
Directly after the coffee arrived at the table, a gypsy entered the restaurant. Street merchants usually left this establishment alone, but on this particular night, the gypsy showed more gumption than usual. He wore a cap over greasy black hair, tied in a low ponytail, and clothes that had been so oiled from continual use they looked all-weather proof. He limped slightly, but didn’t make a show of his disability. Over one arm was a basket brimming with dethorned, blood-red roses. Victor spotted him as soon as he entered the dining hall and, when he could do so without looking overeager, waved him over.
“A flower for the beautiful lady?” the dark man asked.
“How much?” Victor asked.
The gypsy told him a price well above market value.
“Two dozen.”
The man beamed with the sale.
Before Liza could protest, Victor handed over the appropriate mix of coins and bills in exchange for a mountain of roses. In another moment, the man disappeared.
He knew Lize was still wondering what had catalyzed the reservation for their restaurant, but she didn’t ask. The roses were an unusual splurge for him, but only played up whatever announcement or event might be coming. When she finished her sorbet and he, his coffee, he paid and suggested they walk through the sleepy old city.
Naturally, she agreed. Six years ago, after dinner at the restaurant, he had asked her to move in with him after meandering to a little park hidden behind one of the small churches, elevated above the steep cobblestone streets. He knew she suspected it would be similar tonight—whatever he wished to tell or ask her, it would be revealed there.
***
“I’ve made a breakthrough,” Victor told her as they walked down the steep grade of the cobblestone street in the direction of Lake Geneva. “It’s quite an amazing milestone, really,” he continued, speaking in the vaguery she preferred. She had no mind for science or medicine. Earlier in their relationship, when he’d tried to explain in detail the work to which he dedicated his life, she’d gotten confused, then frustrated, then annoyed. He had since learned to speak of milestones and breakthroughs without bothering with details. She didn’t need to know, anyway. Not being able to understand it, she was prone to make moral judgments of it, far more harshly than she would have could she have comprehended the importance of it.
“That’s lovely,” she said vaguely.
“It’s made me come to another realization,” he continued, remaining ambiguous as long as he could. They had turned onto a wide, shallow-stepped staircase that led upward to a small garden of a park platformed above the city, a corner of green with a handful of benches that looked out over the tiled roofs of the ancient buildings. He paused as they took the stairs, in no hurry to arrive at his point, the entire evening theirs alone.
At the top of the stairs, Victor was irked to find a vagrant sleeping drunk on one bench, and that another couple had claimed the stone wall and view over the city. He would have to improvise a different position. No matter. The drunk was oblivious in his drugged sleep, and surely the couple would move on soon enough. He guided Liza with an arm around her waist to the wall at the back of the small garden. As the stage director, he would have arranged his actors differently. But it would have to do. More than he wanted the picturesque vue, he didn’t want witnesses for their intimate moment.
“I’ve been distracted the last few months,” he told her, positioned now near a second, smaller, staircase set into the wall with its own hidden colonnade leading down to the lower streets. “I haven’t been giving you the attention you deserve. I’ve left you neglected.” Liza nodded at his assessment. He took the roses she’d been cradling in one arm like a sleeping baby and laid them on the balustrade of the small staircase. He glanced over and saw the other couple making their way to the set of stairs they’d just come up. He took both her hands, cold in the January winter night, and held them in his as they stood face to face.
“I understood you were busy,” she said. “Sometimes it is like that.” She shrugged with the dismissive acceptance of an army wife, accustomed to losing her husband for months at a time in another service.
“Yes. But it’s no excuse. You’re the most important thing in my life,” Victor lied, “and without you, all my work and progress would be dust in my mouth.” Victor heard a shuffling noise somewhere down the small stairs, but kept focus on his speech. He dropped to one knee, staging the moment as the cliché demanded. “Liza, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. You are the light of my life and the reason I do everything I do.” He paused, knowing what he needed to say, but wanting to sound sincere when he said it. Pauses helped with that. “I know you want to be a mother. And I’ve put my work before that, prioritizing my ambition over your desires. But I yearn for a future with you. I want to invest in our life, perhaps also to build a family together–” again, he paused, allowing the pressure of the moment to build on her. “Will you marry me? Will you be my future?” He released one of her hands and took a small velvet box from his coat pocket, flipping it open as he raised it to her. A glassy stone glinted white in the city night, a perfect duplicate of a million other stones set just like it, on the ring fingers of countless other young women.
Lize gasped. “Victor!” She took the box, ignoring him for a moment to admire the ring, his knee cramping on the cold stone ground.
In truth, the marriage proposal on one knee was not an old Swiss or French tradition. It had been imported via films from North America, along with McDonalds and blue jeans. In the modern day, marriage in the francophone region of Europe was often an action reserved for after a couple proved their staying power with a child or two, had established careers, and perhaps also a home purchase. But the romance and charm of the American proposal had infected the dreams of young girls across the nation.
“Yes!” Liza gasped. “Yes, of course!” Finally, she took his hand and pulled him up, the shiny ice-crystal of a stone already adorning the appropriate finger. She flung her arms around his neck. “Mille-fois, oui!” she whispered into his ear. He buried one hand deep into the blonde hair tied loosely behind her head, his other slipping under her winter coat and along the silk of her dress, finding its spot just below the small of her back. He pulled her close and felt her melt against him–her body forming to his, her breasts tight against his chest, her hips tight against his thigh.
Then, just as their lips met, a hissing, growling noise. A wooden rod banged against the stone wall of the stairwell, demanding attention behind them.
Liza twisted in their embrace to see the source of the noise, somehow also melting further into his protective hold. Victor saw the horned mask of the beast, and took a step back, pulling Liza with him. He glanced around for the other guests in the park, but the couple had disappeared, and the drunk, forced into the reality of the sober world by the various invasive noises, had fallen from his bench and was presently stumbling down the other staircase.
“Your money!” the beast growled, a knife now glinting from a hand hidden by an oversized black sweater. He thrust his empty hand out at them, ready to be filled with treasure. He hissed again, encouraging them to hurry and making Liza jump in fear.
“You can have whatever you like,” Victor told the specter, “But please don’t harm us. No need to put anyone in danger.” He fumbled into his coat pocket and pulled out his wallet. He tossed it to the black figure, intentionally off-target. Just as the horned man dropped his gaze and stooped to pick up the wallet, Victor stepped forward and kicked him, the toe of his shoe connecting with what may have been the soft of the creature’s neck. The beast roared in anger, drawing back and slashing the knife toward the man in dinner dress and fine Italian shoes. The knife found leg-meat before Victor could pull it back, tearing through fine wool and three layers of dermis before Victor got his body out of reach. “Get away!” he shouted, the monster still bent over and howling in pain from the blow to his neck, letting the knife clatter to the ground when it no longer stuck in flesh.
Liza, now pulling herself from the shock, tugged forcefully at Victor’s arm. He let her pull him backward, then, with an arm around her waist, they fled across the small park and down the same stairs the drunk had used only moments before.
If the beast followed, he was slow in his mask and cumbersome clothing. A few streets and alleyways later, they heard nothing behind them, and stopped running.
“We must go to the police,” he told her, still panting for breath. “They need to know this madman is roaming the streets.”
“No,” she objected, “Your leg. It’s bleeding. We should find a doctor first.”
He shrugged off her protestations and pulled out his cell phone. “The wound is superficial,” he told her, “I’ll be fine.” He thumbed in the emergency number for the police and raised the phone to his ear. “The madman with the mask just attacked us—” he told the dispatch operator on the other end of the line. “—the Krampus is still on the prowl.”
Author update :
Annoyingly, I actually wrote an update last week, but the website was buggy, and when I sent the post out, it had not saved on the reloaded page. **and I’d missed that it was lost.
Last week was bitter cold—more than fifty degrees below freezing, on the Farenheit scale. Which is cold. Die of exposure in twnety minutes or less, kind of cold. Burst your water pipes, and possibly freeze your sewer line, if you’re really unlucky, kinda cold.
Cold enough there was no way I was going to be able to use my office, with just the charming little space heater I have. It was also cold enough that, being the good driver that I am, even when I warmed up my engine for fifteen minutes, the engine actually got colder as I drove! That was a little off-putting — made me rethink driving too far away from civilization.
But it was all only for a few days, and then it broke. Now it’s above freezing, and it feels like a heat wave! I’m back in my office, and half the time don’t even bother to let my car run early! We’ll be sun bathing if this keeps up!
Some people were complaining, and understandably so. But honestly, I kind of like having a few days of intense weather every year. I wouldn’t want it to stay, but it sort of wakes you up. Makes you vigilant, in the way you don’t have to be when the weather is easy. It makes you grateful for indoor plumbing and oil heating (imagine surviving this with a wood stove and no insullation!), but also makes you pay attention. I don’t want it ot stick around too long — I start to get cabin fever pretty strong if I don’t move. But I like these rough edges of winter that put the rest of the year in perspective.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m also looking forward to some coming adventures, away from the Dakota’s.
Have you planned any winter holidays? I love sharing the excitement of anticipation of adventures to come—