Generation of Liars (8 page)

“I’m getting a new flat?” I asked
through screwed-up lips. “I wasn’t aware that new
digs
were a stop on
this little scenic adventure.”

“Motley decided he doesn’t want you
going back to your old apartment after what happened on the Eiffel Tower. He’s
afraid that ex-boyfriend of yours will be looking for you there.”

“I can’t just
up
and move. I
love my apartment. It’s a studio in a crumbling building with a rat infestation
and my neighbors are all dancers. Plus, I can see the glow from the Moulin
Rouge out my bathroom window.”

“Alice, this is serious.” The voice
coming from her lips, which were darkened by brandy wine lipstick, left no room
for negotiation. The mix of beauty and sternness that she exuded intimidated
me.

I crossed my arms resentfully.
“What about all the stuff at my old place?”

“You will just have to live with
what you have on you.”  I gave her a sour look, knowing that the only
possessions I had on me were the tattered, blood-stained clothes on my back and
the note I always kept hidden inside my shoe.

“Motley said not to worry,”
Cleopatra answered. My eyes followed the three moles on her neck, up the path
to her ears, where a set of burnished diamonds were aglow in the rising
moonlight. The diamonds looked seriously pricey. “You can go shopping in the
morning.”

“Thanks for the concern about my
safety, but ditching my apartment is overreacting. Pressley has no way of finding
out where I live.”  

“We need to play it safe, Alice.
Motley did some digging around while you guys were in Rio and he thinks this
Pressley Connard character may be an agent from the United States Government.”

“Government? Impossible. Pressley
majored in history and he planned on becoming a high school history teacher.”

Rabbit finally untied his tongue
from the choking feminine allure of Cleopatra long enough to add, “Alice, you
haven’t seen him in three years. You need to realize that a lot could have
changed since then. I’m sure he would never guess that you would end up in your
line of work, either.”

“You have a point,” I responded.

“Let me give you the key,”
Cleopatra told me. “So that you can go inside and get situated.”

“Is that what’s around your neck?”
My eyes were affixed to the key tied around her neck by a velvet string. I had
noticed it the moment she pulled up to the dock.

She bared her speckless teeth in a
sly smile and reached her hand around to her back pocket. “No, dear, that is my
own special key.” She produced a different key in her fingers. “
This
one
is for your apartment.”

“Can I keep my name?” I asked,
closing my fingers around the key.

Cleopatra struck a finger to her
chin. “I almost forgot.” She dipped two fingers into her back pocket again,
this time pulling out a laminated photo ID which displayed my face with the
name Alice Fix printed next to it. “Here is a new CNIS card with your new
address printed on it.”

I snatched the card from her hand
and turned to Rabbit. “Well, are you coming?”

“Me?” Rabbit asked.

“Forget it,” I said. “I wouldn’t
want to pry you away from the
scenic
view.” My eyes glowered at
Cleopatra, well more precisely at her wetsuit, which fit against her body like
reptile skin. I hopped off the boat and paced towards the building. My new
apartment was on rue de Seine in the 6
^th
arrondissement. The
building’s white stone facing made it stand radiantly against the dusk sky, and
its height created an elegant distinction from the surrounding buildings. I
counted the humongous windows up at least a dozen stories skyward, noting the
entire bottom stratum was made up of a clothing boutique and a
boulangerie
;
the windows of both were already blackened for the night. 

I walked to the storefront and ran
my fingers along the front Plexiglas window, leaving a streak of glistening
fingerprints. From behind the glass, a mannequin stared back with painted eyes.
The mannequin had alabaster skin and she was crowned with a wig, soft like spun
silk, and stylishly posed in a tan trench coat and a pair of ultra-pink kitten
heels. It all looked about my size.

I reached for my snub-nose revolver
and shot the lock on the shop door. I slithered inside the boutique and
stripped the mannequin naked. I slid the shoes off her feet and tiptoed away
from the scene with everything tucked in the nook of my arm.

*   
*    *

I balanced the stolen goods in my
arm as I twisted the keyhole of my new flat. The inside opened up to a gleaming
kitchen with white marble floors and expansive rows of scrolling cabinets. The
entire back wall of the apartment was enfaced with a two-story hyaline window,
which caused moonlight to spray into the living space and bathe over the
furniture and walls. I shut the door behind me and let the items in my hand
drop to the floor. I approached the foot of the metal spiral staircase, turning
my legs into the curve of each step, which led to the loft that hosted the
sleeping area. The space was bare but for a four-poster bed, its spindles as
white as tusks, with sheets of lacey ivory draped from each corner. I
approached the bed and climbed on top of it, rolling onto my back and allowing
my hair to fall glamorously down over the edge. I felt the edge of my phone run
over my hip bone from inside my pocket and I pulled it out and laid it on the
bed. I wondered what was taking Motley so long to check in with me.

I hopped off the bed and descended
the stairs into the kitchen. The space was so airy that I could hear the echo
of my own footsteps and it made me uncomfortable, like I was my own phantom.
You make a lot of enemies working for a guy like Motley, and creepy echoes were
just about the last sound I was comfortable with. I opened the refrigerator and
saw that Motley had thought to stock it with a gallon of milk and a bag of French
press coffee beans, and the best part was that the freezer contained a pint of
chocolate ice cream. I smiled because it meant that he probably wasn’t that mad
at me, after all. I headed to the bathroom and flicked on the lights to check
myself out in the mirror. The bandage on my arm had transposed to a bloody rust
color. I eyed the bathtub, a white porcelain basin suspended by a set of four
porcelain claws over a pristine marble floor. I swiveled the brass lever to
start the water and shook myself out of my clothes. I pulled off my stocking
and let the note that held my confession fall onto the glassine marble.

The water felt like hot knives over
my sore muscles and I closed my eyes and let the misty steam envelope me. After
toweling off, I searched my bag and pulled out all the makeup I could find. I
applied a set of feathery false lashes, red-brick blush, and ruby red lipstick.
I stepped into the stolen pink kitten heels and wrapped myself inside the tan
trench coat, securing it onto my body by cinching the belt at my waist. The
last thing I did before walking out of the bathroom was tuck my confession into
one of my shoes.

I stepped out of my apartment and
pulled the door shut behind me. There was a hot breath behind my back.

I turned around and saw that the
neighbor across the hall, dressed as though arriving home from an opera house,
fur and peacock feathers, was fussing with her keys in the lock. She turned to
give me a confounded look, placing her hand to her chest, over the lump of
ermine trim on her coat. When she saw I was harmless, the tension drained from
her expression. “Oh, you gave me a spook,” she said in English with a trebling
French accent. “I was under the impression that apartment was vacant.”

“I just moved in tonight.”

She was a woman in her late
sixties, with cheekbones stiffened from a surgeon’s scalpel and ears that had
been battered in vain glory by the heft of diamonds. Her eyes canvassed the
length of my body all the way down to my pink kitten heels. “There is only one
place a woman is headed dressed up like that,” she reported to me.

“Oh?” I asked, tugging the handle
of my door to test that it was shut.

“Boulevard de Clichy,” she said.
“I’ve lived in Paris for five decades, I can sense these things.”

“Impressive,” I told her.

“If you know anything about Paris,
you know that no respectable girl would powder her nose south of Pigalle. So,
tell me, what’s a girl like you doing headed there?”

“My old apartment was on the
boulevard and I just need to retrieve a few belongings.”

“You’ll have to come in for a cup
of tea once you’re settled. I always like to meet my neighbors.” She opened her
door, allowing me to peak into her apartment and see a tapestry of lush red
velvet couches. The walls of her apartment were bathed in the hot, red strobe
of police lights flickering outside her windows. “There was a break-in
downstairs tonight at the clothing boutique. So, do be careful out there.” The
woman disappeared into her apartment, to leave me lingering in the drench of
her perfume.  

*   
*    *

I got off at the Blanch metro
station beneath Boulevard de Clichy in Montmartre. Fog rose from the sewers
like ethereal smoke. The buildings were all Technicolor jewel boxes. The fins
on the red windmill glowed like fire. I plucked the cigarette from between my
lips and laid eyes on the red, pulsating flare emanating from the famous Moulin
Rouge. The landmark so perfectly embodied the glitzy, grimy vibe of the
neighborhood. Like the revolving spokes on the windmill that made it famous, the
Pigalle quarter spun on the dual axes of money and desire. A life lived in
Pigalle is a life less ordinary.

The apartment building I lived in
up until my sudden relocation was a tall, chalky factory building the color of
chimney soot. It had once been a place where dresses were sewn during a more
romantic era. Now it was a low-rent apartment building that had the neon-red
glare from the Moulin Rouge staining its front windows. A healthy clientele of
girls in lace and leather were roaming the sidewalk, their every movement
bathed in red from the scintillating lights of the windmill.

I extinguished my cigarette and
threw open the doors to the building, but I froze when I heard someone taunting
my name, soft and methodical like a lullaby, from up above my head.

 “
Alice, Alice, a girl so
full of malice
,” the voice purred.

I looked up and saw a girl, the top
half of her body was tipping out the window two stories above my head. All
around her face was an ash blond upside down crown of hair, and through her
fluted crimson lips, wet like jelly, she crooned the name, “
Alice
.”

There was only one girl so cheeky
in all of Pigalle. Her name is Sara Cinnamon. What you need to know about Sara
Cinnamon is a New Jersey accent and a push-up bra. “Alice, where have you
been?” Sara called out. She climbed out the window and ambled, knees over
elbows, down the fire escape. When she got to the bottom she squeezed a hug
around me, and I couldn’t help but behold that she smelled like knock-off
perfume and whatever greasy food the stage show she danced for had served the
night before.

“Sara!” I exclaimed. “I haven’t
seen you in a few days. How have you been?” I dug inside my bag for a cigarette
and pitched it to her.  

Sara Cinnamon was my age, but her
smile was picked clean into black coal from whatever drugs she took, and her
eyebrows were drawn on with marker. In that good, dim lighting they use at her
shows, she was probably hot stuff. Out in natural moonlight, her skin was like
pancake batter and her blond hair extensions looked like they could crawl away.
She was drunk and high when she arrived in Paris after a bad breakup, and,
well, some people don’t thrive on change I guess, so Sara stayed that way. The
way we met was that I used some of my moves from David Xad on a boyfriend of
hers after he put bruises on her during a night of drinking. We’ve been friends
ever since.

“I’m okay, Alice,” Sara replied,
fishing inside her gold
lamé
bra for a lighter. “But
you’ve got some abracadabra junk happening. You straight up disappeared on us.
Your apartment was empty yesterday, and then today some old lady in a pink bath
robe moved in with her little mangy housecat parade trailing behind. Nobody
knew what happened to you. I figured either you pissed off the wrong guy and
went belly up in the Seine or you hit pay dirt and cashed off to Versailles.”

“I had an unexpected relocation.” I
leaned against the side of the building and grazed a lighter over the cigarette
at my lips.

“Oh, yeah?” Sara questioned. “Where
are you staying? Somewhere that’s all class, I bet.
Suddenly you
don’t
invite friends over?”

“I didn’t mean to run off without
saying goodbye. I had to move out of the neighborhood. There was some heat on
me and I needed to play it safe. I came back to see if any of my clothes were
still at my old apartment.”

“Does this have anything to do with
the cute guy who came around looking for you earlier?”

The cigarette tumbled from my open
lips and I hissed out, “What cute guy?”

Sara swatted the smoldering
cigarette butt off my shoulder, digging embers from my hair with her plastic
fingernails. “He was tall. Dark hair, dreamy eyes, real cute. He said he needed
to find you, but I told him nobody had seen you for a few days.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

Sara took a long puff of her
cigarette and blinked her lashes skyward, as though trying to recall an
important detail. “Yeah, I think he said his name was Elvis or something.”

“Elvis?” I smacked my forehead.
“Sara, could he have said that his name was Pressley?”

“Oh, yeah, you know what, that
might have been it. Like I said, Alice, he was real cute. A girl can get
distracted.”

“Listen, Sara, I’m sorry for not
saying goodbye before I moved out. I promise I will invite you over to my new
place once my life settles down.”