Bulletproof (Healer) (12 page)

             
I can’t refuse. I buy a thick bar of chocolate orange and a small bag of almond truffles. “I’m in love,” I say, shoving a truffle into my mouth as we walk through the city. It is a glorious day; the sun is beating down on the us.  I like the way the water and the sun ripple together when I lean over a bridge and stare into the River Seine.

             
We see the Eiffel Tower. Gabe takes a photo of me standing underneath the massive metal structure using my new phone. My favourite spectacle is the Ponts des Arts. A pedestrian bridge where couples attach a padlock to the railing and throw the key into the river. A symbol of everlasting love. I never thought of myself as a romantic before. Most of my thoughts were bloody or violent. But I never had a special boy to pine after either. I don’t know. Not really. I have Maurice who is showering me with affection. But I haven’t met him. And there’s Gabe. But we’re not even friends. 

             
I decide to attribute my new found romantic side to Paris itself. There must be something in the air in this city that turns you into a blubbering softie. Gabe is running his fingers along the padlocks, looking dejected. “Have you been here before?” I ask.

             
He nods, “Once.” 

             
“An errand for Maurice?”

             
“No, before I worked for Maurice,” he says to me, blinking past the blinding sunlight that is in his face. “Three years ago maybe. I was seventeen.”

             
“Oh,” is all I say. I want to ask him about Claire. Did he come here with her? Did they hook a padlock to this very bridge, throw away the key and share a romantic kiss? A promise of eternal love. It makes me feel nauseous. 

             
“With a girl?” I ask, gently probing for information. He isn’t looking at me. He leans on the barrier of the bridge and looks off into the distance, down the River Seine. 

             
He laughs but it’s a sad laugh, “Yeah.”

             
“That’s nice,” I say. “Romantic.” But I don’t press any further. If Claire is the girl he visited Paris with, he doesn’t want to talk about her and I don’t want to open an unhealed wound. I don’t want to make him feel worse.

             
We stand in silence on the bridge for a while. I examine him  as he stares into the distance and the sun illuminates every inch of his tired face. The glare highlights his pointed features, his lusciously full lips and his wearying heart. He is uniquely attractive; I shouldn’t enjoy looking at his face as much as I do.

             
We drink coffee. I buy a postcard and a keychain. I think of how much Shannon would love Paris and I hope I get to return home so I can see dad take her here. She deserves a break from all the weirdness being my stepmother entails. 

             
“It’s time to go,” Gabe says.

             
We return to the hotel to collect our bags where another member of Maurice’s staff is waiting to collect us and take us to the airport. Thankfully, it isn’t Chec. I doubt I could stomach seeing his ghastly face looking at me like a glass of fine win he can drink up, couldn’t stand the thought of his mocking tone whenever he spoke to Gabe like he was beneath him. 

             
This worker is an older woman. She is plain, in her forties, expressionless and silent. I like her silence much better than Chec’s overconfidence but there is something eerie about her pursed mouth as she doesn’t even greet us. She just fills the boot of the limousine with our bags, slams the door in our faces and drives off.

             
“That’s Sue,” Gabe says once we are settled into the limousine. Questionably, there is no champagne this time. Instead of chocolate strawberries, there is a circular cheesecake on a silver dish. It looks delicious, covered in a raspberry sauce which makes me feel a bit queasy as it looks like the syrupy blood from my dreams. In addition, all the chocolate and coffee I’ve indulged in this morning has made me feel bloated. The cheesecake remains untouched. 

             
The drive back to the airport seems shorter than the one going. I am sad to watch Paris dissipate behind the tinted windows as we drive further and further away from the cosmopolitan city. The delicious chocolates and pastries. The gentle murmurs of French accents. The sunlight reflecting off the water of the Seine. I will miss Paris a lot and I hope I can return one day, maybe spend longer drinking in the sights, sounds and tastes, if I’m lucky I could  maybe live here. I could get lost in Paris. Nobody would know me as Miracle Girl. I would be Cassie Mueller, just another young girl trying to make it in the city of love.

             
Sue doesn’t say goodbye when she drops us off, merely gives Gabe a quick nod then I’m on a plane again for the second time in two days. It seems such a waste to spend so little time in Paris but I owe the fact that I have been here at all to Maurice, he wants me to come to Toulouse so I better do what he says. 

             
I read Maurice’s letter again on the plane. I feel nauseous about meeting him and it’s not the cheesecake or the chocolates that are giving me this light-headed feeling. A tangible vampire. No longer a two dimensional image on a computer screen or a frightening presence in my dreams. 

NINE

              When we touchdown in Toulouse it is about five o’clock. I’m hungry again. I crave the chips my dad makes every Sunday night. I wonder where he is while I wait for Gabe to pick up our bags from the conveyor belt. Is he still searching for me or am I presumed dead? If so, how is he coping?

             
I think about what Gabe said to me: everybody has something. Is it true? All of us find a tool, bad or good, to help ease the aches and pains of daily life. I think about dad’s bursting belly. Over the past two years, as my accidents have grown more dangerous than ever, dad has used food as a comforter. His belly has been stretching, his clothes no longer fitting, rolls of fat developing where they once didn’t exist. Doughnuts, chips covered in curry sauce, chocolate. They helped dad to cope with the prospect that one day he would lose me to this precarious world, that he might not always be able to rely on the strange mutation running through my veins to keep me safe and alive. 

             
Gabe is walking towards me rolling our two suitcases behind him. His black hair is lying across his forehead and curling at his ears. He looks good then I think about the image of him lying beside me, saliva building up at the corners of his mouth, a thin layer of slimy sweat glistening on his cheeks, purple rims around his expressionless eyes and I think of dad, bursting at the seams, and I wonder, is the way dad indulges in fatty foods any better than Gabe’s reliance on alcohol? Both damage their health. Both weaknesses force me to watch a good man slowly deteriorate before my eyes as they are gradually consumed by their sadness. Both make me feel utterly useless.

             
Outside the airport in Toulouse, Rose is waiting on us. I am overjoyed to see her face. She throws her arms around me, “Didn’t you just love Paris?”

             
I nod enthusiastically. My affection for Rose has grown considerably, “It was amazing.” I tell her what I loved most: the chocolates, the Ponts des Arts and the sweet smell of poetry and history filling the air. Rose grins, Gabe hangs back. I tell her about Maurice’s gifts and the beautiful hotel with the solid gold bath and the mountain of pillows. I want to tell her about how drunk Gabe was, how he was shouting the name Claire in his sleep and about my nightmare but it seems distasteful to talk about it while Gabe stands there.

             
“You will love Toulouse too,” I have missed Rose’s dainty English lilt. “The Ville Rose… It’s beautiful.”

             
“It’s a shame Maurice is so far out,” Gabe speaks up. He starts to pack our things into Rose’s car, a tiny yellow Mini Cooper, “Couldn’t he have given you a bigger car either?

             
“For his own privacy Maurice lives in the outskirts on Toulouse, in the countryside, in the most fabulous manor, you will adore it,” Rose explains. Gabe scoffs at the word privacy and mutters something about suppression. 

             
Driving with Rose in the car is much more pleasant than a journey with Gabe listening to heavy metal and figuring out a way to avoid an uncomfortable silence. She gibbers on about the party she has planned for me and the clothes she wants me to wear. I tell her about the jewellery Maurice requested I wear tonight and she yelps with excitement. Gabe sits in the back, wallowing in self-pity. While I chatter happily to Rose, I can’t help but think about just how I am going to help Gabe. 

             
We drive further away from the heart of Toulouse and into the countryside. The lush green is familiar to me, living in Scotland, so I feel content looking out of the window to see the sun sharing it’s yellow heat across the trees, grass, mountains.

             
Gravel roads crunch beneath the tyres. “Look, there it is,” Rose says when a large house becomes visible on the top of a grassy knoll. There’s a group of trees creating a thick green barrier but I can make out the red bricks and charcoal tiles of the roof. We wind through the tall trees so I can see Maurice’s home clearly now. The roof is comprised of varying sections, slanting in different directions and gradients. It’s big, I think, so big. Made my house look like a garden hut. There’s a room veering off the right side of the house with glass walls and roof. A greenhouse, I think, but there are no plants in there. 

             
We come to a stop somewhere along the long pebbly driveway behind a procession of cars. Black, silver, red, yellow. Big, small. Modern, vintage. I have to catch my breath. So many cars. I want to hop in and take the hot red Ferrari a spin. 

             
Daylight is still throbbing gently in the blue sky, it is dwindling but there’s enough light that any vampires in this house won’t be alive yet. I find this strangely relieving. “Gabe, take her to her room but go the back way. I don’t want her to see any of the party arrangements,” Rose grins, pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head. 

             
There’s about five people working outside the house. One man with a big black beard and a pot belly is painting the front door white. Two young, handsome men with caps on their head are moving garden furniture around. Muscles flexing in their arms. An enviably pretty Asian girl with long, straight black hair is kneeled beside the flowerbeds that surround the house like a muddy moat. She giggles flirtatiously with the two men who are moving a clay pot from the entrance of the house to the far left. A short woman with glasses and red hair is standing with one hand on her hip, the other holding a clipboard. She is the only person to notice us when we step out of the car. For the dwelling of somebody who isn’t even conscious during the day, this is a very busy place.

             
She waddles over to us, “It is so nice to meet you, Cassie.” She offers her hand to me; I shake it and smile gratefully. I am struck with desperation to make a good impression. “I’m Angelica.”

             
Angelica’s face is taught from botox or a face lift. The skin of her neck is like a cooked turkey and the ferociously dyed hair coming out of her scalp is like wispy flames. Her lips form a tight, grim line and are covered in a thick layer of bright red lipstick. She looks like a villain from a horror movie, I think and want to laugh. 

             
Rose gives her a polite hug and Gabe hangs back, sitting on our suitcases and sulking like an angst teenager. “I see Gabe is as delightful as ever,” says Angelica and Rose rolls her eyes. I smile along as if I am part of the whole ‘Gabe is a failure’ joke when really I want to comfort him as he sits there looking wistfully into the distance.

             
“We really need to get Cassie ready for the party,” Rose says.

             
“Oh yes!” Angelica’s face contorts itself into a smile. It is more frightening than her grimace.