Exiled (A Madame X Novel) (12 page)

I take pity on him, though he’s not uttered one word of complaint, and indeed, he seems to be actively enjoying watching me splurge.

“I think I’ve spent enough of your money, Logan. Let’s take this stuff home.”

He glances at his watch. “Sounds good to me. We’ve got to get changed for dinner and the show anyway.”

We catch another Uber home. Set the bags down, sort through them, pick an outfit for tonight, strip for the shower . . . and up on the counter, beneath Logan, which has us running late for our dinner reservation. Not that I mind.

Dinner is a fancy affair at an upscale place somewhere in what Logan tells me is Hell’s Kitchen. I don’t recall the name, or the cross streets. I don’t really care, not today. I’m all about the experience, letting Logan take care of the details. I follow him on foot from our home to the nearest subway station for my first subway ride. It is a revelatory experience, sitting in the inward-facing seats, holding on to the bar, watching the wide variety of people. Old, young, white, black, brown, Asian, rich, poor, clean, dirty, self-absorbed, alert. There is nothing connecting any of them—any of
us
—except this moment on this train.

We are ascending the stairs to street level now. I wind my fingers through Logan’s and share a slice of my thoughts. “When I lived in the condo in Caleb’s tower, there would be many, many hours of my life that were just utterly . . . empty. One can only read for so long, you know? One of my only pastimes was to look out the window and watch the people coming and going. There was never any lack of passersby, so I could stand at that window for hours, just watching them go past. I would imagine lives for them, create entire stories
about them. I still do it, sometimes. If I’m having trouble processing my emotions, or I’m just overwhelmed, I’ll end up people-watching, and imagining stories for them. I would create these elaborate histories for the strangers walking under my window, I think, because I had no history of my own.”

Logan nods. “There’s a word that sort of encapsulates that idea:
sonder
. It’s the realization or understanding that each person passing by you or sitting next to you on the train or whatever, that everyone has their own life, their own complex network of friends and relatives, their own stories. I picture each person having a thread that follows them, and it’s a tangled, knotted, interwoven thread with a million individual skeins, but if you could follow that thread, it would eventually, somehow, intersect with yours. Sometimes it’s just that individual moment, where you and that person occupy the same space for a single heartbeat, and other times that person might be more intimately connected to you in a way you’d never have imagined.”

“
Sonder.
I like that word.”

By this time, we’re at the restaurant, where we’re told it will be a bit of an additional wait, as we’re a few minutes late for our reservation. Logan leans close to the hostess, an attractive young woman wearing a dress that reveals more than it covers, has a brief whispered conversation that also involves a surreptitiously passed bribe. I don’t know what he said or how much he bribed the hostess, but it clearly worked, since she leads us to an empty table immediately.

When we’re seated and Logan has ordered us a bottle of wine, I question him about it. “What did you say to the hostess? And how much did you bribe her to get us this table?”

Logan laughs. “Oh, I didn’t bribe her. I just showed her my business card.” He slides one out of his wallet and hands it to me. It bears his name, a cell phone number, an e-mail address, and nothing else.

“So? I don’t understand.”

He taps at the bottom of the menu:
Owned and operated by Ryder Enterprises, LLC.
“This was the very first business I started, when I moved to New York getting out of prison. I figured a restaurant was a safe bet for an ex-con, right? As long as the food and the service is good, the environment quiet and the atmosphere pleasant, the clientele won’t care whether or not the owner has an arrest record.”

“So you own this restaurant?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. I actually worked as the manager for the first year it was open, too. I had limited capital, and I didn’t want to blow it all right off the bat. So I took it slow. Got directly involved, made sure this place was stable, made sure I personally hired a quality manager, good waitstaff, a great head chef. Once I was sure this place would turn a profit, I started sniffing around for my next venture, but I stayed involved here still, more as the owner than the manager, at that point. Now, with all the other shit I’ve got going on, I’m rarely here, but I figure since I own the place, I might as well take advantage of it, right?”

“I thought you sold off businesses once they were turning a profit?”

He shakes his head. “Not all of them. One of the most important things as an entrepreneur is to make sure you always have multiple streams of income. Never rely solely on one venture, if you can help it. Diversify, diversify, diversify. So I’ve kept ownership of . . . oh, a dozen or so various enterprises. This place, a chain of auto parts stores out in the Midwest, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, that region. There’s a security firm for B-list celebs out in Hollywood, um . . . God, it’s hard to remember them all. I don’t have anything to do with the day-to-day running of ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them. They’re all owned under the overall umbrella of Ryder Enterprises, which is, basically, a management corporation. I’ve got a whole
staff of efficiency experts, transparency officers, troubleshooters, sales account managers, shit like that. Unless there’s a major, major problem, I just file the taxes and rake in the profit. Oh, there’s a chain of cinemas down south, small-town, single-screen sorts of places. Um, a couple different gas station franchises, three—no, four, luxury car dealerships, one here in Manhattan, one in Atlanta, one in San Diego, and . . . shit, where’s the last one? Seattle.”

I wrinkle my brow as I sip my wine, the one half glass I’m allowing myself. “I thought you flipped other businesses? I’m confused again. What is it you actually do, Logan?”

This gets me a laugh. “After I got out of prison, I had a decent chunk of start-up capital stashed down in the Bahamas, one of those private, offshore, numbered accounts. I’d been siphoning my income there via a complicated network of transfers while I was working for Caleb. Security, you know? I needed to know, if something went wrong, that I’d have some cash to start over. Well, good thing I did that, because obviously, something went wrong and I had to start over. And I started over by starting small. This was a floundering restaurant when I bought it. It was a sushi place, I think, and not a great one. So I gutted it, remodeled the interior, gave it a new identity. Upscale, a simple but elegant menu, efficiently run, good service. I sank maybe a quarter of my capital into this place between the purchase and the remodel, but it started turning me a decent profit within three years. It was stable and climbing toward the black by the end of the first year, though, so I knew I was good to start looking for my next endeavor, which was the car dealership here in Manhattan: BMW, Lexus, and Range Rover. High initial cost, but quick returns.” He searches my face. “Am I boring you?”

“Sort of, yes,” I admit. “I’m not a businesswoman.”

“Okay, short version, then.” He takes a swallow of wine, pauses so we can order our dinner, and then starts over. “I started out
buying businesses, anything I could find that I could afford and that I thought would turn a quick profit. Once I’d gotten my investment back from each business I bought, I would invest in another. And meanwhile, each business would be turning me a profit, increasing the cushion between my investment and my income. I would invest, restructure if necessary, get involved to make sure it was running, and then I’d move on to the next venture after I was sure the company could run without me. I did a lot of traveling in those early years. I was an independent business owner, essentially, and that was it. But after a few years, my income was enough and my diversity of businesses broad enough that I figured it’d be safe to let that spread of companies be my stability, so I set up Ryder Enterprises, the management company, to run them without my input. And then I started doing what I do now, which is what you saw, what I’ve told you about—flipping corporations. Mostly stocks, tech, investment, securities analytics, high-dollar, white-collar sorts of stuff. See, there are millions of businesses out there, thousands just here in New York. And at any given time, there are always some that are barely making it. I buy them up at a bottom-dollar price, since they’re about to go under, and then I either jigger things internally so they’ll start turning a profit, or I disassemble them and transfer their accounts to a different company, usually one I own, which I then sell at a profit. You ever see
Pretty Woman
? I’m kind of like Richard Gere’s character in that movie, just . . . hopefully less of a dick than he was.”

“What about the people who work for the businesses when you tear them apart?”

“Well, that’s what sets me apart. I always make sure there’s somewhere for everyone to land. I’ve got a whole team dedicated to referrals, connecting employees to headhunters, things like that.”

“So this restaurant, the gas stations, and the movie theaters, you just own them?”

“Right. They’re income stability. So even if I make a colossal blunder, make a bad investment and lose a shitload of money, the Ryder Enterprises spread of companies can sustain me in comfort.” He bobs his head side to side. “Can sustain
us
in comfort, I mean.”

I expect Logan to have our bill comped, since he owns the restaurant, but instead he pays it and leaves a rather significant tip for the waitress, who I don’t think had any idea she was serving the owner.

And then a long walk block after block back to the theater district. We take our seats just as the house lights are lowered.

The show is . . . unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Bursting with energy, music that soars and sweeps and hints at the Middle Eastern origins of the story. The dancing! The singing! It’s all too much, and I want to sing and dance with them. The Genie, especially, is a delight, such wild, joyous, frenetic energy, presence that dominates the stage, the whole theater.

I am raving as we leave the theater, chattering more than I think I have since I woke up from the coma. Logan is listening, attentive, but seems content to let me talk, to merely enjoy this admittedly rare bout of effusiveness from me.

It is past ten o’clock now, but the city is still manic, bustling. Lights flash and blink, voices rise in a pleasing din. A policeman on a huge black horse trots past, watchful, alert. The crowd of people leaving the theaters takes over the streets, so the cars trying to ply their way from one avenue to another must inch slowly between the gaggles of theatergoers. I chatter about my favorite songs, about the Genie, about how fun the show was, how Logan has to take me to see as many shows as he can spare the time for.

All the while, Logan has my hand and is taking us somewhere specific.

To a place in the heart of the theater district called Junior’s. It is
crammed with people, every table occupied, and the hostesses are telling people it’s a twenty- to thirty-minute wait minimum. Logan puts his name in and then finds me a seat, stands in front of me. I’ve run out of words by this time, though, and now we’re quiet.

But I like this, too, that we can sit together in silence, content to merely
be
.

It seems Junior’s is famous for its cheesecake, and Logan doesn’t have to ask me twice to convince me to order a piece of chocolate cheesecake. Which, when it arrives with Logan’s coffee and my tea, is mammoth. More cheesecake than I think any one person should be able to eat all at once; that is my thought when it arrives, at least. But yet by the time I’ve set down my fork, I’ve eaten very nearly the whole thing.

Cheesecake eaten, Logan pays the bill and yet again leaves a fabulously generous tip, and then leads me back to Times Square, which at night is a simply magical place. The lights, the way the TVs shine and flicker and shift, the advertisements for all the shows, the contagious air of vivacity that infuses the crowd . . . it is truly magical. We sit on the steps and watch people, and I take the time to process everything I’ve experienced today. The ferry, the memories I regained, the key necklace, which is now nestled between my breasts, exactly the way Mama wore hers.

I am sitting a step below Logan, between his knees. I lift up, twist, and kiss him until someone hoots at us, and someone else tells us to get a room. I smooth my palm over the stubble on his cheek. “Logan, I know I already said this, but thank you so much for today. It was . . . I think this was the best day of my life.”

Logan’s eyes go down to my cleavage, but the speculative gleam in his eyes tells me he’s looking more at the key, and I wonder what he’s thinking.

Marriage?

I’m having a baby, possibly his.

And possibly . . . not his.

So what do I want?

To belong to Logan forever, of course. To be utterly, irrevocably his. To know that no matter what else life throws at us, we will belong together, side by side, hand in hand, lives tangled and braided and inextricably woven together.

Yes, I want to marry Logan.

And I cannot wait to discover how he will ask me. Because he will.

I know he will.

It’s just a matter of when, and how.

I am not impatient, I realize. He will ask me in his way, in his time. And it will not disappoint, because Logan is incapable of disappointing me.

Love is patient, I remember reading somewhere.

L
ess than forty-eight hours later, early in the morning. Four thirteen
A.M.
, so says the digital clock on Logan’s bedside table. There’s a pounding on the door. A fist, hammering wildly. Cocoa goes nuts in her room, clawing at the door, barking like a demon. Snarling. Logan is out of bed, tugging on jeans, jogging to the door.

“Shit,” I hear him mutter under his breath.

I’m in one of his button-downs, the hem coming to midthigh. Behind him, peering past him, as if I could see through the door. But the sinking lead ball in my stomach tells me who’s on the other side.

Logan’s curse tells me.

He jerks open the door, puts his body into the crack. “The fuck you want, Caleb?”

“What is
mine
.” Your voice is mad, animal snarl.

“Dude. We’ve been over this. You let her go, remember? She’s with
me
now. It’s what she wants. Just . . . let her go. Please. For her.”

A moment of silence, and an explosion of violence. Logan is
knocked backward, and you are lunging through the doorway. I shrink back against Cocoa’s door. She’s wild, barking, snarling, scrabbling. Tearing the door down like she did when Logan was gone.

Not this. Not again.

Logan is up on his feet, bleeding from his lip. “Back off, motherfucker. Just leave before this gets messy, huh?”

But you are lightning, you are a striking serpent. Pistol whipping out, a black blur, the point jammed up into Logan’s chin. “I will
not
miss a second time, Ryder.”

You twist the barrel into Logan’s flesh. Turn, see me. Your eyes flash, your lip curls. “X. Get over here.
Now.
”

I rise to my feet. Straighten my spine. “No, Caleb. It’s over. I don’t want to see you anymore. Never again.”

“Isabel.” This, from you, is a plea. Low, vicious, desperate. “You
must
.”

“No.” I gesture at Logan. “I love him. If you kill him, you will have to kill me as well.”

“Isabel—” Logan grunts.

“No. You shut the fuck up, Ryder.” Your voice is a rabid, grating snarl. Rough, unstable. To me, then: “Isabel.”

You wander away from Logan, but the gun stays trained on him. To me. Stumbling, nearly. Uncharacteristically uncoordinated. Not drunk; your eyes are lucid. Mad. Crazed. I don’t even know. I glance at Logan. Plead with him silently to stay put. I will not allow you to shoot him again.

“You don’t need the gun, Caleb.” I make sure my voice is cool, calm.

“You’ll come with me?”

“No.”

“Then I need the gun. You are mine. You will come with me.” Your voice is . . . not yours. Not Caleb’s. Almost as if you are
regressing. Becoming Jakob, somehow. Someone less refined, less in control. The Czech is showing through in your rhythms and diction.

“I can’t, Caleb. I do not belong to you. Not anymore. I’m with Logan now.”

A snarl. The gun levels at Logan. “Then he is dead. He should have already been dead. He does not get to have you. Only I.”

“Caleb, please.” I touch his wrist. Urge him to lower the gun. “Please don’t do this. Don’t.”

Your hand latches onto my wrist. You jerk me hard, so I fly through the air, land against you. “Mine—only mine. Not his.”

“Caleb, let go. You’re hurting me.”

“Let her go, asshole!” Logan shouts.

Cocoa’s claws are gouging through the door.

Logan lunges again, and you fire. Miss. A hole appears in the wall to Logan’s left.

“A warning, only. For her. Back.” You grab me by the throat.

Twist me so my back is to your front. The gun jabs at Logan. Your fingers pinch against my throat. I cannot breathe. I don’t think you realize what you’re doing.

“Let her go, Caleb,” Logan murmurs, careful now. Voice low, slow, soft. “Let her go. You’re hurting her. You’re choking her.”

You glance down, let me go with a start. But then you grab me once more, this time one of my wrists, the other, pinioning them in one of your hands behind my back. Propelling me to the door.

“Caleb—” I start.

“Silence.” You push me to the door. Let me go. Twist in place to cover Logan with the gun. “You. On your knees.”

“Not gonna happen, man. You can shoot me if that’s your game. You did once, already. I survived that.”

“You will not survive a bullet in your brain,” you say, and jerk open the front door.

The alarm has been blaring this whole time. I didn’t even notice until now. I don’t think anyone has.

Logan watches with agony on his face, watching Caleb take me away yet again.

“Caleb, wait!” Logan pleads.

“No waiting. She is mine.” This is not you. This is Jakob, someone I do not know. Someone I can predict even less than I could Caleb.

“You don’t understand, Caleb. It’s Isabel . . .” He steps around front, accepts the barrel of Caleb’s gun to his forehead. “She’s pregnant.”

You go stone-still. Your eyes search Logan. I, between you, see this. See the hunt for the truth in your eyes on Logan’s.

“No.” You shake your head. A denial. A refusal to accept it.

“Yes, Caleb.” I whisper it.

“His?” You turn your gaze to me.

“I—I don’t know.” I despise myself for having to admit this. “It could be either of yours. There is no way to know, yet.”

A moment of frozen, fraught silence.

“Kurva.”
This, in a language I do not know, from you; Czech, most likely. It has the tone of an epithet. “A baby?”

“Yes.” I turn in place, look up at you.

“
Kurva
—a baby.” You look down at me, as if I am a creature you have never seen before.

There is a depth in your eyes, a wrecked, mortal agony in those dark brown pools that is awful to see in a man ordinarily so closed off and stoic. You search my face. Hands at your sides, gun held casually, easily, forgotten.

“Isabel . . .” This, from you, is a whisper. A plea. A moment of weakness. A caress, with a word. Softness from a stone. Love, even, from a razor blade.

And then, without a word, you’re gone. Just . . . gone. You turn, and flee. Run swiftly, desperately. Round a corner, and gone.

Logan and I both stare after you.

Logan wraps his arms around me, hauls me inside. Carries me. Sets me down on the couch. Lets out Cocoa, who sniffs me and then Logan, tail wagging, murmuring softly, whining.

“What the hell was
that
?” Logan asks, taking a seat beside me and curling his arms around me, pulling me against his chest.

I shake my head. “I . . . I don’t know. He’s coming apart.”

“He certainly seemed . . . unstable.”

“It was frightening. That was not Caleb. That was nothing like the man I’ve known these last six years. He is always so . . . in control. Strong. Stoic. Emotionless.” I gesture vaguely. “That? That was . . . I am worried. For him. For me, for us. I never quite knew what he might do, but now? After seeing him that way . . . I am afraid.”

“Understandable. That was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever experienced.” The next is more to himself than to me. “It’s almost as if he has multiple personalities or something. To be so completely unlike himself . . .”

“What is that?”

He glances at me. “What? Oh. MPD, multiple personality disorder. It’s where a person goes through something so extremely traumatic that the mind sort of . . . compartmentalizes, in a way. Cuts out the part of the mind that contains those memories. But instead of just suppressing or repressing them or whatever, the mind will create a different personality, an entirely new psychological entity that is tougher, that can deal with the trauma or whatever it was. If . . . Jakob—the guy born in Prague—went through something really truly awful, he might have created Caleb as a way to deal with it. If Jakob felt overwhelmed and weak and victimized and out of control, he would have created a personality like Caleb, you
know? Someone strong, dominant, in control. And now, losing you, somehow it has fractured Caleb’s hold on Jakob, if you know what I mean. Like Caleb has been in control this whole time, and now Jakob is breaking through.”

“You think that is the case?”

He shrugs. “I mean, it’s all speculation. Only a trained psychologist could really diagnose something like that. It’s just a totally wild guess. Caleb could just be losing his shit in the more normal sense. Just . . . cracking up.”

“It worries me, either way. I never caught even a hint of any of this from him until recently.”

“No way to really know, unfortunately. And he’s not your problem, anymore. Your concern now is being healthy. Taking care of this baby.”

I breathe out slowly, a shuddery breath. “The baby.” I put my hand on my belly. “It doesn’t feel real. And I don’t . . . I don’t even know what to do next.”

“Well, we get you a doctor, number one. Make sure you’re healthy, all that. And then, number two, I think you should talk to someone. A therapist. Try to make some kind of sense of . . . everything. And eventually, you need to make some decisions regarding your future, and our future.”

“What decisions?”

“Well, you’ve been staying here sort of out of default, because there was nowhere else. But is that what you want? How do you want to structure your life? Do you want to keep living with me here? Do you want to keep working on getting Comportment off the ground, or does being pregnant change that?”

“God, Logan. That’s too much. Too many questions. I don’t know. I don’t know any of that!” I feel stifled, my lungs compressed, my mind crammed so full of such a wild whirling maelstrom of
thoughts and emotions that I can’t think, can’t sit still, can’t take anymore.

I shoot to my feet, pace away. “I need to get out of here. I feel crazy. It’s all too much.” I clutch my head in both hands, feeling as if the crushing weight of everything that is my life is about to explode out of my skull. “I can’t be here anymore. I have to—I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I could scream from the burden of it all. Caleb, Logan, the baby, my past—and the lack thereof. The brief snippets of memory that hint at a wonderful childhood, and the not-so-pleasant glimpses at something far more nefarious between Caleb and me. Lies. Truths. Illusory tapestries woven with skeins of both lies and truth. Six years, nine years. A mugger, a car accident. Did I know him before? Did he cause the accident somehow? Has all this been a plot of his devising? How can I care for a child when I am not even a person, but a ghost, a shred of a soul lost in limbo? I am no one, I am nothing. I am the
Starry Night
, and
Madame X
. I am a shaven-headed girl in a hospital bed. I am a blank slate, a tabula rasa on which a mysterious man named Caleb Indigo has inscribed his imprint. I am Rapunzel, locked in the tower, raven-haired instead of blond. I am Belle, prisoner of a Beast, a thing of shadows and magic and primal carnality. The least of the threads that comprise me is Isabel.

Logan is beside me, grabbing me, turning me to face him. “Look at me, Isabel.” He tilts my chin up with a fingertip. “Breathe. Take a breath. Look at me, and take a moment.”

I focus on breathing, focus on Logan’s gaze, the brilliant indigo soothing me. He found his patch at some point, the brown leather one. I don’t remember him putting it on. Truth be told, it’s a relief when he puts it on. I feel horrible for it, but looking at the bare, raw, healing wound is . . . too much. Too hard to look at. It makes my stomach churn to know how close he came to death.

But that train of thought only upsets me more.

Am I crying, yet again? I have wept so much, of late.

I feel listless. I see you, over and over and over. The man in the tower, dressed impeccably, the master of his world. The rutting beast, the controlling, dominating sexual conqueror, the man who can ensnare my mind and my body and my emotions, bend me to your will, get me on my knees and on my back. The silent aggressor, the man who will always get your way. The man in room three, on your knees behind Rachel, fucking her from behind, your eyes on me, Rachel’s eyes on me. Rachel enjoyed that, knowing I was watching. So did you. I see you, Caleb. I do not see Jakob. Not until the night in my room, a month ago. When you did not fuck me, did not control me, but kissed me and made love to me, and spoke my name with something like reverence. The way you shut down abruptly when I spoke the name “Caleb” rather than “Jakob.” You were not you, then. That was a man I could have loved. Perhaps that was the man I
did
love, when I was Isabel, the first time, the sixteen-year-old Isabel, the errant, school-skipping girl infatuated with an older man. I see you, the mixed-up, unstable, violent creature who was just here. Yelling, cursing in Czech, tripping over your own feet. Running away.

“Enough.” Logan lifts me in his arms.

I let him.

He deposits me in the bathroom, on the closed lid of the toilet. Starts the shower. Adjusts the water. Pulls me to my feet, unbuttons the shirt. Guides me in under the spray. This isn’t sexual. I wish it were, I would like the distraction from my thoughts. But it’s not. Instead, he washes me gently, shampoos my hair, rinses it, and wraps me in a towel. Dries me, dabbing and patting and rubbing. Guides me to the bedroom. I sit on the edge of the bed and watch as he grabs clothes from the closet and the bureau. His clothes, mine. Underwear, T-shirts, jeans, socks. Several days’ worth of clothing. And then he dresses me.
I am little help, my mind has shut down. I am content to do whatever Logan wishes, let him take me wherever he wishes to take me. I cannot bear anything more. He slides underwear up my legs. Slides my arms through the straps of a bra, and I cooperate in fastening it the rest of the way. Hands me a pair of jeans and a sweater. I put those on while Logan showers, a military-fast shower. Three minutes, at most. Emerges naked, hair damp. Dresses with military efficiency, ties his hair back, packs the clothes into a black hard-sided suitcase. He doesn’t fold the clothing, however, but rolls it into tight rolls. I notice this, and find it odd. And then, packed and dressed, he makes two phone calls. One, to Beth. Arranging for Cocoa to be looked after for a few days, and to make sure the office knows he will be out of touch and out of town, to handle whatever comes up as best they can, leave a voice mail in case of emergency. The next call is, from what I can tell, to arrange a flight somewhere. Leaving now, today.