The Drowning River (18 page)

But the waiter brought two glasses of champagne anyway, and the coffee as well. His not to reason why, supposed Iris; maybe he thought that Jackson was going to drink both glasses.
‘Grazie,’
she said, pulling the coffee over, and Jackson laughed.

‘You don’t like champagne?’ he said, with that laid-back smile of his. ‘Come on, Iris, everybody likes champagne.’ She gave him a sharp look, conjuring up all her animosity for the experimental architect to maintain it, then gave in. She took the glass, and sipped. It was nice; very cold, so the glass had turned cloudy with condensation. Iris felt herself relax just enough, and she leaned into the padded banquette.

‘Do you know this place?’ she said. She didn’t know why she didn’t just get to the point, instead of making small talk, except that she didn’t really know Jackson very well and she couldn’t just jump in. Besides, she was curious and guiltily she realized that she was enjoying herself.

‘Uh-huh,’ said Jackson, looking around him. ‘Could be, yeah. I think we’ve been here, one time.’

‘We?’ she said.

He looked at her consideringly. ‘The guys,’ he said. ‘You know. The guys. Brett, and Alice, and Tracey and Bernard and Imi and Jonathan. The guys.’

Jonathan had been the one who’d called her the fat chick; Iris remembered the name immediately Jackson said it, like a brand on her skin, and she felt the heat rise to her cheek in response. Jackson was looking at her. ‘I guess you don’t know ’em, do you?’ He sighed. ‘Ronnie always said you had no money. No dough, no point in asking you, you’d get embarrassed.’ He shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

Iris swallowed. ‘That’s OK,’ she said, shrugging. ‘She was right, as it happens.’

‘Yeah, but still,’ said Jackson. ‘I’m sorry.’

Iris saw that the cuffs of Jackson’s sweatshirt were ragged, as if he chewed them, like a child.

‘Jonathan came to the party,’ said Iris. ‘None of the others did.’ And again Jackson eyed her with amusement.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘He’s got a thing for you.’

Iris froze, holding her glass at her lips. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said, trying to sound like she didn’t care, like this wasn’t the biggest insult she’d ever heard.

‘Whatever,’ said Jackson. ‘Actually, he does.’

‘Why did he call me the fat chick, then?’ she burst out, except that she knew straight away. There were boys like that.

‘Because he’s an asshole,’ said Jackson, still looking at her. Suddenly his glass was empty; he lifted a hand to the waiter. Iris drained her glass too, stood it back on the table, light-headed. ‘I can’t pay for these,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

‘Another two, please?’ said Jackson to the waiter as if she hadn’t spoken. At least he asked in Italian this time, even if it was with a terrible accent. The waiter nodded; in her light-headed state Iris wondered if she’d ever be able to talk to a waiter that way, as if it was perfectly normal to be drinking champagne at three o’clock on a wet November
afternoon. It was the drink, of course, but she felt like crying, then suddenly she thought of Ronnie, that she should be here and that they didn’t know where she was. Come on, she told herself, wake up.

‘So why did no one else come?’ she asked. ‘None of – the guys?’

Jackson’s eyes flicked away from her. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, evasive. ‘Kids’ stuff, Halloween. When she first planned it, y’know, it was all going to be great, we were going to go out on the town, do crazy stuff, dress up, break into the Boboli, do fireworks –’ He broke off, frowned. ‘Uh, her bag – Ronnie’s bag, that’s where they found it, yeah?’ She wondered how he knew; except, of course, word got around.

‘Yeah,’ she said, warily. ‘The Boboli.’ The carabiniere had said something about the vineyard, could that be right? Was there a vineyard in the Boboli? A woman feeding cats had found it. She remembered the cats, one particular corner with plastic trays and a scattering of pellets, and a ginger tom curled up motionless in the sun.

The waiter delivered another two tall glasses, took away Iris’s coffee cup. The place was emptying; through the big, steamed-up window it seemed that the rain had stopped.

‘Uh, OK, the party,’ said Jackson. ‘Well, she seemed to lose interest, didn’t, like, say come, you absolutely have to come. Talked about it like it was kids’ stuff, just for the babies, like Sophia.’ He smiled, far away.

It was true, Sophia was just like that, a big, pretty baby; spoilt, too. Since when, Iris wondered, had she got so world-weary herself? Had Ronnie done the Halloween thing as a way of including her, another baby?

‘What were you doing instead?’ asked Iris, without really thinking. Again Jackson’s eyes flicked off and away from her. ‘Some guy, some friend of Alice’s mom’s, has some place up in the hills, they were having a fireworks party, we got dragged along, kind of.’ He looked back at her from under his eyelashes. ‘It was fun, you know? But I do, like, feel guilty, now. We – well, I should have come over to Ronnie’s, to see you guys.’

‘Can’t be helped,’ said Iris quickly. ‘It was fine, actually, she didn’t seem upset.’

‘No, I wasn’t thinking of her, exactly,’ said Jackson. ‘I know she wasn’t upset.’ He took a meditative sip.

Iris felt something move into place in her head, a piece of a puzzle. ‘You talked to her? After the party?’ She thought of Ronnie hanging out of the big window at the end of the
salotto
in the dark, trying to get the best signal on her tiny silver phone. Talking to Jackson?

Jackson stared, his eyes turning dark; Iris heard the almost-accusation in her voice. She thought he was paler; he looked handsome like this, she thought, eyes properly open, serious. He was the one, wasn’t he? Ronnie’d been planning to go away with Jackson. She scanned back through the previous weeks; how could she have missed it? She thought of how they’d been with each other, so casual, everything always just in a group, drifting off to bars with the guys. She felt angry, as if she’d been deceived, Ronnie pretending she was just playing the field when really there’d been Jackson, sweet, laid-back Jackson with his iPhone, her man.

Only there was something else to him, this afternoon; an edge to laid-back Jackson.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Ah, you got me. Yeah, I guess I did.’

‘She called you?’ she said quietly.

Jackson whistled. ‘Yeah,’ he said, eyes narrowing. ‘She called me.’

‘So she called you that night,’ said Iris, ‘when you were up in the hills. At that other party.’ Her voice was flat. What was she angry about?

‘No, no,’ said Jackson. ‘Not then. Well, she could’ve called me then, only I didn’t talk to her, I – I left the phone at my place, it was out of battery.’ He shrugged, watching her.

She stared at him. Was he telling her the truth? Ronnie had certainly been talking to someone. She couldn’t work out what he was telling her. Behind the bar a man with slicked-back hair was looking at them as he pretended to polish a glass.

‘Look,’ said Jackson. ‘Do you think I’m lying, is that it? Do you think I’ve done something to Ronnie?’ His voice was cool and level, and Iris sat, frozen, unable to believe it. Not Jackson. But there was something in the quality of his anger, some extremity.

‘Well,’ said Iris carefully, ‘you’ve been a bit weird. About the police, and stuff. And you weren’t in school on Tuesday.’

‘Wasn’t I?’ he said. ‘Maybe not,’ and he shrugged again, still watching her. It was as if he was daring her to ask him more.

‘So what did you get up to, Tuesday?’ She tried to sound light, but they both knew it was serious.

He let out a deep breath.

‘OK,’ he said. He smiled warily. ‘She didn’t call me during the party, she called me Tuesday morning, the morning after.’

Iris saw those two champagne glasses on the drainer, the bottle in the fridge with a spoon in it.

‘And?’ she said.

‘And, she said, she wanted to talk to me.’ He leaned across the table towards her and spoke earnestly for once; now he wanted her to believe him. ‘OK? She was real excited, you know Ronnie.’ Almost imperceptibly Iris shook her head.

‘You came over?’ she said, and he shrugged, spreading his hands. ‘You were going away together,’ she said, her voice flat with the sense of betrayal she could not explain. She put her hands to her face, her cheeks burning into her palms. ‘She planned this whole thing so she could go away with you.’

Jackson started shaking his head and laughing. ‘No way,’ he said. The sound of his laughter made her so angry she glared. ‘Come on, Iris,’ he said. ‘No! Me and Ronnie? No way! No way!’ It was almost comical, Jackson’s expensive education, his vocabulary boiled down to a handful of words, but she couldn’t laugh.

‘Where is she?’ she said quietly. ‘Do you have a key to the flat, Jackson? Did you come into the flat yesterday, after – do you have her keys? Did you wipe her computer, because they took it, you know, the police took it, they’ll be able to get into it.’

‘You’re crazy,’ said Jackson, impatiently. ‘Of course I don’t have a key.’

‘Where is she?’ said Iris, doggedly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jackson bringing his fist down on the table. The glasses jumped and at the bar the waiter turned at the sound.

‘I don’t know anything about her computer. There was totally nothing between us, only friends.’ She was beginning to learn that the angrier he was, the quieter his voice grew. She refused to be intimidated.

‘So you came over to the flat, and drank champagne with her, when you should have been at school.’ She could hear herself, scolding like
a schoolteacher. ‘And nothing was going on?’ She stopped, something sticking in her throat. ‘And now she’s disappeared and you don’t know anything about it?’

Jackson let out a strangulated laugh.

‘I drank champagne with you,’ he said. ‘Is there something going on?’

She shook her head, wordless.

‘Ronnie and I were friends,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I came over, jeez, it wouldn’t have been the first time.’ He looked over her shoulder into the distance and she couldn’t tell if he was avoiding her gaze or just concentrating. ‘We were just having fun, talking, stuff.’

‘Stuff?’ said Iris stiffly.

‘Well maybe at the beginning – I mean, when we first got to know each other, uh – we fooled around a bit, come on. But it was never – anything. And Tuesday morning, she. . .’ And again he shifted his gaze ‘. . . she just wanted an audience, I guess.’

All Iris heard was that they’d been more than friends, at the beginning; she and Ronnie’d only been here a month, the beginning might have been three weeks ago, not a hundred years. It felt like a hundred years to Iris. She breathed out. None of my business, she thought. Who she fools around with; except it is, now she’s run off.

‘So what did happen?’

Jackson folded his arms. ‘You don’t give up, do you? OK, here’s the full deal. We had a drink, in the apartment.’ He paused. ‘Jeez, that place, gives me the creeps.’ He grimaced; all right for you, thought Iris. I’m the one going back there tonight. ‘She was happy. Totally happy. She even said one glass of champagne was enough. She said she didn’t need it.’

‘Did she say why?’

‘She said she’d tell me sooner or later, but she couldn’t say anything just now. A wind-up, I thought.’

Iris looked sceptical.

‘Well, I guess I thought it was some guy, and she’d bring him along one evening, maybe he was some count or something so we were all
supposed to be really impressed.’ He sighed. ‘I kind of pushed her a little, just to tease her, but she clammed up. Said she was going to do some painting, that’s all. She was all fired up about painting, suddenly, said she’d been stupid, wasting her time, she really wanted to paint, after all.’

Iris snorted. ‘And you believed her?’ But then she thought, That MySpace page. The Leonardo drawings she’d posted, that dreamy stuff about being an artist. And she’d just thought, You’ve changed your tune, Ronnie. She became aware through the window of the long facade of a stone
palazzo,
a baroque doorframe, a cornice, a statue; the standard, beautiful Florentine view. Why not? Why shouldn’t this place have got to Ronnie?

Jackson shrugged. ‘Yeah, I know. Ronnie, working? No way, that was what I thought. But y’know, it’s been going on a while. Tuesday, she showed me her sketchbooks, she’s been working on the quiet, like she was going to surprise us all.’

‘What did you think?’ asked Iris, grumpily. ‘About the sketchbooks?’

Jackson sounded uneasy. ‘Well, she was trying, y’know?’

‘If she wanted to get good, it’s a shame she didn’t work a bit harder, after all that eyelash-batting she did at Massi the first couple of weeks. He really put in the hours on her; he must have thought she was serious.’ Iris could hear how she sounded, all pinched, like a schoolteacher, but it had been annoying, really.

Jackson looked bleary. ‘Not at the school, she said. It was kids’ stuff, she said.’

‘OK,’ Iris said. ‘Let’s say I believe you. So what was she excited about? Who
was
she going away with? Some kind of – painting holiday?’

Now Jackson looked really uneasy. ‘I dunno,’ he said.

‘Right,’ said Iris, and she made an effort to speak calmly. ‘OK, I’m not making this up, this isn’t all in my head. She told me she was going to stay with friends in Greve for a couple of days. Only the friends never invited her, they’re not even there. I called them.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘So she was planning something for that couple of days. She had to be going somewhere.’

He looked away. ‘With the new guy, maybe?’

‘A new guy none of us has got a single peek at. This top-secret new guy – come on. You know what Ronnie was like, she couldn’t keep quiet if her life depended on it.’

And they both stared at each other again. ‘Maybe this guy was different,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Come on, Jackson. Did she say anything about where she was going? Did you – did you leave with her? You never told me what you did, the rest of the day, did you?’

He shook his head. ‘I left her there,’ he said quietly. ‘She said she wanted to do her face. Didn’t want me looking over her shoulder.’ That sounded like Ronnie, all right, hours in the bathroom and a rubble of open pots and dried-out brushes left behind.