The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, page 9
“What are you doing?”
The voice, too close, behind her. The stable hand, no longer humming, no longer brushing the dappled mare, but standing in the alley between berths, a crop in his hand.
“Sorry, sir,” she says, a shade breathless. “I came looking for my father’s horse. He wanted something from his satchel.”
He stares at her, unblinking, his features half-swallowed by the dark sprawl of his hair. “Which horse would that be?”
She wishes she’d studied the horses as well as their packs, but she cannot hesitate, it would reveal the lie, so she turns quickly toward the workhorse. “This one.”
It is a good lie, as far as lies go, the kind that could have easily been true, if she’d only picked another horse. A grim smile twitches beneath the man’s beard.
“Ah,” he says, flicking the crop against his palm, “but you see, that one’s mine.”
Addie has the strange and sickening urge to laugh.
“Can I pick again?” she whispers, inching toward the stable door.
Somewhere nearby, a mare whinnies. Another stamps its hoof. The crop stops snapping against the man’s palm, and Addie lurches sideways, between the stalls, the stable hand on her heels.
He’s fast, a speed clearly born from catching beasts, but she is lighter, and has far more to lose. His hand grazes the collar of her stolen coat, but he cannot catch her; his heavy steps falter and slow, and Addie thinks she’s free, right before she hears the crisp, bright sound of a bell ringing on the stable wall, followed by the sound of boots coming from outside.
She is nearly to the mouth of the barn when the second man appears, cutting like a wide shadow across the doorway.
“Has a beast got free?” he shouts before he sees her, wrapped in the stolen coat, her too-large boots catching on the hay. She scrambles backward, right into the arms of the stable hand. His fingers close around her shoulders, heavy as shackles, and when she tries to twist free, his grip digs deep enough to bruise.
“Caught her thieving,” he says, the coarse bristles on his cheek scraping hers.
“Let me go,” she pleads as he pulls her tight.
“This isn’t a market stall,” sneers the second, drawing a knife from his belt. “Do you know what we do with thieves?”
“It was a mistake. Please. Let me go.”
The knife wags like a finger. “Not until you’ve paid.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“That’s all right,” says the second man, drawing closer. “Thieves pay in flesh.”
She tries to tear free, but the grip on her arms is iron as the knife comes to rest against the laces of her dress, plucking them like strings. And when she twists again, she is no longer trying to get free, simply trying to reach the boning knife inside the pocket of her stolen coat. Twice her fingers brush the wooden hilt before she manages to catch it.
She drives the blade down and back into the first man’s thigh, feels it sink into the meat of his leg. He cries out before he thrusts her away like a hornet, flinging her forward, right onto the other man’s blade.
Pain screams through her shoulder as the knife bites in, skates along her collarbone, leaving a trail of searing heat. Her mind goes blank with it, but her legs are already moving, carrying her through the stable doors and out into the square. She throws herself behind a barrel, out of sight, as the men come stumbling, swearing, out of the barn behind her, their faces twisted with rage and something worse, something primal, hungry.
And then, between one step and the next, they begin to slow.
Between one step and the next, the urgency falters, and fades, the purpose slipping, like a thought, out of reach. The men look around, and then at each other. The one she stabbed stands straighter now, no sign of the tear in his trousers, no blood soaking through the fabric. The mark she left on him, erased.
They jostle, and rib, and head back into the barn, and Addie slumps forward, her head coming to rest against the wooden barrel. Her chest throbs, pain tracing a vivid line along her collar, and when she presses her hand to the wound, her fingers come away red.
She cannot stay there, curled behind the barrel, forces herself up, and sways, feeling faint, but soon the wave of sickness passes, and she is still on her feet. She walks, one hand pressed to her shoulder, and the other closed tight around the knife beneath her stolen coat. She doesn’t know when she decides to leave Le Mans, but soon enough she is crossing the courtyard, away from the stable and through the winding streets, past bawdy inns and tavern houses, past crowded steps and raucous laughter, giving the city up with every step.
The ache in her shoulder fades from a searing heat to a dull throb, and then, to nothing. She runs her fingers over the gash, but it is gone. As is the blood on her dress, swallowed up like the words she scrawled across her father’s parchment, the lines she drew in the silt on the riverbank. The only traces of it are on her skin, a crust of drying blood along her collarbone, a smear of browning red across her palm. And Addie marvels a moment, despite herself, at the strange magic of it, the proof that in one way, the shadow kept his word. Twisted it, yes, warped her wishes into something wrong and rotten. But granted her this, at least.
To live.
A small, mad sound escapes her throat, and there is relief in it, perhaps, but also horror. For the truth of her hunger, which she is only just discovering. For the ache in her feet, though they do not cut or bruise. For the pain of the wound in her shoulder, before it healed. The darkness has granted her freedom from death, perhaps, but not from this. Not from suffering.
It will be years before she learns the true meaning of that word, but in this moment, as she walks into the thickening dusk, she is still relieved to be alive.
A relief that flickers when she reaches the edge of the city.
This is as far as Adeline has ever gone.
Le Mans looms at her back, and ahead the high stone walls give way to scattered towns, each one like a copse of tress, and then, to open field, and then, to what, she does not know.
When Addie was young, she would surge up the slopes that rose and fell around Villon, fling herself to the very edge of the hill, the place where the ground fell away, and stop, heart racing as her body leaned forward, longing for the fall.
The slightest push, and weight would do the rest.
There is no steep hill beneath her now, no slope, and yet, she feels her balance tilt.
And then, Estele’s voice rises to meet her in the dark.
How do you walk to the end of the world? she once asked. And when Addie didn’t know, the old woman smiled that wrinkled grin, and answered.
One step at a time.
Addie is not going to the end of the world, but she must go somewhere, and in that moment, she decides.
She is going to Paris.
It is, beside Le Mans, the only city she knows by name, a place that played so many times across her stranger’s lips, and featured into every tale her father told, a place of gods and kings, gold and majesty, and promise.
This is how it starts, he would have said, if he could see her now.
Addie takes the first step, and feels the ground give way, feels herself tip forward, but this time, she does not fall.
New York City
March 12, 2014
XVII
It is a better day.
The sun is out, the air is not so cold, and there is so much to love about a city like New York.
The food, the art, the constant offerings of culture—though Addie’s favorite thing is its scale. Towns and villages are easily conquered. A week in Villon was enough to walk every path, to learn every face. But with cities like Paris, London, Chicago, New York, she doesn’t have to pace herself, doesn’t have to take small bites to make the newness last. A city she can consume as hungrily as she likes, devour it every day and never run out of things to eat.
It is the kind of place that takes years to visit, and still there always seems to be another alley, another set of steps, another door.
Perhaps that’s why she hasn’t noticed it before.
Set off from the curb, and down a short flight of steps, there is a shop half-hidden by the line of the street. The awning was clearly once purple, but has long faded toward gray, though the shop’s name is still legible, picked out in white lettering.
The Last Word.
A used bookstore, judging by the name, and the windows brimming with stacked spines. Addie’s pulse thrills a little. She was certain she’d found them all. But that is the brilliant thing about New York. Addie has wandered a fair portion of the five boroughs, and still the city has its secrets, some tucked in corners—basement bars, speakeasies, members-only clubs—and others sitting in plain sight. Like Easter eggs in a movie, the ones you don’t notice until the second or third viewing. And not like Easter eggs at all, because no matter how many times she walks these blocks, no matter how many hours, or days, or years she spends learning the contours of New York, as soon as she turns her back it seems to shift again, reassemble. Buildings go up and come down, businesses open and close, people arrive and depart and the deck shuffles itself again and again and again.
Of course, she goes in.
A faint bell announces her arrival, the sound quickly smothered by the crush of books in various conditions. Some bookstores are organized, more gallery than shop. Some are sterile, reserved for only the new and untouched.
But not this one.
This shop is a labyrinth of stacks and shelves, texts stacked two, even three deep, leather beside paper beside board. Her favorite kind of store, one that’s easy to get lost in.
There is a checkout counter by the door, but it is empty, and she wanders, unmolested, through the aisles, picking her way along the well-loved shelves. The bookshop seems fairly empty, save for an older white man studying a row of thrillers, a gorgeous Black girl sitting cross-legged in a leather chair at the end of a row, silver shining on her fingers and in her ears, a giant art book open in her lap.
Addie wanders past a placard marked POETRY, and the darkness whispers against her skin. Teeth skimming like a blade along a bare shoulder.
Come live with me and be my love.
Addie’s refrain, worn smooth with repetition.
You do not know what love is.
She doesn’t stop, but turns the corner, fingers trailing now along THEOLOGY. She has read the Bible, the Upanishads, the Quran, after a spiritual bender of sorts a century ago. She passes Shakespeare, too, a religion all his own.
She pauses at MEMOIR, studying the titles on the spines, so many I’s and Me’s and My’s, possessive words for possessive lives. What a luxury, to tell one’s story. To be read, remembered.
Something knocks against Addie’s elbow, and she looks down to see a pair of amber eyes peering over her sleeve, surrounded by a mass of orange fur. The cat looks as old as the book in her hand. It opens its mouth, and lets out something between a yawn and a meow, a hollow, whistling sound.
“Hello.” She scratches the cat between the ears, eliciting a low rumble of pleasure.
“Wow,” says a male voice behind her. “Book doesn’t usually bother with people.”
Addie turns, about to comment on the cat’s name, but loses her train of thought when she sees him, because for a moment, only a moment, before the face comes into focus, she is certain it is—
But it is not him.
Of course it is not.
The boy’s hair, though black, falls in loose curls around his face, and his eyes, behind their thick-frame glasses, are closer to gray than green. There is something fragile to them, more like glass than stone, and when he speaks, his voice is gentle, warm, undeniably human. “Help you find anything?”
Addie shakes her head. “No,” she says, clearing her throat. “Just browsing.”
“Well then,” he says with a smile. “Carry on.”
She watches him go, black curls vanishing into the maze of titles, before dragging her gaze back to the cat.
But the cat is gone, too.
Addie returns the memoir to the shelf and continues browsing, attention wandering over ART and WORLD HISTORY, all the while waiting for the boy to reappear, to start the cycle over, wondering what she’ll say when he does. She should have asked for help, let him lead her through the shelves—but he doesn’t come back.
The shop bell chimes again, announcing a new customer as Addie reaches the Classics. Beowulf. Antigone. The Odyssey. There are a dozen versions of this last, and she’s just drawing one out when there’s a sudden burst of laughter, high and light, and she glances through a gap in the shelves and sees a blond girl leaning on the counter. The boy stands on the other side, cleaning his glasses on the edge of his shirt.
He bows his head, dark lashes skimming his cheeks.
He isn’t even looking at the girl, who’s rising on her toes to get closer to him. She reaches out and runs one hand along his sleeve the way Addie just did along the shelves, and he smiles, then, a quiet, bashful grin that erases the last of his resemblance to the dark.
Addie tucks the book under her arm and heads for the door, and out, taking advantage of his distraction.
“Hey!” calls a voice—his voice—but she continues up the steps onto the street. In a moment, he will forget. In a moment, his mind will trail off, and he’ll—
A hand lands on her shoulder.
“You have to pay for that.”
She turns, and there’s the boy from the shop, a little breathless, and very annoyed. Her eyes flick past him to the steps, the open door. It must have been ajar. He must have been right behind her. But still. He followed her out.
“Well?” he demands, hand dropping from her shoulder and coming to rest, palm open, in the space between them. She could run, of course, but it’s not worth it. She checks the cost on the back of the book. It isn’t much, but it’s more than she has on her.
“Sorry,” she says, handing it back.
He frowns, then, a furrow too deep for his face. The kind of line carved by years of repetition, even though he can’t be more than thirty. He looks down at the book, and a dark brow lifts behind his glasses.
“A shop full of antique books, and you steal a battered paperback of The Odyssey? You know this won’t fetch anything, right?”
Addie holds his gaze. “Who says I wanted to resell it?”
“It’s also in Greek.”
That, she hadn’t noticed. Not that it matters. She learned the classics in Latin first, but in the decades since, she’s picked up Greek.
“Silly me,” she says dryly, “I should have stolen it in English.”
He almost—almost—smiles, then, but it’s a bemused, misshapen thing. Instead, he shakes his head. “Just take it,” he says, holding out the book. “I think the shop can spare it.”
She has to fight the sudden urge to push it back.
The gesture feels too much like charity.
“Henry!” calls the pretty Black girl from the doorway. “Should I call the cops?”
“No,” he calls back, still looking at Addie. “It’s fine.” He narrows his eyes, as if studying her. “Honest mistake.”
She stares at this boy—at Henry. Then she reaches out and takes back the book, cradling it against her as the bookseller vanishes back into the shop.
PART TWO
THE DARKEST PART OF THE NIGHT
Title: One Forgotten Night
Artist: Samantha Benning
Date: 2014
Medium: Acrylic on canvas over wood
Location: On loan from the Lisette Price Gallery, NYC
Description: A largely monochromatic piece, paint layered into a topography of black, charcoals, and grays. Seven small white dots stand out against the backdrop.
Background: Known largely on its own, this painting also serves as the frontispiece for an ongoing series titled I Look Up to You, in which Benning imagines family, friends, and lovers as different iterations of the sky.
Estimated Value: $11,500
New York City
March 12, 2014
I
Henry Strauss heads back into the shop.
Bea’s taken up residence again in the battered leather chair, the glossy art book open in her lap. “Where did you go?”
He looks back through the open door and frowns. “Nowhere.”
She shrugs, turning through the pages, a guide to neoclassical art that she has no intention of buying.
Not a library. Henry sighs, returning to the till.
“Sorry,” he says to the girl by the counter. “Where were we?”
She bites her lip. Her name is Emily, he thinks. “I was about to ask if you wanted to grab a drink.”
He laughs, a little nervously—a habit he’s beginning to think he’ll never shake. She’s pretty, she really is, but there’s the troublesome shine in her eyes, a familiar milky light, and he’s relieved he doesn’t have to lie about having plans tonight.
“Another time,” she says with a smile.
“Another time,” he echoes as the girl takes her book and goes. The door has barely closed when Bea clears her throat.
“What?” he asks without turning.
“You could have gotten her number.”
“We have plans,” he says, tapping the tickets on the counter.
He hears the soft stretch of leather as she rises from the chair. “You know,” she says, swinging an arm around his shoulder, “the great thing about plans is that you can make them for other days, too.”
He turns, hands rising to her waist, and now they’re locked like kids in the throes of a school dance, limbs making wide circles like nets, or chains.
“Beatrice Helen,” he scolds.
“Henry Samuel.”
They stand there, in the middle of the store, two twenty-somethings in a preteen embrace. And maybe once upon a time Bea would have leaned a little harder, made some speech about finding someone (new), about deserving to be happy (again). But they have a deal: she doesn’t mention Tabitha, and Henry doesn’t mention the Professor. Everyone has their fallen foes, their battle scars.
