“Okay, fine, I have my backpack in the car. But these are the important items,” Paolo said. “We can see Stonehenge on the way. Have you seen it?”
“No.” Jule was indeed particularly curious to see Stonehenge, which she’d read about in a Thomas Hardy novel she’d bought in a San Francisco bookshop, but she wanted to see all the things—that was how she felt. All of London she hadn’t yet seen, all of England, all of the great wide world—and to feel free, powerful, and yes, entitled, to witness and understand what was out there.
“It’ll have ancient mystery, so that’ll be good,” said Paolo. “Then when we get to the house, we can hike around and look at sheep in meadows. Or take pictures of sheep. Maybe pat them. Whatever people do in the countryside.”
“Are you inviting me?”
“Yes! There will be separate bedrooms. Available.”
He perched himself on the edge of her kitchen chair, as if unsure of his welcome. As if maybe he’d been too forward.
“You’re nervous right now,” she said, stalling for time.
She wanted to say yes. She knew she shouldn’t.
“Yeah, I’m very nervous.”
“Why?”
Paolo thought for a moment. “The stakes are higher now. It matters to me what your answer is.” He stood up slowly and kissed the side of her neck. She leaned into him, and he was shaking a little. She kissed his soft earlobe and then his lips, standing on tiptoe there in the kitchen.
“Is that a yes?” he whispered.
Jule knew she shouldn’t go.
It was the worst idea. She had left this possibility behind long ago. Love was what you gave up when you became—whatever she was now. Larger than life. Dangerous. She had taken risks and reinvented herself.
Now this boy was in her kitchen, trembling when he kissed her, holding a bag of junk food and fizzy water. Talking nonsense about sheep.
Jule crossed to the other side of the room and washed her hands in the sink. She felt as if the universe was offering her something beautiful and special. It wouldn’t come around again with another such offer.
Paolo walked over and put his hand on her shoulder, very, very gently, as if asking permission. As if in awe that he was allowed to touch her.
And Jule turned around and told him yes.
Stonehenge was closed.
And it was raining.
You couldn’t get close to the actual stones unless you’d bought tickets ahead of time. Jule and Paolo could see some big rocks in the distance as they drove up, but from the visitors’ center, nothing.
“I promised you ancient mystery, and now it’s nothing but a parking lot,” said Paolo, half sad and half joking, as they got back in the car. “I should have looked it up.”
“That’s all right.”
“I do know how to work the Internet.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m more excited about the sheep anyway.”
He smiled. “Are you really?”
“Sure. Can you guarantee sheep?”
“Are you serious? Because I don’t think I can actually guarantee sheep, and I don’t want to let you down again.”
“No. I don’t care about sheep at all.”
Paolo shook his head. “I should have known. Sheep are not Stonehenge. We have to face that. Even the very best sheep are never going to be Stonehenge.”
“Let’s eat the Swedish Fish,” she said, to cheer him up.
“Perfect,” said Paolo. “That is a perfect plan.”
The house wasn’t a house at all. It was a mansion. A great house, built in the nineteenth century. It had grounds and a gated entryway. Paolo had a code for the gate. He punched it in and drove along a curving driveway.
The walls were brick and covered with ivy. On one side, there was a sloping garden of rosebushes and stone benches, ending at a round gazebo by the edge of a stream.
Paolo fumbled in his pockets. “I have the keys in here somewhere.”
It was raining hard now. They stood in the doorway, holding their bags.
“Damn, where are they?” Paolo patted his jacket, his pants, his jacket again. “Keys, keys.” He looked in the tote bag. Looked in his backpack. Ran out and looked in the car.
He sat down in the doorway, under cover from the rain, and pulled everything out of all his pockets. Then everything out of the tote bag. And everything out of the backpack.
“You don’t have the keys,” Jule said.
“I don’t have the keys.”
He was a con artist, a hustler. He wasn’t Paolo Vallarta-Bellstone at all. What proof had Jule seen? No ID, no online photos. Just what he told her, his manner, his knowledge of Imogen’s family. “Are you really friends with these people?” she asked, making her voice light.
“It’s my friend Nigel’s family’s country house. He had me here in the summer as a guest, and no one is using it, and—I knew the gate code, didn’t I?”
“I’m not actually doubting you,” she lied.
“We can go around the back and see if the kitchen door is open. There’s a kitchen garden, from—from whenever in history they had kitchen gardens,” said Paolo. “I think the technical term is ye olden days.”
They pulled their jackets over their heads and ran through the rain, stepping in puddles and laughing.
Paolo jiggled the kitchen door. It was locked. He wandered around, looking under rocks for a spare key, while Jule huddled under the umbrella.
She pulled out her phone and searched his name, looking for images.
Phew. He was definitely Paolo Vallarta-Bellstone. There were photographs of him at charity fund-raisers, standing next to his parents, wearing no tie at an event where clearly men were supposed to wear ties. Pictures of him with other guys on a soccer field. A high school graduation photo that showed a mouth full of braces and a bad haircut, posted by a grandmother who had blogged a total of three times.
Jule was glad he was Paolo and not some hustler. She liked what a good person he was. It was better that he was genuine because she could believe in him. But there was so much of Paolo that Jule would never know. So much history he’d never get to tell her.
Paolo gave up hunting for the key. His hair was soaked. “The windows are alarmed,” he said. “I think it’s hopeless.”
“What should we do?”
“We better go in the gazebo and kiss for a while,” said Paolo.
The rain didn’t let up.
They drove in damp clothes toward London and stopped at a pub to eat fried food.
Paolo pulled the car up to Jule’s building. He didn’t kiss her but reached his hand out to hold hers. “I like you,” he said. “I thought—I guess I made that clear already? But I thought I should say it.”
Jule liked him back. She liked herself with him.
But she wasn’t herself with him. She didn’t know what it was, or even who it was, that Paolo liked.
Could be Immie. Could be Jule.
She wasn’t sure where to draw the line between them anymore. Jule smelled of jasmine like Imogen, Jule spoke like Imogen, Jule loved the books Immie loved. Those things were true. Jule was an orphan like Immie, a self-created person, a person with a mysterious past. So much of Imogen was in Jule, she felt, and so much of Jule was in Imogen.
But Paolo thought Patti and Gil were her parents. He thought she’d been to college with poor dead Brooke Lannon. He thought she was Jewish and rich and owned a London flat. Those lies were part of what he liked. It was impossible to tell him the truth, and even if she did, he’d hate her for the lie.
“I can’t see you,” she told him.
“What?”
“I can’t see you. Like this. At all.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
“Is there someone else? That you’re going out with? I could take a number or get in line or something.”
“No. Yes. No.”
“Which is it? Can I change your mind?”
“I’m not available.” She could tell him she had someone else, but she didn’t want to lie to him anymore.
“Why not?”
She opened the car door. “I have no heart.”
“Wait.”
“No.”
“Please wait.”
“I have to go.”
“Did you have a bad time? I mean, aside from the rain, no Stonehenge, no country house, no sheep? Aside from the fact that it was a day of disaster upon disaster?”
Jule wanted to stay in the car. To touch his lips with her fingertips and to relax into being Immie and to let the lies build up on each other.