I fit the next image together, and the next. Jesus. They’re all of him. There’s even one of him lying down and—Christ alive, that’s way more of my brother than I ever needed to see. In every single one the eyes have been destroyed, punched or torn out with something.
I had a feeling Mimi was lying about knowing him the first time I met her. I suspected she was hiding something as soon as her wine glass hit the floor in Sophie Meunier’s apartment. But I never expected anything like this. If these are anything to go by—if that nude painting is any clue—she knows Ben very well indeed. And feels strongly enough about him to have done some pretty serious damage to these paintings: those tears in the fabric could only have been made with something really sharp, or with a lot of force—or both.
I stand up but as I do a strange thing happens. It’s like the whole room tilts with the movement. Whoa. I go to steady myself against the nightstand. I try to blink away the dizziness. I take a step backward and it happens again. As I stand, trying to get my balance, it feels like the ground is rolling around under my feet and everything around me is made of jelly, the walls collapsing inward.
I stagger out of the bedroom, into the corridor. I have to keep a hand out on both sides to stop myself from keeling over. And then Victor appears, at the end of the passage.
“Jessie—there you are. What were you doing?” He’s walking toward me down the dark corridor. He smiles and his teeth are very white—just like a real vampire. My only way out is past him; he’s blocking my escape. Even with my brain turned to syrup I know what this is. You don’t work in twenty different divey bars and not know what this is. The drink some guy’s offered to buy you, the freebie that is anything but. I never, ever fall for that shit. What the hell was I thinking? How could I have been so stupid? It’s always the pretty ones, the seemingly harmless ones, the so-called nice guys.
“What the fuck was in that drink, Victor?” I ask.
And then everything goes black.
Monday
Mimi
Fourth floor
Morning. I’m sitting on the balcony watching the light seep into the sky. The joint I stole from Camille hasn’t helped me relax: it’s just making me feel sick and even more jittery. I feel . . . I feel like I’m trapped inside my own skin. Like I want to claw my way out.
I hurry out of the apartment and run down the twisting stairway to the cave, not wanting to meet anyone on the way. It’s full of the detritus from the party last night: broken glass and spilled drinks and dropped accessories from people’s costumes—wigs and devil’s forks and witches’ hats. I normally like it better down here, in the dark and the quiet: another place to hide away. But right now I can’t be here either because his Vespa is there, leaning against the wall.
I don’t—can’t—look at it as I pull my bicycle from the rack beside it.
He always went out on that Vespa. I wanted to know about his life, I wanted to follow him into the city, see where he went, what he did, who he met with, but it was impossible because he used that bike to go everywhere. So one day I went down into the cave and I stabbed a small hole into the front wheel with the very sharp blade of my canvas-cutting knife. That was better. He wouldn’t be able to use it for a few days. I only did it because I loved him.
That afternoon I saw him leave on foot. My plan had worked. I went after him, followed him into the Metro and got onto the next carriage. He got off in this really shitty part of town. What the hell was he doing there? He went and sat down in this greasy-looking kebab place. I sat in a shisha bar across the road and ordered a Turkish coffee and tried to look like I fitted in among all the old guys puffing away on their rose-scented tobacco. Ben was making me do things I never normally would, I realized. He was making me brave.
Ten minutes or so later a girl came and joined Ben. She was tall and thin, a hood up over her head, which she only took down once she was sitting opposite him. I felt my stomach turn over when I saw her face. Even from across the street I could see that she was beautiful: dark chocolate hair with a sharp fringe that looked so much better than my home-cut one, a model’s cheekbones. And young: probably only my age. Yes, her clothes were bad: a fake-looking leather jacket with that hoodie underneath and cheap jeans, but they somehow made her seem even more beautiful by contrast. As I watched them together I could actually feel my heart hurting, a hot coal burning behind my rib cage.
I waited for him to kiss her, to touch her face, her hand, to stroke her hair—anything—waited for the worse pain I knew would come when I saw him do it. But nothing happened. They just sat there talking. I realized it seemed quite formal. Like they didn’t actually know each other that well. There was definitely nothing between them to suggest they might be lovers. Finally he passed her something. I tried to see. It looked like a phone or a camera, maybe. Then she got up and left, and he did too. They went in different directions. I still couldn’t work out why he’d been talking to her, or what he might have given her, but I was so relieved I could have cried. He hadn’t been unfaithful to me. I knew I shouldn’t have doubted him.
Later, back in my room, I thought of that night in the park, how we’d shared that cigarette. The two of us in the dark by the lake. The taste of his mouth when I’d kissed him. I thought about it when I lay in bed at night, fingers exploring. And I whispered those words I heard in the darkness by the lake. Je suis ta petite pute. I’m your little whore.
This was it, I knew it. This was why I’d waited so long. I was different from Camille. I couldn’t just screw around with random guys. It had to be something real. Un grand amour. I had thought I’d been in love before. The art teacher, Henri, at my school—Les Soeurs Servantes du Sacré Coeur. I’d known we had a connection from the beginning. He’d smiled at me in that first lesson, told me how talented I was. But later, when I sent him the paintings I had made of him, he took me aside and told me they weren’t appropriate—even though I’d worked so hard on them, on getting the proportions right, the tone: just like he’d taught us. And when I sent them to his wife instead, but cut up into little pieces, they made some kind of formal complaint. And then—well, I don’t want to go into all that. I heard they left for another school abroad.
I didn’t know where this part of me had been hiding. The part that could fall in love. Actually: I did. I’d been keeping it locked away. Deep down inside me. Terrified that sort of weakness would make me vulnerable again. But I was ready now. And Ben was different. Ben would be loyal to me.