Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 04 - Strings of Glass (6 page)

“When
Anand died, Kalpesh was in his early twenties. He was
the man’s only heir and at least publicly grieved his uncle deeply. Never
before had so many mourners been hired.”

“Mourners
for hire?” I asked. Dan passed me the joint, only a nubbins now. I took
the last drag and then stubbed it out in a nearby ashtray.

“Yes,
professional mourners. Simply, they cry for you.”

I
nodded, sitting back into the swing seeing black-clad,
wailing women, writhing with imagined grief.

“His
fortune is vast and there is no reason for him to work. So he takes his
pleasures as an occupation.” Anita closed her eyes and leaned her head
back against the wall.

“What
pleasures are those?” I asked.

“Perversion,
pain, children,” she said, moving only her lips.
“He buys them by the dozen, tires of them quickly, and releases them onto
the streets with nothing more than the clothes on their back.”

“Jesus,”
Dan said. He reached across the swing, squeezing my shoulder, pulling me
closer.

“No
one does anything,” Anita continued. “He owns the police and even if
he didn’t, the rights of children are hardly a top
priority,” she said her voice bitter with truth. “They matter less
even than those of women.”

“Why
is a French magazine interested in this Shah
guy?” Dan asked.

Anita
sat up placing the cloth wet from melted ice onto the coffee table.
“Several years ago he ‘hosted’ the Paris Children’s choir,” she
caught my eyes holding them. “They reported waking up without their
clothing, groggy, and bruised. One of the chaperones disappeared, the
other,” she flicked her eyes to Dan, “spent three days in a drug-induced
coma.”

Dan
shook his head and drank deeply from his glass. “How could he get away
with it?” Dan asked.

“There
is an extradition order for him but like I told you, no one can touch him in
Gujarat. He can do no wrong there.”

“So
what are you doing in Goa?” I asked.

She
returned her intelligent eyes to me; they
looked tired now, sad, but not defeated. A spark glowed in them that I admired.
Kalpesh Shah was going to have to kill Anita if he wanted to stop her. “He
has a house here. I heard that a shipment was coming, children from Nepal, new
ones. He planned on staying at his estate a week, then returning for the kite
festival but he was delayed in Gujarat. I was sneaking onto his property trying
to get proof of the children. Take pictures, maybe talk to some of them. I got
caught. You saw what happened next.” She closed her eyes again and swayed
slightly. “Thank god you were there.”

“Then
what?” I asked. “Once you talked to the children, got the pictures,
what was next?”

“He
has an open house every year for the Kite Festival. It’s a family tradition
that reaches back 500 years. He can’t refuse any guests. I planned on going
there, getting pictures of his home, and speaking
with him;
that would be the final piece of the puzzle.” She became animated now.
“I already have a police source who’s
admitted on the record that they’ve ignored numerous accusations against him.
And someone inside his household has been feeding me information. I’m so
close.” She sat back again, looking exhausted.

I
fiddled with my glass of whisky. “So what you need,” I said,
“is
to get him on a plane to France.”

“What?”
she asked.

“If
he landed in France he’d be arrested, right?” I asked, taking a sip of
whisky, feeling the fire in my belly.

“Yes,”
she said. “But… I’m a reporter. My plan is to expose him for what he
is.”

“In
the French press?” I asked. “What will that accomplish exactly?”

Her
eyebrows pulled together in conference over her elegant though swollen nose.

I leaned
forward, feeling my heart beat in my chest. “I have a plane.”

“You
what?”

“I
have a plane and I can get that murderous, child-abusing
piece of shit on it.”

Anita
stared at me, speechless.

I
laid
under the mosquito net staring at the textured shadow it cast on Anita’s
sleeping form. She was breathing slowly, evenly, like someone who needed it. I
knew I should rest, too, that my body deserved time
to recover, but it felt like a live wire. Dan had offered Anita his side of the
bed. Anita’s exhaustion caught up with her soon after my declaration that I
would grab Kalpesh Shah and drag his ass to France.

Why did
I say I would go and get him? Because I could? It wasn’t that simple. I wanted
him stopped. The thought of those children being sold to him…
I felt bile rising in my throat and sat up.

Anita
rolled, stirred, but quickly settled back into her deep slumber. I slipped out
from under the white gauze and tiptoed out of the room. Blue, of course, woke
and followed me, his ears perked. I checked around the corner and saw Dan
passed out in the hammock, his arms thrown wide, one foot hanging over the
edge.

Taking a
moment I watched his chest rise and fall. He was so sweet looking. His hair,
always in need of a cut flopped across his forehead. A thin sheet covered his
body but I knew that it was sinewy, strong. And he was so damn smart, knew so
much. So many nights I’d slept next to that man, laughed with him over coffee
in the morning, played with him in the surf, yet I
felt no ownership. Dan was not mine.

Quietly
I headed through the trees to the pool. The lights were off and I slipped off
my pajama pants, pulled my T-shirt over my
head and,
naked, dove in, making hardly a splash. Blue followed along the edge, watching
me as I back- stroked from one end to the other. I
switched to crawl and then finally to breast stroke.

Sober
now, the cool water and exercise clearing my mind, I thought about Anita’s
story. She was brave, and no fool. I wanted to help and not just because it was
the right thing to do but because I itched for something bigger than paperbacks
and sunbathing. Mulberry and Dan were right about me. I couldn’t live a quiet
and safe life. I stopped in the deep end, catching the edge of the pool and
floating against the wall.

Blue
came over and touched his nose to my wet head. He licked at my eyeball and I
pulled away. He was recovering well, the stitches were melting and all the
puncture wounds closed. His hair was coming back but he still looked patchy,
not his usually gorgeous self.

The missing
fur reminded me of why I tried to stay safe, not so much for me but for those I
loved. Running after this Kalpesh Shah could get us all killed. My heart beat
in my chest just thinking about Dan in danger. He never shied away from it, he’d
been instrumental in taking out the last evil bitch I’d faced but if he was
hurt or, I shuddered, killed, I’d never forgive myself. I had enough ghosts
haunting me without Dan’s sweet memory.

“Hey,”
I looked up and there he was, standing at the edge of the pool in just his
boxers. He smiled at me. “Want some company?”

I
nodded. “Sure.”

He
pulled off his pants and dove in. I watched his pale form elegantly glide
through the dark water. He rose in front of me, his hair plastered to his head.
He leaned back and dipped under again, this time his hair was off his face. He
smiled at me, his gorgeous eyes bright in the moonlight.

Dan swam
over and placed an arm on either side of me, holding onto the edge of the pool,
letting the weight of his body press against me. “I like what you did back
there,” he said. “
I’ve got a plane
,” he said grinning.
“You’re just so fucking awesome.”

I
laughed and he kissed me, running one of his arms around my waist. My legs
floated up and encircled his hips. Dan’s kiss became more urgent. I let go of
the wall and held onto his back, trusting him to keep us both afloat.

After,
we laid on one of the sun-beds, head to toe, wrapped in beach towels, staring
up at the sky. He played with one of my feet, tickling the bottom.
“Hey,” I said, pulling it away.

A small
smile played on his lips, his long lashes fluttered
against his cheeks. “I’m proud of you,” he said.

“What?”

He
shrugged. “I like it when you’re doing something.”

“Yeah,
I guess, me, too.”

“You’re
going to let me help, right?”

I felt a
tug on my heart. “Dan, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He
looked over at me, “I don’t want you to get hurt either.”

“Yeah,
but I’m trained to not get hurt you’re…”

He
smiled.
“A computer geek.”

“Maybe
that will come in handy,” I said.

“So
I can come with you?” he asked.

“Yeah,
of course, you can come with me.”

He
grinned. “Good.” I closed my eyes and leaned back, anxiety churning
in my chest.

#

W
e laid there in silence for a
moment and then Dan wiggled my big toe. “What was your first boyfriend
like?”

“What
makes you ask?” I said, opening my eyes.

“I
don’t know,” he looked up at me. “I guess I was just thinking about
my first love.” Color rose in his cheeks and he gazed to the ground.

“Oh
really?” I said. “Now I want to hear about her.”

“You
first.”

“No
way,” I laughed. “Come on, spill it,” I pushed at his chest with
my foot.

He
smiled. “She was wonderful, older,” his smile jumped into a quick
grin, pride. “She was very pretty but tough, you know. She was a bad ass
basically. She used to take me to the church behind our high
school to smoke. She taught me how to roll those joints you
enjoy so much.”

“I
should thank her,” I said.

He
laughed. “Yeah right.” Dan reached out and played with my foot,
rubbing at it absentmindedly. “I was two years younger than her and she
took me under her wing. I followed her around like a puppy. We were just
friends. But by the time she was a senior I’d had a growth spurt and was
starting to come into my own. I felt powerful with the computer stuff rather
than geeky.” He laughed. “Actually what happened is I got good
looking. I noticed her notice. She’d always brushed up against me and been
playful, teasing me; offering me
something she knew I didn’t dare to take. But then one day in the darkroom -
that’s how we met. We were both into photography.”

“What
did she look like?” I asked.

“She
had black hair that she put colored streaks into. Wore a leather jacket and
tight pants. She had a nose ring, a tongue piercing,
and a belly button stud. She had tattoos. The chain connecting her wallet to
her pants jingled when she walked. It was a sound I came to relish.”

“So
what happened in the dark room?”

His
teeth flashed. “When we first met she would look over my shoulder at what
I was doing and help me out. By the time we kissed she would ask me to come
look at something and my nose reached the top of her head. She smelled exotic.
She used Indian soaps from this crazy store in a strip mall. I love that smell
to this day.” He laughed. “It might be one of the reasons I like
India so much.”

“Okay,
so you’re in the darkroom smelling her hair. Then what happens?” I asked,
teasing. 

Dan
laughed. “She turned around but I didn’t move. She laughed and said, ‘Dan,
a little space’. I just shook my head ‘no’ and stood there. I reached out and
played with a strand of her hair, wrapping it around my finger. She looked up
at me and we were really close. ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ I said
to her. She nodded and swallowed. I could feel energy vibrating between us. The
way it had been for several months. She made me feel included and special and I
worshipped her for it. I mean I really worshipped her.”

“That’s
how you’re avoiding the mistake with me?”

“It
helps, and you’re kind of a loser.” He grabbed at my ankle and I kicked
him away.

“Finish
the story.” He bit his lip and reached out again. This time I let him drag
me toward him, wrapping my legs around his waist. He leaned over and sweeping
aside my towel, raspberried my belly. I laughed and pushed
at him.

“This
is how I show my respect, Captain.”

“Get
off of me!” He tickled me until I wriggled out of his grasp. “I want
to hear what happened. She turns around, you won’t move, and then…”

“OK,
so I’m playing with her hair and,” Dan licked his lips, “I told her I
loved her. That I’d loved her since the day we’d met. My heart was beating out
of my chest. And I could feel every nerve
in my body. It was hot in there and the smell of chemicals thick. She raised
onto her toes and touched her lips to mine. It was soft at first, then her
tongue darted out and I thought I was going to pass out.” Dan smiled at
me, his eyes hooded and misty with memories.

“What
was her name?”

“Morgan,
but everybody called her Moe. I thought that was so cool.”

“So
how long were you together after the kissing in the dark room thing.”

“Two
years. Basically until I moved to California. And then she broke up with me.
She was living in New York, went to NYU and I had gone every weekend,
religiously. My mom did not approve but since my
dad got me on the weekends and he thought banging a college girl was by far the
best use of my time, he allowed it. Guy was happy to hear I could get a girl,
considering my nerdy attributes. But when I decided to go to California for
school, she called it off.”

“Why’d
you go that far away if you were in love?”

“I
wanted to stay together.”

“Obviously
not if you moved away, if you left her.”

“Maybe
you’re
right,” Dan said with a frown.

“Are
you still friends?”

“Sure,
yeah. She’s a mom living in New Jersey. Crazy right? The coolest girl I ever
knew ended up a mom in New Jersey.”

“Coolest
girl? Ahem. What about me?”

“You’re
no girl.”

“Ha!”

“What
about your first love? Your
first heartbreak?”

“Morgan
really broke your heart?”

“Yes,
I was a total mope for a year. Now tell me about who cracked yours.”

“I’ve
never been in love.”

“Really?
You’ve never had your heart broken?”

I shook
my head. “My heart is broken,” I
laughed ruefully, “now I’m just trying to avoid having it shattered.”

“I
guess,” Dan said. He looked out at the water and we sat in silence for a
while.

“Dan,
you don’t want to be with me,” I said softly. “I don’t know why
you’re sticking around. I’m no good.” I felt a tear slip and rubbed at it
quickly.

Dan
reached out and pulled me to him. I let him wrap me in his arms, spoon me, kiss
the back of my neck. “You are good,
Sydney,” he whispered. “You’re the best.”

“I’ll
only hurt you. I can’t give you what you deserve,” I said,
feeling awful that I didn’t have the strength to push him away, to
save him from me.

“I
only want you, as much as you want to give.”

I shook
my head, feeling his heart beat. “Dan, you don’t understand.”

He
propped himself on his elbow and I rolled onto my back so that I could see his
face in the darkness. “Sydney,” he smiled,
“you
really worry too much.”

I
laughed and he kissed me.