Hunting Daylight (9781101619032) (26 page)

“Sounds pretty,” Gillian said, then looked down at her ring. “I think our luck is fixing to change.”

Hours later, Vivi walked into the hotel suite, loaded with packages. The room was dark, the curtains pulled tightly over the sunny windows, hiding the view.

“Hey, Meep,” Caro said, coming out of her bedroom.

“Look what Gillian and I bought,” Vivi said.

She followed her mom into the bedroom and dumped the bags on the bed. Caro began folding the white blouses and beige denims.

“Gillian told me to buy neutrals,” Vivi said.

“I love what you picked out,” Caro said.

Vivi sat on the bed, watching her mom work on each garment, flattening the edges with her palms. “Gillian says we’re leaving Zermatt,” she said. “She’s going to Italy.”

“She’ll love it, won’t she?” Caro lifted a striped tan blazer.

Vivi folded her arms. “Where is Raphael taking us now?”

“Paris.” Caro set the blazer on the bed and reached for an ecru sleeveless top.

“Can’t I go to Villa Primaverina with Gillian?”

“We’ve got an appointment with Dr. d’Aigreville in Paris.”

“We? When did you and Raphael become a
we
?”

“We’re not.”

“You said it again.” Vivi sighed. She knew she was acting bratty, but she couldn’t stop. That little taste of freedom had changed her. She felt older. Tougher. And she owed it all to Gillian.

Caro set the shirt on a tall pile of clothes. “You knew about Paris.”

“But I never agreed to see this doctor. You’re doing stuff without asking me.”

“It’s a one-hour appointment, not brain surgery,” Caro said. “Raphael and I will be there.”

“Why do I need to see a doctor? You don’t know for sure if I gave you a nosebleed.” Vivi shoved the pile of clothes, and they slid across the bed into a messy heap. “You can’t make me go.”

Caro looked as if she’d just walked into a house with a lit cigarette and realized too late that she smelled gas.

Raphael walked into the bedroom, wearing faded jeans and a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt. “What’s going on? I could hear you two yelling in the hall.”

Vivi looked at him from under her eyebrows. “Maybe you shouldn’t stay in the same suite with us.”

“Don’t be rude,” Caro said.

Vivi felt anger boiling up inside her. If she’d put eggs under her arms, they would have been hard-cooked in thirty seconds. “I’m tired of being jacked around.”

“Your mother and I are trying to help you,” Raphael said.

“It doesn’t feel like help. Every time I start to like a place, I have to move. Now you’re sending Gillian away.”

“Don’t be so self-centered,” Raphael said. “Not everything is about you. Gillian wants to leave.”

“Go away, Raphael. I want to talk to my mom.”

He walked to the bed and helped Caro refold the clothes.

Vivi clamped her lips together. Oh, she wanted to hurt someone. She wanted Raphael to check into another hotel. And she wanted her mom to stop folding those freaking clothes. She heard a roar inside her head.

A red ribbon uncurled from Raphael’s ear. A crimson drop splashed onto the shoulder of his T-shirt. Another thread ran over his chin and disappeared under his jaw. He swiped his neck and blinked at his fingers. He sat
down hard on the edge of the bed, and another pile of clothes toppled over.

Vivi’s throat felt thick and scratchy, as if she’d eaten a spoonful of termites. Raphael kept staring at his fingers. They were bloody. Caro’s mom ran to the bathroom and came back with a damp washrag. She dabbed at Raphael’s ear. “Am I in trouble?” Vivi’s eyes filled.

“No,” her mom and Raphael said at the same time.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Vivi felt sick to her stomach.

“I know,” Raphael said.

“I guess I do need to see that doctor, huh?” Vivi said.

Two nights later, Vivi was huddled in the back of a Mercedes sedan, watching the A-6 highway race behind them like dirty water. Raphael sat next to Caro, talking about the catacombs and sewers in Paris’s underground like he was some kind of tour guide.

Vivi’s throat tightened, and she slumped down in the seat. Getting to Paris hadn’t been easy. They’d been on the road for forty-eight hours, mainly because Raphael had changed vehicles and drivers multiple times.

She sat up straight when she saw the Eiffel Tower. When she was little, she’d thought that Paris was two cities—the Left Bank and the Right Bank. A few years ago, she and her mom had stayed in an apartment on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Vivi’s bedroom had faced the tower, and she’d kept her window open all the time, listening to the street noise, watching students rushing to the Sorbonne. One day she would buy flowers from one of
those carts, and she’d pop into a café and air-kiss a gorgeous guy.

The Mercedes crossed the Pont Neuf Bridge and drove up Rue du Louvre, past the north wing of the museum and the post office. Traffic in Paris always made Vivi light-headed. The whole city had a strange beat, slow yet jittery, like molasses poured onto a frayed electrical cord.

When the car turned onto Place des Victoires, Vivi sat up straight and looked at the storefronts that lined the square. A monument of King Louis XIV on horseback stood in the center of the roundabout. The Mercedes drove around it, shot down a narrow street, and stopped in front of Raphael’s townhouse. Men with earphones spread out on the sidewalk, edging toward the car.

The driver rushed to open a side door. Vivi stepped out into the night air and squinted up at the house. It looked like a miniature Louvre, the same limestone façade, lacy iron balconies, and a blue mansard roof with dormer windows.

The security men formed a wall around Raphael as he led Caro and Vivi through a blue paneled door, into a private courtyard where potted lemon trees sent a delicious fragrance through the night air. A gargoyle rainspout ran down the wall, its mouth poised over a limestone basin.

“So when will I see the doctor and get my head shrunk?” Vivi asked.

“Later tonight,” Raphael said.

Vivi followed her mom into a wide entry hall where a staircase rose up to a shadowy landing. “Maybe we shouldn’t stay here,” she said, her voice echoing.

Caro turned. “Why not?”

“Raphael lives on a busy street,” Vivi said. “People will see us coming and going. What if those goons are still chasing us?”

“Don’t worry,” Raphael said. “My company sometimes rents this house to musicians and actors. People are always in and out. No one will pay attention to us. Especially if we wear disguises. We—”

“Which actors have stayed here?” Vivi asked.

“Oh, Shakespearean types.” Raphael smiled. “Are you ladies hungry?”

“Starved,” Caro said.

Raphael walked toward a black door at the end of the hall. “Chez Georges is just around the corner.”

“Don’t we need reservations?” Caro asked.

“You worry about the wrong things,
mia cara
.” Raphael opened a closet, pulled out a blond wig, and handed it to Vivi. She wished she hadn’t left her fake eyeglasses in Scotland. They would have looked good with this wig.

“Where did you get this?” she said. “Did you shave Lady Gaga’s head?”

“It’s your disguise,” Raphael said.

She put on the wig and lifted a curl. “Can I have different one?”

“You look cute,” he said, then handed Caro an ash-blond wig. The stiff curls fell over her shoulders like uncooked spaghetti. Thick, boxy bangs skimmed her eyebrows.

“This is stupid.” Vivi straightened her wig. “If it’s not safe to walk around in Paris in regular clothes, why don’t you just order pizza?”

Arrapato barked, then spun around. “You can come, too,” Raphael said, fitting the dog into a Sherpa bag. The dog pushed his nose against the mesh door and whimpered.

“Yes, I know,” Raphael said.

“Do you understand what he’s saying?” Vivi asked.

“No, but he understands my tone of voice, and my tone says,
Don’t draw attention to yourself—or us
.” Raphael put on thick, horn-rimmed glasses and a dark wig. He handed the Sherpa to Vivi. “Pretend like he’s your dog.”

“I wish he were mine.” Vivi hooked the strap over her shoulder and sighed.

Two baldheaded guards in khaki shorts and polo shirts followed them out the back door, down a narrow street. Vivi had never been to Chez Georges, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. Inside, the dining room was narrow as a shoe box, jammed with tables, the walls lined with gold mirrors. However, the food smelled great. Her stomach rumbled as she breathed in great drifts of garlic, butter, and browning bread.

Raphael greeted the maître d’ in French. The man looked confused for a moment, peering over the rim of his reading glasses. Then his small dark eyes blinked open wide, and he smiled. He seated the trio in a corner and handed out menus with a flourish.

The moment Vivi got settled, the back of her neck tingled, as if spiders were edging down her collar. She glanced at the next table, where an older woman was staring at Raphael. She was so short the table came up to her chest. Her straight copper hair was cut just below her
ears, and her bangs looked as if they’d been trimmed with a Weed Eater. Her dark eyes held a fierce gleam. In her arms was an orange cat, and it peered at Vivi, too.

“
Que voulez-vous?
” Vivi heard someone say.

A waitress in a black-and-white uniform loomed over the table. Her face was flat as a pie pan, almost too large for her body. Vivi’s mom ordered escargot and foie gras; Vivi couldn’t decide between scallops and steak au poivre.

“Bring her both,” Raphael said. “I’ll have steak, too—rare—and a soup bone for my dog.”

“Excellent,
monsieur
,” the waitress said.

A few minutes later the maître d’ walked up with a soup bowl, a bloody bone jutting up. “
Pour le chien
,” he said, slipping the bowl into Arrapato’s Sherpa.

Vivi glanced at the next table. The copper-haired woman held a cigarette, her eyes narrowed. Vivi felt as if she were a selection on the dessert cart.

“Mom, that dwarf keeps looking at me,” she said.

Raphael and Caro glanced up. The copper-haired woman was talking to her cat, holding its broad, flat face in her stubby hands.

“What dwarf?” Raphael asked.

“How many do you see in this restaurant?” Vivi said. “She’s right over there. And she was watching me.”

Caro straightened the salt and pepper shakers and made no comment. Raphael took a sip of water, something Vivi had never seen him do. The waitress brought bread, melted goat cheese salads, and little tureens filled with pâté. As she left, Vivi cut her gaze back to the cat woman.

The table was empty. Smoke curled up from an ashtray.

At ten
P.M.
, Vivi climbed into the back of a stretch Hummer with Caro and Raphael. All three of them still wore their disguises, though Vivi longed to pull off her wig. She spelled out dirty words in the air with a curl as the vehicle sped down the Champs Élysées.

Paris was going to be horrid, Vivi thought. She’d never seen Raphael act this paranoid. And he’d totally stolen Gillian’s idea about disguises. Maybe Dr. d’Aigreville would give him Xanax.

The Hummer turned onto a tree-lined avenue and stopped in front of an apartment building that resembled a white wedding cake. A Mercedes pulled in behind the Hummer, and two security guards got out. Caro and Raphael tucked Arrapato into the Sherpa, and then guards led them into the building. A doorman made them wait in the creamy marble lobby while he called Dr. d’Aigreville’s penthouse. Finally the man directed them to a creaky, old elevator that had mirrors and an old-fashioned iron grille that pulled shut. It was horrible.

Dr. d’Aigreville waited just inside a tall black door.

This was the woman Vivi had seen at Chez Georges. The same short copper hair and chopped-off bangs. Her eyes were level with Vivi’s. The woman tore her gaze away and embraced Raphael. They air-kissed each other’s cheeks.

“
Hé! Mon ami
,” Dr. d’Aigreville said.
“Tu m’as manqué? Comment vas-tu?”

Raphael smiled.
“Je vais bien, merci. Et toi?”

“Bien.”

Raphael started to make the introductions, but Vivi
cut him off, glaring at the doctor. “I saw you at Chez Georges. You had a cat.”