The Silver Thread (32 page)

“You mean I just stepped in dead human broth and have people’s shit in my hair?” interrupted Annika.

“I suppose, in a roundabout way, yes. But think about it, Annika,” he said, pulling her away from a skull protruding from the wall near her head. “It’s mostly filtered. When there’s a large sewage leak or flood, they don’t allow anyone down here.”

“Finn, I have dead people sauce in my hair. I have dead people sauce in my shoes. Can we please go now?”

“I washed my hair twice and I still feel disgusting,” Annika grumbled, stepping out of the bathroom in her robe with her hair wrapped up in a towel. With the hair dryer in her hand, she passed by Finn, whom she had made to stand and wait for his turn to shower. After her realization about people sauce, she had forbidden him to sit on any furniture or touch anything except the doorknob to their room. He was to put his clothes in a plastic bag with hers, to keep them from contaminating anything else.

Once Finn was allowed into the bathroom, Annika slipped into a pair of cropped yoga pants and a tank top. As she blow-dried her hair, she decided she was finally getting used to being a brunette, much to her surprise. She wondered if her husband had been the one to suggest she change her hair, or if it had been his smarty-pants older brother. Satisfied that her hair was dry enough, she turned off the blow-dryer and set it aside, reaching for the television remote instead. She was tickled pink to discover that one of her favorite zombie movies was playing, dubbed in French.

At the next commercial break, she took off the seat cushions and pulled out the mattress, then tossed on all the pillows from the big king sized bed. She climbed back up and stretched out her legs, scanning the room service menu while she waited for the commercials to end.

The bathroom door opened, and Finn snickered at her as he ventured out with a towel wrapped around his trim waist. He set the plastic bag of dirty clothes by the door and walked over to a dresser.

“You look terribly uncomfortable,” he observed, digging through one of the drawers. “I assume we’re staying in, since you’re reading the menu in your pajamas?”

“Yep,” she confirmed. “Is there anything in particular you want me to have brought up for dinner?”

“Let me see what they have,” he said, and she jumped off the bed and sidled up beside him to show him the selection.

“What was that?” she asked, eyeing him strangely.

“What was what?”

“That look you just gave me. You think I still smell bad, don’t you?” she accused, looking aghast.

“No, I don’t think that, not in the slightest,” he said, appearing flustered. “I’m sure it’s the dirty laundry by the door.”

“Will you just smell my hair and make sure I got all the catacomb crumbs out of it?” she pleaded, dropping the menu on the floor. “Maybe I need to wash it again?”

“Trust me, your hair is clean,” he assured her in a firm tone, tightening the grip on his towel. “You’re overreacting.”

“Come on, Finn, pleeeease?” she begged with the most coy pout she could muster, and rose to her tip-toes in front of him. She planted one hand on his wet shoulder and motioned at her head with the other. “Just smell my hair and tell me I’m not crazy.”

He gave an irritated sigh of defeat and leaned down, sniffing the top of her head. Then he exhaled softly and buried his nose in her hair, inhaling and exhaling deeply as he wandered his way down the back of her scalp. Annika’s legs broke out in goose bumps as his warm breath hit her skin again and again. The birchwood undertones of his aftershave arrested her senses, leaving her woozy.

“You’re not crazy, Annika,” he said in a low, deep voice, “You’re barking mad.” In a huff, he grabbed a few items from the drawer, slammed it shut, and disappeared into the bathroom again.

“Hey, you didn’t tell me what you wanted,” she called through the closed door.

“As long as it’s vegetarian and wine is involved, I don’t care,” came his aggravated reply, and then the shower turned on once more.

Annika rolled her eyes at his touchiness and opened the door to the room just far enough to kick the bag of clothes into the hall. Maybe after two weeks of sharing a suite and spending so much time together, Finn was starting to get sick of having no privacy. After all, he was used to living in a huge house with tons of personal space, and sleeping in a bedroom twice the size of the one they were in now. She tried to shrug it off and put on some lotion and lip balm while the zombie outbreak was just beginning on television, but it was still bothering her. Then she dialed room service to place the dinner order, and also to schedule a dry cleaning pickup, but she still felt frustrated. Then she dialed the country code and the number to James’s gallery.

“Guess where I’m calling you from, James,” she said when he answered the phone.

“God, is it still Paris?” he replied. “Or are you and Talvi in Rome? He was talking about taking you there.”

“No, the Eiffel Tower is outside my window and the Champs-Élysées is right around the corner,” she said, grinning. “But I’m not here with Talvi. He ditched me the minute we walked outside of the airport. He left me with a babysitter while he went to take care of some unfinished business with a secret co-worker of his that he’s never told me about. And it’s a
chick
!”

“Shut the fuck up!” James squealed. “It’s been two weeks and you’re just
now
telling me all of this? Who’s the babysitter he left you with?”

“Do you still have that screensaver on your computer at work?”

“
No fucking way
!” he screamed in her ear so loud that she could barely make out the words. “You’ve got to be
shitt
ing
me!”

“I gotta admit, I’m having too much fun to be pissed off that my husband left me for another woman,” she said, grinning. “We’ve been checking out museums and having picnics and eating some of the best food I’ve ever put in my face. He even took me to a polo game, but first he took me to Gucci and Prada and Chanel. And the wine here is so, so amazing. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Did you just call to try and give me an aneurysm, because I’m about to have one!”

“No, actually, I wanted to let you know that I found you the perfect white blazer,” she said. “Finn has one just like it, except bigger. He’s like, six foot eight. Should I send it to the gallery so someone’s around to accept the package? I don’t think you want this sitting on the doorstep all day at the house. It wasn’t cheap.”

“Yeah, send it to the gallery, but send Talvi’s huge hot brother with it. You can’t handle both of them. I’ll even accept that package after regular business hours. Can you send him now?”

“I can’t right now; he’s in the shower,” Annika said flirtatiously, glancing at the closed bathroom door. “Oh James, he’s so buff. He’s been doing extra chores at home, chopping wood and hauling bales of hay around the stable…and speaking of packages, you ought to see him in his swimsuit. He looks like he’s on the Olympic swim team, but we just hang out in the hot tub drinking top shelf booze while he gives me language lessons. He says I’m a very good student.”

“You are such a bitch! I think you really
are
trying to give me an aneurysm!” Then he lowered his voice to a serious tone. “Annika, please don’t tell me that you’re banging him, and that’s why he’s in the shower.”

“No, no, no, I’m behaving myself. We stepped in something really nasty down in the catacombs,” she assured him. “But I’m going to be gone longer than I expected. Talvi said it could be a few weeks or so, but he wouldn’t tell me anything else. He just stuffed me in a car with his hot brother and bailed. He didn’t even give me a number I could reach him at, even though he has a secret cell phone.”

“That seems really weird. There must be something else going on that you don’t know about.”

“What if this mystery woman he works with is that something else?”

“I don’t know, Annika. That doesn’t seem like him. He’s crazy about you, in case you haven’t noticed. Chivanni’s been telling me some pretty wild stories about those Marinossian boys from back in the day, but we all have a few of those in our vaults,” said James. “Just promise me you won’t do anything stupid. You’ve kinda got it made with Talvi. And your hot babysitter. Look but don’t touch, okay? And call me if shit gets crazy. Well, if it gets crazier.”

“I will,” she assured him, and hung up the phone. There was a knock at the door as someone’s brain was being eaten on the television, and a table covered in different sized silver dishes was wheeled into the room.

“
Ici
, c’est vous plait
,” Annika said, pointing to the pulled out sofa bed.

“
Ici
?” the very cute waiter asked, as if the pulled out sofa bed in front of a gory zombie movie seemed an odd place to dine.

“
Oui, merci beaucoup
,” she replied graciously, and helped him lay out the different dishes on the sheets. He seemed unsure what to do with the wine, and set the two bottles and two glasses on the coffee table with a wine key before rolling the table toward the door. As Annika held it open for him, he paused for a moment in the doorway.

“You, you are American?” he asked, and she nodded, smiling. She thought he was about to compliment her on her French, but instead he asked her in halted English, “You stay here with your…husband?”

“No, with his brother,” she answered before realizing how it sounded when said out loud. She blushed, but the waiter only gave a subtle nod, concealing his grin as best as he could. He glanced over his shoulder, and then back at Annika. He took a black business card out of his jacket and pressed it into her hand. In white lowercase letters, she read “
la Société d’
Art
Soute
rraine
.”

“Oh, you’re an artist? What kind of art do you make?”

“Tomorrow you visit, an’ we paint, per’aps?”

Annika flipped the card over, and in the same white lettering was an address, and nothing more.

“
Merci
, that would be
très bien
,” she said, putting the black card in her pocket. She gave him an enthusiastic wave goodbye along with a large tip as he snatched the bag of dirty clothes from the floor, tossed it in a basket under the table, and headed for the elevator.

She shut the door just as Finn came out of the bathroom, dressed in his baby blue flannel pants and a plain white t-shirt.

“What did you end up ordering?” he asked, locking the door since she had forgotten to. Whatever had been bothering him earlier seemed unimportant now.

“Well, I decided to play it safe and not order any seafood,” she said, and crawled onto her previous place on the bed.

“A wise decision,” he agreed, and reached for one of the bottles of wine. Annika began to lift the silver lids and rattled off her selections.

“Provençal
style ratatouille, a side of braised chicory, mezze penne with tomatoes, black olives, pine nuts and basil, and then for dessert there’s a cocoa and sea salt strudel with white coffee ice cream for me, and dark chocolate and caramel
mi cuit
with pear and ginger sorbet for you. And they had like, fifty thousand wines in their cellar, so I hope you’re alright having a Carmenere with dinner and the Madeira with dessert.”

“That sounds fine to me,” he said passively, and inserted the wine key into the bottle he was holding.

“That’s actually the Madeira,” she pointed out.

“I know,” he said, and began to pull out the cork.

“But we’re having that with dessert,” she reminded him.

“Yes we are,” he said, not looking at her. He sniffed the cork, set the wine key down, and poured them each a glass of Madeira. “I don’t suppose you can guess when was the last time I enjoyed a pear and ginger sorbet?”

“Um, a few years?”

“Um, try never,” he said, playfully mocking her American accent while he passed her one of the glasses. “It would be criminal to let something like that waste away while I bide my time with yet another ratatouille.”

He handed her the dish of cocoa and sea salt strudel and settled onto the other side of the bed. He dipped a spoon into the pear and ginger sorbet and brought it to his lips, closing his eyes in bliss.

“You have to try this,” he said, and passed his plate to her. They traded back and forth every few bites for ten solid, silent minutes. Finn said nothing, other than humming a little here and there in pleasure, before trading plates and repeating the happy hums.

“I’m sorry if I annoyed you earlier about smelling my hair,” she finally said. “I know I can be kind of a girl sometimes.”

“I’m painfully aware of your gender, but no, I’m not annoyed with you,” said Finn, mesmerized by the bloody fight scene on the television. He set down his empty plate and took a slow drink of wine, swirling it in his mouth. “I’m annoyed with my brother. He chose a fine time to pick up a job. He didn’t happen to call by chance, did he?”

“No, are you worried about him?”

Finn gave an uncharacteristically contemptuous harrumph and continued to stare straight at the screen.

“No. I’m worried about you and I.”

Annika was just about to ask him to elaborate on what he meant by that, when he nearly shouted,

“What the bloody hell? How can she possibly have a machine gun for a leg?”

“It’s a zombie movie,” she laughed. “Anything goes.”

“What total crap,” he announced in disgust, finally turning to look at her. “Where’s the channel changer?”

“It’s supposed to be crappy,” she said, defending her campy film. “They made it so bad that it’s good. We’re not changing the channel. You wanted to know about American culture, and this is a cult classic.”