Vienna (10 page)

“BBC America had a clip of you addressing that so-called reporter. Up on your high horse. I swear, you're just like Heather.”

“She's in the shower.”

“That's fine. She'll call back when she's ready. Send her our love.”

“Okay.”

“Good-bye, Vienna.”

“Okay.”

Vienna put the phone on the desk.
Just like Heather.
Famous and rich and happy. Exactly like that.

She shuffled to the bed and sat. The spread was silver-white, stitched in a diamond pattern. Diagonals drawn from each diamond's vertex formed eight different triangles, which could be used to form three different rhombuses the same size as the original. Endless permutations flowing through a complex cascade of angles and areas. Such geometries could make solid surfaces ripple like water. But now the shapes faded even as they appeared.

Vienna wasn't certain how, but she'd borked it all up. She'd planned to divert attention away from Justine. What difference did it make to her if the popular press thought she was stupid? She had no presence in their world. Wasn't it right that she took the lead, just as she had while navigating Brussels's winding streets?

She didn't want to think about it but she needed to know. When Justine stepped from the bathroom, draped in a white robe that covered her like a tent, Vienna screwed up her courage. “Can we talk?”

Justine folded a leg underneath herself as she sat next to Vienna, her free leg swinging slowly off the end of the bed. “It depends. I'm very tired, Vienna.”

She didn't want to mention the phone call, but she'd told Dr. Ingles she would. “Your mother called. She said that she loves you.”

“This is a test of the Abigail Emergency Broadcast System. Had this been an actual emergency, your father would already be on the line.”

“What does that mean?”

“She's worried about me. You know, the dead boyfriend in the bathroom. The new girlfriend to be vetted. It's okay. They'll give me time to sort through it all—they've always been great that way. I'll call back when things settle down a bit.”

Vienna gave up on whatever that was about. “She talked about horses and she said we're the same.”

Justine was silent for several seconds, then a brief smile. “I bet she saw a video of you smacking Jordan around. Up on your high horse. She accuses me of that now and then. Taking on the world without caring about consequences.”

Which at least was close to what Vienna really wanted to talk about.

“You haven't sat still since we returned.”

“Anxious exhaustion.”

Vienna decided that meant Justine was angry. “I didn't do well, did I?”

Justine lifted a hand and brushed it through Vienna's hair. “You did fine.”

“I thought I could take the blame.”

“There's no money in that. It's a much better story if Justine Am cowers behind a troubled girl.”

“That's not how it was.”

“Winners always write the histories.” She took Vienna's glasses off, stretched up the bed to set them on the nightstand. “Anyway, you made it fun. I never expected that.” She sat back up. “I thought Jordan Farquar was going to faint for a second. I was sure James was. It was no less than I deserve after dragging you all over town for my own amusement.” She turned to face Vienna, pulling her leg up and under the bathrobe. “My turn to ask a question.”

“Okay.”

“When we were at the police station, you mumbled something under your breath. I caught the word ‘buckaroo.' What did it mean?”

Vienna sighed because she knew where this was going, having been there a million times. “I thought Mr. Hargrave looked like a cowboy. The Spanish translation is
‘vaquero,'
which became corrupted into the English word ‘buckaroo.'”

Justine laughed, which wasn't anywhere in the script. “James does look like a cowboy. Can you imagine him roughing it on the open range, face-to-face with a longhorn? He'd piss himself.”

She doesn't get it.
“I have to find room for new things by attaching them to what I already know, otherwise I get anxious and sick even though everyone says that's wrong. It all has to fit together.” Satisfied that would pull the conversation back to well-worn pathways, Vienna readied herself for
the speech
about how she needed to
try harder
.

“I think that's a beautiful way to see the world.”

“You don't understand.” It wasn't fair.

“Likely not, but I will try.”

Vienna decided it would be less annoying to just give up and move on. “My turn to ask a question.”

“One more.”

“Why did you buy me glasses when you know I don't need them? They were very expensive.”

“Because they make you comfortable.”

“So why did you take them off?”

“One question too many.” And now Justine's hand was over hers. The American continued in a whisper. “I would answer if I could.”

Vienna felt the heat of a rising blush. “Will you try?”

“I don't know, Vienna. It might be because I am tired. Or because I am so alone tonight. Or because it's taboo back home and I am sick of rules. Or because what goes around comes around and this is a settling of accounts. Or maybe even because you are you and tonight I want to take the long way home.”

Vienna spread her fingers under Justine's, letting them weave together. Was that being too forward? Or maybe not enough?

“What about you?” Justine asked.

“Me?”

“Why did you let me take them off?”

“I am like half the world.”

“Now it is your turn to explain.”

“I am like half the world, thinking I'm in love with Justine Am.”

Justine nodded and Vienna felt the fool. How many times has she heard people say they love her?

“Why would you be in such a questionable state?”

“Because you are beautiful?” She hadn't meant it to sound like a question.

“So I'm told. Why do you find me beautiful?”

At least that was easy. “Symmetry.”

For some reason that made Justine smile. “You lost me.”

“Facial symmetry is the number one indicator of beauty. Followed by youth and clear skin.” She looked over what little she had on the subject. “Though in the last decade, a flat belly has become more important.”

“And here I assumed it was my ass.”

Vienna considered this and decided to risk a less safe answer. “You read too many books by lonely old men.”

That made Justine laugh aloud. “You're a little witch, you know that?”

Vienna couldn't make anything of that, except witches were bad, weren't they? Instead of explaining, Justine asked another question. “There were plenty of beautiful people at Holler that night. You said so yourself. So why me?”

Vienna felt the conversation slipping away. “I don't know,” she whispered. “I don't know anything when you're like this.”

“See? You understand perfectly.”

That made no sense at all except just like that Justine was kissing her, her lips cool and soft. Vienna flinched back. “I don't—”

Justine held her index finger in front of Vienna's lips. Vienna expected her to say something, but Justine remained silent. After a few seconds, she leaned forward again and kissed Vienna a second time. Her teeth soft on Vienna's lower lip. Below growing confusion, Vienna felt a shift of intent. Justine edged closer. It was no longer a friendly kiss. It was insistent and pressing and filled with heavy, hungry tension. Vienna fought rising panic.

Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life.
That was William Golding.

The taboo of the old life.

I'll mess up again.

Justine shifted forward, pushing into Vienna. She felt herself turn to face Justine, as if Justine had her on a string. As if she had no choice but to answer.

To answer …

In an instant, Vienna knew why Grant had died in the bathroom. How his last desperate attempt to stay alive had failed. But there was no way she could stop what was happening.
The lust of the goat is the glory of God.

Justine's hands undoing the back of her dress. Was this how it was supposed to be? She moves and I respond without control? Does this mean something?

“Shh,” Justine whispered, even though Vienna hadn't said anything. “Sometimes you have to let the night breathe.” The dress slipped off Vienna's shoulders. Justine's hand moved across her stomach. “Let me show you something,” she said. Her other hand went behind Vienna. Once again, Vienna's body responded on its own, rising to meet Justine's touch.

Justine's hands moved further, and suddenly Vienna felt exposed.
Should I fight this?
Female lovers in books often did. Maybe it was expected, to prove she wasn't a harlot? Did it make a difference that she was with another female? She felt her muscles pull tight.

Justine pulled away. “Vienna? Do you want this to happen?”

Wasn't it a little late for questions? “Okay,” she said, and that was all wrong. “Yes.” Before she even had a chance to think about it.

“So much for going back to the States,” Justine said. And that was sad and happy at the same time. Justine leaned forward again, her fingers shifted barely at all but it was enough to catch Vienna's breath.

Vienna closed her eyes, felt herself being pushed back. And at least that seemed right. She tried to hear music, because Cecile said she always did, but she couldn't hear anything except the susurration of fabric over skin and her own breathing.

Her clothes piled up at the foot of the bed, where they would get wrinkled. Justine's lips on her stomach. Warm and wet. Stimulus and response. All of her nerves suddenly running down instead of up. Vienna closed her eyes. Justine's lips trailing across her skin.

And that seemed right, too.

Let the night breathe. She repeated it to herself as a gentle mantra. Let the night breathe. And she was in that dark band of violet sky that always appeared between double rainbows. A place of profound quiet and light all around. And it was a little scary because there was so far to fall, but maybe that was how it was supposed to be. Time slipped away in a sensuous trance.

The feeling stayed with her even after movement slowed and ended, fading only as sleep came on. A soft voice there. “What you did was very brave, Vienna.” It sounded somehow like love. “No worrying about tomorrow.” But there was no way to know if it had been a dream or not.

Later, the clock moving through the small hours, Vienna seemed to catch the scent of sun-warmed pine trees. Her first visit to the Cart House, deep in the Austrian forest. The limestone mantel over the entry carved with the image of Nerthus, Mother Goddess of the World. The goddess was standing in a cart pulled by cows, surrounded by the young maidens who would drown when Nerthus returned to her lake. There was a Latin phrase below the carving, written by Tacitus. Uncle Anson said it meant days of celebration and happiness and that the estate should be called Nerthum Something Something but it was fine to call it Cart House, just as Gisella had a century ago. Whoever that was.

Then Vienna was inside the Cart House and there was fog everywhere. Pictures and paintings and diagrams covering the estate's endless hallways. They told her that David Andries, dead on the bathroom floor, had never been the target. It was Justine. And just like that, Justine was in Vienna's bathroom, shot in the face and so much blood streaming across the pure white floor. And Vienna had a pencil and she kept drawing lines around the invading red because lines helped her understand shape but there was so much blood and there was no way to stop it and there were girls in the lake, screaming as the water closed over them, and Vienna screamed too but there was no sound at all.

Vienna's eyes opened. Nothing but the shallow rasp of her own breathing. She reached back, her hand brushing low across Justine's side.
She's still here.
Vienna rolled to face her. In the clock's dim light, she watched Justine breathing. No sinister forest. Only the fading urgency of a nightmare.

It wasn't even a proper nightmare. It wasn't about how Vienna couldn't talk to people the right way or how the world made her sick. This dream had been about Justine.

Justine, who misquoted Shakespeare. Vienna closed her eyes.
William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564 …

Othello to Desdemona: “‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed and I loved her that she did not pity them.'”

It all has to fit together.
Vienna's fingers clinched tight around her pillow. It was impossible because even before they had sex, Justine had already done a million things differently than anyone else. Most of them wrong.

“‘I loved her that she did not pity…'” Vienna moved the words around, looking for a safe place to put them. She was still looking when sleep caught her again.

Vienna awoke at five. Justine was sprawled across the bed, her lips slightly parted in sleep. It took some effort to slide off without waking her. Off to the bathroom to take care of the morning. She took a long shower, not having any place to go. Nothing to think about except what had happened last night.
Did I do better? Does she hate me now? Am I a whore? Will we ever do that again?
Was making love supposed to make you anxious?

Thirty minutes in front of the mirror to get her hair looking right. At least that solved the mystery of why it took Justine so long to get ready every morning. Having only her old clothes and the new ones Justine bought, she slipped into her old ones, banging her arm painfully on the side of the sink when Justine's BlackBerry startled her with some internal alarm.

Justine was quickly there, shutting it off. “I have to work out, hun. Can you wait for breakfast?”