barely able to breathe. He moved away. She slid down along the door and sat on the floor, where she curled her body over her bent knees. She stayed like that, listening to the pounding of her own heart until the deepest hours of the night.
The key turned soundlessly in the lock as she let herself into the museum. She set down her shoulder bag and flicked on the panel of lights. Her palms were sweating, and she rubbed them on her jeans while she walked toward the small tool room at the back.
Everything was scrupulously neat, just as he was. She remembered the feel of his hands when they’d touched her breasts, and she crossed her arms over her chest. She forced herself to concentrate on the rows of tools. Finally she found what she wanted. She lifted it off the narrow shelf and tested its weight in her hands. Belinda was wrong. The rules were the same for everyone. If people didn’t follow the rules, they lost their humanity.
She closed the door and walked across the museum to the Royale. The ceiling lights shone like tiny stars in the gleaming black finish. The car had been cherished. Alexi had wrapped it in canvas and straw so no harm would come to it.
She lifted the crowbar high above her head and brought it down on the shiny black hood. The jaws of the beast snapped shut.
Chapter 16
She’d destroyed the Royale, systematically smashing the hood and the windshield, grille and lights, beating in the fenders and the sides. Then she’d attacked the heart of the car, Ettore Bugatti’s peerless engine. The thick stone walls of the museum had held in the noise, and no one tried to stop her as she put an end to Alexi’s dream.
The old couple already occupying the compartment regarded her suspiciously. She should have cleaned herself up first so she wasn’t so conspicuous. She turned to stare out the window. There was blood on her face, and the cut on her cheek from the flying glass stung. It was only a small cut, but she should clean it so it didn’t get infected and leave a scar.
She envisioned her face with a little scar on her cheek. And then she imagined the scar beginning at her hairline, cutting a diagonal across her forehead, and thickening to bisect one eyebrow. It would pucker her eyelid and cut down over her cheek to her jaw. That would just about do it, she thought. A scar like that would keep her safe for the rest of her life.
Just before the train pulled out of the station, two young women came into the compartment carrying a supply of American magazines. Fleur watched their reflections in the window as they settled into their seats and began studying the other occupants in typical tourist fashion. It seemed as if weeks had passed since she’d slept, and she was so tired she felt light-headed. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the rhythm of the train. As she drifted into an uneasy sleep, she heard the echo of smashing metal and the crunch of broken glass.
The American girls were talking about her when she woke up. “It has to be her,” one of them whispered. “Ignore her hair. Look at those eyebrows.”
Where was the scar? Where was that pretty white scar cutting her eyebrow in half?
“Don’t be silly.” the other girl whispered. “What would Fleur Savagar be doing traveling by herself? Besides, I read that she’s in California making a movie.”
Panic beat inside her like the pounding of a crowbar. She’d been recognized a hundred times before and this was no different, but being connected with the Glitter Baby made her feel sick. Slowly she opened her eyes.
The girls were looking at a magazine. Fleur could just make out the page in the window’s reflection, a sportswear ad she’d done for Armani. Her hair flew in every direction from beneath the brim of a big, floppy hat.
The girl directly across from her finally picked up the magazine and leaned forward. “Excuse me,” she said. “Has anybody ever said that you look exactly like Fleur Savagar, the model?”
She stared back at them.
“She doesn’t speak English,” the girl finally said.
Her companion flipped the magazine closed. “I told you it wasn’t her.”
They reached Nimes, and Fleur found a room in an inexpensive hotel near the railroad station. As she lay in bed that night, the numbness inside her finally broke apart. She began to cry, racking sobs of loneliness and betrayal and awful, boundless despair. She had nothing left. Belinda’s love had been a lie, and Alexi had soiled her forever. Then there was Jake…The three of them together had raped her soul.
People survive by their ability to make judgments, yet every judgment she’d made was wrong.
“I am sorry, mademoiselle, but this account has been closed.” Fleur’s Gold Card disappeared, tucked like a magician’s trick into the palm of the clerk’s hand.
Panic gripped her. She needed money. With money, she could hide someplace where she’d be safe from Alexi and where no one would recognize her, someplace where Fleur Savagar could cease to exist. But that wasn’t possible now. As she hurried through the streets of Nimes, she tried to shake off the feeling that Alexi was watching her. She saw him in the doorways, in the reflections of store windows, in the faces passing her in the street. She fled back to the train station.
When Alexi saw the wreckage of the Royale, he felt his own mortality for the first time. It took the form of a slight paralysis in his right side that lasted nearly two days. He closed himself in his room and saw no one.
All day, he lay in bed, holding a handkerchief in his left hand. Sometimes he stared at his reflection in the mirror.
The right side of his face sagged.
It was almost imperceptible, except for the mouth. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t control the trickle of saliva that seeped from the corner. Each time he lifted his handkerchief to wipe it away, he knew that the mouth was what he would never forgive.
The paralysis gradually faded, and when he could control his mouth, he called in the doctors. They said it was a small stroke. A warning. They ordered him to cut back on his schedule, stop smoking, watch his diet. They mentioned hypertension. Alexi listened patiently and then dismissed them.
He put his collection of automobiles up for sale at the beginning of December. The auction attracted buyers from all over the world. He was advised to stay away, but he wanted to watch. As each car went on the block, he studied the faces of the buyers, printed their expressions in his mind so he would always remember.
After the auction was over, he had the museum dismantled, stone by stone.
Fleur sat at a battered table in the back of a student cafe in Grenoble and stuffed every cloying bite of her second pastry into her mouth until nothing was left. For nearly a year and a half, food had provided her only sense of security. As her jeans had grown tighter and she’d been able to pinch that first definitive fold of fat at the base of her ribs, the thick fog of numbness had lifted long enough for her to feel a brief sense of accomplishment. The Glitter Baby had disappeared.
She imagined Belinda’s expression if she could see her precious daughter now. Twenty-one years old, overweight, with cropped hair, and cheap, ugly clothes. And Alexi…She could hear his contempt tucked away inside some honeyed endearment like a piece of candy with a tainted center.
She counted out her money carefully and left the cafe, pulling the collar of her man’s parka tighter around her neck. It was February, and the dark, icy sidewalk still held remnants of that morning’s snow. She tugged her wool hat further down over her head, more to protect herself from the cold than from fear that anyone would recognize her. That hadn’t happened in nearly a year.
A line had already begun to form at the cinema, and as she took her place at the end, a group of American exchange students fell in behind her. The flat sounds of their accents grated on her ears. She couldn’t remember
