Compact with the Devil: A Novel Read online

  “I’m not supposed to drink. I can still go out. That’s what we talked about at my meeting last night.” He stopped, tugging on her arm until she stopped also. He checked his watch, fumbling to get his mittened hands under the layers of windbreaker and sweater. “But really, it’s not even noon, and I think that’s Paris time.”

  “So? It’s got to be getting-drunk time somewhere.” Nikki brushed angrily past him.

  “Using alcohol to cope with emotional issues is one of the signs of addiction.”

  “I’m having a bad day, OK? I don’t think I’d be any fun. You want someone who would be fun.”

  Kit leaned closer, scrutinizing her face. “Have you been crying?” he demanded.

  “No!” exclaimed Nikki, blushing and wiping at her cheeks.

  “Yes, you have. What happened?”

  “Nothing,” answered Nikki, avoiding eye contact.

  “Was someone being mean to you? It was Brandt or one of his bastards, wasn’t it?” He waved a hand back toward the hotel. “’Cause I’ll fire them like that.” And he tried to snap in his mittens, but it didn’t work. Nikki laughed a little.

  “No, it wasn’t them. It was my boyfriend. My ex-boyfriend.” His head tilted to the side inquisitively, and Nikki gave in. She had to tell someone.

  “We were supposed to spend Christmas vacation together in Mexico, but he called at the last minute and canceled—again. And I got mad and I kind of broke up with him and he didn’t call back and so I came here, but now, one of my … coworkers gave me this …” Nikki pulled out the picture of Z’ev and Nina.

  “She’s hot,” he said.

  “She’s not me,” said Nikki, glaring at him.

  “But that’s him?” he asked. Nikki nodded and wiped at her face again. “I guess now we know why he canceled.”

  Nikki opened her mouth to excuse Z’ev, to explain that he was working, but stopped. What was she going to say? Z’ev had betrayed her secret and canceled their vacation to go make out, and probably more than that, with Nina Alvarez.

  “So you were serious about the getting-really-drunk thing?” he asked. She nodded. “You don’t want to do that,” he said.

  “Yes, I do,” said Nikki with a sniff.

  “No, you want to do that later. Right now, you want to see the sights of Paris with me.”

  “I won’t be any fun,” said Nikki halfheartedly.

  “No, it’ll be good,” he said, squinting into the distance and nodding as if he could see the future. Nikki shook her head, but she could feel herself giving in.

  “Come on,” he said with his impish grin. “You said I needed backup; sounds like you could use some too. We’ll back each other up.”

  “Yeah?” she asked. “Like partners?”

  “Good cop, bad cop,” he answered.

  “OK,” said Nikki, and they started to walk away from the hotel.

  “I get to be the bad cop,” they said at the same time, and laughed.

  “We’re going to have an absolutely brilliant time,” he said, tucking his arm through hers and then back into his pocket. “I can tell.”

  They strolled arm in arm down the Champs-Elysées, past the Louis Vuitton store, past the Virgin Megastore, past the movie theater, and toward the enormous circle of the Ferris wheel that marked the entrance of the Tuileries, the gardens outside the Louvre. Around them tourists of all kinds marched with wondering eyes or irritation according to their disposition. Kit kept his hat down and his collar up, pulling it down only to point out a particularly remarkable specimen of tourist.

  “I think this is where they light off fireworks at New Year’s,” said Kit, gazing up at the Ferris wheel.

  “Really? I would have thought that they would do it from the Eiffel Tower.”

  “I think that’s for Bastille Day. This is what they’d show on the TV when I was a kid. The Ferris wheel and the Arc in the background.” He turned around, walking backward and holding up his hands to make a square screen. “Yeah, this is it. This is where the party is. Too bad we won’t be here.”

  “I guess so,” answered Nikki, realizing that another holiday was creeping up on her. She felt a moment of panic. It couldn’t be New Year’s yet. She wasn’t ready! She hadn’t even had Christmas!

  “You know where I want to go?” asked Kit as they entered the gardens, dodging past the Africans wanting donations and a signature for one cause or another—usually the cause was their pocket.

  “I’m not sure we should be going anywhere really,” said Nikki, having doubts about her impulsive escape from the hotel.

  Kit’s face immediately formed a pout. “I’ve been to Paris four times and I never get to do anything.”

  Nikki looked at him and reconsidered her position. If the bad guys didn’t know where they were going, then no one else would either. It was safety, of a sort.

  “Well, what’s on your list?” she asked cautiously.

  “I want to ride on the bat-boats.”

  “The what?”

  “The bato-thingies?”

  “The Batobus?”

  “The boats with the clear roofs, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, I want to ride on one of those. They’re in all the movies. And then I want to see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.”

  “I think those will probably have really long lines.”

  “Oh.” Kit’s face fell.

  “But we can get off at the Eiffel Tower on the Batobus and see it from the ground.”

  “That’ll have to do!” said Kit, bounding back. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

  “Let’s get hot dogs then,” said Nikki, pointing to an octagonal hut tucked among the expanse of paths.

  “Where are we?” asked Kit, looking around.

  “The Tuileries,” said Nikki, leading the way toward the hot dog stand. “That’s the Louvre over there.”

  “I suppose the lines will be long for the Louvre too.”

  “Definitely. No Mona Lisa for you today.”

  They threw themselves in line for hot dogs, and twenty minutes later they were carrying their meal toward the river.

  “This is not a hot dog,” said Kit as they walked across the bridge and down to the quay for the Batobus.

  “No, it’s better,” said Nikki, biting into the cheese-covered French bread that contained two hot dogs. The cheese had melted across the top to form a light brown crust.

  The Batobus pulled to a smooth stop, and they bought a half-circuit pass, taking them down to the Eiffel Tower. The other passengers looked up in mild curiosity as they entered and Kit nervously pulled his cap lower on his face and turned up the collar on his windbreaker. But no one commented or noticed that a pop superstar was among them.

  They rode in silence for a while, admiring the towering skyline and the bridges that crossed the Seine.

  “I ought to remember more,” she said, thinking out loud.

  “Hmm?” answered Kit.

  “I was here in high school. I ought to remember more about Paris, but all I get is a vague feeling of familiarity.”

  Kit gave a short laugh. “I feel that way about almost every city I’ve ever toured in.”

  They fell back into silence, each contemplating their own miseries. Nikki’s thoughts inevitably turned to Z’ev. She’d known, hadn’t she? That it would all end in disaster. That he hadn’t really wanted to be with someone like her in the first place.

  “You ever go to a house party and go looking for a friend, but every time you go into a room everyone says, ‘Oh, you just missed him,’ and you’re stuck wandering around all night looking for him like an idiot?” asked Kit suddenly.

  “That sounds like every house party I ever went to,” said Nikki. “I would have thought you would have had more luck than I did.”

  “No, I’d usually go get high in the bathroom and save myself the embarrassment,” said Kit. “You weren’t the popular girl?”

  “Bottom tier of popular,” said Nikki. “On t
he cheerleading squad, but not the captain. Frankly, I always felt like a fraud.” Kit laughed. “But at the same time, I always felt like one of the problems with Z’ev and me was that I was too much of a popular girl, you know?”

  “Well,” said Kit, “he’s an idiot. Anyway, his loss is my gain. But my point was … I had a point.” He paused, brow furrowing.

  “Losing people in a house party,” said Nikki.

  “Right!” he exclaimed. “That’s how I feel about Christmas this year. I keep wandering in and people are all, ‘Oh yeah, it was great, should have been here.’”

  “I know what you mean. I was on a plane for Christmas, and now I feel like everywhere I go, I’ve just missed it, and if I could just get to the next place fast enough I could catch up,” said Nikki, eyeing a sparkling red JOYEUX NOËL banner hanging from a building.

  “Only it’s worse than that!” he exclaimed. “It’s like walking into a room and everyone not only says that you just missed him, they all have great pics of the fun they had without you.”

  “Yeah! That’s it. I never thought I was that into Christmas, but I really am missing it this year. Even though I was going to miss it anyway,” she said sadly. “I was going to be in Mexico with Z’ev.”

  “It’s one thing to miss things because you planned on it, but another thing altogether to have things taken from you.”

  “I suppose. But you know, even if I was home I think I’d still be missing something. Is it possible to miss something you’ve never had?”

  “Definitely,” said Kit, nodding. “I miss my brain constantly. No, seriously”—he continued around Nikki’s laugh—“I miss having parents. I mean, my mom loves me and all, but she isn’t exactly June Cleaver and mostly I grew up with Nan anyway. I remember once I went over to a friend’s house when I was about eleven, and his mom was running around getting dinner ready, his sister was making a mess, the dog was barking, and I actually got light-headed I was so jealous. It was nothing but everyday life and I wanted it so bad. I appreciate my family and everything, but it’s not the same.”

  “My parents split up when I was pretty young. I used to wear these really short skirts over to my friend Tanya’s house because her dad would always yell at me to go put some clothes on. He wouldn’t let us out of the house until I borrowed a pair of Tanya’s pants.”

  “How insane is it that we would want to be yelled at?”

  “If they’re yelling at least you know they care.”

  “Does that mean you care about me?”

  “Oh, come on,” said Nikki, feeling suddenly embarrassed by her outburst on the bus.

  “No, I’m serious. I can’t always tell how people feel about me.”

  “What are you talking about? You’ve got girls screaming your name. You know everyone loves you.”

  “Mmm, no. They love Kit Masters, the product. And a product is something you can leave on the shelf. I can count the number of people who care about Christopher Masters on one hand.”

  “All right, do it,” said Nikki, challenging him.

  “Nan, Mom, Trista, and Brandt.”

  “What about Duncan?”

  Kit cocked his head thoughtfully. “Yes, you’re right. Duncan has done a few things that went beyond a paycheck.”

  “Beyond a paycheck? That man loves you.”

  “Duncan?” Kit blushed. “Nah, he’s a real tough guy. It’s his job to look after me and he takes his job seriously. That’s all.”

  Nikki laughed. “You have been out in the spotlight too long.”

  The Eiffel Tower loomed into view, like the corpse of a giant iron praying mantis. Its four latticework legs clamped into the cement, and the body was swarmed by hungry worshipful ants. They walked off the bus and tilted their heads back and then farther back as they tried to take in the entire structure. Climbing the stairs, they crossed the street and looked at the line snaking in S-curves across the expanse of cement beneath the tower.

  “Kit Masters could get to the front of that line,” he said thoughtfully.

  “If he wasn’t trampled to death by hundreds of screaming teenagers first.”

  “Mmm,” said Kit. “Besides, Kit Masters is too cool to come to a place like this. He’s probably holed up in some posh hotel snorting coke off a high-priced hooker’s midriff.”

  “I think that was more information than I wanted to know,” said Nikki as they ventured into the throng. There was an uncomfortable silence between them.

  “I’ve never been with a hooker!” burst out Kit, drawing a strange look from a passerby. “No, really.” He reaffirmed it in answer to Nikki’s raised eyebrow. “I mean yeah, I’ve done the thing with the coke, but I never had to pay a woman to sleep with me.”

  “I believe you,” said Nikki, and he blew out a gusty sigh of relief.

  “I forget not everyone knows when I’m joking.”

  “Well, when you’re not joking about the coke, how am I supposed to know you’re joking about the hookers?”

  “I … I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t think you’d think I was the kind of person to use a hooker.”

  “You’re a rock star!” said Nikki.

  “No, I’m me. We’ve been talking about this in my meetings. We all get caught up in what we are. Our label. Sometimes it’s our job or what are friends tell us we are, sometimes it’s our addiction. I guess I’m probably more susceptible to it than most people since I get to see everyone else’s opinion of me printed in a newspaper, but mostly we do it to ourselves. We put ourselves in this little box. At first the box is comfortable, but after a while …”

  “After a while you feel stuck.”

  “Right! And it starts to crush you.”

  “How do you get out of the box?” asked Nikki quietly.

  “One inch at a time, I think,” he answered. “I tried other substances, but apparently they don’t work.” He winked and Nikki smiled. “It’s funny, though, the more you try to get out, the more you realize you’re out already. We never fit entirely into one thing.”

  “We just get used to thinking of ourselves that way,” murmured Nikki.

  “Yeah,” said Kit, and then stopped to look around. “Wow!” he said, turning back to look at the Eiffel Tower. It spiraled up toward the winter sky above the crisp carpet of bright green grass. He took a slim digital camera out of his pocket and snapped a photo. “Here, let’s take one of you!”

  Nikki posed and then returned the favor, then made him squat a little and put up his hands so it looked like he was wearing the Eiffel Tower as a hat for the next picture.

  “Oi! Excuse us!” said Kit, interrupting a pair of middle-aged German tourists, plump around the middle and friendly in the face. “Can you take our picture?” He was practicing his American accent, but after starting with “oi” Nikki couldn’t believe anyone would buy it.

  “Do you know, you look very much like the English pop star Kit Masters?” asked the German man as he handed back the camera. Kit and Nikki exchanged glances.

  “Y’all keep sayin’ that,” responded Nikki. “We’ve never heard of this Masters fella.”

  “He is a singer here,” said the woman cheerfully. “Very famous! All the girls love him!”

  “Well, I guess I’ll have ta make sure no one tries ta steal my guy,” answered Nikki, taking a possessive hold of Kit’s hand.

  “Thanks for the photo,” said Kit.

  “Ja,” said the woman, and waved cheerfully as they walked off.

  “I can’t believe they bought that,” said Nikki, pulling Kit toward Les Invalides and Napoleon’s Tomb. The museums were at the end of a long expanse of grass down from the Eiffel Tower and worth a look, if Nikki remembered correctly.

  “You know, I know the clouds have kind of come up, but I keep thinking the sun’s shining over there.” He pointed to the golden dome atop Les Invalides. It radiated the kind of glow usually reserved for movie special effects.

  “Sometimes it just seems like a sunny day,” said Nikki. “Eve
n when it’s not.”

  PARIS VI

  Le Gator

  “No, wait, wait. You girls stay up here,” Kit commanded the three giggling teenagers. Nikki couldn’t imagine why; they had just butchered “Brand New Key.” Their Tears for Fears had been OK, but Nikki decided that the French should not be allowed to sing American seventies kitsch.

  “I’m going to need some backup singers,” Kit explained, rushing around the stage to set up an extra mic for the girls. “All right,” he said, standing in front of his own mic. He hitched up his jeans in an embarrassed gesture that still managed to look sexy. “This next song”—he was still pushing the American accent—“is for my friend Nikki. The very drunk redhead out there.”

  “Whoo-hoo!” yelled Nikki, throwing her hands up. The crowd of bar patrons cheered too, but whether it was for her or for Kit or for drunk redheads in general, Nikki couldn’t tell.

  “Nikki recently caught her boyfriend having a public snog”—the accent was slipping—“with a South American heiress.”

  The crowd booed, and Nikki joined in wholeheartedly.

  “No, actually,” said Kit with a serious expression, “it works out well for me ’cause I want into her pants and the only way I stand a chance is if she’s drunk.” The crowd laughed, and Kit laughed back.

  “But seriously,” said Kit, the Sinatra accent back in full force as he grabbed the mic stand and leaned it way down like one of the old-time crooners, “Nikki, this song’s for you.” He snapped his fingers at the DJ, who launched the music for Aretha’s “Respect.” The bar roared its approval; Kit had them eating out of his hand. Awed, Nikki realized that being a rock star wasn’t about getting paid to sing before thousands. It was this, the ability to take a room full of people and make them into an audience—into one single voice, a single mind. She felt that she should have known this, but like everything else they had done that day, it was surprising.

  They had skipped Napoleon’s Tomb, with the myriad families and children that were too close to Kit’s demographic, and found the Rodin Museum. The quiet museum house and gardens had proved the perfect distraction and Kit had spent an entirely blissful few hours contorting himself to match the poses of the statuary. Nikki snapped pictures and laughed till her sides hurt. Kit had demanded Notre Dame next, fans be hanged.