“Will she?” he asks nervously.
“Just go,” I say, taking out a roll of black trash bags. I promise you, I’ll be done in no time. Half an hour tops.”
He frowns. “Are you sure? It’s so late.”
I grin at him. “I usually leave here in the early hours of the morning.”
“Do you?”
“Yup.”
“All right, if you’re sure.”
Once he’s gone I bag all the rubbish and wash all the wine glasses. Leaving them overnight only makes the red wine dry and much harder to clean. Then I lock up and go out back. I notice immediately that I have a flat tire.
“Oh damn,” I mutter, crouching next to it.
I consider calling a taxi, then decide to just walk back. It is a beautiful night, and will just take me an extra twenty or so minutes to get home. I start off down the road. Ten minutes later it starts to rain. I run to the bus stop with the intention of waiting the downpour out, but even before I can sit down a long black car with tinted windows comes to a stop next to me.
I have never seen a car like that in town before. The window of the back seat rolls down and the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life smiles at me. Her eyes are ocean-blue, her skin is pale, and her hair is platinum blonde, but I am certain the color is not from a bottle. She is mesmerizingly beautiful, almost angelic, but I am afraid of her. I glance around me. The street is completely deserted.
“Do you need a lift?” she asks, her voice silky and hypnotic.
Every cell in my body screams at me to beware. I take an instinctive step backwards. “I’m fine, thank you.” Even my voice sounds shrill and panicked.
“Well, at least have an umbrella, then,” she says, and holds out an umbrella in her outstretched hand.
“Thanks, but I’ll just wait the rain out,” I reply warily.
“Go on, take it. I promise, I won’t bite.” She laughs, a tinkling, sweet sound. When she laughs she is even more beautiful.
I stare at her. Something about her flawless beauty reminds me of Rocco, but where he attracts me, hers has a strange deadly quality that repels.
“Go on,” she coaxes softly, her beautiful lips hardly moving.
As if I have been hypnotized, my hand, against my will, reaches out for the umbrella.
“Good night,” she murmurs, once the umbrella is in my grasp.
The electric window rises up smoothly, and the car pulls away, but the encounter is so bizarre for a few seconds I am frozen and staring at the empty spot where the car and the woman had been. Then, as if released from the grip of invisible hands, I find I can move again. I shake my head as if to dislodge the fog in it, unfurl the umbrella, and start walking home. The raindrops fall on the umbrella in a relentless staccato beat.
But my heart is racing even faster. I feel fear, but I do not know why.
Chapter 17
Autumn
I have strange dreams of running and being chased, but they are confused and jumbled and I wake up with a sense of dread. And then I remember, today is the day I paint Rocco and suddenly my body becomes alive with a strange excitement.
The day passes with incredible slowness. During my lunch break I get my bicycle tire replaced then it’s back to more hours that never seem to pass. Finally, Larry goes home and thirty minutes later I start to close the store. As I come out of the backroom holding my knapsack full of my painting gear and a prepared canvas, the rusty doorbells chime.
A man in a dark suit wearing a hat comes in. I know instantly he is Raoul. He has swarthy skin, dark eyes, and the look of a loyal servant.
“Miss Delaney?” he says, bowing his head courteously.
I never told Rocco my last name, but I suppose he could have asked Larry. “Yes, that’s me.”
He gives an old-fashioned bow. “I’m Raoul. Are you ready to leave?”
For a split second, it feels as if I am standing at a crossroad. Making an important decision that will alter my life forever, but then the feeling passes and I say, “Yeah, I’m ready.”
He offers to carry my knapsack for me, but I tell him it is not heavy. Instead he picks up the easel that I had already brought into the showroom. He drops into silence as he waits for me to lock up. We get into a grey and yellow mini, and old French songs stream out of the music system. It’s not my thing, obviously, but it’s not exactly unpleasant either. In fact, it kind of suits the man and his lost-in-time vibe.
Soon we leave the town. As every sign of human habitation begins to fade we start on the winding road up the mountain. I look around me curiously. The road is dangerously narrow and full of loose stones. Sometimes it feels as if we are an inch away from falling right off the road and careening down the mountain, but Raoul is an excellent driver, and after a while I start to relax and notice that the higher we climb the more beautiful the scenery becomes.