Perfect Strangers

The taxi driver thinks I’m a lunatic. I know because he shouts after me, “You lunatic!” as I claw my way out of his cab, flinging money over my shoulder and panting like a Labrador.

In and of itself, that little display of mental instability probably wouldn’t have been quite so upsetting to him. But taken together with the way I hurled myself into the cab and screamed at him to Go go go! while pounding on the plastic divider between the front and back seats, then dove onto the floor and curled up there, babbling to myself as I hid underneath the safety of my suitcase, it was a bit too much.

I don’t have a clue where he’s dropped me.

It doesn’t matter, however, because what I need is only half a block away. The cheerful sign of a hotel beckons me from the side of a tall brick building, promising safety and anonymity.

And a minibar. Arguably the most important of the three.

I hustle up the street, dragging my suitcase behind me, sweating and swearing and out of my mind with panic. At the front desk, a bearded young man with a tranquil smile greets me. His name tag reveals him to be Christoph, which I take as an ominous sign, but at least it doesn’t say James.

I’m not particularly superstitious, but there’s a limit to what I can handle.

I shout, “I need a room! Whatever’s available!”

“How many nights, madame?” He waits, hands poised over his keyboard.

Clutching the counter, I wheeze and gasp. “At least one. I’m not sure. Can I tell you later?”

He looks me up and down, his tranquil smile never faltering. Like Jean-Luc at Café Blanc, he probably thinks Americans are insane. “Certainment. Your credit card, please?”

I scrabble around in my handbag for my wallet, fumble through it with shaking fingers, then toss my Amex his way. It slides off the counter and onto his keyboard. He picks it up delicately with his index finger and thumb, as if maybe it’s swimming with germs.

Why would James have so many guns? My brain flashes a set of wolfish teeth. The better to shoot you with, my dear.

“Ms. Olivia Rossi,” Christoph reads from my card. “Welcome to the Saint Germaine. Any preferences on the type of room? Bed size? View?”

“No, no.” I glance nervously over my shoulder. “Whatever’s fastest.”

His typing is quick and precise. He consults his computer screen. “I have a lovely room on the fourth floor, madame. King bed with a fireplace, overlooking—”

“I’ll take it!”

He pauses to glance at me. In a lowered voice, he gently inquires, “Ms. Rossi…is everything all right?”

Oh God. Don’t get thrown out. Act normal. Pushing my hair off my face and clearing my throat, I try my best to appear like a civilized human being and not a woman fleeing the devil.

“Actually, no. My boyfriend…” I glance with genuine fear at the door. “We had a fight. I don’t want him to know where I am.”

“Say no more,” Christoph says briskly, puffing out his chest. “I will check you in under a different name, madame.” His typing is even faster now, bless him. He hits the Enter key with a flourish, then leans over the counter to whisper, “You are in room 402, Madame Pollitt.”

“Pollitt. Thank you.”

He informs me conspiratorially, “Maggie Pollit was the name of the character Elizabeth Taylor played in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Have you seen the film?”

“No.”

“Best American film ever made. Of course, American movies do not have the same quality as French cinema, but that particular movie was perfect. And you, madame, bear a striking resemblance to its star.”

Despite my panic, I have to laugh. I look like Elizabeth Taylor? Clearly, he’s been drinking.

He insists, “It’s true. No one has ever said this to you?” He waves a hand at my face. “It’s the eyes. That incredible color—violet, que c’est belle! Haunting, one could say.”

If I never hear that word for the rest of my life, it will be too soon.

I thank him weakly for the compliment. He beams at me, then turns to get a room key from a small cabinet hanging on the wall behind him. I sign the paper he offers me, take the key, then lurch away toward the elevators.

When the mirrored doors slide shut and I see my reflection, I’m surprised the nice front desk man didn’t call the police. I look like I’ve just broken out of prison.

The room is well appointed with elegant furniture and is much larger than I expected. I suppose I should’ve asked the price, but when one is dealing with the discovery that her ex-husband has kidnappers on his payroll and her lover has a stockpile of weapons in his apartment that could rival that of a small country’s, commonplace things like money don’t seem quite so important.

Maybe I’ll send Chris the bill.

Leaving my suitcase inside the entryway, I throw my purse onto the bed, then yank the curtains shut over the windows. I could care less about the gorgeous view of the Eiffel Tower right now, and the suspicion that somehow James will discover where I am has lit a paranoia fire under my ass.NôvelDrama.Org content rights.

I raid the minibar under the TV cabinet and gulp down three tiny bottles of whiskey before drawing a breath. Then I sit on the edge of the bed and look around, wondering what the hell I’m going to do.

The obvious thing is hightail it back to New York. But waiting for me there is Chris’s invisible surveillance team. The thought that I’ve been being watched for—how long?—makes me queasy. And, frankly, furious. Not only about the invasion of privacy, but also about everything I don’t know that made Chris think a secret security detail was necessary in the first place.

“I have enemies,” he said. Powerful enemies. Ruthless ones.

Enemies that might use me to get to him.

I reach for the phone on the bedside table to call Kelly for advice, but stop. If Chris had me under surveillance, might he have had her under surveillance, too? And what exactly does “surveillance” mean, anyway? People peering at me through binoculars? Listening to me through devices planted in my house?

Tapping my phone?

I feel sick to my stomach.

It’s then that I remember James’s unhackable phone in my back pocket. I pull it out and stare at its blank black face. “James Blackwood,” I whisper. “Who are you?”

In a flat, computerized voice, the phone responds. “James Blackwood is an American-born artist specializing in portraiture.”

I scream and hurl the phone across the room.

It lands on the carpet next to the door and lies there, smirking at me.

After a moment when I get the pandemonium in my body under control, I move warily toward the phone and pick it up again. Curse my damn overactive imagination, because I could swear the thing has a pulse that’s beating against my palm.

I say to it, “Sure he is.”

The blasted thing stays silent. Time for a different approach. “Who is Sir Elton John?”

The phone immediately provides me with the Wikipedia entry for the musician, including details about his birth, education, early career, and awards and accolades.

Okay, so it’s got some advanced version of Siri onboard. Let’s take this thing for a spin. “Show me a picture of James Blackwood.”

The screen lights up. Photographs begin to fly past at warp speed. Young men, old men, babies, graduation photos, driver’s licenses, birth announcements, obituaries, and finally a Wanted poster circa 1832 featuring a grinning, gap-toothed cowboy with a huge handlebar moustache.

This phone is a fucking smartass.

“Show me a picture of James Blackwood the American-born artist specializing in portraiture.”

The screen goes dark. After a brief pause, the electronic voice speaks again. “No known photographs of James Blackwood the American-born artist specializing in portraiture exist.”

The plot thickens.

“What’s your name?”

“I am James Blackwood’s phone.”

“Hello, James Blackwood’s phone. I’m Olivia.”

“Greetings, Olivia.”

I can’t believe I’m having this conversation, but as my life is utterly insane lately, I’m going with it. “Phone, who is your manufacturer?” James said he had a friend who made it for the government, but I’m not inclined to believe a word from him anymore.

But the phone is playing coy. “That information is classified.”

Shit. Not only is this thing a smartass, it’s smart. “Is there anything you can tell me about yourself?”

“I am an Aquarius.”

“Funny.”

“And you are a Scorpio.”

My breath catches. My heartbeat kicks up a notch. I have to swallow before I can speak. “How do you know that?”

“Your birthday is October twenty-seventh.”

I try not to lose my shit. After all, I’ve got a Wikipedia page of my own. If this thing has some glorified version of Google in its operating system, it knows all about me.

But wait—I only told it my first name. There must be a million Olivias in the world. Ten million. More.

Gooseflesh rises on my arms. I whisper, “How do you know who I am?”

“Your voice matches the sample from the data file James Blackwood requested on 9 July, 2019 at 15:12.”

July ninth was the day I met James at Café Blanc.

As for the time, 15:12 is military parlance for twelve minutes after three in the afternoon. I don’t know what time it was when I first spotted him. Did he request the data file after I left the café…or before?

Oh God. Did he already know about me before I arrived? Did he know my face? Was he waiting for me?

Was he sent for me?

Is that the reason he owns all those guns?

My mind starts to fray around the edges like a piece of fabric unraveling. A fragile thread unwinding quickly from a spool. “What else is in the data file?”

I sit and listen in growing shock as the phone recites a detailed biography of me, including things not found on my Wikipedia page. Birth place, town where I grew up, parents’ names, siblings’ names, education, occupation, novel titles and dates of publication, hobbies, volunteer work, favorite foods, known allergies, list of current medications, marriage and divorce dates, and dozens of other specifics.

Last but not least—children.

“Emerson Luna Ridgewell, only child, born September ten, 2012. Deceased April eight, 2017. Cause of death: catastrophic injury to the heart from penetrating gunshot wound suffered at an outdoor political rally in Washington DC organized by her father, then a congressman from New York. Shots were fired into the crowd from a speeding vehicle, striking Emerson, the lone victim.”

The electronic voice pauses for a beat. “Congressman Ridgewell was the assassin’s intended target.”

My breath whooshes out of my lungs as if I’ve been kicked in the gut.

I drop the phone in horror and clap my hands over my mouth, backing up until I bump into the wall. I stand there shaking until my knees give out, then I slide to the floor, blind and deaf to everything, drowning in terrible memories.

The most recent of which is from only hours ago when Chris was sobbing in the restroom at the café and telling me the bullet that killed our daughter was meant for someone else.

I think this phone and my ex-husband both know it was meant for him.

Here’s another one plus one equals two moment: James also knows.

And if James and Chris have met before, as I suspected, not a single thing either one of them has told me is true.

I’m still sitting against the wall deep in shock sometime later when James bursts through the hotel room door.