“Tío,” the girl said, moving towards the man from earlier. “Tío, este hombre me está asustando.”
Spanish,Tom thought hurriedly. She was speaking in Spanish. The man looked up from Tom’s phone sharply, quickly taking the girl’s hand and pulling her to him.
“Qué te pasa, Sunshine?Te está molestando?”
“Si. Está preguntando por mamá. Aprendimos sobre el peligro de los extraños en la escuela. Es un extraño y percibo el peligro.”
The man shot Tom a filthy look. “Look, I’m glad you’re helping us out, but you’re scaring my girl here. Keep your distance, hey?”
“I just want to know about her mom, okay? Look, the two of you...” Tom shook his head. “You both seem really familiar to me. If I could just know about her mom, then I...”
“Then what? I told you, I’m a little bit famous. You’ve seen me in a magazine or something.”
“Yeah, fine,” Tom snapped. “But I recognise your niece too. Something about her eyes and face and the way she talks and—”
Tom stopped, as realisation dawned on him. His mouth gaped open, and his heart seemed to stop within his chest.
“Oh my God,” he breathed out. “Oh my God.”
The girl was looking up at him from the safe confines of her uncle’s arms, and Tom stared back at her. Suddenly, he knew exactly where he’d seen her eyes before — those brown eyes flecked with gold.
It had been in every mirror he’d ever looked at.
They were his eyes, he suddenly realised. This girl had his eyes.
Chapter 9: Sperm Jackpot
She tries not to let it bother her that she knows so little about him. Tries not to let it show how worried she is that he shares so little of himself with her. Tries not to fret that after weeks and weeks of travelling, living and sleeping with this man, he’s still nothing more than a closed book to her.
It’s not that she feels unloved. With Tom, she feels anything but that. His love for her is written into the touch of his hand, into the press of his kisses and into the sheer, unadulterated adoration that seems to seize his eyes whenever he follows her with his gaze. He looks at her with a fierce possessiveness that makes her feel wanted and whole — when she walks into the room, he lights up with a glow that makes her feel happy and proud.
At first, that pride surprises her. Because why should she feel proud for merely invoking a feeling of happiness in a man? It’s so simple a feeling, happiness. So easy and universal. So primitive that she shouldn’t see it written in the face of her lover and then feel a rise of pride that she — she, Ari — made it happen. When she sees Tom light up with happiness, her pride feels both unearned and yet deserved. Unearned because he should be happy, with or without her presence, Ari thinks. And yet... and yet, she also relishes in the knowledge that she’s brought him a moment of joy. Deep down, Ari suspects that Tom has not been a happy man, that joy has been hard-won by him, and that happiness has eluded his life.
She suspects but doesn’t know.
Because he never talks about himself, beyond the day-to-day conversations of their lives. They talk about the world, and their travels, and the food they eat and the sex they have and the politics of the day and so many other mundanely amazing things that Ari’s head struggles to remember it all.She talks about herself, only a little at first, until she grows in confidence and opens up a little more. In the absence of any stories from him, she tells him all of her own, starting from the first memories of her life to the day they met. She tells him about finding her love for art aged seven in a London gallery, staring at Van Gogh’sSunflowers. She tells him about the day her cat was hit by a car and Ari watched it die in the street, the feline’s eyes panicked and frantic as it gasped for breath, before they finally turned glassy, all life having ebbed from its broken body. She even tells Tom about her parents, about their xenophobia and homophobia and how they’d reacted when her older brother came out.
“They kicked him out,” she whispered. “He was seventeen. I was six. He visited me as often as he could, but my parents were relentlessly intolerant. When he asked me to be bridesmaid at his wedding, my parents wouldn’t allow it. I snuck out of the house to be there, and when I got back, they’d changed the locks. All my things were by the side of the road.”
“That’s awful,” Tom replied, aghast, suddenly thankful for Marnie. He was fairly certain his mom would love him no matter what.
“They’d had enough of me, I guess,” she said sadly, looking up to find Tom’s eyes ablaze with anger on her behalf. His fists were clenched, and his frown was deep, and she leaned over to kiss his knuckles, to bring him out of his fury and back to her.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I don’t need them. I don’t miss them. I only feel sorry for them, now.”
“No child should be treated like that,” he returned fiercely, and it suddenly crossed Ari’s mind that perhaps — just perhaps — Tom might have had a life story a little like her own.
“Were your parents like mine—” she began, before Tom abruptly stood.
“The museum will be open now.” He pulled her up and threw a handful of notes on the table for the server.
He’s good at deflection, Ari learns. So good that often she didn’t realise he’d deflected a question until she replayed the conversation hours later in her head. He’s good at evasion and deflection and silence. He’s good at all the things that make her worry and wonder, while she tosses and turns in his arms at night.
“Who are you?” she whispers to him, staring at his slack and peaceful face, beautiful even in sleep. “Who are you, Tom? Where are you from? Who are your people, beyond me?”
She desperately wanted to know. These questions played on her mind, plaguing her so that she slept badly and ate poorly. Who was this man she’d taken into her life and bed and heart? All she really knew about him was that he was an American, a pilot and a magician. A magician, Ari mused. Wasn’t magician just another word for trickster? This thought made her stop and pause. It worried her to think that she loved a man who only offered her his shell. It worried her that she loved him without really knowing him. Would she still love him if he shared everything else too? Would she still take him into her heart? Or would she turn from him? Or even hate him?
Together they travel across the Baltic states, before crossing the water from Lithuania to Denmark. Tom keeps his passport in his backpack, bringing it out only when they cross borders, before furtively stashing it away once more.
