Page 103 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
Still, I make sure I’m on a stair above Aaron, to be safe.
“Just cut to the chase,” I say, crossing my arms. “What does Merrick want?”
“You know he has aspirations beyond bureau chief, Helene. To rise up to something like editor-in-chief ofThe Wall Street Journalor theLos Angeles Times,though, Merrick needs connections. And to get into the exclusive old boys’ clubs where those connections can be forged, he needs his supportive, smiling wife by his side. He has to look the part before he can get it.”
I scoff. “And what about this?” I point at my belly. “How does me carrying another man’s baby help with Merrick’s precious image?”
Aaron shrugs. “You’ll say it’s Merrick’s child. Celebrities do it all the time. Their PR reps manage their relationships.” He puts the word “relationships” in air quotes.
My jaw drops. How can anyone deprive their child of knowing who their father is? And for a publicity stunt!
Obviously Aaron and Merrick have no qualms about asking me to do so.
“Fuck you,” I say. “I’d never do that.”
Aaron leans against the stairway wall and smiles, oozing with condescension. “You don’t seem to get it, Helene. Merrick isn’t asking. He already tried doing that when he flew to Alaska, and you turned him down. So he’s not giving you a choice this time.” Aaron reaches into his coat and pulls out a fat manila envelope. “See, what I’ve got here is a dossier on Sebastien. Or is his name Cameron? Or Jack, Reynier, or Oliver?”
“No…” I sink onto the steps. I remember the “dirt dossiers” that Merrick and Aaron compiled in grad school as revenge for the editors kicking them off the newspaper. But as bad as those were, a dossier on Sebastien would be much, much worse.
Aaron delights in flipping through the file in front of me. “It’s too bad technology advanced so rapidly since Sebastien took on this identity, isn’t it? Before then, it was easy to shift from one name to another and disappear into a new identity. But nowadays…Technology can be so inconvenient. Well, inconvenient to men who’ve somehow lived for at least two hundred years. But convenient for people like me, who know how to mine data to get what I need. You know, Sebastien never seems to age. I found photographs all the way back into the mid–nineteenth century—as well as a painted portrait from 1827 of a botanist, Sir Charles Montague—that look an awful lot like a certain crab fisherman we know today.”
I can’t stop shaking. All that information, at the fingertips of two journalists who could publish it in a second and ruin Sebastien’s life. The U.S. government—hell,everygovernment, as well as unscrupulous private companies—would want to lock him up and run experiments to try to extract the secrets of immortality.
How does a man avoid death? Can his genes be harvested to create super soldiers? Or to make commercial products for people who want to live forever? The temptation is too great for anyone to leave Sebastien alone.
And then, suddenly, another realization hits me like a cargo ship plowing into a tiny fishing boat: It’s not only Sebastien who’s at risk. It’s our baby, too. They’d want to know if a child could inherit the ability to live forever.
Oh my fucking god.
I curl around my belly, holding it tight, as if somehow I can burrow us away and keep her safe.
But that would still leave Sebastien.
“What do I have to do?” I whisper, unable to even look Aaron in the eye.
“You already know. Leave Sebastien. Go home. Be a good little wife.”
I want to shove Aaron down the stairs. But I can’t muster the will, because I’ve already been beaten.
“How do I know you won’t publish the information about Sebastien, even if I go back to Merrick?” That kind of exposé would make Aaron’s career. He and Merrick would probably win Pulitzers, get million-dollar book deals.
“You don’t,” Aaron says matter-of-factly. “But you do know that if youdon’treturn to Merrick, then we will.”
For the first time in months, I feel sick. My stomach lurches, and I throw up all my dinner on the stairs. A nasty splash of it lands on Aaron’s too-shiny shoes.
Not shiny anymore.
“Ugh!” he jumps back, stumbles down a few steps, slams into the wall to stop his momentum. “Motherfucker.”
I swipe vomit off my face and glare at him, a small victory in the midst of a losing battle.
“Tell Merrick I need time to think about it.”
“No. No more time. Merrick has been patient enough.”
Ha!Patient. Merrick only took his time over the past few months so he could gather enough evidence about Sebastien’s past, not out of any kindness to me.
“I have plane tickets with your name on them, departing soon. Merrick won’t be so lenient this time. You and I are going to the airport right now.”
