Page 4 of Last Violent Call
“Never heard that once in my life,” Juliette replied without missing a beat. She turned over her shoulder to look at him, perched at the canal with her legs dangling over the edge. A ray of sunlight lit her frame in a perfect rectangular block, putting a gleam in her eye and a redness to her lips that he wanted to consume whole. It didn’t matter that he had kissed her until they were both delirious last night. It didn’t matter that he had her forever and ever to kiss, past death and into whatever afterlife existed. He still couldn’t get enough of her.
Juliette’s eyes dipped delightedly to his chest, then back up again, grinning like she could tell what he was thinking. She probably could. She’d probably thrown on his shirt over her pajama shorts knowing exactly what it would do to him to see her like this, the sleeves slightly too long and the collar askew, the dip of her clavicle more visible than it had any right to be.
With an exaggerated sound of effort, Roma dropped himself down beside his wife, forcing a frown.
“I only came outside to get my shirt back. You’ve left me shivering like a sad little ragamuffin.”
A breeze blew along the canal as if to emphasize his point, rustling the weeping willow tree to their right. The leaves looked like translucent fairy wings, every shade of green as bright as emeralds. Thoughthe waters always gave their surroundings a bite, the sun was warm on his bare shoulders.
“Pay the ransom, then.”
“You’ll make it that easy for me? No further extortion?”
Juliette leaned forward, her eyes crinkling. “Maybe I won’t give it back after the payment. Start counting up to three, and I guess we’ll see.”
Science could tell him that the ground was below his feet and the sky was above his head and the early light of day was upon his back. Roma wouldn’t listen. To him, Juliette was the sun.
He closed the space between them, eyes shutting a heartbeat before their lips made contact. It was second nature to him, a function easier than breathing. She was made for him, and he for her; his inhales were finished by her exhales, their motions anticipated by the other even if it was something as mundane as Roma lifting his hand for the dishcloth and Juliette sliding it his way before he had spoken aloud.
Roma cupped her neck, his fingers brushing the smooth locks of her hair out of the way before sinking down to her collar.
“One,” he murmured against her mouth, undoing the top button and beginning his mission to get his shirt back. “Two.” Their lips brushed again, the contact luxuriously slow. The next button snapped open. Juliette made a noise at the back of her throat that sent his every nerve ending into overdrive.
“Three—”
“Stop making babies on the front stoop!”
Juliette tore away, so startled by the voice calling across the canal that she would have tipped right into the water if Roma hadn’t recovered quicker and clutched her elbow to right her. Succeeding in frightening them, their old neighbor—Mrs. Fan—gave a great big cackle, propping her bucket higher on her hip and turning the corner to go around to the front of her house. She had walked out from her back door, which wasdirectly connected to a set of stone steps that led down to the canal for laundry.
“Ta ma de—not cool, Fan nainai!” Juliette shouted after her.
“Sorry, sorry, get back to it! I’ve been waiting for more kids around here, so I guess it’s fine even if you make it a public activity….”
Her voice faded off as she got too distant to hear. Juliette huffed.
“It wasnota public activity. There aren’t even any windows facing us.”
Roma resisted the urge to laugh when he knew it would only make her madder. In the first few months after they had settled in Zhouzhuang, the townspeople had been much colder toward them. Rightfully so, since no one knew where Roma and Juliette had suddenly popped up from. Then Juliette started bringing fish to the doors of every old woman along the main canals, and Roma would braid flower crowns for the children who played by the largest stone bridges. Though the townspeople still suspected that the two must have fled from something unlawful, they had come to treat Roma and Juliette like their own.
“I suppose that was our own fault. Come on, we’re going to catch a cold.”
Roma led them inside, giving up on getting his shirt back as he fetched a new one from the closet. It was hers now if she wanted it; he could afford to buy another in the exact same shape and color. Though they had started trading weapons as the avenue they knew best, it also happened to be a lucrative business, bringing in enough that they would often reject clients if they didn’t like what the weapons were being used for.
“Breakfast?” Juliette asked, emerging from the bedroom while pinning her hair back. She had put on her own clothes: a qipao, light green with a flower stitched onto the shoulder.
Roma was already grabbing the coins on the living room desk, half his jacket dangling off his shoulder. “I’ll race you.”
“Stop it,” Juliette threatened immediately. “Don’t think I won’t tackle you to the ground!”
As much as he would have loved a full-body tackle—because Juliette refused to admit that he could and would easily snatch her out of the air—he did slow by the door, sticking his arm into his sleeve properly and taking her hand when she walked out with him.
“Hey,” she said. Her tone had changed, playful Juliette swapping out for serious Juliette. “I forgot to ask…. That picture yesterday looked familiar to you too, didn’t it?”
He knew immediately what she meant. It would have been very difficult to miss the resemblance.
“It did,” he answered softly.
Alisa was going to be turning eighteen this December. While he kept himself very informed on her life, he hadn’t seen her properly in years, didn’t know how his sister was faring past the news that Celia brought in. He and Juliette couldn’t set foot back in Shanghai; it was far too easy to get caught if they showed their faces. Though he trusted Celia to watch after Alisa, perhaps trusted her even more than he was capable of trusting himself, he missed that mischief-maker crawling in and out of the cupboards while he was trying to have private conversations, missed her so much that the feeling latched onto him like a tumor. He and Juliette had survived in the literal sense, had built something precious in the wake of burning a hate-filled cycle into ash, but the people in Shanghai weren’t wrong when they whispered about Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai being dead—they could never go back, and that had killed a huge part of what made themthem.
