Generation of Liars by Camilla Marks Read Free Book Online Page B

with
travelled a lot too, and you never know who you might bump into in first class.
But there was something else. Something I feared more. The itch in my shoe. I
feared being discovered by anyone from my past, by anyone who knew me before
that fateful night in November, the story of which unravels on the words
written on the confession inside my shoe.
    I jumped out of my seat, wobbled
down the thin airplane aisle, and crashed into the bathroom. This is where I
proceeded to wretch out the contents of two shakers worth of that cheap, awful
alcohol from Rabbit’s mini bar into the efficient airplane toilet. I lifted my
head from inside the toilet and stumbled to my feet to face the mirror. I
surveyed my reflection, which resembled a blurry Impressionist painting of a
girl. I was something Andy Warhol would paint on a bad day. The skin on my face
was a ghastly shade of porcelain, framed by wings of dark hair matted to the
side of my cheek by a glistening slick of sweat. Green eyes, made large and
crooked from messy black eyeliner, were leaking mascara spiders down my cheeks.
My lips were full like a poison lotus flower. The acid-dissolved white pills
that had come up with the vomit tasted like poison in my mouth. Damn it, I was
tired. I wanted that dynamite stick in my hands and I wanted to crush it with
the force of Hercules. I straightened myself up and stumbled back to my seat
and passed out until we landed in Rio.
    *   
*    *
    I was sitting in the backseat of a
taxi. Buildings roared by, pink and yellow ghettos, painted the color of
happiness in some half-brained attempt to deflect the miserable conditions.
    The taxi driver spun the wheel,
taking sharp corners as we dodged bicycle messengers and wagons that pulled
towers of fruit. The buildings had porch overhangs sagged by the humidity. I
looked down at my legs, covered in the same bright stockings I had been shot
in. I brushed my hands over the thin fabric, thinking of the dreamy doctor and
the way he had so tenderly touched my legs. I tried to remember his name. Ben ,
he had said. Ben Robinson. An all-American name. I closed my eyes, reliving the
embarrassment of him seeing my confession note. I wondered what type of girls
he dated; classically-educated, well-pedigreed girls spending a semester in
Paris touring the galleries. Not fakes like me, who show up wearing crayon
makeup and bullet holes.
    The taxi made a tumultuous turn
onto a dirt road and I turned my head out the window.
    “Are you sure this is the right
place,” I asked, forgetting that when I hailed the car outside of the airport,
the driver had spoken only enough English to tell me the cost. I brushed my
fingers over the cell phone in my lap, smooth and black like licorice candy,
and let my eyes skim over the address Motley had texted me. I repeated the
address once more for the cab driver.
    I knew the whole trip was Motley’s
twisted version of payback for screwing up the Eiffel Tower job as soon as the
cab pulled up to the house and I laid eyes on a ramshackle pink bungalow with a
brood of filthy chickens loitering out front.
    "Wait right here," I told
the driver. I charged towards the house and swung open its moth-ravaged screen
door.
    "Alice? Is that you?” a male
voice framed by a Dutch accent was calling from the halls within. A tall,
skinny man, dressed in a tunic and with his blond hair tied back in a ponytail,
eclipsed the doorway. His age was about forty but the sun had textured his skin
to the harshness of a man in his seventies. I recognized him immediately.
    "David!" I called out,
dropping my bag and giving him a hug. “The legendary David Xad, live and in
person, I don’t believe this.” His embrace was so delicate that it was easy to
forget he was a trained martial artist who could kill a man with his bare
hands. “It’s so great to see you.” I pulled away to look him over. He looked
exactly the same as he did three years earlier when the two of us spent an
intensive weekend