Penult (The Liminality, Part Four)

Chapter 6: London

It occurred to me that I should have taken the opportunity to press Wendell regarding Isobel’s whereabouts. If his people had been keeping tabs on Karla, they probably knew something about Izzie as well. Back when he first tried to recruit me to become one of his Facilitators aka assassins, and I had showed reluctance, he had actually threatened her safety.

Coercion came easy to guys like Wendell. Blackmail was the favorite tool in his motivational tool box.

But all that was water under the bridge. Nothing to be done now but to go and search for Izzie on our own.

I rummaged through the folio I had taken from the Rutland safe deposit box, selecting a Canadian passport with a recent picture of me that I didn’t remember posing for. The name next to the picture was David M. Rooney. There you go. No longer was I blacklisted with UK immigration. It was going to be hard getting used to Karla calling me Dave.

We went back down to the restaurant and had a real dinner, and afterwards spent another night enjoying each other’s bodies. Karla sure didn’t act like a girl who wanted to die, not that we couldn’t keep on making love on the other side.

Our pillow talk that night dared not broach the topic of death wishes or suicide pacts. Maybe she sensed that I didn’t want to hear about it. We spoke only of logistics. Where we would go first. How we would get there.

In the morning, we packed our few belongings, grabbed a quick breakfast and made our way down to the bus stop. I wish we had a few more days to stick around the Dolomites, because I liked it here. I would have liked a chance to explore the place.

I hoped we could come back here again someday, preferably with Karla in a better frame of mind. The bus careened down the switchbacks to the lowlands and Bolzano where we caught a train to Milan, and then a budget flight to London City Airport.

The black card went through without a hitch and my fake passport worked like a charm. We breezed through customs, this time with no strange blonde ladies to accost me.

It was time to draw from my box of tricks again, this time the key I had found in that old lady’s safe deposit box in Rutland. I called the number on the tag and listened to a recorded message on the other end: ‘1137 De Vere Gardens, Kensington.’ I Googled it, and found it was just off of Hyde Park, in what had to be an extremely ritzy neighborhood given its proximity to Kensington Palace.

Karla was leery about going there but I insisted we check it out. When we arrived, we found a dense block of nicely kept apartment buildings. Number 1137 was a green metal door in a wall of beige and brown stone, the number in bronze gone green with verdigris.

We unlocked the door went up the stairs to find a fully furnished flat with a well-stocked fridge and pantry. It looked like someone lived there, apart from the fact that there was not a speck of trash in the bins, and the end of the toilet paper was folded into points like they do in nice hotels.

“Who lives here?” said Karla, hovering in the foyer, reluctant to touch anything. I plopped down onto a humongous leather easy chair and clicked on the TV.

“It’s ours for now. Enjoy it while you can.”

“No, really James. Who owns this place?”

“I don’t know. Wendell’s bosses I guess. The rich people who go to Frelsi. But it’s cool. We can stay here. They gave me the key. Right?”

“They gave you or you took it?”

It took her a while, but eventually she relaxed enough to explore some of the cupboards and closets.

“There is pasta here. And sauce in jar. You like pasta?”

“Sure,” I said, as I flipped through the channels.