David Mitchell - The Book of Other People

‘I think you’re confusing me with someone else,’ Soleil said.

Gabrielle’s father returned to the room with a bottle of wine in each hand. ‘Red or white?’ he asked, holding them up like trophy fish.

‘Red,’ said both women simultaneously, and then laughed.

‘See, Gabrielle,’ Soleil said. ‘Your mother and I aren’t that different.’

Gabrielle’s mother looked as though she was about to disagree, but instead she took a final sip of her wine, and held her glass up to her husband for a refill.

‘Do you think they’re natural around each other?’ Soleil asked, later that night. Soleil was staying in Gabrielle’s room, in her bed, while Gabrielle slept on the trundle below. There was no guest bedroom in Gabrielle’s house – further proof, she thought, that they weren’t rich.

‘What do you mean?’ Gabrielle asked.

‘I mean, do you think they’re putting on a show?’

‘For who?’ Gabrielle asked. Then corrected herself. ‘For whom?’

‘For me. Trying to show how in love they are.’ Soleil said ‘in love’ like a boy in Gabrielle’s class did, with a guttural emphasis on ‘love’.

‘No,’ Gabrielle said truthfully. ‘They’re acting the way they always do.’

Soleil fell asleep a few seconds later, as if only the whiff of scandal or deception could keep her awake. Gabrielle sat up watching her, the light of the moon sliding through the blinds, striping their bodies. Soleil slept on her stomach with one leg falling off the side of the bed, like she had been poisoned.

By Thursday it was clear Soleil was bored. She walked around the house balancing water glasses on her head and turning the flowers in vases upside down. ‘I learned this from a florist in Denmark,’ she said. She had learned everything – candle-making, Tai Chi, Portuguese – somewhere else.

That afternoon, Soleil decided she and Gabrielle and Gabrielle’s mother should go to Lake Tahoe for the weekend, for what she called a ‘girls’ getaway.’ She had a friend there, a woman named Katy, who owned a café on the water.

‘You’ll like Katy,’ Soleil said, now sunning herself in the back yard. ‘She’s a free spirit. Very sexy.’

Gabrielle was sitting on the grass next to her. ‘So all your friends are pretty then? My mom, Katy…’ Gabrielle was testing. She knew her mother was attractive. ‘Your mother’s a good-looking woman,’ her father was fond of saying. Then he would break into song.

But Soleil hesitated. Gabrielle immediately regretted saying anything. ‘Your mother’s cute,’ she said, wrinkling her nose, ‘but she’s not sexy . She just doesn’t have that vibe about her.’

‘I can’t leave Jack alone for the weekend,’ Gabrielle’s mother said flatly that evening. They were sitting in the living room and Soleil had laid out her Lake Tahoe plan.

‘Well, he can come too,’ Soleil said.

‘I don’t think he can,’ Gabrielle’s mother said, without offering an explanation. She appeared beleaguered by Soleil’s visit, and had gone to bed early every night since Soleil had arrived.

The plan seemed dead to both Soleil and Gabrielle’s mother, but Gabrielle found herself desperate to save it.

‘Can I go with Soleil even if you don’t come?’ she said.

‘Let me think about it,’ said her mother.

Her father entered the room, waltzing with an imaginary partner. ‘What’s going on?’ he said, looking at their faces. He stopped waltzing. ‘A summit meeting?’

Gabrielle told him about the trip, and appealed to him to let her go. ‘I want to see how self-sufficient a single woman has to be,’ Gabrielle said. She had picked this up from Mrs Terwilliger, her history teacher, who was newly divorced.

‘Sounds like a good plan,’ her father said.

Gabrielle smiled at him, and forced herself not to look at her mother. She stared at her father even as she heard her mother stand up and walk out of the room, the sound of her practical heels heavy on the hardwood floor.

‘Dorothy?’ Gabrielle’s father called after her.

‘I’m just checking the fridge to see what I’m going to make us for dinner,’ her mother replied, but Gabrielle could tell by her footsteps that she was in the study, not the kitchen.

On Friday, Soleil dressed in a snug white shirt and white pants, no panty lines visible. Or maybe, Gabrielle thought, she wasn’t wearing any. Soleil was big-boned and tall, and the whiteness of her outfit highlighted her size. She looked like a small ship.

Soleil’s van was also white. ‘I hate this car,’ Soleil said, as they pulled out onto the road. ‘But I need it for my job.’

Gabrielle realized she didn’t know what Soleil did for a living. She didn’t seem like someone with a job.

‘What is your profession?’ Gabrielle asked.

Soleil laughed. ‘Why so formal? Do you work at passport control?’

Gabrielle shook her head. Soleil laughed again.

‘I’m an antique collector,’ Soleil said. ‘I specialize in Coca-Cola merchandise.’

‘Oh, like old bottles,’ Gabrielle said, too quickly.

‘Not bottles ,’ said Soleil, and Gabrielle saw the skin around her eyes tighten. ‘I collect beautiful mirrors and old vending machines from the twenties and sell them at Coca-Cola conventions. You wouldn’t believe how many people are into that stuff. When I lived in Minnesota I made a really good living.’

‘You lived in Minnesota?’ Gabrielle asked.

‘Yes,’ Soleil said, and Gabrielle detected a slight stutter, a repetitive ‘Y’.

A billboard advertised an upcoming refreshment center called the Nut House. ‘I think I have a few ex-lovers who live there,’ Soleil said. Then she turned to Gabrielle and grew very serious. ‘If anyone ever invites you to Belgium, please promise me you won’t go.’

‘Did something bad happen there?’ Gabrielle asked.

‘No, nothing happens there. That’s the point. It’s Belgium.’

‘Oh shit,’ Soleil called out, waking Gabrielle.

‘What?’

‘We’re almost at Katy’s house, and we didn’t go grocery shopping. That’s what you do when you stay with someone – you stock their fridge.’

‘Oh,’ Gabrielle said, though Soleil hadn’t brought anything into her mother’s kitchen.

They stopped at a grocery store designed to look like a log cabin. Soleil pulled out a shopping cart.

‘Do we need a cart?’ Gabrielle said.

‘We’re buying for the whole weekend,’ Soleil said. ‘The wine alone would break your arm.’

In the far corner of the cart, Gabrielle saw something brown. Square. A wallet. She gave it to Soleil, who quickly flipped through it. ‘Henry Sam Stewart,’ she read. ‘Blue eyes, overweight. Lives on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.’ She looked at Gabrielle. ‘You know what that means?’

‘He’s a gambler.’

‘No,’ Soleil said. ‘It means you’ll get a big reward.’

‘Because he’s a gambler.’

‘No, stop with that. Because, Bree, he lives far away. He’ll be really grateful we made the effort.’

Soleil bought a map along with the groceries, and they climbed back into the van and set out to find Henry Sam Stewart. The wallet sat between them in the cup-holder.

‘How much do you think we’ll get?’

‘ You ’ll get it. You found the wallet,’ Soleil said. ‘And I would say fifty dollars would be a fair reward.’

‘Fifty!’ Gabrielle didn’t know what she’d spend it on. Maybe a present for Soleil.

It took over an hour to get to the house of Henry Sam Stewart.

‘We’re getting close,’ Soleil said as they turned off onto his street. ‘Hand me my lipstick.’

Soleil could apply lipstick – she was partial to a dark plum shade – to her wide, thin lips without looking. Gabrielle tucked her hair behind her ears.