The House of Dreams by Kate Lord Brown

Author:Kate Lord Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250084545
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

TWENTY-NINE

FLYING POINT, LONG ISLAND

2000

GABRIEL

The thought of Quimby has me on edge again. Still, after all this time. I screw my eyes closed against the memory of him, just for a moment.

“Gabriel?” The girl’s voice is close by, insistent. “We’re not done yet. Come on. What happened next?”

“It was that night I finally started to relax around the place.” My heart is fluttering in the cage of my ribs, but I’m not going to let on to her, oh no.

“Even if Quimby had been sniffing after Peggy Guggenheim and her fat wallet?”

“Yeah, well, if he’d tried her in the summer, I just had to hope he wouldn’t bother chasing her up again now she was in Marseille.”

“Go on, then. Tell me what happened next.” The girl sits beside me again.

* * *

Breton—I never felt comfortable enough to call him André, he was always Monsieur Breton to me—well, he came back downstairs after half an hour or so.

“Rose will be fine,” he said, rolling down his sleeves and fastening the heavy links in his cuffs. “A sore head and a few bruises, but nothing more serious.” Peggy rushed forward and took his arm.

“We had no idea you are a doctor, my dear! What other secrets do you keep?”

“Plenty,” he said, bowing that great head of his slightly. “I was a medic in the Great War, and recently,” he said. “Like my dear friend Dr. Mabille.” I saw her bridle a bit at that. Everyone knew she’d refused to cough up for Mabille’s ticket to America. Peggy argued that he was just the surrealists’ doctor, not an artist of note. Breton was gracious enough not to push the point further. I guess he felt, they all felt, beholden to her.

I slept at Air-Bel that night, for the first time. All the rooms were full, so I curled up on one of the sofas beside the dying fire and had the first good night’s sleep I’d had for months. I felt safe, I think it is as simple as that, and I knew that Annie slept in her house nearby. It is a terrible thing to be afraid all the time. Everyone was terrified, because of the Gestapo, just waiting for that knock in the night. And me, I was petrified at the thought that Quimby might expose me. It felt like I was living on borrowed time, that I could lose everything, and Annie, at any moment.

Around seven A.M., people began shuffling downstairs. Varian and his group set off to catch the tram into town to open the office, and as I sipped my coffee at the window I watched him walking abreast with Danny and the others, Clovis racing ahead of them. They reminded me of gunslingers in an American western.

“Morning,” Mary Jayne said as she poured herself a steaming cup of coffee. “Are you coming into town?”

“Perhaps later. I was hoping to see someone.”

“Marianne?” She flashed me a quick smile. Aube rushed into the room and ran to me. I picked her up and swung her onto the crook of my hip.

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