THE FREE FALL
Some nights she feels like fingers are closing round her throat. This is one of them. She lurches for breath, heart thudding and hair tangled into sweaty knots. Beside her Piper is a gentle sleeping lump in the dark, unstirred and seemingly oblivious. Alex cradles Piper's quiet frame with her own, tries to rise and fall with her breathing in order to sleep. What have I done, she asks herself.
Their first stop is Zürich. Alex has an appointment with a bank.
"What," she says, "you think I didn't make provisions?"
Afterwards they take a walk along the Lake carrying packets of much too much money in a shoulder bag. Fluffy little clouds of fog surround the distant mountains. Swans drift in and out of eyesight, swimming up the glacier-colored river; when they come close you see them leaving specks of dirt and grey feathers. Alex shifts her sunglasses. The sun is warm, but the breeze from the lake is icy.
"You'd think it'd be a little cold for the swans, don't you think. How do they do it?"
They are drinking expensive coffee from steaming paper cups. Piper is trying to catch Alex's eye.
"Alex, the money isn't going to last us forever, is it."
"It'll last long enough."
"And after that?"
Alex shrugs.
"I guess I can find another tougher kingpin to beat up my old kingpin."
"That's not funny."
"I wasn't joking."
Piper's mouth is a thin line. She swallows hard. Alex turns to her and pokes at Piper's sunglasses. "Look, Pipes…" she starts. Piper shakes her head.
"I promise I'll do everything I can before I get back into that business," she whispers. Piper only nods.
"Everything you can."
"I'm sorry, Piper. I'm sorry for all of it."
Piper tries to, but she can't speak. She leans forward and they kiss; their cheeks and noses are cold and chapped but their mouths are hot and moist and taste of coffee and fresh air.
In Munich, "Monaco di Bavaria", as Alex calls it, Alex buys a black second hand Lancia coupé off a private dealer. It's a drizzly grey day in late March and Piper is wearing a beige men's trench coat with a fancy collar. She visits one of those quiet, creamy and opulent baroque churches that smell of old stone and incense. The quiet is total except for the steady drip of the rain outside; there certainly never was anything as quiet as this at Litchfield.
Alex meanwhile haggles for their car, paying in cash and avoiding questions (How does she always manage to pull this off? Piper wonders).
It's dangerous and unnecessary, getting a car like this; it might just attract attention, and it's pricier than need be. But it even smells nice and, driving through alpine tunnels, heading south, Alex can only think: this.
Somewhere along the way, Piper has taken to playing Beethoven's 7th over and over in the rented apartments, in their Lancia coupé, or the small hotel rooms they now frequent. She'd picked the recording up in some non-profit Alpine thrift shop, somewhere between Salzburg and Innsbruck. The joy of listening to music, something she'd completely forgotten about at Litchfield: the 2nd movement in particular is prone to being looped, as though its ominous beat were voicing something she doesn't really long to express.
They hide the gun. Sometimes even in places as conspicuous as the glove compartment.
Alex suppresses a smirk and glances at Piper: "All you need is a gun and a girl, huh."
She reaches over and squeezes Piper's boney knee in its black stocking. Piper's hand snakes over Alex's shoulders, fingertips pressuring the malleable skin at the nape of her neck, "I always thought Venice would be good for honeymoons, don't you think?"
Alex takes Piper's snaking hand and kisses its palm. "Venice is great for arriving by train," she says – "what on earth will we do there with our car?"
But they head to Venice anyway and leave the car at a lot in Mestre. Venice is a stinky trap of a place, but it's okay off-season. It doesn't even flood while they're there and it is the perfect distraction.
Spending € 50 on two espressos and a small bottle of San Pellegrino at the Piazza San Marco, its pavestones shimmering and wet with birds and grime, Alex laughs at how she could never help loving Venice. She delights in the fatalistic romance of the city, its little sinking bridges, its readiness to be all smoke and mirrors when it is still, unbelievably, miraculously, standing – but mostly she relishes the excitement Piper gleans from it: stopping at little shops that sell the beautiful hand made glass, they Oooh and Aaah at tiny figurines and intricate marble paper. Alex is dragged along to another basilica just so Piper can gaze at an altarpiece painted by Titian. They stay in a suite with a parlor overlooking the Canale Grande at the top of Hotel Gabrielli Sandwirth – their last suite for a long while, Alex promises.
"Then let's make the best of it," Piper says, pushing Alex back into the yet to be destroyed bed, so finely made up that the sheets come apart with a ripping noise. She is so hurried at first that she can hardly unfasten Alex's bra all the way, leaving the straps dangling, one cup barely exposing a full white breast, its pink tip glistening with moisture from Piper's wide, open mouthed kisses. Alex finds herself balancing on a frustrating brink of pain and fine-tipped pleasure. She covers her eyes with the back of her hands and cries. Her glasses are scattered somewhere on the noiseless carpet.
The notion that they might be safe here, far away from their car, hidden behind an endless stream of false identities, faked passports, and packets of cash money, with the harsh jolt of danger lurking beyond those little canals, bridges, and cat-riddled courtyards – it releases them into a greater, soggier delirium than what they'd known before. Their bodies thrash and convulse upon unison, their thighs shake and thrust with frenzy. They cry, biting and heaving; they kiss and lick at tears, at trickling sweat, and at those thicker dewy fluids they emit unaware but joyously in that pulpy and sodden place they frequent the most.
Hours later they leave the bed only to open the windows in order to cool their scorched bodies.
The bedroom of the suite overlooks a tiny canal and a budding garden – mercifully, no windows face them. Piper briefly lingers at the window, catching the smell of seawater, the horns and the lights off the Vaporetti. Alex quickly calls her over anyway. She doesn't know when she got this careful, this panicked at the notion of any sort of loss or threat to what is dear to her – but her chest feels so much more tender than it used to, as though she is more in love with Piper than she used to be. Up close, she can see that there are scratch marks and mouth-sized bruises on Piper's back and thighs; there are scratches on Alex's as well. They've skipped dinner.
"I'm sorry kid," Alex murmurs as Piper crawls up to her, obedient and kitten-like as she was ten years ago or so. Alex runs her finger along Piper's eyebrow. It feels like with all the worrying her eyesight is getting worse. "I'm sorry for everything."
One time Piper goes out and leaves Alex making calls from one of the archaic booth payphones in the lobby, testament to Alain Delon movies and Patricia Highsmith novels. Alex is trying to inconspicuously reach old acquaintances she trusts, make allies, but it only makes her feel desperate and useless.
Piper walks down winding alleys and over the misty bridges, listening to the call of the ships and the seagulls. It is a weekday and there are fewer tourists than usual. Her fists are buried deep inside her trench coat. Pigeons flutter off of the grey square and into the grey sky. Piper stands and watches them go. Quite the honeymoon, she thinks to herself.
An aching globe at the pit of her gut, it feels like Alex is with her wherever she goes. She # wishes she could think of anything other than Alex, worry about anything other than Alex; when she traces mosaics around San Marco's Basilica with hundreds of other tourists she realizes she hardly cares; she can't think of any other fire within her as much as Alex's, can't feel anything about anything at all unless she thinks of Alex's face and hands, her eyes, the expression Alex has when Piper watches her come. It makes Piper feel like a meek college girl all over again, robbed of her lungs, only just discovering the implications of sexuality.
Hardly a thought is shed to what might be happening in Litchfield at this moment: most likely, or most hopefully, they all consider her dead by now, dropped into the Hudson without a note. How unexpected. She wonders whether the police are even after her: isn't it more likely that she is a dead, missing felon at the bottom of a garbage heap on Staten Island than a scattered tourist wandering through Venice?
Piper stops for an overpriced espresso and tries to read, but the conversation of the American couple at her side is too distracting. From what she can tell, they are having some unappetizing lover's quarrel.
Why is it that Americans have the loudest voices in the world, Piper wonders grimly.
With sudden panic, she wonders whether people have seen Alex and her the same way. She can just picture it: Alex's loud voice, utterly lacking volume control unless to explicitly hiss imminent threats of danger, her laugh, her awful humor; Piper's own loud rambling, their constantly wandering hands. Unlike her and Larry, he has never thought of her and Alex from the outside, never really wondered what they looked like to others. Her slight, gnawing shame is tinged with the tender but raw realization of a sudden unbearable need to see Alex, hear her laugh, feel the brush of her hair against her cheek.
Piper tucks away her book, pays, and rushes off immediately. Just a moment later she realizes she can't seem to find the best short cut back to the hotel. Down some little street smelling of urine and sewer, Piper turns and decides to walk the other way. That's when she believes she sees, out of the corner of her eye, a hint of motion – the outline of an arm, a black leg – duck behind a corner. Panicked, she decides to head back, only to find an empty alley with some bare branches reaching out over a chipped garden wall.
When she finally gets back to the hotel, her breath is short and her eyes are stinging with tears. Alex is nowhere to be found. The room is empty and clean. All their things are immaculately in place. Piper calls down to the front desk, stammering
"Miss Veen – è partita?"
"Signora Veen-eh," the receptionist yammers in Italian. The rest Piper hardly understands.
"How long," she gasps, "commè – combien tempo?"
There is a frantic exchange but no understanding is reached. Feeling utterly useless, Piper lies down on her back. After a while she is racked by dry, childish sobs. She doesn't know how long she stays on the bed with her eyes shut, listening for the sound of the elevator, before steps down the corridor sound as swift and firm as Alex's. The door clicks open and Piper throws her fit of hysterics.
"Oranges!" Alex cries as Piper clings to her, "I went out to buy oranges. The ones they give us for breakfast are like a week old. For crying out loud, I had a craving for fresh oranges!"
Piper stops crying and wipes her nose. "Fuck you," she finally mutters, her breath shaking. "I thought you were fucking murdered. Alex. Rotting in a sewer somewhere. Don't ever do that again."
Alex's eyebrows are raised. "Okay," she finally says.
"It's not funny."
"No, but it's kind of cute."
Piper throws a pillow at her.
"Hey," Alex says. "Just a taste of what I went through in Queens."
"I even talked myself into feeling followed. My God."
Alex swallows. Her eyes flare and her lower lip drops the way it does.
"Well," she says, "how sure are you that you weren't?"
"Pretty sure I wasn't. It must have been an alley cat or low blood sugar. There's no way they got over that wall…"
Piper is talking half to herself. Alex's eyes are watching her uncertainly.
"Fuck," she shudders "now you got me scared."
But Alex has already been scared the whole while. Only a rational part of her brain won't quite accept it: there's no way, no way they could know about her and Piper here. Not unless they have telepathic superpowers – No, Alex reminds herself: they most certainly do not. If anyone here has superpowers, it's her; she's the invisible woman, isn't she. She reaches forward, clutching both sides of Piper's face, and kisses her cheek. What sours her mood is that this, this wonderful little vacation – what could be this blissful, mindless honeymoon in this fairy tale of a city – is soured by fucking Kubra. By this awful gut wrenching paranoia.
"Come on, Babe," she whispers and Piper's eyes, hardened as they've become over the past year, soften just a little.
"It's still light out. Let's grab our books and go for a walk along the beach. Let's have a picnic."
On the Vaporetto heading towards Lido, they stand at the back, watching Venice grow smaller and smaller in the distance.
"It's hard to think about it as anything but a backdrop," Piper says. "It feels like such a movie set."
"I know, right," Alex rolls her eyes just a little "that's what its primary function has been for the past two hundred years. A beautiful movie set. Hasn't somebody already said that?"
Dusk is falling without a sunset as they walk along the beach. It's cold, but they take off their shoes anyway. It's just a weekday after all, off-season; restaurants and bars seem empty or closed. Still, it feels magical. Alex buys a wine bottle, cheese, and fresh bread from a supermarket near the beach and they sit in the sand with their meager picnic and watch as it gets darker and darker. A street musician nearby is playing a Russian waltz, apparently just for them. Alex rolls her eyes and scoffs.
"Alex," Piper mutters in a shushing tone.
"Sorry," Alex says.
"You can be such a snob sometimes."
"Wow, you got me."
Piper gnaws on a crust. "What's over there?" she says, pointing at the horizon.
Alex shrugs. "Dunno. Croatia, I guess, maybe Pula. Or Slovenia."
"You ever been?"
Alex is thoughtfully chewing on a large chunk of bread. She washes it down with a gulp of wine.
"Croatia a little at first. A lot of cheap British kids who go just to party. Smaller market."
"Never mind," Piper says quickly.
"We should go," Alex says "Croatia is great for swimming and sea kayaking. We could discover some off-the map islands along the Dalmatian coast and stay for a while…"
The sky has been cloudy all day and there are no stars out. They go back to catch a late Vaporetto, trembling a little from the wind as they wait, holding each other close for warmth. Alex's skin always seems to radiate heat, Piper thinks. She closes her eyes surrounded by the familiar scent: salt, and skin, and Alex. She can feel Alex burying her face in her hair. They try not to talk about how ironic it is that they, doomed as they are, are hanging around a doomed city, soon to sink into the Adriatic Sea and be lost for good. That night, exhausted by the fresh wind, they make love calmly, and sleep well afterwards.
They don't go to France. They don't even mention France at all anymore. Paris is bad luck. They drive to Milan for a few days to see Tristan and Isolde at La Scala. Alex makes it through the fifteen minutes of the overture, which makes her eyes glaze over with emotion, before she bails to smoke a cigarette. Her hands shake as she fumbles with her lighter. Her anxiety is inexplicable and she blames it on the music.
"Quitter," Piper hisses in the intermission, "it's been gorgeous."
Alex has been waiting at the buffet, sipping glass after glass of expensive champagne.
"They wouldn't let me back in," she mumbles as apology.
"Yeah, well, it was beautiful. That soprano is amazing, so powerful…" Piper says, taking a sip of Alex's champagne
"…her voice really has this, I don't know, I think it's a kind of amber color…"
Alex watches with a smirk.
"Yeah right. Like you know so much about Wagnerian singers. What kind of operas did your parents take you to see, Pipes? Did you go to the ballet every Christmas?"
"Actually, Mother was more of the Broadway type," Piper says curtly. She eyes the other Milanese in their fancy evening gowns. It feels like they are eyeing her back. She wishes she and Alex could quietly switch their conversation to Italian or German or French. Alex, meanwhile, is playing with her glasses. Piper takes another sip of Alex's champagne.
"Can I get you your own drink?"
"Are we really supposed to be drawing this much attention to ourselves?"
"Brat."
"Fatalist."
"You look beautiful in that dress, though" Piper giggles, "I can't wait to get back to the hotel to remove it."
Her body bounces lightly against Alex's, who tries to hold her by the hip with a steady hand,
"Shh," rolling her eyes, Alex is too dizzy with laughter and champagne to banter. But she manages to add a sarcastic whisper: "Pipes, people are watching."
"I love how you can still make jokes about our dire situation."
"Mhm."
They are giddy to get back to the hotel three and a half hours later. The music has filled them with a terrible kind of need for each other.
"When you think about it," Piper says as Alex hails a taxi to get them to their hotel, "it had these mythical modern elements to it. The whole Liebestod thing, isn't it a little existentialist? Like something out of a forties crime movie – you can't escape the past…"
"Tell me all about it, Pipes," Alex says, dragging Piper onto her lap in the car and running her hand up between her legs in one fluid movement, Piper gasping inaudibly before their mouths close over each other, "tell me all about the things they taught you in college about Wagnerian opera and 20th century philosophy."
"You would never give me credit for my own thoughts, would you?" Piper whispers as Alex does delicate, unimaginable things with her fingers. Piper tightly grasps Alex's upper arm, where the tattoo is, and makes an effort not to scream as their taxi speeds through the Milan night. This night, they kiss and fuck in shiny, sweaty abundance, as though they are trying to devour each other, as though it were their last night together. They fall asleep just at the crack of dawn.
Alex makes an inventory of the money they've been carrying around in cash and decides to drive up to Zürich one last time.
"Maybe I should come with you?" Piper asks.
"No, I can make the trip there and back in a day," Alex says, more to herself, "and then we'll be off to Croatia."
"Not Tuscany?"
"Croatia is just as beautiful as Tuscany," Alex says and despite the tension in her stomach kisses Piper lightly on forehead, "We'll do Croatia for a few weeks, then Albania and then Greece. Maybe we can take the ferry to Istanbul. Would you like that, Babe?"
"Yes," Piper gasps and kisses her on the lips, "yes yes yes."
Alex is still a little withdrawn and Piper can't help it – "isn't it a little dumb, travelling with so much money?"
"You got a better suggestion, smartass?"
There is spite in the way Alex says smartass and Piper flinches. "Well I guess you've got a gun, right?"
Alex hesitates with the gun. "Piper," she says in a low voice, "I think you should keep it, by the way. Just for the day. I'll feel better if you do."
"Al, no – "
"What if someone were to come? What if something – I couldn't – "
"Which is exactly why this is a bad idea. I should come with you."
"We'd just be putting both of us at risk. There's a border patrol. On the look-out for the both of us, who knows."
"But you'll have nothing and no one to protect you."
Alex smirks a little in her winning way: "I've got the Lancia. That's as good as any weapon."
They keep fighting over this for a while, but eventually agree that Alex is going to Zürich with the Lancia and Piper is to stay behind in Milan, guarding the gun and the rest of their money.
"I'll be back in about ten hours."
Alex instantly feels awful about it. There are construction sights and redirections all around Milan and it takes her almost an hour to get out of the city. She curses loudly several times. The thought of Piper's sad face back at the hotel is killing her. Driving north she starts thinking about Piper maybe having an enjoyable day in Milan without her, meandering through streets, feasting on prosciutto, gnocchi, or saffron risotto, and browsing antique book stores selling large old maps, and that kills her a little, too.
The sky darkens just as she crosses the border into Switzerland. Alex shifts her glasses calmly and breathes through her nose.
Piper spends the morning reading and listening to Beethoven's 7th. Every now and then she opens the drawer to the nightstand and peeks at the gun. It feels heavy in her hand when she takes it out to look at it up close.
Around noon she leaves the hotel in her trench coat. She finds a market selling antique prints of nature studies. A few tourists are browsing at the other stands. They are always a man and a woman together, elderly, usually British or German. Piper watches them: they are respectable, acceptable sort of people, the husband probably a dentist, the wife a homemaker. They are here because they are now permitted the enjoyment these sorts of things – travelling through Italy, browsing antique prints – because they've made their good, proper lives.
For a moment Piper catches a wisp of sorrow – feels like she might be in mourning over this kind of path she'd planned for herself and lost, the one filled with work and justified pleasure. But then, almost with a sense of relief, she realizes that she couldn't go back to it even if she wanted to, and really, that feels just fine. Well, Piper thinks, fuck them. Right? To each their own life. Cal would be so proud; she really wants to go to a pay phone and call him just now, just let him know she's alive and well – gone missing after his wedding for a very good reason. But she doesn't. She finds a bookstore with an English section and stocks up for the journey east. She feels too nervous to eat and skips lunch.
It starts pouring in the early evening when Piper is stuck at a café. It's nearly time for Alex to come home and she briefly considers wearing the Corriere della Sera as a kind of hat but then she decides to try reading it instead. She orders another glass of cheap wine. Maybe, she tells herself, she'll learn Italian properly someday. When the rain lets up the street lights are on and she heads back to the hotel, heart beating wildly. What if Alex isn't there?
Then, she tells herself, it would have been the rain. Maybe she's stuck at some rest stop up north, waiting for the shower to pass. But Piper also knows that no rain shower would stop Alex Vause. She would either have to be home or be –
Piper finds Alex absolutely livid.
"Do you know what time it is?" she hisses, arms flailing "it's seven thirty. I've been waiting here for three and a half hours. What the fuck, Piper. And then I saw you left this – "
She opens the drawer with the gun and slams it shut again, the weight of the barrel clunking against the wood.
"Do you have any idea how worried – drove down like a crazy person just to make sure I got here right on time so you wouldn't worry – probably broke a fucking record, got stuck in traffic and still made it here by three thirty, didn't even stop for lunch…"
Alex gasps, out of breath. She spins around and sits on the bed, unable to look at Piper. Her face is pressed against her hands. Her glasses lie, dismissed, on the small hotel desk smothered under the large, black, cash-filled duffel bag.
Piper can only sit down next to her and run her fingers over Alex's shoulders, up the back of Alex's neck and into Alex's hair. She can feel Alex's posture crumpling beneath her fingertips. Alex lets out a breath of shuddering sobs that she is, even now, still trying to contain. "I thought you were – " she says in a dry, sober voice that trembles nevertheless. She sniffs and shakes her head "We're so fucking stupid, aren't we."
When has Piper last seen Alex this upset? She leans forward and buries her face in Alex's hair, inhaling its scent. "I'm here," she whispers. Her fingertips automatically massage the tense muscles around the nape of Alex's neck and then wander over her collarbone, "I'm here," she says again, "I'm not going anywhere."
Alex's kiss is salty and sticky with tears. It's a demanding kiss, the kind that secretly begs, show me, show me you'll stay. They silently fumble with the buttons on Piper's blouse, the hooks of Alex's bra, zippers, and shoelaces… this time it's like they are basking in the saltiness of their relief. Piper kisses along the inside of Alex's trembling thighs. She welcomes the searching fingers in her hair, the pull. It's just us now, she thinks, a metallic taste in her mouth like blood. She slowly urges her fingers further, opening them wider, waiting for the low sound that is Alex's moan. Just you and me and that ruby red blood sunset. Outside, the rain beats against the window.
Some nights, Piper wakes up all alone, the way she used to when Alex was still a heroin importer. She will stumble out into living room to find Alex hunched over a road map, or reading a book under a solitary light. There is never an exchange of words. Alex will simply look up. Piper will come to her curl up at her side, and fall asleep with her head on Alex's chest. Later in the night Alex will gently heave her back into bed. There's no point in bringing up Alex's insomnia in a conversation. Somewhere, a clock is ticking. They watch out for parked cars and guests in hotels whom they've spotted more than once.
The trunk is filled with two cardboard crates of books and their new clothes. They change their passports and names one more time and drive slowly through breezy warm weather and northern Italian towns. The slow noble pulse of the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 7th still accompanies them onward.
"You've got to listen to the whole thing," Alex says sharply one time, pushing the back button to the start of the symphony, "the whole thing, or you'll be missing the point."
"Says our musicologist."
"It's a goddamn symphony. It would make sense to listen to the whole thing, why else do you think he wrote the whole damn rest of it."
Other times they listen to the rock music Alex chooses: Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen. Sometimes they listen to Tom Waits and Roy Orbison. With just a handful of second hand CDs to choose from, there isn't a lot to listen to.
They stop in Verona for a night and drink wine in the small courtyard off the room they rent from a family with three children. Cats crawl over the walls and peer at them. It's a dusky spring evening that makes them feel lighthearted and young.
"Hey," Piper says, her hand wandering over Alex's hair, tucking a strand behind an ear, "Hey, let's go out tonight. Have a night on the town."
Alex glances at her and smirks. They wear sunglasses and snapbacks and drink Schnaps in a bar with some bawdy, elderly locals. Later they find their way to a party with a strikingly young clientele. Wildly dancing girls wear short skirts and low cut tops and are all decidedly younger than eighteen. They are all visibly, excessively drunk.
"This has got to be illegal," Piper yells as they stop at the bar for cocktails.
"Nope," Alex yells back gleefully, "this is Europe."
They wander around, sloshing their straws through the ice of their sticky sweet drinks. Unnervingly, Alex's mind immediately rattles around her old business thinking – vibe, style, and price range of clients; how much could be dropped here, who would do the dealing – and she quickly tries to ricochet away. Piper catches her eye, even with sunglasses. Alex draws her close and gently kisses her lips. She smiles reassuringly.
"I feel invisible," she says in Piper's ear "old and invisible."
Piper quickly reaches up and kisses her again. They grin at each other, bashfully. The music beats on loudly and Piper sways, but she doesn't dance. Instead, she climbs onto a bar stool and watches the dancing kids, sweaty boys and girls, half naked, crashing into one another, arms raised.
A short blonde girl with an undercut approaches them.
"Hey," she shouts at Alex, with the strong imitation of an American accent learnt from TV shows and movies "Are you that actress-, the American – "
"Yes," Alex drawls loudly over her glass, "yes, that's me."
The girl squeals and runs off to whisper with her friends. Piper pulls away her drink.
"Jerk," she says.
"Hey," Alex says, "want to fuck in the stairwell?"
"Alex" Piper shushes, but she follows Alex out into a courtyard. The building is very old, she realizes with a twinge of amazement. The courtyard smells of spring. A group of young people is leaning against the walls, the smell of marijuana pungently hanging in the air. They look up at Alex and Piper and give them vague smiles.
Piper clings to Alex's shoulder, feeling giddy despite it all. They stagger through a gate and into an empty park, quiet but for the distant sound of the party. An old fountain is splashing at the gravelly center of the park.
"I feel like such a teenager," Piper snickers as Alex lifts her onto the stone edge of the little pool at the fountain's base.
"Mhm," Alex nods slyly, tearing at little at Piper's stocking under her dress. She can feel heat building inside her. They are breathing quickly. Piper is clutching at her hair and shoulders, face pressed against Alex's cheek, whimpering ever so gently. "Come on," she says, in a rougher voice this time. Alex grasps her and moves between her legs, hitching one up, and pressing herself into her. Piper gasps, then moans, her head sinking into Alex's throat, her hands roaming under Alex's t-shirt, dipping into the bra and making Alex shudder.
Piper comes, and it feels like Alex is coming with her.
They drive on, skirting the mountains, heading towards Slovenia. Past Venice, they stop at a farmhouse for a lunch of mushroom risotto and wine. Alex isn't ready to leave Italy just yet.
"One last stop," she says: "Trieste."
A botanical garden surrounds the strange little white castle of Miramare just outside of the city; they stop to watch the sea and read their books. A pretty park gazes right into the horizon. In its far corner sits a café with an old tabby cat curled onto a wrought iron chair in the sun. Alex orders an espresso and lights a cigarette, leaning her head back. Piper, feeling listless, leaves her to her book and wanders off, up and down the gravel paths of the old garden. Further off, she can hear elderly women murmuring amongst themselves, though she can't see them through the trees. When she comes back out into the open, to the terrace that looks out onto the sea, wind is blowing and clouds have gathered up above. A white haired lady, with pretty blue eyes and a little golden brooch under her collar, smiles at Piper and raises her hand at the air. "Bora scura," she says in her frail old voice. Her pretty blue eyes dart off in a way that makes Piper assume dementia.
"Bora scura," Piper repeats, "you mean the wind?"
Wordlessly, the white haired lady walks off, cackling to herself. Goose bumps rise on Piper's arms. With a sickening pang, she is reminded of Jimmy – dead by now, probably. Dead like she and Alex are going to be someday soon. The thought tears into her head for a moment, and with her heart thudding wildly she turns around and walks back.
Alex is reading, unperturbed by the wind and the clouds, with her feet propped against the wrought iron table, the old tabby purring on her lap.
"Alex," Piper says, a little too sharply, "that's a street cat. You can't have it on your lap, it's dirty."
Alex leans back and grins at her.
"Calm down," she chuckles, blinking through her glasses, "she's got a flea collar, look."
Annoyed by Piper's outburst, the cat gets up, lazily stretches over Alex's legs, and hops off into the flowerbeds.
"See?" Alex smirks, "Now you've scared my cushion away. Thanks a lot, Pipes."
Piper flops onto one of the little chairs and exhales audibly.
"What's the matter, seriously?"
"I don't know. Anxieties, I guess. I'm starting to feel scared again. Or feel that I've been scared, all along. I don't know. I feel like we're hurtling towards something, something deadly and bloody, and all I can think is that I don't want this trip to be our last."
Alex sighs and shifts her glasses. She leans across the table to take Piper's hand.
"Oh no," Piper jerks away "Not after you've been cuddling a street cat."
"What the fuck," Alex guffaws, grabbing Piper's fleeing hand and holding it tightly "You've had worse stuff on your hands. Asbestos, Litchfield rats, crazy pee, meth head blood…"
Piper rolls her eyes and intertwines her fingers with Alex's.
"Not to mention Red's tampon breakfast muffin."
Reluctantly, Piper lets out a burst of laughter. She sighs, and meets Alex's gaze, directed so firmly at her.
"I love you, you know that?" Piper says suddenly, as if finally able to grasp this ominous weight on her chest. Alex lifts her head a little, touched by the admission. Her mouth twitches.
"I know. I love you too."
Rain is falling on Trieste. The sky is the color of pewter and the streets glisten in the traffic lights. The city feels bigger than it is. This isn't Italy from a sunny postcard, Alex thinks: this is Italy from a seventies gangster film. They stay at a grand old hotel that is mostly empty, the same way the city feels mostly empty.
It had been Alex's plan to hike into the hills for the small taverns and village shops that sell good prosciutto and wine but instead they are grounded to the dark old coffee houses with little marble tables that smell like the dust of old monarchies.
"We should go out and have our picture taken with the statue of James Joyce," Piper says, "even with our umbrella."
Alex rolls her eyes but obliges, pulling up the collar of Piper's trench coat. They amble about, have another cup of coffee, and listen to a tour guide give a talk about Miramare castle that stands stoically in the rainy wet distance across the bay.
"The castle is a haunted place," the tour guide shouts with a British accent, "Bad luck befalls lovers who venture there…"
Charlotte of Belgium, he goes on to explain, went mad in that castle after the violent death of her husband Maximilian I in Mexico.
Piper straightens her shoulders and glances at Alex who is flipping through a program guide of film screenings and concerts, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. There are circles under her eyes that release a twinge of protectiveness in Piper's chest. What if something were to happen to Alex, she thinks. It is almost unimaginable, this being Alex – indestructible Alex Vause, force of nature, Amazon-like in height; even her eyes, it seems, could kill. Piper knows she feels safest when she is with Alex, but still – What if? The pain the thought causes gives her the sense that Yes, she would probably completely lose it. Just thinking about it is unbearable.
"Makes sense, the curse thing," one tourist mutters to the other, "my parents went to Miramare on their honeymoon and look where they ended up."
The voices laugh and fade away.
Piper swallows hard. Damn it, she thinks, Why didn't I just go back to prison, take Alex with me, do our time, keep Alex safe with me, wait for Kubra to be arrested. Instinctively, she pushes herself into Alex's arms and buries her face in the nape of Alex's neck. Alex's body shudders in surprise and amusement.
"Hey," she says with her lips pressed against Piper's hairline, "everything okay here?"
"No," Piper mumbles, her lips pressed against the skin of Alex's collarbone, "Not okay. Nothing is okay."
They go back to the hotel and Alex runs Piper a hot bath. She pours in a ton of the bath salts they got at a market in Verona the week before, puts on Benny Latimore, and leaves the bathroom door open. She herself isn't feeling up for a bath. She feels restless, head buzzing: a few Damiano Damiani films are playing in town, a film maker she remembers to have been Fahri's favorite, and a strange sensation is clenched in her throat – as though she would like to go to these films just to see him nod at her with his approving, cold eyes, saying "Excellent choice, Alex."
The association also creeps her out. Who put those Damiano Damiani films in the program, anyway? Was it a coincidence, or did someone, is this a threat – No, that's just crazy.
Alex gets up and walks to the bathroom door. She stands there watching Piper in her bath, basking, foam piled luxuriously high. A smile twitches with Alex's lips and her chest feels heavy.
"Feeling better?" she says, and comes to sit at the side of the tub, "you look good enough to eat."
"It's perfect," Piper says quietly, "thanks, Babe."
"Listen Pipes," Alex says, and she knows she is looking a bit too serious, "I'm going to go out for a bit, okay? I'll be back around eight."
Piper sits up in the tub. "Is everything okay?"
Her breasts rise out of the water. Alex looks away and inhales through her mouth.
"Jeezus, Pipes" Alex says, "You're not making this easy are you."
"I wish you'd stop it with the stupid jokes. What is going on."
"Nothing," Alex shakes her head, "I just need to get out."
"Okay."
"I'll be back no later than eight thirty, okay?"
She leans forward, the tips of her long hair grazing the water of the tub, and places a kiss on Piper's lips.
"You watch out," she says, "Enjoy your alone time."
In the street she walks briskly, almost angrily. A wind is coming from the sea, just as fiercely, crashing the waves against the pier in the harbor. Alex ducks her head under her hood and heads for the cinema. It is empty except for a few, college-aged boys with pale skin and glasses. They glance at Alex admiringly, over their shoulders. At the bar of the cinema Alex spots two men in elegant coats and white hair, just talking. Alex has never seen them before. The girl selling tickets gestures at her and Alex turns on her heel and walks out.
She walks uphill for a while and passes some ancient ruins in the rain. Wind whips her hair. What was she even thinking, coming out here, expecting to find someone familiar? Kubra wouldn't send anyone familiar after her. Kubra doesn't even know she's here, for fuck's sake. He probably thinks she's in New York, or Buenos Aires, Copenhagen or Manila, or any other fucking place, anywhere but this quaint city by the sea. All of this over thinking – it's probably the first sign of her losing it.
She stops, breathes deeply, and walks back. She'll go back to Piper; maybe there'll still be some hot bathwater, she thinks, or maybe she'll have a shower. She sniffs. She feels like she might have caught a cold. All she wants now is to be somewhere warm and safe, feel Piper's skin against hers, feel Piper's arms and legs wrapped around her, and her face buried in Piper's blonde hair. And maybe let Piper play that stupid Beethoven symphony one more time while they go to sleep in each other's arms.
She stops in her tracks when she realizes it's them. She can just barely duck behind a car. Of course, they've already seen her. Of course. They've known she's been there all along, they've probably known since Venice or Milan. Oh, she and Piper were just being so stupidly carefree, weren't they.
Alex turns, ducks, and walks away as fast as she can, around the old ruins and up the street to their hotel, praying she isn't being followed and also knowing, deep down, that it wouldn't make a difference.
She finds Piper in a sleepy pile, watching Italian television. When Alex walks in she sits up and curses.
"You scared me," she says.
Alex claps her hands. "Pack up," she says, grabbing the duffel bag they keep hidden under the bathroom sink "We're leaving."
"Now?" Piper gasps.
"Yes, now. Put on some clothes. Dress warmly. Leave everything that needs packing. Come on."
She pulls the gun out of her empty suitcase and drops it in her shoulder bag with her laptop. There's no time left to pack her other things; unpacking them was a stupid idea in the first place. Piper is pulling on a sweater over her t-shirt.
"Come on," Alex urges again. They take the back stairway and stumble into the private parking lot. Piper hasn't even tied her shoelaces. By the time she can speak, they are already speeding through the hills behind Trieste.
"Piper," Alex says, glancing in the mirror, her voice rough, "can you see them? Can you see anyone?"
"Who," Piper says, "who?"
"Who do you think," Alex hisses. But she throttles the speed and grimaces, relieved, just a little.
"Is it Kubra?" Piper says, "He's found us?"
"Yes," Alex says, "I guess. I mean, I know. I don't know why they haven't approached us properly yet. Maybe they're just trying to scare us. Anyway, we're not going back, Pipes."
"Ugh," Piper says in her angry flare, her hand flying up to her forehead, "I swear I could smash – If only I could just – "
"Just what? Go all girl's prison on them, Pipes?"
Alex eyes are flashing.
"These aren't people you can brawl with, y'know. If they get us – "
She doesn't want to say we're dead, but that's what she's thinking now anyway: as good as dead.
Alex clears her throat. "My predecessor," she says, "you know what they did to him? To his wife? …even his kids – "
she stops when she sees the look on Piper's face. She probably should have told her before.
"This is sicko, okay."
The old Piper might have blown up with an accusation, but this Piper sits back into her seat, her face calm. She nods. All she says is: "Well, we better get away then."
Her eyelids are lowered. Alex isn't used to this kind of Piper – this confident, sincere, almost coldly adult Piper – but it reassures her, the way Piper's cool hand massaging the nape of her neck has always reassured her.
"Get rid of the car, get rid of everything. Dye our hair…" Alex sighs "Fuck."
"Hey, it's okay," Piper's voice is low and cool "We have each other, right?"
Alex quickly glances at Piper out of the corner of her eye. They share a brief, helpless smile.
At some point, they'd crossed the border to Slovenia without noticing. Near a field with a small chapel, Alex stops the car and gets out. It's dark, the rain has stopped. The only noise is a steady drip-dripping coming from the trees.
"Listen," Alex says, "did we leave anything behind that might indicate where we were going?"
Piper bites her lip. "Like my guidebook to the Dalmatian coast?"
"Fuck."
Alex does the math in her head: it would take them about three hours to get to Zagreb and just one hour to get to Rijeka. She decides on Ljubljana, even though this might be the most obvious choice – there is no border patrol, at least, and she'll be able to pay in cash. It's predictable, but inconspicuous. The drive takes them less than two hours.
Alex drives through a dark, nondescript suburb with socialist-style housing blocks and stops at a small building with a glowing yellow hotel sign.
"Cozy," Piper says.
The receptionist, a middle-aged woman with short red hair that reminds them of a meek version of Red, shows them an empty garage lot behind the house. The hotel room is stuffy but they only crack the windows open an inch and draw the curtains closed. They turn off the lights. In the dark, Alex removes her glasses and places them on the nightstand. Feeling her heart beating against her ribs, she lies down flat on her back. She swallows, wondering whether she really is coming down with a cold. The bed shifts as Piper crawls to her side and wraps her arms around her as a big spoon. She kisses Alex's shoulder.
"I thought we had a plan," Alex's voice cracks, "now I don't know anymore…"
"We'll figure it out in the morning."
Alex lets out a long, shuddering breath and turns to face Piper. She strokes a strand of Piper's blonde hair between her fingers and cradles Piper's cheek.
"Maybe we should leave Europe for good," she says "but by now I can't think of anywhere in the world where they wouldn't find us."
"We'll figure it out," Piper says. She leans forward and kisses Alex. Alex's lips are wet and trembling. Piper kisses Alex's cheeks and they are wet, too.
"I really am sorry," Alex whispers through the dark "I thought I could protect you, y'know. But now I'm starting to wonder whether it'd be best if you…"
"No," Piper says firmly, "No, no, no. You can't send me away. I'm not leaving you."
Alex inhales loudly, through her nose.
"Okay," she says shakily.
"You can't keep me safe, either way," Piper says "that's not how it works."
"I know."
They watch each other. Then Alex's face breaks into a chuckle:
"Well despite all of it, I'm really glad I've got you with me, kid."
Piper can't help but smile.
"Yeah. Me too."
In the morning, still drunk with sleep and mindless of where they are, they have sex in whispers, a little too rushed. They hold each other close afterwards, and feel better. Without eating breakfast, they open the trunk of the car to see what's left: A handful of books and CDs litters the back, behind the black duffel with the money. The Beethoven Symphony is gone, though, as is Benny Latimore.
"Oh well," Piper sighs. Then she pulls out the guidebook to the Dalmatian coast, the one she thought she'd left at the hotel.
She raises her eyebrows.
"Oh," Alex says. A smirk spreads across her face.
"Well, I guess we could still go."
It's an evening in August. Piper is out walking down to the little dock in sandals. Her skin has darkened, tiny freckles covering her nose and shoulders, and her hair is bleached from the sun. Alex is coming over in their stuttering wooden boat that came with the house, essential to their living now – main land is right in sight, but their little motorboat is the only form of transport, apart from a choppy swim. It's not the only way off the peninsula – there's a spot that brings in the power lines, which is convenient for them; but there is no proper road to drive on. They keep extra canisters of gasoline in store to be on the safe side, and a radio that connects with the post office off the next island.
Alex hands Piper the shopping bags up onto the wooden dock. Her hair is longer now, and sometimes, she doesn't wear eyeliner.
"Did you get the toilet paper?" Piper asks sharply.
"Yeah," Alex laughs, "but they were out of dental floss."
Piper shakes her head.
"Don't worry," Alex says, heaving herself onto the dock "They know about our needs. They laugh about all the stuff they have to order in now 'for the Americans'."
Piper frowns.
"Is that safe for us?"
Alex secures the boat wordlessly, then stands to look at Piper.
"No," she says, "nothing is safe for us."
They head back to the little house, carrying their groceries. It's little more than a fishing hut, but mercifully, a recluse of some sort installed plumbing and electricity long ago. They have a kitchen and a living room, and a bedroom upstairs, beneath the slanting rafters. They even have a small bathroom with a tub. Most of the walls are stone and keep cool during the day. The sea surrounds them at all sides, except for the thin stretch of land that connects the peninsula to the larger island – there are a few pine trees there, and an ancient wall made of rocks.
They unpack the groceries side-by-side. Piper places her hand on Alex's back.
"There's plenty of Americans who come out here, right? We're not the only Americans. Right?"
"Yeah, sure!" Alex shifts her glasses in her face. "No, definitely. I heard some people speaking English in the village today. Tourists come in by ferry from Zadar. They buy tampons and toilet paper, just no dental floss."
Piper nods, reassured. They've already talked about this, but she likes hearing it, anyway. They've already started being recognized by the locals in a friendly, amused way. The locals are generally old people, or very young children spending the summer with their grandparents. Mostly, though, people leave them alone.
"Oh, I ran into Zdravko today," Alex says, fetching an onion out of a basket and heating water in a pot for pasta, "told him about the shed. He said I could fix it myself and I told him I'm not that crafty. He asked about you and sent his greetings and this – "
Alex unwraps a large black bottle with the word Pelinkovac 2013 scrawled on a stained white sticker.
"Homemade herbal liquor" Alex laughs "says he made it with his nephews."
Zdravko is the small man with leathery, tattooed skin who rents them their little island home. Piper has a hard time trusting him, believing his mysterious tattoos to be a sign of shady political alliances in the past, but he makes Alex laugh, and he seems to think the world of Alex, half her size that he is, giving her gifts of fresh fish and bottles of horrible moonshine.
"Oh Alex," Piper says as Alex takes a sip straight from the bottle. Alex hesitates, then she says, "Y'know, there's a couple good, sea-front apartments on the market a little south of Zadar. I'm thinking of buying one and renting it out for tourists. As an investment or something. We won't be able to live off of fish and noodles for forever."
"Mhmm," Piper says, "next time we see Zdravko I've got to ask him about maybe using that old garden out back. We could grow our own food. I'd be terrible at it, but we could try."
"Look at us, all domestic. Next, you'll be selling artisanal soaps at the market."
"That's what I was thinking!"
"Which is why I asked Zdravko about the shed…"
After some coaxing, when the food is nearly ready, Piper takes a sip of the Pelinkovac. She makes a face.
"Ah, that's what I live for," Alex says and kisses Piper's scrunched up lips.
They laugh. Piper plays with the bra strings under Alex's t-shirt. They put candles on their little wooden table outside. The sky is pink and purple. A breeze makes the flames of the candles flicker in their glasses.
"It's getting cold," Alex says and goes back inside to get their sweatshirts.
That's when Piper sees the lights. They look a little like the headlights of a car, shimmering through the trees where there is no road. Then Piper realizes they are flashlights, and another light, coming from an approaching boat.
"Alex," Piper calls. It sounds more like a low gasp.
For a moment, she almost thinks it's the FBI – but then Alex comes bounding outside and she realizes it's way worse. Alex is holding the gun. Her hand is shaking.
"The boat," Alex says, "get to the boat."
Their own little motorboat is rocking up and down, knocking against the wooden rafts supporting the dock. The other boat is approaching too quickly.
"Bad idea," Piper mutters.
They go back inside. Piper takes a knife from the kitchen and they climb upstairs and watch through the cracked bedroom window. The sky by now is dark purple, almost grey. The sea, too, is a dark grey purple. The candles on their little table are still flickering brightly. Five men, all in all – how the fuck did they find them. Alex cocks the gun and points it, her hand trembling. She exhales.
"It'll miss," she says, "it's too far."
She waits another moment and shoots. They are immediately met with return fire and duck. Glass shatters.
"Fuck," Alex says.
"Alex."
"I can't believe it," Alex looks at her, an expression in her eyes that Piper isn't sure she's ever seen before; it's not exactly fear or rage, but a mixture of both and something else.
"I can't believe he's the one who gets to win. This is not what it's supposed to be. This is not how it's supposed to go."
They are crouched there, watching each other. It feels like they have prepared for this in their thoughts for so long, in such quiet, that now it doesn't feel like much at all. Piper glances across the room, at the old floorboards, at Alex's crouching body, her long black hair, her chipped black nail polish, the rose tattoo emerging out from under her grey t-shirt. Her chest is rising and falling, her eyes are on Piper. They reach out and hold hands. It was going to be a beautiful evening.
Later that night, more shots ring out from the little peninsula with its old fishing hut, but the wind carries the echo off to sea. None of the villagers ever hears of it. When Zdravko goes out on his motorboat a few days later to visit his American friends, he doesn't find a sign of them.
"It's a mystery," he tells the people in the village, "their boat was still in place, and dinner was on the table. No sign of them, just some disturbed cobwebs, a broken window, red smudges on the floor. Who would do such a thing, who would murder two clever and brave women living on their own like that, minding nobody's business but their own?"
Zdravko wonders and wonders, but never finds an answer.