Genuine Fraud(22)

LONDON

Six weeks earlier, Jule arrived in London for the first time. It was the day after Christmas. She took a cab to the hotel she’d booked. The English money was too large to fit neatly into her wallet. The cab was mad expensive, but she didn’t care. She was funded.

The hotel was an old and formal building, remodeled inside. A gentleman wearing a checked jacket sat at a desk. He had a record of the reservation and showed Jule to her room personally. He chatted while a porter carried her things. She loved the way he talked, as if he’d stepped out of a Dickens novel.

The walls of the suite were papered in black-and-white toile. Heavy brocade curtains covered the windows. The bathroom had heated floors. The towels were cream-colored and textured with small squares. Lavender soap was wrapped in brown paper.

Jule ordered a steak from room service. When it came, she ate the whole thing and drank two large glasses of water. After that, she slept for eighteen hours.

When she woke, she was elated.

This was a new city and a foreign country, the city of Vanity Fair and Great Expectations. It was Immie’s city, but it would become Jule’s own, just as the books Immie loved had become part of Jule, too.

She pushed open the curtains. London stretched out below her. Red buses and beetle-black taxis crawled through traffic on narrow streets. The buildings looked hundreds of years old. She thought of all the lives being led down there, people driving on the left, eating crumpets, drinking tea, watching telly.

Jule was stripped of guilt and sorrow, as if she’d shed a skin. She saw herself as a lone vigilante, a superhero in repose, a spy. She was braver than anyone in the hotel, braver than all of London, braver than ordinary by far.





Back in the summer on Martha’s Vineyard, Immie had told Jule about owning a flat in London. She had said, “The keys are right here. We could go tomorrow,” and patted her bag.

But she hadn’t mentioned it ever again.

Now Jule called the building manager who handled the flat and told him Immie was in town. Could he arrange for cleanup and an airing? Could some groceries be brought in, and fresh flowers? Yes, everything could be arranged.

When the flat was ready, Immie’s key turned easily in the lock. The place was a large one-bedroom with a den in St. John’s Wood, near lots of shops. It occupied the top floor of a white town house and had windows that looked out onto trees. The cupboards held soft towels and sheets with a ticking stripe. There was only a bathtub, no shower. The fridge was tiny and the kitchen barely furnished. Immie had fixed up the flat before she’d learned to cook. But that didn’t matter.

The June after high school graduation, Jule knew, Imogen had attended a summer abroad program in London. While she was there, she bought the flat with encouragement from her financial advisor. The sale had gone through quickly, and Immie and her friends had shopped in the Portobello Road market for antiques and in Harrods for textiles. Immie had covered the front door with instant photographs from that summer—maybe fifty of them. Most featured her and a crew of girls and boys, arms around each other, in front of places like the Tower of London or Madame Tussauds.

Jule put her things away in the flat and then took the photographs down. She threw them in the trash and took the garbage bag down to the basement.

—

In the weeks that followed, Jule acquired a new laptop and put the two old ones in the incinerator. She went to museums and restaurants, eating steaks in quiet establishments and burgers in noisy pubs. She was charming with servers. She chatted with booksellers and told them Immie’s name. She talked to tourists—temporary people—and sometimes went to a meal with them or joined them at the theater. She felt as she imagined Immie would: welcome everywhere. She worked out every day and she ate only food she liked. Other than that, she lived Imogen’s life.

At the start of her third week in London, Jule went to Madame Tussauds. The museum is a famous attraction, full of Bollywood actors, members of the royal family, and the dimpled stars of boy bands, all sculpted in wax. The place was crowded with loud American children and their aggravated parents.

Jule was looking at the wax model of Charles Dickens, who sat morosely in a hard wooden chair, when someone spoke to her.

“If he lived now,” said Paolo Vallarta-Bellstone, “he’d have shaved that baldy head.”

“If he lived now,” said Jule, “he’d be a TV writer.”

“Do you remember me?” he asked. “I’m Paolo. We met in the summer on Martha’s Vineyard.” He had a bashful grin. He was wearing old jeans and a soft orange T-shirt. Beat-up Vans. He’d been backpacking, Jule knew. “You changed your hair,” he added. “I wasn’t sure it was you, at first.”

He looked good. Jule had forgotten how good he looked. She had kissed him once. His thick black hair was in his face. His cheeks looked slightly sunburnt and his lips a bit chapped. Maybe he’d been skiing.

“I remember you,” she said. “You can’t decide between butterscotch and hot fudge, you get sick on carousels, you might want to be a doctor someday. You actually play golf, which is stodgy; you’re traveling the world, which is interesting; you follow girls around museums and sneak up on them when they stop to look at a famous novelist made of wax.”

“I’m just gonna say thank you,” said Paolo, “even though you made mean remarks about golf. I’m glad you remember me. Have you read him?” He pointed at Dickens. “I was supposed to in school, but I blew it off.”