The Butler(51)

“She’s not a vestal virgin, for God’s sake, or a fourteen-year-old. She’s a forty-three-year-old woman.”

“She’s only interested in working,” he confirmed. And so was he. It made it easy and safe for them to be together. The most they could ever be was friends.

“Then she needs a good shaking. And so do you,” his mother scolded him, and hadn’t mentioned it lately. She was coming close to the end of her search for the Monet’s rightful owners, and was working on two new paintings, a Pissarro and a very unusual Picasso that Goering himself had taken out of Paris on his famous art train, on one of his raids on the Louvre. He had put it there for safekeeping after taking it from a well-known Jewish family. Liese was looking forward to working on them when she finished with the Monet. But she also worried about Joachim. He had lost his brother and never known his father, and she knew he was terrified to love.



* * *



—

    As promised, Joachim came back to pick Olivia up in time to get to the movie and buy popcorn. She liked it with sugar now, as they did it in France, instead of salt.

“I forgot to ask you what movie it is before I so gallantly offered to be your bodyguard,” he teased her.

“It’s a love story with Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro,” she said, as he found a parking space down a side street from the theater and she noticed that he was right. There were gangs of teenage boys cruising everywhere, and little clusters of Gypsies begging and eyeing people’s purses.

“Oh God, I should have asked,” he said. “Isn’t there something violent, or a science fiction movie with robots beheading each other?” She laughed at him.

“I hope not,” she said happily, as she got out of the car. It was nice having someone to go out with. She usually went to the movies alone or didn’t go at all.

Joachim pulled her close to him, so no one snatched her purse, and his broad frame protected her. They got to the theater two minutes later, bought popcorn on the way in, and found two seats together, which was rare on a Friday night. He looked around and saw with amusement that there were a number of older couples seated with one arm around the other. Given the age of the stars, it had attracted an older audience, even older than they were.

    “I think I’m too young for this movie,” he complained, as the previews came on.

“Shut up and eat your popcorn,” she told him, and he laughed and put an arm around her shoulders.

“Just so people don’t think we’re strange or don’t like each other.”

“I don’t think they care,” she said, smiling and eating her sugared popcorn. But it felt nice to have a warm arm around her. It made her feel more human and not just like a work machine that went nonstop with no affection to fuel it. She had forgotten what that felt like, it had been so long.

The movie came on then, and Joachim kept his arm around her until the end. He enjoyed the film more than he wanted to admit, and Olivia loved it and said she wanted to come back and see it again sometime.

“You can get the DVD or stream it.”

“It’s not the same as in the theater,” she said, as they walked back to the car. They’d had a nice evening together. He was good company and they were comfortable with each other.

“Do you want to stop and have a pizza? I’m hungry,” he said, as he started the car, and a teenage boy pounded on the hood, and ran away laughing with his friends. “That’s why I don’t want you here alone. Pizza?” She thought about it and nodded. Neither of them had had dinner, just popcorn. There was a pizza restaurant a few blocks from her apartment. They were fancy pizzas, and delicious.

They shared a truffle pizza and talked about work and the movie, and she was sleepy by the time he took her home and dropped her off.

“Have a nice weekend!” she called out to him and waved. “Thanks for the movie!” He had treated her. She was upstairs in her bed half asleep ten minutes later, and he drove back to his mother’s apartment with a smug look on his face, determined to prove that his mother was wrong. He wasn’t in love with Olivia. They were just friends. She was probably the best person he knew and he admired her and wanted to protect her from any harm. And he loved working with her. But that didn’t mean he loved her. He was absolutely certain he was right. She was beautiful and fun to be with and smart, but that didn’t sway him. They were work partners, and she was his boss, and nothing more. He couldn’t wait to tell his mother as he drove home. For once her intuition was way off base.





Chapter 13


When Joachim came home from the movies with Olivia, he heard voices in the living room, and thought his mother had fallen asleep in front of the television. It was late for her to be up, and he walked in to gently get her to her bedroom and stopped in his tracks. She was wide awake, sitting on the couch, and Javier was sitting across from her. His left upper arm was wrapped in a towel soaked with blood, and there was a gun lying on the coffee table in front of him. He grabbed it and stood up the minute he saw Joachim walk in. He pointed the gun at Joachim’s heart, and their mother’s voice rang out strong and clear.

“If you hurt so much as a hair on his head, Javier, I swear I’ll kill you myself. Put the gun down. You don’t shoot your own brother. You’re in my home. Have some respect. You come here after twenty-five years, with a gun? What’s happened to you?” But she could see what had happened. He was an entirely different person. There was nothing left, no morals, no compassion, no humanity. There was nothing he cared about. It was Cain and Abel in the end.