"Well, you were right!" Cal said as he burst through the apartment door back at Wine House.
The windows were wide open and only a hint of yesterday's cigarette smell lingered in the air. Frank was on the couch with the long, black case open on the coffee table in front of him. He looked up in surprise at Cal's sudden entrance and deftly snapped the lid closed.
More secrets, but there was no time for that now.
Cal flung his cellphone like a frisbee at Frank, who rocked back in his seat just in time to catch it against his chest. Frank's face was expressionless as he scanned the picture.
It was taken from a distance and showed Eeva with her brown hair walking arm-in-arm with a tall, thin man dressed in a tailored suit.
"Marat fucking Solonik," Frank said gravely.
"Yep!"
"Where'd you take this?"
Cal waved the question away. "That's your question? What's Eeva doing with him?"
Frank examined the image again, his face still so foreign to Cal without its trademark mustache, which, for all Cal knew, was tucked in Frank's pocket.
Cal paced the small room like a tiger in its cage.
Frank used his thumb to flick through the images on Cal's phone revealing similar photos, all of them fuzzy from the low-quality digital zoom. The last series of photos showed Solonik escorting Eeva through the doors of his public art gallery in Central Nice.
"Did they see you?"
Cal shook his head.
"You taught me well."
Frank tossed back the phone and Cal caught it in stride.
"I'm sorry I was right," Frank said and frowned.
Cal growled.
Frank continued, "But I didn't actually think she'd be working with—"
"—Just," Cal interrupted with a wave of his hand, "save it."
Frank drummed his fingers across the closed case in front of him.
"What can I do?" he finally asked.
What a question.
"I think you've done enough, Frank! Actually, you know what? You can get that bottle of Kentucky from the kitchen. I'm going to get drunk."
Frank shot to his feet and said, "That I can do!"
"And—by the way—who the hell are Nikolas and Dorian? And why do they keep texting my number assuming it's Martin's?"
"Friends of mine—or contacts, at least."
"Why do they have my number?"
"Mine's classified."
Cal let out a long breath. "This is why I'm your only friend, Frank."
Frank smiled. "Perfect."
\
They were in Place Masséna, with Frank trying to make conversation and Cal trying to ignore him.
Best friends.
"Pass me that flask, will ya?" Cal said as they pushed through the plaza. Frank gladly obliged and a moment later Cal was swallowing a gulp of liquid fire courtesy of the great state of Kentucky.
Thousands of people gathered around, waiting for the Bataille de Fleur to start. The King of Time towered over everything, his papier-mâché body covered in flowers, and his royal court of parade floats arranged around him like a battalion of flowery tanks. Across the plaza, Cal caught sight of an Albert Einstein float with its crazy hair and the professor's mustache spread in a benign smile.
Time is an illusion and all mustaches are fake.
Cal snorted a laugh.
Dancers and drumlines kept the plaza noisy and the energy high. When the final float stopped in formation, the music stopped and the assault began: two hundred thousand flowers raining onto the waiting crowd like a rainbow barrage of petal artillery.
Cal and Frank were in the middle of it all.
The masses around them jumped and cheered, snatching bouquets from the air or swooping them off the ground. It was a festive madhouse of flailing limbs and falling flowers. Cal eyed a contingent of police standing at the periphery, and he brought the metal flask again to his lips.
A bundle of white daffodils bounced off his head and landed in Frank's outstretched hands.
"Trade?" Frank asked and Cal took another sip before making the exchange.
The fire in his throat lingered and the lightheadedness that followed was welcomed, banishing images of Eeva and her brown hair on the arm of Marat Solonik.
If only it were that easy.
The rain of bouquets was unending, and Cal let himself get caught up and carried away by the energy of the place. He and Frank jumped and jostled shoulders to shoulder with strangers until their collars were stuffed and their hands were full of color. Frank smiled like a child, uninhibited, plucking flowers out of the air with precision and laughing like it was the funniest thing he'd ever done. The bourbon in Cal's blood scattered his thoughts and made it easy to laugh along—but soon he was sweating with all the jumping and the press of bodies all around. He had flowers tucked behind his ears and under his arms. Molly was the gardener of the family, and she would know the names of all the pretty things Cal was incidentally crushing in his fists.
Cal watched Frank jumping and laughing in childlike exuberance and imagined Molly in his place, with her red hair bouncing around her slight shoulders and decorated with every color of petals that rained around her like confetti. She was beautiful, like an angel dancing barefoot in a garden.
Tears were hot on his cheeks when Frank hit him in the face with a bouquet of bluebonnets, the petals exploding outwards like a flight of birds. Cal brushed away the remnants from his eyes only to see Frank laughing, his face red with joy and bourbon.
It wasn't fair that Frank was here among the flowers and Molly was dead.
Cal hit Frank in the face with a red tulip on a long stem, hit him hard, but the tulip broke at the stem and was too light to cause any damage.
Frank laughed it away and returned the blow with a bouquet of forget-me-noughts he held in his other hand. The pair exchanged blows like floral fencers, back and forth, as colors rained down and people pushed and elbowed for positioning. Frank swung his bouquet and rapped Cal's ear with an accidental knuckle. Cal growled at the shock of pain in his ear and grabbed for a bundle of baby's breath stuffed in Frank's collar, snagging his shirt in the process. A button popped and went flying and Frank barked a HEY! before shoving a pink petunia hard into Cal's nose.
"Fucker!" Cal hissed through his teeth and pushed Frank's shoulder with his flat palm, flowers forgotten.
Frank returned the shove. "Watch it!"
Cal was forced back into a woman behind him, who yelped in surprise. Someone pushed him forward again, back into Frank, where his breath reeked of bourbon. He locked his arms around Frank and almost threw him to the ground.
"It's not fucking fair!" he yelled instead.
"Eat shit!"
"You had a wife—ugh—you . . . wasted it!"
"Fuck off!"
The ground was a carpet of flower-pulp, and they slipped as they pushed and pulled each other. There were shouts all around them and strange hands grasped at their shoulders trying to separate them. Maybe their feet tangled together then, and Cal fell to the ground, bringing Frank down with him until they were rolling in a bed of petals and crushed bouquets. Another man fell on top of them and the circle of spectators around them jeered and yelled.
In the distance a sharp whistle blew.
"Cal!"
"What?" He still gripped Frank by the shoulders, shaking him on the ground.
"Stop! We better get the fuck out of here!"
The whistle shrieked again, closer.
"Cal, get off me! It's the fucking police!"