“So you have an accent or you don’t?”
“I don’t really have an accent anymore,” he said softly. “It can come out, of course, when I’m with my parents, but I worked very hard to get rid of my Russian accent. Very, very hard.”
“Why? Did you not want people to know?”
“I’m not going to answer that question.”
“Okay, then. So where did you move to when you first came to the United States?”
“My family and I, we were in New Jersey for six months.”
“New Jersey. Why?”
“I had an aunt there, my father’s sister.”
“Oh, cool. Did you like it there?”
“I hated it. It was a cesspit.”
I chuckled. “Well, tell me how you really feel.”
“Have you ever been to New Jersey?” He made a left, and I wondered exactly where we were.
“I think I’ve been to Newark Airport once when I was flying to New York.”
“Yeah, so you’ve never been to New Jersey.”
“Actually, that’s not true. I had a friend in high school who wanted to go to Princeton and ...” I paused. I didn’t want to continue this story. “But yeah, I haven’t really been to Jersey.”
“So let me ask you a question, Rosie.”
“Okay.”
“Tell me about your brother.”
My heart stopped for a few seconds. What did he know about my brother? And why was he asking me? “My brother?”
“Yes, your brother. Tell me about him. There is not much information out there.”
“No, there’s not,” I said warily. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m curious. He’s your family.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” I said.
“Okay.”
He made a right, and I could feel the car accelerate. Were we on some sort of highway? Why was he going so fast? What highways were near the bar? I couldn’t think. My brain was jumbled.
And why had he been asking me about my brother? No one asked about my brother, no one. A chill ran over me. There were so many things that he didn’t know, so many family secrets—and secrets about me. I didn’t feel guilty about not telling him. I mean, I didn’t know shit about him. It wasn’t like he’d shared his whole life story with me and I’d shared nothing. He most probably knew more about me than I did about him. No, I wasn’t going to feel guilty about that.
He was singing along to a song that was playing on the radio and I realized that he changed the station. It was a classic rock song. I couldn’t remember the name, but I knew the song well. I sang along with him, enjoyed being with him in this moment.
It was weird. I should have felt scared. I should have felt out of control. But I was excited. I felt like I was on the top of a rollercoaster and anything was possible.
Finally, the car stopped.
“You can take off the mask now,” he said softly.
“Don’t you care if I see where we are?”
“No,” he said, and I could hear laughter in his voice.
“Okay, then.” I tore the mask off, anxious to look around and see where we were. But all I could see were cement walls. “Where are we?” I looked at him through narrowed eyes. Shit, maybe he was kidnapping me.
“We’re at my home,” he said softly.
“But …”
“But what?” He laughed as he got out of the door. He walked around to the passenger door and opened it for me. “Close your mouth, Rosie. Didn’t I tell you? You’ll catch flies.”
“I just don’t understand what’s going on here.”
“What?”
“You live in a cement room?”
“No, this is the garage.” He grabbed my hand. I undid my seatbelt and got out.
“So this is why I could take off my blindfold? There is nothing for me to see.”
“Nope, nothing for you to see at all.” He winked at me and walked towards the right-hand side. I stared at him like he was crazy because it was just a wall. It was literally just a wall. We were in a room, or rather, a large garage that was only walls. I couldn’t even see the garage door. What the fuck was going on? And then he placed his hand against the wall and a door suddenly opened as if by magic.
“What the fuck?” I said as I hurried behind him. “What is this crazy place?”
“This is my home. I take my privacy very seriously.” He stared at me. “You should, too.”
I swallowed hard then because I really wasn’t sure what I’d let myself into. I was scared to walk through that door. What was I going to see on the other side?
Chapter 5
If you’re like me and you’ve watched too many horror movies in your life, you can only imagine what I was expecting to see on the other side of the door. A bunch of dead bodies, maybe some sort of saw, or a whole lot of ropes. So when we walked through the door and I saw a large expanse of windows looking out at the city, I was shocked.
“Wait, what? How are we so high up? How had I not noticed that?” I looked at him in confusion. “What the ever-loving hell is going on?”
“What are you talking about?”
“How are we so high up in the air, but we were just in the garage?”
He grinned. “Ah, wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I’m so confused. Also, I know where we are.”
“You do?” he said with a small smile. “Really?
“When you live in the middle of the city like this, it’s—”
My jaw dropped as the view outside the windows changed. We were now in Paris? I could see the Eiffel tower in the distance.
“What the …?” I looked at him, my eyes wide. “What is going on?”
“Ah, I guess you’ve never seen anything like this before.” He smiled
“Am I going crazy? How did you just change our location?”
“I didn’t change our location, Rosie.” He laughed. “It’s all an illusion.”
“But what …”
“You’ve heard of green screens, right?”
“What? Yeah. They change backgrounds in movies and photographs.”
“Exactly. Well, I have a version of that all around this room. So you can be wherever you want to be.”
I stared at him in surprise. “That’s kind of weird, but I guess kind of cool.”
“And don’t worry. We’re not going to stay in this room.” He grabbed my hand “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going upstairs.”
“Upstairs? So we’re downstairs?”
“You have too many questions, Rosie, and too many clothes on.” He laughed. “Come on.”
He grabbed my hand and I let him lead me into another room. We walked up a flight of stairs and then through a doorway on the right.
“Come.”
Jackson led me into the room, and my jaw dropped. It was beautiful. It looked like the inside of a magazine—and a really cool magazine, too.
“What is this furniture? Is it from Restoration Hardware?”