They Call Me...Montey Greene

Chapter Forty One

CHRISTINA ARRIVED a few days later just as Alejandra said she would. Then that saying; "You never miss what you have until it's gone," started rolling through with regularity with every flip of the calendars' page. Mother's Day came and went without a question about a gift, as did Father's Day the following month. The things that Montey had always taken for granted and considered petty, their very meanings now augmented with bigness.

The collect call he so desperately wanted to receive from Spider never came and his frequent phone calls to his friends Marley and Caesar became less so. Montey did continue phoning the house phone and his wife's cellphone. First the calls went directly to voice mail—then they just rang continuously—finally he got the voice recordings stating the phones were no longer in service and for him to please check the numbers and try again.

Montey often wondered who came up with the crazy sayings such as; "You can't have your cake and eat it too" and "No news is good news." First off, why couldn't you eat the damn cake if it was yours? And, that no-news-is-good-news crap was just some psychological bullshit to prolong the mental and emotional letdown when the news turned out bad—which was usually the case more often than not. Still, if Spider hadn't called him then he held onto that flicker of hope that his family was still in safe hands somewhere.

July 4th came and went without him seeing or hearing nary a firework except for what he caught on an international news broadcast later that night after returning from spending the day in a beach chair down on that stretch of highway now covered with sand and palm trees, the Paris Plages. So much for independence, for Montey was dependent on a lot of planets lining up correctly for him to gain that.

After running around behind Alejandra in the garment district that day, and the rearview mirror stare downs with Charles as he sat in the back of that Bentley, Montey made a habit of taking Alejandra's little roadster out as it helped him escape his reality for hours at a time. He drove all over Paris, getting lost on several occasions. On one such occasion while in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area he bumped into Daniel and Annette dinning outside amongst the smokers when leaving Café Les Deux Magots after getting some overpriced lemon tart pastries. They were actually surprised to see Montey and thought surely he had gone back home to the States already when they hadn't heard from him.

In any event the Coopers were there on holiday they said and were generally concerned for Montey's wellbeing and told Montey the reason why they hadn't contacted him was they wanted to respect his privacy. Montey gave them a wad of cash which more than covered the money they gifted him and laid out for his trip that sent him on the course he was on in the first place. He didn't have to worry Annette resisting as he gave it to Daniel who gladly accepted.

In the waning days of July Alejandra's fiancé Paolo showed up much to her chagrin, since neither her father, Juan Carlos, nor his hired overseer Charles, knew anything of their relationship and she wanted to keep it that way. At least Paolo had the courtesy or common sense to phone Alejandra when he touched down at Orly International Airport, instead of driving out to the château in Fontainebleau unannounced.

When they caught up with Paolo at La Table des Maréchaux, the restaurant at Hotel Napoleon where he booked a room, Montey inquired about the incidents in Milan. Paolo told him they had no leads, the case had grown cold, but on the bright side of things no additional incidents had been reported regarding Alejandra's showroom or her boutique which was still under reconstruction.

That wasn't the news Montey really wanted to hear, still Montey wondered why Juan Carlos still had him on his payroll. Nothing was happening in Paris and in all likelihood it was going to stay that way.

Montey didn't pretend to know the magnitude of what was really going on but whoever wanted to rustle Juan Carlos' feathers, for drugs or whatever, would most likely keep doing it where Juan Carlos was based, back in Milan. And that was just fine by him.

For two people who were supposed to be engaged and hadn't seen each other in months you would think they'd be anxious to tear each other's clothes off, especially with how physically tempting Alejandra naturally looked. Montey figured they wanted to run up to Paolo's room and get a quickie in or something so you can forgive him for being taken aback when she asked him if he could wait for her as he excused himself from the table to give the two lovebirds some privacy.

The look which engulfed Paolo's face was one Montey could identify with. He'd be a little put off too if he flew all this way, with flowers no less, and was told he couldn't sniff his wife or fiancé's panties. On the flip side of that coin, Montey was with Alejandra when they stepped into that pharmacy on Champs-Elysees where she bought some feminine hygiene products so maybe mother-nature had arrived nixing any plans she may have had of sexual foreplay. It also could explain the attitude she displayed when she saw Paolo. In any event it wasn't Montey's problem for lord knows he had enough of his own.