Read Online Plain Fame by Sarah Price - Free Book Online

buildings and swarms of people. Staring people, she thought. She was tired of people staring at her, and her head was still reeling from when they had departed the hospital only thirty minutes ago.
    Alejandro sat opposite her, his back to the driver and his cell phone pressed to his ear. He spoke in a language that she didn’t understand, but the words flowed like rapid-fire music. She liked listening to the strange words, full of s sounds. The end of each sentence seemed to lift as if hooking into the next sentence. There was music to these words, music that she never noticed before she had met Alejandro. And she liked the way it sounded.
    He pressed a button on his phone and glanced at her. Or, rather, she imagined that he glanced at her from behind his dark sunglasses that reflected her image. She could see herself in the reflection; her plain blue dress seemed too plain compared to the beautiful leather seats and sleekness of the limousine. “You are comfortable, sí ?” he asked. “Would you care for some water or iced tea?”
    Amanda shook her head. “Nee,” she said softly.
    “Neah?” he repeated.
    She smiled, despite her discomfort. “No, I meant.”
    “Ah.” He nodded his head once. “In Spanish, no is the same as in English. I suppose in Deitsch, it’s different, sí ?”
    “Ja,” she said and smiled when he laughed at her. “Sometimes it’s nein , too.”
    “Nein?”
    She shrugged and turned her face toward the window. The scenery looked ugly and depressing. Cramped buildings. Gray sidewalks. Lots of people. There were so many stores with signs pushing sales and discounts. Garbage cans overflowed on street corners. The buildings were too tall. The streets were too crowded. And no one knew one another or seemed to care. She couldn’t imagine living in such a big, dirty place, so far from nature and so disconnected from the earth.
    “The city is ugly,” she said, surprising herself and slightly ashamed when she heard the words come out of her mouth. But she meant it.
    “Sí,” he acknowledged. “This part is ugly.”
    “How can people live here?” She turned to look at him, surprised that he was staring at her.
    He tilted his head, hesitating before he answered as though thinking about her question. “I suppose it’s not so bad,” he started. “There is a lot of life in New York City: theaters, museums, restaurants.” She didn’t look impressed. “People like culture, and cities tend to have a lot of it. Maybe it’s not so ugly after all. Some of the buildings have beautiful architecture, no?”
    “I suppose,” she said, but he could tell that she didn’t mean it. “Why did they steal my picture?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject.
    He wasn’t certain that he had heard her properly. “Steal your . . . ?”
    “My picture. Those people stole my picture with their cameras. They didn’t even ask,” she said, the disapproval apparent in her voice.
    “No, they didn’t, did they?”
    Earlier, when they had left the hospital, there had been a crowd of people outside, waiting as if someone had tipped them off that Viper was leaving with the young Amish woman. He had been pushing her wheelchair out the door to help her get into the limousine that was waiting to take them back to Pennsylvania. But the crowd was too much. Security had to come out to push people back. Alejandro had kept a serious face, his focus on helping Amanda to the car. Amanda, however, had ducked her head, shielding her face with her hands. She wasn’t used to that much attention, and she certainly didn’t like people taking her photograph.
    Now Amanda looked at Alejandro, wondering how he could be so nonchalant about such crowds. “And you don’t mind?”
    Alejandro shrugged. “I’m used to it, I guess.”
    Her mouth fell open. Used to people stealing his picture? It was so invasive and bad mannered. The people had no qualms about shoving cameras in his face, and he was used to it? “That