by Doyle, S.
I folded my arms over my chest and crossed my legs. “You’re on the clock, old man. Say what you want to say and be done with it.”
“Your mother was a…a…a beautiful woman once upon a time.”
I held up my hand. “Spare me. She’s off limits as far as this conversation is concerned. Because I don’t know who I’m more disappointed in as a parent.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. “I know you believe I abandoned you.” Breath. “I know you may think I just learned of who you are.” Breath. “But I’ve known about you since your birth.”
“So you knew my mom was pregnant, yet you did nothing about it.”
“Not.” Breath. “Nothing.” Breath.
I waited while he took the time to fill his lungs with oxygen.
“I couldn’t be in your life—”
“Why not?” I cut him off. Because that seemed like an easy excuse. I just couldn’t be in your life. Sorry. No dad for you.
“The work,” he sighed heavily. “What I was doing was always so dangerous. I’ve always been a target for people around the world who want my work, want my knowledge, want me to fix their ailing nuclear reactors. If they knew I had a daughter…”
I nodded. Having been a target of spies recently, I got where he was going with this. He was afraid I’d be used to force him to do some evil dude’s bidding.
“It’s only now,” he breathed. “At the end. When they can’t hurt me or use me anymore that I wanted to do this one last thing for you. But I never forgot about you. Never stopped trying to help you.”
That had me raising an eyebrow. I didn’t remember a lot of help growing up.
“I sent your mother support payments. Monthly. Sadly, she eventually used all of that money to support her drug habit. I begged her to get help for your sake. There were times she did. Enough that I thought you were better off with her than CPS.”
He wasn’t wrong. There were times she’d gotten clean. Once, when I was eleven. That had been a good year. Then the she’d fallen off the wagon. When I was thirteen, she’d tried again and had stayed clean for six months before she’d reverted to her old habits.
It sort of made sense she’d been getting support payments all that time. Her waitressing job paid shit but still we’d had an apartment. There had been food. Even when she was using. Until the drugs completely took over and I knew I had to leave to live.
I looked at the man sitting across from me. The man dying across from me. I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel now. A sense of connection?
Gratitude?
“Fuck that!” I said, angry at myself for even thinking of forgiving him. “I was seventeen when I left home. For over a year I lived day to day stealing what I could to survive. Where were you then? Where were your support payments then?”
He nodded as if acknowledging his sins. “I wasn’t there. I’d been in Germany…working. I didn’t know you’d left your mother.”
“No, you were not there.” I stood then and started to pace the room. Walking toward the window, I tried to focus on the ornate iron work on the windows across the street. To commit them to memory so I could write about them later, but right now all I saw was the past.
Huddled up under an overpass at night. My knees pulled in on themselves so tight I was practically folded in half. Rain coming down on either side of the street. Watching as someone pulled up to a corner bar and got out of his car and failed to lock it.
Inside, a cell phone I could sell. A change cup with almost thirty dollars in quarters. A hundred-dollar bill that must have fallen out of his wallet and settled under the driver’s seat.
I took it all. And I lived another day.
So that I could be here looking at ornate iron work on a Paris building across the street.
“I wasn’t there with you,” he sighed. “But the investigator I’d hired to keep tabs on you finally told me you’d left home. I thought…of approaching you then. Finding you…but after all this time, I didn’t think you would believe me.”
That my long-lost father was a nuclear scientist and wanted to help me? No, I wasn’t entirely sure I would have believed that. It wouldn’t have felt any more real than it did now.
“I tried to help you as best I could. I considered reporting you to Child Protective Services, but I was scared for you. Growing up, I came from that system in Italy. It wasn’t a good environment for me. So I did what I could. Contributed in other ways.”
I turned around and glared at him. “I don’t remember any special contributions.”
I remembered hunger and fear.
It came roaring up in my stomach. All I wanted to do was go home. When I got back to my condo, I wondered if I would ever leave. If I would really sink all the way into the agoraphobia that had always threatened at the edges.
At least I would have the internet, delivery, Leigh. There were worse ways to live. I already knew that.
“Who do you think you were…” Breath. Breath. “…stealing from all those months?”
Whipping around to face him, I winced. “What do you know about what I did on the streets?”
“I had you watched,” he wheezed. “Every night my investigator would find you. You didn’t panhandle…he told me that. You were too proud for hand-outs.”
I blinked. What was he talking about? “You had me watched?”
He nodded, and, watching him, I could see the effort he was exerting to keep talking.
He sighed and took a few hits of oxygen. “He told me he tried to give you money and you told him to piss off.”
It didn’t surprise me. People had offered me money. I took it from the women. I never took it from the men. If there had been some guy who had tried to offer me money, I would have assumed strings came attached.
“No,” I said, feeling my throat get tight. “I wouldn’t have taken any money from a man.
He tried for something that might have been a smile or a smirk. “I told him he had to get creative. Do you remember all those cars you stumbled upon that were unlocked and always had loose cash lying around? You think that was a coincidence?”
It was inconceivable. Impossible. I shook my head as if launching a denial. Yes, there had been unlocked cars. One with a wallet that had been stuffed with cash. I’d lived off that find for weeks. It’s how I was able to rent a motel room for the first time in months. I’d been able to sleep in a bed.
“They were different cars…” I said, my voice trailing off as I tried to think back. Big cars, small ones. Fancy ones with impressive names that probably didn’t belong in the sections of Philly where I’d been squatting.
I heard his attempts to suck in air and this time it hurt something in my chest. Like I was struggling to breathe, too.
“Always different cars. Disguises. Different investigators so you wouldn’t get suspicious. It wasn’t too difficult. They told me you never wandered much beyond a four-block area. It had always been easy to find you.”
Just like that, my entire teenage narrative changed. In an instant I’d gone from having no father, to having a father who’d sent child support and who’d basically funded me through my homelessness.
I’d gone from being a thief to someone who had just been taking the payments left out for me.
From a homeless and desperate girl to someone who had just been biding her time.
“Why didn’t you…” I cut myself off, not knowing what I wanted to say. “You could have just told me…”
“The father you never knew. A man you had never met. That I was sending proxies from Germany to help you? I was afraid anything more direct and you would run again. And I would never find you.”
I don’t know what I would have done back then if some investigator had approached me about my father. How could I? Suddenly, it was too much.
“I need air. I need to breathe. I can’t think. I can’t stay.”
“Come here, child.”
I winced at the near endearment, but still, I moved closer to him.
From under the blanket that was tucked around his waist, he pulled out a purse. Black, unassuming, something I used to carry on my dates with Jared when I didn’t want to bring more than a credit card, a tampon and my condo key.
“Go see Paris,” he wheezed. “There’s euros, an Amex. Walk around and take in the sights. Think. Then come back and we’ll discuss the future.”
“There is no future for us,” I said immediately. I still took the purse.
He shook his head. “No, there is no future for me. But there is most certainly a future for you. Go. You’re safe. No one knows you’re in this city and Marta will follow you for your protection.”
“She drugged me, and she was in Venice along with a Russian spy, how do I know I can trust her?”
“I sent her to Venice to bring you back. That was all me. She’s a competent guard. She’ll follow you. At a distance,” he added when I glanced at Marta skeptically.
“I don’t know if I’ll come back to you,” I told him truthfully.
“You’ll come back. There’s too much at stake.”
“I don’t care about your Legacy Project,” I told him, even as I started to walk away. “I don’t need your money. I just want to be left alone.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “Go think on it, child. That’s all I ask. Go see this beautiful city you write about so emotionally.”
Heading toward the long door where Marta stood, I didn’t look back. I didn’t even say goodbye.
By the time I hit the street outside the apartment building and looked up at the window where only an hour ago I’d stood, I realized I’d made a mistake.
I should have at least said goodbye.
12
Paris
Beth
I wandered the streets in a daze. A place that was supposed to be a dream destination was now just a space filled with cars and noises and buildings and roads. Paths that directed me one way or another. Eventually, I found it easier, more peaceful walking along the banks of the Seine, even though there was less to see, until I was left with no choice but to take to the busy streets again.
I didn’t stop at the Louvre or the Musée d’Orsay. I didn’t think about heading toward the now shell of a cathedral, Notre Dame. I kept the purse my father gave me clutched in my hand, but I never opened it.
Marta, I assumed, was nearby, but if I looked over my shoulder or suddenly turned around, she was nowhere obvious to be seen. I was alone or at least felt that way.
My father had watched me as a child, sent support payments, helped me while I was on the streets and I’d never known it. Had never known him. Now I was trapped in some ridiculous global spy plot, and he was dying, and it all seemed like too much to process.
If only Liam were here. He was the only one who might understand my anger. My hurt. My confusion. If only I could lay back and have him fuck all of this out of me.
I tried to focus on a plan. I couldn’t aimlessly wander the streets indefinitely. Glancing up, I spotted an internet café tucked between a chocolatier and a bread shop. Suddenly, the need to hear from a familiar voice overwhelmed me.
Priorities, I got some chocolate filled macarons first, then I popped into the store filled with computers in use. Paying for only thirty minutes of time, because something told me I shouldn’t sit in one place for too long, I logged on and went immediately to my DMs.
Nibbling on the cookies and trying not to orgasm as the chocolate decadence melted on my tongue, I smiled when I saw the message indicator.
LEIGH: Hey, you out there? It’s been a while since I heard from you. Everything okay?
LEIGH: Are you screwing the hot guy? Or wait, the not-hot guy? Or both of them at once? I want details!
LEIGH: WHERE ARE YOU?
The series of messages made me think at least there was someone in the world who would have cared if I’d gone missing, never to be heard from again.
ME: Hey, it’s me. You’re never going to believe what happened to me.
LEIGH: WHERE ARE YOU?
ME: I’m in Paris. Can you believe it? Long story. Let’s just say I don’t think I’m ever leaving home again once I get back to the States.
LEIGH: Where are you right now?
ME: Right now, I’m in an internet café talking to you. If I told you everything that’s happened, you wouldn’t believe it. Let’s just say my life is unhinged right now and I couldn’t care less about a book deal.
I waited for a response. Probably more questions. But what was I supposed to say? That it turns out I have father, that he’s some kind of nuclear scientist whose made this miraculous discovery that the world wants? And because they know I’m his daughter, that means they want me, too?
None of that was going to make any sense. Besides that, I didn’t even really know Leigh. She was just an internet connection I’d turned into a friendship.
Was I really going to hit her with spies? Both Russian and American?
It seemed too weighty and unfair. So I went with something that I would normally share.
ME: Oh… and yeah, I did screw the guy. Not Charlie Hunman….the other guy. Who I decided is sneakily hot. AND he had a dick piercing!
LEIGH: Holy shit!
There was a long pause before she added a question
LEIGH: And so…did he make you like it? Sex, I mean. Not the piercing.
A smile played around my lips as I thought about all my previous sexual experience and compared that to Liam.
ME: Uh, yeah. He did. And both, actually.
LEIGH: Good. You deserved a good boning. Listen, I have to run. Where are you headed to next in Paris? Please tell me the Louvre.
ME: Not quite. Right now, I’m just enjoying walking around. I want to stop at the Pont des Arts. It used to be a lock bridge, but not anymore. I wrote an article about it the day they removed the locks.
LEIGH: I remember. You cried for all the love lost in the world.
ME: It made me sad.
I waited a few moments, but there was no response. She did say she had to run, but I hadn’t realized it would be so abruptly. I checked the time and did the math and realized it was ridiculously early in New Mexico, but I knew enough about her strange job hours not to question it.
Bolstered by the thought that there was someone out there in the universe who cared about me marginally, I pulled up a map on the computer and plotted a route to the bridge. I realized I wasn’t that far away, so I left the café with a new sense of purpose.
Walking faster than I had earlier, I stopped when I reached the base of my destination.
Le Pont des Arts.
The Lock Bridge.
That romantic place where people would come to attach a padlock on the bridge railings to seal their love and throw the key into the river to mark its permanence.
The locks were long gone now. Removed by the government for the pesky reason that the weight of so many locks was causing the bridge to fail. Such a silly reason to destroy the solid bond of love for so many, but there it was.
Practicality even in Paris.
I walked over the arch and stopped midway. Imagined how many others had stopped on this very spot with their hearts in their hands. Ready to pledge a permanence of feeling to the world.
Whether the stories ended happily or not, the feelings and emotions declared on this bridge had been real. Poignant.
Something I’d never let myself come close to feeling.
Because my mother as an addict? My father a ghost? Because I’d seen on the streets how some people would victimize the unfortunate? For all those reasons, and possibly others, I’d locked myself off from the rest of the world.
Now it seemed like there was no more hiding.
Glancing toward the edge of the bridge, I saw a vendor stand selling all manner of locks. A way to at least buy one and toss away the key even if you couldn’t fasten the lock to the bridge anymore. I looked at the purse in my hand, which contained cash, an Amex and something else I’d felt when Gino had handed it to me.<
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Wandering toward the vendor’s stand, I studied the locks and found one that I thought suited. I passed the old man a few euros and he handed me back a Sharpie.
Of course.
Beth and Liam
I wrote it and felt a wave of sentimentality overtake me, since I was never going to see him again, then I pushed it aside. Now wasn’t the time to get maudlin. I had to keep my head on straight and not be completely oblivious to what were still the facts.
I’d been kidnapped to Paris, so the American government didn’t know where I was. Liam didn’t know where I was. Hopefully, Gino was right, and Dmitri didn’t know where I was. But Marta, who I didn’t entirely trust, did know where I was.
It was time to crawl out of the miasma of my father’s revelation. Time to think about next steps and proactive actions instead of reactive ones.
One thing I was certain of, I wasn’t safe. Not as safe as Gino thought. If Liam taught me anything, he’d taught me that. I wouldn’t be safe as long as I was a target, and I was a target as long as people believed I knew where Gino was.
And I definitely knew where Gino was now.
Security measures were required. I grasped the lock in my hand and thought about my plan as I wandered off.
* * *
Marta was now definitely a little tighter on my trail. The few times I’d looked behind me, I’d seen her in the near distance.
I’d wandered around the streets purposely this time, as opposed to aimlessly.
Not as a tourist, but hopefully like someone who was trying to walk off the funk of the past. The present. Pretty much everything that was happening to me in my life.
A few trips on the metro. A few missed stops.
Then I was at Gare du Nord. The largest train station in Paris and a hub to any number of cities throughout Europe. Not to mention there was a train that would take me to the airport.
An idea occurred to me and I moved through the station, taking a detour into the women’s restroom. When I came out, I moved past the storage lockers stopping at one locker in particular and checking around to see if Marta was in sight.
