by Colin Meloy
A casual onlooker might assume that the café was closed; there seemed to be no light emanating from inside, and the door was firmly shut. The outside tables were layered in dust, and several of their accompanying chairs were upended, as if no one had sat in them for ages. Charlie cautiously approached the door and peered in. The glow of a few lamps shone through the glass. He tried the door. It was unlocked and opened with a loud creak.
Those few lamps visible from the outside illuminated a shabby dining room inside the café, a tiled floor covered in grimy tables, and a long wooden bar littered with a smattering of dirty glasses. Someone, at some point, had tried to pair a few dozen chairs to the café tables, but it was as if the chairs had all, over the course of time, migrated to strange and far-flung places in the room. Several of them looked as if they’d drunk too much pastis themselves and were lying, dozing, on their sides. Charlie walked slowly up to the bar and craned his neck to see if there was any other human soul in the Bar des 7 Coins other than himself.
“Hello?” he called. “Bonjour!” he added, for good measure. No one answered. He thought he saw a mouse scurrying along the back side of the bar. Several bottles of unknown vintage had accumulated on the shelves behind the bar; they were all covered in a healthy layer of dust. Charlie walked back into the center of the café and, righting one of the chairs, took a seat at a table and puzzled.
He puzzled for several minutes this way.
He removed the business card from his pocket and flipped it over in his fingers. There was no doubt: it was the same café. But why had Amir given him the business card for a derelict café, for a business that seemed long defunct? He was getting ready to leave when he heard a sound coming from some distant room.
It was whistling.
Charlie froze in his chair as the whistling grew louder, accompanied by the sound of heavy footsteps. They were coming from somewhere behind him. Unbidden, his mind identified the song being whistled as “Les Enfants du Pirée,” a song that had been inescapable on the radio for the last year. It was something about the state of the café that led Charlie to believe that whoever was whistling and walking must be a ghost. He swiveled his body quietly in his chair, looking to see what kind of apparition was about to appear.
If it was a ghost, it was a very fat ghost. And when it materialized, stepping through a swinging door behind the bar, it seemed as shocked to see Charlie as he was to see it. The “it” in question was, no doubt, a very large man in a floral-printed shirt that enveloped his body like a muumuu. The shirt looked like it hadn’t been washed in several weeks. The man wore a short beard, and his black hair was thinning in strange patterns on his head. His eyes widened to see Charlie, then darted around the room nervously.
“On est fermé,” he said in a voice that sounded strangely flutelike, coming from such a large body. He was informing Charlie that the café was closed, though a quick look at Charlie’s watch confirmed that it was almost noon. What café in their right mind would be closed at Thursday lunch?
“But—” began Charlie.
“You are English?” asked the man.
“American, actually,” said Charlie. “And I think I’m looking for—”
“We are closed,” said the man. His English wormed from beneath a heavy accent.
“On a Thursday at lunchtime?” Charlie could not hide his disbelief.
The man seemed to appraise the situation. He scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Okay,” he said. “We are open.”
That was easy, thought Charlie. “Oh,” he said. “Good.”
“Yes,” said the man. He was still standing, somewhat frozen, behind the bar. “What would you have?”
Charlie was so confused by this interaction that he’d forgotten that he’d meant to ask after Amir. “What—” he stammered. “Are there any daily specials?”
“No,” said the man.
“Okay,” said Charlie.
“Yes,” rebutted the man. “There are daily specials.”
“Oh,” said Charlie. “Okay. And what are they?”
The man seemed suddenly stumped by the question, and he frowned as if he considered it unfair that Charlie should press him this way. “They are . . . ,” he began. His eyes scanned the restaurant, as if trying to conjure the words. “Hhhhhh,” he said, after a time, which mostly sounded as if the man were trying to expel something from his throat.
“Pardon?”
“Hhhhhh,” the man repeated. Finally, the sound more or less transfigured into an understandable word: “Horse.”
Charlie grimaced. “Horse?”
“Hare,” corrected the man. “Rabbit. In a stew.”
“You said horse, just before.”
“Didn’t. I said rabbit. In a stew.”
Charlie figured it wasn’t wise to press him. “Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“Do you have a menu? Maybe I’d look at your menu.”
The man ran his hand down the bar thoughtfully. He seemed to gaining a semblance of confidence in his role as waiter. “No menu today. Just the special.”
Charlie was hungry. Besides, he thought that maybe ordering from the gentleman would go some way to make him more at ease. “I’ll take the rabbit stew, then,” he said.
“You will?” The man seemed surprised.
“Well, if it’s the only thing for lunch, I guess so. Yes.”
The man abruptly lifted his hand from the bar and walked back through the swinging door. It had barely swung back in place before he appeared again. “Would you like something to drink while you wait?”
“Sure,” said Charlie. “A grenadine?”
The man winked and smiled, pointing a chubby finger in Charlie’s direction. “Good choice, my friend.” He walked the length of the bar, stopping only once he was in front of the shelves of dusty and disordered bottles. He managed a dramatic pirouette to face them. Charlie, from where he sat, could hear the man whisper, “Grenadine. Grenadine. Grenadine,” as he searched the bottles’ labels for the right one.
“Is that it, there?” called Charlie. “The one with the red stuff in it?”
The man gave Charlie another wink over his shoulder as he reached out and grabbed the bottle Charlie had identified. He picked up a glass from the bar, spat in it, and wiped it clean with the hem of his shirt. Charlie winced and looked away, trying to turn his attention to the decor of the café. Several oil paintings were hung on the walls, which were covered in a faded patterned paper; one of the paintings was mysteriously of a coat without a body inside it. Another was of some fortress, piled high on top of a mountain peak. The café itself seemed as if it once had been a fine establishment, but it had long fallen into disuse and disrepair. Newspapers cluttered the corners, and muddy scuffs covered the old tile of the floor.
“Here you are,” came the man’s voice, directly over Charlie’s shoulder. A tall glass filled to the brim with a reddish liquid appeared in front of Charlie. “Une grenadine.”
“Merci,” said Charlie. He eyed the glass suspiciously. As if postponing drinking it, he looked up at the man and said, “Do you know someone named Amir?”
“Amir?” asked the man. “No. No Amir.”
“Kid my age, maybe. Lebanese, I think. Brown hair? I think he might’ve given me this card.” He reached into his pocket and showed the business card to his waiter. The man looked at it blankly.
“I don’t know this card,” he said. “I don’t know Amir.” With a whistle, he began walking back to the bar.
“This is the Bar des Sept Coins, correct?”
“It is,” said the man.
“But you’ve never seen a brown-haired kid named Amir.”
“Never,” said the man emphatically. Maybe—just maybe—too emphatically, Charlie decided.
Charlie, mystified, picked up the glass in front of him and absently took a sip. A sudden burning sensation ripped through his throat as he gulped down the drink. He looked back at the man, shocked. “This . . . ,” he sp
uttered, “what is in this?”
“Grenadine.”
“And . . . ?”
“And gin, of course,” said the man. He’d returned to his place behind the bar.
“You put gin in my grenadine?”
The man seemed genuinely offended by Charlie’s critique. “Is there any other way to drink it?”
“I’m twelve years old, sir,” said Charlie. “Do I look like I take gin in my grenadine?”
The man gave a disinterested shrug. He disappeared back behind the swinging door, leaving Charlie alone with his thoughts. He stared out the front door of the café, wondering for a second time whether he should just give up his search for the boy pickpocket and get on with his life. This thought was interrupted when the swinging door behind the bar swung again and the man in the muumuu appeared, holding a plate.
He sashayed proudly over to where Charlie was seated and, with a loud “Bon appétit!” laid the dish in front of his only customer.
“This is the rabbit?” asked Charlie.
The thing on the plate was, without a doubt, not a stew. Instead, it was definitely a sandwich. And one that looked as if a few bites had been taken out of it.
“À la Marseillaise,” said the man, smiling toothily.
Charlie peeled back the top slice of the bread; a gooey layer of what appeared to be some kind of chocolate spread adhered it to its downstairs neighbor. He could not find it in his heart to quibble. “Looks delicious,” he said. He was about to pick it up and take a bite when he thought better of it. “Listen,” he said, scooting his chair away from the table. “If you do see someone named—”
“I do not know this Amir,” the man interrupted.
“I know,” said Charlie impatiently. “But if you do—”
“It is very unlikely that—”
Charlie countered loudly, “BUT IF YOU DO.” He waited to see if the man would interrupt again. When he didn’t, Charlie continued calmly: “If you do see him, will you tell him Charlie Fisher stopped by?”
“Charlie Fisher,” repeated the man. “Yes.”
“Tell him . . .” Charlie searched for the words. “Tell him he dropped this and I was just returning it.” He set the business card on the table with a resigned sigh.
“Very well, monsieur,” said the man, whose sudden shift in tone gave away his eagerness to be done with Charlie altogether.
Charlie began to ask for the check when he was interrupted by the most sudden and abrasive change in atmosphere he’d ever, in his short life, experienced. In a matter of moments, the once-placid café was transformed into a whirlwind of absolute chaos.
The café door swung open with a tremendous crash, and in ran a horde of kids. They moved too fast for Charlie to count them, but his embattled mind managed to guess there were six or seven. His heart felt like it was leaping out of his chest. Two of them dove toward him as one, only separating inches before his table; his glass of gin-and-grenadine (mostly gin) flew violently sideways and splashed to the ground in a most spectacular manner. Charlie himself fell over backward in his chair, spilling comically to the dirty tiled floor. He scrambled to his feet just in time to see his waiter, suddenly looking very alert, standing in front of the mirrored wall behind the bar, corralling the children toward him. Charlie saw him reach behind one of the bottles, and much to Charlie’s surprise, the entire wall of shelves opened to reveal a secret passageway behind it. One by one, the kids disappeared behind the shelves; the waiter counted each of them, like a mama duckling numbering her young. Apparently one was missing, because he looked quizzically out into the room; he seemed surprised to see Charlie still standing there.
“Charlie!” came a voice from the far end of the café.
It was Amir, breathless, having just dashed into the dining room. Both of the boys faced off, seeming equally shocked to see each other. Finally, a smile broke across Amir’s face.
“C’mon!” he cried, running and grabbing Charlie’s hand. He dragged Charlie across the room, sending chairs flying as he did so. Charlie, at that point, began to hear the encroaching wail of sirens, somewhere out in the street. The heavyset waiter impatiently waved them toward him; when they arrived at the doorway, the waiter put his hand on Charlie’s chest, stopping him.
“You know the chump?” the man asked.
“The chump’s with me,” said Amir.
Apparently, that was enough explanation for the waiter. Charlie and Amir dashed under the man’s arm just as he let go of the strange door and it closed behind them. Together, they entered the darkness.
Chapter
EIGHT
“Watch your step!” someone instructed Charlie, though he could not say who. The way was pitch-black on the other side of the secret door. It was also very cramped, which Charlie discovered by simultaneously scraping both elbows on the opposing walls of a passageway that seemed to be slowly angling downward. The air became cool and slightly wet. A flicker of electric light could be seen somewhere off in the distance ahead of him, illuminating the parade of figures he was following in silhouette. The cry of sirens was all but silenced by the closed door behind them. He reached out to touch the shoulder of the kid nearest him. The bare glow of the corridor’s light showed that it was Amir.
“Where are we?” whispered Charlie.
“Shhh,” warned Amir. “Just follow.”
Charlie could hear some sort of hushed argument occurring at the front end of the line as they arrived at an abrupt end to the corridor. Curiously enough, the file of bodies began suddenly corkscrewing downward and out of sight. It didn’t take long for Charlie to arrive at a spiral staircase that had been built into an ancient-looking stone well. Grasping the wrought-iron banister, he carefully followed the wooden steps; they seemed to multiply endlessly as he traveled. After some time, the stairs let out on a stone surface and Charlie looked up. His breath caught in his throat.
The glow of the electric lamps revealed that he was standing in the midst of a massive catacomb.
Charlie struggled to date this strange subterranean burrow—but he’d have to guess that, like many European catacombs, it likely dated to Roman times. The stones were darkened with soot and age, and wide cavities had been constructed into the walls of what amounted to a long, low corridor. Presumably, bodies had once been interred in these cavities, but there was now little evidence of them. Instead, fine Persian rugs and tasseled pillows had been thrown about, giving the appearance of a kind of exotic salon. In the center of the room was a large table, surrounded by chairs. Its surface was piled high with what appeared to be paper money, coins, and treasure of every metallic hue.
The argument that Charlie had overheard in the corridor above had continued in this new environment, though it had grown in intensity. It was between two boys, roughly Charlie’s age. One was a boy with deep-ebony-colored skin; the other was a mop-topped white kid of almost comically large proportions for his apparent age. The former spoke in a rich accent that Charlie couldn’t place, the latter in some kind of Slavic dialect. Their English, though, was strangely similar in its alienness.
“That chump had a dipsy, Bear,” said the first boy. “I felt it. He came down on me before I knew what was happening!”
“That weren’t no dipsy,” said the second. “That was some old Iowa tweezer poke. You spooked, that’s all. Almost throwed the mob.”
A girl interjected, “He was a whiz copper, boys. Didn’t you see that fuzzy tail?”
The two boys stopped and stared at the girl. Charlie, squinting his eyes against the low light of the torches, recognized her as Jackie, the girl he’d met with Amir the day before.
“No,” said the boy they called the Bear, in disbelief.
Jackie pulled something from her purse and threw it on the table. It was a silver badge. Everyone in the room ran to look at it, including Charlie.
“Look at that,” said the girl. “Whiskers got whiskers.” She removed several more items from her purse and threw them on the table: a wallet
, a watch, a laminated credential card, and what looked to be a much beloved photograph of a cat.
The argument was immediately forgotten; the entire room erupted into laughter. Charlie found himself joining in, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was laughing about. Apparently Charlie’s contribution was conspicuous in some way, because as soon as he began, the entire room stopped.
Everyone’s attention was suddenly turned to the newcomer. Charlie’s laughter dwindled away awkwardly. “Hi,” he said, after a beat.
Jackie pushed through the crowd of kids, all of them struck speechless by Charlie’s presence, and fixed Charlie with an unholy glare. “Who in God’s name are you and how did you get here?” she asked in a tone of voice that Charlie, had he written about it in one of his stories, would have described as “it could disintegrate hard steel.”
Amir, thankfully, stepped in. “This is Charlie. You remember Charlie Fisher, right, Jackie?”
“What, the chump you were turning out yesterday?” asked Jackie.
“That’s him,” said Amir.
Jackie, by this time, had turned to face Amir squarely. “And how, pray tell, did he come to find our scatter?” Before Amir could offer a reply, she corrected herself, saying, “How did he come to be actually inside our scatter?”
Charlie scanned the crowd that was now surrounding him. There were eight kids in total, including Amir and Jackie, of varying ages, heights, and ethnicity. Of the pack, three were girls. One of the girls approached Charlie—she was certainly the youngest of them all and decidedly the smallest. She wore her brown hair boyishly short; she spoke to Charlie in the most hardened London Cockney accent he thought he’d ever heard.
“Shall I stick this britch?” she asked. She’d reached into her pants pocket and retrieved a knife, which she waved threateningly in front of his face.
Charlie assumed it had been a question asked of someone else, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to offer his own opinion: “I don’t think you should,” he said.
“I didn’t ask you,” said the girl menacingly, now inches from his face.
