by Ted Mooney
Max stepped back and scanned the boat without favor. “Where’s Groot? He’s not here?”
“Sorry, he left for Rotterdam this morning.”
“Rotterdam? But we had an agreement! I can’t shoot this scene without him.”
“I know, and he asked me to give you his apologies.” She wiped her hands on a rag and passed it to Jacques, who accepted it gratefully. “His mother’s sick.”
“Really?” Max had never heard Groot mention his mother. He handed Jacques the manila folder he was carrying. “Is it serious?”
“I don’t know.” Rachel gave a small, nervous laugh. “I mean, he says it’s his mother, but he’s still pretty fixated on the money my parents wired us for the engines. I never should’ve teased him about it because now he really wants to pay it back. Wants to a whole lot. So maybe he went to raise the money somehow, or maybe just needed a break from his killer-bitch girlfriend. Or maybe his mother is sick.”
Max glanced at Jacques, who commenced setting up the camera and sound equipment. “Okay,” he said to Rachel, “we’ll just have to make the best of it.” She was wearing jeans and a red leotard top that contrasted nicely with her jet-black hair, a strand of which strayed across her cheek. “Can you walk us through the mechanics of what you’re doing here with the engine?”
“No problem.”
“We’ll keep it kind of free-form, if that’s all right. Don’t worry too much about staying on topic, just follow your thoughts. Jacques, you shoot it. I’ll take sound.”
“Check.”
When Rachel was again positioned over the engine, removing the fuel pump, Max cued Jacques and they began. She explained what she was doing, pointed out which parts would probably replace their opposite numbers in the Nachtvlinder’s original engines, and managed to convey a genuine enthusiasm for the mysteries of the diesel-combustion cycle. It was peculiar, Max thought, the hushed zealotry with which she and Groot spoke about the boat, almost as if it embodied a cause of some kind, a spiritual principle larger than themselves, to which they felt privileged to sacrifice their time and resources.
When he sensed that Rachel was nearing the end of her technical commentary, he intervened. “You’ve said before, Rachel, that a boat is like a living thing. Could you expand on that a little for us?”
“Sure.” She pushed aside the errant strand of hair, leaving a smear of engine grease across her cheek. “Every boat has her own character, a combination of traits that makes her unique. How she handles, what she’s capable of, what she was designed to do, all that. Plus, from the moment she’s launched, she accumulates a history that shapes her just like experience shapes a person. In the case of the Nachtvlinder, that’s more than a hundred years. We’ve seen logs that show her sailing throughout the former Dutch colonies, from the Antilles—Curaçao, Aruba, Saint Martin—to the East Indies—Java, New Guinea, Sumatra, Borneo, the Moluccas, and the rest. She’s been around the world, for sure. And that kind of history leaves its mark.”
Max threw a quick look at Jacques to make certain he was getting all this. “So am I right that your and Groot’s attachment to the Nachtvlinder is personal, even intimate?”
“Oh yes. Definitely. She’s our baby.”
Leaving a small silence, Max allowed the sense of this last remark to settle. Then he said, “Where’s Groot today?”
Rachel looked momentarily confused. “Groot went to Rotterdam.” She hesitated. “We had a quarrel.”
“What about?”
“Money, supposedly.” She seemed to think about it. “But we wouldn’t really fight over money. That’s just an excuse.”
“Yes? So what’s the real issue?”
“Well, us—him and me. Do we go on or not.” She folded her arms and shook her head in a wry approximation of perplexity. “And actually the Nachtvlinder’s at the center of all that, because she’s like a standard of some kind, an example of endurance and good faith, nothing false about her.” She laughed. “I realize how frivolous that might sound to people who don’t know boats, but believe me, it’s real enough to us.”
“So I gather,” said Max. He adjusted the sound level. “But Groot did ask you to marry him, and now you two seem to be at odds—if not over money, then over whatever it stands for, right? Power, freedom, family—you tell me.”
Rachel’s features seemed to thicken and her mood to falter. “Getting the engines was a surprise,” she said. “We thought it would take all summer to rebuild the old ones. Now we’ll be done much sooner.”
“Does that mean you have to make up your mind sooner, too? About marrying him?”
“No. Why should it?” Behind her glasses Rachel’s eyes flashed with something quite like anger. Jacques zoomed in slowly.
“Hey, no reason.” Max hastened to return the conversation to its previous footing. “So what happens after you finish with the engines?”
“We’ll put her in dry dock, get her caulked, filled, and painted, clean her props. There are bound to be some surprises—planks that need replacing, that kind of thing.” She turned her face into the wind, giving Jacques and the camera her profile. “Sorry, Max,” she said after a moment. “Maybe we should—”
But she did not complete her thought. From the quai came a briskly cadenced sound. All three turned to look. Six black-uniformed police, trotting two abreast in tight formation, were headed across the packed-sand quai to the Nachtvlinder.
“Oh, my God.” Rachel fell back a step, her hand over her mouth.
“Stay cool, guys.” Max handed the sound boom to Jacques and took over the camera. “We’re all on the same side.”
“Better watch it,” Jacques said under his breath. “They’re CRS.”
“Riot police? But doesn’t French law let me photograph anyone I want to in public, cops included?”
“Yes, but—”
Already Max was filming the police as they barreled up the gangway, their boots sounding in unison, their service pistols holstered but conspicuous at their hips. They didn’t slow their pace boarding the boat and were almost on top of Max and the others before their commanding officer raised a hand and brought them to a halt. He took in the scene—Max behind the camera, Jacques with the sound boom, Rachel hovering over the partly eviscerated engine—then he said, “À qui appartient ce vaisseau?”
Rachel came forward uncertainly. “Excusez-moi?”
“I said, who owns this vessel?”
Seeing another policeman move toward him, Max stepped out from behind the camera with both hands raised in a pantomime of surrender. He’d left the camera running on its tripod.
“Oh, you speak English!” said Rachel gratefully. “Well, the actual owner is away right now, but he and I live here together. And these two guys, they’re just, you know, filming.”
The officer appeared unmoved. “Identity cards, please.”
When all three had produced photo IDs, he addressed himself again to Rachel. “Who else is on board at the present time?”
“No one, Officer. Just us.”
“I have orders to search this boat, Madame. It will go better for everyone if you do not create problems.” He smiled mirthlessly. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course.”
The officer lifted his chin to his men, and they set off at a military pace—one to either side of the wheelhouse, three down the companionway. Max was again behind the camera, recording these maneuvers as best he could without giving up his prime spot on the foredeck. Jacques had propped the sound boom among the legs of an overturned deck chair so that the mike dangled directly, but without his physical intercession, over Rachel and the commanding officer. Past experience with the CRS had inclined him toward caution.
From below came the clamor of invasive search—stowage lockers flung open and shut again, furniture pushed aside, batons sounding the bulkheads for hidden compartments. Each of these noises registered on Rachel’s face, which the officer observed with clinical interest. Finally she said, “Please, sir, I’
d like to cooperate, but I don’t know what you’re looking for.”
He nodded as though listening to some familiar music doubtfully rendered, then, half begrudgingly, reached into his jacket and produced a photograph for Rachel’s inspection. “Do you know this man?” he asked.
To get a shot of the photo, Max had to remove the camera from its tripod. He came around behind Rachel and the officer, filming over their shoulders as they considered the black-and-white image.
“No, I’ve never seen him before.”
“Are you certain?”
The man in the photo was a nondescript, balding Caucasian of middle age, wearing a white lab coat and heavy black-framed glasses, standing in a high-tech industrial interior of some kind and cradling a clipboard, his lips pursed to suggest the confidence and resolve befitting a man of reason. The photo reminded Max of something from a year-end stockholders’ report, a visual aid usually run alongside optimistic earnings forecasts and three-dimensionally rendered pie charts.
“Positive,” said Rachel. “Why? What’s he done?”
“That remains to be determined,” the officer replied with a sniff. Already his men were coming back empty-handed from their search. Turning to speak to them, he saw Max filming. “Sir, if you don’t put that camera away I’ll arrest you for obstruction.”
Max backed off a couple of steps and continued shooting. The officer glared at him, then looked away. “Mathieu!” he said to one of his men. “Did you turn up anything?”
The man stood at attention. “No, sir! Nothing!”
Shifting his attention to Rachel, the officer smiled unpleasantly. “This is the same Nachtvlinder that was firebombed a few weeks ago, is it not?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with—”
“Let me ask the questions,” he replied. Taking a radio phone from his belt, he called headquarters. “The situation,” he said after identifying himself, “is that there is no situation. We’ve tossed the boat from stem to stern. Nothing. No doctor, no illegal aliens.”
To keep both Rachel and the officer in the frame, Max had to move several steps to the left.
“What do you suggest?” the officer said.
Behind Max, heading upstream, a bateau-mouche churned by, roiling the holly-green waters. The officer put his radio back and started toward Max, and at almost the same moment someone seized Max’s camera and yanked it away. He whirled round in outrage, ready to defend his rights, only to see that Jacques now held the camera, and, from the look on his face, that Max had made a mistake. He turned back just in time to receive the full force of the officer’s fist in his solar plexus.
It had been many years since Max had taken such a punch. He crumpled at once to the deck, gasping for air.
“You don’t listen, sir,” the officer said. “For your sake, I hope you learn to.” He nodded curtly to Rachel, then led his men across the deck and down the gangway in the same martial manner in which they’d arrived, the sound of their bootsteps quickly fading on the quai.
Rachel and Jacques helped Max into a deck chair. He was thinking about the night he’d met Odile and been obliged to fight the man pursuing her. It seemed like only yesterday.
“You went too far,” Rachel told him.
“No,” Max began, “I think … I think it was …”
“Don’t talk,” Jacques said. “Breathe.”
ODILE RETURNED HOME in a state of mounting unease. She tried working on the wedding dress—Fatima had called the day before to pronounce herself delighted with the new design—but couldn’t concentrate and was forced to set it aside. Anyway, she reasoned, to proceed was pointless until she got her client to agree to a fresh fitting.
Upstairs, she brewed a cup of rosehip tea and stood sipping it in the bedroom, studying the Giacometti drawing. The half-emergent woman it depicted, formed of welter and waste, seemed to demonstrate some irrefutable fact of life, a truth that Odile recognized yet couldn’t name, and for quite some time she remained transfixed. Then, abruptly, she grew frightened. The afternoon’s events had left her feeling flayed, vulnerable, raw.
She hurried back to the kitchen and, at five thirty, called Turner, who asked her to go with him to an opening at the Centre Pompidou, an idea so preposterous that she almost hung up. After she made her feelings clear and he’d sufficiently apologized, they agreed to meet at his apartment instead.
She dressed carefully, aware of wanting to please him: black lace brassiere and panties, a plum-colored dress of her own design, black lizard-skin heels, drop earrings, no perfume. Contemplating the effect in the mirror, she recalled there were several kinds of guilt that sometimes, properly handled, could cancel one another out for an hour or two. She left Max a note saying that she was with a client.
At Turner’s apartment, before she could even get the key into the lock, he flung the door open. She stared at him.
“Aren’t you coming in?” His eyes, so dark the pupils were hardly distinguishable, shone as he took stock of her.
She hurried past him. “I just needed to see you,” she said as he closed the door.
“Same here,” he replied. “You’ve been on my mind all day.”
Turning to see if he spoke ironically, she was instead surprised by how genuine he seemed. “Really? All day?” She laughed, teasing him a little.
“Yes, really.” Then he said, spacing out the words as if to clarify, “I think about you night and day.”
The laughter died in her throat, replaced by a citric sting that made her eyes water. She swallowed, wanting to speak, but it was too late for that.
In bed she let need supersede judgment and held nothing back, not even trying to excuse herself. When she felt him about to come, she slipped out from beneath him, pushed him back on the mattress and vaulted on top. With her hands planted side by side on his chest, she chased him down, matching thrust to thrust, unstinting, until her vision darkened, he said her name, and a blood tide lifted her up and away. She loosed a long, low cry that ended, as she fell forward onto him, in a sob.
They lay together afterward, drained, still, and blank. She clung to the blankness, working it down into a thin sleep in which she could rest, a moment of nullity, no more than that. She woke with a start.
“He looked different.”
“Who?” said Turner, stirring.
“Thierry. His head was shaved. And he was wearing glasses.”
Turner shifted her gently off him onto one side, then drew her back into his arms. “You know,” he said, “I could’ve sworn that for a moment there, just a moment, you were really with me. Am I wrong?”
She left a small silence. “No.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that. Because I don’t want to be childish about this, but I do have feelings for you.” Saying it seemed to sober him. “Yes, I do. And I don’t see much point in pretending otherwise.”
Wriggling closer, she willed him to be quiet.
“Do you?” he persisted.
In the five years of her marriage to Max, Odile had never till now been unfaithful to him. She shivered. “There’s always reason to pretend,” she said.
“Maybe so, but in your case I can’t.” He seemed to be arguing a point of order. “Anyway, you’re here. That must count for something.”
“It is what it is,” she told him.
“But I’m not the only one who cares,” Turner insisted. “Or do I flatter myself?”
“No,” she surprised herself by saying. “I do care for you. Of course I do. But feelings solve nothing. Surely you know that.”
“Well, at least I got you to admit it,” he said after awhile. “That’s something.”
Softly she disengaged from him, got out of bed, and began dressing. Aware of his watchful eyes on her, she suddenly felt certain that he understood her better than he let on, maybe better than he realized. The thought wasn’t altogether unwelcome—as he’d said, being there must count for something—but she felt compelled to resist it nonetheless. Reaching behind h
er back, she fastened her brassiere. “Things are about to get busy for me at home,” she told him. “My husband’s daughter is coming to visit from New York.”
“For how long?”
“A month.” She picked her dress up off the floor. “It’s been in the works for awhile.”
“I see. And are you close to her?”
“Yes and no. I mean, she’s thirteen. Who can tell?” She pulled the dress on over her head, shook it into place, then sat down on the edge of the mattress, presenting her back to him. He zipped her up, and she was on her feet again, scooping her hair clip and earrings off the dresser, collecting her shoes. “Anyway, there’ll be a lot to do. You know—family things.”
Turner got out of bed, took a bathrobe from the closet, and put it on. “So when will I see you?”
“I’m not sure.” She stood before the mirror, dabbing at her hair. “It’ll be hard.”
He came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. “But you’ll find a way.”
“I’ll try,” she told him.
He saw her to the door, and she took the elevator down.
On the street, walking to the métro, she let bits and pieces of the day replay themselves in her mind—the envelope of money, the turquoise handbag, Thierry and Gabriella in the theater, the slide show of tunnels and catacombs, the Russians in their jackets, the car they’d left unattended—until her sense of the day’s events composed itself into a kind of refrain that, as she considered it, grew alarming.
There had been a calamity. She had lent herself to a calamity.
CHAPTER 23
MAX WATCHED HIS DAUGHTER enter passport control. Her figure had filled out incredibly in the three months since he’d seen her in New York, she was wearing a chartreuse minidress he suspected she’d changed into on the plane, and the official overseeing her transit onto French soil appeared to be flirting with her, delaying her passage with droll commentary and artfully timed glances. She emerged from his attentions looking puzzled but pleased, her passport held gingerly before her.
“Breaking hearts already, are you?” said Max. In his arms she froze as she had for the last year or more, mortified by his love. He forced himself not to take it personally. “How was your flight?” he asked, releasing her.
