by Ted Mooney
The conversation below ceased immediately at his approach, and all three rose guiltily to their feet. Looking from one to another of his prospective subjects, Max saw an expression quite like shock on their faces. He decided to let the moment play out. Without comment, he considered his surroundings: the dimly lit compartment, the river-facing portholes brighter than the compartment, the nautical magazines neatly stowed in a bamboo rack, the map of the Seine framed and bolted flush to the bulkhead, the bank of wooden storage lockers, the pair of canaries in a cage not yet shrouded for the night, the cantaloupe rolling listlessly about in a bowl as the Nachtvlinder pitched in the wake of a passing boat. Max’s eyes settled on Rachel. She looked stricken.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I should’ve knocked.”
Groot was quick to intervene. “No, no. You just surprised us. That’s all.” He made a move to help Max with his equipment, but Max shook his head fractionally and he backed off. “The light,” Max said. “I thought maybe we could shoot a couple of—”
But now Odile stepped forward, quite composed again, and as she looked him in the eye something like a memory came hurtling back to him. Yet it was more immediate than a memory, it was her voice in his ear, saying, as it had that early spring afternoon, topside on this very vessel, when the two of them were in easy harmony still: Enough. When the time comes, you’ll do what must be done. I require it, and you won’t fail me.
To his immense relief, he understood that now was that time.
“Max,” she said simply.
WHEN TURNER’S CONVERSATION with Odile came so abruptly to an end, he’d redialed at once, only to get her voice mail on the first ring. This he took to mean that her phone had been switched off, whether by herself or someone else, and as thoughts of the evening’s developments ricocheted through his head, he commenced, in his agitation, to walk the moonlit city streets at random, oblivious to both direction and purpose. By the time he got a grip on himself, in the eighteenth arrondissement, a street sign informed him, even though he already knew, that he was on rue de la Goutte d’Or. He wondered briefly why there weren’t more people around, especially given the extraordinary light, and in a neighborhood known for its night trade. Then he saw, and realized he’d been seeing for some time now, an unusual number of police on the street—plainclothes and uniformed, on foot and in squad cars, with the occasional riot van parked inconspicuously in an alley. He hesitated, tapping his forefinger against his pursed lips as he pivoted slowly to survey the scene. Then he headed south toward the river.
At first he kept to the main boulevards—Magenta, Fayette, Haussmann—but before long grew uncomfortably aware that the belt-and-tape holster he’d rigged for his gun was designed more for concealment than for access—a definite disadvantage, should there actually be a moment of need. He turned down a side street, then another, before sheepishly slipping into a half-darkened doorway.
Unbuttoning his shirt, he transferred the gun to the waistband of his trousers, in front, at the left, then buttoned his suit jacket over it. He knew he was behaving like a character in a movie but so now was everyone else—all over the world, every waking hour, without even thinking about it. The times encouraged people to magnify their view of themselves, and, like it or not, you had to accommodate. He stepped again into the street.
“Watch out!” cried a voice closing fast from behind.
Turner leapt back onto the sidewalk just in time to avoid being run down by a helmeted bicyclist in black leather.
“Moron!” the man shouted over his shoulder as he sped off.
“Asshole!” Turner called after him, then continued south.
If, as he sometimes suspected, there would come a day of deliverance for people like himself, people so rabid to live that they knew neither up nor down, right nor left, then maybe fear wasn’t the survival mechanism he’d imagined it to be. Maybe, instead, it was the problem. A hindrance to what would otherwise happen. But how could you tell? Speculation did no good, that much was obvious. And in the end, of course, fear or no fear, the same fate awaited everyone. Or so one was led to believe.
Moment by moment, then, block by block, Odile seeped back into his thoughts until she eventually displaced all others. He grew more confident. Despite her efforts to discourage him, obvious from the start, he remained undeterred in his pursuit. He believed she loved him, even if she wished it were otherwise. And people floundered, they changed their minds, outside events intervened without warning. Why shouldn’t he have a life with her? He felt it within his power to make this happen. Anyway, he had to try. He owed it to himself, a changed man, and he owed it to Odile, the woman who’d changed him. Nothing else would do.
Rounding the corner onto rue des Halles, he saw a group of police halfway down the block, taking counsel together, their vehicles obstructing the street. Unpleasantly aware of the weapon jammed into his waistband, he crossed the street to avoid the officers, one of whom called out to him.
He stopped in his tracks, and the cop dashed across the pavement to have a word with him.
“Good evening, Officer,” Turner said. “Is there something wrong?”
“As a precautionary measure, there is a civil alert, yes, and that is something we must all take seriously. Your identity card, please.”
Reaching into his breast pocket, Turner produced his wallet, removed his identification card, and handed it to him.
The policeman looked him over with care, his gaze lingering thoughtfully at the waist, where Turner’s jacket was buttoned tight. Then, after a quick, hard glance at his face, the officer shifted his attention to the card. “Where are you going tonight, sir?”
“To my home. I live in—”
“I can see where you live,” the officer said curtly, then handed back the card. “Go there directly, no stops.”
“Yes, of course. As quickly as possible.” Turner hesitated. “Should one be alarmed?”
For the first time the officer seemed to ease up slightly. He looked evenly into Turner’s eyes and, with no suggestion of levity, replied, “Sir! One should never be alarmed. One should be alert.”
“Well said.” Turner glanced at his watch. “So, with your permission, I’ll get going.”
“That’s a very good idea.” His interest in Turner exhausted, he jogged back to where his fellow officers were gathered.
Turner hurried on and did not look back. But he wasn’t going home.
TOPSIDE on the Nachtvlinder, temporarily united in their desires, Rachel, Groot, and Odile assembled for a scene that Max had yet to glimpse or invent. The fog was still rolling in and the light was brighter than ever, but with no idea when the moon might set, he couldn’t bear to lose any camera time. Each wasted second hurt.
Turning toward the quai, he gestured for Jacques to keep shooting. From his assistant’s vantage, the freshly painted boat would be blending more and more into the overall whiteness, even partly disappearing into it.
“Where do you want us?” asked Rachel.
Max led them to the river side of the boat, stationing Odile amidships, just out of camera range. Groot and Rachel he took closer to the stern, where the light was brightest. When he had them arranged to his liking, up against the railing, bodies half turned toward each other, he put the light meter to their faces, took a reading, and retreated behind the camera to frame the shot. Satisfied, he drew himself up in somewhat priestly fashion to address his principals.
“Okay. This will be a little different from what we’ve been doing, because I won’t speak. I won’t ask questions, and I won’t be a factor. But don’t let that worry you—quite the opposite. Once we start, you’ll be free to do or say anything you want. You can even think of yourself as someone else, if that appeals to you or helps you get to where you need to be. What I do ask is that you keep things moving, physically and verbally, following your gut. Don’t think, just let it out. Ignore me and accommodate to whatever seems real. Understand?”
He inspected each of the
m in turn. Meeting Odile’s gaze, he experienced a thrill of complicity. Whatever happened now would happen to them both. They’d respond as one. And as things had been when the two of them had first met, so would they be again. The readiness was all.
“Two scripted moments only,” Max went on. “First, Rachel, I want you to slap Groot as hard as you can on the cheek. The right one, since you’re left-handed. Is that okay with both of you?”
They looked at each other for a moment, then nodded.
“Second, when I give the signal to Odile, she’ll come into the action. Incorporate her however you like. Odile, follow your impulses. Other developments—and as you know, there will always be other developments—should be treated naturally. Oh, and I’ve got Jacques down there on the quai shooting too, in case we need some backup footage. He may come aboard later. But ignore him just as you do me.”
Max, though hoping for no questions, left a short interval in which they might be posed. None were. “So, guys, that’s it.” He put his eye to the viewfinder. “Everybody ready?” He took their silence as assent. “Rachel, it’s all you.”
Inhaling deeply, she clenched her teeth and drew her left hand back, palm open. Max started to film. The slap, when it came, was much harder than anyone but Max had expected, snapping Groot’s head around to face the camera. But he didn’t flinch or move away. He didn’t touch his cheek. Max slowly tightened the shot.
“Does that mean no?” Groot asked her.
“It means I wanted to slap you.”
“Then do it again.”
She did, harder still.
“Exactly,” said Groot. “So this is what I think.” He took her elbows in his palms to gentle her. “Odile, our friend, has asked us to help her. We have agreed, because the circumstances are unusual, and because she’s our friend. But you don’t really want to do what she asks. You want me, the upright Dutchman, to be the one to bear the bad news and say, ‘No, what you ask of us is illegal. No, it would endanger our safety and maybe that of our boat. Besides, and for no particular reason, we don’t want to do it.’”
Max zoomed further in until his subjects’ heads and shoulders were tightly confined within the frame. He could tell that Rachel wasn’t sure whether Groot was acting, telling the truth, or telling a truth he thought was hers.
“No!” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous, putting words in my mouth like that. Even a child could see what you’re up to. Pig!”
He smiled and, superbly, became one.
She lunged, but he easily fended her off. She lunged again and, slipping one ankle behind the two of his, pushed him over backward, onto the deck. His surprise, Max saw, was genuine. She stood over Groot, hands on her waist, panting, as he propped himself up on his elbows and forearms to contemplate her.
“Do you feel better now?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “I mean, I’ve been wanting to do that for awhile, but it doesn’t really make me feel any better.”
“Love in its savage state,” said Groot, getting to his feet. “So invigorating.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rachel demanded.
With a slow roll of his hand, Max beckoned Odile into the action. She came at the pace indicated, a languid stroll suitable for a moonlit night on shipboard, but when she entered the frame, Max’s heart inexplicably began to race, just taking off on him, up, up, and away. There was no time to wonder why. Instead, he reminded himself that, even if he wasn’t entirely in charge here, his own receptivity, properly cultivated, would eventually reveal what he’d come to record.
Odile said, “I’ve just had the strangest dream.”
Max moved in on their three faces until they were framed close, like clover leaves bleached silver by the moon.
“Tell us,” said Rachel.
“It was in a railway station, I don’t know where. Eastern Europe, maybe. We were in the main hall, all four of us—a place that had once been thought grand but now was like a ruin, very dilapidated, you know? And there was a huge crowd surging around us, people trying to escape some kind of disaster. A war, I think. There was artillery fire nearby. Anyway, we couldn’t speak the language, and we didn’t have any money or tickets. The last train out was due to depart at any minute. I thought, We’re trapped. We’ll die here.”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” said Groot.
“But what I sound like and what I am are often very different things. Surely you know that, Groot.”
“Anyway,” said Rachel. “The dream.”
“Yes. So just as I was thinking these thoughts—of resignation, you might say—a great stillness came over the departures hall. I looked around me. Everyone but the four of us had all at once been frozen solid, like ice statues. In the blink of an eye. No one could speak or move. Only us. Max was the first to realize what this meant and he pushed forward, knocking people aside. Some of them, a lot of them, shattered when they hit the marble floor. We didn’t care. We were also knocking over these frozen supplicants, almost as if it were a game. I wondered if this was death for them—breaking into a million pieces like that—or whether being frozen had already killed them. It didn’t matter, though. I was completely detached. We made it to the window, grabbed tickets for ourselves, and ran to the platform. The conductor took our tickets, and we got on just before the train pulled out. We got away.” She drew inward, speaking now to herself. “We escaped.”
A short silence followed. Max made motions to proceed.
“This, I think, is quite positive,” Groot said. “In adversity, we were resourceful together. Survivors amid the calamities of the world, which are always legion. You should be happy. We should be happy.”
“But we weren’t the ones who froze those people. That just happened.” She deliberated further, then declared, “We weren’t resourceful, we were lucky.” She glanced at Groot to see if she’d offended him, then recoiled. “Oh my God! Your cheek, what happened?”
“Does it show?” He touched the inflamed area. “Yes, well, Rachel was expressing some dissatisfactions. And in this case I wasn’t lucky.”
“Liar,” Rachel said.
“It had to do with the guests we’re expecting,” he told Odile. “Your friends.”
“It had to do,” Rachel corrected him, “with your putting words in my mouth.” She turned her back to the others and, leaning on the rail, gazed moodily out over the river, into the translucent white.
“Listen,” Odile said, “if this is about us getting those people out of Paris tonight, let’s just call it off. I’ll tell them—”
Thinking he’d probably end up running Odile’s words in voice-over, Max panned left to focus solely on Rachel, whose sultry sulk was quickly taking on a power of its own. At precisely the same moment, however, a large white yacht ran by, very fast and close, throwing up great curls of frothy water that were nonetheless almost invisible in the fog. The roar of its engines drowned out whatever Odile was saying and the sudden swell cast the Nachtvlinder back against her mooring. As the houseboat rebounded off the quai, Rachel was in turn thrown hard against the rail. She held tight. Some seconds later, when the wake had subsided, she leaned over and peered down into the Seine—looking for something she’d dropped, it seemed to Max. But whatever it was, it was well and truly lost. She turned to the camera, and Max saw that her glasses were gone, her deep blue eyes as large and liquid as mountain lakes.
“That was my last pair,” she said ruefully.
Max zoomed in slowly on her features and held the shot, waiting. When she blinked a second time, he cut. “That was great, you guys. First rate. Take five.”
Groot drew Rachel aside. “Do you want me to get my mask and go down after them?” he asked.
“Thanks, but you’ve already had enough river toxins for a lifetime. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the lens prescription below somewhere.”
Max stepped back to insert a new cartridge into the camera. Something about Odile’s improvised dream
account had caught his fancy, as if it contained a message for him, but he couldn’t decipher it. He looked around to see if the light was holding. It was.
Then he heard Odile say, in a hoarse whisper quite unlike the voice she’d used to recount the dream, “They’re here.”
Looking to the gangway, Max saw Jacques backing slowly onto the boat, filming. He was soon followed by an athletic young woman Max had never seen before, then a fastidious-looking man with sparkly eyeglasses and shaven scalp, then by the man whose picture the CRS had shown Rachel shortly before Max received his punch to the gut. The doctor. As they came aboard, Jacques peeled off along the quai-side rail, still filming, but no longer an obstacle to Max’s field of view. Unthinkingly, he turned his own camera a hundred and eighty degrees on its tripod, put it on automatic, and went forward, along with everyone else, to greet the new arrivals.
Odile gave him a dazzling smile, and he returned it. Quite possibly, he thought, he was the most inventive and daring filmmaker of his time.
“I am Groot Gansevoort, captain of this boat,” the Dutchman said. “As I understand it, you want us to take you to England. This is correct?”
“Yes,” said the woman, who didn’t introduce herself. She wore a white denim jacket and carried a turquoise purse. “We would be so grateful. And we can pay you.”
“This is Rachel, my first mate,” Groot continued. “It will take us at least twenty minutes before we can get under way. I think the best thing would be for you to stay out of sight for now, and since I’ll need Rachel’s assistance, her friend Odile, whom you’ve obviously met, will escort you below.”
The doctor whispered something into the other man’s ear. Without hesitation, the latter addressed himself to Max. “Our guest of honor is a little worried about the cameras. Is it possible to know what they’re for?”
“Of course,” Max said. “We’re making a short feature film about this boat, which has been recently restored, and its owners, whom you just met. I am Max Colby, and film is my profession. Your friend has absolutely no cause for alarm.”
