Spectacle

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  Thank goodness she was tall, or she’d never reach the key over the door. Simone wasn’t tall enough to reach it, and it was a happy day when Nathalie finally could. From then onward, the Rooftop Salon, as they called it, became a favorite new retreat.

  She pushed open the heavy door. Stanley pranced forward onto the moonlit roof and leapt onto the ledge. Nathalie took light steps along the perimeter—people lived in the apartment immediately below—and sat against the wall. Voices from Josephine’s, the tavern on the next street, danced along the summer air.

  She opened the small box and took out the letter from Agnès that had arrived a few days before the postcard.

  Dear Nata,

  We’ve been here five days and Grandmother has baked on four of them—bread, croissants, a tart, and bread again. “We Jalberts put ovens to good use,” she likes to say. Starting tomorrow I’ll be her apprentice. If I should come home in August resembling a hot air balloon, you’ll know why.

  Roger is already driving me mad. He talks constantly, and none of it is terribly interesting. He’s also been mischievous (he put a frog in my shoe yesterday) and clumsy (he spilled tea on my journal this morning). We are celebrating his tenth birthday next week, and I quite think I’ll give him leaves or rocks or some such as a prank. My real gift to him will be a tart, if my apprenticeship goes well.

  Incidentally, the journal survived the tea. Alas, the page with my latest short story on it did not. I suppose it’s just as well, because it wasn’t a very good story.

  On the topic of writing: Tell me about yours. I want to know everything about the newspaper, the morgue report, and what it’s been like to wear trousers. Save for that, I envy your marvelous opportunity.

  Must go. Papa is calling me to help Maman weed the garden. He thinks it’s a good “experience with the earth.” Bending over in the hot sun and getting covered in dirt is an experience with the earth, but I would not classify it as good. A few days ago there was a snake in there, and I screamed. I have made excuses ever since to avoid working the garden, but unfortunately I think my luck has slithered away like that awful snake.

  I’ll send a postcard soon. Write to me, my friend.

  Bisous,

  Agnès

  If Simone was a rose—bright, feminine, and alluring—then Agnès was a lily. Sweet, elegant, and pure. Whereas Nathalie had known Simone her whole life, she’d only known Agnès since the start of this past school year when Agnès changed schools; they’d taken to each other right away. As someone who’d traveled all over France, and even to England and Germany, Agnès had an explorer’s spirit, always eager to find something new or special or different, even in the everyday. Simone and Agnès didn’t cross paths with each other often, but when they did, they got on well enough. Nathalie loved the way each of them viewed the world.

  She put the letter back in the envelope and took out some blank stationery from the box. Leaning back, she let her gaze drift to the shimmering night sky. What was she going to say to Agnès now? Writing that postcard at the café had been a mistake. She didn’t want to tell Agnès what had happened at the morgue, not until she made sense of it. Or maybe not at all. Agnès was on holiday, after all, and that vision was too much to put into a letter. But she had to explain away what she’d written.

  Stanley hopped off the ledge and came over to her, pawing at her pencil.

  “Is this encouragement or a warning that you’re about to break the no-pencil promise?” She scratched his chin, picked up the pencil, and began to write.

  Dear Agnès,

  I have always wanted to ride in a hot air balloon, and they are rather pretty, so there are worse resemblances. I shall look for you in the sky upon your return.

  Baking … well now. You must teach me everything you know. If you show me how to make a tart, I’ll show you a few things I’ve learned about sewing. Even trousers. Maybe for next year’s birthday gift for bothersome Roger, whose antics make me glad I don’t have a younger brother.

  Is it hot there like it is in Paris during the summer? Have you gone to the beach yet? I want to hear all about the ocean. I long to see it someday. And smell it, and hear it. (I could do without the tasting.) I should think standing in the waves and feeling that powerful water pulling away is amazing.

  Writing for the newspaper is an adventure, what with the obligation of a daily column, the constant buzz of the activity in the newsroom, and my wish to impress M. Patenaude. I’ve grown accustomed to wearing trousers but cannot say I like them.

  I suppose word has made its way to northern France about the murder victim, yes? The queue to get into the morgue was long and my goodness, Agnès. You can’t imagine how ripped up she was, this ill-fated girl so very close in age to us. What I saw I will continue to see for days. I sent you the postcard shortly after the viewing; that’s why I was so very shaken.

  What’s it like to stroll the streets of Bayeux? Tell me in great detail, my good friend, so that I feel like I’m there with you.

  Bisous,

  Nata

  As she was writing out the envelope, the chatter from the tavern grew louder and more forceful, pulling her out of her thoughts. Two men started yelling at each other, and the sounds of a brawl erupted. Nathalie tucked the letter into the envelope and crept to the edge of the roof. A gap between buildings framed one of the men as a fist struck him and he fell. The puncher came into view but was soon pinned by the barkeep. The first man struggled to his feet while stroking his jaw, yelled something in a drunken voice, and ambled away. She wondered if he’d remember any of it in the morning.

  And then she had an idea.

  She revisited the thought she’d had earlier, that perhaps the morgue incident stemmed from a memory. Needless to say, she didn’t remember seeing anyone slash a girl to death. Then again, she also didn’t remember buying flowers. Who could say what the mind did and didn’t suppress? Maman had told her about a tailor whose visit to a hypnotist unlocked long-forgotten details of the day his childhood friend drowned. And Nathalie had once read a story about a woman who, during a fever, recalled pushing her baby brother out a window when she was three.

  If touching the morgue glass had indeed untied a memory knot, it should be easy enough to prove or disprove.

  Nathalie crawled back to her spot and picked up her journal. She began writing as hurriedly as her hand would move, as if pouring out recent memories might unearth a buried one.

  But it didn’t.

  Other than the memory gap involving the flowers, she could re-create every hour of the day for the past week.

  She had no reason, not one, to think that the experience was a memory. That theory could be discarded.

  Leaving her with nothing that made sense.

  Maybe, as she’d suggested to Simone, it was something like a heat-induced fever dream. Heat did strange things to people sometimes. Or maybe, as Simone thought, it was a vision.

  Or maybe she was going mad and instead of paying visits to Aunt Brigitte, she’d be her roommate before too long.

  Nathalie picked up her things and went with Stanley back to the apartment, feeling no better, and possibly worse, than when she’d left it.

  7

  The next morning, Nathalie was at the morgue before it opened. Even the vendors hadn’t arrived yet, and there wasn’t a beggar in sight. The only other people in front of her were a handful of factory workers in overalls complaining about their boss, a pair of American brothers who apparently found something to be very funny, an older couple with a small dog, and a boy several years younger than herself.

  When the doors opened, she glanced at M. Gagnon’s post, which was instead occupied by a droopy older gentleman. She went to the left side of the viewing pane anyway.

  “Mon Dieu.”

  Nathalie heard the words before grasping that she was the one who’d spoken them.

  It didn’t matter that she’d seen the victim twice yesterday and relived the vision in her mind all night. It didn’t matter
that she knew there was a second victim and had tried to picture her.

  None of it prepared her for the reality of seeing two victims side by side.

  She tried blinking it away, as if that could make this sad spectacle of bloodied young women disappear.

  The new victim was pale, with a pinkish skin tone, and older than the first. She had very long hair, the color of late-day sun and knotted like a sailor’s rope. Her dress hung behind her, blue and green and damp. Rain on a summer picnic.

  The young woman’s face was ripped open; she was the mirror image of her sister in death. Together they were a pair of grisly candlesticks on a gray stone table.

  Would it happen again?

  Nathalie had to know.

  Be courageous. Be brave. Be too brave for your own good, as Maman says.

  She moved farther away from the others and put her hand forward. Straightening her posture, Nathalie stretched her fingertips toward the glass.

  The touch brought her there quick as a bullet.

  Three slashes unfolded in reverse. The blade sank in deep, held by an unseen hand; Nathalie was too close to the girl’s face to see anything else. The knife ripped from collarbone to throat, then lifted and pierced from the top of the throat to the bottom of the jaw. One more time the knife lifted, plunging from the girl’s jaw to the corner of her mouth. Blade and flesh, flesh and blade.

  Then the victim stood up and a set of hands pulled back from her. Pushing. Nathalie got farther apart from her, as if she was being pushed away. Running. The girl moved backward, too, both of them running backward down a long hallway with a dark blue and gold rug down the center. Chasing.

  The girl’s run slowed to a walk and she turned around, a look of excruciating terror on her face that softened into concern, then a flirtatious grin.

  Then it was over.

  Chasing. Running. Pushing. Killing. The victim’s realization that she was about to die.

  Someone beside Nathalie coughed. She faced them just long enough to see the couple, the brothers, and one of the factory workers staring at her.

  The factory worker turned to his companions, glancing over his shoulder at Nathalie as he wiggled between them, as if to get away from her. One of the brothers whispered to the other, and the two muffled a chuckle. The couple continued to gawk; the man put his arm around his wife and guided her away. Then they gazed at the corpses, or pretended to, once again.

  Nathalie took a step in their direction. “Excusez-moi—what … what did I say?”

  They ignored her. The woman pointed to one of the bodies and whispered something to which the man replied with a vigorous shake of the head. Then they began talking to the factory workers and the young boy about the murder victims.

  She pulled her bag to her chest, digging her nails into the leather to steady her fingers.

  The guard. Did he notice? Nathalie looked over her shoulder. No, he was examining his knuckles, whereas M. Gagnon’s replacement was in the midst of a yawn.

  No second interrogation, at least. And no suppressed memory, she concluded, because to see and forget two murders taking place was very unlikely. She’d already ruled it out, but this confirmed it.

  Now what?

  Although it wasn’t hot this morning, she could still be hallucinating. Especially if she was crazy, a possibility she gave more credence to by the moment.

  She had no answers. Only questions.

  One of her teachers had said he’d never met a student who enjoyed asking questions quite like Nathalie. “Distinctly inquisitive,” he’d called her. It was true, or used to be. Right now questions were just vexing worms that burrowed through her mind.

  She didn’t want to look at the bodies. Any of them. Obviously she had to, for the sake of her column. Not just look at them but study them.

  Nathalie walked to the back of the display room, clutched the catacomb vial in her pocket, and approached the viewing pane again. She stood tall and observed the other corpses, eyes skipping over the victim. The other new bodies on display were an overweight man, probably the other body they’d carried past her in the hall yesterday, and an elderly woman. Their deaths were undignified—no one wants to die anonymously in a public place—yet ordinary. Compared to the two girls, all the other souls appeared to be sleeping.

  When Nathalie left the morgue, she headed to the bureau de poste to mail her letter to Agnès. She caught herself clenching her fists, nearly crushing the letter, twice on the way there.

  * * *

  She didn’t want to sit in the noisy steam tram or on the omnibus as horses plodded along. Nor was she in the mood to be pressed against strangers. A long walk home was inconvenient but preferable. The reaction of the crowd in the morgue both today and yesterday made Nathalie feel like an outcast. Worse yet, she agreed with them.

  Taking the route near the Seine, she paused at the water’s edge to stare into the river. The river that served as pall bearer for two young women not much older than herself. Before their identities became Victim #1 and Victim #2, who had they been? Perhaps one had been a shop girl who loved the thrill of a new perfume and the other, a studious girl who read Latin and had just enjoyed her first kiss.

  How did the killer dispose of them without being seen?

  Finding the bodies must have been horrendous. She couldn’t imagine how the unwitting discoverers had felt upon realizing that the object floating in the water was human and that the human was a young girl and that the young girl was dead.

  And the victims. What went through their minds that harrowing moment, when they knew they were going to die? She’d seen it on the second victim’s face, that instant of realization. What did it feel like, that brief intersection of horror between the realms of life and death?

  A few blocks from home, she passed a newsboy selling Le Petit Journal. The ink shouted at her from the stack of papers, begging her to come closer.

  When she did, the headline overtook her like a thief in the alley.

  Girl’s Killer Sends Letter to the Newspaper

  While the boy engaged with a talkative customer, Nathalie paused to read more. The letter was quoted in large print beneath the headline:

  To Paris,

  I’d like to express my gratitude to you for coming to see my work on display. It was a pleasure to see so many, especially the woman in blue and her young girl—who, I must say, carried in the most delightful yellow bloom. The little one’s screams upon seeing my Sleeping Beauty were indeed a welcome surprise.

  Until the next one, I remain,

  Ever yours,

  Me

  And there, under a lamppost beside the newsboy and the talkative customer, Nathalie threw up the raspberries and cheese she’d had for breakfast.

  8

  Throughout dinner that evening, Maman eyed her with suspicion. Not eating pistou soup, one of Nathalie’s favorite summer meals, gave her away. She tried forcing herself to have some but was afraid she’d throw up again.

  “What do you think of the soup?” asked Maman, sinking her spoon into it. “You’re not having much. Too much basil?”

  “No, it’s delicious.” Nathalie soaked a piece of bread in it. “I’m just … I have an upset stomach.”

  “Because it’s empty. All the more reason to eat.” Maman’s skepticism was palpable.

  “When I get back from Simone’s,” Nathalie said, eating the soup-soaked bread. “I told her I’d be there at six.”

  Nathalie cleared the plates and washed them. Her life was ruled by the hour hand these days. Last summer she’d spent a few hours a day reading or writing in the city’s gardens or people watching at a café with Simone, and her biggest worry had been getting chores done before Maman got home from work.

  Now it was corpses. And unexplainable visions. And a murderer.

  She should be in northern France with Agnès in a little town where time stood still. A summer where her greatest concern would be how big a slice of tart to take or snakes in the garden or Roger being a nu
isance.

  With a sigh, she tossed the dishrag on the counter. Maman asked yet again what was the matter.

  “Nothing,” said Nathalie. She picked up the dishrag, folded it neatly, and placed it on the counter. “I hope I feel better soon, that’s all.”

  Maman folded her hands together, wincing from the effort. Nathalie took her satchel and kissed Maman on the forehead, promising to be home by nine.

  * * *

  Nathalie got off the steam tram in Pigalle a block from Simone’s place and bought a newspaper at a nearby tobacco store. Dance halls, bawdy can-can shows, and café-concerts spilled into one another in this part of the city, and Simone lived in the center of it all. (Maman considered this section “a heap of decadence,” so Nathalie “moved” Simone’s address to a building in a more respectable area several blocks away.)

  Because of her schedule at Le Chat Noir, Simone kept strange hours—“vampire hours,” as she called them. Some nights she performed in a show, and although she only had minor chorus roles, she was overjoyed just to be on stage. Other nights she waited tables at the club. She often spent her nights off there, too, listening to poetry readings or musicians trying out new compositions.

  Sometimes it was hard to remember how Simone had passed the time before Le Chat Noir. Was it really just a few months ago that their evenings had been spent at the Rooftop Salon, watching passersby below and making up stories about them?

  Nathalie slid past a beggar in the doorway of Simone’s building, noise reaching her ears as she stepped into the dim foyer. Someone was always shouting or playing the piano or having a party; if not, there still remained an underlying hum of voices. The place smelled of cigars and alcohol so thoroughly that it seemed to have been painted onto the walls. The wooden stairs, bearers of countless weary feet, groaned as she made her way up to the apartment.