by Jeremy Bates
He passed through several rooms until he spotted another makeshift table nestled behind a support column. This one had been created with bricks for legs and a large circular saw for the surface. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, he took a cellophane baggie from his jacket pocket, tapped out two powdery lines onto the table, thought one was rather small, and added a third. He rolled a ten euro note and snorted all of them. The cocaine burned the inside of his right nostril. He sniffed deeply, then sat there listening to the silence as the high kicked in.
He had first tried coke three years ago when a friend offered him a key at a party. It didn’t do anything for him. He didn’t know whether it was bad blow, or whether he didn’t do enough, but he didn’t try it again until last July. The girl he was casually seeing, Marlène, pressed up against him while they were at some bar, kissed him, and stuck a small baggie in his hand. He went to a stall in the restroom, placed his credit card on top of the toilet tank, and tapped a single line onto it. For the next hour he was flying, and all he could think about was when Marlène was going to give him the baggie again. He got in touch with her dealer a few days later, a yuppie from an affluent family, and had bought from him ever since.
Pascal recalled how excited he had been to get Danièle high. They always entered the catacombs at night and rarely left before dawn. It was sometimes hard to stay alert, and blow seemed to be a perfect remedy for that. But when he offered her some at a party at the Beach, she flipped out, asked him all these questions. Where did he get it? Who did he get it from? How often did he do it? Defensive, he told her someone gave it to him, and, no, he’d never tried it before. She accepted this, and he’d never mentioned it to her again.
Still—maybe he should give her a lecture about smoking so much fucking pot…
“Rascal?” It was Rob.
Pascal considered not answering, but he said, “Here.”
“Where?” Closer.
“Here.” He peered out from behind the column and saw the light from Rob’s headlamp ten meters away.
A few moments later Rob stood before him, a can of beer in each hand. He plopped down across the table. “I think I get what you dig about this place,” he said affably, handing a beer to Pascal and cracking open the other. “Peace, serenity. Awesome.”
Pascal rolled the cool can from one palm to the other. “Did Danièle send you over here to check up on me?” he asked. “Because I don’t need her or you or anyone checking up on me.”
“I’m not checking up on you, boss. I—” He saw the baggie of coke. “You’re doing that shit down here?”
“So?”
“I thought you were getting clean?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t want to bust your balls—”
“Then don’t, Rob!” he snapped. “You and Danièle. Fucking Danièle. How much pot does she smoke? You never say anything to her.”
“Blow’s different. It’s addictive—”’
“Addictive! You’re going to lecture me on addiction now? What number beer are you on? Five? Six? And those ones—twelve percent? That means you’ve had like twelve regular beers. And you’re going to tell me about addiction?”
Rob’s lips tightened. He looked away.
Pascal immediately regretted the outburst, and he was thinking of something to say, a way to patch things up, when Danièle cried out.
Chapter 24
ROB
Rob and Pascal jumped to their feet. Rob grabbed Pascal’s bicep, preventing him from leaving, but Pascal tugged free. “Something happened!” he exclaimed.
Rob shook his head, watching Pascal. Understanding registered in his eyes, and they thundered over. He flinched backward, almost as if slapped.
Rob wanted to say something to him, but there was nothing to say.
Pascal left.
Rob didn’t go after him. What was the point? If Pascal went off on his own, he would want to be by himself. If he went after Will…well, Will could handle himself.
Rob slumped back to the ground and listened. Danny, thankfully, didn’t make any more sex shrieks, nor was there any sound of a confrontation.
He shook his head. Danny needed a fucking frontal lobotomy. What the hell was she thinking? He got it. She didn’t like Pascal romantically. Fine. It was perfectly within her right to see other people. And it was a tough situation. She and Pascal were friends; they got together on a regular basis. He was bound to see her with other guys. Nevertheless, did she have to be so insensitive to his feelings? All the touchy-touchy stuff with Will in the restaurant and the van was one thing—but having an orgasm loud enough to wake the dead?
Rob skidded a hand over his face and wondered if they should cancel the whole expedition. Maybe Pascal was gone already, heading off to find the woman on his own, and maybe that would be for the best.
He brought the beer can to his lips, hesitated, then set it back on the table.
How many had he had? Two at the Beach. Two where they had set up camp. This one. Five.
Was he soused? He had a buzz, but he felt more high than drunk.
Goddamn Pascal had sounded like the wife there for a bit. Dev was on his ass all the time about the drinking. It seemed they fought about it every day. Rob simply didn’t get her. He’d been drinking ever since they met, it didn’t bother her then, but all of a sudden it’s some sort of problem? Fuck that. He’s never become a Mr. Hyde, never gone on a drunken rampage, never turned violent, never done any of that bad-drunk shit. So it wasn’t him who’d changed. It was her. They would be fine if she wasn’t always nagging and getting into moods.
And that last fight, before he’d left to meet Pascal and Danièle at La Cave—sweet Jesus, that had been bad. He knew the gloves were off as soon as Dev stepped through the front door. She’d been tight, withdrawn, you could see it in her walk, and she had gone immediately to the master bedroom to change. Rob stayed out of her way, in the kitchen, making macaroni and cheese for the girls. When she came out, she was wearing an old tee and joggers.
“Guess your work thing’s no black tie event?” he kidded.
“I’m not going to the dinner,” she stated, opening the fridge and snatching a bottle of chardonnay.
Rob stopped stirring the pasta. “Why the hell not?” Though he knew why, of course. She was making a point. She was pissed off he was going out—“abdicating his responsibilities” was the phrase she liked to toss around—and to make a point, she would stay in.
Rob said, “The babysitters coming in thirty minutes.”
She took a wine glass from the cupboard, filled it nearly to the rim. “Better call her and cancel.”
He clenched his jaw. He should have done just that: called the sitter, cancelled, let Dev stay in and sulk—but her behavior was so petty it was begging to be rebuked. Yeah, she’d told him about her work dinner last week, and yeah Pascal had only invited him to the catacombs two days ago, so she had dibs on going out, but situations like this were the reason babysitters existed. How was hiring one abdicating his parenting responsibility, for Christ’s sake? He had been home with the girls—and Dev—all weekend. “I’m not canceling,” he told her. “You’re going to your dinner—”
“No, I’m not.”
“—and I’m going to the catas with Rascal and Danny.”
“Where you will no doubt get drunk.”
“Give it a break, Dev.”
“We have two daughters, and you’re abdicating—”
“Don’t fucking start!”
“Don’t worry. The situation is resolved. I will stay home with Bella and Mary. Go have fun in the catacombs and drink yourself retarded.”
Rob flicked the wooden spoon he was using to stir the pasta against the stove’s stainless steel backsplash. It bounced back at him and clattered to the floor. He kicked it into the next room.
“Very mature, Robert.”
“Fuck you, Dev.”
He made to leave the kitchen.
“I don’t know anymore,” Dev sa
id.
He stopped, turned. “You don’t know?”
“Nothing,” she said quietly.
“You don’t know?” he repeated.
“Go, Robert.”
“Go fuck yourself, Dev.”
“Yes, maybe I will. Why not? I do everything else myself.”
He grabbed his jacket and backpack from the foyer, then left the flat, slamming the door behind him.
Shoving these memories aside, Rob lifted the beer to his lips again and took a long swallow.
Chapter 25
Danièle and I made our way back to the grotto hand in hand. Rob and Pascal were still gone, for which I was grateful. I was sure they would have heard Danièle, and I would rather be asleep, or at least lying on the ground and pretending to be asleep, when they returned.
We set up her hammock, she climbed in it, then told me to join her.
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“You will be cold.”
“Better than getting an ice pick in my back when I’m sleeping.”
“If you change your mind…”
I chose a spot a respectable distance away from her, stretched out on the slab of stone, used my backpack as a pillow, and closed my eyes.
I was still ridiculously high. Colors and images and bizarre thoughts flashed behind my closed eyelids. I tossed and turned, listening for sounds of Rob and Pascal’s return. There was nothing but vacuum silence.
Gradually my mind shifted to Danièle, and how I felt about having sex with her for a second time. The answer: not as bad as I would have thought. That wasn’t very romantic. I could imagine how she would react had I voiced this. But it was true. Despite the bombshell Bridgette had dropped on me earlier this evening, I couldn’t simply shut off my feelings for her, and I’d assumed having sex with Danièle again would be nothing more than rebound sex, cheap and guilt-ridden with no emotional attachment. Yet that wasn’t the case. In fact, I felt strangely invigorated. This wasn’t solely because the sex was good—it was because I felt suddenly closer to Danièle than before. It was as if a mental curtain had been drawn back, and I was seeing her for the first time, only now realizing how special she was.
I didn’t think Danièle and I would ever get too serious—how could we if I was only in France for another two months—but we had the present, didn’t we?
I opened my eyes, saw Danièle watching me in the candlelight.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“You sure you do not want to join me?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled lazily, closed her eyes. I did the same.
I had no idea of the time. I considered checking my wristwatch, but didn’t. It didn’t matter. Time didn’t matter down here.
Still, it must have been late, and I must have been exhausted, because moments later I was asleep.
I crept silently through the Bunker, though it wasn’t the Bunker, more of a mile-long corridor. Everything was bathed in red light. The floor was shiny with blood the color of jelly and lumps of what might have been fecal matter. Those iron doors with the steering wheel handles were set into the brick walls on both sides of me at even intervals. Some were fitted with barred windows. Occasionally a door stood ajar, a bad overhead fluorescent flickering inside, revealing mutilated bodies strapped to gurneys, experimented on, tortured, dismembered.
Straight ahead, at the end of the passage, was a door larger than all the others. I was drawn to it, slowly, inexorably. Abruptly the dream reality hiccupped, and I stood before the door. I spun the wheel handle. This activated a bolt-lock system. Gears churned. The door swung inward on silent hinges.
I stepped into a dark room and moved forward cautiously. Shadows closed around me so I could barely see a few feet ahead.
A noise froze me to the spot.
“Come out,” I heard myself say.
Nobody appeared.
“Who are you?”
No reply.
I pressed on. Two steps, three.
A gurney rolled from the margins of my vision. The wheels clattered on the stone floor. It stopped before me. A person lay on it, covered by a white sheet.
“Hello?” I said.
No reply.
I pulled away the sheet. My lung shallowed up.
Maxine lay on her back, staring at me with liquid-black eyes. Her face and hands were bloated and as white as a slug’s belly. Her long hair was wet, as if she had just exited the shower—except she was wearing the off-the-shoulder cream dress with the hanky hemline that she had died in. The fabric was soaked through and clung to her body, so I could see the outline of her small breasts, her nipples. She sat up, swung her legs to the floor. “Am I going to miss it?” she said.
“Miss what?” I asked.
“The wedding.”
“We’re not getting married anymore. Things didn’t work out.”
“Things didn’t work out for me either.”
“I’m sorry, Max.”
“You left me.”
“She was drowning.”
“I was drowning—and I’m your sister, Will.”
Bridgette and I had wanted a small wedding, fifty guests, mostly family, some close friends. At the rehearsal dinner Max, who was one of Bridgette’s bridesmaids, toasted me. It had been touching and honest and peppered with wit. Later that evening, after the older folks had retired to their bedrooms, Bridgette and I had been in the main lodge with all the bridesmaids and groomsmen. There were eight of us in total. Everyone was drinking except for Bridgette and me. We didn’t want to be hung over for the ceremony the following day.
Brian, one of my best friends since high school, suggested we take the boat out for a spin. We had rented a fully-restored 1950s mahogany Chris-Craft Capri for the weekend. I was chosen as the designated driver.
I said, “That guy shouldn’t have been out there without lights.”
Max was still sitting on the gurney, still dripping wet. It seemed the water was leaking from her pores. “And we shouldn’t have had so many people in the boat,” she said.
“That didn’t cause the accident.”
“Didn’t it?”
It had been a tight fit with the seven of us in the Chris-Craft—Liz, Bridgette’s maid of honor, had remained behind on the dock—and everyone was laughing and whooping. Then, out of nowhere, a fisherman in an aluminum bass boat appeared directly before of us. I should have plowed straight over him. If I had, he likely would have been the sole fatality. But how do you do that? How do you run a man down like road kill? Anyway, it wasn’t my choice to make. Instinct took over. I yanked the wheel to the right, and the Chris-Craft’s port side slammed into the bass boat’s bow at a forty-five degree angle. The sound of the impact had been unremarkable, like a giant plastic milk jug buckling, followed by another, smaller wooden thunk. I think this was the Chris-Craft’s propeller taking off the top of the fisherman’s skull.
“You’re right,” I told Max. “There were too many of us. We were too loud. I didn’t hear him. Still, he shouldn’t have been out there without any lights.”
I hit the water facefirst. It felt as though I’d kissed concrete. I went under and didn’t know up from down. When I finally burst through the surface, the Chris-Craft was upside down. The wooden hull side rose from the water a few yards away from me. The six-cylinder engine gurgled and sputtered.
Three bodies, the only bodies I could see, floated nearby. They began to sink almost immediately.
“I was closer to you, wasn’t I?” Max said.
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “You were there one second, then gone the next.”
“But you chose to save her?”
This was what no one understood. I didn’t choose anybody. I didn’t weigh the pros and cons of whom to rescue, the way you might ponder different brands of the same product at the supermarket. There was no reasoning, no calculating happening inside my brain at that
moment. Nothing but an overwhelming need to act, to do something, anything.
And then I was swimming to where Bridgette’s body had been moments before. I dived. The water was black. I couldn’t see. But my hand brushed her back. I slipped my arms around her body and kicked until we surfaced.
The aluminum boat drifted past the stern of the Chris-Craft. I swam to it, pulling Bridgette with me. I gripped the gunwale and yelled for help. Liz, who was still on the dock, heard me. She woke my parents. My father and Bridgette’s father arrived in one of the lodge’s boats. Bridgette’s father gave Bridgette CPR, while my father and I dived for Max, but the lake was too deep.
Police divers recovered all six missing bodies—including the fisherman’s—the following morning.
“What was I supposed to do?” I said. “Bridgette was unconscious. If I let go of her…”
“So you let me drown?”
“I’m sorry, Max.”
“And how did she repay you?” Maxine said, staring at me with those black, haunting eyes. “She left you. I wouldn’t have left you, Will. I’m your sister. I wouldn’t have left you no matter what anybody said.”
I woke stiff and cold and disorientated, though the fog cleared quickly. I was beneath Paris, in the catacombs. Candles glowed softly. I tried to recall the dream I’d been having. The Bunker that wasn’t the Bunker. The rooms with the bodies on the gurneys, peeled open like oranges, their insides exposed—rooms my sleeping mind had no doubt extrapolated from the real one with the bank-vault door, the one I’d outlandishly speculated (but didn’t say out loud) to be a torture chamber where Nazis had performed hideous experiments on the French freedom fighters they’d caught in the catacombs. And Max—Jesus, Max, in the dress she’d worn on the night she’d died…
