by John Brooke
RG is Renseignements Généraux, the internal branch of the secret police, to which Aliette has no access without a mandate (and even then it’s never easy). RG‘s notes echo Aliette’s: Flossie is known to be involved in prostitution, minor drugs; but included in the reference to the incident during the Papal visit to Paris are two items from a juvenile record. These describe charges related to acts of church desecration perpetrated by the subject when she was fifteen. Altar trashing. The attacks were marked by the subject’s tendency to scrawl quotations. A fragment from Matthew 19:
...and there are those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven? (sic).
And one from Corinthians 7, Paul’s defence of celibacy:
...but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.
RG, ever thorough, is apparently keeping watch on the lady, in an effort, one had to suppose, to avoid further possibility of catastrophic embarrassment for Mother France viz. a Holy Father with a lump on his head or worse. As usual, RG was itself breaking the law; this information ought to have been destroyed when the subject had reached the age of majority. Maître Botrel is taking risks to help her.
“Just calling to thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Enough said. Stay discreet for both your sakes! But the inspector likes her. She wants to talk... “How in the world did you come across Maeve?” Maeve belongs to mythology — not the secret police.
“Oh...sometimes when you love someone their name sits in your mind like a neon sign. I was going through IJ’s report on the message on Colette Namur’s bathtub and it was right there in front of me. My girlfriend’s name. She’s Irish...teaches chemical engineering at la Chimie.”
“Ah.” Ecole nationale supérieure de chimie: top-level chemical engineering school, one of a medium-sized and mediocre city’s few national points of pride. Must be a smart woman. Then, connecting three seconds too late: “Your girlfriend?”
An embarrassed pause sensed clearly down the phone line... Aliette!
“...I thought you would have known. Legal circles in this town are small, to say the least.”
“No...no, I didn’t know... And I certainly didn’t mean to — ”
Cécile remains lawyerly matter-of-fact. “Maeve was for you, Inspector, because I’ve met Flossie Orain and I know you’re going in the right direction. The thing in your mail...well, that one’s for the Commissaire. When I interviewed him, he managed to tell me bits and pieces of what she did. I felt ashamed, frankly. And angry. So facile...”
“Yes.”
“It’s difficult... Political, professional, personal; they tend to get mixed up, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“People should be reasonable, no?”
Yes, Maître. Merci. Good to know you’re still with me. This will make the waiting easier.
On the other hand, October’s Marie Claire has also arrived. It features the Marie Claire Guide Amoureux, a detachable supplement with colourful illustrations and accompanying descriptions of twenty different ways of making love:
The Accordion — he’s on his knees; she’s on her back with her knees up and practically touching her nose...we’re all scrunched up here. Like an accordion. “Sure. I’ll try it...”
The Amazon — looks like Olympic wrestling. She’s got him down (on a beach in the picture) on his side; she’s got one of his legs lifted so his knee’s up around her breasts; she holds it there, pinning him, the nexus of her soft weight at the stiff centre of his gravity. Applying pressure as required. “OK...”
The Twist (No 2) — Marie Claire says this is a position where the woman can explore her more lascivious side. She lies on her back (beside a slice of watermelon with the ocean in the background) and puts both legs around one side of the guy, who is on his knees; thus they join from a less-than-centred geometry; and she twists. “Yes, that could be lascivious.”
The Wheelbarrow — she lies at the end of the bed and sticks her bum up in the air. He picks up the wheelbarrow and goes to work. “I would love that so much, Piaf...”
The Jockey — he sits on a dining room chair; she sits in his lap, facing him. “Hmm...” Because there’s a horse running free in the back of her mind now and it won’t go away. But in this one she’s the jockey, he’s the horse: “not quite what I’m looking for...”
Leafing through, Piaf warmly at her elbow.
The Rider: (Position classique) is another in this sub-genre of her-on-top-of-him. A woman who needs tenderness, who may not be sure of herself, may be shy when it comes to this position evocative of images of prostitution. If she can conquer that and learn to play with her fantasies, this position is the source of great pleasure. Conduct your own sensual game at your own speed. Move around, vary the penetration, touch the man, look at him, embrace him. Men like it when the woman takes the initiative. Other features: lying on his back, the man has better control over his ejaculation, and this makes it better for both of you. Right, but it’s still the wrong way: sitting on him, the generic she’s the rider not the horse... And why would Marie Claire say this one’s a classic in one breath and tie it to images of prostitution in the next? Have they got a problem? Or is it the generic us that has the problem and they know we’ll react to the word? Reverberations up and down our lives... “We’ll have to write a letter to the editor. Eh, Piaf?”
Ah... Here’s one that reverses the proposition and comes nearer her instinct’s wish.
The Tractor (Le Remorqueur) — She’s the machine; she’s down on her hands and knees, tending forward, pulling the load, so to speak. “On ne parle pas des chiens ici, mon Piaf...” Not talking doggies here, Piaf; nor wheelbarrows; not at all: he sits, flush to her behind, his legs draped round her haunches, the tractor driver. He just sits there. Steering. As engine and chassis it’s her job to provide the means of motion. This appeals to a pony’s needs. “Tractor’s a lot like a horse... Eh, Piaf? I mean, look.”
This sort of information will make any waiting harder.
“Hello, Raphaele? Aliette here. Remember that three-cheese sauce...”
“Come on over.”
Saturday night, she puts on her new camisole, slips out through her secret door and goes. It clears the mind, momentarily. But (inevitably): Is this right? Is this a relationship? He cooks beautifully. Does exactly what she tells him to do in bed. Does amazing things with his tongue. Drives that tractor as well as you could want... Mmm. Doesn’t make noise. (Neither does she.) Doesn’t insist on sharing a shower. Could be the perfect man. The only problem is that she feels no real need to go down to the basement for coffee on Monday. Or Tuesday. That’s not part of her desires. Nothing’s perfect, Aliette. I know. Don’t rub it in. I don’t need it... But it’s horrible when you know it before you even finish eating that great pasta. No? Please! Give it a rest. People need. People try...
I never rest. I just change shape, ma belle.
A week after Ondine Duguay’s visit to the offices of the Police Judiciaire, Assistant Inspector Patrice Lebeau reports that she has disappeared from her domicile. Inspector Nouvelle, staying calm, sensing progress, says to leave no stone unturned.
And luckily there’s other work. Two cases are passed along, the trans-border kind she usually handles. A murder in the city’s Turkish enclave: two families fighting over fruit stands at the market; or could it have more to do with the market in forging illegal papers and avenues of entry for fellow countrymen? And a heroin merchant from the burgeoning park in Zurich, two hours down the road, is said to be about, looking to expand his trade. Aliette gets right to both of them. Business as usual; good to be busy.
Being busy, other things come to her.
Feeling like a screw-up for letting the old woman slip away, Assistant Inspector Patrice Lebeau passes by almost hourly now and catches a boy in the alley peering through the fence behind the missing seamstress’ shop. René, almost ten, lives across the
way. He admits there are sometimes good things to see — “like sometimes ladies in there trying things on.” As if the cop will understand. Patrice says he’ll think about dropping the peeping charge if René can tell him anything more interesting he may have seen. “Well,” racking his memory for something more interesting than ladies trying things on; “back in August, when it was so hot? ...there were a lot of them, all dressed up, and this old man... They were picking up the apples from the old lady’s yard and putting them in the back of this big old car.”
Like this car? Showing a picture of a ‘49 Citroën TA. Yes. And René’s mother remembers seeing it too. She brings her child down to the commissariat and they both sign depositions. “Never seen so much activity in that place,” she adds, recalling that stifling August day; “thought she made undies and the like.” She’s more than happy to help the police and guarantees them her René will soon grow out of his urge to peek.
This information prompts concern at the courthouse over the fact that Ondine Duguay had been to Inspector Nouvelle’s office shortly before her disappearance.
“But before her disappearance there was no reason to hold or even talk to her. Her sister is my friend...she was trying to help where she couldn’t. It was mostly a personal thing. Between them. Me, I sat and drank tea.”
“Mostly?” prods the Judge, looking tanned and well-fed from his five weeks in the south.
The inspector shrugs. “No mandate, Gérard. I asked, monsieur — and you said no.”
Gérard Richand rolls his eyes and heaves a sigh. Business as usual for him now too.
“We touched on the case, of course, but I didn’t write a word. Really — just a tea party with two old ladies.”
What with the seamstress running, René’s revelation, the bodies, the drug, and whatever-the-hell this thing is they’re saying happened to Néon at the brothel, Gérard is feeling more than a little out of the loop. It’s not a feeling a Chief J.of I. enjoys. Gérard throws his weight in certain directions... Once again it’s amazing what can happen when the ones with the power actually start to care about something; in three days there’s a call from Germany. Francine Léotard has been apprehended while strolling along the Lindzerstrasse in the Lower Saxony town of Oldenburg in the company of one Christophe Giguerre, a respected car-parts manufacturer from Lille. It’s one of those situations where you don’t ask whether German police methods are ahead of ours or behind; all that matters is that the next day Marcel Cyr’s classic car is found in a box on the dock just down-river at Bremerhaven, due to sail for Leningrad in four days’ time.
Bravo! No fine object of beauty and most especially one made in France should have to spend the winter in a Russian gangster’s garage. We look forward to seeing Francine and Christophe...
Feeling better about almost everything here.
Almost, Aliette?
Well it’s painful trying to tell a man you don’t really want a man who does everything you tell him to... They start saying things like why did you keep telling me exactly what to do? Clouds the issue. Becomes a vicious circle...
And Georgette, problematic at the best of times, is watching her. Waiting. Expecting.
But even Claude, still wobbly, still resting, but slowly finding his way back from his trauma, seems receptive to her proposed plan of action. Claude’s initial reaction was much the same as hers: “A secret door? Unbelievable!” Then he’d said, “Although maybe I’m not surprised.”
Three weeks...turning into four. Aliette’s tan fades and disappears.
15
I Am the Queen of Every Hive
Thursday evening is a rare free night for both Flossie and Louise. It’s Louise’s monthly break for four or five days. It’s the night Flossie usually receives Christophe, her regular from Lille. But Christophe’s in Germany on business and Flossie has let the space remain unfilled.
So they share a slow supper alone in the dining room.
Louise seems far away, staring past Flossie’s eyes. Flossie asks, “What is it?”
“We had a sideboard exactly like that one at home,” says Louise. “Stained green maple...same stain, same copper work on the panels, same fittings...English, mid-nineteenth century. Papa found it in Antwerp...so strange where things end up.”
Flossie regards the stately sideboard, the crystal carafe and wine service set on a silver tray on the right side, the rosewood cutlery chest on the left. All from Herméné’s mother’s place. Most of the better furnishings adorning Mari Morgan’s are. “You never told me that.”
“It was like my secret,” murmurs Louise. “My deepest darkest secret. My personal challenge: to sit here and not feel it... It was uncanny — Maman’s silver was the same weight as this. She had her initials engraved on every piece. Part of her trousseau. Some nights, back at the beginning, Maeve could make me think I was home.”
“Maeve loves a challenge...”
“Or that I was married...that this was my dining room, that the life was exactly the same. The one she’d planned for me. The one she demanded. It’s lucky we don’t have a piano...I don’t think I would have been able to stand it.”
“You’re a musician?”
“I was supposed to be. She made that too impossible. She was too perfect. It’s why I had to get away...”
“I always thought it was your father and his righteous money.”
“I had lots of reasons. I guess we all do... I guess some of them are closer to the heart than others.”
Flossie says, “After all this time and you never told me these things...”
Louise is perplexed. “I know. It’s like I closed a door and left all that on the other side.”
“I always tell you everything.”
“Do you? How does one ever know? ...I suppose I couldn’t relate it to you and me.”
“I feel a kind of vertigo,” says Flossie, “like I’m sitting in mid-air.”
Louise smiles across the gap. A wan smile: I love you but I can’t help you; got my own thing here and I need to work it out; “Ondine says I should go see my mother before the end...”
Flossie nibbles an edge of Muenster from the tip of her knife, swallows the last of her wine.
Louise ponders it. “I don’t know... I know I should. But I know I can’t.”
“It’s been too long,” says Flossie.
“Ondine says I should come to terms.”
Flossie rises, goes to the sideboard and takes a decanter from the bottom shelf. And two tiny china cups, each with a gold leaf rim around the lip, a painted dragon swirling intricately inside. Filling them, she places one in front of Louise. “Here. Come to terms.”
Louise says, “No...” her mulling grows darker; “not tonight... Ondine says she’s still my mother, even after she’s gone.”
“Do you really need Ondine to tell you what you feel?”
“It’s a comfort to have that perspective... I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed it.”
“You sure she’s not a sentimental old woman?”
Louise emerges from her reverie. She tells Flossie, “She has nothing to be sentimental about. Not any more. You know that.”
Flossie sips her Maeve and makes a mawkish toast. “I am the queen of every hive...”
“Flossie... Don’t. Ondine’s only doing what she can. It has nothing to do with you and me.”
Flossie can’t help it. She takes the untouched cup from in front of Louise and drains it too. She smiles down into it, eyeballing the dragon and quotes another line. “I am an enchanter — who else will set the whispering voice to song?”
“Please...we have to let this take its course.”
“I just wish she’d mind her business.”
“It is her business,” says Louise. Gently. Wistful. Louise’s clients would never guess.
2.
Speaking of business: J.I. Jamms III, MBA, Représentant commercial, Le Monde de Mickey works for the French marketing arm of the world’s most famous mouse. His mom calls him
James-The-Third; as instructed, Vivi Namur just calls him Jimmy. He has been parachuted into the Republic as line-coordinator of a marketing blitz aimed at ensuring that every French family with kids will make the pilgrimage to the new theme park going up just east of Paris (le grand projet de fantaisie) at least once. There are excellent stock options tied to Jimmy’s numbers and he works hard, travelling the regions. But if his bosses back in California knew he was here with Vivi, he’d be gone in a second. Mari Morgan’s is not exactly a family values kind of place.
Although Jimmy’s bosses might understand his inclination. With her halo of dark curls, pert nose, teasing smile and light brown eyes, Vivi looks fascinatingly like a certain pubescent TV star who is now old enough to be Jimmy’s mother but lives forever in reruns on his company’s own TV network, frozen at the most magical moment of a girl’s life... A very lucky find.
When first informed of this miracle, Vivi had said, “It sounds Italian — Annette.”
“No, no, my Vivi — she’s about as American as you can get.”
“But me, I am French...”
“Of course you are...” But tonight Jimmy has brought something he’d like her to wear. A hat — a black felt beanie with two plastic “mouse” ears attached. A brilliantly enduring marketing tool created by his employer, it was part of the uniform worn by members of the original TV “club” that brought American children running straight home from school throughout the ‘50s.
Here’s your shirt (with your name on the front),
Here’s your ears (one of these caps)
...Now you’re an honorary Mouseketeer!
At which point the lucky guest would receive a big kiss. If the one bestowing it happened to be the girl-star with the smart little body, nine-to-thirteen-year-old boys all over America would quiver. A wonderful new feeling. Jimmy has watched the reruns and quivered too.
The girl, the ears; they represent a major thread through Jimmy’s life. “Please — for me?”
But something’s gotten into her. “Non!” And to get the point across once and for all, she shoves Jimmy and his stupid hat away so hard he rolls half out of the bed.
