by John Brooke
Willem van Hoogstraten was preparing fresh coffee. ‘Can I help you?’ Although he’d never seen this man’s face, he recognized him immediately. A suddenly rushing heart showed in his eyes and revealed the fact that Willem had been waiting for this visit.
Taking the measure of Willem, Tommi smiled. ‘Nice spot. Never had the pleasure.’
‘We’re a bit of a local secret.’
‘I love secrets… Haven’t seen that Pearl, have you? Some people say she stopped in here.’
Willem shook his head — too quickly, a deep raspberry color rising too spontaneously in his milky northern cheeks.
‘May I have this?’ Picking up one of Willem’s hand-lettered menus.
‘Of course.’
‘Pearl’s Kiss?’
‘A sort of tribute.’
‘I think I’ll come back and take a picture.’
Fighting panic, struggling to control his shaking, Willem gestured: be my guest.
Tommi bowed and left the kitchen.
‘Oh, merde!’ Anne-Marie was flabbergasted. She was at a table in a shadowy corner with Georgette Duguay. She’d been brooding, hadn’t really noticed the tall man who’d come in. ‘Don’t let him see me!’ Sinking into her chair, pulling the Le Soir Style section up in front of her face.
Georgette turned and gawked. ‘What a horrible-looking man. Who is he?’
‘Never mind… Please!’
‘Well, I don’t blame you for hiding.’
‘And please shut up! You don’t even know him.’
‘But I can see him.’
‘Looks aren’t everything, Georgette. Mon dieu!… Just be cool!’
The artist’s model coolly raised her glass in a mock toast to a street girl’s altruism. But it was empty. ‘I could do with another one of these…What say?’ Craning her elegant, much-studied neck, searching the room for Willem.
Preparing his coffee, considering Tommi’s disturbing gaze, Willem van Hoogstraten realized he was afraid. Not for himself — for Pearl. Willem would never assume to be a part of it. He was just a simple man who had tried to do his bit. He had no idea how to confront the eyes of Tommi Bonneau, much less his camera. He’d spent a difficult week realizing he had no real notion at all as to the heart of Pearl Serein. And now this. Willem lifted his tray and pushed through the door. He could barely focus. He forgot where he was, went to the wrong table…twice! Regulars were watching Willem — blushing, flustered.
He finally placed the order with its rightful owner, then hurried to his two friends.
Willem couldn’t carry the weight of his secret all alone.
Anne-Marie said, ‘She was here?’
Georgette said, ‘That was him?’ Then turned to Anne-Marie.
Ignoring Georgette’s accusing stare, she said, ‘Could we have another round?’
Willem fetched pastis, more water, and poured one for himself — badly needed.
He took a break and tried to explain.
When he finished, Georgette said only, ‘I would like to read this book about this maid.’
There was a respectful pause. Anne-Marie and Willem both knew Georgette had had a mother, long ago, who’d flown away off a trestle bridge, another victim of unkind love.
Anne-Marie tapped the front page of Le Soir. ‘So this is true?’
‘Seems so. At least from what she told me.’
She asked, ‘But why would Pearl tell you things like that?’
‘I guess she needed to. Poor thing, she was very stressed.’
33
Just a Guy With a Camera
Georgette said, ‘Your Tommi made Willem tremble.’
Anne-Marie responded, ‘He’s not my Tommi.’
‘But you wouldn’t mind.’
‘One day at a time, Georgette.’
The older woman patted the younger woman’s hand. Sipped her drink.
And forced the issue. How did this happen — you and Tommi Bonneau?
Anne-Marie tried to explain. About the night at Diabolik. And after…
…well, no, not every delicious detail. She just said, ‘Voila, that’s how.’ A shrug, a street-savvy smile. ‘He’s fun. It’s been a bit of wild ride, if you know what I mean.’
Georgette asked Anne-Marie, ‘Then why is Willem scared?’
‘Oh, you heard him — he’s worried about Pearl. You know how Willem is.’
As was usually the case, when closing time arrived with early evening, Anne-Marie and Georgette Duguay were the only two guests remaining in the Rembrandt. And normally — on any other Saturday — Willem would have brought a bottle and helped them finish it off. Not this Saturday. They watched him arranging tables for tomorrow. He wanted them to leave…
No, still not a word as Willem fastidiously arranged the table next to theirs.
Anne-Marie was losing patience. ‘What are you so worried about?’
He paused. ‘Everything. I feel I’ve got this entire thing so completely wrong.’
Georgette, never known to be subtle, said, ‘You’d better invite us up, Willem.’
‘No. Can’t. It’s been a trying day. I need a quiet night.’ He continued placing spoons just so.
So they paid their bill and put their coats on, wondering as he saw them out.
Willem van Hoogstraten bowed, blushing, gaze averted, bolted the door behind them.
Before she left the van, Georgette admonished, ‘You tell Tommi that Willem is our friend.’
‘She’s his job,’ Anne-Marie retorted, dismissive. ‘He’s just a guy with a camera.’
‘Tell him!’
Sure. Salut. And they parted at the corner.
Bitch. Anne-Marie resented Georgette’s damning judgement.
She drove on, back into her little world…
You think he’s ugly, Georgette? You should see him when he’s up there on the roof. When Tommi throws back his head, lets the night wind fly through his hair. When he calls out, as if to the entire city, ‘When the wind is high, I feel madness!’ And with an evil wink that makes her instantly wet, he whispers, ‘So said Diderot.’
Then he runs.
Anne-Marie has never met or even heard of this Diderot. But of course she follows. In Tommi’s words, Un bel petit parkours. Running out across the rooftops, down through the back streets and along deserted midnight docks, all acceleration, covering ground at a rate that leaves the ground weightless, a sensation of slicing the night air, wide open, of being outside space.
She can’t follow everywhere. But watching Tommi vault from balcony to sill to railing as he scales the sheerest sides of buildings, leaves her dripping. And amazed.
Occasionally they’ll sight others and this is another revelation. A community of people, all runners, fearless and beautiful, like herself and Tommi Bonneau. He told her, ‘We’re like the first people, Anne-Marie. Us, them, we travel against a backdrop of night in any direction our hearts send us. There’s no else like us. We’re brand new!’
Anne-Marie wished she’d told Georgette how, when you meet a guy like Tommi, it makes you question all the times before. But she knew Georgette would tell her thinking this way is her life’s big problem. Did she need to hear that? She knew it. It happens with each one: This is the big one, this is the only one that’s real. Yes, this girl’s life’s big problem. But how can she help it?
Running with Tommi in the dead of night…surely this is love. It has to be.
But saying that — Georgette would only turn the knife a little deeper.
Then why did she hide when he came in today?
Because there was something wrong and she needed to think.
Because Tommi was fun. But he was angry. Too angry.
And because Tommi only talked of love when he was doing Pearl.
Tommi’s studio was like a shrine. Anne-Marie could understand that. Pearl’s fabulous! She knows she would not be there with him if it weren’t for Pearl. She even told him, ‘If you love her so much, why not ask her out?’ No hard feelings on
her part. ‘I mean, I understand.’
Tommi told her, ‘It’s not like that. It’s like she’s my Béatrice.’
Béatrice? Hearing that, Anne-Marie felt doubly jealous and must’ve looked at him wrong.
‘Pearl is my job, OK? My work. Got it? If you don’t believe it, go away. I don’t need that shit.’
‘No,’ agreeing. Fine. Cool.
…But why? Why the need? What was there? She gnawed at it in her way.
Like most men, he had a need to explain his heart’s obsession. Or try.
‘Hints,’ said Tommi, ‘hints and secrets. We take pictures because of the secrets they contain — secrets we can’t fathom any other way. Look at Dante, seeing the glory of God reflected in Béatrice’s eyes, I believe that so piercing was the ray/ which I endured that would have been lost/ if from it I had turned my eyes away …Look at Petrarch, seeing perfection once in Laura — and living by it his whole life! It’s there. It’s our duty to keep searching. We look for hints of perfection.’
Right. And it was Tommi’s job to know all these famous people. Anne-Marie knew a Béatrice but not a Laura. Béatrice the film star, the one in Betty Blue. Famously fucked up, but dangerously belle, someone a girl like her could relate to. Anne-Marie had seen the film six times. She’d even made a pilgrimage to the beach town in the south where they filmed it. ‘You know her?’
Tommi would sigh when she said things like that and run his fingers through her curls. He talked about a guy called Henry, an American in Paris. ‘Henry Miller…He said, The task of genius, and humanity is nothing if not genius, is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously, die miraculously…’
‘He said that?’ Could he speak French, this Henry? Wasn’t Pearl’s mama American?
‘He’s dead…and he didn’t say it, he wrote it in a book.’
‘Ah.’ Like that Diderot, she’d finally figured out. Anne-Marie was not a big reader of books.
‘He’s a man you would’ve liked. Very into sex.’
‘Sex is healthy.’ Sex is fun!
‘Sex is energy. Sex is the vines on the wall.’
What? Tommi would say things like that. And it left Anne-Marie feeling lonely, even when she was right there beside him, pushing against him, wanting more, always more…
‘Cartier-Bresson says, In whatever one does, there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart. When the master says it, you believe it. We go through the eye to the heart.’
Who? Anne-Marie had no idea. Sounded like another nob.
Tommi told her, ‘I believe it. I’ve seen it, this perfect thing.’ Tommi said he had seen it there in Pearl. ‘My job is to immortalize this woman — to poeticize her. It truly is. My Béatrice.’
‘I see,’ said Anne-Marie.
Hardly. Well, not really. Not at all.
But she felt it. Anne-Marie’s heart sensed that a woman like herself hardly registered on Tommi’s heart’s scale of virtue, that movie and rock stars and the Local Scene were as close as she’d ever come to Tommi’s heart’s ideal. Of course she felt that. It wasn’t the first time Anne-Marie had resigned herself to the fact she would have to settle for being the one in a man’s bed but not in his heart. And when Tommi reached for her, she rolled back into his arms. Ready, willing and able. Mm! Whoever he knew, whatever he believed, there was no denying the fact that she was here, right now, with him. And she wanted to be here. Because men like him were her addiction. Her instinct told her not to push too far. She listened, but so much was beyond her.
So she watched and, mainly, felt him…
Tommi Bonneau believed these things he told her. It was clear to her. He believed it more than anything — including love. The kind you can actually touch. And when she was with him on the rooftops, running with him, she saw him from a close-up vantage no one else did — not even Pearl Serein, and she knew she should take what she could get when it came her way and enjoy it till it came to a head. Which it would. Because it always did.
She needed to believe she could take Tommi’s pain and make it better.
But she was sharing Willem’s uncertainty. Why should Willem be afraid of Tommi?
Anne-Marie held her born-to-be-faithful heart in abeyance, forced her mind to ignore these looming worries as she guided the van back to the house at 33 Rue Pontbriand.
34
Sunday’s Worse than Saturday
Anyone with boyfriend problems knows Sunday’s worse than Saturday.
‘Salut?’ Aliette approached the battered old Westfalia van. Anne-Marie was sitting at the wheel. She had seen the inspector and pulled over. The inspector had not seen her — she had been walking aimlessly, far from anywhere that mattered, honestly trying to give it (and herself) a break. Now here was Anne-Marie, pulled over, wanting a word, and the inspector was surprised. Anne-Marie never sought her out, she mainly tolerated the cop who was Georgette’s standoffish friend. For history’s sake, mainly. Sympatico, as required — that was Anne-Marie’s basic position.
Anne-Marie seemed almost lethargic, tired eyes exuding a well-fucked Sunday absence. Lucky her. Before Anne-Marie could speak, the inspector said, ‘Just tell me one thing — is she with him?’
‘No. I’m with him.’
‘I meant hiding. Working on this thing together. You know what I mean.’
‘We haven’t seen her.’
We. How touching. Fine. Alors… ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Look after Willem.’ Which meant, Take him off the street.
‘Willem? Willem’s a private citizen. Until Willem breaks the law, it’s Willem who looks after me, and I pay him for the attention.’
Anne-Marie just stared.
‘Has Willem got a problem?’
‘Willem broke the law.’
‘Really. What did he do?’ Aliette knew Anne-Marie knew more about the law and its ins and outs than most people you might meet — hard-won knowledge gained from a street-faring life.
‘Go ask him. Just make sure he’s not at risk.’
‘At risk?’
She grinned thinly. Shrugged.
Aliette envied her amazingly wild jet-black curls. ‘OK. We’ll have a talk with Willem.’
‘Thank you.’
She asked, ‘What about you? Are you at risk?’
Anne-Marie instinctively retreated. ‘Risk is a matter of taste.’
No cop could argue with that. She tried to get serious. ‘But these guys are dying. And he’s — .’
‘No!’ Anne-Marie was with him. She would defend him. ‘He has his camera. His story. His big ideas about manhood… And he’s a pain in the ass like all the rest of them…’ Her eyes went soft, looking for the cop to understand. ‘But how does that kill anyone?’
‘Then what is Willem’s problem?’
‘Willem’s scared.’
‘Of what?’
‘His shadow?’ Shaking her head — this is a gift. Don’t push me.
‘I can’t help if you won’t tell.’
‘I’m not asking for your help. It’s Willem.’
Aliette nodded. OK, I’ll accept your gift. Then, ‘So…’ trying a smile — a two-girls-out-on-a-Sunday kind of tone. ‘You’re looking good. It’s going well?’
The veteran street girl just rolled her eyes: Don’t bullshit me.
OK, fine. But Aliette was truly interested. ‘How long?’
‘A few weeks.’
‘Too early to say much, then?’
‘A little.’
‘What’s so great about him?
‘There are certain things we like to do together.’
‘But Pearl? I mean — ’
‘She’s just his Béatrice,’ sniffed Anne-Marie, defiance hardening those huge dark eyes.
Béatrice. Right. ‘OK. Thanks…You keep an eye out at your end for me?’
Sure. The van pulled away.
‘Let’s talk about it first. I might be willing to negotiate.’
‘You?’ Willem blushed. ‘I didn’t think you’d be — ’
‘Stop it, Willem. Take a break. Tell me.’
It wasn’t terribly busy. He saw to a dessert order, presented a bill with a coffee refill, came back and sat. After he told her how he’d sheltered Pearl and his instant fear on the occasion of Tommi’s visit, she had to tell him, ‘You should have told us.’
He repeated, ‘Are you going to arrest me?’
‘I will if you keep asking. Why did he make you nervous?’
‘I don’t know. It was like he was looking right through me.’
‘Are you hiding Pearl Serein?’
‘No.’
‘But?’
‘She asked me to keep it a secret. There is such a thing as honor, you know.’
Aliette sat back, sipped beer, munched another frite. ‘I know, Willem… I know.’
‘But…’
‘But?’
‘She’s not who I thought she was.’
Aliette felt a kind of bitter pity, the two emotions mixing like a burning soup. She asked, ‘And what was that?’
Willem wasn’t sure. ‘She told me her life’s ambition is to start a kindergarten just for boys.’
‘Isn’t that sweet.’
‘I suppose.’
She asked, ‘How could she possibly be what you thought she was?’
He asked, ‘Are you going to arrest me?’
35
Remy Aggrieved
Aliette Nouvelle was not the only one out walking aimlessly on a Sunday. Remy Lorentz had no lessons booked that day. He’d woken up and realized he was bored with hanging around the club, waiting for the next bored woman. He’d been vaguely hoping a bit of tennis with Agnès Guntz would help her get past the shock of Bruno Martel. Maybe they could take up where they’d left off. Good idea, but much too quick. That same old problem — Remy was impetuous. It never served him well. His mother had told him. Pearl had told him. Agnès had retreated. She needed time. She needed space. She actually seemed to like that fat phony. Remy could not call Rose Saxe — not on a Sunday afternoon. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Her story in yesterday’s paper had bothered him, had sent him back to places he didn’t want to go. He was walking, trying to understand this nagging irritation. That cop with the blonde hair had planted the seed. Replanted it — because he’d put it out of his mind. Necessary. Because he was never going to make it to Roland Garros, but you had to earn a living and teaching tennis at the Quarter Racquets Club was about as soft a touch as he would find. But it was always there: Remy had always been better than the rest of them. Tennis made Remy a star when he was twelve. He’d been featured in the school paper every year for winning something — Bonneau had taken his picture. They read about him. Hung around him, like the girls did. They tried to be his friend.
