by Cara Black
His confused feelings about her surfaced: her terrible driving, her unconventionality, the passion she brought to things and the fierce loyalty she showed him. And glimpses of the raw inner hurt he’d seen exposed a few times. Like the hurt he’d so often felt.
He thought about her huge eyes and the funny way she hid her feelings for Morbier yet yearned for his approval.
Never mind that she didn’t provide tickets for restaurants or a Carte Orange pass for the Métro like some employers, she made sure she paid into his seçu, the mutuelle for medical insurance, and his prévoyance. When bills were paid and lucrative contracts signed, they celebrated with champagne and sushi. The odd thing was, his mother and the marquis had seemed pleased.
Would Aimée let him take care of her now that she was blind? Or would she push him away? Should he team up with Rajeev? Join him and form a software business, as Rajeev was urging him to?
He repressed his feelings. As always. But the thought that though she was his best friend, sometimes that wasn’t enough, kept rising up. He wanted more. More of her. He pushed that away.
He drank the Cardinal/Communard and half of another, then stared at the old chrome coffee machine topped by a winged eagle and at the special VIEILLE PRUNE ARTISANALE 4L.- 45 FRS. written in white on the beveled mirror until Miou-Miou returned. Breathless. She grabbed her drink and downed it three long gulps.
“That bad?”
She nodded.
“Another?”
He caught the waiter’s eye, pointed to their glasses.
“Does your client cook the Bataclan’s books?”
“He’s the comptroller,” she said. “And since his sun crossed Virgo . . . very auspicious . . . he’s decided to ask for the hand of his plumber’s sister who lives three houses down in the same Batignolle banlieue.”
“At least he’ll be able to fall back on his brother-in-law if the theatre business gets tight,” René said. He handed the waiter several hundred-franc notes.
“Vraiment, I was worried about Josiane’s chart,” she said, reaching for her new drink. “The one I never completed. Of course not, it got stuck under . . .”
“The comptroller’s?” René interrupted.
She nodded. The tulle ribbon bobbed in her curls. “Look,” she said, setting down a chart. The spheres of planets were crossed by red, aqua, and orange lines. “I hadn’t finished the alignment of the houses and the dominant planets . . . but Josiane called, wanting to meet. She said I could finish later, but she had an important question to ask first.”
All this astral plane talk unnerved him. “And you said . . . ?”
“Clients call my hotline or hit my website with questions all the time,” she said, noting disbelief in his eyes. “I’m very good.”
René grew aware of the sounds of conversation and the clink of glasses around them. Tables filling with the café clien- tele, the waiter rushing to fill orders and barking new ones to the younger look-alike barman.
“Sometimes I’m so good, it’s scary,” Miou-Miou confessed.
René avoided her eyes. He shifted on the rattan chair and wished his dangling legs could touch the floor. Just once.
“If I finish the orbit of her ruling planet . . . see how the sun line intersects . . . that shows warning. ‘Tread lightly on the rungs of life’s ladder.’ But here,” she slapped the chart, rustling the paper. “The lifeline was cut.”
“When?” If she was so good she’d know.
“11:40 p.m. last Monday night,” she said, glancing at her watch. She stood up, hefted her bag across her chest and snapped her green denim jacket closed.
“How do you know that?”
“She was going to call me. She didn’t,” said Miou-Miou. “I have to go. I’ve got another appointment.”
Josiane’s body was found Tuesday midday, René thought. But the morgue would have an estimate of the actual time of death.
Thursday Afternoon
AIMÉE SAT back on her bed in the residence, frustrated.
“Searching database for requested information. Five minutes remaining,” said the computer’s robotic voice. René had tried for Yves Montand’s silky tone. She hadn’t had the heart to tell him, Not even close.
Aimée lifted her fingers from the keyboard, felt her way across the cotton duvet, and found the rumpled Nicorette gum package. She rifled inside. Each tin foil pocket punctured and empty. All gone.
Her fingers scrabbled over the duvet, found the bedside table and the plastic bottle of lemon-scented nail polish remover she’d requested that René bring her. She uncrossed her black silk Chinese pajama pant-clad legs and felt around.
Where were the cotton pads? She felt something small, square, rough on one side. A box. A matchbox. Who’d been smoking . . . Morbier, Non, he’d quit. Bellan?
A few matchsticks rattled. She slid one out and chewed the matchhead, enjoying the gritty tang of sulphur on her tongue. Like pepper, without the kick. If only she had a cigarette to go with it.
And then she’d win the Lotto, fill every hungry stomach with food, and discover a cure for blindness.
Dream on.
There were knocks on the door. “Delivery for Mademoiselle Leduc.”
She reached for the security chain and unhooked it, then for the door knob.
“Sign please,” the voice said.
But she couldn’t. “Guide my hand to make an X.”
He did.
“Please, what does it say?”
“Package from Samaritaine from Martine Sitbon, and four orchid plants,” he said. “The card says ‘When in trouble, do the frivolous.’ ”
How sweet!
After she opened the box she found it filled with what felt like sunglasses, in assorted shapes: round, 70s rectangular, and cat-eye shaped with bumps . . . rhinestones?
She left the orchids for Sylvaine to help her with, then tried on each pair of sunglasses. Wondered what they looked like, kept on the ones she imagined were like Audrey Hepburn’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. All she needed were the rope of pearls and cigarette holder.
Then her palm touched something on the bedside table . . . a crumpled cellophane packet. Too thick for Nicorette . . . dare she hope? She put it to her nose, smelled the paper . . . an acrid blond tobacco . . . Gauloise Blond? Her favorite brand?
Her fingers found them . . . two filtered cigarettes. She wanted to shout Thank you God except for the nagging thought: Who would have forgotten them . . . or left them for her? A sympathy gesture from Bellan? But he’d visited her in the hospital, not here. Was it a forgetful janitor’s?
Would he want them back?
Never mind. And this wasn’t a hospital, surely people could smoke in their rooms. She hadn’t seen any sign forbidding it. And if some dragon complained, she’d get a kick out of saying just that.
Logistics . . . she had to plan her actions. How to smoke and not set the place on fire.
Stupid . . . such a simple thing. How could lighting and smoking a cigarette be such a big deal? But of course it was.
The matchbox fell from her hand. She heard it strike somewhere on the linoleum below her feet. Fighting a desire to burst into tears of frustration, she took a deep breath. Forced herself to look on the good side. Nom de Dieu, she was about to enjoy a coffin nail!
First she needed something for an ashtray. By the time she found the espresso cup and saucer and knocked it over, spilling the dregs over her sleeve, she’d located the matchbox with her toes. With a nimbleness she didn’t know she had, she clamped her toes around the matchbox, then hoisted it onto the mound of the piled duvet.
Had she closed the door to her room? If it weren’t so irritating, she’d find her predicament silly. But she imagined she would appear ridiculous to a sighted person looking in her room.
Sighted . . . when had she begun referring to others as sighted? She’d been around Chantal too much.
With everything in position, including bottled water, just in case of fire, she stood by t
he window. Lifting the smooth handle, she opened the double window a crack, then pushed it all the way open. She felt vents or narrow slats. Of course, a shutter; she pushed it aside, too. Then a metal bar, with ornamental grille below, like every apartment in Paris built in the Haussman era.
A brisk autumn gust from the Seine scented with chalky soil accompanied the whirr of machinery nearby. From below came the scrape of a bulldozer. She recognized the unmistakeable grating of an earth mover in the distance.
Urban renewal in the Bastille: the thought left a bad taste in her mouth. It was worse for those displaced by it. Whole courtyards of artisan workshops were being demolished by the high-profile Mirador construction company.
Now came the hard part, lighting the match. Only three left.
The filter tip sat in her mouth. The cigarette jutted straight out. Her hands were held close to her body. She took the match from the matchbox, positioned the nubby part between her forefinger and middle finger, set the match close, and struck it. A long slow sizzle and thupt, it lit on the first swipe. Heat came from her fingertips.
She moved the match to where she thought the cigarette tip was and inhaled. Her fingertip burned. But had she found the tip first?
And then she felt the rush of tobacco as it caught and burned. She inhaled, the jolt from the nicotine making her head spin. The smoke rushed to her lungs. Lightheaded, she fanned the match in big arcs until sure it had gone out.
Sipping an espresso would make it perfect.
Almost.
Back at the laptop, crosslegged, taking deep drags on the cigarette, she dug deeper into the Populax database. Her fingers flew over the keys, guided by the robotic voice. The impressive client dossiers revealed lucrative campaigns, especially the one for the Bastille Opéra. The Opéra’s exchange with St. Petersburg, a brainchild of glasnost, now a struggle for the St. Petersburg opera house, was being promoted by the Opéra board. Layer by layer, she checked the files. She found using extra keystrokes slowed her down, but not by much.
Nothing unusual.
Just to make sure, she ran a virus scan. The semi-silky voice informed her, “Scanning time remaining ten minutes.”
She sat back, grinding the cigarette out in the saucer positioned by her elbow. Trucks bleeped and the whine of the bulldozer came from below. She figured if she could see, the back of the Opéra would be on the other side of the Hospital.
The day before the assault, she’d used René’s car, adjusting his customized controls to fit her height. Finding taxis on a rainy Paris night had required more good taxi karma than she’d been willing to bank on.
Running late for the impromptu meeting called by Vincent just an hour earlier, she’d dented René’s Citroën in the tight first-floor Opéra parking lot. Carrying two laptops, graphs, rolled-up flowcharts, and the thick Populax file slowed her progress. She’d asked the gaunt-faced parking attendant for help. He’d given her a big smile and showed her a shortcut. He lisped and walked with a rolling gait, favoring a shortened leg. Yet he’d gone out of his way to guide her to an unmarked blue door that led to the back of the Quinze-Vingts hôpital, with the Opéra backstage loading dock on her left, and what she recognized now was the résidence St. Louis on her right. Vincent’s office on rue Charenton stood directly opposite. She’d felt about in her raincoat pocket, and come up with a damp fifty franc note.
“You’re a prince!” She’d meant it, looking at the downpour. “Got any idea when they close this exit?”
“Make it back before the guardien locks it at eight,” he said, smiling that warm smile again. “Although sometimes he forgets.”
All this had happened less than a week ago. But now she couldn’t see, didn’t know if she ever would, and her whole world had careened out of control. Even the satisfying smoke only blunted her anxiety.
Pangs of “what if’s” hit her until the semi-sexy velvet voice told her she had to make a choice between continuing the download or pausing. She snapped out of her mood of worry and self-pity. Time to work.
Loud pounding on the wall startled her. Aimée hit SAVE. Was the computer voice bothering her next door neighbor? Sharp raps at her door.
She switched off the laptop. Stood and counted her steps to the door.
“Oui?”
The knocking continued.
Aimée reached again for the security chain and unhooked it, then reached for the handle, a metal hook with padded grips and opened it.
“Who’s there?”
“Don’t torture me. Either close the window or give me a cigarette,” said a quavering voice.
“Forgive me, but I didn’t know,” she said, wishing she could see who this poor woman was. “I have one more . . . share?”
“Merci. ”
Something furry and soft feathered her arm as the woman passed. Like her grandmother’s fox collar. The same mothball musky smell. Aimée remembered the fox wrap draped around her grandmother’s neck. The two beady glass eyes, the sharp claws, and how she loved to touch them. “For special occasions,” her grandmother said, “baptisms, weddings, funerals, and when you graduate from the Sorbonne.”
But she hadn’t, and her grandmother passed away soon after.
“I’m your neighbor. Let me see you,” said the demanding voice.
Aimée felt hands, wrinkled and dry, outlining her cheeks, neck, and hairline. Fingers with short nails and a clinging chocolate aroma explored her.
“Nice earrings . . . pearl studs?” she was asked.
“I’m impressed,” she said. “Call me Aimée.”
“Madame Toile, but you can call me Mimi. Just don’t call me late to dinner.”
Old joke. Something metallic jingled.
“What’s that . . . your key?” Aimée asked.
It felt like a flattened serving utensil beneath Aimée’s hand. “Eh? My absinthe spoon . . . I need it. Must do it properly, you know.”
Aimée knew that absinthe had been outlawed for years, but figured the old biddy had her own source. Or inhabited her own world.
“Hold the sugar lump just right and sip the absinthe through it,” she said, her voice misting with anticipation. “Every afternoon, Rico pours me a few drops. He’s Pierre’s grandson, so I know it’s right.”
The old woodworm liquor rotted the brain. Had it damaged Mimi’s?
“Pierre supplied the maison,” Mimi said. “Such a well-connected man. Even when they shut us down in forty-eight.” She made a snorting noise. “We moved across Marché d’Aligre. All the girls came. What else would they do?”
Was Mimi the absinthe-drinking ex-madam of a bordello?
“They called us an institution,” she said. “Now where’s that Gauloise?”
She felt Mimi’s dry hand leading her to the bed. Using the same maneuver, Aimée lit the final cigarette and passed it to her. Mimi inhaled a long drag, then slowly exhaled. “Reminds me of the first time. He did it like a soccer player, no hands and straight for the goal.”
Aimée laughed. Her first time, with her cousin’s friend, had been similar.
“So why were brothels closed in nineteen forty-eight?”
“Now who cared about us, eh? Except the government! They needed the buildings. The housing shortage after the war. . .incroyable! So they took over the houses . . . even the Sphinx in Montparnasse, where the ministers went. Well, what went on at the Sphinx was no enigma, if you get my drift.”
Aimée didn’t know if she wanted to.
Madame exhaled a long smoky breath, felt for Aimée’s hand, and slid it between her fingers. “Reminds me of the blackouts. We’d share fags then, too. Never light three on a match, or a sniper will get you, they said. None of us went to the Métro during air raids. We took our chances: after all, we were getting paid, weren’t we?”
A nicotine-induced wave of dizziness came over Aimée. Was it a sign of recovery, small though it might be?
“Clothilde was the smart one. Shrewd. She still runs her bar,” she said. “Right down there on t
he corner of rue Moreau. Banked her sous and bought the place. Clotilde knew how to judge the tide and still does. After all, the tide only goes two ways, in and out. The difference after forty-eight was that the girls stood out front on the cobblestones. That and not getting checked every week by the médecin. Stupid, I call it . . . with so many diseases nowadays, eh?”
“What happened to your eyes, Mimi?”
“Something I can’t pronounce, but I like it when that young doctor tells me about it.” Her laughter sounded more like a cackle. The bed rocked. Aimée felt a sharp nudge in her ribs. “He wears good cologne and drinks Sumatra blend espresso. Know the one?”
Dr. Lambert. Mimi’s sense of smell wasn’t the only sharp thing about her.
“He’s the department head, Mimi.”
“If I wasn’t so old, he’d head my department. Like him?”
“Well, he’s . . .”
Another sharp nudge in her ribs. “Good salary, secure job and what a pension! A girl’s got to think of these things, non? Looks only take you so far.”
And Aimée wondered if Mimi was thinking of herself as she spoke.
“He’s married, most likely.”
“And when has that ever stopped anything?”
After Mimi left, Aimée ran a standard virus check on her laptop, figuring she might as well finish the tedious job before tackling the password encryption.
The slow whirr of the zip disk and then the announcement “Zip disk cleaning time remaining twelve minutes” caused her to reach for the nail polish remover bottle. She uncapped it, swished the nail polish remover onto a cotton square and rubbed away what she hoped was the chipped Gigabyte Green. The lemony acetone smell cleared her sinuses.
More loud knocking on her door.
“Oui?”
Perhaps Mimi wanted a manicure, too? Well why not, Aimée had time. She lifted the laptop, unplugged the external Zip Drive, and set them in the drawer.
She heard a muffled voice, hard to distinguish from the increasing loud gnawing of the bulldozer and pealing church bells somewhere. Was it night . . . was it dark? No . . . the men were still working. Or were they working late on the new Métro line?
