The Wife of Riley

by A W Hartoin

  “Someone wants to be very sure,” said Chuck.

  I swiped my finger across the top of the padlock and came up with a light layer of dust. “No one’s been in for a while.”

  Chuck rubbed his hands together. “Time to canvass the building.”

  “I guess so, but not many people are home. We’ve yet to see a single resident.”

  “Maybe they’re all writers like Morty and never go out.”

  “I’m sure that’s it.”

  My phone rang and it was Aaron, texting that my dreaded pastry class started in forty-five minutes.

  “I’ve got to get to class. Maybe we can do it tomorrow,” I said.

  “No,” said Chuck. “You go to class. I’ll canvass.”

  “You don’t speak any French.”

  He waggled his eyebrows. “I speak other things fluently.”

  Well…you used to.

  “What if they’re all men?” I asked.

  “I’ll wing it the way you taught me.” Chuck kissed me on the forehead and shooed me down the hallway. I heard him pounding on his first door as the elevator closed. He wasn’t intimidated by the French and that was more than I could say for most people. If anyone had a shot, it was him, but if he got into that apartment without me because I had to make stupid pastry, I would scream.

  I stumbled out of Atelier Guy Marin three hours later, covered in flour and sugar. My arms ached from beating the choux dough and whipping cream by hand. By hand! They had mixers—lots of mixers, the freaks. I’d been lectured on proper method—something about wrist movement—and belief in one’s pastry. Oh, I believed in pastry. I believed I’d never willingly go back and make it.

  “Put on your hat,” said Aaron as he turned me around toward the metro stop.

  “Now I can put on my hat. Thanks a lot.” I jammed my floppy hat on my head.

  Chef Jacqueline, the pastry Nazi, said no hats in the kitchen and, of course, I couldn’t wear a chef’s hat because, as she helpfully pointed out, I wasn’t a chef. I had to remove my hat and reveal my bizarre Buckwheat hair to the world. You may say that it wasn’t the world, it was just an exclusive pastry class. No. It was the world. Everyone had cellphones and they all had to take pictures of me and post them to their Twitter accounts, their blogs, and websites. Did everybody have to have a website? Chef Jacqueline was very helpful when she used my full name every time she spoke to me. Every time. In case someone missed it. It was the pastry class from hell. My choux sucked. My raspberry gastrique congealed for no good reason and my custard broke all four times I made it. Now I was being demoted to beginning pastry. I looked like an idiot and I turned out to be one.

  To improve the situation, I got five irate texts from Mickey Stix asking why the hell I looked like a demented pastry chef instead of a sexual fantasy. I wasn’t their cover girl to make men cringe. Now I was trending on Twitter and not in a good way. I had no answer, so I didn’t reply.

  “You shouldn’t take that off,” said Aaron.

  “You think?” I marched down the steps into the metro and a huge gust of wind came up from the tracks, sweeping my hat off my head. It disappeared over a mob of people coming down the stairs. They carried Aaron and me with them to the platform. People were giving me sidelong looks and I crossed my arms. If anyone pulled out a phone, I would harm them. My regular phone was ringing like crazy. I ignored it. If Mickey wanted to yell, he could do it through texts.

  We got back to the apartment and I collapsed on the bed.

  “You hungry?” asked Aaron.

  “This is the worst vacation ever.”

  “Chocolate?”

  I buried my head under my pillow. “I’m going to sleep. When I wake up, that class will not have happened. Got it?”

  “Huh?”

  “Sleeping, Aaron.”

  He finally left after three more attempts to get me to go out to find food. I wasn’t fooled. He wanted to go to that vintage linen shop. All the restaurants he mentioned just happened to be on that street and it was way too late for lunch.

  I fell asleep, only to be jolted awake after what felt like five minutes. “It is not!” I opened my eyes to see Chuck staring at me from the end of my bed and, for some reason, my arms were in the air. I dropped them and tried to pretend that didn’t happen.

  “I think you were dreaming.”

  Oh no! Oh no!

  “Did I say anything?” I asked.

  Please say no.

  “You said, ‘My god damn cream is whipped.’ I guess you didn’t like the class.”

  “It was a freaking nightmare and I couldn’t wear my hat.”

  He sat on the edge of my bed. “I heard.”

  “From who?” I said slowly.

  “Pretty much everybody I know. You’re trending, hot stuff.”

  I flipped over and buried my head. “Go away. You can’t be seen with me. I’m a Halloween mask waiting to happen.”

  “That would be hilarious,” he said, rubbing my foot. He probably didn’t want to get too close to my hideous head.

  “No, it wouldn’t!”

  “Okay. Funny to me,” he said. “Get up. We’ve got a reservation.”

  I sat bolt upright. “Are you kidding?” I pointed to my head. “My hat is gone. Gone, I tell you.”

  “If you wash it, it’ll go back, right?”

  “In theory.” I didn’t bring up my scuba hair in Honduras. It took a month before my hair calmed down. My hair wasn’t like other hair. It had feelings and I think I insulted it.

  “Take a shower then. You smell like butter. On second thought, I like butter, all oily and slippery.”

  For a second, he seemed like Chuck. I moved in, all ready for him to start kissing me all over, but the second I did, his face changed and he leaned back.

  “There’s plenty of hot water,” he said. “You can soothe the savage hair. I booked a dinner cruise at eight.”

  “I’m not going if this keeps happening,” I said, pointing to my head.

  “Deal.”

  I went into the bathroom and left the door cracked just in case Chuck decided to join me. Fat chance. I got into a boiling hot shower and lathered up my frizzy mop. “Did you get in the apartment?”

  “What apartment?”

  “Chuck Watts, I’m not in the mood.”

  He laughed and said, “No. There were only three residents at home.”

  “Men?” I asked.

  “Yeah. My bad luck and they were ancient. They couldn’t have heard me even if I could speak French.”

  I rinsed out the suds. So far so good. “We can try again.”

  “Absolutely. But first we’ll go to dinner,” said Chuck.

  I finished up and came out wrapped in a towel. “How does it look? I was afraid to try the mirror.”

  “Normal for wet hair, I think.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  “You want another hat?”

  “I’ll have to. Where’s Aaron?”

  Chuck headed for the door, leaving so he wouldn’t see me naked. Gasp. What a nightmare that would be. “He’s going out with cooking cronies.”

  “Where’s he going?” I wanted to get a plan together on the whole Angela thing.

  “I don’t know. Aaron’s a big boy.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Chuck grinned. “Metaphorically speaking. He’ll be fine. He lived here for years.”

  “I can’t tell you how weird that is. Aaron doesn’t look like a world traveler.”

  “Looks aren’t everything.”

  “Clearly. Can we talk about what’s going on with us?”

  “No. We can get ready. We have to be on the boat at eight sharp. Get ready.”

  I sighed. This was going nowhere fast.

  Patience, Mercy, patience.

  Chapter Twelve

  The boat slid through the Seine silently, heading for the brightly lit dock next to the Pont de Arts. I leaned against Chuck’s shoulder and gazed out at the twinkling lights of the Louvre. />
  “Did you like it?” he asked.

  “It was perfect.” Perfect wasn’t an exaggeration, even with my frizzy hair stuffed under a cheap, rather misshapen fedora I bought off a street vendor. Chuck had chosen one of the oldest boats still afloat on the river, an Art Nouveau masterpiece of brass and polished teak with portraits of nubile women intertwined with lush foliage. We sat on original love seats angled to see out of the wide glass windows. None of the cheaper touristy boats done in glass and shiny white for us and I felt warm and grateful for it. This was the way The Girls saw Paris. They ignored the commercial places and saw only what had been and would always be.

  The captain announced that we’d docked and wished us a pleasant evening. We wove through the love seats and elegant booths to the gangplank and trotted down the creaking wood path to land on solid, gravely ground.

  “Should we go home?” asked Chuck. “I don’t know what people do in Paris after dark.”

  I laughed. “Neither do I.”

  “You’ve been here a dozen times.”

  “With elderly ladies. Sometimes we went to the Louvre when it was open late, but that’s about it.” I was playing it cool, but I knew exactly where I wanted to go. Chuck couldn’t figure it out or I was up a creek. “You know, I heard about a lovely bar where we could get a drink, maybe see a little Parisian nightlife.”

  “Was it in the guidebooks?” Chuck and those guidebooks. If it wasn’t in a book, it didn’t exist.

  “No…Ellen’s mom went there. She said it was nice and very Parisian.”

  “Which way?’

  I led him up stone stairs that were suspiciously sticky and smelled of urine to the Pont des Arts. We passed the thousands of love locks fixed to the bridge, walking over toward the Louvre and possibly Angela Riley in the form of Sabine Suede.

  “God, it’s beautiful at night. Totally different. There are so many people out and it’s a weeknight.”

  “That’s Paris for you. Always something happening.” I tugged on his arm when we passed the Louvre and went down a little side street. I’d memorized the directions to Grand Bleu, Sabine Suede’s hangout, but that meant nothing when it came to me. I could get lost anywhere and frequently did.

  That time was no different. We ended up in an alley next to a bunch of trashcans that smelled like three-week-old shrimp.

  “Let’s have a seat,” said Chuck with a wide grin. “That smell rocks. I can feel it seeping into my skin. It’s my first souvenir.”

  “Shut up,” I said, looking at the map on my phone. It wasn’t helping.

  Chuck took the phone. “Okay. Left at the light. Then right, right, left, right, and a left. Got it?”

  “What do you think?”

  We made it to Grand Bleu fifteen minutes later. The hotel was upscale—not Bled family upscale, but it was pricey. The bar looked like it could’ve been used as a set for Midnight in Paris, very Art Deco with lots of geometric shapes and polished walnut paneling. I missed the Art Nouveau ladies of the boat and their sensual take on nature.

  “This is more like it,” said Chuck, taking a look at a pair of women at the bar, chatting up the bartender. The place had more customers than I expected. They were mainly businessmen, looking for a good time. From the looks of it, they’d find it easily, but Chuck didn’t have to know that. We’d stay for an hour or so. I’d look for Sabine Suede, maybe ask the waitress or bartender to point out Sabine Suede if I could manage it, and we’d go.

  Chuck ordered us martinis because it seemed like a martini kind of place and I chose a table at the back with a view of all the action. And there was plenty of action. I’d never seen so many hot girls in one room since I’d been backstage at one of the DBD concerts. Even though the guys were members of AARP, they could still lure the young ones in.

  The waitress brought our drinks and I sipped my martini, making a face. Too strong. I needed to keep my wits about me with the steady parade of women coming through the bar. The bartender caught my eye and I saw instantly that he thought I was one of their ilk, using the Marilyn fantasy to get customers. I gave him a slight shake no and he frowned.

  Chuck scuttled to the edge of his seat. “Mercy, it’s time to go.”

  “Huh?” I was scanning the room.

  “We need to go now.”

  I pulled my hand out of his. “Why? We just got here.” I couldn’t leave. Sabine hadn’t shown up yet.

  “This isn’t a place I’d bring you. Let’s go,” he said.

  Oh no! I should’ve known the cop would figure it out.

  “What are you talking about? It’s nice and the drinks are good.”

  “The drinks are strong for a reason.”

  “And what reason is that?” I asked, still scanning.

  He pulled me closer. “These women are hookers.”

  “No,” I gasped. “How can you tell?”

  “When’s the last time you saw a guy like that”—he pointed to a balding man in his sixties with a serious paunch—“attracting not one, but two twenty-five-year-olds?”

  “Maybe he’s famous,” I said.

  Chuck pulled me out of my chair. “He’s not famous. He’s a John.” He tossed some euros on the table and tried to push me to the door.

  “I have to pee.”

  Smooth, Mercy.

  “Sorry. I…um…need to go to the ladies’. Be right back.” I dashed toward the hallway to the hotel before Chuck could protest. There was a sign for the bathroom pointing down another hall. I had no plan, as usual, and hoped something would come to me.

  Something, or rather someone, did. One of the women came out of the bathroom, pulled on her extremely short skirt and plumped up her breasts so that they threatened to pop out at any second. She didn’t strike me as French with her almond eyes and darker skin.

  I pulled fifty euros out of my purse, waved it at her, and pointed to the bathroom. She sized me up, shrugged, and followed me in.

  “Do you speak English?”

  She looked me over and leaned languidly on the bathroom stall. “Yes.” She had an Eastern European accent and looked about seventeen, if you bothered to look past the heavy makeup. “You like?”

  No in so many ways.

  “I’m in the market for some information, not…that,” I said.

  “Information? You like watch?”

  Ew.

  “No, no. I want to ask you some questions. I’ll pay if you give the right answers.”

  “What is right answer?”

  I got out my Fibonacci phone and showed her Angela Riley’s picture. “Have you ever seen this woman?”

  She shook her head. “No. Who is woman?”

  “I’m just looking for her.”

  The girl pouted. “I prettier than her.”

  “That doesn’t really matter. This woman is missing. Do you know someone called Sabine Suede?”

  She puzzled over the question. “I hear name. Not know her. How much you pay?”

  How much did I have? Two hundred. That would work for words. Her other services were probably much pricier than that. I waved the fifty euro. “Can you get ahold of Sabine Suede?”

  “No. I not here long.” She pouted again. I assumed she did this with men and it worked. I couldn’t imagine why. It was seriously odd.

  “Do you know anyone who could get ahold of Sabine?” I asked.

  “I can do.”

  “Now?” I waved the fifty.

  She called someone called Cashmere and held out her hand. “She at bar.”

  I gave her the fifty and Cashmere came in a few minutes later. Cashmere was probably at the end of her career, at least thirty-five but probably older. She was much more wary than the other girl and eyed me coldly, then adjusted her sequined dress over her implants. They were so large they put me to shame and I wasn’t a small girl by any stretch. The nurse in me wanted to ask her if they were painful, but I caught myself. I was there to cross Sabine off my list. Nothing else.

  “Do you speak English?” I aske
d.

  “Yes. How much?” she asked.

  I crossed my arms. “It depends on what you have to say.”

  She calculated my worth. Since her outfit obviously cost more than mine, it wasn’t much. “How much do you have?”

  “Look. I don’t have a lot of time. Do you know Sabine Suede or not?”

  “Is she in trouble?”

  “Not from me. I only want to figure out if she’s the woman I’m trying to find,” I said.

  “What woman?” she asked.

  I held out my phone. Cashmere gave Angela’s picture a careful look, but she gave nothing away. “One hundred euros.”

  “Do you have a picture of Sabine?” I asked.

  She nodded and I gave her a hundred euros. It was painful, but I could tell Cashmere wasn’t any pushover. Plus, I didn’t have time to argue. I expected Chuck to pound on the door any second.

  “Let’s have it,” I said.

  She showed me several pictures of a woman with Angela’s dark curly hair and a jagged scar from her mouth to her ear.

  “From her customer last year?” I asked, indicating the scar.

  Cashmere was caught off guard and nodded before she thought about it. I showed her Angela’s picture. “Have you ever seen this woman?”

  “No. Who is she?”

  “The one I’m looking for,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I went for the door, but Cashmere grabbed my arm. “I can do anything she can.”

  “I have no doubt.” I opened the door right into Chuck, who was in the hall and had a sheen of sweat on his brow.

  “Are you okay?” He hustled me out of the building.

  “I’m fine. I’m not so sure about you,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  We turned right and Chuck’s stride lengthened so that I was jogging.

  “Nothing’s wrong. What happened in there?”

  I dug my heels in and he dragged me three feet before stopping. “Nothing happened. It was a bathroom. I went to the bathroom. What is up with you?”

  “I don’t want anything to happen to you.” He hugged every ounce of breath out of me. I struggled in his arms and ended up having to pinch him to get free.

  “Sorry. Sorry,” he said, his voice husky.

  I kissed his cheek. “Nothing’s going to happen.”