What She Saw

by Gerard Stembridge

  “So, this isn’t some kind of election propaganda thing?”

  “Lana. A French election is not like the U.S. We have no political commercials on television. It is forbidden.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, we cannot. It is the law.”

  “You promise me?”

  “Of course.”

  Lana is sorely tempted. The contrast between the coiffed elegance of the TV politician and her memory of the naked old goat with a ferocious grip on a helpless young woman is stark and it angers her. If only people in France—women especially—had seen what she saw. Maybe it is the right thing for her to try to conjure up at least some sense of the violence of it: especially those blazing eyes. This Fournier guy is way past inappropriate. Maybe he is truly dangerous. What happened to Odette afterward was forcible abduction, surely?

  “Okay. Tell you what. I leave Paris tomorrow evening. Let me sleep on it. If in the morning I still think it’s a good idea, then yeah, sure, I’ll do it.”

  “But you are here now. It will be only ten minutes.”

  “I know, but honestly, Guillaume, I’m exhausted. I have to think it through. Don’t worry, I’m pretty well there with you on this and if I decide to do it, then you’ll get one hundred percent. But I need some quiet time first.”

  “Sure, sure. I understand. Hey, why not sleep here? Then, when you wake—”

  “No, I’ll be more comfortable back at the hotel.”

  “But will you be safe?”

  Guillaume says it like it’s the most obvious thing. It hadn’t occurred to Lana.

  “Fournier’s men tried to kidnap you. They tried to kill us on the street. They have your phone and the keycard for your hotel room. You don’t think they will be waiting for you?”

  But she has to go back to the hotel precisely because her passport and ticket are there. Maybe she should go to the police first, the real police? Explain the whole story. Hi, one of your presidential candidates is trying to have me killed. Could I have some round-the-clock surveillance, please? Not a good idea.

  “But even if I stay here tonight I still have to go back in the morning to pay my bill and get my stuff. If they’re waiting for me now, they’ll still be waiting. Of course, you won’t really care anymore once you get your interview, right?”

  “No, Lana, please. This is not true.”

  “Okay, okay, here’s a deal. Bring me to the hotel. If there’s any problem, I’m straight back here with you. If not, I get a good night’s sleep in my very luxurious bed and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  Silence. Lana registers that odd something ripple across Guillaume’s face again, a hint of the spoiled child thwarted. Not a man she’d automatically put her trust in, but right now what are the choices?

  “Look, if you don’t want to do this, I’ll just go. Let me back on the street. I’ll find my way to the hotel and take my chances, or go to the police—”

  “No. All right. Of course we’ll take you. I’m sorry, it’s just I wish I can think of a better plan to help you.”

  Lana’s not entirely sure why she doesn’t quite buy that.

  1 AM

  The yellow loaf—it was actually a classic Renault 4, Guillaume had proudly told her—is hardly the most inconspicuous vehicle to be arriving in should there be anyone on the lookout outside Le Chevalier. The last thing she wants is another crazy chase. So they pull in at the nearest corner, where another conversation begins between Guillaume and Pauline, so passionately intense they might have been arguing nature or nurture, but Lana’s best guess is that they are only discussing which of them should check out the hotel lobby for anything suspicious.

  Pauline jumps out. Guillaume, looking at her sashay brazenly under the arches toward the entrance, chuckles admiringly.

  “Pauline, she is so clever. I say I will go. She says no, it must be her in this situation. She says if Vallette or one of his men is waiting they will know me for certain, but they may not know her. And if they do know her and approach, she says a woman can have the perfect solution for this problem. You know what she will do? Scream and scream, ‘Leave me alone! Help, please!’ There is nothing any French man can do in this moment. She says it will be fun making the scene.”

  Lana feels a little guilty that she’s not more grateful for all the trouble this strange young couple is taking, apparently on her behalf, but somehow she can’t rid herself of a vague resentment that this anarchic pair has trapped her in their own private made-up movie adventure. What she needs is a few hours’ quiet to think through step by step everything that has happened and the best way to extricate herself from the mess. Right now the dull simplicity of meeting Brian off a plane at Dublin airport seems the most desirable thing in the world. The meds must really be kicking in.

  Pauline comes skipping back and she and Guillaume exchange another unnecessarily long kiss before the excited babble begins. His translation is unusually, but mercifully, succinct.

  “She thinks it is safe. To be certain we will wait for you. I will give you my number; you have the card?”

  Lana hands him his business card. He scribbles a number on it.

  “Call me from your room.”

  “I will. Thank you. Merci beaucoup, Pauline.”

  Pauline leans back and kisses her enthusiastically full on the lips.

  The lobby and bar are more or less empty. No music at this late hour. Lana can’t help glancing in the direction of the private elevator. She approaches reception and, given her presumption that anything that can go wrong tonight will, is surprised to be issued with a new keycard without fuss and with a smile. There’s no sign of her hero bellhop, Odette’s brother.

  “There’s a bellhop named Claude. Is he still on duty?”

  The receptionist seems to hesitate before answering.

  “Claude? No. He is gone home.”

  “Oh, that’s a pity. I just wanted to thank him actually. He was a big help to me earlier tonight. A real lifesaver. Maybe I’ll see him in the morning?”

  Again there’s something uncomfortable in the receptionist’s manner, her reply stilted.

  “No. Claude will not be present in the morning.”

  Is it his day off? Had he been hurt tangling with Fichet—Vallette—and his crew? Had that lovely mouth got a fat lip on her account?

  Lana feels nervous wings flutter inside her rib cage as the elevator doors open on the fifth floor, but the corridor is empty. She pauses at her room door. The old keycard had been in the purse that Vallette’s guy had forced her to drop. Someone could be waiting in there. The flutter becomes panicked flapping. She scampers back to the elevator to confirm that it’s still there waiting, then returns to 511, takes a deep breath, and slides the keycard in. The green light flashes and she eases the door open, peering into the darkness, anxious, alert. She reaches and finds the light switch. There’s no one in the room. Of course there might be someone hiding in the bathroom, but at this point panic recedes, relief takes charge, and Lana tells herself not to be so ridiculously paranoid. She walks in with confidence, closing the door firmly behind her. Lying on the bed and closing her eyes feels exquisite. She begins to drift. Thanks to the meds, she should get something like a decent night’s sleep. Is it possible that all the bad stuff is over? Perhaps Fournier and his friends have decided to leave well enough alone.

  There is something she needs to do, but can’t think what it is. Her brain is shutting down with the tingling pleasure of a masseur’s thumbs rippling down her spine. Whatever the thing is, it can wait until morning. Everything can wait until morning. Guillaume will have to—Guillaume! Her eyes flash open. That’s it. She’d promised to call and reassure him. Lana feels guilty, because, quite suddenly, the way she truly feels is clear to her: she doesn’t want to see either him or Pauline ever again. All she wants is to get up early in the morning, spend a pleasant few hours wandering through pretty streets and pretty shops, and then fly home to safe old Brian.

  As she reaches
for the phone Lana notices the envelope on the bedside locker. Then she notices what is not on the bedside locker. Her meds. Isn’t that where she left them? Yes, she is sure of it. Has anything else been touched? Now she looks around the room. Her bag, the jeans she had thrown on a chair, the catalog from the Hopper exhibition: everything is gone.

  Room 511 has been cleared out.

  It must be the cumulative effect of all the nerve-jangling experiences of the last few hours, but only now does Lana give in to hysteria. No matter the consequences, she so needs to scream. She opens her mouth and it seems inevitable that some awful primitive shriek will fill the room, but she can’t make any sound other than short, urgent gasps. Her head swivels this way and that in a hopeless search. This can’t be. She folds to the floor wishing she had someone to pray to. She wants to run and run, but can’t even unclench her fists.

  The awareness that Guillaume and Pauline are waiting for her call makes her finally reach forward and grab the envelope from the locker. “Madame Gibson” is neatly written on the front. She opens it cautiously as if it might explode in her face.

  Madame Gibson, please telephone 0676589403

  cordialement

  She imagines whoever wrote it—Vallette?—enjoyed “cordialement.” He might as well have scrawled “come out with your hands up.” They have her passport, e-ticket, money, medication, cards. They hold all the cards. That’s why they hadn’t needed to waste manpower hanging around the hotel or lurking in the room waiting for her. She’s out of options. What use are Guillaume and Pauline now? There’s nothing they can do about this. What did these people intend to do with her, anyway? Lana always liked a good conspiracy theory—on the JFK assassination she was a grassy knoll woman through and through—but the idea that in this situation someone might think that killing her is the appropriate action seems utterly crazy, too excessive, unnecessary. How could she be that important or dangerous? Maybe they intend to kidnap her and keep her under wraps until after the election? Or bribe her?

  Might it be possible to convince them that she’s harmless, that it had all been a dumb accident as a result of her condition? They have the meds so they know that part isn’t a lie. A woman on the edge goes a little crazy and ends up an accidental witness, but hey! She has absolutely no intention now of broadcasting what she saw, which was nothing anyway. In fact she’s forgotten about it already. Put her on the plane and send her home. Best for everyone. Would they buy it? First things first, she’d better call Guillaume to reassure him, quickly before he arrives at the room to check on her. Lana knows she’ll have to concentrate very hard to make herself sound truthful.

  “Hi, Guillaume.”

  “I am in the foyer. I am coming to find you—”

  “No, no, it’s okay. Everything is fine.”

  “You were so long.”

  “Yes, I had to get a new keycard. It took a little while to sort it out.”

  Guillaume’s voice suddenly becomes very quiet, very intense.

  “Are you certain? Lana, if there is a problem and you cannot explain me, if there is perhaps someone with you now, just say, ‘Good night, Guillaume,’ and hang up.”

  Lana attempts a laugh, as if to suggest that he’s being amusingly melodramatic.

  “No, no, honestly, everything is fine. I’m just going to sleep now. But thank you.”

  “Okay. Good. You will call me in the morning?”

  Lana feels more than a little guilty and is sure she sounds utterly unconvincing.

  “Yes, of course. First thing.”

  “Perhaps I will meet you here early?”

  “Sure, sure. Yes, why not?”

  Finally he lets her hang up. She stares at the note for several minutes. There is nothing incriminating or sinister in it, but at least it’s something on paper. If she brought this to the police wouldn’t it show that she’s not some crazed fantasist? But then what? Fournier is a powerful political figure and she’s a foreign nobody. Grassy knoll time again.

  She feels so utterly alone. Is there any point in calling Brian and crying down the phone, take some comfort from the sound of his voice at least? No.

  Nathan.

  Like a curl of smoke that takes shape the name drifts into her head. In this desperate moment, she allows herself to think about him. At least he is here in Paris.

  Nathan. It’s as if she had redacted all references to him in documents, consigned to the trash all files containing his name, yet somehow he has remained lurking in the hard drive.

  Nathan. Nathan. Nathan. To entertain even the most fleeting notion of setting out to make contact with him at this hour seems utterly bizarre, reckless, hopeless, but, now that it’s surfaced, she knows the idea is not going to go away. Given the hopeless situation in which she finds herself, wouldn’t it be something to see Nathan again? But who’s to say he’s still living in the same place? After more than three years, the chances of finding him tonight, just like that, are minuscule. Especially without even a phone number.

  But at this moment he seems like the only person she can trust.

  2 AM

  What Lana had promised herself would not happen on this trip, she is about to make happen. Yesterday evening her elated self had assured her that the Hopper exhibition was the perfect opportunity to go back and reclaim at least some part of Paris. To exorcise the ghost of her wicked behavior a few years ago. It would be uncomplicated, a short trip, a definite focus. There’d be no need even to think of Nathan and she certainly wouldn’t indulge in foolish self-deluding actions like meandering over to the Left Bank pretending to be just another casual tourist, while secretly hoping to see his face loom miraculously out of the café crowds, or hear a voice from nowhere shout, “Lana Turner! Is that you?”

  Circumstances had changed everything. Now she is about to go deliberately in search of him: trekking across the river to find his old apartment. So late. It’s crazy and wrong. But it’s all she has left.

  Lana had sat on the floor in 511 for nearly an hour telling herself that this idea of taking off into the night without a cent in search of someone she hadn’t seen in more than three years and who probably wouldn’t want to see her, was the worst of the many bad impulses she’d acted on over the last few hours. What were the chances that Nathan was still living in the same apartment? How would she get into the building to find out? What could he do for her anyway, even if she did get to see him? All that considered, she still felt a desperate need for some kind of contact with someone who she felt . . . someone who wasn’t a complete stranger. Surely he wouldn’t slam the door in her face, no matter how she had treated him the last morning they’d seen each other? There was an even darker possibility. Was he the real reason she had worked up her unstoppable urge to return to Paris? No. No! How could that be? If the trip had gone according to plan she would not have made any attempt to make contact. But it was so much the opposite of going to plan and now she was alone and afraid.

  None of this thinking and rethinking mattered. In the end, Lana could not bear to stay in her violated room any longer. No matter how tempting the bed was, no matter how exhausted she felt, sleep was out of the question. Even though she forced herself to take a shower she did so frantically, counting the seconds.

  Now, crossing the lobby, Lana keeps her gaze well away from the private elevator. Is it her imagination that the night concierge seems concerned as he lets her out onto the street? Would Madame like him to call a taxi? Once outside Lana walks about twenty yards before stopping under the shadow of the arches to look around oh-so-cautiously. She waits to see if anyone emerges from the hotel. Are there shadows peeping out from anywhere? She scans parked cars for signs of surveillance. Jesus, she’s thinking in words like surveillance. There are four people visible on the street and she observes their movement, but they seem like normal passersby. Fournier and his people are probably getting a good night’s sleep confident that she has no options, nowhere to go.

  But they don’t know about Nathan. This
is something.

  Though he’s very much on her mind now, it isn’t until she turns right toward rue de l’Amiral-de-Coligny that she allows this walk to become a full-fledged journey of recollection, not so much a sentimental journey as a passionate white-knuckle ride. Straight ahead Lana sees the orange awning with LE FUMOIR printed in black letters along the fringe. She slows as she approaches. The bar is closing, a few patrons finishing their drinks. So different from the night she first met Nathan: It was just before the despised ban came into force in France and that night the dark-wood interior was bulging with smokers savoring the last of the good old days, a memory they would keep for their grandchildren. “Ah, what times they were. We used to crush into crowded rooms choked with noxious smoke. Our clothes stank and we coughed all the time. Wonderful.” The sight of the impenetrable fug inside had made her smile for the first time since Brian and she had parted in tight-lipped silence earlier that day. Their long-planned, fabulously romantic Christmas and New Year’s trip to Paris had crumbled to dust when Brian had gotten an urgent call from Seattle. He was needed immediately, which was how he was always needed. What pissed her off most of all was that it hadn’t even occurred to him to discuss it with her before agreeing to return. Oh, he was disappointed, sure, hell, he was despondent. But, he said, that’s the way the ball bounces and they’d get another shot at Paris. He’d been shocked to the point of disbelief when Lana told him, in a tone sharper than the windchill outside, not to change her flight because she was staying on. But . . . but . . . what would she do in Paris on her own? What about New Year’s Eve? Lana had just shrugged. It was Paris. Five days would barely be long enough for what she wanted to see and do. Brian’s aggrieved accusation that she was being childish was the wrong move. He’d adjusted, but then cast her as the cold, unforgiving one while presenting himself as the true romantic, whining that no matter where, they should be together on New Year’s Eve. It was also vital apparently that they should park the Paris experience until they could return and enjoy it together. Most ineffectual of all, he had tried wheedling. Come home with him please, darling. He promised that they’d return at the first chance they got, but she’d been implacable. The only solution that would satisfy her was for Brian to tell his masters that work could wait until January 2 as planned. So, after angry words that became chilly words that became silence and a sleepless night, Lana had just wanted him to go as quickly as possible.