What She Saw

by Gerard Stembridge

  NOON

  The buzz is catching as she weaves around the stalls at Maubert: the colors, the aromas, and of course those luscious French voices talking food like there is nothing more important, not just on this Saturday morning, but always and forever. It’s such a pity Nathan’s not with her, but they’ll have the rest of the day together; to lunch, to step out or maybe not; one of those take-it-as-it-comes carefree days.

  Lana is tempted to buy something at every stall, but remembering she has only a fifty, tells herself to strategize, hang out a little, take it all in, check out the best on offer, plan an amazing brunch, and—okay, okay, okay, but look at those great hunks of creamy yellow cheese, have to have some of that. Can’t just pass by. Way too much temptation. A pretty young girl with a beauty spot on her upper lip gives her a shaving of Comté Vieux and she buys a wedge of it, as well as a chunk of Beaufort and a thick triangle of Saint Agur and a few little cylinders of Chabichou. While the girl is wrapping, Lana’s attention wanders to boxes of glistening salad greens at the vegetable stall. She wants some of those leaves. Does the girl really have to make such a ritual of wrapping a few pieces of cheese? Lana tells herself to relax, this is part of the pleasure of market shopping: the time and care taken. But she needs to get to those leaves before they’re all snapped up. Come! On! Finally the cheeses are handed over. She gives her the fifty and immediately crosses to the vegetable stall and grabs a head of romaine lettuce.

  “Madame!”

  The girl is holding up her change. Lana goes back to her.

  “Madame!”

  The guy at the vegetable stall shouts, obviously concerned that grand larceny of a head of lettuce is about to take place, so she holds up her change by way of explanation. The smile he offers in response reveals remarkably gray teeth for a guy in his line of work. He’s spindly and combs his hair forward in an unnecessary as well as unattractive way. Someone who cares about him should tell him it ain’t working. She gives him the lettuce to bag and looks along the stall. Cheese and salad. The meal is already taking shape: a fat generous salad with wine and cheese to follow. What else? Vine tomatoes, obviously. She points. The spindly guy starts to bag them, looking to know when to stop. She keeps waving him on until her attention is distracted by the cucumbers. And fat radishes. And apples. And fresh herbs. She points at them all. Et là, et là, et là. This time, to avoid consternation, she hands over a ten before walking away as he finishes weighing and bagging everything. Lardons have popped into her head and she’s on that trail now. And walnuts. Lardons and walnuts are what this salad needs. But a stall entirely devoted to saucisson makes her pause and quickly reassess: saucisson instead of lardons? Au Poivre, Au Pistache, Au Figues. Perfect. Sliced and tossed with the lettuce, tomatoes, tarragon, radish, cucumber, and the creamy Saint Agur in a giant bowl, if Nathan has one big enough.

  The saucisson man is fat and wears glasses with oddly modish red frames. What little hair he has hovers above, a cumulus detached from his crown. He offers Lana a “gout” of chorizo and chuckles when she gasps at the heat of it.

  And that’s when, turning away to suck in cool air and glancing down, she notices the shoes: tan oxfords. Very elegant. Surprisingly so. Not Saturday morning at the market shoes at all. They make Lana look closer at the man, who’s studying some farm chickens at the next stall. He’s wearing a suit and carries no shopping bag. Nor does he appear to have bought anything.

  While Lana tells herself this is pure paranoia, that she’s just looking for trouble, she can’t help remembering how she’d missed a similar signal the night before: the subtly expensive perfume of Fichet and his men. Okay, a guy being overdressed for the market is hardly a crime and maybe he’s not here by choice. Maybe he’s just hovering waiting for his wife, who’ll appear in a moment laden with bags of fresh vegetables. Still, Lana feels it would be foolish to ignore those shoes. Okay. If her crazy brain is even halfway to being right, it won’t be this guy alone. He’ll have friends and maybe they’ll stand out too. They would be . . . her eyes flick left and right and . . . yes, there’s another one. A type like last night’s fake cops, muscled with perfectly coiffed hair, also in a suit. And no shopping bags. He’s gazing in total fascination at a selection of foie gras. Despite her accelerating heartbeat, Lana wishes she could get close enough to check out his shoes. Okay, she thinks quickly now, let’s nail this. If there are two there might be a third. Maybe more. If there’s another he would have to be . . . she stops at a dairy stall and fakes interest in a huge tub of crème fraîche, so thick it’s pink-hued, while angling herself to check on her right. After a few furtive glances this way and that she nails him at the street end of the market, conspicuously sleek in a double-breasted gray coat and a very expensive tie. And, of course, no shopping bag. As far as Lana is concerned, there is no doubt now. These guys are either some strangely elegant gang of pickpockets or they’re trailing her. She doesn’t recognize any of them from last night, but of course she wouldn’t. What would be the point of having someone tailing her who she’d seen before? But what do they intend to do? Watch and follow, wait for the right moment to grab her? She feels panic mounting, but so is the buzz and the buzz is winning.

  Lana decides to test how they respond to whatever she does. For the next minute she moves even more quickly, zigzagging around the stalls, pausing to ask stallholders questions as cover. Her trackers drift about and soon she works out that they’re keeping her locked at the center of a loose triangle. So she turns suddenly and walks quickly, directly toward one of them. He moves past casually, but immediately the others adjust to reconfigure the triangle. There can be no doubt. As she veers close to the street side of the market, Lana realizes this might be the kind of moment they’re waiting for, if they do intend to take her. Presumably they have a car waiting nearby. She turns quickly, back to the safety of stalls and people.

  Can she magic herself out of their sight long enough to confuse them and get a head start? The Maubert-Mutualité metro entrance is alongside one of the fruit and vegetable stalls. If she can get down those steps before they react and cross the underpass to the other side of the boulevard, then she might have an opportunity to lose them on the street. But how can she make herself suddenly invisible? A short stallholder with big yellow hair points at watermelons, asking if she wants some, they are superb. Lana lifts one up, and its weight suggests the beginning of an idea big and brash enough to tickle her. Forget invisibility, go the other way: mayhem. She smiles and asks for two watermelons. As the woman selects and bags them, Lana turns in what she hopes seems a casual circle, as if savoring the pleasure of the market and the moment, as a tourist might, while actually measuring with her eye the height of the railings behind her and figuring it won’t be too much of a stretch to vault over them. But her watchers are positioned on both sides of the stall, making her plan to execute sudden chaos a little more complicated and uncertain.

  The way the little stallholder with big hair smiles gives Lana a twinge of guilt about what she’s about to do. By way of some compensation she hands over her remaining twenty to the poor woman. When she turns to her register, Lana pulls at a tower of boxes full of apples, scattering them on the ground in the direction of the guy in the oxfords. Now their eyes meet and he knows his cover is blown. He comes at her. Lana swings her plastic bags and lets loose. The watermelons fly at him like dodgeballs. One catches his shoulder but the other strikes full on his face and the muffled howl tells its own story. The poor little stallholder is now screaming and stretching to grab her. Lana goes for broke and sweeps everything—broccoli, carrots, potatoes, onions—onto the ground on either side. Then she clambers rather than vaults over the railings down to the metro steps, leaving the other two suits stumbling through fruit and vegetables, kicking aside boxes, leaping over their squealing-like-a-pig friend to get near the entrance.

  At the bottom of the steps Lana shoots right to take her under the boulevard. Up ahead there’s a left and right turn. Choose! Fast! Back up
to street level or down to the metro platform? The open air and crowded boulevard seem safer, freer. She spins left and up. Back on St.-Germain she barges through a lot of people going the other way, but looking back they’re not enough to shield her from the first of the three men appearing up the steps. Passing Le Twickenham café bar, Lana feels truly sorry for the old waiter who is outside, fastidiously laying lunch tables, placing wineglasses, knives and forks and napkins, but there’s no time to apologize for upending everything as she passes, creating another obstacle for her pursuers. Too scared to check how close they are, she veers right, down a lane, trying to think ahead, trying to remember, to get some kind of picture of what streets led where in this area. She’s pretty certain that somewhere between here and Nathan’s apartment is the complex of cramped little pedestrian streets that is oldest Paris. In a straight runoff there is no hope of staying ahead of these guys for long, but that tourist-crammed zone might give her a shot at losing them. But this lane is eerily deserted apart from a Franprix store. The men still have not appeared round the corner behind her. She ducks inside and instantly regrets it. If the men stop and come in she’ll be trapped. The little supermarket has no other exit. It helps that shelves go to the ceiling and the aisles between them are narrow, making it easier to keep out of sight. She scurries to the far end to catch her breath. Peering along the gap between walls of cans and bottles, she feels confident that there’s no way they would have seen her even if they’d glanced in as they passed. The downside is that she can’t see the entrance and can’t be sure that they have passed. The space between shelves is so ludicrously narrow it’s almost impossible for customers to move about without brushing one another. When the store is crowded it must be like some kind of human pinball game. Already the urge to escape this confinement is gnawing at her and she has to work hard to restrain her impatience. Edging forward until the entrance/exit becomes visible, it’s some relief to see that there’s no one waiting, the aisle seems entirely empty. Five minutes more should be long enough. Too long for her liking, but still she counts it out, every irksome second.

  Once she’s decided it’s safe to leave, Murphy’s Law, which she suspects is fast becoming Lana’s Law, kicks in. As she arrives at the checkout, the guy in the double-breasted overcoat, looking out of breath, passes the entrance, stops suddenly, and steps in. Lana finds herself only a couple of arm’s lengths from him. His moment of surprise is replaced by a slow grin, like an actor genuinely astonished to hear his name come after “and the Oscar goes to . . .” Lana backs away, but he doesn’t follow; he’s way too smart for that. He positions himself between the entrance and the checkout and slowly, deliberately, his smile now wide and mean, takes out his cell. He knows there’s no other exit and is happy to play solo until the rest of the band arrives. Lana has to do something fast. And, as it often does, for better or worse, the buzz takes off and tells her what to do. Which breaks more easily, more dangerously, a wine bottle or an olive oil bottle? The olive oil shelf presents itself first. When she grips a bottle by the neck, tight in her hand, the buzz soars and breaks the scale. She’s going to enjoy this—hell, she’s enjoying it already. Mr. Double-Breasted will so not expect this. Holding the bottle by her side, like a firearm, Lana Turner sashays to the checkout and smiles at Double-Breasted as she pays. Such a pity that the gorgeous gray wool is about to be destroyed. The checkout girl starts to bag it, but Lana stops her with a “Pas de sac, merci.” She tries to measure the distance between her and her pursuer. Only a few feet. She holds a mental picture of his position as she turns her back on him. Take one big step nearer as you swing, is Lana’s last instruction to herself. The moment has arrived and it feels scarily good.

  Gripping the neck of the bottle, she taps the end against the metal checkout counter, and as it smashes she swings round and—with a step forward—rams the jagged bottle at the guy’s face. The sound of shock all around her is gratifying, but the squeals of others are nothing compared to his animal howl. Blood and olive oil intermingle and smear down his face. Lana drops her weapon and runs without thinking about direction. Suddenly she’s back on St.-Germain. Horns blare and voices rasp as she weaves and skips across the wide, busy road. One bellowing, gesticulating driver is silenced when she kicks his door and lunges in the open window to grab his neck, screaming faux-French gibberish in his face. Somehow she reaches the other side safely and keeps moving at the same pace until she stops dead and bends almost double, no breath left in her body. Looking up, there are two of everything moving along the great boulevard. She rubs her eyes. Only now does the full impact of what she’s just done hit home. If her brain had been in equilibrium, would she have imagined herself capable of performing such a violent act? But undeniably it had been exhilarating, disturbingly so. She walks on at something more like a normal trot to the St.-Michel intersection and back to rue Danton, glancing carefully in every direction all along the way. Outside the apartment building she has a complete blank about the code, but by closing her eyes and summoning up Nathan’s lips forming the numbers over and over, she remembers. And now comes a weird feeling of regret, disappointment, failure, that there would be no brunch, no glorious salad, or cheese or saucisson. She is limping home, empty-handed, with nothing more than loose change. Poor Nathan, does he really deserve all this hassle? Should she tell him everything immediately? Even about the olive oil bottle?

  Thinking about it later, Lana will realize that when Nathan opened the door, she was so busy apologizing for the absence of treats from the market that she hadn’t actually looked at him properly and so had no idea if his face betrayed any guilt or even nervousness. Had he performed brilliantly, like a poker pro? Perhaps, if she had been paying attention, there might have been something in those entrancing green eyes that would have warned her and allowed the tiniest opportunity to run. Not that she would have had any energy left to do it.

  But instead, gabbling and still unsure how much to tell, she walks past Nathan and has almost reached the kitchen when she hears a repeated clicking sound. Lana freezes. No, no, it couldn’t be what it sounds like. A moment later, Fichet—or Vallette, if Guillaume is to be believed—steps into view. Click, click. In a politely understated way his jacket hangs open just enough to reveal a gun in his waistband. Oddly enough it makes him look much less like a cop. Fichet—Vallette—stops picking his fingernails and gestures toward the living room.

  “Step in, Madame Gibson.”

  Lana swivels. Nathan seems fascinated by his shoes. He doesn’t intend to suffer an accusing gaze. She thinks, well, I need a rest anyhow. As she walks by Vallette, his now-familiar, discreetly expensive fragrance seems to mock her.

  The first thing Lana sees when she opens the living room door is a leonine flourish of silver hair sprouting from the back of the couch. Vallette nudges her forward and a great spreading frame comes into view. Jean-Luc Fournier, squatting in the center, smiles at her and takes a deliberately languid drag from a long, slim cigar. He is fully dressed. Small mercies.

  1 PM

  Madame Gibson . . . Jean-Luc Fournier.”

  Politely, he hauls himself up. Lana does not move toward the offered hand. Somehow through churning rage, bewilderment, and distress she manages to summon up a tone that resembles disdainful sarcasm.

  “Oh . . . yeah . . . my apologies. As the old joke goes, I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”

  Fournier behaves as if she has not spoken. He sinks down again, this time favoring one end of the couch, and gestures for Lana to join him. She ignores the invitation and takes her own sweet time before choosing a bentwood chair by the wall, forcing him to twist his neck around to look at her. Vallette leans against the wall near the door, while Nathan moves as far from Lana’s direct eye line as he can manage. She doesn’t bother to attempt any engagement with him just now. She feels too nauseated. Fournier’s mouth is moving, the eyes and smile all for her. Lana makes an effort to tune in.

  “I’m sure we will have much to talk abou
t. I certainly hope we may. I love to engage with intelligent, beautiful women and you are clearly both. And, I suspect, much more. You are a vessel of rich possibilities, I think. It could be a very stimulating exchange. But . . .”

  The pause doesn’t suggest hesitation. It is entirely measured. He takes another long drag from the cigar, blows the smoke slowly, and waves a hand in what he intends to be an explanatory manner. When he speaks again, he’s no longer looking at her. It’s as if he’s thinking aloud. Only now does Lana notice how clear his English is and how rapidly he speaks, as if to showcase his linguistic brilliance.

  “I have one question of very great importance and I will ask it now, to take the issue off the table, as it were. There are those who in negotiation tend to favor moving slowly in decreasing circles toward problematic areas. I believe that is why so many bad decisions are made. By the time the most controversial matter is considered everyone is exhausted. It is always better to get to the heart of a matter without delay. So, I ask: who are you working for?”

  The question is so out of left field that Lana’s shock is genuine.

  “I don’t even know what you mean by that.”

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “It’s a dumb question. You might as well ask me my favorite color.”

  “I can only repeat: who are you working for?”

  Lana shrugs.

  “You say you like to ‘engage,’ as you put it, with intelligent women. Is this what you mean by engage: just keep asking the same meaningless question?”

  “Jean-Luc, if I may—”