None of that stopped Hector from pushing the line, though.
Flirting a bit, Hector closed a hand over Molly’s and said, “Where would we have eaten, Molly?”
She smiled, her head on side, and stroked the back of Hector’s hand. “A new little brasserie I found just off the Rue Mouffetard. Thought we’d sit by the fire and watch the workers shiver in the streetcars.”
“That would have been…nice.”
Hector took his hand away and she frowned a little. He got out a cigarette. He offered one to Molly, who shook her head. He remembered then that she rarely smoked. He struck a match with his thumbnail. He waved the match out and tossed it in the ashtray on the table between them. She said, “I’ve been reading some of your stories.”
Hector bit his lip, frowning. He blew smoke through his nose. “Yeah? How?” Hector took no small measure of solace from the fact that his “crime stories” — the proof of his “whoring” to other would-be and unpublished writers in the Quartier Latin — were unavailable in Europe. “Where in hell did you see any of my stuff?”
“Sylvia’s. She’s been quietly subscribing to Black Mask, to some other pulps from back home. She shared some of them with me. They really are quite wonderful stories, Hector. With a little tweaking they’d be—”
Hector shot her a look. “What? More literary? No thanks, honey. And I reckon I’ll have to have myself a little chat with Miss Beach.”
Molly took his hand again. “Don’t be cross, and please don’t be angry with her, Hector. Please. Sylvia is quite proud of you. She only shows them to a few close friends. I loved the stories. I love the way you write. I was grateful to get a chance to see them. I mean, since you won’t ever show me or anyone other than Hem anything that you’re working on.”
Hector stared off across the room…out at the street where the snow seemed to have abruptly shifted to a cold hard rain. Across the street, a boucher stood under the canopy of his shop in his bloodied apron, staring up at the gray sky with his still bloodied arms hanging loosely at his sides.
People passed by the front window of the bal musette with hunched shoulders, their heads tucked down. Some clutched sodden copies of newspapers spread open over their heads.
Molly said, “Be nice to be someplace warm and sunny, wouldn’t it?”
Hector smiled back at Molly and took her hand again. She squeezed his hand harder. “Sure, I guess,” he said. “But I like the rain, too.” He checked his pocket watch: a bit before five.
Molly said, “You’re meeting someone?”
“Hem and Hadley. But not for an hour or so.”
“We could go somewhere quieter until then, couldn’t we? Some place where you can hear yourself think?”
“Sure, let’s do that.”
NOBODADDY
The little magazine editor was crawling across the floor of his flat, trailing blood as he dragged himself on elbows and blood-slicked knees on the parquet floor.
He was whimpering and pleading for his life.
Nobodday was on the verge of being sick. This wasn’t what he was, not really.
The masked killer raised a statuette — a bronze copy of Michelangelo’s Duke of Nemours — and brought it crashing down on the man’s skull.
“For my one true love,” the little magazine editor’s killer whispered over and over.
It was all and always for her. Well, it started that way. She was still the driving force. But Nobodaddy was also looking after other interests, too. The masked killer collapsed back against the wall, staring at bloody hands. The hands of a self-styled poet.
Poetry was a recent preoccupation — an attempt to pierce the veil of Parisian literary society. They’d mocked him for his efforts in fiction writing…penniless, unpublished “literary writers” who tore into him when they learned he had a reasonably lucrative writing career underway writing short stories for the fantastic pulps back home.
At some point it occurred to Nobodaddy to expand his quest to further her work by taking the dark, pitiless vision of his own fictional pulp-lit creations and fashioning them into a cosmology for the dark, empty times — a siren’s song of the void that would speak to this so-called “lost generation” of war vets and women made wanton and wild by the horror of the last decade’s war.
If he couldn’t win them to his side as readers or artistic allies, he would force his vision upon the world as a kind of dark messiah.
The body on the floor twitched once…twice. Some spark of life not yet ground out of it.
Sighing, Nobodday hefted the statue and set to work again.
4
The bar to which Molly led Hector was relatively quiet for perhaps the first twenty minutes that they were there. She had found them a booth close by a stone fireplace.
Rather than sitting across from him, shivering, Molly had squeezed into the booth alongside Hector. She sat pressed close against him. Her leg was warm against his and he could smell her perfume. She smelled like lilacs.
“I’d take that cigarette now, Hector,” she said, raising her voice over the din from the growing crowd of drinkers. Surprised, Hector lit her cigarette and was shaking out the match when there was more commotion…some loud crowd coming their way.
A group of giggling young men shouldered their way through the drinkers, clearing the way for the woman with them.
Hector watched the woman: tall…proud shoulders and ivory skin. Her blue-black hair was cut in a severe and short bob and worn in bangs…looking a little like a gleaming black helmet. She was wearing a gray skirt, black sweater, and carrying a long coat. Her dark eyes briefly considered Hector, then looked around the room a bit more.
Molly, sounding a bit perturbed, said, “You don’t know her, do you? I’m frankly surprised.”
“No, I don’t,” Hector said. “And why surprised?”
“She’s rather famous around the Quarter and elsewhere. Or infamous, rather. Her name is Brinke Devlin. She’s a kind of professional muse.”
“What’s that mean?”
Molly’s violet eyes were hard. “She moves from painter to writer to poet. Brinke takes them on as lovers and delights in claiming she pushes them to greater works. Then she moves on to her next find. She’s really just an expensive whore. But a very attractive one…no denying that. That coat — it’s a Poiret. Very pricey.”
“Whore” got Hector’s attention — Molly never used that kind of language. Thinking about that, and feeling her leg still tight against his own, Hector thought perhaps he should take Hadley’s assessment of Molly’s interest in him a bit more seriously.
“This ‘muse,’ she’s French?”
Molly shook her head. “No, Brinke’s like us…another American.”
Brinke Devlin and her “escorts” — most, if not all of them, homosexuals, Hector figured — were looking for a place to sit. He checked his pocket watch again and said, “By now we’re probably leaving your boyfriend, or Hem and Hadley, waiting. We should go.” He sensed Molly bridling at his choice of words to describe Philippe.
Molly slid out of the booth and Hector helped her on with her coat. He shrugged on his leather jacket and picked up his hat, aware now that Brinke Devlin was watching him again.
He smiled at her and waved a hand at their vacated booth. “All yours,” he said to the “professional muse.”
***
Walking back through the mix of snow and rain, Molly clinging to his arm, Hector paused to watch a young girl singing on the street corner for coins. She couldn’t be more than ten, Hector figured. The little girl was unusually petite and her hair seemed quite thin…as if she might be sick in some way. She was singing “La petite tonkinoise,” singing it a bit off-key:
Je suis vive, je suis charmante,
Comme un petit oiseau qui chante….
There were just a few coins in the hat she’d put down at her feet. Hector said, “How much do you make on a good night, darlin’?”
The girl, her eyes tightly closed, contin
ued singing.
A merchant standing in the recessed door of his shop for a smoke said, “She’s quite deaf.”
Hector nodded. He pulled out a five-franc note and crouched and lightly shook the girl’s shoulder. Her eyes flew open, searching Hector’s face. Smiling, he handed her the bill and then picked up her hat full of coins and handed her that, too. Still crouched down so she could see his face, perhaps read his lips, he said carefully, “Go along home now, little sparrow. Go along home and get warm.”
Molly squeezed Hector’s arm and said, “She’ll just be back here again tomorrow night. I’ve seen her before.”
“And I might be by this way again tomorrow night, too,” Hector said. “You know, to send her on her way again.”
“You’re a soft touch,” Molly said, walking on tiptoes to kiss Hector’s cheek.
The bal musette they had vacated earlier still wasn’t filled to capacity. Hector looked around and saw their former table was still available. He led Molly there and helped her off with her coat.
Hector smiled and waved as he saw Hem and Hadley threading their way through the tangle of dancers and diners and prostitutes. He threw his coat over Molly’s and pulled an extra chair over to their table.
He hugged Hadley and she gave Hector a kiss on the cheek and then shook Molly’s hand.
Hem gave Molly a bear hug and slapped Hector’s back. He said, “Bumby’s with Marie, our femme de ménage, so we have the night, if needed.”
“Swell,” Hector said. “What’ll it be?”
“Burgundy,” Hadley said, smiling. She brushed snow from her short thick, raggedly cut red hair. She was pale-skinned and her cheeks were red from being outside. Hadley’s blue eyes were also watery with the cold. She wore a worn coat that buttoned tightly across her chest — she was still carrying a good deal of extra weight from the baby. Shivering, Hadley kept her coat on. She was eight years older than Hem, who was just a little older than Hector, and she treated Hector like Hem’s flirtatious kid brother.
“Same for me, for now,” Hem said.
Hector went to fetch their wine.
A hand on his shoulder. Hector turned to face a good-looking blond man with violet eyes. It was Philippe, Molly’s boyfriend the French painter. Philippe smiled and said, “You’re not dancing with Molly, Hector? I wouldn’t have minded. I, you know…I trust you with her.”
Hector smiled and said, “That’s your job, Phil — dancing with her. I’m not much of a dancer. And Molly? Well, it’d be like kissing your sister.”
Philippe frowned, and Hector said, “Sorry, it’s an Americanism. What I mean is, I think of your lady as a kind of kid sister. Back home, we don’t often dance with our own sisters.”
Philippe nodded uncertainly, said, “Where are they?”
“Back and to the left,” Hector said. “Get you something to drink?”
“No, I just came from the Rotonde. I’ll wait a while.” The young painter drifted toward the back to find their table.
Hector returned to the table with Hadley’s and Hem’s wine and then realized his own glass was empty. Hector went back to the bar. There was some commotion. Hector was suddenly flanked by two young men with unnaturally yellow hair and matching camel’s-hair overcoats. They looked familiar. Hector checked the room reflected in the mirror behind the bar and saw several more young men…surrounding Brinke Devlin.
An older, overweight man with a monocle, sitting at a table near the bar, raised his glass. He said, “Brinke! Why are you here? All the other chic children are at Boeuf sur le Toit.”
“Good a reason as any not to be there,” Brinke called back.
Hector thought Brinke and her gang should all actually be at a bal musette off the Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève — that joint catered to homosexuals.
Brinke moved to the bar and one of the men next to Hector stepped aside to make room for her.
“I know you,” Brinke said to Hector, smiling. She frowned then, thinking. “How exactly do I know you?”
“We met next door. I witnessed your entrance with your entourage there. Quite an entrance. You took our booth.”
“Oh yes. You were with the blonde. Your wife? Your lover?”
“My friend.”
She smiled. “Oh.”
Hector smiled and held out a hand. “Hector Lassiter. And I know your name, Miss Devlin.”
“That could be good or bad,” Brinke said, shaking Hector’s hand. “Your name is known to me, too, Hector.” He couldn’t figure out how that might be.
He smiled and said, “So as the Count, or whatever he is over there asked, why aren’t you at Boeuf sur le Toit? It is a Mecca for the smart set, isn’t it? A monument poétique?” The Boeuf, located on the Rue Boissy d’Anglas, was a kind of voguish hive for would-be writers.
“Hell, I’m no poet,” Brinke said. “And you’re not there, either. You’re probably not there for the same reason that I’m not there — it’s on all the tourist maps, now. All the out-of-towners flock to the Boeuf and to the Rotonde to see what passes for bohemians in those places. Three years ago, there were six thousand Americans living in Paris. Now they say there are thirty-thousand of us. It’s amateur night in Paris, nearly everywhere, all the time. Gertrude — you know, Stein — calls it the curse of a great exchange rate.”
Brinke picked up Hector’s fresh drink as it was set before him and sampled it. The light over the bar gleamed in her blue-black hair. She looked at his glass, then sipped some more. “It’ll do,” she said. “Better order another for yourself, Hector.”
Hector held up a finger and pointed at his stolen drink. The bartender winked and nodded.
“So why are you here?” Hector took his new drink and sipped a little. He said, “This place isn’t on anyone’s map.”
Brinke smiled and sipped some more of Hector’s liberated drink. “Last time I was at the Boeuf, I spilled some claret on Maurice Ravel. His companion gave me a terrible tongue-lashing for it.”
“Probably marking territory,” Hector said, watching one of Brinke’s “escorts.” He smiled at Brinke and said, “I mean, Proust is freshly dead…Maurice is available again.”
“You’ve heard those stories, too,” Brinke said. “Well, anyway, I’m still living it down. And this place? This place seems to me to be…very real.”
“Working-class, you mean?”
“Authentic, I mean,” she said. “And the people are interesting. Take you, for instance. You write crime stories published back home. They’re quite good.”
Hector was taken aback. “How do you know that? How have you read them?”
“Sylvia Beach showed me a few of your stories a couple of days ago.”
Hector sipped his whisky, seething. “Why the hell would she do that?”
“Because I write similar stuff. Well, not so similar, maybe. Mine are more mysteries, I’d guess you’d call them.”
“You write mystery stories?”
“I write mystery novels. I write them under a nom de guerre. ‘Connor Templeton.’”
Incredulous, Hector said, “You’re Connor Templeton?” He had read a few of Templeton’s books. Not really Hector’s cup of tea, and very much mysteries. But they were sly and sardonic and easy, fun reads. Smart…often sexy.
“That’s right,” she said, sipping more of the drink she’d taken from Hector. “But please keep it quiet. Only you and Sylvia know what I really do. I have a reputation as a dipsomaniacal dilettante to live down to.”
“Sylvia’s better at keeping secrets than I give her credit for,” Hector said. Then he added, “Unless they’re my secrets, I guess.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Hector. You have no reason to hide your work from all them.” Brinke gestured vaguely behind her. “What you write is gritty and real and gripping. I write comedies of manners with bloodless murder stirred in.”
“You could adopt another pen name…write different sorts of things under that name.”
“It’s not tha
t simple. It’s not quite the way I work…or draw inspiration.”
“Someone told me you’re a professional muse.”
“I hear that a lot, too,” she said, smiling. “I don’t discourage it. Saves a girl paying for her own drinks and dinners. Mystery writing doesn’t pay what you might think.”
“Nobody seems to know you have any inclination for writing anything yourself.”
“Better that way. And with my looks, they’d never take me seriously, anyway.” Brinke shrugged. “And if they knew I wrote mystery books for sweet little old ladies back home? I’d never get a free drink again.”
Hector looked her over again and smiled. “That’s just self-delusional.”
“I don’t carry off self-deprecation convincingly, huh?”
“It’s a longer reach for some than for others,” Hector said. “I still can’t match you to this place.”
“Jean-Paul over there likes it.”
“In a looking-down-his-nose way, you mean?”
“Sneering, sure. He thinks it’s ‘rustic.’ He says the working men who come here are like those ‘fellows with dirty fingernails’ in D. H. Lawrence books. The ones the haughty ladies have lusty affairs with. Now, me on the other hand?” Brinke waved a hand in the vicinity of her long neck: “I’m up to here with bloody accordion music.” She looked in the mirror. “Looks like your friend is spoken for.” With her other hand, Brinke gestured with her drink at the dance floor. Philippe, the blond painter, was spinning Molly, who was giggling.
“That’s her boyfriend,” Hector said. “He paints.”
“So, she is just your friend,” Brinke said. “But she doesn’t look at you that way. I could see it in her eyes at that place next door. You’re missing an opportunity there.”
Hector said, “You want to go somewhere with no accordion music?” He hesitated, then said, “And without your prissy, praetorian guard?”
“That could be…nice.”
“Give me a minute.” Hector drained his drink and weaved his way back through the dancers to the table where Hem now sat alone. Hadley was dancing with one of Brinke’s escorts. Hem seemed amused by that for the moment, but Hector figured that sentiment could turn on a dime. It was good he was leaving, he thought…it would save Hector the risk of being Hem’s coat holder in case Hem decided to thrash Hadley’s dance partner.
One True Sentence: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 1) Page 3
