A Bouquet of Rue

by Wendy Hornsby

  The CCTV monitor was split into four screens, each screen streaming a few seconds of live footage from a different closed-circuit camera somewhere in France before cutting to another.

  I took a seat next to one of the engineers, with Guido hovering over my shoulder. “Tell me about your access to CCTV.”

  He shrugged, puzzled, I thought by the question. “We can pull up most municipal systems.” He punched some buttons and the current scene on the street outside the studio appeared on a large central monitor. “The French haven’t embraced CCTV the massive way the Brits have, but most cities have general coverage. Paris does, for sure.”

  “Does Vaucresson?” I asked.

  “Bien sûr. A lot of bigwigs live there, so of course.”

  “Can you show me the Vaucresson train station Friday night from about nine o’clock on?”

  “I can try.” The central monitor screen flashed with a new image—the familiar station platform—and then split as he pulled up footage from one camera after another until each of the six cameras around the train station was displayed. More flashes as the images shifted from current live stream to the archived Friday footage. “Here you go.”

  “Checking up on Jean-Paul?” Guido asked, slipping into my chair as I rose from it.

  “No.” I went around to the front of the console for a closer look. “This morning I told you about the girl from the village who went missing Friday night. Her friend, the kid who showed up on our terrace, said he walked her as far as the station parking lot. She hasn’t been seen since.”

  “How interested are you?” he asked

  “I don’t know yet.” I watched people, trains, and cars come and go, hoping to spot a girl dressed all in black. “Can we single out the parking lot?”

  “Hold on.” The engineer, whose named we learned was Zed, sent two of the frames to an adjoining monitor. The first camera was trained on the walkway between the parking lot and the platform, the other looked toward the lot’s street exit. He said, “Those cameras shoot six or eight frames per second. Decent enough resolution, but the angle isn’t great for face recognition.”

  “Can you fast forward?” I asked. He did as Diane came to stand beside me. At time stamp 21:21:52—fifty-two seconds past 9:21 p.m.—I saw what I thought was three people walk into the parking lot off the street: a tall boy, a slender girl, and someone who was shorter and curvier than the others and who seemed to lean heavily on the boy. “Go back to 21:21:49, please, and run in slo-mo from there if you can.”

  “Is that the missing girl?” Diane asked.

  “Maybe.” I turned to Zed. “Can you freeze screen two at 21:21:18 and zoom in?” The image of the trio was clear enough to identify Ahmad Nabi. The curvy shadow leaning against Nabi wasn’t a person, but a red, hard-shell cello case that he carried. The slender girl walking beside him looked like a typical teenage Goth. Black hair, baggy black jersey, black mini skirt, torn black tights, six-hole Doc Martens boots. Was she Ophelia Fouchet? All I had to compare this image with was the photo her parents posted on the missing children flyer, and the fact that she played the cello. If indeed the girl with Nabi was Ophelia, she had put a lot of effort into not looking like the sweet-faced blonde in that photo. “Can you print the frame?”

  “Not from here,” Zed said. “But I can send it to your company mailbox.”

  “I don’t have a company mailbox,” I said. “Can you send it to my cloud account?”

  Zed said, “Not if it’s out of our system, unless Diane—”

  Diane turned to her assistant, “Bruno, you did set up mailboxes for Maggie and Guido, right?”

  “Of course, yes.”

  “And did you tell Maggie and Guido that they have mailboxes, and give them access information?”

  “Oh.” All color was gone from his narrow face as he looked from me to Guido. “Merde. I sent the info to their mailboxes.”

  “Yes, Zed,” Diane said with a heavy sigh. “You may send the image to Maggie’s cloud account until Bruno gets off his skinny ass and gets her set up in-house.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Can we continue?”

  There wasn’t very much more footage to see. On the screen, Nabi and his companion said good-bye, exchanged bises, and he handed her the cello case. He walked back the way he came and out of frame. She continued toward the platform for a few yards, lugging the case that was nearly as tall as she. Before she reached the opening to the platform, she turned and watched Nabi until there was no more of him to see. When he was gone, she walked back into the parking lot and out of camera range stage left, as it were.

  Zed put the other four cameras back up on the monitor, each of them covering a different zone of the train platform. The Goth girl wasn’t captured on any of them. Indeed, by ten o’clock, the station was all but deserted. Unless the girl had instantly disguised herself as a middle-aged man carrying an umbrella or one of a pair of young men who snogged a bit on the platform as they waited, she did not catch the ten-fifteen train to Paris on Friday night. Nor was she there to catch the ten-twenty-two toward Le Celle Saint-Cloud. So, where did she go after Nabi left her?

  “See what you needed?” Guido asked.

  “I saw what there is,” I said. “It supports what the boy said but only adds questions about the girl.”

  Zed said, “Let me guess, you want the parking lot footage sent to you, too.”

  “Yes, please. And a few minutes of the platform. Enough to show the girl wasn’t there.”

  A young man with spiky hair leaned in from the hall. “Diane?”

  “Yes, Moby?” Diane said, turning toward the door.

  “I’m told Madame MacGowen is with you,” he said.

  I said, “I’m here.”

  “You’re needed in makeup.”

  “Makeup?” I said. “Why?”

  “The interview,” Diane said, checking the clock on the far wall. “Jimmy starts taping at quinze-heures.”

  That is, three o’clock. It was already past two. But I was still puzzled. “Who is Jimmy? And what interview?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “You got the memo, yes?”

  “Memo? No.”

  She spun around and nailed her assistant with a glare. “Bruno?”

  “Merde,” he said again, face paling as he looked at me. “I sent it to your office mailbox.”

  “Madame MacGowen?” Moby, still leaning around the doorframe, repeated, more impatiently the second time.

  Diane sighed. “Sorry this was sprung on you, Maggie. But please go with Moby and get your face powdered, or whatever. You’re scheduled to tape a segment on Ce Soir with Jimmy Jardine, one of our more popular talk show hosts. The network wants your audience to know you’re here. My only advice is, don’t let him bait you.”

  “Come, Guido,” I said, rising from my chair. “Time to sparkle.”

  Diane wagged a finger. “Maggie alone this time; the language issue, yes? Guido, Zed will finish your tour of production facilities. And Bruno will get you set up on your office mailbox. Right, Bruno?”

  Guido did not like being on camera, so he seemed relieved. I patted him on the back as I passed by on my way out and said, “Wait for me.”

  With a promise that he would, I went with Moby down a few floors where the broadcast studios and their appendages were.

  “Annette,” Moby announced, showing me into a makeup room that was like a small, fully equipped beauty salon. “Madame MacGowen is here.”

  “Almost finished with Jimmy. Have a seat,” Annette said, flicking her chin toward the second of the two chairs in the room. Her hands were busy artfully tousling the hair of the man in the other chair. He was fortyish, tan, fit, and clearly happy with his image in the big mirror on the wall in front of us. The stylist paused what she was doing to give my face a long, hard study. “Who usually does your makeup?”

  “I do.”

  Her answer was a grunt that connoted to me that, from the look of me, she wasn’t surprised. Except when I’m in front of a
camera, I rarely bother to put on anything more than some blusher and mascara, if that. I think that walking around with a bare face is my reaction against the heavy camera-ready makeup I am required to wear onscreen. A bare face can also be a disguise; fewer people recognize me.

  “Madame MacGowen is it? You must be the American invader,” Jimmy said, eyes shifting to take in my reflection in the mirror. “It’s Maggie, right?

  “Right. Let me guess,” I said; remembering Diane’s warning not to let Jimmy bait me, I swallowed the invader remark without commenting on it. “You’re Jimmy Jardine, host of Ce Soir.”

  “Guilty as charged,” he said, preening.

  “So, what should I know before we go on the air?”

  “Just relax and be yourself.”

  Moby leaned in from the hallway only long enough to say, “First call, Jimmy. Chop, chop.” And then he disappeared again. The man never seemed to come all the way into a room.

  Annette brushed some shadow under Jimmy’s chin, unsnapped his protective cape and snatched it aside with a flourish. “Fini, Jimmy.”

  “Thanks, poupée.” He pushed himself up from the chair. Under the cape he wore blue jeans and an untucked pink dress shirt. He flipped up his collar and gave himself a last careful study in the mirror. After a resigned shrug and a moue, he took a denim jacket off a hook and draped it over his arm. His parting words were, “Annette, don’t pretty her up too much. I don’t need the competition.”

  It was my turn for Annette’s brushes and paint pots. She was good at her job, and fast. Face, hair, a last dusting of powder, and she unsnapped my cape and took it away. I had no idea where I was to go next. As I got out of the chair, I asked her, “Where is the green room?”

  “Moby will come for you.” She brushed something on my lips and warned me not to lick them or drink anything. Then she stood back and took a long view of me. I had not dressed to be on TV: everyday skirt, knee-high boots, gray silk blouse, red cardigan. She tugged my skirt down, undid the top button of the blouse and pulled it open, flattening the collar to expose my sternum. Then she grasped the bottom corners of my cardigan, gave them a twist and tied them into an interesting knot at my waist, something that would never have occurred to me to do. With a little more fuss and tuck, she said, “Red’s your color; you look fine. Just remember that Jimmy is a bastard, and women scare the shit out of him. And don’t cross your legs on camera.”

  “Good to know.”

  As promised, Moby came to fetch me. There were three men already waiting in the green room when I entered: a writer, an art historian, and a professor of political theory, I learned as we introduced ourselves. We made small talk and watched the pre-show activity on the Ce Soir set via a flat-screen monitor attached to the wall.

  The set was typical talk-show design—host’s desk and a row of chairs for guests—except that the small audience sat behind the host where they would be seen on camera during the broadcast, and not out front. A jazz combo, stage right, warmed up the audience. While that was going on, a soundman came in and wired the four of us with remote microphones; my power pack was slipped down between my shoulder blades.

  Moby appeared at the door and summoned everyone except me to follow him. Was I, the American invader, to be ignored? Or was I being overly sensitive?

  “Courage,” the political theorist said to me as he trooped out behind the others.

  “Do I need courage?” I asked.

  “If Jimmy is playing polemicist today, yes. We all will.”

  On the wall-mounted monitor, I watched the new activity on the set from the green room. There were last checks for light and sound, then a moment of stillness before the director, standing behind a podium between the primary cameras, gave a signal. The music rose, the audience applauded, Jimmy walked on set, flirted with the camera, took his seat behind the desk, and the show began. A short monologue, and then the writer, the art historian, and the professor of political theory came on, waving to the audience. They shook hands all around as Jimmy introduced them, sorted themselves into seats, and the discussion began.

  Jimmy set the tone, challenging the writer to defend the topic of his new book, something about the relationship between patterns of human migration and global climate change. The political theorist thrust himself into the conversation. He said, “Isn’t the current anti-immigration push nothing but cover for long-rooted racism? All across the eurozone, along with open Islamophobia, we’ve seen a surge in anti-Semitism unmatched since Hitler. In Paris, where the great majority of French Jews live, you would be hard pressed to find a Jewish child in a public school because of harassment and bullying. It seems that with every passing year our collective memory of the Holocaust fades, and that is both tragic and dangerous. How do you equate that with global climate change?”

  The art historian sent the discussion caroming from there to white nationalism represented in the arts. Once the conversation reached a certain momentum, Jimmy backed off and let his guests fight things out among themselves without his input except for the occasional provocative prod. The give-and-take was noisy, sometimes angry, sometimes truly cogent, other times downright silly, no more than argument for the sake of argument. It was much more free-form than American talk shows, with the host more participant when he chose to be than referee. I watched it all with a growing sense of dread.

  As a distraction, I texted Jean-Paul and told him I was waiting for my curtain call. He said he would ask Ari to go into the house and set the television to record Ce Soir so we could watch it later. He was supportive and funny, as expected, and that’s why I reached out to him. I asked if he had learned anything more about Nabi’s situation. He answered that the police verified his alibi with the sausage maker and released him. Ari took him home to clean up, then dropped him at school before lunch. There were still questions about Friday night, but Jean-Paul thought Nabi didn’t have much to worry about. I was feeling calmer by the time he signed off.

  Finally, Moby came for me. Annette was waiting in the passageway to touch up my face and straighten my clothes. All the time she was tucking and fussing and daubing with her brushes, Moby was giving me instructions about what to do when I got the cue. On the set there was a brief musical interlude as a break from the earlier discussion to the next segment. While I waited, Jimmy read an introduction: American filmmaker Maggie MacGowen, some blah, blah, blah about me and my history. Then, to my surprise, instead of summoning me he ran the five-minute trailer for the Normandy film that Guido and I had given to Diane Duval as part of the original pitch we made to beguile her enough that she would hire us. At the end, a new banner rolled announcing our upcoming series—I had never seen it before—the monitors faded to black, lights came up and the studio cameras were back on Jimmy and company. Moby gave my shoulder a forward nudge. I strolled onto the set as the audience applauded and Jimmy and the debate bunch rose. I waved to the audience and shook hands with the quartet on set. Jimmy took my extended hand and leaned in for the exchange of les bises as if we were old friends.

  Jimmy’s first question as I took the chair closest to his desk was, “How many German soldiers did your grandmother murder?”

  “Face to face? Only one that I am aware of,” I said. “Slit his throat and shot him through the heart. But what she and the women of her village did on the night she mentioned in that film clip was an act of war, not murder. They did what they had to do to survive,” I said. “What fascinates me, though, is that out of a five-minute discussion about fundamental existential issues relating to traditional family farming in France, what caught your attention was a twelve-second nugget where my grandmother mentions that she and the women of her village dispatched a company of German Occupation soldiers in order to save not only their lives but their livelihood. The point of her story is, she despairs that her grandchildren don’t share her commitment to the family land and its produce. The question is, will the family farm survive past this generation?”

  Jimmy leaned closer to me and
rested his chin on the heel of his hand. With a smarmy grin he may have thought was charming, he asked, “When provoked, are you as fierce as your grandmother?”

  I remembered to smile: “You don’t want to find that out, I promise you.”

  The political theorist dove in: “You say those murders were morally justified in order to save a patch of dirt? Morally, murder is murder, Maggie, even during war. How can you suggest otherwise?”

  “Sure, sure, Étienne,” the writer interjected. “But leave that for now.” Turning to me, he said, “In that clip you seem to elevate the cultural importance of the small farmer—what is it your people produce, cheese and brandy?—to some iconic status, as if the artisanal producers are the veritable foundations of what defines France. I want to ask, Maggie, how you, an American, have the nerve, the arrogance, to think you can interpret life, commerce, and culture in France for a French audience. Don’t you think, that as an outsider, that is impossible to accomplish?”

  “Not at all,” I said. I had expected some form of that question to come up.

  The art historian wanted to jump into the fray but only got as far as, “Beware barbarians at the gate—” before Jimmy, upright again, shut him down by saying, “Why not, Maggie?”

  “I believe it was Anaïs Nin who said, ‘What we are familiar with we cease to see.’ Sometimes we need an outsider to hold up a mirror so we can realize what we have become blind to. Certainly, the keenest contemporary observations about life in early America were made by Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman.”