A Bouquet of Rue

by Wendy Hornsby

  We went back to the topic of music, because it was through the orchestra that Nabi met Ophelia, his protector. I could be heard asking, “Did you need a protector at school?” He laughed softly and framed his face with his palms, and said, “You see what happened when she was not here one day.

  “Ophelia is so strong. She doesn’t want to be like everyone else,” he said as the scene switched to the CCTV tape from the train station Friday night. Nabi and Ophelia walked into frame. “She is my only friend here. I miss her. I am worried about her.”

  Cut to Ophelia walking alone down the street behind the train station with her cello. Suddenly, the muted grays of the CCTV night shot were replaced with the bright, if a bit jerky, video I shot that morning of the bearded man who found the cello being pinned down on a meadow in the haras; the cello was in the frame. Nabi said, “Where can Ophelia be?”

  The image faded to black, music crescendoed over the low murmur that filled the room when the last clip appeared, their whispered conversations drowning out the last plaintive strains of the piece. The room became bright again to reveal Detective Delisle standing at the podium looking freshly starched and thoroughly formidable as she gave the student body a hard-eyed looking over.

  “I am Detective Delisle of the municipal police,” she said, voice echoing around the cavernous space, eyes constantly scanning the kids as if she were looking for criminals among them; she reminded me of the nuns at my high school. “We need to talk about harassment.”

  While she gave the students the legal definition of what constitutes harassment, with my video camera I panned their faces, filming their reactions. Though all of their electronic devices were banned during the assembly, some of the kids kept themselves so busy with God knows what that they might as well have been passengers on a bus and not present in that huge room at all. Some listened with great interest, some with skeptical or perhaps hostile frowns, a few wiped away tears. Some just seemed to have zoned out. An interesting mix.

  Delisle asked for questions. The first, no surprise, was about what they had seen in that last bit of video: “Did you find Ophelia in the haras?”

  “Whore,” a single voice from somewhere in the crowd. Delisle homed in on the section the word came from, pointing a finger at a clutch of boys, one of them now blushing furiously. I waited to see what would happen. She warned us that she would go off on a kid if he “threw shade” at her.

  Face like stone, that finger pointing directly at a red-faced boy, she said, “You. Come.”

  “Me?” He pointed at himself, quaking more than a little, feigning innocence.

  “You have something to say,” she said, open palm out, flicking her fingers for him to come. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Down there?”

  All she did was flick her fingers once more and the kid, though reluctant, came forward, but he stopped several yards to the side of the podium. With the crook of one finger, she impelled him to the podium next to her.

  Looking at him, she said, “Up there surrounded by all your friends you made a comment about a classmate. It was easy to make when you had your buddies to shield you. But here you are, out where everyone can see you. Will you repeat what you said so we can all hear?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Uh, it was rude?”

  I was twenty feet behind them, and off to the side. When the boy looked at Delisle he was full face to me, and she was in profile. I had seen never anyone blush as furiously without passing right out. I waited for him to fall over.

  Looking him in the eye, she said, “Tell us what a bully is.”

  “Uh.”

  She waited for more before repeating, “Uh?’

  “Uh, it’s someone who picks on someone else. Someone weaker.”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” She shook her head and made eye contact again with the kids in the bleachers. “Someone weaker. An easy target then? Someone who can’t defend himself, or herself?”

  “I guess.”

  “Like a person who isn’t in the room when you say something rude about her?”

  “No. I was just—”

  She waited. Finally, he said, “I was just being a smart ass. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your classmate. And pray she hasn’t come to harm before you get the chance. Now, go take your seat and sin no more.”

  The room was as silent as a classroom ten minutes after the last bell of the day. Delisle looked at the kids and let them squirm for a moment before speaking again. With a gesture over her shoulder toward the blank screen behind her, she said, “You saw what was done to your classmate, Ahmad Nabi. Did you know it took three football players and one girl to inflict that damage? Broke some bones, made him piss blood. Four kids, against one. To make certain that none of you still have the idea that that sort of torture is okay, we need to have a serious discussion about bullying. Your new directeur, Madame Jensen, tells me that she intends to make the elimination of campus harassment one of her primary missions. I promise that if any of you give her problems, she has my number on speed dial. Now, I’ll turn the podium over to Madame Jensen.”

  Delisle came over and stood beside me, arms folded over her chest. With a nod at the camera, in a low voice, she asked, “Can they hear me now?”

  “No. The only microphone is on the podium.”

  “Thanks for doing that video for me. It isn’t what I expected, but it was okay.”

  “Hardly my best work, but it isn’t as if I had a lot of time to make it pretty.”

  She laughed, a soft chuckle deep in her chest. “I owe you. That’s twice, now.”

  “Don’t think I won’t call in the debt,” I said.

  “I’m sure you will.”

  I noticed her watching Guido. After a while, she leaned in and asked, “Your guy over there with the camera, he doesn’t wear a ring.”

  “He isn’t married.”

  “Seeing someone?”

  “Not that I’m aware. He’s only been in Paris since Friday, so he hasn’t had much time.”

  “He isn’t—” She bobbed her head from side to side, one shoulder up, asking a question.

  “Not gay.”

  She sneaked a look at him, smiled in appreciation, or perhaps anticipation, caught me catching this assessment, and shrugged before turning her attention back to whatever the directeur was saying.

  Jensen’s remarks were brief. She expanded on Delisle’s remarks and announced that the school was committed to addressing and eradicating harassment in any form. There was a new sheriff in town, in other words, and some things were going to be different under her administration. During their first period in the morning there would be workshops on the subject led by experts from the Ministry of Education. Absentees would be heavily punished. A pamphlet was distributed and homework on the subject was assigned. Before she dismissed the fidgety mob in the bleachers, she reminded them that a hotline had been set up for tips about Ophelia Fouchet. After that, she released them back out into the daylight.

  While I broke down my camera setup, Delisle found some excuse to go over and chat up Guido. When the directeur asked her for a word and the two of them walked out, I draped a coil of extension cords over a shoulder, grabbed up the camera and tripod, and took it all over to Guido.

  “How’d it go?” I asked him.

  “Depends on which thing you’re asking about,” he said, taking the camera from me and fitting it into its case. “If you mean your little video, for a quick hack job it was pretty good, but hardly ready for prime time.”

  “From you, I’ll take pretty good for a hack job as compliment enough,” I said, shucking the cords onto his pile. “I want to get a look at the footage we shot today to see if any of it is usable for our piece on bullying, assuming we decide to do one. If we can get the directeur to buy in, I want to film the efforts of this campus to stop harassment and use it as counterpoint to the ugly shit we’re going to have to wade through.”
/>   “Think she’ll go along?”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Let’s go back to, How’d it go?”

  “How did what go?”

  “Detective Delisle has her eye on you.”

  He smiled almost shyly. “I think we have a date. Her English is a whole lot better than my French, but it’s still not so good. We’re meeting for drinks later.”

  “Tread gently, my friend,” I said, handing him the tripod. “She packs heat.”

  He laughed.

  I looked around for Jean-Paul. During the assembly I’d lost track of him. He was next to Guido when the video started, but I didn’t remember seeing him after the lights came back up afterward. I texted him and asked where he’d gotten to. The answer was Monsieur Gold’s classroom, along with directions so I could find my way to Ophelia’s calculus teacher’s domain. I told him I’d be there after I helped Guido get all the gear to the car. I left it to Guido to stow the equipment—he can be very fussy about what goes where—and went into the building.

  Nabi told us that sometimes Ophelia would say she needed help with calculus as an excuse to go speak with her teacher. Until I met her teacher, Joel Gold, I assumed she had a crush on him. I was wrong. Monsieur Gold was small, old, and the little hair he had was wiry gray tufts over his ears. Thick glasses made him look owlish. He had a big voice as teachers so often do, and must, but when he spoke to Jean-Paul and me he lowered the volume and pulled three chairs into an intimate circle.

  “Ah, Ophelia,” he said, shaking his head. “I am so very concerned that something has happened to her.”

  “Did she confide in you?” I asked.

  “Bits here and there,” he said, straightening his bow tie. “Enough that I knew she was troubled and sometimes needed a neutral place to wait until the— What shall I call it? The afternoon rush, I suppose. At any rate, until the other students were gone and the coast was clear so that she could get home without being bothered.”

  “Did she tell you who bothered her?”

  “Not in so many words. When I teased her about suddenly appearing all in black like a vampiress she said that she couldn’t bear looking like a princess anymore because she felt dark inside. I suggested that we go speak with a counselor, and she laughed me off. She told me not to worry, she said she only hoped to scare away some big jerk.”

  “Do you know who the jerk was?”

  “I can think of three or four who seemed to hover around her. But one specifically? No.”

  I said, “Did Louis, Maxime, or Octave hover?”

  He hesitated before he said, “These are all children, madame. They may have the bodies of adults, but in here—” He tapped his head. “They are naïfs. Babies. On Tuesday they may explode over one thing, and on Wednesday another. I have learned over the years that what they say in the heat of a momentary drama needs to be tempered over time before we can truly understand their issues. If the police were to ask me these questions, I might be more inclined to speculate. But to tell you, a lay person, what I only suspect but don’t know would be tantamount to gossip, don’t you agree?”

  “Of course,” I said, silently damning his scruples. “Are you aware that Ophelia’s friend, Ahmad Nabi, was badly beaten yesterday?”

  “Sadly, yes,” he said, shaking his head. “And I know by whom. Directeur Jensen called a staff meeting this morning to discuss what happened and to tell us which students will not return for the remainder of the school term. We are all very upset, of course, but far more so for Nabi than the others.”

  “Do you know Nabi?”

  “Yes. And I understand that Monsieur Bernard does as well. Am I correct?”

  “Not until a couple of days ago. This came up in the meeting?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “No, no,” Gold said. “From time to time I have spoken with Doctor Massarani about Nabi’s assignments; the boy is in my introductory algebra class. Once, I dropped off some of the boy’s schoolwork at your home so that Doctor Massarani could review it with Nabi; I am aware who you are by reputation, Monsieur. The doctor and I had such a nice conversation that I stayed for the tutoring session when Nabi arrived. Doctor Massarani has helped the boy immeasurably. Though the boy is bright, very bright, and he has an affinity for numbers, he was in need of serious remediation when he arrived. By end of term, he should be caught up to grade level. Not a surprise, really. Musicians are frequently also gifted in math. Something about the way the brain is wired.”

  “Do you play an instrument, Monsieur?” Jean-Paul asked the mathematician.

  “I do.” Gold’s face brightened. “Saxophone. Hot jazz. Sometimes after school I jam with the music teacher, the directeur—the former directeur, that is—and the soccer coach. From time to time Nabi and some other kids in orchestra join in. Nabi loves jazz, and lordy can that kid play! We riffed on Rhapsody in Blue last week. Nabi took that old standard to places Gershwin could never have imagined, though he would have recognized his framework. Made my hair, what little I have anyway, stand on end. Nabi, that quiet little kid, has a soul on fire.”

  He played air sax as he remembered, bobbing in rhythm to music that lived on in his head long after the notes of the jam session had dissipated into the ether. I could see why kids would be drawn to this unassuming-looking little man. With a long sigh, he was back within the walls of his classroom.

  “Did Ophelia ever join in?” I asked.

  “Bien sûr. Of course, yes. The cello makes a fair stand-in for the bass when the bass player has a tennis meet.” Suddenly, the joy of remembering that improv session was gone. He gazed out the window behind me, as if hoping to see something—someone?—that wasn’t there. “Ophelia, Ophelia, where have you gone?”

  “That is the question,” I said. “Did you know that her cello was found this morning?”

  “Yes. Monsieur Bernard told me when we were waiting for you. I was worried for her before, but now I am frightened. Please, if you learn anything, I would like to be told.”

  Jean-Paul put a hand on Gold’s shoulder, looked him in the eye, and said, “Bien sûr, Monsieur.”

  We got up to leave, but I quickly sat back down. “Monsieur Gold, what happened to the former directeur?”

  “At the risk of sharing gossip,” he said, “it’s my understanding that the ministry received a letter accusing him of carrying on an inappropriate relationship, so he was reassigned to a desk at headquarters until the issue is resolved.”

  “Any truth to the accusation?” I asked.

  He raised his palms. “Qui sait? Accusations are easy to make and sometimes difficult to disprove. Same answer for your next question, and probably the next; I simply don’t know.”

  “I don’t like coincidences,” I said. “I find it curious that both he and Ophelia disappeared on the same day.”

  He chuckled. “I doubt Samuel Lambert has disappeared from anywhere other than this campus. If he is not at a desk in the ministry, you will likely find him at home tending his roses; he has a passion for gardening even greater than his love for jazz.”

  “Thank you for your time, Monsieur Gold,” Jean-Paul said, extending his hand. I followed his lead and said good-bye. By then, school had already been out for an hour, so though I had hoped to speak with the music teacher, he was gone for the day.

  We found Guido waiting in the faculty parking lot. Leaning against the car beside him was our fair detective, Fleur Delisle. She straightened when she saw us.

  “I want to thank you,” she said, extending her hand to me. “I could not have gotten the point across to the students nearly so well as a few pictures did. The kids, I think, paid attention. At least some did.”

  “They seemed to,” I said. “They certainly sat right up when the lights came on again and they saw you glaring at them.”

  “I wasn’t glaring at them,” she said with a frown.

  “Guido got it all on video if you want to see for yourself.”

  She shot him an appreciative glance. “Maybe I’ll do just that. Sho
uld I bring a bottle of wine?”

  I translated what she said for Guido. He grinned, his face coloring a bit. He said, “Tell her she doesn’t need to bring anything. I know where to find the key to an entire wine cellar.”

  “Just keep your hands off my Bordeaux,” Jean-Paul said with a laugh.

  Delisle understood enough of that to laugh with him.

  It was decided that Delisle would drive Guido and the film equipment back to Paris—the least she could do, she said, to thank us—but first, Jean-Paul and I wanted to speak with him about, maybe, making independent films again. We had all missed lunch and the apple and chunk of cheese I’d had in lieu of breakfast were a faint memory. It was after two and before six, so restaurants in town were no longer serving lunch and not yet serving dinner. The options were to go home and make something or to get a croque-monsieur, a sort of open-faced grilled cheese sandwich, at the local café tabac. The latter appealed to Guido, so we headed to an agreed-upon café in two cars, with Delisle and Guido in the lead. We waved them to go ahead because Jean-Paul wanted to call home to check on things. Ari assured him that all was quiet. Diba, looking for ways to be useful, had finished cleaning the guest house and had moved on to the main house. Ari, apparently also concerned about being a burden, told Jean-Paul that it was enough that we had taken in Diba and Nabi, but he could not expect us to also feed them until other housing was arranged, a problem Ari was working on. So, in the meantime, Diba would be preparing their meals in Ari’s little kitchen; she had already gone grocery shopping. Jean-Paul assured him that we did not feel burdened, but when he put his phone away and reported to me, he seemed relieved that our houseguests did not intend to become long-term residents.