Number 7, Rue Jacob

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Yes, euros. Is that a problem?”

  “No. Of course, the funds are available. But, Madame, that is a great deal of cash to carry around. Perhaps you would prefer it in the form of a counter check?”

  “No, cash please.” I set the empty teacup on the desk and leaned forward to look him in the eye. “Monsieur Revere, do you have any idea how much a Paris couturier-original gown might cost, even if it has been worn once?”

  “Ah, yes, I see.” He relaxed visibly, smiling, a man who knows women well. “A private sale. What denominations would you prefer?”

  “One hundreds, I think. Anything larger can be cumbersome to use. And I’d like one thousand of it in small bills, please.”

  “As you wish. Please excuse me for just a moment. More tea?”

  “No thank you,” I said. For the next ten minutes, I looked everywhere in that handsome office except at the four perfect little pastries still on the plate in front of me. I needed food, real food, and not a belly full of sugary, buttery treats, no matter how delectable they were. When M. Revere returned, he resumed his seat and counted out ten thousand euros in front of me on the desk. When I nodded, he zipped the cash into an elegant green leather pouch and presented it to me.

  “Enjoy your gown, Madame,” he said with a little flourish. “And welcome back to Paris.”

  Welcome back, indeed. I hadn’t actually lied to him, either, and it truly was genteel of him to have concern for my safety. But before I felt better about telling him about a beautiful dress I would never buy, I had to remind myself that it was none of his business what I wanted my money for. I shook his hand, thanked him very much, wished him well, and walked out into the bank lobby. I stopped long enough to transfer the thousand in small bills into my own wallet. As I walked back toward the apartment on rue Jacob, I kept a hand in the coat pocket that held the cash-stuffed leather pouch, lest it fall out or get lifted by sticky fingers, and entertained myself imagining the grand party I was not wearing that couturier dress to, one I would expect to enter on the arm of Jean-Paul. Along the way, I stopped at a bakery for a take-out sandwich—French ham and cheese in a length of baguette with tomato and fresh basil—and at a greengrocer for a few apples. The next stop was a small neighborhood electronics shop.

  “I need a prepaid telephone, please,” I told the much-tattooed young clerk behind the counter; I wanted a burner phone of my own. I would do as Jean-Paul asked and leave my phone in Paris, but I’d be damned if I would disconnect myself entirely. During the two days that I spent shuffling through airports, rescheduling missed connections and cancelled flights without a phone, I became keenly aware how much I depended on the damn things to tend to essential business, to stay connected with those I care about, to find my way around, and even to know what the weather is going to be. I caught the clerk’s attention and said, “Make that three.”

  “Three?” A terrorist or a drug runner can look like anyone, and it seemed that the clerk was trying to decide whether I was someone to worry about. Who needs three prepaid, therefore unregistered, untraceable telephones?

  With a broad American smile, the sort that makes the more restrained French think we might be half wits, I said, “Have you any idea how exorbitant the telephone bill might be for a parent on vacation in Europe with three teenagers who send endless texts and photos and posts to their friends in the States without any regard for the cost of transmitting data? The national debt would pale in comparison.”

  Of course, he said, he understood. What model would I like? He showed me several. I wanted to be able to remove the battery so I needed phones that did not have a solid case. When I suggested that I would likely need to change SIM cards as we moved about the world, he raised his eyebrows, but showed me a model with a snap-off back. The battery was just below the SIM card slot. I said, Yes, please, three of those. How much time will we load onto the phones? We talked it over like old friends and he suggested that we start with two hours each and when they were used up the kids could spend their own money to reload them, n’est-ce pas? I answered, “Oui, d’accord,” and the deal was done.

  On the counter, there was a display promoting prepaid credit cards. Sometimes cash is useless, such as when you need to make flight or hotel arrangements over the phone or the Internet. While the clerk was distracted, activating my phones, out of his line of sight I unzipped the green leather bank pouch, counted out thirty bills, and tucked them into my wallet. When the clerk came back I pointed to the display and said, “And three of those, please.”

  He needed a moment to think about that before he asked, “For what amounts?”

  I smiled. “A thousand euros each should do it.”

  “Your children are very fortunate to have such a generous parent,” he said as he pulled three cards from a locked drawer. With a smile, he added, “Maybe you’d like to adopt me?”

  I laughed. “I have my hands full as it is. But if I decide to trade one in, I’ll call you first.”

  Transactions complete, the affable clerk tucked my purch­ases into a plastic bag and shook my hand. “Enjoy your travels, Madame.”

  I wished him farewell, took the handle of the bag, and turned for the door just as a man came in from outside, letting in a gust of icy air. The shop was very narrow and the man, a very large man enveloped in a very large coat pulled up over his chin, seemed to fill up most of the available space. He wore a knit watch cap pulled down so low over his brows that all I could see of his face between collar and cap were pale, almost colorless gray eyes and a cold-reddened nose. He trained those pale eyes on me long enough to make me uncomfortable. Nodding toward the door, which he blocked with his bulk, I said, “Excuse me.”

  Instead of moving out of the way, as I expected, he pulled off his cap and grinned at me. “We’ve met, have we not?”

  I took a good look at him. He was tall and very blond. Not beauty-salon blond, but the real thing; nearly translucent hair, eyebrows, lashes. Because I make films that have my name and face all over them, and that are regularly broadcast on an American television network, it isn’t unusual for people to recognize me. Or to think they recognize me. Offscreen, walking around, I do not wear TV makeup or have my hair styled and lacquered in place, so when people recognize me it is more common that they think that we went to school together or shop at the same supermarket than to realize that I have a face they saw on the television in their living room. Also, because of what I do for a living, I meet a lot of people. Many I remember, more I do not. When I saw this man’s pale eyes and white hair, I knew that I had never seen him before. My first thought was that he was looking for female company and had pegged me for a fellow tourist. Even if all he wanted was a little chitchat, I wasn’t interested. I said, with what I hoped was a modestly polite smile, “No, sorry. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “Yes, I’m sure of it,” he persisted, holding his cap against his chest. I could not place his accent. Not quite British. Dutch or Scandinavian with a British education? Eastern European? “Perhaps over a coffee we could discover where we knew each other.”

  “Thank you for the offer, but I’m afraid I haven’t time.” I gestured toward the door. “If I may.”

  “Ah! Sorry, yes.” After some complicated choreography, he shifted a bit to one side and held the door open for me. As I ducked under his outstretched arm, which put me uncomfortably close to his body, he said, “It’s cold, ja?”

  I answered, “Oui,” though he had spoken to me in English, the first person to do so all day. During the last year and a half, I had become quite proficient with French. So, what was there about me that clued him, I wondered, as I went out into the cold?

  When I turned onto rue Jacob, I saw the two cleaning women walking away from number seven, and felt relieved. With them gone, I would have a quiet place to relax, to eat without getting jostled, perhaps to get a brief nap, and to figure out what to pack for a jaunt to Venice when I had no idea what I might need.

  Mme Gonsalves intercepted
me as I came through the gates. “Madame MacGowen, a delivery arrived for you.”

  She handed me a white paper bag imprinted with a green cross, a pharmacy bag. I thanked her and took it without asking any of the questions running through my mind, and refrained from opening it right there where she could see the contents, though I suspected that if she were curious she could have opened the bag when it arrived. Instead I crossed the courtyard and went straight up to Isabelle’s apartment, clutching the bag against my chest. I didn’t know what was going on, but seeing the green cross on the bag was not reassuring. As soon as I had locked the front door behind me, I hung my purchases on a hall tree hook and opened the white bag.

  Two prescription vials with large white tablets, a box of sterile gauze pads, a roll of surgical tape and a tube of antibiotic ointment. I examined the labels on the bottles. I know enough about drugs to recognize what they were: an antibiotic and a generic for hydrocodone-acetaminophen, a painkiller. My name was on both prescriptions, but someone else was sick and in pain, and because the prescribing physician was Jean-Paul’s brother-in-law, Émile Lepage, I was afraid they were intended for Jean-Paul.

  Fear can make you stupid. And so can fatigue. I sat down and made myself breathe, to think. Jean-Paul had sounded all right on the phone. He coughed once, and that meant absolutely nothing. He kept the conversation brief and on message, the arrangements he made for me had taken some care and attention, so at least he was coherent when we spoke. For the next three and a half hours, until my plane departed for Venice, I needed to keep that in mind and not to imagine seventeen dire scenarios. The best way to do that was to get busy.

  First, I plugged in the burner phones so that they would be fully charged when I needed them. Next was the issue of what to bring. In the armoire of the bedroom Freddy’s sons shared, I found a good, somewhat worn backpack. Into it went a couple of changes of my freshly laundered underwear, some silk long johns, a black turtleneck, black wool slacks, a string of pearls because one never knows, a red Pashmina, two T-shirts, a black V-neck sweater, and the usual toiletries kit. When the phones were charged, I pulled the batteries out. I found three zip-top sandwich bags in a kitchen drawer and put a phone, a charger, and a battery into each one. I changed into fresh jeans—my own—and put one of the cell phones into my pocket. The other two went into the backpack with the pharmacy bag. I zipped up the backpack and set it beside the front door, ready to go.

  My two big suitcases were still in the vestibule where I had left them. To get them out of sight, I lugged them into the boys’ room and shoved them into the armoire. Before I closed the door, it occurred to me that by using only disposable phones, I could be functionally without a camera, and I’m never without a camera. From the larger bag, the camera bag, I selected a palm-sized high-definition video cam that also took good still shots, and packed it along with an extra battery pack and two photo storage cards into a fitted case that went into the backpack.

  My own coat was still damp, so I decided to hang on to Freddy’s coat. It was waterproof, warm, and had deep pockets for phone, money, and passport. When the coat pockets were packed and buttoned shut, I cleaned the boots I had arrived in and pulled them on. I was ready to go, and there were still three hours until departure. With nothing else to do, I decided that I might as well head for the airport and wait there. Ordinarily, I would pull out my phone and call for a taxi. Instead, I decided to walk up to boul’ Saint-Germain where there was sure to be a cab stand.

  I made a quick circuit of the apartment, making certain that windows were locked. The cleaners wouldn’t win medals for their work, but they had effectively removed the eau de gym socks from the place and made order out of the worst of the mess, and it would do until I returned. Whenever that might be.

  The telephone in the office rang. I ran in to get it, expecting to hear Jean-Paul’s voice.

  “Maggie? Émile Lepage here.” Jean-Paul’s physician brother-in-law.

  “Émile?” Cold white panic rose from somewhere deep inside me. “Ça va?”

  “Me? Fine, thank you. Happy I caught you. I’m just turning onto rue Jacob. Will you please open the gates and let me drive in out of the cold? It’s beginning to sleet.”

  “Sure” was the best I could think to say; how many people knew I was there? After I hung up I went to the panel next to the front door and pushed the button marked porte to open the gates, and hurried down the stairs to wait for Émile. The big iron gates were already parting by the time I opened the front door. As Émile drove through, he spotted me and aimed his Citroën for the open space closest to the blue door. The car had barely come to a complete stop before he was out. With his coat pulled up over his head, a black medical bag hugged close to his chest, he made a dash toward me.

  “Getting colder,” he said once he was inside. “We’ll have a good snow tonight.”

  He handed me his bag so that he could shed his sleet-speckled coat, which he then draped over the stair rail. We exchanged les trois bises, kisses to both cheeks and the third that is saved for familiars. When I extended his bag toward him, to return it, he took my wrist, pressed his fingers on my pulse and looked at his watch.

  “Your pulse is racing,” he said, releasing my wrist.

  “I’m sure it is,” I said, gathering up his coat as I led him up the stairs and into the apartment. “First, you send over prescriptions for pain and infection, and dressings for a wound I don’t have. And then you show up. Émile, what is going on?”

  His shoulders and palms rose, the French gesture package meaning, Who the hell knows? “I was afraid it was for you, Maggie. That’s why I’m here. Our Jean-Paul telephoned, telling me only that the medications had been prescribed by a physician abroad and that I should send instructions to a pharmacy here and have them delivered to you straight away. I did as he requested, Lord knows why, but I told him that I would need to see you to make sure that you’re all right. He was adamant when he told me not to come. Of course, he had to tell me where to have the pharmacy deliver, n’est-ce pas? Et voilà.” Another shrug, just one shoulder, finished his sentence: and here he was.

  I glanced toward the telephone on the table. “He gave you this number so you could call me?”

  “He did not.” With a little laugh, he pointed toward the ceiling. “For that I went to a higher power. I called my mother-in-law, who called her good friend your grandmother, who was only too happy to share that bit of information so that we could invite you to our home for dinner. So, Maggie, now that I see that you are fine, I am worried about Jean-Paul. Where is he? I want to see him for myself.”

  “So do I. Will you drive me to Orly?”

  He eyed me as he thought through that question. “You are going to him?’

  I nodded. “If I tell you where, dear Émile, you might tell your wife, who would tell her mother, who would immediately call my grandmother, so—”

  What I said apparently made perfect sense to him. He reached into his suit-coat pocket and brought out a card with his contact numbers and handed it to me. “Of course, I will take you to the airport. In exchange, you must promise me that you will call me if anything—anything—is wrong. D’accord?”

  “D’accord,” I agreed. “Ready?”

  We put on our coats, I slung the backpack over my shoulder, but before we got out the door, Émile spotted the bags with my uneaten lunch and fruit hanging from a hook on the hall tree, where I had left them, forgotten in my rush to see what the pharmacy had sent over.

  “When did you last eat, Maggie?” When I took too long to answer, he grabbed the bags and handed them to me. “You look very pale and quite drawn. For strength, you will eat this while you wait for your plane. And when you arrive at your destination, you will get some rest. Doctor’s orders.”

  At Orly, Émile dropped me at the curb outside the departure lounge, kissed my cheeks, and then merged back into traffic headed toward central Paris. With no luggage to check and a boarding pass in hand, I went straight to the secur
ity area, suffered the usual humiliations, put myself back together, and made sure that I was still in possession of my essentials. On the way to the departure gate assigned to my flight, I acquired a paperback book, a bag of trail mix, a bottle of water, and a cup of coffee. I found a seat near the gate, ate my sandwich, opened my book, and settled in for the wait until my flight was called.

  Mid-February, the beginning of two weeks of Carnevale in ­Venice. The plane was packed with boisterous people who had started celebrating early. Carnevale di Venezia is more subdued than the semi-controlled riots you might find in Rio or New Orleans. To begin, it’s generally cold in Venice at that time of year, so there aren’t legions of nearly naked people parading in the streets. There are public events, of course, and plenty of alcohol, but most of the real partying is private, fancy-dress, indoors, and very expensive. Did I say, plenty of alcohol?

  Boarding seemed to take forever as people jostled for overhead bin space. My fellow passengers had not packed lightly for the festivities, perhaps bringing elaborate costumes with them. The plane had unassigned seating and I lucked into a window spot, stuffed the backpack under the seat in front, and hunkered in for the duration. I was distractedly watching baggage handlers on the tarmac below my window when the woman in the aisle seat reached across the empty seat between us and gave me a gentle nudge. She flicked her chin toward a man approaching down the aisle. The very blond man from the electronics store that morning was waving a hand, trying to get my attention over the heads of people shuffling ­forward down the aisle in front of him.

  “This time you can’t deny that we’ve met before,” he said with a broad grin when I looked up and saw him. “In the shops today, yes?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said without enthusiasm.

  “What a coincidence.” A woman in front of him turned to deliver a scowl at him; he was quite loud. “Going to Venice for Carnevale? Let’s hope the weather clears up.”

  I was saved from further conversation when a young man with the requisite little hipster beard and close-cropped hair dumped a duffel onto the middle seat beside me and made a fuss trying to stow an oversized bag into the already full bin above us. I leaned toward the window to stay out of his way and opened my book. By the time my neighbor settled in, the blonde had been impelled along toward the back of the plane by the tide of passengers behind him.