That Spring in Paris

by Ciji Ware

  “Oompf! Oww!” Juliet cried, her elbow plowing into a man’s mid-section.

  A split second following this collision, a large, strong hand grabbed her upper arm, only just preventing her from collapsing across her suitcase and perhaps even landing on the cement in front of the revolving door.

  “I am so sorry!” apologized the man who had been both her victim and, now, her rescuer.

  By this time, he’d grabbed her other arm and righted the two of them. The stranger appeared close to her in age. His slightly Gallic profile made her assume he was French. Embroidered on the chest of his leather jacket on the left side was the name “Deschanel.” However, the words he’d said in English were spoken in a perfectly normal American accent, which startled her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked with a worried frown.

  “Yesss,” she hissed between clenched teeth. “Barely.”

  She rubbed her elbow that still smarted from the impact. He removed his hands from her shoulders and studied her briefly. Towering above her by at least a foot, and broad-shouldered, the man had closed-cropped, jet black hair. The angled planes of his face were smooth-shaven and his starched, blue cotton collared shirt beneath his jacket gave him a squeaky clean appearance.

  He said, “I didn’t see you until the last second when you just suddenly appeared, barreling toward the door.” He paused, adding, “Like I was.” Then he asked for a second time, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  The near pile up was her fault, she knew, but she didn’t have time to apologize.

  “I’m okay!” she insisted, and made a grab for the handle of her suitcase, propelling herself and it through the door of the hospital without a backward glance.

  Would Avery be a patient here, she wondered as she sped through the lobby at a dead run—or would her best friend be lying in the morgue?

  CHAPTER 3

  Monday afternoon, November 16, 2015

  Avery was alive!

  Juliet kept her eyes glued on the hospital’s receptionist at the Information kiosk as she waited impatiently for directions to her friend’s room. She sensed the tall individual she’d literally run into outside the hospital a few minutes ago had just come through the revolving door and was now crossing the lobby behind her. He strode with some urgency down a corridor to her left, past the sign “Intensive Care Unit” that featured an arrow pointing in the same direction he was headed.

  He sure looks like he’s late, she thought. If he was a doctor, she hoped for his patients’ sakes he was not scheduled to perform any tricky procedures today.

  The other best news of the day, as far as Juliet was concerned, was that the entire staff at the American Hospital was apparently required to speak a passable amount of English that certainly bested her own abilities in French. After a brief exchange, she was astonished to learn that hers was the solitary name on the approved-visitors roster for Ms. Avery Evans, noting “Juliet Thayer” as “next of kin.” More good news: Avery had been assigned a private room on the post-surgery ward and her condition had just been upgraded from “critical” to “serious.”

  At least she’s not in the ICU, Juliet considered, feeling relieved that she wasn’t being told to go down the same corridor as the man in the leather jacket. She should have offered an apology for rolling over his foot with her suitcase, but then surely, current circumstances excused her?

  The receptionist gave a nod in the direction of Juliet’s luggage.

  “You’ve only just arrived in Paris, oui?”

  “Yes. I flew from the States as soon as I received word that Ms. Evans had been shot in the attacks.”

  “You must be exhausted,” the young woman offered sympathetically, “but your cousin will be overjoyed to have you here, I expect.”

  Cousin? Juliet almost smiled. Trust Avery, after only six months of living in Paris, to be schooled in the ways of French bureaucracy and to list her friend as a close family member in hopes it would gain Juliet easy entry upstairs if she’d raced to France as Avery had so poignantly summoned her.

  A few minutes later, Juliet hesitated at the door to Avery’s darkened room, not wishing to wake her. The still figure cloaked up to her neck in crisp, white sheets, was either asleep or sedated following the three-hour surgery that, according to the nurse at the desk, Avery had endured in the early hours of Saturday morning. Juliet tiptoed across the room and took a seat on a metal chair beside the bed. Within seconds, Avery’s eyes flew open.

  “Jules! Oh my God... you came!” she murmured, her voice hoarse.

  “Well, don’t you think you took some awfully extreme measures to get me here?” Juliet replied in the usual teasing way they had with each other.

  “You wouldn’t come with me the first time I asked,” she said, the faintest of smiles tracing her lips, “so... a pal’s gotta do what a pal’s gotta do.”

  Avery’s eyes fluttered shut and she appeared to drift back to sleep. Juliet settled into the chair next to the bed, her mind shifting to the day when her best friend left San Francisco for Paris. Juliet had driven her to the airport. All the way there, Avery had pleaded they should exchange the profession of commercial art for a further and more serious study of landscape and portrait painting, respectively. “Video war games are your brother’s obsession, not yours,” she had implored. “Designing illustrations on boxes of this crap wasn’t the reason we went to art school.”

  “I know, I know!” Juliet had retorted. “Don’t rub it in.”

  In the beginning, their graphic design work had been an easy way to pay off their student loans while making good money creating the illustrations used on the packaging for innocent little games like electronic tic-tac-toe. Then, all of a sudden, Brad decided to launch his own version of a digital World War III and life at work became crazy. The first in the series of violent games where players gained points by electronically blowing up “high value targets” that were clad in the distinctive clothing of citizens of the Middle East was an immediate hit and received millions of dollars worth of free advertising on Facebook and Twitter from its enthusiastic fans—mostly male. GatherGames’ meteoric success, in turn, prompted the move to take the company public with the stock debuting high above predictions. Immediately the pressure was on to come up with more games to keep fans, Wall Street, and the investors happy.

  “Not even Jamie can stand to watch the footage anymore, the poor guy!” Avery had said that last day before she’d boarded her flight. “Do you actually think your younger brother likes editing animated blood and guts all day long? ‘Sky Slaughter... Death by Drones’,” she mimicked in sepulchral tones. “Gimme a break!”

  “Jamie claims he’s getting Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder just from staring at all those mythical kill sequences for hours on end,” Juliet had agreed with a mirthless laugh.

  “He probably is getting PTSD! Just because he’s mastered the technology side of the video game business doesn’t mean he meant this to be his life’s work, does it?”

  “God, no!” It seriously jerked Juliet’s chain that Brad had pressured Jamie away from his editing job at Pixar studios in the East Bay by both demanding family solidarity and making him Chief Technology Officer when the Thayer family business was first being bootstrapped. “Without even asking, Brad slotted my poor baby bro into editing these horror shows to save money, I guess. By that time, Pixar had hired his replacement and he was stuck.”

  Avery’s parting comment before she boarded her plane for Paris that day had returned to haunt Juliet this past weekend.

  “Has anyone at GatherGames ever thought about the implications of what they’re slinging out there into the Universe?” she’d groused. “‘G.I.s pitted against the Muslim world!’ Jeez... I couldn’t believe it when Brad ordered us to print that phrase on the outside of the box.”

  “Oh, you mean how Sky Slaughter desensitizes pimply teenagers into thinking that killing other human beings is a w-a-a-y cool, patriotic sport?”

  “That,” Avery sai
d, “and the fact that anyone can use the encrypted messaging between players to communicate anywhere in the world—and not even the F.B.I or the C.I.A. can crack the codes.”

  “Or so we think,” Juliet had quipped. “Brad says the government’s National Security Agency has been trying to crack private codes from telephone calls and bank records and Google searches, sucking up all our data to turn us into a police state.”

  “Brad thinks NSA is cracking hundreds of individually-invented encryption codes?” Avery had scoffed. “That older brother of yours is paranoid.”

  Since Friday’s attacks, the newspapers and TV reports were full of speculation that the Paris terrorists had used encryption technology embedded in video games and cell-phone messaging applications to exchange communications during the run-up to their devastating assaults on French civilians. Bolstering Avery’s contention that encryption was hard to crack, even by the NSA, authorities were bemoaning via the media that they couldn’t decipher pre-instructions that had been transmitted, terrorist-to-terrorist.

  And given her acrimonious parting from her employer six months ago, Avery had made no effort to conceal her disdain for the way in which hotshot Stanford Business School graduate-cum-CEO Bradshaw Thayer IV had morphed into an “arrogant, insufferable, dot-com asshole.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Avery had apologized one time. “I know he’s your flesh-and-blood—if it’s possible you were born from the same loins—but really, he’s a total jerk.”

  And now, gazing at Avery in her hospital bed—eyes closed, face pale as the pillow behind it—Juliet was forced to admit that she completely agreed with Avery’s assessment of Brad’s behavior since the company had gained success producing video war games particularly noted for their realistic violence. Juliet recalled how tempted she’d been half a year ago to hop on the plane alongside her former “cubicle captive”—as Avery had described their working environment. But, of course, Juliet hadn’t gone to Paris, citing the irrefutable fact the Thayer clan was dangerously up to its eyebrows in debt helping her older brother launch his electronic empire.

  But why, Juliet wondered, had she allowed Brad’s arguments to convince her to take over Avery’s former position as design director? Why hadn’t she made the break at that moment and pursued her true love, landscape painting? She had allowed herself be convinced that, as a member of the hallowed, fifth-generation Thayers of San Francisco, family loyalty came first. After Friday’s attacks, she wasn’t so sure she still bought into Brad’s line that encryption was the bulwark of free speech—and freedom, period—and that there was more at stake than just a job she’d grown to despise in a company whose recent products she now hated.

  Why did life have to be so complicated?

  Juliet heaved a sigh and glanced around at the sterile surroundings. To the right of the hospital bed, a machine hummed rhythmically as it dispensed the proper amounts of intravenous painkiller for a patient who had had several bullets removed from her right shoulder and upper arm, both of which were swathed in multiple layers of bandages.

  Juliet shifted her weight on the metal chair beside Avery’s bed and felt her own lids grow heavy. She closed her eyes as the accumulation of stress and travel fatigue pulled her under, and soon she fell fast asleep, sitting bolt upright.

  * * *

  Avery stirred restlessly in her bed and looked over at her sleeping friend.

  “Jules?”

  In an instant, Juliet awoke and sat up straight, but her eyes remained at half-mast for a few seconds longer. “Hey there,” she murmured. “How are you feeling? Can I get you something?”

  Avery lifted her head off the pillow and winced. “They had to set my arm in a couple of places in order to get the bones back in line. I have no idea what they did to my shoulder, but it hurts like holy hell.”

  In a show of sympathy, Juliet leaned forward and lightly patted her friend’s good hand lying on top of the bedcovers. “I learned from the receptionist that you told them I was your next of kin, and a first cousin, no less,” she teased.

  “Well, that’s practically true,” whispered Avery. Her eyes fluttered shut once more as she added, “I would have said ‘sister’—but we look so different.”

  It was laughably true. Avery was short and a little stocky, with a truly arresting set of breasts and a mop of wildly curly dark hair, while Juliet’s slender height and shoulder-length auburn mane were a complete give-away as to her predominately Irish-English ancestry.

  “Well, I’m honored to be named as your cousin,” Juliet said, giving Avery’s uninjured hand another small squeeze.

  “I figured that you’d be the only one to show up,” Avery muttered, barely awake.

  Juliet knew that Avery had very little hope that her mother, an aging hippie growing medical marijuana somewhere in the wilds of northern California, would come riding to the rescue. And, sadly, the same was probably true for her father, Stephen Evans, a Wall Street investment banker whom Avery hadn’t seen much of since her parents split up when she was six. Avery had once disclosed that at least her father had granted her a modest trust fund at age thirty-five, which she’d apparently used to “jump ship,” as Brad had termed it. Given the crazy pressure they’d both endured at GatherGames, Juliet hadn’t blamed her friend one bit for leaving and, in fact, had nothing but admiration—and a good dose of envy—that she’d had the means to do so.

  Juliet would never dispute the truth that Avery had been the leader in their relationship from the first day they’d met as undergraduates at the Art Center in Pasadena, a decade and a half ago. Gazing at her friend, now, immobilized in a hospital bed in a foreign country, Juliet could hardly believe the chain of events that had reunited them.

  Avery moved her head from side to side, uttering apologetically. “Sorry. I keep dozing off. It’s the meds. Did I mention yet how glad I am to see you?”

  Juliet felt her lips curl in a smile. “Yes, you did. And by the way, the nurse told me how lucky you are regarding your shoulder, as opposed to your right arm. They extracted two bullets lodged in tissue, only. No bones there were affected at all.”

  “Even so, that’s the kind of luck I could certainly do without.”

  “Thank heavens you’re left-handed and you’ll be able to paint your portraits as well as you always did,” Juliet said, trying to find something cheerful to offer.

  As Avery closed her eyes once more, a tear from each corner slid down her cheeks.

  “The meds aren’t helping?” Juliet worried that the pain had increased.

  Avery’s voice caught. “How will my friend ever paint again?” she cried. “He was shot in the back when he threw himself on top of me right after the guns started spraying bullets everywhere!”

  Avery, whom Juliet had never once seen cry in the years they’d known each other, began to weep quietly.

  “I can’t imagine what that was like...” murmured Juliet. “Who were you with?”

  “Someone from painting class. We were sitting side-by-side on the left side of the restaurant, our backs to the door. We both heard a commotion and some shouts and saw this guy come in with this huge, long gun, and then everything exploded. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor with a bunch of bodies heaped on top of me, including my friend, closest to me, and also the waitress who’d been serving us... and I don’t even know who else.” She continued in a strangled whisper, “I was having Asian noodle soup... and the noodles were everywhere... dripping with blood.”

  “Oh, Avery... I am so sorry this happened to you. I-I—”

  Juliet was at a loss for a way to comfort her friend. Meanwhile, Avery began to toss her head back and forth against her pillow, tears now streaming down her face.

  “A hospital was across the street, but the line of ambulances stretched a block...”

  “Thank God you got yours to take you to this one.”

  “I must have passed out after I yelled at them that I was an American and wanted to come here. I don’t even remember
the trip,” she said, choking on a sob.

  All Juliet could think to do was hold her friend’s good hand more firmly. She rang for the nurse, who immediately administered an additional sedative. The thickset, no-nonsense woman motioned for Juliet to follow her out of the room.

  “Your cousin is not only suffering physical pain from her wounds and surgery,” she explained, “but she’s still in shock and can’t stop reliving the moments she was shot. Before you arrived, she demanded to know what happened to the young man that was brought in with her.”

  “She just told me he threw his body over her to protect her.”

  The nurse heaved a heavy sigh. “I had to tell her that the poor boy remains in acute, critical condition in Intensive Care.”

  “Is he going to make it?”

  The nurse gave a shrug, raised an eyebrow, but didn’t hazard an opinion.

  Juliet thanked her and returned to Avery’s bedside. Several hours later, the wounded young woman awoke suddenly and immediately rang for a nurse. Once again, she demanded to know from the staff member who’d just come on duty the current medical status of the young man brought in the ambulance with her on Friday.

  “Unless you are a family member, I am not at liberty to tell you, mademoiselle,” the new nurse declared in heavily accented English.

  “But we were together having dinner when the men started shooting!” protested Avery. “We’re good friends, damn it! You’ve got to find out what’s happened!”

  Tight-lipped, the nurse merely shook her head disapprovingly and left the room.

  “Merde!” swore Avery, reaching for the covers with her good left hand and throwing them aside. “I’m going down there!” she announced, and then cried out in pain as she struggled to sit upright.

  Juliet bolted from her chair and put a restraining hand on Avery’s good shoulder.

  “Look, sweetie, I completely understand why you’re anxious to know about your friend, but if you get out of bed, you’ll hurt yourself and that won’t help anything, least of all, you. I’ll go and try to find out how he’s doing and come right back, I promise.”