by Ciji Ware
She put a tentative hand on Finn’s forearm. “You both must be absolutely exhausted... and I’m about to drop myself from either hunger or jet-lag. I agree. I think all three of us need a break. Let’s leave.”
Finn nodded, a kind of detached coolness masking his features.
Claudine glanced worriedly at her nephew and then said to Juliet, “Finn has his car here and can drop us both off. Where are you staying?”
“Avery doesn’t know it yet,” Juliet replied, “but I’m going to borrow her apartment on the Rue de Lille.” She turned to address Finn. “I hope that won’t take you too far out of your way? I could easily just get a taxi.”
As if shaking himself out of a trance, he replied, “No, no... not out of our way at all. Rue de Lille is not that far from Claudine’s place on Rue Jacob. They’re both on the Left Bank.”
“Great. Give me a sec to find Avery’s house key. I saw her purse on the bed stand. The emergency responders must have gathered it up when they put her in the ambulance.”
Fortunately, Avery’s keys were easily located at the bottom of her handbag next to her cell phone. Juliet scribbled a note and tucked it under the paper cup half full of melted ice chips. It was early evening by now and it had grown dark outside the hospital windows. Juliet imagined that the nurses would soon be coming in with Avery’s evening cocktail of sedatives and pain pills. She wrote:
I’m at your flat, a cell phone call away
and not too far by metro, I’m told.
Otherwise, I’ll see you in the a.m.
Love, your Cuz...
She dangled the keys in one hand and pulled her suitcase by her other as she emerged from Avery’s room. “For once, something was easy around here,” she announced, and then halted in her tracks. “Where’s your aunt?”
“Claudine decided the quickest way to get home was by metro, since her line is back up and running again. I expect by now, the stations are swarming with cops.”
“Oh, gosh! I hope your driving me to Avery’s didn’t—”
Finn laughed. “God, no! My aunt at seventy-seven prides herself on her independence, and it really is faster for her to take the metro.” He grabbed the handle on Juliet’s suitcase. “For some reason,” he said, a sly grin spreading across his face, “she found it significant that you and I literally crashed into each other outside the hospital.”
“You told her about that? Did you mention how rude I was not to apologize on the spot the way you did?”
“No,” he replied, deadpan. “I told her it was all my fault.”
Juliet pointed a finger at the worn patch on the sleeve of his jacket.
“Oh, I get it,” she teased him. “An officer and a gentleman?”
“By Act of Congress, no less,” he replied.
“Huh? How’s that?”
“I’ll explain later. Let’s get out of here.”
Finn gestured to a minuscule car parked in the hospital visitors’ area. Juliet absorbed the sight of a vintage, low-slung MG’s forest-green body and black canvas top and began to laugh.
“No wonder your aunt wanted to take the metro!” Finn swung open the passenger door and she pointed to the camel-colored leather interior. “A two-seater with a tiny bench for a back seat? Does this vehicle actually drive? It must be fifty-years-old!”
“Sixty-four years,” Finn replied with obvious pride. “It’s a 1951 model.”
Juliet bent at her waist to have a better look inside.
“And just how were all three of us, plus my suitcase, going to fit in this chariot?”
“I could have strapped your bag to the back,” he insisted. “You’re slender enough to have squeezed onto the bench behind Claudine riding in the passenger seat.”
Juliet looked at him with undisguised skepticism.
“I bet your aunt just chose the subway to avoid feeling like a clown at the circus.”
Finn held up his hand like a Boy Scout. “I swear... on my honor... my aunt volunteered that she admired your loyalty to your friend Avery, flying here all the way from California. Her exact words were, ‘With the time change and all this stress, the poor girl must be about to drop. I’ll take the metro and give her my seat.’”
“Hmmm... .” Juliet murmured, unconvinced. She tapped the MG’s soft canvas top. “But... don’t get me wrong,” she hastened to add, “I’m very grateful for the ride.”
“When I bought the car seven months ago on a sunny spring day with the wisteria and cherry blossoms in bloom, it seemed like a swell idea,” he noted, stashing her suitcase on its side behind their bucket seats. “I should have been a little suspicious, though, that it came with a bearskin rug. Hop in and you’ll see. It can be quite cozy.”
As soon as she was settled, he tucked a very brown, very heavy, very furry blanket around her feet, legs and shoulders.
“No heater, right?” she asked when he’d folded himself into the other seat. “Where did you get this antique? And a right-hand drive, no less.”
“Someone from England sold it to a friend in Paris who sold it to another guy, who—after about twenty-five or thirty years—sold it to me.”
“But at least the French are sensible like us. They drive on the right side of the road while the British drive on the left. Isn’t it kind of terrifying to maneuver a tiny, English sport car like this in Paris traffic?”
“Oh... like most inconveniences, you get used to it.” He turned the key in the ignition and Juliet was alarmed by the odd sounds that burbled forth. She observed Finn in profile as he wiggled the key, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Come on, baby... come on!”
A second later, the MG seemed to respond to his commanding tone and the engine turned over. Juliet covered her eyes as they pulled into traffic.
“Whew,” she breathed when the car appeared unscathed in the flow of vehicles advancing down the road. Despite the heavy bear rug, she could see her breath within the close confines of the passenger seat. She wondered if tonight it would start to snow and the security helicopters would be grounded?
Finn handed her his cell phone. “Can you pull up Avery’s street address on my GPS? I vaguely know where Rue de Lille is, but I don’t know where the apartment number shows up.”
Juliet took his phone in hand and murmured, “Let’s see... number seven.”
“How did your friend happen to land a place to live there? It’s a great neighborhood, but pretty fancy.”
Tapping the address into his phone she replied, “Actually, I was the one who told her to see if there was an apartment on Rue de Lille, or nearby.”
“You’ve lived in Paris before?”
“No, but my great-great grandmother did.” Unable to keep the pride out of her tone, she added, “She was one of the first women to gain a certificate of architecture at L’École des Beaux Arts at the end of the nineteenth century. After the big San Francisco earthquake in 1906, she designed and built the small hotel my family owns and still lives in.”
Finn glanced briefly at the Google map on the phone that Juliet held in her hand.
“That’s impressive,” he said with an admiring nod. “Is Juliet a family name?”
“Julia... Juliet... both are. We alternate generations to keep everyone straight at family get-togethers. Great, great granny’s mentor was another pioneering California woman architect named Julia Morgan who built a slew of buildings out West.”
“Well, Juliet is a beautiful name,” Finn replied as he made a right turn across a bridge and drove along the Left Bank of the Seine. “Very romantic.” The outlines of the Eiffel Tower rose in the night sky, its silhouette beautiful and ominous in the darkness.
She pursed her lips, wondering if Finn were teasing her, as had so many others all her life, about the connection to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Meanwhile, he returned his gaze to the street ahead.
“It’s so strange not to see the tower lighted after dusk,” he murmured. “But you were saying that you recommended Avery find a place on Rue de Lille?”
<
br /> “Yes. When Avery decided to quit her job where I worked too and come to Paris to study portrait painting, I told her about the student quarter near L’École. Amazingly enough, there was an apartment at the top of number seven, and Avery took it.”
“Well, the neighborhood is pretty posh now. French gentrification, et cetera.”
“It is?” Juliet asked, somewhat deflated.
“The lower apartments, especially, but I imagine there are still some bonne chambres on the top floors.”
“What are bonne chambres?”
“Maids rooms,” he translated.
Juliet took in the sight of the massive former train station they were passing that Finn identified as the Musée d’Orsay. She remembered from her art history studies that it housed one of the world’s greatest collections of Impressionist paintings.
“So,” Finn said, turning onto the Rue de Lille behind the museum, “for the first time today you’ll be seeing where your great-great grandmother lived—what, a hundred-plus years ago? That is pretty great.”
“It is.” She smiled at his joke, stirred by the thought she’d be staying at Avery’s flat in the very building where her talented forbear had lived. She glanced across the space separating them, her spirits lifting a notch. “I want you to know, Finn, that I really appreciate you’re doing this... driving me to Avery’s.”
“Happy to oblige,” he replied, scanning the street numbers passing by.
“No, truly,” she insisted, “and also, you were great the way you handled telling Avery the absolute minimum about Jean-Pierre’s condition. You saw for yourself how fragile she is right now. I can only imagine how terrible it is for you and your aunt to know that... well... that the Grenelles’ boy probably isn’t going to make it.”
She noticed Finn taking a firmer hold of the leather-covered steering wheel, but all he said was, “Glad to be of help.”
“Are we very near L’École des Beaux Arts?” she asked.
“It should be at the far end of Rue de Lille. Ah... and there’s number seven.”
Miraculously, there was a parking place within a block of Avery’s apartment that was just large enough for the diminutive car to slip into next to the curb.
“No wonder you like driving cette petite voiture in Paris,” Juliet said admiringly.
“Ha-ha! You do speak French. I understood: ‘this little car,’ right?”
“Yes, but as I said before: my French is horrible-to-non-existent. Only what I was forced to learn while in art school. That’s where Avery and I first became friends, and then we both got jobs at a San Francisco start-up—which actually belongs to my family, too.”
Finn reached for the door handle, and then hesitated.
“Ah... interesting. A hotel and a family business. What did you two do there?”
“Commercial graphic art. Not a first choice for either of us, but we both needed to start paying off our student debt. My dad always says that five generations of Thayers have lived from hand-to-mouth in a big way and we’re ‘land poor.’ Educating three kids, each two years apart, at private colleges cost plenty.”
“What was your first choice with art?” he asked, leaning back in his bucket seat.
“My goal has always been plein air landscape painting, and Avery, obviously, is passionate about portrait painting. They teach both at L’École.”
“Plein air means... painting from real life, right? Outdoors... in the plain air?”
“Yes, basically landscape painting.” Then she teased, “Hey, you speak French about as well as I do!”
Finn again reached for his car door handle. “Well, I’m betting that despite what you say, you’re probably way ahead of me in that department. I studied Arabic at the Academy.”
“Army or—?”
“Air Force. My appointment to the Academy in Colorado Springs was the ‘Act of Congress’ thing I kidded about earlier. A senator from your state has to recommend you as a candidate and it gets voted on.”
“You’re an actual pilot?” She glanced at his flight jacket.
“Not anymore.” He paused. “I got shot down a couple of years ago on my second tour in Afghanistan,” he added with no further details. He swiftly opened his door and went around to help Juliet out of the car, seizing a corner of the heavy bearskin blanket and folding it into a thick square. Pulled to her full height, she shook a finger at him in the chilly evening air.
“You can’t just drop something like that on me! Shot down? Thank God you’re okay! What happened?”
Finn took his time placing the blanket on her empty seat and then offered matter-of-factly, “A mission to evacuate soldiers hurt in Kandahar. I only ended up with a broken leg and a thigh full of shrapnel. Four of the guys didn’t do so well when we crashed.”
“Meaning?”
“They died.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
Finn ducked his head and reached into the back seat of his car to liberate her suitcase from the bench seat where he’d secured it.
“After I got hurt, I couldn’t pass the flight physical. When I recovered well enough to walk without a limp, I was transferred to a States-side division for three years. Last year, I resigned from active duty—period.” He set her suitcase on the ground and pulled up its telescoping handle. “And that’s the story, morning glory.”
Juliet guessed Finn had probably told that version of his departure from the service many times and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. Maybe he was working for NATO or something, she speculated, which accounted for why he was in France. What would he say if he knew that she had designed the packaging for the top-selling video war game that offered “pretend” aerial combat of the most violent kind to kids as well as to amateur joy-stick jockeys like her brother Brad and his Stanford buddies—men approaching their middle years who had never served a day in uniform?
“So, no more Air Force?” she commented, falling in step beside him as he led the way down the street.
“Nope.” He took her arm as they approached number seven and she was startled by how comforting it felt to have this stranger by her side. “Let’s get you upstairs and turn on the heat in Avery’s flat,” he said. “In November in some of these old buildings, it can actually be cold enough to freeze fish.”
CHAPTER 5
Avery’s apartment building was in a fortress-like structure with ten-foot-tall wooden double doors on the street level that were flanked by panels of glass protected by wrought iron scrollwork. An outsized brass slot for mail punctuated the right door’s central panel—and there was no keyhole to be seen under the knob on the left door.
“So now what do we do?” she asked in some dismay, holding up Avery’s set of keys. Just then, another helicopter could be heard patrolling a few streets away.
Finn swiveled his head, eyes darting to the sky. Juliet observed him inhale a deep breath, let it out slowly, and inhale a second one. He pointed to a panel of buttons affixed to the right-hand stone doorframe. “Do you know the code?” His voice was tense and he shot a glance to the right and left of the two of them, as if something sinister was very nearby.
Unnerved by everything happening around her, Juliet shook her head. “I-I never thought to ask.”
“Okay,” he said in a clipped tone. “Let’s ring for the concierge.”
By this time, Juliet’s hands were both shaking and numb with the cold. She pushed the lowest button on the panel, waited, and got no response.
“Here, let me try,” Finn offered.
Methodically, he pushed the top button for an unknown apartment, waited, and when no one said, “’Allo?” he proceeded to push the next five until there was a loud buzzing sound and he swiftly pressed his leather-clad shoulder against the heavy door.
“So much for security,” he commented. “Quick, get inside.” He held the door for her to enter a narrow, stone-paved foyer that muted the sounds of the helicopter overhead.
Juliet turned around slowly, grat
eful to be inside where it felt safer.
“Just think...” she murmured, pointing to a set of stairs. Her voice echoed in the passageway. “My great-great granny, Amelia Hunter Bradshaw Thayer, strode up and down those stairs every day she went back and forth to architecture class at L’École...” She shivered in the cold. “I hope she owned a fur coat! This place is the North Pole!”
“Avery lives on the fifth floor, right?” Finn asked, taking a tighter grip on her suitcase. “That means it’s six flights up. The French count the bottom floor as the ‘ground floor,’ and one flight up is the first floor.”
“Really?” groaned Juliet. “We have six floors to climb? That cancels the goodness of the French driving on the same side of the road as we do in America.”
Finn gave a snort of laughter and reached for the banister. The pair trudged up the circular stairway in silence, passing door after oak door, until both of them were out of breath, puffs of steam spewing from their nose and mouth in the frigid air by the time that they reached the top level.
“Let me try opening her door,” Juliet said between gasps. “I have to master all this sometime.”
Fortunately, the modern key fit smoothly in the lock, easily admitting them into Avery’s apartment. Once inside, however, they exchanged startled glances, neither speaking at first as they both gazed at the walls surrounding them. Finally, Juliet declared, “This is not even a maid’s room. It’s an attic. Watch out, Finn! If you move from the door, you’ll bump your head.”
The interior of Avery’s flat could not have been more than three hundred square feet, with much of it useless space for anyone but a midget, due to the sloping angle of the roof and deep-set gables cut into two walls.
During the next twenty minutes the pair tried everything possible to get the heater to work. Leaving Finn to continue fiddling with the dials on the radiator under the window, Juliet crossed the one-room space to inspect the half-fridge that was narrower than an ice cooler—and probably less efficient, from the look of its rusty interior.
“There’s not a thing that’s edible in here,” she complained. “Not even any take-out Chinese!”