Sensational

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  Nathalie stared at the ceiling. A cobweb drifted back and forth like a miniature noose. “If there’s anything good I can say about this, it’s that I’m relieved I don’t remember seeing the heads, either in person or in my vision. For all the duress this ability has given me, at least it protected me this time.”

  Papa nodded. “Once we had a fever outbreak on the ship, and in healing, I took it on. This time it wasn’t diminished, and I was sicker than some of the men I healed.” He halted, overtaken by the memory. “We were in port at Shanghai and a skirmish broke out in the city; knives were drawn and one of my friends was stabbed. He died then and there.”

  “It could have been you,” Nathalie said. She hadn’t been aware of Papa’s brush with death. How many others had he encountered, both at sea and on land? She didn’t want to know.

  “Yes. It could have been me.”

  A knock on the apartment door interrupted them. Papa disappeared into the parlor. Then, she heard the timid creak of the hinge, followed by prolonged murmuring.

  The hinge signaled a proper hello, and footsteps came through.

  “I’ll let her know. Please do sit,” Papa said, his voice loud as it drew near. He poked his head into her room. “Jules is here.”

  “Is he?” She slipped out of bed. “Why?”

  Stanley hopped off the bed and scooted out the door Papa held open. “He said you were going to see Simone in a show. Do you remember?”

  She sighed. Despite anticipating a memory loss, she obviously hadn’t prepared for everything. “I didn’t write that down. So no. I don’t.”

  “I—I told him that might be the case. Shall I send him away?”

  For weeks Simone had talked about the show, and while Nathalie didn’t recall making plans to attend tonight specifically, she certainly didn’t want to let down her dearest friend.

  “I’ll go. It will take me some time to get ready. This is important to Simone, and … I don’t mind the distraction.” She tossed off her covers, took off her wool socks, and sat up. “Is Jules able to hear well?”

  Papa made a gesture indicative of “somewhat.”

  From what she’d written, he’d done two thought readings yesterday—and others, if Christophe needed them. Thought readings for murders took more out of him because they were so intense.

  “I hope he’s able to enjoy the show,” she said, as her father left the room.

  What a strange sense of normal it was, she thought, to share not only their Insightful gifts together, but also the consequences of them.

  Papa relayed everything to Jules and then excused himself to tend to elderly Madame Bisset downstairs, who needed him to hang a picture for her.

  Choosing what to wear was a challenge, even with an ample variety of clothes in her wardrobe. Maman made exquisite dresses, skirts, and blouses for her, using materials far above what they could otherwise afford that she acquired from the shop, either through discount or excess merchandise. Jules didn’t have the benefit of refined clothes. For his sake, she was careful not to wear anything that would draw attention to the contrast when they were out together. She sensed the disparity troubled him at times and didn’t want to exacerbate those feelings. Were it not for her mother’s profession, she wouldn’t be so fortunate herself, and she never forgot that.

  No, the reason Nathalie had difficulty now was because she was exceedingly cold and inclined to dress as if it were January. She couldn’t keep on this velvet dress, despite how it and her thickest wool skirts beckoned her. Last time, her memory loss was three days and so was the coldness, so it stood to reason that losing two days might result in two days of struggling to stay warm.

  Who knew? No two Insightfuls had the same experience. Her ability was born of science but had the untamed spirit of art.

  Nathalie opted for a red-and-gray striped taffeta dress, the silver bracelet with smooth red glass Jules had given her, and a deep gray shawl she’d bought in the Cambodia Pavilion. She brushed her hair and pinned it up. Deciding her neck would be cold, she selected a red velvet scarf to wear with her overcoat.

  As soon as she held it, her mind went to the words in her journal.

  They each had a white scarf around their necks, covered in blood.

  With a shake of the head, she returned the red scarf to the drawer and picked out a black-and-gray checked wool one instead. Even if she couldn’t remember, it just didn’t feel right to wear anything red around her neck today.

  She put on a hat and evening gloves, draped the scarf and coat over her arm, and entered the parlor. Jules stood, dapper in light gray pants and pale blue shirt, holding his dark gray hat. “Apologies for making you wait. I had to find clothing layers to account for winter on a late spring night.”

  “You look stunning,” he said, taking her hands in his and kissing her on the cheek. “How are you feeling?”

  “Before or after mon bonbon’s arrival?”

  “Ah, speaking of which…” He picked up a small bundle he’d placed on the table and handed it to her. “Chocolate with a raspberry filling.”

  Nathalie opened it with a grin and inhaled the scent. She tossed it in her mouth, giving him a muffled “Merci!” as she joined him on the sofa. She shared with him a version of her feelings that was more appealing than what was underneath, like the dresses that covered Maman’s mannequins. No need to talk about how embarrassed or weak she felt, not yet. Maybe not at all, not even to Jules. As she spoke, she noticed how intently he focused on her mouth.

  “How’s your hearing today, Jules?”

  He smiled in a way that told her he, too, was trying to hide the extent of his magic-engendered affliction. “Much better than it was earlier. I was isolated this morning, couldn’t hear very much at all. My mother and Faux Papa quarreled, so just as well. I took Suzanne for a walk.” He touched his earlobes, his eyes on a distant something else inside him. “Faux Papa” was his mother’s husband, a gambler Jules was compelled to call father at home but gave the added designation otherwise. Suzanne was his six-year-old sister, an apple-cheeked delight. “It’s still dulled, but steadily improving. I’m hopeful I’ll be back to normal by the end of the evening. Don’t whisper anything playfully untoward to me, lest I ask you to repeat it more loudly.”

  Invoking Simone, she nudged him with her elbow. “Warning noted.”

  Just then there was a rustling at the door, followed by Maman coming through it with a bag of provisions. Jules immediately stood and offered to help. Nathalie rose, too. Together they put the food on shelves and in cupboards while Nathalie told her mother what had happened.

  When they left for Le Chat Noir, she took Jules by the hand.

  “Thank you for being so good to me,” she said. “I’m grateful for your multitude of kindnesses and how willing you are to talk to me. And to let me talk to you.”

  Then she told him a truer version of her feelings, and he did what was most important to her—he understood.

  10

  Gaudy Venus with a splayed-out palm tree, glittering with electric lights, hailed them to Le Chat Noir.

  Nathalie slipped off her coat and gloves as she and Jules stepped inside. A hulking man with an unkempt beard and an ill-fitting evening coat checked their names off a list, his eyes staying on Nathalie longer than she considered appropriate. He remarked to Jules about his good fortune in accompanying this “fetching lady” and gestured for them to proceed.

  The club had two floors: food, drink, and performances on the first floor and the shadow theater with its moving silhouettes on the second. Paintings of black cats under the moon and twirling ballet dancers reminded patrons that the heartbeat of this cabaret was art.

  Louis, easy to spot with his deep red pompadour hair, waved to them from a center table near the stage. He had a small bouquet of roses on the table, no doubt for Simone, and three glasses of wine.

  The club pulsated with unbridled exuberance. Nathalie had been here several times in the last couple of years, and while it wasn’
t something she could do nightly like Simone, she understood the appeal. Everyone was in high spirits; there was a smile in every direction. Lovers shared gazes hinting at secrets when they weren’t sharing kisses; impromptu dancers heard the music before it even began. Someone was doing a tarot card reading at one table; at another, dice rolls were followed with back slaps and guffaws. Every man and woman in the room was so alive.

  Quite a contrast to where Nathalie spent her days.

  Jules pulled back Nathalie’s chair and then, after almost getting a drink spilled on him by a rushing waiter, settled into his own. After a round of greetings and proffered wine, Louis’s eyes took on a devilish glint.

  “So,” he said, flattening his palms on the table, “have you heard the rumor?”

  Nathalie and Jules shrugged in unison. “I haven’t heard much of anything today,” Jules added, poking him.

  Louis leaned closer, oblivious to the dark humor, with a conspiratorial look in his eyes. He loved being the bearer of news. “It’s being said they found one of the bodies.”

  Jules darted a glance at Nathalie. “Louis, I don’t know if—”

  “Where?” Nathalie appreciated Jules’s chivalric concern, given what they’d discussed on the way there. Yet she didn’t want to be depicted as delicate. She’d lost two days, not the ability to hear about a killer. This was about the crimes, not her.

  She hoped.

  Louis wrinkled his longish nose. “The sewer, of all places.”

  The Paris sewers, an engineering feat so impressive that it was a tourist attraction, were watery avenues mirroring the city above. Hundreds of meters of tunnels wormed their way underneath the city, carrying filth and waste and secrets.

  “Who told you?” Whereas Louis indulged in gossip here and there, Jules was more discriminating. He aimed for facts, wanted to know the whys and hows. Maybe it stemmed from his Insightful gift or his time spent helping with cases; whatever it was, Nathalie valued his discretion.

  Louis sat back and nodded toward the bar. “Up there. Overheard two men talking. I didn’t hear much because they walked to their table shortly thereafter.”

  “So what?” Jules smirked. “You should have followed them. Tell them your inquisitive friend Jules wants to know how they found out. Sit at their table until they explain themselves. Threaten to read your poetry to them.”

  Louis chuckled. “Let me go ask them now,” he said, pretending to get up.

  “I’ll do it. Where are they?” Nathalie eyed the room and pointed to a pair of very old, very drunk men. “Is that them? Quickly, give me a poem.” She laughed, but instantly her mouth went sour, as if the laugh were spoiled food.

  Why were they joking? Why was she being so lighthearted? Nothing about this was funny, not the murders, not the rumor, not the idea of a body in the sewer. And certainly not what it had done to her.

  Louis rested his elbows on the table, expression somber once again. “If it’s true, I wonder if the other body is in the sewer.”

  Jules, ever the studious one, reeled off some facts about the design of the sewers and how many kilometers they were. As Jules spoke, Louis’s eyes flickered to Nathalie. Suddenly he stared at her as if seeing her for the first time tonight.

  “Nathalie, you’re shivering!”

  “Am I?” Whatever coldness she felt was replaced by heat rushing to her face.

  Louis put his hands to his cheeks. “Oh, no. I can’t believe I didn’t think to ask how you were doing. Especially after Jules’s remark about hearing—”

  “I didn’t think you were listening.”

  “I was, Jules. But I had to get the story out first.” He winked at Jules then turned to Nathalie. “Last time I remember how you—when you—” He stopped himself and flattened his palms on the table once again. “Did you lose … days?”

  Jules put his arm around Nathalie. His warmth felt delightful, and she pressed into him lightly.

  “I lost days.”

  “Yesterday, I assume.” Louis winced. “And … our adventure at the empty shoemaker’s shop?”

  “You knocked over a rack and Simone found a love letter under an old ledger.”

  Louis’s face had a tint of hope. “So you do remember?”

  She frowned. “Non. Only through notes, from Monday afternoon until my ride home on the omnibus today,” she said, drawing her shawl closer. She described to him the feeling as she realized it, and was answering his questions (Louis always had questions) when the club’s founder, M. Salis, took the stage.

  “You, sir,” said M. Salis, pointing to a gent on their left in perfectly ordinary garb. “Has anyone told you tonight how hideous that shirt is? Please do your fellow man a visual courtesy and dispose of it when you leave here tonight.”

  The crowd laughed, well-acquainted with the sharp tongue of the sardonic master of ceremonies toward his audience.

  “Ladies, gentlemen, and the rest of you too uncouth to be either, welcome to the show.” M. Salis smoothed out his jacket in exaggerated fashion. “May I present my cohort Aristide Burant and a cast of lovely ladies who will distract you from the mediocre humor in his act.”

  Simone and nine other girls took the stage in bold black-and-white costumes covered with ribbons and beads. They posed and danced as the cabaret singer, wearing a black velvet jacket, red shirt and scarf, and tall boots, sauntered on stage. For the next hour, he sang satirical songs about the minutiae of Parisian life, with political commentary and bawdy humor that made Nathalie blush.

  The show was entertaining (if unrefined), and Nathalie was more than proud of Simone, who radiated joy, beauty, and confidence. Just a few summers ago, Simone had sat with her on the Rooftop Salon, their name for the open-air space atop their apartment building. They’d stared at the stars and spoken of their dreams: Nathalie to work for the newspaper and Simone to be a performer. And here they were, each doing exactly that.

  “Well, did you love it?” asked Simone, bouncing over to their table about five minutes after the show concluded. She sat on Louis’s lap, hugging him and the roses. She still wore the bright lip color and rouge she’d had on during the performance but had changed into her own dress, which somehow didn’t look out of place at the cabaret. “Or did you love it?”

  “I found it to be moderately entertaining,” said Jules, faking seriousness.

  Nathalie joined in. “And I considered it to be somewhat amusing.”

  Then they both broke into grins, praising her and the show.

  It wasn’t the time or place for Nathalie to tell Simone what had happened, so she trusted Louis would.

  As they were talking, Simone bubbling with joy throughout, Nathalie took in her surroundings. People were talking, laughing, imbibing, smoking, trading stories. Life all around her. And try as she might to lose herself and simply enjoy her time among friends, all she could think of was how there might have been a body in the sewer and how she had lost two days of her life.

  * * *

  The walk home was leisurely, the night air a refreshing change from the smoke-filled hall. Nathalie and Jules walked hand in hand. Or rather, hand in gloves. Nathalie had been too embarrassed to wear them at Le Chat Noir and couldn’t wait to put them on again.

  They passed by Le Petit Journal, humming away with news and events as it always was.

  “I have an idea,” Nathalie said, halting a few meters beyond the entrance. “Two, in fact. Stay here—I’ll be just a moment.”

  With that, she dashed into the newspaper building.

  11

  The sewers were a vast subterranean city of their own, akin to the Catacombs, but housing ever-moving rainwater and waste rather than bones eternally at rest. Paris above and below, light and dark, all both hiding and revealing various facets of human existence.

  Nathalie had been only once before. She, Jules, Simone, and Louis, finding the newly offered official sewer tours too expensive, had devised their own very unofficial one of short duration. (A tourist noticed them slitherin
g down a side tunnel and screamed, creating a fuss they knew wouldn’t end well, so they’d fled in haste a mere quarter hour after entering.)

  The most distinct feature of that incident had been the foul odor. She could not imagine the lot of the night soil collectors, the men tasked with obtaining waste used for fields in the provinces.

  Yet somehow she’d forgotten just how overwhelming the smell was, even with the aid of a patchouli-scented handkerchief through which to breathe.

  Last night after the show, Nathalie confirmed with a newsroom colleague (her first idea) that a body had been found in the sewer. She proposed to Jules that in the morning they go on one of the tours, sort of (her second idea).

  They waited for a distraction at the entrance—sometimes it was nice to live in a city of distractions, and confused tourists inadvertently helped in this regard—and joined the group.

  Now, here they were in the sewers, trailing a group of tourists in order to … to what?

  Look for clues?

  Seek the murderer?

  Find the other body?

  Yes to all, to some extent. They agreed to pick up any objects that might, possibly, in some way, be of interest to the police.

  Yet none of those were plausible questions, really. Instinctive curiosity drew her here, not a logical, seamless plan. Or at least, if she’d had a plan or had thought through something later in the evening, it must have been swallowed by her ability last night. She’d been so caught up in the memory loss of touching the first victim’s head that it didn’t occur to her that a second would follow—the gap she’d suffer from the victim in the refrigeration room. As it were, the end of the night escaped her. She recalled saying good night to Jules and planning to meet; after that, she didn’t remember anything until waking up this morning.

  “I’m going to be disappointed if we don’t run into Jean Valjean,” said Jules, who had a fondness for Les Misérables.

  Nathalie stroked her coat-covered arms. Even though she was much less cold today, the humidity in the sewer exacerbated whatever remained. “I’d rather meet Fantine, but I’d greet Jean with enthusiasm, too.”