“That doesn’t fit the legal definition of entrapment,” she heard Jamie say. “The girl showed up looking for you but not knowing it was you … oh, no, no, no. You will go in there and talk to her … I guarantee you’ll come across far more favorably in your version of events than you would in mine.”
Annie strained to hear the rushed-whisper of Gus’s words, while thinking of the message she left for Laurel at the inn. Would her mom come to Paris? Did Annie even want her to? God, what a disaster of a vacation. She should’ve just stayed in her room and eaten cakes.
“Anyone know where a fellow can get a little meat and potatoes round here?” said a voice.
Annie looked up, a smile crashing across her face. Gus, her old pal Gus.
“Hachis Parmentier,” she said and frowned.
No, she was not happy. She was mad. The man had lied. Or maybe he hadn’t.
He had led Laurel on. Or so it seemed.
But, at the very least, he broke Laurel’s heart, or broke her altogether, otherwise she would’ve stayed in Paris. Everyone knew the best way to solve an immigration problem was with a wedding. The Laurel in Gus’s story wouldn’t have left unless she had to.
“Well, well, well,” Annie said. “If it isn’t the Missing Writer of The Missing Duchess. What was it you said to me on that first day? ‘The man who wrote that book is long since gone.’”
“The old fella went to Paris in 1973 and in Paris he remains.”
“We were acquainted at one time.”
“That man is unknowable.”
“Long gone,” Annie said, eyes narrowing as she poked at her dinner. She was suddenly not that hungry. “Or right in front of my face. Oh, thanks for the tape recordings, by the way. Jolly good time listening to the details of my mother’s Parisian sexual awakening. I suppose it’s nice to know she hasn’t always had her shit together.”
“Whoa,” Jamie said, entering the room. “You told her about having sex? With her mum? You’ve some balls on you, guv’nor. Of course, telling Annie about said balls was probably in poor taste.”
“Probably?” she said.
Jamie took a seat across from her. He placed a napkin on his lap, as if this were an ordinary meal and not the start of some kind of very jacked-up dinner theater. The man had expended great effort on making the hachis Parmentier and evidently nothing was going to keep him from it.
“You told me the writer was long gone,” Annie reminded Gus, who remained fixed in the doorway. “You said he was in Paris.”
Jamie motioned his brother toward the food but Gus waved him away.
“So, nothing?” Annie said. “You have zero response?”
“Are we not in Paris?” Gus asked. “Funny, as I was sure I saw the Notre-Dame across the way.”
“Smartass is not as cute on a sixty-year-old as I’m sure it was on Win Seton the writer. If it was even cute back then at all.”
“My guess is no,” Jamie said.
“Annie,” Gus said with a deep sigh. “I meant every word. The man who wrote that book, who loved your mother, he is gone. Win … he was the best part of me. A sad referendum on my true nature, of course, as Win was nothing to get excited about. But that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Enough with the self-deprecating crap.” Annie speared a piece of meat. “It was funny and even charming at first. Before I knew you were completely full of shit.”
“Aw, Annie,” Jamie said. “Cut the poor bloke some slack. He’s only a little full of shit. A half tank. Maybe only a quarter full.”
“I haven’t uttered a single lie,” Gus insisted. “That man. That life. It’s gone. When your mother left Paris, Pru disappeared and so did Win. What you see is his shell, the husk of a man. The rest of him remains forever in Paris, stuck in 1973.”
“That is completely pathetic,” Annie said, even as she felt her heart soften at the thought.
“Probably. But that’s how I see it. And that’s why I ended the tapes where I did. You want the truth? The epilogue? What happened after? Well, listen up, I’ll tell you exactly where Win and Pru went from there.”
Seventy-nine
ÎLE SAINT-LOUIS
PARIS
APRIL 1973
We believed Paris was the start of us.
It’s the kind of city that makes you think of beginnings, or even juicy middles. Paris is a book to savor, in whole or in part, at any time and in any season. At age ninety or at thirty-four, you can open any chapter and read from there.
Seeing Paris with Pru was like turning up the city’s volume, brightening its lights, painting the sky bluer. F. Scott Fitzgerald said “The best of America drifts to Paris.” Pru was the best of America, the best of everything.
In between the dispatches from the Grange, tidbits to help round out my book just as Mrs. Spencer promised, Pru and I gulped in the city. We frequented every worthy café, watering hole, underground club, and place to be seen and unseen. We clinked glasses at the Ritz, ferreted out underground discos, and paid more than a few visits to the gay nightclubs Pru still joked were merely colorful closets from which I refused to emerge.
On weekends we went to Brittany, or to Banbury. A half-dozen times we went with Gads to Blenheim, where Pru learned to ride horses and quickly became a foe to the indigenous fox population. You told me you lived in hunt country. I’d like to think Blenheim gave your mom a first taste.
My brother graciously employed Pru as a sometimes-courier at his bank. It was not for want of money but for want of not getting deported. In actuality the only things she ever couriered were the various sunglasses and wallets he’d left scattered throughout town.
Why did I not marry her then? Shed the courier façade and make a proper wife out of her? I don’t have an answer other than it didn’t seem necessary. Something about superfluous paperwork, unneeded red tape, and a declining institution. Getting married in 1970s Paris was a bit like wearing a tuxedo just for the hell of it. Plus look at the duke and duchess. Things were fantastic, until they wed. They remained a cautionary tale lodged in our minds.
Soon it was April. Paris was coming out of its slush and gloom. In the States, the last batch of the six hundred POWs released under Operation Homecoming returned to American soil. Nixon was knee-deep in post-Watergate conspiracies and cover-ups. Mrs. Spencer’s chum Picasso died at his home in France.
It was early afternoon. We’d come from the Luxembourg Gardens, where I’d written the last lines of The Missing Duchess. Some claptrap about the duchess unknowing of true love. I’d go on to change these words, the book not published until after her death, but at the time I viewed the biography as good as done. It was the shortest distance between us and the sunset.
“Who are you going to write about next?” Pru asked as we bounded our way up the steps of my flat. “You spent twenty years chasing this broad. You’d better get cracking on the next.” She tapped her wrist. “Not a moment to waste.”
“The only broad I want to chase is you.”
I’d playfully nipped at Pru’s backside as she opened the door to the flat. It was two o’clock. Two-ten, to be precise. We knew instantly something was wrong.
“Jamie?” Pru called, tiptoeing down the hall.
He was not supposed to be there. He should’ve been working banker’s hours like the banker that he was. But his unmistakable inflection rang throughout the home. He was entertaining a guest, someone he didn’t know.
“In the living room!” he called, voice feeble. “Is my brother with you?”
Jamie stepped out into the hallway, his face green as a witch.
“Jamie?” Pru walked toward him. She placed a hand on his elbow. They’d become close. He was now like a brother to her. “You look peaky. Is everything…?”
“Laurel.” He took her hand, panic in his eyes. “Fecking hell. I don’t know what to do. There’s someone here to see you. Mrs. Spencer…”
“Mrs. Spencer’s here?”
Pru’s face brightened.
&nb
sp; “Where is the old gal? I hope Tom’s taking good care of her. Is he here too?”
Pru tried to step around the corner. Jamie yanked her back.
“Cor blimey. She warned us! She did!”
Pru gently pushed Jamie out of her way, and then walked into the living room where she saw a figure sitting on the couch. A figure that was decidedly not Mrs. Spencer or Tom. Lord, what Pru would’ve given to see Tom’s menacing glower right then, the hammer in his hand.
“Who are you?” Pru said, though she knew the answer already. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
Every organ inside her body plunged to the floor, Pru would later describe. Here was a ghost. An apparition. Death at her doorstep.
Run! Pru’s mind told her, though her feet refused to move. Run! Leave! Get out!
The person before her should’ve been a welcome sight, a miracle, a reason to celebrate. But in fact there sat the worst possible news—for Pru, and especially for a bloke once known as Win.
Eighty
ÎLE SAINT-LOUIS
PARIS
APRIL 1973
“Laurel Innamorati. You are a tough one to track down.”
The man stood. It was not so easy as he had but one leg.
“Here you are though,” he said. “At last. I swore that no matter what, I’d go to the ends of the earth to find you and Paris is close enough. Paris by way of a shit shack in the English countryside. What the hell is up with that place?”
Pru would later say that at that moment she genuinely thought she was back at Berkeley. Maybe she was with Petal, finally agreeing to partake in her roommate’s penchant for acid. What felt like a year of grief and turmoil was instead one wretched, upside-down, and backward trip. It made more sense than accepting what she saw as true.
“No,” Pru said, and tried to shake away the vision. “You’re not real. This isn’t real.”
I tried to reach for her but she swatted me away. Tears filled her eyes.
“You should probably scram,” the one-legged man said to Jamie and me. “She’s obviously in shock. Leave her be. Give her time to adjust.”
“Sorry, mate, I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
“Me neither,” Jamie agreed with a nod and a tight-lipped look of solidarity.
“Fine. Have it your way. We can make it a party. Laurel?”
The man tried to walk toward her but, thanks to his lack of balance, fell onto the couch with a thud.
“Laurel?” he said again.
The stranger’s eyes latched onto Pru’s drawn and waxen face. He scowled at and into her, as if this might get her talking. Pru did open her mouth for a second, but then closed it back up again.
“Well, this has been a hell of an adventure,” the man said. “Mom told me you were at some estate in England. Then I showed up and it’s a friggin’ hovel. I rang the goddamned doorbell and some naked geezer started shooting at me. As if I haven’t had my fill of that.”
Pru made an odd smacking sound, like a puppet without a voice.
“The bitch was paranoid as hell,” he went on. “Wouldn’t tell me where you were. Luckily she had some family members willing to be a little more honest.” He shook his head, then laughed sourly. “I’ve seen some crazy shit in the past year, but this might take the cake.”
Pru whimpered but I was the only one to hear.
“So old chum,” I said, working up the mettle, trying to sound at ease. My stomach, though, was roiling like a storm. “You’re sitting in my living room but I don’t recall you making a proper introduction.”
“Win…” Jamie said plaintively, a warning.
“I’m Charlie,” the man replied, giving his name a kick. “Charles Edgar Haley, Junior. Laurel’s fiancé.”
He didn’t need to add the fiancé part. My heart had already smashed into a trillion pieces.
This man, this skinny, tan-necked, buzz-headed, one-legged foreigner was Pru’s fiancé. The one who was dead.
“You told me he’d been killed,” I said to her, eyes blazing.
Pru looked back, face as startled as if I’d struck her, which is what she said it felt like. I called her a liar, but I didn’t care about the lie. One lie or a thousand, if this man disappeared all would’ve been forgiven.
“He was killed,” she sputtered. “That’s what … no. Everyone go away.” She grabbed at the sides of her head. “This is not true. None of you are real.”
“Oh sweet Laurel.” Charlie lunged forward and grabbed her arm. “My poor girl.”
He pulled her onto the couch beside him. And, wouldn’t you know it, she let herself be pulled. Once she made contact with the cushion, Pru buried her head in both hands.
“This must be surreal for you,” Charlie said. “We tried to find you but no one picked up the damn phone at your supposed number. Some friend of Mom’s … Edith, I think … we thought she was messing with us. Giving us bogus information. So I flew over myself, as soon as I could. We were going to send a private investigator but I wanted to be the one to hunt you down. You are one hell of a slippery girl, I’ll tell you that.”
“Hunting down women,” I said, trying to be funny, trying to be mean. “You Yanks are crafty, aren’t you?”
“Who are you again?” Charlie said, squinting.
I noticed then his rumpled clothes, the scarred face. The man was a long way from posh Boston, to be sure. He did not look like someone who fit with Pru. Hell, he thought she was Laurel, when she’d come so far from that.
“The name’s Win Seton. And I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Whoa, that’s quite a bold directive when a man’s come back from the dead to find his true love.”
“True love?” I said. “The girl who waved good-bye as your ship sailed off no longer exists.”
“I was never on a ship.”
“She’s not the same person.”
“Like I said, who are you again?”
“I’m Win Seton.”
“Yeah, I got that part. I might be missing a limb but my ears work.”
“I’m the owner of this apartment,” I said. “And she’s my girl.”
Pru looked up then. Her eyes were red and streaky. I saw in them what I mistook as a promise but was instead a plea.
“They told me he was dead,” she said, voice quivering. “I saw him.” Pru turned back to Charlie. “Your ashes. Kon Tum. They buried you! There was a funeral!”
“I know. It’s hella fucked up. A real botch job. The short version…” Charlie shrugged. “Wrong body.”
“Wrong body?” I said, as disgusted as I’d ever been in my life. “How is that even possible?”
The explanation was horrific enough but, on top of that, he was talking about it like someone muffed his lunch order and he was therefore forced to eat chicken salad instead of tuna.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Charlie said. “A bunch of men did die in the blast. The rest of us were captured. Uncle Sam tried its damnedest to match body parts with the list of those missing. But…”
He shrugged again. I wanted to punch him in the face.
Sixteen bodies were found after the attack, Charlie explained. Twelve were positively identified. The Department of Defense tried to sort out the leftover four and eventually used their best efforts to pin the parts on Charlie and three other men.
“Some guys reported as dead, like me, were POWs,” he said. “Some guys thought missing were already dead. A clusterfuck. No better way to explain it.”
It sounded so damned unbelievable at the time. But in the following years I’d come to learn this was not a one-time screwup. Bad luck, horrible luck, though not singular luck. Other misidentified bodies have been uncovered from that war, in the new millennium even, thanks to better forensics.
“They mixed up body parts?” Pru said, green-gilled and looking like she might vomit. “How does that even…”
“I guess, fundamentally, we were interchangeable.”
“And so you’ve been…” she sta
mmered, trying to get a hold of what he was saying.
“In a POW camp,” Charlie finished for her. “Goddamned hellhole. Makes that decrepit mansion of yours look like the fucking Ritz. The shit I saw. The shit that happened. I can’t even tell you. I will never tell you. But I will say this. On a good day I only ingested twenty maggots, and the pus on my wounds was allowed to ooze unfettered, no new wounds piled on.”
Charlie said nothing else, locking up the details in the steel clamp of his mouth. I was unnerved to see hostility in his eyes, which I attributed to my own demented jealousy. He was a romantic rival, infinitely more sympathetic and brave.
“So they let you out?” Pru said. “Just like that?”
Though she’d heard of Operation Homecoming, Pru had not been one of the four million people glued to a television watching the POWs come home. She had been in Paris, in love, with no time to brood over world affairs.
“I wouldn’t say they let me out ‘just like that.’” Charlie smirked. “If you’re curious, I had both legs when I went into camp.”
“God,” Pru said, and made a small gagging sound.
“No, miss. There was no God where I was. Not a hint of Him to be found.”
“I’m … I’m glad you survived,” Pru managed. She looked unsteady, unsure, a woman in high heels walking across the deck of a careening boat. “Your parents must be thrilled.”
Jamie and I exchanged looks. I’d never seen a homecoming that looked so far from home. In this I found hope, however short-lived. Pru was not overjoyed to see him. She didn’t even seem especially relieved.
“They’re happy of course,” Charlie said. “But, baby, it was you. Your face kept me going. I was only in the camp nine months, nothing compared to some of the guys, but it was pure hell. I thought of you the whole damned time. Hell, I thought of you before I was captured. The horrors I witnessed, the ones I committed myself.”
As Charlie spoke, veins lifted off his temples.
“You were right,” he said. “I never should’ve gone. But visions of you kept me alive. When I finally got out of the hospital and you weren’t there … fuck. I wished I’d died. This time, for real.”
I'll See You in Paris Page 32