by Jill Kelly
The same kind smile reappeared and Sofia touched her arm. “Set yourself apart from the others in some way. Be receptive. Wait patiently. The answers will come.” She took a card from her pocket and handed it to Ellie. “Call me when you know.”
31
Ellie slept all the way to Paris. Between the Valium from her doctor and the sleeping pill samples Arlen had given her, the seven hours passed quickly. She was met at the airport by Michelle, a French major from the college who was now working as an au pair. Ellie offered to get them a cab, but Michelle insisted they use the bus system. Ellie realized the girl wanted to show off her knowledge of the city. She felt slow and hungover from the drugs and the jet lag, but she tried to seem interested in Michelle’s chatter about her new life, which was vastly different from small-town western Pennsylvania. Before Gettysburg, she would have enjoyed Michelle’s company, as the girl was clever and gregarious. Now all she wanted was to get to the studio apartment in the 5th arrondissement on the Rue des Ciseaux near Saint-Germain-des-Prés and go back to sleep.
Michelle insisted on bumping Ellie’s big roller bag up the narrow, twisting stone stairs to the third floor. Apartment #4 opened into a small kitchen with gas stove top, toaster oven, and refrigerator plus a small sink and counter space just long enough for a dish drainer and cutting board. In French style, the dishes and cutlery were on open wire shelves. A few steps further on was a living room crowded with a chocolate brown velour sofa, a coffee table, a miniscule TV, and against the wall a wooden table and two dining chairs. To the right, through small-paned glass doors, was a bedroom with a double bed and an antique armoire that Ellie guessed dated from the 1800s. And off that, behind the headboard, was tucked a tiny bathroom with toilet, sink, and stall shower. More glass doors in the bedroom opened onto a small balcony over the busy one-block street below. Restaurant noises wafted up from the street when she opened the doors.
She took Michelle down to the restaurant on the corner, where they ordered omelets and frites, the closest thing to an American breakfast on the menu. Michelle told her more than she wanted to know about the French family she worked for and the American kids she hung out with and a new guy, Lenny, she’d met a few days before. Ellie kept smiling and nodding and encouraging her.
“I was surprised to hear you were coming. I didn’t know you were going on sabbatical,” the girl said finally. She pulled out a Gauloise and lit it.
Ellie squelched a smile. Michelle had a fashionable cut on her brown curly hair, a scarf around her neck, and now the cigarette. Paris sophistication.
“I had a bad accident,” Ellie said. “It seemed best not to teach for a while and to get away and do some healing. And I’ve been wanting to come back to France, so it’s all worked out for the best.” She glanced over at the couple at the next table, who had just ordered a second carafe of wine. She felt the old craving wash over her. She hadn’t been in France since she’d gotten sober. She took a sip of the Perrier.
“Are you going to stay long?” Michelle ate the last of her frites with her fingers.
“A few months, I think. I might take a cooking class or an art class. Or just give myself a real vacation. And I have friends in Germany and in Denmark I’d like to visit. But right now, mostly I just want to sleep and adjust to Paris time.”
Michelle took the cue and went off soon after in the direction of the Métro, and Ellie headed back to the apartment.
She woke in the dark to a shout from the street. The late October day had been sunny and warm, and she opened the balcony door for air, but now there was a distinct chill. From the pavement below, she heard a clatter of plates and silverware and a murmur of voices. The clock near the bed read 7:43. She saw with disappointment that she’d slept most of the day away—the worst way to deal with jet lag. Now she’d be up all night. She lay back, her limbs leaden. Eventually thirst pushed her into the kitchen and the bottle of Evian she’d bought coming back from the restaurant that morning.
She took a glass and the bottle over to the sofa and sat down. A soft glow from the street lights below and the city night filled the room.
Joel had been in her dream. And Danny. How odd that they would appear together.
She and Joel had been in his condo. He was cooking for her, an elaborate meal of meats. There were slabs of steak and mounds of ground beef. She recognized a loin of pork tied round with string. A bowl of chicken innards in blood stood on the chopping block as well and the bird sat trussed in a roasting pan. She sat on a bar stool across from Joel, trying to explain that she was vegetarian now, that she couldn’t eat any of this, that it would make her sick. He paid her no mind, reading loudly from a textbook for student butchers. She felt increasingly distressed.
There was a knock on the door. When she opened it, Danny stood there, a drink in one hand and a bouquet of daisies in the other. He grinned at her, that old endearing grin, and she suddenly felt safe. She wanted to leave with him and get away from Joel, so she took his hand and pulled him toward the street, but he shook her loose, pushing past her and heading into the kitchen.
She hesitated, still on the doorstep, then followed him in. Joel was no longer in the kitchen, and the meat had all vanished. Danny stood arranging the daisies in a large blue bottle. When she came closer, she saw that the petals were joints, joints and cigarettes. Danny stuck out his glass. “Another double, darlin’. You know just how to fix ’em.”
She stood for a long time in front of the bottles on the kitchen counter, trying to decide something, something she couldn’t quite grasp. Then she poured him a stiff scotch and went into the living room. He was sitting on the chocolate velour sofa, the one in this apartment, the daisies in front of him on the little coffee table. He was pulling the petals from the flowers, “She loves me, she loves me not.” He stacked the joints to the left and the cigarettes to the right. She put the glass of scotch, its fumes filling her senses, on the table as he pulled her down into his lap. A wave of desire surged through her and then she heard the shout from the street and awoke on the Rue des Ciseaux.
Ellie poured another glass of the Evian and sat back on the couch. She was hungry, but there was no food in the apartment and she didn’t have the energy to go out. She sat for a few minutes not thinking, afraid to be with herself.
The dream seemed obvious. Joel had treated her like meat; he had butchered her sense of trust. She didn’t know how to be with that kind of betrayal, that kind of lie. As an alcoholic, she was no stranger to the double life, to pretending to be something she wasn’t. But this was so far beyond hiding a bottle of wine or acting sober when she was drunk. She thought again of the trauma counselor’s urging that she should feel angry with Joel, perhaps outraged the way Sandy and Arlen were or grimly determined to get to the bottom of it the way Hansen was. But all she could feel was sick, sick and foolish. What kind of fool was she that she had trusted Joel? What kind of person was she that he would do this to her? These questions wouldn’t go away.
“I never liked Joel,” Sandy had told her the second week after the rape.
“But it was your idea that I go out with him,” Ellie said.
“It was my idea that you go out with him once. You’d been complaining about no social life, nothing interesting to do, and I knew from Arlen that Joel was looking for a date for that big-deal fundraiser. I saw it as a chance for you to have a dress-up night on the town. I saw him as a guy for you to go out with, not a guy for you to get involved with.”
“Then why didn’t you stop me?”
Sandy shook her head. “I tried a couple of times. I told you to go slow, to find out more about him, but you were already determined to make something of it. I knew better than to try to talk you out of it. That never works.”
Sandy was right. She hadn’t listened. She had wanted a man in her life and Joel had seemed like a good choice. Smart, professional, single. And he had been the kind of cool and detached that always made her want to pursue. How ironic was that? She had chased after a
psychopath. No wonder she felt foolish.
Ellie glanced at the clock in the bedroom. It was just after nine, and muffled sounds of revelry from the restaurants below her came through the glass. She should get something to eat but her appetite had gone. She dredged up the energy for a shower and then went back to bed.
32
Capriano didn’t call Hansen until well into the next week after the interview with Arlen Gerstead. Hansen had been busy with a knifing that had occurred in a strip mall convenience store and there had been several more arsons so he just had to let Ellie’s case stay in Capriano’s hands.
Capriano didn’t waste time with a greeting. “Nothing from the sex clubs,” he said when Hansen answered the phone.
Hansen sighed. “Nothing, huh?”
“I showed the pictures around, but Joel wasn’t a regular at either of the two public clubs. One bartender said he might have come around months before but he couldn’t be sure. No Tiffany as a dancer. No Asian girls at all. It’s almost as if Gerstead had made it all up.”
“But the places exist?”
“Oh yeah, they’re both there and well known to a buddy I have who works vice. And he says neither place traffics in boys or men. That’s what the club managers told me as well—strictly for straight customers.”
“And the place in Squirrel Hill?”
“Nothing there at all. I took the directions Gerstead gave us and found a house that matched the description, but when I rang the bell, a security guard came out to the gate and said that the owners were away in someplace in Southeast Asia and wouldn’t be back for months. Said he knew nothing about any kind of parties. And I definitely don’t have enough to get a warrant for the place.”
“A dead end then.” Hansen felt especially weary.
“Maybe not. My buddy in vice had heard of these parties. Apparently they move around, never in the same location more than once or twice.”
“But Gerstead described that nurse and the fake hospital room. That’s an elaborate setup to be temporary.”
“Not if you’ve got super-rich clients willing to pay through the nose. You can set up anything in a few hours.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
Both men were silent then for a moment.
“What’s next?” said Hansen. “Do you think Gerstead has told us all he knows? Seems to me he’s kind of parsing out information.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think he knows the second man. I just don’t. I think we are going to have to wait until something happens or Ellie McKay remembers something. Or maybe Vice will turn up something on the next party. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
Hansen didn’t like it, but he knew Capriano was right. What else could they investigate at this point with Richardson dead and Ellie in France? He put the official file away in the office and went back to work. He still hadn’t remembered to mention the Gerstead boy staying at Ellie’s—or that Ellie had left the country—although he couldn’t see how it was connected to the case.
33
The late September sun was coming up later, but Al and Beemus still got up at four to have their toast in the dark, their moments of prayer, human and canine, on the porch swing together. Al needed more quiet time than ever.
He was trying hard to give Ellie the space she needed. He was deeply disappointed that she had not moved to the ranch yet. He did not see how they would get used to each other, find ease with each other, if they didn’t spend more time together. At the same time, he had a full life of responsibilities with the land and the animals that waited for no one to sort anything out.
He considered trying to find out what had happened to Ellie before she came to Farmington. He’d used a detective once before and knew that they had ways to find out almost anything. The same man would surely be happy to take his money again. He also realized that if it had been a criminal assault, there’d be information on the Internet. But that seemed distasteful. Ellie had a right to her privacy, a right to her hurts and sorrows, just like he did. He trusted that she would tell him when she was ready. The trick was to make her stay until then.
He threw the dregs of his coffee out into the yard and went in for a second cup. He had a half hour until the foreman would show up for work.
Jim Broadacre had been a big disappointment. He was a hapless fool, nothing like his predecessor in wisdom or thoughtfulness. He had not had Al’s vote for pastor when Jack Merchison retired. Al had preferred the woman, a bit young maybe, but livelier, more open to change. But the congregation hadn’t been ready for a woman, and Broadacre had a local connection. His son-in-law was assistant manager at the Sears. Al didn’t know who else to talk to about Ellie. His dad was dead. Jack too. Gracie was out of the question. He knew lots of folks in Farmington. Hell, he knew most of the town. But that was different. That was neighbor helping neighbor, or nodding at somebody from church, or joshing with a waitress at Arlene’s on West Street. He didn’t think any of them would understand why he’d married a stranger, a woman passing through town whom he’d met in a bar. He didn’t need to be told he was a fool.
He wondered if he and Stevie would have been close when the boy got to be a man. If they’d have had the kind of understanding and knowing he’d had with his dad. The old familiar ache for the boy throbbed deep in his chest. Maybe he could have talked to his son about Ellie. Maybe not.
Al was pretty sure he could fall in love with Ellie. The chemistry was there. He believed she had a good heart. He could love her, perhaps deeply, and they could be good company for each other. His proposal had not been a whim, although it might have looked like that. He had been seeking and waiting for the right one to come along. And Ellie had. But he couldn’t seem to find a way to show her that. And … he couldn’t seem to find a way to lift off the burden, whatever it was, that weighed on her soul.
34
Ellie felt at loose ends in Paris although she tried to establish a routine. She walked each morning for an hour if it didn’t rain. She went to a different museum each day, to a movie each afternoon. She took long naps and read some of the newest fiction. Because her housing was cheap, her travel funds were generous, so she took side trips to Giverny to Monet’s gardens and out to Versailles again. She became friends with the woman in the apartment below and she reconnected with a couple she knew in the suburbs, but all these people worked and had full lives and she found herself too much alone.
That loneliness and the dream from the first night had brought thoughts of Danny back. Danny with his easy ways. His soft brown hair and blue eyes. Life with him had been easy, it seemed now: lots of sex and laughter, lots of good conversation and good food and even better whiskey. He wasn’t Irish, but he may as well have been. He was enamored of the Irish struggle and the Irish poets, whom he quoted at the oddest moments. He was a romantic and Ellie loved that about him.
When she met Danny, Ellie was in her forties and her biological clock was ticking. Not the baby clock—she was past that and her students were children enough for her—but the partner clock. She wanted to share the rest of her life with a partner in a deep romantic commitment, and when Danny chose her, told her he loved her on a misty late evening walk on a covered bridge, she fell deep and hard. This was it, she had thought.
They were a good match—all their friends thought so. They both loved literature and movies and music, cats and wine-tastings. They traveled well together. And for a decade, it had worked. Then things fell apart. When Ellie was honest with herself, she knew she’d had a serious problem with alcohol before she met Danny, but his self-image as a connoisseur of single malts and vintage Cabernets and his unspoken insistence that she share that passion set her up for more misery.
Truth be told, she was glad Danny drank. It was a relief not to have to hide her drinking from him, to bask in his unconcern for quantity or frequency. Even when the blackouts began to happen regularly, he said nothing. But they terrified Ellie. So did the increasing severity of her hangovers. She tried cutting
back, but to no avail—the need to drink was just too strong. So she decided to stop, telling Danny she had concerns for her liver. He scoffed at that, told her she was a lightweight drinker with nothing to worry about, but he certainly wouldn’t force her to drink with him.
For a month she was able to abstain, able to watch him pour bottle after bottle of wine in his own glass at dinner, able to smell the whiskey on his breath when he came to bed late into the night. Then the pressure, subtle at first, began. He wanted her to drink with him. He missed eating out with a fine bottle, he said, missed inviting friends over for cards and whiskey and the jokes and laughter that came when they’d all had a few.
Ellie held out. But then Danny began going out in the evenings, coming back after she was asleep, and then sometimes not showing up until breakfast, and she knew she had a choice to make.
She chose to drink again but held tightly to drinking very little. For a brief while, things were okay. Then Danny took to going out again anyway. And she let go of moderation and the hangovers weren’t any better and the blackouts came quicker and finally she got a DUI and her teaching contract was not renewed and the whole house of pretense fell in around her. After spending time in a treatment center, she left Danny and moved to Pennsylvania. But … she hadn’t stopped loving him. So one night, sitting on the chocolate velour sofa, she gathered her courage and sent the email she’d been fantasizing about since she’d moved into the little apartment on the Rue des Ciseaux.
“I’m in Paris,” it said. “I’m lonely. I’ll send you a ticket. Will you come?” The next morning, there was a message in her inbox. “Air France Flight 490, Friday 08:30.”
Ellie refused to pay $75 for a cab out to the airport so she retraced the bus–train–bus route that Michelle had shown her. It was early morning and the commuter train was mostly empty heading away from the inner city.