Paris by the Book

by Liam Callanan

“Madame—”

  “No,” she said, and began making her way out from behind the counter, preparing to make her exit. Through the secret bookcase door, through the tiny office, up the narrow back stairs. But first, a declaration. “I didn’t realize until now,” she said, “that you are departing.”

  In a moment, I would realize I’d misunderstood her—she was referring to the funny little three-wheeled car, Declan’s taxi, that had just pulled up—but until then, I thought she’d taken some X-ray of my soul, and that she knew better than I when we would leave Paris.

  “Madame!”

  “Do the girls know?”

  Was this true, that we were leaving? Was she a clairvoyant? How could she know such a thing? She couldn’t.

  “Bonsoir, Madame,” she said.

  “I think my husband’s alive,” I said, quiet enough that I wasn’t sure she heard.

  But she did. “Does he drive a taxi?” she said, and nodded to the window. And so I finally turned and saw the vehicle idling, finally realized that this was the “departing” she’d been referring to, that this was what she wondered if the girls knew about.

  Or not. “Bon courage,” she said, and left. It means something like “good luck,” but not quite; it translates literally as “good courage,” which should have been a helpful reminder. There are different kinds of courage, Leah, suitable for different situations. Tonight—for a change?—take the good kind.

  * * *

  —

  The minicab couldn’t get near the address Declan had given me; the street was full of people. But once I’d made my way there, Declan found me outside. Kiss, kiss, one cheek, the other, where were my friends? Couldn’t come, I said, and he grinned and introduced me to two young women nearby. Old friends? New? Stray students? I tried to see if I recognized them from the store, but I didn’t, and of course not; of course Declan had a life outside mine. Of course he had other friends. And some of those friends would be women. Younger than me. Younger than him.

  Robert had always looked younger than me and I’d always liked that; I thought it made me look sexier and more daring than I was. But now people were looking at me, and I looked at me through their eyes and saw that I was older. I reflexively clenched my right hand—not from anger, but anxiety. That was the hand Robert always held.

  Then again, Robert held my right hand because it went with his left; his right hand was often sore—from writing, he claimed; he handwrote early drafts. This charmed me early on, and later, chafed. Surely some aspect of writing doesn’t involve suffering, I’d say, and then, often as not, we wouldn’t be holding hands anymore.

  A waiter from inside yelled at us. Declan threw his shot back, the girls threw back theirs, I sipped at mine—no idea what it was—and Declan led us in. Dansons! he shouted, and I was game, but it was even more crowded inside than out.

  So it was going to be that kind of evening: on my feet, no place to perch. Declan drew us into the bar, deeper and deeper, which made no sense, as it was only becoming more crowded, with no space to dance. But then, we were at a doorway in the rear of the room, manned by two very large men. Promising. They let Declan through with hardly a glance, but when I followed, they put a hand out to stop me. “But that is my friend,” I said in English. My friend, meanwhile, had already disappeared into the crowd and music beyond.

  “Mon ami,” I corrected.

  “Non,” one of the bouncers told me. “Toi, c’est non.” Not for you (and not even the formal “you,” or vous). And there it was. The bouncer was saving me from myself. How wonderful for the helpless women of the world that there are so many men so ready to look out for us in all manner of dangerous situations—entering a nightclub, say, to dance.

  But now, Declan’s other “friends,” the young women from earlier, slipped past me with nods and giggles hardly half-hidden. The bouncers smiled as they passed in.

  Arguing in French has always been a burden for me, so I decided to accelerate the process. It was a tricky business, the bakchich, the little gift to ease the way, and I was never sure how much to pay off whom. (In Milwaukee, it had been simpler: if a blizzard was pending and you needed your snowblower fixed, a fifth of Jack Daniel’s got you to the head of the line. Or so I’d heard; such had been all Robert’s doing.)

  Awkwardly—I liked to think enterprisingly—I had tucked fifty euros in my bra before I left the store. I’d not wanted to carry a purse, and, frankly, I’d not expected to spend any money: that was what Declan was for (along with carrying my phone, which I’d passed to him outside). But here I was, digging around in my top for my emergency cash, something I’d not done since I was nineteen.

  Unfortunately, this only alarmed the bouncers, and my subsequently looking for a small-enough bill—this wasn’t that much of an emergency—upset them even further, and one bouncer started hassling the other. They spoke very fast, in a very broad accent, but I was able to make out what they were saying: they were embarrassed that I was attempting to give them money. Well. They weren’t alone in that. In any case, their next words I understood perfectly: vite, vite, one said, sweeping me in quickly, refusing my money. I didn’t press the point. I hid my cash, blinked once, and went through the door, into another world.

  * * *

  —

  Blue, then purple, then a white flash, then black. Stairs—crowded into a vertiginous spiral staircase, no railing—at one end. A tiny, tight stage. A chandelier, a real one, dripping light. Video projections sliding off the walls onto the ceiling, the floor, the patrons, the bar. I find Declan at the bar. I yell at him for abandoning me at the doorway. He can’t hear me; I can’t hear myself. The music throbs, surrounds, more pulse than sound, and I feel it there, right there, in my chest, then lower. Declan turns away from me, still smiling, and then, a moment later, turns back, a drink in his hand, something clear, vodka. I shake my head. One of the slinky girls comes up to Declan and he nods, laughs, and hands her his drink. She disappears onto the dance floor. But—I am on the dance floor, which is a sticky matte black. Everyone is on the dance floor. This room—is all music, all dancing.

  Declan is a voice in my ear. My left, my right. He says this, that. Look there, here. I do not know if this is what he does when he is drunk or if this is what he does all day long. Regardez this church, that corner, that window. Tonight he asks if I see the man in the tux over there; how cool, how funny, how Paris is that? I don’t look, because if he’s in a tux, it’s not Robert. I look. It’s not Robert. I nod, I smile, I dance. Platforms suspended from chains sway in two corners of the room, or I’m swaying. Declan leans back to my ear: the DJ is a friend of a friend of a friend. Leans away, dances, spins, is at my ear again: I was prom king. I smile, nod. I can’t stop dancing. He can’t stop talking. I want to be annoyed, but can’t, because each line comes with a laugh, with his breath at my ear, with his hands at my arms to steady himself or keep me from floating away. I know a café nearby, he finally says and I finally say to him, one word at one ear, stop, one word at the other, talking.

  The parted-lip look on his face, equal parts delight and desire: I did that, I think. I dance. I can do anything, I think. I dance. Anything. I ride the music, slick with sweat, and watch and wait for Declan to lean in again, which he finally does. Let’s go.

  * * *

  —

  We didn’t go far enough. We got distracted by a little café two streets down. Or I did. A short man, wide white mustache, rumpled apron, insisted we stop. He waved menus at us. Declan waved him away. But I stopped. The rest of the city’s cafés—that is, cafés that need such assistance—now employ young women, Eastern Europeans mostly, beautiful universally, as their touts. But not here. Here, this man. From another era, from another world, and he bowed, he took my left hand, he kissed it deeply. One more millisecond and it would have been too long, but he knew this. He had kissed, and held, hands for decades. He lifted his face, he swept us i
nto two seats, he lit a tiny cupped candle between us.

  Declan ordered a coffee, but I suddenly wanted a beer, and so he switched his order, too. And then we spent a good deal of time laughing. In my Paris scrapbook—and I have one, which I shoplifted from my own store, beautiful creamy pages and a little pouch of old-fashioned photo corners to affix photos, which I someday intend to do, so long as I am permitted to travel back in time and take all the photos I failed to snap the first time around—I will have one page devoted to those two beers, that little table, that night. We talked and we laughed. Really laughed. Somehow, everything became funny. Declan was so beautiful, and so smart, and so good with kids—especially my kids. And, of course, he was good with taxis. Finding clubs. Finding ears.

  “You’d think a ring would keep a man away!” I said, raising a glass toward the mustachioed tout, who was back at work on the sidewalk, reaching toward other hands to kiss. Our beers had been delicately decanted into pear-shaped glasses, but I took a swig right from the bottle now, eyeing my little ring as I did. It winked at me. I winked back. Just having fun.

  But Declan wasn’t. He sipped his beer, too, and turned away.

  “What?” I said.

  He looked at me carefully, waiting.

  “Excusez-moi de vous déranger,” I said and smiled. He did not. “Carl said that was a disarmament treaty,” I mumbled.

  “What—? Wait, who’s Carl?” Declan asked.

  “Oh, Carl is one of my three—” Declan’s face, an alarming mixture of disgust and pain, stopped me. “Oh, you’re jealous,” I said. “Please, I—”

  “Please,” Declan said.

  “Carl is a customer,” I said. “Of the bookstore. One of three, the girls joke. He likes mysteries, and he could pass for my grandfather.”

  “And me?” Declan said.

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “No, I don’t think you could.”

  “Leah, don’t joke,” he said. It’s the one thing men (especially psychologists) have been telling me all my life. Men, save Robert. He never said this. Maybe because he never knew I was joking, but still, it was something I liked in him. Robert never told me no. That soccer-night DJ, that crowd, those noise abatement cops, and finally, the world: yes, Robert had told them nooo.

  But Robert never said no to me, not until the night I’d said, let’s get you help, real help. Not toolbox help, the kind the therapist had offered us, but the inpatient kind. No, he’d said.

  “I should go,” I said to Declan. “No joke.”

  “Please don’t,” he said.

  “Declan,” I said.

  “Leah,” he said. “We—we’ve been spending a lot of time together. I’ve liked that. I like—you. I’d like to—not tonight, maybe it’s too late, or too fast, except it’s not—damn, why is this awkward? It’s like being in junior high again.”

  “I didn’t have two daughters when I was in junior high,” I said, very intently, to my beer bottle.

  “Is that what this is about?” he said. “Because—I mean, of course. But maybe some night, or day—unless daytime is weird—was weird—”

  “No, this is weird,” I said.

  It’s possible that men always told me not to joke because I wasn’t good at it. Because all they wanted, all Declan wanted—and Robert before him—was a straight answer. Leah, are we good?

  Declan picked up my hand—my—left hand. His was dry and smooth and hard.

  This was what Declan’s hand felt like. This was what it was like to be held again.

  “This is weird,” he said, and gently tapped my ring with his thumb, once, twice. Then he let go. I felt like I was on one of those chained platforms from the club and it had just given way. “I mean, I get it,” he said, “or I got it, but something happened.”

  “I told you what happened.”

  I’d have thought I’d have gotten better at lying, given how much of it I was doing lately.

  “No, something happened recently. Not tonight. Something before that. Something changed. We were hanging out, it was fun—”

  “It was fun tonight.”

  “You told me you ‘liked’ me.”

  I took a short breath. “True.”

  “And something happened. I want to say, something happened on that stupid Madeline tour.”

  A longer breath. “Obviously.”

  He waited, shook his head. “See?” he said. “Like right now, that look: you’re not—you’re not here.”

  “I couldn’t be more here. I’m right here.”

  “You’re distracted,” he said. A retreat, or so his eyes told me, but I ignored that. “I don’t—I don’t get it,” he said, softening further. It was awful to watch. It must have been worse to watch me. “Unless . . . is there someone else?” he asked. He looked at the ring again. “I don’t mean . . .”

  What was so wonderful, and terrible, was that he didn’t mean Robert. And that I did. There was someone else. There were two words in a book, I’m sorry. There were one hundred pages of a manuscript, two daughters on a bridge, one husband who might have been there, too. It was easy enough to imagine, anyway. Easier, if somehow more painful.

  I heard my phone ping in Declan’s pocket: and there it was, life, the kind of real life I led, as opposed to the fictional, carefree Paris life I assumed Declan led, returning. My phone pinged again, and again, a little anvil across which unease could be bent into anger.

  What if it was Ellie? Or Daphne? Or Eleanor, with news.

  Or, right on schedule, Robert himself?

  Declan pulled out my phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. “Shit,” he said. Even from across the table, I could see that it was crowded with messages and alerts. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “I must not have heard—or felt—”

  He leaned toward me over the table and laid the phone gently between us. “I think you missed some calls,” he said.

  The screen was more explicit than that: ten missed calls, six voice mails, and twelve texts, the most recent of which, from Ellie, was automatically displayed.

  The doctors say they need 2 talk 2 the mother. . . .

  CHAPTER 11

  Declan offered to summon a “real” taxi, but I refused and got in an illegal cab that sidled up as we stood arguing.

  Utter mistake. He wasn’t a criminal, my driver, but he didn’t speak French, or English, and he didn’t know Paris. I wasn’t much better beyond the Marais, and so wasn’t even aware how off course we were until Ellie—with whom I’d been texting frantically—told me to ask the driver what the hell was going on, because she’d tracked me (or rather, my phone) to Père Lachaise.

  I looked out the window. C’est vrai, the cemetery. I got the driver to stop, and with the help of the map display on my cell phone and some shouting, I learned that he was taking me to the airport. Of course: it was the only thing he knew to do with hysterical Americans. I told him my daughter was ill, very ill, and got out and walked away. He didn’t even curse at me. Or if he did, I didn’t hear him. Two policemen, though, cruised up. Either they’d overheard me or there was a bulletin out for a madwoman, a cheat, the world’s worst mother, at large in Paris.

  Although it took some doing for them to convince me that I wasn’t under arrest, I finally accepted their offer to speed me to the hospital—the Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades. The hospital for children sick.

  Ellie met me at the end of the block, to walk me into the compound.

  “Where have you been?” Ellie said.

  “How is she?” I said.

  “Like, the phone showed me where you were, but—”

  “Ellie, Ellie, Ellie,” I said as the world flew by. It’s not that we were walking that fast—I’m not sure if we were walking at all; I felt like I was hovering, drifting, bodiless, and my vision reduced everything but Ellie to a blur. Where was Daphne? Where was my purse?
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  Ellie was speaking. French, English. She was speaking to me.

  “The doctors have to do this thing called a spinal—a ‘spinal tap’?” Ellie said.

  “Is that your translation or theirs?” Would the hospital have a translator? Daphne was our best translator.

  “It’s not a translation,” Ellie said. “It’s what they said, those exact two words, in English. In French they said something about the lower back, and poking. ‘Ponction’?”

  “How did you know to come here? Did Madame send you here? It’s miles from the store.”

  “I knocked on her door, she didn’t answer. I didn’t try long. Daphne woke me up. She’d gone looking for you in your room—she was—you could tell right away it wasn’t good. She wasn’t making sense, she fell and wouldn’t get up. I called les pompiers, and when they came, they said this place was best for someone like Daphne,” Ellie said. “Or I think they did. They asked me about you, I said I didn’t know, then I said you were on your way, and by then we were here. At a children’s hospital. It’s like, only for kids.”

  “It’s for kids?” I said. Because my fifteen-year-old couldn’t have figured this out. Because I was ignoring what Ellie had figured out: how to get emergency services to come to a bedroom above a bookstore, how to get the paramedics to ignore the fact that the mother was not present, how to ensure that she (unlike me) stayed at her sister’s side—at least until she had to fetch her mother from a police car at the curb.

  “I think so,” Ellie said, her voice going higher, starting to wobble. “They gave me an English brochure. It said they invented the stethoscope.”

  The first entrance we passed gave every evidence that this might be true—a spiky gate, wrought iron, towering, furred with rust. What had this hospital invested in since that first stethoscope?

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Ellie: where’s Daphne?”

  She led me through one lumpily cobbled court and then another, past the smokers, the cryers, lonely faces lit gray by the screens of their phones. We finally reached a modern wing with glass walls, aggressively stylish furniture. A towering cartoon dog with a loud thatch of orange hair stood nearby. He had to have terrorized more than one child.