Paris by the Book

by Liam Callanan

  I told him that almost all my favorite memories of Paris involved him, Declan.

  “Like the mugging in Ménilmontant?” he said. “Or the time you learned the French term for ‘police psychologist’? Or when you invited me out for coffee to—to do whatever it is we’re doing now?”

  “Like a fifty-course midafternoon meal lit by a million flowers. Like a daytime whatever in my kitchen with wine instead of coffee. Like when you took me dancing and kept asking afterward if everything was okay—kept asking, even when I didn’t answer.”

  “You’re not answering me now,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I—if I’m hearing you—”

  “You are,” I said.

  “I can’t be,” he said. “What you’re saying is that a woman’s arrived from Milwaukee, and she’s told you the police think your husband is dead. There’s a boat, some kind of report. Your daughters haven’t heard about this yet—”

  “And won’t,” I said.

  “You keep pretending that I don’t know them, your girls?” Declan said. “Not well, but enough to know that—they’ll—”

  “Fine, yes, I need to tell them, but that’s my problem, not—”

  “But that’s not—I don’t think problem’s even the right word.”

  “Problème is an excellent word. In English or French.”

  “The problem is you think—you know—he’s still alive. And you think—you think you saw him. You think you were getting messages from him before, you thought you saw him before, but now—now you know.”

  “I think I know,” I said.

  “Okay,” Declan said, but he was agreeing with something he was thinking, not what I was thinking, which was can you wait? Can you be a friend and just a friend, just until I figure out what’s going on? But when I looked up, he was gone. He was still sitting there, but he was gone, gone from me, and I wasn’t getting him back. Not his easy conversation or his eyes or his shoulders, legs, his hands. All of it, gone. My purse savior, dance defender, daytime companion, gone.

  “Declan,” I said.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said. “And I mean that, I mean that word every way it can mean. I’m sorry for you, I’m sorry for me.” He twisted to find the waiter.

  “Declan,” I said. “This is not—I hope this is not good-bye.”

  “It’s not,” Declan said. “It’s something way stranger.”

  * * *

  —

  Laurent thought something strange was going on, too. Or so Madame Brouillard reported when I returned to the store. I’d not been there for the morning delivery, which meant Laurent somehow roused Madame to have her sign for it (and, knowing Laurent, have her carry the boxes into the store). Madame did not like Laurent (he’d once told her he didn’t like books; they were too heavy; he preferred delivering mops). Madame did not like being roused. Madame did not like that the store had not been open of late during my usual hours—noon until dinner—and that she was pestered at all hours as a result. She’d not expected much, having turned things over to Americans, but she had expected better than this. And, worst of all, the store now seemed to be attracting dangerous people.

  At first I thought she was referring to the crowd Ellie, Asif, and Declan had convened the other night, but no: Laurent said he’d seen someone “prowling” around. I wasn’t as confident as Madame seemed to be that prowling was the right word, but the gist of what Laurent was saying was clear.

  And so was the gist of what Madame was saying: either I figure out how to run the store better, or she’d find a way to run us out. After all, I couldn’t be part owner of a business, as our visas required, if it wasn’t in business.

  * * *

  —

  Of course I took offense at Madame’s threat—I was supposed to—but I wanted us to be doing better, too. In no small part because I wanted to show off for Eleanor. Maybe every other aspect of my life was a mess, but I wanted Eleanor to see that I’d managed to figure out this much, how to survive in Paris.

  And we almost were. We’d spent down much of Robert’s prize money, but we were doing okay. Madame’s threat aside, the visas George had magically acquired for us were still working their magic. George also helped us negotiate for the assistance the government sometimes granted independent bookstores. If I’d had to pay for tuition or health care, the books, indeed, would not have balanced. But I didn’t have to pay for those things; George paid us handsomely, and Madame Brouillard, when she wasn’t browbeating me about my poor business abilities, made clear her own failings by not following up with me when I was late with my monthly payments (confusingly, when we discussed them in English, we called this the “mortgage,” but in French, she would use the word for “rent”).

  Originally, I’d thought Eleanor and I would spend her first full day walking the city—the best cure for jet lag—but that would mean shuttering the store yet again. If I had had enough cash flow to hire an assistant (and Molly was all but begging me for such a position), things might have been different.

  I was lugging the last of Laurent’s boxes into the back room when I heard the bell over the door, reminding me that I’d forgotten to lock it until I was officially open. Too late now, but so much the better; an early sale would help us make up lost ground. It might even be the man who had called in looking for a first edition of Sophie Calle’s cryptic 1979 photo essay Suite Vénitienne, which we did have and could never sell, because it was Madame Brouillard’s own copy and she wanted five hundred euros for it. If I sold it at that price this morning, though, I’d more than cover the cost of closing—or hiring Molly—this afternoon.

  “Bonjour,” I called. “Bienvenue, bienvenue,” I said, dusting my hands and easing the bookcase-door aside.

  “Good morning,” said Eleanor, in a tone that suggested it was not.

  “I—well, here you are. I was going to be in touch as soon as I squared away things here,” I said, blinking hard. “Did you not sleep well?” I asked.

  “The bed was awful,” Eleanor said. “And I want to apologize for last night.”

  “Me, too,” I said. I paused.

  I guess I thought Eleanor would go first. But she said nothing. So I said nothing.

  “Well, I’m glad that’s over with,” I said.

  “Not quite,” Eleanor said, drawing a folder out of her purse. “They should be ashamed, that hotel, what they charge for printing.”

  “Oh—? We could have printed that out for you for free.”

  “I wanted to see it first.” She looked at me. “It’s the police report. I don’t know if my calling them accelerated things or if things just came together, but—here it is. There’s nothing new in it, it’s everything I said.”

  I stared at the folder. The stack of pages inside seemed insultingly small. Smaller than Robert’s manuscript.

  “Like I said,” I said quietly. “I need time.”

  “Leah—” She reached toward me, and I reflexively withdrew. She stiffened, stung, and then put the pages away. “Leah, time is what I’m trying to give you.”

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “What?” I said.

  “Ellie tells me you’ve had a gentleman caller.”

  “I’ve—what? I’m sure she did not,” I said.

  “She has eyes,” Eleanor said.

  “If Ellie has eyes, then she saw that I’ve done something you told me to do—make friends. I’m up to four now. Five, if I can still count you.”

  “Count me first,” Eleanor said.

  “Well, number five is just a friend. His name is Declan. He is very sweet and handsome. But nothing more. That’s clear.”

  “Is it? To all involved?” Eleanor said. “You deserve to get on with your life,” Eleanor said. “That is what I’m trying to help you with. I don’t want the
police report to be true any more than you do. But realize, past the pain, what a gift the report is.”

  “The UPS driver said he saw a man lurking about,” I said.

  “Did he call the police?” Eleanor said.

  “I don’t think it was like that,” I said, trying not to look at the folder.

  “Did you call the police? In Paris, or Milwaukee?” Eleanor said, more gently now. “When you ‘saw’ Robert in the video? When Daphne ‘saw’ him on the bridge? When ‘he’ apologized to you by scribbling an unsigned ‘sorry’ in the pages of a book you randomly found?”

  Just a PAUSE button. It’s all I want from the world’s scientists. A STOP button would be too much to ask for. But a pause, just a pause, when you don’t want to hear—

  “He died, Leah,” Eleanor said. “It’s time to use the word, the actual word. And I know it’s like he just died, but it turns out he’s been dead for some time. Enough time that it’s now time to take some steps.”

  How did she do it? With her voice, her eyes, the way she set her face? Take something I’d been certain of, just hours, just seconds ago—that I’d seen Robert on that video—and knock it askew? Life had no PAUSE button, but apparently, Eleanor had a button that launched you fast-forward, and I felt that now, a physical pull, past sad-eyed policemen, past lawyers, past Milwaukee friends nodding sorrow, past the girls keening. All of this, about to start.

  CHAPTER 14

  But everything started with me, with convincing me of what was true, what was fiction. The theory that he was dead had all the evidence, save Robert’s body. The theory that he was alive had no evidence, save Robert’s—what? I didn’t know how to categorize his brief cameo, nor what now seemed, in retrospect, like constant haunting.

  I felt Eleanor watching me, measuring me. I just told Leah her husband is dead, and yet she seems unmoved. But I was moved, or had moved, from one belief to another.

  Press PLAY.

  “I’ll hear you out, Eleanor,” I said. “But will you hear me?” I wasn’t sure yet what I would say beyond this.

  The store’s phone started ringing.

  “Please answer that,” I said. It was the first thing I could think of. “That would help.”

  Eleanor lifted the receiver. “Allo,” she said, and looked at me for my approval. I nodded. “Late Edition Bookshop,” she said.

  She listened.

  “Can you speak English?” Eleanor asked. She listened a moment more, then continued. “I don’t speak French. This is an English-language bookshop.”

  She listened again, more briefly. “‘Lay-cole’? Is that the author?”

  L’école. School. School was calling. “Allo, allo,” I said, taking the phone. The school intimidated me now even more than the girls. “Je suis désolée. Mon—assistante ne parle pas français. Ça va bien, les enfants?”

  Les enfants, the children, mine, though it turned out they were talking about George’s.

  * * *

  —

  When I got to their school, I immediately checked their foreheads—please, God, let us not go back to the hospital where they invented the stethoscope—but they were cool. The woman explained, in English, that their class was going to the park today, but the twins could not go along because they did not have their permission slips signed. I offered to sign right then. The woman shook her head slowly: I was not their mother.

  But it was okay for me to pick them up at school?

  We were already on the sidewalk outside, and she began closing the door. They didn’t have staff to watch the children without slips, she said. Je suis désolée.

  George texted me that he was sorry, too. But Eleanor was not; the twins had charmed her. Why don’t we take them to a park ourselves? Would the Luxembourg Gardens suffice? The hotel had told her it had many diversions for kids.

  But we didn’t have to go anywhere if I was expecting someone, she said.

  Was I? I didn’t like the sound of those italics, but I didn’t want to stay cooped up in the store either, so I agreed to her plan. I called Shelley to see if she might mind the counter. She told me to close the store. I didn’t call Carl, because every time he’d given me his contact info, I’d deleted it. I finally called Molly; she said she’d be over as soon as spin class was over. When she arrived, Eleanor, impatient, already had her sunglasses on and acknowledged Molly with barely a nod.

  “That’s that actress, isn’t it?” Molly whispered as I showed her a variety of unnecessary things, like how to record a sale.

  “I can’t say,” I whispered back.

  Molly grinned. “I love Paris.”

  My new employee surreptitiously snapped a photo of us as we left.

  The walk ahead wasn’t short—three kilometers, forty minutes or likely more—but, because of the oddities of the map, the Métro would have taken us almost as much time. (Not that this kept Peter, who considered the Métro the world’s longest and most convenient amusement park ride, from begging that we take it.) I called up to Madame Brouillard to tell her about Molly. She didn’t answer. I asked Eleanor if we could postpone talking about, you know. She did not answer.

  So it was a relief when difficulties and distractions arose. We passed a carousel that had somehow squeezed itself onto a narrow traffic island by a Métro entrance. Dozens of carousels dot the city, an implausible number. From the air, Paris must look like a whirling machine of countless cogs. It’s a marvel the sidewalks aren’t more choked with children dizzily staggering away from their rides. I could see that Peter, however, was focused: a carousel and a Métro entrance? The Luxembourg Gardens and its swing sets (and especially its sailboats) could wait.

  But Annabelle needed to use the bathroom. A small crisis became a larger one, as the first two self-sanitizing sidewalk toilets near the carousel were out of service. Now Peter needed to go. We walked on. And on. We were still well shy of the Gardens and their toilets, so I routed us into the first tiny crêperie that presented itself. Hardly the width of a pool table, the restaurant was for tourists. A take-out window opened directly onto the street; a darkened refrigerator case featured a haphazard array of Coke products. The counterman was the only employee and looked no more Parisian than I. Still, I would not have assumed, as Eleanor did, that he knew German, but soon they were chatting away.

  Before I knew it, we’d been allowed to use an immaculate bathroom behind an unmarked door. We were then ushered through another unmarked door to a tiny courtyard behind the restaurant. Here sat a table, two chairs, and a small playground set.

  Toys.

  This was his backyard. His children’s toys. I turned to comment on this to Eleanor, but she was deep in negotiations with the counterman.

  When he left, Eleanor cleared her throat. “Luxembourg Gardens another day,” she announced. “Today, we dine in the Garten Erdem.” Peter and Annabelle looked confused. “My new friend, Erdem—who is Turkish and thus gifted in such arts of the kitchen as Americans, and perhaps even French, can only dream of—is going to lay out a lovely spread for us,” she said. “Children, look!” And because Peter and Annabelle cannot fail to be charmed by any special gesture from anyone—a tight-smiling stranger holding open the door at Picard makes them blush—they leapt.

  “Des jouets!” they shouted.

  “Eleanor,” I said as the twins tackled the toys. “You are a marvel.” And she was. She’d not said an additional word about Robert. I wondered how much longer I had.

  “Oh, listen to you,” Eleanor said. “And that’s even before the wine comes.”

  Wine: so I had that much time. Erdem delivered a bottle of prosecco. We spent our first glass watching the twins drag the equipment this way and that, carefully arranging the smaller toys. Every so often, one would hand a toy to the other; words were exchanged, everything was rearranged.

  “They’re running a little store, aren’t they?” Eleanor fin
ally said. She reached for the bottle and poured herself another inch.

  “It’s a side affliction of living above, and in, a bookstore,” I said. “Whenever they play, they play this. I don’t think they’ve seen their father enough to know how to play international consultant.”

  “Don’t call it an affliction,” Eleanor said. “It’s a benefit.”

  By the time we were halfway through a second glass, Erdem had delivered, and the twins consumed, a small pizza. They went back to playing. Erdem soon reemerged with a special off-the-menu meal he and Eleanor had worked out. Nothing fancy, but somehow quite exotic—a tomato cucumber salad where the tomato and cucumber were largely displaced by cubed oranges and olives. Eleanor insisted that she detected coriander. I said paprika. She asked if Declan was Irish. I said no, we hadn’t.

  “Excuse me?” Eleanor said, which is when I realized I’d answered the question some wicked part of me imagined she was asking, which is whether I’d slept with the man. She watched me work this out, and then she worked it out. “Good lord, Leah.”

  “Please,” I said.

  “Oh, god, you did,” she said. “I can hear it in your voice.”

  “We didn’t,” I said. “What you can hear in my voice is—actually, I don’t know what you hear. What I hear is this other woman, this other me, who’s been getting introduced to a new—to a different—life?”

  “A single life?” Eleanor said.

  “An independent life? My-own-two-feet life. I don’t know. It’s been—interesting.”

  “Which is code for?”

  “Maybe it’s for ‘fun,’ except it hasn’t been precisely that; it’s been disorienting sometimes and pleasant other times, but mostly, it’s been a new pair of glasses when I’m out with him. Do you know how different this city looks when you’re walking with someone, when you’re sitting beside the Seine with someone, when you’re having a glass of wine with someone?”