The Apartment

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The Apartment Page 11

by S. L. Grey


  “Not entirely. Sure, this apartment is a shithole. But the city is as wonderful as we expected, isn’t it?” Steph nods. “And I’ve had real insights that years of therapy couldn’t buy. It’s amazing how a change of scene can give you instant perspective. It’s such a cliché, but it’s true—a holiday is as good as a…” That’s not right.

  “Isn’t the cliché that a change is as good as a holiday?”

  “Yeah, well, that one’s bullshit. I’d take the holiday anytime.” She laughs. “I’m glad we’re here.”

  She thinks about it, then says, “Me too.”

  Those three men with their knives are still shadowing my thoughts, but we’re far away from that house; Hayden’s far away from it. We’re all safe. For the first time since the attack, those men are cocooned away so deeply that I can’t smell their stink, that I can’t hear their barking, unintelligible voices, that I can’t hear Steph’s stifled whimpering. So faraway that I’m able to bury the emasculating sense of helplessness and shame I’d felt as Steph was dragged away from me and I was forced to remain behind in the living room, too incapacitated by fear to even plead for my family’s lives. For the first time since that dreadful night, I think we’re going to be okay.

  —

  Close to eight, Mireille announces her presence with a sustained rattle on the door handle. She seems to have neatened up for the occasion, wearing a smart red coat over a floral-print dress that’s utterly at odds with the grubby knits and shawls and shapeless trousers I’ve seen her in before. She’s carrying an almost-full bottle of Armagnac in her right hand.

  “Come in. Welcome,” Steph says, ramping up the genteel hostess act. “Let me take your coat.”

  Mireille dumps the brandy on the coffee table, shucks her coat off into Steph’s hands, and paces around the living room. “It smells nice in here,” she says. “It’s long since we have good food cooking here.” She wanders over to the window, where I’ve finally worked the shutters open with some implements from the kitchen, then peers down to the courtyard below, her face so close to the window that her breath mists the glass. “It’s open now.”

  “Yes.” Steph says, glancing at me. That “now” confirms that Mireille has been in here before. The air through the gap in the sash is cold and fresh and mingles nicely with the cooking aroma to dispel the mustiness and stagnant atmosphere from the apartment. I wonder if Mireille approves—somehow that seems to matter—but she doesn’t say anything more, just flaps the heavy brown curtain, pulling it closed a little, then gathering it again.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I take the bottle of brandy from the coffee table. “Would you like some of this? With water? Ice?”

  She grimaces in something I take to be a smile. “That you have later maybe.”

  “Some wine?” Steph asks, holding up a bottle in the kitchen doorway.

  “Wine. Yes.”

  I didn’t know what to expect from her, but if this stiff, peculiar formality carries on, it’s going to be a long evening; I hope she loosens up soon. She sits at the small, square dining table and I join her. When Steph brings her glass she takes a sip and silently looks out the window at the dark outlines of the buildings and the shaded night sky beyond them. She’s almost demure and totally isolated, like some lonely woman in a Hopper painting or a Bresson photo. There’s none of that angry defensiveness or rudeness she’s shown us so far. Some fire in her seems to have gone out.

  I’m about to stand and go check on the pasta water, beg Steph to trade places with me and try to forge some conversation, when Mireille turns back to me and talks. “I’m not always nice, I know. It’s because I am afraid, and I am the only person who can look after myself, yes? It is good you are cooking family food, like there used to be here, long time ago.”

  Tell me about your family, I want to say. Who lived here with you? Why does nobody live here now, and what the hell is the story behind all the stuff in the storeroom? But somehow, now, I don’t want to know. Now that we know the Petits are alive at least, we can just get through this week and go home. Everyone’s being pleasant to one another—Mireille, Steph, and me—and I want to protect that fine balance.

  But Steph’s leaning in the kitchen doorway, dishcloth in her hand. “Where’s your family from?”

  “I always live in Paris.”

  “Did you stay here with a family? You said you had no children?”

  I glance at Steph. “Nobody expects an inquisition, honey.”

  “Why don’t you put the pasta in?” she chirps through a fake smile, tossing the cloth at me and taking my place opposite Mireille. With some relief, I duck into the kitchen and listen as they talk.

  “You have only one child, yes?” Mireille asks.

  “Yes, one daughter. She’s two.”

  “I think you have two girls,” Mireille says.

  Steph doesn’t stop to consider before she speaks. “Mark also had a—” she starts. Jesus, Steph. I cough loudly and she veers off. “Can I top up your wine?”

  “Thank you.”

  There’s an awkward pause, so I call out, “Your English is very good, madame.”

  “I studied one year in London.”

  “What did you study?” Steph asks.

  “I start with accountancy, but soon I come back here to make art.”

  “How long have you been in this building?”

  I glance through the doorway at Steph, clattering my spoon to catch her attention. This is starting to sound like a police interview.

  But Mireille continues answering the questions obediently, part of this pensive mood she’s in tonight. Perhaps her uppers have stopped working. “A long time. This is why I cannot leave so easy. My whole life is here, even though they want me to go.”

  “Who? Who wants you to go?”

  If Steph keeps grilling Mireille, she’ll clam up and we’ll never find out the background to this building. I stir the pot one last time and come out and sit down and begin to blabber about our holiday. Everyone likes to hear a visitor praising their city, so I rattle on about how we’re enjoying the architecture and the ancient roads and the fresh produce, but Mireille interrupts me. “I now know you. I know about your family, your little girl. Tonight I decide finally. I will leave.”

  “Leave where?” Steph asks. “Here you mean?”

  “Oui.”

  “Why?”

  “You cannot run away from your history.” She looks at me as she says this. “It was always with me. I think maybe it will go with the last people. Mais, non. Now I must take it with me, or it is with you.”

  “It? What—” I say, as Steph overrides my question with her own.

  “Enough!” Mireille says. Then, softer, “Like I say, I thought qu’il était parti, that it had left—with the last people. They had pain, but not enough, I think. I was wrong. I am sorry for you. I am sorry for your child.”

  Okay, this is getting ridiculous and creepy and really spoiling the atmosphere we’ve managed to create in this place today. This woman’s insane, that’s all, and we shouldn’t have expected any information from her. I stand up and tap Steph on the arm. “A little help in the kitchen, please. Excuse us, madame.”

  Steph pushes back from the table and trails me into the kitchen.

  “Now it is with you,” I mock, clattering the plates and pasta spoon to disguise my voice. “She’s crazy. We’re not going to get any information from her.”

  “She’s struggling to express herself; that’s all. Let’s just allow her to speak. We can match what she tells us with what the real estate agent says, and then we’ll know.”

  “Know what? Why is it important? It feels like we’re digging in stuff that doesn’t concern us. We should just leave it alone.”

  “I want to know,” she says, splatting sauce over the portions of pasta.

  I shake my head. I’m not going to dissuade Steph, and I don’t want to fight, so I’m just going to shut up and drink wine. This dinner party was a stupid mistake. I
chop the baguette into chunks and as I lay them on a board with some of the cheese, I hear the grind of the window sash going up. Steph’s carrying two plates of pasta through and I hear them thump and clatter as she shouts, “Mireille! Don’t!”

  There’s only time to turn and glance out of the kitchen window, where I see Mireille perched outside, on the window ledge, pushing off against the rusty brackets that once held a window box, saulting up and gracefully diving headfirst. The floral dress ripples luminously as she goes.

  Chapter 12

  Steph

  I was within lunging distance of Mireille when she threw herself out of the window, but I didn’t hear her body crumpling onto the cobblestoned courtyard below. Or maybe I did and I’ve blocked out the memory. White noise filled my ears; the plates I was carrying crashed to the floor; I was dimly aware that my legs buckled. But I didn’t scream—I’m sure of that.

  “Steph, Steph, what’s she done?” Mark shouted. Still I couldn’t move. I felt him bash against my shoulder as he ran for the window and looked down. “Oh fuck,” he said. “Oh shit, oh Jesus.” He turned to face me. “She’s alive. She’s trying to move, Steph. She’s breathing.”

  A jolt of adrenaline as swift and vicious as an electric shock rocked through me, and I came back to myself. “Call an ambulance, Mark. Call the police.” I sounded absolutely calm. I felt absolutely calm. I knew this wasn’t rational. By rights I should have been a mess—witnessing Mireille’s suicide attempt should have reignited the PTSD that festered inside me after the home invasion.

  “What’s the number? Fuck…”

  “Google it, Mark.”

  “Okay…good. Yes.”

  I stepped over the pasta mess on the floor, collected a cushion and the throw from the couch, and made for the door.

  “Steph—what are you doing?”

  “Getting to Mireille. She needs help.”

  “Wait. I’ll come with, just let me—”

  “No time, Mark.” And then I left the room.

  —

  There was very little blood. She’d thrown herself out headfirst, but she must have twisted as she fell, and she lay on her side, her left arm cruelly angled beneath her, her shoulder dislocated. The left side of her face was pressed into the cobbles, but her right eye was open. Her floral dress was rucked up, revealing pasty, scarred thighs furred with dark hair.

  I dropped to my haunches next to her and gently covered her with the throw. “Mireille.”

  She was breathing in short, whistling gasps. “Huh, huh, huh, huh.”

  “Mireille. Don’t move, okay? Help is on its way.”

  “Uh.”

  Tiny white flecks haloed her head. Tooth shards, those are tooth shards, I thought with that same chilling calm. Her right eye flitted crazily in its socket.

  I considered lifting her head to slot the cushion beneath it, but I didn’t dare risk further injury. I stared up at the window. She shouldn’t have been able to fit through it so easily. A shadow appeared behind the frame.

  “Mark!”

  “They’re on their way,” he called. “I’m coming down.”

  I turned back to Mireille and took her right hand in mine. It was freezing and limp and peppered with blue oil paint. Rain began to fall, and I gently wiped away the drops that threatened to run into her eyes.

  She groaned, drawing in a rattling, broken breath. She was trying to lift her head.

  “No. Don’t move, Mireille. The ambulance is coming. You’re going to be fine.”

  She was trying to speak.

  I looked into her eye but could detect no sign that she knew who I was or understood what was happening to her. “Shh. Try and keep calm. They’ll be here soon.”

  “Je…Je pense…”

  I had to strain to hear her. “Shh.”

  And then she hissed, as clear as day, “Je suis désolée.” An apology, but it somehow sounded like a threat.

  I dropped her hand and skittered away from her on my haunches. Something sharp dug into my palm—a fleck of broken tooth. I scrambled to my feet, rubbing my hands on my jeans to dislodge it. Seconds later I heard the slap of running feet, and then voices and light filled the courtyard. Mark took me to one side as a trio of overalled paramedics fussed around Mireille.

  The calm clarity receded then. It had done its job. I started to shake. My memories of the next couple of hours are fragmented, but this I know for sure: Mark and I were there when a young paramedic with a tattoo of a star on his wrist pronounced her dead. It was 8:45 exactly.

  —

  While Mark took a pair of grim-faced gendarmes up to the apartment, I waited next to the mailboxes, my back turned to the courtyard. When he returned, a polite but serious policewoman asked us to collect our identity documents and then drove us to the nearest police station. After handing over our passports and numbly giving our statements separately to uniformed officers, we were ushered into an anonymous room that smelled of coffee and paint. The French cops I’d seen wandering around the city had intimidated me with their automatic weapons and steely demeanors, but without exception everyone we encountered that night was sympathetic and spoke good English.

  Mark held tightly to my hand throughout. It was his turn to take over. I don’t know how long we were left in that room, but it felt like hours. We barely spoke. Every so often, when he sensed I needed reassurance, he squeezed my fingers.

  Finally, a slender woman with tiny hands and pronounced crow’s-feet clomped her way into the room and gave us a tired smile. “I am very sorry for keeping you waiting. I am Capitaine Claire Miske. You must be very tired. We have informed the consulate of your country of the events tonight, which is necessary when a foreign national is involved in a suspicious death.”

  “It wasn’t suspicious,” I blurted. “We told you, she jumped.”

  The policewoman nodded. Her eyes were bloodshot and her nails were bitten to the quick. “I know this. But it is still, ah, known as suspicious. That is the terminology.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It is no problem. I know that you have had a shock. It is bad for your holiday, non?”

  Mark shot me a glance. The understatement of the year.

  “Is the South African embassy going to send someone to assist us?” he asked.

  “Ce n’est pas nécessaire, monsieur. We have assured them that we will not detain you for much longer. It is likely in this circumstance that the procureur will ask for a full investigation, but we are satisfy that—”

  A uniformed officer stuck his head through the door, glanced at us, and then said something in French to the policewoman.

  “Ah,” she said to us. “Excuse me. I will not be long. I can bring you some café? Water?”

  “Thank you,” Mark said.

  A fresh ribbon of anxiety coiled through my gut. “What if there’s an inquest and they want us to stay here in Paris, Mark?…Christ, what if they think we had something to do with her death?”

  “They don’t. It won’t come to that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That captain seemed nice, didn’t she? And if we were in any trouble, someone from the embassy would have turned up, I’m sure of it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Really, Steph.”

  “Did you tell them what Mireille said to us before she jumped? All that crazy stuff she was babbling about?”

  “I told them she was talking nonsense,” he said, cutting me off. “I said we had no warning that she was about to do what she did. I said we hardly knew her at all.”

  “Do you think she might have overheard us—”

  “I told the police everything they needed to know, Steph.” His voice turned cold. “She was out of her mind. You mustn’t dwell on anything she said. We didn’t know her at all. And she didn’t know us. It’s the truth. Why complicate it?”

  A pretty, dark-haired woman appeared then and handed us each a plastic cup of surprisingly good black coffee.

  When she left, Mark sighe
d and took my hand again. “I’m sorry if I sounded harsh. It’ll be fine, Steph. We’ve been through worse.”

  I let my head droop onto Mark’s shoulder. I dozed, but I didn’t dream.

  The captain with the crinkly eyes finally returned, apologizing again for keeping us waiting. I was relieved to see our passports were in the file she placed on the table in front of her. “D’accord. I think I should tell you that the woman who you know as Mireille is known to us. She has a history.”

  Mark disengaged his hand from mine. I hadn’t realized how sweaty it had become. “What do you mean ‘the woman who you know as Mireille’? Is Mireille not her real name?”

  “Oui, my apologies. It is just, ah, my turn of phrase. This woman has been in many institutions. We are trying to contact her family, but we have spoken to her doctor, and he say she was often talking of ending her life and has tried this before. It seems this time she succeeded.”

  “Shame,” I breathed, although to be honest, I was too drained to feel pity for Mireille right then. Mark took my hand again.

  The policewoman picked through the file. “I have read, of course, your statements. You say that it was she who invited herself to come to dinner at the place where you stay?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you saw no sign before that she was, ah, intent on hurting herself?”

  “No,” Mark said. “Like I said, we hardly knew her. I’d run into her on the stairs a couple of times, and I’d only really thought she was eccentric. Harmless.”

  She nodded. “D’accord. Yet it seems this was her plan. To die in front of you. To jump from the window.”

  I felt Mark tense next to me. He was the one who’d opened that window. He was the one who’d obsessively hacked at the shutters. If he hadn’t opened it, would she still be alive, or would she have found another way to do it?

  I found my voice. “Why us? We were strangers.”

  “Who can say? This woman. She was…ah, how you say…damaged. She was sick. We are still investigating, but we think that she was living in the building illegally. She was not renting her studio.”

 

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