by Cara Black
Émil had fallen at twilight; the dusk, a rose-violet slash under the fingernail crescent of a moon. Her papa had told her the moon’s lit face always turns toward the sun. And to imagine Émil in the turquoise-green Mediterranean enjoying the sun-baked sand. She’d shaken her head stubbornly.
She’d begged her papa to call Captain Morvan, an old colleague and police diver, who’d checked with the Seine dredgers. After he’d reported no luck, she insisted they search the water-treatment plant beyond Bercy. But Émil must have floated away.
Then one day a package had arrived, covered with British stamps, official customs forms, and coarse brown twine. It was addressed to her. In it, she found a toffee-furred bear wearing rainboots, blue slicker, and luggage tag from Paddington station, London, on it, saying “Please take good care of this lost bear.”
After her father’s death, in his drawer, she’d found a yellowed receipt from an English department store for a stuffed bear for a Mademoiselle Leduc. And after all these years, her Paddington Bear still stayed on her bed.
Her dog Miles Davis and the stuffed Paddington Bear were the only men in her life. But wasn’t that how it turned out . . . a successful career and money, but a sour love life, or conversely, madly in love, business falling apart and broke?
Was it just her? Or the fact that bad boys were her downfall?
The last time she’d been happy had been with Yves, now a news bureau chief in Cairo. A problematic relationship at best. Then a few flings, all disasters.
Her tastes were simple. Someone who could make her laugh, had nice eyes, and had the same taste in champagne. Veuve Clicquot. And a bad boy side that made up for any other deficiency.
A nurse’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Dr. Lambert’s ready. I’ll help you to the MRI.”
Why was she thinking about men? It wasn’t as if she’d had a future with anyone before, and now the prospect seemed even more remote. Zero. She couldn’t see and didn’t know if she ever would.
“Nervous?”
“Me?” she said, hoping her voice didn’t crack with tension.
Chantal had taught her to endow someone with a face or a feature, to “give looks to voices.” She turned to the voice and nodded. The movement felt more natural, less odd than before.
“Ba wey,” said the young nurse for bien oui, with that hesitant Parisien drawl. Aimée felt her slowly expelled breath. “Can’t stand enclosed spaces myself, but Dr. Lambert will be staying with you. That’s quite unusual, you know.”
An eye surgeon and head of the department at the MRI? Didn’t they have technicians for that? But she was reassured. She wouldn’t mind having him explain what he saw or giving her the chance to ask questions.
A buzz of voices met them in the imaging department.
“Dr. Lambert, the cranial sac shows distension . . .”
“Here’s the case we’re going to study: female suffering severe blunt trauma to the head, partial asphyxiation, and subsequent vision blurring and loss.”
Great. She was to be his guinea pig for students. And he hadn’t even told her.
“You forgot the resulting concussion, Dr. Lambert,” she said.
Silence.
“So I did, Mademoiselle Leduc,” he said. “Anything else slip my mind, or does that about cover it?”
A snicker came from somewhere in the shuffling group she felt standing ahead of her.
“You’re the doctor,” she said. “I hope you explain everything. And the real prognosis.”
“This is the type of patient, doctors, that will be your rare curse and luck to treat,” he said, his voice serious. “Strong-willed and a fighter.”
What about smart?
And despite the fear gnawing at her insides, she focused on his voice explaining the neurons, ganglia, arteries, veins, and whatnot causing the trouble. Or what seemed to.
“Notice the nice embolizing technique of Robards, the neurologist at hôpital Saint Antoine,” Dr. Lambert said. “He redirected the bloodflow and supported the blood vessel at the weakened site. Not in a textbook, but it makes good sense. Remember that.”
Aimée concentrated on Dr. Lambert’s words, but even with a few years of pre-med, she felt lost. Nevertheless, she could appreciate Lambert’s observations, his way of injecting guidance, of teaching them to think. Maybe if she’d had a professor like that in the école des médicins she’d have stayed. But then the dissection of corpses had gotten to her.
She took a deep breath as the gurney wheeled ahead. They wrapped sheets over her and slipped her into something that echoed. Drafts of air shot across her. And from all around the noise of the giant machine, as it powered up, enveloped her. As if she’d been shoved inside a wind tunnel.
From outside came the muted clacking of equipment, moving of knobs and other adjustments.
“Try these earplugs; it gets noisy,” said a loud voice. “Small space bother you?”
“A little.” She was terrified.
“Try to remain still.”
The nurse had given her small sponges, telling her to let out her tension by squeezing them. At least they kept her fingernails from digging into her palms.
THE STUDENTS had gone and Dr. Lambert stood near her. Elevator bells pinged down the hallway. The smell of the hospital laundry soap clung to his lab coat. She managed to sit up, then to stand.
“Got a clearer idea of the problem, Doctor?”
“Right now I’ve got a clearer picture of what’s not the problem,” he said. “The brain stem’s a complicated highway. But, to tell you the truth, the doctor who reads the MRIs won’t analyze the films and report until tomorrow.”
Great. Her knowledge had increased by zero.
“Let me reexamine your eyes. I want to check something,” he said. “Tell me if anything changes.”
She felt his hand on her chin, lifting it up. He must be tall. His fingers lifted the edge of her eyelid. Gently. A metallic clicking sounded by her nose.
Desperately she wanted to see. Anything. A blur, something. She tried.
Only darkness.
He pushed her hair off her forehead. His hands were warm.
“You want it straight?”
“Will I need a drink to hear this?”
“Are you always so . . .?”
“Feisty?” she interrupted. “Only when I’m scared, only when my life’s collapsing. Otherwise I’m easy.”
“Your life will change, it has to,” he said. Something moved on the linoleum, as if his feet shuffled. “But it doesn’t have to fall apart. Shall we have that drink?”
Now she was really scared.
“Fine, let’s hit an Orangina machine in the lobby,” she said. “My treat.”
She thought back to books she’d read about Helen Keller, all unkempt and wild with rage before she learned Braille, and that movie, Wait Until Dark, with Audrey Hepburn, blind and gorgeous in Givenchy, defeating killers. But she wasn’t like either of them.
It hit her like a load of bricks. Her vision loss was permanent. She didn’t need him to spell it out. She needed to find somewhere to fall apart, but not in front of him. Then somehow she’d manage to call René.
She realized how nice Dr. Lambert was. He’d cared enough to find her a place to stay. He’d tried. Above and beyond his duty. The poor guy must have a heavy schedule, case overload, and a wife and kids dying to see him after a long workday.
“Look, let’s make it some other time. You’ve got a life, probably a big day of surgery and appointments tomorrow,” she said, giving him a way out. “We can talk when the detailed MRI report comes in. Unless, of course, I wake up to a halo of miraculous light and can finally do my nails. Then I’m out of here.”
“You know that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile,” he said.
Had she smiled? She felt warmth spreading over her hand. From his.
“Let’s go,” he said. He placed her hand on his bended arm. “Amaze me with all the tricks Chantal’s taught you.”
Perform like a circus animal?
“What do you mean?” Dumbfounded, she stood paralyzed.
“Relax. You’re pretty uptight. Show me how you walk on rue Charenton to the bar-tabac on the corner of rue Moreau, for a start,” he said. “Or do you have stage fright?”
She didn’t want to go to a lighted, noisy bar full of people. Or to pass by the passage where she had been attacked. She wanted to crawl into a hole, curl up, and cry.
“Scared?”
“Me? Where’s that bar?” She strode ahead, pulling him along with her and prayed to God she didn’t run into a pillar or stone wall.
BY SOME odd quirk of fate, she’d been to the bar-tabac on the corner of rue Moreau. It was on the rainy night she’d parked in the Opéra parking lot and the attendant had showed her the shortcut through hôpital Quinze-Vingts. She’d stopped for a quick espresso, knowing she was late for the impromptu Populax meeting but figuring she’d need to key up with caffeine to match Vincent’s nervous energy.
She remembered the fifties-style bar, but not its name. Comfortable and utterly Parisian, like the one around the corner from her apartment. They still existed. Timeworn, with a stumpy, rounded counter. The soccer calendars with team schedules on the nicotine-burnished walls. The smudged, beveled mirror with the specials written in white over the Lavazza coffee machine, crowned by rows of cups. Upside-down liquor bottles anchored to the wall with silver stop-cocks that gave metered doses. The brown mosaic tile floor littered with sugar cube wrapping and cigarette butts, where one bumped elbows with neighbors. Not chic but centime-conscious.
“Later on they sing,” Dr. Lambert said, taking her elbow and guiding her onto a leather banquette. “Clothilde shuts the place at midnight, the accordion player hands out sheet music, and people stay until dawn.”
Clothilde. Where had she heard that name?
“The new generation craves a whiff of the past. To sing their grandparents’ songs, to dance the bourrée from the countryside in three quarter time.”
She knew the past could reassure. Or frighten.
“You know most people in Paris come from somewhere else,” he said. “What about you?”
“A Paris rat,” she said, leaving out the fact her mother was American. “And you?” she asked.
“Born in Chambery. The snowy Savoy.”
What did he look like? she wondered.
“But my grandparents . . .” she went on.
“Let me guess,” he said. “Auvergne?”
She nodded. “That’s easy.”
Paris was filled with Auvergnats. Between the wars and during the Depression, Auvergnats, nicknamed bougnats, had fled the mines and their bleak farms in the Massif Central, migrating in droves to Paris. The well-known tale: coal merchants, hoping to make their fortune in Paris, often ending up carrying coal on their backs. The more affluent opened bistros, accounting for the large number of Auvergnat-based menus one still saw. She remembered her grandmother telling her how in Cantal, the calcium carbonate-rich springs coated any object put under them with a shiny translucent layer. Like the pervasive bougnat influence in Paris.
Her senses had been pared to the essence. People, slapping eath other’s backs, and smoking, involved in discussions, as they were all over Paris tonight. Their energy hit her. And she felt curiously part of it.
“Pastis?”
She needed something strong.
“Double, please.” She shoved a fistful of francs at him.
While Dr. Lambert got drinks, she pulled out Josiane’s cell phone, found the number pad, and called René.
“Allô?”
Aimée heard klaxons and the revving of engines in the background.
“Ça va, René?”
“I’m stuck in the motorcycle rally in Bastille,” he said.
“But that’s on Friday nights.”
“Maybe you should let them know. Alors, traffic’s jammed,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Not far, buying my doctor a drink,” she said.
Pause.
“Aren’t there ethical considerations . . . doctor and patient, eh?”
“It’s after my MRI. He’s trying to break it gently to me,” she said.
“MRI?”
“Standard procedure. He’ll know more tomorrow.” She didn’t want to tell René she’d be blind forever. “Look, he feels sorry for me.” She felt the edge of the table, worn and sticky. “What did you find out?”
The revving of engines increased. She wished he’d shut his window.
“Aimée, get this. Romanians intimidate residents and old people, using strong-arm tactics to force them out. They don’t even try and evict them legally,” René said, his voice rising with excitement. “Seems a construction company moves in then and restores or demolishes the building. Josiane was working on a story about this.”
“Would that have got her murdered?”
“Makes more sense than that she was a victim of the Beast of Bastille,” said René.
René was good. A natural.
“Quite the detective, aren’t you? Tell me more.”
And he did. The architect Brault’s allegations, the roller-blading astrologer’s predictions, his friend Gaetan’s evasions, and the old woodwind maker’s information.
“Draz?” she asked. “This old man heard the name?”
“Seems Draz was a bon mec. The old flutemaker heard him beating someone to a pulp below his window,” René said. “I don’t imagine that’s something you forget.”
“Good job, partner. Listen, someone stole my phone,” she said, wanting to downplay the attack. “Try my number, see who answers.”
She clicked off. René called right back.
“Your voice mail answers,” he said. “Your phone’s probably in the Seine with the fishes.”
She wasn’t so sure of that.
“I’m staying somewhere else tonight,” she said.
Another pause.
“With your doctor?”
How did René make that jump? Was her flicker of attraction to the doctor so obvious?
“An opera singer rents rooms . . .”
“What about the residence? You need care!”
She appreciated his concern. He was the only family she had besides Morbier, who was keeping to the margins of her life.
“It’s complicated,” she said. “Look, my door got carved up and I had a close encounter hanging from my window railing.”
“Someone attacked you in your room?”
So she told him.
Right now, she was so worried that she might not see again, that everything else faded in importance.
“Stay at my place.”
“René, the doctor wants me near the hospital, available for tests. He can’t schedule in advance, he calls me in when a space opens. But thanks for the offer.”
The air brakes of a late evening lumbering bus hissed in the background.
“Of course,” he said, his tone resigned. “You need to be close to the hospital. Lucky the attacker didn’t take your laptop.”
“He came for something else: Josiane’s phone. If he saw the laptop in the drawer he ignored it. My phone must have sat in full view on the bed but I’d put Josiane’s in my pajama jacket pocket after the nurse copied the numbers for me. I’d forgotten it was in there.”
She heard René’s intake of breath. “By now he will have discovered he’s got the wrong phone. You are in danger.”
“That’s why I moved. Only you, Dr. Lambert, my landlady, and Chantal know where I’m staying.”
“Good.”
“Listen, why don’t you make an appointment with Josiane’s editor?” she said. “Find out what she worked on, see if the editor will share her notes.”
“Tomorrow. I’m beat.”
He sounded more than tired.
“We know she lived near Marché d’Aligre.”
She pictured the streets leading to it, one of the few covered markets left in Paris. Her grandfather ha
d bought pheasant there. She’d accompanied him, transfixed by the beady-eyed stuffed guinea fowl and the bright-plumed pheasants. Rabbits hung by their feet upside down. Under the glass and wire-framed roof, he’d buy Meaux mustard sealed in its crock with red wax, and containers with olive oil from Provence they decanted into small bottles.
The marché hosted a thriving outdoor produce trade and secondhand dealers, too. On the outer fringes, under the arcade of a 70s “monstrosity” (according to her grandfather), stood the curve of flats replacing Haussman era buildings, where street people spread blankets, hawking odds and ends. A marketplace since medieval times, the Marché d’Aligre was the only spot in Paris to continue the tradition unbroken.
Aimée tried to view the map in her mind. Had it made sense for Josiane to go through that passage where she was killed on her way home to rue de Cotte?
No, the passage lay several blocks in the opposite direction.
Then why would Josiane go there? But she knew why . . . the phone caller, the man had begged her to meet him.
She knew because she’d heard him.
Again she wondered if they had been having a lover’s quarrel.
“René, what if this involves jealousy?” she said. “Love problems. Plain and simple.”
“Since when is love plain and simple?”
He had a point.
She smelled Dr. Lambert’s Vetiver scent before his thigh brushed against hers in the booth.
“René, I’ll get back to you later,” she said and clicked off.
She felt her hands laced around a frosted cold glass.
“The new bartender recommended Fire and Ice. A speciality of the Antilles, where he’s from, too. He swears this will get anyone through a rough night.”
“So, doctor, what gets you through?”
“Call me Guy. If you keep calling me doctor, customers will descend on us to describe their illnesses.”
Laughter. Low and melodic. Nice.
“So what gets you through the night?” she asked again.
“Sunrise.”
What a cop out! She might as well head back to the opera singer’s and try banging her head on the wall. Maybe that would jiggle those neurons into action. It might even restore her sight.