by Kailin Gow
The old man looked at her with tears in his eyes. “I did not see anyone next to you. You must have been separated when I saw you. God help him. If he is a strong, young man he’ll be all right.”
“But the threat was in the stadium,” Taryn argued. “We’re safe out here.” She glanced at them. “Aren’t we?”
The older man and young woman exchanged glances.
“What’s going on?” Taryn said. She suddenly realized she didn’t have her purse. “Oh, my God. I don’t even have my phone. I need to contact my family, my friend.”
Once more father and daughter exchanged glances.
“Will you please tell me what’s going on?”
“Le Stade de France was not the only target,” the young woman said.
“Target? What are you saying?”
“Several have been shot at le Bataclan. Last I heard thirty were dead, but the number keeps rising. We don’t know when it will stop.”
Taryn looked from the young woman to the older man and suddenly felt the urge to throw up. It was all so surreal.
“More have been shot at a Cambodian restaurant,” the old man added.
“Paris is under attack.” The young woman seemed calm except for the light tremble of her hand as she cut another slice of bread.
The notion seemed so absurd. “But… No. That can’t be. You have to be wrong.”
The young woman turned up the volume of the radio just as it once again announced the death toll; forty-three.
“Oh, my God,” Taryn whispered. “Oh, my God.” Clutching her chest, she reached for the nearby chair.
“So you see,” the old man said in a cool, calm voice. “The streets are not safe for anyone, much less a woman with child.”
Crying, Taryn collapsed into the chair, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from blacking out.
Chapter 3
Errol
Errol finally made it back to his car and checked his phone to see if he’d received a call or text. In all the noise and confusion, he might have missed a call. So nervous was he to get a message from Taryn or Sam that he fumbled with the phone, dropping it twice before getting a firm grip on it and checking his messages.
Nothing.
His heart sank. More than anything he’d wished Taryn had made it home, and was now safe and sound. At the very least, he would have been satisfied if she’d called home to reassure her mother that she was okay.
On the hope that Sam simply hadn’t been able to reach him, he called home. “Anything?” he said simply, unable to submit to the obligations of polite conversation.
“Sorry, Errol,” she said just as simply. “No word from this end. And I guess this means you didn’t find out anything on your end either.”
“The streets of Paris are barely recognizable. They’re either bare, silent, deadly, eerie silence, or they’re crowded with police officers and reporters from around the world.”
“It’s all over the news everywhere. Three friends from back home have called to see if we’re all right. The coverage is constant.”
Errol shook his head. It had to be bad for the entire world to look in on Paris. “I feel like I’ve been plunged back into the early forties, back to the last world war. It’s like a battle zone out here.” For a moment, a picture of himself as a young boy, lost in New York, running through the streets, looking for his parents from France, flashed into his mind. He had seen devastation like this before. Had lost people before to something like this before. Long ago. In New York. He was visiting the U.S. to New York with his parents from France. His brother had stayed behind in France while the rest of the family came to New York for a brief holiday. Then something went horribly wrong. There were explosions and bombings. People were dying. Many were lost. Errol was separated from his parents. Lost. He couldn’t find them. He looked for days, and right before he fell down during one of the blast from a crumbling nearby building, he found his mother’s purse. Smashed. His mother and father…they were nowhere to be seen. Could they have perished and become ashes from the fire that engulfed several people? The blast left him reeling and falling down. When he woke up later, he couldn’t remember who he was except he had parents. Then he was told they had died.
Errol shook his head. He had almost forgotten September 11, the event that took his memories and his parents from him. Now it seemed September 11, 2001 was being repeated all over again, but now in his home country of France. His entire body shook. He lost his parents that day and the life he once had as a child. He had to rebuild everything. He felt so alone then.
“Errol? Errol?” Sam’s voice nudged him out of his darkness, and he listened to his mother-in-law’s firm but gentle voice. “I know it’s rough. Errol, we’ll have to find Taryn.”
Errol took a deep breath, pulling himself together. “I’ve got a list of places I want to check. Every restaurant we’ve ever been to, every cabaret, every patisserie and café.”
“Godspeed, Errol. Godspeed. Let me know the minute you find anything.”
He hung up and stared at his phone for a long moment. Getting around to all the places he wanted to search was going to be complicated, nearly impossible, but he had to start somewhere. He started the car and headed off to Taryn’s favorite café. It was empty. Not even a single employee remained, although the night was still young. He then tried a few of her favorite restaurants, but again, no one was around. The lights were out, the doors were locked and the air deafeningly silent.
Pulling over to the curb, he stopped to look inside yet another restaurant. Again, the lights were out. No sign of life.
Paris was on lockdown.
“My God, Taryn. Where are you?” He pounded the steering wheel and felt his determination give way to such dismal fear, he wanted to cry. Clutching his heart, he called out her name.
His breaths coming out in haggard puffs, he stared at the empty sidewalks. “I’ve got to stop running around in circles. This is going nowhere.”
Tuning into the radio, he hoped for more clarification of what was going on. Maybe he was going about the wrong way. Instead of looking anywhere and everywhere she enjoyed going, he’d concentrate on the places that had been hit. The first radio station he found spoke of nothing else but the attack.
“It is now being confirmed,” the French radio news announcer said. “Two bombs went off at the Stade de France, and there is rumor of a third. No word yet on whether anyone was injured or killed. Back at the Bataclan, the police are…”
Errol switched the radio off. The stadium. Could she have gone to the stadium? A night out. A good, friendly football match could be the perfect place for her to take a friend. Loud music and dense crowds weren’t really Taryn’s thing, but sporting events were more up her alley.
Suddenly determined and with a set goal in mind, he turned the ignition, put the car in gear and headed off to St. Denis. Once again, getting through the streets proved difficult, and once again, he was met with a barricade once he reached Le Stade. A flood of people were still leaving the enormous stadium, and Taryn was surely among them.
He parked the car on the first available space he could find, even though he knew he was in an illegal parking zone. He’d deal with the ticket later, and even if they towed his car away, he didn’t care. All that mattered in that moment was finding his wife; his wife and unborn child.
Like a man on a mission, he headed straight into the outgoing crowd, bumping shoulders with people who were desperate to get out and as far from the stadium as possible. Every once in a while he managed to stop someone long enough to show them a picture of Taryn, but time and again, the results were the same. No one had seen her.
And even if they had seen her, they were all in such a daze, so confused and so fearful, they probably wouldn’t have recognized her anyway.
Errol plowed forward despite the complaints of the sports fans who passed him.
“Mais, il est cinglé, celui la,” an old woman shouted as she slapped at Errol’s shoulder.
“Crazy?” her British companion said. “I’ll say, he’s crazy.”
Then in the distance, Errol spotted a familiar face; a tall young man with a distinct look of shock on his face. As he approached the young man, he tried to remember his name. Where had he seen him? Where did he know him from? A restaurant? The studio? An employee?
Then it hit him. The culinary institute! Yes. Henri. A former star student who had far too much talent for such a young man. And a friend of Taryn’s. Yes, so close a friend that Errol had once found himself insanely jealous when Taryn had headed off to Henri’s family farm. While it had all been innocent enough, Errol still smarted at the thought of the event.
Henri had been just a kid then, a bright eyed student so eager to learn everything about the culinary world and about the business of running a restaurant, but now he seemed more mature, calmer and more grounded.
Or perhaps it was just the devastating events that brought it out of him.
As he continued to get closer, hindered by the ever pushing crowd, he wondered if he might not simply been mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time his imagination played tricks on him. The few women he’d seen on the street seemed to all have Taryn’s hair, her gait, her mannerisms. Twice he’d run up to them only to have them stare at him in horror, one of them screaming for help until he backed away and left the scene.
In his eagerness to find Taryn, or anyone who might have seen her, his eyes were surely playing tricks on him again. He shook his head and blinked then looked at the young man once more. It sure as hell looked like Henri.
It was worth a shot. Errol pushed through the crowd with increased determination and came up to him.
“Pardonnez-moi,” he said, holding his phone up to him. “Avez-vous vu cette dame?”
The young man turned to look at the photo, then looked up at Errol. He seemed confused at first, than strangely flustered. His lips moved, as if in prayer, but no words came out.
“Have you seen this woman?” Errol repeated in English.
“Oui. Yes. Taryn.” He looked up at him with such deep sorrow, that Errol reached out to hold him.
“You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
“Chef Errol! Yes, I’ve seen her.”
Errol pulled him aside, out of the way of the crowd.
“No,” Henri argued as he tried to get back into the flow of the outgoing crowd. “We have to leave. Don’t you know what’s going on here? We have to get out of the stadium and fast.”
“Not before you tell me about Taryn.”
“She was with me,” he said with tears and panic in his eyes. “We were enjoying the game. She told me it was to be her last outing with friends before the baby came. It was really a great evening, then all hell broke loose and everything went nuts. Some people are saying that two bombs went off. I think they were both outside the main entrance, or something… and there may be more. Hell, what a catastrophe this is turning out to be. It’s a nightmare; a real nightmare.”
“Calm down, Henri, and tell me. What happened to Taryn? Why isn’t she with you now? Where is she?”
“I don’t know what happened. She was at my side one minute and then I turned around and she was heading in the other direction with this white-haired old man. I tried to go after her, but the crowd pushed me in the opposite direction.”
To a certain extent, Errol felt relieved, and he breathed with greater ease for the first time since the ordeal had started. At least now he knew where she’d been, who she’d been with and he had a clue as to what had happened. It also explained why she didn’t answer her phone. In the rush to get out, she’d probably left her purse behind.
One thing for sure, she hadn’t been injured by the bombs that had went off. Surely she’d made it out of the Stade, but then what? Was she still safe? Could she be lying somewhere injured by the pushing crowd?
“Okay, so where are the other exits? Where could she have gone out by?”
“I don’t know. But I do know we have to get out now. Come on. There are bombs going off. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“No. We have to go back inside and try to find her. Who knows what happened to her?”
“Are you nuts? Crazy? That’s a suicide mission. Besides, I told you. We were on our way out. She can’t still be inside. No way would she have gone back inside.”
“You were still inside when you lost sight of her. You have no idea whether she came out or not,” Errol blasted.
“Look at the chaos around you. There’s nothing you can do for her now, but save yourself. Pray that she’s all right, and hopefully tomorrow, when the dust settles, you’ll have answers.”
“I’m not going to wait until tomorrow to get answers.” He gave Henri a frustrated shove. “I’m going in there.”
“It’s suicide,” Henri shouted. “You’ll never make it in.”
But Errol was already thick into the crowd. Taryn was in no condition to rush or run. She couldn’t have made it very far. Maybe she’d stumbled and was crouched in some corner somewhere, or even worse; the panicked crowd had trampled her, unaware of her delicate state.
The thought sickened him and he doubled his efforts to get through the crowd, but for every step he took forward, the crowd set him back two and sometimes three.
“I have to find my wife,” he shouted in desperation. “Taryn! Taryn! Where are you? Please, let me get to my wife.”
“Get out and save yourself, fool,” a man shouted as he shoved his elbow in Errol’s gut.
“Out of the way, you idiot,” another one said as he pushed past him.
“Allez. Allez. Tassez-vous,” a woman said with fear and agony in her voice.
As a group of young man came barreling at him, Errol lost his footing and fell back. After a few kicks in the gut and the toe of a sharp shoe to the forehead, he managed to get back on his feet, but yet another group, equally eager to get out, sent him on his back once more.
This time getting up was impossible. His ribs were repeatedly kicked by the rushing crowd and a few stepped over his legs, crushing him. Blood trickled down from his split lip, from his forehead and he quickly felt battered and bruised. He got on all fours and crawled a few paces before being shoved down to the floor by the panicked crowd.
“Taryn,” he mumbled as he slowly realized the futility of it all. “Taryn. Taryn.” His eyelids grew heavy and the sound of the passing crowd became increasingly muffled.
Unable to endure another blow, Errol collapsed, his bruised cheek hitting the cold concrete floor.
Chapter 4
Errol
In slow motion, almost as if pulled back by a vacuum, Errol ran through the streets of Paris, dodging bullets and bombs, then ducking and jumping to avoid elbows and knees. Buildings crumbled around him and the city streets broke apart shattering into tiny pieces of rubble until he was running through acres of farmland. Thick mud clung to his feet, weighing them down and hindering his every step as he tried to get closer to Taryn.
Wearing a pale colored dress that blew in the wind, she waited for him at the other end of a long field of dry, dead flowers that swayed in the heavy wind. Her hands stretched out to him, she called his name and smiled, but no joy came to her eyes, only sorrow.
He trudged on, putting every ounce of energy into getting to her, but the mud only became deeper and deeper, slowing him more and more. Soon he was waist deep in the thick mud that threatened to swallow him up. The more he tried to move forward, the deeper he sank.
“Taryn,” he called out. “Taryn, I’m coming. Don’t move. I’m coming.”
“It’s too late, Errol,” she called out to him, her voice barely making it through the din of the wind. “You’ve come too late. I waited for you. I called out to you, but you didn’t come. And now it’s too late.”
“No! No, it can’t be. I’ve been looking for you all night, since the very first moment I learned you were missing, I’ve been looking. Come with me now. Come home.”
Taryn shook her
head. “You were so busy with your restaurant,” she said with a hint of reproach. “Another restaurant. And all the while, here I am, ready to have your baby, alone, with just one last desire to go out and enjoy Paris.”
“I love you. You know, I love you.”
“Yes.” She turned and walked away.
“Taryn.”
“Go back to Hong Kong, Errol,” she said without looking back.
“No! Taryn! Come back!”
He sat up suddenly, sweat running down his cheek and his fists filled with sweat-soaked sheets. “Taryn,” he whispered, his voice hoarse as if he’d been shouting all night.”
“He’s up,” a familiar voice called out.
“What? Where…?” Errol looked around and once the fog of sleep lifted, he recognized his room with all its familiar furnishings and objects, objects Taryn had brought to his home to make it her own like the small jewelry box her mother had given her and the tacky, yet amusing laminate of three kittens playing with balloons that Bobby had bought her for her fourteenth birthday. There were also objects she’d purchased to add her sense of whimsy and style to his otherwise masculine and somewhat austere décor, like the glittering lampshades that she’d set atop one of his classic, yet admittedly stuffy lamps.
“Home,” he said. “Home. Where’s Taryn? Is she back?” His eyes focused on Bobby. “Tell me she came back.”
“He’s up and asking a lot of questions?” Bobby called out through the door.
“Well, it’s about time.”
As cool as a cucumber, Leo sauntered in, looking like the movie star that he was.
“Leo, when did you get here?”
“Is he really up?” Sam said as she came running in. “Oh, Errol. Honey, don’t be so quick to sit up. You really do have to rest.”
“Taryn,” was all he could say.
The trio looked at one another than back at Errol. They didn’t have to answer him. He could see the answer in their eyes.