“We’re not all going,” Oliver said, glancing at Ellis’s overnight bag and shopping bag full of food.
“Oh, but we are.” Keith shoved his bag in first, then gestured for Ellis and Ginny to pass theirs over. Oliver tried to put his in as well, but Keith slammed the lid down before he could.
The car was a two-door—a fact that had never been relevant before. Ginny had always been in the front seat. Today, she would almost certainly be in the back. She never thought about the back of the car as being an actual place you could sit. It was more like a glove box extension.
“I’m shorter,” Ellis said. “I’ll get in the back with Gin.”
“No,” Keith said. “Let him manage in the back.”
“Gin’s taller than me. She should ride in the front. This is her trip. I’m intruding.”
“It’s fine,” Ginny said. That conversation needed to end. “I’ll take the back.”
She folded down the front seat with a bang and plunged in headfirst, getting briefly tangled in the seat belt, before squeezing herself in. The backseat was not a happy place. It was covered in musty-smelling fabric—fabric that had seen dirty sets and smelly costumes and piles of old take-out bags of hamburgers and fried fish and chips. In fact, the first thing it brought to mind was the swimming pool Dumpster, except it wasn’t as big and it wasn’t as clean.
What was mildly uncomfortable for her must have been torment for Oliver, who was at least six or seven inches taller. His head scraped the roof and he had to keep his neck slightly bent. He stuffed the backpack by his feet and held the leather satchel on his lap. The combined effect forced him into a squashed, leaning position, with his shoulder pressed up against Ginny’s ear. She tried to move closer to the door, but there was simply no more room. They had been packed in like freight. Keith got into the driver’s seat and immediately adjusted it back into Oliver’s already cramped knees.
“All set?” he asked everyone.
He put the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine made a terrible screeching sound, then coughed itself off. “This car is never going to make it to France,” Oliver said.
“Don’t worry about the car,” Keith said, jiggling the key. “Worry about yourself.”
“Who are you two? Do you have names at least?”
“I’m Mr. Pink,” Keith said. “She’s Mr. Shut Your Face. Now, tell us where we’re going.”
“Paris,” Oliver replied stiffly.
“Yes,” Keith said slowly, with mock patience, “you told us that already. But can you be a bit more specific than that? I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but it’s actually quite a big place.” He reached down and folded his seat back, completely crushing Oliver.
“I’ll tell you when you get off my lap.”
“I just want you to know what to expect from this trip,” Keith said, folding the seat back up into a driving position. “Pain. Not nearly as much as you deserve, but we will try our best.”
“I already worked it out,” Ellis said, holding up both a map and her phone. “We take the M20 to Folkestone, then from there we get the train to France. The trip to Paris should take about five and a half hours, total, so we’ll be there by dinnertime.”
“I’ll tell you the rest when we’re closer to Paris,” Oliver said coldly.
“‘I’ll tell you the rest when we’re closer to Paris,’” Keith repeated, in an exact copy of Oliver’s voice. He could do other types of English accents very well, at least to Ginny’s ear. “Posh boy speaks posh. Bet you went away to school. You a public school boy? Sent away from home at a young age? Is that why you’re so well-adjusted?”
“Yes,” Oliver said. “That’s why. Can we go now?”
The Talking Letter
Most of the route to Folkestone was a highway—so the next two hours were mostly spent looking at the backs of flatbed lorries, vans, other cars, and the many sheep and horses that seemed to graze along England’s major traffic arteries.
Keith’s car, never a prize, was even worse in the winter, in the backseat. It was thin and poorly insulated. The heater was a concept joke that was probably funnier closer to the vents in the dashboard. Ginny huddled inside of her jacket and zipped it up over her chin, breathing hot air back on herself. In the front, Keith and Ellis were talking, but Ginny could just about hear them over the terrible noise of the engine. Oliver had his headphones in the whole time. She was in a little bubble, all on her own.
Once they got to Folkestone, they made their way into a long line of cars at a dock, where they sat for half an hour. Then a man in a glowing yellow-green jacket was waving them along a train platform to a series of wide doors and directly onto the train. This was an odd experience, being in a car on a train. All the cars trundled along through the silver train compartments. There were ads on the walls, and everything was bathed in a soft yellow light. Then another man in a vest flagged for them to stop. Doors closed and a heavy metal grate dropped down, locking them in. There were no windows around, not that there would be anything to see. They were going through a tunnel, passing under the English Channel—a kind of very long, sideways elevator ride.
Oliver tried to stretch a bit, accidentally digging his elbow into Ginny’s ribs. She pushed it back.
“So,” she said. “Are you going to show me the letter now so we know where we’re going?”
“There’s nothing to see,” Oliver said. “I don’t have it with me.”
On that, Keith and Ellis swiveled around.
“You don’t have the letter?” Ginny said. “You forgot it?”
“I memorized it.”
“You are joking,” Keith said. “I realize that you are not like the other children, but you are joking about that.”
In reply, Oliver tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and began to recite.
“ ‘Oh, you’re still reading. Good! All right, Gin. You’re in Greece. Greece is a fine place to be. . . .’ ”
Okay, so he wasn’t joking. This was weird, listening to Aunt Peg channeled in a deep male English voice. This was like a horrible séance. In a car, on a train, under the English Channel.
“ ‘Have you ever seen water like this? Felt sun like this? Is it any wonder that the Greeks were among the first to really start asking questions about the nature of beauty and art and life itself? This is the birthplace of Western thought. This is where the Big Questions were forged out of the stuff that had been eating at mankind’s collective brain for millennia—the big What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? has been the central question of my life.
“ ‘Sometimes I’m asking it in a big sense. Sometimes I mean it in a very small, immediate sense, like when I am trying to do my taxes. Lately, what with the brain cancer and all, I ask it all the time. I ask it about the TV remote (which, to be fair to me, is insanely complicated). I ask it when I can’t remember which way it is to the grocery store. My disease has taken me on a journey of wonder, Gin. Wonder, and a lot of trying to buy bread at the post office.
“ ‘Even I know that some of the things I have asked you to do are strange, and I’m a weirdo with a tumor the size of an egg in her head. But I have a method to my madness.
“ ‘I want us to make a painting together. This painting is inspired by something my friend and idol Mari Adams did called Paint This for Me. She did a series of sixteen identical paintings—really simple ones—and then she left them in various places around Edinburgh to be touched, admired, rained on, stepped on, drawn on, sliced up . . . whatever happened to the paintings, that was all part of it. Then she collected them up and did an exhibition. I always liked the idea that the paintings were out there living their lives, being changed by the world. My idea is a little different. I am making one picture out of different materials that I have placed around in various spots. In order to collect them, you’re going to need to revisit some places you’ve been, and go to one place you haven’t. I’m marking your route home.
“ ‘The first place you’re goin
g back to is Paris. No one “gets” Paris after one visit. No one. How you get there is up to you. I know how I would want to do it—I’d jump ferries all the way across the Mediterranean, stopping in Sicily and Sardinia. Or you could stay along the coast of Italy and France, bouncing your way along the Rivera. Or you could just take a plane. Whatever floats your boat. Or plane. Just get to Paris. And what’s there—the first part of this piece is the background—the sky.
“ ‘Sometimes, Gin, I wonder what inanimate object I would like to be, if I could be any inanimate object in the world. There are so many good choices. I’d love to be an airplane that crossed the Atlantic twice a day. I’d love to be the Tivoli fountain, where poets have perched for hundreds of years, and tourists have come to understand the joy of living art. But the one I always come back to is much more humble. I’d love to be a tabletop in Paris, where food is art and life combined in one, where people gather and talk for hours. I want lovers to meet over me. I’d want to be covered in drops of candle wax and breadcrumbs and rings from the bottoms of wineglasses. I would never be lonely, and I would always serve a good purpose.
“ ‘I suppose you remember going to my friend Paul’s restaurant, the one I decorated? I made four tabletops for it. They’re all made out of doors, and I painted each by hand. The paint I used wasn’t really designed for the wear and tear of a restaurant, so they should all be well-marked. It’s up to you to take the one you know is right. You’ll know it when you see it. Use your instincts.
“ ‘Paul knows that you will be coming back to take one of the tabletops. I asked him not to mention this to you when you first came by—so I hope you are pleasantly surprised that you are going back.’ ”
Oliver stopped and fiddled with the clasp of his bag.
“That’s it for now,” he said.
It was only then that Ginny realized she was clenching her stomach muscles to the point of nausea, holding in whatever reaction hearing this letter produced. It wasn’t sadness or excitement—it was homesickness and nostalgia. It was like hearing the voice of a ghost. No one said another word until the train came to a stop and they made their slow way out and onto a French road, which looked more or less exactly like the English road they’d just left behind.
“It’s in the café,” Ginny said quietly. “Les Petits Chiens. That’s what it’s called.”
It took about three hours of driving through France, punctuated by a few dodgy turns and bursts of swearing from Keith. Ellis navigated while Keith negotiated a car with right-side steering on what was, for him, the wrong side of the road. Oliver went back to his music and staring out the window. Ginny was left to her own thoughts, which was honestly the last place she wanted to be left.
They reached Paris right around five, just as the streets were snarled with traffic and the dark had descended and the streets glowed orange from the streetlights. It was bizarre how quickly generic highway could turn into . . . well, Paris. For the first time since she had gotten in this car, Ginny felt a surge of excitement. There was the Eiffel Tower, just illuminated for the night. There were the long stretches of creamy white buildings with their big gray-black roofs and their skylights. There were the Art Nouveau Metro signs from the turn of the twentieth century, with their sinuous green iron workings that looked like curling plants. This weird, impossible place that looked like a collection of palaces, a grubby city, a museum, a tight cluster of cafés—everything, all at once.
In the summer, the trees had been thick and green. Now, the trees were bare, but heavy with lights, so many lights, the color of champagne bubbles. Paris took its decorating seriously. The smells of the city seeped in—the bread coming from the bakeries, the toasty smell of a crepe truck, the occasional gust of sewer or garbage. Then, right back to the bread and crepes. Ginny’s stomach grumbled loudly.
“I could eat one of those little dogs,” Ellis said, pointing at someone walking a ratlike creature. “I am honestly that hungry.”
“Me too.” Keith swerved to avoid a pedestrian—or maybe toward a pedestrian. It was hard to tell. “I’m glad we’re going to a café.”
They drove on to increasingly smaller and more familiar-looking streets, finally arriving on a narrow artery where motorcycles had completely taken over the sidewalks for their driving and parking purposes. The car barely fit down the road. Keith stopped when he could go no farther and they seemed to be in the right area. They climbed out of the car. Oliver immediately grabbed for his cigarettes and shoved one in his mouth.
“I know where we are,” Ginny said. Somewhere in her brain, she had stored the layout of these little passageways. She started walking, surprising herself with her own assurance. Sure enough, she turned a corner and saw the tree that blocked the front, now bare of leaves. Les Petits Chiens was dark. There was a sign stuck to the door, which was barely visible. It’s never good when there’s a note on the door of a shop or restaurant. It never means, “We’re open and everything is working just fine.”
Ginny held up her phone to illuminate it.
“It’s in French,” she said. Her three and a half years of high school French had led her to this moment. “It says . . . ‘Dear Customers, Jean-Claude and I have gone to Orange for the holiday. The restaurant . . . will open . . . something, something . . . on January third. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. . . .’ Oh my god. It’s closed until January.”
That was it. Instant failure, right out of the gate. Oliver cupped his hands around his face and pressed his face against the window to look inside. He tried the door as well, even though it was pointless. Keith immediately began laughing the tired laugh of someone who has just driven all the way to Paris in a backwards car.
“So we came all this way for nothing,” he said. “Brilliant. Maybe this is something we could have checked on if we had the letter.”
“All right!” Ellis said brightly. “This is just a little setback. We made it all the way here, we can figure this out.”
No one replied, so she tried again, this time bouncing a bit as she spoke. “We haven’t eaten properly all day,” she went on. “We just need some food to buck us up, and we’ve got the best food in the world all around us. Let’s find ourselves a nice little café and have some dinner. Then we can think about what to do next. Right?”
Nothing.
“Right?”
“Might as well,” Keith said. “I’m starving.”
He threw one arm over Ellis’s shoulders. With the other hand, he beckoned Ginny over. Ginny stepped over quietly. He draped his other arm over her shoulders, making them a friendly threesome. Behind them, Ginny could hear Oliver walking quietly in their footsteps.
The Card Cheat
They were in a café, four streets over from Les Petits Chiens. It had been chosen simply because it was the most café-looking of all the cafés they passed—very small round tables with marble tabletops, dark wood, a nickel-plated bar, and a simple menu written on a blackboard offering three courses and a glass of wine for eighteen Euros each. It was still a bit early for Parisians to be having dinner, so they had the place almost entirely to themselves.
Oliver had been forced to sit by himself at a small table in the corner. Ginny could see that he was attempting to look dignified, even after his very public shunning and banishment. The way he sat there in his long black coat, deliberately sitting very upright, eating his plate of roasted chicken . . . Ginny almost felt pity for him. She had to tell herself not to look over at him. They had already each polished off a crock of onion soup, and now were making their way through the large dishes of mussels and the cones of French fries that cluttered the table. She had never eaten mussels before. They looked very odd, with their black, almost opalescent shells, each spread widely to reveal the globby little bit of seafood inside. But it turned out that globby was good, especially when swimming in a pool of white wine and garlic sauce, which you can then drink up in the empty shells and soak up in fresh bread. This was probably the exact kind of meal Aunt Peg wanted t
o see on her tabletop.
“Right,” Ellis said, eating the last of a paper cone full of fries, “what happens now?”
It was an excellent question, and not one Ginny could answer, but they were both looking at her like she was about to start spouting streams of pure wisdom.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I want to get the tabletop. But Paul isn’t here. I guess I could try find an email address or leave a note or something. Maybe he can send it to me . . . or something.”
Keith picked at the remainder of his food and Ellis fidgeted a bit. It wasn’t the most inspirational answer. Ginny stared at her mussel shells and the tiny amount of broth at the bottom of her bowl. She was still in Paris, eating Parisian food on a beautiful Parisian winter night. That was something.
“Does anyone want to hear my suggestion?” Oliver asked from three tables away.
“Not really,” Keith said loudly.
Oliver picked up his plate of roasted chicken and potatoes and joined them, making room for himself on Ginny’s side of the table.
“The owner of the restaurant already knows that you are going to come for it. The letter clearly says so.”
“We aren’t stealing the tabletop,” Ginny said, stacking her shells into a pyramid.
“It’s not stealing if it is already yours. What we’re talking about is breaking and entering—and we can do the entering without any breaking.”
“And what does that mean?” Keith asked.
“We pick the lock.”
Keith snorted and shook his head. He grabbed another piece of bread and ripped it in half.
“All I need is a little piece of wire,” Oliver said. “I’m willing to give it a go, unless someone else has a better plan.”
The Last Little Blue Envelope Page 7