A Bouquet of Rue

by Wendy Hornsby

  I looked up French privacy laws and learned that the definition of what constitutes a breach of privacy is very broad. Generally, it was illegal to investigate, make public statements about, or write about a person’s sex life, friends, family life and home, leisure, health, religion, political opinions, and union membership without express permission. Suits for invasion of privacy, I read, were quite easy to bring and difficult to prevail against, but monetary rewards were very small.

  The magazine had an online version, but my search to find any mention of Yvan Fouchet in back issues came up empty except for a one-sentence public apology made less than a year ago. The editors did not say that they had been incorrect, only that they regretted violating Fouchet’s privacy in their April edition. The April edition had disappeared from the archive, but at the end of the March table of contents there was a thumbnail preview of what to expect the following month. Along with spring fashion news and tips for freshening the kitchen, the magazine would run Part Four of their series on workplace harassment, “What to Do if Outing Your Abuser Gets You Fired.”

  I read the first three installments and went on to the fifth, published in May. In my humble opinion, the author relied too much on anecdotal evidence, mostly interviews with woman who claimed abuse, and too little on hard evidence. But I had to admit that though they were little more than rehashings of the ongoing issue without offering any remedy, they were fast and interesting reads. I found that some of the follow-up letters to the editor were more revealing than the articles. Indeed, the most intriguing to me was in the May issue on the page after the April apology. Someone who signed herself as Déchaînée—Furious—wrote, “I reported my abuser. I was fired. I called his wife. She acted when no one else would. I feel pure schadenfreude. Try it.”

  My, my, my, I thought as I went upstairs to get ready for bed, that poor man got himself into big trouble. Now there were at least two angry women who gave him hell. I still didn’t know what offended Yvan Fouchet enough that he sued the magazine, but my imagination was in overdrive. Whatever it was I was fairly certain it had nothing to do with the latest model of earthmovers.

  ] Five

  Do you make a habit of sticking your nose into other people’s business?”

  Monsieur Roussel, the tough talker from the gathering at Éric’s house last night bellied up to me as I waited on the platform for my morning train into Paris. I was dumbfounded not only by the tone of this confrontation but by the way he used his bulk to intimidate me. I took a step backward and looked up to meet his narrowed eyes. I managed to say, “A missing child is every parent’s business. So is abuse of any child, by anyone. And yes, I have made a career of sticking my nose into other people’s business. It’s called journalism.”

  “You’re not one of us.” He clearly had more to say but he was interrupted when a smaller man, similarly suited, carrying a similar briefcase, seemed to pop out from behind the big man.

  “You’re Maggie,” the newcomer announced, smiling into my face. “We saw you on the Jimmy show last night. My wife told me that you had moved into our little neighborhood, and here you are. She’ll be so excited when I tell her I actually ran into you.” Then he turned enough to see the face of the man standing like a barrier between us. “Ah, bonjour, Roussel. Didn’t realize that was you. Put on a few, have you? How is Adèle?”

  “Not—” Roussel said after seeming to stumble over the question. His voice quavered when he managed to finish the sentence. “It’s not good, Claude.”

  I thought it was time for me to move along, but just then the approach of the Paris train was announced and the waiting crowd surged forward, pressing in around us. Roussel sniffled and I risked a glance at him. His face glowed red, his eyes had filled with tears.

  “I am so sorry,” the man he called Claude said, obviously uncomfortable about the other man’s emotional reaction to what may have been nothing more than a polite question—How is Adèle?—to an old acquaintance. “She looked well last I saw her. Still hopeful, yes?”

  “Not hopeful, no. The chemo that worked last time does nothing this time,” Roussel said. “The doctors offered her something new, a medical trial, but it has made her so sick. She has refused it. She says, enough. No more.”

  I thought he might keel over, so as a reflex I put a steadying hand under his elbow, pulled a tissue from my bag and handed it to him; tears coursed down his cheeks. After he blew his nose and took a few shuddery breaths he managed to gain enough composure to see that it was I who offered him succor. The look on his face, was it shock? No, it was chagrin.

  “My train is here,” I said, and moved into the flow of humanity surging toward the train as soon as the doors opened. Once inside, I spotted a window seat halfway down the car and managed to claim it. A woman took the aisle spot beside me but when a friend passed by my seatmate immediately got up to join her. While the other passengers shuffled in, I watched the platform, looking for patterns in the movement of people, trying to decide between the benefits of rushing aboard in the vanguard or hanging back for a more leisurely entry; there was room enough for everyone. The seat next to me was claimed just as the train began to move. I settled back and looked over to see the once again composed face of Monsieur Roussel looking back at me.

  “Merci,” he said.

  “De rien,” I answered, because I had done nothing but hand him a tissue. And keep him from falling over. I definitely did not want to hear an apology for his boorish behavior earlier so I said, “I’m sorry about your wife.”

  “Merci, but you can’t know what it is like to watch and be helpless.”

  “I lost my husband to cancer,” I said. He sighed and dropped his head, chagrined yet again. I told him, “Like your Adèle, my Mike came to a place where he refused further treatment. I think that was the last piece of his life he felt he had control over.”

  “Was the end—” He needed a moment to compose himself before he could make another attempt at the question. “Was the end hard?”

  “For everyone who loved him, yes, it was brutal. But he was at peace.” I left out the part where Mike, knowing what was ahead, sat down in the backyard with a glass of very good wine and his police sidearm, a Beretta, and kissed the world good-bye. Instead, I said, “Nothing can make what you’re going through easier, Monsieur. Sometimes I just wanted to hit something.”

  At that he smiled. “After that girl flic’s warning last night, I did speak to my son, Louis. The situation with his mother has been difficult for him. He doesn’t know how to handle what he feels. Nor do I.”

  “Understandable. Did you know that Ahmad Nabi lost both of his parents and his three siblings during their attempt to find a safe place to live? I think his music helps him continue on.”

  “I didn’t know anything about him until last night.” This time, no doubt, he was past chagrin and suffering a full dose of the bile of shame about what he had said the night before, and probably that morning as well. He had to look away from me to gather himself. When he turned back, he said. “I am an ass, aren’t I?”

  I laughed. “I don’t know you well enough to answer that, Monsieur.”

  The retort caught him by surprise and made him laugh. After a moment, and with the hesitation of a man who knew he was about to say something that maybe he shouldn’t, he said, “It’s just that the boy is so very different from us. How can he fit in?”

  “Other than, his skin is half a tone darker than yours and he apparently has a real gift for music, what is so different about him?”

  With a sidelong glance, and a wry little smile, he said, “You are going to make this as difficult as you can for me, aren’t you?”

  “I’m trying to, yes. Look, all I ask is that you don’t do anything to interfere with the boy. Isn’t being a pimply-faced teenager punishment enough for him?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, God, how did we survive those years?”

  “I still have nightmares,” I said.

  “Zut alors, eh?” he mutte
red, leaning back in his seat, arms crossed over his barrel of a chest. For a moment we didn’t say anything. But after a quick glance at me, he said, “I understand that Ophelia Fouchet is quite serious about her music, as well. Last night, on that bit of security film we could see that wherever she was going she took her instrument with her.”

  “Interesting, yes,” I said. “Do you know her well?”

  He toggled his head from side to side, an answer I interpreted as maybe yes, maybe no. “I know her parents from school committees. The girl was always one of the general pack of kids around; I never spoke with her. My boys are all football, football, and she runs with the equestrian crowd. Her father is a big horseman, anyway. That group is, well, très snob, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think I do.”

  “The girl was always done up just so, looked like she fell off a magazine page. Just like her mother, for that matter. My family thinks that I am strict, but next to Yvan and Claire Fouchet I am a cream puff. And then, one day I see Ophelia with black-dyed hair and torn stockings and makeup like a ghoul and I think, oh-là-là, look out, the teenage revolution has begun chez Fouchet. I wondered how old Yvan was taking it.”

  “How do you think he was taking it?” I had seen for myself that the man was currently a wreck. But I wanted to hear what Roussel had to say about Fouchet before Ophelia took off.

  “Qui sait? Every time I see him, he looks worn out. But he always says everything is good, life is perfect. But how good can it be, eh, if his daughter keeps running away?”

  “She’s run away before?”

  “Ouais. Hanging out overnight in the haras with dope-smoking friends; who knows where she goes? But not like this time. Maybe she’s finally figured out how to do it right.”

  “Maybe so,” I said. “I hope she’s safe.”

  “Yes, bien sûr, of course. We all do.”

  During the little time remaining until I had to change trains, Roussel asked about what I had done that I was on Jimmy Jardine’s show the night before. His friend Claude seemed excited about it. I told him, in brief, and in turn he told me he worked in securities at a big firm in La Défense, the financial district of Paris. Nothing interesting, he said. For a long time, whenever I asked Jean-Paul what he did before he was appointed consul general to Los Angeles, he told me he was just a boring businessman. I learned soon enough that nothing could be further from the truth. I was beginning to suspect that saying one’s work was très ennuyeux could be cover for some version of “If I tell you I’ll have to kill you.”

  When we reached my transfer stop, we said good-bye and headed off in separate directions. I went from the train to the studio for a meeting with Diane Duval about air dates for the Normandy piece, followed by a discussion of possible topics for the films Guido and I would follow with.

  Diane greeted me by handing me a box of freshly minted business cards, stiff little cardboard rectangles with the network logo, my name, and my title, Cinéaste d’investigation. I thought they were grand. I put a couple in my pocket and stuffed the box into my bag.

  “I know the production schedule is tight,” Diane said, leading me to an arrangement of chairs by her office window. “So we need to begin hiring your crew and support staff right away. Who do you need first?”

  “A researcher,” I said. “Guido and I worked with a very capable woman in Los Angeles. If immigration and union benefit packages weren’t issues, I would buy her a ticket and get her here now. But, assuming we’re stuck with reality, we need someone who is not only an experienced researcher but who is a relentless and fearless snoop. We never know what we might get into, so this person needs to be flexible as well.”

  She laughed. “I was hoping you’d adopt Bruno. You might go down to the studio morgue and ask around. Now, tell me what you’re thinking as follow-up, just in general.”

  I did, in general, because that was all I was prepared to share. Diane was so agreeable to my ideas, as amorphous as they were, that I wondered if Guido and I were being given a honeymoon period while we settled in. We had come from such a mercurial situation at our last network that both of us were conditioned to keep one foot out the door. Maybe here it would be different. Or maybe not, once we had settled in.

  After our meeting, and after getting lost in the maze of hallways only once, I walked into live studio operations to speak with Zed. He was intrigued enough by the mystery of the missing girl that when I asked him to pull up some Friday night CCTV footage from the street behind the train station, he agreed. When he had time, he would collect it and send it to my studio inbox. Zed also helped me figure out the Paris Métro schedule so that I could get across the city from Issy-les-Molineaux to meet Guido at Isabelle’s apartment on rue Jacob in the sixth arrondissement without going too far astray or spending the rest of the morning getting there.

  Because my meeting with Diane was shorter than I had expected, I had over an hour and a half to fill before Guido expected me. I was in Paris, so filling an hour was hardly a problem, however, it occurred to me as I walked outside and looked around that the studio, on the edge of a densely packed media company district, was only a short distance from the editorial offices of the magazine that published an apology to Yvan Fouchet almost exactly one year ago. I knew this because the night before, more out of habit than plan, I looked up the address of the magazine. And there they were, the third giant complex on the right. With a half-formed plan and no great expectation anything would come of it, I walked into the vast, shiny lobby below the magazine offices, handed one of my brand-new cards to the security desk and said, “I have an appointment with Roni Pascal.”

  He read the information on the card into the phone, listened for a moment, and then walked me to an elevator, used an electronic fob to open the door, pushed a number inside, and sent me on my way. I came out of the elevator into another shiny lobby. A young woman, simply dressed and très chic, with a pink sticky note stuck to her index finger like a flag waited for me to step out. After glancing at the note, she said, “Maggie MacGowen?”

  “Yes.” I handed her one of my cards. “I’m here to see Roni Pascal.”

  “I’m Roni,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t remember we had an appointment.”

  “We don’t. I lied to Security downstairs because I want to talk to you about a series you wrote last year on workplace harassment.”

  She shrugged as she thought that over, then she said, “Sure. Let’s go in here.”

  In here was a small meeting room that hadn’t been tidied after its last use. Roni pushed coffee mugs to a corner and offered me a seat. As she settled into her chair, she said, “I know who you are, Maggie. I read in the trades that you are working over here now. How can I help you?”

  “A year ago, in May, your magazine published an apology to a man named Yvan Fouchet for something that was said about him in April. I haven’t read the April issue, but I would not be surprised if what he thought was a breach of his privacy was a reference to him in the fourth installment of your series on workplace harassment.”

  As soon as I said Fouchet’s name her face screwed up as if a sudden stench had wafted into the room. “I can’t talk about him.”

  I chuckled. “The expression on your face already answered part of my question.”

  “Good thing I’m in print journalism, oui? I wouldn’t last on television. So, yes, the man’s name came up in the April installment. He was angry, he sued, he won. For me, the story of Yvan Fouchet is done, fini.”

  “Did you know his daughter has gone missing?”

  “Fouchet’s daughter? No. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know much to tell,” I said. “On Friday night she got permission to go to a pizza party with a school group. But there was no pizza party. She simply disappeared into the night.”

  “Hmm.” Chin resting on her fist, she studied me for a moment. “You think there’s a connection between the missing girl and my article? It came out a full year ago.”

  “The
only obvious connection between Ophelia Fouchet and whatever you wrote is Monsieur Fouchet. Who is he? What is he? I hear he’s strict, I hear he fights with his wife. At the moment he looks like he’s on the edge of a nervous collapse.”

  “Fighting with the wife is no surprise, but if you quote me saying even that there could be another suit for breaching his privacy. You need to be careful or he could sue you, too.”

  “French privacy laws are very different from American laws. They are so broad they must make your work difficult.”

  She nodded. “I hear Americans say that the French are not scandalized when prominent people, or even ordinary people, I suppose, get involved in sexual escapades. A prime minister has a child with a mistress, a powerful economic figure screws any woman he can trap, whether she wants it or not, and the French press says nothing. Believe me, we are also scandalized, but in France a person’s privacy is more important, more powerful, than freedom of the press. If you reveal that a man has a mistress, you are interfering with his family because you are creating discord between him and his wife or causing the disrespect of his children, or, heaven forbid, snooping into his sex life. He has the hammer of the courts on his side. So, we journalists tread a fine line.”

  “The lawsuit and the apology come after the fact. If a man’s name shows up in a national magazine, I’m certain that someone will make sure the wife knows about it long before he gets his grievance into court. Your magazine paid him one euro in reparations?”