Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer

by Katie Alender

  No one could nurse a funk like Hannah. She stayed off by herself for the rest of the day, pouting through the Musée Rodin and all the way back to the hotel. When we stopped in the lobby, Hannah lurked on the fringes with her arms crossed in front of her.

  I was about to start up the stairs when I felt a hand on my arm.

  “Colette,” Jules said, looking a little awkward.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “I still feel very guilty about what happened earlier,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’d like to make it up to you.” He spoke in a rush, words pouring out of his mouth. “Let me take you to dinner. Madame Mitchell said it is all right … if you would like to go.”

  I stared at him in surprise. And then, to my even greater surprise, I heard myself saying, “I’d love to.”

  “What are your friends doing tonight?” Jules asked as we walked through Saint-Germain. The sidewalk was so narrow that whenever we passed someone going the opposite way, Jules had to jump down and walk in the street. The smells drifting from the small pâtisseries, warm and sweet, filled my nose.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But maybe we don’t have to talk about them.”

  “That works for me,” he said. He glanced at my outfit — the white dress/black blazer/cowboy boot combo I’d wanted to wear the medallion with. “You look really nice this evening.”

  “Thanks,” I said, looking at his blue shirt, which brought out the soft blue of his eyes. “So do you.” I felt myself blushing, so I tried to change the subject. “So … what do people in Paris talk about?”

  “Anything,” he said. “Everything.”

  “Okay.” A pair of old ladies were approaching, so I followed Jules into the street, then hopped back up to the sidewalk. “Tell me something no one else knows about you.”

  He rubbed his neck with his hand. “No one? At all?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “No one. It doesn’t have to be a horrible secret, but it has to be interesting. Or, no. It just has to be true.”

  He smiled, showing a dimple in his right cheek. “Good, because I’m not very interesting.”

  “How can you say that?” I asked. “You know so much about everything.”

  “Ah, but that’s not me. That’s France. Perhaps that’s why I want to be a historian — so that I can become more interesting by knowing things about the past.”

  “You’re not answering the question,” I said.

  He was quiet for a moment as we veered onto a narrow, one-way street. Every so often, a car drove by, but they were few and far between. So we, like everyone else, walked right down the center of the road.

  “Something about me that no one knows,” he said. “Okay. When I was fourteen, I wrote a poem and emailed it to my favorite singer.”

  “A love poem?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “The words were not a love poem, but I think that was why I wrote it. From love.”

  And now for the million-euro question. “So who was it? Who’s your favorite singer?”

  “Ah, I can’t tell you. But I can tell you that she replied and said thank you and that I should write more poetry.”

  “So did you? Write more poetry?”

  He laughed. “Not a single line since then. I felt quite stupid, in fact. I regretted it, even though she was very nice.”

  “You shouldn’t regret that,” I said. “I’ll bet she thought it was really great.”

  “She probably gets a thousand emails like mine every day.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “Not poems. Not written from the heart.”

  He shrugged.

  “What made you decide to write it?” I asked.

  “I think … I wanted to thank her, in a way? For saying in her songs what I kept thinking and feeling but couldn’t say. It was just a few dumb lines about, I don’t know, darkness and pieces of light and … something about a cat, I think. But of course that was only a symbol.”

  “Of course,” I agreed. I pictured fourteen-year-old Jules sitting in his tiny room, at his tiny desk, composing poetry.

  Seriously adorable.

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  He blushed and tilted his head. “Oh, it’s no great story. But it’s true, and no one else knows about it.”

  “And it’s interesting,” I said. “Ten points.”

  “How about you?” he asked.

  I laughed. “You already know all my secrets.”

  “Those are things about your family. What about you?”

  Headlights approached up ahead, and Jules gently wrapped his hand around my elbow and guided me to the edge of the street to let the car pass.

  “I don’t have secrets of my own, I guess.” Except for the latest revelation that I was possibly a duchess. But somehow I sensed that wouldn’t impress Jules — especially since it had so much to do with Armand.

  I could mention the ghost again …

  Or you could get a marker and write JE SUIS TRÈS CRAZEBALLS on your forehead.

  “What about …” Jules spoke more slowly. “Perhaps this is too personal.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You don’t have to say. But I wonder … why you’re claustrophobic. Did some specific incident cause it?”

  I walked along for a while without responding. Jules didn’t press.

  “Please don’t answer if you don’t want to,” he finally said.

  “No, I — I want to. It’s just that it sounds so stupid. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m faking it or something.”

  He came to a complete stop and turned toward me, shaking his head. “You are not stupid, Colette.”

  Had I done anything to make him think otherwise? But something about Jules was disarming. So I began to speak.

  “When I was seven, during the summer, I spent a week with my grandmother — Grandma Lucille; she was born in France. My dad came to pick me up, and I told him I didn’t want to go. So I hid in the storm cellar. Except Grandma thought I went home with my dad, and my dad thought Grandma said it was okay for me to stay. And they both left. And the door latch got stuck.”

  I could remember the sudden, shocking feeling of the trapdoor overhead not lifting when I pressed on it.

  Jules held my gaze. “That must have been very scary.”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “I know it doesn’t sound that bad, but …”

  I could still smell the scent of the raw dirt, feel the humidity on my skin. The sick “they forgot about me” sensation that started in my stomach and then wrapped around my heart like a snake, squeezing until I thought I would stop breathing and die.

  Eventually, tired of banging on the door, I retreated to the corner of the room. I found a flashlight, but its beam died after about three minutes. In a way, the light made things worse, because now I knew exactly how tiny and closed-in my surroundings were.

  Hours later, I was covered in sweat, so thirsty my throat felt raw, and had to pee so badly I could hardly move. I had no idea where my grandmother might have gone, but I knew vaguely in the back of my head that she had a friend named Patricia who lived in Cleveland and that sometimes she went there to visit for days at a time.

  I thought there was a very real possibility that I would starve to death or die of thirst before anyone could find me.

  Which is a really, really sucky thing to think about when you’re seven years old.

  So I cried. And I peed my pants. And then I cried some more.

  I kept thinking of all the creepy-crawlies that might be hiding around me and imagined them inching across my skin, up the wet legs of my shorts, through my hair …

  Finally, I managed to cry myself to sleep. When I awoke, it was to the sound of the door above me being jerked open, and my mother’s worried voice calling, “Colette?!?”

  I mewled in response, still too frightened to move, and she barreled down the ladder toward me.

  “Oh, Colette!” she cried, picking me up off the floor and hugging me t
ightly. My grandmother and father peered down into the darkness. They were arguing, sniping at each other, but I didn’t pay attention to them. I was focused on being in my mother’s arms, safe and loved and not dead.

  Dad hauled me out and set me down in the hallway as Mom climbed back up.

  Grandma looked down at me — and if I live to be a hundred and fifty years old, I’ll never forget what she said: “Get her off the rug, Leo — she’s covered in urine!”

  Mom must have said something to her (and knowing Mom, it was a doozy of a something), because the next thing I remember is being home, and being plunked into a warm tub, and then given one of my dad’s oldest, softest T-shirts to sleep in.

  And being tucked into bed and kissed good night and the door closing gently behind my mother …

  Then screaming my lungs out.

  I woke up Charlie, who cried because he thought we were all being murdered. He’d accidentally seen a TV show about someone who got murdered and he was going through a stage where he thought murder happened to everyone, like it was inevitable. He’d heard the phrase screaming bloody murder and ended up actually screeching the words, “BLOODY MURDER! BLOODY MURDER!” so loud that our neighbors woke up and called my parents to make sure we weren’t all being, you know, bloodily murdered.

  I ended up sleeping with my lights on … until I was ten years old.

  So, yeah, I was a foolish kid who did something foolish and then drew a lot of foolish conclusions about what had happened to me. I wouldn’t have died. It wasn’t like the story about the bride who gets locked in her hope chest and isn’t found until she’s just an old skeleton. The storm cellar was the first place they looked when they realized I was missing.

  But still.

  I gave Jules the broader strokes, leaving out the pants-peeing but leaving in the part about Charlie and the murder, since I thought it would be nice to end on a lighter note. Then, of course, I had to explain the phrase screaming bloody murder.

  “Your grandmother must have been so sorry,” he said.

  “Well … kind of.” I tried to remember any sorriness. Mostly she’d been angry about her hall rug.

  Not that I blamed her. Grandma had other things going on in her world besides me … besides all of us, really. There were her cruises, her weekends in Miami or Saint Thomas. Her golf league, her charity groups. From the time I was old enough to know my grandma, I was old enough to know that we, her family, were somehow not enough for her.

  Mom’s mother, Grandma Carol, can’t get enough of knitting and cooking turkeys and mailing us care packages.

  But Grandma Lucille just never quite embraced that side of grandmotherhood.

  In a way, that took away the biggest part of the hurt when Dad left. After all, how could he help it? Look who he’d had as an example.

  Maybe, in discovering our heritage, I’d finally found the explanation for why people in my dad’s family had always been so concerned with outward appearances and material possessions. The Iselins were nobility. We were used to getting our own way and being surrounded by sumptuous settings. It was just in our blood.

  “I think you must have been a brave little girl,” Jules said.

  “I don’t know if I’d go that far,” I said.

  Another car came toward us. Jules took my hand and once again led me up onto the sidewalk, then back down again.

  And then he didn’t let go of my hand.

  We ate dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall that served incredible steak frites — just grilled steak with a pile of fries, but somehow it felt fancier here. We finished with the world’s most unbelievably delicious crème brûlée. Jules paid for everything, despite my protestations, and then we went for a walk along the Seine, where the breeze blew a steady stream of cold air that made us unintentionally huddle closer. After a few minutes of walking, Jules reached for my hand again, and I let him take it.

  I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought he was plain-looking. His face wasn’t hollow-cheeked or angsty, but it was square-jawed and open and strong. His eyes may not have gleamed like Armand’s did, but they had a depth to them that Armand could never hope to achieve. Armand was all show — and Jules was all substance. I never felt like Armand was really seeing me for me — even when he stared directly into my eyes.

  With Jules, I felt like he was seeing me even when we weren’t looking at each other.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Have you ever heard of someone named Véronique?”

  He gave me a sideways look. “Ah … a lot of people are called that.”

  “No, I mean, someone famous. A historical figure.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Is it someone you’re related to?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe?”

  Jules pursed his lips, and I was afraid I was going to drive him off with my crazy talk. So I changed the subject.

  “What’s your favorite part of Paris?” I asked instead. “You’ve been everywhere, right? Is there someplace you never get tired of?”

  He smiled at me, a dimple appearing just left of his mouth. “What time do you have to be back?”

  “Ten,” I said.

  He checked his watch. “We have time.”

  “Time for what?” I asked, but he was already hailing a cab.

  “Come on, and I’ll show you!” he said, pulling me inside.

  A few minutes later, the taxi pulled to a stop in front of a narrow strip of lawn that ended in the brilliantly illuminated Eiffel Tower. I stared at it, shining against the dark sky, about four times bigger than I’d imagined it would be.

  “Won’t we be coming here with the class?” I asked.

  “Not at night,” he said.

  “It doesn’t even look real.” I tried to gaze up at the top but couldn’t keep my balance.

  “Here,” Jules said, standing behind me, his hands on my arms. “Now you can look.”

  I leaned back until I could see the tip-top of the tower. I was so engrossed in the sight that it took me a second to realize that I was leaning back against Jules’s chest.

  One of our hearts was pounding, but I couldn’t tell if it was his or mine.

  I leaned back a little further and looked up at his face. “Bonjour,” I said.

  “Bonsoir,” he said, his eyes twinkling down at me.

  I stood up and turned around. “Can we go up?”

  “To the top? You are not afraid of height?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Height is the opposite of what I’m afraid of.”

  “Then, yes, of course,” he said. “As long as the line’s not too long.”

  It was rather chilly, so the line was manageable, and within thirty minutes we found ourselves at the top.

  I’d never been so high in the air before, except on planes. I looked at the cityscape below us, the way the warm, amber-tinted streetlights mixed with the whiter lights of the buildings on the meandering streets. The river curved gently away, crisscrossed by glowing bridges.

  The breeze made me shiver, and then I was wrapped in Jules’s arms.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “What?” he asked.

  I didn’t get … what he liked about me.

  To be honest, my week in Paris was making me wonder whether there really was a me. Who was I? Did Colette exist as a human, or was she just a pathetic mash-up of other people’s expectations?

  Maybe Colette is the person who asks these questions, I thought. Even if she doesn’t have the answers.

  Too hard to explain. I shook my head. “Never mind. Say something in French.”

  He said something, his voice sliding over the words in a way that made me feel kind of melty inside.

  “What did that mean?” I asked.

  “It was a question,” he said, a dimple appearing in his cheek. “I asked if … if you mind if I kissed you.”

  “How do you say no in French?” I said.

  “Non?” he said, mildly surprised. His expression was misera
ble. “I’m sorry, Colette, I —”

  “Non,” I said, putting my hand on his cheek. “Non, I don’t mind.”

  So he kissed me.

  As we pulled apart — but not too far apart — I stared up into his eyes, warm and blue and earnest.

  I’m in Paris, and I met a boy, and he really likes me, and I kissed him. At the top of the Eiffel Tower.

  Maybe things were a mess back home. Maybe I was losing my mind and/or being stalked by an evil ghost. Maybe when I got back to the hotel Hannah would kill me for abandoning her in the Catacombs. Maybe I only had three days left in Paris with Jules.

  But just for now … just for this moment … life was good.

  AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK Friday morning, Armand sat at his desk, his notes in front of him. His files were immaculately maintained — he had learned that from his father, who was an excellent businessman.

  He thumbed through them to the letter I, for Iselin, and pulled out the page he’d been creating for the American girl. Silly fool! She represented one of the most powerful and prestigious families in France, and even with the full knowledge in front of her, laid out like a banquet, she didn’t know what to do with it.

  Not to worry. Armand could advise her. He pictured them attending formal functions together, being introduced as a duc and duchesse — the hot couple in the magazines. Sure, she needed some instruction to be able to present herself in the proper manner, but it wasn’t her outside that mattered — it was her blood. Her noble lineage.

  Most of Armand’s friends were completely uninterested in marriage, but Armand wanted to marry young — provided he found the right girl. And as he stared at Colette’s biography, pieced together from bits of information he’d collected from the internet, he felt fairly confident that he’d found her. Of course, she was only sixteen, but he could wait two or three years, until she was an adult.

  And then think how powerful their families would be — united.

  Think first of your legacy, his father often told him. Armand followed this advice as well as he could. He’d seen it work for his father — the way he’d found the most beautiful woman to marry and have his children, though there was no love in their marriage. What was love compared to honor, nobility, the respect of millions of people? Armand certainly didn’t love Colette and in fact he doubted he ever could; there was something about her that made him impatient and irritated. Their marriage might not be a happy one — but it would be an important one.