by Allan Folsom
“I don’t suppose you know the girl,” McVey said as he watched Osborn and Vera walk away from them. Lebrun turned the key in the ignition and he eased the car off in the same direction.
“You are not asking if I know her, but if I know who she is—correct? French and English expressions do not always mean the same.”
McVey was incredulous that a man could talk with a cigarette always dangling from the corner of his mouth. He’d smoked once, for the first two months after his first wife died. He had taken up smoking to keep from drinking. It didn’t do much good but it helped. When it stopped helping, he quit.
“Your English is better than my French. So yeah, I’m asking if you know who she is.”
Lebrun smiled, then reached for his radio microphone. “The answer, my friend, is—not yet.”
18
* * *
THE TREES along the boulevard St.-Jacques were beginning to turn yellow, getting ready to drop their leaves for winter. A few had already fallen and the rain made walking slippery. As they crossed the street, Osborn took Vera’s arm to steady her. She smiled at the gesture, but as soon as they crossed, asked him to let go.
Osborn looked around. “You worried about the woman pushing the baby carriage or the old man walking the dog?”
“Both. Either. Neither,” she said flatly, purposefully being aloof, but not quite sure why.” Maybe she was afraid of being seen. Or maybe she didn’t want to be with him at all, or maybe she wanted to be with him completely but wanted him to make that decision for her.
Suddenly he stopped. “You’re not making it easy.”
Vera felt her heart skip a beat. When she turned to look at him, their eyes met and held there, the way they had that first night in Geneva, the way they had in London when he put her on the train to Dover. The way they had in his hotel room on avenue Kléber when he’d opened the door and stood there with nothing but a towel around his waist. “What am I not making easy?”
Then he surprised her.
“I need your help and I guess I’m having a hard time figuring out how to ask for it.”
She didn’t know what he meant and said so.
Beneath the umbrella he was carrying for both of them, the light was soft arid delicate. He could just make out the top of her white medical tunic raising up under the blue anorak she wore. It made her look more like a member of a mountain rescue team than an urban doctor in training. Small gold earrings clung to the base of each ear like tiny raindrops, accenting the narrowness of her face and turning her eyes into enormous emerald pools.
“It’s dumb really. And I don’t even know if it’s illegal. Everybody just makes it seem like it is.”
“What is?” What was he talking about? He was throwing her off. What did this have to do with them?
“I have a prescription I wrote for a drug that now they tell me is only available at hospital pharmacies and that I need local authorization for. I don’t know any doctors here’ and . . .”
“What drug?” Concern was written all over her face. “Are you ill?”
“No.” Osborn smiled.
“What then?”
“I . . . I told you it was dumb,” he started uncertainly, as if he were embarrassed. “I’m presenting a paper when I get back. As soon as I get back. For a reason named Vera, I took an extra week off when I should have been back at work . . . .”
“Say what you mean, will you?” Vera grinned and relaxed. Everything they had done together had been rich and romantic and deeply personal, even to helping each other through the private embarrassments of bodily functions when they’d both had the twenty-four-hour flu in London. Aside from their first exploratory conversations in Geneva, little, if anything, had been said about their professional lives and now he was asking an everyday question involving just that.
“I’m presenting a paper to a group of anesthesiologists the day after I get back to L.A. Originally I was to speak on the third day, but they changed it and now I’m first. The paper has to do with presurgical anesthetic preparation involving succinylcholine dosage and effectiveness under emergency field conditions. Most of my experimentation has been done in the lab. I will have no time when I get back, but I still have two days here. And it seems that if I’m going to get any succinylcholine in Paris, I’m going to need an okay from a French doctor before anyone will I give it to me. And as I said, I don’t know any other doctors.”
“You’re going to self-medicate?” Vera was astonished. She’d heard of other doctors doing that from time to time and had almost tried it herself as a medical student, but she’d chickened out at the last minute and copied a published Study instead.
I’ve been doing various experiments since I was in med school.” A broad grin crossed Osborn’s face. “That’s why I’m a little strange.” Abruptly he stuck out his tongue, bulged his eyes and twisted up an ear under his thumb.
Vera laughed. This was a side of him she hadn’t seen, a silliness she hadn’t known existed.
As quickly, he let go of his ear and the goofiness faded. “Vera, I need the succinylcholine and I don’t know how to get it. Can you help me?”
He was very serious. This was something that had to do with his life and who he was. Suddenly Vera realized I how very little she knew about him and, at the same time, how much more she wanted to know. What he believed, and believed in. What he liked, and disliked. What he loved, feared, envied. What secrets he had he’d never shared with her or anyone else. What it was that had cost two marriages.
Had it been Paul, or were the women at fault? Or was he just bad at choosing them? Or—was there something else, something inside him that festered a relationship all the way to ruin? From the beginning she’d sensed he was troubled, but by what she didn’t know. It wasn’t something she could point to and understand. It was deeper and for the most part he kept it hidden. But it was there just the same. And now, more than at any time since she’d known him, as he stood there under her umbrella in the rain asking her to help him, she saw him absorbed by it. All at once she felt herself overwhelmed by a wanting to know and comfort and understand. Much more a feeling than a conscious thought, it was also dangerous, and she knew it, because it was pulling her somewhere where she had not been asked, and to a place, she was certain, no one had ever been invited.
“Vera?” Suddenly she realized they were still on the street corner and that he was talking to her. “I asked if you could help.”
Looking at him, she smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Let me try.”
19
* * *
OSBORN STOOD near the front counter of the hospital pharmacy trying to read get well cards in French while Vera took his prescription and walked to the pharmacist in the back. Once he glanced up and saw the pharmacist talking and gesturing with both hands while Vera stood with a hand on a hip waiting for him to finish. Osborn turned away. Maybe he’d made a mistake involving her. If he were ever caught and the truth came out, she could be charged as an accessory. He should tell her to forget it, find some other way to deal with Henri Kanarack. Fumbling, he replaced the card he was looking at in the rack and was turning to go back to her when he saw her coming toward him.
“Easier than buying condoms—less awkward, too.” She winked and walked past him.
Two minutes later they were outside and walking down the boulevard St.-Jacques, the succinylcholine and a packet of hypodermic syringes in Osborn’s sport coat pocket.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, putting up the umbrella and holding it so they could both walk under it. Then the rain started to come down more heavily and Osborn suggested they look for a taxi.
“Would it be all right if we just walked?” Vera said.
“If you don’t mind, I don’t.”
Taking her arm, they crossed the street against the light. When they reached the far curb, Osborn purposefully let go. Vera grinned broadly, and then for the next fifteen minutes they simply walked and said nothing.
Osborn’s thought
s turned inward. In a way, he was filled with relief. Getting the succinylcholine had been easier than he’d imagined. What he didn’t like was that he’d lied to Vera and used her and it bothered him a great deal more than he thought it would. Of anyone he’d even known, Vera was the last person he’d deliberately use of not tell the absolute truth to. But the fact was, as he reminded himself, he’d had little choice.
Today was not every day, nor was what he doing the stuff of everyday life. Old and dark things were at work Tragic things, that only he and Kanarack knew. And that only he and Kanarack could settle. It worried him again to think that if things went wrong, Vera might be accuse of being an accomplice. In all likelihood she wouldn’t go to jail, but her career and everything she’d worked for could be ruined. He should have thought of that earlier before he’d even talked to her about it. He should have but he hadn’t and now it was done. What he had to think about was the rest. To make sure that nothing went wrong, to make sure that both he and Vera were protected.
Suddenly she took his hand and pulled him around to face her. When she did, he realized they were no longer on boulevard St.-Jacques but crossing the Jardin des Plantes, the formal gardens of the National Museum of Natural History, and were almost to the Seine.
“What is it?” he asked, puzzled.
Vera watched his eyes find their way to hers and she knew she’d snatched him out of a dream.
“I want you to come to my apartment,” she said.
“You what?” He was clearly bewildered. Pedestrians scurried past left and right and gardeners, despite the rain were preparing their work for the day.
“I said, I want you to come to my apartment.”
“Why?”
“I want to give you a bath.”
“A bath?”
“Yes.”
A great boyish grin crept over him.
“First you didn’t want to be seen with me and now you want to take me to your apartment?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Osborn could see her blush. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes. I have it in my mind that I want to give you a bath, and in the thing they call a tub in your hotel you could barely wash a small dog.”
“What about ‘Frenchy’?”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Tell me his name and I won’t.”
For a moment Vera was silent. Then she said, “I don’t care about him.”
“No?” Osborn thought she was teasing.
“No.”
Osborn looked at her carefully. “You’re serious.”
She nodded definitively.
“Since when?”
“Since . . . I don’t know. Since I decided, that’s all.” She didn’t want to examine it and her voice trailed off. ‘
Osborn didn’t know what to think, or even feel. On Monday she’d said she never wanted to see him again. She had a lover, an important man in France. Today was Thursday. Today he was in and the lover was out. Did she really care for him deeply enough to do that? Or had the lover business been only a story to put him off in the first place, a convenient way to end a brief affair?
The breeze off the river caught her hair and she tucked a strand of it behind her ear. Yes, she knew the chance she was taking but she didn’t care. All she knew was that right now she wanted to make love to Paul Osborn, in her own apartment and in her own bed. She wanted to be with him completely for as long as they could. She had forty-eight hours before her next shift began. François, Osborn’s “Frenchy,” was in New York and had not contacted her for several days. As far as she was concerned, she was free to do as she pleased, when she pleased, where she pleased.
“I’m tired. Do you want to come? Yes, or no?”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said. It was five minutes to ten in the morning.
20
* * *
THE SOUND of the phone woke her. For a moment she had no idea where she was. A harsh glare came in through the French doors partially open to the patio. Beyond them, over the Seine, a midafternoon sun had given up trying to push through a stubborn overcast and vanished into it. Still half asleep, Vera rose up on one elbow and looked around. Bedclothes were strewn everywhere. Her stockings and underwear were on the floor, half under the bed. Then her mind cleared and she realized she was in her apartment bedroom and her phone was ringing. Covering herself with part of the sheet, as if whoever was on the other end might be able to see her, she snatched up the phone.
“Oui?”
“Vera Monneray?”
It was a male voice. One she’d never heard. “Oui . . .,” she said again, puzzled. There was a distinct click on the other end and the line went dead.
Hanging up, she looked around. “Paul?” she called out. “Paul?”
This time there was concern in her voice. Still there was no reply and she realized he was gone. Getting out of bed, she saw her nakedness reflected in the antique mirror over either dressing table. To her right was the open bathroom door. Used towels lay on the sink and on the floor by the bidet. The bath curtain had come down and was lying half across the tub. On the far side of it, one of her shoes perched ceremoniously on the closed lid of the toilet. To anyone entering now there would be no mistaking that long and forceful love had been made in these two rooms and God knew where else in the apartment. In her life she’d never experienced anything like the past hours. Her entire body ached, and what didn’t ache was rubbed raw land sore. She felt as if she’d locked union with a beast and in so doing had unleashed a primitive fury that had built, moment by moment, thrust by thrust, into a gargantuan firestorm of physical and emotional hunger from which there was no escape or release except through complete and utter exhaustion.
Turning away, she saw herself again in the mirror and came closer. She wasn’t sure what she saw, exactly, except that somehow it was different. Her slim figure, her small breasts were the same. Her hair, though completely disheveled, hadn’t changed. It was something else. Something had gone from her, and in its place something else had come.
Abruptly the phone rang again. She looked over at it, provoked by the intrusion. It continued to ring and finally she picked it up.
“Oui . . .,” she said distantly.
“One moment,” a voice came back.
He was calling.
“Vera! Bonjour!” François’ voice bounded at her over the phone. He was up, bright, demanding.
It was a moment before she replied. And in that moment, she realized that what was gone from her was the child in her, she’d crossed a brink from which there was no turning back. Whoever she had been, she was not anymore. And her life, for better or worse, would never again be what it had.
“Bonjour,” she said, finally. “Bonjour, François.”
Paul Osborn left Vera’s apartment at a little after noon and took the Métro back to his hotel. By two o’clock, dressed in sweatshirt, jeans and running shoes, he was driving a rented dark blue Peugeot down the avenue de Clichy. Carefully following the rental agency’s street map, he made a right off the rue Martre onto the highway that led northeast along the Seine. In the next twenty minutes he made three stops at pull-outs and side roads. None showed promise.
Then at two thirty-five he passed a wooded road that seemed to lead toward the river. Making a U-turn, he came back and turned down it. A quarter of a mile later he came to a secluded park situated on a hill directly along the river’s eastern banks. From what he could see, the park itself was little more than a large field surrounded by trees, with a dirt road around its periphery. Taking it, he drove along until the road began to curve back toward the highway. Then he saw what he was looking for a dirt and gravel ramp leading down to the water. Stopping, he got out and looked back. The main highway was a good half mile away and obscured from, view by the trees and heavy undergrowth.
In summer, the park, with its access to the river, probably saw heavy use, but now, at nearly three o
’clock in the afternoon on a rainy Thursday in October, the area was completely deserted.
Leaving the Peugeot, Osborn walked to the top of the ramp and started down. Below, through the trees, he could just make out the river. The dark sky and drizzle closed everything in, making it seem, almost, as if he alone existed. The ramp was steep and had been worn into ruts by vehicles using it as a portal to a landing at the bottom that no doubt served as a launching place for small boats.
As he neared the bottom and the incline leveled out, he saw a line of old pilings rotting at the water’s edge and assumed the site had served as a much larger entry to the river years before. When, or for what reason or in what years, who knew? How many armies, over how many centuries, had passed this way? How many men had walked where he walked now?
A dozen or more feet from the water’s edge, the gravel gave way to a gray sand that quickly became a reddish mud just as it reached the water. Venturing out, Osborn tested the firmness. The sand held, but the moment he reached the mud his shoes sank into it. Pulling back, he kicked what mud he could from his shoes, then looked again toward the water. Directly in front of him the Seine flowed lazily, lapping gently in tiny wavelets against the shoreline. Then, less than thirty yards down, an outcropping of rock and trees jutted sharply, turning the flow abruptly and sending it off into the main current.
Osborn watched for a long moment, all too conscious of what he was doing. Then, turning purposefully, he crossed the landing to a stand of trees at the base of the hill leading up from the water. Finding a large branch, he picked it up, crossed back, and tossed it into the water. For a moment nothing happened and it just hung there. Then slowly, the current nudged it forward, and in a few short seconds it was swept down toward the trees and then out toward the main current. Osborn glanced at his watch. It had taken ten seconds for the branch to move away and get caught up in the predominant flow. Another twenty and it disappeared from sight around the outcrop of rock and trees. All told, just about thirty seconds from the time he tossed the branch in until he lost sight of it.