B0092XNA2Q EBOK (22 page)

She laughed, grabbed a croissant from the tray inside the window, and placed it on my table. She left me with my coffee and my bread. I was quite proud of myself. I’d just navigated ordering. If I found myself alone, I wouldn’t starve. I looked around and realized
it was a good thing I didn’t have to ask for a bathroom because I’d either be looking for a tree or sitting in a Langeais jail after having made misinterpreted hand gestures that landed me there.

I drank my coffee, which was quite good, and nibbled my chocolate croissant, which had been dipped in butter, baked, and infused with chocolate. After a second cup of coffee and a third croissant, the girl left the check. I left a twenty-euro bill on the table, thinking it would cover my check and her tip. It did. She tried to bring me change but I said, “No,” and she smiled.

I figured I’d pressed my luck with the language enough so I stood and began making my way home.

The sound of the engine and the flash of silver caught my eye. A Mini Cooper, tinted windows, wound a serpentine road higher up on the hill. Surely there was more than one. Then she stopped, stepped out, flowers in tow, and began walking across the lawn on the hill above. She was a half mile from me but didn’t see me. She was intent on something else. I wound through the streets, up a series of steps, and exited into a cemetery. A very old cemetery. Isabella, covered in a scarf and sunglasses, knelt in a far corner. I held back. Hiding behind old stones and a mausoleum. She brushed the grave, setting the flowers in the brass fixture, and knelt there a long time. I heard her. Talking first, then sobbing. Occasionally, she would say something but I couldn’t make it out. The distance garbled it. I’d not seen this side of her. This was unabashed. Unedited. Torn open. Laid bare. Whoever this woman was, this was her.

An hour later, she left. I watched her load into the car and slowly wind around the town toward the château. When she was out of sight, I walked up to the grave. The flowers were fresh. Tears still wet on the marble.

My insides hurt. Like they hadn’t hurt in a decade. Old wounds, picked open. The scab and scar, peeled back. I turned, looked
away. Pain is pain whether it’s yours or someone else’s. It’s one thing to know it as your own. It’s something else to watch it crack someone down the middle.

I wandered back to town. Window-shopping. Part of me wanted to run. Leave this woman and her problems and her pain and skirt back across the ocean. And part of me did not want to do that. My mind raced. Questions I couldn’t answer. I felt like Steady was walking alongside me. Heard his heels shuffling. Before long, I was talking with him. Out loud. Or, at least, the idea of him.
Why me? What can I do? What should I do? What would you do? No, don’t answer that one.
A woman and her daughter approached, then crossed the street and passed on the other side—keeping a safe distance. Evidently, my conversation had grown animated. An hour later, I found myself staring through the window of a used-bookstore. Katie’s biography sat in the display staring back at me. The proprietor had both French and English versions.

I gave in to my curiosity, paid the man, and stuffed the book under my arm.

T
he Ice Queen
was a quick read. Easy to get into. He’d cobbled together tabloid rumors and Katie’s story with a good dose of his own invention. It began with a scene designed to hook the reader, made as melodramatic as possible. It was about ten years ago, when she had “hit rock bottom.” Yes, some of it was true—Katie had admitted as much—but much was fabricated, and its tone and intent was nothing short of cruel.

By page ten I was ready to put it down. The guy was a gold digger and she was his golden goose.

The sound of banging pots and pans mixed alongside the Allman Brothers drew me to the kitchen. The woman I’d witnessed at the graveside was gone. Someone else had taken her place. This woman was singing, “And I got to run to keep from hiding.” Unlike everything else about her, she did not have a good voice. When I poked my head around the corner, she looked like she’d been dipped in flour from ear to elbow. She sneezed, wiggled her nose, waved me forward with a white hand. “Come here. Quick.”

I obeyed. She sniffled, pressed her nose against my shoulder, rubbing hard and smearing flour and snot across my shirt. “Thanks,” I said.

She sneezed. Then sneezed again. Louder. Finally, she arched her back, took a deep breath, held it, and—drawing the force up from her toes—sneezed a third time. Having sprayed spit across the kitchen and what looked to be our dinner, she shook her head and said, “Wow!”

“You better?”

“Yep.”

I thought to myself but spoke out loud. “How can someone so small make such a loud noise?”

“Cheap seats.”

“What?”

She pointed to an imaginary row of seats somewhere beyond the kitchen. “Cheap seats. Back row. If you want to reach them, you’ve got to project.”

“Got it.”

She was as close to her physical self—whoever that was—as I’d seen her since we left my boat. No wig. No makeup. No fake eyelashes or fake boobs or fake teeth. This was woman stripped bare. I didn’t know what to call her. So I started there. “What should I call you?”

She was kneading dough. She smiled, didn’t look at me. “Sort of difficult not knowing what to call someone, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Touché.”

She motioned to a small bottle of vanilla extract. “You mind?”

I picked it up, screwed off the cap, and handed it to her. “Peter.”

She stopped. Her eyes found mine. She considered this, her wheels turning. Maybe a slight recognition. A question surfaced. Or was that just me, reading something into nothing.

I shrugged. “It’s my real name.”

“And ‘Cartwright Jones’?”

“I bought him. Or rather, paid some guys to make his name
mine. I thought it’d be good to have if I needed to run farther than I’d already run. I’ve used it a couple of times to get in and out of Canada.”

“Fishing?”

“No, I just wanted to know if it’d work.”

“You drove all the way up there to see if your fake passport would let you into Canada?”

A shrug. “Well, yeah, but I was also curious to see if, once out, they’d let me back in.”

“A bit paranoid, aren’t we?”

“No. Maybe.” I smiled. “Okay, yes.”

She returned to her ingredients. Smiling. I noticed in moments like these that she talked much like some of the NFL’s great running backs played football—she could change directions on a dime. Catching people off guard was her version of a truth serum and a guarded attempt to communicate beneath the surface but only on her terms. “And how far have you run?”

I considered my answer—and its ramifications. I erred on the side of vague honesty. “A long way.”

She accepted my answer then scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to me. “Flashlight in that drawer right there.” She pointed to the back of the kitchen. “That door there will drop you down into the wine cellar. The first two are in bin thirty-seven. The third is in forty-three, I think. Maybe forty-four. I get them confused.”

I clicked on the light and made my way down into the dungeon, talking to myself. “Yeah, my wine cellar below my château always confuses me, too.”

I wound down the stairs, down a hallway lit with a string of lights, down another set of stairs, and eventually into the first large cave we explored that morning. I got my bearings, then descended down the second set of stone steps, and landed in the Reserva. I opened the iron gate, searched the labels, matched them with her note, and began walking out.

The flashlight created the shadow that caught my eye. Small
steps carved into the stone at my feet led up and to a small round opening over my shoulder, large enough to turn sideways and wiggle through. I set down the wine, climbed up, and shone the light. It was something of a loft to my current cave. Someplace you had to know about to get to. Get into. I wiggled in, and stood hunched over, my back pressed against the ceiling. The empty room was eight by eight. The entrance was worn where someone—or someones—long ago, had slid in and out. The only sign that anyone had ever been here was a hand-carved date on the wall: May 5, 1992. Some twenty years ago. The numbers were curved and not too deep, suggesting a girl had carved them. I traced them with my fingers, doing the math in my mind. If Katie Quinn or Isabella Desouches had carved them, she would have been fifteen. Meaning, a year later, she would land in Miami.

I returned with the wine and she put me to work setting the table in the smaller of the two dining rooms, which I found down a short hallway from the kitchen. The back of the château sort of bled into the mountain, or hill. That meant that the dining room we were eating in had been shaped into the mountain. A cave itself. Low ceiling. Fireplace. Dark wooden table. Candles on the wall. I set the table, and because the temperature was a constant fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit, I built a fire and lit the candles. No one has ever accused me of being romantic, or even understanding what romance might look like, but I had a feeling that room fell into the category.

Three hours later, we finished the best dinner I’d ever eaten. Three courses. Starting with tomato soup. Three different types of fresh-baked bread. The best butter I’d ever put in my mouth. Lamb. White asparagus topped with parmesan cheese. Some sort of cheesy potato thing. Salad with strawberries and walnuts. And one more thing—the French are serious about their wine and they don’t just drink one bottle with dinner. They drink all or part of a
bottle with each course. We drank three different bottles: Blanc de Lynch-Bages 2007, Château de Liscous 2005 Saint-Émilion Grand Cru—my favorite—and Château Lafon-Rochet Saint Estephe 1993. I know their names because I wrote them down.

I also learned that French folks do dinner backward. Soup. Main course. Then the salad. And along with the salad comes a selection of what they call cheese. Notice I said
they
call cheese. I didn’t say that’s what I’d call it. She served the salad, then passed a plate. The smell nearly made me vomit. I gagged. She tried to suppress the smile and look surprised. “What’s wrong?”

I turned my head. “
What
is that?”

“Goat cheese?”

It was all I could do not to retch. I handed the plate back.

She proffered again. “Try it.”

“No, thank you.”

“Really. You’ll like it.”

I pointed. “That could gag a maggot.”

She cut a slice and ate it. Savoring it. “Suit yourself.”

She chewed and swallowed.

“How do you eat that?”

“It’s a French thing.”

I shook my head. She took a bite from a different roll of cheese, this time using a spoon. My lip curled. “You might want to use some mouthwash after that.”

The words had just exited my mouth and she was in the process of laughing when we heard a loud and purposeful knock on the door. She stopped chewing, turned white, and began looking around. As in, looking for a place to hide. I asked, “You expecting someone?”

“No.”

She looked at herself, shook her head. “I don’t have time.”

I stood. “I got it.”

“What if they speak French?”

“Follow me. Climb the steps to the second floor. If they don’t
understand me, you can yell down and tell them you’re on a conference call.”

She followed behind me, holding on to my shirt, hiding behind me. “You’re good at this.”

“I’ve had some practice.”

We slid through each room, I turned off the lights as we walked. She climbed the steps. A man’s shadow stood outside the front door. I stood to the side, clicked on the porch light, and saw Ian Murphy standing on the porch, a bottle in his hand. I pulled open the door. He said, “
Bonjour
, mate.”

I still had my napkin in my hand. “Oh, hello.”

He leaned his head forward but didn’t step inside. “Is Madame Desouches available?”

I was about to open my mouth when she hollered down from the second-floor balcony. The sound echoed through the foyer. “Ian, I’m on a conference call with people in the U.S. Can it wait ’til tomorrow?”

“Oh, right then. Sure thing. Well—” He offered the bottle. “This is for you. Some of our best. Cheers.” He shook my hand.