The Clasp (26 page)

When they got back to the apartment, Paul was sitting on a leather chair in the corner of the living room, trying to force-feed Grey caviar from Kaspia.

“You'll love it.” He spoke like a frustrated parent, as Grey pressed her lips in a straight line and shook her head.

“It's good for the baby.”

“No!”

He put the spoon down in exasperation. “Well, you smell like cheeseburgers so it's no wonder.”

When they heard the door shut, Grey came trotting toward them, firing instructions at Nathaniel about the car—a trick with the stick shift, how to use the GPS since his phone would be too
expensive. Nathaniel glared at Kezia for promising his services before he offered them. Grey had that mischievous glimmer in her eye that appeared when any of her male friends were about to spend time in a confined space with any of her female friends.

Paul put the caviar in the kitchen and was now sharing the plans for “tonight's docket,” which included a quiet dinner with some of their expat friends—a marketing executive from Denver, a hedge fund manager from Boston, a caterer from Colorado Springs, her math teacher husband, and their baby . . . an actual five-month-old baby. Nathaniel suggested that perhaps, in lieu of this sinfully boring experience, he might want to meander up to the alleyways of Pigalle or along the murky waters of the Canal Saint-Martin where the
'ipsters
were, or check out the place with the ironic disco ball. Paul paused and considered this. Nathaniel waited for the magic words
You're on your own, buddy
. Instead he turned to Grey and said: “Do you think Tritt and Becca and all them would be into that?”

“Or maybe we can leave tomorrow morning,” Nathaniel whispered to Kezia, panic rising in his voice, “take the scenic route.”

“Really?” She brightened.

He had seen into his immediate future and was seized by the lack of control he was going to have over it. He couldn't find the language to fight his host's itinerary, which stretched from this moment to his departure on Sunday night. He should be able to explain, without offending anyone, that no amount of namedropping could get eight Americans and a baby into an underground Parisian club. Alas, the impurity of his own motivations obscured his confidence.

“Really.” He nodded adamantly.

Grey was now explaining a trick with the car trunk and Nathaniel found himself paying attention.

Paul looked concerned. “Babe, that's the old GPS.”

“Oh shit.” Grey turned the screen over in her hand, holding it by its suction cup. “You're right. Ignore everything I just said.”

“I can't believe I flew six thousand miles to see cows,” Nathaniel muttered.

“You won't have to look at a single cow.” Kezia patted him on the shoulder. “I promise. I'll cover your eyes if I see a cow coming.”

“Great, I'll drive right off the road.”

D
ieppe was a straight shot from Rouen. The two cities shared a map crease. Alas, the smoker on the train had been correct. There were no buses departing for Dieppe until the next morning, owing to construction or Ascension Day or National French Whimsy Week. Victor wandered through the tight stretches of streets, keeping an eye out for affordable hostels, but found no good options. The air was damp, a reminder that he was heading closer to the English Channel. He passed a picnic area in the middle of the city, filled with families eating sandwiches. Upon approach he read a sign hammered into the ground informing him that this was also the site where Joan of Arc was burned. There were candy wrappers everywhere.

Eventually Victor settled in a square. He exhaled and pressed the knots in his shoulders. From what he had read, it seemed Guy was generally content to travel alone, to be “removed from what is called Society.” But even Guy had his moments. “Extended solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence,” he warned. “We need to have around us people who think and speak.
When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms.” The population of the square had thinned but Victor could hear glasses clinking, the sound of feet and furniture being scraped against cobblestone on neighboring streets. A ghostly man in regulation overalls came by, spearing trash.

Victor bypassed the Euro Café, the Carpe Diem café, and a three-story pub filled with students recapping their days. He kept away from squares and the storefronts with the Keebler Elf–looking roofs, their cream façades painted with jaunty stripes. He balked at the prices for food. A ham-and-cheese crêpe for €8.25? Same as his bus fare to Dieppe. He went into a grocery store and bought a salami and a plastic container of mozzarella balls for €4.80. He ate the salami like a baguette, tearing off chunks with his teeth as he clomped down the worn steps between buildings, being spit out into a residential neighborhood of brick and concrete. The sound of the cathedral bells banged through the air, uncoordinated chimes bouncing from high to low pitches.

He smiled at a pair of black cats as they trotted, one behind the other, along the striped crosswalk. Surely, he thought,
two
black cats crossing one's path is good luck. He was one step closer to the château. But for now, he wanted somewhere to sit, drink, and eat his balls in peace. The streets were quiet, compact cars parked bumper to bumper on both sides of the road. The people who passed him lived in the neighborhood, digging for keys and disappearing into doorways without acknowledging Victor. He came to a parking lot flanked by defaced City of Rouen trash bins and that's when he spotted a squat building with a Stella Artois sign in the window.

The rule of thumb for bars in New York was that off the beaten path was a good thing. Bars were better when they had no signs or signs that just read “BAR” in neon. There would always be clubs and lounges and models-and-bottles for people like Nathaniel.
Victor liked his dives and his dark corners. Unfortunately, because Victor had never been to Europe, he did not understand the inability of a thousand-year-old city to modulate “grit.”

In the corner of the dank, rotten-boothed hovel sat a group of men. Two looked like their noses had been broken. One had a crucifix and a face tattoo beneath his eyes that, upon furtive examination, was a spray of varicose veins. They all wore striped tracksuits. Most of their heads were shaved, neck rolls folding over their turtlenecks when they laughed.

Victor approached the wooden bar, feeling himself casually watched. The time had passed for him to pretend he was looking for someone. It would be worse to leave. He tried to pull a stool out but it was nailed to the ground. He sat with his knees spread apart and pressed against the wood. He was desperate for a less conspicuous duffel, one that wasn't so clearly packed with all his worldly goods. He also wished he spoke passable French but if he wanted to drink—and he wanted to drink—he was going to have to open his mouth. He ordered a glass of whiskey and ice.

The bartender flicked on a TV next to the register. Sports commentators babbled about something having to do with the French Football Federation instead of talking about the match. The bartender balked at the TV and took a rack of glasses into a back room. Victor missed him already.

The mirror behind the liquor bottles was so scuffed Victor could see only the lit end of his cigarette as he inhaled. It made him feel like a vampire. He ate a couple of mozzarella balls, and returned to his reading, which consisted entirely of Guy's envy-inducing exploits. The ladies of the nineteenth century were powerless against the charms of a heavy mustache and a set of croquet hoops. After dousing himself with “pints of cologne,”
Guy “entertained an endless procession of women, starting with lawn games and eventually retiring to the bedroom.” Quoth François, the trusty valet: “One evening, he brought home a red-haired young woman, not pretty, but rather pleasing. After breakfast she flew away, but not for long; she came back at four o'clock and waited for my master. The next day she appeared at nine in the morning. This lasted four days; after which my master said to me, ‘Do what you will with her, I don't want her any longer.'”

Victor swallowed one of the balls whole. Perhaps once he found the necklace, more of Guy's mojo would rub off on him. Then again: he might contract something else entirely. By the time Guy wrote “The Necklace,” his syphilis had progressed. His eyesight was on its way out and the hallucinations were on their way in. He wrote lengthy letters to his doctor, explaining how “Everything overwhelms me. In the mirror, I see the most deranged images, monsters, hideous corpses, all manner of terrifying beasts, ghastly wraiths, and all the fantastical visions that come to haunt the minds of madmen.”

Victor was looking into the mirror behind the bar, sucking on his cigarette, when he heard the swish of nylon pants. The man with the face veins was at his side, reaching over the bar and pawing at the underside. Victor tried to concentrate on the page. The man pulled out an object the size of Victor's eyeglass case, wrapped in brown paper and rubber bands: (a) weed, (b) money, (c) in a better, brighter world, baseball cards.

“Quoi, connard? Tu peux pas trouver une autre bibliothèque?”

From the way the man spoke, mumbling and unsnapping the rubber bands from his treasure, Victor wasn't sure if he was being spoken to.

“Bonsoir.”
Victor looked up, a nervous grin where a steely nod should have been.

The guy emitted a laugh. Victor could smell the dinner on his
breath. He shook his head and rejoined his cohorts, moving at a frighteningly unhurried speed for someone who had just taken whatever it was he took.

The bartender returned. Neon grass flickered on the TV. Victor removed his glasses, which were so filthy he could read better without them. He finished his drink, signaled for another one, and consumed the rest of his sad-looking balls—like goldfish flapping around in a puddle. The men in the back chatted in hushed tones. The bartender leaned on the opposite end of the bar, reading a newspaper, occasionally looking up at the TV just to piss himself off.

And then the men gathered themselves, slid out of their booth, and swished right out the door.

The TV seemed louder, as did the sound of the bartender turning a page of his newspaper. Victor was relieved. Since his discovery of what Johanna's necklace really was, he felt his mind slowly splitting. Half of him lived in Guy de Maupassant's world, a world of books and pet parrots and peals of female laughter. And half of him lived in the immediate practicalities of how to make his money last and get to the château. He preferred Guy's world. Perhaps it was because of this remove from reality that Victor experienced the following events as a kind of heart-racing dance, with one step following the other as if choreographed.

He noticed something was wrong when the bar door swung open and stayed open to allow for the five men who had just departed to come back in. Three remained just inside the door while two rushed into the room, including Face Veins. He leaped over the bar and grabbed the startled bartender by his collar. Victor wanted to stand but he worried that it would be perceived as an act of hostility.

The other man held the bartender's arm behind his back while Face Veins berated him in French. Then he slapped the bartender,
and when the bartender defended himself, the abuse got upgraded to a punch in the face. Victor eyed the exits. Who knew what the bathroom was like or the room behind the bar? The three men, all well over Victor's weight, were still blocking the door. Face Veins shook the brown paper package in the bartender's face, waving it in a way that confirmed there was currency inside. Apparently not enough of it. Face Veins slammed the bartender against a shelf of bottles, causing a couple to smash on the ground. The eyes of the men at the door told him to stay put. Face Veins punched the bartender again. This time a gold ring cut across his temple, splattering blood across the bar, onto the newspaper and into Victor's drink, where a drop of it plumed and faded. When Victor looked up again, he saw the gash, blood running into the bartender's eye. Now he stood.

A couple of slaps and a shady drug deal gone awry he could handle. But there was blood in his booze, on his book.

There was the quick bleep of a siren outside, most likely a cop car passing through, but it was enough to spook the thugs. One of the men at the door yelled to the two men behind the bar. It was time to go. The bartender slumped forward, attempting to head off the stream of blood with the sleeve of his shirt.

Face Veins turned around, somehow surprised that Victor was standing there, that he had witnessed this entire scene.

“Toi, mec, donne-moi ton portefeuille et ton mobile.”

“Pardon?”
Victor's heart was plotting its escape from his rib cage.

Face Veins took a sneakered step closer, dinner breath hot in Victor's face.

“Pauvre con.”
He spit on the floor.
“Si tu me donnes pas ce que, je
vais sauter ta mère et puis je vais chier dans ta bouche!”

Apparently the first request was this guy's version of asking nicely.

“Okay, okay.”

Victor felt his pockets and then remembered that his wallet was in the duffel bag. He watched himself unzip the duffel, felt how slowly he was moving, felt powerless to snap himself back to the present despite reasonable certainty that he was about to get his ass kicked.

The other men in the bar were now shouting at Face Veins. The cop car had slowed down at the end of the street. Tired of waiting, Face Veins lunged for Victor's duffel, which contained all his clothing, money, books, and his passport, sure, but also the sketch of the necklace. Victor tugged back on the other end of the strap.

He felt a rush of adrenaline and hit the guy on the nonvein side of his face.

It was a quick punch, delivered with the momentum of someone with little skill but decent reach. Victor was surprised by the impact, by how little padding there was between skin and skull. He had gotten in fights as a teenager that were more like briefly unsupervised wrestling matches. The guy's nose started gushing immediately, as if the blood were stored in pods in his nostrils, waiting to be popped. Now he was really screaming. Victor had visualized fight scenarios before, and in his imagination, his opponent ducked and Victor's fist went flying through the air, wasted energy. Even in his dreams, he was himself.

Face Veins held his nose. Victor focused downward on his duffel and this stranger's fingers still clutching the strap. He lunged for it. Alas, he had used up all his luck with that punch. Face Veins swung around in a fury, boxing Victor in his ear, grabbing his head and kneeing him in the eye. Every nerve ending in Victor's body migrated to his face. He fell backward, smashing against the barstool and hitting the floor hard. He clutched his back near the kidneys. Apparently his body had a special troop of nerves it was willing to dispatch to the kidneys. He was grateful
that he wasn't wearing his glasses. Face Veins spat on him (was there no end to this man's reservoir of saliva?) and grabbed Victor's duffel.