The Clasp (30 page)

H
e could hear the paper burn on his cigarette as he inhaled. It was dead quiet at 11:15 p.m. and it was only getting deader. The silence was a kind of weather itself, blanketing the château in stillness. In a letter to his doctor, after Guy had really begun losing his shit, he wrote: “We are mere playthings for this deceiving and whimsical organ, the ear. Movement causes a particular tiny flap of skin in our ear to quiver, which immediately transforms into noise what is in reality only a vibration. Nature itself is silent.”

Almost.

There were a few dogs on the property, medium-sized things of indeterminate breed that the Ardurats kept in outdoor cages. They made a colossal amount of noise in the early evening, barking at every winding-down château activity. They barked at the Italians leaving, at the gate shutting, at the cars backing out. They barked in anticipation of the Ardurat girl walking across the lawn with a sack of kibble in her arms. They stress-barked at her mother, just as much the embodiment of
American Gothic
in real life
as in her photo, when she slammed the door to the family's kitchen. They stopped barking after dinner, soothed by the TV glowing from a room on the third floor. Once the room had gone dark, Victor could barely make out the breathing lumps of their bodies from where he hid—which was inside the garden shed, spying from behind a thin pane of glass.

He took a long drag, just to hear the paper crackle under his nose, inhaling the earthy air of drying herbs. Then, for absolutely no reason, an entire rack of garden trowels and shears came crashing down, smashing a terra-cotta pot in their wake.

He waited for the dogs to go off.

“Louise!”
Mr. Ardurat poked his balding head out the window.
“Ta gueule!”

The dog offered her counterpoint.

“Non! Non! Ta gueule, Louise!”

During the tour, Victor learned the château was split into dozens of rooms (originally designed to keep the heat in during winter). Until now it had been difficult to pinpoint the master bedroom and the residential portion of the château. But now he saw where it was, happily far from his turret. He put the cigarette out carefully, grinding the butt with his shoe, slung his duffel across his chest, and poked his head around the corner of the shed.

At first he stayed low, crouching down over the grass as if avoiding laser sensors. Then he just stood upright, walking steadily as he approached the house. He thought of college, of how he used to have lies prepared in case he got caught stealing. What would be the lie here? His car broke down at the front gate and he needed to use the phone? How did he get this far onto the property? How did he get over the moat? It was covered in grass, but still—a moat.

Victor ran his fingers along the mortar. He squinted and looked up. Unless the Nazi soldier had moved the necklace again
without telling Johanna's aunt, it was still behind a brick somewhere in that turret. The only way in was through the window. He chewed on the skin around his cuticles.

His hand shook as he placed it on a trellis. The insanity of what he was about to do skittered across his brain like a roach running under his kitchen stove. And like spotting a roach, he had two choices: (a) acknowledge it and crush it or (b) reason that he could just as easily have not seen it.

When Victor began climbing, his fear was more centered around the dogs' barking than his back breaking. He shifted his duffel with every vertical foot, keeping it from banging against the wall. Then came a moment of pure mortal fear, the exact pull that raised him from
I will probably break my ankle if I fall
to
I
will definitely break my neck if I fall
. Finally, he reached the protruding top ledge of a long window frame, thick enough for him to stand on. The trellis stopped just before the second-floor window. He felt the ledge with his fingers. He tested the branches to see if they would hold him but there was no way to complete the test without putting his full weight on them. Instead he took a deep breath and flung one leg up onto the ledge, letting the other dangle, grunting as quietly as he could while he lifted the rest of his body.

He caught his breath. Clouds rushed over a full moon. Below him, he could see rows of snapdragons dividing artichokes and cauliflowers from each other. He could see the little guest house the owners of the château must have crammed into during the occupation. Had the Nazi soldier, the sensitive soul that he was, ever climbed out here to get this view? Had Guy? Probably not. They were both too busy having love affairs to climb out on ledges.

The window, Victor thanked God, was open. It squeaked loudly on its hinges when he pushed it. He quickly rolled onto the floor, duffel first, expecting to land in Guy's old bedroom. But he must
have climbed at a slight angle in the dark and he popped into the hallway outside the bedroom.

Fuuuuck
, he mouthed.

He wiped his pants and looked down the winding staircase. He could see the tops of gold poles and velvet ropes. A grandfather clock ticked at the end of the hallway. As Victor's eyes adjusted, he saw a hallway table covered in typical hallway table fare: mail, pads of paper, school supplies, eyeglass cases. The air up here was different from the mausoleum on the ground floor. People lived here.

Victor poked his head back out the window, craning his neck to get his bearings. The door to his right was the door to Guy's old room, it had to be.

His heart thumped. He put his ear to the door and placed his hand against it, as if checking for fire.
Who breaks and doesn't enter?
Who indeed. The doorknob, host to a millennia of dings and scratches, gave easily as he turned it.

It wasn't even locked.

O
uvre la porte.”
Kezia yanked on the passenger door.

“Do you have the keys?”

“Oh, ha-ha.” She used her hand to hold her hair out of her face. “Hilaaarious.”

“I'm serious.” Nathaniel turned out his pockets.

She felt a panic swell in her throat. Many of life's little unfortunate events could be met with immediate acceptance—like Rachel's flying hat—but two in one hour seemed like a lot to ask. She tried her door again and peered into the curved glass to see if keys could be found . . . and then what? She didn't see any wire hangers in this parking lot, and if she had, Nathaniel would have made an entirely different joke about them.

“I don't have them, I swear.”

She shot him daggers over the roof. The car was the control in this experiment. Home base. More reliable than her partner, certainly. Her brain made the rounds, inspecting the rest of her organs: Stomach, low. Bladder, full. Heart rate, up.

“Goddamnit!” She kicked the tires.

“Kezia.”

“I can't believe you lost them. Now we're going to have to hike all the way back up there. They could be anywhere. You had, like, one job and you're too busy texting random skan—”

“Did you try my jacket pocket?”

His lips curled more smugly than usual. She put her hands in both pockets, until she felt Grey's Eiffel Tower–shaped key chain. She got into the car, wordlessly leaning over to unlock his door. He sat in the driver's seat and plucked the keys from her open palm.

“Oh, thank you, Nathaniel,” he said. “Thank you for being my chauffeur. I'm sorry I accused you of being an imbecile, Nathaniel. I'm sorry I live my life waiting for others to mess up and then turn everything into a character assassination, Nathaniel.”

“I'm not sorry,” she said to the visor mirror. “I'm sure you've done something over the years that warranted that. Consider it retroactive.”

They went to three different hotels, including one with a neon outline of the cliffs above the door, but they were all booked. It was the start of summer. Peak tourist season. Even the hostels were full. It was an especially humbling sensation to pass backpackers on the road, packs stuffed higher than their heads, and feel envious of whatever lice-infested cotton ball they called a bed.

“Now there
really
isn't any room at the inn,” he said.

“I don't know what to do.” She leaned her head on the dashboard. “We could drive straight to Tours-of-David-Arquette.”

They had been intentionally mispronouncing each town name, lazily butchering them for their own amusement. Tourville-sur-Arques was the first to fall.

“Hold up.” He consulted his phone, really thumbing through it.

“Are you trying to tweet this?”

“Take this.” Nathaniel held out the road map. “We get back
onto the highway and make a right. We're going to this spot. You navigate.”

She accepted the map without looking at it, blinking at him. What useful information did the phone have now that it had withheld over the last couple of days?

“Do you trust me?”

“No.” She laughed as he put the car in reverse.

An hour later they were going up a steep wooded driveway that tested Nathaniel's stick-driving skills. At the top, there was an immaculate stone mansion with awnings protruding from the entranceway. It was as nice a hotel as any she had seen. Everywhere there were strawberry plants dotted with little white flowers. In addition to the grander signs of luxury (a lion insignia on the entrance and lilacs perfuming the air), there was a polished plaque. This place was host to a three-star Michelin restaurant.

“You must be joking.” She leaned forward in her seat.

A deer came springing past them with a speckled fawn behind her.

“I can't expense this and I don't know what those SAG checks are paying you . . .”

“That's the Screen Actors Guild.”

“So?”

“So I'm a writer.”

“Well, you must have cleaned up with your pilot.”

He shrugged and bounced out of the car, opening her door for her.

“Who
are
you?”

“Follow me, m'lady.”

As she walked beside him, she thought, for the first time really, of Caroline and Felix. This week had felt as if she were on
someone else's honeymoon (with triple the bickering and none of the sex). But this place? This place made her feel as if she were on Caroline and Felix's honeymoon specifically.

“
Bonjour
,” Nathaniel chirped to the man at the front desk, a guy their age with a middle part.

“Bonsoir, monsieur. Comment puis-je vous aider?”

“Sorry to barge into your establishment,” Nathaniel said.

“Ce n'est pas grave, monsieur.”

“I hate that expression,” he said to Kezia, pitching his voice up an octave. “
Ce n'est pas grave, ce n'est pas grave
. Of course it's not grave. Nobody stabbed anybody.”

“You're embarrassing us,” she muttered.

“Oui. Je m'appelle Nathaniel Healy et je voudrai une chambre pour le nuit.”

“Apologies, sir, but the hotel is at capacity for tonight.”

“See?” Kezia said. “Of course it is.”

Now she was annoyed. She wasn't brimming with bright ideas herself but not only was this detour a waste of time, it was psychologically damaging. She knew the feeling, having ordered enough four-hundred-dollar dinners, sat in front-row seats, and walked through VIP entrances with Rachel, only to come home at the end of the night and have her key stick in the lock and her ceiling leaking brown water onto a fresh pile of laundry.

Nathaniel leaned his elbows on the desk.

“Can you please check again? This should have all the information you need.”

He put his cell phone on the desk like a gauntlet, brushing against a bellhop bell as he straightened. Kezia muffled it silent. The guy took the phone, a skeptic forced to look into a crystal ball. Then he handed it back to Nathaniel and asked them to excuse him while he disappeared through an oak door behind the desk. Nathaniel winked at her.

“Do you have something in your eye?”

“Do you have something up your butt?”

The man returned with a second man following behind him, wearing the same charcoal uniform with two sets of brass buttons running down the chest like candy dots.

“Apologies for keeping you waiting, Monsieur Healy. Bertrand will take your bags from your car and escort you to your suite. Please let us know if you have need of anything during your stay.”

“
Merci
,” Nathaniel said, a self-satisfied grin blooming across his face. “Kezia, how old do you think this place is? Look at those ceiling carvings. I bet we're standing in the servants' quarters.”

“What did you do?” Her mouth hung open.

“Ah.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I didn't do anything. Caroline did. This is my officiant present. A deluxe supreme accommodation at any Markson hotel property in the world. All expenses paid. They don't just own the chains in the United States. They have a couple of what's-it-called hotels around the world. Trophy? Marquee?”

“Vanity.”

“Yeah, that.”

“Oh my God.” She flung her arms around him. “And you used your golden ticket on us?”

“Desperate times.” He shrugged. “I was going to use it to take a real girl to Singapore or something. But I guess you'll do.”

They followed Bertrand to their room, accessible via a private staircase so different from the Bates Motel staircase last night. Bertrand held open the door for them. The room was massive but understated with sponge-painted blue walls and groups of low white chairs in two clusters—one around the fireplace and the other beneath a painting that looked like a Cézanne and probably was. The ability to arrange furniture in circles, to create living rooms within living rooms, struck Kezia as a luxury greater than
a dishwasher. Every inch of wall space she had in New York was spoken for by the backs of couches and chairs. Every bed she had slept in since graduation touched two walls at once, trapping every guy she had slept with since graduation against a hissing radiator pipe. You had to be a millionaire in New York to expose the back of your furniture.

Nathaniel sprawled out on the bed.

“I have an idea.” He bounced up and put his temple against the bedpost.

“Normally I'd say I don't want to hear your ideas, but after this”—she spun in a circle—“you may present whatever idea you wish.”

“Let's get shit-housed.”