The Paris Key (7 page)

“
Mais, c'est excellente, la
Brasserie Bofinger!” said Philippe. The two had a quick exchange in rapid French, apparently about the quality of the restaurant.

“He's really more a business associate,” continued the younger man. “And it wouldn't do to stick him with the bill. You'd be doing me a real favor. My name's Killian, by the way. Killian O'Mara.”

Genevieve swallowed hard and tried to fend off the headache through sheer force of will, as though it were a simple mind trick.

“Do you have any proof?”

“Proof of my name?” He gave her a quizzical look.

“Proof that it's your residence? A driver's license, a phone bill, something with your name and address on it?”

Both men looked confused. Genevieve tried again.

“I'm not . . . I have no idea what the laws are like in Paris, but where I'm from, locksmiths don't just go around opening locked doors upon request. How do I know you actually live there?”

Now they grinned at her.

“You're saying an intrepid thief might just hire a locksmith to let him into random apartments?” Killian asked.

“I . . .” Yes, she supposed that
was
what she was saying. This sort of thing was an issue in Oakland, and she was sure locksmiths were required to obtain proof of residency. Probably using a locksmith to gain access to a victim's lair was one of those things people would never think to do in France.

“All right,” said Genevieve. “I tell you what: If you could go get me a large, very strong coffee, straight, no milk or sugar, plus a
pain au chocolat
, I will meet you at your house in fifteen minutes.”

“Really? It's a deal. By the way, what's your name?”

“Genevieve Martin,” said Philippe, helpfully. Pronouncing her name perfectly, of course. “She is the new locksmith of Village Saint-Paul.”

“I'm really not a locksmith,” Genevieve tried again.

“What happened to the Dave of the sign?” Killian asked.

“Dave died,” said Philippe.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” said Killian. “Was he a relative?”

Both men turned to look at Genevieve.

She burst into tears.

Angela, 1983

P
asquale (sweet, long-suffering Pasquale) has lost her patience with Angela.

“Je suis désolée,”
Pasquale says. “I am sorry, but you are in Paris! You must go out of the house while it is sunny. . . . It is not always so beautiful here. I insist—go out, walk around and see the sights!”

Angela knows there are sights: Paris is the City of Lights, after all, and when she came with Jim on their honeymoon she had been enamored by everything she saw. There were the obvious attractions like the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and Notre-Dame, of course, but so much more than that. Like the ice cream at Berthillon on l'Île Saint-Louis. She had insisted they walk across each and every bridge over the Seine, looking down into the water. And then Jim dragged her to the Café des Philosophes in search of the radical discussion group.

That was back when Jim would speak of philosophy; he bought her a book from Shakespeare and Company: the collected letters of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

“Listen to this,” Jim said, reading from the book. “Jean-Paul wrote this to Simone: ‘I love you while paying attention to external things. At Toulouse I simply loved you. Tonight I love you on a spring evening. I love you with the window open. You are mine, and things are mine, and my love alters the things around me and the things around me alter my love.'”

“What does that mean?” asked Angela.

“That he loves her, and that his love for her changes everything.”

But Angela wasn't so sure. She thought maybe it meant that his love was ephemeral, hard to pin down. That the things around his love changed his love.

And as for Simone de Beauvoir, Angela knew there were feminist lessons in de Beauvoir's prose, but what most spoke to her was the sense of longing, the never-quite-fulfilled yearning of a couple destined to spend their lives together, while never actually marrying, never living together, never making the ultimate commitment.

Angela hadn't known how to put her feelings into words, and she wasn't ready to voice it to Jim, but there was something seductive about the challenge to love a man beyond all reason, to take everything her man could dish out. Not outright abuse, of course, nothing like that. Just like Lady Day singing, “Hush now, don't explain” and Janis Joplin, begging her guy to “take another little piece of my heart. . . . I'm going to show you . . . that a woman can be tough.” And Simone de Beauvoir, the woman who was described as the mother of the feminist movement, stating that her greatest achievement in life had been her relationship to Jean-Paul Sartre, the philandering philosopher who received so much more public acclaim than she in life, when she was arguably the more revolutionary thinker.

Angela had wanted, back then, to give herself to Jim in this way. Heart and soul. Rationality be damned.

But Jim was won over easily, expecting her only to be a partner and helpmate as they returned to the land, started a family, ate organic vegetables, savored the simple pleasures. Even in this he is not overly demanding; she escapes from time to time to sleep on a friend's couch on O'Farrell Street in San Francisco, just to get away. Jim is patient. He is steady. He is a good man.

She is very lucky. Everyone says so.

The weariness is heavy within her, dragging her down. She is exhausted. She went to bed before dinner last night and didn't get up until eleven today, but still she is fatigued.
Très fatiguée
is a French term that seems particularly apt not only to her body, but to her soul as well.

Perhaps it is oxygen deprivation. If a person stops breathing, eventually she must stop living, right? Or would pieces of her start to die off first, small bits not integral to life?

She turns this idea over in her mind as she walks.

The small toe would probably be first to go. Perhaps earlobes, hair, the fingernails, which had become virtually useless with the advance of civilization and the decline in the need for claws. Or perhaps it would be invisible parts inside one's body: the appendix, or tissue-thin linings, or tiny glistening organs one never even realized one possessed. Or maybe it would be parts of the brain or soul . . . her sense of humor, for example.

Angela crosses the bridge and finds herself on the Île-de-France, passing by the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. A swollen line of tourists waits to climb to the top to visit the gargoyles, while herds of visitors surge into the open entrance of the sanctuary itself. The tourists are red-faced and grumbling, cameras hanging around their necks, plastic bags bulging with tchotchkes purchased out of boredom or habit from the ubiquitous souvenir shops: mini gargoyles, music boxes that play “La Vie en Rose,” tea towels and refrigerator magnets and T-shirts that proclaim a love for Paris, proof of one's international credentials upon returning to Spokane and Midland and Columbus.

Angela keeps her head down and pretends not to speak English, feeling embarrassed by the prosperous, well-fed Americans. The strong U.S. dollar brings them flocking to Europe, clogging medieval streets as they arrive in their air-conditioned tourist buses built for wide American dimensions. Middle-aged women in cardigans and sensible shoes, hair cut short more for convenience than with an eye toward fashion; middle-aged men in baseball caps and cargo shorts, displaying sturdy American legs. A few slouching teens forced to accompany their parents. They appear alternately enchanted and exhausted, limping through a city they have seen in movies and read about in books. It is part of the lore, the City of Lights.

But what that lore doesn't tell them is that Paris is a workaday place full of folks just trying to get to and from work. It is, like any other urban center, a vast, hurried, confusing mélange of streets and boulevards and museums and street people begging for change. There are more smokers here, true, and the streets are lined with cafés, and if you turn around you might see a plaque telling you that you are standing near the home of Victor Hugo, or you might find yourself, quite by accident, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, looking up into its steel-and-lace guts—a building so lofty that, like tall buildings everywhere, it disappears when you draw near.

But in the end, Paris is still just a city.

So Angela skirts the tourists and keeps walking, past kiosks selling newspapers and cigarettes and gum and stamps, past outdoor café tables and tiny shops selling kitchen gadgets, back across the Pont Neuf, past the Louvre and the Palais-Royal, and down the avenue de l'Opéra. Now that she has started walking, it seems she cannot stop. Perhaps if she keeps walking, no particular destination in mind, she will eventually get some air into her lungs; she will feel herself breathing.

The day has turned cold and gray; the sunshine, as Pasquale had predicted, was fleeting. The Parisians are just as cold and gray, Angela thinks. They stand in stark contrast to the colorful, overeager Americans, like really well-dressed gargoyles come to life.

Except for him.

He is on his hands and knees, using chalk to draw a huge painting on the sidewalk in front of the place de l'Opéra. He scuttles around gracefully, adding dimension, bringing his picture to life. He has smudges of yellow and blue on his face; his big hands and forearms are covered in multicolored dust. His hair is so dark it is almost black, and when he looks up, his heavy-lidded eyes are a somber, and startling, light blue-gray.

“Bonjour, belle femme!”
says a man sitting nearby in a folding chair, holding out a cup for people to give money. He is pudgy and sandy haired, with a pleasant face. Angela had been so absorbed watching the dark-haired chalk painter that she is startled by this voice. He repeats, in English: “Hello, beautiful woman!”

“I . . . hello,” she says. She wishes she had thought to answer in French, but when she gets nervous, the words flee her mind. In any case, her accent is so bad she fears he would have known her origin anyway.

“I am Thibeaux. This is Xabi.”

“Xabi?” She wants to hear the voice of the man covered in chalk, wants his remarkable eyes to lift again. So she asks, “How do you spell that?”

To her disappointment, the chalk painter remains silent, his head bent over his work.

So instead, Thibeaux spells the name for her: “
X-A-B-I.
It's short name for Xabier. Basque name.”

Angela roots around in her bag for some francs but isn't sure how much the coins are worth in U.S. terms. She hasn't figured out the money here yet; she spends every day hidden in Dave and Pasquale's apartment, letting them handle the outside world.

The coins clank loudly as she drops them in the cup. Thibeaux hoots, rattles the coins, and gives her a huge smile. She blushes, not sure if the money is too much or if he is teasing her for putting in so little.

Angela walks around the chalk painting to see it from the proper perspective, and only then does she realize it is the Statue of Liberty, surrounded by scaffolding. Xabi is working from a black-and-white photo from the newspaper. She remembers reading that the statue was being cleaned for the first time in decades, a massive undertaking.

“Why the Statue of Liberty?” she asks, directing her question to the artist.

He sits back on his haunches, looks up at her, studies her for a long moment. Finally he says in accented English, “It seems a perfect metaphor, no?”

“How so?”

“America, held up by—how do you call this?” He points to the picture.

“Scaffolding.”

“Yes. America, held up only by scaffolding.”

“But scaffolding doesn't hold anything up. It's flimsy itself.”

“Yes. Precisely. A metaphor. And of course the statue was a gift from France, so it is even more so.”

An American couple walks by, laden with shopping bags, barely slowing as they look at the painting, ignoring Thibeaux's rattling of his cup. In a voice loud enough to be overheard, the woman says, “Don't these people have jobs? It's a Tuesday and they're playing with chalk!”

“Yup,” the man responds. “Must be nice.”

When they are gone, Xabi holds Angela's gaze, gives her a sardonic smile. Then he says,
“Ah, les Américains. Très gentils.”

Which meant, “Ah, the Americans. Very courteous.”

In her halting French, Angela responds, “You can't refer to all Americans that way. It's a big country.”

“Where are you from?” he asks.

Usually she tells people she is from Canada. It is so much easier that way. No one holds Canadians in the kind of disdain in which they hold Americans. But for some reason she tells this man the truth: “Mississippi, originally.”

“There are many problems there, no? It is racist, I hear.”

“It can be, yes. But there are good people there, too.”

“Good people, like you?”

“Yes, just like me.”

“Hey, you want to join us?” Thibeaux asks. Angela looks up, again startled to find him there, as absorbed as she is with Xabi.

Thibeaux has folded up his chair and gathered together the newspapers and is packing a small wooden box with chalk and rags, a spray bottle of water. He has been joined by several others: three men, one woman. They are dressed like bohemians: their clothes raggedy and covered in chalk and paint.

“This is Jean-Luc, Mario, Cyril, and Michelle. Artists, all. We are going to a restaurant right here, around the corner,” he continues. “Xabi and I are painting murals there in exchange for food. Come with us.”

“I . . .” Angela is about to beg off. She should beg off, shouldn't she? She isn't the kind of woman who joins itinerant bands of artists in restaurants.

On the other hand, this is Paris. And it is starting to rain, big fat drops staining the sidewalk a dark gray. No one seems to notice the chalk painting is already beginning to smudge and run.

Pasquale will be expecting her for dinner, but Angela could call from the restaurant and explain she'd met up with an old friend. It isn't that far-fetched. Everyone passed through Paris eventually, didn't they? And probably Pasquale would be relieved to have her home to her small family for an evening. Pasquale has been welcoming and warm, unfailingly hospitable, but now, as Angela puts herself in her sister-in-law's shoes for a moment, she realizes how disruptive it must be for her to have a woman sleeping in her daughter's room fourteen hours a day.

Angela falls into step beside Xabi as they walk to the restaurant.

“Won't the rain ruin your painting?”

He shrugs and says,
“C'est la vie.”
That's life.

“How long has it taken you to paint it?”

“Three days.”

“What a shame, then.”

“It is a . . .
Comment dit-on
? A process. The people, they give money because they appreciate that we are making art. No need to last forever.”

The restaurant is charming, candlelit, and cramped. The walls are covered in sketchy, half-finished Chagall-like murals of people floating and dancing among puffy clouds over a Parisian skyline. The tables are full of tourists—American and Japanese, a few Germans—munching on pencil-thin breadsticks and drinking wine from straw-covered Chianti bottles.