The Paris Key Page 9

  She cringed inwardly. Maybe she should just hide the stuff and go buy Catharine something nice here in Paris. . . . She was in the world’s shopping mecca, after all. Surely she could find something worthy, something a person would value beyond barbecue sauce.

  Genevieve turned the chaud tap on full strength and waited several minutes, but the water never heated up. Not even enough to take the edge off. Then she tried the froid, just in case the hot and cold lines had been crossed, but that was no better. Finally she forced herself in, trying to wash herself thoroughly without immersing her body in the freezing water.

  She swore, caught her breath. Felt like crying, felt desperate.

  First-world problems, she imagined Mary saying. The thought made her laugh as she emerged and dried off with a fluffy towel, teeth chattering.

  No Internet. No hot water. Genevieve was prepared—eager, even—to embrace change in her life, but this was pushing it. She wrapped a blanket around herself and hurried into the main room.

  Catharine had left her godmother’s phone number on the bottom of her note. Genevieve placed the call, and after she’d stumbled through a few French words the receiver was passed to her cousin. After hellos and quickly catching up, Genevieve asked if there was normally hot water available.

  “Mais bien sûr! The village may be behind the times in some ways, but yes, we have hot water. But you have to be sure the light is on fire.”

  “On fire?”

  “The hot-water heater is in the closet in the kitchen, the one with holes in the door. You turn the knob for the gas and light the little fire, and—”

  “Oh, you mean the pilot light?”

  “Yes, that’s it. We don’t leave it on all the time, to save gas. I can give you the name of someone if you need help; there are many neighbors who could—”

  “No, no, merci.” Genevieve didn’t want strangers trooping through what she was already coming to think of as her place. Not yet. “I’m sure I can figure it out, thanks.”

  “I am sorry my timing was poor. Désolée . . . sorry I am not there.”

  “It’s okay, really. You had your plans, and I’m enjoying getting familiar with everything. It’s good for me to discover things on my own.”

  “Oh, good, good. Genevieve, I wanted to ask you: Could you possibly visit my mother while you are there? I told her that I would not visit for a few days, but she forgets things. I left her address and the directions on my father’s . . . bureau. Comment dit-on? Desk. On his desk.”

  “Of course,” Genevieve said as her gaze alit on the directions. “I was going to ask you about that—I would love to see Tante Pasquale.”

  “Good. I am back in Paris on Thursday. I would like to invite you to lunch. I am in the twentieth arrondissement, near Montmartre. There is Métro nearby. Close to my mother. It is not hard to find.”

  “Sure, of course,” said Genevieve, wondering why Catharine seemed reluctant to come to the village, to what was still her home, her property.

  “When you are on the Métro, make attention to the thieves. The . . . what do you call them? The ones who take from the pocket?”

  “Pickpockets.”

  “Oh yes. How . . . obvious. So, everything else is going well? I asked one of the neighbors to leave some food.”

  “Thank you! I have been enjoying it. Thank you so much. But that reminds me—your mother always insisted we needed a fresh baguette every day. Is the Maréchalerie still the best boulangerie in the neighborhood?”

  Catharine’s chuckle was deep and smoky. If Genevieve didn’t know Catharine and just heard her voice over the phone, she would have conjured an image of a woman with a wide, generous mouth, a voluptuous figure, and lush, long hair. Though Catharine had a few such physical attributes, they somehow added up to someone who seemed asexual. Always had. Even when Genevieve was in Paris as a young teenager, she remembered looking at the then twentysomething Catharine—the young woman still living in her parents’ house, sleeping in a twin bed and reading comic books—and thinking she was the last person Genevieve could imagine talking to about sex. It would be like asking a female, geeky version of Mr. Rogers. Here she was in Paris, she remembered thinking, and her French roommate probably knew less than she did about the nuts and bolts of human anatomy.

  “I’m glad to see you are still a little bit French,” said Catharine. “This is the first question you ask me. Very good. Many Americans, they do not eat bread. I find this . . . confusing. How does a person simply decide not to eat bread? How does this even happen?”

  This was another thing Genevieve remembered about Catharine: She always wanted Genevieve to explain America—and Americans—to her.

  “I think it’s mostly a diet thing. We just don’t have the same relationship with bread. Not to mention that ours isn’t as good as yours. So . . . about the boulangerie?”

  “Yes, la Maréchalerie is still the rudest, and the best. So often these go together, don’t you think?”

  “Only in Paris.”

  “Oh, I think not, ma cousine,” Catharine said with another chuckle. “I think not.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Angela, 1983

  It is after midnight by the time they finish their meal in the back of the restaurant.

  “Where are you staying?” Thibeaux asks.

  “With my brother. In the Village Saint-Paul,” says Angela.

  “Of course you are,” says Xabi in a sardonic tone. Angela wonders what it says about her that she is staying in the village, what he finds objectionable. But she hesitates to ask.

  “Xabier, why don’t you walk her home?” Pablo suggests.

  “It’s all right,” Angela says with a quick shake of her head. “I’ll be fine.”

  The wine has made her a little hazy, just enough to make her feel confident, yet simultaneously to doubt herself. She remembers a time when she walked everywhere, anytime, at three in the morning, no problem. Back then she hadn’t given a thought to being out on the streets alone, unaccompanied, and a little tipsy from wine. Now, of course, she realizes it is foolish to take the risk. But there is a part of her that admires that old self, the audacious girl she’d once been, ready to take on the world. Unafraid, unabashed, undeterred.

  Now she knows enough to be afraid. Now she is afraid of so many things.

  “He is going your way,” says Pablo, cajoling. “It is easy for him. And what is better for a man than to escort a beautiful woman? You will take her, Xabi?”

  “Bien sûr,” Xabi says with a frown. He pulls on a worn brown leather jacket. “Of course I will take you.”

  Angela thanks Pablo, Thibeaux, everyone, for the night, feeling awkward as she does so, as though she is thanking them for afternoon tea. But what is the proper etiquette after spending the evening drinking wine and eavesdropping on revolutionaries?

  She nearly laughs aloud at this thought and thinks, It is all right, she will never see any of them again and will simply remember this night with fondness: a perfect souvenir from Paris, so much better than a commemorative key chain.

  Xabi leads the way down the glistening cobblestone street. It is no longer raining, but the sidewalks are freshly washed from the downpour and the streetlamps and restaurant lights reflect brightly off the wet concrete. Angela wonders about Xabi’s chalk painting: Has it been washed away, a multicolored kaleidoscope of pigments swirling in the puddles?

  He lights a cigarillo. Offers her one. It is brown like a cigar, but much slenderer than the cigarettes back home. Delicate. Exotic. Angela takes it, though she doesn’t smoke.

  This. Walking together in silence. The air damp and cool, scented with rain and old stone and the Seine. A cigarillo in her hand because she is no longer Angela Martin, wife and mother. She is An-zhel Mart-ann, a woman who walks the wet streets of Paris with a handsome escort in the wee hours, a little bit tipsy on unfiltered red
table wine, smoking.

  Breathing. She is breathing. Finally breathing, with a smoke in her hand. Only in Paris.

  Paris at midnight is not like any other city she has ever seen: certainly not San Francisco—which shuts down so early it’s hard to find a meal past nine at night—or even New York. Here people are out in droves: huddled over coffees and beers in outdoor cafés, or lounging on benches, heads bent closely. There are couples walking arm in arm; others are leaning up against walls, lingering under bridges, pushing into one another, kissing.

  Angela remembers watching an old movie set in Paris (what was the name?) in which one character tells the other: “It’s midnight. One half of Paris is making love to the other half.”

  “They have no large homes,” Xabi says suddenly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “People who live in the city—it is very expensive here. The houses, the apartments, are very small. So they . . .”

  “Make love on the street?”

  He looks over at her, surprised.

  She laughs. Oh yes, she may have had a little too much wine.

  “Yes, sometimes. Or they meet at cafés, like their . . . what do you call the salons?”

  “Living rooms?”

  “Yes, like this, like the living room. There are many thousands of cafés in Paris.”

  “So, you’re not from here, are you? Thibeaux said you are Basque?”

  He nods.

  “What is it like there?”

  “It is . . . complicated. I have family in both France and Spain. But the legacy of Franco is still with us. It is still brutal in some ways.”

  “Franco died a while ago, didn’t he?”

  “Not soon enough.”

  “Is that why you came to Paris?”

  “I came to Paris because here, the people support artists. Not the Americans so much, but others are very supportive. They throw coins, enough to live on.”

  “I’m sorry you don’t like Americans.” Is it the man, or the place, that makes Angela feel free to be someone she is not? To say the things she wouldn’t say? “It’s a shame we can’t be friends.”

  Again he looks startled. Discomfited. She is glad.

  “I never said . . . I never meant to say that.”

  “No, really. I understand. A lot of people don’t like Americans.”

  “It is . . . the policies of the government. Not you.”

  She smiles. Smokes. They walk the rest of the way without talking, but somehow the silence between them feels companionable, not awkward. There is something about this man . . . the way he holds himself, the intense way he looks at her, as though there isn’t anything else—anyone else—in the world.

  They arrive at the Village Saint-Paul. Xabi steps back to read the sign on the front of the building.

  “Your brother is a serrurier?”

  She nods. “Yes, a locksmith.”

  “He opens doors? Is he good?”

  “The best. Look.” She pulls a pendant out from under her blouse. “He gave me this. It’s a key from ancient Syria.”

  Xabi reaches out to lift the rusty metal, his light eyes studying it intently. The nearness of his hand to her chest makes Angela’s heart pound, her senses sing.

  “It doesn’t look like a key,” he says quietly.

  “No, it doesn’t, does it?”

  “What does it open?”

  “Only my heart,” she says with a little laugh. Her joke falls flat, though, as Xabi gazes at her for a long moment without speaking.

  Finally he drops the key, wishes her good night, and walks away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  That night Genevieve studied her French with renewed enthusiasm. Pawing through her phrasebook and dictionary, she pulled words together and jotted down several phrases in her notebook: Il faut = I need, it must; J’ai mal à la tête = I have a headache; Est-ce que vous pouvez m’aider? = Could you help me?

  Though she wasn’t able to fall asleep until well past one in the morning, her rest was blissfully free of locked doors, of any dreams at all, actually. She was awakened a little after nine by the sound of tapping at a window. Pulling on a black Oaktown sweatshirt over the T-shirt and shorts she used for pajamas, she went into the main room to investigate.

  A middle-aged couple stood outside the kitchen window.

  He was short and compact, with wide, slightly bulging eyes topped with wire-rimmed glasses. She was unsmiling and wore no makeup, her graying hair swept up in a severe chignon.

  After a round of bonjours, they introduced themselves as Daniel and Marie-Claude Goselin. Marie-Claude spoke, while Daniel stood at her side, smiling and nodding. Much of Marie-Claude’s meaning was lost in translation, but Genevieve did glean that these were the neighbors responsible for leaving the food, the nourriture sur la table.

  “Oh, merci, merci beaucoup. J’aimais . . .” Genevieve tried to say, “Thank you for the food. I loved it,” but finally trailed off, foiled once again by gendered pronouns and the past tense. Still, the point was made. She hoped.

  “We meet you when you are visiting when you are very small; I think you do not remember us. You are here now to tackle on your uncle’s business?” the man asked in tortured English.

  “Yes, I would like to, but . . . it is difficult to know how,” Genevieve responded in equally tortured French. “I think I must get the papers of the government.”

  This engendered a long discussion between the man and woman, in which they appeared to be telling Genevieve the secrets for obtaining the necessary paperwork with which to conduct a business in the Village Saint-Paul. Because it was zoned as an arts and antiques district, some requirements were unique to the area.

  “Ne te rends jamais aux bureaucrates,” Daniel concluded with a rueful shake of the head. “Never . . . Comment dis-tu?”

  “Never surrender?” Genevieve translated.

  “C’est ça! That’s it!”

  “I’ve been told that ‘impossible’ n’est pas français.”

  “Exactly! This is what Napoléon says.”

  So they were taking advice from Napoléon now? As Genevieve thanked her neighbors for their advice, she started to yearn for a cup of coffee. She felt groggy and wondered what time it was in California (probably one in the morning?) but then chastised herself. You’re in Paris; there is no “home” time.

  Another man walked up to join their trio; he was large, American-sized, big-boned, and well-padded, with a florid, handsome face. He seemed shy, yet stood closely, as though already part of the conversation.

  A conversation that had long ago outpaced Genevieve’s linguistic abilities.

  The man introduced himself as Jacques André. There was a lot of talking and pointing, and Genevieve realized they were trying to tell her where they lived—the couple on the other side of the courtyard’s ivy-covered walls, the younger man through the arched walkway. The oft-repeated word brocantes—summoned up from her dusty memory, it meant “antiques”—made her suppose they were dealers, as were most residents of the area. Those lucky enough to have inherited homes here were able to live above or behind their shops, as Dave and Pasquale and Catharine used to do, while benefiting from frequent antiques fairs and arts events, as well as everyday foot traffic.

  When there was a lull in the conversation, Genevieve volunteered, “Today I am going to visit my aunt.”

  It was a sentence from a beginning French class, and yet Genevieve felt inordinately pleased with herself. Already the language felt just a tiny bit easier, like a too-tight pair of leather shoes that, while painful, loosened ever so slightly each time she wore them. She just hoped she didn’t develop the equivalent of linguistic bunions in the process.

  Marie-Claude mentioned that in France most elderly parents lived with their families, and how sad that Pasquale couldn’t live with Catharine, bu
t the facility was very special, very modern. Alzheimer’s was such a shame . . . quel dommage. Everyone shook their heads and the conversation stumbled to a gloomy end.

  Finally, Jacques and Daniel brought out business cards.

  Genevieve had to look for the number on the ancient phone to give to them, reading off the faded numbers from under a strip of yellowing tape, written by Pasquale, how many years ago?

  But of course, the neighbors already had that number, as it was the same one Dave and Pasquale had had for decades. And besides, as Genevieve recalled, the custom in the village was less about phone calls and more this: to stop by and speak through windows. When they were flung open, it was taken as a sign that the inhabitants were awake and ready to chat. Or, in this case, even when they were closed, neighbors simply knocked and woke a person up.

  After they’d bid one another “bonne journée,” Genevieve fixed herself a simple breakfast: a hunk of the (already stale) baguette with some cheese and pâté, and a cup of strong tea.

  She started a shopping list: coffee, baguette, vegetables, fruit, yogurt.

  Catharine had written out very careful instructions for visiting Pasquale, which she had fastened together in a thick sheaf like a handwritten instruction manual: where to find the Métro entrance, how much money was needed for the book of tickets (called the carnet), and even a description and diagram of how to use the machines. She included which exit to take out of the Métro station, and a little map of how to walk from there to the Alzheimer’s facility.

  Genevieve considered what Catharine had said about pickpockets. She doubted they could be any worse here than in San Francisco but supposed it was smart to leave her valuables in the apartment.