The American Girl (32 page)

AUGUST 12, 2015

T
he girls and I stood facing each other across that blue-lit room, not moving, not speaking. I felt numb. When I'd visited Noémie in the hospital, she'd seemed so vulnerable. I couldn't get my head around the way she blocked the door now, her eyes not moving from mine.

In the last few days, I'd grown to know Quinn (at least I thought I had), her tremulous swing between light moods and dark ones, her shy sweetness. I'd only really seen the pair of them together once before, when the jagged energy of their meeting ricocheted around the walls of Les Yeux. Now that I saw them holding hands in the doorway, I thought I understood why Noémie had screamed that day when the friend who must have abandoned her there came back for her after a week. Now I could see why their strange meeting had held the world's attention. There was something electric about the two of them together, something that terrified me.

Long minutes dragged by before Quinn ended the staring contest. She flicked a glance past me at the blue screen of death on the PC monitor, her face oddly void of emotion, as if she was trying to be hard. “We put a program on there,” she said, “so it would play the videos one after the other and wipe the hard drive after the last one.”

“Why?” I asked softly, though deep down, I'd begun to guess.

“Why play them or why erase them?”

“Why any of it, Quinn?”

“We played them for you so you could see what happened to us,” said Noémie. Her dark eyes glistened with unshed tears.

“And we erased them because we know how you are with videos,” Quinn said in her new fake-tough voice, “and we didn't want you to be tempted. Did you bring the money?”

“Yes,” I said. I'd been wondering how long it would take her to ask me for it. “But this isn't the way. It isn't even enough to get you—”

“You don't need to worry about that,” she said sharply, then in a softer voice, she added, “I'm sorry, but we needed enough to get away from here.” She turned to Noémie and I caught a hint of anxiety behind her bravado.

“You have to believe, we only wanted to scare Raphael,” Noémie said suddenly, “to make him see the bad of what he was doing and stop it. We never meant to harm him. But then Maman had followed me there and things went—”

“He wanted us to play a game with him and we did play his game, but not the way he wanted us to,” said Quinn.

“It was an accident,” said Noé, rubbing her hand across her eyes, “but we knew no one would believe us.”

“Fuck,” I said, putting my trembling hands to my face, “what are you going to do now?”

Noémie's lips trembled. “We need to get away from here, I think—”

“Yeah.” I took out the money and looked at it in my hands, thinking it would never be enough for them, that I should stop them from making things worse for themselves. “I don't know, shouldn't you . . . ?” But in the end, I didn't know what the right thing to tell them was, so I crossed the room and handed the money to Quinn. “You should turn yourself in,” I said. “They'll be easier on you.”

But they were already half in the hallway, ebbing from the blue light into the dark.

AUGUST 17, 2015

Video Diary: Session 8

[Quinn sits by a window, smoking. The wall behind her head flakes blue paint; the furniture is bright and cheap, a hotel room, maybe, in a hot country. Outside the window, car horns blare and the sun is blinding]

Well . . . we never meant to hurt anyone. Maybe you don't believe me, but it's true.

[She stubs out the first cigarette and lights another]

So, um, by the time Raphael told Noémie to meet us at Les Yeux, we'd come up with kind of a plan: we would make a video of him, get him back for all those videos he made, all those poor girls he blackmailed. You know, like, play him at his own game, right? Make him feel scared like he made Nicole feel . . . like he made us feel, I guess.

[Quinn smokes]

It wasn't hard to get him there. All I had to do was make him think he was in charge. Easy enough—he got off on that. He had his own plans for the night, anyway. We met Noé, went inside the caves. He started handing out the pills and alcohol. It was dark, so, easy enough to pretend to swallow them, stay sober while he got more and more out of it. Soon there was like this three-person party going on in that big bit of the cave like a cathedral vault. Creepy place, that, where his ancestors were put to death all that time ago . . .

[Quinn stares at the chaotic life outside the window]

He asked us to start kissing while he filmed us, so we did as he said. After a bit, I said, “Let's go look in that little chamber through the bolted door, the one you told me about.”

He jumped at that, 'cause in there, well, um, he could play the game he'd wanted to play with us all along. It was Noé who brought a knife, just to scare him a bit, so he'd do what we said. It was so much easier than I thought to make him strip, make fun of him in front of the camera, like he did to us. So, anyway, uh, Noé bolted the door . . . behind him and Émilie. We panicked then. I guess we weren't really in control anymore.

[Pause]

Yeah, I lost track of her in those caves, when she fell, sprained her ankle. I ran out in the woods, feeling God . . . so bad . . . like, I should go back and find them, open the door. But what stopped me? Well, I remember feeling so scared of what they would do to me if I went back, and at the same time, I thought, what would happen if I let them die?

[Quinn lights another cigarette and smokes furiously]

I remember running towards that guy in the car, thinking maybe he would help me fix it somehow.

[Pause]

So, not all of the videos were lies. At first, I really couldn't remember much. Honest to God. But then, slowly, I started to. But by then I didn't know who to trust. Anyway, we all told a few lies, didn't we? Émilie and Raphael and Noémie, the inspector, and Molly, too.

Wasn't expecting Molly's last lie to get us off the hook, though. That last clip she took in the club, her recording of Valentin and Séverin? It's front-page news now:
Police corruption in Charente-Maritime. Local mob questioned over role in Blavette slaying.
Since they couldn't find any real, um, physical evidence. That film we made of Raphael in the caves uploaded to the site before we could stop it, but deleted itself after Molly watched it. Only she knows what we've done. Her film from the club distracted the media away from us, gave us time to get away.

[Quinn takes a deep drag on her cigarette]

Last I heard, they're not even interested in us now. This woman Marcelline Masson, the Republic prosecutor, she's reinvestigating everything—the Blavette case, corruption in the local police force, everything . . . Seems like the powers that be were turning a blind eye to Séverin's business ventures since long before Valentin took charge. In actual fact, it was so well known that he dumped bodies in the caves, the police didn't even look in them properly to start with. They thought Séverin was their man, the guy behind the family's disappearance—they just couldn't say that. As soon as they started this new investi
gation, the prosecutor's team found other remains—the body of Marc Blavette. He'd been in those caves since he vanished two years before. No way of knowing, I guess, if Séverin killed him over money, or if Émilie did it . . . or if he just had enough of everything and wandered off one day.

[Long pause as Quinn stares out
of the window]

One mystery is left, I guess. See, I keep hassling Noémie, trying to get her to tell me the truth, um, about how Émilie found us in the caves that day, right? Noé, she says her mom just followed us there to that chamber on a maternal hunch of some kind. But whatever. I mean, I don't see how that could be, 'cause it was deep in the caves, that room, where only the Blavette family could find it . . . so the legend said. So how could it be true that Émilie just randomly wandered in there . . . unless Noé told her?

[Quinn stubs out her cigarette and flicks the butt out of the window]

Still, we're far away now, starting a new life. Think I'm gonna have to stop asking her about it. Only bugs her when I do. She says we have to trust each other now.

It's true. We're all we have.

[She taps her pack of Lucky Strikes, but there are none left]

Damn. Hey, you ever have one of those Magic 8 Balls as a kid? Yeah, they're cheesy but I like 'em. Can't see one in a junk shop these days without remembering my little pink bed with the daisy-pattern comforter on it. And that makes me think of my mom. She picked out that bedspread with me at Sears when I was eleven . . . Now I think that there never really was anything for me to stick around for at home after she died, not my dad,
anyway. Not my friends either—I mean, none of them even sent a card, though they all had time for Fox News interviews.

I have this theory . . . our lives are all a bit like those Magic 8 Balls. You can shake 'em around, hoping for the right answer, the one that will make you happy, but you never really know which of those sharp little pieces is going to bubble to the surface.

[Pause]

If you find you can't live with the message on that cheap plastic triangle, though, I have some advice for you:
ask again later
. You never know what's waiting inside those mysterious globes of plastic . . . hidden away in the dark.

AUGUST 18, 2015

M
y flight was leaving for Logan International in a couple of hours, and this time I really didn't want to miss it. Things back home were taking off. Our latest episode of
American Confessional
brought in our best viewing figures yet and, despite my beef with Bill, I had to admit it was perfect the way he edited together my clip from the club with a bunch of the earlier footage of Quinn's quest for the truth. Our focus on the police cover-up and the way the murders were wrongly pinned on Quinn had done double duty: we redeemed her in the public eye at the same time that we condemned Séverin and his co-conspirators.

That final show exonerating Quinn proved beyond doubt that the local mob had been in cahoots with the police the whole time, covering up their murders as well as their drug dealing . . . well, you can imagine. It was like Watergate all over again for Bill. He says if it had just been a story about small-town corruption in France, it wouldn't have played too well: it was the #American
Girl aspect that brought in viewers, who now had a chance to rant about the injustice of the whole #AmericanMonster vilification. No one needed to know the real role she and Noé had played, not when what they'd done was justice, of a kind. I made sure we gave them a bit of cover by insisting Bill add one last line to the narrative of the last episode: “Quinn is now living under witness protection for her own safety.” By the time the furor dies down and people realize she's really gone . . . well, I hope she and Noé have had time to vanish for good. It's what they wanted.

In place of a farewell drink, Marlene and I were holding one final meeting of the St. Roch coffee klatch, at where else but La Grande Bouche?

It was oddly comforting to watch her on the go, refilling our coffees and dumping a pound of stollen loaf on the table in front of me. I didn't need to test my theory that it had the consistency of cement peppered with lead shot by tasting it; sometimes you just know these things. She sat down across from me, a satisfied smile on her face. I'd already thrown her some tidbits about Stella's affair with Raphael and the way she leaked that video to the press. I was in her good books for now.

“You are flavor of the month here, Molly, and not only with your listeners. Marcelline Masson has sung some of your praises, I hear.”

“Yeah, well, it's not all it's cracked up to be,” I said modestly. “After a life spent as a nonentity, celebrity's too crazy for me. I've been screening my boss's calls and everyone else's. I haven't even seen that last episode.” It was true. I had to do what I did, shape the story the best way I could to keep Quinn and Noé out
of the spotlight. And if the whole thing ended Valentin's career, he deserved it, didn't he, the way he'd lied? That was what I kept telling myself.

“Perhaps you are not so popular with the local police force, though.” Marlene flicked a glance around the café, pretty empty now that her cop regulars were either in jail or avoiding her.

“I feel bad about that,” I say, sipping black coffee and avoiding eye contact with the stollen. “They were bad to the bone, but they still bought your coffee. And I'm worried, you know, when I leave, that there might still be some of Séverin's people out there who might want to hurt you. You were pretty involved in it all.”

She snorted a cynical laugh. “You think Marlene will be lost without Molly the Pit Bull to defend her. Bah! Most of them are gone down, anyhow. Is that how you say it? In the clink. As for the rest, I will make short work with them. I was tough girl long before you, Molly Swift.”

“I know, but I mean . . . Séverin will have connections on the outside still, family. Don't be a hero, Marlene.”

She threw her head back in a raucous laugh. “I am of course a hero, always, as you tried to be, too, I think. I have seen your film, busting into the club, punching your boyfriend on the ground. Being so macho. I was like proud momma when I saw it.”

I tried to laugh along, but the sight of Valentin lying prone on the floor lodged in my head and I stopped, rubbing my eyes wearily. “I guess it had to happen. I mean, they were up to their necks in it. I still don't understand how Séverin even knew all that stuff, about Valentin following me, stealing my papers . . .”

“I think it is obvious,” said Marlene. “They were plotting to
gether all the time; the police, they were taking some bribes to turn a blind eye to Séverin's drugs and murders so they could skim the top off the proceeds.”

“Okay, but why did they want me followed in the first place?”

Marlene rolled her eyes. “Séverin knew Quinn. When Raphael disappeared with his money, he had men looking inside the hospital, and his dogsbody Valentin following the ‘aunt,' you, to see what she might know. It is all on the internet, Molly. Really, you Americans can be such ignoramuses.”

“So he did trust me . . .” I said, more to myself than to her. It's been bothering me—not knowing whether Valentin ever really believed I was Quinn's aunt, whether anything between us was real. He seemed so hurt when he found out I'd lied. “But anyway, he told way worse lies and I believed them all,” I said, trying to sound cynical rather than hurt.

Marlene didn't miss a trick, though. She gripped my hand in a slightly terrifying show of solidarity. “That dummkopf deserved to be kicked, Molly. He deserves prison, too, coming in here, drinking my coffee and eating my stollen, pretending to be nice. If he were here I would take this knife and with it cut off his . . .”

“No cutting off things after I'm gone,” I said, trying and failing to disarm her. “Anyway, you wouldn't get very far with this table knife.”

“Why not? I have the muscles of a woman who makes her own bratwurst. I would make quick work of these dirty cops, who didn't even investigate the crimes of our town because they were taking with both hands from the till.” The stollen took the
worst of her wrath with the knife, an image that will haunt my dreams.

When I stood, Marlene heaved herself out of the booth and enveloped me in possibly the most perfumed and definitely the most bosomy hug I'd ever had.

“I will miss you, Molly Swift,” she said.

I don't do sentiment, not really, but it was one of those moments.

“I'll miss you, too, Marlene Weiss.” It was true. She was the only one who'd been honest with me, after all. As for Valentin—in the end, our relationship was based on lies on both sides, and in that sense, at least, we were a good match.

Marlene deftly undercut our
Casablanca
moment by stuffing a Tupperware tub of what I felt fairly certain was sauerkraut into my handbag. “For your trip.”

“This win any awards at the festival?”

Marlene looked affronted. “Do you truly need to ask?”

I waved goodbye before we could get onto the thorny subject of German versus French recipes for pickled cabbage, and headed to the taxi stand. Climbing into the back with a murmured request, I leaned back and let St. Roch flow by me in all its dust and sunlight and beauty and ridiculousness, bidding goodbye to the gas station and the medieval church and the gendarmerie. There were exciting times ahead, according to Bill. We would go places, he said, be people. I should be excited to get back to it. Still, I found myself leaning my head against the window, my eye caught on a blue streak of sea panting alongside
the car. At that bend in the woods, the one where they found her, I couldn't help checking to see if there was a young girl wandering the road in her white dress, somehow lost. I told myself there were two of them now and they were holding hands, their eyes fixed on the road ahead.