The Same River Twice (34 page)

At the mews, Odile greeted Allegra with a hug, which, Max couldn’t help but note, his daughter returned with all the natural warmth that had deserted her in his own embrace.

“Oh how lovely! Look at you, sweet—so grown up! I’m very happy to see you again!”

“Thanks,” said Allegra, the blood rushing to her face. “It’s good to see you, too.”

“And such a stylish dress! Maybe while you’re here we can design something special together. I’m always looking for someone with a good fashion sense to wear my clothes. That’s the only kind of advertising I believe in, you know?” Odile glanced surreptitiously at her watch—but she wasn’t wearing her watch, Max noticed, her wrist was bare, and she now rubbed it distractedly with her other hand.

“Unfortunately, Allegra, right now I must go to work. A client who’s getting married, her wedding dress, some last-minute changes …” She made an upward spiraling gesture with the hand that had briefly covered her wrist. “So I’ll see you later, okay?”

Allegra nodded vigorously, they kissed cheeks, and Odile left Max to help his daughter settle in. She seemed marginally relieved that it was again just the two of them.

“How’s your French these days?” he asked, as together they climbed the stairs to the garret room.

“I don’t know yet.”

“You’ll be fine.” He set her duffel bag down at the foot of her bed. “Now here’s your house key,” he said, holding it out to her. “That opens the downstairs door, which locks automatically when you go out, don’t forget. You remember the gate code, right?”

“Yes.” She was taking in the room in a series of small glances, each of which seemed to leave her a little more at ease. Her last visit had been just two Christmases ago, but it now felt to Max unfathomably distant.

“A few house rules. You’re thirteen, and I think that’s old enough for you to go out by yourself. But when you do, I want you to tell either me or Odile where you’re going and when you’ll be back. Can you do that?”

“Yes,
Dad.”
She rolled her eyes, but he saw that she was pleased.

“Good. I’m counting on you.” He opened the drawer in the bedside table and extracted the cell phone he’d bought for her. “Now this little item is essential to our arrangement, okay? I want you to keep it charged up and switched on whenever you go out. You’ll find it already programmed with numbers for me, Odile, and your friend Dominique, who, by the way, expects to hear from you sometime this afternoon. You’ve got a hundred and eighty prepaid minutes there, more than enough to get you launched. Okay?”

“Cool, Dad! Thanks.” She inspected the phone happily.

“What else? Oh, I invited Dominique and her father to dinner tonight, so you’ll see her then. Be sure to ask Odile if you can help with the cooking; I think she has something special planned.” Max found himself staring at his
daughter’s hair, selected strands of which shone blonder than the rest. “How are you for cash?”

“Mom gave me two hundred in traveler’s checks.”

“Okay. Hang on to that.” He took out his wallet. “Here’s three hundred francs, which is your weekly allowance while you’re here. Things are expensive in Paris, and I won’t bail you out, so pay attention where it goes.”

“Jawohl!”
she said, saluting.

“Don’t be cute.” He struggled unsuccessfully to hide his amusement. “Are you hungry?”

“Not really. They gave us something on the plane.” She plopped down on the bed, then held the cell phone up at him. A flash went off, she bent over the LED screen to examine the image. “Dad! You look so serious!”

“And a good thing, too,” he told her. “Listen, why don’t you unpack, relax, take a bath if you want, then come down to the studio later. I’ve got a few work things to take care of.”

“All right,” she said, with an exaggerated frown. Shrugging. “If you like.” Going on to herself in French as he descended the stairs.

In the courtyard he interrupted the anarchists preparing to launch what appeared to be an improvised weather balloon, a beach ball-sized sack of aluminized fabric with a wire-frame gondola suspended beneath. Directing their efforts was the pale blond girl he’d seen some weeks ago with the clipboard. He raised a clenched fist to her in passing, and she smiled at him before returning to the task at hand.

“Jacques?” he called as he let himself into the studio.

That morning, in an afterthought so belated it made him cringe, Max had sent his assistant to Saint-Ouen to scour the flea market for DVD titles issued by La Peau de l’Ours. He had the idea that if he could discover what changes had been made to the other counterfeited movies—and surely
Fireflies
hadn’t been specially singled out for revision—then something useful might be learned, if not about the violator of his film, then about himself, the kind of man he was and the kind of films he might yet make. But Jacques hadn’t returned, and alone in the studio, Max put the idea out of his mind.

Upstairs, he watched the footage of Rachel he’d shot aboard the
Nachtvlinder
the day of the police raid. The light off the water gave her a shimmering immediacy that played well against her musings about the boat and its hundred-year history. Juxtaposed, the two elements carried a hint of foreboding. Max rejoiced.

Film: he would never be done with it.

But as the police entered the picture, boarding and searching the boat, as their commanding officer requested identification from everyone present and began to interrogate Rachel, an unwelcome thought occurred to him. Recalling how bitterly Madame Leclère had complained of her own experience with the police, in particular their confiscation of her files, he found he couldn’t entirely dismiss the possibility that a connection existed—something in the files that had led the police to the
Nachtvlinder
—though nothing he could point to supported such a notion.

More troubling still—and here he froze the frame—was the photo of the man in the white lab coat. A doctor, according to what the officer had said, presumably meaning research scientist rather than medical doctor. The very fact of this man, an apparent fugitive, fit so unexpectedly with what Max had learned of La Peau de l’Ours, at least in its medical aspects, that he had to remind himself that there was no reason at all to suppose that the two were related. He was just free-associating. A hazard of the profession.

Suddenly annoyed, he switched off the video monitor, plucked a cigar from the box on his worktable, fired it up, and opened the window that looked out on the courtyard.

The anarchists and their science project were nowhere in evidence. Instead, standing on the cobblestones just beneath the window, two sleekly dressed men, somewhat foreign in aspect, gazed up at him in an attitude of pained expectancy. They seemed to be waiting for a word from him, an announcement, perhaps, or a small speech. Amused, he gazed back.

“Bonjour,”
he said.

They nodded in acknowledgment of his greeting and continued to look. Then the heavier of the two men said something to the other, something Max couldn’t make out, and without further consultation they left, as if they’d come to the mews for no other purpose than to exchange stares with him.

He expelled a stream of blue smoke into the courtyard, then tossed the cigar irritably after it. He couldn’t concentrate worth a damn today.

“I CAN’T STAY LONG
,” said Odile. “I just thought that, you know, since I was in the neighborhood …”

“Your timing is perfect.” Céleste wheeled her painting cart out from behind its screen and parked it beside the portrait-in-progress. “The light is better than last time, a little more golden, and painting you I need all the
help I can get. We will work for one hour maximum. If that’s all right with you.”

“Yes, that’s fine.” Odile removed her clothes, draped herself as before in the green silk dress, and took up position at the center of the sofa, her pose by now second nature.

Céleste came forward to adjust the fabric, then drew back again. For several seconds her cornflower-blue eyes drank Odile in before she chose a brush from the six or seven she held bunched in her left hand and dipped it in turpentine. “Now,” she observed to herself, “we begin again.”

For some time she painted in silence, her attention washing over her subject like an astringent bath. The sudden need to be seen in this way, clearly and without sentiment, had brought Odile directly here from Fatima’s fitting, which had turned out to be more a hand-holding exercise for the jittery bride. Now it was Odile who required reassurance. She sat as still as she could, her bare skin tingling.

After several minutes Céleste said, “I think we’re getting somewhere.”

“Really? What makes you say that?”

“The maenad has returned. I lost her for awhile, but now she’s back.”

“Back? You mean in me or in the painting?”

“Both,” Céleste said simply. “Please don’t turn your head.”

“But do I still look like someone who—someone capable of anything?”

Céleste continued to paint, offering her no answer, until the silence itself became the answer and the question evaporated, as if it had never been asked.

Gazing out at the now-familiar rooftop vista, Odile saw, on a tiny terrace two buildings away and a story below, a woman berating a small boy. He was hugging a medium-sized black dog and crying. The woman, her hands on her hips, continued to harangue him, then picked up a garden hose, handed it to him, and retreated into the apartment.

“I’m sure you know by now about me and Turner,” Odile said. She sighed. “He’s different from what I expected. Less cynical, maybe, though I don’t know about that.”

“You’ve discovered his optimistic streak,” suggested Céleste.

“Is that what it is?” Odile watched the boy stroke the dog and speak to it as though in consolation. “I wonder. Everything you told me about him that first day, the day he brought me here to meet you, is true, of course. That he’s not comfortable in his skin, that he’s fallible to himself, unexpectedly human, all that. Yet for an optimist, if that’s what he is, he has some very worrisome friends.”

Céleste swore softly to herself.

“What’s wrong?” said Odile.

“Nothing. I’ve got ahold of you at last, the person who keeps escaping me.” She looked fiercely from the canvas to Odile and back again, painting. “What friends?”

“Do you know someone named Kukushkin—a banker, I think?”

“Turner has so many business associates.”

“But surely not that many who can have a man killed.”

Céleste didn’t answer immediately. The boy on the terrace began to hose down the dog, who cowered miserably beneath the jet of water, pressing himself against the masonry wall as though he might somehow evade notice there. Odile looked away.

“The thing you must understand about Turner,” said Céleste, “is that he always lands on his feet. He doesn’t plan it, but he survives. It’s one of his gifts.”

Odile said no more. The certainty with which Céleste had spoken encouraged her to examine things from a more rigorous perspective, one in which she saw that her time with Turner had already come to an end. She’d indulged herself, that went without saying, but her curiosity about him had been genuine, her interest that of a fellow traveler not afraid to detour. Feelings had been had, possibly an insight or two. But that was all over now.

Later, just before they quit for the day, Céleste said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“You do?” Despite herself, Odile let a hand stray to her hair.

“I ask only that you not cut it until I’m done with you.”

Odile stared at her and promised she wouldn’t.

DESCENDING THE STAIRS
with a platter of sliced lamb, Allegra first began to giggle, then lost her composure completely as she ferried the food out to the green metal table in the courtyard. Behind her, looking furiously amused, Dominique followed with the
haricots verts
. Rachel and Eddie Bouvier were already seated, and Chinese lanterns flickered in the overhanging chestnut tree.

“The girls are stoned,” Max said, looking down on the scene from the living-room window.

“Don’t be absurd. They’re just enjoying themselves on a perfect June night.” Odile handed him a bowl of split spring potatoes.

“Think so?”

“Yes. And would you take the other bottle of wine down too, please?”

At the table, when they were all seated and served and the meal had begun, Eddie said, “Today I did something I promised myself never to do. Yet I can’t say I regret it. In fact I am quite content.”

“Tell us,” said Rachel, spooning garlic sauce over her lamb.

“Your regret is merely latent,” Odile added. “As your friends, we will help you find it.”

Dominique nudged Allegra under the table and soundlessly mouthed something that sent them both into fresh bouts of hilarity. Max pretended to ignore them.

“As you know,” said Eddie, “my brother Gaspard lives in Strasbourg, where he teaches music at the conservatory. For two years now he’s been in love with one of his students, a very pretty girl, lavishly gifted as a violinist, but also stupefyingly selfish and equipped as well with a truly incredible appetite for cocaine, which, needless to say, he often has to finance. In short, a complete horror. In her favor I can add only that I once heard her play Biber’s
Mystery Sonatas
with such clarity that—”

A small crash ensued as Odile, who had been taking a second helping of the ratatouille she’d prepared for Allegra and herself, knocked over her water glass, which fell to the cobblestones and shattered. Blushing, she apologized and bent down to pick up the pieces.

“But Odile!” said Eddie, glancing at her plate. “This delicious lamb—why do you not permit yourself to enjoy it?”

“She’s a vegetarian,” Allegra said delicately, leaning back in her chair as if to demonstrate that she, too, had forgone the lamb.

“Or maybe a Buddhist,” Max added. “We’re not sure.”

“Go on, Eddie,” said Odile.

“So, this is the love of my brother’s life, at least in his opinion. But there’s more to this story, because the whole time he’s been seeing her she has also been seeing another man, someone in Paris who knew nothing of Gaspard.” Eddie paused for a sip of wine, nodded his approval in Max’s direction, and continued. “I know this not only because she missed no opportunity to tell my brother about this other man but also because I twice ran into her with him, quite by accident, here in Paris.”