The Same River Twice (39 page)

“Yes, normal.” Turner sighed. “How are things at home? Everything okay?”

“More or less. Why? Shouldn’t they be?”

“I only meant that with your stepdaughter visiting …”

Odile blew a puff of air from her cheeks in mock vexation. “And not only her! Rachel’s quarreling with her boyfriend, so she’s staying with us too. But for the most part everything’s under control. Or as much as it ever is.”

“Rachel. Your friend whose houseboat was—”

“Exactly. Anyway, she needs a place to think. She’s contemplating marriage.”

“I see. And what do you advise?”

“That she has the right to remain silent. That everything she says can and will be used against her in a court of law. That roses are red and violets are blue. All that.”

Turner laughed despite himself. “I keep forgetting that you lived in America.”

“I keep forgetting that
you
did,” replied Odile. She seemed to be relaxing a little. “Why did you leave?”

“But surely Céleste told you.”

“Something about a girl, wasn’t it?”

Besieged suddenly by a storm of recollection—the girl, her exotic laughter, the Cycladic figure, the unhappy customer with his gun, the sister
calling from the morgue, the waiting that had turned into guilt and then into a plan, the dream of beauty ruined, the departure that resembled flight, his arrival in Paris and the life that had ensued—Turner found he lacked both the will and the ability to explain. “No, not a girl. My reasons for coming here were professional. France was changing its auction laws. I saw an opportunity.”

She smiled at him quizzically, then looked out over the park. “Listen, my friend. There’s something I have to tell you.”

He raised a hand to stop her. “No. Not yet.”

“But it will only be worse later.”

“At least it will be later. That’s a plus, in my opinion.”

She laughed and for a moment slipped her hand between his arm and torso. “Are you so sure you know what I was going to say?”

“Oh yes, my sweet.” He caressed her cheek, but she frowned and abruptly pulled away, turning an ear to the breeze.

In the near distance, approaching the Place de la Bastille, a crowd not visible from where they sat could be heard beating tambourines, clapping hands, and chanting something as yet unintelligible. She looked sharply at Turner. “It’s the protest,” she said. “The illegal aliens and their supporters.”

“Is that today?” He closed his eyes and turned his face to the heavens. What he most needed to do was to stop time. If that proved impossible, he would very shortly have to come up with a suitable alternative—that much he understood. “I thought they were at République.”

“They started there and marched,” she said. “Now they’re here.”

“Yes, well, that’s the complaint against them, isn’t it? ‘They were there, and now they’re here.’ Stupid, I agree, but that’s what pisses people off. About the illegals, I mean.” Odile said nothing, but he sensed her thoughts racing and opened his eyes. “What is it?”

“Didn’t you tell me that your Russian banker friend—I’ve forgotten his name …”

“Kukushkin,” said Turner, suddenly uncertain whether he’d told her the man’s name before or not.

“Kukushkin. Didn’t he pass a message to you, through that Swiss guy, the art collector, that there were rumors about you being involved in, what—transborder kidnapping? One person or maybe a truckful is what you said.”

“Yes, but I’ve never done anything like that.”

“Good. I’ll believe you, since why not? But consider this: the police raided my friend’s houseboat a few days ago. As it happened, my husband was there filming, on location. So there’s a record of this incident. And what
the police said they were looking for was illegal immigrants—one or more, I don’t know—as well as someone they referred to as ‘the doctor.’ They had a photo of him. They also asked if this was the same boat that had been firebombed recently, which of course it was, courtesy of those Russian buffoons. So for the police, I think, this wasn’t just a stab in the dark. Do you agree?”

Turner was already on his feet, staring at her warily. “Doctor,” he said. “What kind of doctor?”

“How would I know? I saw a video image of his photo. He was a balding man in a white lab coat, black-framed glasses, that’s it. None of us had ever seen him before. Not that we would’ve remembered.”

From the square came the chant of massed voices damning immigration law and the hypocrisies of those enforcing it. The crowd sounded large but orderly. Whatever police presence there was remained mute.

“What about Thierry Colin? Did he make any mention of, say, fertility treatment or something of the sort? In vitro, ex vitro, whatever?”

“No, nothing like that,” Odile stared at him. “Why? What are you talking about?”

“I’m not sure, but I think Gabriella, who does seem to have disappeared, was in some kind of therapeutic program or other. Anyway, she was taking a fertility drug.”

A brace of laughing teenage girls strode by three abreast, arms linked, eyes flashing, their futures not as distant as they imagined.

“I didn’t get the impression,” said Odile, “that Thierry had babies on his mind.”

“Men usually don’t, not until absolutely necessary.”

“With fertility treatment they do.”

“Right. Point taken.”

But now, from being someone wanting to solve the mystery of his assistant’s disappearance, of her involvement with Thierry, a person he’d hired casually, almost without thought, to perform an errand, Turner became a man in refusal, someone wanting above all not to hear the message that he knew this woman sitting on the bench before him as he paced was intent on delivering sooner or later, a message that was unfair and wrong because it was premature, but for which he had no dissuasive argument because his response, too, would be premature—reckless, certainly self-defeating. To his despair, he understood—or admitted to himself at last—that he loved Odile and that his judgment was no longer something he could trust.

“Let’s walk,” he said.

They took the steps down to the street.

At the Place de la Bastille, the demonstrators had now all arrived, close to three thousand of them, by Turner’s estimate, and were encircled by police vans, each fronted by two officers in token of those who remained at the ready within. But the crowd appeared peaceful and the observing officers already a little bored. A screech of electronic feedback shredded the air as a sound system was turned on, then brought to level. Turner and Odile took up a position at the southeast corner, halfway up the steps of the Opéra, to get a better view. A clutch of children ran by, throwing ice cubes at each other from their soft-drink cups.

Odile stared after them. “I’ve remembered something,” she said.

“Tell me.”

At the podium, an Algerian man with a neatly trimmed beard stepped up to the microphone. “Friends! Comrades! Parisians!” he began.

“Ah, but I’m sure it’s nothing,” Odile said. “Forget it.”

“I don’t think we have that luxury,” Turner replied.

She frowned and looked out over the crowd. “When we left Paris that first day, Thierry had an insulated bag with him. He was very protective of this bag, he held on to it the entire time, not putting it down until we were on the train, and even then he kept it clamped between his ankles. I teased him about it, calling it his purse, until finally he unzipped it to show me what was inside. It was a—how do you call it?—a thermos bottle, you know, but bigger. I said, ‘Ah, so you cannot live without your American coffee?’ He laughed and said no, it wasn’t to keep things hot, it was a refrigeration unit. ‘I am bringing caviar to Russia,’ he said, which he thought was very funny. ‘Excess is my métier,’ he said. Naturally, at the mention of himself, my attention wandered.”

“But?”

“When we got to Brest—”

The public-address system emitted another squeal, and the bearded speaker said, “We who live at the city gates of Paris, we who are not even granted the dignity of jobs—”

“When one gets to Brest,” Odile went on, “there’s a wait while the wheelbases on the train carriages are changed to fit the wider-gauge Russian tracks. Thierry excused himself, saying he wanted to stretch his legs. But when he came back, he no longer had the insulated bag with him. I didn’t notice it was gone until much later. That’s it.”

For some time, neither spoke.

A television crew arrived, shot a brief stand-up segment with the crowd
as backdrop, and left. A man at the edge of the crowd shouted obscenities at the speaker but was quickly hustled off by the police. Two dogs on leashes barked and snapped at each other until their owners succeeded in dragging them apart.

Turner put his arm around Odile. “Come home with me,” he said.

“But you know I’m here to end things between us.”

“Yes, but it’s too soon.”

“There has to be a last time,” she said. “It’s better to have already had it.”

“But we haven’t already had it.”

“I love my husband.”

“What’s that got to do with anything? Come home with me.”

Odile sighed. “You’re going to be hurt,” she said.

“Ah, but I’m ahead of you there. I’m hurt already.”

She struggled not to smile. “Or my husband’s going to get hurt. Or maybe even me, and I detest pain.”

“We’re all adults. We can work around a little pain.”

“Really? How do we do that?”

“I’ll show you later. Just come back with me.”

She seemed to waver. “But it’s already late.”

“Four o’clock’s not late. This time you can keep your watch on, if it’ll make you feel better.”

“I’m not expecting to feel better,” she said, laughing as she spoke.

Turner’s spirits soared. “Don’t think about it, then, just do it.”

She bit her lip. “But—”

“Come,” he said, leading her by the hand.

She went.

Somebody threw a smoke bomb into the crowd.

MAX AND ALLEGRA ARRIVED HOME
to a confounding sight. The overhead lightbulb just inside the entrance was half full of water, dripping copiously but still radiant. More water had spilled down the staircase and now lay pooled on the beaten dirt floor of Odile’s studio. Max told Allegra not to move, then, skirting the spillage, went directly to the fuse box and switched off the apartment’s electricity.

“Shit!” came Rachel’s voice from the floor above.

Max picked a flashlight off its hook by the door and, taking Allegra by the hand, climbed the stairs.

“I’m an idiot,” Rachel said when she saw him, then threw her arms around him. “Please don’t hate me.”

“Water does seem to be your element,” Max said. “But nobody hates you.”

Allegra smirked and retreated to her aerie.

Rachel explained that she’d been drawing a bath when the phone rang—a call she’d been waiting for from her mother. They talked for almost twenty minutes before Rachel remembered the tub and raced to turn it off, but it had long since overflowed. By now, though, barefoot, with her jeans rolled halfway up her calves, she’d mopped up most of the water, and Max helped her with the rest. It wasn’t the kind of apartment that was easily damaged by accidents or incidental neglect.

“Dad!” Allegra came rushing down from her room. “I’m going to meet Dominique, okay?”

Max looked over her entirely new outfit: lace-up leather boots, tight black pants, and a low-cut, fluorescent green cotton top. “Where are you two going?”

“Just to her house. I’ll be back by seven thirty, I promise.”

“All right. Be careful.”

She promised she would, flashed a brilliant smile, and, waving goodbye to Rachel, hurried downstairs and out the door.

“She’s a wild thing, isn’t she,” Rachel said, a little wistfully.

“Don’t know,” Max replied after a moment. “Can’t tell. Maybe not.”

LATER
, when the apartment was dry and the electricity back on, Rachel announced she was going out to buy groceries. Though they didn’t really need anything, Max let her go and before long went to the newsstand for the next day’s
Le Monde
, then returned home to read it.

On the arts page was a story about Thursday’s scheduled auction of the Soviet flags. Turner was quoted twice. Uncertain that he’d remembered the name correctly, Max took the Giacometti drawing down from the wall and examined the business card taped to the back, Turner’s estimate of the work’s value written on it. As he stared at the words engraved on the face of the card, a number of things that he’d lately been thinking about fell into place.

He left the paper—folded open to the flags story—on the kitchen table and went to his studio to work for a couple of hours. When he came back, Odile, Rachel, and Allegra had all reappeared, the paper was gone, and dinner was being prepared amid an atmosphere of general conviviality that included many bathtub jokes.

At eight they all sat down to a vegetable couscous and two bottles of
Sancerre that Max had been saving for the proper occasion. The meal went on for a long time with much hilarity, as if no one wanted to face the nocturnal solitudes to come.

Afterward, when Rachel was duly installed on her sofa and Allegra asleep upstairs, Max joined Odile in bed. She was wearing a white cotton nightgown that he rarely saw and reading a French translation of
The Lime Works
.

“I see those Soviet flags you brought back from Moscow are coming up for auction on Thursday,” he said. “Feel like going? Just for fun?”

She marked her place in the book with a length of black velvet hair ribbon and turned toward him. “No, not really. Do you?”

They looked at each other in silence.

“I might,” Max said.

Odile looked a little longer, then reached behind her and turned out the lamp.

THE
NACHTVLINDER
, cleaned, caulked, and freshly painted, was to be released from dry dock that afternoon, Wednesday, at three o’clock. Max had sent Jacques ahead to Conflans-Sainte-Honorine to interview Groot on camera and record anything of interest that might develop before his own arrival at the boat chandlery. Rachel was driving to the site in Max’s ancient Citroën while he filmed her from the suicide seat, encouraging her to reflect on recent events. In the back Allegra leafed through a fashion magazine she’d borrowed the day before from Dominique. From time to time, she sighed theatrically.