“Clients call my hotline or hit my website with questions all the time,” she said, noting disbelief in his eyes. “I’m very good.”
René grew aware of the sounds of conversation and the clink of glasses around them. Tables filling with the café clien- tele, the waiter rushing to fill orders and barking new ones to the younger look-alike barman.
“Sometimes I’m so good, it’s scary,” Miou-Miou confessed.
René avoided her eyes. He shifted on the rattan chair and wished his dangling legs could touch the floor. Just once.
“If I finish the orbit of her ruling planet . . . see how the sun line intersects . . . that shows warning. ‘Tread lightly on the rungs of life’s ladder.’ But here,” she slapped the chart, rustling the paper. “The lifeline was cut.”
“When?” If she was so good she’d know.
“11:40 p.m. last Monday night,” she said, glancing at her watch. She stood up, hefted her bag across her chest and snapped her green denim jacket closed.
“How do you know that?”
“She was going to call me. She didn’t,” said Miou-Miou. “I have to go. I’ve got another appointment.”
Josiane’s body was found Tuesday midday, René thought. But the morgue would have an estimate of the actual time of death.
Thursday Afternoon
AIMÉE SAT back on her bed in the residence, frustrated.
“Searching database for requested information. Five minutes remaining,” said the computer’s robotic voice. René had tried for Yves Montand’s silky tone. She hadn’t had the heart to tell him, Not even close.
Aimée lifted her fingers from the keyboard, felt her way across the cotton duvet, and found the rumpled Nicorette gum package. She rifled inside. Each tin foil pocket punctured and empty. All gone.
Her fingers scrabbled over the duvet, found the bedside table and the plastic bottle of lemon-scented nail polish remover she’d requested that René bring her. She uncrossed her black silk Chinese pajama pant-clad legs and felt around.
Where were the cotton pads? She felt something small, square, rough on one side. A box. A matchbox. Who’d been smoking . . . Morbier, Non, he’d quit. Bellan?
A few matchsticks rattled. She slid one out and chewed the matchhead, enjoying the gritty tang of sulphur on her tongue. Like pepper, without the kick. If only she had a cigarette to go with it.
And then she’d win the Lotto, fill every hungry stomach with food, and discover a cure for blindness.
Dream on.
There were knocks on the door. “Delivery for Mademoiselle Leduc.”
She reached for the security chain and unhooked it, then for the door knob.
“Sign please,” the voice said.
But she couldn’t. “Guide my hand to make an X.”
He did.
“Please, what does it say?”
“Package from Samaritaine from Martine Sitbon, and four orchid plants,” he said. “The card says ‘When in trouble, do the frivolous.’ ”
How sweet!
After she opened the box she found it filled with what felt like sunglasses, in assorted shapes: round, 70s rectangular, and cat-eye shaped with bumps . . . rhinestones?
She left the orchids for Sylvaine to help her with, then tried on each pair of sunglasses. Wondered what they looked like, kept on the ones she imagined were like Audrey Hepburn’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. All she needed were the rope of pearls and cigarette holder.
Then her palm touched something on the bedside table . . . a crumpled cellophane packet. Too thick for Nicorette . . . dare she hope? She put it to her nose, smelled the paper . . . an acrid blond tobacco . . . Gauloise Blond? Her favorite brand?
Her fingers found them . . . two filtered cigarettes. She wanted to shout Thank you God except for the nagging thought: Who would have forgotten them . . . or left them for her? A sympathy gesture from Bellan? But he’d visited her in the hospital, not here. Was it a forgetful janitor’s?
Would he want them back?
Never mind. And this wasn’t a hospital, surely people could smoke in their rooms. She hadn’t seen any sign forbidding it. And if some dragon complained, she’d get a kick out of saying just that.
Logistics . . . she had to plan her actions. How to smoke and not set the place on fire.
Stupid . . . such a simple thing. How could lighting and smoking a cigarette be such a big deal? But of course it was.
The matchbox fell from her hand. She heard it strike somewhere on the linoleum below her feet. Fighting a desire to burst into tears of frustration, she took a deep breath. Forced herself to look on the good side. Nom de Dieu, she was about to enjoy a coffin nail!
First she needed something for an ashtray. By the time she found the espresso cup and saucer and knocked it over, spilling the dregs over her sleeve, she’d located the matchbox with her toes. With a nimbleness she didn’t know she had, she clamped her toes around the matchbox, then hoisted it onto the mound of the piled duvet.
Had she closed the door to her room? If it weren’t so irritating, she’d find her predicament silly. But she imagined she would appear ridiculous to a sighted person looking in her room.
Sighted . . . when had she begun referring to others as sighted? She’d been around Chantal too much.
With everything in position, including bottled water, just in case of fire, she stood by the window. Lifting the smooth handle, she opened the double window a crack, then pushed it all the way open. She felt vents or narrow slats. Of course, a shutter; she pushed it aside, too. Then a metal bar, with ornamental grille below, like every apartment in Paris built in the Haussman era.
A brisk autumn gust from the Seine scented with chalky soil accompanied the whirr of machinery nearby. From below came the scrape of a bulldozer. She recognized the unmistakeable grating of an earth mover in the distance.
Urban renewal in the Bastille: the thought left a bad taste in her mouth. It was worse for those displaced by it. Whole courtyards of artisan workshops were being demolished by the high-profile Mirador construction company.
Now came the hard part, lighting the match. Only three left.
The filter tip sat in her mouth. The cigarette jutted straight out. Her hands were held close to her body. She took the match from the matchbox, positioned the nubby part between her forefinger and middle finger, set the match close, and struck it. A long slow sizzle and thupt, it lit on the first swipe. Heat came from her fingertips.
She moved the match to where she thought the cigarette tip was and inhaled. Her fingertip burned. But had she found the tip first?
And then she felt the rush of tobacco as it caught and burned. She inhaled, the jolt from the nicotine making her head spin. The smoke rushed to her lungs. Lightheaded, she fanned the match in big arcs until sure it had gone out.
Sipping an espresso would make it perfect.
Almost.
Back at the laptop, crosslegged, taking deep drags on the cigarette, she dug deeper into the Populax database. Her fingers flew over the keys, guided by the robotic voice. The impressive client dossiers revealed lucrative campaigns, especially the one for the Bastille Opéra. The Opéra’s exchange with St. Petersburg, a brainchild of glasnost, now a struggle for the St. Petersburg opera house, was being promoted by the Opéra board. Layer by layer, she checked the files. She found using extra keystrokes slowed her down, but not by much.
Nothing unusual.
Just to make sure, she ran a virus scan. The semi-silky voice informed her, “Scanning time remaining ten minutes.”
She sat back, grinding the cigarette out in the saucer positioned by her elbow. Trucks bleeped and the whine of the bulldozer came from below. She figured if she could see, the back of the Opéra would be on the other side of the Hospital.