The day before the assault, she’d used René’s car, adjusting his customized controls to fit her height. Finding taxis on a rainy Paris night had required more good taxi karma than she’d been willing to bank on.
Running late for the impromptu meeting called by Vincent just an hour earlier, she’d dented René’s Citroën in the tight first-floor Opéra parking lot. Carrying two laptops, graphs, rolled-up flowcharts, and the thick Populax file slowed her progress. She’d asked the gaunt-faced parking attendant for help. He’d given her a big smile and showed her a shortcut. He lisped and walked with a rolling gait, favoring a shortened leg. Yet he’d gone out of his way to guide her to an unmarked blue door that led to the back of the Quinze-Vingts hôpital, with the Opéra backstage loading dock on her left, and what she recognized now was the résidence St. Louis on her right. Vincent’s office on rue Charenton stood directly opposite. She’d felt about in her raincoat pocket, and come up with a damp fifty franc note.
“You’re a prince!” She’d meant it, looking at the downpour. “Got any idea when they close this exit?”
“Make it back before the guardien locks it at eight,” he said, smiling that warm smile again. “Although sometimes he forgets.”
All this had happened less than a week ago. But now she couldn’t see, didn’t know if she ever would, and her whole world had careened out of control. Even the satisfying smoke only blunted her anxiety.
Pangs of “what if’s” hit her until the semi-sexy velvet voice told her she had to make a choice between continuing the download or pausing. She snapped out of her mood of worry and self-pity. Time to work.
Loud pounding on the wall startled her. Aimée hit SAVE. Was the computer voice bothering her next door neighbor? Sharp raps at her door.
She switched off the laptop. Stood and counted her steps to the door.
“Oui?”
The knocking continued.
Aimée reached again for the security chain and unhooked it, then reached for the handle, a metal hook with padded grips and opened it.
“Who’s there?”
“Don’t torture me. Either close the window or give me a cigarette,” said a quavering voice.
“Forgive me, but I didn’t know,” she said, wishing she could see who this poor woman was. “I have one more . . . share?”
“Merci. ”
Something furry and soft feathered her arm as the woman passed. Like her grandmother’s fox collar. The same mothball musky smell. Aimée remembered the fox wrap draped around her grandmother’s neck. The two beady glass eyes, the sharp claws, and how she loved to touch them. “For special occasions,” her grandmother said, “baptisms, weddings, funerals, and when you graduate from the Sorbonne.”
But she hadn’t, and her grandmother passed away soon after.
“I’m your neighbor. Let me see you,” said the demanding voice.
Aimée felt hands, wrinkled and dry, outlining her cheeks, neck, and hairline. Fingers with short nails and a clinging chocolate aroma explored her.
“Nice earrings . . . pearl studs?” she was asked.
“I’m impressed,” she said. “Call me Aimée.”
“Madame Toile, but you can call me Mimi. Just don’t call me late to dinner.”
Old joke. Something metallic jingled.
“What’s that . . . your key?” Aimée asked.
It felt like a flattened serving utensil beneath Aimée’s hand. “Eh? My absinthe spoon . . . I need it. Must do it properly, you know.”
Aimée knew that absinthe had been outlawed for years, but figured the old biddy had her own source. Or inhabited her own world.
“Hold the sugar lump just right and sip the absinthe through it,” she said, her voice misting with anticipation. “Every afternoon, Rico pours me a few drops. He’s Pierre’s grandson, so I know it’s right.”
The old woodworm liquor rotted the brain. Had it damaged Mimi’s?
“Pierre supplied the maison,” Mimi said. “Such a well-connected man. Even when they shut us down in forty-eight.” She made a snorting noise. “We moved across Marché d’Aligre. All the girls came. What else would they do?”
Was Mimi the absinthe-drinking ex-madam of a bordello?
“They called us an institution,” she said. “Now where’s that Gauloise?”
She felt Mimi’s dry hand leading her to the bed. Using the same maneuver, Aimée lit the final cigarette and passed it to her. Mimi inhaled a long drag, then slowly exhaled. “Reminds me of the first time. He did it like a soccer player, no hands and straight for the goal.”
Aimée laughed. Her first time, with her cousin’s friend, had been similar.
“So why were brothels closed in nineteen forty-eight?”
“Now who cared about us, eh? Except the government! They needed the buildings. The housing shortage after the war. . .incroyable! So they took over the houses . . . even the Sphinx in Montparnasse, where the ministers went. Well, what went on at the Sphinx was no enigma, if you get my drift.”
Aimée didn’t know if she wanted to.
Madame exhaled a long smoky breath, felt for Aimée’s hand, and slid it between her fingers. “Reminds me of the blackouts. We’d share fags then, too. Never light three on a match, or a sniper will get you, they said. None of us went to the Métro during air raids. We took our chances: after all, we were getting paid, weren’t we?”
A nicotine-induced wave of dizziness came over Aimée. Was it a sign of recovery, small though it might be?
“Clothilde was the smart one. Shrewd. She still runs her bar,” she said. “Right down there on the corner of rue Moreau. Banked her sous and bought the place. Clotilde knew how to judge the tide and still does. After all, the tide only goes two ways, in and out. The difference after forty-eight was that the girls stood out front on the cobblestones. That and not getting checked every week by the médecin. Stupid, I call it . . . with so many diseases nowadays, eh?”
“What happened to your eyes, Mimi?”
“Something I can’t pronounce, but I like it when that young doctor tells me about it.” Her laughter sounded more like a cackle. The bed rocked. Aimée felt a sharp nudge in her ribs. “He wears good cologne and drinks Sumatra blend espresso. Know the one?”
Dr. Lambert. Mimi’s sense of smell wasn’t the only sharp thing about her.
“He’s the department head, Mimi.”
“If I wasn’t so old, he’d head my department. Like him?”
“Well, he’s . . .”
Another sharp nudge in her ribs. “Good salary, secure job and what a pension! A girl’s got to think of these things, non? Looks only take you so far.”
And Aimée wondered if Mimi was thinking of herself as she spoke.
“He’s married, most likely.”
“And when has that ever stopped anything?”
After Mimi left, Aimée ran a standard virus check on her laptop, figuring she might as well finish the tedious job before tackling the password encryption.
The slow whirr of the zip disk and then the announcement “Zip disk cleaning time remaining twelve minutes” caused her to reach for the nail polish remover bottle. She uncapped it, swished the nail polish remover onto a cotton square and rubbed away what she hoped was the chipped Gigabyte Green. The lemony acetone smell cleared her sinuses.
More loud knocking on her door.
“Oui?”
Perhaps Mimi wanted a manicure, too? Well why not, Aimée had time. She lifted the laptop, unplugged the external Zip Drive, and set them in the drawer.