She felt his hand on her chin, lifting it up. He must be tall. His fingers lifted the edge of her eyelid. Gently. A metallic clicking sounded by her nose.
Desperately she wanted to see. Anything. A blur, something. She tried.
Only darkness.
He pushed her hair off her forehead. His hands were warm.
“You want it straight?”
“Will I need a drink to hear this?”
“Are you always so . . .?”
“Feisty?” she interrupted. “Only when I’m scared, only when my life’s collapsing. Otherwise I’m easy.”
“Your life will change, it has to,” he said. Something moved on the linoleum, as if his feet shuffled. “But it doesn’t have to fall apart. Shall we have that drink?”
Now she was really scared.
“Fine, let’s hit an Orangina machine in the lobby,” she said. “My treat.”
She thought back to books she’d read about Helen Keller, all unkempt and wild with rage before she learned Braille, and that movie, Wait Until Dark, with Audrey Hepburn, blind and gorgeous in Givenchy, defeating killers. But she wasn’t like either of them.
It hit her like a load of bricks. Her vision loss was permanent. She didn’t need him to spell it out. She needed to find somewhere to fall apart, but not in front of him. Then somehow she’d manage to call René.
She realized how nice Dr. Lambert was. He’d cared enough to find her a place to stay. He’d tried. Above and beyond his duty. The poor guy must have a heavy schedule, case overload, and a wife and kids dying to see him after a long workday.
“Look, let’s make it some other time. You’ve got a life, probably a big day of surgery and appointments tomorrow,” she said, giving him a way out. “We can talk when the detailed MRI report comes in. Unless, of course, I wake up to a halo of miraculous light and can finally do my nails. Then I’m out of here.”
“You know that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile,” he said.
Had she smiled? She felt warmth spreading over her hand. From his.
“Let’s go,” he said. He placed her hand on his bended arm. “Amaze me with all the tricks Chantal’s taught you.”
Perform like a circus animal?
“What do you mean?” Dumbfounded, she stood paralyzed.
“Relax. You’re pretty uptight. Show me how you walk on rue Charenton to the bar-tabac on the corner of rue Moreau, for a start,” he said. “Or do you have stage fright?”
She didn’t want to go to a lighted, noisy bar full of people. Or to pass by the passage where she had been attacked. She wanted to crawl into a hole, curl up, and cry.
“Scared?”
“Me? Where’s that bar?” She strode ahead, pulling him along with her and prayed to God she didn’t run into a pillar or stone wall.
BY SOME odd quirk of fate, she’d been to the bar-tabac on the corner of rue Moreau. It was on the rainy night she’d parked in the Opéra parking lot and the attendant had showed her the shortcut through hôpital Quinze-Vingts. She’d stopped for a quick espresso, knowing she was late for the impromptu Populax meeting but figuring she’d need to key up with caffeine to match Vincent’s nervous energy.
She remembered the fifties-style bar, but not its name. Comfortable and utterly Parisian, like the one around the corner from her apartment. They still existed. Timeworn, with a stumpy, rounded counter. The soccer calendars with team schedules on the nicotine-burnished walls. The smudged, beveled mirror with the specials written in white over the Lavazza coffee machine, crowned by rows of cups. Upside-down liquor bottles anchored to the wall with silver stop-cocks that gave metered doses. The brown mosaic tile floor littered with sugar cube wrapping and cigarette butts, where one bumped elbows with neighbors. Not chic but centime-conscious.
“Later on they sing,” Dr. Lambert said, taking her elbow and guiding her onto a leather banquette. “Clothilde shuts the place at midnight, the accordion player hands out sheet music, and people stay until dawn.”
Clothilde. Where had she heard that name?
“The new generation craves a whiff of the past. To sing their grandparents’ songs, to dance the bourrée from the countryside in three quarter time.”
She knew the past could reassure. Or frighten.
“You know most people in Paris come from somewhere else,” he said. “What about you?”
“A Paris rat,” she said, leaving out the fact her mother was American. “And you?” she asked.
“Born in Chambery. The snowy Savoy.”
What did he look like? she wondered.
“But my grandparents . . .” she went on.
“Let me guess,” he said. “Auvergne?”
She nodded. “That’s easy.”
Paris was filled with Auvergnats. Between the wars and during the Depression, Auvergnats, nicknamed bougnats, had fled the mines and their bleak farms in the Massif Central, migrating in droves to Paris. The well-known tale: coal merchants, hoping to make their fortune in Paris, often ending up carrying coal on their backs. The more affluent opened bistros, accounting for the large number of Auvergnat-based menus one still saw. She remembered her grandmother telling her how in Cantal, the calcium carbonate-rich springs coated any object put under them with a shiny translucent layer. Like the pervasive bougnat influence in Paris.
Her senses had been pared to the essence. People, slapping eath other’s backs, and smoking, involved in discussions, as they were all over Paris tonight. Their energy hit her. And she felt curiously part of it.
“Pastis?”
She needed something strong.
“Double, please.” She shoved a fistful of francs at him.
While Dr. Lambert got drinks, she pulled out Josiane’s cell phone, found the number pad, and called René.
“Allô?”
Aimée heard klaxons and the revving of engines in the background.
“Ça va, René?”
“I’m stuck in the motorcycle rally in Bastille,” he said.
“But that’s on Friday nights.”
“Maybe you should let them know. Alors, traffic’s jammed,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Not far, buying my doctor a drink,” she said.
Pause.
“Aren’t there ethical considerations . . . doctor and patient, eh?”
“It’s after my MRI. He’s trying to break it gently to me,” she said.
“MRI?”
“Standard procedure. He’ll know more tomorrow.” She didn’t want to tell René she’d be blind forever. “Look, he feels sorry for me.” She felt the edge of the table, worn and sticky. “What did you find out?”
The revving of engines increased. She wished he’d shut his window.
“Aimée, get this. Romanians intimidate residents and old people, using strong-arm tactics to force them out. They don’t even try and evict them legally,” René said, his voice rising with excitement. “Seems a construction company moves in then and restores or demolishes the building. Josiane was working on a story about this.”
“Would that have got her murdered?”
“Makes more sense than that she was a victim of the Beast of Bastille,” said René.
René was good. A natural.
“Quite the detective, aren’t you? Tell me more.”
And he did. The architect Brault’s allegations, the roller-blading astrologer’s predictions, his friend Gaetan’s evasions, and the old woodwind maker’s information.
“Draz?” she asked. “This old man heard the name?”
“Seems Draz was a bon mec. The old flutemaker heard him beating someone to a pulp below his window,” René said. “I don’t imagine that’s something you forget.”