“Good job, partner. Listen, someone stole my phone,” she said, wanting to downplay the attack. “Try my number, see who answers.”
She clicked off. René called right back.
“Your voice mail answers,” he said. “Your phone’s probably in the Seine with the fishes.”
She wasn’t so sure of that.
“I’m staying somewhere else tonight,” she said.
Another pause.
“With your doctor?”
How did René make that jump? Was her flicker of attraction to the doctor so obvious?
“An opera singer rents rooms . . .”
“What about the residence? You need care!”
She appreciated his concern. He was the only family she had besides Morbier, who was keeping to the margins of her life.
“It’s complicated,” she said. “Look, my door got carved up and I had a close encounter hanging from my window railing.”
“Someone attacked you in your room?”
So she told him.
Right now, she was so worried that she might not see again, that everything else faded in importance.
“Stay at my place.”
“René, the doctor wants me near the hospital, available for tests. He can’t schedule in advance, he calls me in when a space opens. But thanks for the offer.”
The air brakes of a late evening lumbering bus hissed in the background.
“Of course,” he said, his tone resigned. “You need to be close to the hospital. Lucky the attacker didn’t take your laptop.”
“He came for something else: Josiane’s phone. If he saw the laptop in the drawer he ignored it. My phone must have sat in full view on the bed but I’d put Josiane’s in my pajama jacket pocket after the nurse copied the numbers for me. I’d forgotten it was in there.”
She heard René’s intake of breath. “By now he will have discovered he’s got the wrong phone. You are in danger.”
“That’s why I moved. Only you, Dr. Lambert, my landlady, and Chantal know where I’m staying.”
“Good.”
“Listen, why don’t you make an appointment with Josiane’s editor?” she said. “Find out what she worked on, see if the editor will share her notes.”
“Tomorrow. I’m beat.”
He sounded more than tired.
“We know she lived near Marché d’Aligre.”
She pictured the streets leading to it, one of the few covered markets left in Paris. Her grandfather had bought pheasant there. She’d accompanied him, transfixed by the beady-eyed stuffed guinea fowl and the bright-plumed pheasants. Rabbits hung by their feet upside down. Under the glass and wire-framed roof, he’d buy Meaux mustard sealed in its crock with red wax, and containers with olive oil from Provence they decanted into small bottles.
The marché hosted a thriving outdoor produce trade and secondhand dealers, too. On the outer fringes, under the arcade of a 70s “monstrosity” (according to her grandfather), stood the curve of flats replacing Haussman era buildings, where street people spread blankets, hawking odds and ends. A marketplace since medieval times, the Marché d’Aligre was the only spot in Paris to continue the tradition unbroken.
Aimée tried to view the map in her mind. Had it made sense for Josiane to go through that passage where she was killed on her way home to rue de Cotte?
No, the passage lay several blocks in the opposite direction.
Then why would Josiane go there? But she knew why . . . the phone caller, the man had begged her to meet him.
She knew because she’d heard him.
Again she wondered if they had been having a lover’s quarrel.
“René, what if this involves jealousy?” she said. “Love problems. Plain and simple.”
“Since when is love plain and simple?”
He had a point.
She smelled Dr. Lambert’s Vetiver scent before his thigh brushed against hers in the booth.
“René, I’ll get back to you later,” she said and clicked off.
She felt her hands laced around a frosted cold glass.
“The new bartender recommended Fire and Ice. A speciality of the Antilles, where he’s from, too. He swears this will get anyone through a rough night.”
“So, doctor, what gets you through?”
“Call me Guy. If you keep calling me doctor, customers will descend on us to describe their illnesses.”
Laughter. Low and melodic. Nice.
“So what gets you through the night?” she asked again.
“Sunrise.”
What a cop out! She might as well head back to the opera singer’s and try banging her head on the wall. Maybe that would jiggle those neurons into action. It might even restore her sight.
She chugged the Fire and Ice, a mixture tasting of tomato and strawberry zinging with tabasco. Curiously wonderful.
“Look, I appreciate the drink . . .” she said, making as if to stand up. Hard in the cramped booth when she didn’t know which way to turn.
She felt a tug on her elbow and decided to stay put. She wouldn’t have known what direction to go anyway.
“Blame it on a school trip to England,” said Guy. “We saw dawn rise through the pillars at Stonehenge. And it changed my life.”
He sounded serious.
“I was fifteen,” he said. “Since then I’ve photographed hundreds of sunrises all over the world. After an eclipse comes the best sunrise. Incredible.”
And she knew what he meant. She loved sunrises herself. Watched them from her window lighting up the Seine with a luminous glow. The quiet time before the city burst alive. Like a still breath before a large exhalation, feeling as if she were the only person on the planet.
Yet, she’d imagined him otherwise; a life filled with surgery, consultations and patients. “How do you find the time?”
“The baker loves me. We share a coffee. He’s the only other one awake at dawn on my street except for the newspaper truck. Or once in a while, kids coming home from rave parties.”
“What was sunrise like this morning? Describe the colors.”
Pause.
He attempted to change the subject. “I live behind an old hardware store, famous for doorknobs. It’s been there since 1862, has more than 130 kinds. They specialize in Louis XIII style.”
Why was he avoiding her question?
“Did you miss the sunrise this morning?”
“I don’t think it’s healthy,” he said, his voice hesitant, “talking to you about this . . .”
“Please, tell me about the colors,” she asked again. If she couldn’t see the sunrise, she’d like to hear about it. Visualize it.
“As I said . . .”
“But I want you to,” she said. “Then I can see it in my mind. I miss seeing the sunrise.”
“So you like them, too.”
A pause.
Had she made points with her doctor? He grew more human all the time.
A band of pewter fog covered the Pont Neuf,” he said. ““Peach lightened up the horizon, spreading and reaching for the blue.”
“What kind of blue?” she asked.
“Innocent. Baby blue. The stars and streetlights twinkled until the bands of color became one brightness.”
She wished she could see him; the shape of his eyes, how his mouth moved, if his cheekbones slanted, and how light glinted in his hair.
“It’s not something I broadcast,” he told her. “Some might say I seem obsessed.”
“Having a passion isn’t necessarily obsession. I’m just wondering what you look like.”
That must be the Fire and Ice talking.
“Chantal’s a bad teacher if she hasn’t . . .”
“But she has,” she said, interrupting him as she passed her fingers over his face. Tentatively, she traced his chinline, felt the stubble and the soft border of his lips. His mouth. It would be rosy and he’d have straight white teeth. Her fingers traveled his earlobes, then his long fringed eyelashes that never seemed to end. Black or dark brown hair? Maybe tobacco red? She felt his forehead, smooth and . . . she stopped. Down girl . . . try and control yourself.