“Like this,” he said, taking her other hand, sliding it, with his, along her eyebrows and framing her eyes.
“I’ll leave it to the professional,” she said, enjoying this. Now if he could only give a massage.
The next table had gone quiet.
“Encore?” asked a voice near them.
“Feel like that pastis?”
“You buying?”
“Two double pastis, merci,” he ordered.
After the drinks landed on the table, she felt proud as she hooked her pinky over the glass’s edge to gauge just the right amount of water to pour into the milky pastis. The anise aroma hit her along with the buzzing conversation, the hiss of the espresso machine, and the smoky atmosphere. Comfortable and familiar, even though she couldn’t see. The feeling that things could be worse crept into her mind. After all, there was a man at the table.
Not her man. Not her table. But it was a start.
Arm-in-arm they walked to Madame Danoux’s. She heard the hushed sound of the cars passing over the cobbled street. It must have rained while they were in the café. The car tires sounded different.
“Not many people appreciate sunrise,” he said, his tone low in the damp street. “They’d rather sleep.”
“My father pulled the all-night shift. When I was little, the only time we’d have to talk was before I left for school,” she said. “Sunrise was the best time of the day for me.” She remembered his worn bathrobe, tired face, and grin as he poured her steamed milk and chocolate. His thick, unread work files on the table by her bookbag. She shook off the memory.
“What’s on this street, Guy?”
“Café, fabric store for decorators, the offices of the La Rochelle Film Festival, and of Médecins san frontières,” he said, pausing.
Was there something else he wanted to say?
“There’s a uniform manufacturer, a public relations agency . . . it’s written in Chinese but it looks like a wholesale accessory shop. In the courtyard there’s an organ grinder’s supplier. He’s the only one who still makes the music rolls.”
She recalled something: the sheets of music from Clothilde’s café . . . and the sheet of music René found in the garbage at Mathieu’s. Did they connect? But she’d think about that later. At the door, she reached for his hand, not knowing where to plant the customary bisous on his cheeks.
“I didn’t learn much about the MRI,” she said. “But I enjoyed myself. Merci.”
“That’s the point,” he said. “Chantal and the others frequent the bar we went to. The owner was a madame way back when, a ‘character,’ as people say.”
“A colleague of Mimi’s?”
He laughed. “That’s the rumor. People watch out for each other here. The quartier takes care of the non-sighted.”
Her heart chilled. “Not well enough. I was attacked in the passage and Josiane was killed.”
“But the serial killer’s . . .”
“It wasn’t him. It was someone who knew Josiane.”
“Let’s concentrate on the present,” he said.
And then she felt his fingers on her lips. Then his lips on hers. Warm and searching.
And she was 16 again . . . late kisses in a hallway at night, stolen and wonderful. Something mysterious revealed for the first time.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” he said.
What did he see in her?
The door opened. “Dr. Lambert . . . is that you?” Madame Danoux’s distinctive contralto filled the hall.
By the time Aimée got to bed, her tiredness had evaporated, leaving a brittle restlessness. Didn’t patients fall for their doctors all the time? What a cliché.
Again, she wondered what had appealed to him? She was blind. Had it been pity . . . a mercy gesture?
Yet, he hadn’t said he was married or involved. She hadn’t felt a ring on any of his fingers.
And what good would she be to a man? How could it go anywhere? Did she want it to go anywhere?
Stop.
But he knew how to kiss. If she didn’t quit this, she’d be fantasizing about him all night. Forget counting sheep. She had to switch gears, distract herself, but she couldn’t call René, it was too late.
She felt for the laptop, trying to ignore the mustiness and mothball scent emanating from the corner armoire, wishing Miles Davis, her puppy, was curled at her feet. As usual.
But thank God, he was with René’s neighbor in Les Halles. He needed care and she couldn’t provide it. Maybe they could enroll in the guide dog course together.
After booting up the laptop, she created a file, titled it Chanson and typed in what bothered her. A big list in no particular order. And as she typed, the voice repeated the words. After five minutes she played the list back.
Over and over.
Then she arranged them in order of importance. Blindness, Vincent’s obstinate refusal to furnish the hard drive, and Mirador with Draz, the scum, rated as the top three.
And René. She worried about his health, what he’d found out, and what he might miss. She often missed things, only to notice them later. Or details might hit her as she walked away or in the middle of the night.
Like now.
This was the kind of thought process she’d learned from her father and grandfather, growing up in a household of policemen. Not to mention the smoky Pelote nights with half the Commissariat playing cards around the kitchen table. The talk. The nuances, the glances, the tipoffs. The way they treated their indicateurs. Every flic nourished informers. Had to. By osmosis, she’d absorbed what to be aware of, what to suspect, and how to tell when something was being withheld.
Fat lot of good that did her now. She wasn’t in the field. She had to depend on René. And part of her worried about people’s cruelty to him because of his stature.
She wanted to tear her short, spiky hair out, but not seeing the result would ruin the pleasure. All she could do, besides stew, would be to put her fingers to work. She felt around, made sure the modem wires hooked into the phone line.
She couldn’t do much about her blindness. But she could find out if Mirador had a website and garner info from it. René would get the scoop from Josiane’s editor, but in case it might help . . . she’d call in the morning and butter up whoever hired the casual labor . . . assuming she got that far.
“Bienvenue à Mirador,” came a slick media-trained voice at the website. She found the fiscal and corporate structure, how they complied with building codes governing construction.
She hoped René had reached everyone on Josiane’s speed dial. . . . Had the killer’s number been listed? Was that why he wanted the phone? Or did he think the last call could be traced? That thought jarred her.
Of course, if she planned to murder someone she wouldn‘t be that stupid. And she didn’t think he was. But the attack on her, the similarity to the Beast of the Bastille’s method bothered her. In its very similarity, it seemed too planned to resemble the serial killer.
Disturbing. This was someone with access to inside knowledge. Fear danced up her spine.
Draz, the Romanian, might have prior convictions. A long shot. She didn’t even know his last name. Or if he was in the country legally. But checking on the off chance that he had a prior record would save a lot of time if he did. Her father always said “follow your nose.”