“There’s one other thing,” I say, remembering. “Ben left this voicenote for me last night, just before I got into Gare du Nord.”
Theo takes my phone. He plays the recording and Ben’s voice sings out. “Hey Jess—”
It’s strange hearing it again like this. It sounds different from the last time I listened, somehow not quite like Ben, like he’s that much further out of reach.
Theo listens to the whole thing. “It sounds like he says something else, at the end. Have you been able to work out what?”
“No—I can’t hear it. It’s too muffled.”
He puts up a finger. Hang on. Then he reaches into the rucksack by his chair—as crumpled as everything else about him—and pulls out a tangled pair of headphones. “Right. Noise-canceling and they go really loud. Want one?’ He holds out a bud to me.
I stick it in my ear.
He dials up the volume to the max and presses play on the voicenote again.
We listen to the familiar part of the recording. Ben’s voice: “Hey Jess, so it’s number twelve, Rue des Amants. Got that? Third floor” and “Just ring the buzzer. I’ll be up waiting for you—” His voice seems to cut off mid-sentence, just like every time I’ve listened to it before. But now I hear it. What sounded like a crackle on the voicemail is actually a creaking of wood. I recognize that creak. It’s the hinges of the door to the apartment.
And then I hear Ben’s voice at a distance, quiet but still much clearer than what had been only a mumble before: “What are you doing here?” A long pause. Then he says: “What the fuck . . . ?”
Next there’s a sound: a groan. Even at this volume it’s difficult to tell if it’s a person making the sound or something else—a floorboard creaking? Then: silence.
I feel even colder than I did before. I find myself taking hold of my necklace, reaching for the pendant, gripping it hard.
Theo plays the recording again. And finally a third time. Here it is. Here’s the proof. Someone was there in the apartment with Ben, the night he left this voicenote.
We each remove an earbud. Look at each other.
“Yeah,” Theo says. “I’d say that’s a little fucking weird.”
Mimi
She’s not in the apartment right now. I know because I’ve been watching from my bedroom window. All the lights are off on the third floor, the room in darkness. But for a moment I actually think I see him; appearing out of the shadows. Then I blink and of course there’s no one there.
But it would be like him. He had this habit of showing up unannounced. Just like he did the second time I met him.
I’d stopped by this old vinyl store on my way back from the Sorbonne: Pêle-Mêle. It was so hot. We have this expression in French, soleil de plomb, for when the sun feels as heavy as lead. That was what it was like that day—hard to imagine now, when it’s so cold out. It was horrible: exhaust fumes and sweaty sunburnt tourists crammed together on the pavements. I always hate the tourists but I hate them most of all in the summer. Bumbling around, hot and angry that they came to the city rather than the beach. But there were no tourists in the store because it looks so gloomy and depressing from the outside, which is exactly why I like it. It was dark and cool, like being underwater, the sounds from outside muted. I could spend hours in there in my own little bubble, hiding from the world, floating between the stacks of vinyl and listening to record after record in the scratched glass booth.
“Hey.”
I turned around.
There he was. The guy who’d just moved in on the third floor. I saw him most days, wheeling his Vespa across the courtyard or sometimes moving around in his apartment: he always left the shutters open. But close up, it was different. I could see the stubble on his jaw, the coppery hairs on his arms. I could see he wore a chain around his neck, disappearing beneath the neckline of his T-shirt. I wouldn’t have expected that, somehow: he seemed too preppy. Up close I could catch the tang of his sweat, which sounds kind of gross—but it was a clean peppery smell, not the fried onion stink you get on the Metro. He was kind of old, like I’d said to Camille. But he was also kind of beautiful. Actually, he took my breath away.
“It’s Merveille, isn’t it?”
I nearly dropped the record I was holding. He knew my name. He’d remembered. And somehow, even though I hate my name, on his lips it sounded different, almost special. I nodded, because I didn’t feel like I could speak. My mouth tasted of metal; maybe I’d bitten my tongue. I imagined the blood pooling between my teeth. In the silence I could hear the ceiling fan, whoomp, whoomp, whoomp, like a heartbeat.
Finally, I managed to speak. “M—most people call me Mimi.”
“Mimi. Suits you. I’m Ben.” His English accent; the bluntness of it. “We’re neighbors: I moved into the apartment on the third floor, a few days ago.”
“Je sais,” I said. It came out like a whisper. I know. It seemed crazy that he thought I might not know.
“It’s such a cool building. You must love living there.” I shrugged. “All that history. All those amazing features: the cave, the elevator—”
“There’s a dumbwaiter, too.” I blurted it out. It’s one of my favorite things in the building. I wasn’t sure why, but I suddenly wanted to share it with him.
He leaned forward. “A dumbwaiter?” He looked so excited; I felt a warm glow that I’d been the cause of it. “Really?”
“Yeah. From back when the building was a proper hôtel particulier—it belonged to this countess or something and there was a kitchen down in the cave. They’d send food and drink up in it and the laundry would come back down.”
“That’s amazing! I’ve never actually seen one of those in real life. Where? No, wait—don’t tell me. I’m going to try and find it.” He grinned. I realized I was smiling back.
He pulled at the collar of his T-shirt. “Christ it’s hot today.”
I saw the small pendant on the end of the chain come free. “You wear a St. Christopher?” Again, I just kind of blurted it out. I think it was the surprise at seeing it, recognizing the little gold saint.
“Oh.” He looked down at the pendant. “Yeah. This was my mum’s. She gave it to me when I was small. I never take it off—I kind of forget it’s there.” I tried to see him as a child and couldn’t. Could only see him tall, broad, the tanned skin of his face. He had lines, yes, but now I realized they didn’t make him look old. They just made him seem more interesting than any of the guys I knew. Like he’d been places, seen stuff, done stuff. He grinned. “I’m impressed you recognized it. You’re a Catholic?”
My cheeks flamed. “My parents sent me to a Catholic school.” A Catholic girls’ school. Your papa really hoped you’d turn out a nun, Camille said. The closest thing he could find to a chastity belt. Most kids I know, like Camille, went to big lycées where they wore their own clothes and smoked cigarettes and ate each other’s faces in the street at lunch break. Going to a place like the Soeurs Servantes du Sacré Coeur makes you into a total freak. Like something out of the kids’ book Madeline. What it means is you get stared at in your uniform by a certain kind of creep on the Metro and ignored by all the other guys. Makes you unable to talk to them like a normal human being. Which is probably exactly why Papa chose it for me.