Annette checked her watch again.
It was another ten minutes up the slowly rising hill to the Panthéon. Men and women in business clothes gathered in cafés and bistros for an after-work apéritif. Paris is a northern city, like London, darker than Toronto at this hour and moodier in the mist and the rain. On the other side of the Panthéon, almost at Jardin des Plantes, Annette and the girl turned onto what was surely the ugliest street in this corner of the fifth arrondissement, Rue Santeuil, across from a humanities building of the Sorbonne. Ugly for Paris was somewhere between normal and vaguely attractive, by North American standards. The atypicalapartment building had been built for students and belonged, poetically, to the suburbs of Paris more than Paris itself—the things one lazy mayor can do. Laundry and flags from former colonies—including a Maple Leaf—hung over balconies. Across the street, in the courtyard of the squat university building, some students in bog jackets sat on a patch of wet grass, one of them with a guitar. They sang a Bob Marley song.
Annette found her keys in her purse, finally, and opened the door for the little girl. He waited forty minutes under the awning of an entrance to the Sorbonne. The rain had come again and the student troubadours had fled indoors. She walked out at 6:45 in a dark blue dress with a crisp tan overcoat, high heels. Her hair was dry now and arranged. Annette carried a handsome polka-dot umbrella with a wooden handle but no daughter. Kruse followed her back up the hill to Rue Mouffetard, close enough that he caught the outer cloud of her citrus perfume. She stopped at a pharmacy window, before the plaza, and deftly tucked the umbrella under her arm. The not-a-journalist reapplied her lipstick and licked her finger, dabbed at her right eye, and then just stared at herself and breathed, whispered something into the glass.
A masseuse had set up a mini-clinic under a big umbrella next to the fountain at Place de la Contrescarpe. Under the umbrella was a special chair and a hand-painted sign: “Free Massages with donation.” The old lanterns around the fountain had popped on. In the springtime, trees that bordered the fountain would blossom pink. Tonight the branches were bare and wet. Their shadows hung over the neglected masseuse, who was making eye contact with passing pedestrians like a lonely hound.
Café Delmas was designed as a library, with soft light and books on the shelves, leather chairs and an antelope’s head on the wall. Annette went immediately into the washroom, so Kruse found a table for them. His seat backed into the corner, faced the room. Some of what he had heard, from travellers and Bugs Bunny cartoons and American comediesstarring Chevy Chase, had turned out to be correct: the French are not afraid to smell the way men and women smell at six or seven o’clock at night, after a day of work. They are a musky people.
He stood up when she emerged and didn’t quite know whether to offer his hand or kiss her cheek. Neither perhaps. Neither. Before she sat down she began apologizing for what had happened in the newsroom, her voice shaky and her words so jumbled together he had to focus completely to understand.
“When Madame Kruse phoned it was early in the evening and I was on the late shift, you see, and she asked for a journalist and I am a journalist—I am, truly—so I believe I did nothing wrong, nothing unethical. The reporter who had written the story, he was not in the office. He rarely is. I might have transferred her, of course, but who was in at that hour? Interns. Contractors. I am a journalist, as I said. It was very kind of you, this afternoon, to lie for me. But please understand I know how to do this, what I am doing.”
“What would you like to drink, Madame Laferrière?”
“If you would prefer a journalist with a byline in
Le Monde
, a byline already I should say, it is only natural and correct. I will find someone for
It was another ten minutes up the slowly rising hill to the Panthéon. Men and women in business clothes gathered in cafés and bistros for an after-work apéritif. Paris is a northern city, like London, darker than Toronto at this hour and moodier in the mist and the rain. On the other side of the Panthéon, almost at Jardin des Plantes, Annette and the girl turned onto what was surely the ugliest street in this corner of the fifth arrondissement, Rue Santeuil, across from a humanities building of the Sorbonne. Ugly for Paris was somewhere between normal and vaguely attractive, by North American standards. The atypicalapartment building had been built for students and belonged, poetically, to the suburbs of Paris more than Paris itself—the things one lazy mayor can do. Laundry and flags from former colonies—including a Maple Leaf—hung over balconies. Across the street, in the courtyard of the squat university building, some students in bog jackets sat on a patch of wet grass, one of them with a guitar. They sang a Bob Marley song.
Annette found her keys in her purse, finally, and opened the door for the little girl. He waited forty minutes under the awning of an entrance to the Sorbonne. The rain had come again and the student troubadours had fled indoors. She walked out at 6:45 in a dark blue dress with a crisp tan overcoat, high heels. Her hair was dry now and arranged. Annette carried a handsome polka-dot umbrella with a wooden handle but no daughter. Kruse followed her back up the hill to Rue Mouffetard, close enough that he caught the outer cloud of her citrus perfume. She stopped at a pharmacy window, before the plaza, and deftly tucked the umbrella under her arm. The not-a-journalist reapplied her lipstick and licked her finger, dabbed at her right eye, and then just stared at herself and breathed, whispered something into the glass.
A masseuse had set up a mini-clinic under a big umbrella next to the fountain at Place de la Contrescarpe. Under the umbrella was a special chair and a hand-painted sign: “Free Massages with donation.” The old lanterns around the fountain had popped on. In the springtime, trees that bordered the fountain would blossom pink. Tonight the branches were bare and wet. Their shadows hung over the neglected masseuse, who was making eye contact with passing pedestrians like a lonely hound.
Café Delmas was designed as a library, with soft light and books on the shelves, leather chairs and an antelope’s head on the wall. Annette went immediately into the washroom, so Kruse found a table for them. His seat backed into the corner, faced the room. Some of what he had heard, from travellers and Bugs Bunny cartoons and American comediesstarring Chevy Chase, had turned out to be correct: the French are not afraid to smell the way men and women smell at six or seven o’clock at night, after a day of work. They are a musky people.
He stood up when she emerged and didn’t quite know whether to offer his hand or kiss her cheek. Neither perhaps. Neither. Before she sat down she began apologizing for what had happened in the newsroom, her voice shaky and her words so jumbled together he had to focus completely to understand.
“When Madame Kruse phoned it was early in the evening and I was on the late shift, you see, and she asked for a journalist and I am a journalist—I am, truly—so I believe I did nothing wrong, nothing unethical. The reporter who had written the story, he was not in the office. He rarely is. I might have transferred her, of course, but who was in at that hour? Interns. Contractors. I am a journalist, as I said. It was very kind of you, this afternoon, to lie for me. But please understand I know how to do this, what I am doing.”
“What would you like to drink, Madame Laferrière?”
“If you would prefer a journalist with a byline in
Le Monde
, a byline already I should say, it is only natural and correct. I will find someone for
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