Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (11 page)

“The memory isn’t all bad. I was ass-over-tit in love with that man. Helplessly giddy about him. We’d been traveling for a
couple of weeks together, keeping each other very warm at night. I’d just assumed he loved me too.”

By the time she’d met Thierry, she’d perfected the act of tumbling heedlessly in love. Traveling had a way of shucking the
expectations that tended to build around a settled life. Travel became a goal in itself, wanderlust the passion that fed it,
and any man with the same sentiment in his heart, an easy target for affection. She’d fallen in love with Thierry not just
because he had liquid brown eyes and a way of smiling that made one eye squint more than the other. She’d fallen in love with
him because he, too, wanted to work his way across Europe, and if the money held, into Greece and maybe Turkey. He understood
her urge to follow the road far, far from where she was, to some exotic destination that would then turn into a jumping point
to yet another.

“The truth was that Thierry was just like the others I’d hooked up with,” Judy said. “He was a common
goujat
.”

The word came to her, surprisingly easily, feathering off her tongue.

“I assume that means ‘gigolo’?”

“More of what Audrey would call a ‘player.’ Thierry never set himself up to be anything but a man of breezy affections, or
our relationship to be anything but one of convenience and common interests. We fell in together, as we happened to be on
the same road. At the beginning I had no problem with that. I felt the same way.”

Monique leaned into her. Her shoulder was warm.

“But by the time Thierry came along,” Judy continued, “I’d been traveling for over five months. Some of the glamour had worn
off. I’d started to feel as if my feet were losing their grip on the earth. It’s difficult to describe.” Judy struggled to
find a way to explain how it felt to be rootless for so long, to sense the emotional connections to home and old friends and
family stretch so thin, almost to the point of dissolution. “Every step I took farther along those cobblestone paths—every
loose, easy, carefree relationship I’d thrown myself into—made me lighter and lighter, until I wondered if I’d eventually
just float off the face of the earth. And not a single soul would give a damn.”

Monique said softly, “And Thierry changed that?”

“No,
I
changed it. By talking to him about the future.” Judy glanced at that bench where she’d last seen him. “Within an hour of
broaching the subject, he gave me a kiss and took off.”

He’d startled a flock of pigeons when he’d stood up. By the time the fat birds settled back down, the man she thought she’d
loved was gone.

“Judy…why would you want to remember this?”

“Because I was a brave and reckless young woman back then, but I was also about as shallow as any garden-variety teenager.
I had no clue about what really mattered in life. Until I took my broken heart in hand that day and stood up from that bench.”
She cast her gaze over the mansard roofs and the dome of Sacre Coeur in the distance. “When I stood up from that bench, Monie,
I finally knew what mattered. So I booked my flight back to the States. Within two years I found Bob.”

Bob, who rooted her in the suburbs with five fat, happy babies and a brace of big messy dogs. One Bob was worth a hundred
thousand flighty French Thierrys.

Monique leaned her head on Judy’s shoulder. “That man sure did shatter your heart.”

“Yes, he did,” Judy conceded. “And so did Audrey—unintentionally—when she stepped on that plane to California.”

Monique lifted her head and gave her a quizzical look. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, “Audrey’s not leaving you forever.”

“No, she’s not. But when she threw me that breezy wave, that’s the moment I understood that my life as I knew it was over.”
In the courtyard a flock of pigeons suddenly rose up and whooshed to higher perches. “You wanted advice about how to handle
an empty nest? I can’t give it to you, Monie. I’m floundering. I just can’t imagine what the hell I’m going to do with the
rest of my life.”

B
ecky braced her sketch pad against her ribs as she stood across from the opening to the Metro station. She sketched the metal
archway that held the station sign, Denfert-Rochereau. She adored the loopy script, the chipping green paint, the romantic
name. But she kept blinking, trying to clear a film in her eye. Paris was sooty like New York City, with all the cars and
the exhaust and the wind kicking up debris. Every time she rubbed her eyes to clear her vision, her eyes just watered more.

Right. That’s what she needed. Soot in her eyes, interfering with her already shitty vision.  

“Hey, we’re moving.” Monique, standing a little way behind Becky, kept her place with Judy in the line to the Paris Catacombs.
She flicked her wrist to look at the face of her watch. “A forty-minute wait. That’s going to kill our plans. At this rate,
I don’t think we’re going to make it to Sacré Coeur in Montmartre, Judy.”

“Crazy tourists.” Judy craned her neck as the group started filing into the little green building. “Who comes to Paris to
go wandering underground?”

“Three women on a mission.” Monique tapped the increasingly tattered itinerary jutting out of the side pocket of her daypack.
“Besides, we could spend a month in Paris and still not see everything.”

“But why aren’t these folks at the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre?” Judy said. “The l’Arc de Triomphe, the Picasso museum, the
Musee D’Orsay—”

“The catacombs would be Gina’s first stop.” Becky tucked her charcoals in her backpack. “It’d be the first stop for all her
neck spike–wearing friends too.”

Becky joined them in the line as she flipped the pages of her sketch pad, noticing how few bare pages were left. She should
slip into one of the stationary shops near their hotel in the Marais and purchase some overpriced acid-free paper before tomorrow.
As she flipped her gaze caught a series of quick line drawings of the Château de Vincennes, which she and the ladies had visited
that morning. Then she admired a detail of a mansard roof and a hasty draft she’d made of the famous pyramid in the courtyard
of the Louvre. She flipped past a drawing of the rose window of Notre Dame and then paused on a sketch of a hunchbacked gargoyle.

The gargoyle was bug-eyed and snarling, bird-bone thin, the composition of its arm crooked like a dog’s leg. The thought passed
through her mind that Gina would have loved that gallery of gargoyles. At Gina’s age Becky’s sketchbooks had been full of
pencil drawings of flower fairies and elves. Gina’s were filled with gnomes. Where Becky imagined castles in clouds and woodland
cottages, Gina portrayed haunted houses and ruined towers. Not for the first time Becky wondered why she hadn’t recognized
the broken nature of that girl’s dreams when she’d first arrived at her home, a gawky and stone-faced twelve-year-old. By
the time Becky recognized Gina as a dark kindred spirit, Gina had already dismissed her as the wicked stepmother.

Judy suddenly thrust a hand between the pages so she could flip the gargoyle out of sight and reveal a sketch of the Eiffel
Tower.

Judy tapped the page. “This would look really nice, matted and framed, on my wall near the front door. Christmas is coming,
you know.”

 “I hear you, Captain Obvious.”

Becky flipped the pages closed. Through the amber filter of her sunglasses, she noticed the lines of hangover weariness around
Judy’s eyes. Last night the three of them had put on their wrinkle-free party dresses, high-heeled it to the street, and hailed
a taxi. They’d arrived at the Champ de Mars and paraded to the elevator of the Eiffel Tower where, on the second tier, they
emerged at Le Jules Verne.

While Monique and Judy oohed and ahhed over the panorama of nighttime Paris, she’d taken a seat with her back to what the
girls’ determined was the best view. Instead of the blur of city lights, Becky had focused on Judy, drinking too many glasses
of a really good burgundy as she regaled them with salacious stories about her French lover. Monique, looking lovely and wistful,
idly twirled the stem of her glass as the widow did her usual disappearing act, mentally drifting off someplace where she
and Judy couldn’t follow.

“It looks like we’re going to make the next group.” Monique fixed her clear gaze on Becky. “You sure you’re up for this? The
book says the tunnels are dimly lit.”

Becky bent over to hide a spurt of irritation. She unzipped the backpack she’d tucked between her feet, slipped her sketch
pad inside. She took her time fitting it in tight.

Monique’s voice rose above her. “I’m not mothering, Beck. I’m just making sure you have full information.”

She straightened to her full height, a good inch taller than Monique when they were both wearing sneakers. “I did tell you
that the ophthalmologist said there wouldn’t be any sudden or abrupt changes in my vision, right?”

“Actually no.”

“And that most likely I’d lose only about five percent of my visual field over the course of an entire year, right?”

“Daytime vision, I assume.”

“And how many weeks has it been since I got the diagnosis?”

Monique made an exaggerated sigh as she pulled out a pile of euros. “All right, all right, maybe I was mothering a little.”

“I appreciate the impulse, Monie, but no worries.” She hiked her pack over her shoulder as they stepped up to the ticket counter.
“I’ll just stay close to you guys and try not to knock down any bone pyramids.”

Becky regretted her snarkiness the moment they passed through the entranceway and realized they’d be descending into the catacombs
by way of a dimly lit spiral staircase. She flattened her fingers against the opposite wall and then gripped the railing as
she toed her way down. The risers were uneven. She stumbled on the fourth step. It wasn’t so dim that she couldn’t see the
way Monique paused, her shoulders tightening, clearly resisting the urge to turn around and look up at her. But Becky only
gripped the railing with more determination. She wasn’t about to grasp Monique’s shoulders now, with the taste of snark still
lingering on her tongue.

Monique suddenly sucked in a sharp breath. “Don’t touch the walls. They’re slimy.”

Becky pressed her hand harder against the mossy stone. Her palms were soaked but the sliminess didn’t bother her. Should she
miss a step she would need to grind her fingers into the mortar to keep upright. And the deeper they descended, the less light
filtered in from above. The air billowing up from below smelled of mildew and decay.

She cast through her memory for what she’d read about these catacombs. These old stone quarry tunnels had run through Paris
since before the revolution. Sometime in the eighteenth century the city grappled with the problem of too little space, too
many dead bodies, and too many ill-placed graves infecting the groundwater that people drew from nearby wells. So the powers
that be decided to disinter the bones from the cemeteries and transfer them to these unused quarry tunnels. They piled the
bones, one on top of another, in ways both bizarre and artful. The bones of six million people lay here.

The bottom of the stairs came abruptly. Becky stumbled against Monique, and then just as quickly righted herself, but not
before she noticed that Monique was trembling.

“Ooh,” Monique murmured as she moved deeper into the tunnel, “this place is
creepy.
”

Becky didn’t feel the same quivering excitement. To her all strange, dark places were full of dangers. These tunnels were
dimmer than she expected. This tour was going to take focus and labor, like walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood after
emerging from a new restaurant, gripping Marco’s arm and using the red haze of a distant stoplight as a marker for where they’d
parked the car.

Judy fell in pace beside her as they followed the crowd down the tunnel. “Monie, tell me there’s no steep spiral staircase
back up to the street level at the end of all this. My knees are screaming.”

Monique folded the map closed. “Let’s not worry about the route out yet. We’ve got a bit of a hike to the main area.”

Judy said, “Hike?!”

“The actual entrance to the catacombs is a kilometer or two through this tunnel. But it’s flat and easy.”

Judy groaned. Becky tried to focus on a faint blob of light ahead, but it kept winking in and out of sight behind the heads
of the people bobbing in front of them. The deeper through the tunnels they walked, the more the walls seemed to close in,
the denser the air seemed to get. It smelled like the air of a wet dryer, except chilly and tinged with the tang of iron.
Over the shuffling of footsteps, Becky heard the sound of water gurgling, like the running of an underground stream.

Monique’s voice dropped low with delight. “Isn’t this something straight out of a Stephen King novel? Kiera would have
loved
this.”

“I’m so glad,” Judy sang, “that I’m not claustrophobic.”

Monique fumbled with something in her pack. “I’m going to pull out my video camera.”

“Nope, I’m not claustrophobic at all.”

Becky flinched as something splashed on her shoulder. Beside her Judy flinched too.

 “Either it’s raining in here,” Judy said tightly, “or a bat just vacated his bowels on my head.”

 Monique clicked the video camera on to the sound of a beep. “It’s just water. I got hit too. Can you believe this place?
Even the walls are weeping.”

 “There’s enough air down here, right?” Judy’s voice rose in pitch. “Because they only allow two hundred people at a time
in the catacombs, right? Any more than that and we’d use up all the
air.
”

Monique said, “Don’t hyperventilate.”

“You can only hyperventilate if there’s
air
.”

“Take deep breaths. Just stay calm and keep walking.”

“Are you really videotaping me having an anxiety attack?”

“You’re not having an anxiety attack. You’re perfectly fine, walking right under the streets of Paris—”

“To see skeletons. Why in God’s name would Lenny put this on the list?”

Monique made a sound deep in her throat—a soft little hint of a laugh—a light bit of music Becky hadn’t heard in a while.
“It’s just like a horror movie, isn’t it? It’s something straight out of the mind of Wes Craven. And to think Lenny wouldn’t
even sit through
The Sixth Sense.
”

Becky murmured, “Wait—he didn’t like that movie?”

“Oh, he’d never admit that. He was okay through the first part of it. Until the boy ended up in the little closet at the top
of the stairs.”

Becky shivered, remembering the scene when a young boy is locked in the darkness and savagely beaten by something only he
could see.

“When that part came,” Monique continued, “Lenny shot up out of his chair and insisted that we keep watching as he left the
room.”

Becky muttered, “I’d be right on his heels.”

“Oh, he came back after a while. He kept coming and going. First to go to the bathroom. Then to get a glass of water. Always
at the point in the movie when things got really creepy. But he would never admit it scared the hell out of him. Not while
his eleven-year-old daughter was wide-eyed and squealing in delight.”

Monique fiddled with something on the camera—at least that’s what Becky thought, from all the clicking. “Monie, are you saying
that Lenny didn’t like horror movies?”

 “He hated them.”

“Then why put this on the list?”

Monique didn’t say anything right away, and Becky sensed in her pause a brief uncertainty. “Well,” Monie said, “I guess it’s
because he loved the cuddling I insisted on after.”

Judy murmured, “Ooh-la-la.”

“Come on, Monie.” Becky thought that she may be going blind, but there were some things even a blind friend could see. “This
is
really
creepy. If Lenny chose to put this on the list, then it was just for you alone.”

“No, no. Everything on that list was for the two of us.”

“Becky’s right,” Judy said. “Lenny picked these catacombs because he was throwing you a bone.”

Monique groaned. “You didn’t just say that.”

“I did,” Judy said. “A little humor to keep me sane, Monie, because I see the vestibule up ahead, and you know what comes
after that.”

The shadowy silhouettes of the tourists abruptly expanded, and Becky got the sense that they’d just entered a larger space,
though the only way she had to gauge that was the slight distance—like an exhale—that both Monique and Judy put between them.

“O-kay.” Judy’s swift intake of breath was followed by a shaky, uneven exhale. “I guess this is what we’re here to see.”

“I’m channeling Kiera.” Monique’s excitement was a shiver that rippled through her whole body. “This is so
keeeeeeewl.
”

The video camera whirred on again. Becky strained to see something in the yellow light. It was like looking at a stucco wall,
the details entirely lost. Becky knew what was collected down here. She supposed what was spread in front of her, drenched
in the sepulchral light, were the artistically stacked bones of people who’d been buried three centuries ago. It might be
better if she could move closer, so that she might actually be able to see some detail. But in this relentless dimness she’d
probably find herself six inches from something curious before her brain resolved the image into the empty eye sockets of
a skull.

 “Hey, Monique,” Judy said, “it’s getting a little close in here, don’t you think? Let’s go ahead a little farther, get away
from the crowds.”

“I’m game.”

Becky followed on their heels as her friends maneuvered through the crowd. The back of her neck tingled, the hairs standing
up, and not just from the cold and the proximity of the dead but also from the heart-stopping half collisions she was avoiding
only by a breath. During the walk from the staircase to these tunnels everyone pretty much had been moving forward in the
same direction, but here in the caverns themselves, people milled, veering to the left and to the right, noting to one another
the names of the galleries, the little niches built into the walls with the urns within, altars made of bones.