The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles (22 page)

Jo started on the salad dressing.
Sunflower or olive oil? Once I get the money from the book, I’ll use only top-quality olive oil. Cold-pressed, extra virgin, the most expensive stuff, the kind that wins competitions. I won’t be short on money now. Jesus, fifty thousand euros! Those publishers are crazy. Did I really lose weight, or did I misread the scale? I’ll weigh myself again tomorrow.

Anyway, why do you have to be thin to please men? In the twelfth century, women were built like tanks. What shall I call my heroine? Careful not to put too much mustard in the dressing, Hortense doesn’t like it. Will there be children in my book? When Antoine and I got married, we wanted four kids, but we stopped at two and I regret it now.

What the hell was he thinking, taking out that loan without telling me? And here I am, stuck with it!

So how do you come up with a name for a character? Eleanor? Too predictable. Gertrude, Mary, Cécile, Sibylle, Florence? What about the man? Eustache, Baudouin, Arnoud, Thierry, Guibert? And why should my heroine only have one lover, anyway? She’s not the fool I am. Or maybe she’s a fool who ends up wildly successful anyway. That would be funny: a girl who only hopes for a little happiness and winds up rich because everything she touches turns to gold.

A drop of boiling water from the pot splashed Joséphine’s hand, and she jumped back with a yelp. She poked the potatoes with the tip of a knife to see if they were done.

“Hi, Mommy!” Zoé bounded into the kitchen. “We walked home with Mme Barthillet. She’s so skinny! Mom, if I ever get fat, will you put me on that diet of hers?”

“Hello, Mom,” said Hortense. “Guess what? They told us there won’t be any hot lunch tomorrow. Can I have five euros to buy a sandwich?”

“Yes, honey. Give me my wallet. It’s in my purse,” she said, pointing to the bag on the radiator. “Zoé, don’t you want a sandwich too, for tomorrow’s lunch?”

“I’m eating at Max’s. He invited me over. I got an 81 on my history quiz.”

Joséphine observed her younger daughter. She would definitely put a little Zoé in her story. She could picture her as a village child with ruddy cheeks, bringing in the hay or stirring the soup as it bubbled in a big cauldron hanging over the fire. Joséphine would change Zoé’s name, but keep her humor and her love of life. And her way of saying things. And what about Hortense? She would make her a princess—very beautiful and haughty . . . She’d live in a castle while her father was off on a crusade and—

“Hey, Earth to Mom!”

Hortense was holding Joséphine’s purse out to her. “My five euros, remember?”

Jo took her wallet, and handed a five-euro bill to Hortense. As she did, a clipping fell to the floor, and Joséphine bent to pick it up. It was the photo of the man in the duffel coat. She suddenly knew who she would write her letter to.

That night, when the girls were in bed, Joséphine wrapped her quilt around her shoulders and went out onto the balcony. She looked up at the stars and asked them for strength and for ideas. She wanted them to forgive her for agreeing to Iris’s scheme.
I don’t have any choice. What was I supposed to do?

She studied the night sky carefully, looking for the last star on the handle of the Big Dipper. That had been her star when she was little. Her father had given it to her one night when she was feeling sad. “You see that little star at the very tip of the dipper, Jo?” he’d said. “If it went away, the whole dipper would lose its balance and fall. If we lose you, our family will fall apart. Because you bring it joy, good humor, and a big heart. In each family, there are some people who don’t seem important, but without them, there would be no life, no love. You and I, we’re that type.”

The little star at the end of the dipper never sparkles
, Jo thought,
but I bet it made the photograph of the man in the duffel coat fall out of my wallet. Thank you. I’ll write my story for him.

“Hey, Jo! You’re hiding something from me, aren’t you?”

Shirley was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips. Joséphine had spent the past hour and a half in front of her computer, vainly waiting for inspiration. Taped next to the keyboard, the photo of the man in the duffel coat wasn’t any help. As a muse, he’d been a complete failure. Jo thought of Iris’s failed attempts to write.
Will I experience the same blank hopelessness? Better not start counting those euros before they hatch.

“You’ve been avoiding me, Jo.”

“This isn’t a good time, Shirley. I’m in the middle of something.”

Just when I was ready to dive in!
she fumed.
Just when I was going to overcome my writer’s block!
She looked up, and decided that Shirley’s nose was much too small. To her dismay, Jo suddenly wanted to punch it.

“You’re avoiding me, aren’t you? Ever since you got back from the mountains three weeks ago, I’ve hardly seen you.” She pointed at the laptop. “Is that Hortense’s?”

“No, it’s mine,” Joséphine said through clenched teeth.

“Since when do you have two computers? Did Steve Jobs leave them to you in his will?”

Joséphine smiled despite herself. She was beginning to accept that she wasn’t going to get any work done.

“Iris gave it to me for Christmas, actually.” She immediately regretted saying so.

“What’s the catch?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Jo. Your sister never gives something for nothing, not even the time of day. So go on, tell me.”

“Shirley, I can’t. It’s a secret.”

“And you don’t think I can keep a secret?”

“A secret is meant to stay secret, right?”

Shirley smiled.

“Okay. You scored a point. Are you going to offer me some coffee? Black with two lumps of brown sugar, please.”

“I only have white. I haven’t had time to go shopping.”

“Too busy working?”

Joséphine bit her lip.

“You didn’t ask how my holiday went. Remember? In Scotland?”

Joséphine knew that keeping her secret would be tough. Shirley didn’t give up just like that. At Christmas it had been easy
not to tell her about Antoine and the loan; Shirley’s thoughts were all about decorations, the stuffed turkey, and the
bûche de Noël.
But the holidays were over now, and Shirley’s radar was fully operational again.

“All right, I’ll ask. How was your vacation?”

“Awful. Gary was in the doldrums the whole time. Ever since dancing with your daughter, he’s been off his rocker. He wandered around my friend Mary’s house spouting gloomy poetry and threatening to hang himself with his turtleneck. In his room I found twenty-four drafts of love letters to her that were as torrid as they were desperate! Some were even written in iambic pentameter. He didn’t send any of them.”

“And a good thing, too. Hortense doesn’t have much patience with whiners. If he wants to attract her, he better become a big shot. Hortense is a material girl. She wants it all and she doesn’t like waiting.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“She loves beautiful dresses, fine jewelry, fancy cars. Her ideal man is Marlon Brando in
A Streetcar Named Desire.
Gary might try working out and wearing a ripped T-shirt. That doesn’t cost much, and it might catch her eye.”

“Brando! When I was her age, it was Robert Mitchum. I was mad for him! Speaking of which,
What a Way to Go
was on the telly last night. It stars Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine. When they were shooting it, the two were having a hot love affair.”

“Oh, really?” said Joséphine absentmindedly, looking for an excuse to get Shirley out of her kitchen.

Unbelievable!
she thought to herself.
This is my best friend, and I love her dearly, but at this very moment I’d chop her up and put her in a stew just to get rid of her.

Shirley had finished listing the movie’s cast and was describing the plot when something she’d just said caught Joséphine’s attention.

“She doesn’t want to be rich, so she tries to marry the most modest, unassuming bloke she can find, one who will guarantee her a nice quiet life. She thinks that money can’t buy happiness, see? It just makes you unhappy. Anyway, it’s so funny, Jo! Because she keeps marrying these poor blokes, and thanks to her, each one hits it big, makes loads of money, and kills himself working. She ends up a widow every time. Proving her theory that money doesn’t bring happiness!”

“Wait a minute!” said Jo. “Tell me the story again, from the beginning. I wasn’t listening.” Shirley recapped the plot again.

Excited, Jo clutched her arm.

“But that’s my idea exactly! I thought of it yesterday!”

“I’ve never seen you so excited over a movie,” said Shirley teasingly.

“That’s not just a movie, it’s the story I want to tell in my stupid novel! . . . Oops!”

Jo turned pale.

“It’s a secret, Shirley. I mean it.”

“I won’t say a word, Jo. I swear,” said Shirley, crossing her fingers behind her back. She planned to tell Gary, of course. Shirley told her son everything he needed to understand life, so he could beware and protect himself. She claimed that children
know everything before the adults do. They know their parents are going to split up before the parents do, that Mommy drinks in secret and that Daddy is screwing the supermarket checkout girl. Also, that Grandpa didn’t die in bed of a heart attack, but atop a stripper in Pigalle.

“I knew something was up the minute I walked in.”

“You really can’t tell a soul. Iris would be furious if she knew you knew. When she suggested I write it for her, at first I said no. . . .”

“This novel you want a plot for . . .”

“Yeah. Iris suggested I trade my so-called talent for cash. For fifty thousand euros! That’s an awful lot.”

“You need that much money?” Shirley asked, now genuinely surprised.

“There’s something else I didn’t tell you.”

Afterward, Shirley folded her arms across her chest and looked at Joséphine.

“You’ll never change,” she said with a sigh. “You let yourself get taken in by the first con artist to come down the pike! But what I don’t get is why Iris needs you to write a novel.”

“She wouldn’t tell me.”

“For God’s sake, Jo, you’re an accomplice to a swindle and you don’t want to know why? I’ll never understand you!”

Joséphine looked like a deer in the headlights.

“Next time you see her, at least ask. It’s important, Jo. She’s going to put her name on a book you wrote, and what does it get her? Fame? Your book’s going to have to make a big splash for that
to happen. Fortune? She’s giving you all the money—unless she’s planning to cheat you, which I wouldn’t put past her. She promises you the money, then gives you only a small part of it and flies off to her lover in Venezuela.”

“Shirley, stop it! Now you’re the one writing a novel! Don’t put thoughts like that in my head. I’m stressed enough as it is.”

Joséphine looked anguished, and Shirley regretted upsetting her.

“I recorded that film last night,” she said. “Want to watch it?”

“What, right now?”

“Sure. My class at the conservatory isn’t for an hour and a half, and if the movie isn’t over, you can finish watching it alone.”

They went to Shirley’s apartment and played the tape. Onscreen, Shirley MacLaine appeared, dressed all in black and looking lovely. She slowly walked down the staircase of a pink mansion, followed by eight men in black carrying a coffin.

“Did you see the photo of the man in the duffel coat on my keyboard?” Joséphine asked as the credits rolled.

“Yeah, I did. I figured you must be up to something big to have stuck it in front of your face. Probably for inspiration.”

“It didn’t work. He hasn’t inspired me at all!”

“Make him into one of the five husbands and it’ll work.”

“Thanks a lot! You told me that they all die.”

“Not the last one.”

“Oh . . . But I don’t want him to die,” Jo said very quietly, her eyes glued to the screen. Shirley MacLaine had calmly walked offscreen. The funeral parlor attendants lost their grip on the coffin, which went tumbling down the stairs behind her.