Authors: Claire North
Paris.
What may I say of Paris?
That the French never take no for an answer.
Wars, riots and rebellions, governments formed and overthrown, regular as winter flu; crushing poverty and great wealth. Through all of this Paris has stayed Paris, crown of France, city of boulevards, chic and red wine.
In romantic movies Paris is the Seine and sentimental understandings beneath the burgundy awnings of the local café, where waiters in crisp white aprons serve tiny croissants on silver plates and whisper philosophical truths about love.
In American thrillers Paris is corruption, its grimy Metro hiding beady-eyed strangers chewing unknown herbs in the corners of their mouths, who spit on the track and snigger at young women and chase each other down the cobbles of Montmartre.
To children Paris is the double-decker train and the Eiffel Tower; to wealthy adults it’s the sound of champagne popping on the top-floor restaurant beside Notre-Dame. To nationalists it’s the tricolour flying by the Arc de Triomphe, and to historians it’s the same, though perhaps the historians look upon the red, white and blue with a little more circumspection.
To me Paris is a beautiful place to spend May, June and September, hideous in August, drab in February and at its most magical when the drains are opened to wash away yesterday’s dirt, turning the city streets into a roaring fountain.
To Aquarius Paris was the last known location of the entity known as Janus.
I ditched Salome at the arrivals lounge of Charles de Gaulle airport and walked to the taxi rank in the security guard who’d been about to search me. There I caught a taxi driver by the arm, but was so repulsed by the stench of booze on my breath and the migraine pounding against the side of my skull that I went instead to my neighbour driver and slipped into him, easing cautiously out of the taxi rank with my hire sign off.
Roadworks on the Autoroute du Nord left me fuming, fingers drumming while the radio played bad Europop. When the traffic report kicked in, overriding the singer’s expression of the notion that his lover was his light, his breath, his joy, his food, his buttered toast, it declared that the tailback ran all the way to the Périphérique, and with a hiss of frustration I pulled off the autoroute and went looking for a station.
At Drancy I caught the RER and a young woman with dyed blonde hair and, alone in the scratched corner of my carriage, rifled through my purse in search of who I was. I was Monique Darriet, and I was carrying fifty euros in notes and coins, a door key to location unknown, a tube of lipstick, a mobile phone, two condoms and an insulin kit. Pulling up my sleeve, a bracelet revealed me to be diabetic and asked that you dial for emergency assistance immediately.
I shuffled into an old man with a pencil moustache at Stade de France. He wasn’t as handsome nor indeed as comfortable as Monique, but I wasn’t in the mood to manage my blood sugars.
Only fools and the desperate stay near Gare du Nord or Gare de l’Est. Like nearly all major stations in every major city on the planet, all they’re good for are thin coffee, overpriced cigarettes and the fumes of taxis waiting in ranks. Noise, bustle and a sense that nobody cares define the drab station concourses where money cannot buy a decent sandwich, and I made sure to be at least fifteen minutes’ walk from them before I looked for a hotel.
Down a street too narrow for the height of houses that fronted it I found a thick black door with a bell pull that weighed as much as my old thin arms. The proprietor seemed surprised to have a guest, but I shook his hairy hand nonetheless and slammed the gate in the bemused face of my former host.
Inside, a windowless hall was lit by bare tungsten bulbs, the filaments wound like strands of DNA. The air smelt of warm breath and wood varnish. I trotted round to the back of the reception desk and assigned myself a suite on the top floor, marked it as paid for, tucked the key in a plant pot on the landing of the stairs, grabbed my coat and went to find a hearty meal and a missing ghost.
My body didn’t need the food, but routine dies hard, and the mental compulsion to eat outweighed physical desire. As stew steamed before me and coffee cooled by my side, I watched the street and thought about Janus.
Three weeks ago she’d been photographed by Aquarius: a Japanese woman sitting in this very same café, newspaper on the table in front of her. She’d looked distracted, her eyes wandering off somewhere to the left of the lens, but then Janus probably had plenty to think about.
“Excuse me,” I said to the waiter, pushing a very generous tip on to the tray, “I’m looking for a friend of mine. Osako Kuyeshi. Comes to this café sometimes. Have you seen her at all?”
Paris isn’t as diverse as London or New York. A lone Japanese lady sipping coffee by herself had been noticed. As, indeed, had her absence.
I found her in outpatients at Georges-Pompidou, waiting for a CT scan. Slipping into a woman in hospital robes and thick support socks, I sat down by her and said, “Are you waiting for the scanner?”
She was.
“What’s it for, can I ask?”
“I get cysts,” she explained. “And I lost my memory.”
“That’s terrible for you. I’ve been waiting months,” I grumbled, rolling my tongue against the false teeth glued to my gums. “I have terrible problems with my memory. One day I’m standing talking to this stranger on the train, next thing it’s two months later and I’m down to my knickers in someone else’s bedroom.”
No! exclaimed Osako Kuyeshi. Not you too?
Yes! Shocking, it was, just shocking, I mean, they weren’t even
my
knickers…
… but enough about me. Tell me about you.
Forty minutes later I walked out of the hospital, a junior doctor with a stethoscope round my neck.
Three days ago Osako Kuyeshi had opened her eyes and not known where she was. Five months of her life had vanished. She barely even spoke French; the last thing she remembered she was in Tokyo, waiting to collect her benefits. The doctors were baffled, so were the nice men who came to ask her questions about it as she sat waiting for the psychiatrist.
“It’s all right,” I’d said. “I’m sure something good will come of this.”
I don’t think so, she’d replied. My husband died last month, and now I’m alone. I don’t think anything good will come ever again.
Osako had woken in an apartment not her own.
That was interesting.
If Janus had left Osako as an emergency move, she would have done so in a crowded street, a place hot with bodies to jump to.
An apartment sounded more planned, less alarmed.
I went to Sèvres-Lecourbe, south of the monument to military ambition that was Invalides, searching out Janus’ new host.
The place turned out to be a holiday apartment, rented in Osako’s name, though she couldn’t remember the purchase. The first face that Osako had seen – young, green eyes and a purple veil – was the house cleaner, a Moroccan woman with flawless French and shoes going through at the toe, who exclaimed that she’d been asked about Madame Osako’s condition already, first by the doctors, then by the men who came knocking on her door, and she had told them what she told me – that she had helped Osako when Madame stumbled.
And after Madame stumbled?
The cleaner wasn’t sure. She remembered a stumble, then she stood in the street and Madame Osako was screaming, just screaming. Poor woman, is she all right?
“You found yourself in the street but cannot say how you got there?”
“Of course I can say!” she exclaimed. “I walked there! I can’t remember why I walked there, but I must have walked there, because there I was!”
And in the street did you see someone walk away?
Funny thing: that was precisely the question the other men asked her too.
Janus, you two-faced god, where are you?
Osako to the cleaning woman, the cleaning woman to a stranger in the street.
Only he wasn’t a stranger, because this was planned, this was something Janus had arranged, and the stranger was…
Monsieur Petrain, who lives at number 49, and there’s only one question I really want to ask here, one question that will crack this case wide open:
“Monsieur Petrain. His arse. Would you describe it as ‘tight’?”
I remember Will, my gofer from the days of Marilyn Monroe, Aurangzeb and champagne.
I did not wear his body long, for he and I had a deal, and at the termination of our contract I shook him by the hand, and he was unafraid of my touch, and I said, “Good luck to you, Will.”
He grinned and squeezed my palm and replied, “Likewise. Likewise.”
Thirty-two years later I was sitting in Melissa Belvin in a diner off Columbus when a man entered. He was chubby without being fat, portly without being uncomfortable, and he ordered strong black coffee, a Danish pastry and a copy of the
New York Post
.
I watched him flick through political scandals, corruption, reports on dictators and economics, straight to the back. There he started earnestly on the sports pages, scouring each line of every article like a holy text.
After a while I walked over to him, swinging myself on to the high stool by the bar at his side.
His eyes flickered up to me from the paper and, perceiving no threat, returned to his reading. Others might have stopped to stare, for in my yellow dress and fair hair I was beautiful even by the rules of the time.
“How are the Dodgers doing?” I asked.
He glanced up again, re-evaluating then dismissing. “OK. But they can sure do better.”
“Tough season?”
“It’s always a tough season for the Dodgers. It’s how they make success feel sweet.”
That should have been that, but I said, “And how are you, William?”
His eyes focused fast, now trying to read the face that moments before he’d disregarded. “I’m not William. You’re thinking of someone else.”
“Then who are you?”
“I think you have me mistaken —”
“How’s your memory?”
Silence, and now his eyes moved though his body was still, sweeping me top to bottom. “Jesus,” he breathed. “
Jesus!
Look at you! Who the fuck are you?”
“I am Melissa.”
“And how the fuck have you been, Melissa?”
“Well, thank you. Moving around a bit. You?”
“Good. Good! Fucking good! You still agenting? Is this –” he leaned back abruptly “ – is this work?”
“I’m not in that line of business any more.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“It became… difficult. I’m just a stranger, for now.”
He stared, his mouth making the slow circular movements of a mind that wants to speak and can find no words. Then, having no wittier exclamations, he threw his hands into the air and exclaimed, “Fuck! You wanna get a drink?”
He was older, a well-lived age, a life that had progressed more slowly than the speed of years which had passed it by. In a bar off Broadway he regaled me with the life and times of Harold Peake – a new name for a new man.
“So then I got into sport, I mean, like, bought into it, you know, as an investor. And I’ve got this house now – you have to come see it – out in New Jersey, and my partner – you’ve gotta meet my partner, he’s just great, he’s such a great guy – and we’ve got a garden, and I mow the lawn on Sundays, can you believe it? I
mow the lawn!
It’s like, Jesus, from where you first met me to where I am today, it’s like unbelievable.”
That sounds great, I said. That sounds really nice.
His silence was the sudden sharp closing-off of a man afraid he has talked too much. “So ‘Melissa’,” he mumbled, “you must have been up to stuff. You must have seen some things. Tell me, what’ve you been,
who’ve
you been?”
“Nothing much to tell. I’ve been living quietly.”
“Come on, come on! You’re… you know… why would you live anything other than… you know!”
“As I said. Things have been quiet.”
“You gotta come see the house. You gotta meet Joe.”
“That would be… nice.”
“Where you living at the moment?”
“A hotel on Columbus, near 84th.”
“That’s swell, but bet you don’t get to mow the lawn?”
You guess correctly. I do not mow the lawn.
“Then come have dinner! Sunday? You can do Sunday, right? I mean, you’re not jetting out of town?”
Sunday would be lovely. Give me the address.
The house was a mansion in New Jersey, a testimony to revival colonial pride all in white. The partner, Joe, was a man of gleaming teeth and impossible tan. The food was rich and served with guacamole on the side. The lawn was very mown.
“And where did you two meet?” Joe asked, kissing me on both cheeks.
“LA,” explained Will. “Melissa was a runner at Paramount.”
“That’s wonderful – just wonderful! And are you still in the movies, Melissa? Did you know my boy in his wilder days? You look so young – what is your secret?”
Creams, I replied. I make my own creams.
The house was full of photos. Even the toilet boasted a framed portrait of the happy hugging couple. Shelves were lined with memorabilia. A plaster model of the Eiffel Tower, which changed colour with the temperature. A memorial mug from Santa Monica, a teddy-bear shark won at a fair in Vermont, the hat Joe had given back to Will the first time they met, when a gust of wind blew it off his head and into the arms of him who would be his lover. The painting of Rhode Island they’d bought together, to hang on the bare wall of their first apartment. They showed me every object, told me every story.
This is lovely, I said.
How lucky you must feel.
God! Joe replied. It’s been such a ride, you know, like, such a ride.
At 5.45 p.m. Joe pulled out of the drive in a fat 4x4 to go to church, and I stayed behind, drinking port and eating cheese with Will in the back garden.
“You’ve built yourself a wonderful life here,” I said as the leaves swayed on the beech tree and a child screamed in a neighbour’s garden. “You must be proud.”
Silence from Will, and I glanced over at him to see his hand white around the circumference of his glass, eyes turned into the setting sun.
“Proud. I guess so. I’ve done the things you’re meant to do. Get a job, get a house, get a husband. I go to the dentist, clean the floors, plant the garden, have dinner with friends. Yeah, I’m proud. I’ve lived the American dream. I owe you that. But… I’m not so sure, any more, that the American dream is a thing to take pride in. You see the kids come back from Vietnam; you live through Watergate, watch the Russians point missiles at you which you just point straight back, and you think… yeah, I’ve got the perfect life. But it’s someone else’s idea of perfection. Someone told me to be proud, and I did it, and I’m proud, but the pride I got… I’m not so sure it’s mine.”
“What would you rather do?”
“Fuck,” he groaned. “Fuck, what kind of question is that? How the fuck do I know what I’d rather do, I haven’t done it. I’ve begged. I’ve been down on the street on my fucking knees and begged, and I know I don’t want to do that. I know that this life is better – so much better it doesn’t even seem like the same me living it. I know what I have is great because everyone tells me so, but how do
I
know? How do I know that what I do is better than being a surgeon, hands covered in beating blood? Or a soldier, a politician, an actor, a teacher, a preacher. How the fuck do I know that my better is anything more than the great big fat lie we tell ourselves to justify the slow fat nothing of our days. There isn’t enough time in a life to find out if the other guy’s better is better than yours, cos you’d have to lose everything you have to find out for yourself. In the old days our fathers dreamed of bringing liberty and prosperity to the whole of the human race, of building a perfect society, and somehow that became a dream of a bigger car and a bigger front window and our neighbours making apple pie, apple fucking pie. And we bought into it, the whole fucking country, we bought into it, and we’re proud because our lawns are neat and our houses are warm in winter and cool in summer and – fuck!” He slammed his glass down, port slopping in bloody streaks over the side. “We’re happy because we’re too fucking scared, too fucking lazy to think of anything better to be.”
Silence.
The playing child next door had fallen silent. Will unclasped his fingers from the glass, one at a time, and turned to me, swinging the full force of his body to bear.
“Can I ask you something? Can I ask you… What do you think of this?” A sweep of his hand, covering the garden, the house. “Do you like it? You’ve been anyone you fucking want; you must have an idea. Should we be proud?”
I didn’t answer.
“Come on, whatever-the-hell-your-name-is. Come on.”
I laid my glass to one side. “Yes,” I said at last. “You have something beautiful here.”
“Do we? You could be a billionaire like that! You could be president of the USA without having to bother with the elections. Is what we’ve got so much?”
“Yes. You have something… enviable. Not just things. Anyone can buy things. Your house is full of stories. Everything is a story. You get to keep them.”
“And that’s enough?”
“Yes.” I flinched even as I spoke the word. “Joe – do you love him?”
“Fuck, of course I do.” He spoke the words, and I believed him, from the pain in his eyes to the horror in his voice. “I love him. But how do I know I love him? How do I know that this is love? I’ve got nothing else to measure it by, no way of knowing. What’s enough? How you live,
who
you live, what’s enough?”
“Nothing. Nothing is ever quite enough. No matter who you are, there’s always something more to be had, which could be yours if only you were someone else.”
“Make me like you.” The words came so fast I barely heard them. He spoke again, eyes bright, fingers tight between his knees. “Make me like you.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Come on…”
“No. I don’t know how.”
“Come on!” he hissed. “Come on. I’m begging. This is me, begging. I’m getting old, getting slow, I’m settling down and I know, I just fucking know, I’m going to die in this place, living this life. Make me like you.”
“No.”
“Melissa…”
I rose sharply, and he rose too. “No. This life you have is beautiful. It is clean, warm, dull and beautiful. You’ve built something from nothing, and what you want now would destroy it. No, that’s not the point – it would destroy
you
. You become like me, and not only will you lose the what, you’ll lose the
who
you have. Every means you have of self-definition, from the mole under your arm to the friends who pick you up when you’re too drunk to drive, the memories you own and the stories you tell, the clothes you wear and the people you love, none of it will exist any more. They will belong to someone else. Someone else’s stories. And all you are will be… an audience… to a life you cannot live. I will not help you. I cannot, and I will not.”
I made to move – where, I wasn’t quite sure, the bathroom perhaps, the door maybe – and Will lunged forward and grabbed me by the arm, “Melissa —”
I jumped.
Instinctive panic, the jolt of skin. I jumped, and a woman stood before me, blinking, dazed and confused. With a curse I caught her arm and jumped back before she could begin to scream, and in that second of uncertainty Will’s hand fell from my arm and I turned and walked away, my heels
snap-snapping
on the garden stones as I headed for the door.
I was in the street by the time he caught up with me. “Melissa!”
He stood, wretched, behind me, shoulders down and back bent.
“I can’t help. I don’t know how.”
“Please,” he whispered, tears stinging the rims of his eyes. “Please.”
“All men want to be someone else. It’s what makes them do greater things with their lives. With the lives they can live.”
I began to walk away, and he shuffled limply after, a few steps, no more. “And what about you?” he asked. “What do you do?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “Nothing.”
I left him there, walking until my walk became a run.
I am very good at running.