Dead Letters(39)

My phone starts vibrating inside the fringed bag I’ve borrowed from Zelda’s trailer, and I claw it open in a panic, hoping, fearing, certain that it’s Zelda, that she’s somehow been watching me and knows that I’m headed upstairs to my mother’s room. But Zelda’s phone is black, shiny, and lifeless, just a cool piece of glass and metal in my hand, radiating my sister’s presence like an alien doppelg?nger. I realize with a slight lag that it’s my own phone ringing, and I set Zelda’s down on the counter.

It’s Nico. I jump with a guilty start, realizing how thoroughly he’s been pushed out of my mind. This man, whom I wake up next to nearly every day, whom I’ve said I love, has been eclipsed by just a few days with the Antipovas. And by Wyatt, a nasty little voice suggests, and I think it sounds like Zelda. I dither with my finger above the answer icon. I don’t want to answer the phone, I realize. But that’s the old me. Not the Paris me.

“Nico, salut!”

“Ava, is that you?” Nico says in his thick French accent. I love that accent. It sounds like a caricature. Even though I’m capable enough in French for us to communicate well, I always prefer to speak English with Nico, to hear his silly Gallic pronunciations. A cruel part of me has occasionally wondered if I like having the upper hand linguistically, if what I enjoy is actually being able to supply tricky vocabulary terms and to correct grammatical slips. Growing up between hyperverbal Zelda and sharp-tongued Nadine has made me hungry for linguistic supremacy in any arena. But who doesn’t like to be on top of the conversation? To win?

“Yes. It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“I thought you would call when you debarked the plane, but I didn’t hear….” There is a tiny hint of recrimination in this, and I realize that I had promised to call on my arrival. It was one of the last things I said after kissing him on the brow, while he lay sleepily on the foldout couch in my tiny apartment.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry! Things have been a little disorganized here—I’ve really had my hands full.”

“I thought that. Are you all right?”

“I’m…yeah, I’m okay. It’s all a little crazy at the moment, but I’m trying to get a handle on what needs to be done.”

“Your sister…she is…?” Nico trails off delicately.

“Well, there’s still some official confusion—the cops have to confirm everything,” I say vaguely. I can hardly tell him that I think Zelda is alive and well, laughing at all the mayhem she’s created from a safe distance. I would sound crazy.

“And your father? He came for you?”

“Yeah, he picked me up. He’s…the same as ever,” I answer with a shake of my head.

“Your mom? How is she?”

“Just okay, I think. She’s been really disoriented. Thinks I’m Zelda half the time.”

“That…must be difficult,” Nico says after a pause. I realize I’m making him do all the conversational work; I’ve clammed up and am now just politely responding to questions. I hate the phone.

“It must be really late there—are you okay?” I ask, trying to redeem myself.

“Oh, not so late. I had a few glasses of wine after work,” he says. I can hear a smile in his voice.

“Tell me where you went,” I say eagerly. I want to be back in Paris, meeting him at one of our cafés for an Armagnac.

“We went to Le Compas. Your favorite,” he says, still smiling. I groan in envy.

“Oh, c’mon! You’re forbidden to go without me!” I immediately regret this; I’ve never given him rules before, never consciously tried to control his comings and goings. I’m not the same Ava there; I’ve changed. But he doesn’t seem to notice. He just chuckles.

“It wasn’t the same without you. I kept looking for you in the corner, anytime a girl with black hair walked by. I saw someone I thought to be you. She resembled you.”

“I miss you,” I gush, comforted and absurdly touched by this recognition of my absence.

“You are missing me,” he answers in a favorite play with French grammar. I smile at the old game.

“Tu me manques. Is it hot there?”

“Not too much. But I am inside the most of the day.” Nico works in finance, at the Bourse, not far from my apartment. He wears stiff, clean suits that always smell very faintly of cigarettes, and he carries a leather bag filled with important papers. I love this about him, how thoroughly sanctioned he is. He has stuck to the guidelines of capitalism, and he’s winning at it.

“And what are you going to do now?” I ask.

“I’m going home to your apartment,” he answers promptly. “Just around the corner. I want to sleep in a bed that smells of you.”

“I miss you,” I say again, in English this time.

“I miss you too.”

“I’ll let you go to bed. I was just about to go check on my mother.”

“Good luck, Ava. I think of you.”

“Me too.”

“Will you call me tomorrow?” he asks with a hint of hesitation.

“Of course I will. Bonne nuit,” I say and end the conversation. I stare out the window for a moment before sliding the phone back into my bag. I go into the kitchen and open the fridge. In the right-hand crisper I’ve hidden some nicer whites: wines we didn’t make ourselves. I pull one of them out. I reach up into the too-tall wooden cabinets that my mother insisted on and get down two wineglasses. I hope Mom will see this as a treat or, maybe, a bribe for her cooperation. She’s not usually allowed real wineglasses in her room, not since the tremors started intensifying. One of Zelda’s emails detailed a harrowing experience wherein Mom managed to slice open her fingers with a broken wineglass, and Zelda was convinced that Nadine had tried to off herself. Though I can’t say there wasn’t a longish moment, as I stood in the doorway, dear sister, when I thought: Damn, if I’d just come upstairs a little later, Zelda had written. But it had apparently been accidental, and Zelda had patched Nadine up quite nicely.