The Paris Apartment(11)
Besides, I don’t really have enough to tell them, do I? A cat that might just have killed a mouse? A necklace that might just have been innocently broken? A brother who might have just fucked off, yet again, to leave me to fend for myself?
No, it’s not enough.
I put my head in my hands, try to think what to do next. At the same moment my stomach gives a long, loud groan. I realize I can’t actually remember the last time I ate anything. Last night I’d sort of imagined I’d get here and Ben would fix me up some scrambled eggs or something, maybe we’d order a takeaway. Part of me feels too queasy and keyed up to eat. But perhaps I’ll be able to think more clearly with some food in my belly.
I raid the fridge and cupboards but besides half a pack of butter and a stick of salami they’re bare. One cupboard is different from all the rest: it’s some sort of cavity with what looks like a pulley system, but I can’t work out what it’s for at all. In desperation I cut off some of the salami with a very sharp Japanese knife that I find in Ben’s utensil pot, but it’s hardly a hearty breakfast.
I pocket the set of keys I found in Ben’s jacket. I know the code now, I’ve got the keys: I can get back into this place.
The courtyard looks less spooky in the light of day. I pass the ruins of the statue of the naked woman, the head separated from the rest, face up, eyes staring at the sky. One of the flowerbeds looks like it has recently been re-dug, which explains that smell of freshly turned earth. There’s a little fountain running, too. I look over at the tiny cabin in the corner and see a dark gap between the closed slats of the shutters; perfect for spying on anything that’s going on out here. I can imagine her watching me through it: the old woman I saw last night, the one who seems to live there.
I take in the strangeness of my surroundings as I close the apartment’s gates, the foreignness of it all. The crazily beautiful buildings around me, the cars with their unfamiliar numberplates. The streets also look different in daylight—and much busier when I get away from the hush of the apartment building’s cul-de-sac. They smell different, too: moped fumes and cigarette smoke and roasted coffee. It must have rained in the night as the cobbles are gleaming wet, slippery underfoot. Everyone seems to know exactly where they’re going: I step into the street out of the way of one woman walking straight at me while talking on her phone and nearly collide with a couple of kids sharing an electric scooter. I’ve never felt so clueless, so like a fish out of water.
I wander past shop fronts with their grilles pulled down, wrought-iron gates leading onto courtyards and gardens full of dead leaves, pharmacies with blinking neon green crosses—there seems to be one on every street, do the French get sick more?—doubling back on myself and getting lost a couple of times. Finally, I find a bakery, the sign painted emerald green with gold lettering—BOULANGERIE—and a striped awning. Inside the walls and the floor are decorated with patterned tiles and it smells like burnt sugar and melted butter. The place is packed: a long queue doubles back on itself. I wait, getting hungrier and hungrier, staring at the counter which is filled with all sorts of things that look too perfect to be eaten: tiny tarts with glazed raspberries, eclairs with violet icing, little chocolate cakes with a thousand very fine layers and a touch of what looks like actual gold on top. People in front of me are putting in serious orders: three loaves of bread, six croissants, an apple tart. My mouth waters. I feel the rustle of the notes I nicked from Ben’s wallet in my pocket.
The woman in front of me has hair so perfect it doesn’t look real: a black, shining bob, not a strand out of place. A silk scarf tied around her neck, some kind of camel-colored coat and a black leather handbag over her arm. She looks rich. Not flashy rich. The French equivalent of posh. You don’t have hair that perfect unless you spend your days doing basically nothing.
I look down and see a skinny, silver-colored dog on a pale blue leather lead. It looks up at me with suspicious dark eyes.
The woman behind the counter hands her a pastel-colored box tied with a ribbon: “Voilà, Madame Meunier.”
“Merci.”
She turns and I see that she’s wearing red lipstick, so perfectly applied it might be tattooed on. At a guess she’s about fifty—but a very well-preserved fifty. She’s putting her card back into her wallet. As she does something flutters to the ground—a piece of paper. A banknote?
I bend down to pick it up. Take a closer look. Not a banknote, which is a shame. Someone like her probably wouldn’t miss the odd ten euros. It’s a handwritten note, scribbled in big block capitals. I read: double la prochaine fois, salope.
“Donne-moi ?a!”
I look up. The woman is glaring at me, her hand outstretched. I think I know what she’s asking but she did it so rudely, so like a queen commanding a peasant, that I pretend not to understand.
“Excuse me?”
She switches to English. “Give that to me.” And then finally, as an afterthought, “please.”
Taking my time about it, I hold out the note. She snatches it from my hand so roughly that I feel one of her long fingernails scrape at my skin. Without a thank you, she marches out through the door.
“Excusez-moi? Madame?” the woman behind the counter asks, ready to take my order.
“A croissant, please.” Everything else is probably going to be too expensive. My stomach rumbles as I watch her drop it into the little paper bag. “Two, actually.”