Paris by the Book(44)

Worse, I’d come back with another man entirely.

“Can we take the tour?” Daphne asked, five words, one breath.

“Daphne,” I started to say. Ellie and the twins were returning from the globe. In a moment, I’d hear from Ellie that it had been a bad idea for me to go to Ménilmontant, just as it had been a bad idea for Ellie herself to go, just as it had been a bad idea for us to come to Paris, the globe was out of date, it was stupid to organize the store by countries, and: men were idiots.

But for now it was still quiet, still just Daphne and me, still enough time for Daphne to whisper and be heard by me alone: “I think he found the note.”

“Who—what note, sweet girl?” I said.

“The one on the pillow,” Daphne said. The one in Milwaukee, she meant, the one I didn’t leave. The one that said what Daphne said now. “‘Meet us in Paris!’”

I looked at her. I looked to see if I could see the abandoned daughter I had been after my parents had died, my brain simmering in constant low-level frenzy, where are they where are they now I just need to ask to say I just need to know if—

Daphne did not look like this. Her eyes glinted, her nose crinkled. She had no reason, she said, to think what she thought; she just had a feeling, she said, you know?

She—she actually did this—she smiled.

All I could do was nod.

I’m sure it looked like I was agreeing, though all I knew now was how much I didn’t know. I didn’t know why Ellie was angry. I didn’t know what—or whom—Daphne thought she was seeing around Paris. I didn’t know why Declan had been in Ménilmontant, nor why seeing him after for coffee felt like a date, which it definitely wasn’t.

I told myself the police had still found no clues—no trace—none. I told myself to keep holding out for proof. Proof: not perhaps-sightings or false twinges or notes left on a pillow or scribbled in a book.

I told myself to remember what was real and what was not.

I told myself to ignore the fact that, increasingly, I could not.



* * *



—

Realizing this, I should have proceeded more cautiously. But what was incautious about agreeing to go on a Madeline walking tour in three weeks’ time? Or to go out with Declan for a “nice” meal a week before the tour? His idea. Strictly business. We’d discuss the upcoming Madeline tour. Just from the looks of the flyer, it seemed like we could do a better job, he said. My local expertise, your book expertise . . .

Not that expert, I protested, but what I really wanted to protest, to discuss, was another smaller word, we. What were we up to?

I wondered exactly that as an opaque glass door slid open in the first arrondissement and we stepped into the Ballon Rouge, a restaurant that I’d read about—who hadn’t?—but never visited. Though the name, in this context, referred to a particular type of wineglass, Declan felt very clever about his invitation: once he’d discovered my interest in Lamorisse, the man and film had become a steady subject. Declan also seemed quite pleased to insist on the meal being his treat.

It was early afternoon and the restaurant was empty. We were seated by the sommelier, a bald man in a tight black T-shirt. He wore a monocle I belatedly realized was a tattoo.

He and Declan were business school classmates, I discovered. I wondered if they’d done a case study on flowers, their cost and effect. In the center of the room, beneath a cylindrical skylight wide enough to accommodate a Titan rocket, bloomed what looked like ten thousand flowers. Purple, purple, every last shade. Lavender hydrangeas foamed out of pots. Indigo delphiniums shot lancelike from impossibly tall and slender glass vases. Orchids. Dahlias. And also fat pink peonies with faces as furrowed—and as big—as the girls’ the day they were born. The prix fixe here was 250 euros a person; with wine, I’d seen reports it could climb as high as 1,000 euros. As it turned out, today’s bill—as Declan knew going in—would be zéro; the restaurant was testing its late-spring menu with “friends and family.”

“Even the wine’s free,” Declan said as a bottle arrived. Wine? We were having wine. I thought I should decline—coffee was one thing but wine another, and—and I told myself to calm down. And that the wine would help me do that.

The sommelier showed us the label, which we nodded over dutifully. I smiled up at him, he grimaced down. We were doing something wrong, but I didn’t really care; I’ve always felt, in exchanges like this at Paris restaurants, particularly over wine, that it’s my job to do something wrong. To do otherwise is to dash expectations, deny the sommelier some righteous pleasure, the kitchen some titters. The cork came out with a loud thwop and Declan pushed his glass toward the sommelier, who smiled and shook his head and nodded to me. Declan smiled. I smiled. We were all smiling. The sommelier emphatically splashed some wine into my glass. As I reached for it, I considered that I’d not seen enough female sommeliers in France, how there needed to be more, how I might myself study to become one. I watched as the wine surged up the sides, caught all the light in the room and—

The sommelier lifted the glass to his lips, sipped, chewed, nodded, and finally meted out a tiny smile. Then he decanted the rest of the bottle into a large wide-bottomed carafe that looked like it had been stolen from a laboratory.

I held up my glass. “To business school,” I said.