The Book That Matters Most (15 page)

Julien stepped in, sweaty and out of breath. He looked fatter, Maggie thought. Or was the memory of Gavin's too-skinny body still so strong that Julien seemed enormous in comparison? How had she ever thought he looked like Gérard Depardieu? He looked nothing like him. Nothing at all.

He was carrying his reusable mesh grocery bag, and he placed it on the stainless steel island, pulling out the breakfast radishes she liked so much, and butter and sea salt—her favorite snack. Maybe he wasn't angry? He hadn't looked at her yet, and she hadn't moved from the window. Julien took a bottle of champagne from the bag, and deftly wrapped a towel around the cork, twisting it in such a way that it opened with just a small sigh. He arranged the radishes, the butter, the salt, on a tray. He poured two glasses of champagne, and placed the bottle in the ceramic ice bucket.

Was he humming? Maggie cocked her head. Yes. He was humming.

“Julien,” she said, “I lost my phone. I didn't know how to reach you—”

He turned toward her, the tray in front of him.

“I worried,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I didn't know how to reach you,” she said again, less confidently this time.

He watched her closely as she spoke, as if he were looking for something.

Slowly, he walked toward her. He placed the tray on the big square table in front of one side of the hot pink sofa.

“My favorite,” she said, smiling, feeling the pulse in her throat quicken.

“Mais bien sûr,”
he said without any kindness in his voice.

She went to him and leaned in to kiss him, but he turned his face.

“Maybe we should make a plan,” Maggie said, speaking fast. “So that I can let you know if something like this happens again. Or if anything at all happens.”

“Yes,” he said, “we need a plan.”

Maggie gave him a nervous smile and sat down across from him, leaving her legs parted so that he could see she was not wearing any underwear. He did see, but pretended not to.

“Hemingway always made a plan,” she said. “He was a planner.”

She took the glass of champagne he offered her, and sipped it.

Julien came and sat beside her. Without warning, he took her face in his hands, roughly, pressing his thumbs into the soft flesh below her jaw, his fingers into the hollow of her cheeks.

“The next time you lose your phone,” he said in a way that let her know he didn't believe her, pressing his fingers into her face harder still, “you sit here and wait for me. You don't go out. You don't move until I show up. Do you understand?”

His grip on her was so tight that she couldn't open her mouth, so she nodded.

When he released her, it was with a shove hard enough to send her head reeling backward. Maggie moved her sore jaw up and down a few times, trying not to cry. She didn't want him to see her cry. All she wanted was to be out of here, away from him. She thought of her morning yesterday in the bookstore, how calm she'd felt there. For the first time since she'd come to Paris, she hadn't felt alone, even though no one spoke to her, or even noticed her.

Julien's fingers grabbed her hair, yanking, and he pushed her down onto the sofa. He was unzipping his trousers, unbuttoning his shirt.

Then he paused above her.

“Next time it will be worse,” he said.

M
aggie needed to get out of here, away from him, she thought, as he rolled each small pink radish first in sweet butter, then in salt, and tenderly gave it to her. He brought her ice wrapped in a towel for her cheek, which stung and ached. He smoothed her hair, and explained that she had broken their deal, he had to make her pay for that, didn't he? She nodded, said, “Of course, I am stupid,” tried to think of where she could go. The only other person she knew in the entire city was Gavin, and that would be a mistake. A terrible mistake. Hadn't she promised herself yesterday to change her life? To stop making bad decisions?

Julien kissed her on the lips.

Then he walked away, but she didn't hear him leave. Instead, he was busying himself in the kitchen. Maggie closed her eyes, as if she could shut him out. But his movements echoed, assaulting her.

“Ma coccinelle,”
Julien said softly. “Open your eyes. Look. Look what I brought you, my love.”

Maggie looked, and saw the little pipe in his hand.

“
T
hey say that it's possible to inject it without becoming addicted,” Maggie said to him the next day, or the day after that.

They were in the white bed at the top of the stairs. Julien was heating the pipe for her. He frowned.

“No, I don't think so,” he said.

She wanted to grab his hand and tear the pipe from him. She wanted to swallow it whole. Somewhere, he had a baggie of junk, and he carefully doled it out to her and she wanted to find that baggie and pour it into herself, to lick every bit of the powder from it.

“I saw on television something about an eight-hour rule,” she said, trying not to sound desperate. Trying not to shout at him to hurry up, goddamn it!

“Shh,” Julien said, lifting the pipe, finally, to her quivering lips. “I gave you more this time. I see how much you like it, and how sweet it makes you. You won't go away again like that, will you?”

Maggie inhaled so deeply that she thought her lungs would burst, that her brain would explode. Her body twitched.

“Maggie?” Julien said anxiously.

She wanted him to know she'd heard him, but she couldn't speak.

“Maggie!”

With a struggle, she opened one eye. She gave him a lopsided smile. She slurred, “I love you.”

“You scared me,” he said.

But she had stopped listening. She was in that big, empty, glorious place.

W
ith her new phone in her purse, Maggie stepped into the day. She thought about calling her mother, how the sound of her voice would help Maggie keep moving forward. But what if it didn't? What if her mother only sounded worried? Or grilled her about the art classes she was supposed to be taking in Florence? Quickly, Maggie found an image of the
David
and texted it to her mother.
My new boyfriend
, she wrote. Almost immediately her mother texted back
Cute!
Maggie smiled. She had made a mistake but today was a new day. No more Julien. No more drugs. She had bought a new notebook and written two sentences in it. Then, afraid Julien would find and read it, she'd torn the page from the notebook and thrown it away in the trashcan on the corner, ripping it first into tiny pieces in case he looked through the trash and found it.

Where the street turned into rue de Rivoli, Maggie paused. Her plan had been to go to the bookstore again and spend the day there, safe. But standing here, the air that peculiar blend of warm and cold at the same time, she thought perhaps it would be better to be outside, to get fresh air and feel the sun. Yes, she could take a walk first. Hadn't Julien said she was too pale?

She stood, deciding.

The bookstore would bring her that sense of comfort that had soothed her. Maybe while she was there she would hear people talking, hear someone looking for a roommate, meet someone who could be a friend.

But.

She looked in the direction of the bookstore. It had been there seemingly forever, she thought. It would be there later. Or tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow.

Maggie turned and walked away, in the direction of the Bastille.

“
I
know you.”

Maggie lifted her head in the direction of the voice. It was hard to keep her head up, so she peeked from beneath her heavy eyelids. A boy stood there.

“From the Musée d'Orsay, right?” he said, pulling up a chair beside her.

She sat at a table at the café across from the bookstore, waiting for the store to open. She had never been so stoned in her life. Every now and then, she had to remind herself to breathe.

The boy ordered two espressos and croissants.

“You okay?” he was asking her.

Maggie nodded.

“Whoa,” he said in a low voice. “You're wasted.”

It was too much, sitting there, listening, trying to keep her eyes open, her head up. Maggie leaned over and rested her head on the boy's shoulder. He had on the softest sweater she'd ever felt. Cashmere. And he smelled so good, so clean, like soap and toothpaste.

“What did you take?” he asked her. “You have to be careful.”

He let her keep her head on his shoulder, and for this Maggie was grateful.

“Here,” he was saying, and she realized some time had passed because she was just a little less high. “Drink this.”

He held the small cup of espresso for her because her hands were shaking so much. It was hot and bitter.

“Good,” she mumbled.

“Jam?” he was asking her. He slid a plate with a croissant covered with gobs of strawberry jam in front of her.

Some more time had passed. She could sit up now.

“Yes,” she said. “Lots. Please.”

“I'd like to think you came here to find me,” he said. “But I think you just got stoned and maybe lost.”

She didn't answer him. She just chewed the croissant. When she could hold a pen, she would write in her notebook that she must never ever go to Gavin's again. Even as a small electric thrill raced through her body remembering the last twenty-four hours. When she'd explained she had a boyfriend who couldn't see the marks on her arm, he'd shot her up near her ankle. How many times? she wondered now. And when had she left? And how had she gotten here?

“My name is Noah,” the boy was saying.

Maggie sighed. This was too much. The last time, she decided, already wanting one more hit. Then that would be the real last time.

“You dropped this,” the boy said, holding up a cell phone.

“Shit!” Maggie said, grabbing it out of his hand.

No calls. The sight of that made her weep.

“Whoa,” he said again. “Hey.”

“I need to go,” she said.

Why had she left Gavin's in the first place? Slowly it came back to her. He'd given her a final hit and gone out to get more. She was supposed to wait for him right there.

“Do you live nearby?” Noah was asking her. “Will you come back tomorrow?”

T
here were so many people clogging Gavin's street that Maggie couldn't get through. In the distance, she saw police cars, an ambulance.

She stopped pushing.

“What happened?” she asked no one in particular.

“Some stupid American kid,” a man said, turning to walk away. “OD'ed.”

The door to Gavin's apartment building opened and two men emerged, carrying a gurney. The shape on the gurney was covered with a blue and green blanket. She knew that blanket.

Maggie tried to hold it back, but she couldn't. She bent over and threw up into the street. Someone handed her a handkerchief with a scalloped edge, and she wiped her mouth with it. When she turned to give it back, the person was gone. In fact, the crowd was parting to make way for the ambulance, which moved slowly past them. No siren. No lights.

PART FIVE

APRIL

“Things have a life of their own,” the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh
accent. “It's simply a matter of waking up their souls.”

—
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez

Ava

Ava did not have the slightest idea how to find someone. But she supposed the best way to start was at her computer with a Google search. As she typed in Rosalind Arden's name, she hoped that an obituary would not pop up on the screen. How would she ever explain that to the book group?

Did you mean Rosaline Arden?
Google asked her.

Apparently, Rosaline Arden was somebody. An Olympic speed skater back in the 1960s, she had a Wikipedia page and newspaper links, videos, and interviews. She was even on LinkedIn.

But Rosalind Arden had nothing.

Ava typed in the name again, adding
From Clare to Here
after it. This time she got pages and pages of information, all of it about the song and none of it about the book.

Now what?

Maybe if Rosaline Arden was on LinkedIn, so was Rosalind Arden. But she wasn't. She wasn't on Facebook or Twitter either. Was it possible for a person to disappear this completely?

Ava got up from her desk and made a cup of tea. Will or Maggie would probably know some way to find a person who seemed unfindable. When she was a kid, she used to spend hours in the library looking up famous people and obscure facts. She loved pulling out the drawer in the card catalogue, fingering the cards with their secret code typed across the top, then jotting down the code on a scrap of paper with the tiny pencils put there for just that use. She loved sitting at the long wooden tables and poring through information, taking notes, discovering. Ava could almost smell the mildew and new carpet smells of that library, could see the cat glasses hanging on the fake pearl chain around the librarian's neck.