The Bullet (26 page)

Fifty-four

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2013

I
did not have Madame Aubuchon's stamina. In her own hour of need, Hélène had holed up inside this apartment for seven weeks. I didn't last two days.

I forced myself to wait until twilight before venturing out. Under normal circumstances, this would not have been a challenge. The flat was spacious and tasteful, the furnishings more minimalist than I would have predicted for a woman in her seventies. Perhaps this was the boy-toy husband's influence on display. The walls were lined with books, mostly in French. On the upper shelves were smaller but still sizable collections in English, Italian, and Russian. The literary canon was well represented, but there was also a suspicious number of mysteries and thrillers. I would have chalked these up to Jean-Pierre, except that Madame Aubuchon appeared to follow a strict labeling system with her personal library. Penciled inside every front cover, in what I recognized as her handwriting, was her full name and a year. Presumably the year she had read the book. Madame Aubuchon had devoured everything ­­P. D. James and Ian Rankin had ever written, along with Lee Child's entire Jack Reacher series. God, it was too good. The prim head of Georgetown's French Department—a leading authority on the seventeenth-­century playwrights Molière and Racine—was secretly addicted to page-turners about a testosterone-drenched, ex-army cop. I
would have given quite a lot for the chance to drop that into casual conversation in the faculty lounge.

What drove me outdoors wasn't the lack of diversions, but the lack of food. I couldn't face the raspberry jam again. And while I couldn't lay eyes on the source, all afternoon the smell of freshly baked bread had wafted up from the street to torment me. There must be a
boulangerie
on the corner, just out of sight. When the sky at last grew purple, I borrowed a raincoat and hat from the hall closet and let myself out. The coat stretched tight across my chest and hips; the woman was a sparrow.

The bakery was already locked tight for the night, but a corner shop on the next block had everything I desired. A wedge of cheese, the dry French sausage known as
saucisson sec
, half a dozen apples, cans of tomato soup, a liter of milk, a bottle of wine. In a dusty basket near the front I found baguettes. They had gone stale, but I tucked two under my arm, breaking off a heel to nibble as the clerk rang up my purchases.

Ten minutes later I was back in the apartment. I stashed the cheese and the milk in the fridge and chewed a slice of the
saucisson
as I contemplated the nonfood items I had acquired: a toothbrush, a bar of soap, and a box of L'Oréal Prodigy #10,
Blond Très Très Clair
.

Fifty-five

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2013

T
he L'Oréal #10 was a disaster.

It turns out you can't go from naturally dark brown hair to
Blond Très Très Clair
, at least not without making an intermediate stop at ghastly orange. The woman who stared back at me from Madame Aubuchon's bathroom mirror was crowned with what could only be described as a carroty mullet, complete with crooked layers in front and a ratty tail at the back, where I'd left the hair longer to hide my still-vivid scar.

I would have to seek professional help. Vanity aside, I was trying to keep a low profile, and this look would cause young children to run screaming.

On boulevard Saint-Michel was a salon I liked. But they might remember me, and it was unlikely to be open on a Sunday. Instead I borrowed the rain jacket and hat again, lowered my sunglasses, and caught the metro to the Château Rouge stop, in the eighteenth arrondissement.

•   •   •

YOU COULD SMELL
and hear the Marché Dejean before you saw it. The unofficial heart of Paris's African community was hopping on a Sunday morning. The stink of meat assaulted you even as you climbed the steps from the metro, wafting over from Boucherie Amar Frères, a halal
butcher. Around the corner, pretty housewives from Senegal haggled over the price of yams; street traders hawked fake Louis Vuitton bags; children begging for sticky, honeyed pastries spilled out the door of an Algerian bakery.

I stopped outside a Tunisian restaurant to get my bearings. Surely there was an Arab hairdresser around here. I was gambling that barbers in this neighborhood might be less likely to abide by the rhythms of a nominally Catholic country, where on a Sunday morning everyone was supposed to be either asleep or in church. Judging by the throngs of people squeezing past me, I had guessed right on that front. I was also gambling that someone used to styling women of color might have experience in rescuing brunettes from bad home dye jobs.

A beautiful black woman with platinum-blond hair swept past me on the sidewalk. I caught up with her, paid a compliment, asked directions. She said a name and pointed. It took several wrong turns and another request for directions before I arrived at a brightly tiled establishment fitted with two vinyl barber chairs. The proprietor looked surprised when I walked in. Even more surprised when I peeled off my hat and revealed the mess he had to work with. He held up a finger, signaling me to wait, and disappeared into the back. A minute later he returned with a woman in tow, a baby on her hip and a girl of four or five trailing behind. The two of them consulted in a language I couldn't understand. Hindi, possibly, or Urdu. They were not African.

Then she stepped forward with a surprisingly sympathetic smile. “You did on your own?” She pointed at my scalp.

I nodded sheepishly.

“One hundred euros. I fix for you. Will take some hours.”

I handed over the money, plus a generous advance tip. When someone is about to attack your head with bleach and a pair of scissors, it's in your interest for the person to feel warmly toward you.

I was led to one of the vinyl chairs. The girl shyly offered me tea, then sugar cubes, which she dropped into my cup with tiny silver tongs and a look of such endearing seriousness that I accepted three. She dis
appeared while her mother stood behind me, whipping bleach into a paste in a steel bowl.

“Where is your family from?” I asked the woman, by way of conversation.

“Pakistan. Lahore. And you?”

“Lyons.” France's third-largest city. I knew it reasonably well, should she ask questions. But she merely nodded. The girl reappeared, carrying a stack of comic books. She held one up to me, smiling. I smiled back. She held up another one, pointed at the cover and giggled.

Her mother spoke sharply to her, asking a question in their language. Then the mother began to laugh as well. “She says you look like Tintin.”

I stared. The Belgian boy adventurer on the cover of her books styled his orange hair in a cowlicky cross between a pompadour and a Mohawk. I made to protest, but what was the use? The girl had nailed it. She crawled into my lap and demanded that I read aloud to her the adventures of Tintin and his dog, Snowy, while her mother rubbed a white paste that smelled of lemons into my hair.

•   •   •

I EMERGED INTO
the strong sunlight of early afternoon looking less like Tintin and more like a youngish Mia Farrow. The Pakistani woman had done me right. My hair was dark, golden blond, shaped into a modern pixie cut, spiky on top, with a flirty flip in the back. The hair just covered my scar. She had deftly avoided touching it, had asked no questions.

I walked to a nearby café and ordered more tea. The remaining German phone was in my pocket. It was time, I reckoned. I had not checked the news for three days. I prepared myself to read about the manhunt that must now be under way for me. The press must be hounding my family in Washington; my heart ached at the scandal and shame I had brought on the Cashion name.

On the
Journal-Constitution
mobile site the murder had ascended to
the lead story. Ethan Sinclare was now identified by name. His family was described as shocked and grief-stricken. The Atlanta Bar Association was planning a tribute dinner. There was a more detailed account of the wounds that had killed him, two bullet shots to the stomach, fired from close range. Police were still seeking to question a person in connection with the incident. Anyone with relevant information was urged to make an anonymous call to the Crime Stoppers Atlanta tip line, or to text the tip to C-R-I-M-E-S.

There was no mention of my name. Nothing hinting at a motive for the killing. I did not understand it. I sat until my tea went cold, then removed the chip from the phone and crushed it beneath the heel of my boot.

The Marché Dejean had finished for the day, but at the top of the stairs leading back down into the metro, a lone vendor remained. He had a dirty, green sheet spread across the sidewalk, loaded with car air-fresheners, lighters, knockoff designer sunglasses, and a handful of preloaded cell phones.

“Combien?”
I asked, gesturing at the phones. How much?

He shrugged.
“Trente-cinq
.
”
Thirty-five.

I scoffed and turned to go. But his necklace caught my eye. Rather, not a necklace but a small, leather pouch, hanging from a suede strap.

“Et pour ça?”

“Ça? Non. C'est la dent de mon fils
.
”
That's my son's baby tooth.

Not the tooth, silly. Just the pouch.

He looked dubious.

“Cinquante.”
I held out a fifty-euro note. “For both.”

He shook a small, brown tooth from the pouch into his fingers. Unknotted the suede strap and handed it, along with a phone, over to me.

“Code for the SIM card is taped to the back,” he mumbled.

Once I'd settled into the plastic bucket seat of the train, I unwrapped the bullet from its tissue-paper sheath inside my purse. Dropped it into the pouch and tied the strap tight around my neck. The leather was still warm from his skin.

•   •   •

THAT NIGHT I
became aware of a man watching me.

Back in Hélène's apartment I had found myself restless. The evening was unseasonably warm. The neighborhood cafés would be packed. My cans of tomato soup were unappealing. I paced the parquet floors, weighing the risks, knowing I should stay inside with the curtains drawn and my nose in a book. But I seemed unable to channel my old risk-averse, introverted self. She bored me. Just after dark I exited the building by a back service door, slipping into the soft air and walking east, crossing the Seine, hugging back streets and then the banks of the river itself.

There is an Italian wine bar near the Odéon that stays open late. On a night like tonight it would be busy, knots of people sipping Sangiovese on the sidewalk, waiting for seats at the bar or at one of the red Formica tables. I scanned the wine list and ordered the house Vermentino, a dry white from the hills between Liguria and Tuscany. Then I plunked down on the curb to wait. The crowd was mostly young, mostly locals in expensive denim and leather jackets, lighting each other's cigarettes and chattering in French. I was wearing my sensible boots with black leggings. No makeup, no jewelry, no ornamentation of any kind. My newly blond, cropped hair lay flat against my head. I felt invisible.

From inside the restaurant, though, a man kept glancing at me. He was at a table for two in the window, speaking to another man whose back was to me. I could not see his features clearly in the candlelight, just the flash of his dark eyes. They did not look away when I stared back. Suddenly he was making his way to the bar, speaking to the bartender, pointing outside toward me. My blood froze. I scrambled to my feet, ready to run.

But when he appeared at the door he was holding two glasses.
“Je me suis demandé si vous aimer
iez un autre.”
I thought you might like a refill. He nodded in the direction of the bar. “He said you liked the Vermentino.”

I stepped back. Scanned our surroundings for signs of a trap. A squad of armed Interpol agents might be lurking behind him, preparing to storm us from the restaurant kitchen. He took in my tense posture with a raised eyebrow. “You're not going to run away, are you?
Je ne mords pas
.” I don't bite.

I could have been mistaken, but his black eyes were not watching me like those of a cop closing in on his quarry. They were watching me the way a man watches a woman he wants, outside a bar on a velvety night in Paris, when the evening is still young enough that anything could happen.

I took the wine.

“Comment vous appelez-vous?”
What's your name?

“Simone.”
It was the first time I'd said it out loud.
“Je m'appelle Simone Guerin.
Et vous?”
And you?

“François
.
”
He smiled and produced a pack of cigarettes, shook out one for each of us. I opened my mouth to tell him I don't smoke, then reconsidered. Caroline didn't smoke, never had. Simone, on the other hand, was still making up her mind about such things.

“Alors, Simone. Parlez-moi de vous
.
”
Tell me about yourself.

“Je suis écrivaine
.
”
I am a writer. That had a crumb of truth. I thought of the book I'd been so excited to write, not three weeks ago, the one my brother Tony had teased me about in my Georgetown kitchen. The politics of divorce in working-class, post-Napoleonic France. It was as though the idea had sprung from the mind of a completely different person. The topic now failed to interest me in the slightest. I began to talk instead about travel memoirs and fat war histories, slim volumes of poetry and novels with bleak endings that drove you to despair. About all the books I loved to read, and all the ones I wanted to write, and some of what I said was real and some of it I made up as I went along. His black eyes never left mine.

Shall I describe him for you? François was pale with thick, dark hair that matched his eyes. Tall but delicately boned. He wore a black cashmere turtleneck and skinny jeans. But you already guessed that. He
leaned down to kiss me and I let him. Smoke curled up from the cigarettes we held against our hips. He was so precisely my type that his lips felt already familiar. I had kissed a dozen boys just like him, on a hundred velvety Paris nights. Paris is a veritable ocean, wrote Balzac, but it is also, he conceded, a moral sewer.
Un égout moral
. This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how remorseful one is prepared to feel the morning after.

If they ever called my name for a seat inside, I missed it. At midnight the candles on the tables had burned low. Every chair was still occupied. The hum of conversation, of easy laughter and whispered seductions, floated out to the sidewalk. The bartender eventually passed us the Vermentino bottle through the window, and we stood there, kissing and talking and smoking, until it was finished.

When he whispered that his apartment was close by, though, I broke away. I've had my share of lovers, but I've never picked up a stranger in a bar and slept with him. I'm no prude about such things. I simply think a man should have to work a bit harder than that. So much of the pleasure lies in the chase.

I kissed him, on the cheek this time, and said good-night.

“Attends,”
he said. Wait. On a scrap of paper he wrote his name and a telephone number. I folded it, discovered I had no pockets, tucked it into the leather pouch at my neck.

Mist was rising off the Seine as I threaded my way home. I stopped every few hundred yards, listening from darkened doorways, making sure that neither François nor anyone else had followed.