The Last Little Blue Envelope (7 page)

The Card Cheat

They were in a café, four streets over from Les Petits Chiens. It had been chosen simply because it was the most café-looking of all the cafés they passed—very small round tables with marble tabletops, dark wood, a nickel-plated bar, and a simple menu written on a blackboard offering three courses and a glass of wine for eighteen Euros each. It was still a bit early for Parisians to be having dinner, so they had the place almost entirely to themselves.

Oliver had been forced to sit by himself at a small table in the corner. Ginny could see that he was attempting to look dignified, even after his very public shunning and banishment. The way he sat there in his long black coat, deliberately sitting very upright, eating his plate of roasted chicken . . . Ginny almost felt pity for him. She had to tell herself not to look over at him. They had already each polished off a crock of onion soup, and now were making their way through the large dishes of mussels and the cones of French fries that cluttered the table. She had never eaten mussels before. They looked very odd, with their black, almost opalescent shells, each spread widely to reveal the globby little bit of seafood inside. But it turned out that globby was good, especially when swimming in a pool of white wine and garlic sauce, which you can then drink up in the empty shells and soak up in fresh bread. This was probably the exact kind of meal Aunt Peg wanted to see on her tabletop.

“Right,” Ellis said, eating the last of a paper cone full of fries, “what happens now?”

It was an excellent question, and not one Ginny could answer, but they were both looking at her like she was about to start spouting streams of pure wisdom.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I want to get the tabletop. But Paul isn’t here. I guess I could try find an email address or leave a note or something. Maybe he can send it to me . . . or something.”

Keith picked at the remainder of his food and Ellis fidgeted a bit. It wasn’t the most inspirational answer. Ginny stared at her mussel shells and the tiny amount of broth at the bottom of her bowl. She was still in Paris, eating Parisian food on a beautiful Parisian winter night. That was something.

“Does anyone want to hear my suggestion?” Oliver asked from three tables away.

“Not really,” Keith said loudly.

Oliver picked up his plate of roasted chicken and potatoes and joined them, making room for himself on Ginny’s side of the table.

“The owner of the restaurant already knows that you are going to come for it. The letter clearly says so.”

“We aren’t stealing the tabletop,” Ginny said, stacking her shells into a pyramid.

“It’s not stealing if it is already yours. What we’re talking about is breaking and entering—and we can do the entering without any breaking.”

“And what does that mean?” Keith asked.

“We pick the lock.”

Keith snorted and shook his head. He grabbed another piece of bread and ripped it in half.

“All I need is a little piece of wire,” Oliver said. “I’m willing to give it a go, unless someone else has a better plan.”

“You’re going to stand there,” Keith said, his voice taking on a slightly defensive tone, “in full view of the street, and practice all those safecracking tricks you learned on the internet, is that right? Sounds very slick.”

Ginny had restrained herself so far, but now she had to speak. “We are
stopping
this
now
,” she said. “My tabletop. My rules. Shut up and go back to your corner.”

She was surprised by the firmness in her voice. Judging from their expressions, so was everyone else. Keith smiled. Ellis had to stifle a laugh into her napkin. Oliver did nothing at all for a good thirty seconds, then picked up his plate and stood up.

“Listen,” he said, looking down at her and meeting her eye, “if we leave Paris without that tabletop then there is no point in going on, and our entire trip will be for nothing. This is your one and only chance. Either we try to get it, or I walk away right now. I still have a ticket home. Think it over.”

It was quiet for a moment. Ginny listened to the muffled sound of French radio from the depths of the kitchen, the rip of the occasional motorcycle down the street. She was the captain of this disastrous operation, with no clue what to do now, or where to go next. She only knew what she didn’t want, but that kind of information doesn’t actually get you anywhere.

“Much as I don’t like agreeing with him,” Ellis finally said, jerking her head in Oliver’s direction and lowering her voice, “I think he’s right. What if we could go in there without causing any damage at all? You could do that, Keith. You know you can. I’ve seen you get windows open, get in all kinds of places.”

“Yeah, I
can
do it,” Keith said. “That’s not the issue. It’s Ginny’s painting. And if she doesn’t want to break in, well . . .”

They stopped their conversation when they were presented with the apple tart and coffee that was included with their meal. It was a beautiful, golden piece of pastry, fresh from the oven.

“. . . but I could go over and see what our options are. Maybe there’s a way in that wouldn’t hurt anything. I mean, since we’re here. It does seem pointless to walk away without even a second glance, Gin.”

Ginny split her pastry into two pieces with her fork, releasing a little cloud of steam. The waitress came back and deposited a small jug of cream on the table. It was such a reasonable suggestion that Ginny didn’t have much room to argue. It
was
pointless to walk away without even looking at the building again. A few tables over, Oliver blatantly stared, listening to every word.

“Okay,” Ginny said. “I mean, if you want to look. Just . . . look. I guess that’s fine.”

Keith slapped the table and got up.

“You didn’t eat your tart,” Ellis said.

“It’s all right.” He broke into a worrying smile. “I don’t like fruit.”

Once he was gone, Ellis and Ginny were left to themselves. It was just them in the big, dark wood booth, staring at each other across the marble table. Ellis ate her tart happily, mumbling her joy about actually being in Paris and having real French food for the first time. Ginny felt mildly queasy, but forced it down in small, scalding bites. Once the food and coffees were done, there was nothing between them. No distractions. Just quality time to drink each other in. There was Ellis—everything that Ginny wasn’t. Not just English, but a Londoner. Positive and unafraid where Ginny was cautious and concerned. Prepared. Cheerful. No wonder Keith was dating her. It only made sense.

Ellis toyed with her ring for a moment, then pulled the Top Trumps cards from her bag.

“Want to play?” she asked. “I know it’s silly, but I used to love these things. I must have had twenty packs of them. It wasn’t a holiday unless we had Top Trumps. Let’s see . . . I have dinosaurs, Harry Potter, cars . . .”

Oliver slid into the booth next to Ginny.

“Want to see a trick?” he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he reached over and took one of the packs of cards and began to run through a series of very fancy shuffles. Then he fanned out the cards on the table, facedown. It was the “dogs” pack.

“Pick a card,” he said. “Look at it, but don’t tell me what it is.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Ginny asked.

“Showing you a trick. One of you, pick a card, look at it, and stick it back in the pack.”

At least now Ellis and Ginny were back on the exact same page. They looked at each other across the table. Of the many aspects of his personality Oliver demonstrated so far, “Magic Trick Oliver” was actually the strangest. Ellis laughed out loud.

“Oh, go on then,” she said, taking a card. “You’re clearly a mental.”

Once she had looked at it and put it back, Oliver pushed the deck back together, shuffled it a few more times, and began flipping over cards.

“Do you think this means we’re friends?” Ginny asked.

“No.” He continued shuffling. “Is this your card?” He held up a card with a picture of a pug.

“No,” Ellis said.

He flipped over some more, then held up a black Labrador.

“This one?”

“Nope.”

Oliver flipped over card after card, but Ellis shook her head each time. When he reached the end of the pack, he sifted through,

“That’s odd,” he said. “That normally works. What was it?”

“A golden retriever,” Ellis said.

The door banged open and Keith hurried across the café to them. The cold had lit up his cheeks, and his eyes were bright. “Right,” he said. “We’re in luck. There’s a passage behind all the buildings on that street. I made my way down and found a window in the back of the restaurant. It’ll be no problem at all to pop that open and slip inside. Nothing broken. No damage done. Trust me—I used to do this all the time.”

Ginny searched her mind for something, anything that could slow this down.

“What if there’s an alarm?” she asked.

“I seriously doubt there is. It’s a one-room restaurant with four tables. There’s a simple lock on the front door, which is almost entirely made of glass anyway. Anyone could smash into that place anytime, if they wanted to. He probably takes the cash box with him at night. Aside from that, there’s nothing to take but the crockery. No offense to your aunt’s decorating skills, but from what I could see through the window it already looks like that place has been vandalized. That place is like my car—too crap to be worth burglaring.”

“Sounds fine to me,” Oliver said. “I’ll go.”

“It’s not up to you,” Keith replied. “It’s up to her.”

All eyes were on Ginny. Out of the four people at this table, she was the only one who appeared to have any doubts about this plan. The radio droned on in the kitchen, and the clank of dishes grew louder. Outside, there was a lot of honking. Everything was swelling up. There was a growing sense that something was happening, and if Ginny wasn’t going to take part in it, she would be left behind forever.

“What is it we’re looking for again?” she asked.

Oliver put his hands flat on the table and blinked once. Ginny could almost see him flipping through pages in his brain.

“I think. . . .” He stopped and drummed his fingers, then nodded confidently. “I
suppose
you remember going to my friend Paul’s restaurant, the one I decorated? I made four tabletops for it. They’re all made out of doors, and I painted each by hand. The paint I used wasn’t really designed for the wear and tear of a restaurant, so they should all be well-marked. It’s up to you to take the one you know is right. You’ll know it when you see it. Use your instincts.”

“Four tables,” Keith said. “Won’t be hard.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Wayhay!” Keith slapped the table. “That’s the mad one I know.”

“What about us?” Ellis said, indicating herself and Oliver.

“No point in us all going in. Ginny has to come, to identify the table, but you should stay with the car, El. I don’t think we have much time left in that space, and the last thing we need is a large clamp on the wheel. Posh Boy will be out front. Not
directly
out front . . .”

“Yes, I could have guessed that, thank you.”

“ . . . but nearby. You can stand around and smoke and look French. Any problems, you tap on the window. Are we all set?”

Ginny was not remotely set, but things were in motion. The bill was brought over, and she put down sixty Euros while the others donned their coats.

“I’m just going to walk Ellis back to the car,” Keith said. “Stay here. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Oliver set his lighter on the table and gave it a spin.

“I don’t have any illusions about the two of us,” he said. “I did the card trick because you looked nervous. When you’re nervous, you need a distraction. I provided one.”

“You’re not
that
good at sleight of hand, though. I guess it’s a good thing you’re not picking the lock.”

He shrugged.

“I’m nervous too,” he said, getting up. “I’m going to have a cigarette. I’ll be outside.”

There was a little clink of a bell as the door shut behind him. Ginny absently ate the crust off Keith’s untouched apple tart. She wasn’t sure which was more annoying—the fact that he had successfully distracted her and temporarily made her less nervous, or that he was being honest about his own nervousness. She didn’t want him to have good qualities. Horrible people should be horrible all the time. That should be the law.

She stared at the street, remembering the last time she was in Paris with Keith. They broke into a graveyard. And they got caught. Last time, they were let go. This time, they might not be so lucky.

Really, the only question now was whether she should call Richard before the police got them, or after. She reached into her pocket for her phone. Something came out with it and fell to the floor. Ginny leaned over to pick it up.

On the ground by her seat was a card with a picture of a golden retriever.

The Great Table Caper

Keith pulled his hat low over his head, pressing all the fringy ends of his hair down flat around his face. It gave him long sideburns and almost entirely obscured his eyes.

“I look shifty, don’t I?” he said. “Good. Best to look the part.” He clapped and rubbed his hands together eagerly. “I can’t tell if you’re enthused or about to be violently sick.”

“Is there a third option?”

“Cheer up,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “It’s me you’re with. Would I ever lead you to do something stupid? Best not to answer that. Just follow me down this dark path over here.”

Put like that, the idea had more appeal. Follow Keith into the dark . . . yes, that she could do, even if the alley that he had described was actually just a space just over a foot wide. It was a minor separation between buildings, nothing that people were really supposed to pass through. Keith turned himself sideways and started moving along quickly. Ginny could only see his outline, and mostly followed by sound, trying not to scrape her face or knees on either wall. This had to be some kind of garbage alley for the restaurant. Whatever was underfoot was squishy and slippery—maybe boxes, maybe food—she refused to consider any other options. And actually, Parisian restaurant garbage smelled kind of nice. It was fresher than other garbage, sweeter, like overripe fruit. Maybe that was something she could put in her college essay:
There I was, creeping down the sweet garbage alley to break into the restaurant.
. . .

“You all right?” Keith asked. “Be careful when you get to the end. There’s an old bike you have to step over.”

“Fine,” she said, trying to keep her tone confident.

Even though she’d been warned, she tripped over the bike. She probably tripped because she’d been warned and was telling herself not to trip over the bike. She did that sometimes. It was often easier not to know what obstacles were in the way. The space behind the buildings was wider, but scrappy, mostly full of rubbish bins, boxes, and cast-off bits of furniture. Keith had turned on his cell phone for a light and was holding it up to a narrow window about five feet off the ground.

“See.” Keith grabbed the sill and pulled himself up to peer through the darkened window. “Easy.”

What he was describing as “easy” would have been better described as “too high, too narrow, and too locked,” but Ginny kept this thought to herself.

“All right,” he said, hopping down. “I’ll get the window open. Just needed a tool for the job. . . .”

He poked around in the trash for a moment until he found an extremely unstable-looking chair. If it looked risky in the dark, Ginny couldn’t even imagine how bad it would have seemed if she could have gotten a good look at it. But Keith climbed up on it nonetheless and started working away at the window.

“Is it locked?” she asked.

“It’s not a problem,” he whispered. “Lower your voice.”

At first, he must have been trying to ease it open, but when it didn’t give after a minute or two, she heard his efforts getting louder, and his tone became more frustrated and determined. Finally, there was a splintering noise and he swung the window open in triumph.

“There you go!” he said, stepping down from the chair. “No problem. Up you get.”

“Me first?”

“I’m a gentleman.”

Ginny climbed onto the chair. The legs were wobbly and the seat was made of some kind of basket weave that felt like it was going to give at any second, so the sooner she stepped off of it and got through the window, the better. She shoved her head and shoulders through. The room was pitch-black, with a terrible, vaguely septic smell. She could just make out that it was small, and that there was a white object just below her—the toilet. This made it impossible to slide in headfirst. In fact, there seemed no way in at all. She was just dangling there, about five feet up, half in and half out of the building, with nothing to hold on to. Plus, she was fairly certain that her hips would not actually fit though the opening.

“Come on,” he said. “Have to be quick here. I’ll give you a boost.”

And with that, his hand was under her foot, pushing her up and in up to her waist. From there, she teetered between the world of the toilet and the world of the alley, her upper half facing a terrible fate, and her lower half flailing in Keith’s direction. Her hips, as she had already guessed, caught her, leaving her to seesaw.

“Turn on your side,” he whispered up to her.

“I know,” she said. She tried to rotate herself slowly, so that some kind of graceful cartwheel maneuver could be pulled out of this. Once she began to turn, she started to fall forward again, right into toilet land. Keith had her legs now and was holding them for support, so now she was dangling over the toilet. Lacking any other choice, she scrabbled to put her hands on the seat. Her loose hair hung upside down, right into the bowl. There was no point in resisting now. She let her weight fall forward and slid gracelessly toward an old French toilet. And then she was on the floor, with the final, horrid indignity of a strand of her dampened hair landing in her mouth. She spit it out.

Keith had a lot more experience with this kind of thing and managed to pull himself up on the window frame and swing in feet first, stepping onto the toilet seat and landing silently and more or less gracefully upright with little effort.

“See?” he said. “Easy.”

The bathroom was a very small place, no bigger than a broom cupboard, which meant that they were pressed in close together . . . not face-to-face, but face-to-side-of-head. She was close enough that she was sure she
heard
him smile.

“Shall we?” he whispered. She could just feel the brush of his lips through the hair that covered her ear. For a moment, she bitterly regretted not having her braids. There definitely would have been lip-to-skin contact. And now, he was rubbing her stomach in his attempts to find the door handle.

This was too much. She was getting lightheaded. It was lucky that it was so dark, that she had a good excuse for clutching at the door frame. Ginny took a series of deep breaths to steady herself and followed him out, through the beaded curtain that revealed the miniscule kitchen, the bar, and the room with the four tables. The front of the restaurant was mainly made up of two large windows covered heavy purple velvet drapes. These were wide-open. Keith pointed at them. He pulled them closed on one side, and Ginny crossed around to pull them on the other. They were very effective light-blockers. Now it was pitch-black.

“Let’s get the lights on and do this as quick as we can,” he said.

This required a lot of fumbling around, feeling the walls. Les Petits Chiens was not a large place. Though they worked separate walls, they bumped together several times—a slightly unusual number of times, really. Finally, one of them hit the right spot on the wall and the tiny chandelier turned on. Suddenly she could see her aunt’s artwork, which covered every surface. There were her collages, the pictures and the pieces of broken dishes that were mounted, mosaic-style on the wall—the hundreds of pictures of dogs, all eyes and tails and random fuzzy bodies. “All right,” Keith said, surveying the four garishly colored tables. “Which one do you think it is?”

One was orange, one was plum, one was yellow, and one was blue. All were variously spattered with designs and dots of paint. She stood at the end of the room and passed her eye from one to the next, over and over.

“She wants a sky, right?” Keith said, pointing at the blue table. “This looks like a sky.”

Her eye lingered on the blue table for a moment. It was covered in splatters that could have been stars. They were yellow and vaguely starlike. But Aunt Peg wouldn’t paint a blue sky with yellow stars. She might paint the opposite, though. She turned to the yellow table. It had almost no other paint on it, aside from a few tiny flecks of red, which almost looked accidental.

“It won’t be that one,” Keith said. “That’s just a plain one.”

Ginny kept looking at the yellow one. It was deeply marked by stains from the bottom of glasses, orbs of red wine, scars from moisture. This was the table with the lightest color, the least protection. This was the one that would mark the most. She put her hand on its surface and reached for the plum-colored table at the same time. The plum-colored table had a cold, slick surface. The paint felt protective. This yellow paint was different.

“It’s this one,” Ginny said.

“The yellow one? You sure?”

“Look,” she said, pointing at the rings and marks. “This is exactly the one she would want. She talked about people drinking wine, meeting over a table. And these marks—they’re like the sun, or the moon, or . . .”

Well, that was it really. But she still knew it was the best choice. Keith got down on the ground and looked at the table from underneath. He produced a multipurpose tool in a case, with various-size heads for different jobs.

“Where did you get that?” Ginny asked in amazement.

“From my car. I had it in there from when I moved the set.”

Since his head was under the table, Ginny could stare at the rest of Keith as he worked. This was a calming and pleasant sight, interrupted only by the unmistakable sound of a siren in the distance—one of those keening European ones that sounded like they were going
nee-neer-nee-neer-nee-neer
, and she could see the echo of a flashing light from somewhere down the street. Ginny drew back the curtain a little and found herself facing Oliver, who frantically waved for her to drop it.

“Oh my god . . . ,” Ginny said. “Oh my god . . . stop. Stop!” Keith froze in place, taking in this sensory information.

“Is that for us?” he inquired.

“We have to go!”

“Right. Perhaps I was wrong about the alarm system. Oh well. You never know until you try. I’ve almost got this thing off, anyway.”

He said it calmly, as if this was just a very interesting piece of trivia, then got up on his feet. He gave the tabletop a shake.

“Come
on
, you bastard,” he said, grunting a bit to get the last nut loose.

“We need to
go
,” Ginny hissed.

“No point in that now. Turn off the light and close the back window.”

“What?”

“They’ll probably just check the doors and windows and leave,” he said quietly. “We just have to keep our heads and voices down.”

Several seconds of utter panic ensued as Ginny tried to find the light switch again, then fumbled through the dark, crashing into the toilet to get to the window. Then another fumble back into the main room. Keith was invisible in the darkness.

“Get down,” he whispered, now with a trace of urgency in his voice.

Ginny dropped to her knees, then scuffled her way along the floor until she found the bar. She got behind it, curling herself into a ball. Outside, Oliver was talking very loudly to someone.

“I’m supposed to be meeting someone here, you see,” he was saying. “This is where she’s staying. I tried the doors. . . .”

Rapid French from some other person, and more protestations from Oliver, who was playing the confused tourist about as well as Keith had that morning. A slightly drunk, arrogant English tourist.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what’s happening, but I was just waiting here. Do you speak English? She said Twenty-five Rue de . . . wait. What street is this? What street is this? Can you just show me . . .”

“He’s stealing my routine,” Keith whispered from across the room. “Bastard.”

They stayed liked this for several minutes, until the voices retreated. She heard Keith moving, so she peeked over the ball. He was standing up, pulling at the table again.

“We need to get out!” she said.

“Almost have it . . . stand over by the door, would you?”

“There are
police
outside.”

“They’ve walked away, which means we have exactly right now to do this. Trust me, I’ve done this before. You trust me, don’t you? When I say
now
, you throw open that door. So get the locks undone.”

There was no time to think about this. She controlled the shaking in her hands as she felt around for the locks. There were two dead bolts on the door, plus a strange lock which took a lot of jiggling to undo.

“Ready?” he said.

“Um . . .”

“Now!”

The double doors of Les Petits Chiens swung open. Keith hoisted up the table and hurried outside with it, setting it carefully down on the sidewalk.

“Take it,” he said. “Get it to the car.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me. Be with you in a sec.”

He stepped back inside and shut the doors, leaving Ginny in front of the restaurant with a tabletop made of a half a door. She had no option but to move, as quickly as possible. The tabletop was large, but not overly heavy. It was impossible to run with it, so she shuffled as quickly as she could. There was a little offshoot street about twenty feet away, just as narrow as this one. She turned down it, having no idea where it went. It was nearly impossible to make it down this alley with half a door, but she also couldn’t stay on the same street as the restaurant—so she wound her way down, turning to the left and right to squeeze past trash bins and bikes. It whacked into bike handles and brick walls and various unseen objects.

This alley didn’t go in a straight line, but wove between buildings on a long curve. She emerged on a much brighter, busier street, one lined with lots of small shops: a late-night grocery store, a packing supply store, a crepe stand, a Senegalese restaurant. After a few wrong turns, she finally got back on a street that she remembered and saw the white car at the end. People were giving her a lot of looks, but she soldiered on, working her way through the crowd with the tabletop. Ellis jumped out of the car to help her.

“Where’s Keith?” she asked.

“Coming.

“Where’s Oliver?”

“I don’t know.”

Ellis opened the backseat and climbed into the other side and helped pull the tabletop into place. Then, without her even hearing him approach, Keith joined them.