She began to shiver. Darkness was falling, solidly. The sky above the rooftops had turned black.
Hearing a metallic rattle, she looked down the block and saw a man lowering a grille over the shop window.
Panic seized her suddenly with its iron claw. She ran toward him.
He turned, surprised. He was a round cabbagey man in a long apron.
Her hands fluttered up, her mouth opened. Then she rushed in the shop door before he could close it.
A sparrow woman sat on a high stool behind a counter with a cash register and a pyramid of glass ashtrays. She stared at the girl.
“Please—”
The man in the apron came in behind her. He stood with his arms folded.
It was some kind of café. She saw a few tables, all empty.
The woman asked her something. The girl shook her head and spread out her hands.
Then she said, “Perdue. Je suis . . . perdue.” They were her first French words.
They conferred briefly, and then the man in the apron waved her toward the door. She thought he was going to lock her out but he nodded and smiled, reassuring her.
He followed her onto the sidewalk and began to gesture and speak. Eventually she understood that he was pointing at a sign with a picture of a bus on it. She’d noticed them all over the city and seen the big groaning overloaded buses pulling up.
She ran across the street and stood by the sign in a circle of yellow light from a streetlamp. He watched her for a moment and then went inside. Later he came out with the woman, locked the door, and went away with her, arm in arm.
Planting herself, she began to wait. Buses come. Buses always come. She felt in her pocket for her coins.
Finally, at the end of the block, a bus came lurching. She realized it might not stop for her and stepped into the street, holding up her hand. It was a gesture she’d seen the men in dark suits make, to interrupt each other.
The bus wheezed to a stop in front of her and the doors opened. She climbed up, fumbling for her money.
The bus was packed with dark forms.
The driver turned his face to stare at her. His hand, on the long lever, closed the door behind her and the bus started, with a jerk. He nodded at the coin box.
She dropped all her money in. He looked at her oddly.
She wanted to sit down, she wanted to fold herself into the dark mass of strangers.
The driver was still looking at her.
“Rue,” she said. “Rue Alfred Deodangue.”
He nodded, and handed her back two of her coins.
As she sat down, she remembered the poison paint flaking off the bedroom ceiling in Rome, sending the American woman home. With a stab of shame, she remembered that she had hoped they might also be recalled. Now, settling into her seat and beginning to study the street signs, she knew she did not want to be recalled.
The arm of the stranger next to her was solid and still. After a while warmth began to seep into her side.
Let us stay a long time, she prayed, until I can put it all together—the words, the streets, the woman with her face pressed against Jean’s window.
It might even be possible to ask questions now that she had some words. She imagined asking one of the jeering girls in the convent schoolyard why she hated her, what she had done. Perhaps it would turn out not to be hate at all but only some kind of game. If it was a game, any kind of question could be asked, because games were always about asking questions: “Red Rover, Red Rover, who will you send over?”
She had always been good at games, chasing the ball across the half court and lobbing it into the net or sprinting down the soccer field ahead of everyone else.
Thinking about games, she prepared herself for her stop, recognizing the avenue the bus was rolling along. She stood up, leaving the still presence beside her. Stepping to the front of the bus, she waited for it to ease almost to a stop at the sidewalk. She’d seen how it was done—this jumping down from a bus that hadn’t quite stopped. She primed herself and jumped.
Well, she fell, but it didn’t matter. She got up at once as the bus wheezed off.
It was just a question of learning their rules. At school, she would remember to wear white gloves the next time grades were announced and to stand up from her desk with her arms folded on her chest when her mispronounced name was called.
Running home—it was late after all, and dark—she considered the question of asking questions. She sensed an opening, as though her French words had breached a low, solid wall.
The concierge let her in, looking at her curiously.
“Bon soir,” she said. There were two more.
The big stairs seemed to reach for her, as though they had been waiting. She ran up, her footsteps muffled by the thick runner that was held at each tread by gold bars.
At the top, she nearly gave up and went into her blue room as she always did. But she was still aware of the opening, although it already seemed to be closing. She wondered briefly if it could only exist outside the house.
As long as it was still possible, she pushed her way through the dimness—lights hadn’t been turned on yet—and knocked on her parents’ bedroom door. It seemed unlikely that she’d ever done that.
She heard her mother’s startled voice and went in.
That lovely lady, her mother, was sitting on the satin stool in front of her dressing table, decorated like an altar with candles, silver boxes, and trays. She turned, looking alarmed, and the girl saw her silken leg in the opening of her dressing gown. She was getting ready to go out—her evening dress lay on a chair—and the girl knew she had very little time.
“I took the bus,” she said, and gasped with surprise at herself. “Jean didn’t come.”
“Well, that is something,” her mother said, smiling. “That is really something.” The girl didn’t know whether she meant that Jean had not come or that she had taken the bus.
“I was thinking of a question,” she said, twisting her hands. Her mother had turned back to the mirror and was dusting her nose with a feathery thing that shed powder everywhere.
“What question, Darling?” her mother asked.
“How was that woman, that ambassador, poisoned?”
Her mother laughed. “You’re still thinking about that?”
“I really want to know,” the girl said desperately. There was so little time. Soon her mother would rise, drop her dressing gown, and lower the big dress over her head. Then she would pack her little purse, slide on her shoes, and leave.
“Lead in the paint that flaked off her ceiling,” her mother said. “I thought you heard that.” She was applying a coat of red lipstick.
“But I don’t understand,” the girl said, and now she knew she was talking about many thing. “Did she sleep with her mouth open?”
Her mother smiled. “She may have,” she said sagely. “She may have, for all we know.” Then she stood up to get on with the rest of her dressing.
The girl went away. She didn’t particularly want to watch her mother don the big dress although she knew she would look beautiful in it.
She went into her blue room and turned on a lamp. Above her head, the paneling of the octagonal walls reached into the darkness, topped with swirls. She stood studying that. The room had been designed for something else,