“It’ll be okay, Raymond,” she said.
Raymond closed his eyes and felt his body sink deeper into the mattress, against the springs, and prayed for sleep to take him even as he felt disgusted by her words. Nothing was going to be okay and she knew it. Still, Yvonne curled up against him. Her breath melted into his ear, and he felt something inside unfurl. She leaned in, seeking his lips in the dark, but all he could do was squeeze her arm in response.
“What’s that sound?”
Yvonne stopped and listened, her head cocked against his shoulder. Raymond thought he heard a whimper. No, it was a voice. A woman’s voice, calling in the night. “I’m ready!” Yvonne’s hands ran across his chest, but as soon as she leaned in again to kiss him, the sound of soft knocks jolted them. She grabbed Raymond’s arm.
“Don’t—”
“I have to,” he said. “You stay in bed. I’ll go help her.”
Raymond scrambled in the dark to put his clothes on. In the kitchen, he called out as the knocks persisted. “You have to wake up, Madame Simeus! This is a dream; you’re not awake.”
He opened the door to find his landlady standing there, her coarse silver hair combed back into a chignon, mumbling incoherent words. She had smeared peach lipstick around her mouth and donned a pearlescent gown he’d never seen on her before. Her eyes were open, vacant, but deeply asleep.
“Will you take me to the dance?” she asked.
Raymond stifled a smile. He saw her legs uncovered where the dress stopped at the knee, her ankles scrawny, her feet in fuzzy white slippers. Madame Simeus, always so proud and indignant.
“Come, I’ll walk you back to bed.”
“I’m waiting for my date.”
“Right.”
He grabbed her arm and guided her back into her house as he’d done many nights before, thankful for the interruption, his eyes searching the darkness around them.
Nicolas was also awake, staring at his notebook, holed up in the darkness of his study, and hoping that if he couldn’t sleep, at least he could work. The manuscript was tucked away in its usual spot, and as usual it seemed to blaze and crackle like a glowing fire in the room. Maybe that was why he felt slightly feverish.
Eve had finally fallen asleep after starting to fold clothes and precious little things. They were slowly preparing to leave for the Dominican Republic. Amélie was at her side in her crib. Nicolas, on the other hand, hadn’t been able to sleep since he’d started working on the book.
In the glow of the lamp, Nicolas peered over his notes. He bit his nails at the thought of Jean-Jean reprimanding him for writing the book, for unearthing such sensitive information in the first place.
And yet he couldn’t ignore the anarchic nudge within to challenge all of this, to change the world around him when everyone else was being coerced and corrupted. Sometimes the sleeping anarchist in him would just wake up in the middle of a lecture. His students would sit there in shock as the words poured out of him. When they began to gasp or grow awkwardly still, he’d know to rein it in quickly. He hated that look of resignation on their faces. Resignation sickened him.
Molière! he thought sadly. Where are you? Molière, his former pupil, who had been the opposite of resigned when he reached out to Nicolas. “I’m now an archivist in the prisons of Port-au-Prince,” he’d said with a quiet smile. “I remember what you taught me about justice.” And Molière presented Nicolas with what would become the backbone of his book. “You said there were many ways to start a revolution, Maître. Remember? Well, here. I thought you’d want to know about the disappearance of a certain Dr. Alexis.”
Three days now of trying to reach his young source and still no word. Nicolas tried not to panic when the last phone call led him to a relative who announced sadly on the other line: “Molière is gone. He has disappeared.”
He heard a pop outside the window. Nicolas jumped and peered through two louvers. Something had hit the shutters, something thrown. A stone, possibly. His eyes adjusted gradually, and he could make out the branches of almond trees swaying eerily over the hood of his car. A distant streetlight cast a bright glow on the sidewalk. Nicolas pushed the louvers wide open and looked at the fragile stems of garden roses that held their weight against the quiet breeze and the sleeping anoles.
Nothing moved in the night. He must be getting paranoid. Probably just blind bats dropping cachiman fruits on the house midflight. Then, just as he started to close the shutters, a shadow streaked through the garden. It headed for the gate. Nicolas’s blood ran cold. He opened the shutters wide again. Yes. A silhouette was stepping over the bougainvillea bushes. A man.
“Hey!” Nicolas shouted.
The intruder reached the wall surrounding the property. The gate was padlocked, and he tried to hoist himself over the edge. Nicolas fumbled around under his desk. His fingers found the release and the hidden drawer popped open, revealing a space where he kept his notebook and a blue pouch. He unwrapped the fabric with trembling hands and emerged from under his desk with the Colt .45. The thing seemed to grow heavier each time he held it, especially when he cleaned it under Eve’s reproachful eye.
As he left his study and rushed past the bedroom door, Eve’s head popped out, her eyes panicked. “I heard something. What is it? Why aren’t you in bed—”
“Get back in the room and stay inside!” Nicolas pushed past her as she gasped at the gun he held, running to the front door, bumping into the console table and rattling lamps and framed family photographs.
With a grunt, he unbolted the door and ran to the veranda. The warm midnight air coiled around his knees and ankles. He stood there in nothing but his robe and a pair of leather slippers. He caught his breath and stopped for a moment, looking. Was the man still here? There he was, pulling himself over another part of the wall. Nicolas raised his gun to eye level. “Stop! I’ll shoot!”
The silhouette fell over the other side of the wall, landing with a thud.
“La police!” Nicolas yelled. “Police! Au voleur! Thief!”
Heart pounding, he shouted with all the air left in his lungs. He had to alert the neighborhood! He had to scare off the intruder.
A car door slammed, and an engine sped off furiously into the night. The dogs of the neighboring homes howled and barked in concert. Windows lit up, silhouettes ushered behind curtains, residents carefully avoiding exposure. Nicolas looked around to be sure that there was no one else stalking the house. His hand was still wrapped around the handle of the Colt, his finger resting against the trigger guard, as he’d been taught to do.
As dawn lit up Turgeau, the police came to inspect the garden. Nicolas was annoyed when they said the crime had already been committed, so they wouldn’t come out till curfew was over.
“I don’t think the intruder or his accomplices would stick around for you to come inspect my garden,” he said. “I’ve already looked. No one is here!”
Eve tried to placate him, and he kept quiet, allowing them to look for evidence. Maybe the intruder had dropped something. Maybe he was trying to break in. Who knew?
The neighbors asked questions Nicolas was unable to answer. Nothing was stolen, nothing was missing, no door was broken, no harm was done, and there was no conclusive report to be written. His next-door neighbor, Monsieur Pierre-Louis, a retired airline pilot, called him over to the fence that separated their two houses.
“Neighbor, is everything all right?” he asked. “You know