“Noémie’s your sister?” I say, surprised. And then I realize why he looks so familiar: it’s Raphael, the Sorbonne student whose photos I’ve been admiring for months.
“But of course.” That charming smile again. “Didn’t she say I was coming today?”
“No.”
Noémie turns around just far enough to interject. “You are an asshole, Raffi. Maman is expecting you Sunday. She will lose her mind.”
He smiles back sweetly at her. “But, dearest sister, my college term has ended, and I heard from Maman there was a nice new American exchange staying all summer, so I thought I’d come entertain her.” He winks at me.
We ignore Noémie as she pretends to vomit.
“Are you staying all summer?” I want to kick myself for my obviousness.
He shrugs. “Well, maybe, if I find something fun to do. Otherwise, I will go back to Paris. It can get quite boring here, you know?”
“Yeah, really.”
When Raphael tells me that he is nineteen and at college in Paris studying film, I try to pretend I don’t already know everything about him. He finds out where I’m from in the States and seems really interested, asking about Boston and my college plans and what music I like. All the while, just at the edge of my vision, I see where Noémie sits scowling. Freddie is sitting next to her on her towel and every so often he just stares in my direction.
It makes me shiver under the shade of the olive tree, so that I find it hard to focus on what Raphael’s saying, about how he’s seen everything by Tarkovsky ever, and loves the Beastie Boys for their irony, and worships Tom Waits because he is God. I try to hold up my end of the conversation, but my mind keeps circling back to the bad things that have happened. I mean, come on. The texts have been weird. The video was megaweird and scary. But this near-drowning incident makes three.
Three weird, scary things in two days. And Freddie is starting to seem like he just might be stalker suspect number one. Maybe he dunked me like that because he wanted to scare me? Well, he’s succeeded.
JULY 31, 2015
Back in my room, I dragged off my wet clothes with a sigh, lay back on the bed in my underwear, and looked at my phone. Three A.M. Jesus. There was a message from Bill that just said, Call me. I texted him back saying I had pay dirt for him and tried to send him some of the photos. When I couldn’t get them to send with the spotty Wi-Fi, I threw my phone down in disgust and lit another cigarette. Hanging out the window, I looked down at the street below, its potholes and drift of trash, the occasional tourist or bum shuffling by.
I held my phone all the way out the window, as far out as I could manage, attempting to catch a few rays of their three-star internet. As if Bill sensed my moment of vulnerability through the transatlantic airwaves, my phone burred into life, “Jolene” playing on the ring tone. My partner-in-crime’s raddled face smiled at me under his name and number. I answered, immediately noticing a shifty tone to his voice when he said hello.
Bill was a journalistic giant in his day, a hero of the Watergate era, and he likes a good exposé as much as he did when he was my media studies lecturer. I was in night school then, a last-ditch attempt to salvage an education after years of expulsions and reform schools and ultimately dropping out of college to attend the School of Life. Bill was one of that institution’s most curmudgeonly alumni, so we hit it off. I wanted to be him; he saw a chance to work again by using me as his eyes and ears, his proxy out in the world. He’d be right at home in this era of whistle blowers and WikiLeaks if his wife would ever let him out of the house; but he has strict instructions from both his old lady and his doctor to cut back on work, booze, and cigarettes. The fact that he’s done none of these might escape his doctor, but not his eagle-eyed wife, Nina, who by the sound of his voice when he spoke to me was sitting in the room.
“What’s up, Swift?” he asked, trying to sound jovial.
“Nothing much. Enjoying the red wine and all that jazz.”
But just as I know Bill’s voice, he knows mine. Knows for certain when I’m holding something back. It’s not just the journalist in him—it’s the dad.
“Rough day at work?”
“Well …” I took a swig of whiskey, toyed with a cigarette. “There’s good news and bad news. First the good: I went to see the girl in the hospital, like you said. While I was there, I found out some stuff about the Blavettes …”
I started telling him about the police putting a bulletin out on the Blavette family, about going to their house, meeting Valentin. I could tell I’d grabbed his interest by the way he tip-tapped on his laptop as I spoke, probably Googling the news item.
You see, the main idea for American Confessional is that we take on stories of police incompetence or just general corruption, and find the real story. One day after he was retired and I’d just lost a job, we met for a drink and came up with the idea of a talking heads show based on old-fashioned undercover work and pavement-pounding. Our first series was a long haul and probably the hardest work we ever did on a case: a miscarriage-of-justice story about Manatee Mack, a poor, black guy from Florida who we argued had been framed by the police for his white teenage girlfriend’s murder. We came close to clearing his name, got the Innocence Project on board, garnered support from millions of listeners, only to see the story end in the death chamber at Florida State. Both of us wanted to quit after that and did for a while. It was just too sad.
Maybe that was the reason the second series dealt with the opposite kind of injustice: Mindy Kaufman, a wealthy old lady who rented apartments on the Upper East Side and who everyone knew had poisoned her husband and housekeeper after she caught them together. Most of what we pulled together was gossip and hearsay, but we had a theory Mindy had used a slow-acting pesticide called Victor Cockroach Gel. The police had either been paid off or scared off, though: they wouldn’t pursue it. In a marvelous piece of dumb luck, we got Mindy on tape chatting about the murder to her pet mynah bird. Our listeners devoured that one.
In the end, what started out as a nostalgia piece became a popular show, not to mention a good earner because of paid ads and keen fans. I’m the anonymous roving ear who records the footage and sends it to Bill. He shapes and edits cleverly and generally protects my secret identity. He really knows how to pitch a story.
Finally, I told him about the whole mistaken-for-a-relative thing.
“You mean, they think you’re the aunt or something?”
“I guess. At first I only said that to the receptionist to get in for a minute, then when I was sitting in the girl’s room … a nun came. She was so thrilled that a family member had visited I started to feel pretty weird.”
“So you haven’t ’fessed up?”
In the background of the call, like echolalia, I heard Nina’s commentary. “ ‘’Fessed up,’ Bill? What has she gotten into this time? Should you be involved, in your condition?”
“Yeah, I guess I should, really,” I said, talking more to myself than Bill, who was now busy bickering, “though I don’t have to go back to the hospital, since—”
“Don’t you have a casserole to heat up, Nina? Leave me alone,” Bill shouted, “and, Molly, for God’s sake. You meet the inspector in charge of the case in a parking lot. He opens a goddamn door for you and I’m sure you all but castrated the guy. You have an in with the Holy Sisters at the hospital and you’re too moral to play aunt all of a sudden?”
“Not too moral, but … I mean, would it be fair to the girl?”
“Fair