“It looks to me that someone has cracked up your car,” said a French-accented voice at my elbow. “Have they also taken your things?”
I turned around, poised to take a swing, and saw a man in a panama hat and a crisp white suit, smoking a purple Sobranie and looking pretty pleased with himself for his observation.
“Computer printouts,” I said, “which were worth nothing. It’s more just …”
“… stressing, I know,” he said, his eyes twinkling sympathetically. “There have been a few break-ins around here. The hotel should have warned you.”
“That would’ve been good,” I said, slamming the door. It bounced open again.
“It would seem the locking parts are broken,” said the man. “I may have something that will be of use in this.”
“I’m fine, really,” I said.
“It’s not a problem,” he said, lifting his hat briefly to reveal thinning blond curls.
It seemed rude to say no twice. He walked a few feet, opened the trunk of a green Figaro, and pulled out some cardboard and gaffer tape. How convenient, I thought. It just so happened that he was out here when I found my car and that he had the very things I need to fix it. I squinted at the Figaro, trying to see if the headlights looked familiar from the road to St. Roch. I was still a bit bleary from the Jack Daniel’s and it was hard to tell. I got my keys ready between my fingers to be on the safe side.
When he came back, grinning with DIY man-pride, I said, “So how come you were here in the parking lot? It’s nearly three A.M.”
By way of answer, he took a drag of his cigarette. “We are both working on catching the lung cancer, I think. Here …” He handed me the tape.
I accepted it, not completely convinced, and bit off a length of silver tape. Together, we forced the door to stay closed with one of the most haphazard repair jobs of all time.
“Looks like a pirate with a shitty eye patch,” I said.
“Of course it is.” He smiled glassily, looking like he hadn’t a clue what I was saying. “Are you staying at the Napoléon?”
I nodded. “You, too?”
Mr. Panama Hat smiled charmingly with one side of his mouth, and I felt surer than ever that he was either my stalker or a journalistic rival. Still, he seemed harmless enough for the moment, so I waited while he put his tape back, and walked back to the Napoléon with him. A few steps from the door, the rain started coming down hard. Before I knew it, my knight in shining armor was sweeping his coat off, holding it out to protect me like something out of a Robert Doisneau photograph.
When we were safely inside the doorway, he laid his hand on my arm. “I can see you are shaking.” With a little bow he pulled the door open for me.
“I’m fine,” I snapped. Chivalry frightens me.
“Really? It might do you good to drink one more Jack Daniel’s for the road, to steady your nerves?” He smiled his charming smile, his face moving too close to mine.
“What do you mean ‘one more’? How do you know what I’ve been drinking?”
“You’ve been in the bar for a while,” he said with a laugh. “I did see you before, and now you are weaving a little. It is part of the reason I helped you.”
“Well, don’t,” I said. “I can hold my drink and I don’t need some two-bit Jean-Paul Belmondo impersonator holding doors open for me.”
I strode through the door to the old-fashioned brass elevator and jackhammered the button. It was stuck.
Monsieur Tremblé, the concierge, walked up. “All is well, mademoiselle?”
“No,” I said. “That gentleman over there has been bothering me. He—”
“That gentleman—” Tremblé gently released the button “—is Monsieur Valentin. I’m sure he would only be meaning to help.”
The elevator arrived and he pulled open the delicate birdcage.
“Thank you, Tremblé.” I smiled weakly and stepped inside, thinking that I knew that name from somewhere.
Monsieur Valentin. Inspector Valentin. I’d just missed a golden opportunity to have a drink with the detective in charge of the case. I could have drunk him under the table, charmed him, pumped him for information, and captured it all on video. Instead, I verbally kneed him in the balls. Typical.
JULY 13, 2015
Blog Entry
Hands burrow into my armpits, close on my upper arms, strong as a vise, pressing into me. Hurting me so I want to yell. But I can’t because my mouth is full of water, my lungs burning, chest, flesh heavy as lead. The hands squeeze me, wrench my flesh, and I am fighting tooth and nail, fighting for all I am worth, sucking the water deeper and deeper, my nose, my throat on fire.
And then the hands haul me to land and I flop on the concrete oven shelf at the side of the pool, its grit raking my flesh, then I lie still, weirdly still, no longer fighting at all.
The field of my bright-light-spotted burning blur vision darkens. Something is over me, on me, blocking out the sun. Someone. Vaguely, I see a tanned face, dark eyes, lips. Then the lips are on mine, blowing, and strong hands pump my ribs. I cough, splutter up water, choking, wheezing for air. Lips press mine again, soft and hot against my freezing lips, breathing harsh life into me. I cough harder. More water comes out. The man moves, turns me on my side. It strikes me that he is fully clothed in black and I have the surreal thought that the ghost of Johnny Cash just saved me from drowning.
My ears pop and the world shrieks again. Voices crash against my eardrums, angry, cacophonous. Waves of sound, argument, some angry exchange in French happening over my head that I am way too out of it to translate. The squall of words ends as suddenly as it started. The hands are on me again, under me, lifting my waterlogged floppy fish body. Johnny Cash cradles me against his black-clad chest. I blink and stare up like a baby. His face is all I can see and he is beautiful … and familiar somehow.
He frowns down at me and I hear my voice all high and dreamy. “Am I dead?” My own voice betraying me.
He grins and says, “That’s terrible.”
“What?”
He’s laying me down on a towel at this point, my own towel under the olive tree. Other faces jostle behind him to look at me. Noémie, Freddie, Sophie, Romuald. They are blurry, out of focus. Then I see Freddie, who nearly drowned me, and I look away, look back at Johnny Cash. Less Johnny Cash now that I’m gazing up into his dreamy brown eyes, more James Franco. He has the tousled dark hair, a stubbly beard, and cute crinkles in the corners of his eyes.
“Terrible,” he murmurs, leaning close to my face so only I can hear, “to almost drown and then the first words you come out with are cliché.”
I smile up at him, even though my ribs ache and my eyes sting and my throat burns. “So the next time I have a near-death experience I should—” cough “—stop watching my life flash in front of my eyes and take a minute to come up with a better line?”
“Ah, irony. You must be feeling better. I am officially no longer needed here.” He pretends to get up and then kneels down closer, grinning again. He smooths strands of hair from my forehead, then turns to Noémie and says something brusquely in French