“Are you sure you haven’t been here before?” I asked, my nose in our guidebook. He navigated the Metro with ease, quickly found exactly the café or shop or museum we were searching for, while I might as well have been on the moon.
“Maybe in another life,” he answered. There was something solemn to his tone that caused me to look up from my reading. But he was smiling when our eyes met. He pointed to his temple. “Smart. You married a very smart man.”
The truth was Marcus always seemed to know where we were or how to get to any destination. He had a mind for navigation, an uncanny internal GPS. I might wander lost and confused, even in my own city, turned around after a ride on the subway, unsure of east and west. Not Marcus. Not ever. It was annoying, how he was always right, but I found myself relying on it. A man like Marcus was the reason other men didn’t ask for directions.
Our last night in Paris, we were returning to the hotel, both of us a bit glum that the trip was coming to a close.
“One more,” Marcus said, grabbing my hand.
A narrow stairwell led down beneath the sidewalk. An electric strain of music seemed to waft up from the darkness. It was late. We had an early flight.
“Why not?” he said when I hesitated. “This time tomorrow we’ll be home.”
The damp stone staircase ended at a heavy wooden door. When he pulled it open, sound and smoke came out in a wave that pushed us back, then washed us in. Soon we were one with a throbbing mass of bodies that seemed to pulse in unison with the dance beat. We made our way to the bar, where Marcus shouted something at the pierced and scantily clad young woman who leaned in to take our drink order.
I normally don’t like crowds, overwhelmed as I become by details, energies, expressions on faces. But I felt oddly centered, able to coolly observe my environment. I could tell it was a local haunt; it lacked that Parisian self-awareness of its place in the dreams of the rest of the world. There was something gritty and slapdash about it, as though you could come back tomorrow and it might be gone. The chic, lithe Parisians I’d been staring at in envy for days in high-end shops and restaurants were replaced by an alternative set, tattoo covered and glinting with metal in odd places, nipples and tongues, eyebrows. I watched an androgynous couple make out near the door, a woman moving slowly to some internal beat, her eyes pressed closed. On a small stage, three men with identically styled dark hair and black garb were surrounded by electronic instruments and computers; they seemed to be the origin of the sound, though they were as grim and stone-faced as undertakers. I turned to comment to Marcus, but he was gone. I peered through the crowd and saw the back of his head as he moved toward the bathrooms. He must have yelled to me and I didn’t hear him over the din. There was a fresh drink on the tall table beside me which I assumed he’d left for me-something bitter and heavily alcoholic. When nearly twenty minutes passed, my drink gone, my interest in the scene around me dwindling, I headed in the direction I’d seen him disappear.
When I saw him, he was standing with a woman-she was emaciated and pale, with features too sharp, too angular for her to be quite pretty. She was talking to him heatedly, and he was looking around, clearly uncomfortable. Just as I approached them, she reached out and touched his face. I saw him grab her hand and push it gently away. She looked so injured, so confused, that I felt my heart clench for her.
He turned away and almost ran right into me.
“What’s going on?” I asked. It was quieter away from the stage but I still had to yell.
“Some crazy woman thinks she knows me. I can’t convince her otherwise,” he said, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go.”
“Kristof, please!” she yelled after us. “Please.”
He didn’t turn back to her, just hurried me toward the door. I felt some kind of primal tug to look at her again. She was yelling something I couldn’t make out.
“You don’t know her?” I asked him when we were outside. I felt oddly shaken, a slight tremble in my hands.
He was already walking away, came back and grabbed my hand. “No,” he said with a scowl. “Of course not.”
“The way she touched you-” I said, and found I couldn’t finish. From where I stood, I would have thought them lovers. Her touch was so intimate-her eyes so desperate. I stood rooted, not willing to follow him. I kept an eye on the door, wondering if she’d come out after us. I saw his eyes drift there, too.
“Isabel, she was high,” he said, tugging at me, his hand still in mine. I resisted, made him move back closer to me. “She called me by another name. You heard it yourself. She was clearly unwell or at least impaired.”
I found myself studying his face. His expression was earnest, even amused. His eyes were wide, brow lifted. He matched my gaze and then finally dropped his eyes to the sidewalk.
“Okay, you caught me,” he said, lifting his hands. “I have a girlfriend here in Paris. This whole trip was just a ruse so that I could rendezvous with her this last night-while you stood a few yards away.”
He gave me that magic smile then and the lightest drizzle started to fall. It all just washed away as he pulled me close.
“You’re not the jealous type, Iz.”
I bristled. It wasn’t about me being jealous or not. It was about a woman who wore an expression I recognized on some cellular level. Loss, betrayal, a touch of anger. I knew that face; I’d worn it for different reasons. But I didn’t say anything else. I let him drop his arm around my shoulder and steer me toward the hotel. I stole one last look behind us, sure I’d see her standing there grim and lonely in the rain. But the stairwell was dark and empty; I didn’t hear the music that had drawn us there anymore, either.
I WENT BACK to Linda and Erik’s. I had a key and knew that the apartment was empty; maybe not the best idea in the world but I was desperate. I needed space to think, a change of clothes, and some time on a computer. I also needed to figure out how to get some money. I’d stopped at the ATM and cleared out the rest of my cash, a hundred from each account. Now I had five hundred dollars, the money from the accounts plus what I’d already had in my wallet. I knew it wouldn’t last long. I still had my credit cards but I knew I couldn’t use them without creating a trail that was easily followed-that is, if he hadn’t maxed those out as well.
I took a shower in Linda’s bathroom, the only uncluttered space in the house. Her sanctuary with its stone walls and steam shower. The kids weren’t even allowed to enter. Sometimes I think she’d force Erik to use the kids’ bathroom if she could. I tried not to wet the bandage but failed and wound up peeling it off painfully.
After my shower, I looked at myself in the long mirrored wall over the marble sink and was shocked at how horrible the cut on my head looked, reaching from the middle of my brow to my temple-like something out of a horror film. My hair had been hideously shaved back a bit, which was bad enough. And the wound itself was too red, some dark yellow puss leaking out between the black stitching. I didn’t think the leakage was healthy, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. I found some gauze and medical tape in the first-aid kit under the sink and bandaged myself up again, nearly nauseated by how much the wound hurt to the touch. I recalled then that I was supposed to be taking antibiotics. Were they in my bag? I couldn’t remember. Brown watched me mournfully, hands on his paws. He emitted a low whine from the doorway, as if he was concerned about me.
“It’s okay, Brown,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
I padded into the kitchen with him at my heels, put some food in his bowl and changed his water, gave him a doggie treat. He seemed to feel better about things after this.