LUCIEN CLIMBED THE WORN stairs leading to avenue Junot, his lungs constricting in the bitter chill. It was a steep staircase dotted by infrequent old-fashioned green metal street lamps, like those in his village. Except for the ice and biting wind, he might have been home. His pulse raced despite disappointment. The recording engineer had greeted him at the studio door with a long face, informing him that he was sorry but the session had been cancelled and telling him to go to 63, rue Lepic, and up the stairs.
Lucien figured Félix was en route to some meeting and would meet him there to break the bad news that SOUNDWERX had reneged on the deal.
Nice! He didn’t even have a decent winter coat. And the flics were on the prowl for him. And he still didn’t have the rent.
Wild aromatic herbs grew out of the old walls, their scent mingling with that of the wet, seeping earth. The stair summit leveled off to worn stones tented by elder, ash, and sycamore branches. A gypsum rock taller than he blocked the path. Fernlike ailanthus branches spread from the crumbling stone wall, their rain-glistening leaves catching the light of the half-moon. He tripped over a raised cobblestone. A rustling in the bushes, and then speckled blackbirds and magpies swooped upward, leaving brown fluttering leaves in their wake.
A wild place in the heart of Paris. He hadn’t known one existed.
Ahead, he saw a dark-coated figure under a street lamp, eyes shining under her mauve knitted cap. Slim and lithe, he’d know her anywhere.
“Marie-Dominique!”
Had she been persuaded by Félix to await his arrival to coat the bitter pill?
“Over here, Lucien.” She motioned to where wild fig branches and cedar trees interlaced.
“What a spot to meet, Marie-Dominique,” he said. Puffs of frost filled the air between them.
“It’s the maquis of Montmartre. It reminds me of home.” She pointed with her black-leather-gloved finger past the stalks of a garliclike herb. “I discovered it. Wonderful, non? An old woman told me her grandmother’s farm had been here. There used to be watering troughs for the animals over there.”
All Lucien saw were dark stones and underbrush.
“These old walls were part of the mill that ground wheat for flour.”
Lucien stepped over the brush and saw the shadowy arms of a windmill looming behind the stone wall. Hidden.
“There were dozens of mills here once,” she said. “Now only two remain.”
The pinprick lights of Paris below shone like fireflies caught in a net of ferns. In the stillness, the dark, her rose scent drifted toward him. He wanted to fold her in his arms.
“You’re in danger, Lucien.” Her voice had changed.
“I know. It seems I’m an object of police scrutiny.” Longing filled him despite his earlier disappointment. Just seeing her alone made his skin tingle.
“Them, too? I found out that Petru has planted Armata Corsa propaganda at the studio,” she said, “and arranged for the police to arrest you!”
“Petru?”
“He works for us, but he’s involved in something else. I left Félix a message to warn him that Petru’s trying to sabotage you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Marie-Dominique stepped back, doubt showing on her face.y “Am I wrong? That group, the one you and your friends joined— ?”
Félix. Now Marie-Dominique. He was tired of this. “I signed up and went to one meeting with my brother and friends. As I told you. How can you think I’d be part of something that’s not even a political movement anymore? They’re gangsters! They extort protection money and graffiti the tête de Maure all over to make the bombings appear to be political.” He kicked a loose, cracked pavement stone that clattered into the bushes. “The true Separatists want to free Corsica, but not like that.”
She looked away. He clutched her arm. “I should know. Luca, my little brother, worked construction on the military base until the union went on strike and shut it down.”
“Quit that old talk, Lucien. It’s always the same!”
“The same?” He had to make her understand. “Luca forgot his tool kit and went back to retrieve it. The gangsters, the so-called “union,” thought he’d crossed the picket line. The next day they delivered his body to my mother. What was left of it.”
He trembled, trying to forget the bloody image of a mutilated Luca with a tête de Maure painted on his chest.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” she said.
“I had signed up in a drunken moment of idealism. How wrong I was.” He kicked a clod of dirt with his toe. “Nothing will stop them or those developers who are gutting the coast, ruining the land—”
“So you’re blaming Félix now?” Her eyes flashed.
“I spoke of the developers who are ruining the land.” His feet crunched the ice between the cobbles. “What does he have to do with that?”
“As if you didn’t know. His military contracts, the development he’s involved in . . . why he’s there right now. There’s been another crisis with the Ministry contract. He’s doing the best he can for the island.”
The best?
“I didn’t know. You’ve changed, Marie-Dominique. I once thought . . .” He paused. He snapped an elder twig between his fingers. He couldn’t bottle it up any longer. “I never understood. Now I’ve figured it out. Your hotheaded cousin Giano saw us in the cave and made trouble. So your family sent you to Paris to make a match with Félix.”
“I prevented the vendetta.”
“The vendetta?” She sounded like his mother. “It’s changed. Young people don’t care; they hate the rivalries and killings. I should have spoken up, explained to your father. Or maybe the vendetta is just an excuse. You agreed to marry a rich man. Maybe you really wanted the good life. But Félix? An old roué?” He wanted to bite his tongue. He hadn’t meant to say that.
“How can you attack Félix?” she said, hurt in her eyes.
“Someone who’s trying to help you . . . your career. But, as always, you lash out with no regard for anyone else’s feelings.”
Shame and anger filled Lucien. Had he gotten it all wrong? Conflicted, he looked down. His legs didn’t seem to work. He was torn, paralyzed. He should go, he knew.
“That’s the one thing I miss, the scent of the maquis,” he told her.
“‘The maquis has no eyes but sees everything,’” Marie-Dominique reminded him.
Did it see inside him? Did she?
“I’m late for my next job,” Lucien said, finally making his legs move.
Her face was in shadow.
“You’re still a terrible liar, Lucien.”
She edged past him. Stopped. Stood on the stairs, her wool coat glistening with drops of rain in the light of the street lamp. Her back to him, her gloved hands shaking. “You don’t understand.”
And then he finally realized. For her, he’d just been a fling. A flirtation, easily gotten over.
“You have no ears to hear what I’m saying,” Marie-Dominique said.
She’d changed. Hardened. Where was his Marie-Dominique with the sand-dusted feet and olive-oil-stained hands?
Her heels clicked down the stone steps and when he looked, she’d already turned the corner.
LUCIEN PULLED his coat collar higher and stared at the fingers of mist floating over the buildings below. He was cold and alone, the murmur of Paris below him. He should be recording right now, but Félix was in Corsica, the flics and this Petru were in league against him, and Marie-Dominique had left him again. As they said, a life could fall apart in seconds. And his had.
Bad luck dogged him. His grand-mère would call it “the evil eye.” Superstition, all superstition. He believed in science, empiricism. Still, the image of the old mazzera came to him, “the witch” they called her in the village. She was supposed to know how to lift curses.