Vijay’s laughing but I’m not. I’m sure Nick was drunk again. Or high. And I know why he was that way, why he is that way, almost all the time now.
“You wouldn’t believe how many people applauded. He was booked but he’s out on bail. Again. He’s going to plead insanity. He says he suffers from a fear of clowns.”
Nick suffers, but it’s got nothing to do with clowns. “Tell him hi, will you? Tell him I’ll call him as soon as I’m home,” I say.
“Arden broke up with him,” Vijay says. “She’s dating Mickey Rourke now. He took her to Bali for the rest of break.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Technically, no. She turned eighteen two weeks ago. Bender got a movie deal. And Simone got into Brown.”
“How about Vijay Gupta?” I say. “Harvard wake up yet?”
“Not yet.”
“They will, V. I know they will. And you should turn them down when they do. Who needs the Jivey Leagues? Fight the power, bruh. Stick it to the man. Go to Bard instead.”
“Wow. Yeah. That’d show them.”
“Vijay! Vijay Gupta!” I hear in the background. “This does not sound like a conversation of substance! It sounds like you’re speaking to one of your foolish friends!”
“Gotta run. Flesh-eating Mombie. Later, A.”
“See you soon.”
I’m smiling as I hang up, glad that my plan worked. Glad my painter mother is painting again—even if it is on a wall. Maybe I can bring her some more things. Why not? I’ve got a few hours to kill before I need to leave for the airport, and Clignancourt, the huge Paris flea market, is open today. I decide to go.
I get my bag and jacket, tell my father I’m heading out. He asks me if I have euros for the fare to the airport and dollars for the cab ride from JFK to Brooklyn. But before I can answer, his phone rings.
“Hello, Matt,” he says. He looks at his watch. “It’s very early your time, isn’t it? Is anything wrong?”
Matt. That’s Dr. Becker’s first name. I wonder if he’s done rounds yet today. If he’s seen Mom’s wall. I wonder if, by any chance, he’s figured out who sent the art supplies. Time to make tracks.
“Andi, wait a second,” Dad says.
“No worries, Dad!” I yell from the doorway. “I’ve got money! I’ll be fine! I’ll call you from Brooklyn. Bye!”
I slam the door and bolt.
52
Like a city, Clignancourt has its own districts.
The streets leading to the market are full of low-rent flea-market guys. They set their goods out in carts or just throw a blanket on the sidewalk. I walk past women and men selling African beads, socks, lipstick, underwear, sweatpants, goat curry, and batteries, and keep moving toward the heart of the market.
The Rue des Rosiers and the Biron have furniture. L’Entrepot has salvage. Serpette has vintage clothing, old Louis Vuitton trunks, and chandeliers. I don’t want any of that, so I head to the Marché Vernaison, which is funkier and junkier. It’s a rabbit warren of stalls, jumbled and narrow.
I stop at one and buy a silver thimble and a cracked porcelain cup. A cookbook from the forties. A faded velvet candy box. I move on and find some faded fabric roses, jet buttons, a ribbon belt with a rhinestone buckle, postcards from Deauville. I pick my way around boxes and crates, looking, hunting, stuffing my finds into my bag.
I turn a corner, pass a stall selling fur coats, another selling clocks. Outside a third is an old gilt table, and on it there’s a bowl filled with billiard balls. They’re nicked and dented, five euros apiece, and I know my mother will love them. I pick out three.
My bag gets heavy. I’m hungry. But I keep looking and digging, walking farther into the market until I come out the other side. The antiques stalls give way to junksters again. I pick through their offerings, turning up a red crystal necklace, a candy tin.
And then I’m at the end of it and there’s just one last dealer to visit—a skinny guy with a ponytail. He’s eating a gyro with one hand. Pulling stuff out of a rusty Citroën with the other. He looks like he just arrived. He’s wearing a long, grimy velvet jacket with a hoodie under it. The hoodie has the outline of a city on it. I ♥ ORLÉANS, it says.
There’s a box of old jewelry out on the sidewalk. I start pawing through it. He squats down next to me and smiles. His teeth are in bad shape. There are bruises between his fingers. His eyes have a glazy, unfocused look. He looks around, then pulls a bone out of his jacket.
“I got it from the catacombs,” he tells me. “It’s a leg. Very old. You want it? Twenty euros. I have ribs, too. Ten euros. And skulls. They’re fifty.”
“Um, no thanks.”
I hope he’ll go back to his boxes, but he doesn’t. Coldplay’s on the radio. He starts singing along with Chris. One minute I held the key, next the walls were closed on me, and I discovered that my castles stand, upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand …
He wipes his nose on his sleeve, and says, “Could be Louis XVI singing that. Or maybe just his head. Since they cut it off.”
“Could be,” I say, moving away from him a little.
“The head knows it’s been cut off. For a few seconds. Ten, maybe fifteen. It’s true. A doctor made experiments back in 1905. He picked up the head of a guillotined man immediately after it had been severed and called his name. The eyes blinked. They looked at the doctor. They knew him.” He air drums with the leg bone until “Viva la Vida” ends. Then he says, “Paris is all music and ghosts. I can see them.”
I glance down the street to make sure I’m not alone with this grave-robbing smackhead lunatic.
“Can you?” he asks.
“Can I what?”
“See them.”
“No.”
“They’re everywhere. Sometimes they want my food. Sometimes they want to talk. Sometimes they’re angry at me.”
“I bet they are. I bet they’d like to kick your ass. But they can’t. You stole their legs.”
He laughs. Finishes his gyro. Sparks up a cigarette. “My grandmother, she was Roma. You know … a Gypsy?” he says. “She used to tell me that it’s a sign, when the dead appear. A sign of death.”
“Wow. That’s so perceptive.”
“She meant the death of the one who sees them. It’s a warning. It means you’re drawing too near to them, to their world.” He starts drumming again. “Do you?” he says.
“Do I what?”
“See them.”
Why is he asking me that? I wonder. I’m about to say no when I suddenly remember that night on Henry Street when I was walking home from school and saw Truman. I remember my trip to the catacombs, when I thought I heard the dead talking to me. I tell him no anyway.
“They see you,” he says. “They’re watching. Waiting.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, rattled but trying not to show it.
I finish with the jewelry and cast an eye over the rest of his offerings—moldy paperbacks, coffee bowls, dishes, a Pernod ashtray, old porn mags, grimy bow ties, a box of vintage Christmas cards. I’m about to leave when I see it—stuck in a box by the trunk of his car—a small oil. A still life.
I pick it up. It’s really old and really good. The paint is cracked and the frame is chipped. There’s a tiny tear in the canvas. But the painting itself is beautiful. It shows pears, some chestnuts, an old copper pot, and a dead rabbit. My mother would love it. It’s the sort of thing she has hanging near her easel. At home. The more I look at the painting, the more I want to get it for her. To bring it to the hospital tomorrow and hang it on the wall of her room. It’s better than anything I’ve bought so far. Maybe it will help her. Maybe it will do what Dr. Becker’s pills never will. Maybe it will be an iron band.
“How much?” I ask him.
“A hundred,” he says, taking a drag on his cigarette.
I open my wallet. I haven’t got it. Not a hundred. I have enough money for a cab to the airport, with a few twenties left over.
“How about sixty?” I say, ho
ping he’ll go for it because his hands are trembling, but he tells me no.
“Come on, you need it. You know you do.”
“Not as bad as you do,” he says, looking at my own shaky hands.
I take out all the money I can spare and put it on the roof of his car. It comes to sixty-eight euros and change. “It’s all I’ve got,” I tell him.
He looks me up and down, then tugs on my belt. He’s so close to me that I can smell the lamb he ate.
I step back really fast. “Later, asshole,” I say.
He laughs. “Don’t flatter yourself. The belt’s worth money,” he says.
I get it now. I take it off and put it on top of the euros.
“Keep going,” he says.
I take off my rings and put them on the pile. And my bracelets. He rakes through the jewelry, then points at my earrings.
“Come on!”
“You want the painting?”
I grumble, but I take them off and add them to the pile. I feel naked and defenseless, as if he took all my armor. There’s no metal left anywhere on me. Well, almost none. His eyes go to Truman’s key. I cover it with my hand.
“Forget it. Not for sale,” I tell him.
He stares at the key, then raises his eyes to mine. They aren’t unfocused anymore. They’re sharp and dark. As dark as midnight.
He smiles at me, his crazy eyes glittering. “Life was blotted out,” he says. “Not so completely but scattered wrecks enough of it remain.”
“What?” I say, pretty freaked out. “Why did you say that?”
But he doesn’t answer me. He just laughs.
It’s just more smackhead nonsense he’s spouting, I tell myself. He doesn’t know anything. Not about me. Or Truman. Not about the key.
“Are you going to sell me the painting or not?” I ask him, trying to sound braver than I feel.
He chews his lip for a minute, then nods. I tuck the painting under my arm before he can change his mind.
“Thanks,” I say, heading off. I’m so excited that I tell him Adieu, which is a final goodbye, pretty much like saying, See you in the next world, instead of Au revoir, which means see you later. I apologize for the mistake, tell him Au revoir.
He shakes his head, smiles at me with his rotten teeth. “You had it right the first time,” he says. “Adieu.”
53
I’m running late.
The Métro was super slow—track work or something—and it took forever to get back to G’s. It’s nearly six o’clock. I should be getting into a cab now, not running up the stairs to his and Lili’s loft.
Lili’s home. She’s watching the television and talking on the phone at the same time—with G, I think. There seems to be some confusion over his flight. After a few minutes, she hangs up.
“The airline workers have walked out,” she says to me.
“What? No way!” It can’t be. Not now. Not tonight.
“Orly and DeGaulle are a mess. G was supposed to come home tonight but his flight was canceled. He is trying to get on a train but it’s difficult. Apparently, everyone else has the same idea.”
“When did this happen?” I ask her.
“They announced it about an hour ago.”
I drop my bag on the floor. “I can’t believe this,” I say, totally crushed.
“Andi? What’s the matter? Oh! I completely forgot you were leaving tonight. Did you get a call from the airline?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been stuck in the subway.”
I call my voice mail and sure enough there’s a message.
“What do they say?” Lili asks as I hang up.
“That my flight’s canceled, too,” I tell her.
“I’m sorry, Andi. I know you wanted to see your mother.” She comes over, puts an arm around me. “At least we will get to keep you for a few more days. G and I are happy to have you.”
I force a smile. “Thank you, Lili,” I say.
She tells me she’s on her way out to have dinner with some students and that there’s bread and ham and cheese in the kitchen and I should help myself.
I thank her, pick up my bag, and put it in my room. Then I sit down on my bed. I didn’t see this one coming and I should have. The workers have been threatening to strike for days, but I paid no attention. I was too worried about getting my outline done.
I look around my room, wondering what I’m going to do with myself for the next two days, or three days, or eight years, or however long it takes before I can get on a plane to New York. I feel a bit panicky at the thought of having nothing to do and nowhere to go, and being around my father for God knows how long. I feel totally down about not being able to see my mother tomorrow.
I dig in my bag for my pills and swallow a couple. The Qwells kept me pretty stable all day long—maybe a little stupid and clumsy, but stable. As I put the bottle back, I see that the diary’s still sitting there, right where I left it last night. I still have four or five entries to go. I’d planned to read them when I got back from Clignancourt. Before I called a cab to take me to the airport. As I reach for it, I realize I wouldn’t have had time to read the last entries. I was running way too late.
“Happy now?” I say.
As I open it, Lili comes in.
“I’m leaving, Andi. I’ll only be a few hours.” She says goodbye, but stands in the doorway instead of leaving. “You know,” she says, “there’s this place on the Rue Oberkampf. A few streets west of the Ménilmontant Métro stop. G and I used to go there. When we were students. The food is good and there’s live music on Sundays. It’s called Rémy’s. I really think you would like it. It would be good for you to get out. To hear some music. Maybe meet a few people your own age and have some fun. You might be here for a few days, you know. We French love our strikes.”
“Rémy’s, is it?” I say, like I’ve never heard of the place before.
“Yes. Think about it.” She kisses me and leaves.
I sit on the bed for another minute or so, staring off into the darkness, hoping it’s not too late. For Alex. For Louis-Charles. And for me.
54
I’m hurrying down the Rue Oberkampf. It’s after eight. I’m late. They’ve probably already started.
I’m excited. I should know better but I can’t help it. I can’t wait to see him. Maybe I didn’t totally blow it after all. Maybe we can have a bowl of Rémy’s stew after we play, and talk. Or not talk. Like we did at Sacré-Coeur. Not talking would be very nice.
I open the door and smack into someone. The place is packed. I guess Sunday’s a big night here. I stand on my tiptoes, trying to see the stage. Virgil’s there. He’s rhyming. He’s swaggering up and down. The crowd loves it. They’re cheering him on in ten different languages. He’s most of the way through “I’m Shillin’.” I recognize it from his CD.
“… I’m not somebody
Till I’m wearing LV
A pony, a gator
A big shiny G
Call me a sellout
But I’ll make ya shell out
Buy this watch, drink that tea
You’ll be just like me
Selling sneakers, selling coffee
The money’s sweeter than toffee
Selling jewelry, selling cars
Yeah, it’s welfare for stars
She was the shit
Made arthouse a hit
Just ask Brad Pitt
Then she quit
Now she’s pimpin’ vitamin water
And tellin me I oughta
Buy a bottle of skunkjuice
From her girl Estée Lauder
He had the beats, had the swagger
He was more than a bragger
Sold his rhymes
Many times
Now he’s rich as Mick Jagger
He said, I had to get real
Make a deal Work my spiel
Get my face on the box
Of your kid’s Happy Meal
I bowed down to the clown
r /> Cuz I wanted the crown
The silk dressing gown
The penthouse uptown
Now I’m a Bolivar smoker
Playing craps, playing poker
I’m a big power broker
And Diddy’s a joker
Sell your music, your art
Sell your soul, it’s okay
Don’t ever forget
Where there’s a shill, there’s a way.”
He takes a big arms-out bow and the audience goes wild.
Jules is behind him. And some other guys. They have gear tonight—mics, amps, guitars, a drum machine. They don’t see me. I’m way at the back with no idea how I’m going to make my way through the crowd.
I look left and right, trying to figure out a path. I look at the stage again and see someone I didn’t see before—a tall, beautiful girl with dark hair and light brown skin. She steps up, gives Virgil a towel and a glass of water. She turns to go, but he reaches for her, takes her hand and pulls her to him. He whispers something in her ear, then kisses her cheek. She laughs. Hugs him. Hops down off the stage.
Wow. That didn’t take long. Guess he was really broken up that it didn’t work out with me.
I duck out. Quick. Before anyone can see what a sad and sorry fool I am.
55
I’m trying to play “Norwegian Wood.” But it’s not working. I’m fumbling the chords. It’s a total mess. I give it up and try some Bach. But that doesn’t go well, either.
I’m playing to keep from thinking about things. Such as—Why did I think Virgil didn’t have a girlfriend? Two? Five? A dozen? Him, a hot hip-hop god? I thought there was something special between us. I was sure there was. But I guess I was wrong. Impaired judgment—another fabulous side effect of Qwellify.
I bungle the passacaille I’m trying to play. I tell myself it’s because my hands are cold. It’s windy out here on the Pont Neuf. There’s snow on the air. A few flakes are already swirling down. But I know the cold’s not the reason I’m playing badly. It’s the Qwell. I took more after Rémy’s. And now I’m slow and numb. I can’t feel a thing. I know it’s cold, but I can’t feel it. I know I’m heartbroken, but I can’t feel that, either.