“Wake up, kid,” a man’s voice said. “You’d better pull yourself together.”
Vincent gazed across the room, his eyes slits. He glimpsed a man in a naval uniform. It was Haylin.
“Medical personnel are allowed in,” Haylin told him. “I have about twenty minutes, so you need to listen to everything I say.” He then tossed something to Vincent, and without thinking Vincent reached up and caught it. It was a set of car keys. It woke him up.
“What are these?” Vincent’s mouth felt like cotton when he spoke. His eyes hurt when he opened them wider. Light poured in and he rubbed at his eyes with his fists.
“They’re yours. You’re driving a Ford.” Hay stood to drape his jacket over the pane of glass cut into the door. “We don’t need the staff to know what we’re doing.” He took off his shoes and his shirt, then stopped and gestured when he took note of Vincent sitting there in shock, unmoving. “Can you hurry up? You leave for Germany tonight and trust me—you do not want to miss your flight. Your sisters and William will have my hide if something goes wrong.”
Vincent smiled. He remembered how to do that.
“Let’s go,” Haylin urged. “Step one. Get the hell out. But just know this. You can’t contact any of us. You have to make a clean break, otherwise we can be implicated and charged with abetting a federal offense.”
In the parking lot the car was exactly where Hay said it would be. A rented Ford. He was to drive directly to Kennedy Airport, renamed in 1963 for their fallen president. He had Hay’s ticket and passport and the two thousand dollars in cash Franny had sent along. She’d sold Maria’s sapphire and was glad to have done so for Vincent’s sake. Once safely in Germany, Vincent would be on his own, free to go where he pleased. Before leaving, though, he’d had to punch Hay.
“Right in the mouth,” Hay had advised. “It’s filled with blood vessels and will look much worse than it is.”
Vincent then was instructed to tie Hay up—Hay had obligingly handed over his tie and his belt—and then to cover Hay with a blanket so no one would notice the switch until it was too late. And it was already too late. He was gone. A navy man and a doctor, with proof of it in his pocket. He looked official, with his buzzed hair, his head nearly bald. He drove with the windows down. He could feel his abilities coming back to him. He passed lights on the parkway and they clicked off. He turned on the radio without touching it. It was dusk, his lucky hour, the hour when he’d met William, when he’d gone onstage in Monterey, when he made his way to freedom, knowing he could never come back, understanding that this was the way one life ended and another began.
There was no reason for the authorities to doubt that Dr. Walker had been beaten and robbed. After the investigation he was given another ticket to Germany and a new passport. He and Franny knew they could not see each other in case one or the other was being watched. Still they dared to meet one last time, in Central Park, at night. It was easy enough to disappear into the lilac-colored shadows on paths they knew so well. The leaves on the trees looked blue, the bark violet. Franny had Vincent’s dog with her. Harry walked slowly, for he had aged since Vincent’s disappearance. All the same Franny kept him on a leash, for fear he’d take off and search for his master. She tied the dog to a bench when Haylin came up the path in the dark. They climbed the rocks above Turtle Pond and sat with their bodies so close they were touching. The water was green and luminous.
“Should we swim?” Haylin said.
It was a joke, but neither laughed. They wished they could go back to that moment when Franny didn’t dive in and change what could never be changed. Franny rested her head on his chest. His heart seemed too loud. Lewis was in the tree above them. Looking down, he made a clacking sound.
“He’s a funny pet,” Haylin said. “He’s so aloof, yet he follows you everywhere.”
“I’ve told you before. He’s not a pet. He’s a familiar. And you’re the one he’s following. He’s never really liked me. We’re too much alike. Two crows in a pod.”
“I see.” Haylin threaded his fingers through her hair. “You’re a beautiful bird.”
He was still a drowning man every time he was with Franny, and now he had to give her up again. They would not be able to write or see each other, lest Hay’s involvement with Vincent’s disappearance be reexamined. He had done enough. Franny would not ruin him any more, although he very much wished that she would.
They did what they should have done years earlier; they took off their clothes and dove into the pond. Even in the shallows it was freezing, but once they went all the way in, they forgot the cold. The branches of the plane trees moved in the wind. There were snowbells, which bloomed for only ten days. Soon everything would be in leaf, a green bower as far as the eye could see. Tonight the city smelled of regret. Franny floated on her back, and Haylin came and took hold of her, pulling her to him. To want someone so much could be a terrible thing, or it could be the best hope a man could have.
“I can’t be drowned, so don’t even try,” Franny teased. She could feel his sex against her and she moved so that he could enter her. She gasped because she felt the loss of him even now when he was inside her.
“Yes you can,” he said, holding her closer. He would be going overseas and felt there was nothing to lose. To hell with the curse and the government and all the rest of the world. There were turtles below them and above them the firmament was starry. “Anyone can drown.”
He walked at night, in a black coat acquired at a flea market. His hair was cropped, his complexion pale. He knew enough French by now to manage, but in truth, he rarely spoke. He had stayed only a short time in Frankfurt, where he’d practiced magic in a lonely room, then tried West Berlin for a month before heading for France, where he’d instantly felt more at home. He lived in a small hotel in the Marais, a good place to hide out. In France, no one asked who you were or what you were doing there. They simply wrapped up the loaf of bread you bought, handed over the drink you ordered in a dive bar, and nodded when you bought cheese or meat. He was nervous when he saw Americans. He feared being caught for some ridiculous reason, a fan from Washington Square would recognize his face and bring attention to him in a public place. He’d forget to pay for an apple in a shop and be arrested and then found out.
What saddened him most was seeing people walking together in the hush that came to Paris only at certain dim hours of the day. He’d be wandering back to his hotel, having been out all night, eager to return to his room and sleep through till the late afternoon, but then he’d see lovers together and he’d feel a stab of loss cut through him. He couldn’t help himself from missing William, but in response he’d turn his back to the scene that troubled him and keep walking, any idea of sleep shattered. If he thought too much about all he’d lost, he wouldn’t be able to go on. Several times he’d come close to phoning William, but he couldn’t take the risk of incriminating him.
Many times he’d thought of Regina, who was already nine. Likely he would never see her again, and that was most surely in her best interest. He couldn’t ruin her with his love. The past seemed a distant thing, unreachable, as gone from him as ash. Once, in a bakery, he’d heard his own song, recorded at the Monterey Pop Festival. Someone other than William must have taped it and sent it out and now it had resurfaced. Vincent had turned and walked out. Soon the radio was muffled by street sounds and his frantic heart calmed down.
It was all so long ago, the golden hillsides in California, the dock where the sky was so blue. He was here, now, away from everyone he’d ever known in a place that also yielded beauty at every turn. He tried not to see that either; closing his eyes to the radiant light, and to the wood doves plummeting from the trees to the grass, and the lovers who didn’t bother to hide their passion. This is why he usually walked at night, when the world was rife with blue-black shadows and pools of lamplight turned the streets yellow.
On evenings when Vincent felt the need to escape his room earlier than usual, he didn’t bother to
wait for nightfall. His hotel was musty, and there were times when he wanted freedom from his makeshift home. He went where no one knew him. It was dusk and he was having wine at a café in the Tuileries. The last of the daylight was sifting down in shades of orange. It was an illuminated world; one had to squint to see behind the paths. He knew William would have appreciated the beauty of the place; he would have enjoyed hearing the ringing of a bell tied around the neck of a goat there to eat grass, which was why Vincent himself could hardly tolerate any of it. Most of the young men in the city looked like Vincent: dark hair, bearded, dark coats and boots. He fit in well. He could be anonymous. He carried a newspaper, though he could not yet read French well enough to make much sense of the articles.
He was turning the pages when a woman sat across from him. She was older, extremely elegant, wearing sleek white-framed sunglasses despite the hour. She wore black, and took a cigarette and gold lighter from her leather purse.
“So here you are,” she said.
Vincent looked up and shrugged. “Je suis désolé, madame. Vous avez fait une erreur. Nous ne nous connaissons pas.”
“We don’t know each other, it’s true,” the woman remarked. “But I am not mistaking you for anyone else. I knew your mother. To tell the truth, I knew her extremely well. I’m the same as you and your family, you see. From a very long line here in France. When your mother lived here in Paris, Susanna didn’t deny who she was. That came later. We remained close, by long distance, and I know she would have wanted me to watch over you, which is what I’ve been doing.”
“I see.” Vincent put down his paper. So he was not anonymous after all. Because this was Paris and not New York, he did his best with the pleasantries of polite conversation when in truth he wished to merely storm off. “Perhaps I don’t wish to be looked after.”
“But you’re one of us, so you see I have no choice.”
Vincent shook his head. “I’m not anything.”
The woman looked at him sadly. “We never change who we are from the beginning. You still have your inheritance from your bloodline. We may have experience and loss, but who we are at the core, that never changes. You are something special, the same as you’ve always been.” She went on to introduce herself as Agnes Durant. “I have an apartment behind Place Vendôme. We often gather there. We’ve been here in Paris for so long we don’t have to hide as Americans do. No one sees us if we don’t wish them to. You think you’re in hiding, but your presence is quite evident.”
Vincent flicked down some money for the bill and stood, nodding courteously. “Then it’s best for me to go.”
“And keep running? That’s the coward’s way, isn’t it? Please. Don’t go.”
Something in her tone moved Vincent. He sat back down again. “Madame, I appreciate your offer of help. Really. I do. But there’s no point.”
“You have nothing worth living for?”
Vincent laughed. “Not so much. No, I don’t.”
“Because you can’t go back to America? Because the government will never let you be?”
“Because I lost the man I loved.”
“Oh.” Agnes nodded. That she understood. “Many of us lose the man we love. And it’s terrible. I know that for myself.”
Vincent heaved a sigh and leaned forward, his expression bleak. He saw that this woman was the age his mother would have been and he felt a connection despite himself. “I have nothing left.” He had always known his life would be over when he was still young.
Madame shook her head. “Vincent,” she said with emotion. She clearly had the sight. “One life may be over, but another can begin.”
Vincent gazed at the orange light. He could see every molecule of air, all of it infused with possibility. He picked up the scent of the sweet grass in the gardens, and heard the ringing of the goat’s bell and felt the chill of the evening as it approached.
“You’re in Paris,” Madame said. “You might as well live.”
So that he could live freely Madame Durant advised it would be best if he died. It must be public and final. He would no longer be a wanted man. His government would forget him, and so would everyone else. He could be himself, but with a new name and a new life, and what’s more, he could then avoid the Owens curse.
He checked out of the hotel in the Marais. He had very little with him, but there was enough cash left from Franny’s generous gift so that he could shop at a music store near the Sorbonne. There he spent the afternoon searching for an instrument that might replace his cherished Martin left behind in the States.
He found the guitar at the end of the day. A Selmer, the kind the brilliant gypsy musician Django Reinhardt had used. Reinhardt’s third and fourth fingers were paralyzed and became webbed after he suffered burns in a fire, but he continued on with a style that was his alone. The guitar Vincent chose was made of laminated rosewood with a walnut neck and an ebony fingerboard. It had been made in the early fifties, and had been banged around, but once Vincent picked it up he didn’t want to let it go. He hadn’t played since his fingers had been broken, and so he was tentative at first, but he thought of what Django had gone through, and how he’d managed to become one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time, therefore he couldn’t feel sorry for himself.
He was not as skilled as he once was; all the same, strumming the guitar felt like sorcery. The tone was so singular, so nearly human in its trembling pitch, it was as though he’d found his soul in a dusty shop. He was in Paris and he felt alive. Perhaps Agnes had been right: you remained who you were. Vincent bargained, but not too much because he wanted it so. And then he saw a little record player in a corner, a clever little machine fit into a rose-colored leather traveling case. He bought it without bargaining, full price, and he took it with him, tucked under his arm.
He went to a stationery store, where he bought an airmail letter. He then sat at a café, ordered a coffee, and composed a message to his sisters. He told Jet that one of the best days of his life was when they arrived at the hospital after the accident to find she was alive. He reminded Franny of the story she had told about the minstrel who lost his voice.
He wrote that when he thought of the past he envisioned the three of them lying on the kitchen floor, eavesdropping on their father’s therapy sessions. There they were, children trapped in a house they couldn’t wait to get away from, but which he now missed every day.
You both rescued me every time I needed you. I hope I’m worthy of such kindness.
We were wrong about Maria’s curse. It is simply the way of the world to lose everything you have ever loved. In this, we are like everyone else.
When he went to post the letter, he also had the record player boxed up and sent to April’s address in California. He jotted a note on a piece of thin, white paper. To my dear Regina, to whom I made a promise that I kept.
He did not need to write to William. Mrs. Durant had already taken care of that.
He tossed his backpack into a trash bin in the park where it could be discovered after he was gone. Everything he had, other than his guitar, was folded inside, including the key to 44 Greenwich Avenue. It was a portion of his life he would never get back. Friends of Madame Durant’s were stationed in the Tuileries. They had hung posters on lampposts and a crowd was already gathering. There was an atmosphere of expectation in the streets. Vincent’s music was known in France and his underground tape often played.
Vincent wore a black suit. He kept a photograph of William in his shirt pocket, the one taken in California when the world was open to them. They had been standing on the dock in San Francisco and had persuaded a stranger to snap them together, arms entwined, the sky behind them a vivid blue. Tonight he had sipped a tincture of dogwood Madame had given him, so that his voice would come back to him.
For the date of the concert he’d chosen Samhain, All Hallows’ Eve, the night of death and transformation. The sky was black and filled with stars and the leaves on the chestnut trees curled up as a sudden flash
of cold descended upon the city. He stood on an overpass near the Louvre facing the crowd. The lamps in the park blinked as though they were fireflies. This was the moment he had seen in the three-sided mirror when he was fourteen. When a hush fell he sang the songs he had written in New York, beginning and ending with “I Walk at Night.” He had his fans, but most in the crowd had never heard of him. The last song was a river in which he would have happily drowned.
Isn’t that what love makes you do? Go on trying, even when you’re through, Go on even when you’re made of ash, when there’s nothing inside you but the past.
He felt the wolfsbane he had ingested earlier in the evening spreading through him. He was sinking into it as the herb slowed his heart and his breathing became shallow in his chest. He could see everything he’d never seen before as time slowed down. The glimmering of the world. Those he’d loved who’d loved him in return. The gifts he’d been given. The years he’d had. He was so beautiful in that moment. Those who watched him gasped and forgot where they were. An enchantment took over and people stood in silence. White moths appeared from the grass. They spun past, higher all the time, until they disappeared into the sky.
Vincent was grateful this was the way he was able to leave behind everything he had known before. He collapsed, and when he could not be revived, a doctor who was a friend of Madame Durant’s signed the death certificate at 11:58. It was still All Hallows’ Eve. The temperature had dropped. Raindrops fell and splattered on the sidewalks. A private ambulance was sent for. Reporters had been called so they might witness his death. The leaves were curling in the cold and no one seemed to have the ability to speak. All was still, except for the siren as the ambulance pulled away, and then, at a little after midnight, the sound of the falling rain turned hard as it became ice striking against the sidewalks and the brown leaves of the chestnut trees.