And then it happens. We’re at the Café Sainte-Lucie with Ambrose, sitting at our regular table, when Vincent’s lips curve into a slow smile. I turn to see what he’s staring at, and there she is, Sad Girl, sitting at a corner table, reading. She has this rapturous expression as she reads, like there is nothing she loves better than sitting outside, turning pages. Her berry-red lips are quirked up into an unself-conscious smile.
“Great,” I moan, turning back around. Ambrose leans over to see who we’re looking at and exclaims, “Hey, isn’t that . . .”
“It’s the girl,” Vincent says. “But she’s not as sad as before.”
“Well, well, well,” Ambrose says, folding his arms across his broad chest. “Why don’t you go over and talk to her?”
“And say what?” Vincent scoffs.
“She seems to like reading. Tell her you’re in a book club and invite her to join.”
“A book club with one member. Good one, Ambrose. She’s really going to buy that,” Vincent remarks dryly.
“Naw, Jules and I could come and pretend we read the books too,” Ambrose says with only a soup?on of humor.
“I don’t need to pretend I read books,” I interject.
“Man, movies trump books any day,” Ambrose counters, leaning back in his seat.
“We are not having this conversation again,” I say, but glancing over at Vince, I see he’s not listening. He’s lost in the girl. And Ambrose has the gall to look amused by the situation.
Sad Girl starts hanging out there regularly, at the same table in the far corner of the café terrace. Which, of course, means that what used to be our few-times-a-week coffee break becomes an everyday ritual. Sometimes twice a day, from what I gather from Charlotte and Charles. But I have more important things to worry about than Vincent and his obsessions. Lucien, the numa leader, and his crew have been setting off mini catastrophes all over town. Over the last few months, the numa have gotten more and more active, and JB and Vincent are wondering what the numa chief has up his sleeve.
We saved a potential suicide from him a couple of weeks ago. She was fourteen and pregnant, and Lucien had convinced her that life wasn’t worth living. As usual, he and his crew tagged along to see the deed done. To revel in their repulsive glee at having tricked yet another human to her doom.
I was volant, walking with Charlotte and Charles, and foresaw what would happen. I flew to fetch Vincent and Ambrose as reinforcements just as Charlotte and Charles began fighting Lucien’s henchmen. Vincent didn’t get to the girl in time to touch her—to pass her his calm—but dove into the river right after she jumped and saved her. Charlotte and Charles killed two numa under the bridge, but Lucien and another got away while Ambrose was fending off some curious passersby.
After that incident, Lucien seems to lay low. A couple of weeks pass without our catching sight of him or his men. Although all I want to do is escape to my studio and paint, I find myself spending most of my free time babysitting Charles, who is once again in one of his existential crises: Why are we here? Why couldn’t he have just died and stayed dead? Why is he forced to live out this existence that he never chose? Sad Girl is completely off my radar.
So I am unprepared when Vince and I pass the café one morning and see her sitting at her usual table. “I could use a little caffeine fix about now, how ’bout you?” Vincent says, eyes glued to her face.
It’s useless to resist. I follow him onto the terrace, where he takes a table a few rows away from hers on an aisle she will have to pass when she leaves. I spend the next half hour trying to ignore the fact that Vincent is only half listening to the stories I’m telling. So I amp up the intrigue and give him a story I’m sure he’s never heard.
It was about 1910 and Juan Gris and I were leaving the Bateau-Lavoir, that hideous wooden building where we all lived and worked. If possible, it felt even colder inside the building than out. We were so frozen that even with gloves on we couldn’t manage to paint, so our plan was to go sit in a warm café until our fingers unstuck, and then get back to work. Between us, we had enough cash for two coffees, and I guess we were looking pretty rough—but who wasn’t in those days?
Anyway, on our way back to the Bateau, Juan and I got nabbed by the police. Handcuffed and taken in. We knew we were already on the police lists for suspicion of being anarchists and rabble-rousers (which we were not). But this was no regular roundup of indigents. No—these cops confused Juan with one of the robbers of the rue Ordener bank. They were sure it was him, even though we swore up and down we were innocent artists.