We sat across from each other in a tiny restaurant, eating steaming bowls of French onion soup while gazing through the window at the covered market outside. The aroma of flame-grilled chicken hung deliciously on the air. And the market stalls were a visual delight, filled to overflowing with seafood, vegetables, and flowers. Behind them, vendors called out to the Saturday afternoon shopping crowd, extolling the virtues of their fruits, while holding out samples for people to taste.
“I do not think I have ever been here before,” Violette admitted, after primly wiping a strand of melted cheese from her lips with her napkin.
“It’s the oldest market in Paris,” I said. “I think it was around four hundred years ago that it was transformed into a market from an orphanage that dressed its children in red. Which is why it’s called the Marché des Enfants Rouges.”
“Market of the Red Children,” Violette mused in English.
“You speak English?” I gasped.
“Of course I do,” she responded. “I learned it quite a while ago, although I have not had much of an occasion to use it recently. But if you wish, we can speak in your mother tongue. It will be good practice for me.”
“Deal!” I said enthusiastically, pausing when I saw her look at me quizzically. “And I’ll try to stay away from using slang”—I smiled—“to make it easier on you.”
“No, no!” she insisted. “Charlotte was right when she said I needed to be in step with the times. Where better could I learn twenty-first-century language and mannerisms—in English—than from a twenty-first-century American girl?”
“Actually, if you really mean that, I have an idea. Do you like films?”
“Are you referring to the cinema?”
“Yes. Besides reading and hanging out in museums, going to the movies is my absolute favorite thing to do.” I scraped the last spoonful of the delicious soup from my bowl and finished off my glass of Perrier.
“Kate, I must admit,” Violette said, looking embarrassed “I have never been to the cinema. It has not been around that long, you know, and I just cannot see the point. Like you, I would rather spend my time reading a book or looking at art.”
“But film is art! In fact, it’s the French who dubbed it ‘The Seventh Art.’” I thought for a second. “Do you have anything to do after lunch?”
Violette shook her head with an expression of alarm as she realized what she had gotten herself into.
I reached under the table for my book bag, pulled out a worn copy of Pariscope—the weekly guide for Paris events—and flipped back to the cinema section. Scanning the classic film pages, I searched for something that would be worthy of someone’s very first film ever.
A few hours later I squinted in the bright January sun, as Violette and I walked out the doors of a vintage-film cinema. Above us hung a billboard for Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious.
“So,” I asked, glancing toward her. “What did you think?”
A broad grin—the grin of a fourteen-year-old, for once, instead of a centuries-wizened old woman—spread across Violette’s face. “Oh, Kate. It was amazing.” Her voice was hushed with awe. She grabbed my hand. “When can we do it again?”
TWELVE
VINCENT CALLED THAT NIGHT, APOLOGIZING FOR disappearing for the day. He had already sent a couple of texts, and from their tone, he was obviously feeling guilty about something and trying to make up for it.
“It’s okay, Vincent. I actually spent the whole day with Violette.”
“You did?” Although he sounded tired, I could hear the surprise in his voice.
“Yeah, she was supposed to walk me home, but I took her out for lunch instead. What was up with the numa alert, anyway? Jules said some might be lurking around your neighborhood.”
“Nothing. It was a bad tip, actually. Violette told Jean-Baptiste to call off the alert tonight. Everything’s as it was before: invisible numa ready to jump out when we least expect it.”
“Well, you were right about Violette. She’s actually really nice. It’s just Arthur with the ‘humans suck’ attitude problem. I think I’m just going to avoid him as much as possible.”
“That’s probably a good plan.” Vincent sounded exhausted and distracted. Whatever he had been up to today, it had definitely taken its toll. He didn’t sound like himself.
“Vincent, I’d better go. You sound beat.”
“No, no. I want to talk,” he said quickly. “So tell me: What are you doing, mon ange?”
“Reading.”
“Not surprising,” he laughed, “coming from Paris’s most voracious devourer of books. Is it something I’ve read?”
I flipped to the front of the book. “Well, it was published four years after you were born, but was banned for most of your life—existence. At least in its uncensored version.”