“Thanks. I think so too.” I try to believe it.
“Here, let me give you my number.”
“That would be great.” I give him my phone: he puts his details in.
As I take it from him our fingers brush, and he quickly drops his hand.
Back up in Ben’s apartment I’m relieved to find I can get onto Nick’s Wifi using the password he gave me. I head to Ben’s Instagram and look for “Nick Miller”—the name he’s put in my phone—but I can’t see him among Ben’s followers. I try a more general search and get Nick Millers from all over the place: the States, Canada, Australia. I look through them until my eyes sting. But they’re too young, too old, too bald, from the wrong country. Google is useless, too: there’s some fictional guy called Nick Miller from a TV show which fills all the Google results. I give up. Just as I’m about to put it back in my pocket my phone vibrates with a text. And for a moment I think: Ben. It’s from Ben! How amazing would that be, after all this—
It’s from an unknown number:
Got your message about Ben. Haven’t heard from the guy. But he’d promised me a couple of pieces of work and a pitch. I’m working at the Belle Epoque café next to the Jardin du Luxembourg all day. You can meet me here. T.
I’m confused for a moment, then I scroll up to my message above and I realize it’s the guy I texted earlier. I take Ben’s wallet out of my back pocket to remind me of his full name. Theo Mendelson, Paris editor, Guardian.
I’m coming now, I text back.
Just before I slide the card back into the wallet, I notice another one sitting behind it. It catches my eye because it’s so simple, so unusual. Made from metal, it’s a dark midnight blue with an image like an exploding firework, picked out in gold. No text or numbers or anything. Not a credit card. Not a business card either, surely. Then what? I hesitate, feel the surprising weight of it in my palm, then pocket it.
When I open the door that leads onto the courtyard I realize it’s already starting to get dark, the sky the color of an old bruise. When did that happen? I haven’t noticed the hours passing. This place has swallowed time, like something from a fairytale.
As I walk through the courtyard I hear a sound close by, a rasping: scritch, scritch, scritch. I turn and start as I see a small, stooped figure standing only a couple of meters away to my right. It’s the old woman, the one I saw last night. She wears a scarf tied about her gray hair, and some sort of long shapeless cardigan over an apron. Her face is all nose and chin, hollow eye-sockets. She could be anything from seventy to ninety. She’s holding a broom, which she’s using to sweep dead leaves into a heap. Her eyes are fixed on me.
“Bonsoir,” I say to her. “Um. Have you seen Ben? From the third floor?” I point up to the windows of the apartment. But she just keeps on sweeping: scritch, scritch, scriiiitch, all the while watching me.
Then she steps even closer. Her eyes on me the whole time, barely even blinking. But just once, quickly, she looks up at the apartment building, as though checking for something. Then she opens her mouth and speaks in a low hiss, a sound not unlike the rasping of those dead leaves: “There is nothing for you here.”
I stare at her. “What do you mean?”
She shakes her head. And then she turns and walks away, goes back to her sweeping. It all happened so quickly I could almost believe I imagined the whole thing. Almost.
I stare after her stooped, retreating figure. For Christ’s sake: it feels like everyone I meet in here is speaking in riddles—except Nick, maybe. I have this sudden, almost violent urge to run up to her and, I don’t know, shake her or something . . . force her to tell me what she means. I swallow my frustration.
When I turn to open the gate I’m sure I can feel her gaze across my shoulder blades, definite as the touch of fingertips. And as I step onto the street I can’t help but wonder: was that a warning or a threat?
Concierge
The Loge
The gate clangs shut behind the girl. She thinks that she’s staying in a normal apartment building. A place that follows ordinary rules. She has no idea what she has got herself into here.
I think of Madame Meunier’s instructions. I know that I have no option but to obey. I have too much at stake here not to cooperate. I will tell her that the girl has just left, as she asked me to do. I will tell her when she comes back, too. Just like the obedient member of staff I am. I do not like Madame Meunier, as I have made clear. But we have been forced into an uneasy kind of alliance by this girl’s arrival. She has been sneaking around. Asking questions of those that live here. Just like he did. I can’t afford to have her drawing attention to this place. He wanted to do that too.
There are things here that I have to protect, you see. Things that mean I can never leave this job. And up until recently I have felt safe here. Because these are people with secrets. I have been too deep into those secrets. I know too much. They can’t get rid of me. And I can never be rid of them.
He was kind, the newcomer. That was all. He noticed me. He greeted me each time he passed in the courtyard, on the staircase. Asked me how I was. Commented on the weather. It doesn’t sound like much, does it? But it felt like such a long time since someone had paid any attention to me, let alone shown me kindness. Such a long time since I had even been noticed as a human being. And soon afterward he began asking his questions.
“How long have you worked here?” he inquired, as I washed the stone floor at the base of the staircase.
“A long time, Monsieur.” I wrung out my mop against the bucket.
“And how did you come to work here? Here—let me do that.” He carried the heavy bucket of water across the hallway for me.
“My daughter came to Paris first. I followed her here.”
“What did she come to Paris for?”
“That was all a very long time ago, Monsieur.”
“I’m still interested, all the same.”
That made me look at him more closely. Suddenly I felt I had told him enough. This stranger. Was he too kind, too interested? What did he want from me?
I was very careful with my answer. “It isn’t a very interesting story. Perhaps some other time, Monsieur. I have to get on with my work. But thank you, for your help.”
“Of course: don’t let me hold you up.”
For so many years my insignificance and invisibility have been a mask I can hide behind. And in the process I have avoided raking up the past. Raking up the shame. As I say, this job may have its small losses of dignity. But it does not involve shame.
But his interest, his questions: for the first time in a very long time I felt seen. And like a fool, I fell for it.
And now this girl has followed him here. She needs to be encouraged to leave before she is able to work out that things are not what they seem.
Perhaps I can persuade her to go.
Jess