Down in the cave, I tear my eyes away from his Vespa. I feel like there’s a metal band around my ribs stopping me from taking in enough air. And in my ears still this horrible rushing sound, the white noise, the storm. I just need to make it stop.
I yank my bike free and haul it up the stairs. I can feel the pressure building inside me as I wheel it across the courtyard, as I push it along the cobbled street . . . all the way down to the main road where the morning rush-hour traffic is roaring past. I jump onto the saddle, look quickly in each direction through the tears blurring my eyes, push straight out into the street.
There’s a screech of brakes. The blare of a horn. Suddenly I’m lying on my side on the tarmac, the wheels spinning. My whole body feels bruised and torn. My heart’s pounding.
That was so close.
“You stupid little bitch,” the van driver screams, hanging out of his open window and gesturing at me with his cigarette. “What the fuck were you doing? What the hell were you thinking, pulling out into the road without looking?”
I yell back, my language even worse than his. I call him un fils de pute, son of a whore, un sac a merde, a bag of shit . . . I tell him he can go fuck himself. I tell him he can’t drive for shit.
Suddenly the front door of the apartment building clangs open and the concierge is running out. I’ve never seen that woman move so fast. She always seems so old and hunched. But maybe she moves more quickly when you’re not looking. Because she’s always there when you least expect to see her. Appearing around corners and out of shadows, lurking in the background. I don’t know why we even have a concierge. Most places don’t have them any longer. We should have just installed a modern intercom system. It would be much better than having her around, snooping on everyone. I don’t like the way she watches. Especially how she watches me.
Without saying anything she puts out her hands, helps me to stand up. She’s much stronger than I ever would have guessed. Then she looks at me closely; intensely. I feel like she’s trying to tell me something. I look away. It makes me think she knows something. Like maybe she knows everything.
I throw off her hand. “?a va,” I say. I’m OK. “I can get up on my own.”
My knees are still stinging like a kid’s who has taken a tumble in the playground. And my bike chain has come off. But that’s the worst of it.
It could have ended so differently. If I hadn’t been such a coward. Because the truth is, I was looking. That was the point.
I knew exactly what I was doing.
It was so close. Just not close enough.
Sophie
Penthouse
I descend the staircase with Benoit trotting at my heels. As I pass the third floor I pause. I can feel her there behind the door, like something poisonous at the heart of this place.
It was the same with him. His presence upset the building’s equilibrium. I seemed to see him everywhere after that dinner on the terrace: in the stairwell, crossing the courtyard, talking to the concierge. We never talk to the concierge beyond issuing instructions. She is a member of staff, that sort of divide must be respected. Once I even saw him following her into her cabin. What could they be speaking about in there? What might she be telling him?
When the third note came, it wasn’t left in the letterbox. It was pushed beneath the door of the apartment, at a time when I suppose my blackmailer knew Jacques would be out. I had returned from the boulangerie with Jacques’ favorite quiche, which I have bought for him every Friday for as long as I can remember. When I saw the note I dropped the box I was holding. Pastry shattered across the floor. It sent a thrill through me that I knew had to be fear but for a moment felt almost like excitement. And that was just as disturbing.
I had been invisible for so long, any currency spent long ago. But these notes, even as they frightened me, felt like the first time in a very long while that I had been seen.
I knew I could not stay in the building for a moment longer.
Outside the streets were still white with heat, the air shimmering. At the cafés tourists clustered at pavement tables and sweated into their thé glacés and citron pressés and wondered why they didn’t feel refreshed. But in the restaurant it was dim and cool as some underwater grotto, as I had known it would be. Dark paneled walls, white tablecloths, huge paintings upon the walls. They had given me the best table, of course—Meunier SARL has supplied them with rare vintages over the years—and the air-conditioning sent an icy plume down the back of my silk shirt as I sipped my mineral water.
“Madame Meunier.” The waiter came over. “Bienvenue. The usual?”
Every time I have eaten there with Jacques I have ordered the same. The endive salad with walnuts and tiny dabs of Roquefort. An aging wife is one thing; a fat wife is another.
But Jacques was not there.
“L’entrec?te,” I said.
The waiter looked at me as though I had asked for a slab of human flesh. The steak has always been Jacques’ choice.
“But Madame,” he said, “it is so hot. Perhaps the oysters—we have some wonderful pousses en Claire—or a little salmon, cooked sous vide . . .”
“The steak,” I repeated. “Blue.”
The last time I ate steak was when a gynecologist, all those years ago, prescribed it for fertility; doctors here still recommend red meat and wine for many ailments. Months of eating like a caveman. When that didn’t work came the indignity of the treatments. The injections into my buttocks. Jacques’ glances of vague disgust. I had inherited two stepsons. What was this obsession with having a child? I could not explain that I simply wanted someone to love. Wholehearted, unreserved, requited. Of course, the treatments didn’t work. And Jacques refused to adopt. The paperwork, the scrutiny into his business affairs—he would not stand for it.
The steak came and I cut into it. Watched as the blood ran thin and palest pink from the incision. It was then that I looked up and saw him, Benjamin Daniels, in the corner of the restaurant. He had his back to me, though I could see his reflection in the mirror that ran along the wall. Something elegant about the line of his back: the way he sat, hands in his pockets. The posture of someone very comfortable in their own skin.
I felt my pulse quicken. What was he doing here?
He glanced up and “caught” me watching him in the mirror. But I suspected he knew I was there all along, had been waiting for me to notice him. His reflection raised the glass of beer.
I looked away. Sipped my mineral water.
A few seconds later, a shadow fell across the table. I looked up. That ingratiating smile. He wore a crumpled linen shirt and shorts, legs bare and brown. His clothes were entirely inappropriate for the restaurant’s formality. And yet he seemed so relaxed in the space. I hated him for it.
“Hello Sophie,” he said.
I bristled at the familiarity, then remembered I had asked him not to call me “Madame.” But the way he said my name: it felt like a transgression.