“Mostly that she had one hell of a good time. You know how in Vanity Fair and First Press you see all those photo layouts of the European rich and privileged and wonder what it must be like to live like that? My mom lived like that. At least she did one job at a time. Look at some of these.” Nikki dealt out the photos like playing cards, one after another, each showing young Cynthia in a posh surrounding: on the sweeping lawn of a country estate out of Downton Abbey; at a lacquered grand piano with the rocky coast of the Mediterranean out the picture window behind her; on the private terrace of a hilltop manor overlooking Florence; in Paris with an Asian family under the marquee for the visiting Bolshoi Ballet; and on and on. “Apparently, for her, tutorin-residence was like a fairy tale dream you had to wake up from, but when you did, the butler came and got your bags.”
There were also pictures of Nicole and other young friends her mom’s age, plus a bunch of snapshots of her mom and her pals standing individually in various locales around Europe, grinning and gesturing grandly like Price Is Right spokesmodels, obviously their shared joke. But Nikki remained fixated on her mom and the frozen record of her bopping around in France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. In a number of photographs she appeared posed with her host families. Most of Cindy’s patrons had that look of old money, standing pompously in a circular drive or in private gardens, but mostly in predictable small-to-tall groupings of moms, dads, and impatient young musicians in bow ties or ruffled dresses in front of a Steinway grand. There was one other person in all those group pictures. A tall, handsome man, and in most of them, her mother stood close beside him.
“Who’s the William Holden knockoff?” asked Rook, tapping a shot of just the man and Cynthia together outside the Louvre. He was older than Nikki’s mother by twenty years and did give off the former leading man’s gritty attractiveness.
“I’m not sure. There is something familiar about him I can’t place.” She snatched the picture from him and put it back in the proper pile.
“Whoa, not so fast.” He picked it right back up. “Maybe it’s the William Holden thing you recognize…. Or is it something else?”
“Like what?” Nikki tried to grab it away again, but he dodged her. She said, “I don’t see William Holden.”
“I do. I see William Holden and Audrey Hepburn. They’re both straight off the movie poster for Paris When It Sizzles.” He held the photo up to her nose. “Check it out. His weathered good looks paired with her refined innocence masking the sexy tigress inside. You know, that could be us.”
Nikki looked away. “There is no sizzle in those pictures. He’s too old for her.”
“Know who I bet this is?” he said. “He’s that Oncle Tyler who set up her tutoring clients. Yeah, this is Tyler Wynn. Am I right?”
Ignoring him, she plucked another shot from the stack and held it up. “Hey, here’s one of just Mom taken right here in Paris.” The developer’s time stamp on the reverse read “May 1975.” The photo was of her mother balanced on one foot with a hand shading her eyes, comically peering into the future. It was snapped in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. “I want to go there,” said Nikki. “Right now.”
They left the keepsake box with the hotel manager to lock in the safe and took a taxi to Ile de la Cite. Darkness had fallen and the gray stoneworks of the edifice were bathed in white light, which also cast a spooky glow upon the gargoyles observing from above.
Rook knew what this was all about; she didn’t have to say it. They left the taxi and hurried along silently, walking around the back of a tour group that encircled nighttime street performers who juggled flaming batons. They made their way to their destination: the center of the square that faced the front entrance of the massive cathedral. They paused, patiently waiting for a high school field trip to clear away and then approached a small piece of metal embedded in the paving stones, a shiny octagon of brass rubbed smooth by years of wear. This was the exact location in the photo of Nikki’s mom. She took the picture out of her pocket to prepare herself and did what she’d come to do. A month shy of thirty-five years later, Nikki Heat stood in her mother’s footsteps. Then, raising one foot off the ground, she shielded her eyes in the identical hammy pose, which Rook captured with the flash of his iPhone.