There’ll be a fine for this, Odile said ominously, as we passed by her.
In her kitchen Euphrosyne held out her hand for my knife, and when I gave it to her, she stabbed it into the cork of a bottle of wine and twisted it out. She drank from the neck thirstily and handed it to me, and I did the same. This calls for a proper smoke, she said, and fumbled in her skirts, extracting two cigars. She cut the tips and struck a match against the stone of her counter, and soon the fragrant smoke lifted between us. She waved me to her balcony and handed me one.
I held it in my hand, happy.
Pull it into your mouth, not your throat, she said, as if I did not know. And she winked. It’s good practice, and then she giggled.
Now I can’t, I said, and made a face as I blew the smoke out in a gust.
She laughed openly now, and I smiled and held it to my mouth again.
So it is that I can, I said.
Under the soft light coming off the city in the dark, we smoked and watched the street below, passing the bottle between us until we grew quiet.
She reached out and took my hand and began to sing, loudly down into the street,
De préférence chaque soir,
L’amateur contemple
Les belles d’nuit qui s’font voir
Au boulevard du Temple!
In the street, a pair of drunken men roared their approval. Again, she said to me, and hit me on the arm, Sing with me!
We sang it again, and as we reached les belles, she sang instead les reines, overemphasizing it, and I laughed at her doing this until I was choking a little on the wine and smoke, and then she laughed at me, also until choking.
Again! she shouted at me. Everyone must hear us!
We sang it again, over and over, until the street complained loudly. At this, Euphrosyne pouted and threw her now-empty bottle into the street, where it made a satisfying crash. The concert is over, she yelled down. We clambered back into her apartment.
Les reines d’nuit, she said, toasting, as she stabbed another bottle open and drank.
Les reines d’nuit, I said, and drank after her.
Do you imagine the police are still searching for us?
I shrugged. I honestly could not say. I was still unused to the world, unused to the idea of police. In my life until then, every time I’d left, I’d left, and no one remembered me, and no one cared. Or, at least, not that I ever knew. As I stood in her kitchen, a glass of wine in my hand, as drunk as I ever had been, it seemed, yes, unlikely that anyone knew me except her.
I would think they are, she said. I am so tired of them, though. Are you?
I was about to shrug again and then she said, Yes, I can tell you are also.
It is dreary, this life, she said, and her head hung down for a moment. When she looked up at me, she said, But there are moments it is very bright. Do you love me? she asked.
I nodded.
Yes, I love you, too, she said. She stood and walked over to me. When I watch you in the ring, as you leap through the fire, it’s like you’re the only beautiful thing in all the world.
No one had ever given me this kind of compliment before, and it lit the air around us. I saw myself briefly as she must have seen me. All this time I’d admired her, I did not know she also admired me. I had never thought very much of what I did until then.
All the world, she said again. And then, Did I kill him, do you think? she asked. I think I might have killed him.
I said nothing to this, afraid she might have gone mad. I loved her, it was true. But I barely knew her.
I hope he is stronger than that, I managed. She laughed.
We’ll need a disguise, she said. Come.
I had never seen an apartment like hers—I did not yet know what it was or where I was. The front rooms were decorated like a theater’s lobby, with red velvet and gold braid, as if her bedroom were a theater box. Dark cherrywood furniture and thick rugs. I stopped myself from lying down on the one in her foyer. The door to her bedchamber had been made to resemble a box door exactly, papered in pale pink silk, which matched the fabric of the chairs, the bed, and her tufted vanity seat. All felt vaguely obscene, and yet magical, so different it was from the outside. I wanted to go back out to the foyer and enter again and again, to feel it again.
She went to her closet. They must be very good disguises, she said. For we are now murderesses. She gestured at her bed. Please, she said. Make yourself at home.
Where will we go? I asked.
Oh, she said. Maybe to Biarritz? Do you have any money saved?
I . . . Yes, I said quickly. I do. I thought of the money I’d saved, still there, for Lucerne.
It’s only for a little while, she said. I’m sure he’s not dead. I’m sure he’s just now with his friends, alive and already on to some café for a digestif.
On the bed, I nodded. She held out a beautiful tweed traveling costume. This, perhaps, she said. It’s so modest, no one will recognize me in this. She smiled at me. Unless they see the shoes.
I wondered how far to go with this. I was expected at the cirque the next day.