I leaned onto her shoulder. I watched her and the land moving outside her window, the speed like nothing I’d ever seen. Somehow monstrous, as if we were moving faster than we should. The enormity of the night’s events was becoming clear. My trip to my mother’s family was truly abandoned, and yet I was not afraid. With Euphrosyne, a loneliness I had felt even when my own family had been alive was gone. Behind me was the world I’d once lived in and here ahead of me now was something else altogether.
Who would we be? I wondered. Or, rather, Who were we now? For it seemed to me the night had wrought a transformation. I pulled my knife out again and held it up in the dark.
She squeezed my hand when she awoke. Good girl, she said. And then I fell asleep, waking only when the porter knocked to ask after our plans for dinner.
§
We found rooms easily enough. Afterward, we counted our money and decided we had enough to last us for two weeks and that, we decided, was enough time for us to discover if we were wanted women. I dictated a letter to Euphrosyne for the cirque owner, saying I had to leave suddenly to visit a sick aunt and that I hoped he would understand.
Is he kind? she asked me.
I think he may be, I said. I knew he’d be angry, but I was sure my little rose would bring me luck with him again.
Each day Euphrosyne read the newspapers from Paris for some report of the death of the man she’d attacked, but after the first few days, when we saw no sign of the crime, we relaxed into the idea that he was alive and would be satisfied if she apologized. We decided we would act as if we were on a holiday. I’d need my job once I returned, but, for now, I was still inside the dream born once I’d pulled that knife.
I was unaccustomed to this kind of bathing. It amused me. Little tents covered the beach and from the distance resembled a parade of giant gowns. I imagined enormous women climbing down from them, as if from fantastic machines. The beachgoers made their camps underneath them.
The other apartments here were full of stylish women looking sadly out at the ocean from their windows, the cafés, the boardwalk, anxiously asking after letters. At first we laughed to find so many women here, and then we did not laugh. It seemed many had been promised money or a visit, and sometimes the man or the money came. More often, it seemed, this was where a man sent a mistress when he needed her to be away from Paris and away from the attention of others. A town for the end of an affair.
On our first walk on the promenade, as we drew near the Empress Eugénie’s palace there, Euphrosyne became excited. I wonder if we can see her, Euphrosyne said. She looked into the imperial resort with real determination, as if she were about to march up to the front door and ring the bell.
It’s like a dream for me, to meet her. Have you ever seen her?
Yes, I said, nodding at the vague memory of the woman in a domino mask. And it was then I told Euphrosyne the story of singing for the Empress and the ruby rose.
I kept it pinned into my bodice, and so I took it out to show her.
She gasped. Her fondness for the Emperor and Empress, her worship of them, this was one of the first things I learned about her, and this was when I did.
He gave this to you? You performed for her? Can you see her, do you think? she asked me. Could you go and call on her?
I shook my head no before saying anything. The idea made me recoil.
You could, you could. I don’t understand you, she said. If the Empress herself has seen you, you could be a real singer, and instead you’re out with the likes of me! She laughed at this, enough to begin coughing. I don’t understand.
You should be a singer, she said. This is what that means.
As we turned to go back, she said, When you do become a famous singer, when you’re a grande dame, you remember me, all right? You remember your Euphrosyne. We walked back to our hotel among the legions of waiting mistresses. We should get you back to Paris, she said. Now that it seems we’re not murderesses. Get you back to your glorious career.
I laughed.
I want you to swear something to me, she said then, drawing up short as she waited for me to stop laughing. Here, right now. We’ll swear it together.
I looked cautiously at her as she summoned what she was going to say.
We’re not to be like these, she said, gesturing at the stylish women around us. This is our vow. We’ll not come here again, ever, if it means waiting for some man to eventually stop paying our bills.
Some of the women near us heard and moved quickly away, indignant or sad, or both. She and I hadn’t discussed them once, and I understood why now.
Raise your right hand and place it on your heart, she said. Swear on that heart of yours, never.
Never, I said.
Never, she said.
We returned. We were happy, proud. We were sure we’d succeeded. And we were arrested the night we returned to the Bal Mabille.
§