He’d worked up the nerve to call her after talking it over with Veejay, who wasn’t helpful at all, suggesting that Neil try to blackmail Barry into letting him see the videos and maybe getting a cut of the profits if he were, like, selling them on the Internet or something. “Don’t be an asshole,” Neil told Veejay, and Veejay did finally call his cousin who was a solicitor in Sheffield, and found out that yes, it was totally illegal to film people in the shower without them knowing it, and even though Barry could try to make the case that it was all in his own house, that argument almost never stood up.
So Neil had called Magdute to tell her that he was really sorry he hadn’t said anything right away, but that he had found a hidden camera behind a double mirror in the downstairs bathroom. He’d even gotten Veejay’s cousin to say he’d do a three-way call and talk to her about taking Barry to court, but she said she didn’t want to. Neil had planned a whole speech about how he felt like such a jerk for having waited a full twenty-four hours to tell her about it, but in the end he didn’t have to use it, because Magdute only said “Mmm” when he started back at the beginning and told her about the padlock on the medicine cabinet and the Altoids box with the hole in its side and that weird note. “So this camera is looking at the bath?” she asked, and when Neil said yes, Magdute said, “Ahh, okay,” and that was it. When he asked if she was still there she said, “Oh, yes,” and something in her voice made him think she was trying not to laugh. He wondered if maybe he was getting worked up over nothing, or if it was all a big joke on him. But as soon as he hung up the phone he told himself that he’d done the right thing. You couldn’t know that there was a secret camera in somebody’s bathroom and not say anything. And it really couldn’t have been some kind of twisted practical joke. The hole drilled through the Altoids box had had rust around it and the box was stuck to the shelf as if it had been there for a long time. Finally he decided that if it was a joke, it would have fooled someone way less gullible, and if it wasn’t, well Magdute was a grown-up. Now she knew, and she could do what she wanted.
So it wasn’t that Neil was unhappy that Magdute was coming to Paris, it just seemed like it might be sort of awkward. And it wasn’t very convenient. There was no good way to take the metro from Gare du Nord to the archives, and he’d have to carry all his books and papers with him if he was going to go straight there after she left. And it wasn’t like he and Magdute were friends. Neil thought about calling her back and telling her he couldn’t make it. But on the other hand, it wasn’t like Neil had girls calling him up every day, asking if he wanted to have a coffee.
Her call reminded him that he’d never sent his father the Christmas presents from her mother. The shopping bag Magdute had given him at the bus stop in Swindon only had a packet of Euro-style coffee in it, along with some woolen socks and a couple of sort of unflattering photos of a woman in front of a Christmas tree. Pretty crappy presents, and they showed that Neil’s father and Magdute’s mother didn’t know each other very well because Neil’s father didn’t even drink coffee.
The problem was that whenever Neil thought about sending the presents—and he really had thought about it, several times—he ended up thinking about Barry’s house and the girl in the party dress he’d seen behind the door. Her particular expression made things complicated. Obviously she hadn’t wanted to be seen, and the noise Neil made opening the bathroom door had startled her. But the look on her face, the way her eyes had gone wide and she pressed two fingers to her lips—Neil still wasn’t sure if she’d been warning him to keep quiet or asking him for some kind of help. Each time Neil started to look for a box to mail the presents home in, he would get to thinking about the last time he’d been looked at like that, and he’d end up deciding all over again that he couldn’t let his father know he’d ever been to Swindon. It was better for his dad to think that Neil had flaked and never made the trip than to have to tell him about the house with the pictures of naked girls and the camera in the medicine cabinet.
Old guys doing weird, probably illegal things involving young women was a subject Neil was never in a million years going to voluntarily bring up in a conversation with his father, who had practically been fired from his job as an English teacher for some stuff that had happened with a student. It had been a pretty big deal in their really small town, on the front page of the local paper for weeks during Neil’s eighth-grade year. The girl was also in eighth grade, which made the whole thing worse, and after one single, horrible confrontation, when Neil had said ugly things to his father and his father had cried, neither of them had ever mentioned the thing again.
The girl’s name was Becca Gallegos and she and Neil had known each other since they were kids. When Neil’s parents got divorced, he and his mom moved into the trailer park where Becca’s family lived and she and Neil would ride bikes together and dig for treasure in Neil’s backyard. Becca started out a grade ahead of Neil, so they weren’t in class together until middle school, when she got held back. It wasn’t that she was slow or anything, she just had a lousy home life and missed a lot of class. Which, Neil’s father said, was why she needed extra encouragement.
By the time Becca got to eighth grade she was a mess. She wore a bunch of eye shadow and went around looking spooked and scribbling things in a little notebook. It was that notebook that was Neil’s dad’s undoing, because he offered to read some of her writing and began having her stay after class to discuss it. At some point Becca started telling people that Neil’s dad had done some inappropriate stuff and her father threatened to sue the school district.
Things got pretty ugly for a while. Neil’s dad didn’t do himself any favors by comparing the school board to the Inquisition and ranting about how the language arts department and the entire education system didn’t know the first thing about nurturing literary talent. He said he’d never touched her and she said he had. There was a hearing in front of members of the school board, but apparently there wasn’t much evidence of anything because Becca never pressed charges and they let Neil’s dad resign and keep his pension.