Conquering Venus
By Collin Kelley
Conquering Venus
Copyright 2009 Collin Kelley
Published by: Vanilla Heart Publishing on Smashwords
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For Joy Thomas and Joy Borazjani,
who were there from the beginning.
Le silence eternal de ces espaces infinis m’effraie. – Blaise Pascal, France, 1660
Prologue
The Reflecting Hands
For here there is no place that does not see you.
You must change your life. – Rilke
In his dreams he can remember her name. From the shadowy first glimpses when she was peripheral, on the edge of a crowd or morphing into a friend or family member, to the day the plane lifted off from Memphis Airport bound for London and her face and body finally synchronized in mid-flight slumber. Upon waking, her image remains sharp and clear, but her name slips into the ether of his subconscious.
She is older, but stunning, like a French movie star; her mouth down-turned at the corners, dark eyes, hair long and blonde. She has a place now, too, not just random locations in unrelated dreams, but a balcony over a street. She appears, a palm raised in what seems like greeting, until she begins tracing her life line, a delicate finger circling the pad under her thumb, the mound of Venus. I don’t know what you mean, -----, he says with frustration. She smiles and rests her hands on the railing, their whiteness shocking against the black metal, and on the back of her left hand, between the thumb and index finger, is a tattoo of small interlocking crosses. He knows this marking, knows it like the back of his own hand, because in the summer of 1995 as Martin Page stares at himself in the mirror of his London hotel room, he can see the same tattoo inked into his skin – a South American symbol meaning “equal but opposite” – and her name is on the tip of his tongue.
Chapter One
The Dreaming
Martin sat at a dressing table in the Metropole hotel on London’s Edgware Road. He was twenty-two that year, but looked older. Tiny lines were forming around his eyes, while closer inspection revealed the beginning of a furrow in his brow. His skin was unblemished and pale, like so many blondes, eyes large and blue. Not fat or thin, just in between. When people noticed the tattoo, there was a momentary pause, a summing up of character, a re-assessment. They would notice he wore all black, that his eyes were often hidden behind bangs, that he spoke with a calm, detached voice. But their gaze would eventually flicker back to his left hand. Peter had the same tattoo when he was alive; inked in the same spot on the same day as Martin’s, when they decided they were familiars. At his parents’ insistence, the mortician covered Peter’s tattoo with make-up, so that when his hands were crossed over his heart in the long coffin, it would be as if those dark lines never existed. As if Martin never existed.
Earlier in the evening, Martin went downstairs to the large indoor swimming pool. He lost his way in the maze of hallways, and then emerged into a glass corridor that overlooked the pool below. He saw David McLaren alone in the pool doing laps. David was eighteen, athletic, tan and aware of his looks. When David began his backstrokes, he caught a glimpse of Martin looking down at him and felt a chill pass through him in the warm water. Like the first time they met, like he had suddenly caught his breath. But Martin did not see this moment of panic, for he was in the elevator, filled with both a dread and excitement he had not felt in years. When Martin came into the poolroom, David swam to the edge and smiled up at him.
“Why don’t you come in?” David asked.
“No, we have to be ready for dinner in an hour,” Martin said.
“Stop playing chaperone. Leave that to Lady Diane. Loosen up.”
David climbed out of the pool. The water ran down his lithe body, making his bathing suit cling to his narrow hips. David stood there running his hands through his wet, dark hair. Martin and David stared at each other. They had been in similar situations before, when something unspoken was palpable, a third person whispering, but the words were unclear.
“Let me make you as wet as I am,” David said opening his arm, water glistening.
Too late for that, Martin thought, sidestepping David, who laughed as he grabbed a towel and walked toward the changing room.
Back in his room, Martin remembered the evening four months ago when Diane Jacobs, his best friend, called and said she had been asked by her principal to fill in as chaperone for a group of students from the high school where she taught English on their graduation trip abroad. We need another chaperone, she said, I can finagle it so you can go. She badgered him into saying yes – it’s cheap and we’ll be there for over three weeks and they swore to God the hotels would be decent – and, after relenting, he went to bed and the woman, whose name he could almost recall, made her first appearance.
Martin sat at the mirror in a trance, and for the third time since he arrived in London, he could see her in the reflection, as if the glass did not exist. There were dark circles around her eyes, highlighted by her pale skin, and she wore her hair pulled back away from her face. The hands, in which she cradled her chin, showed her true age, and there was the tattoo…
There was a knock on the door. Both Martin and the woman in the mirror turned to acknowledge it. For a moment, Martin stared at the door.
“I’m coming. Just a second.”
Martin stood up and moved toward the door. He took a deep breath and went out into the hallway where Diane, David and the others were waiting.
In the mirror, the woman turned back to look at herself, unsure of what she had heard or where it came from. Her trance broken, yet feeling that something was in motion, the fluidity of time and space. She reached out and put her palm against the mirror. Over her shoulder, the reflection of her own city, its distant cacophony of traffic and voices like a second heartbeat slightly out of sync. There was a name on the tip of her tongue, had been for months, and an image becoming clearer by the moment. She tapped on the glass, intoning the mantra she used in place of the name that only came to her in dreams, sending it like a beacon into the unknown: Paris, Paris, Paris.
Diane Jacobs had met Martin four years earlier at an all-purpose grief counseling workshop for the bereaved, divorced and lonely hearted. She read about the workshop in Memphis’ daily newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, and decided to attend out of morbid curiosity. Diane also thought it would mollify her mother, who called constantly to express concern over her only daughter’s mental and spiritual welfare.
“Oh, my God…see a rabbi,” her mother screeched. “What do you wanna go to a grief counselor for? A divorce is private business, not something you tell everyone. Only a rabbi should know these things.”
“Mom, you rarely go to synagogue yourself. Why the hell are you pushing it on me?”
“Don’t curse, Diane.”
“You didn’t answer the question, Mom.”
“I go when I need to, that’s all you need to know. I go. It’s your father who doesn’t go.”
“That’s because he doesn’t want any reminders. You know that. You missed the whole concentration camp experience.”
“He should be thankful he’s here, with a nice home and a nice wife and a nice daughter, who rarely calls and never visits and should be going to synagogue. Why don’t you find one of those nice teachers to talk to? You need more friends. They have a singles night at synagogue…”
Diane felt alienated from the other teachers. They were all prim and proper, dedicated to their profession, with perfect children and husbands. She wanted to put nails through their heads. She half-heartedly tried to befriend one of the teachers, and told her she planned to attend the counseling workshop. The teacher was enthusiastic, telling Diane she might meet her next husband there. Instead she met Martin.
Although Diane was almost twenty years older, she and Martin had an instant bond. They watched impassively as the others poured out their grief in a sterile room at the downtown community center. Then one night Diane laughed out loud as an overweight woman declared her independence from the devil known as chocolate frosting. Diane slapped her hand over her mouth and caught Martin’s eye and he began to laugh as well. Little snickers he couldn’t control, the first time he had laughed in months and months. He put his chin on his chest and tried to breathe deeply, but he could feel Diane’s eyes on him. When he glanced back up, their eyes met and they began laughing so hard they were asked to leave the room.
“I knew coming here was a mistake,” Martin said once they were on the street outside.
“Well, at least you got a laugh at the expense of somebody else’s misery,” she said. “How often does that opportunity come along?”
“True.”
“Besides, that woman up there doesn’t know what misery really is. Her satanic pact with Betty Crocker ranks rather low on my misery meter. I bet you’ve got bigger problems than she has.”
“I don’t know…maybe,” Martin said hesitantly. He wanted to go home, but then she started digging through her purse for cigarettes.
“I should give them up, but sometimes you just need to fill your lungs with toxins.” She pulled a rumpled pack from her bag but it was empty. “Shit.”
Martin reached into his pocket and handed her the rest of his pack. “Keep it. I’ve gotta go. Nice to meet you.”
“Oh, I see. I lift your dreary spirits and then you run away.”
“I just need to go.”
“So, why were you up there?”
“Why were you?”
“Quid pro quo, Dr. Lecter,” she said, lighting up. “If you’re going home to drink alone, you might as well invite me. Are you even old enough to drink?”
“I’m eighteen. I live in Germantown with my parents.”
“Oh, baby, then you definitely don’t want to go home. There’s a diner up the street. Let me buy you coffee and you can tell me your life story.”
“You do know that I’m gay, right?” Martin asked.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“If you’re trying to seduce me, it won’t work.”
Diane laughed loudly, choking on the cigarette smoke. “You’re young enough to be one of my students. That’s not my bag.”
“Good to know. Nice to meet you, Diane.”
Martin walked down the street, but could feel the woman shadowing him. They walked to the diner and Diane stopped at the door. Martin kept walking. “Was it a car wreck, cancer, murder or suicide?” she called out to him.
Martin turned to look back at her. “What do you want from me?”
“Just to talk,” she said. There was a tone in her voice that Martin wouldn’t hear again for a long time—a hint of desperation. Martin nodded and walked through the open door she offered him.
They began to counsel each other during weekly sessions at the diner and never went back to the grief workshop. Over bad coffee and greasy food, Martin learned Diane was Jewish, divorced, unable to have children and growing to detest her job as a schoolteacher. Diane had come home early one day and found her husband in bed with someone else. She told him on the spot she wanted a divorce and moved out of the house into an apartment the next day. She often liked to imagine the look on her husband’s face as he opened the door and found their home completely empty, save for their marital bed.
Three months after their first meeting, Diane found out Martin was in the hospital after he missed one of their weekly sessions at the diner. She sensed there was more to Martin’s past, but she never pushed for more information. There was something unsaid in Martin’s emotionless recounting of Peter’s suicide. Often, they just talked about theatre and films and books they had read. During their last few meetings, Martin seemed more withdrawn. He was lethargic and unresponsive to the sarcastic comments she whipped out regularly to make him laugh. She asked him if he was taking any medication, but he smiled thinly and said, “I wish.”
“You’re not making any plans to join Peter are you?” she asked, half jokingly. The look on his face made her pause. Her dormant nurturing instinct kicked in. She had mixed emotions about Martin, most of which she pushed out of her mind. If he were straight, if he wasn’t damaged, she might have seduced him to boost her ego. God knows she could have used it.
She sat in the diner for nearly an hour waiting, a small panic beginning to blossom in her stomach. She went to Martin’s house and his embarrassed mother said he had gone away for a few weeks. The way she said “gone away” instantly tipped off Diane as to his whereabouts.
“What hospital?” Diane asked, and Martin’s mother went scarlet.
“He can’t have visitors, other than his family.”
“Why don’t you do me a favor then, Mrs. Paige? Why don’t you call over there at the loony bin you committed him to and tell them I’m his aunt. Tell them Aunt Diane wants to come and visit her nutty little nephew.”
“Who are you?” Martin’s mother demanded, and shouted back into the house for her husband.
“I’m a counselor at the grief workshop,” Diane lied. “We meet every week, you know. Wasn’t the workshop your idea?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Paige said, flustered, as her husband appeared in the doorway behind his wife. “This is the counselor at the grief workshop Martin was attending.”
Mr. Paige looked Diane up and down. “Damn lotta good she did,” he said, and walked back into the house.
London’s streets were bustling on the last night before Diane, Martin and the teenagers departed for Paris. Everyone was going home, going to dinner, going to the theatre or cinema.
Diane had a bad feeling about the attention Martin was giving to David, who had been in her English composition class. He was a typical jock, played baseball and was captain of the swim team. He was going to college on a full athletic scholarship. But her fine-tuned radar indicated there was something not so typical about him. She watched them walking together, huddled close in some intense conversation, as the other teens ran ahead toward the Underground station. She came up behind them and tapped Martin on the shoulder.
“Run along, Mr. McLaren…the chaperones need to have adult talk.” David rolled his eyes at her, winked at Martin and ran ahead to catch up with the others.
“You two were practically humping each other. Are you fucking him already?” Diane asked as Martin fell into step with her, but he didn’t answer.
“Don’t give me the silent treatment,” Diane persisted. “You hardly know him.”
“I know him. You know we’ve gone out a few times. Movies and driving around.”
“Golly-gee, did you park and neck, too?” Diane deadpanned.
“You’re not funny.”
“I’m a laugh-riot. Remember the night you met him at the mixer? What did I tell you?”
“You made some joke about him being Michael Jackson fodder and I should use him as a jack-off fantasy and find someone my own age.”
“Bingo. You met David when he was still my underage student. Are you trying to get me fired?”
“He’s an adult now. He can make up his own mind.”
“Or you can use your super homo powers and make it up for him.”
“You’re implying that I’m seducing him, which is flattering...”
“Look…I don’t even want to have this conversation. I don’t want to know anything about it. I’m the oblivious, harried spinster teacher who doesn’t know about the urgings of young boys. Hell, I didn’t even want this gig. If their mealy-mouthed French teacher hadn’t gotten preggers, we wouldn’t even be here.”
“Is that what you’re going to say in court?”
“I hate you so much.”
“Be happy for me, Diane. I haven’t felt this happy in ages…as you well know. Be supportive.”
Diane grabbed his arm and pulled him up short. “Don’t do that. Don’t accuse me of not being supportive. Six months ago, you wouldn’t look twice at the guys I introduced you to, now suddenly you’re after one of my kids.”
“One of your kids? You don’t even like him. You said he’s a dumb jock…”
“I never said he was dumb.”
“You implied it…you got that dismissive tone in your voice.”
“David is smart, but if he has an inkling of queerness, it’s buried down deep. Do you really want to devote your energy to this?”
“I’m not devoting energy. We’re in Europe; I’m having fun. If something happens, it happens…”
“Hey, hey…do not blow that much smoke up my ass. I know you well enough to know that ‘if something happens, it happens’ is a big bunch of malarkey.”
“Malarkey?”
“Let me put it in plain English for you, then…you’re after this boy because he reminds you of Peter.”
Martin was momentarily speechless, then turned and walked away. “Fuck you, Diane. That was uncalled for.”
“It was very much called for,” she said walking behind him, nipping at his heels like a dog. “Tell me one good reason for pursuing David and I’ll shut up.”
“He does remind me of Peter. Is that wrong? He’s funny and he’s interested in what I have to say. Damn it…how much longer are you going to have me on suicide watch? It’s been…”
“Okay,” Diane said, putting her hands over her ears. “Fine. He reminds you of Peter. I think that’s sick on about eight different levels, but you answered the question. Just do me a favor. Be discreet. These kids would love to see me out of a job and homeless. He may be of age, but I’m still culpable.”
Martin kissed Diane on the cheek. “Always thinking of yourself.”
The teenagers ran into the entrance of the Underground, some trying to jump over the turnstiles. “This isn’t New York,” Diane yelled. “We pay to ride the subway.” They were normal teenagers, wild with being away from their parents, wanting to go to pubs, wanting to go to Soho and look at the freaks.
“You are the freaks,” Diane told them.
The bane of Diane’s existence was a student named Beth. Very gothic, dyed black hair, too much white makeup, nose ring. “I want to get a tattoo,” she said sullenly, as they waited in line.
“And why would you want to do that, dear? You’re such a lovely girl.” Diane rolled her eyes at Martin.
“My mom said it was okay.”
“I’ve got three words for you: dirty foreign needles.”
“You’re so xenophobic, Ms. Jacobs,” Beth said as she slouched away.
“Get hepatitis and die then,” Diane called after her.
“I will!” Beth shouted back. “And it’s not the subway. It’s called the Tube.”
“Whatever. Fucking little ghoul.”
On the escalator down to the platform, David was standing so close to Martin that their hands brushed together. The Underground station echoed with the voices of passengers and the roar of the trains. Martin allowed himself the small thrill of pressing his hand against David’s. It would be an accident, too many people on the escalator. Martin froze when David took his hand. He looked at David, who was in his own little world.
“I didn’t know we were at the hand-holding stage yet,” Martin whispered in his ear, trying to make a joke of it, the same way David always played off his little come-ons. But David didn’t react the way Martin expected, never did.
“That’s so gay,” David laughed nervously, snatched his hand away, balled it into a fist and punched him on the arm hard.
Martin had never told David about Peter, had sidestepped questions about the past and the tattoo on his hand, which David thought was cool in a prison sort of way. One night before they left for Europe, David had come and picked him up in his Jeep, and they drove for over an hour, not speaking, the radio turned down to a low hum.
“Thanks, man,” David had said as he dropped Martin off at his apartment. “I just needed to get out and drive and think about some stuff, but I didn’t want to be alone. You know.”
Martin had smiled and nodded, but he didn’t know, not really. David was a moody boy, and that drew Martin like a moth to flame. Just like it had drawn him to Peter.
There was a commotion on the platform, someone shouting, but Martin wasn’t paying any attention. He was looking at David again, searching for an answer in the boy’s unfathomable gaze. They were almost at the bottom of the escalator when Martin heard the word “bomb.”
In an instant, Martin and David were being swept back up the escalator by a crush of bodies. A computerized voice announced evacuation. Martin’s feet slipped on the escalator steps, which were going in the wrong direction. Someone at the bottom hit the emergency stop, the entire machine lurched, and everyone on it fell forward screaming. David was on Martin’s back, trying to help him up. Somewhere behind him, Martin heard Diane calling his name.
David had Martin around the waist, pulled him up and back against him. Even in the chaos, Martin wanted to go weak in his arms, but David was urging him up the stairs. Martin could feel the weight of the people behind them.
At the top of the escalator, David guided Martin toward the exit where people were streaming out like ants. There was the sound of sirens converging on the site. A large man pushed David and Martin out of the way, almost making them fall, but David pulled Martin close to him.
“Are you all right?” David asked, his eyes fixed on Martin.
Martin nodded. David reached up and pushed the hair out of Martin’s face, then pulled his hand away. He had gotten too close. Checked himself emotionally.
“I’m sorry to break up this tender moment, but let’s get the hell out of here,” Diane said as she ran past them.
David stepped back, looking at Diane then back to Martin. For a moment, Martin saw the insecurity, the uncertainty.
They wound up eating at a McDonald’s across from the hotel. Diane confined everyone to their rooms, which was an unpopular decision. Martin heard some of the teens sneaking away in the night. He had already undressed for bed when there was a knock at the door. Diane wanted him to go downstairs to the bar for a drink. “I need to take the edge off. Get dressed and come down,” she said.
David, whose room was just two doors down from Martin’s, stepped into the hallway and wanted to know what was going on. He was shirtless and wore a pair of sweatpants low on his hips.
“We’re going downstairs for a drink,” Martin said, amazed that David had not slipped away with the others.
“Cool. Hold up and I’ll come with,” David said as he disappeared back into his room.
“He likes to show off that bod, doesn’t he?” Diane said. “Maybe I should get drunk and make a pass at him and see what happens.”
“That would certainly get your teaching license revoked.”
In the bar, David downed a succession of screwdrivers until his head was lolling around on his neck. A bus was picking them up at eight the next morning and taking them to Waterloo Station to catch the train to Paris, Diane reminded them.
“Don’t get drunk,” she admonished David. “You’ll be too hung over and I’ll leave your ass here without any hesitation.”
David giggled and slapped his hand over his mouth, eyes darting between Diane and Martin.
“How many of those have you had?”
“I lost count,” David slurred.
Martin was working steadily on his fourth drink, waiting to feel the slight dizziness that always overtook him when drunkenness was setting in. “I still have feeling in ninety percent of my body. They must be watering them down.”
“I’m just waiting for that nice warm feeling to overtake me so I can go to sleep,” Diane said, snuggling down into the plush chair.
“You know what they say about single women who drink alone,” Martin said, as David began to snore. He was lying face down on the couch, drool running out of the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, yeah, that’s sexy,” she said, stirring what was left of her huge margarita. “I can certainly see the attraction.”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about this anymore. So you wouldn’t be… what was the word… culpable?”
“Don’t be pissy. Have another drink.”
“I’m not being pissy.”
“Yeah, you are. You have that tone.” She saw the notebook tucked between Martin’s thigh and the armrest of his chair. “Are you writing?”
“A little.”
“Poetry?”
“Yes.
“Read me something. You haven’t done that in ages.”
“I can’t,” he said, nodding toward David.
“Lord…”
“You’re ruining my drinking experience, Diane.”
She turned the glass up and drained the contents. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Make sure you get lover boy upstairs and tucked in.”
Martin leaned his head back and looked up through the atrium. On a balcony above him, a woman had come to the edge. She was elegantly dressed and held a champagne flute. When she noticed Martin looking at her, she raised her glass to him, and it brought on a goose-bump inducing sense of déjà vu. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them, prepared to raise his glass in return, the woman was gone. Maybe it was his imagination; he realized he was very drunk and slowly made his way back to his room, passing out in his clothes on the big empty bed.
The dream comes and goes, ebbs like a tide. Martin is on the stairs in Peter’s house. It is so perfectly quiet. There is the sound of gunshots so deafening it makes Martin stumble and clutch at his ears. Martin is running back up the stairs to the landing and Peter’s room just beyond. The stairs are like an escalator going the opposite direction and Martin cannot gain any ground. The woman is at the top of the stairs, reaching out a hand to pull him up. He lunges and misses, tries to call her name, but like a horrible childhood dream, he has no voice.
Chapter Two
The Other Side Of The Mirror
At just before seven o’clock in the morning, Irène Laureux sat up in her bed drenched in sweat, heart pounding. She thought it was a heart attack, then remembered the sound of gunshots. Had she been dreaming about Jean-Louis? Although dead for almost thirty years, he still came to her in dreams, but this was not the same. She absurdly thought she was having someone else’s dream. It was that book she was editing on the paranormal, she decided, a useless waste of paper that would sell millions. Her editor at the publishing house, Gerard, kept her eye sharp by sending a variety of books for her to polish at home. Her beloved prison which she had been unable to leave for…what was it now? Oh, no. It couldn’t be twenty-five years? In the summer of 1995, Irène Laureux was sixty-seven years old.
The medical term—the psychobabble mumbojumbo—was agoraphobia. She had been afflicted with it in one form or another most of her life. Her parents used to drag her outside to the Tuileries and playgrounds to be with other children. She bristled at the noise, the sheer volume of people on the metro. Jean-Louis took her to Versailles to walk in the gardens and boating on the Grand Canal. But they were all gone and there was no one to ease her fears, to make her go outside.
Irène crawled to the end of the bed and pushed open the double doors to her balcony. Her giant gray cat, a lazy Persian named Pierre, was waiting patiently to be let out to take up his favorite spot in the sun. She pulled on a robe, piled her hair up on her head and went out also. The tobacconist, Anton, was opening his shop across narrow rue Rampon. She called down to him.
“Bonjour, Madame Irène,” he called back.
“A box of Gauloises…quickly,” she smiled. “I ran out last night and am desperate.”
She couldn’t even walk across the street for cigarettes. She had everything delivered. Her food, her smokes, the manuscripts she edited. Gerard had been promising her a computer for months, said it would reconnect her to the world. Despite being only a few miles from the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre—places taken for granted by Parisians—she had not seen them in over two decades.
Anton came out with two boxes of smokes and a copy of Le Monde, and Irène put money into the silver bucket she kept tied to the balcony and lowered it to the street. “Are you feeling better today, Madame?” Anton inquired. “I was very concerned about you.”
Irène’s face flushed with embarrassment. She had tried to go outside two days before and failed again. Although she knew it would never work, she would sometimes put on a nice suit and make her way downstairs to the lobby. As she neared the front doors, her heartbeat would speed up and her breathing would become labored. Irène would open the doors and step into the street. For a moment, she would be frozen. Her mind whirling as a group of tourists approached, enveloping her. She would crumple, fall against the wall, grope blindly for the door. Anything to get back inside.
“I’m fine, Anton,” she said, lighting up her first cigarette of the morning and inhaling deeply. “What would I do if you weren’t there to pick me up out of the street?”
“The Jungians have been no help?”
“They are persistent, but even they have given up,” she laughed. The Jungian psychoanalytical institute was at the opposite end of rue Rampon, and while doctors and students never made house calls, Irène was a special case. They tried to get her to keep dream journals, to make the connection with her past problems to solve the ones of the present. They urged her to use her mind to overcome the fear, to find synchronicity. And she tried to conjure up Jung’s form of magic, to banish the fear, all to no discernable effect.
“Call out if you need anything,” Anton said, tipping his cap to her. Like most men, Anton was smitten with her. She might have been an older woman, but she still had her charm. She was a faded Juliet, a damsel in distress. Irène worked this perception to her advantage, while secretly lamenting the lines that were starting to show on her face and the spots appearing on the back of her hands. Her hands had been lovely once. Even the tattoo she shared with Jean-Louis looked more faded than usual. She rubbed her thumb over it, to feel the raised surface, a small comfort. She used to watch for people’s reactions when she extended her hand, the horror that registered on their faces. Weren’t tattoos only for sinners, thieves and the outcasts of society? She wore hers like a badge.
The morning was cloudy and Pierre moved back to the doorway, watching Irène checking the boxes of flowers that lined the balcony, which ran the entire length of the building. The high-ceilinged apartment in the 11th arrondissement once belonged to her aunt, her mother’s sister. It was with this aunt that Irène came to live as a small girl. The Nazis were still in Paris and her mother and father had been taken away. When her aunt died, Irène inherited a small income and the apartment, her comfortable prison.
The opposite end of the balcony faced the Bel Air Hotel, her main source of entertainment long before she became confined. Anyone with agility could have leapt from a window on the Bel Air Hotel’s third floor to her balcony. Irène could see inside all the rooms on the floor opposite and partially into the rooms above and below. Although she would never admit it, Irène Laureux was a peeping tom. She had a small pair of black binoculars that she would train on the windows. Oh, the things she had seen in the fifty-plus years she had lived across from the hotel. Sex of all kinds: men and women, men and men, transvestites. She saw someone jump from the roof and a woman floating in a bathtub full of her own blood where she had slit her wrists.
Indeed, Irène and her binoculars had stopped a number of crimes: shifty-eyed maids pocketing guests’ jewelry, repairmen attempting to molest women. The old owner of the Bel Air, also smitten with Irène for more years than he could remember, figured she had saved him thousands of francs in lawsuits alone, so when irate guests phoned the front desk or stormed downstairs to the lobby, he told them Irène was a government agent on special assignment. It usually worked. Those guests would return to their rooms and try to pretend like no one was watching, afraid to close their windows for fear Irène would report them for suspicious activity.
It was most alarming at night when a man and woman were trying to consummate a honeymoon; they would peer out the window to see if the secret agent was on the balcony. It was hard to tell because Irène would turn off all her lights and sit on the balcony in darkness. Then, there would be the sound of a match strike and a cigarette would glow to life. Irène relished these moments.
Irène went back into her apartment through the living room doors to put coffee on. The phone rang on her desk, which was stacked with manuscripts and offered a perfect view of the hotel. It would be Gerard calling to check on the status of the manuscript she was editing. She decided to torture him
“Irène, mon amie…”
“I have nothing to say to you, monsieur. You disappoint me.”
Gerard tripped over his tongue. “What, what have I done?”
“You have been promising me a computer for months, and still nothing. It’s 1995, Gerard, we must keep up with the times.”
“I will. I swear it. You must compose your memoirs.”
“No one wants to read that,” she scoffed. “Don’t try and flatter me. I just want to be able to read these manuscripts without having to rely on that little cretin you employ as a courier. It would make both of our lives so much easier. The woman who lives downstairs has offered to show me how to use e-mail to send the manuscripts back and forth.”
“You have my word.”
“Hmmm…”
There was a pause and Gerard asked timidly, “Have you finished editing…”
“Of course, silly man. Send that little monster to pick it up. And tell him to use the buzzer, not scream in the street.”
“Merci, Irène…of course. I will speak to him personally. I cannot have my best editor upset.”
Pierre was brushing against her legs under the desk, demanding his breakfast. Irène was hungry, too. She would bring her coffee out to the big table on the balcony and read the newspaper. The old hotel owner had told her the night before that another large group of American high school students were checking in today. He would pack them onto the third floor so Irène could keep an eye on them with her binoculars.
While the coffee perked and Pierre devoured his breakfast, Irène found herself at the large piano that Jean-Louis bought her the year before he died. She played reasonably well when she played, which wasn’t very often. Atop the piano were photographs of the dead, so many of them: her parents, her aunt and her husband. He was buried just up the avenue in Père Lachaise, but she never visited. Could not.
The dream came back to her – the sound of gunshots in her head, and that boy who had been appearing almost nightly for months. She placed her hands flat on the dark wood of the piano to steady herself. She could see herself reflected back in its dark, ebony surface and remembered sitting at her dressing table mirror. She had fallen into some kind of daydream or trance and could see someone else staring back at her…someone with a tattoo like hers.
Irène looked up and her eye caught the statue of the Venus de Milo, a small, perfect replica sitting on a pedestal near the front door. Irène often found herself staring at the statue, the original just a few metro stops away in the Louvre. Her husband bought the statue before he died, his last gift to her. The goddess of love, the image of beauty, Venus was said to have been an indecisive woman who did not know what she wanted, so she took everything. But she was conquered in the end, turned to stone. Venus de Milo, with no arms, her body contorted, her lovely face revealing nothing.
“Go to hell,” she said out loud to the statue, causing Pierre to look up from his food, startled by the anger in her voice.
The sound of gunshots is deafening at the top of the stairs, which are pushing him backwards so that every step is wasted, like he’s running in place. Martin opens his mouth to scream…
Someone was knocking at Martin’s door. He sat up in bed sweating profusely. His mouth was dry and the back of his throat sore. The dream came often, but the escalator was a new twist, prompted by the events in the Underground the night before. The shadow woman had been there before, but never so clear. The dream manifested itself in a variety of ways—the stairs collapsing, turning to a slide, disappearing altogether—but the end was always the same; Martin never made it to the top.
Martin got out of bed and stumbled in the dark hotel room to the door. He opened it and the bright lights made him throw his hand up in front of his eyes.
“Dude... you fuckin’ left me in the lobby last night,” David said laughing. “I woke up about four this morning face down in my own drool.”
“Oh, shit…I was so drunk. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no biggie. Glad to see you finally cut loose a little bit. I’ve woken up in stranger places than that. You look like ass, dude.”
“Thanks, I feel like it.”
“We leave in an hour.”
“How the hell are you so full of energy?”
“Cuz I’m young and full of cum,” David laughed at his own joke, and started gyrating against Martin’s leg. “Get movin.’” He punched Martin in the arm and went back to his own room.
Somehow, Diane was able to rouse the teens and get them all to Waterloo Station to make the train. The Eurostar was preparing to depart and Martin was struggling with a suitcase heavy with the books purchased on Charing Cross Road and in the stalls at Camden Town. He was hung over, his head pounding. There had been some kind of mix up with tickets; too many passengers booked on the same car.
Diane, David and the rest of the students had already gone ahead, so Martin was the last to reach the platform. A porter was waving him on, urging him to hurry. The sleek bullet train suddenly moved forward. “Better hurry, sir, the train is leaving the station,” the porter said as he took Martin’s bags.
Martin ran back down the platform in search of his car. He had nightmares about this kind of thing. A departure announcement echoed through the cavernous depot. Martin saw Diane’s head leaning out of a car door just ahead. “Hurry, for godsake!” she yelled at him. The train was picking up speed. Martin jumped into the car, and Diane grabbed his arms to steady him.
“What the hell happened?” she asked.
“They’ve booked three people in each seat,” he said.
A door opened behind them and a porter entered from another car. He pushed past them quickly, even as Diane reached out to grab his arm. “Excuse me! I’m Jewish. I have an inbred fear of crowded trains. I want to sit down please!” The train lurched forward and Martin grabbed Diane to keep her from falling. Just when they thought they were going to be standing up for the three-hour trip to Paris, the conductor returned and said he had a seat for Diane. She threw up her hands in surrender. “Ask for a refund,” she advised Martin as she went into the car. “We can blow the money on whores and crack.”
Ten minutes later, the conductor told Martin another seat was not to be found and that a first class car was being opened for him.
“You mean I’ll be up there alone?”
“It’s quite comfortable, sir. You may ask a companion to sit with you if you like.”
Martin made his way unsteadily down the aisle of the train until he located David’s seat. He was sitting with some of the other teenagers and already involved in a game of cards.
“What the fuck happened to you?” David asked. “Where’s your seat?”
“They moved me up to first class. Come sit with me. They said I could bring someone up. Free drinks.” Martin smiled conspiratorially.
“Nah,” David said, patting his jean pocket where there was the outline of a small flask. Martin had seen David drinking from it several times while in London. “I’m gonna stay here and play cards with the guys. I’ll come up later.”
“Oh, sure. Okay.”
Martin walked back up the aisle, seeing the back of Diane’s head. She was asleep, her forehead pressed against the window.
The private car was vast and empty, but the seats were big and comfortable. The porter came in every few minutes asking Martin if he wanted drinks or food, but Martin asked him not to come back. He checked his watch, hoping David would join him.
The English countryside passed by quickly as the train approached the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. When the Eurostar hit French soil and the high-speed tracks, the train would hit its maximum cruising speed and bring them into Gare du Nord at two o’clock.
Martin leaned back in the plush seat and nodded off even before the train reached Dover and the Channel Tunnel. He dreamed he was walking down a narrow street. The sky moved like time lapse. He looked up, and in slow motion a figure emerged onto a balcony. It was the woman from his dreams, so clear now he could see every detail. She extended her hand down to him, beckoned and he thought nothing of it when his feet left the pavement.
Chapter Three
Adagio
Martin stepped off the train at Gare du Nord and blinked in the dazzling light. The sun was drying the pavement after a rain shower and the sky was becoming a brilliant blue.
A porter was putting all the bags on the platform and passengers were milling about and pushing other bags out of the way to find their own. Diane walked up, hair askew, lipstick smeared on one corner of her mouth. Martin laughed at her.
“Did we hit a rough patch of track?”
“Piss off,” Diane said. “Like these Parisian bastards give a shit what I look like. Where’s my luggage? I need a shower. I have train funk.”
“You are going to be a crazy old woman,” Martin called to her as Diane made her way toward the growing mound of luggage. The teenagers were already there, throwing bags around. She flipped him off behind her back without ever breaking stride.
David was dragging his and Martin’s bag down the platform. “Sorry I didn’t come up front, I totally passed out again. I was so wasted last night.”
David was the group’s de facto translator, since none of the other teenagers could read or understand a word of French. Martin read it and spoke it better than he let on, but told no one because he did not want to be bothered with translating for the group.
“How could they pass French and not even be able to read a few simple words?” Diane wondered. “That teacher of theirs was a worthless whore. I hope she has a difficult pregnancy.”
As the group was trying to figure out how to buy tickets on the metro, Diane discovered that Beth had gotten her tattoo; some sort of dragon on the back of her neck. It was an infected, bloody mess. “My god! It looks like it was done in prison with a rusted fork!” Diane screamed.
“Chill out, Ms. Jacobs. It’s just some puss. You shoulda seen my nipples when I got them pierced.”
“Okay! That’s more than I wanted to know,” Diane said, clutching at her chest. “If you get gangrene and die, I don’t wanna hear it. No lawsuits!”
The teens ignored Diane and passed money over to David, who was haggling with a woman behind a glassed enclosure about the kind of tickets needed to get the group to République Square. The line was being held up and people were already making comments at the back of the line for the American tourists to move on. Martin realized he had forgotten to exchange money at Waterloo in all the confusion. He shrugged at David helplessly, and David winked at him and bought another ticket. “Thanks,” Martin said as David handed him the little blue stub.
“You’ll have to work that off later,” David said, the smell of alcohol on his warm breath.
Martin punched David hard on the arm. “That is so gay.”
David was surprised, but then laughed it off. “You are so weird. Diane must be rubbing off on you.”
Diane was struggling with her bags down the steps to the train platform, musing aloud why there were never any down escalators in Europe. A hot wind blew through the metro station as one of the ancient trains approached. A distant smell of something rotting came along with it. “I’m holding my breath for the next two weeks,” Diane said.
The metro was packed and Martin found himself pressed under some man’s armpit. Diane secured the edge of a seat, where she sat with her head in her hands having the “ultimate Midol moment.” David was pressed against Martin’s back. The train moved out of the station, gathered speed, then jerked to a stop. Martin bounced off the man in front of him and back against David, who was hanging on to the overhead railing. “You just wanted to bump into me like that,” David said. They were so close, Martin could feel the heat coming off David’s body.
“What was the line from that Meryl Streep movie where all those people were packed into the trailer?” David asked.
“One more person in here and we’ll need a lubricant.”
David stared at him. “I can’t believe you knew that right off the top of your head.”
Diane looked up and said, “Martin knows a lot about lubricants.”
All eyes turned to her and stared. Martin’s mouth was hanging open.
“Movies! I mean, Martin knows a lot about movies! Did I say lubricants?” She laughed, then dropped her head back into her hands and groaned.
David turned back to Martin and winked.
République Square was a bustling place, full of shops and American fast food restaurants. Hunched old women hurried to the market, men in business suits with mobile phones clamped to their ears, bicycles whizzing past. Small cars weaved in and out, barely missing each other and pedestrians. Diane searched her map for rue Rampon.
“It’s this way,” David said, pointing down Boulevard Voltaire. “It should be just past those buildings.” Martin walked in that direction, as David and Diane argued over the map and the teens sat down on the ground with their bags.
Martin saw the sign for rue Rampon attached to the side of a building on the corner, and when he turned down the street, he recognized it as the place from his dream. He was overcome by déjà vu again… the narrow street and a building with a balcony full of flowers. But no one was visible on the balcony; nothing stirred on rue Rampon at all.
The teenagers came up behind him. Diane was yelling at Beth, David was laughing with one of the girls who had been flirting with him since London. They all pushed past Martin, who was rooted to the spot. The teens saw the Bel Air Hotel halfway up the street and all started running for it, shouting.
“Take this bag, Martin,” Diane said, hefting one of her carry-on bags to him. “I think I’ve dislocated my shoulder.”
Diane ran to catch up with her charges before they descended on the hotel staff. Martin moved up the street slowly, drinking it all in. He felt the urge to write down what he was seeing, to capture the moment. He was digging in his backpack for the notebook, walking toward the hotel entrance, when he heard music coming from somewhere above him. It grew louder as he reached the hotel and Martin recognized it—Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Its rising chord section and shimmering strings were almost at their crescendo. It was coming from the apartment, the one with the balcony full of flowers. Martin looked up.
Someone was there. The woman from his dream. He blinked rapidly to clear his eyes of tears, which came with no warning. Maybe it was relief or joy or fear or a mixture of those things. The woman raised her hand in salutation, as the Adagio reached its crescendo.
And after that crescendo, there was a moment of peace, a silence before the chords began again. Elegiac. A remembrance of things past and of things becoming. In that moment, Martin met Irène for the first time.
Before Irène had seen the boy in the street, she had gone outside. The stupid courier from the publishing house left the manuscript on the street, propped against the front door, not even bothering to ring the buzzer. Anton closed the tobacco shop for a long lunch and she picked up the phone to call the hotel, but then put the receiver down. The envelope was just outside; certainly she could open the door long enough to reach out and grab it.
She went downstairs to the lobby and cracked open the door. The courier – who would certainly have to be fired for this – had left the large envelope just out of reach. She knelt down and held on to the door frame, grabbing for the envelope. I must look like a lunatic, she thought as she stretched out an arm and used her foot to keep the door open. A warm gust of air hit her in the face and she suddenly felt dizzy. Her foot slipped and before she could turn and scramble back, the door closed and locked with amazing swiftness. Irène sat down hard on the pavement, clutching the envelope to her chest, as her breathing became labored. She was paralyzed. Blackness enveloped her, like a slow dimming of lights. If she didn’t get back inside, the darkness would overtake her and she would faint. Somehow she managed to slide her back up the wall until she was standing. She hit every button on the call box until her downstairs neighbor, a young woman who did clerical work at home while caring for her ill father, answered and let Irène back inside.
“I’m fine, Julie,” Irène said when the woman came out into the lobby to check on her. Her breath was heavy and ragged like she had run a marathon. “I locked myself out.” Julie checked Irène’s pulse and shook her head, warning Irène, as she had many times before, that she would give herself a heart attack.
Irène, disgusted with herself, went upstairs and cleaned the apartment. It was her response to the stress, a way to keep some modicum of control about her life. By dusting and polishing, she would slowly unwind. She would save the piano until last, lovingly pick up each photograph from its dark surface. Her favorite was there: Jean-Louis clutching her in front of Notre-Dame on Bastille Day, 1967. They both looked so young. They were dancing in the plaza, and a photographer called out to them. They both turned and the photographer took the picture. They looked pensive, dramatic, Irène thought. She smiled at the black and white image and dusted the glass surface before replacing it on the piano. If only history could be so easily cleaned up, she thought.
Irène put Barber’s Adagio on the old turntable Jean-Louis brought to their marriage. He had an impressive collection of records and Barber was his favorite American composer, specifically the Adagio for Strings. The music was mournful, but somehow full of living. It was the sound of dawn breaking, Jean-Louis once said, a new day. When she thought of Jean-Louis, and she did often, she put on the record.
The new set of hotel guests would be arriving any moment. As she dusted, she became aware of the ticking of the old grandfather clock that once belonged to her aunt. She heard the gears moving, then it struck three, and a shiver ran through her. Something was happening.
She was headed toward the balcony when the phone rang. It was Gerard, asking if she had begun editing the novel. She demanded the courier be fired, unloaded her frustration on Gerard, who sounded near tears as he apologized. Even over Gerard’s simpering and the Adagio, she could hear the sound of the teenagers coming down rue Rampon from Boulevard Voltaire. She could always hear them.
“I have to go, Gerard. Someone is here.” She hung up and hurried to the balcony.
Most of the teenagers were already inside the hotel, but there was one young man lagging behind. He seemed bewildered, lost, and she wondered for a moment if he was part of the group. He wasn’t a teenager. He stopped, looked around and sought the source of the music. Then he looked up. Irène felt a shiver of recognition; she raised her hand and smiled. The Adagio crescendoed, then silence. They smiled simultaneously. Just like a mirror. Synchronicity.
Diane called out for Martin. A small-scale riot had broken out in the lobby with the teenagers. Martin turned to acknowledge Diane, and when he turned back, he saw the woman was gone. He stood there for a moment, feeling foolish. What had he expected from her? Was she supposed to come flying downstairs and embrace him?
Diane was shouting in English to the hapless clerk behind the desk. “Yelling is not going to help. She’s French, not deaf,” Martin said. The old owner of the hotel came out from an office to subdue the hubbub.
“Do you speak English?”
“Oui, Madame.”
“Thank god. I’m Diane Jacobs. We have reservations.”
“Ah, oui, Madame Jacobs. We have your room assignments and keys.”
The owner had dealt with hundreds of Diane Jacobs over the years. They were always frazzled and spoke no French. He didn’t care as long as the money was good. The old man handed Diane a piece of paper and put a handful of keys on the counter. She turned to the group of teens who were running around the lobby. With two fingers in her mouth, she whistled, making everyone jump.
“Okay, guys. I want everyone to be calm and cool and not give me any hassle about which room you’re in. And no trading.”
The teens groaned and began to protest.
“Hey! I need a little less griping and a little more cooperation. I know some of you have become close on this trip, but no one is going home a parent. I don’t need that kind of lawsuit on my hands.”
As Diane was handing out the keys, Martin looked around for David. He was sitting in a corner of the lobby taking a quick sip from his flask. As Martin walked up, he quickly pocketed the container. “Wanna share a room this time?” Martin asked as nonchalantly as possible. At first, David didn’t respond; he looked at Martin almost as if he wasn’t there. “David?”
“Oh, uh…no, I’m gonna have my own room,” he said. “I need some privacy. We can hang out, though. You know, whenever.”
Diane called David’s name and he went to retrieve his key. After Diane handed it to him, he picked up his bag and went to the elevator and got on. Diane turned and looked back at Martin and mouthed, “What was that all about?” Martin could only shrug.
Martin went to the lobby doors. On the balcony above, he could see a little plume of smoke rising from the table where a cigarette had been crushed out. The way the sunlight fell, he could not see inside the French doors.