He told her they’d blocked off the Rue des Deux Ponts during the night for the movie shoot. She looked out the window. No crowds yet, no movie stars, but there were trucks. The sound of angry horns as drivers learned they couldn’t go through. He said she might cross the bridge to find a cab. But she didn’t want a cab. Even though her legs ached, she wanted to walk again. Only if Serge went with her, Richard said. He didn’t want her getting lost out there. (He didn’t want her passing out, was what he didn’t say.)
Serge roused himself, despite Fiona’s protests, to put on his jacket and come along, half the time dragging behind like a sleepwalker, half the time speed-walking ahead and deciding where they should go. She grew used to the back of his head—his dark, floppy hair, his long and ruddy neck.
Yesterday, on the back of his motorbike after the café, she’d insisted he take her on the Pont de l’Archevêché—broad and nearly empty. A bride and groom posing for a photographer, but no Claire. Of course that bridge, or any bridge, would be the last place they’d find her. Life didn’t work like that.
Now they walked down on the quays, Fiona showing Claire’s photo to every artist she saw—the ones with canvases the size of index cards for sale, the man drawing caricatures, even a clown in full makeup who sat eating a sandwich. Serge stood back to text, to light a cigarette, although his translation would have been helpful. “Elle est artiste,” Fiona managed each time, but she wished she could elaborate, explain that her daughter was not a pregnant teenager, not a hapless runaway. They all shook their heads, bemused.
Serge led her to Shakespeare and Company, which Fiona had known was a bookstore, but which also turned out to have beds upstairs, Serge explained, “for lonely foreigners.” That made it sound like a whorehouse, but when they went upstairs she saw little cots. They were for single young people, sleeping four hours a night, caffeinating their hangovers away, engaging in passionate flings. Not a place you’d stay with a partner and a child. If she’d been in a better mood, Fiona would have fallen in love with the store, with its creaky floors and precarious tunnels of books, but as things were she just wanted to move on.
With Serge peering over her shoulder, Fiona showed Claire’s photo at the counter to a young guy with a Brooklyn handlebar mustache and a Southern accent. He called a girl over.
The photo was from Claire’s freshman year at Macalester, Parents’ Weekend. Claire stood with one hand on her crowded dresser, half smiling, irritated but tolerant. Fiona chose it because it looked the most like Claire had in the video, round-faced from the weight she’d gained that fall. She remembered, sickeningly, the relief she felt each time she sent Claire back to school that year. Not that she wanted her gone, far from it, but she’d imagined this would be how they got along best. Claire could have her space, then she’d come home and they’d shop and eat and catch up, and soon they’d maybe even split a bottle of wine, talk as adults. It would be this way through the rest of college, and then when Claire moved to another city—Fiona always knew she would—and visited twice a year. But at Christmastime she announced she’d be spending the summer in Colorado. She came home for a week in June and then Fiona drove her to O’Hare, and when Fiona started getting out of the car to circle around and hug her, Claire said, “They’ll start honking.” And she quickly kissed her mother’s cheek.
And that was it. That was all.
The girl shook her head. “I mean, she looks a little like Valeria.”
The guy said, “Is she Czech?”
Fiona said no, told them she had a little girl. The guy said, “Let me get Kate. She knows all the kids that come in.”
And then this Kate was standing there, tall and British, peering at the photograph. Kate said, “I couldn’t say for sure.”
“She’s older now,” Fiona said.
“She looks like that actress from American Hustle.”
There was a man waiting behind them to buy a stack of paperbacks, and so they stepped away, further into the store. Serge took the photo, held it by the edges. “She must miss you.”
Fiona didn’t know how to answer that.
Serge said, “You’ll stay for Richard’s show, okay? His friends mean so much to him.”
“I’ll try.”
“No, no, promise!” Serge smiled, a smile so suddenly dazzling that it must have let him waltz through his entire life making demands like that.
“I think I’ll have overstayed my welcome by that point.”
“So we kick you out and get you a hotel! Promise.”
“Okay,” Fiona said, “I promise.” She wasn’t sure she meant it, but it didn’t hurt to say. Another nine days away from the resale shop was too long, but in nine days she’d either have found Claire or would still be looking—and could she go home in either case?
Before they left, Fiona grabbed an English book of Paris history just so she wouldn’t walk out empty-handed, the staff feeling sad for her. The mustachioed bookseller was ranting to a customer about American DVD players. Something about the frames per second. “Americans don’t even care!” he said. “That’s why I moved to Paris.” He threw his hands in the air.
Fiona stopped herself from laughing. It couldn’t be true, could it? That someone would uproot as easily as that? Everyone she’d ever known to leave America had done it for solid reasons: job, romance, politics. To study, like Nora. Claire and Kurt had fled the reach of the Hosanna Collective—although she’d considered the possibility that Claire was running from her, from some perceived childhood trauma. But what if it was nothing more than a lark? First the commune, then Paris, next a sheep farm in Bulgaria? What if Fiona had simply failed, as distracted as she was in those early years of Claire’s life, to tether her daughter tightly enough to the world?
The guy looked at the price. Three euros. He told her it was on him.
* * *
—
By the time they circled back to Richard’s in the early afternoon, the filming had begun.
It was hard to see what was going on; people had packed together as if to watch a parade. Down the street a crane loomed overhead and enormous lights glared down from tripods.
Fiona left Serge behind and wiggled through—one advantage of being small, no one ever felt you were usurping the view—and soon she was at the front, hands on the wooden barrier.
The action was a block farther down, at the corner near a crimson restaurant front, but this was the closest the crowd could get. Fiona made out a mess of chairs and ladders and people—and in front of the restaurant, a woman talked with a man. He embraced her and she walked away. Just a few yards, then she stopped, went back, did it all again. Each time, two men ran in front of her carrying white reflective sheets. A camera followed on wheels.