“I know who the guy is,” a woman near Fiona whispered in English, “what’s-his-face, the Dermott McDermott guy. But I’ve never heard of her.”
The man she was with laughed too loudly. “Dermott McDermott. I love it.”
A security guard strolled past. “We’re gonna get in trouble,” the woman whispered. Really, there was a constant low-level murmur all around, one that could surely be edited out if the mics picked it up.
Fiona studied the crowd on the opposite side of the street. No one there who looked like Claire. No one with a little girl. No one like Kurt. But the crowd reshuffled constantly.
Claire had talked about majoring in media studies before she dropped out of college. In high school she’d go to the Music Box on Saturdays and sit through three movies in a row. At the end of her senior year, she had a boyfriend who wanted to be a screenwriter, and Claire was going to make the films. Fiona hadn’t liked that boy at all—long fingernails, no eye contact—but surely he’d have improved over time! How much better he’d have been in the end than Kurt Pearce.
Fiona had been out of touch with Kurt and Cecily for only a few years when he had walked into her store, told her he was doing some hunger activism around the city, that maybe they should be in touch. After that he invited her to occasional events, although she rarely made it. And she had no idea that the whole time he’d been battling addiction, stealing from Cecily, stealing, in fact, from some of the hunger organizations he worked for so tirelessly. That Cecily had given him one last chance, and then one more chance after that, before writing him off completely. All that news came out later, after Fiona had already introduced him to her daughter, after he’d ruined her life.
They paused the action when a plane flew overhead. Fiona remembered Julian Ames once telling her he’d rather starve doing live theater for the rest of his life than make a million dollars doing movies. Movie work, he said, was mind-numbing. Julian had paid rent by working in that blue-walled sandwich shop on Broadway, the one where Terrence first sat her down and told her Nico was sick. Julian couldn’t have been there that day—she’d have remembered if he was there when she started wailing, if she’d grabbed all those napkins off the counter right in front of him—but in her mind he was the one at the register. His hand forever in the tip jar. That lock of dark hair forever in his eyes.
The actress repeated her loop, and Fiona repeated her scan.
She should head back to Serge, make sure he knew she was okay. And she was beginning to do that, had just squeezed free of the crowd, when she felt a tap on the back of her head. She spun to see a man smiling down. A face she was supposed to recognize but couldn’t, quite.
“I knew I’d run into you,” he stage-whispered. She must have looked confused, because he added, “Jake. From the plane?”
“Oh!” A step backward. “It’s nice to see you. Jake.”
He seemed sober, but his beard and hair and the oaky scent of his clothes still suggested someone who might have slept in the woods last night.
Really, she was angry. If the laws of probability were going to allow her one random encounter on the streets of Paris, why must it be with her seatmate? This was lightning, striking only once.
He said, “I’ve just been wandering. My thing isn’t till tonight.”
“Your thing.” Had he explained this on the plane?
This meeting wasn’t random at all, she realized. Fiona had told him where she’d be staying, and it was a very small island. She looked for Serge, but he’d disappeared. She waved for the guy to follow, and they ducked down a connecting street—far enough that they could talk in their regular voices, but not so far that no one would hear if she screamed.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“What? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, they totally found my stuff at O’Hare. They’re sending it.”
“Just like that?”
He shrugged. “I got a boomerang wallet. I’ve lost it like twelve times. And every time, someone turns it in.”
“That’s—unbelievable.”
“Not really. It’s such a clear moral test for people. They see a wallet, and it’s like, Am I a good person or a bad person? People want to believe they’re good. Same people would totally steal from work, right? But they send back a wallet, they feel good about their souls.”
He was right. But how dare he? How dare he drop his things all over the globe and trust that they’d return?
He said, “This movie is a trip!”
“Did you come here to watch it, Jake?” She didn’t hide her sarcasm.
“No,” he said. “I was looking for you. Not, like—not in a creepy way. Sorry. I wanted to ask you something.” If he weren’t so attractive, she’d have run away by now. She’d have grabbed the arm of the nearest man, said, “Here’s my husband!” But instead she just stood there, looking up into his face and waiting.
He said, “I was mad at myself, after we got off the plane, for not asking more about Richard Campo. Like—I don’t want to sound like a stalker, but I could totally do something with him. I could pitch that so easy.”
Fiona held up a hand to stop him. She said, “I’m missing some information.”
“Sorry. I can’t remember how much I said. I write culture stuff, mostly for travel magazines. You read National Geographic? I had a piece there last summer, on this Mayan dance festival in Guatemala.”
“Okay.” It all made sense—the pilot who’d been, what, fired for drinking? Or decided he wasn’t cut out for that life, that there were better ways to see the world? She said, “He’s been doing a ton of interviews. I don’t know if that makes it more likely or less that he’d agree.”
“It wouldn’t really be about art, is the thing. It would be about living here, you know, like an expat artist’s view of the city. Or it could be about the art. I don’t know, whatever he wants.”
Why was she even considering helping him? Maybe it was the same principle as the wallet: She wanted to feel good. Maybe it was his beautiful eyes. Maybe it was a welcome distraction. She pulled her phone from her purse and said, “I can give you his publicist’s number.” His publicist being Serge.
Jake adjusted his backpack, scratched his beard. He said, “That would be phenomenal.”
She still had the phone in her hand, was still giving him the last digit of Serge’s number, when it started vibrating.
“Oh holy shit,” she said. “I have to take this!” She left him there, walked quickly for no good reason.
Static at her ear. Arnaud cleared his throat and said, “Well, they were easy to find. Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Pearce, and I have an address.”