She stuck her left hand into her jeans pocket to stop shaking. “You’re sure it’s them?” Mr. and Mrs.!
“Ha, yes, he was easy to find because he was arrested last year. No prison, don’t worry.”
“God, what for?”
“Small theft,” he said, before her mind could fully go to murder, infanticide, domestic terrorism. “It’s—the fine he got, this was probably just some shoplifting.”
“Wait,” she said, “hold on. No. He’d be deported, wouldn’t he?”
“Ah,” Arnaud said, “okay. No, not really, and it also turns out he’s an EU citizen. They could have, but—”
“Since when?”
Arnaud didn’t know. But hadn’t Kurt’s father been Irish or something? Maybe he’d had dual citizenship all along. Maybe that helped explain their move to France.
Serge was across the side street, waving. He trotted to her and stood there, listening.
“You didn’t talk to him, did you?”
“What I have is an address in the Fourth, just outside Le Marais. Affordable street for that area, but not dangerous or anything. You know Le Marais?”
Fiona remembered Richard implying it was a gay neighborhood, although she also thought she remembered this was where the Arabs lived, or maybe it was the Orthodox Jews. Surely not all three together, that would never work, would it? She said, “Not well.”
“I’m going to stake it out. Like in the movies, okay? Just surveillance.”
“Can I come?”
He chuckled. “This is not a great idea.”
“So, when, tonight? You’re doing this tonight?”
“Unless something comes up. I’ll take photos.”
“What do I do in the meantime?”
“Enjoy Paris. Your friend with the motorbike, he can take you out, yes? Go sightseeing.”
Sightseeing. Lord.
“Promise you’ll rest. Yesterday you nearly fainted in your omelet. Save your strength for when you need it, okay? For now, we wait. Drink some wine, rest, relax.”
Resting didn’t sound that bad. And she was so, so tired.
1985
Hanukkah passed, and the edges of the lake froze white. Charlie’s mother couldn’t fly in for Christmas because her new boyfriend was taking her to the opera. She’d come later, she said, and Yale was a bit relieved. He adored Teresa, but Charlie didn’t need more stress right now.
Yale ran into Teddy at the bank. His black eye had faded to purple, but the bandage was still across his nose, a strip of white tape. Teddy claimed it had been liberating, learning he could survive an attack. Yale didn’t believe him for a second. Teddy said, “Did you know you see actual sparks? I always thought that was just a cartoon thing.” Yale said, “Yeah. I mean, I’ve been punched.”
He ran into Fiona on the street, and she told him her family had finally cleaned out Nico’s place and hadn’t noticed anything missing. “Mostly because they didn’t know what had been there to begin with. My cousins took all the electronics,” she said. “That was all they cared about. My mom took his drawing board, but she just shoved it in a box, and I don’t know what she’s even gonna do with it. My dad wore gloves. He wore actual rubber gloves.” Yale hugged her so hard her feet came off the ground.
He ran into Julian at a resale shop where Julian was trying on bright yellow corduroys, and when they were too short on him, he made Yale try them next. He said, “They make your ass look like hamburger buns. I don’t mean that in a bad way.” He stepped back, looked Yale up and down. “They don’t do much for your front, though. And I’ve heard about your front.” Yale felt himself blush, all the way down to his neck. “What,” Julian said, “you think Charlie can keep a secret?” Julian bought a terrible white leather jacket with fringe. He told Yale that he and an actor friend were using their stage makeup skills to teach men with Kaposi’s sarcoma to cover their lesions. “They look pretty good,” he said, “from a distance.”
On a gray, sleeting day, Yale went with the real estate agent to see the house down Briar. He met her on the sidewalk and she clapped like a marvelous show was beginning.
The listing price was three times Yale’s salary. Better than he’d expected. Still a stretch, but doable if he kept this job, if his salary grew along with the Brigg, which it was supposed to. It was roughly the same amount Charlie had paid last year to buy the paper its own phototypesetting machine. An exorbitant amount for a piece of equipment the size of a refrigerator, but quite reasonable for a house. The purchase meant Charlie was broke, but it also meant Charlie’s staff no longer had to go downtown to the typesetting company and use its machine in the middle of the night, clearing out by 6 a.m., zombified. The paper would, theoretically, over the years, pay Charlie back, bar ad by bar ad; but he was more likely to increase his staff’s meager salaries than refill his own pockets. Charlie never bought anything for himself, not even food. If it weren’t for Yale, he’d live on tea and ramen.
Yale hadn’t mentioned the house to Charlie yet. He might balk at the cost, or even at the fact that Yale would pay most of it, but it would help Charlie feel more secure. It had to, if they owned the place together. They could get a dog then, too, and Charlie had always wanted a dog.
On the walk-through, Yale fell in love with the living room, the wooden floors, the built-in bookshelves on either side of the fireplace, the bay window. The kitchen wasn’t much, but they could invest in that later. He’d always wanted to learn to tile. The upstairs was filled with afternoon light, and just standing there in the empty bedroom, looking out into the small backyard, Yale felt like he was floating. A house! He could already imagine the ribbing they’d get—Teddy would call them lesbian separatists—but who cared, because look at the thick glass of the windows, the solid floors!
The world sounded the same as it did from his own apartment—the hum of traffic, a car door, someone’s stereo—but somehow it all felt new again. As if it weren’t just a new house but a new city. This was the buzz he’d felt when he first moved here, when he spent days exploring neighborhoods, studying maps, jotting in his notebook things like, “Tell cabs take Ashland, not Clark” and lists of restaurants (“BELDEN DELI” he’d written his first week, as if he’d single-handedly discovered the place), and things he heard about but never intended to follow up on, like the fifth-floor bathroom at Marshall Field’s being a tea room. He’d just wanted to know those places were there, wanted to feel at all times exactly as he’d felt in a cab flying down Lake Shore Drive. And for some reason, in this white-walled room of this little house, the city pulsed around him again.