Cecily sat on Richard’s couch, her body angled toward the window. She said, “I’ve never seen Paris before. What a strange time to get here.”
“I hate that we have to live in the middle of history. We make enough mess on our own.”
Cecily smiled. “I’ve missed you.”
“Richard says hello. He’s gone to his studio. It’s funny, I went out myself today, but it scares me that other people are out. I mean, Richard can’t run if something goes wrong.”
Cecily agreed, and Fiona told her she couldn’t reach Claire. Cecily said, “It’s natural to worry, but I’m sure she’s fine.” It hadn’t occurred to Fiona till then to worry about Kurt as well. Kurt was more likely to be out at night. She didn’t imagine he liked heavy metal, but still.
Serge came through the front door then, hair sticking up with sweat, eyes ringed. He nodded at them both and ducked into the bedroom.
“I feel I’m imposing,” Cecily said, and Fiona assured her she wasn’t.
“We’re all in crisis mode here,” she said, “just for different reasons. Listen: What I think we could do, is go to Kurt’s apartment. Maybe he’d let us have Claire’s number, given the situation. And now that I’ve seen her myself.”
Cecily examined her unpolished nails. “Better if I go alone, don’t you think?”
Maybe—and besides, they’d want privacy. Fiona wouldn’t have wanted some third party there when she’d seen Claire the first time.
So after some lunch, after Fiona walked her down and got her a cab, Cecily took off for the Marais. She promised to call the instant she knew anything.
When Fiona came back upstairs, Serge was in the kitchen with his laptop. “I yelled at you last night,” he said. She understood this was his apology. “Your daughter is not on Facebook?”
She almost laughed. How much easier that would have made everything. A message to her in-box, rather than flights and detectives. “No,” she said. “I’m not either.” Damian was, and he’d checked obsessively over the past few years.
“So, two things. One is, people can check in safe, like this.” She looked over his shoulder, saw a list of names and faces, friends of Serge who’d marked themselves alive. “But here,” he said, and he clicked to something new, “this is a forum to ask after people. I write a message, okay?”
She nodded and he started to type.
“Claire what?”
She grabbed the grocery pad and pen from beside the stove and wrote for him: Claire Yael Blanchard. “I guess she could be using Pearce. For a last name.” And she wrote that too.
“Okay,” he said. “Posted. We wait.” Dear God, it was exactly what Arnaud had said to her, what felt like a thousand years ago. We wait.
* * *
—
Damian called and she filled him in.
“Do you think she’s scared?” Damian asked.
“I hope not. I mean, not more than everyone else. She’s not a kid anymore.”
“But she’s a mother.”
“Right,” Fiona said. “Right.”
“Maybe this is how we get her home.”
Fiona doubted it. The chaos of the world had never helped her before. That it might help now seemed ridiculous.
She said, “Let’s not get greedy.”
July 15, 1986
Lake Michigan, impossibly blue, the morning light bouncing toward the city.
* * *
—
Lake Michigan frozen in sheets you could walk on but wouldn’t dare.
* * *
—
Lake Michigan, gray out a high-rise window, indistinguishable from the sky.
* * *
—
Bread, hot from the oven. Or even stale in the restaurant basket, rescued by salty butter.
* * *
—
The Cubs winning the pennant someday. The Cubs winning the Series. The Cubs continuing to lose.
* * *
—
His favorite song, not yet written. His favorite movie, not yet made.
* * *
—
The depth of an oil brushstroke. Chagall’s blue windows. Picasso’s blue man and his guitar.
* * *
—
Dr. Cheng said, “I’m going to write down everything I say to you, so you can read it again later.”
* * *
—
The sound of an old door creaking open. The sound of garlic cooking. The sound of typing. The sound of commercials from the next room, when you were in the kitchen getting a drink. The sound of someone else finishing a shower.
* * *
—
All of them growing old together on the Yacht for Old Queers that Asher always joked about. Right off the Belmont Rocks, he said, with binoculars for everyone.
* * *
—
Art Nouveau streetlights. Elevators with gates.
* * *
—
Fiona having kids. Being a surrogate uncle, buying the kids sweaters and gum and books. Taking them to the museum. Saying, “Your Uncle Nico was a good