threats and his two million dollars and the plaque he’d pried off the Steinway, Bill puffed out his cheeks but never stopped staring at the photos. He said, “This is a lot more than two million, Yale. And I’m being very conservative. I mean, look at these. Look at these. You’ll figure out Cecily, you will. You’re my miracle worker.”
On the way home, Yale bought flowers and an apple pie. He smiled at strangers on the El, and didn’t feel the cold.
2015
Fiona slept well, from whenever Serge had brought her home until 3 a.m. She lay still a long time, not wanting to make noise and rouse Richard. Wasn’t he an old man, despite everything? And then she fell back asleep and dreamed that her seatmate from the flight was swimming with her in a pool. He had something that belonged to Claire, and when Fiona found her, would she hand it over? He pulled from his swimsuit pocket, slowly, like a magician, Nico’s long orange scarf.
When Fiona finally came out into the kitchen, Richard was at the breakfast table, the morning sun illuminating his computer, his hands. He typed quickly, mouthing words. “Emails,” he said. “Did you ever think we’d be so buried under mountains of these things?” She sliced a banana and asked if Serge was up yet. Richard laughed. “The question should be if he’s back yet. Which he is. He fell into bed around four.” Serge had a number of boyfriends, he said, none serious. “Mostly Italians. He does pick lovely ones.” Fiona knew better than to ask whether it bothered Richard. He seemed tickled by the whole situation, by Serge’s youth and energy. Richard stretched luxuriously, a lion in a bathrobe, a sun king on his throne. He closed his computer and said, “Look at this gorgeous weather, just for you. I wish you could enjoy Paris. Next visit you will. I don’t know when I died, but this is my Valhalla.”
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