give him a look.
He shrugs. “The men in Paris, we have an understanding—”
“You mean a bro code?” I roll my eyes. “Let’s get on with the breaking and entering,” I say, perhaps a little too loudly.
“Sssshhh.” Alexandre gently places a finger on my lips. I thought I’d already conveyed my deep irritation at being shushed the first couple times he did it, but apparently not sufficiently. Also, I might be imagining it, but I swear he lets his finger linger against my lips a second longer than necessary before I twist away and scowl at him.
There’s no one in the inner courtyard. We can slip right in the door of the H?tel—it’s not like someone fixed the lock in the last few days. It’s probably been busted for years. We head straight to the winding stairs to the landing with the worn velvet tapestry and yellow border that Gautier mentioned in the first article we found. I can’t get over that it’s still here. Though there are probably tapestries and paintings older than this one hanging all over apartments in Paris, like that Delacroix etching in Alexandre’s foyer. Age increases the value of some objects and diminishes others. It’s a bit of a crapshoot, assigning an object—or a person—worth, isn’t it? It’s luck, and it also kind of sucks because for most of history, the people who got to assign that value were men who didn’t look like me.
But I suppose love assigns value, too. Like the portraits I do every year in school that line our staircase back home in Chicago. Those mean as much to my parents as that Delacroix does to Alexandre’s family—maybe more—but they’re not hoping to sell them and save the family estate because, well, my skills aren’t exactly Delacroix-etching level, and our house is not exactly an estate.
“I don’t remember seeing another door last time,” Alexandre says as we enter the dusty old parlor that is exactly as we left it. As I step into the room again, my heart races. I keep glancing at the windows, hearing a siren, but it’s only in my mind. I grimace, remembering the crack I made in the buffet table drawer. The red silk scarf we found last time rests where we tossed it before making our quick escape after seeing that cop outside.
“Well, it was dark, and we had to hide and—”
“You were distracted by all the kissing,” he says.
“You wish,” I scoff, trying hard not to smile. “You were distracted by all the kissing.”
“Without a doubt.”
Don’t flirt, Khayyam. You’re sending mixed messages. To yourself.
Why is it so hard to do the thing that’s best for you when you know it’s best for you? Sometimes I wonder how human beings have survived from the Paleolithic to now. We always seem to operate against our own better judgment. I’m guessing Byron might say that’s what makes life worth living—Dumas might say the same, too.
But I push their voices out of my head. It’s Leila’s voice I’m here to find.
Alexandre heads to the opposite wall and begins tapping it like Velma in Scooby-Doo trying to find a secret passage. If only there were a giant fireplace with a sconce that was actually a lever revealing a hidden room. Before I join him, I want to look in the cabinets in the buffet we didn’t get a chance to investigate the first time we were here. One is empty, but when I open the other one, I see several ripped pieces of paper scattered on the shelf inside. I gather them up to take a look—it’s bits of a torn-up tarot card. I piece the dusty fragments together. I beckon Alexandre over to show him.
“It’s the last of the three cards Gautier mentioned. The Lovers.”
“L’Amoureux, La Roue de Fortune, La Mort. Past, present, and future for Dumas.”
“He must’ve been pretty upset, but ripping up a tarot card isn’t exactly logical.”
“You know what they say: le c?ur a ses raisons que le raison ne conna?t point.”
“The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know?” I smirk. It hits a little too close to home. Like, why do I still want to