The Woman in the Fifth

Eight

NOTHING HAPPENED THAT first night. I set up my laptop. I forced myself to work — my eyes straining under the single naked lightbulb. I pushed myself into writing five hundred words. I turned up the radiator and discovered that it gave off no more heat. I drank the two litres of Evian. I peed several times in the toilet and was grateful that I didn’t need a bowel movement, as I couldn’t have handled standing up to do it. I read some of the Simenon novel — a dark, sparely written tale about a French actor getting over the breakup of his marriage by wandering through the night world of 1950s New York. Around four in the morning, I started to fade — and fell asleep sitting up at the desk. I jolted awake, terrified that I had missed something on the monitor. But the screen showed nothing bar the glare of a spotlight on a doorway — an image so grainy it almost seemed as if it was from another era, as if I was looking at the past tense just downstairs.

I read some more. I fought fatigue. I fought boredom. I drew up a list of what I’d buy this afternoon to fix the place up. I kept glancing at my watch, willing 6 a.m. to arrive. When it finally did, I unlocked the door. I turned off the light in the room. I closed the door behind me and locked it. I hit the light for the stairs. At the bottom of them, I stood for a moment, trying to hear any noises from the big steel door at the end of the ground-floor corridor. Nothing. I unlocked the front door. Outside it was still night — a touch of damp in the air, augmenting the chill that had crawled under my skin during those six hours in a badly heated concrete box. I locked the door, my head constantly turning sideways to scan the alleyway and see if anyone was waiting to hit me over the head with a club. But the alley was clear. I finished locking the door. I walked quickly into the street. No cops, no heavies in parkas and balaclava helmets, waiting to have a few words with me. The rue du Faubourg Poissonniere was empty. I turned left and kept moving until I came to a little boulangerie that was on the rue Montholon. This took me a few minutes past my own street, but I didn’t care. I was hungry. I bought two pains au chocolat and a baguette at the boulangerie. I ate one of the croissants on the way back to my chambre. Once inside I took a very hot shower, trying to get some warmth back into my bones. Then I changed into a T-shirt and pajama bottom, and made myself a bowl of hot chocolate. It tasted wonderful. So too did the second pain au chocolat. I pulled the blinds closed. I set the alarm for 2 p.m. I was asleep within moments of crawling into bed.

I slept straight through. It was strange waking up in the early afternoon — and knowing that I wouldn’t see bed again until after six the next morning. Still, I had things to do — so I was up and out the door in ten minutes. Much to my relief — because the paranoid part of me wondered if, indeed, I would get paid at all — an envelope was waiting for me at the Internet cafe. As agreed there were sixty-five euros inside it.

‘Where’s Kamal?’ I asked the guy behind the counter — a quiet, sullen-looking man in his late twenties, with a big beard and the telltale bruise on his forehead of a devout Muslim who prostrated himself several times a day in the direction of Mecca.

‘No idea,’ he said.

‘Please tell him I picked this up, and say thanks for me.’

I headed off to a paint shop on the rue du Faubourg Poissonniere, and bought two large cans of off-white emulsion and a set of rollers and a paint pan and a tin of white gloss and a brush and a large bottle of white spirit. I would have preferred bringing all the decorating gear to ‘my office’, but I had to obey the ‘No Arrival Before Midnight’ rule. So I made two trips back to my room with the gear, then headed out back to the Cameroonian dude who had sold me all the bedding and kitchen stuff. Yes, he did have an electric radiator in stock — all mine for a knockdown price of thirty euros.

Getting all the paint stuff to my office that evening proved tricky. Before setting out, I made a pit stop by the alley at around eleven and discovered that, at the start of this laneway, there was a large crevice in a wall: currently filled with rubbish and animal droppings. Never mind — it was perfect for my needs. I returned with two cans of paint and some old newspapers. As I bent down to place the newspapers on the ground inside the crevice — I wanted to avoid getting rat shit on my stuff — the fecal smell became overwhelming. I shoved the two cans of paint in, and returned to my room to bring the next load of stuff over. It took a further run after that to have everything in place.

Then I sat in a bar on the rue de Paradis, nursing a beer and waiting for midnight to arrive. The bar was a dingy joint — all formica tables and a battered zinc counter, and a French-Turkish barmaid dressed in tight jeans, and a dude with serious tattoos also working the bar, and the jukebox playing crap French rock, and three morose guys hunched over a table, and some behemoth splayed on a barstool, drinking a milky substance that was obviously alcoholic (Pastis? Raki? Bailey’s Irish Cream?) as he was smashed. He looked up when I approached the bar to order my beer — and that’s when I saw it was Omar. It took him a moment or two for his eyes to register it was me. Then his rant started. First in English: ‘Fucking American, fucking American, fucking American.’ Then in French: ‘Il apprecie pas comment je chie.’ (‘He doesn’t like the way I take a shit.’) Then he pulled out a French passport and started waving it at me, yelling, ‘Can’t get me deported, asshole.’ After that he started muttering to himself in Turkish, at which point I didn’t know what the hell he was saying. Just as I was about to finish my beer and bolt from the place before Omar got more explosive, he put his head down on the bar — in mid-sentence — and passed out.

Without me asking for it, the barmaid brought over another beer.

‘If he hates you, you must be all right. C’est un gros lard.’

I thanked her for the beer. I checked my watch: 11.53. I downed the pression in three gulps. I headed off.

At midnight precisely, I walked up the alleyway and unlocked the door. Then, in less than a minute, I made three fast trips to retrieve my hidden gear and bring it into the hallway. I bolted the door behind me. There was the same mechanical hum I’d heard yesterday emanating from the door at the end of the corridor. I ignored it and headed upstairs. A minute later, all the gear was in my office and the door locked. I was ‘in’ for the night. I plugged in the electric radiator. I turned on my radio to Paris Jazz. I checked the monitor. All clear in the alley. I opened the first can of paint. I went to work.

That night, nothing happened again — except that I managed to give the office two coats of paint. I did my ‘job’ as well — checking the monitor every few minutes to see if there was anyone lurking in the hallway. There wasn’t. Before I knew it, my watch was reading 5.45 a.m. — and though it was clear that the second coat wouldn’t sufficiently cover the chalky grey concrete walls, at least I knew that another night had passed.

I packed away all the gear. I washed the brushes in the sink. I left at 6 a.m. exactly. I took several deep gulps of Paris air as I walked down the still-dark street toward the boulangerie. My usual two pains. One eaten on the way home, the second with hot chocolate after a shower. Then — with the aid of Zopiclone — seven hours of void until the alarm woke me at two and a new day started.

That night, I finished painting the walls. I sanded down the woodwork. I left at six. The next night, I finished glossing all the woodwork. Again, there was no activity whatsoever on the monitor. At six that morning, I moved all the empty cans and paint gear out of the office and dumped the lot in the rubbish bins at the end of the alley. When I awoke that afternoon, I went straight over to the cafe to collect my wages. For the third day running, Mr Beard with the Prayer Bruise was behind the counter.

‘Still no Kamal?’ I asked.

‘He goes away.’

‘He didn’t say anything to me about that.’

‘Family problems.’

‘Is there a number I could call him on?’ I asked.

‘Why you want to call him?’

‘I liked him. We got on well. And if he’s got some personal problems …’

‘There is no number for him.’

The tone of voice was definitive. It also didn’t encourage further questioning. So I picked up my pay envelope and said nothing, except, ‘I want to buy a few more things for the office. Might you be able to get a message from me to the boss?’

‘You tell me what you need.’

‘A small refrigerator and an electric kettle. It’s very hard to work in that room all night without coffee or hot water. I’d also like a rug. The concrete floor still gives off a bit of damp—’

‘I tell him,’ he said, cutting me off. Then he picked up a rag and started swabbing down the bar. Our conversation was over.

When I arrived at work that night, a fridge was awaiting me in a corner of the room. Though somewhat battered — with hints of rust on its hinges — it was still working. So too was the electric kettle positioned on top of it. It looked new. When I filled it with water, it boiled its contents in less than a minute. The only problem was, I didn’t have any coffee or tea on hand. But, at least, I now knew that the man in charge was amenable to certain requests — even though there was still no rug.

But there was a change in my usual routine: a visitor in the alleyway. He arrived at 1.48 a.m. precisely. The phone rang on my desk, jolting me. I looked away from my Simenon novel and turned immediately to the monitor and saw a man of indiscriminate age (the grainy image made it hard to discern his features) standing outside. I was instantly nervous. I picked up the phone and said, ‘Oui? ‘

His voice was raspy, and French was not his first language. But he still said, ‘Je voudrais voir Monsieur Monde.’

I hit the 1-1 entrance code. Downstairs I heard the telltale click of the door opening, then the door being closed with a decisive thud. I pressed 2-2 to alert my ‘neighbors’ that they had a legitimate visitor. There were footsteps on the downstairs corridor. There was a knock on another door. The door opened and closed. Then there was silence.

I didn’t see or hear him exit, even though I kept scanning the monitor. There were no other visitors. There were no sounds from down below. My shift ended. I went home.

A few days later, the carpet finally arrived at work — and I began to bring my laptop in every night, forcing myself back into the novel. As there was no other work to do but this work — my quota of words per night — I kept at it. Days would pass when no one would ring the bell, demanding admittance. Then there would be a night when four separate callers came to the door, all men of indeterminate age, all asking to see Monsieur Monde. I’d hit the button, the door would open and close, there would be footsteps, another door opening and closing, end of story.

A month passed. February gave way to March. There was an ever-early lightening of the evening sky; the days still cold, but brighter. Had I been in a normal state of mind, the thought would have struck me: You have been working for over five weeks now without a day off. But I was still operating on some sort of weird autopilot: work, sleep, pick up cash, movies, work. If I took a day off, I might fall out of routine … and if I fell out of routine, I might start to reflect about things. And if I started to reflect about things …

So I stuck to the routine. Day in, day out, nothing changed.

Until something unsettling happened. I was nursing a post-cinematheque beer in the little bar on the rue de Paradis. I picked up a copy of Le Parisien that had been left on a table and started flicking through its contents. There, on the bottom right-hand corner of page 5, under the headline, Body of Missing Man Found in Saint-Ouen, was a photograph of someone named Kamal Fatel. Though the photo was grainy, there was no doubt that it was the same Kamal who ran the Internet cafe and found me my current job. The story was a short one:

The body of Kamal Fatel, 35, a resident of rue Carnot in Saint-Ouen, was found last night in an unused dumpster near the Peripherique. According to the police at the scene, the body, though badly decomposed, had been identified through dental records of the deceased. The Saint-Ouen medical examiner issued a statement saying that, due to the state of the cadaver, the exact time and cause of death had yet to be ascertained. According to Inspector Philippe Faure of the commissariat de police in Saint-Ouen, Fatel’s wife, Kala, had thought her husband was traveling in Turkey to visit relatives there. Fatel, born in Turkey in 1972, had been resident in France since 1977 and had run an Internet cafe on the rue des Petites Ecuries …

I downed the dregs of the beer in one go. I grabbed the paper. I walked with considerable speed toward the rue des Petites Ecuries. Mr Beard was behind the counter of the cafe. I dropped the paper in front of him and asked, ‘Did you see this?’

His face registered nothing.

‘Yes, I saw it,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you shocked?’

‘This morning, when I first saw the story, yes, I was a little shocked.’

‘A little shocked? The guy is dead.’

‘Like his wife, I had thought he had gone back to Turkey. But …’

‘Who was behind it?’

‘Why should I know such a thing? I worked with Kamal. He was not my friend.’

‘Was he in some sort of trouble with somebody?’

‘Once again, you ask questions which I cannot answer. His life was not known to me.’

I could tell he was lying — because his eyes kept darting away from mine whenever I tried to eyeball him. Or if he wasn’t lying, he was working very hard at not appearing nervous — and failing badly.

‘Will there be a funeral?’

‘In Turkey.’

‘How do you know that?’ I challenged.

He tensed, realizing he’d just let himself be caught out.

‘Just a guess,’ he said, then stood up and said, ‘I am closing now.’

‘Do I have time to check my email?’

‘No.’

‘Just give me five minutes, no more.’

‘Be fast.’

I sat down at one of the computer terminals, clicked on Internet Explorer and then typed in AOL. Within a minute, my mailbox covered a corner of the screen: with one actual email … from, of all people, my former colleague, Doug Stanley. It read:

Harry:

Sorry to have fallen off the face of the planet during the past few weeks. I’m going to cut to the chase straight away — because I’ve never tried to bullshit you about things … and I certainly won’t start now. Now that the dust has started to settle here, Susan and Robson have gone public as a couple. The official version is that, in the wake of your disgrace, Susan was ‘emotionally shattered’. Robson befriended her — and then they ‘became close’ … nice euphemism, eh? As bullshit goes, this is truly choice. Everyone knew they were an item long before everything blew up in your face. And yeah, I do realize now — especially after all that’s gone down — that I should have told you long ago what was happening between them. I still feel damn guilty about that — thinking that, if you had been aware of their involvement, things might have turned out differently for you.

Anyway, you also need to know that Robson has been spreading word around the college that you have hit the skids in Paris. Worse, he’s also let it be known that he gleaned this information from Megan. In his version of things — and, believe me, I know that it is simply his version (and, as such, far from the truth) — you’ve been sending her this series of self-pitying emails, playing up your impoverished circumstances and trying to point the finger at Susan. Again, let me reemphasize the fact that I know he’s twisting whatever you sent to Megan — just as the sad, what a tragic story tone he adopts when relating this information makes me want to punch out his lights. But, as you well know, the man is the all-powerful Dean of the Faculty — which, in our little world, gives him power over all of us … especially if we don’t have tenure.

I thought long and hard about whether I should burden you with this ongoing horseshit — but eventually decided that you did need to know. My advice to you is: consider that chapter of your life closed, and do know that if things in Paris are as bad as Robson described, they will definitely get better … because you will make them better. And there is one small bit of good news from this Ohio backwater: word has it that Robson has decided not to proceed with the college’s lawsuit against you. The son of a bitch was finally convinced that continuing to crucify you was pointless.

I’m certain the separation from Megan is an ongoing agony. Trust me: she will come round. It might take some time — but it will happen. She will want to see her father again.

Finally, let me know if you are totally strapped, as I’m happy to wire over a thousand bucks pronto. I wish it could be more, but you know what they pay third-tier academics in the Ohio sticks. I certainly don’t want to see you on the street.

Bon courage.

Best

Doug

PS Did you stay at the hotel I recommended in the Sixteenth? If so, I hope you fared better than some friends I sent there last month. It seems they had a run-in with some creep at the front desk.

‘Trust me: she will come round.’ I doubt that, Doug. Without question, Susan and her new man had poisoned Megan against me — and there would be no more emails from my daughter. That knowledge — and the pervasive sense of loss which accompanied it — made Doug’s other news (‘… Robson has been spreading word around the college that you have hit the skids in Paris‘) seem unimportant. Let Robson tell everyone that I had fallen on hard times. It no longer mattered what people thought of me. Because I no longer mattered — to anyone else, let alone myself.

And hitting the Reply button next to Doug’s email, I wrote:

It was very good to hear from you. Regarding Robson’s continued demolition job on me … my only response is: you’re right. That chapter of my life is finished, so I can’t really worry about what is being said about me around a college to which I will never return … though I am relieved that Robson has called off his legal thugs. But you should know that I had managed to re-establish contact with Megan — and she had seemed genuinely pleased to have a running correspondence with her father — until Susan found out about it and …

Well, you can guess what happened next.

As to my situation in Paris … no, I am not completely down and out. But it isn’t exactly a romantic set-up either. I live in a small room in a grubby building in the Tenth. I am working illegally — a non-event night watchman’s job … but one which gives me the opportunity to write until dawn. I have no friends here … but I am making use of the city and I am managing to keep my head above water. I was immensely touched by your offer of a cash injection — as always, you are a true mensch — but my straits aren’t that dire. I am managing to stay afloat.

And yes, I did spend several nights at that hotel in the Sixteenth. And yes, your friends are right: the guy on the front desk was a real little monster.

Keep in touch.

Best

As soon as I sent this email, I switched over to the New York Times website. As I scanned that day’s paper, an Instant Message prompt popped up on the screen. It was a return email from Doug:

Hey Harry

Glad to hear it’s not that desperate for you over there … and I’m really pleased you’re writing. Got to dash to a class, but here’s a Paris tip: if you’re in the mood to meet people — or are simply bored on a Sunday night — then do consider checking out one of the salons that are held around town. Jim Haynes — one of life’s good guys — holds a great bash up at his atelier in the Fourteenth. But if you want a more bizarre experience, then drop into Lorraine L’Herbert’s soiree. She’s a Louisiana girl — starting to look down that long barrel of the shotgun marked sixty. Ever since she moved over to Paris in the early seventies, she’s been running a salon every Sunday night in her big fuck-off apartment near the Pantheon. She doesn’t ‘invite’ people. She expects people to invite themselves. And all you have to do is ring her on the number below and tell her you’re coming this week. Naturally, if she asks how you found out about her salon, use my name. But she won’t ask — because that’s not how it works.

Keep in touch, eh?

Best

Doug

On the other side of the cafe, Mr Beard said, ‘I close now. You go.’

I scribbled the phone number of Lorraine L’Herbert on a scrap of paper, then shoved it into a jacket pocket, thinking that — as lonely as I often felt — the last thing I wanted to do was rub shoulders with a bunch of expatriate types in some big-deal apartment in the Sixth, with everyone (except yours truly) basking in their own fabulousness. Still, the guilty man in me thought that I owed Doug the courtesy of taking the number down.

Mr Beard coughed again.

‘OK, I’m out of here,’ I said.

As I left, he said, ‘Kamal was stupid man.’

‘In what way?’ I asked.

‘He got himself dead.’

That phrase lodged itself in my brain and wouldn’t let go. For the next few days, I searched every edition of Le Parisien and Le Figaro — which also had good local Paris news — to see if there were any further developments in the case. Nothing. I mentioned Kamal’s death once more to Mr Beard — asking him if he had heard anything more. His response: ‘They now think it is suicide.’

‘Where did you hear that?’

‘Around.’

‘Around where?’

‘Around.’

‘So how did he take his life?’

‘He cut his throat.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘It is what I heard.’

‘He cut his own throat while walking along a street, then tossed himself in a dumpster?’

‘I report only what I have been told.’

‘Told by whom?’

‘It is not important.’

Then he disappeared into a back room.

Why didn’t I walk away then and there? Why didn’t I execute an about-face and vanish? I could have gone home and cleared out my chambre in a matter of minutes, and pitched up somewhere else in Paris. Surely there were grubbier streets in grubbier quartiers, where it was possible to find another shitty room in which I could eke out a living until the money ran out.

And then? And then?

That was the question which kept plaguing me as I sat at the little bar on the rue de Paradis, nursing a pression and wishing that the barmaid was available. I found myself studying the curve of her hips, the space between her breasts that was revealed by her V-neck T-shirt. Tonight I wanted sex for the first time since Susan had thrown me out all those months ago. It’s not that I hadn’t had a sexual thought since then. It’s just that I had been so freighted with the weight of all my assorted disasters that the idea of any sort of intimacy with someone else seemed like a voyage into a place that I now associated with danger. But never underestimate the libido — especially when it has been oiled with a couple of beers. As I found myself looking over the barmaid, she caught my appraising stare and smiled, then flicked her head toward a beefy guy with tattoos who had his back to us as he pulled a croque monsieur out of a small grill. The nod said it all: I’m taken. But the smile seemed to hint an ‘Alas’ before that statement. Or, at least, that’s what I wanted to believe. Just as I wanted to believe that Kamal ‘got himself killed’ because he owed somebody money, or he was in on a drug deal that had gone wrong, or he’d been fingering the till at the cafe, or he’d looked the wrong way at some woman. Or …

A half-dozen other scenarios filled my head … along with another pervasive thought. Remember what Kamal told you when he first offered you the job: ‘That is of no concern of yours.’ Good advice. Now finish the beer and get moving. It’s nearly midnight. Time to go to work.

Later that night, I opened my notebook and a piece of paper fell out of one of its back pages. It was the scrap on which I had written Lorraine L’Herbert’s phone number. I stared at it. I thought, What can I lose? It’s just a party, after all.

‘It’s not a party,’ said the uppity little man who answered L’Herbert’s phone the next afternoon. He was American with a slightly simpering voice and a decidedly pompous manner. ‘It’s a salon.’

Thanks for the semantical niceties, pal.

‘Are you having one this week?’

‘Comme d’habitude.’

‘Well, can I book a place?’

‘If we can fit you in. The list is very, very tight, I’m afraid. Your name, please?’

I told him.

‘Visiting from … ?’

‘I live here now, but I’m from Ohio.’

‘People actually live in Ohio?’

‘The last time I looked.’

‘What’s your line of endeavor?’

‘I’m a novelist.’

‘Published by … ?’

‘That’s pending.’

He issued a huge sigh, as if to say, Not another wouldbe writer.

‘Well, you know that there is a contribution of twenty euros. Please arrive with it in an envelope, on which your name is clearly printed. Take down the door code now and don’t lose it, because we don’t answer the phone after five p.m. on the day of the salon. So if you misplace it, you will not gain entry. And the invitation is for yourself only. If you show up with anyone else, both of you will be turned away.’

‘I’ll be alone.’

‘No smoking, by the way. Madame L’Herbert hates tobacco. We like all our guests to arrive between seven and seven thirty p.m. And dress is smart. Remember: a salon is theater. Any questions?’

Yeah. How do you spell ‘up your ass’?

‘The address, please?’ I asked.

He gave it to me. I wrote it down.

‘Do come prepared to dazzle,’ he said. ‘Those who shine get asked back. Those who don’t …’

‘I’m a total dazzler,’ I said.

He laughed a snide laugh. And said, ‘We’ll see about that.’