The Woman in the Fifth

Fourteen

LATER THAT NIGHT, before going to work, I stopped by my room to pick up my laptop computer and a book I was reading. When I arrived home, the note I was dreading was stuck under my door:

I get 1000 euros tomorrow or you fucked.

The handwriting was scrawly. I turned over the scrap of paper and wrote:

You will get your money in a couple of days. If you reveal anything before then, you will get nothing.

I shoved this note under Omar’s door, then entered my room and sat down on my bed and tried to sift through everything I had told Margit tonight, and how good it felt to finally unburden myself of this secret, and how I felt simultaneously exposed and self-belittled for having admitted the terrible shame that haunted my every waking hour.

But Omar’s blackmailing note also emboldened me. En route to work I walked directly into the little bar on the rue de Paradis. Yanna was serving the usual crew of drunks (many of whom were her husband’s chums). Her eyes grew wide when I entered her establishment — a case of the guilty jitters which she tried to temper with a tight smile as she pulled me a pression and simultaneously filled a shot glass with bourbon.

‘What brings you here?’ she said in a low whisper, glancing at the half-cocked clientele, wondering if they were picking up her nervousness.

‘We need to talk,’ I whispered back.

‘Bad time.’

‘It’s somewhat urgent.’

‘I can’t leave the bar with all these creeps watching us.’

‘Make an excuse. I’m going to finish these drinks and leave. Meet me in ten minutes up on the corner of the rue de Paradis and the rue du Faubourg Poissonniere. What I need to say can’t be said here right now.’

Then I threw back the whisky and drained the beer and left — all the other clientele glaring at me as I hustled myself out the door. As expected, Yanna did show up ten minutes later at my proposed rendezvous spot. She had a cigarette going when she arrived and appeared hyper-tense.

‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ she hissed at me. ‘Everyone in the bar saw you were trying to talk to me.’

‘It was an emergency,’ I said. ‘Omar …’

And I told her how he saw us and what he was now threatening.

‘Oh fuck,’ she said. ‘My husband will first kill you, then me …’

‘Not if you do what I tell you.’

That’s when I outlined the idea that Margit gave me (though not telling her that another party had cooked up this scheme). Yanna didn’t seem convinced.

‘He’ll still believe that fat slob,’ she said, ‘because he’s a fucking Turk. It’s an idiotic Turkish male code-of-honor thing. If the slob tells you that your woman is a slut then, without question, she is a slut.’

‘If you go to your husband crying, saying how Omar forced himself on you, how he had his hands everywhere, how he was so drunk he obviously didn’t know what he was doing, but still did vast amounts of improper things to you—’

‘He’ll still beat me.’

‘Not if you sell it properly to him.’

‘He’ll do it anyway — even if he totally believes me. And his justification will be that — as it was me acting like a slut which prompted Omar’s “attentions” — I deserve to have my eyes blackened.’

‘You should get out of this marriage.’

‘Thank you for such intelligent advice. My husband gets back tonight. If you value your life I would lay low for a few days — just in case he does believe his fellow Turk and decides to come looking for you with a sickle.’

‘I’ll make myself scarce.’

‘One last thing: don’t come into our bar again. I want to erase you from my life.’

‘The feeling is entirely mutual,’ I said, then turned on my heel and left.

Some hours later, at work, the thought struck me: ‘laying low’ was not going to be the easiest of tasks, especially in an area where everybody knew each other and in a job where an unexplained absence from work wouldn’t be tolerated. There was a part of me that wanted to return to my room, pack up all my possessions (a process that would take no more than ten minutes) and vanish into the night. But once again, I was plagued by the question: Then what? I also knew that if I did do a bunk, I’d severely disappoint Margit. Earlier that evening — after I had finished telling her what had happened to Shelley — she had returned to the subject of Omar’s threat, saying, ‘It would be far simpler for all concerned if Omar simply disappeared from view before the husband got home.’

‘Sure it would. But from what I’ve heard, he has no family back in Turkey, and no life to speak of outside of his job and his chambre de bonne. And he’s completely legal here. Even flashed his French passport in my face.’

‘A pity, that. Had he been illegal, you would have been easily able to turn the tables on him. One phone call to the Immigration Authorities—’

‘But he could have ratted on me too. After all, I am working here without a carte de sejour.’

‘But your job doesn’t really exist, does it? You live beneath the usual Social Service radar that would get you found out if you were legitimately working. Anyway, if forced to choose between the story told by an educated American and an illiterate greasy Turk, who do you think they are going to believe?’

‘Racism has its virtues, I guess.’

‘Absolutely. And you’re just as racist as the cops.’

‘Or as you.’

‘That’s right. But remember this: though an immigrant like Omar, living on the margins in this city, might despise all the people here having plush, proper lives, his real scorn and despair are aimed at those in closest proximity to him. Zoltan always used to say, “Never trust another immigre. They wish for your downfall in order to reassure themselves there is someone lower than themselves.” So, yes — Omar will rat you out. Which means you should go home right now and pack a bag and flee the rue de Paradis. But if you do that—’

‘I’m running away again.’

‘As you ran away after your friend’s suicide … even though you weren’t to blame for what she did.’

‘I will always blame myself for what happened.’

‘As a way of hating yourself. But suit yourself. You haven’t finished the story, Harry. So … tell me about the suicide.’

Margit poured me another glass of whisky. I tossed it back. Even though I had already downed half the bottle, I still felt nothing.

‘First I have to tell you about the abortion business,’ I said.

‘Your friend had to have an abortion?’

‘No. It was alleged that I was trying to talk her into having an abortion … which was certainly news to me. That day — the day I woke up on Douglas’s couch to find his front lawn under siege by reporters — all hell broke loose. By six that evening, it was a major story across Ohio: Professor Tries to Force Freshman Student to Have Abortion After Affair.

‘Now, you have to understand that I never, never, spoke with Shelley about an abortion. Nor was I even aware that Shelley was pregnant. In fact, it struck me as virtually impossible that she was carrying my child, as I had used a condom when we slept together.’

‘So how did this fantastic story about you trying to talk her into a termination go public?’

‘It seems that Shelley had kept a journal since we’d started seeing each other. When all the shit hit the fan, the Proctor in her dormitory — a real little goody-goody Born-Again Christian type — carried out her own raid on Shelley’s room, found the journal and dutifully turned it over to the Dean of the Faculty. As it turns out, Shelley’s journal was full of crazy romantic stuff: about me being the love of her life, about me telling her that I had never felt so passionate about anyone before — something I never said — and also promising her that I’d leave my wife and daughter to marry her — another complete fabrication. This romantic fantasia went on and on for pages, and recounted, in prurient detail, the afternoon we spent together in that Toledo motel — something the press leaped upon after the diary was leaked to them …’

‘Leaked by Robson?’

‘As I found out later. But though the media loved all the graphic stuff in the diary about our afternoon of love — Shelley’s exact words — they really went crazy when they read a long sequence of entries about her wanting to be the mother of my baby. Then, after I decided to break it off with her, her imagination went wild. Suddenly there were statements in the diary like, How could he do this to me when he knows I’m pregnant? and, All I want is to have our child, but Harry tells me he will never allow that. And then there was the kiss of death: I got the results of the pregnancy test today. I am a Mom-to-Be! I raced to Harry’s office to tell him the good news. But his reaction was horrible and absolute: the baby must die. And he picked up the phone and called an abortion clinic in Cleveland and made us an appointment in three days’ time. But there’s no way I will kill our baby.

‘Margit, I swear to you, I never had any of those conversations with Shelley. It was pure invention on her part.’

‘And one which the Dean must have looked upon as a gift from God.’

‘Not just the Dean, but every right-wing press commentator in the country. The story played right into their hands: “progressive” professor seduces young student and then insists on “murdering” their baby. I was held up as an example of everything that was degenerate and sordid about the socalled “liberal elite” … while Shelley was considered a heroine for saving the life of her unborn child.

‘All the television stations staked out my house — and showed my wife and daughter being ambushed by the press as they left our home. One of the journalists actually asked Megan, “What do you think of your father having a girlfriend who is only three years older than you? ” She burst into tears and I wanted to kill that bastard.

‘They also showed footage of some greasy lawyer for Shelley’s father — an ex-Marine whom she loathed — telling the cameras that he was filing, on behalf of his client, a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit against the college for allowing a degenerate like me to teach there. There was also a soundbite with Robson, where he put on this face of gravitas and concern, saying how it was horrible that “this poor young woman” had been victimized by me, and how he would personally ensure that I never entered a center of higher education again.’

‘And where was Shelley during all of this?’

‘Her parents had taken her home to Cincinnati — where she was kept locked away from the press.’

‘And meanwhile …’

‘I stayed in Douglas’s basement and ignored all knocks on the door and all phone calls. But I did email a statement to the press, in which I categorically denied that I had ever demanded the abortion, as she had never told me that she was pregnant. And as we had practiced safe sex …

‘Well, this created a new feeding frenzy. The next day the television crews caught Shelley and her family en route to church, and started hurling questions at her like, “Are you lying about being pregnant? Did you make it all up … ?” Shelley looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Later that afternoon, the family lawyer issued a statement, saying that I was being even more of a monster by calling Shelley a liar … and how they would have certified medical substantiation of her pregnancy within forty-eight hours.

‘In the middle of all this madness, Doug was fantastic. He ran interference for me, keeping all intruders at bay and screening all phone calls … except for one from Megan which came right after Shelley’s lawyer appeared on TV, saying that I was a beast. Megan must have gotten the number from Susan — who, in turn, had to have been told by Robson where I was hiding out. Anyway, when I got on the line, I started saying something lame like, “Megan, darling, I know this is awful. And I know you must hate me for all this. But I just want you to know—”

‘She cut me off. “I never want to talk to you again,” she said, crying. Then she hung up.

‘Naturally I called her straight back. Susan answered — and said, her voice completely calm, “You will never see — or hear from — your daughter again.” And then she added, “If I were you I’d kill myself.”

‘But it was Shelley who did that. Late that night, while everyone was asleep, she left her parents’ house. Around two hours later, she jumped off a highway overpass a mile from where they lived. She landed right in the path of an oncoming truck. The cops said someone saw her standing on the overpass for several minutes before she jumped. This led them to surmise that she was waiting for some large vehicle to approach.’

‘Or maybe she was trying to find the courage to jump.’

‘She left no note, or any hint that she was planning to …’

I fell silent and reached for the whisky bottle, pouring myself another substantial slug.

‘Do you think she jumped because she was about to be revealed as a fantasist?’

‘Perhaps. Or maybe her father had been making her life hell for her. And if her obsessive behavior was anything to go by, she was certainly not in the most balanced and reasonable state … which, in turn, was all due to me breaking it off with her.’

‘Harry — if the diary proved anything, it’s that she lived in a fantasy world. She didn’t reveal the extent of her compulsions while you were getting friendly with each other … which means she was either very good at disguising her manias or you were completely blind to them. But knowing you, I sense it was the former. Had she shown telltale signs of obsessiveness—’

‘I would have ended it well before we slept together.’

‘My point entirely. But instead, she wove this fiction about “having your baby”. Robson went public with it. You countered, saying she was making it up. When faced with probable exposure as a fantasist, she killed herself.’

‘That’s one interpretation.’

‘Was it your friend Douglas who found out all the details of the suicide?’ Margit asked.

I nodded.

‘And did he inform you about Robson and your ex-wife?’

‘Doug finally did tell me about the rumors going around. He also admitted that he had known about them for the past few months — but felt uneasy about telling me, in case it blew over. I understood — especially as I never told Doug that I knew that, a couple of years earlier, his ex-wife had been sleeping with the college librarian … who was also a woman.

‘Anyway, Doug was also unable to accuse Robson of leaking both the story and Shelley’s diary to the press. He was coming up for promotion in a few months and, if he crossed Robson, he was finished. Still, privately, he was appalled — and encouraged me to simply disappear. “You start exposing Robson now, and it’s going to look like you’re trying to deflect responsibility. It’s really best if you just vanish.”

‘The next day, the Cincinnati medical examiner revealed that Shelley hadn’t been pregnant when she killed herself. Within an hour, the family lawyer issued a statement saying that it was medically plausible that her period had been several weeks late — and that the pregnancy test might have been faulty. “Whether or not she was actually carrying Professor Ricks’s child,” he said, “is less important than the fact that she thought she was pregnant — and that Ricks, upon hearing the news, dropped her and insisted on the abortion … a demand which sent her fragile psyche into a downward spiral, eventually resulting in her suicide. Ricks, in essence, murdered this poor young woman.”

‘Well, this spin on the story played everywhere — and I decided to take Doug’s advice. I got him to go over to my house when Susan wasn’t there to collect my passport and laptop. I went downtown to my bank. When I walked in, the manager told me that my custom was no longer welcome here. I said, “Fine by me, because I’m closing my account.” I had twenty-two thousand dollars in a savings account. I transferred fifteen of that into a mutual fund for Megan. I took the rest in cash — and grabbed my things at Doug’s and got into my beat-up Volvo and left town. Eight hours later I was in Chicago. I found a cheap hotel — four hundred and fifty dollars a week — off Lake Shore Drive. I parked my bags and drove out into the ‘burbs and stopped at the first used-car lot I found and accepted three grand in cash for my Volvo. Then I caught a cab back to the subway, returned to the hotel, and began a life of … well, nothing, really. My room was shabby, but adequate. It had a lumpy bed, and an old television, and a toilet that flushed, if you were lucky, on the third go. But the management asked no questions, and I paid my weekly bill on time, and didn’t ever complain or say much to them during the weeks I was there.’

‘How many weeks?’

‘Six.’

‘What did you do during that time?’

‘I forget.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s the truth. I remember sleeping until noon every day and always having breakfast in the same little luncheonette, and never buying a newspaper or magazine because I was afraid of reading something about the case. I never checked my email. I spent a lot of time at the movies. I bought paperbacks in second-hand shops, I drank in down-at-heel bars near the hotel, then watched shit television half the night. I suppose I was in total shock. I never had any sort of emotional highs or lows. I just dragged myself through the day like the walking dead. Until, one evening, I came home from an all-day session at the same multiplex cinema. The night porter on duty told me that a guy had come by that morning, asking for me. “He looked like some sort of process server to me,” he said, and added that he was certain to come back very early the next morning, “because that’s what those assholes all do“.

‘I went upstairs and called Doug. He asked me why the hell hadn’t I answered any of the emails he’d sent me, and did I know that Shelley’s father had made good on his threat to sue the college? The college, in turn, had decided (at Robson’s urging) to sue me for defamation of their public reputation, gross professional negligence and so forth, and had hired a private detective to find me. “If you’re calling me, the gumshoe has obviously tracked you down,” Doug said. When I explained that it seemed I was about to be served papers, he told me to flee immediately. “Get out of the country now, otherwise prepare to be destroyed in the courts.”

‘So I said, “OK, I’ll get the next flight to Paris.”’

‘And once you got here?’

‘I did manage to get back into contact with Megan — and we actually started a correspondence until her mother found out and put an end to it. I haven’t heard from my daughter since then. But after they reached some sort of smallish payoff arrangement with Shelley’s dad, the college did decide to drop its threatened action against me. According to Doug, the college’s Board of Directors overruled Robson, who wanted me pursued to the ends of the earth.’

‘That man really has it in for you.’

‘Yes. It’s not enough that I have been ruined. He won’t be happy until he sees me completely crushed.’

‘And if you could be revenged against him … ?’

‘I don’t want revenge.’

‘Yes, you do. And you deserve it. So does Shelley. Had he not leaked any of this to the press, she would probably still be alive today. So what do you think would be an appropriate payback for all the harm he perpetrated?’

‘You want me to fantasize here?’ I asked.

‘Absolutely. The worst thing that could happen to the bastard.’

‘You mean, like discovering that he had a huge collection of kiddy porn on his computer?’

‘That would do nicely. And say you wanted to devise an appropriate punishment for your ex-wife … ?’

‘Now let’s not get ridiculous here …’

‘Go on, it’s just loose talk.’

‘If she lost her job—’

‘You’d feel vindicated then?’

‘Why are you playing this game?’

‘To help you.’

‘Help me … what? Psychologically?’

‘The talking cure is a good one — especially when it comes to articulating your anger, your grief. But it doesn’t fully close the wound.’

‘Then what does?’

She shrugged and said nothing. Except, ‘You need to be on your way now. We will continue talking in three days’ time, if that’s fine with you.’

‘Of course.’

‘We might even have sex the next time … as you might be feeling less guilty about fucking that barmaid. You will definitely tell her to go crying to her husband about Omar’s horrible assault on her.’

‘I’m dreading the idea—’

‘You will dread a beating even more. A tres bientot …’

Having now done what Margit had demanded — having spoken to Yanna and hatched my plan with her — I felt strangely calm. Though there was part of me that wanted to go to Mr Beard and make up some story about having to leave town for a few days on ‘personal business’, I decided to stay put and see just how things played out … like someone playing Russian roulette, who was certain it was worth staying in the game because the odds were six to one that he wouldn’t get his brains blown out.

Back in my office later that night, I opened my laptop and went to work. My novel was now over four hundred pages in length. The doubts that haunted the early months of writing had been replaced by a fierce momentum — and the sense that the novel was starting to write itself. This was another reason why I was loath to run away from this small nocturnal cell. Its claustrophobic bleakness had become almost talismanic to me; the place where, free from all outside distraction, I pounded out the words and moved the story on. And I feared if I suddenly left this room, the writing would stop. So despite all the creeping doubts about everything to do with this job, this quartier, I was determined to stay working here until the novel was finished. Then, one day, I’d simply pack up my things and slip away. Until then—

Why is somebody screaming downstairs?

The scream was loud, shrill, alarming. It had an almost animalistic intensity — like that of a wild beast caught in a trap and howling in torment. After a moment it fell silent. Then I could hear the same voice engaged in loud supplications, followed by other voices shouting him down, and then …

The scream this time was agonizing. Pain was being inflicted in a merciless manner. When a further howl pierced the concrete walls of my room, I found myself on my feet and unbolting the door. But as soon as I yanked it open, the howling stopped. I peered downstairs into an empty corridor. I walked down several steps and stared at the door at the end of the corridor on the ground floor. A voice in my head whispered, Are you out of your fucking mind? I dashed upstairs, closed the door and bolted it again, trying my best to secure it quietly. But it still made a decisive thwack when I pushed it home. After a minute, the howling started again. This time, the other voices started to shout, the howls became hysterical, a word — Yok! Yok! Yok! — was repeated over and over again by the man who was screaming. There was further shouting, then one final appalling screech … then a deep, eerie silence.

I sat at my desk, chewing on a finger, feeling helpless, terrified. Don’t move, don’t move. But if you hear footsteps coming up the stairs, grab your laptop and make a dash for the emergency exit (not that I had any idea where that exit might actually bring me).

Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes went by. I kept staring at the television monitor. No one appeared on its fuzzy screen. Twenty-five minutes. Silence. Then, suddenly, I heard the downstairs door open and footsteps in the corridor. The front door opened. A man came out into the lane. He appeared short — but it was hard to discern anything about him, as he had the hood of his parka pulled up around his head to conceal his face. He also had a broom in one hand. What the hell is he doing with that? I wondered — until he thrust the broom handle at the camera hanging above the door. I flinched — because the image that appeared on the monitor made it seem like he was jabbing the broom handle directly at me. With the first blow the camera just shook. With the second, he scored a bull’s-eye on the lens and the screen went black. Then I could hear whispered voices and low grunts accompanied by the sound of something heavy being dragged along the corridor. The dragging sound stopped, there were more whispers — Were they checking that the coast was clear before hoisting the body? — then the sound of further dragging before the front door closed with a dull thud.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic …

But say they come back for you … ?

If I left now, they could be waiting for me outside. I’d see who they were … and that would be, at best, unfortunate. If I waited here, at least I’d be sending a signal that I was playing by the rules. I wasn’t going to ask questions, go to the cops, make trouble.

I was desperate to flee. I couldn’t flee. But as soon as my watch read 6 a.m., I was gone. Though I wanted to take a long walk by the Canal Saint-Martin to try to calm down, I sensed that it was best to stick to my usual routine, just in case somebody might be watching my movements. So I hung on until 6 a.m., went to the boulangerie and bought my pains au chocolat, then returned to my room, where I found a new note stuck under my door:

I give you two more days, no more. 1000 euros or I tell.

I crumpled up the note and shoved it into my pocket. Then I went inside and took a Zopiclone and crawled into bed.

Up as usual at two. At the Internet cafe thirty minutes later. But as soon as I walked in, I could tell that Mr Beard knew all about last night. Because he came out from behind the bar and locked the front door, then motioned for me to follow him into a back room. When I hesitated, he said, ‘You do not leave here until we have a talk.’

‘Let’s talk here,’ I said, thinking if some stooges emerged from the back room, I’d have some minor chance of throwing myself through the glass of the front window and getting away with mere major lacerations.

‘It’s quiet in the back.’

‘We’ll talk here,’ I said.

A pause. I could see him staring out at the street, looking just a little paranoid.

‘What you see last night?’ he asked.

‘I saw some vandal smash the television camera.’

‘Before that?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘That’s right: nothing.’

‘I don’t believe you. You opened the door. They heard you.’

‘They heard wrong.’

‘You lie. They heard. They know.’

‘I didn’t hear a sound all night. I never left the room all night. The only thing out of the ordinary was the clown who threw something at the camera—’

‘You see his face?’

‘He had a hood pulled up over his head, so it was hard to—’

‘Why you think he broke the camera?’

‘How should I know?’

‘You lie.’

‘Lie about what?’

‘You know what happened. And if the police ask you what you heard?’

‘Why would the police do that?’

‘If the police ask you …’

‘I’d tell them what I told you: I heard nothing.’

Silence. He reached into his jacket pocket and tossed my pay envelope on the floor. I decided not to raise objections to this little act of aggression, and instead played the subservient role demanded of me and leaned over to pick up the envelope. As I stood up again he said, ‘They know you heard the screams. They know you left the room — because they heard you leave the room. You don’t do that again. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said quietly.

I tried to go about my business that day. But as I sat down in a restaurant for lunch, as I took the metro out to Bercy for a screening of Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass, as I sipped a coffee afterward in the little brasserie opposite the Cinematheque, I couldn’t help but wonder, Is someone watching me? I kept scanning people near to me to see if I noticed the same reoccurring face. Walking down a street, I’d stop and spin around in an attempt to catch the man tailing me. But I saw no one. Still, I was taking no chances. I resisted the temptation to use a phone kiosk and call the walk-in clinic to get the results of my HIV test — out of the fear that someone would report back to them that I was seen on the phone and, ergo, to the cops. So I decided to go there myself, my apprehension about the result somewhat tempered by everything else that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

The clinic was open until eight. I arrived half an hour before closing time. The doctor I had seen was in the reception area as I walked in.

‘What brings you back here?’ he asked.

‘I just came by for the test results.’

‘You could have phoned.’

‘I’d rather hear them in person.’

He shrugged, as if to say, If you insist. Then he turned to the receptionist and told her my name (I was impressed that he remembered me). She riffled around an in-tray until she found the necessary file and handed it to him. He motioned for me to follow him into his office. I shut the door behind us. He settled into his desk chair and opened the file and started to read. I studied his face — in a manner similar to a defendant staring at the foreman of a jury as he returns holding the verdict envelope in his hand.

‘Please sit down, Mr Ricks,’ the doctor said.

‘Bad news?’

‘No need to be a fatalist, monsieur. The HIV test came back negative. However, I must inform you that you did test positive for another sexually transmitted disease: chlamydia.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘It is not a serious condition, and can easily be treated with antibiotics …’

‘I thought only women got chlamydia.’

‘Think again.’

He started scribbling something on a script pad.

‘You will need to take these four times a day, and drink at least three liters of water daily. And no unprotected sex for three weeks.’

Three weeks!Margit would be thrilled to hear this — though the fact that I might have also given her a sexually transmitted disease would probably overshadow that minor detail.

‘It is also advised that you do not drink alcohol during this course of antibiotics. It diminishes their efficacy.’

Better and better. Three weeks without booze. How could I get through this life of mine without booze?

‘Naturally, you will also need to inform all your sexual partners of this condition.’

How do you know that I have ‘partners’ and not just a partner? Or is my ever-growing sleaziness that apparent?

‘I would also strongly advise you to return after the course of antibiotics for another blood test — just to be certain that there is no ongoing ambiguity.’

Doctor, there is always ongoing ambiguity … not to mention ongoing worry, as the past few days have shown.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Just fine.’

After stopping off at a late-night pharmacy on the boulevard de Sebastopol and handing over an exorbitant thirty-eight euros for the prescribed tablets, I decided to get the first bit of nasty business over with. I returned to the rue de Paradis and walked into Yanna’s bar. It was a slow night. There were only three other customers there — and they were conveniently installed in a table toward the back. Yanna’s eyes grew wide as I sat down at the otherwise empty bar.

‘I thought I told you not to come here anymore,’ she hissed.

‘Did you speak to your husband?’

‘He was delayed. He comes back tomorrow.’

She glanced nervously at the customers at the back table.

‘Order a drink,’ she whispered, ‘otherwise they will get suspicious.’

‘Water.’

‘Water?’

‘Not my idea of a good time, believe me. But I am on antibiotics.’

‘For what?’ she asked.

That’s when I told her. She turned several shades of white.

‘You fucker,’ she hissed. ‘You gave me—’

‘I gave you that? Think again, madame. It’s a female condition that’s passed on to the male.’ I had no idea if this was true. ‘And since I haven’t been sleeping around—’

‘Liar.’

‘I caught this from you. And who knows where you caught it. Maybe your husband—’

‘Get out,’ she said.

‘Not before you see this,’ I said, and passed her the crumpled note that Omar had left under my door. She opened it up, glanced at it, then handed it back to me.

‘Cochon,’ she said.

‘You’ve got to tell your husband as soon as he arrives.’

‘Believe me, I will. And I’ll also tell him that Omar raped me and gave me this condition.’

‘Now hang on …’ I said, thinking if she told her husband that, it would result in an automatic death sentence for Omar.

‘I hope he kills him,’ she said. ‘And if you don’t get out now, I’ll also tell him that you tried to interfere with me as well.’

I stared at her furious face — and knew that I should not pursue this discussion any further.

Some hours later, staring at the screen of my laptop, ticking off the hours until 6 a.m., I wondered, Why do I have this singular talent for making women angry at me? Or, to cut to the heart of the matter, Why do I always seem to fuck it up? But this was superseded by a larger concern: Omar. The sonofabitch was a blackmailer and a moron who wouldn’t think anything of selling me down the river. Still, the scheme that Margit devised for tripping him up would now result in … well, a fast death might be the mildest of punishments once Yanna’s husband and his collection of goons got their hands on the man who had ‘raped’ his wife and given her a disease (even though Yanna’s husband probably picked it up from one of the whores he frequently slept with). The twisted morality of all this — do I endanger somebody who is threatening to endanger me? — preoccupied me all night. Then dawn came and I was out in the street, walking back to my chambre de bonne, a bag of pains au chocolat in hand.

I mounted the stairs to my room. When I reached my floor, my bladder felt full from all the water I had been drinking that night (doctor’s orders), so I turned toward the hallway toilet.

I opened the door and suddenly jumped back in horror, a scream leaping out of my throat. There before me was Omar. He lay slumped on the toilet seat. His throat had been cut. There was blood everywhere. And a toilet brush was sticking out of his mouth.