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“Is this it?”

The sales clerk had pulled out a Tom Ford bottle and spritzed it on Reine-Marie.

No.

Then Versace’s Eros.

Definitely not.

Then Yves Saint Laurent—

“No, those are all pretty common,” she said. “It’s something I’ve never smelled before.”

“Are you sure it was a cologne?” he asked. “Not something you stepped in? Some do smell like that.”

“Quite sure.”

They went through more. The young man spraying, or dabbing, various scents onto, or around, her.

Reine-Marie felt more and more queasy, but kept going. Finally, they came to the end. Without success. Unless the goal had been to make both of them nauseous. In which case it had been a triumph.

“Désolé,” she said. “But there is one more thing you can help me with.”

Fifteen minutes later, at the door to Le Bon Marché, she pressed a fifty-euro note into his hand.

He did not decline it. He had, he felt, earned every stinking centime.

Reine-Marie returned to bar Joséphine.

Armand and Jean-Guy’s plates had been taken away, but as soon as she sat down, Jacques put her lobster mayonnaise in front of her.

Normally without expression, and certainly without judgment, the maître d’s face now contorted into a scowl.

“Madame,” he said, and backed away.

“I’m sorry, Jacques. I’m no longer hungry. Can you package this up for me to take away?”

“Of course,” he said.

Taking a deep breath through his mouth, he leaned forward and whisked the plate off the table.

“Good God, Reine-Marie, what’ve you been doing?” Armand asked, his eyes almost watering.

She explained.

“It was a good try,” he said as he shoved a few inches away from her and gestured to Jacques to bring their bill. Quickly.

From a distance, Jacques waved the suggestion, or something, away.

Their food and drink were on the house.

As Reine-Marie and Beauvoir stepped into the fresh air and sunshine on boulevard Raspail, they noticed that Armand was still inside.

He’d paused at the entrance and was, once again, staring down at the mosaic in the floor.

Jostled and shoved by impatient guests, Armand stood his ground and contemplated the ancient symbol of Paris before it was Paris.

Jacques had quoted the Latin motto. Fluctuat nec mergitur.