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“Sue-tours?”
“Like with sewing on skin.” She points to her cheek.
“Sutures? Stitches? He had stitches?”
“Yes, and his face was very swollen, and his eye black.”
“What happened?”
“He would not tell me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
“You did not ask me this yesterday.”
I want to be furious with her. Not just for this, but for being such a bitch that first day in Paris, for accusing me of cowardice. But I finally get that none of this is about Céline; it never was. I’m the one who told Willem I was in love with him. I’m the one who said that I’d take care of him. I’m the one who bailed.
I look up at Céline, who is watching me with the cagey expression of a cat eyeing a sleeping dog. “Je suis désolée,” I apologize. And then I pull the macaron out of my bag and give it to her. It’s raspberry, and I was saving it as a reward for confronting Céline. It is cheating Babs’s rule to give it to someone else, but somehow, I feel she’d approve.
She eyes it suspiciously, then takes it, pinching it between her fingers as though it were contagious. She gingerly lays it on a stack of CD cases.
“So, what happened?” I ask. “He came back here all banged up?”
She nods, barely.
“Why?”
She frowns. “He would not say.”
Silence. She looks down, then quickly glances at me. “He looked through your suitcase.”
What was in there? A packing list. Clothes. Souvenirs. Unwritten postcards. My luggage tag? No, that snapped off in the Tube station back in London. My diary? Which I now have. I grab it out of my bag, leaf through a few entries. There’s something about Rome and feral cats. Vienna and the Schönbrunn Palace. The opera in Prague. But there is nothing, nothing of me. Not my name. My address. My email address. Not the addresses of any of the people I met on the tour. We didn’t even bother with the pretense of keeping in touch. I shove the diary back in my bag. Céline is peering through narrowed eyes, watching while pretending not to.
“Did he take anything from my bag? Find anything?”
“No. He only smelled. . . .” She stops, as if in pain.
“He smelled what?”
“He smelled terrible,” she says solemnly. “He took your watch. I told him to leave it. My uncle is a jeweler, so I know it was expensive. But he refused.”
I sigh. “Where can I find him, Céline? Please. You can help me with that much.”
“That much? I help you with so much already,” she says, all huffy with her own indignation. “And I don’t know where to find him. I don’t lie.” She looks hard at me. “I tell you the truth, and that is that Willem is the kind of man who comes when he comes. And mostly, he doesn’t.”
I wish I could tell her that she’s wrong. That with us, it was different. But if he didn’t stay in love with Céline, what makes me think that after one day, even if he did like me, I haven’t been completely licked clean?
“So you did not have any luck? On the Internet?” she asks.
I start to gather my things. “No.”
“Willem de Ruiter is a common name, n’est-ce pas?” she says. Then she does something I wouldn’t have thought her capable of. She blushes. And that is how I know she’s looked for him too. And she didn’t find him, either. And all at once, I wonder if I haven’t gotten Céline, if not altogether wrong, then a little bit wrong.
I take one of my extra Paris postcards. I write my name, address, all my details on it, and hand it to her. “If you see Willem. Or if you’re ever in Boston and need a place to crash—or store your stuff.”
She takes the postcard and looks at it. Then she shoves it in a drawer. “Boss-tone. I think I prefer New York,” she sniffs. I’m almost relieved that she’s sounding like her haughty self again.
I think of Dee. He could handle Céline. “That can probably be arranged.”
