13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [22]
“Hello, Madam,” he answers. “Lovely day, isn’t it? A bit strange for November, don’t you find?”
Louise is flustered: she has this tingly feeling that somehow he has already read the letter she sent him, and somehow he already knows she was the one who wrote it. Of course, this is impossible, as she has just put her criminal message in the post a few minutes earlier.
“Unseasonably warm, yes,” she says. “We are neighbors, it seems.”
“Indeed, I recognized you from Friday. You were at your window.”
“I trust your move went well?”
“It was fine. Nothing of importance was broken. My name is Langlais, by the way, Xavier Langlais.”
He extends his hand, and she takes it. It is cool and efficient in her grasp: two swift pumps and it is gone. “Louise Brunet,” she says. “You are out for a stroll?”
“Actually, I walk through here every day on my way home from work.”
As he utters the word “work,” Xavier gives a quick heave to the caramel-colored leather satchel he carries in his burdened hand, to display it.
“What do you do?”
“I teach literature to high school boys. I have a stack of their papers to look over tonight.”
“That sounds very interesting.”
He shrugs. “Not as interesting as all that. Ah, why don’t I give you our calling card. We just got them in from the printer’s this morning. My wife was quite delighted with them.”
He reaches into his coat pocket for his wallet, and when he opens it, he fumbles. A hundred-franc bill spirals out, falls to the ground at Louise’s feet. Louise reaches swiftly for it before it tumbles away, swept by some errant breeze. She hands it back to him.
“Be careful with your stray cash,”13 she says, smirking.
“Ah, thank you,” he answers, his smile slightly wider now, faintly glowing with something like genuine mirth. “I’ll have to take that under advisement. Honestly, paper money is worth so little these days, Madam. Perhaps it is not even worth bending over to pick up. But thank you, in any case.”
As he speaks, Louise reaches into her purse and plucks out her own calling card. They exchange their paper names soundlessly.
“Well, I should be getting on now,” Xavier says as he puts his wallet back inside his coat, “but I shall have to meet your husband, and you shall have to meet my wife soon.”
“And your children.”
“Certainly. Enjoy the sunshine,” he says, and then leaves, not waiting for her to say good-bye.
“See you,” she calls after his departing back, her voice nearly quavering.
THE NEXT DAY (TUESDAY) Louise has to go out for a big grocery run: she has to look for some fine large piece of meat at the butcher’s; she has to fill up on potatoes and carrots and onions at the produce market; she has to go everywhere.
She needs wine, and cream, and sugar, and chocolate—how could she have run out of all these things at once? What kind of wife is she that she cannot keep such necessities plentiful in her home!
All the same, it is fun to walk everywhere and chat with all the shopkeepers.
After a while, the bags get heavy. The handles start digging into the palms of her hands as she carries them down the street; she is full up, she has to go home. She has bought so many things because her father is coming over for dinner tonight and bringing his friend Pierre Cleper. She looks forward to it: Pierre is a fine conversationalist, if occasionally suffering from a wandering tongue around the ladies.
When she gets back to the front door of her building, she has difficulty pushing it open, laden as she is with all her ingredients. A smiling young man sees this and runs over, opens the door for her, and holds it as she passes through. She nods thank-you at him, and he offers to carry her bags up to her apartment. Normally, she would say no, but her arms are beginning to ache from her long shopping run. She consents.
The young man takes everything from her and follows her up the stairs. He is tall, skinny, and darkly complexioned. He smells of bleach and sweat. He chatters to Louise in painfully shattered French about that time when he was seven years old and broke his leg. She cannot tell for sure