The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [30]
Hesitating, thinking it through once more, he’d called her at the hospital at 6:30 and asked if she would meet him in a café nearby for coffee when she got off work. He’d heard her pause, and for a moment he was afraid that she was going to make up an excuse and tell him she couldn’t see him, but then she’d agreed. Her shift finished at 7:00 but she had a meeting that wouldn’t be over until just after 8:00. She would meet him after that.
Osborn watched her as he carried the espresso back to the table. After a thirty-six-hour shift without sleep and an hourlong meeting following that she was still pert and radiant, even beautiful. He couldn’t help staring at her as he sat down, and when she caught him she smiled back, lovingly. There was something about her that put him some of where else, no matter what he was thinking or what else he was involved in. He wanted to be with her and consume her and have her consume him, always and forever. Nothing either one of them could ever do should be more important than that. The trouble was he first had to take care of Henri Kanarack.
Leaning forward, he reached across to take her hand. Almost immediately she pulled it away and slid it into her lap.
“Don’t,” she said, her eyes darting around the room.
“What are you afraid of? Somebody might see us?”
“Yes.”
Vera looked away, then picked up her cup and took a sip of the espresso.
“You came to me, remember? To say goodbye . . . ,” Osborn said. “Does he know about that?”
Abruptly Vera put down her cup and stood up to leave.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t the right thing to say. Let’s get out of here and go for a walk.”
She hesitated.
“Vera, you’re talking to a friend, a doctor you met in Geneva who asked you to meet him for a cup Of coffee. Then you walked up the street together. He went back to the U.S. and that was that. Shoptalk between doctors. Good story. Good ending. Right?”
Osborn’s head was cocked to the side and the veins stood out on his neck. She’d never seen him angry before. In a way she couldn’t explain, it pleased her and she smiled. “Right,” she said, almost girlishly.
Outside, Osborn raised an umbrella against a light drizzle. Dodging around a red Peugeot, they crossed the street and walked up rue de la Santé in the direction of the hospital.
In doing so they passed a white Ford parked at the curb. Inspector Lebrun was behind the wheel; McVey sat in the passenger seat beside him.
“I don’t suppose you know the girl,” McVey said as he watched Osborn and Vera walk away from them. Lebrun turned the key in the ignition and he eased the car off in the same direction.
“You are not asking if I know her, but if I know who she is—correct? French and English expressions do not always mean the same.”
McVey was incredulous that a man could talk with a cigarette always dangling from the corner of his mouth. He’d smoked once, for the first two months after his first wife died. He had taken up smoking to keep from drinking. It didn’t do much good but it helped. When it stopped helping, he quit.
“Your English is better than my French. So yeah, I’m asking if you know who she is.”
Lebrun smiled, then reached for his radio microphone. “The answer, my friend, is—not yet.”
18
* * *
THE TREES along the boulevard St.-Jacques were beginning to turn yellow, getting ready to drop their leaves for winter. A few had already fallen and the rain made walking slippery. As they crossed the street, Osborn took Vera’s arm to steady her. She smiled at the gesture, but as soon as they crossed, asked him to let go.
Osborn looked around. “You worried about the woman pushing the baby carriage or the old man walking the dog?”
“Both. Either. Neither,” she said flatly, purposefully being aloof, but not quite sure why.” Maybe she was afraid of being seen. Or maybe she didn’t want to be with him at all, or maybe she wanted to be with him completely but wanted