The Last Time I Saw Paris - Lynn Sheene [60]
Claire glanced back as he opened the door. Kinsel was at the table, a glass of wine in his hand. He raised it to her in a toast. She blew him a kiss as she stepped out.
It was after midnight when they reached the flower shop. Jacques waited in the shadows, his eyes on the street as Claire fumbled with the lock. In the darkness and her exhaustion, it took two tries to get the damn key in place and the mechanism to click. She turned back to him as the door swung open. “Thank you, Jacques.”
He shrugged. “For une femme américaine, you have des couilles.” He slipped into the darkness and was gone.
Claire crept up the stairs to her room, her feet aching, body heavy. She couldn’t help but smile in the darkness. She had paid her debts. They damn well knew she was more than a Yankee princess. As Jacques said, she had balls.
Chapter 7
THE PRICE OF ELEGANCE
52, rue du Colisée, Paris. September 1, 1941.
Asweltering late summer day. The air trapped in the alley behind the shop cooked between the buildings. Bricks baked underfoot in the late afternoon sun. The sour scent of rotting vegetation and steaming trash settled on hair and skin. Claire wiped the sweat from her neck with a grubby hand. With a heave, she slung decaying flowers into the rubbage bin. Dropping the empty bucket at her feet, she picked up the next.
Eleven days ago, a Resistánt shot and killed a German officer at the Barbès-Rochechouart station of the Métro. Then the reprisals started. Nazi sweeps pulled people off the street. There were rumors of a planned public execution. Ten people, fifty people, a hundred, lined up and shot. No one knew. They held their breath and stayed inside. German soldiers weren’t walking alone anymore, not pursuing lonely girls with dinner and flowers.
Even the Comte disappeared. The promised second meeting should have been nights ago. Instead of a car to pick her up, his assistant called. Apologetic but brusque. Apparently used to finishing what the Comte started. Thank you, Madame, for your interest, but regrettably the situation is somewhat changed. The Comte will keep your services in mind.
Madame Palain was relieved. “We will do without his money.”
But Claire knew what the loss meant. She said nothing when Madame pursed her lips and frowned, smoothing her hair in the tight bun she wore low on her nape.
They did need his money.
In the heat, what flowers Madame managed to buy slumped, unpurchased, in tin buckets. Claire tossed those that started to rot into the garbage. Claire cursed at the slimy daylily stems that slid from the bucket and splattered green sludge on her dress. With the Comte’s party, the shop would have been set at least until Christmas. Was this the big Resistance Christophe came to Paris to lead? A single German midshipman dead, what good did it do? The entire city suffered for it.
Several turns of the decrepit water faucet handle in the alley and warm water splattered onto the bricks. Claire rinsed the worst from the buckets and carried them rattling against her legs back inside the shop. She paused as she saw Madame locking the front door. Another day without a customer. With the money from the pawned wedding ring long gone, they wouldn’t survive many more.
Claire wiped her neck and arms as she leaned against the cool stone wall in the back of the shop. Madame started her closing routine. Claire watched her go through every bucket, every plant, a slight nudge here or there, inspecting the counters, the floors. Without looking at Claire, the florist gestured to the floor under the shelves. “The stones have sweat in the heat and collected dirt. It will need to be mopped in the morning.”
Claire usually found the routine endearing. A daily lesson in observation and discipline. Tonight it was grating. “You think someone is going to notice?”
The florist straightened, her shoulders pulled back. Claire waited for her to respond in her modulated voice, offer some quaint lesson in living that would, tonight, make Claire sneer.
Madame