B004U2USMY EBOK (11 page)

She grabbed Alfonse’s arm. “Leave him alone!
It was harmless, I wasn’t in danger. Alfonse! Please!”

He snarled something at the other German and
the two men stopped kicking. The young man lay whimpering. Alfonse
turned, saw the door swinging after the two who’d run for the
building and took out his handgun. He aimed at the window and
fired two bullets. The window shattered, screams from inside. The
sound of overturning tables and chairs as people scrambled for
whatever entrance lay to the rear. Such places always had a rear
exit.

Alfonse turned calmly back to Gabriela as he
holstered his gun. “Come on, the car is warm.” He took her arm.

She was shaking as she got into the car. She
stared back at the young man lying on the sidewalk, groaning,
barely moving. He was only a few years younger than she was.

“How was your day?” Alfonse asked in a casual
voice. He draped an arm over her shoulder. “Did you buy the hats
you were talking about?”

“Alfonse, he was just a boy. I can handle
myself.”

“What?” He looked momentarily confused. “Oh,
you mean the zazou. Forget about it. It was nothing.”

“You can’t do that, you can’t just attack
people like that. He didn’t do anything, you should have just
given them a hard word or something, not…what you did.” Her heart
was still pounding and she fought to keep her voice from rising
into a shriek.

“Oh god, don’t start in on that. The sooner
the French deal with these zazous, the better. We had
Swing-Heinis, too, you know. Listening to that degenerate negro
music. Swing, jazz. It’s a moral rot.”

“But what about the music at
Le Coq Rouge
?
”

“That’s different. You don’t see sexual
dancing, moral degeneracy.”

She stared at him, trying to figure out if he
was being deliberately ironic.

“Come on, it’s nothing. There won’t even be a
police report.” He put a hand on her leg and slid it up under her
dress. A raised eyebrow.

“Alfonse, stop it.”

But he didn’t stop. He leaned over and kissed
her neck. His hand slipped higher, reached her panties. He slid
his finger under the edge. She stifled a gasp and glanced at the
driver. The young soldier kept his eyes focused on the road.

“Alfonse,” she whispered. She wanted to push
his hand away, but couldn’t.

And then, abruptly, he did stop. He pulled
his hand out and his entire body went rigid.

She opened her eyes to see that they’d pulled
up in front of
Le Coq Rouge
.
There was another car parked in the alleyway. A soldier wiped it
down with a rag, buffing the glossy black surface with the same
care one might devote to polishing a general’s boots.

“Alfonse, what is it? Is something wrong?”

The car stopped, but he made no move to get
out. “To be honest, I’m not hungry.”

“But I am, I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“Fine, we’ll pick up something in Montmarte.
I know a little cafe in Pigalle, and then we can go to the
cinema.”

Montmarte was a grittier part of the city and
full of the same jazz and swing clubs that he’d just been
deriding. And Pigalle was the site of official brothels, for the
girls
en carte,
as they said, inspected by the police to
keep vice strictly regulated. She didn’t want to go anywhere near
the place.

“I don’t know, that doesn’t sound very nice.”

“I’m sick of all these Germans,” he said. “I
just want get away from war talk for a few hours. Did you know the
Americans bombed Hamburg again? And the Sixth Army is about to
give up the ghost in Stalingrad. They’re eating rats. The air
drops have been completely cut off. They say by February it will
be all over.”

She was pretty sure that such talk could get
him in trouble for defeatism. For his sake, she hoped the driver
spoke no French. You never knew who might denounce you. Not that
she felt any sorrow to hear about the German troubles in Russia.

The major said something to the driver and he
started to back the car out of the alley. “It’s all they’ll want
to talk about, the war. And it will be so much
scheiss,
you know? Everybody knows how the war is going.”

He was trying to sound casual, she could
tell, but there was an underlying strain that he didn’t seem able
to disguise.

“You were fine a minute ago,” she said. “Did
something happen?”

“That’s Colonel Hoekman’s car. I don’t want
to see him.”

“Wait!” she said. It came out loud enough
that the driver turned with a frown. He stopped at the head of the
alley, asked Alfonse a question, but the major just gave him a
dismissive wave and he pulled back onto Rue Saint Remy.

“We can’t leave,” she said. Colonel Hoekman
was there; she had to talk to him. “I told Monsieur Leblanc I’d
help at the restaurant tonight.”

“What, you mean you’ve got to work? Why
didn’t you say anything before?”

“I do, I promised.”

“You don’t need that job.” He lit a
cigarette. A little distance from Hoekman’s car seemed to put him
at ease. “What does Leblanc pay you, anyway?”

Pay her? She was lucky he didn’t charge for
the privilege of working the room.

Gabriela wasn’t stupid; within five minute of
meeting Monsieur Leblanc three months earlier, she’d known exactly
what he wanted from her. It wasn’t, as it turned out, the ability
to clean and buff a fine Sarreguemines serving platter.

But first, he’d showed her to the back,
explained the staff rules, warned her that she’d have to work out
with the other dishwashers how to split up the leftovers. And no
stealing from the ice box or he’d show her the door.

Meanwhile, Leblanc studied her as he might
study cuts of beef brought by the butcher. How much could he
charge for this piece, so nice and juicy? She’d felt a twinge of
misgiving, tempered only by Christine’s earlier promise that
Leblanc would treat her fairly. “He’s not going to corner you in
the closet I mean,” she’d promised.

Christine listened to Leblanc explain
Gabriela’s new job, and occasionally jumped in with a cynical
comment like, “Turn the light on before you enter the kitchen to
give the vermin a chance to run for cover,” or, “Keep the back
door locked. There’s a pack of small boys who will come in and
raid the ice box while your back is turned and Leblanc is too soft
to turn them into the police.”

Leblanc permitted these intrusions with
nothing more than a scowl. But after explaining how Gabriela
should not expect money of any kind for her job, Leblanc now
glanced at Christine. “Which sounds like it might be a problem. I
understand you’re short of money.”

“I’ve been selling some of my ration cards,”
Gabriela admitted, “so that I can afford to use the others. And
it’s not like my rations were all that high to begin with.”

“You’ve come to the right place, then,”
Leblanc said. “It’s true that our food loses something in
presentation by the time our clients send back plates to the
kitchen, but we cook with the best ingredients we can get our
hands on. It still tastes fine. You’ll never go home at night
feeling like a gorged lion, but it’s enough, while you figure out
what to do. Job wise, I mean.”

“I don’t understand. Whether I keep washing
dishes or not?”

“It helps if you think of dish washing not so
much as a job, but as a stepping stone.”

Gabriela looked at Christine. There was a
bruise on her cheek and love bites that crept above her high
collar. She seemed more tired today, older. It must have been a
rough night.

A stepping stone to what? Not onto dry land,
that’s for sure.

“I don’t want to hostess,” she said. “I know
that’s where the money is, but really, I can’t do that, so if
that’s what you—”

“Nobody is going to pressure you,” Leblanc
said. “You work in the kitchen, you work in the kitchen. You’re
expected to wash dishes and wash them well and nothing else. If
you ever change your mind—” He held up his hand. “I know, I
know—but if you ever do, then I’ll change my expectations. But
that’s your choice.”

True to his word, Leblanc left her alone once
she started working. She’d had no money to pay rent or to buy new
stockings or any of the other little expenses that added up, and
so she’d continued to sell her ration cards. But she’d at least
eaten real food (only slightly used) five nights a week and the
work wasn’t strenuous.

More importantly, she’d discovered that Le
Coq Rouge was a great place to watch for Germans. There were all
types: businessmen, young officers on leave from the Eastern
Front, pilots, Gestapo Agents. Practically everything except
enlisted men.

She couldn’t see from the kitchen, but she
asked Christine or Elyse about the officers, if there were any
young, handsome men. Who were they tonight, regular army or maybe
SS agents? Whenever it was SS, she’d make her way to the alleyway
when they were leaving, to watch for her man. And one day, he’d
come. And she’d discovered that his name was Colonel Hans Hoekman.
Better yet, he’d be back.

“But what exactly does Leblanc pay you?”
Alfonse repeated, interrupting Gabriela’s thoughts.

“It’s not much, but it’s still my job, and I
promised.”

“The point is, it can’t be much, and it’s not
worth it. If we go back there you’re going to run into Colonel
Hoekman. He might still be angry from the other night. What if he
wants to interrogate you?”

“I’m just a girl. Surely he won’t care.”

A snort. “He’ll care. You can be damn sure
he’ll care. Hoekman never turns down an opportunity to interrogate
someone.” Another drag from the cigarette. He offered a cigarette
to Gabriela, but she shook her head. “And I’m not just talking
about you. Worried about myself, too, goddammit. I didn’t want to
sit at that table, but if that bastard says he’s your friend, what
choice do you have? You’re French, you don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand about the Gestapo?”

“If you understood, you wouldn’t want to be
anywhere near Hoekman. Just let him do his thing and then he’ll
move on to the next hunting ground.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know, but I guarantee he’s after
bigger game than petrol thieves and faggots. That makes him rather
eager. And there’s nothing more dangerous than an eager Gestapo
agent.”

“But why would you be worried, you haven’t
done anything, have you?” she asked.

“No, of course not.” It came out a bit too
quickly. “But suppose I get into a conversation with another
officer and he says something imprudent about the war. And suppose
Hoekman overhears? I’d be guilty of nothing, but it wouldn’t
matter. The Eastern Front always needs reinforcements. He’s just
that type of man.”

“I know it.”

Alfonse tried to put his hand on her leg, but
this time she refused to be baited. Instead, she looked out the
window at the Paris streets rushing past. She had to get rid of
him and get back to
Le Coq
Rouge
, but how?

As they crossed the Seine on the crowded Pont
au Change, Alfonse rolled down his window and flicked the
half-smoked cigarette into the street. Immediately, a small boy
scrambled into the road, dodging bicycles, to retrieve the
cigarette. There was a brisk market in half-smoked butts and the
city had no shortage of hungry, enterprising children to gather
them. But one of the bike riders had also spotted the smoldering
butt and hopped down off his bike. Gabriela turned her head to
watch through the rear window, hoping the boy would reach it
first.

The boy reached the smoldering cigarette a
fraction of a second earlier, but the bicycle rider pushed him out
of the way and snatched it up. A moment later he was smoking it
while the child sat on his backside and watched.

Alfonse’s driver cursed in German. The end of
the bridge was clogged with bicycles and carts and they weren’t
moving. He honked his horn. Alfonse leaned forward with an
impatient frown.

Behind them, the boy wandered off, while the
man continued to puff on the found cigarette. At last he picked
his way through the crowd to where he’d abandoned his bicycle,
only to stand with a helpless expression. His bicycle had
disappeared while he’d scrambled for the cigarette. She hadn’t
seen it either, and it was impossible to spot the thief in the sea
of bicycles.

Her first thought was the bastard deserved
it. The boy had won fair and square; it was a petty cruelty to
shove him out of the way and steal his prize. One theft begat
another. But the man looked around him, then lifted his hands to
his face with a look of such bewilderment and despair that she
only felt sorry for him. He’d stolen the cigarette, not out of any
real malice, but simply to grab a moment of pleasure in this hard
city. And now the hard city had made him pay.

“Finally,” Alfonse said as the crowd
responded at last to the continuous honking. He did not appear to
have noticed the drama playing out to their rear.

Her resolve stiffened. She had to get back to
the restaurant and if Alfonse wouldn’t take her, she’d have to
find her way back herself. An idea came to her.

Gabriela put a whine in her voice. “I’m still
hungry.”

He patted her knee. “We’ll be there in a few
minutes.”

“Do you know a place called the Egyptienne
?”

“Sure, Boulevard de Clichy
,
short walk
from the Moulin Rouge. It’s a
maison close
, isn’t it? I’ve
heard Goering is a regular when he’s in Paris. But why would you
want to go there?”

“Of course we would never go there,” she said
in a shocked tone. Again, that illusion that she’d just been a
hard-working girl at Le Coq Rouge, who just happened to find
German majors attractive in their own right. “But there’s a good
restaurant in front. I thought we could eat there.”