Paris Is Always a Good Idea (14 page)

Either way, the accusation was outrageous. Not to mention the tone of voice it was delivered in.

Try as she might, Rosalie could not imagine Max Marchais copying someone else's story. She still clearly remembered the evening in Le Jules Verne when he'd given her the first copy of
The Blue Tiger,
and how proud and moved she'd been by the “For R.” And his embarrassment as she thanked him for the dedication.

She shook her head. No one could be so deceitful. She thought of the old author's eyes, how they had suddenly lit up. No one dishonest could look like that.

Then she sat bolt upright, because something had struck her. Hadn't that Sherman guy said that he'd known the story for years—“since I was five, to be exact”? She guessed he was about thirty. Yet Max Marchais had sent her a very modern computer printout, which could only mean that the story was not one that anyone could have known since he was five. And what exactly did he mean by saying that the story was his? Had the arrogant attorney written the story himself when he was five? None of it made any sense.

She leaned forward, wrapping her arms round her knees. Unless … unless there was a common source they had both had access to. It was always possible that there was an old fable about a blue tiger. She nodded pensively, then wrinkled her brow again. Even if that was the case, the stories could not have been, as that arrogant New Yorker insisted, identical word for word.

Rosalie felt her thoughts beginning to get muddled. She was probably racking her brains for no good reason at all. René was right. First thing the next morning she would call Max Marchais to sort the matter out. But she'd have to approach it very sensitively—after all, she didn't want to antagonize the old man.

There was probably very little likelihood that the madman would turn up at the store again, but you never knew. She finished her red wine and climbed back through the window into the apartment.

By the time she closed her eyes to sleep, the following entry was in her blue notebook:

The worst moment of the day:

The number of strange men who come into the store and knock over the postcard stands is increasing alarmingly. Today there was a horrible American who was rude to me and is going to sue me because
The Blue Tiger
has apparently been plagiarized.

The best moment of the day:

Monsieur Montsignac called and asked me if I would illustrate a book of fairy tales for his company. A really big contract. I said yes.

 

Twelve

Marie-Hélène had been in the house all morning, making a hell of a din. Her excessive bustling derived from a certain basic nervousness that was itself based on the fact that she was intending to go away for two weeks. She and her husband wanted to go to Plan-d'Orgon, their home village near Les Baux, where the rest of her family lived—especially her eldest daughter, who had just had a baby.

“Just think—I'm going to be a grandma, Monsieur Marchais!”

Max couldn't remember how many times he'd heard those words over the last few months, coupled with reports on the current state of mother and child. Three days previously, the daughter had actually given birth to little Claire (“she weighs seven pounds twelve ounces, monsieur, and she can already smile”), and Marie-Hélène Bonnier was beside herself with delight and announced to him that she was going to Plan-d'Orgon that weekend and that he would unfortunately have to look after himself for two weeks.

“You will be all right, won't you, Monsieur Marchais?” she had asked with concern, wiping her hands on her apron. Over the years, Madame Bonnier had developed the illusion that he would be completely at a loss if she didn't shop, cook, and clean for him three times a week.

“Of course I'll be all right, Marie-Hélène; after all, I'm not in my dotage yet—am I?”

“That may well be, but you're a man, Monsieur Marchais, and it simply isn't good when a man is left alone in the house, everyone knows that. He doesn't eat properly, the papers pile up, the dishes are left in the sink, and everything goes to pot.”

“You're exaggerating as usual, Marie-Hélène,” said Max, burying himself in his newspaper. “I can assure you that the house will still be standing in two weeks' time.”

Even so the housekeeper had insisted on coming again the Friday before her departure and going over the rooms, doing the washing and freezing some meals that he would only need to thaw and heat up. On the counter there were at least fifteen Tupperware containers that she'd filled so that he wouldn't starve during her two weeks away.

Max had nodded resignedly. There was no point at all arguing with his housekeeper and explaining to her that he was perfectly capable of frying himself an egg or going into the village to eat a snack in the Bar du Marché. Which would even have been quite useful, because that way he could buy himself some pain relief gel from the pharmacy next door.

That morning he had woken up early with a rather unpleasant pain in his shoulder. He'd probably been lying awkwardly. That's how it was. In the mornings you woke up earlier and something was always hurting.

Max Marchais stretched out luxuriously in the bathtub and listened to Marie-Hélène rampaging around, zealously vacuuming the carpets. The bathroom was his only refuge.

A few minutes later Madame Bonnier was audibly bustling about outside the bathroom door. After a while she called out: “How long are you going to be, Monsieur Marchais?”

With a sigh he climbed out of the green shimmering water—like every morning, he'd put in two scoops of Aramis, his favorite bath salts—and got dressed.

Later on she drove him out of the kitchen, then the library. There were hums and bangs, mops clattered on wooden flooring; something in the kitchen fell with a rattle. The whole house smelled of orange cleaning fluid, mingled with the scent of freshly baked cake. Marie-Hélène seemed to have mastered the miraculous art of bilocation: wherever he retreated to, she would appear a minute or so later, armed with vacuum, mop pail, and dusters.

When she finally began to clean the windows in his office, Max took a book down from one of the top shelves with the aid of the library ladder and fled outdoors to sit in the shade in the garden. The sun was shining and it was already pleasantly warm as he immersed himself in Blaise Pascal's
Pensées,
a book whose pithy sayings about life he always enjoyed reading. It was Blaise Pascal, too, who had said that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone
.
”

A wise and insightful remark, which was even more relevant when you were prevented from being alone in a room, thought Max as the howling of the vacuum came to a stop. Seconds later his housekeeper appeared on the terrace, looking around as if searching for something. “Monsieur Marchais?” she called, and he raised his head reluctantly to see that she had something in her hand.

“Telephone for you!”

*   *   *

IT WAS ROSALIE LAURENT—
her voice sounded a bit strange, he thought. Like the voice of someone trying to sound as normal as possible.

“
Bonjour,
Max! How are you? I hope I'm not disturbing you.”

“Not at all,” he said. “My housekeeper's been rampaging around the house since seven o'clock. There's nowhere to hide here, so I've retreated to the garden.” He heard her laugh. “And how are you, Rosalie? Everything okay?”

“Oh yes, I'm fine.” She hesitated a moment before continuing. “Montsignac called yesterday. He wants me to illustrate a big book of fairy tales for him.”

“Congratulations! That's great!” Perhaps she wanted to ask him something, he thought.

“And it's all because of you. And
The Blue Tiger,
of course.”

“No false modesty, Mademoiselle Rosalie. Your illustrations are simply excellent.” He put Pascal down beside him and leaned comfortably back in his wicker chair as she told him about her new book project and his thoughts wandered a little.

Whenever he talked to Rosalie Laurent, and she shared the little things that made up her day, asked him something, or requested advice, he felt revitalized. Since their collaboration on the book, they had met regularly: sometimes she came to Le Vésinet, at others he took the RER train to Paris and they went for coffee or took her little dog for a walk.

Since Marguerite's death his life had been lonely; for a long time he hadn't really noticed it, and when he finally did, it hadn't bothered him much. He'd entrenched himself with his books and thoughts behind a wall not unlike the stone wall around his garden. But since his friendship with this young woman he sensed something new developing that was gradually putting the past in its place, making it really something that was past. Cracks were appearing in the old wall, and light was shining through the cracks.

Rosalie had entered his life like a ray of light, and to his great surprise Max Marchais realized that he'd begun to look to the future and make plans again.

The hum of the vacuum cleaner boomed out of the house, then gradually moved away, and Max gazed at the roses in his garden, which were still in bloom.

“I'm so happy every morning when I see the book in the display window,” he heard Rosalie saying—she seemed somehow to have returned to the subject of
The Blue Tiger
. “How did you actually get the story?” She corrected herself hastily. “I mean, how does someone get an idea like that?”

Max returned from his musing and considered for a moment. “Hmm—the way you always get a story. You see or hear something, there's a thought in the air, you go for a walk in the bois de Boulogne and suddenly you begin to weave a story. There's always a particular moment that triggers the story and sets it in motion.” He paused for thought. “It could be a sentence or a conversation.…” He fell silent.

“And what triggered your story?”

“Well…” For a moment he thought of telling her the truth, but then rejected the idea. “I'd say it was good old Montsignac,” he said, somewhat irrelevantly. “Without his prodding the book certainly wouldn't exist.”

She laughed—a bit embarrassedly, it seemed to him. “No, no, that's not what I mean. What I'm wondering is … is there perhaps a folk tale that is the basis of the story of the blue tiger?”

Max was taken aback. “Not that I know of,” he said. “And if there is, it's not one I'm familiar with.”

“Oh.”

There was a slight pause.

Max felt a growing sense of unease. What was the real reason for this strange telephone call? He cleared his throat.

“Come on, out with it, Rosalie, what's bothering you?” He finally ended the silence. “You're not asking me these questions for no reason.”

And then she actually came to the point and told him—carefully and a little despondently—about the disagreeable incident with the stranger who had turned up in her store and claimed that the story of
The Blue Tiger
had been stolen.

“What utter nonsense,” Max Marchais roared. “You don't believe that madman, do you?” He laughed and then shook his head in disbelief at the absurdity of it all. “Well, my dear Rosalie, I beg you, forget this idiocy at once. I can assure you that I am the creator of the story, and you are welcome to tell that to the gentleman from New York if he ever returns. I thought the story up—word by word.”

He heard her sigh with relief.

“I never doubted it, Max. It was just that this man insisted he could prove it was his story. He was completely out of it, and even threatened to take us to court.”

Max snorted with rage. “Monstrous!”

“His name is Robert Sherman. Do you know him at all?”

“I don't know anyone called Sherman,” retorted Max Marchais curtly. “And I have no particular desire to make the acquaintance of this gentleman, who is obviously a lunatic.”

And that was that as far as he was concerned. At least, that was what he thought.

 

Thirteen

A ray of sunlight fell diagonally into the room. A summery gust of air swelled the drapes at the window. Robert Sherman blinked and listened to the gentle clattering of crockery, which seemed to be a long way away and didn't disturb the pleasant restfulness that enveloped him. The peace of the morning reminded him of the lazy Sundays of his childhood in Mount Kisco.

He stretched, and tried to find his way back into his dream, which was fading fast. It had been a pleasant dream, from which he'd awoken feeling good. Some woman or other had been in it—he'd been sitting on a bench in a little square with her.

He tried to remember more clearly, but the images were too fleeting for him to catch hold of. Not important. He turned on his side, pulled the bed covers up, and dozed off again. For a few happy moments everything in Robert Sherman's world was in order.

Then the shrill tones of an electric drill shattered the silence. Robert sat up in bed, yawned, and took a sip of water. He looked at his cell phone and saw that there was a text.

Well, my dear, that all sounds very exciting. I hope you'll think again. Didn't I tell you that it was crazy to go to Paris. Shall I transfer some money for you? Love, Rachel

And then he suddenly remembered everything. The witch from the card store, the book, the steak restaurant, his wallet. All at once he was wide awake and his feeling of well-being had vanished. He glanced at his watch. Ten thirty! He'd slept for almost twelve hours.

It was Friday, his wallet was missing, and the blasted card store opened at eleven.

As, after a hurried breakfast (consisting of strong coffee and a hastily swallowed, though very crisp, croissant), he squeezed past the two workmen who were standing arguing by the elevator with their toolboxes and ran up the sunny rue Bonaparte, he thought of the bossy tone of Rachel's text. Even if it hadn't been the very best of ideas to go to Paris, there was no need to rub it in like that.