The American Girl (9 page)

AUGUST 1, 2015

I
nspector Bertrand Valentin first met his wife, Lucie, one crisp March morning at l'Église Sainte-Thérèse, the medieval church in the middle of St. Roch. His family had built the walls centuries ago, dragging the stones from the cliffs near the beach and half killing themselves in the process. He and Lucie were married there. His son, Jan, was christened there. Life was good for a while.

Now Lucie hates him. She and Jan live in Lyon and he sees his son about three times a year. They used to play basketball every day. Now they never play. He can't even walk past a basketball court and yet he finds himself in his car at three in the morning parked by his old house, staring at the scarred cement on the garage where the basketball hoop used to be.

Inspector Bertrand Valentin got lost when he was six. A policeman found him and took him home and ever since that day he's known he would be a policeman. And the job's always there.
It never bitches and moans or up and moves to Lyon on a whim. God, though, sometimes he hates this line of work: the violence, the sad stories, the relentless paperwork. He just wants to listen to the Eagles and catch some fish and cook them on the barbecue, enjoy a lazy Sunday in bed, daydream. Anything instead of being stuck in this damned job.

Inspector Bertrand Valentin is an old-fashioned charmer: debonaire, irreverent, and obsessed with cheese. It's hard not to like a man composed of so many contradictions: a workaholic who irons his underwear, an easygoing dude who likes playing basketball, a loner who spends his spare time watching cooking shows. After two solid hours of drinking copiously, flirting shamelessly, and lying badly, I was an expert on the inspector and little the wiser about the Blavette case. There we were, staring down the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniel's, closing up the bar, leaning ever closer as we slurred our words.

When we first started talking, I could feel the eyes of the wolf pack boring into my back, hungry to know what we were talking about. I thought, if only they knew they were watching a scoop in progress. When I started talking to him, I was feeling cocky:
This is how it's done, boys. Learn from a pro
. But try as I might to charm details from Valentin, all I'd gotten was the story of his midlife crisis. Even the wolves loped off hours ago out of boredom.

“Well, I think it's probably time for bed,” I finally said, struggling to stand.

“It's been a pleasure, Molly Perkins. I don't know when was the last time I spoke to a woman like this.” His hand moved up
from my arm slowly and in a dreamlike way he touched my face. “I've told you things I think I have told no one else.”

Just not the right things
, I thought, caught between the chair and Valentin. I didn't know why I wasn't moving to the door, or at least breaking the awkward eye contact that had started. I mean he was attractive, no question, but I shouldn't be . . . no, no, definitely not. I cleared my throat, laughing at some pretend joke.

Valentin stared at me as if I'd gone a bit crazy and quickly composed himself, saying fumblingly, “As the detective in charge of this case, your safety and Quinn's are paramount.” He turned scarlet and stared into his glass.

I took pity on him then, for spending his evening opening his heart to me when all I'd been after was information. In fact, I felt guilty. That must have been why I leaned up on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. Or perhaps it was the effects of the whiskey. Yes, that must have been it. I don't usually kiss my sources.

AUGUST 1, 2015

I
've had hangovers. Some were the mother and father of all hangovers, as they say. The one I had today felt like all my previous hangovers got together and started the International Hangover Society, and then decided to host their annual planning meeting inside my brain. And argue. And then have a disco.

Walking from the parking lot to Sainte-Thérèse, I convinced myself I had actual liver failure. When the resident hacks approached me for a quote outside the hospital, I didn't even try to think of some polite way of telling them to scoot; I just told them to talk to the hand. But it didn't seem to be enough today. Everyone was . . . febrile, manic. They buzzed around me like flies, flinging questions I didn't understand as I tottered towards the door in my dark glasses. I started to feel panicky, like I wouldn't get away. A hand landed on my arm. I tried to push it away.

A voice in my ear said, “It's okay.” Steered me towards the door. Valentin.

There were more gendarmes on the door than I remembered.

“Has something else happened?” I asked.

“Haven't they told you?” Valentin held the door for me and guided me through with a hand on the small of my back. I guess he remembered the previous night.

Inside, I stood for a moment in the familiar space with its smells of antiseptic, air freshener, and floor cleaner and breathed a sigh of relief to be away from the press. Whatever news there was about the investigation, whatever had gone wrong, the thought of sitting quietly with Quinn actually seemed really nice today. Just sharing that bubble of calm and medical orderliness with someone I'd begun to feel I know a little bit. Getting away from all those nuns running around the foyer like headless chickens.

I turned to Valentin, trying to retain that brief moment of prospective calm inside myself. “So what's up?” I asked.

“Well, I think you should talk to the doctors . . .”

Panic flooded through me. “What's happened? Is Quinn okay?” It surprised me how horrible the thought of anything happening to her felt.

“Don't be stressed.” Valentin smiled his best charming smile. “It's actually great news. She's better than okay. She woke up.”

I heard the rest as if underwater, filtered through the sound of my blood rushing in my ears. Eglantine rushed up to repeat the good news because she was the one who was there. This morning at precisely five thirty
A.M.
, Quinn woke briefly and asked for water before falling asleep again. The doctors say she's
in a normal sleep state now. It's early days yet, but it seems the coma is over.

E
VERYONE WAS EVEN
nicer and more solicitous than ever, because they've come to see us as family, because this was happy news, because they didn't know the thoughts racing through my head: mainly genuine happiness, but one little part total dread at what was sure to come next.

There was no option but to sit in the café and sip coffee and try not to look too shell-shocked. Valentin talked and smiled and touched my arm, but all I could think about was how in a little while those same overly familiar hands would be slapping cuffs on my wrists. I wanted to text Bill and get his advice, but no one would give me the space. And so it happened that when a young envoy nurse came down to summon me and tell me that the miracle had happened once again, I must come see, I had no script, no excuses, no fallback stance. I had to wing it.

I walked to her room like a prisoner walking to the gallows, came to the door ready to faint from holding my breath. Valentin was there to witness the moment along with several nurses and a doctor, all crowded into the little room. And across that crowded room, as they say, I met the eyes of Quinn Perkins.

JULY 17, 2015

Blog Entry

By the time Raphael came to get us, he was pretty pissed off, particularly since he got out of the car to see Noémie's head lolling on her chest and me trying to stop her from choking on her own vomit. Between bouts of puking, I told him what I knew: that we sunk a few beers, danced a bit. And then bam! Someone basically assaulted Noémie in there, and before she passed out I was trying to find out who so I could go punch their lights out.

“The person who hurt her, was his name Séverin?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I didn't see. She wouldn't say.”

“I know this was him,” he said, rubbing his hand over his eyes.
“Putain.”

He said nothing more and neither advocated going back into the club to pick a fight nor led the way. He just rolled his eyes like,
I thought you were smarter than that
, and scooped his sister
off the sidewalk. As I climbed into his mom's car, I realized I was now officially on the bad side of 66.6 percent of the Blavette family—a whole different 66.6 percent from the side that hated me yesterday.

In the car, all was silent save for the crickets out in the bushes and the movement of the tires on the gravelly road. I sat in the back with Noémie, stroking her hair while she puked out the window. Up front, Raphael's neck was straight as a telegraph pole.

When we got home, we carried Noémie upstairs and laid her carefully on her side in case she was sick again.

As he closed the door, Raphael said, “At least Maman is not here. If she knew about this she would be furious.”

“Yeah?”

“She's not in a great mood.”

“I guess that's my fault, too,” I shot back. “'Night.” And I turned from him before he could say any more.

Needless to say, I can't sleep. I blog, check Facebook, delete the worst of my photos from the day with Noémie, and zoom in on others (here's one)—from the club—to see if anyone looks like they might attack her. But they're all pretty blurry and actually everyone looks kind of suspicious, don't you think?

As soon as I do get to sleep, a text noise wakes me. My phone tells me it's 3:11 in the
A.M.
, and before I even look, somehow I know.

There's no video this time. Just French words that when I type them into Google Translate come out as,
You will be the next.

I fling the phone on the bed, run to the bathroom, and retch until clear strings of part-digested vodka glisten between my lips and chin. My skin shakes.

I tiptoe downstairs to get a glass of water, hearing the timbers of the house tick and creak around me. Even the hum of cicadas outside freaks me out. I turn all the downstairs lights on and stand in the kitchen, taking little sips.

Through the kitchen window, I glimpse something silhouetted against the moonlight. A man. From the glint of his eyes, I can see he's watching me. I let out a little shriek and drop the glass. Its contents spill down my T-shirt before it shatters on the floor.

“Quinn!” Raphael's face moves into the light.

“Shit. You scared me.”

“It's okay,” he says with exaggerated calmness. “I'll get the brush.”

“I'll . . .”

“No, don't move,” he says. “You have bare feet. You'll hurt yourself.”

He sweeps up the glass and goes to the porch door to tip it in the trash. Not wanting to be alone for even a second, I follow him out into the dark garden. As I watch his tanned legs move through the grass in front of me, a little shiver goes through me. Around the back of the house, the trash cans nestle in a little sort of hidden space with a bench and a trellis and dog roses climbing up. The petals of the roses are closed against the night but their scent is heavy and sweet.

“You smoke?” he asks.

“Sometimes.” Like earlier tonight, I think, when I was out-of-control drunk.

He takes out a pack of Gauloises and hands me one and we sit on the bench, shivering in the night air. Above us the moon has bloomed an angry orange.

“‘Bad Moon Rising,'” I quip. “Blood moon, even.”

“Something has frightened you,” he says. “You want to talk?”

I take a drag of my cigarette, trying to think where to start, shifting from thigh to sticky bare thigh on the metal bench. My stomach is full of pins.

“I've been getting these weird texts. Videos and shit from a withheld number,” I say, going for my usual jokey tone. Instead, it comes out sounding forced. All of a sudden I feel horribly homesick.

But he's leaning in now, eyes wide, as if I've sparked his interest. “What do they say, the texts?”

“Bad stuff.” The lump in my throat grows bigger. I'm about to spill my guts. Should I be spilling my guts? “First the video. God, it was horrible, like a snuff movie. And then the texts saying,
You're next
. . .” I tell him all of it.

“You think it was a bad joke, maybe?” he says slowly. His voice sounds completely calm, as if everyone gets texts like this in France every single day.

“Um . . .” I don't know what to say. “I guess I hadn't even thought of that.”

His cigarette has gone out and he leans towards me, pressing the pale tip of the paper cylinder to my glowing cherry, sucking in, lighting up.

He exhales in slow rings. “I mean it probably is, right? You're, like, how old?”

“Seventeen.”

“Exactly. So who would really want to hurt you?”

“I don't know.”

“So probably, the likeliest answer is someone just wants to make you freak out and shake you up. And now it's worked. So probably if you want to win against that person, you should just forget about it,
hein
?”

I take a drag and hold it in, the smoke burning my tongue when I exhale. My eyes prickle. “I've got to go,” I say, standing up suddenly.

My head spins, the moon whirling around me. My face is turned from him, so I let the tears fall. I know I need to go to my room, to bury my face in the pillows and cry and cry. I don't know whether it's the texts, the stress of the last few days, or the fact that he seems to think it's no big deal how I feel about it all.

I'm about to run off when I feel his fingers touching mine, taking them. “Hey, don't cry.” He pulls me back down onto the bench, turning my face so that I'm looking into his eyes. The moonlight catches the curve of his lips.

His fingers graze mine. “Listen,” he says, “if you are stressed you can talk to me. You can. I am here.” His arm moves behind my back on the bench. “All I'm saying is, don't be stressed.”

I swipe away the tears. “Don't you think it's—”

“Weird? Mean?
Ouais
, but the worst thing when people bully you is to let them hurt you.” He stretches out his spare hand—the one not lolling behind my back—and puts his finger almost to my
lips to shush me before I can say any more. I can smell the salt of his hand.

“I know it can be hard here . . .” he says, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “There's drama, and it always has been so. My mother, she needs the money from these exchanges. It is hard for her since my father left and she is not always good with the people who come. She tries, though.”

I raise my eyebrows. “There've been others, like me?”

“
Bien sûr.
A lot, all through my childhood, there were. Always girls. And Maman can be, you know . . . a bitch. I mean, really, watch out for her.”

“Really?”

He nods, matter-of-fact. “And then there's Noé. She has struggled the most since Papa went. She cuts herself sometimes, makes herself sick. She has always been fragile. She tried to kill herself when she was only twelve.”

“Jesus, I'm so sorry.”

“
Ouais.
My mother found her that time. That was . . . Now she just does idiot things, like going to that stupid club tonight. She gets in trouble and then, boom!” He snaps his fingers. “Drama. Shouting. That is usually when I take off.”

“So I guess you're going to take off soon?” I ask, swallowing smoke, trying not to sound like I care.

“You want me to?” His voice is gravelly, his pupils so big a girl could go skinny-dipping in them.

I shake my head. Something tumbles down inside me, plummeting into free-fall. I lean back and his arm warms my shoulder blades. His head turns towards me, his breath on my cheek.

“You're so much nicer than the others,” he murmurs, almost too quiet to hear. Our faces are so close our noses touch. Suddenly all I can think about is that I can smell his skin, his breath, hear the click of his tongue in his mouth. Owls are calling through the cricket noise. I have the ridiculous urge to tell him some endearment even though I don't know him at all. But then I don't have to because his lips are on mine, his tongue pushing between my lips, our mouths merging. He drinks me in. We kiss and kiss and I don't want it to ever end, then our lips part and he's pulling away, his thumb stroking my cheek.

“Ah, comme tu est belle. Oui, tu est belle et tu le sais.”
He smiles his sweet smile. “And now it is past your bedtime.”

“Why?” My voice comes out soft and kissed-sounding.

“Because it's late and you are my sister's American exchange and I absolutely must not be kissing you.”