Out of the Dark Read Free Page B

leaving Paris when the snow melted on the sidewalks and I went out in my old slip-ons. 'Why wait until the end of winter?' I asked her.
    She smiled.
    'We got to have some money saved up first.'
    She lit a cigarette. She coughed. She smoked too much. And always the same brand, with the slightly stale smell of French blond tobacco.
    'We'll never save up enough from selling your books.' I was happy to hear her say 'we,' as if our futures were linked from now on.
    'Gérard will probably bring back a lot of money from Forges-les-Eaux and Dieppe.' I said.
    She shrugged.
    'We've been using his martingale for six months, but it's never made us much money·.'
    She didn't seem to have much faith in the 'around the neutral five' martingale.
    'Have you known Gérard long?'
    'Yes … we met in Athis-Mons, outside Paris ...'
    She was looking silently into my eyes. She was probably trying to tell me there was nothing more to say on this subject.
    'So you come from Athis-Mons?'
    'Yes.'
    I knew the name well, since Athis-Mons was near Ablon, where one of my friends lived. He used to borrow his parents' car and driv me to Orly at night. We would go to the movie theater and one of the bars in the airport. We stayed very late listening to the announcements of arrivals and departures for distant places, and we strolled through the central hall. When he drove me back to Paris we never took the freeway, but instead detoured through Villeneuve-le-Roi, Athis-Mons, other towns in the southern suburbs. I might have passed by Jacqueline one night back then.
    'Have you traveled much?'
    It was one of those questions people ask to enliven a dull conversation, and I had spoken it in a falsely casual way.
    'Not really traveled,' she said. 'But now, if we could get our hands on a little money ...'
    She was speaking even more quietly, as if she didn't want anyone else to hear. And it was difficult to make out what she said amid all the noise.
    I leaned toward her, and again our foreheads were nearly touching.
    'Gérard and I know an American who writes novels … He lives on Majorca … He'll find us a house there. We met him in the English bookstore on the quai.'
    I used to go to that bookstore often. It was a maze of little rooms lined with books, where it was easy to be alone. The customers came from far away to visit it. It stayed open very late. I had bought a few novels from the Tauchnitz collection there, which I had then tried to sell. Shelves full of books on the sidewalk in front of the shop, with chairs and even a couch. It was like the terrace of a café. You could see Notre Dame from there. And yet once you crossed the threshold, it felt like Amsterdam or San Francisco.
    So the letter she had mailed from the Odéon post office was addressed to the 'American who wrote novels ...' What was his name? Maybe I had read one of his books ...
    'William McGivern ...'
    No, I had never heard of this McGivern. She lit another cigarette. She coughed. She was still as pale as before.
    'I must have the flu.' she said.
    'You should drink another hot toddy.'
    'No thanks.'
    She looked worried all of a sudden.
    'I hope everything goes well for Gérard ...'
    'Me too ...'
    'I'm always worried when Gérard isn't here ...'
    She had lingered over the syllables of 'Gérard' with great tenderness. Of course, she was sometimes short with him, but she took his arm in the street, or laid her head on his shoulder when we were sitting at one of the tables in the Café Dante. One afternoon when I had knocked on the door to their room, she had told me to come in, and they were both lying in one of the narrow beds, the one nearest the window.
    'I can't do without Gérard ...'
    The words had come rushing out, as if she were speaking to herself and had forgotten I was there. Suddenly I was in the way. Maybe it was best for her to be alone. And just as I was trying to find an excuse to leave, she turned her gaze on me, an absent gaze at first. Then finally she saw me.
    I was the one