Paris Twilight Read Free Page B

flurry of wings and a spatter of scattered seed, but no sooner had it commenced than it resolved itself, and the satisfied chiding took up where it left off.
    â€œUnimportant,” Rouchard said, “since evidently he knew you.”
    The first reaction to bubble up through my disbelief was anger. I’m not sure where my hostility rose from (though I can say that in this one instance, my shopworn clairvoyance was still spot on). Partly, it annoyed me that the attorney addressed this final sentence not to me, but to my left hand, a common indiscretion. You remember my disfigurement, my compass-rose scar with its talent for fascinating children. All children and some few adults, though the adults were generally of a ruder sort than this one. At any rate, my answer retrieved his gaze. “I’m sorry,” I said to him. “I must decline to accept this, this . . .”
    â€œGift,” Rouchard said, finishing my protest, and the light in his clear eyes steeled into something less amenable. “But let me assure you, Doctor, this is no gift. You have been appointed sole executor of the estate of one Byron Saxe, who may not have had much in the way of possessions or, let us conjecture, family, but who was nevertheless a legal person and who has conferred on you a legal obligation, which we will help you adjudicate. We have gone ahead with a necessary step and publicized his death in the proper journals so that any other claimants may have their chance to come forward. Due diligence will require some interlude, and then we will have documents for you to sign—there is quite an amount of paperwork involved, his instructions being elaborate, if I may say. I am glad, in the meantime, that coincidence has placed you here in Paris, so you can begin to put affairs in order. The first thing you need to do is visit the apartment, which I understand may be in less than commendable shape, owing to the nature of his disaster, but which has a number of his things in it, such as they are.”
    And with that he placed, in my left hand, a key.
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    Getting from rue Delembert across the river to the address Rouchard supplied me with was not so difficult a task, except for the condition I imposed on myself of giving the slip to the man who could most easily get me there. Drôlet was waiting outside. I hadn’t intended to employ him that morning; hadn’t even imagined, as I ate my room-service egg and toast and made my call to the hospital and my calls (in vain) to the Bakelite lump on the secretary’s desk, that the driver would be around. But hardly had I exited the Clairière’s elevator and begun my trek across the lobby than he materialized in front of me. “You wish us to go, madame?” he inquired.
    Well, no, not
us
. But there he was, so we went. The car was a godsend, I confess. It was drizzling out. How blessed I was, headed for my rendezvous, not to have to rely on the fabled patience of a Parisian cabby as I slowly scanned the façades of buildings for the door bearing Rouchard’s number. And how relieved I was, coming back out of Rouchard’s office, not to face the daunting implausibility of hailing a return cab in the rain, vacant public Peugeots being as magically water-soluble in Paris as empty yellow Checkers in Manhattan. So I was feeling kindly toward Drôlet and his conveyance as I hopped back in and he asked me where to go next.
    Kindly—but I still wished to give him the slip. As I looked down at the memo paper covered with Rouchard’s scribblings, caution whispered that this location wasn’t one I wanted the world, or at least my chauffeur, to know about just yet.
    â€œHotel, please,” I answered.
    â€œAs you wish,” Drôlet said, and something about the tone of his consent, the hint of ironic distance, the temperature-less control, affirmed my decision. I would think better of him, with time. Now, I had a momentary urge to