“What did you say your name was?”
“Allyson,” I hear myself say as if from a distance away.
“Van,” he says, introducing himself while fingering an old pocket watch on a chain.
I’m staring at the table, remembering the intense sharpness of it against my back, the ease with which Willem hoisted me onto it. The table is, as it was then, meticulously clean, the neat pile of papers, the half-finished pieces in the corner, the mesh cup of charcoals, and pens. Wait, what? I grab for the pens.
“That’s my pen!”
“I’m sorry?” Van asks.
I reach over to grab the pen out of the cup. The Rollerball, inscribed BREATHE EASY WITH PULMOCLEAR. “This is my pen! From my dad’s practice.”
Van is looking at me, perplexed. But he doesn’t understand. The pen was in my bag. I never took it out. It just went missing. I had it on the barge. I wrote double happiness with it. And then the next day, when I was on the phone with Ms. Foley, it was gone.
“Last summer, my friend Willem and I, well, we came here hoping someone might put us up for the night. He said that squats will do that.” I pause. Van nods slightly. “But no one was here. Except a window was open. So we slept here, in your studio, and when I woke up the next morning, my friend, Willem, he was gone.”
I wait for Van to get upset about our trespassing, but he is looking at me, still trying to understand why I’m gripping the Pulmoclear pen in my hand like it’s a sword. “This pen was in my purse and then it was gone and now it’s here, and I’m wondering, maybe there was a note or something. . . .”
Van’s face remains blank, and I’m about to apologize, for trespassing before, and now again, but then I see something, like the faint glimmers of light before a sunrise, as some sort of recognition illuminates his face. He taps his index finger to the bridge of his nose.
“I did find something; I thought it was a shopping list.”
“A shopping list?”
“It said something about, about . . . I don’t recall, perhaps chocolate and bread?”
“Chocolate and bread?” Those were Willem’s staple foods. My heart starts to pound.
“I don’t remember. I thought it came in from the garbage. I had been away for holiday, and when I came back, everything was disarrayed. I disposed of it. I’m so sorry.” He looks stricken.
We snuck into his studio, made a mess of it, and he looks guilty.
“No, don’t be sorry. This is so helpful. Would there have been any reason for a shopping list to be in here? I mean, might you have written it?”
“No. And if I did, it would not have contained bread and chocolate.”
I smile at that. “Could the list have been, maybe, a note?”
“It is possible.”
“We were supposed to have bread and chocolate for breakfast. And my pen is here.”
“Please, take your pen.”
“No, you can have the pen,” I say, and out escapes a whoop of laughter. A note. Could he have left me a note?
I throw my arms around Van, who stiffens for a moment in surprise but then relaxes into my embrace and reaches around to hug me back. It feels good, and he smells nice, like oil paint and turpentine and dust and old wood—smells that, like everything from that day, are stitched into the fabric of me now. For the first time in a long time, this doesn’t seem like a curse.
When I leave Van, it’s mid-afternoon. The Oz crew is probably still at the Rodin Museum; I could meet up with them. But instead, I decide to try something else. I go to the nearest Metro station and close my eyes and spin around and then I pick a stop. I land on Jules Joffrin and then I figure out the series of trains that will take me there.
I wind up in a very Parisian-seeming neighborhood, lots of narrow, uphill streets and everyday shops: shoe stores, barbershops, little neighborhood bars. I meander a ways, no idea where I am, but surprisingly enjoying the feeling of being lost. Eventually, I come across a broad staircase, carved into the steep hillside, forming a little canyon between the apartment buildings and green foliage hanging down on either side. I have no idea where the stairs lead. I can practically hear Willem’s voice: All the more reason to take them.
So I do. And take them, and take them. No sooner do I reach one landing than I find another set of stairs. At the top of the stairs, I cross a small cobblestoned medieval street and then, boom, it’s like I’m back in the world of the tour. There are idling coaches and sardine-packed cafés, and an accordion player doing Edith Piaf covers.
I follow the crowds around the corner, and at the end of a street full of cafés advertising menus in English, Spanish, French, and German is a huge white-domed cathedral.
“Excusez-moi, qu’est-ce que c’est?” I ask a man standing outside of one of the cafés.
He rolls his eyes. “C’est Sacré-Coeur!”
Oh, Sacré-Coeur. Of course. I walk closer and see three domes, two smaller ones flanking the big one the middle, reigning regal over the rooftops of Paris. In front of the cathedral, which is glowing golden in the afternoon sun, is a grassy hillside esplanade, bisected by marble staircases leading down the other side of the hill. There are people everywhere: the tourists with their video cameras rolling, backpackers lolling in the sun, artists with easels out, young couples leaning into each other, whispering secrets. Paris! Life!
At the end of the tour, I’d sworn off setting foot in another moldering old church. But for some reason, I follow the crowds inside. Even with the golden mosaics, looming statues and swelling crowds, it somehow still manages to feel like a neighborhood church, with people quietly praying, fingering rosaries, or just lost in thought.
There’s a stand of candles, and you can pay a few euros and light one yourself. I’m not Catholic, and I’m not entirely clear on this ritual, but I feel the need to commemorate this somehow. I hand over some change and am given a candle, and when I light it, it occurs to me that I should say a prayer. Should I pray for someone who’s died, like my grandfather? Or should I pray for Dee? For my mom? Should I pray to find Willem?