“That’s all right, I have a lot of scarves. It isn’t necessary.”
“When did it become a crime to want what wasn’t necessary?”
I was left to try to form an argument to that while Luc stepped up to greet the woman in the stall. He’d pointed out the scarf to her and paid for it and had it wrapped and handed me the parcel by the time I could reply, “I only meant that I’d survive without it.”
With a shrug he said, “Surviving life is not the same as living and enjoying it.”
I couldn’t really argue that, and anyway it was too late—he’d moved into position as he’d done before, a half step to my side and just a little bit in front of me, and with his easy stride began to clear a path for us along the pavement through the crowd. I followed him and frowned a little, realizing the only thing to do was tell him thank you. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll pay you back the money.”
“You will not,” he told me. “That’s a gift.”
“But you don’t have to give me gifts.”
“I do. It’s New Year’s, it’s tradition.”
“But—”
We’d reached the curb now and Luc stopped and turned to look down at me, smiling his perfect symmetrical smile. “Are you always this difficult?”
I thought about that a moment and answered him honestly. “Yes.”
His smile briefly turned to a grin, but he seemed to be trying to hide that by looking instead at the cars passing by on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. When he looked back at me he only had a faint curve to his mouth. “Give it here, then.”
He held out his hand for the paper-wrapped parcel and I passed it over, not really wanting to have him return it but realizing that was the logical consequence of all my arguing.
“Thank you. Now take this.” He handed me my helmet, leaving both his hands free while he opened the parcel and drew out the length of blue shimmering silk. Taking hold of it firmly he reached to arrange it around my neck, tucking the ends through to make a loose knot. “There,” he said, folding the paper into a small square that he tucked deep in one of his pockets, “you’ve worn it, it can’t be returned, and I won’t take your money. You’ll just have to keep it.” He reclaimed my helmet, and held it as effortlessly as before in his left hand. “Now, where are we going?”
The scarf felt soft against my neck—as soft as the worn lining of the borrowed leather jacket that I still had on because I liked the feel of it layered over my own thinner coat. The sleeves were long enough that I could draw my hands back up inside them when the wind blew cold. I did that now, and looked around to get my bearings, trying to remember what I’d seen on the computer maps.
“Well,” I said, “there was some sort of Fair that was held here in Mary’s time. She mentions it in her diary, seeing all the people coming and going from it, although I don’t know if she ever went to it herself. But just in case, I ought to have a look. According to the maps it’s a big market now, just over there I think.” I nodded left. “So I’d like to walk that way, and then Mary’s street should be just beyond that.”
We crossed over. It was hard to miss the market. It stood grandly at the end of a short side street—a great covered building with banner ads draping the walls with their pale colonnades and a two-tiered tile roof and Marché Saint-Germain spelled out in large letters over the arches around the main entrance. The old Fair, I thought, must have been as imposing in its day. It, too, from the pictures I’d seen on the Internet, had been housed under one roof in a large building that dominated the space, drawing crowds.
“Do you want to go in?” Luc asked.
“No.” Busy places like that were my private idea of hell, but I didn’t elaborate. “I only wanted to see it.”
He stood there and looked at the building too. “Is it important to see things in person, for what you are doing?”
“For me it is, yes.” With a slight frown, I tried to explain. “When I’m working through what Mary wrote in her diary, she talks all the time about where she is and where she’s going, but I can’t construct places in my mind when I’m just reading about them in words. If I go to a place, I can follow those words,” I said, “let them direct me, and then I find it easier to form a mental image. Otherwise I get confused.”
Which probably, I thought, was far more information than he either needed or had asked for. I fell silent, feeling suddenly self-conscious.
“There are maps,” Luc said. “And these days on the Internet you can get down to street level, real photographs, and navigate around.”
I didn’t tell him that I found most maps too crowded and confusing, and that even with the online ones he’d mentioned I still couldn’t get the details I was after. All I told him was, “It’s not the same.”
I drew my mobile out to take some pictures and he waited in his undemanding way and let me take the lead. We strolled down the length of the front of the market and down its far side to the little street running behind it—the rue des Quatre Vents, meaning the street of the four winds—and that, in its turn, led us right to the old street where Mary had lived, here in Paris. It wasn’t a long street—the old rue du Coeur Volant was just a single block long, and so narrow in places there scarcely seemed space for a single car to squeeze between the old buildings.