I stood up.
“There, there,” I said, rubbing his back. “There, there. He’s going to be all right, isn’t he? There, there. Look at him, all alive on the bed and everything.”
I was speaking absolute nonsense, I knew, just crooning reassuring nothings, but it seemed to do the trick. After another moment, without lifting his head, Laurent took my arm and held it.
“Thank you,” he said, his face muffled in the pillow.
I patted him. “It’s all right,” I said again. “It’s going to be all right.”
“It’s never all right,” came the voice.
I knelt down beside him. “Well,” I said, “maybe this is a really good time to make it up with your dad.”
“What, before he passes his gun to his left?” said Laurent, turning his face toward me and half-smiling. “Yeah, right. Thanks.”
“Well, lots of people never get a chance to say good-bye,” I said. “You’re going to be lucky. Be sure of it.”
“Are you my lucky charm?”
I smiled. I was the unluckiest person in the world, didn’t he know?
“If you like.”
Laurent sat up and wiped his eyes, then ran his fingers through his hair. “Do I look red?” he asked. “I don’t want the wicked witch to know I’ve been crying.”
“Maybe it’ll soften her up,” I said. “She can see how much you really care.”
“You couldn’t soften her up with a marshmallow massage,” said Laurent crossly. “I really do think she’s made out of old leather.”
“She’s panicking,” I said. “People say strange things when they’re worried.”
“Then she’s permanently worried,” he said.
“I rather think she is,” I said, patting him again. “Look, I haven’t seen much, but I’m a fast learner, and I bet Frédéric and Benoît can do just about anything. Let’s carry on with the shop for a bit until Thierry’s better. It will cheer him up, I think, to know we’ve gone on in his absence.”
“Or completely ruin him by the fact that he’s replaceable,” said Laurent with a twisted smile on his face. I noticed he was holding his father’s empty-looking hand in his living one. Apart from the fact that Thierry’s hand was more bloated and a paler color, they were the same hands.
“Well, we’ll tell him it is obviously much, much worse,” I suggested.
“Oh, you won’t have to do that,” said Laurent wryly. “He thinks everything is much, much worse without him in it.”
“Maybe he’s right,” I said. Just then, Alice came back, with three tiny plastic cups of black liquid on a little tray. I squeezed Laurent’s shoulder once more. “I’ll get back to the shop,” I said. “I’m not much use here.”
Laurent nodded. “I know,” he said reluctantly. “Yes. Do. And answer the phone, do you mind?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’ll say he’s…I’ll say he’s…”
“Say he is going to be fine,” said Alice in a voice that brooked no argument. “Say that he is going to be completely back to normal and that the shop will go on and everything will stay just as it is.”
Laurent would have probably said that this was just Alice seeking to preserve her investment. I didn’t see it like that though. I saw Alice keeping Thierry alive just by saying she was going to. And even though I didn’t want to be, I was slightly impressed.
- - -
It felt amazing to me that I stepped back out of the hospital on that same, beautiful June day. The sky had tiny ribbons of cloud floating across it, and the afternoon sun fell warmly on the backs and necks of shoppers and sightseers, every one of them, I speculated, happy and carefree without a problem in the world.
I realized I had no idea where I was, walked a long way, then figured out I could see the Eiffel Tower over my left shoulder and that therefore I was on the Left Bank, had gone the wrong way, and needed to cross the river again. Yes, I’d been on the Île de la Cité the whole time. If I craned my neck, I could just make out the familiar shape of Notre Dame, far away to my right. It would have been a lot quicker to take a cab or the Metro—everything in Paris is farther away than it looks—but I decided I needed the walk to clear my head. Incredibly careful when looking for traffic, I stepped out, my toes hurting again because they had responded badly to the smell of hospitals, I thought. Or bad weather was coming, but as far as I was concerned, all the bad things were already here. So I walked, slowing myself down to a tourist’s pace instead of the bustling Parisian march, as the locals threaded themselves in and out of the visitors, occasionally huffing their displeasure. I zigged and zagged the roads. But as long as I could keep Notre Dame in my sights, I kept heading doggedly onward.
There was something about it—I knew; forever it had stood for sanctuary, back when the city was really no more than the island and its church. It was impossible not to think about the Hunchback, and Esmeralda, or to look at the gargoyles and shudder to think of a world where people believed in them absolutely, believed that hell was only a blink or a misstep away, that it was pain for all eternity and the monsters carved on the wall were literal and real and there to tear you apart.
At secondary school, there was a bit of religious education and it was quite fashionable for a while—don’t ask me why—to go to church and pray and stuff. I don’t know why except it was seen as quite a clever thing to do, or to match with the Muslim kids who prayed properly and were seen as much cooler, and church kind of turned into this big social event, and I toyed with it till I asked Mrs. Shawcourt about it and her face went a bit stiff and she just said, “Ooh, I have had a lot of church, believe me. Quite enough to be getting on with for this lifetime,” and I was a lot less committed after that.
Around Notre Dame though, I felt something else. Seeing the queues of people waiting to get in—most of them bored-looking Italian school kids larking about, or rich-looking young American students talking really loudly, or elderly couples dressed almost exactly alike, ticking things off in their books. But among them were different people—nuns and people on their own who didn’t have a holiday look about them at all, but rather something very serious and grave. The distinctive twin towers at the front made it seem different, somehow special.