As usual Cheryl’s voice became louder in my head when I began to think of Sophie in certain ways. Her kiss, transactional as it might have been, reminded me of my own involuntary celibacy and that mixed with my anger from the henhouse to leave me fuming. I thought about getting myself my own hooker, maybe one of Sophie’s friends, just to be an ass, but Cheryl’s voice pointed out that I was just being vindictive and mean and, as it often did, pled Sophie’s case. I didn’t have the experience to understand what Sophie was going through or how it was informing her actions now that we were back in too-familiar territory for her. Whatever emotion I had felt back in the henhouse might well be cubed for her. But she just fiddled with her necklace and stared at the early morning condensation on the car window, keeping a cool enough head to play a long game.
Cresting the mountain I could see the early morning light had begun to paint the ocean, which meant it was early enough that Simon’s cafe was probably open. I asked Alon to drop us off there. He nodded enthusiastically and yanked on the steering wheel like it was a firehose.
In the pre-dawn Simon stood up from the bucket and brush he was scrubbing away graffiti from his storefront with. He dried his hands on his apron as he watched me and Sophie get out of the cab. I paid Alon, who reached for the cash with a reticence that suggested he would have rather had his contact card back. But then he looked at Sophie, shrugged, and took the money.
Seeing me with an impossibly tall blonde, rouge still on my neck, presumably after a long night out, Simon smiled. As Sophie slipped an arm into the crook of mine, he took one of his cigarillos out of his breast pocket and placed it in his mouth. In English, he said to me, “Much better company you’re keeping.”
Patting my forearm with her free hand, Sophie said in French, “Oh, I like him.” Simon chuckled a little at this and grinned wider, thumbing a match but not lighting his cigar. Instead he put it away and made a welcoming gesture for us to enter the cafe.
We sat at the usual table in the back, just below the mirror that had captured the three Idiots, what felt like an impossibly long time ago. Sophie took Simon’s usual place across from me, back lit by the dawning day and the slightly tarnished brass fixtures of the entrance.
I ordered the usual and Sophie requested a croissant and fruit. Simon took our order without comment. Sitting there for a moment, despite my bruises, I could have thought we were two normal people enjoying an early morning breakfast before heading out for a day in the Old Town.
Sophie and I sat in silence until Simon brought us our coffee and I remembered another reason I had wanted to come here. In French, I asked Simon, “Could I see the phone?”
Simon took a moment to translate my terribly pronounced French, then shot a sideways glance at Sophie. After what might have been momentary disappointment that the burner wasn’t just our secret he nodded in the most perfunctory way and went behind the marble-topped bar. He rubbed the phone with the towel hanging from his apron as if polishing a glass and then handed it to me.
I thanked him, taking a pack of matches off the table and offering to light his cigarillo for him. He smiled at the gesture of thanks but held up a hand to refuse. He said simply, “I must cook.” Then disappeared into the back to perform his culinary duties.
Knowing that I should sleep soon, I sipped my coffee anyway and opened the phone. Not to my surprise, there were two missed calls and a voicemail. The numbers meant nothing to me, but the icon for an envelope filled me with an almost unexpected dread. Fumbling a bit, I followed the minute instructions for retrieval. I found myself chewing on the matchstick as whatever invisible and distant apparatus geared up to play the message.
There were actually two. The first was a hang-up. The second was Mitnick himself, which surprised me. I had expected to be communicating via underling. He had said as much. Perhaps that had been the first call. Regardless, his baritone came through without introduction. “No one saw you leave the house my friend. I hope you are O-K.” He pronounced the letters of the last word so distinctly it almost sounded like a code. “I think I had found a solution to the problem you presented to me. Let us meet. I have a reward for you.”
And that was it. I stared at the phone a moment, wondering if I’d accidentally hung up. How was I supposed to meet him with no instructions? I guessed I was suppose to call the number back, but I decided to do that after my next shift at the casino.
The eggs, which arrived shortly after, allowed me to forget about that for a moment. After an evening built out of the darkest and hardest edges of reality, to be served something warm, soft, and delicious granted some reprieve. Biting into the crisp warmness of the galette, it was a reminder that someone could make something with love, even for strangers. I raised my head from my plate and breathed through my nose as I chewed, taking a moment to savor it rather than simply scarfing it down. Simon stood nearby, and gave me a happy, almost salacious smile, enjoying how much I appreciated the meal.
I nodded slightly with a chopped exuberance and then bowed my head to eat. So wrapped in the meal and its juxtaposition to suffering that some time went by before I noticed that Simon and Sophie were talking. Speaking in French, natch, I didn’t understand everything, but I caught that Sophie was very happy with her meal as well and was asking if Simon baked his own croissants. Simon played coy for a bit, teasing Sophie as if this were a state secret, but relented when she promised only to buy them from Simon in the morning. And who among the French buys them at any other time of the day?
With a small smile on his lips all the while, Simon took out a tiny paper pad from his apron, a piece of standard issue equipment for waiters but one that I had never seen Simon use to write down an order. Here instead he wrote down an address, also in Les Moulins, not far but closer to a better neighborhood.
I took my time finishing and even asked for a glass of juice. It complimented the bitterness of the coffee and gave a tang that emphasized the smoothness of the eggs. I finished it and everything on my plate, ending satisfied, drinking what remained of the coffee with the occasional smile at Sophie, the kiss forgotten.
I paid, in a stubbornly American fashion, leaving payment as well as a tip sitting under the phone on the table. Simon wouldn’t count the cash until after we were gone and by then it would be too late for him to protest. He wouldn’t like it, but I couldn’t shake the idea he deserved something extra for doing something so simple, so well.
Outside, headed to the tram, Sophie put her arm into mine again, and we walked across the still empty cobblestones, only interrupted once by a nun in her habit, sweeping out the cloister’s vestibule, putting dirt out into the street. We stepped around her, smiling at each other, me and her in our own kind of rapture, mine brought on by the warmth of the cafe, the breakfast in my belly, miles of fatigue, and Sophie by my side.
Moving forward, I realized that, despite my initial resistance, Sophie’s plan granted me the knowledge that we might do something about what we had seen last night, that we had resolved into action against an entrenched and numerically superior foe. I wasn’t sure what it was or what to call it, but it was the closest thing to happiness I had felt in a long while.
To read the next chapter, go here.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
See the author’s published work here.
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