Woman in the Fifth

words per night — I kept at it. Days would pass when no one would ring the bell, demanding admittance. Then there would be a night when four separate callers came to the door, all men of indeterminate age, all asking to see Monsieur Monde. I’d hit the button, the door would open and close, there would be footsteps, another door opening and closing, end of story.

A month passed. February gave way to March. There was an ever-early lightening of the evening sky; the days still cold, but brighter. Had I been in a normal state of mind, the thought would have struck me: You have been working for over five weeks now without a day off. But I was still operating on some sort of weird autopilot: work, sleep, pick up cash, movies, work. If I took a day off, I might fall out of routine … and if I fell out of routine, I might start to reflect about things. And if I started to reflect about things …

So I stuck to the routine. Day in, day out, nothing changed.

Until something unsettling happened. I was nursing a post-cinematheque beer in the little bar on the rue de Paradis. I picked up a copy of Le Parisien that had been left on a table and started flicking through its contents. There, on the bottom right-hand corner of page 5, under the headline, Body of Missing Man Found in Saint-Ouen, was a photograph of someone named Kamal Fatel. Though the photo was grainy, there was no doubt that it was the same Kamal who ran the Internet cafe and found me my current job. The story was a short one:

The body of Kamal Fatel, 35, a resident of rue Carnot in Saint-Ouen, was found last night in an unused dumpster near the Peripherique. According to the police at the scene, the body, though badly decomposed, had been identified through dental records of the deceased. The Saint-Ouen medical examiner issued a statement saying that, due to the state of the cadaver, the exact time and cause of death had yet to be ascertained. According to Inspector Philippe Faure of the commissariat de police in Saint-Ouen, Fatel’s wife, Kala, had thought her husband was traveling in Turkey to visit relatives there. Fatel, born in Turkey in 1972, had been resident in France since 1977 and had run an Internet cafe on the rue des Petites Ecuries …

I downed the dregs of the beer in one go. I grabbed the paper. I walked with considerable speed toward the rue des Petites Ecuries. Mr Beard was behind the counter of the cafe. I dropped the paper in front of him and asked, ‘Did you see this?’

His face registered nothing.

‘Yes, I saw it,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you shocked?’

‘This morning, when I first saw the story, yes, I was a little shocked.’

‘A little shocked? The guy is dead.’

‘Like his wife, I had thought he had gone back to Turkey. But …’

‘Who was behind it?’

‘Why should I know such a thing? I worked with Kamal. He was not my friend.’

‘Was he in some sort of trouble with somebody?’

‘Once again, you ask questions which I cannot answer. His life was not known to me.’

I could tell he was lying — because his eyes kept darting away from mine whenever I tried to eyeball him. Or if he wasn’t lying, he was working very hard at not appearing nervous — and failing badly.

‘Will there be a funeral?’

‘In Turkey.’

‘How do you know that?’ I challenged.

He tensed, realizing he’d just let himself be caught out.

‘Just a guess,’ he said, then stood up and said, ‘I am closing now.’

‘Do I have time to check my email?’

‘No.’

‘Just give me five minutes, no more.’

‘Be fast.’

I sat down at one of the computer terminals, clicked on Internet Explorer and then typed in AOL. Within a minute, my mailbox covered a corner of the screen: with one actual email … from, of all people, my former colleague, Doug Stanley. It read:

Harry:

Sorry to have fallen off the face of the planet during the past few weeks. I’m going to cut to the chase straight away — because I’ve never tried to bullshit you about things … and I certainly won’t start now. Now that the dust has started to settle here, Susan and Robson have gone public as a couple. The official version is that, in the wake of your disgrace, Susan was ‘emotionally shattered’. Robson befriended her — and then they ‘became close’ … nice euphemism, eh? As bullshit goes, this is truly choice. Everyone knew they were an item long before everything blew up in your face. And yeah, I do realize now — especially after all that’s gone down — that I should have told you long ago what was happening between them. I still feel damn guilty about that — thinking that, if you had been aware of their involvement, things might have turned out differently for you.

Anyway, you also need to know that Robson has been spreading word around the college that you have hit the skids in Paris. Worse, he’s also let it be known that he gleaned this information from Megan. In his version of things — and, believe me, I know that it is simply his version (and, as such, far from the truth) — you’ve been sending her this series of self-pitying emails, playing up your impoverished circumstances and trying to point the finger at Susan. Again, let me reemphasize the fact that I know he’s twisting whatever you sent to Megan — just as the sad, what a tragic story tone he adopts when relating this information makes me want to punch out his lights. But, as you well know, the man is the all-powerful Dean of the Faculty — which, in our little world, gives him power over all of us … especially if we don’t have tenure.

I thought long and hard about whether I should burden you with this ongoing horseshit — but eventually decided that you did need to know. My advice to you is: consider that chapter of your life closed, and do know that if things in Paris are as bad as Robson described, they will definitely get better … because you will make them better. And there is one small bit of good news from this Ohio backwater: word has it that Robson has decided not to proceed with the college’s lawsuit against you. The son of a bitch was finally convinced that continuing to crucify you was pointless.

I’m certain the separation from Megan is an ongoing agony. Trust me: she will come round. It might take some time — but it will happen. She will want to see her father again.

Finally, let me know if you are totally strapped, as I’m happy to wire over a thousand bucks pronto. I wish it could be more, but you know what they pay third-tier academics in the Ohio sticks. I certainly don’t want to see you on the street.

Bon courage.

Best

Doug

PS Did you stay at the hotel I recommended in the Sixteenth? If so, I hope you fared better than some friends I sent there last month. It seems they had a run-in with some creep at the front desk.

‘Trust me: she will come round.’ I doubt that, Doug. Without question, Susan and her new man had poisoned Megan against me — and there would be no more emails from my daughter. That knowledge — and the pervasive sense of loss which accompanied it — made Doug’s other news (‘… Robson has been spreading word around the college that you have hit the skids in Paris‘) seem unimportant. Let Robson tell everyone that I had fallen on hard times. It no longer mattered what people thought of me. Because I no longer mattered — to anyone else, let alone myself.

And hitting the Reply button next to Doug’s email, I wrote:

It was very good to hear from you. Regarding Robson’s continued demolition job on me … my only response is: you’re right. That chapter of my life is finished, so I can’t really worry about what is being said about me around a college to which I will never return … though I am relieved that Robson has called off his legal thugs. But you should know that I had managed to re-establish contact with Megan — and she had seemed genuinely pleased to have a running correspondence with her father — until Susan found out about it and …

Well, you can guess what happened next.

As to my situation in Paris … no, I am not completely down and out. But it isn’t exactly a romantic set-up either. I live in a small room in a grubby building in the Tenth. I am working illegally — a non-event night