Woman in the Fifth

watchman’s job … but one which gives me the opportunity to write until dawn. I have no friends here … but I am making use of the city and I am managing to keep my head above water. I was immensely touched by your offer of a cash injection — as always, you are a true mensch — but my straits aren’t that dire. I am managing to stay afloat.

And yes, I did spend several nights at that hotel in the Sixteenth. And yes, your friends are right: the guy on the front desk was a real little monster.

Keep in touch.

Best

As soon as I sent this email, I switched over to the New York Times website. As I scanned that day’s paper, an Instant Message prompt popped up on the screen. It was a return email from Doug:

Hey Harry

Glad to hear it’s not that desperate for you over there … and I’m really pleased you’re writing. Got to dash to a class, but here’s a Paris tip: if you’re in the mood to meet people — or are simply bored on a Sunday night — then do consider checking out one of the salons that are held around town. Jim Haynes — one of life’s good guys — holds a great bash up at his atelier in the Fourteenth. But if you want a more bizarre experience, then drop into Lorraine L’Herbert’s soiree. She’s a Louisiana girl — starting to look down that long barrel of the shotgun marked sixty. Ever since she moved over to Paris in the early seventies, she’s been running a salon every Sunday night in her big fuck- off apartment near the Pantheon. She doesn’t ‘invite’ people. She expects people to invite themselves. And all you have to do is ring her on the number below and tell her you’re coming this week. Naturally, if she asks how you found out about her salon, use my name. But she won’t ask — because that’s not how it works.

Keep in touch, eh?

Best

Doug

On the other side of the cafe, Mr Beard said, ‘I close now. You go.’

I scribbled the phone number of Lorraine L’Herbert on a scrap of paper, then shoved it into a jacket pocket, thinking that — as lonely as I often felt — the last thing I wanted to do was rub shoulders with a bunch of expatriate types in some big-deal apartment in the Sixth, with everyone (except yours truly) basking in their own fabulousness. Still, the guilty man in me thought that I owed Doug the courtesy of taking the number down.

Mr Beard coughed again.

‘OK, I’m out of here,’ I said.

As I left, he said, ‘Kamal was stupid man.’

‘In what way?’ I asked.

‘He got himself dead.’

That phrase lodged itself in my brain and wouldn’t let go. For the next few days, I searched every edition of Le Parisien and Le Figaro — which also had good local Paris news — to see if there were any further developments in the case. Nothing. I mentioned Kamal’s death once more to Mr Beard — asking him if he had heard anything more. His response: ‘They now think it is suicide.’

‘Where did you hear that?’

‘Around.’

‘Around where?’

‘Around.’

‘So how did he take his life?’

‘He cut his throat.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘It is what I heard.’

‘He cut his own throat while walking along a street, then tossed himself in a dumpster?’

‘I report only what I have been told.’

‘Told by whom?’

‘It is not important.’

Then he disappeared into a back room.

Why didn’t I walk away then and there? Why didn’t I execute an about-face and vanish? I could have gone home and cleared out my chambre in a matter of minutes, and pitched up somewhere else in Paris. Surely there were grubbier streets in grubbier quartiers, where it was possible to find another shitty room in which I could eke out a living until the money ran out.

And then? And then?

That was the question which kept plaguing me as I sat at the little bar on the rue de Paradis, nursing a pression and wishing that the barmaid was available. I found myself studying the curve of her hips, the space between her breasts that was revealed by her V-neck T-shirt. Tonight I wanted sex for the first time since Susan had thrown me out all those months ago. It’s not that I hadn’t had a sexual thought since then. It’s just that I had been so freighted with the weight of all my assorted disasters that the idea of any sort of intimacy with someone else seemed like a voyage into a place that I now associated with danger. But never underestimate the libido — especially when it has been oiled with a couple of beers. As I found myself looking over the barmaid, she caught my appraising stare and smiled, then flicked her head toward a beefy guy with tattoos who had his back to us as he pulled a croque monsieur out of a small grill. The nod said it all: I’m taken. But the smile seemed to hint an ‘Alas’ before that statement. Or, at least, that’s what I wanted to believe. Just as I wanted to believe that Kamal ‘got himself killed’ because he owed somebody money, or he was in on a drug deal that had gone wrong, or he’d been fingering the till at the cafe, or he’d looked the wrong way at some woman. Or …

A half-dozen other scenarios filled my head … along with another pervasive thought. Remember what Kamal told you when he first offered you the job: ‘That is of no concern of yours.’ Good advice. Now finish the beer and get moving. It’s nearly midnight. Time to go to work.

Later that night, I opened my notebook and a piece of paper fell out of one of its back pages. It was the scrap on which I had written Lorraine L’Herbert’s phone number. I stared at it. I thought, What can I lose? It’s just a party, after all.

‘It’s not a party,’ said the uppity little man who answered L’Herbert’s phone the next afternoon. He was American with a slightly simpering voice and a decidedly pompous manner. ‘It’s a salon.’

Thanks for the semantical niceties, pal.

‘Are you having one this week?’

‘Comme d’habitude.’

‘Well, can I book a place?’

‘If we can fit you in. The list is very, very tight, I’m afraid. Your name, please?’

I told him.

‘Visiting from … ?’

‘I live here now, but I’m from Ohio.’

‘People actually live in Ohio?’

‘The last time I looked.’

‘What’s your line of endeavor?’

‘I’m a novelist.’

‘Published by … ?’

‘That’s pending.’

He issued a huge sigh, as if to say, Not another wouldbe writer.

‘Well, you know that there is a contribution of twenty euros. Please arrive with it in an envelope, on which your name is clearly printed. Take down the door code now and don’t lose it, because we don’t answer the phone after five p.m. on the day of the salon. So if you misplace it, you will not gain entry. And the invitation is for yourself only. If you show up with anyone else, both of you will be turned away.’

‘I’ll be alone.’

‘No smoking, by the way. Madame L’Herbert hates tobacco. We like all our guests to arrive between seven and seven thirty p.m. And dress is smart. Remember: a salon is theater. Any