Chapter 15

15

The market starts on the streets, with a flood of people selling stolen goods. The fringe market. They sell bright red steaks. Used appliances that will either work perfectly or electrocute you—there is no in-between. T-shirts for date-specific events that no one cares to remember: the 135th anniversary of the establishment of a vineyard in Languedoc, the '98 World Series. Candles that will burn your house down. Haunted children's toys. Everything you could never want. Everything you could never need.

All the sellers look stunned, like they have been through wars. Like they have fought their way through an odyssey to wind up here, selling steak on the street. The terrible thing is, they probably have.

A market is a place where you realize you cannot save everyone. Not all the time. Not even close.

I keep walking until I reach the more official market: great big networks of market stalls and warehouses and shops. This is where they sell the junk they used to make—which is so much better than the junk they make now: tin boxes, carved canes, miniature mechanical birds.

I am pulled in by a little shop selling antique weapons. They are my signature, and I just lost most of my collection on the train. Maybe that is contributing to this horrible feeling I have. Maybe I just miss my swords.

I wear gloves when I kill someone, of course, but I like to think that antiques wreak havoc with DNA. Plus, they just look fucking cool. I buy them on the dark web or through untraceable networks, not live and in person. This is unfortunate, because this shop has an emerald-encrusted rapier that I would really love to kill someone with.

Eva was right; I need this. The market wants me to have it.

"You like it?" the shopkeeper says in French.

"Fuck yes," I say, also in French.

He takes it off the wall and holds it out to me. "Feel how light."

He is right. It is incredibly light. It is probably made for fencing, not murder, but I test the bend in the blade and it is solid. I could make it work.

"Do you offer shipping?" I ask.

"Unfortunately, no. This is a weapon," he adds like I might not know. "I would need to see your passport." I have seven.

"Maybe I'll come back later." I am supposed to be finding Eva—which is seeming more unlikely. The market is bigger than the world. In a way, it is more impenetrable. Out there, there are clear lines and divisions. Here, there is chaos.

The shopkeeper takes the blade back, with the special scowl reserved for people who promise to come back later.

I keep walking, through a broken chain of market stalls and market streets and warehouses. I can see why this is one of the biggest markets in the world. It has no clear delineations. You think you have reached the end only to find yourself in a different iteration. Everything is still for sale. For all I know, all of Paris might be Les Puces.

I have no other plans in Paris now that I have been operated on. Were it not for Eva, I would leave right now. Give myself an arbitrary place, an arbitrary task. Something to do.

Climb Mount Everest.

Cross the Sahara.

Sail to Antarctica.

Anything. I would do anything to keep from doing nothing.

I keep searching well past dark. Past when the market is shut. There is no way she is there. But sometimes I cannot stop myself.

I pass by the same market stalls and shops, now dark, now locked. I pass by the shop with the emerald rapier and I have a thought: If I steal it, there is no chance of anyone tracing it.

It is ridiculously easy, the kind of small-time crime that warms your heart. Disable the security system. Disarm the cameras. Break a small pane of glass. Let myself in. The shop reeks of antiques, like they procreate at night. Rusting and fucking.

The rapier is there on the wall, where the shopkeeper left it. I take it down. The shopkeeper was right: It is so very light. I leave cash payment in the register, enough to cover the window, too. I do not haggle.

I keep walking, mapping out the market until it is tattooed inside my head. Laid out like a body under the stars.