Chapter 20

20

Jonathan

The problem with granting me sick leave is that I am really, really sick. And if I cannot get it out of me one way, I will immediately find another.

I track every person in our train compartment. The Italian woman to her daughter's apartment, the Italian boys to their hostel in Montmartre, the Frenchwoman to Burgundy, the Englishman to Marseilles and the American to a penthouse near Les Puces, and then to his private gym, which I join.

I have to prove something to myself. That Eva existed, maybe. That I can find her.

It is clear she lied to me about everything. It is no wonder I liked her.

Normally I have a mark, a goal I can fix my lethal focus on, but now I have only her.

I have been at the gym for six hours. I am practically sweating blood, but I do not want to leave. It is only noon—the worst time of the day: the afternoon and then the evening, the time when people come together, especially in France.

They sit outside sprawling cafés and drink coffees and cocktails and they talk and they laugh and they do all the human things I am excluded from. That I have excluded myself from.

I cannot lift anymore and I cannot run anymore. My muscles are twitching in this mildly electric, painful way. There is a point at which exercise is just damage, and I am past that point but I do not want to leave. I cannot sleep and I have no one to kill and my life is a meaningless expanse, so I wander the floors of the gym looking for ways to die.

That is when I finally see him: the American from the train. He greets all the staff as he enters the gym, carrying a fencing bag. He walks toward one of the side rooms. A fencing class is starting in ten minutes.

I wander in his direction, planning our spontaneous meeting. Eva must have gone back to our compartment. He might have spoken to her. She might have given him clues to her identity, even her location.

I am not sure if he will recognize me, but his face lights up when he sees me. He drops his fencing bag and strides over.

"The weapons guy!" he says, catching me off guard. I am not sure how to proceed. "Did that woman ever return your suitcase?"

"Oh…No." Eva opened my suitcase. Eva took my suitcase. Another reason I need to find her. The good thing about her stealing my weapons is that I have an excuse to question the American directly. "Did you speak to her at all? Do you have any idea where she might be?"

"No, I was asleep, and then in the morning she opened the suitcase. She said she would return it to you. I assumed you knew each other."

"She didn't say anything else?"

"No. I'm sorry I can't be more help. It must hurt to lose a collection like that." He studies me. "Do you know how to use those things?" This is spoken like a challenge. I can see him sizing me up, trying to determine whether he can kill me. It is a thing men do sometimes.

"A little," I say.

"I'm teaching a class in five minutes." He starts to open his bag. "If you want to join"—he removes his sword—"I'd love to see your style. You don't look like a… traditional ." Comments like that set my teeth on edge.

I do not know if it is entirely fair for me to join, but I convince myself that if I use my nondominant hand I can participate. I can play well with others. "Sure."

We wear masks. It is all so very innocent.

I try to hang back, to not draw too much attention to myself, but the instructor wanders into my orbit. He calls out exercises and watches as I execute them.

"That's a very interesting technique," he says, now in French. "Where did you study?" He probably studied fencing in private school. I first learned to fence in prison—they did not offer classes. I had a cellmate who could make a shiv out of anything and would try to stab me at odd moments—to break up the boredom, I guess. So I taught myself to parry; I taught myself to riposte; I taught myself to flèche.

"I just learned things here and there," I answer the instructor in French.

He tilts his head, watching me. "Why don't you pair off with me for this next part?" He licks his lips.

I can tell he wants to fight me. Almost every man wants to fight me. That is what happens when you are in peak physical condition. Other men see you and want to kill you. They cannot help themselves. It is a natural instinct. Survival of the fittest.

I know that Thomas would not like this. He does not like me to even train in public, because it draws too much attention. I am supposed to be invisible. I am supposed to not exist. Most of the time I am fine with that. Before I took this job, I was already mostly gone.

But today I am on sick leave.

"All right, everyone," the instructor says. "Let's pair off for this next section. Try to find someone with a similar skill level." A man and woman pair up and he separates them. "No, no, men with men and women with women." I cannot wait to pretend to kill him.

He oversees every pairing until he thinks we are all evenly matched. He is wrong.

"All right. Now." He passes up and down the rows, waving his sword. "We will fight in turns so I can observe your technique. But first you will watch us." He gestures between me and him. "What is your name?" he asks me.

"Frank."

"Okay, Frank. Now. You will see Frank—he fights with a different style. He's very sloppy." Again? What is it with people lately? He takes his place across from me. "Go ahead, Frank."

"Go ahead with what?" I ask.

He laughs. "I want you to fight me. Don't you know how to start a fight?"

"I know how to finish one," I say under my breath.

He salutes me with an air of condescension. I advance toward him and he stops me with a hand. "Wait. You have to salute me back. Have you never learned the rules?"

I have learned the rules—seven years ago, when I first moved to France—but I am a little rusty. I do not salute someone before I take their life.

"Sorry," I say. I return to my mark. I salute him back.

"Go!" he says in French.

He did ask. I am using my nondominant hand. I have been working out for six hours. I cannot get fairer than that.

I lunge so fast that he stumbles back. I stab him right in the heart, or pretend to. He seems surprised, and a little annoyed.

"Oh. Okay. Wow." He walks in a circle, shakes out his hands. "Let's try that again."

I go back to my spot. I salute him.

He takes a deep breath, finds his place. "Why don't you give me the right-of-way this time?" he asks.

I shrug.

He salutes me. He says, "Go," a little less forcefully.

He starts it. I finish it. My sword is at his throat.

My classmates look nervous, shifting from foot to foot. There is a palpable tension in the room. A sense that something could go mortally wrong, and I bring it. I always bring it. It is hardwired into my DNA, this ability to turn the world upside down. To scare people.

"Okay," my instructor says. "That's not—I think maybe you don't know the rules very well." He delicately removes the blade from his neck. "You're off target. You are only allowed the area from shoulder to groin."

"Sorry." I shake my head. He is right. What am I doing? I know better than that, and maybe this is not such a good idea after all. Pretending to kill someone is a little too much like actually killing someone. My blood is pumping. My heart is hammering. I keep noticing little things about him—his bad knee and his crooked hips and the blind spot on his left side. His weaknesses light up like targets. I do not want to hurt him accidentally. Or on purpose.

"Maybe we should stop," I say.

"No," he refuses. "You just need to follow the rules." He sounds just like Thomas. He sounds just like everyone. "I can beat you, if you play fair." Okay, now he just sounds crazy.

I try not to laugh. I try not to be a dick—I really do, most of the time.

"You have no technique," he tells me, avoiding his mark so we cannot start. "You don't know what you're doing." He cannot beat me with a sword, so he is trying to beat me with words. I wait for him to take his mark. I force myself not to talk back. I try to stop myself from thinking of ways that I could really kill him. "You're like an animal," he tells me. "You have no grace."

Before I found the job—when I was a kid, and then when I was in prison—I used to love a fight. Fighting makes things so simple. It distracts you from the weight and the ick and the pain of life. I was a bad kid, from a bad house, in a pretty bad town. This is not the first time I have been called an animal. And I am sure it will not be the last.

I want to walk away. I almost do, but then he salutes me, and—before I can stop myself—I salute him back.

"Go!" he says, and this time he moves first.

He comes flying at me with all the dignity of pure fury. The audience gasps. I parry him. He swings wildly. He wants to hit any part of me. He wants to kill me. I know. In my line of work, I see it all the time.

I could kill him. It would be so easy. But it is not my job.

His blade swipes my neck. I feel the cut, feel my own blood wet my collar.

"I got you!" he squeals, victorious, forgetting his own rules. "You're dead!"

I press my palm against my neck to quell the bleeding.

"Congratulations," I say through gritted teeth. "You won."

—

I finally leave the gym. So in a way we both win. I walk through Paris in the afternoon and the streets are a sea of air kisses, of coffee and wine. I have this horrible feeling that everyone else is ordinary, everyone is normal, everyone is happy, except for me.

The world would have you believe that it is good to be unique. It is good to be special. It is good to be different. But the truth is, it is lonely. The reality is, it is alienating. To be the only one in a sea of everyone. The killer in a world of lovers.

Paris is the City of Love. Sometimes I forget that, and every time I remember, I die a little more.

I want to leave Paris, but she keeps me hanging on. I want her full name. I want her number. I want to know why she looked familiar. I want to know who she is so I can discount her, convince myself that she is one of the everyone. That she cannot save me.

She said I would not be able to remember her face, but I remember everything. I remember her elbow, the swell of her bones. I remember her left ear being a hair lower than her right. I remember the little gold line beneath her pupil. I could draw a map, a diagram, even. I can imagine the parts I did not see.

I think about her so much, every detail, that I think I must have made her up. I picture her, surrounded by my weapons, waiting for me to find her. I almost wish I had hallucinated her, because then I might stand more of a chance of bringing her back: cold lips, soft eyes, cowlick.

I am generally too busy to notice that I am alone. I work. Roll over. Work some more.

But right now I do not have work. I walk through the market every day, sometimes three times a day. I find myself selecting her favorite places, as if she told me, as if she is with me, holding my hand.

I am really in a dangerous position. Not because of her but because of me.

I buy everything in Paris. And when I run out of things to buy, I give things away. I drive to the market fringes in my new Porsche and I hand out Tom Ford candles, Italian loafers, all the cash in my pockets.

I want to kill myself. I even know what color my death would be: blue. Which sounds obvious, but you would be surprised how many deaths are red and yellow.

By the time Thomas calls me to check in at the end of the week, I am pleading: Give me a job. Please. My brain needs a job or its job will be me.