Free Paris Twilight by Russ Rymer

every day, and paid by the week. But he insisted on reimbursing us whenever he made a call.” He shrugged. “That’s okay; it’s how he wished it. Then for a while he didn’t come in, and I sent him that phone bill. Mostly, I was kidding him, trying to find out what was going on. Now I’m sorry. I will ask that you please ignore what you’ve received. Byron owes me nothing, and I am sure he owed nothing to anyone else.”
    â€œIs there anything,” I asked, “anything you can tell me about him?”
    I could feel Passim appraise me—who was this woman who knew too little to care so much? A wisp of suspicion crossed his eyes, then fled. “You must come visit us, madame,” he said. “As it turns out, you have chosen monsieur’s favorite table, though he would have been here promptly at five, and I would have served him a beer.”
    Passim left me alone to finish my cake, which indeed tasted famous and which the waiter, though still not seeing me, nevertheless refused to let me pay for, and when the fighter-jet game screamed “Air war!” I bolted back the dregs of my tea and left, but not so quickly that Passim couldn’t meet me by the door, his hand outstretched, and if the thing he held in his hand had been a grenade, it could not have caused a greater explosion in my life.
    â€œThis may be yours, then,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what to do with it.”
    Â 
    To tell you about that, I must explain about the letter—the first letter, signed
A
., from the woman whose name was Alba—and I am mystified that I haven’t already done so. Perhaps it is because the letter, or rather the
event
of the letter (the letter itself being so obstinately unremarkable), occupies a space in my mind that is so nonplussed, so dumbfounded, that it exists as a kind of abeyance, a reality I still can’t quite let myself admit to, though, God knows, it’s a reality I’ll never escape.
    The large manila envelope I’d pulled from Saxe’s mailbox had stayed safely sealed until one night in the apartment when I got the lamps glowing and settled down to wait for the music (with some anxiety! I was never sure on any given night if the serenade would commence again or not), and I decided the time had come. I say this like it was an occasion, but it wasn’t, not at first. After all my avoidance of it, the envelope’s content proved to be as ordinary as a shopping list, which, in fact, it was, in a way: the single page, carefully penned, was primarily about some shoes. It began with no date. That is, the first thing it said, at the top of the page, was
No date. No place
. This was in English, as was the rest of the text, which continued with
Beloved
.
    Â 
Have I thanked you for your beautiful shoes? Oh, not enough! I know how you are, you won’t even remember buying them. Or perhaps you will remember the abuse I heaped on you for your kindness. So I must also thank you for forcing them on me. Who ever could suspect that the item she sees for sale through a pretty vitrine on rue de Rivoli will save her life in some other and unimaginable world, & that’s where I am now, for what I have seen these last recent days is nightmare. I write quickly because Valentín and Rosa will be departing with the mail. There were moments I didn’t have the will to get to here, it was so very far. Even my faithful
alpargatas
would have given up, I’m sure, & it was only your lovely Rivoli boots that soldiered on, took one step and another and dragged me to safety. Oh, that they might abduct me home (is that what you instructed them, or did you just say to take me away? I wish I knew!). How I love you, my dearest & only & I will write more soon.
    Â 
    I suppose my reaction to this missive could have been embarrassment—professions of love and commercial satisfaction mushed together in a sort of purple-prose product endorsement.