Читать книгу Ghosts In the Heart - Michael J.D. Keller - Страница 11

The trumpet player unleashed a whirling syncopated fanfare, a musical warning that “here it comes - brace yourself.” Fast on the heels of last fading trumpet note, the guitarist exploded into an energetic riff that simultaneously channeled Django Reinhardt and Jimmy Hendrix. The bass player stopped and looked at his fellow combo member with an expression of frozen amazement. . . or perhaps it was utter indifference. With jazz musicians it can sometimes be hard to tell one reaction from the other.

Mckenzie moved carefully to his right, surrendering his vantage point in front of the window. As he sidled down the sidewalk, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass. Years of his life had been wiped away. His hair was coal black again without any trace of the streaked gray he had seen in his apartment mirror. A facially youthful appearance, lacking lines or wrinkles was even more obvious. He was looking at the face of a young man free of the physical costs exacted by a life of emotional and physical exertion.

His body might have been altered, but his intellect had not. The analytical skills of an experienced police detective were all still present. Likewise, his memories, his detailed knowledge of the past few hours were unimpaired. Logically, the explanation for everything he could see, hear, and feel around him was simple. He was delirious - thrown by his injuries into a fantastical hallucination of his own creation.

This is not reality he told himself. In the real world, his wounded body was lying on a stretcher or a hospital bed in San Francisco. Drugs to ease the pain caused by the bullets embedded in his side were clouding his mind. He was seriously hurt, perhaps even dying, and his protective unconscious was trying to spare him that last agony. He had reached back into his memories and mentally transported himself to a happier time. Experiencing one universe while remembering another was unavoidably disconcerting. It was akin to dreaming while remaining fully aware that it was a dream. Mckenzie was confident, however, that he knew where reality existed.

He had to admit that as dreams or hallucinations went, this was more crisply defined, better detailed, and more physically inclusive than anything he had previously experienced. In all ways that mattered, he was on the Rue Oberkampf. The narrow twisted street lined with bars, dance clubs, and restaurants that catered more to local young Parisians than to tourists, appeared much as he recalled it from 1982. Yet some things did not seem to fit squarely with the images of his earlier visit stored carefully away in his mind. He had, on more than one occasion, walked by Chez Grenier when musicians were playing in the window. He remembered a quartet, trumpet, saxophone, bass and a drummer. He had no memory, however, of the ensemble now luring in the evening crowd.

An errant burst of wind swept along the street causing Mckenzie to instinctively pull his sports jacket tighter. That seemed odd too. Why was it cold? If he was reliving his previous visit, the early September evening should still be warm. He remembered at least one evening when he had taken off his jacket and carried it on his shoulder. All right, he thought. So my memories and my fantasies are not consistent. Maybe I’m just trying to create a little variety for myself.

Mckenzie glanced again at his reflection in the window. He was dressed with a kind of upscale urban casualness in a white shirt open at the collar without a tie, a dark blue blazer and gray dress slacks. Once again he found it familiar yet different. He had spent three nights in this neighborhood, living at the hotel where Mireille had stayed when she first came to Paris. At night when he prowled the bars and clubs in the street, he had dressed in a fashion close to the reflected image, but he had not owned a blue blazer. The jacket he had worn then had been a neutral brown and his trousers a dark black. Despite his effort to accommodate the variations, he felt a sense of disorienting unease, an inescapable sensation that something was amiss. He turned away from the glass-enclosed concert. He shivered involuntarily as another burst of cold air swept up the street scattering a few scraps of waste paper while eliciting some nervous giggles from stylish young women whose skirts fluttered up their well toned thighs. Steam arose from a freshly deposited brown pile in the middle of the sidewalk - a reminder that the French loved dogs but regarded cleanup duties with notably less enthusiasm.

The streetlights responded to a gradually deepening twilight. The sky held a faint trace of light from the passing day that had not yet fully surrendered to the darkness of a Paris night. The Quartier Saint Ambrosise, like much of the 11^th Arrondisement, had undergone substantial changes in recent years. Once largely a commercial - industrial district it was being transformed more and more into a hip residential area favored by young urbanites who found the lower property costs attractive. The grand reconstruction of Paris in the 19^th century had largely spared the area. The streets remained narrowly confined and lined with venerable brick structures, some that were centuries old. The contrast between the remnants of earlier times and the sophisticated bars and restaurants blossoming along the Rue Oberkampf could be both visually dissonant but throughly appealing.

Mckenzie continued to find the city scape familiar, and yet, with each step more and more unsettling. His memories of his 1982 excursion overlay the features of the street and the surrounding buildings like a traced image resting atop another picture. There should be a way to align the two images, to make one consistent with the other. Nevertheless, there were discrepancies he could not resolve. He clearly recalled the dance club he was approaching, the raucous sound of a driving rock and roll beat enticing a more energetic crowd than those who frequented Chez Grenier. The music sounded out of place - as if the DJ inside had picked up the wrong stack of records. Three doors further down there was a restaurant where he had eaten lunch on his last day in Paris. The name was wrong. It had been called La Bonne Garoupe but the sign above the entrance now proclaimed it to be La Taverre. Why was that wrong?

He tried to physically seize his mind and shake it as if it were an unruly child. He sought to regain the rational persona that had been slipping out of his grasp with each succeeding step. Stop trying to make all of this fit into some understandable context. Delusions aren’t bound by what you think you know. It is all going to end soon anyway. Either you will regain consciousness or you will die. Stop treating this like a puzzle you can solve.

Mckenzie suddenly became aware of an approaching couple who looked at him with a trace of apprehension before averting their eyes and hurriedly walking past. In their evident discomfort, they edged over to the portion of the sidewalk furthest from him. That is just great, he thought, realizing that his internal monologue must have inadvertently become audible. This was exactly what he wanted to avoid, behaving like some kind of crazy, ranting street person, or a refugee from an old Twilight Zone episode.

Glancing across the Rue Oberkampf, he felt a comfortable sense of visual symmetry restore itself. The little wine bar that had decorated a portion of its wall with Mireille’s pictures was precisely where he recalled it. The name painted prominently on the window, Les Caves, was as comfortably familiar as the faint notes from a solo piano emerging from inside. He found himself wondering if you could actually taste wine in the midst of a hallucination. It was time to find out, he thought.

The traffic on the narrow one-way street had increased. As the early evening haze gave way to the full darkness of night, cars on the tight passage way snaked forward, bumper to bumper. Flashing headlights illuminated both the street and the inevitable illegally parked vehicle that constricted the roadway even more than usual. Horns blasted at the offender with a wasted fury since the driver had already dashed inside a store and could not hear the anger he had unleashed. Nevertheless the operators of the other vehicles felt duty bound to exercise the fundamental French right to be irritated by every other driver they encountered.

Mckenzie timed a gap between two passing cars and dashed across the street. It felt comforting to be engaged once more in the venerable Parisian custom of aggressive jay walking. Then he experienced a renewed sense of unease as he reached the security of the sidewalk. There was something about the cars in the parade - like procession behind him that was out of focus. Trying to brush aside that indefinable sensation of doubt, he entered Les Caves.

The rising cloud of cigarette smoke filled a relatively small space, tables and chairs jammed together so close that a communal intimacy was unavoidable. The introspective music was being played by a young woman whose huge piano filled a far corner of the room. All of this matched his memories. Almost. The tables were all occupied by couples or small groups, savoring the excellent variety of wines offered by Les Caves. Everyone seemed to talk, smoke and drink at the same time without missing a beat of the music. Waiters navigated the crowded floor with practiced aplomb, never spilling a drop of liquid from their skillfully balanced trays. Without bothering to look for an empty table, Mckenzie ran the obstacle course to the bar that extended the length of the far wall.

Sliding into a vacant stool, Mckenzie was greeted with surprising alacrity by the middle aged man tending this section of the bar.

“Bonsoir Monsieur”

“Good evening,” Mckenzie replied. He remembered clearly the grimaces his attempted French accent had garnered on his previous visit so he chose to stay in English as much as possible. “A glass of chateauneuf du pape please.”

The bartender smiled approvingly and turned away. At that moment, the piano piece rose in volume in a triumphant cord before fading softly away. A restrained but appreciative round of applause filled the room. An attractive woman rose from behind the piano, smiled at the crowd ,and offered a grateful bow of thanks. One of the waiters approached and presented her with a glass containing a clear liquid. The empty Perrier bottle on the tray indicated that she was not sampling the specialties of the establishment, at least not, while she was performing.

Mckenzie had just raised his wine glass to his lips when he felt an involuntary tremor shake his hand. He turned to watch the lovely pianist pass through a door into an unseen part of the bar. Her hair, blonde, thick, and flowing hung down well past her shoulders.

“I beg your pardon.” Mckenzie interrupted the passage of one of the waiters. “Who is the lady who performed on the piano?” He tried to sound mildly curious, hiding the tension in his voice.

The waiter smiled knowingly as if he were experienced in dealing with inquiries by young men about the lady in question.

“Her name is Ellise Delacroix. She is quite good, yes?”

Mckenzie nodded his agreement.

The waiter’s grin widened. “And she is quite lovely too, nes pas?”

Mckenzie again limited his response to a nod.

“Do not waste your efforts Monsieur.” The waiter leaned forward conspiratorially and spoke in a low whisper. “She is the friend, the very special friend, of Monsieur Ingres, the owner of this establishment.”

Mckenzie smiled as if grateful for the advice and turned back to the bar. He took a large sip from his glass. To his relief he found that you really could taste wine in a hallucination. Her name was Delacroix and she was the friend of the owner. But when he had been here in 1982, when he had really been here, her name had been Ingres and she was the wife of the owner. The long blonde tresses that tumbled down her back tonight had been cut short - almost as short as Brenda Stewart’s hair.

Calling upon every element of self control he possessed, Mckenzie buried his growing turmoil under a steely placid exterior. He rose from the stool and ambled slowly toward the back wall of the bar where the photographs were displayed. The owner of Les Caves, Edward Ingres, was a passionate, indeed somewhat chauvinistic, admirer of his country’s cinema. As much as he enjoyed the films, he liked the actresses more. The back wall of his establishment was his shrine to the incandescent beauty of French actresses. Some photographs were autographed, others were not. Their value to him lay not in collectability, but in the images themselves. Bardot, Deneuve, Moreau, they all had spaces dedicated to the enticing magic they had brought to the screen.

Mckenzie let his gaze move quickly past these older pictures and settle on the space where Paiget’s photographs of her had been arranged, almost as a memorial. Tonight they weren’t there. That space in the wall was blank, empty.

“Exquisite aren’t they?”

Mckenzie had sensed the presence of the man as he moved up to his side. He turned in response to the voice and immediately recognized him. They had actually met in 1982. Ingres, the owner of Les Caves, was a short, stocky man with close cropped gray hair and a face creased with laugh lines - born to be a good host.

Mckenzie carefully modulated his response. “Yes, they are. They are all lovely.” Then almost as an afterthought, he gestured toward the blank space.

“What about Mireille Marchand? You don’t have any of her pictures on your wall.”

Ingnes chuckled. “Not yet. Oh, she is equally beautiful. You know she used to live just two streets over and she came here often. So far, though, she has only had lead roles in two English films.” Ingres sounded mildly displeased that Mireille Marchand was wasting her talent on non-French movies.

“I will wait to see how her career proceeds, see what sort of work she will do.” He smiled brightly. “I think she will be here someday. I expect great things from her.”

With a quiet chuckle, Ingres walked away leaving Mckenzie staring transfixed at the wall. The “work she will do?” Was it possible that Ingres didn’t know? That was insane. She had died four years ago. How could Ingres expect her to work? Unless. Unless this was not 1982.

Mckenzie’s limbs felt wooden, robotic as he struggled to walk rather than run toward the door to the outside. The night air, even colder than it had been when he had gone inside, struck him with a sharp slap as he stepped onto the sidewalk. The ceaseless traffic still filled the Rue Oberkampf but now he realized the cause of his earlier discomfort when he had threaded across the street. Why were there no new cars? Why did all the passing automobiles look like older models?

Mckenzie felt his breathing accelerate as if his heart had wildly increased its rhythm. He looked frantically up and down the street until he spotted it almost a block away. A tabac - the French version of an urban convenience store, a source of snacks, cigarettes, cheaper wines, a variety of household items, and newspapers. Newspapers. No longer caring if he drew attention to himself, Mckenzie sprinted toward the store. Dodging through the press of other pedestrians, ignoring the protests of those he cut off or bumped, he reached the tabac. Still gasping for breath, he pushed open the door and sought out the newspaper rack.

There were only a few papers left - two copies of Le Figaro, two or three Le Monde and one remaining L’Europe. They all had the same date, Monday, October 16, 1978. October 16! Her accident had taken place in the early morning hours of October 17. She was not dead! Mckenzie looked frantically at his watch. It was shortly after 7:00 p.m. She would not die for at least another eight hours.

He still had time.