Zaide had been right, Juliette realized, the minute she climbed the steps up to the platform. She was out of breath, and scared. Her shoulder bag was heavy: she’d brought four books, one of them very fat, a Russian novel, probably—she hadn’t looked at the title. This weight comforted her, rooted her, amid all the bodies pressing into her. She’d forgotten how crowded it was. Forgotten the sometimes invasive smells, the jostling, the complaining, the eyes averted when a homeless person going from car to car held out their hand or reeled off their plea in a monotonous voice. Forgotten the trepidation, the slamming, the clanking, the dark bellies of the tunnels, the sudden rush of light when the train emerged aboveground, when a ray of sunshine was reflected on a window or a facade, sweeping the faces.
Jammed up against a window, she swayed to the same rhythm as everyone else. She had opened one of her books, a dark thriller which sucked her in like a vortex; from time to time she was jolted out of it when an arm or an elbow dug into her or when the insistent bass from a fellow passenger’s headphones mingled with the sounds she imagined as she read.
She read until the last stop, without worrying that she’d miss her station, for once; it was strange, but she actually felt relaxed.
Nation, the final stop. She was the only person left, but she didn’t look up from her book. Then the train set off again, in the opposite direction, this time. She hadn’t changed seats. And as the city unfurled once more beneath her dreamy gaze, she went back to her character, fair-haired, slim, innocently cruel—and desperate for love. The cellars where he fought superimposed themselves on the trembling images in the rain-lashed windows, contorted, angular, their colors blending to create a fleeting, deceptive shimmer.
The same side of the tracks but the reverse image of the city. Juliette had never taken any notice of it before, but she realized now that she always preferred to have the Seine on her right when she was traveling toward Étoile. She always looked in that direction, and in the evenings she sat so that she could let her gaze roam over the water by turning her head to the left, in the direction of travel.
“You really are crazy.”
Juliette jumped. She could have said those words herself—she had perhaps even formulated them in her mind—but the voice was Chloe’s.
Chloe, sitting opposite her, in a lime-green suit, with a pink silk scarf and matching lip gloss.
“I’ve tried to call you hundreds of times.”
Juliette blocked out the image of the mobile phone buried under the piles of the nineteenth-century Grand Larousse dictionary in fifteen volumes, a rare edition bound in full-grain leather.
“I … I think my battery’s dead.”
It wasn’t a lie. Even so, she felt guilty.
“I’ve been following you for an hour,” said Chloe. “You went all the way to Nation, your nose in your book, and now you’re coming back. What are you up to? Are you working for the Métro? Are you doing market research, is that it? Do you make notes in the margins? Mind you, I’d rather that, because otherwise you’ll end up in the nuthouse, my pet.”
Juliette couldn’t help smiling. She’d missed Chloe, too. Her wild hair, her irregular teeth, her smile, her killer heels, and her sweeping statements. Even her online shopping addiction and her disastrous taste in clothes—she’d missed all of that.
“You’re not mad at me anymore?” she asked, with a note of anxiety in her voice.
“Mad at you? Why?”
“About the books.”
“What books? Oh, those … of course not. I’ve moved on, sweetheart. You’re the only one to take that seriously…”
Chloe suddenly frowned, as if a half-forgotten memory had resurfaced.
“Now that you mention it … you left me a book when you quit. On my desk. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes,” replied Juliette. “Have you read it?”
“Sort of. I mean, yes.” She looked at the other passengers, pouted, then whispered, her hand over her mouth: “Yes, I read it. All of it, even.”
“Well?”
Juliette was afraid of sounding too insistent, but she was burning with curiosity.
Chloe adjusted her silk scarf and, puffing herself up, said: “Well, then I handed in my notice.”
“You, too?”
“Me, too. And d’you know what, I had the impression that the book approved. That it was encouraging me, even. That it was pushing me. That probably sounds perfectly normal to you, but for me…”
She let her voice trail off, her eyes wide, almost frightened, as if it had just dawned on her that she’d unwittingly been the victim of brainwashing or hypnosis.
“So what are you doing now?” asked Juliette, slightly concerned.
With Chloe, nothing would surprise her: perhaps she’d started up an exotic pet–walking business in the wealthy sixteenth arrondissement, specializing in giant lizards; or she was modeling S&M lingerie; organizing tours of the Paris sewers with sound effects; delivering whiskey-Kiri-kiwi cocktails at all hours by bicycle …
“I’m learning pastry making. And makeup. And bookkeeping,” Chloe reeled off. “It was home staging that gave me the idea, you see. And your book.”
“What idea?”
“Wedding planner. Or civil partnerships, or whatever you like, Druid marriages, for example, or wedding benedictions in parachutes with a priest and everything. Organizing things for people and making them happy. You see, if a couple is happy on that day, very happy, they won’t want to destroy that happiness, so they’ll make an effort. By the way, I need you to make me a list…”
“Of my friends who want to get married? Forget it.”
“No,” said Chloe, with an expression of exasperation. “Books. I’ll give every couple a book. It’ll be a little extra, the icing on the wedding cake, you get it?”
Yes, Juliette got it. But she was dying to ask another question: “Chloe … this is embarrassing but I’ve forgotten which book I left you. Don’t be offended … I’ve been dealing with a lot of books recently”—that was an understatement, she knew—“and I’ve got everything a bit mixed up.”
Her former colleague gave her an indulgent look of the kind usually reserved for three-year-olds and the senile.
“I understand, pet.”
She rummaged in her bag and triumphantly brandished a small volume.
“Here it is! It’s my lucky charm. I bought five copies so I could be sure always to have one with me.”
Juliette looked at the cover, which showed a woman’s hand holding a scarlet flower against a blue background, the hand itself emerging from the sleeve of a chunky sweater. Ito Ogawa. The Restaurant of Love Regained.