Soon came Dr. Touche, a sleepy-eyed and swarthy man with the hands of a female adolescent. Mme Reynard had asked him to bring along a bottle of champagne but he’d refused, citing an aversion to it, and brought instead a bottle of Côte-de-Brouilly, which they could none of them drink, for it was corked. Dr. Touche was greatly put out by this, and he rang his wine merchant while all in the room sat watching as he described the embarrassment occasioned by the spoiled bottle. “What must these people think of me?” he asked, at which point Mme Reynard began calling out compliments. Dr. Touche waved her down, resuming his conversation: “Well?” he said. “How will you go about making this right?” He listened for a time, holding one finger aloft; now he nodded. “Yes. I think that’s the only way. Do you have a pencil?” He gave the wine merchant Frances and Malcolm’s address and hung up the phone. “He’ll be with us shortly,” he told the group.
While waiting for the merchant’s arrival, Dr. Touche attended to Mme Reynard. Hers was a deep, brief puncture wound, requiring three stitches. She endured the procedure in sullen silence; once it was over, she expressed her mortification at the event. Dr. Touche had moved to the kitchen to wash up; he called out over the sound of running water: “There is nothing shameful in physical injury! The Fates have done you this damage, yet your body is already in motion to heal itself! What a wonder! What a curiosity we are!” He returned, sat beside Frances, and laid his miniature hand upon her knee. In English he asked, “What’s up?” Frances removed his hand and explained in French what they had been occupied with before Mme Reynard’s injury. The doctor had no visible reaction to the news of Small Frank–as–vessel but when Frances had finished, he shook his head.
“From where I stand you are in the midst of an impossibility.”
“You don’t believe in the supernatural?” asked Mme Reynard.
“What is there to believe in? Fear and guilt and sorrow; such motivations as these will bring us to the very strangest and most obscure places in our minds. I have no faith in this story.”
“Your faith isn’t required,” Frances pointed out.
“Still and all. This is my opinion.”
“We’re going to hire a private detective to find the medium,” Malcolm said.
“What an American notion.”
“Thank you,” said Mme Reynard. “I authored it.”
A knock at the door, and now the wine merchant arrived, a gangly man with a ponytail and underarm sweat stains called Jean-Charles. He was carrying a case filled with various bottles of wine; he set this in the kitchen and began uncorking the bottles and handing out glassfuls to the guests. Regarding the offensive Côte-de-Brouilly, he explained his own buyer had recently become irresponsible in the wake of what was apparently a total mental collapse. “There is of course no excuse,” he added, “but this is my truth, and you may do with it what you wish.”
“What prompted the collapse?” asked Mme Reynard anxiously, as though she were concerned about the selfsame thing.
“It’s a long story,” said Jean-Charles, “and very little of it—indeed, none of it—makes what we like to call sense.” Now he made inquiries regarding the nature of the gathering and Dr. Touche conveyed the story of Small Frank. He relished the retelling, adding minor narrative flourishes to the story that pleased him. “Sometimes, it’s as if the cat were just about to open its mouth and speak.” Jean-Charles seemed bored, but became alert at the mention of a private investigator; it so happened the man in the apartment opposite his was in the practice. His name was Julius, and Jean-Charles telephoned and invited him to join their group, and he accepted. The wine sampling continued as they awaited his arrival; by the time Julius appeared, none of those in attendance was sober. A glass of wine was placed in his hand by Mme Reynard; Julius thanked her but, not wanting a drink, he put the glass down. When she returned to place it back in his hand, he resignedly took a healthful sip and put the glass down a second time. Mme Reynard watched the glass. Julius couldn’t deduce what she was feeling by her expression, but she did not return it to him a third time and so he supposed she was satisfied. He sat opposite the group and took out his notepad and pen.
“Who may I do what for?” he asked. He was blushing, somewhat.
Frances said, “I and my son need to find a girl, a young woman. She’s a clairvoyant from the United States living somewhere in Paris. Or is she not living here but visiting, Malcolm?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anyway, she’s around.”
Julius asked, “What is your relationship to this person, madame?”
“None whatsoever.” Frances pointed to Malcolm. “My son knows her carnally.”
Mme Reynard began choking, and she stood and moved to the bathroom. There came the sound of gargling. In a moment she began humming to herself.
Julius told Frances, “It can be helpful for me to know the nature of your desire to find this person.”
“We’ve lost our cat,” Frances explained.
“All right.”
“And this woman, we believe, might be of assistance in locating him.”
“She knows its whereabouts?”
“Not at the moment, no. But I believe she can speak to the cat in her mind, if we ask her to.”
Julius’s pen hovered above his notepad. He opened and closed his mouth. Finally he said, “What is this woman’s name?”
“Madeleine,” said Frances. “We don’t know her surname.”
Julius asked for a physical description and Malcolm said, “She’s pretty curvy, actually.”
“What color is her hair?”
“Blond hair, blue eyes.”
Julius wrote this down. “Do you believe Madeleine wants to be found?” he asked. “That is, do you have any reason to believe she wants not to be?”
“No reason,” said Frances.
The wine merchant, Jean-Charles, cleared his throat and stood and said, “I would like to share a few words.” He looked away, and back. “The world changes, my friends, as the weather changes. Our motivations, our dreams and agitations, our fears change, too. But wine? Wine is immovable. Upon hearing good news, what do we do? We reach for wine. And when we hear bad news? Wine again.”
“Gin,” said Mme Reynard, reentering the room and taking up her former seat on the sofa.
Jean-Charles pretended not to hear. “I’ve been thirty years in the business. I give my life to wine. And wine in turn gives me life, and a livelihood. It is an honor, it is a duty, it is, yes, a calling. But where in the world would I be without my good, paying customers?” He gestured in the direction of Dr. Touche. “I would be nowhere. I would be”—he made a small space in between his thumb and forefinger—“this big. This big and no bigger. Without my good, paying customers? Well, you can just as soon forget about me. Tear me up like paper, scatter me on the breeze: termination. And that’s about all I care to say about that.”
Jean-Charles sat, neck aflush with emotion, moved as he was by his own words. Dr. Touche patted his friend’s back and stood himself—he too wished to give a speech. He said, “We are pinned to a frozen marble boulder skating through black space at an obscene rate of speed. They say we’ll soon collide with the sun, or moon, or some other passing asteroid. But when? Perhaps today? Quite likely tomorrow. Be sure that the end is coming, and you can take that to bed with you.” He started pacing back and forth. “My father,” he continued, “when he came home from work and it was time to take stock, would often say, ‘And how about a ribbon of wine?’ Then he would uncork a bottle and perform a little gulp, a slip of cabernet down the throat, a ribbon of it down the hatch, and then came relief: ‘Ah,’ he would say. He was a simple soul, and had no need for art. And yet I wonder all these years later: is this wine fancy not evidence of his love of beauty? An appreciation for fineness? Perhaps there was a brilliance in the man, only his life didn’t allow him the latitude to locate and cultivate it. We’ll never know, alas. Dead and gone. Dead and burned and buried, pfft!” Dr. Touche filled his glass and held it out before Jean-Charles. “A ribbon of wine,” he said.
Jean-Charles held up his glass. “A ribbon of wine.”
The men clinked their glasses and drank. “Ah,” they said together. Dr. Touche sat down on the couch, looking suddenly sorrowful, as though his own speech had made him depressed. Julius stated his rates and Frances paid him twice what he asked for, in cash. Folding the bills away, he said, “There isn’t very much to go on, but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be in touch with news. Or if I have no news, then I’ll also be in touch. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” said Frances.
“Goodbye,” said Malcolm.
“Goodbye,” said Mme Reynard.
“Goodbye,” said Dr. Touche.
“Goodbye,” said Jean-Charles.
“Goodbye,” said Julius again, and he shut the door softly behind him.