Malcolm and Frances left the apartment early the next morning. In wandering, they found themselves at the natural history museum. They took in the exhibits together, then separated to roam alone. At one point Malcolm stood on the fourth floor, leaning on the railing and watching his mother sitting at the café on the second floor. She was unaware of his spying on her. What he felt was love and fear; he was panicked to keep her close by. He went to the toilet to wash his face; written on the wall beside the mirror were the words, Caesar sees her: “Seizure, seize her.” This bothered Malcolm. He lately had been feeling that the world was showing him more than the needed amount of unpleasantness. He moved to the café and sat across from Frances.
“I’m homesick,” she declared.
“For the apartment?”
“No.”
Malcolm said, “Well, I’m ready to go back to New York if you are.”
Frances was disturbed by this; she realized Malcolm didn’t understand what she, what they were doing in Paris. “Oh, pal,” was all she could think to say. She had given Madeleine five thousand euros for her services, and another three to Julius as a bonus. She had nine thousand euros to her name; she wondered how she might get rid of it.
They returned home, with little said between them. As they walked through the park, Frances noticed the man who had been so courageous in the riot sitting on a bench eating an orange from a mesh sack. His face was welted and decorated with multicolored bruises, but he didn’t appear unhappy. He smiled at Frances, who, for the first time in she could not recall how long, turned away in shyness.
Mme Reynard received them at the door. “I don’t like it when you go away without warning,” she told them. “It makes me feel so alone, so vulnerable.”
“Take it easy—take a bus,” said Frances, and she honked Mme Reynard’s nose. She placed a chair at the window to watch the man on the bench, while Malcolm lay on the couch reading a French tabloid. Mme Reynard had made a soufflé, and this soon was served. After eating, Frances bathed, dressed, and made up her face. In her room she folded seven thousand euros into her coat pocket and left the apartment without telling Mme Reynard or Malcolm.
The man was still sitting on the bench. Sunlight banked off his battered face; his eyes were closed. Frances sat beside him and he turned to look at her, greeting her as la femme à la fenêtre—the woman in the window. Frances nodded and he offered her an orange and she declined. He apologized for the state of his face. “Normally, I’m quite handsome, and not just my friends would say it.”
“I’m sure that’s the truth,” she said.
“Rest assured. And know I shall be handsome again.”
Frances was smiling. She said, “I saw what happened last night.”
“Is that right? Well, well. It was a big show, anyway. What did you make of it?”
“Just that I thought you behaved very bravely.”
The man dipped his head bashfully; but, he was also proud. He expressed a regret for the manner, the style of his violence. “But you must understand that for a man in my position, the police are the lowest forms of life, and so I afford them nothing like respect, nothing but the worst parts of me, which is all they deserve.”
Frances explained her own dislike of police, and the man held his hand solemnly to his heart. She asked why he wasn’t in jail and he said, “They held us in a line just up the street beside the river. The man in charge of us was distracted, he kept looking away, and finally he walked off and out of sight, as though we were just going to sit there and wait for him to come back. The strange thing is that everyone did, except for me.”
“Weren’t you handcuffed?”
“I was, but look.” He displayed his wrists, which were wrapped in bruising and burst blood vessels. “Thick wrists. It was the same way with your Billy the Kid. You know Billy the Kid?”
“I know him.”
“He always got away and I always get away, too.”
Frances said she had changed her mind about the orange, and the man became lively in his search. “Only the finest orange for you, madame,” he said. “The finest, the most delectable orange in this sack? That is the orange you will receive on this day, for you are my guest, the mysterious, the beautiful woman in the window.” He located the winning orange and peeled it on her behalf. “Hold out your hand,” he instructed, and she did, and he laid the sphere in the dell of her palm. Gravely, he asked, “May I have some of your orange, please, madame?”
They shared the orange. It was a pleasant moment for the both of them, and they were happy to’ve met. When the orange was gone, she passed the man the seven thousand euros. He held the bills in his hand.
“I’m very ill,” she told him.
He studied her doubtfully. “You don’t look ill.”
“I am. I haven’t very long to live, if you want to know the truth. So, you see, you’d be doing me a great favor to accept this. It would help me.”
“How would it help you?”
“It would make me happy.”
In a clarifying tone, he said, “Is there anything you want me to do for this money?”
“Not at all.”
The man thought for a while. He peeled off a thousand euros, then handed the rest back to Frances.
“Won’t you take it all?”
“No.” He pointed to another immigrant sitting close by, at the base of a tree. The man was obviously very drunk, and looked to possess less than the average quantity of intelligence. “That man there? He’ll take the rest of the money.”
The man on the bench stood and hefted his sack of oranges over his shoulder. He held out his free hand and Frances gave him hers. Bowing, he drifted away from the park and moved toward the river. After he’d gone, Frances walked over to the man sitting under the tree. She proffered the money and he took it in his fist and stood. He said nothing to Frances; he walked off in the same direction the man on the bench had.
Frances watched the man disappear. She did not have the feeling she’d hoped for. She looked up at the apartment and saw that Malcolm was watching her. She waved; he didn’t.