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Carol approached the péniche, ankles wobbling on the cobbles of the embankment. She and John had sold a script they’d written together. He’d sold his sailboat, pooled the proceeds with his half of the sale of the script, had invested part of it—conservatively, he’d told her—and bought the péniche with the rest. The writers’ group had held a party onboard the péniche to celebrate their two members’ success. Was she correct in her impression that Philippe and Anjali were just a little bit envious? In their shoes, she would be.
John and Philippe were becoming close friends. John had mentioned reading the Gospels and asking Philippe questions. He was changing. She’d seen him become less worried about being a failure. “God loves me no matter what,” John said on a day when they’d received their umpteenth rejection, the day before their script sold. And he’d given up his fisticuff novels for stories with characters who could do more than punch and shoot. The better to write great screenplays, which was fine with her.
Carol’s shoes—the ones with special soles, the only kind John would allow to come in contact with his decks—caught on the cobbled surface of the quai. As she steadied herself with the gangway’s handrail, she thought of Gregoire and how he hadn’t sued her. Was that a mercy from God or just a coincidence? Then she thought with happiness about another good thing unfolding without her being there to spur it on.
Daphné, her spy at Trapèze, had told her that the stork film with the bullying ogre was in production and that Gregoire had hardly changed a word of her script. Daphné didn’t know if Carol’s name would be in the film credits as screenwriter. Carol could sue and waste years in the French courts trying to get her name on the movie. And he could countersue for endangering his life with flying glass.
Maybe her name on it wasn’t the most important thing. Maybe a child would see the movie, identify with the beleaguered storks, choose not to bully the brother-and-sister victims within his or her sphere of influence. The pen was mightier than the sword. At least, she fervently hoped so.
A breeze wafted down the Seine and tossed Carol’s hair. She tucked it behind her ears, watched a bateau mouche go by, and savored the moment.
Emily emerged from the cabin. She unlocked her bike from the railing on the deck and walked it down the gangway. She was on her way to school. A French public high school.
Just then, in a brief moment of October sun, when the dramatic gray and white Paris clouds parted raggedly for a moment, the Seine sparkled, coiling and eddying and tempting onlookers to jump in and take a swim.
“Bonjour, Em!” Carol said.
“Bonjour.” Emily smiled at Carol. “How’s Louise?”
“Fine! I just dropped her at school.”
“She’ll be over later?” Emily asked.
“Yes, we’ll see you after school.”
“Great,” Emily said. She pedaled away, her backpack huge on her little body.
Carol’s heart lifted as John stepped out of the cabin with two steaming mugs of coffee. The breeze up the Seine ruffled his hair so appealingly, and tugged at Carol’s, too.
She walked up the gangway and stepped onto the deck, which shifted under her feet as the péniche tugged at its lines.
“What are we working on today?” he said, setting the mugs on a small teak table in the boat’s cockpit. Carol mused that John was working his way through bankruptcy and IRS snafus. He was diligent about it. Another plus to his credit.
The mugs steamed into the October air. Two pastries, which the girl at the patisserie had wrapped cleverly in white wax paper folded like a pyramid, sat waiting for them on a small plate.
John went every morning for un croissant. He’d recounted to Carol that when he asked for une croissant, getting the gender of the noun wrong, the woman behind the counter wouldn’t sell him one. “Un croissant,” she had said icily.
“Only the French,” John had said. “Sometimes I miss the States, where the customer is king.” No person working behind the counter in a bakery in New York would dream of correcting a customer’s grammar.
As for Carol, she would have pain aux raisins. The patisserie closest to John’s péniche made the best she’d found anywhere in Paris. The flaky pastry wound around a cream filling chock full of raisins. She was gaining weight under this regimen. But, like other things on this boat, it kept her coming back morning after morning.
“No worries, we’ll have lots of ideas,” Carol said.
