22

L’ USINE DE LA PAIX was a few blocks away from the fromagerie, but Valerie was in no position to understand what this might mean, how long it might take to traverse the distance, with near and far shifting before her eyes. Time past was sifting into now, so that what she imagined was a peace symbol, a poster wreathed in flowers on the kitchen wall of Gerard’s house, unforgettable for its ugliness — chartreuse, fuchsia, and orange — but it was a birthday gift from Rita, so he had to put it on the wall.

She pushed the image aside, kept walking until she found the place, one of a row of tiny, weathered shops — a bakery, a café, a drycleaner’s. Each looked one-dimensional at first — flat, plain and homespun, like pictures of shops, rather than the real thing. As she approached them, they seemed more real but also strange — attached to this narrow street but adrift somehow, like laundry on a clothesline. An old-fashioned neighbourhood — no Starbucks or ATMs, no crazed hijackers or urbane cell phone users sloshing through this backwater of time. She wondered if these shops took credit cards, thinking hers might dissolve in her hand if she pulled it out of her wallet. Who knows what year I’ve walked into, she thought. 1970?

James would have been alive, at least.

This place isn’t closed for the break, either. It’s that kind of day.

She stared at the shop, at its maroon façade, its bright blue door, its yellow peace symbol.

I wouldn’t go back to that year, even if I could.

She felt in no hurry to go in.

Yet something was pulling her, and she reached to open the door.

Valerie stepped into darkness. She could see phosphorescent stars on the black ceiling above her. I’m breathing in something stronger than salt air, she thought. On a table was an incense burner, its cat’s-tail of lazy smoke meandering upward, and then a long-haired woman emerged from behind a velvet curtain. She gave off a complicated fragrance. Gardenia, thought Valerie. A touch of citrus and jasmine. It was the scent of frangipani, a long-lived flower. She imagined it blooming thirty years ago, the moment frozen into now.

The woman’s look was vexed and sombre, her gaze disquieting. She wore a high-waisted Indian smock, crimson and covered with beaded embroidery. Her French was good (but not a native’s), her accent indeterminate; her voice low-pitched, almost hoarse, as if she’d either smoked or wept too much. She said her name was Rue, but the darkness of her voice made her hard to hear over the noises of the street.

“I’m looking for a gift,” said Valerie.

“In front of you,” said Rue, “is a treasure.”

Before her was a small vessel, one that in ancient times might have held perfume or oils for anointing. The pot was round, glazed in deep blue and gold, the tapered neck of the lid rising from a base of irregular clay circles so full of movement that she could almost feel the potter’s wheel spinning under her hand. It had strength and presence, as if it had just been made, and a phosphorescence that was also darkness, like a scattering of galaxies at midnight.

“Where did you find it?” Valerie asked.

Rue smiled. “Long, long ago,” she said.

As if long ago were a place.

“I remember it.” In Gerard’s house, she thought. The summer we met. Could it be a pot he had that once belonged to Ora? No — too strange, too much of a coincidence. How would it have gotten here?

“In your memory, then, is where I found it,” said Rue.

Valerie wondered what on earth the woman had been smoking. In a back room, the radio was on. She heard the sound of the towers collapsing.

“C’est un mensonge,” said Rue. “A lie. Mass hysteria. An optical illusion.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Valerie.

Rue looked perplexed.

But then, thought Valerie, This shop might be an illusion. This beautiful pot before me. The whole day, in fact. The idea was too good to be true.

Marguerite had once been a potter. This was a gift she would love, if it were real.

“Fifty euros, please.”

Valerie hesitated. “I know the man who owned this.”

“Do you like it?”

“Do you want me to pay for an illusion?

Rue smiled. “Touch it. It is real.”

Valerie reached out to feel the familiar swirl of the clay, the tips of her fingers alive with the night Gerard spoke to her about Ora.

Time, she thought, had collapsed upon itself. The day had done this, had flung Ora, her beautiful pot and her death into the present. She could think of no other explanation.

Or maybe her memory was fooling her and it had nothing to do with Ora.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said. “It’s almost music.”

“It is yours, then,” said Rue. “You are its rightful owner.” She found a box and began to pack the clay pot.

“You don’t want anything for it?”

“It has been in my shop for over twenty years,” she said. “And no one wants it. They say it is too inquiétant. Disturbing.”

She thanked Rue, then asked her where she could check her email.

Rue’s face became clouded, grey as an old winter sky. “You are returning to the world.”

To find my son, thought Valerie. Remembering Rue’s remark about the towers, she didn’t speak.

“Across from the fromagerie,” Rue whispered. “Look for a seated man with a laptop. Il est assis à la fin du monde.” Seated at the end of the world.

Today’s really gotten to her. She’s not all there. Poor soul. Valerie heard the screen door slam as she hurried out into the eye-aching brilliance of the day. Maybe I’m imagining things, she thought. She was clutching the box. But not everything. Not this.