The next morning went as she had imagined. Isabelle graciously had offered to escort her to the train station after Philippe left for work and while Françoise cleaned. Claire had brought her bag down to the landing by the stairs, where a dutiful Françoise had been instructed to place it in the car while Claire went back upstairs for a last-minute survey of the room.
As she came down the stairs Dan Gould brisked past her on his way up to his room. He did not make eye contact, drawing his stare away in an oddly dramatic fashion that only further served to bring him attention. He pulled his arms in tight, as if to avoid any accidental touch, or even acknowledge that they shared the same space. “Can we talk?” she asked. “Please. I am on my way out, and I’d…”
He stopped at the last step. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“Please.”
“I have already said too much. I know I have. Much too much.”
Isabelle called from the dining room. “Claire? It is time we must have to go. I do not want for you to be late for your train. And please do not let me forget a message I have for you. Always a message for you.”
“One moment,” Claire answered back. “I’ll be right there.” Turning back up to Dan Gould, she said, “Please, Dan. Give me a minute before I go. Just a minute, please.”
“I know what you are going to ask.” He shook his head back and forth, wiping the back of his hand against his mouth. “I know what you are going to ask. I knew it as soon as I told you at the restaurant yesterday. Knew it as soon as I was done talking.”
“We have no choice.”
He looked up toward his room, and then back to Claire. He barked out in a whisper, “I can’t. I told you I can’t afford the consequences.”
“Please hear me out.”
Isabelle called up again. “We are losing our time.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you. I went to bed…And I just knew I should have paid better attention to what I was…”
“Well, let’s turn it into something positive. Make it a good thing. Let’s.” She had never felt herself be so aggressive about not letting something drop.
“You don’t understand.”
“At least give me your phone number so we can discuss this further. There are ways to get information out that are not as devastating as you think. I know these things. Believe me. At least your number. At least we should talk this out when we are both back home. Away from the drama of the moment.”
It wasn’t clear if Gould acquiesced from understanding or to end the conversation, but he took a step down the stairs. “I don’t have a pen,” he said. “I don’t have one. I never carry them on me.”
Claire took one from her purse. She handed it to him with her old Air France ticket folder, which was still in her coat pocket. “When will you be back?”
“Day after tomorrow.” He didn’t look up, trying to steady the paper enough to write down his information. “Here, okay? It’s my home number. Not my work number. My home number. I can’t have any of this conversation nearing my work. You understand? Promise?…I don’t know that I want to talk with you anymore. I don’t want to be involved.” He handed her the folder and pen, watching her push it all into her coat pocket before turning around without saying good-bye.
At least he actually had done that much.
THEY ARRIVED AS THE TRAIN was pulling up to the platform. Isabelle grabbed her guest’s bag and ran off to hold the train, while Claire stopped to hurriedly purchase her ticket. Isabelle was braced in the doorway of the commuter car, keeping the doors from closing under the rueful eye of a conductor too complacent to do anything but stare disdainfully.
They hugged quickly in the doorway, and as Claire turned to head up the steps, Isabelle called out to her, “Claire, arrêtez. Stop. There is the note, here. The message.”
Claire thanked her, and tucked the message into her palm. Again they hugged. The train pulled out of the Méry-sur-Oise station in a slow grind, before soon hitting full speed. She waved to Isabelle out the window. She had the sensation that it would be a long time before she saw her again. It was Lauren’s blue eyes all over, staring at her through the fogging window, as Claire had stood on the platform and watched the train pull away. The intense sadness in Lauren’s watery eyes had tried to be hopeful. But they both had looked away at the last minute, knowing they likely would never see each other again.
Once settled in her seat Claire unfolded the Mailgram. Of course it was from Richard, simply congratulating her on the information she’d gotten from Dan Gould. He also had told Bernard that she would be home soon, and he looked forward to seeing her, but wished he knew when she was arriving.
But regarding your discovery, go slowly. I know how you tend to run with things. But be careful with this guy. It sounds like he could retreat just as easily. Just felt like I should say that.—R.
She smiled at his concern, and then put the note into her pocket, where it sat against his last message, which she still had been carrying. Pushing her bag away from her feet, thoroughly exhausted while still overly enthused, she reached into her pocket to look at Dan Gould’s contact information.
She looked at both sides of the Air France folder. Son of a bitch. There were no numbers. Just a single sentence near the bottom of the back asking that he be left alone, followed by the word Sorry!, capped by an exclamation point.
In less than a second she knew that she had lost Gould. She had played witness to her own stupidity in trusting that he understood the obligation of sharing his work. She should have known that something was amiss the moment she had seen him scurry up the stairs without a good-bye.
Claire didn’t feel as though she had the time to be devastated. She scrambled though her pocket for her pen, trying to reconstruct all of Dan Gould’s information from an exhausted memory. Gas chromatography. Thermal conductivity. Mass flow dependant detectors. Organic compounds that compose the colors. The consistency of saffron in the yellows, same as the forged Cézannes (he couldn’t be more specific?). Building regional colors. Gel electrophoresis. Macromolecules, proteins, physical properties. Microscopic paint chip analysis. Spectroscopy. X-radiography. Electromagnetic spectrum. K2CrO4. Or was it K3CrO6? Yellow precipitate. Layered paints. Premixed paints. She didn’t even know what she was writing, only cataloging all the vaguely familiar terms that Gould had used in his technical explanations. It was like stringing together consonants with no vowels. If she could keep some of Gould’s process in her head, then she could certainly find a chemist at the university who could put it all in the proper context. From there, she could tie in the historical aspects that would support and complement the data. It certainly would be enough to support a theory. At least enough to get the ball rolling. Her stomach turned hard, and her breath lodged into her chest. All she could do was close her eyes, and hope that sleep would retrieve what she had once known.