FORTY-TWO

Victor

As promised, this room had the exact layout of the one below it. There was a small, vintage-looking bed in the corner, custom-built to fit against the curve of the wall. Translucent curtains floated in and out of the open window. And just his luck—the entire circumference of the room was covered in exposed brick.

He gingerly shut the door behind him, releasing the knob into the doorframe, and placed his duffel on the ground.

“So this is where the magic happened,” he said, testing the sound of his own voice.

He scratched the back of his head. Unless he had tripped a silent alarm—and he somehow doubted that people who raised billy goats also installed silent alarms—he had made it into the château undetected. Now it was time to hunt. He ran his fingers along the walls, hunting for a shift in brick texture. He was gonna have to feel up every brick in this room, hoping that the Nazi soldier wasn’t taller than him. None of the bricks were loose. He tried to keep track of the ones he had already checked, counting by touch like a blind man. He looked up at the ceiling, at the decorative plaster wreath that once had a chandelier hanging from the middle of it. Where was his necklace? That plaster wreath knew but it wasn’t telling. He had been raised by people who hid all their valuables in empty Ajax containers (his birth certificate had a permanent bend in it). None of this trick chest of drawers and pick a brick, any brick crap.

Finally, he came to the side of the room with the bed. Victor got down on his hands and knees, inhaling dust. The legs of the bed had pinned the edge of an area rug up against the wall, blocking a row of bricks. Victor attempted to lift one of the legs and squeeze his body farther in. He pawed at the wall. He was running out of bricks. Then what? He would have to check again. He didn’t get this far to perform a half-assed brick-frisking. His fingers pushed against a clay corner.

It made a sound like a mortar and pestle.

He moved it back and forth like a loose tooth. Now he was flat on his stomach, reaching forward as he strained to remove the brick. He rested it on the carpet and plunged his hand into the space behind it. His hand searched, afraid, somehow, of being bitten. Nothing.

Nothing.

“Jewelry is as alive as whomever it touches.” He could hear Johanna say that, sitting in her windowsill, tropical breeze moving the ruffles on her shirt. He should have asked her while he had the chance: But what if no one ever gets to touch it? What then?

He pulled his hand back to take a break and regroup. As he did, he grazed something. He looked in, squinting, and spied a small, flat object. He reached in as far as he could and held it between his fingers, bringing it closer to his face. It felt glossy, like a photograph. A clue, perhaps? His eyes came into focus. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing: A school photo of some kid in a Lacoste shirt, bowl cut, and braces, smiling like a schmuck.

Then the door swung open and hit him right in his ass, knocking him flat.

It took both Victor and the Ardurat girl a moment to process what was happening, for her to determine that Victor was a person and not a piece of furniture.

She was wearing pajama pants and a tank top. She looked even younger to him now than she had spouting history. She had a terry-cloth headband wrapped around her face and her skin was shiny. She had gotten up to go to the bathroom and had come back to a man crawling under her bed, ass up.

He saw himself perfectly through her eyes. Not just an intruder but the creepily gangly intruder with a battered face who had tagged on to her tour group. She covered her mouth with both hands and then dropped them immediately, flicking on the light.

And then the screaming started.

Victor had never experienced auditory slow motion before. It sounded like falling. He held his hand up in disagreement. He felt like he was blocking a bullet.

Finally, she let out a sharp, short “Ah!” and slammed the door, shutting Victor inside. Now, with the lights on, certain teenage elements revealed themselves. The curtains were violet. There were pictures everywhere, clusters of friends at the beach, pieces of one-dimensional memorabilia, cards with inspirational quotes on them, dried roses that wouldn’t quite get flat. A gold chain hanging from a hook that read, ALEXIA.

Victor brushed the curtains aside and looked out the window. The trellis had provided him with a ladder up to the hallway but even if he could reach it from here, he would break his neck trying to get back down the way he came up.

Two sets of footsteps came thundering down the hallway.

“Allô?” screamed Mr. Ardurat. “On appelle la police! Vous êtes armé? Vous m’entendez? Vous m’entendez!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Victor shouted.

He heard Mrs. Ardurat fumble with the desk drawer in the hallway. Victor watched the knob rattle, thinking he was about to receive his second beating in twenty-four hours. Instead, they locked him in.

In the distance, the dogs were going berserk.

“I’m not armed,” he offered. “I . . . je n’ais pas une gun. No gun. Pas de gun.”

No one responded. Two sets of footsteps had moved away but one remained. Mr. Ardurat was manning Victor’s cell in the interim. It had been established that Victor didn’t have a gun but what about Mr. Ardurat?

“I’ll wait here,” Victor said.

Mr. Ardurat pounded the door once, hard, which Victor took as his cue to shut up. He sat on Alexia’s bed, holding the picture of some kid with a newly acquired Adam’s apple. The windowsill was covered with bottles of bright nail polish and plastic snow globes. He shook his head and almost laughed. All of this risk for a picture of some teenage girl’s crush. Though, looking at the photo, a thin retainer wire across the kid’s top teeth, he knew it was not only the necklace he had risked everything for. It was also his crush, so ancient that he had stopped considering if Kezia was ever really right for him. He was just so accustomed to the steady hum of wanting her. Her picture had hung in his heart for so long, he both couldn’t see it and couldn’t imagine the walls without it.

The echo of Alexia’s voice came from downstairs, carrying with it a sustained panic. Frightened as he was, Victor felt awful. She probably thought he was rifling through her underwear drawer right this second. If he thought there was a chance the necklace was hiding in there, he probably would be. He put his head between his knees and exhaled.

“I’m not a burglar,” he sputtered, “or a rapist. Pas de violate votre femme. I promise.”

“Ferme la bouche.” Mr. Ardurat pounded on the door again. “Do not move, asshole.”

It sounded like oh, soul.

“Okay. But I can explain . . .”

This was a lie. Ever since Florida, he’d felt himself on a path. Maybe not the right path, but, for once, a path. A single string of events so that getting his apartment keys copied for Matejo and getting the shit beaten out of him in Rouen felt like the same thing. They were all part of the necklace, as if the ghost of Guy de Maupassant and Johanna Castillo and Johanna’s aunt and Johanna’s aunt’s Nazi lover were all waiting for him somewhere, all counting on Victor to replace what they had lost, all promising to connect him with the world again.

He had an explanation, but that was different from being able to explain.