Banging on a locked door in the Marais was a bad idea at most time, but even worst at Two O'clock in the morning. Several windows lit up in buildings across Rue des Ecouffes. A man's head popped out and shouted for silence. A bottle followed his demand. Sean dodged the missile, which shattered on the slabbed sidewalk.
Petra waited down the narrow street outside the BMW.
"Why aren't we staying at the Hotel Lutetia or the Ritz."
"Here is close to the morgue." The real truth was that after several months in Hamburg, he wanted to be as far away from anything German as he could get and the old Jewish quarter fit that prerequisite to a tee.
Sean was about to give up, when an old woman's voice announced, "J'arrive."
The door cracked open and a wizened lady in a timeworn nightgown poked out her head. A young man, her grandson, stood behind her with a baseball bat, obviously unhappy about having his sleep disrupted. He was about to step outside to quell his anger, when his grandmother lifted her hand to stop him. "Calme-toi, Yves. C'est Mssr.Tempo."
"Oui, C'est moi, Madame Condez." Sean was pleased she recognized her lodger of last winter, though her face revealed that she had thought him as almost a dead man, when he had left her hotel in March. Her assumption should have been correct, except he had bucked the odds in New York and Hamburg.
"Avez-vous bargarrez, Mssr?" The old woman's rheumy eyes drank in the swollen bruises on Sean's face. She was ready for an excuse she would not believe, but accept.
"Non, madame, J'ai tombez." Sean touched his cheek and hoped that this was the last time he would be on the losing end for a long time. "J'ai besoin de deux chambres."
"Pas de problem, Mssr." Madame Steinberg had seen plenty of men who had fallen as hard as Sean over her many years in the Marais and waved wearily for him to enter.
"Jus une second." Sean said, then ran up the street to the car.
"So?" Petra was ready to sleep in the car, if necessary.
"So you and Vanessa go inside. Madame Steinberg has rooms for us."
"Where are you going?" Petra asked, as she motioned for Vanessa to get out of the car and took the aluminum case with her.
Sean pointed to the case with Lukas' videos and asked, "What about that?"
"Get rid of that. I don't care how."
"I understand." He had no interest in seeing those films. "I'll be back in thirty minutes."
Sean went to the car and drove away towards the Seine.
The two women were led inside the hotel by the old woman, who said, "We are not the Ritz, but the rooms are clean."
"Yes, it is not the Ritz, but it will be fine."
"And it's better than the back seat of a car." Vanessa could have been offered the Palais de Versailles and still be unhappy. The blonde was so vulnerable, a natural tendency to protect the weak had been re-awakened in Petra, so she found herself asking, "Was ist los?"
"I think being alone might be a little too hard tonight." Vanessa could already feel haunted by one too many faces of people no longer with the living.
"Then you might as well stay with us. Do you have a big room?"
""Quias, avec two lits."
"Parfait." Petra took her by the arm and led her into the better bedroom. "The bed can fit three."
"Will he mind?" Vanessa sniffled, trying to be brave for the thousandth time that day.
"Every man alive wants to be in bed with two women." Petra shut the door and undressed Vanessa. She shut off the lights and the room was swallowed by the shadows. Tucking Vanessa under the covers, Petra smoothed back the blonde hair from the unfurrowed brow.
"Thank you, Petra. Thank you for everything." Vanessa said, as two women sat in the semi-darkness waiting.
One for sleep and another for a man.
Sean parked his BMW on Ile St. Louis,, since the teen-aged gangs of the Marais would most assuredly smash the windows of any car with German plates.
Sean left his things in the car, but took the bag of videos and walked to the stone bridge spanning the river.
Overhead a few stars poked through the luminescent shield without forming any recognizable constellation. The city was slumbering deeply and few cars sped along the opposite quai. Erase them and the lights and he could have been in the Nineteenth Century.
He leaned over the peak of the bridge and stared at the inky river bisecting Paris. The water lapped at the stone arches below and emptied the videos into the Seine. They sank without a traacce and he walked over the cobbled stones to the other side of the bridge, remembering why he was here.
Further around the river's bend was the city's morgue at Quai de la Rapee.
A chill wrapped around him. He could have ended up there during the Spring and no one would have come for his body. All those dreams about the end of the world had only been reminders of what he had been doing to himself and at what risk he had put himself mourning the loss of Tammi.
Suddenly he realized that he had not thought about her for months. His feelings for Petra had replaced that sorrow and suffering. Nothing helps you forget one woman faster than a new love. His entire life was different and all, because of Kurt.
Sure, the German had been setting him up for a fall, but he hadn't been the one to get hurt. The final body count was unimportant as long as Petra and he were not in it.
Sean left the bridge for the Marais. As much as he craved sleep, he wanted Petra more. The city's soft white streetlights lit the way back to his hotel and, if he really knew how, he would have danced every step of the way, because he was in the City of Light and nothing shines brighter than love in Paris.
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