Guidebook, check.

Bottle of Evian, check.

Phone, keys, money, check.

OK, she was all set for today’s bit of neighborhood recon. On the program was the quartier that stretched from Nortre-Dame de Lorette to Pigalle. Her guidebook recommended starting from the church, but Lena had already seen it during her first two walks. So she took the bustling rue des Martyrs directly to the legendary boutique of Père Tanguy.

Or whatever was left of it.

If anything at all.

Her guidebook was suspiciously evasive on that account, and the photo next to the detailed story of Père Tanguy showed no more than a sober white memorial plaque.

During one of her visits to Paris, Lena had discovered Van Gogh’s Portrait of Père Tanguy in the Rodin museum. She loved the air of quiet serenity the Buddah-like man exuded. Père Tanguy wasn’t a random model—he was the best friend of the impressionists. The jovial fellow sold them art supplies and accepted paintings as payment. He then exhibited the paintings, one at a time, in the window of his tiny shop. On Monday it would be a Renoir, on Tuesday a Monet, on Wednesday a Pissarro, on Thursday a Van Gogh…

She had to see that place.

To Lena’s surprise and joy, the boutique was still there, sold Japanese art, and was called Père Tanguy. After chatting with the friendly manager, she found out the shop had changed hands and was converted into an art gallery a few years ago. Considering Père Tanguy’s obsession with Japanese prints, history had come full circle.

Elated, Lena bought a print and headed back home. She’d promised herself to write at least three pages of her theoretical chapter before the end of the day. It was time to get started… After she had something to eat.

It was past lunchtime, but Lena was hoping she could still order a big salad at the downstairs bistro. She took a window seat at the back. It offered a great vantage point from which to observe the passersby. Lena stretched her legs under the table and began to study the menu. She felt mature, self-sufficient, and in charge.

And single, in a good way.

A young woman with dyed pale blue hair approached her table. “Has mademoiselle decided what she’d like to order?”

The waitress’s hair, her gothic makeup, and pierced lower lip were in stark contrast to her classical French server uniform: a stiff-collared white shirt, black trousers, long black apron, and elegant black shoes. She whipped out a little notepad and tilted her head to the side to signal full attention.

“Your Savoyard salad looks interesting,” Lena said, looking to her for a confirmation.

“It isn’t interesting. It’s fantastic—our chef’s special. It’s the best Savoyard in Paris, if I say so myself.”

“Wonderful! Then I’ll have it, please.”

The waitress shook her head. “I didn’t mean to lead you on. We’re out of the Savoyard. In fact, the only salad left is the Niçoise.”

“That’s OK. I’ll have the Niçoise then, and a pitcher.”

Lena found herself remarkably unperturbed by the salad situation and pleased that she’d remembered to ask for a pitcher. During her previous visits to Paris, she had learned it was local code for tap water. It felt good to showcase that knowledge now, even though she would have preferred to drink Evian.

“Very good choice,” the waitress commented with a sly smile.

Lena wasn’t sure if she was referring to the salad or the tap water.

After finishing her meal and ordering a cup of tea, Lena turned on her iPad. Thankfully, the café offered Wi-Fi. She checked her e-mails and saw one from Gerhard. He was complaining about his current predicament: how to cut a 200-page mammoth of a monograph down to the seventy required for a master’s thesis. At the end of his note he suggested that they critique each other’s work.

So Gerhard wanted them to be thesis writing buddies. All right. It would be part of her healing. Besides, she did need help with her thesis, which at present consisted of only ten pages of theory and about forty pages of poems. The poems were Lena’s French translations of Marina Tsvetaeva, her favorite Russian poet. Even though both Lena and Gerhard majored in translation theory and practices, Gerhard was more into theory while Lena preferred the practice.

She wrote back.

It helped that she knew Gerhard and the way he wrote so well. It was also much easier to critique someone else’s thesis than to write hers. She attached to her e-mail her own anorexic theoretical chapter and asked him for an honest opinion.

She considered sending Gerhard her translated poems, too—after all, they were part of her thesis. She was curious to see if her translations would stir an emotional response in a person unfamiliar with the original texts. Truth be told, Lena craved feedback on the poems she’d poured her soul into.

And that was precisely why she couldn’t send them to Gerhard.

As she packed her iPad away, a nerve-racking sound startled her. A motorcycle screeched to a halt in front of the bistro, its engine filling the street with a hideous stench and roar. Lena wasn’t sure motorcycles were allowed on pedestrian streets, but the biker looked like he wouldn’t give a hoot if they weren’t. His helmet half concealed his face. He sported a tattoo on each arm, and another one peeked from under the collar of his black T-shirt. He wore black jeans and huge black combat boots along with bulky signet rings on his hands. If appearances could talk, his was shouting that a metrosexual he was not.

A few seconds later, the blue-haired waitress came out and stood next to the biker with her arms crossed over her chest. She said something Lena didn’t catch. The biker tapped his helmet but didn’t remove it.

“You were gone for more than an hour with some chick,” the waitress shouted. “People asked me who she was and if you were coming back to the party, and I had to tell them I had no clue. And then, just as I was about to leave, you show up and behave like nothing’s wrong!”

The biker muttered something Lena couldn’t make out.

“I don’t care that she doesn’t mean anything to you!” The waitress yelled, clenching her hands in fists. “I want to know what I mean to you. After all this time, do I mean anything at all?”

Lena couldn’t hear the biker’s reply.

The waitress shook her head. “You know what? Just go away. Right now I can’t stand to look at you.” She spun around and marched back into the kitchen.

The biker started the engine and drove away, leaving stench, noise, and smoke in his wake.

* * *

From behind a tree Rob raised his gun, took aim at the mobster he had been paid to execute, and pulled the trigger. As he watched the bullet perforate his target’s chest, the mobster transformed into a petite young woman with dark hair and big brown eyes. Rob froze. There was no mistake. He’d just shot Lena Malakhova, the girl from the bistro. Suddenly, his head started to ring, the sound getting louder and louder.

He woke up drenched in cold sweat to the deafening peal of his telephone.

“Hello,” he rasped, grabbing the receiver.

“Rob, it’s Maman. Did I wake you? How’s my boy?”

He shook his head vigorously to dissipate the image of Lena Malakhova, sprawled on the ground with a big red stain spreading across her chest. “I’m fine, M’man. What’s up? How’s everyone back home?”

“We’re all OK,” Rose said. “Grand-papa is organizing a chess tournament for the Fourteenth of July celebrations. It’s put him in a good mood.”

“That’s great.”

“He even went to Besançon to order a special prize from a craftsman for the winner. We’ve been bugging him about what it is, but he only says ‘wait and see.’ I fear the worst.”

Rob laughed. “I bet it’s a chess set with topless mermaids as the queens. That, or topless firefighters as the kings. Or maybe both to make sure to embarrass madam the mayor.”

“Oh yes, Bastille Day won’t be a success unless your grandfather has embarrassed madam the mayor!”

“How’s my little sister? Is she finishing the year well?” Rob asked.

“Caro’s been smack in the middle of her class since January. I suspect she’s so comfy there she’s made it a question of honor to uphold that position,” Rose said with a sigh.

“I’ll talk to her.”

“But there’s good news, too. Your sister has declared we’re no longer to buy her anything pink, rosy, or purple because it’s not cool. Her favorite color from now on is black. Please take note.”

Rob smiled. Caroline—Caro to friends and family—was an outgoing, happy child. He wondered if she would retain that personality through her teenage years. She loved to be outdoors. As a result her skin was golden and her wild hair bleached by the sun. Being her elder by twelve years, Rob had logged a record number of babysitting hours up until he left for Paris. As a matter of fact, he may have spent more time with his little sister than both his busy parents combined.

“Note taken—pink is not cool.” He gasped dramatically. “Oh no.”

“What is it?”

“I need to replace my entire wardrobe.”

As his mother chuckled, Rob stuck the handset between his ear and his shoulder, rubbed his eyes, and got out of bed. “How’s Papa? And what about you?”

“Same old. We’ve been really busy for the past couple of months, but things are calming down a bit.”

“Will you visit me then?” He knew there was little chance of that happening, considering how much his parents disliked big cities in general, and Paris in particular. They hated the traffic, the noise, the ubiquitous dog poo, and the weirdoes in the métro. He couldn’t actually remember a single thing they liked about Paris.

“There’s still some urgent work to finish here. Besides, we’re both on the organizational committee for the intervillage Olympic Games and the Firemen’s Ball. It will be special this year, you’ll see.”

During his six years in Paris, Rob’s parents visited him only three times and complained about Paris for months after each visit. So, he went to them whenever he could. That is, whenever he managed to get a weekend off at the bistro, book cheap train tickets, or find an offer to car pool.

He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. “Well, then I guess I’ll see you all in Saint-Fontain in mid-July. Say hi to everyone.”

His mother promised to do that and made Rob promise to eat well and stay away from cigarettes. It was how they ended each of their conversations for the past six years, and Rob had grown to appreciate the reassuring invariability of that ritual.

He hung up and went to the shower. As warm drops hit his shoulders and back, his thoughts turned to yesterday’s exchange with Lena Malakhova. They’d gotten off on the wrong foot. So he’d need to start over… if he were to accept the job.

I can do this.

He would fix their bad start and get Lena to relax around him. And then he’d get close enough to her to eavesdrop on her conversations without raising suspicion. And if he could manage to hold this gig throughout the summer, his little tuition problem would be solved without any need for a fairy godmother.

With a sigh Rob admitted to himself his decision was made. He needed the money, and he was running out of time and options. The gig stank, all right. But after Googling Boris Shevtsov in every language he knew, he hadn’t found anything to suggest the guy was involved in criminal activity. So it would be as he’d said—just a bit of corporate espionage.

Nothing more.

Rob turned off the shower, dried himself and got dressed. Then he went to his desk, picked up Boris’s card and dialed his number.

Boris answered immediately.

“I’ll give it a go,” Rob said. “But if she’s not interested after a week, I won’t pursue her. You’ll have to find someone else. Are we agreed?”

“Agreed. I’ll talk to you in a week.”

* * *

When Lena was eleven, her parents divorced. They didn’t fight over her custody in court but resolved the matter amicably after Dad paid off Mom. Lena still remembered every word of that dreadful conversation shortly after the scandal had erupted and turned their lives upside down. She could still feel the lump in her throat as her mother held her by the shoulders and shouted over her wailing. “You can’t come along. If you do, both of us will starve.” Lena had seen starving children on television. They had huge bloated bellies and vacant eyes. She didn’t want to starve.

Then Mom left and Lena stayed with Dad. She cried for a week. For the next year, she waited for Mom to return for her. After that, she waited for Dad to mellow and let Mom visit. After several years, she gave up.

Lena shook her head to dissipate the memories and forced herself to concentrate on the e-mail she’d been writing for the past half hour. It had two sentences. She added a third one, and reread her note.

Lena pressed send and sighed with relief. It was no small feat to have written such a well-rounded and informative missive to her mother. Those three short lines summarized hours and hours of phone calls with Dad.

Just think of all the time she saved . . .

* * *

Rob arrived at La Bohème an hour before his shift was to start. He scanned the bistro for Lena. To his great relief she was there, sitting at one of the sidewalk tables with her laptop and a glass of iced tea. He made himself a coffee and settled at the table next to hers.

The moment she stopped typing to take a sip from her glass, Rob made his move. “Hi there. I see you like our little bistro.”

She looked at him, recognition flickering in her eyes. “Hi. So you’re here as a patron today?”

“Not really. Just getting sufficiently caffeinated to make it through the evening. Saturday nights are the waiter’s nightmare.”

“I thought they were the best in terms of tips,” she said.

“You thought correctly. Which is why we servers accept to work them without coercion. Have you ever waitressed?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t. My knowledge is purely theoretical.” She took another sip of her iced tea and asked, “Are you a born Parisian? I cannot quite determine from your accent.”

Rob smiled. This conversation was going well. In fact, much better than he had hoped, given the other day’s calamity. “I’ve lived here for the past six years, but I come from a small village in the southeast of France. The region is called Jura.”

“I know Jura. It borders Switzerland. I even went hiking there on the Swiss side a few times,” she said quickly.

“So, I take it you come from Switzerland?” he asked.

She hesitated for a second and then said, “I’ve lived there for the past seven years.”

“I like Switzerland, but I don’t think I could live there. It would be like living inside an idyllic postcard.”

She leaned in, eyes bright with understanding. “Exactly. Like someone locked you up inside an idyllic postcard and threw away the key.”

It was Rob’s turn to offer an insight into Swiss life. “It’s a very reliable country, just like its watches. The first bus always arrives at your stop at 7:13, as announced on the schedule. The postman delivers the mail at 7:14, and the ducks land on the pond at 7:15 sharp, every day.”

“It depends.” She arched her eyebrows. “Where I lived, they hit the pond at 7:03. Every day.”

He shrugged. “Must be lark ducks. Hey, here’s another one: the Swiss won’t cross the street at a red light even if there isn’t a single car in sight. They’ll just stand there and wait.”

“If you try it in Paris, people will think you’re stoned. Have you ever noticed the big red button you’re supposed to press in such situations?”

“When you’re stoned?”

The corners of her mouth twitched upward. “No, when the traffic light is red, but there are no cars.”

“Ah, that one! Yes, I’ve seen it. We have them in France, too.”

“Well, in Switzerland people actually use them! They press, and wait, and press again several times, and wait some more. There are still no cars, but they won’t cross.”

Her eyes were now sparkling with mirth. “I used to think the button made the light change to green faster. But then I timed it and realized its sole purpose was to give the law-abiding citizens some form of release. Like a punching bag for fingers.”

Rob laughed. “Reminds me of another Swiss quirk. If you inadvertently drop a candy wrapper or a bus ticket, at least three people will notice and tell you in French, German, and Italian to please pick it up.”

He held up his index finger and said with a thick Swiss accent, “Keeping our country clean is everybody’s business!”

She put her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God—this actually happened to me once!”

The game is on, he thought as he listened to her peals of happy laughter.