Revolution (37 page)

68

T
he men all have ponytails. All of them. They’re all wearing short pants and long, fitted jackets. The women, the few that I can see, are tattered-looking, and I wonder if maybe I’m walking through another late-night rave. One woman approaches us. She’s wearing a long, old-fashioned dress. It’s dirty. She’s dirty. She smiles at us. Then opens the top of her dress.

“Whoa! Tuck those back in!” I say. Breasts don’t usually scare me, but I’m still flinchy from my walk through Deadville.

Amadé just waves her away as if this happens to him all the time. He’s walking fast. I have to trot to keep up with him.

I see carriages go by. They look as if a fairy godmother made them. There’s no curb, no sidewalk. There’s only the street and it’s muddy. How can it be muddy? There’s no mud in Paris because there’s no dirt in Paris. It’s a city. The streets are asphalt. If they weren’t, the cars would get stuck. But there are no cars, either. No cabs. No buses. No mopeds. There are no signs, no traffic lights. There are a few streetlights, and they have flames burning inside them. The buildings look shorter. There are no airplanes in the sky. And it stinks. It stinks almost as bad as the catacombs did. Of old cheese and feet and rotten cabbage and sewers.

It’s not a rave; there’s no music. It’s not Halloween, because it’s not October. And it’s not a costume party, because there’s no guy in a gorilla suit. So what the hell is going on?

“Come on,” Amadé says, tugging on my arm.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” I ask him.

“It’s not good to be seen. To get in their way.”

And then I get it. And it’s so obvious I start laughing at myself for being so weird and stupid. This whole thing is one big movie set. They’re shooting a night scene in some big historical epic and the extras are running around and Amadé knows we’ll get yelled at if we mess up the shot.

And the dead people were all props. That’s why Amadé and his friends didn’t get upset at the sight of them. And the stink? Probably some kind of method-acting spray-on stuff to keep the actors in the moment.

I start looking around for the giant lights that crews use to shoot night scenes. And the big fat cables and generators and the burly tech guys who operate them. I look for the trailers that shelter the stars between takes. And the tables covered with food in case the crew gets hungry and the angry little peons whose job it is to keep the great unwashed away from Rob Pattinson. But I don’t see them. I only see skinny, dirty kids swarming all over the place.

“Isn’t it kind of late for child actors to be running around?” I ask Amadé.

But he doesn’t hear me. He’s halfway across the street. I catch up. And then we’re at the entrance to the Palais-Royal.

“Hey, it’s been real,” I tell him.

“Have something to eat before you go. Please,” he says.

“I’ve got to make tracks,” I say.

“I fear for you. If the guards see you with blood on your face, they’ll want to know what happened. They’ll detain you. At least come inside and wipe the blood off.”

Maybe he’s right. I really don’t want to get stopped by the police. “Okay,” I say, following him.

The Palais courtyard is busy and raucous and filled with extras dressed as film characters. There are drunks and dandies and gamblers. We get to the Café Chartres and that’s hopping too. The studio must’ve hired it to be the canteen. As we sit down at a table, I look around at the actors. They have bad teeth. Scars. Zits. Greasy hair. Dirty nails. It all looks so real. Makeup’s got the Oscar nailed for sure. I look around for some sign of modernity—a cell phone, Gitanes, a wristwatch, a pen. I can’t even find the espresso machine. It’s remarkable. Every trace of the twenty-first century is gone.

Amadé orders food. I tell him I’m not hungry but he insists. The waiter brings wine. I don’t want any. My head’s still woozy from the wine I drank at the beach. I push the glass over to him but he doesn’t drink it. Instead, he takes out a handkerchief, dips it in my glass, and rubs at my forehead with it.

“Have you ever heard of water?” I ask him, wincing.

He snorts. “You know as well as I do that you don’t want to rub your head or any other part of you with Paris water. The wound would be rotten within a day.”

A man comes to our table. His clothes are covered with food stains. Amadé greets him warmly, calls him Gilles.

“What happened to you?” he asks me.

“A fall,” Amadé quickly says.

I say hello to Gilles, who’s also in full-on actor mode, and take over cleaning my cut. There’s a lot of blood on the cloth. I must’ve hit my head pretty hard.

Gilles gives Amadé a look. Amadé shrugs. “Too much to drink,” he mouths. They think I don’t see them.

The two men talk. I don’t catch it all but I do hear the word
trial
and the name Fouquier-Tinville—again. I know that name. He was the chief prosecutor for the Tribunal during the Revolution. The movie must be about the French Revolution.

They keep talking but I’m not really paying attention.

Gilles says, “The bounty’s been raised again.”

“Has it?” Amadé says. “When did that happen?”

“Just this afternoon. Every man, woman, and child in Paris is trying to catch the Green Man now. After that huge fireworks display last night. Everyone’s dreaming of what they can buy with the money. The guards are very busy tonight. They’re questioning all who pass by.”

I stop dabbing at my head. I’m paying attention now.

“They wounded him, didn’t they?” Amadé says. “They shot him. That’s what the paper said this morning.”

Gilles nods. “I’ll wager he crawled off somewhere to hide and died there. The guard will find him soon enough. By his smell.”

The Green Man. That’s what they called Alex, but Alex lived over two centuries ago. There was a bounty on her, too. I start to shiver. I feel dizzy again. And scared. It’s too perfect, this movie set. This fake world. Something’s wrong.

Amadé notices me shivering and tells Gilles to hurry with our food. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I just need something to eat. A few minutes later the food arrives. Roast chicken, he tells me, smirking, then he makes a joke about the lack of crows in Paris. I try some of it. It’s terrible. Nasty and stringy. Eating it doesn’t make me feel better at all, and watching Amadé eat with his hands doesn’t help, either.

That’s it, I think. I’m out of here. I’m going to hit the ladies’, wash my forehead properly, and find a cab. I ask Amadé where the facilities are. He says I have to walk through the kitchen, so I do. The kitchen’s in character, too. Birds, the kind with feathers on them, are hanging from the ceiling. A bristly pig’s head lies on a table. Eels are squirming in a basket. I turn around in circles looking for a door with W.C. on it but can’t find one.

“Out there!” a man snaps at me, pointing at an open door. I go outside but there’s nothing here—nothing but two men peeing on a pile of garbage.

I start to panic. A thought, whispering in my mind ever since I fell in the catacombs, is shouting at me now. I run back to the table.

“Look, I think I’m having a reaction,” I tell Amadé. “I think a drug I’m taking is mixing badly with some wine I drank. I need help. I need to find a taxi. I need to get home.”

“Where are your rooms?” he asks me.

I’m about to tell him when the dizziness hits me hard. I can barely stand up.

“Come,” he says, wrapping his arm around my waist. “I’m taking you to my home.”

I half walk, half stagger out of the Palais. On the street, we’re mobbed by children. They are so thin, and dressed in rags, and they seem to be everywhere. One of them runs up to us, begging for food. Amadé tells him he has none.

“It is heartbreaking,” he says. “The orphanages of Paris are full now. These here must live on the streets. Their parents were guillotined, perhaps, or their fathers killed in the wars. Danton and Desmoulins, fathers both, tried to stop the worst of Robespierre’s excesses. They tried to appeal to him to show mercy. But Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon—none of them had children, only ideas, and there is little mercy in ideas. Poor things. They will likely be rounded up and sold off to factories or farms. To be worked to death. It is what happens.”

“In the movie, right?” I say, desperately wanting him to agree with me.

He frowns at me. “How is your head now?” he asks.

“Still spinning.”

We walk for some time. The route looks vaguely familiar, but I don’t see any shops I recognize. No Carrefours. No Paul bakeries.

“Here we are,” he finally says.

I look around. We’re on the Rue du Grand Chantier. I’ve never heard of it, but that’s what the street sign says.

“You live here?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he says. He’s busy trying to hold me up and open the outer door. He gets his key in the lock, turns it, and we’re in the courtyard.

I know the Marais—my mother grew up here and we used to stroll the streets together whenever we visited Paris—but this house doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen here. It’s shabby and dark. Instead of the electric light above the door, there’s a lantern. I can smell horses. We go inside and walk up the stairs to the third-floor landing. His apartment is big and cold and smelly, with cracked walls and cobwebby beams in the ceiling.

“Please, you must sit. You really are not well,” Amadé says.

He leads me to a huge wooden table, pulls out a chair, and lights a candle. I sit down and close my eyes, trying, again, to make the dizziness stop.

“Do you have any coffee?” I ask him.

He says he does and that he just needs to heat it. I hear him clattering around. A few minutes pass. I grip the edges of the table, take a deep breath, and open my eyes.

There’s a quill in front of me. A pot of ink. And an old newspaper, the
National Gazette
. I see the date—14 Prairial III. I try to work out the date in my head and come up with the second of June, 1795. The day after Alex died. Six days before Louis-Charles did. It’s just a prop, I tell myself.

Amadé puts a steaming bowl of coffee down in front of me. I thank him, sip it, and set the bowl down carefully. It looks like an antique. So does the table. There’s sheet music spread across it. It looks handwritten. My eyes follow the notes. It’s a rondo. A very old piece. There are two initials at the top of the first page—
A.M
. And suddenly I know where I’ve seen him—in a painting. A portrait. Hanging in an ancient mansion by the Bois de Boulogne.

“You’re Malherbeau, aren’t you?” I ask, afraid of his answer.

He smiles. “Yes, I am. Pardon me for not giving you my full name earlier. It’s a careful habit I have. You never know who is listening. I’m Malherbeau. Amadé Malherbeau.”

“No,” I say, my voice shaking. “No, you aren’t. You can’t be. Because Amadé Malherbeau lived two hundred years ago.”

And then I feel myself topple forward. Amadé shouts. He catches me, picks me up, and carries me across the room to a bed.

What’s happening to me? I feel weak and helpless. It’s the Qwell. I’ve taken too much. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe someone spiked my wine. I feel Amadé unlacing my boots. Sliding them off my feet. I’m so scared. What if he’s the one who did it?

I hear a clock strike the hour. The ceiling is swirling above me. Amadé is leaning over me. He’s talking to me, shouting at me, but he sounds so far away. His face is blurring, melting, fading.

I’m so afraid. “Somebody help me. Please help me,” I whisper.

Right before everything goes black.

69

I
hear music. Someone’s playing a guitar. Working at a phrase. Over and over again. Not getting it right. It should be beautiful but it’s not. It’s annoying. I wonder who it is. G? Lili? I didn’t know they played.

I’m itchy. My chin itches. My neck itches. My ear does, too. I’m thinking there must be a mosquito in the room but there can’t be. It’s December, all the mosquitoes are dead. I’m sore, too. Hurting all over.

I open my eyes, groan at the pain in my head, and shut them again. What happened last night? I remember being at the Eiffel Tower—and what I almost did there. I remember Virgil and his friends. The beach. The police. I can’t remember how I got home but I do remember a weird dream about guys in eighteenth-century costumes, and dead bodies in the catacombs, and eating at the Café Chartres with Amadé Malherbeau.

I roll over, open my eyes again, and gasp. There’s someone next to me. A really hairy someone.

“Yo. Hey. Wake up,” I say, prodding him.

The guy turns to me. He has brown eyes and a long snout. As I’m staring at him in disbelief, he sticks out his tongue and licks my face.

“Dude! Gross!” I say, sitting up. It’s a dog. A huge stinky dog. I scoot away from him, sure that he’s the reason I’m itching.

“It’s all right. Hugo doesn’t bite,” a voice says, making me jump out of my skin. “Amadé. Amadé Malherbeau. Do you remember?” he asks me.

My blood runs cold as I look at him. “No,” I say. “I don’t.”

But I do. I just don’t want to. Because I thought that was all a dream and dreams aren’t real. Unless you’re crazy. I tell myself the same thing I told myself last night—it’s all a movie set and this guy’s an actor. He’s playing the role of Amadé Malherbeau, that’s all.

He’s sitting in a chair now, at the long wooden table. Sheets of music are scattered across it. Some are on the floor. He plays as I stare at him. Writes notes down. Plays again. Swears. And scratches the notes out.

Something’s worrying me, something that happened last night. What is it? I remember now. “Hey, did you put something in my drink last night? Did you?”

“Certainly not. Why would I?”

“To get me back here. In your bed.”

Amadé snorts. “Monsieur mistakes my kind intentions.”

He called me Monsieur last night, too. “Hey, I’m not a man, all right?”

He blinks at me. “You’re not?”

“No, I’m not.”

“But your clothing … no woman wears britches.”

“Enough, okay? Enough with the whole eighteenth century thing,” I say, testily.

I get out of bed, find my boots, and put them on. I don’t know where I am. I thought I was at G’s, but I’m not, and I really want to be. I want to take a shower and wash the fleas, the dog funk, the whole freakshow off me.

I look at my watch. It says 12:03. That was about the time the beach was raided. It’s stopped. I must’ve banged it when I fell in the tunnels. I really hope my father didn’t check my room last night. If he did, I’m dead.

“Where are we? Where’s the nearest Métro?” I ask Amadé.

“Métro? What is that?”

I
so
wish he would stop. I go to the window and pull back a heavy, dusty curtain. Paris is still there; that’s something. Then I see what I saw last night—horses and carriages. No cars. No buses. Women wearing old-fashioned clothes. Men selling firewood and milk out of cans. It’s the movie, I tell myself. Again. I look for the Eiffel Tower, but I can’t see it. Or any tall buildings. I let the curtain fall. Across the room, Amadé is still struggling with the phrase. It’s making my head hurt.

“Wrong chord. Try G minor.”

“Minor, you say?”

“Minor.”

“An unusual choice,” he muses, trying it out.

“Do you have any more coffee?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says, making no move to get it.

I look around for a coffee maker and a fridge and a sink but there are none. There’s just this giant room we’re in, a fireplace, and some furniture. I open the doors to a wooden cupboard and find a jug of red wine, a chunk of hard cheese, and some wet coffee grinds in a bowl. This guy’s a bit of a slob. I pick up the bowl and look around for the trash can.

“What are you doing?” Amadé says.

“Throwing out the garbage. Where do you keep the coffee?”

“Are you stupid? That
is
the coffee! Put it down!”

“But it’s used.”

“Only twice. There’s flavor in it yet. I’m lucky to have that much. There’s little coffee and even less sugar coming in from the plantations now. What does get here is horribly expensive. You know that.” His eyes narrow. “Perhaps you have contacts? For coffee? And sugar? I would give much for them. I can’t compose without coffee. I can’t even think without it.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll get some right now.” A double espresso. For myself. Because I’m so done with him and his insanity.

“What, right now? In broad daylight? Are you mad? Don’t you know what happens to black-marketers? If you’re caught, you’ll be killed.”

I give him a look. “The joke’s getting old. Really, really old.”

“What joke?” he says, looking confused.

“You know what joke. The whole revolutionary thing. I know it’s all a movie set, okay? And you’re an actor. And it was funny for a while but now it’s not. It’s really not. Where’s the bathroom? I have to go. Bad.”

Still looking confused, he points at an old tin tub in the corner. “You’re not going to take a bath, are you?” he says. “I’ve nowhere near enough firewood to heat that much water.”

“Where—is—the—toilet?” I say. Through gritted teeth.

He reaches under the table and pulls out a chamber pot. And I lose it. Completely. I grab it out of his hands and throw it on the floor, smashing it to pieces.

“Stop it! Stop it right now!” I shout at him, feeling as if I’m losing my mind.

Amadé looks at the mess on the floor. He stands up and puts his guitar down. “I helped you,” he says, furious. “I fed you. Gave you coffee. Let you sleep in my bed. And this is how you repay me? Get out. Get out of my house.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

But I don’t get to finish my sentence. He grabs my jacket, bag, and guitar, opens the door, and dumps them on the landing. Then he stands by the door, glaring at me.

I leave and he slams the door after me. I sit down on the landing and put my head in my hands. It’s cold out here. I’m hungry. I should get going but I don’t. I’m afraid to. Afraid to stand up and walk out of this building. Afraid that if I do, the eighteenth-century world will somehow become real.

But I can’t sit here forever. I’ll pee my pants. I stand up and walk down the stairs.

It’ll be okay, I tell myself. It’ll all be okay.